The Surprising History and Psychology of Board Games & Cracking the Fitness Code

Do happy couples have more sex or does having more sex make couples happy? This episode begins with some surprising insight into that question. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/may/more-sex-does-not-lead-to-happiness.html There is something about board games. Chess, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, Parcheesi – we like to play board games. What’s fascinating is people all over the world love board games and have for centuries. Why is there this universal appeal? What do these games do for us? Here to offer up the answers and explanations is Tim Clare, an award winning writer and author of the book Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human (https://amzn.to/4kmAZvo). Everyone knows exercise is important. Still, a lot of people shy away from it. What is it that turns some people off while other people truly enjoy it? Is there a way to motivate people to exercise more beyond just telling them, “Exercise is good for you”? Can people who hate exercise learn to love it? How much exercise is enough to make a difference? Here to explore all of this is Katy Bowman who is the author of 11 books and a frequent speaker on the topic of movement and exercise. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Good Housekeeping and she has been on The Joe Rogan Experience, The Today Show and now she is here. Her latest book is I Know I Should Exercise, But...: 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them (https://amzn.to/4dmWdHs). Do you have a calling? A passion? Not everyone does – or at least not everyone knows what it is. Listen as I reveal some questions you can ask yourself that might help you uncover what you are really called to do with your life. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/passion/201505/6-signs-that-a-passion-or-calling-is-true PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to ⁠⁠https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠ QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: The power of Dell AI with Intel inside is transforming the world of pro sports! For the players and the fans who are there for every game. See how Dell Technologies with Intel inside can help find your advantage, and power your wins at ⁠⁠⁠https://Dell.com/Wins⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, does having more sex make couples happy? Or do happy couples just have more sex? Then, why humans love board games, chess, checkers, Monopoly? And what happened to Backgammon? It used to be hot, then not.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Backgammon went through this renaissance where it became really cool, where like the Rolling Stones were playing. But then you go to somewhere like Syria, or Iraq, or Turkey, and this is a game that has never gone away.

• 1:56Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how to figure out your life's calling? And exercise. We all know it's good for us, so why do so many people not do it?

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• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's an interesting question. Do happier couples have more sex? Or does having sex make for happier couples? We'll start with that question today. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know. You've likely heard from books and self-help experts that increasing intimacy makes couples happier. Simply put, having more sex will lead to more happiness. Well, maybe. There's something called reverse causality, and that may explain this relationship between intimacy and happiness, according to research at Carnegie Mellon University.

• 5:05Mike Carruthers?

  What they found in surveying couples is that happier couples have more sex. In other words, it isn't the sex that makes couples happier. It's that happiness is causing couples to have more sex. And in fact, simply having more sex did not make couples happier, in part because the increased frequency led to a decline in wanting and desire for the enjoyment of intimacy. The authors of the research noted that the desire to have sex decreases much more quickly than the enjoyment of sex once it's been initiated. So instead of focusing on increasing the number of intimate encounters, couples may

• 5:47Mike Carruthers?

  want to work on creating an environment that sparks their desire and makes the intimacy they do have more fun. And that is something you should know. People like to have fun. It seems we're wired to have fun. And there is one very specific type of fun that people have always liked, continue to like, and will continue to like. And that is playing games, specifically games on a tabletop. Board games, chess, checkers, parcheesi, backgammon. Games where you move pieces around a board have been played for thousands of years.

• 6:30Mike Carruthers?

  So what is it about these kinds of games that have made them so popular? And even with the introduction of video games, board games continue to be very popular. Here with some insight into this is Tim Clare. He is an award-winning writer and author of the book Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. Hey, Tim, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Hi, thank you for having me.

• 6:55Mike Carruthers?

  So there does seem to be something very human, that we like to play these kinds of games, whether it's rolling the dice, or dealing the cards, or moving your pieces around the board. Human beings like to play those kinds of games on the top of a table, right?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  There is something incredible about how games in completely disconnected civilizations pop up, sometimes around the same time, and look remarkably similar, and there was no contact. So you take something like knucklebones, right? Rolling dice made out of sheep's ankle bones, or goat's ankle bones. That appears like up in Skara Bray, sort of an island north of Scotland, and it appears right down in Egypt, in ancient Turkey. It appears across, say, the Pacific Islands. You see knucklebone games appearing, played maybe with shells.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  These games that are, we have this idea, we're going to roll some oddly shaped things, and we're going to mark some sides, and depending on what side lands on it, you're going to score points or you won't score points. You see that? That idea is created by humans again and again and again, all over the world, independently. And it doesn't feel like an obvious idea to me to do that. Or it does now, because we take it for granted. But every civilization at some point has invented the technology of dice, and often completely independently of one another.

