1.3 – Health

Everyone knows it’s good to be healthy. Yet, we spend huge amounts of time and money on things we know are bad for our health (and equally huge amounts of time and money trying to fix the consequences). This chapter of Supermorning tackles this extraordinarily wasteful problem and discusses proven methods of getting ourselves to consistently take healthy actions.

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Recap: Short-Term Stress Management

This week was all about techniques for dealing with high levels of existing stress. Next week, we’ll get to some longer-term methods to prevent high levels of stress from occurring in the first place. 

So, let’s round up this week in the usual fashion.

The checklist

Here’s the lowdown of the four stress-management ideas we discussed:

  1. Develop a game plan for stress management.
    • We all know some typical stress-reduction techniques.
    • Making these techniques useful requires a proactive game plan to make sure they’re easily available when needed. 
  2. Let go of unnecessary stress.
    • Often we’re stressed about things that are not so dangerous, highly unlikely or totally outside our control. 
    • Becoming mindful of such cases makes it a lot easier to let go of useless stress. 
  3. Find your Most Efficient Next Action (MENA).
    • There are also many times when your stress is legit.
    • In such times, pouring all this restless energy into doing something about it results in very natural stress reduction. 
  4. Stop digging.
    • We have a tendency to keep doing the thing that caused our stress in the first place.
    • Be mindful of this possibility and do the positive things in the previous steps instead. 

So, there you have it. I really hope these ideas can make your days a little bit more tranquil 🙂 

Have a nice weekend!

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When Dealing With Stress, Start By Not Making It Worse

I’m sure you’ve heard of this age-old piece of advice: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. 

As we’ll discuss today, this little bit of advice can often be very useful for stress management. 

Are you still digging?

So, what is it that caused you to end up in this stressful situation in the first place? Did you do something? Not do something?

Honestly assess whether you’re still doing (or not doing) that specific something. If you are, you’re still digging and you really need to stop! 

Maybe you’ve taken on too much responsibility at work. In this case, the last thing you want to do is to take on more responsibilities either at work or at home. 

Did you have a bad falling-out with a loved one? Then check your ego at the door and stop making it worse with passive aggressive behavior. 

Stressed about your health? Stop self-destructing on empty calories and other unhealthy addictive substances. 

Easier said than done

There’s good reason why the old adage at the top has been around for so long. People have a natural tendency to keep digging when they’re in a hole. We often get some sort of unhealthy short-term satisfaction from digging even harder. 

But a little bit of mindfulness can help a lot with putting down your shovel and rather focusing on the positive ideas we discussed over the past three days. 

So, stop digging, build a game plan of stress-relief techniques, let go of any unnecessary stress, and take deliberate action on useful stress. Together, these ideas can greatly reduce stress and anxiety. 

See you tomorrow when we formally wrap up this week’s topic. 

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Stress Reduction Through Deliberate Positive Action

Yesterday’s post ended with a suggestion to let go of stressors that are out of your control. But there are also many stressful situations you can (and should) do something about.

In these cases, redirecting all this restless energy into meaningful action becomes an excellent stress-relief strategy. Today’s post digs a little deeper into this valuable idea. 

Why positive action is so useful

Most of the problems we experience in our wonderful modern world arise from our primitive emotions. These emotions evolved over the first 99.9% of human history, but, following truly stupendous technological progress in the last 0.1%, most of them have become badly outdated. 

One of these outdated emotions is Worry. As discussed here, Worry can actually be very useful because it can get us to take proactive action and prevent future problems. 

Stress and anxiety are more advanced forms of Worry, but their purpose is the same. They desperately want us to take care of some serious threat that might arise in the future. 

As discussed yesterday, the problem is that they’re often dead wrong.

But there are also many times when they’re right. Today’s post is about those times. 

The Most Efficient Next Action (MENA)

When you’ve gone through the thought exercise presented yesterday and determined that your stressor is something worth worrying about, MENA is your next stop. 

Your MENA can be found from a simple question: What is the one action I can take to reduce the most stress with the least effort? 

Once you’ve found your MENA, make it your very top priority and get it done. If your stress lingers, move on the the next MENA. 

It really shouldn’t take many successfully executed MENA’s before you can relax again. Doing something about your stressor is exactly what your entire 200-millennium-old biology wants you to do. It’s a very natural way to find peace again. 

A healthier relationship with stress

Executing your MENA can be hard, but if your stress is great enough, you can leverage it to get you through. In this sense, stress, like Worry, can be a very good thing. Without it, you might not have the drive to take some tough actions to secure your longer term future. 

Acknowledging this positive aspect can also help improve your relationship with stress. Often we stress because we’re stressed. Making smart use of your stress can kill this nasty vicious cycle before it starts. 

So, what’s your next MENA?

See you tomorrow for our final short-term stress reduction technique: the advanced skill of not making things worse 🙂

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Letting Go of Stress

As introduced yesterday, this week discusses four interesting methods for short-term stress relief. 

One of the strangest characteristics of modern stress and anxiety is that much of it is focused on things that really are not all that dangerous. We easily overemphasize the magnitude and/or the likelihood of a potential future hazard. 

In such cases, the practice of letting go can be very useful. It’s best implemented through some simple questions: 

What is the worst that could happen?

Many times, some negative thinking can actually be quite helpful. Imagine the worst possible outcome. Will anyone die or get seriously injured? Will you end up on the street? Will the world stop spinning?

In the vast majority of cases, the answers to these questions are no, no and no. Just realizing that you will survive even the worst possible outcome can really help you let go of the stress. 

What are the chances?

If the worst possible outcome really can be something serious, the next question is about assessing the likelihood. In our modern society, we’re well insulated against most calamities, making the statistical likelihood of a very bad outcome very low. 

Terrible things reported on the news are often one in a million events that are unlikely to befall you even if you live 100 lifetimes. Correctly labeling a stressor as having an almost zero likelihood is a great way of letting go. 

What can I do?

Often, we find ourselves stressing about things we cannot do anything about. As discussed earlier, worry can be a very positive emotion when it can get you to take proactive action to prevent future troubles.

But if there genuinely is nothing you can do, letting go really is the only reasonable option. Realizing this can be very powerful. 

On the other hand, if you can actually do something about a genuine future threat, getting to work right away is just as effective. That will be tomorrow’s topic. See you then!

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Techniques For Controlling Stress and Anxiety

Welcome to the third health sub-chapter in the Supermorning series: Mental health. 

We’ll kick off with a week of short-term techniques for reducing the impact of existing stress. Then, we’ll look at longer-term strategies to permanently reduce the amount of stress in our lives. And finally, we’ll tackle the complicated topic of happiness. 

So, let’s start simple with some well-known stress management techniques.

Move

We’ve just finished the sub-chapter on fitness, which also happens to be the best way for reducing excessive stress.

If you’re stressed, your body is filled with fight or flight hormones in preparation for physical action. But if you just sit there, these hormones keep accumulating and making you even more anxious. 

Movement is an excellent way to release this built-up tension in a natural way. Ideally, you would move around outside in some green spaces to experience the added anti-stress benefits of nature. 

Talk

An open chat with a trustworthy person who has mastered the art of listening is another excellent stress-release mechanism. Stress and isolation is a combination we should particularly wary of. 

If you don’t have someone like this in your life, maybe a psychologist can be a good option. Getting stressful things off your chest in a safe environment is arguably the main benefit of psychotherapy. 

Relax

If exercise and talking don’t quite cut it, dedicated relaxation practice is the next step. Deep relaxation will flush stress hormones from your body, helping you unwind.

This can be particularly useful right before bedtime to help you get a good night’s sleep. Good options include yoga, meditation, massage, burning certain fragrances or just taking a nice hot bath. 

Breathe

If you’re in a very stressful situation you cannot escape, focusing on your breath may be the best way to control anxiety. The 4-7-8 technique is a good option. 

Build a game plan

I’m sure you’ve heard all these tips before. But it’s often useful to see them all together like this. 

To get the most use out of these ideas, it’s important to develop a game plan of how you will apply them in a stressful situation. 

So, decide beforehand on the type of exercise you can do, who you can talk to, and what relaxation technique you can practice. Make sure that all the elements required by these techniques are at your disposal. 

I really hope this helps! Tomorrow, we’ll cover something a bit less obvious: the subtle art of letting go. 