• 8:30Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I remember hearing that, for example, children play ball because they like to play ball. But another reason was that back when human beings were hunter-gatherers, that children playing ball was a way to train them to hunt. It was, it was playing ball in and of itself, but it had another purpose. And I wonder, do board games have another purpose, or is it just the game?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Well, you've hit upon something really key there, which is that evolutionary psychologists often look like something, look at something like play, and they go, "This presents a problem." Because what is it for? You know, this is a technology that keeps appearing, but it doesn't increase our chances of survival on the face of it. It doesn't increase people's chances of winning a war. So what's going on? And we've studied animals, because we see play in animals, right? And we've studied, say, kittens that play. And evolutionary psychologists looked at them and went, "Hey, come on, this must be training them to hunt." But when we've done studies, there've been expansive studies on preventing kittens

• 9:43Speaker 01

  from chasing balls, chasing, doing these kind of pretend hunting behaviors. And does it affect their ability to hunt when they grow into adulthood? Not at all. Not at all. So this presents us with a huge conundrum. Why do we play? Now, there are plenty of archaeologists who'll look at things like chess, any game that involves some kind of strategy and say, "Well, this must be teaching us lots of lessons about war. This must be training our generals." But the fact is that being a great chess player doesn't make you particularly good at commanding an army. The skills aren't hugely transferable. So I don't know. I do think that games, for me, are like politics you can touch.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  To be able to play a game, to be able to sit around a board and say, "This piece represents this, this piece represents that," to come up with rules, it requires the ability to negotiate and for abstract thought. And I think those things are definitively huge components of any successful civilization.

• 10:46Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. But that's interesting that, as you point out, kittens, if you stop them from playing, it has no impact on their development.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Not at all. And the problem is that when you see human beings who haven't had the chance to play growing up, there is evidence that those humans have various emotional and cognitive challenges when they're grown to adults. But the key thing there is you can't experimentally randomize that. You know, you can't have a an experimenter saying we're going to stop these kids from playing. So it can only be children who, for whatever reason, haven't had the opportunity to do that. And they've often been deprived of other things in their life. And what they did find when they've studied kittens is kittens who've been deprived of the chance of lots of bonding time with their mothers do become

• 11:40Speaker 01

  worse hunters. So this is the thing is game playing games are tied up with all sorts of other things, including just hanging around and socializing and all the other wonderful things that human beings do. So we don't know whether playing games actually teaches us key life skills, or whether games are what they would call an epiphenomenon of happiness and normal development, which is that games are something that spontaneously happens when human beings, and indeed, members of the animal kingdom, are thriving.

• 12:14Mike Carruthers?

  But it does seem, just commonsense-wise, that having to play games requires that you develop some sort of ability to negotiate, deal with conflict, things that you're going to need in life. I mean, it seems to make sense, but but as you say, you can't randomize the test. So it's just going to have to be more of a theory than anything else.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  My, so I want to admit a bias here, which is that sometimes people will talk about games teach children the ability to negotiate. They teach you numeracy skills. They help.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Good cognitive development, right? All of that may be somewhat true, but there were probably activities that they could be doing that would do that more efficiently, right? Like certainly if you play a lot of games that involve counting, your maths skills will get better. But there were other things you could be doing that would do that better. And there's always this niggling worry that I have in the back of my mind that when we start doing that, it's part of it is the guilt that we have to justify play on the grounds of achieving something important, rather than being an end in itself that they create joy, that they're a wonderful way to spend our time. So if I sound a little bit resistant to that, if I keep landing on this side of, well, we don't know for certain,

• 13:35Speaker 01

  I have to admit a bias, which is that part of me resists that with my heart, which is to say, games don't need to earn their keep, in my opinion, based on optimizing us to be productive adults who thrive in the workplace, because they have their own wonderful, wonderful ability, which is to make us enjoy our life and enjoy time with others.

• 14:01Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I have no reason to doubt what you're saying, but you know what comes to mind is, an example of a game I find excruciating is Monopoly. That when it's over, it's over, I am so glad this is over. It's gone on forever and I, I'm sick of it. And I don't feel joy at the end of that game. I feel a relief that it's over, like it. So maybe it helped me be a better negotiator and buy real estate and all that. But there is that, that, God, please stop, please, could this be over?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  One of the key things about Monopoly is that it was never originally designed to be fun. It was designed to teach an economics lesson and a lesson about how monopolies can destroy a healthy economic system. So the game was meant to feel unfair. It was meant to end with one person.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Slowly accruing all the real estate and money. And you were meant to get to the end of it and think, "That was incredibly unfair." And the game was meant to be a teaching tool. It was not meant to be fun. So when people say, "I feel like that was frustrating and drawn out more than anything else," they're getting at something fundamental about the game design.

• 15:24Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about why it seems the world loves board games. And my guest is Tim Clare, author of the book Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years. And yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing. You could turn those clothes into money.

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• 17:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:31Mike Carruthers?

  So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Tim, Parcheesi, Monopoly, a lot of other games that I can't remember the names of, but I know I've played, have one thing in common, and that is this race around the track. There's a track around the edge of the board, and we're all going around in the same way. What is it about that that seems to show up in so many board games?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  You hit upon something that is so compelling to human beings. It's one of these magical formulas. The archaeologist Dr Irving Finkel at the British Museum said that they're called roll and move games in academic literature. And he said that there's something fundamental about that, that wherever in any society, a game where you roll some dice and race around a board, first past the post games appears, it spreads like wildfire. It always comes to dominate the culture that it's in. Why is that exciting?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Well, I suppose what those games do is they take simple dice rolling and maybe you make tally marks and get a score, they turn that into like a horse race. And human beings love a race. And even something like the game poo sticks, right? Where from Winnie the Pooh, where you throw sticks over one side of the bridge and then you run to the other side of the bridge and there's a river underneath and you see whose stick comes out first. I think there's something fundamental in the human spirit, something irreducible about racing.