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Recap: Permanent Fitness Environment

OK, let’s wrap up our fitness sub-chapter with a quick summary of how to construct an environment for lifelong healthy fitness levels. 

As a quick reminder, the idea here is to make movement an inevitable part life. If you manage that, healthy fitness levels will happen automatically for the rest of your days. 

The checklist

Here are three key steps to automatic lifelong fitness: 

  1. Build easy fitness habits. 
    • There are countless opportunities for free movement in our daily lives. 
    • Most of these are very easy and can readily be turned into lasting habits. 
  2. Create a fit home. 
    • The location of your home is a key fitness consideration.
    • There are also many things in and around the house that can be modified to encourage movement and discourage stagnation. 
  3. Make movement desirable. 
    • One of the main motivations for getting fit is to build a body that makes movement fun. 
    • Use the previous two tips to reach this tipping point and then capitalize on sports and socializing to take it to the next level. 

So, there you have it. Fitness should not be something tedious we force ourselves through day after day. It should be an automatic and often enjoyable part of life 🙂 

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Make Movement Desirable

The last element of our lifelong fitness environment is to make it more fun to move your body 🙂

In general, if you can derive genuine pleasure from things that are good for you, life suddenly becomes a whole lot better. Fitness is no exception to this rule. 

So, let’s see how this can be done. 

Patiently get yourself in shape

Moving your body will always be a drag if you have a low power-to-weight ratio. In fact, building a body that makes movement more enjoyable should be one of the main motivations for getting fit. 

If you have a long way to go, don’t rush it. Just patiently build the habits and home environment we discussed over the past two days and allow your fitness to gradually improve. 

Then, as it becomes easier to move your body, gradually up the ante. And sooner or later, you’ll get to the point where movement genuinely becomes fun 🙂

Sports

Participating in sports is not mandatory for healthy fitness levels, but it can make fitness a whole lot more fun. 

There’s an almost endless array of sports to choose from and you can add a social element and/or some technology to make it even more interesting. Give it a try!

Socializing

Open your mind to different ways to add some movement to your socializing. Although there are many options, possibly the five best ways to get this done are:

  1. Learn to dance reasonably well 🙂 Almost any party gets better with dancing and you need some confidence and skill to get people moving. 
  2. Get involved in a multi-person sport or an exercise group.
  3. Take your family or friends out into nature on a regular basis (even if it’s just the local park). 
  4. Get yourself a fit friend or two. If you’re colleagues, exercising together can strengthen the work relationship. 
  5. Convince a close friend to join you on your automatic fitness journey. 

Don’t take fitness too seriously

If fitness becomes a tedious job, you simply won’t be able to maintain it. As we stated right at the start of this sub-chapter, never exercise just because you know it’s good for you. Always make sure you have another reason (preferably more than one). 

If you can line up several fun activities that just happen to involve some movement, you’re on a much better track 🙂

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Building a Fit Home

Today, we continue on our mission to construct an environment where healthy fitness levels happen automatically. 

Your home is the little corner of this world over which you have the most control. That means that it is within your power to modify this environment so that it directly incentivizes good health. 

So, let’s build a fit home.

Location, location, location

As outlined earlier, the very best way to optimize your home for fitness is to choose a location makes it possible to do most of your travelling by human power. You can make it even better by choosing a location that is also fairly close to a bit of nature. 

I cannot emphasize the power of this measure enough. If you get it right, this by itself can be enough to ensure lifelong healthy fitness levels (and save you a huge amount of money). 

Layout

Even if you cannot tap into the power of location, there are other ways to build a fit home. The first of these is to arrange your home in a way to encourage movement and discourage stagnation. 

The obvious place to start is to make it less comfortable to waste hours stagnating in front of the TV. Don’t spend huge money on a super comfortable couch in front of a huge TV with surround sound speakers and subscriptions to all the latest binge-watching platforms. 

Rather invest in forms of entertainment that involve some movement. Something like a combined pool and ping-pong table is a good example. Another good idea is to get some standing desks for working on a PC or doing other creative tasks.

If possible, a pool or a trampoline in the back yard can also guarantee some regular motion. Another interesting alternative is a dog (although there are many things other than fitness to consider). 

Fitness equipment

As discussed last week, be careful not to waste a lot of money on fitness equipment you rarely use. Start with something cheap and upgrade proportionately to how much you find yourself using it. 

But there are some simple fitness equipment every home should have. The first is a couple of comfortable yoga mats for some convenient morning and evening motion.  

Another is a specialized gym chair with some free weights. Put this in a location where a couple of sets of light weights will easily slot into your morning routine. 

One step at a time

Rome was not built in a day. Making too many changes too soon can be quite uncomfortable and could even cause some rebellion in the family. 

So, take a gradual approach to upgrading your home for automatic fitness. Let the stagnation points gradually whither away and gradually introduce a motion point here and there. 

Over time you’ll get a fit home that is viewed as the new normal by all family members, adding several good years to all of their lives 🙂

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Building Easy Fitness Habits

In this final week of the fitness sub-chapter, we’ll build some environments for automatically maintaining lifelong healthy fitness levels.

Good health does not demand regular strenuous exercise or serious expenses on gym memberships and equipment. In fact, most fitness actions are relatively easy. All we need to do is turn them into habits. 

So, let’s run through a typical day and scan over several simple little fitness habits that can be maintained with little or no effort.

The morning

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must once again advocate for some early morning movement. This is an excellent way to kick-start the body and get some exercise as an added bonus.

It doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need to be hard. I just needs to be. Prioritizing movement as a fixed part of your morning routine cements it as a habit surprisingly quickly.

Next, we have the daily commute. If there is any chance you can use some muscle power here, jump at this chance for free exercise combined with huge financial savings. 

It may seem hard initially, but once you get used to it, it simply becomes the new normal. After 11 years of commuting by bike, a daily car commute in rush hour just sounds terrible to me. Getting yourself totally used to travelling by muscle power in this way is incredibly valuable. 

The work day

Chances are that you have a job where you sit at a desk all day long. The first step is to get into the habit of using every opportunity for walking around. See the previous post for some examples. 

A fitness app like Google Fit can help a lot by tracking your steps and move minutes. This quickly turns into a fun game to see how much you can move as you go through your normal day. A fitness tracker with a feature to buzz when you’ve been sitting for too long is another very useful tool. This post offers some basic fitness tech advice. 

A greater focus on motion can cause you to talk more to colleagues, have more effective meetings, and enjoy higher energy levels for higher productivity. It’s a genuine win-win. 

The afternoon and evening

After hopefully using some muscle power on your commute back home, there is one key habit you must break: the tendency to plop down in front of the TV with a bowl of unhealthy snacks. 

Instead, see if you can replace it with some habits involving motion. Go for a little stroll to process the happenings of your work day, take the kids (or just yourself) to the park, spend time on a physical hobby, do a little bit of gardening, make some food instead of ordering takeout, play some handyman around the house. Anything involving a bit of movement will do. 

When the evening comes, a little bit of gentle movement to wind down is another great idea. Stretching or yoga work very well for this purpose. 

Become a little more mindful

Opportunities for automatic exercise are all around us, we just need to be open to them. If we let them in, they become habits very quickly. 

So, open your mind to all these possibilities and give them a go. Then watch you daily step count gradually climb on Google Fit 🙂

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Recap: Fitness Toolkit

This week, we looked at four key tools that can help build lifelong healthy fitness levels. Let’s jump straight into the summary.

The checklist

The four key fitness tools read as follows:

  1. Ideally located home. Not practical for many, but very powerful if you can make it work. 
    • Next time you move, try to find a location where you can easily and safely walk or cycle and easily get into some green-spaces. 
  2. Equipment. Spend wisely to not end up with a basement full of fitness gizmos gathering dust. 
    • The quality of the equipment you buy should be proportional to how much you will use it. 
  3. Technology. Keep it very clean and simple.
    • Start with Google Fit, add a fitness band if you can genuinely use the features, and join Strava for great motivation if you regularly cover longer distances. 
  4. Friends and family. Because movement and socializing play well together. 
    • Actively look to bring more motion to your socializing. There are tons of possibilities! 

So, there you have it. If you keep your toolkit nicely stocked, it will actually become quite hard not to achieve permanent healthy fitness levels 🙂

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