• 20:18Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know if this is something you looked into, but it's a question that I've wondered about. Do we know how video games have impacted the use of and the sale of board games? Has it made an impact or not?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  My first thought when video games came out is that board games are doomed. That has not been the case at all. I think if anything, the ubiquity of video games has fueled this desire to get away from screens and get away from digital experiences. Not that I don't love them, but I think that people really crave that physical experience round the table with other people. Board games have never been doing better in terms of sales. They are doing phenomenally well at the moment.

• 21:09Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of old school board games, I think of chess. Chess has been around, I don't know how long has chess been around?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  It depends who you ask and where you date it from. The game Chaturanga, which was an Indian game, has been around for at least a millennium. But the current rules of chess...

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Would probably only solidified in the past 500 years, I think. The last thing that chess decided upon was the movement of the queen. The queen could only move one square at a time. And then they created this variant called mad queens chess, where the queen could move as far as you wanted, what we have now. And universally, everyone went, this is brilliant. And that's where the final rules of chess that we have today solidified. So probably about 500 years.

• 21:56Mike Carruthers?

  So if the queen could only move one square, so can the king. So what was the difference?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  There was no difference, except that you could lose the queen without losing the game.

• 22:07Mike Carruthers?

  I mean, I'm no great chess player, but I know enough about it and have played it enough to think that that game where the queen can only move one square would be just so dull. And when you allow her to go where she can now go, that's a game changer right there. I mean, it makes the game so much more fun.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think chess is this completely magical game that through tiny rule changes became the version it is today, became the game it is today. And it wasn't designed, so much as discovered, really. And it's an incredible game in terms of the complexity that can come out of a relatively few number of rules.

• 22:58Mike Carruthers?

  What's the connection between chess and checkers? And I ask only because they're played on the same board.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  The answer is that we don't. At some point, it disappears into the ether and we're not sure. Checkers, or draughts as it's sometimes known in the UK, goes back about as long as chess. And there's The thing that has happened with checkers that hasn't happened with chess is we've never decided, the world has not decided on the definitive version of checkers, right? You go to any country, it has its own version of the rules. There's like Canadian drafts, which has like a much bigger board. There's Freesian drafts where you can jump backwards. There's, uh, there's versions, Turkish drafts where you move forwards and backwards instead

• 23:49Speaker 01

  of diagonally. How related is it to chess? Well, checkered boards go all the way back to the time of the Buddha, which is one of our earliest lists of board games. He's telling, he, he gives this list of games that monks aren't allowed to play and he talks about checkered boards. So, did, it makes sense to a lot of people that drafts came, and checkers came before chess because it appears to be the simpler game. We don't have any evidence for that, um, but it seems like it's still a game that's in flux. Um, so, do they have any relationship? As far as we know, one didn't come out of the other, but they may have used the same boards, but that checkerboard has existed for at least five millennia.

• 24:34Mike Carruthers?

  What about backgammon? I, you know, there was a time, I think it was in the seventies or eighties, where backgammon was so hot, at least here in the US. And now you don't hear much about it. I mean, we, we have a backgammon set. I can't remember the last time we got it out and played it.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, backgammon went through this renaissance where it became really cool, where like the Rolling Stones were playing it, people were going to Monaco and playing these high stakes games of backgammon. So certainly, it did go through a renaissance, but then you go to somewhere, you know, like Syria or Iraq or Turkey, any of these countries, and this is a game that has never gone away and can probably trace its lineage back at least 4,500 years. You know, it is an old, old game in various forms.

• 25:27Mike Carruthers?

  Backgammon seems like a game that should not have fallen out of favor because it has so many things that people seem to like in a game. It has skill, it has chance, it, you get to move around the board.

• 25:42Mike Carruthers?

  Seems like it should still be more popular than it is.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  You could imagine Backgammon, all it would take is a couple of celebrities to become, I think, Backgammon fans. It's a game that is, has some skill, has some chance, you know, you roll dice, you move, but there's a great deal of strategy that you can develop by playing the game, but you could, there's still some luck, right? It's a game, I think, that could easily have a revival at any point. I think you're absolutely right, because it's very accessible. Like, I could teach it to my eight-year-old daughter, and I think she'd enjoy it. But the skill ceiling of getting really good at it is actually quite high.

• 26:24Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, yeah, right. That's a good way to put it, that you can get really, really good at it, or you can be a novice and still enjoy it. And I guess maybe that's kind of the magic of a game, where anybody can play and develop in that game.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  I think that's true of some of the lesser-known games, at least in the US and the UK, like the Mankala games that are so popular across Africa, like on Waiso and Wari, games like that, these games that you play with stones or pebbles, where you capture each other's pieces, you pick them up and drop them in these different houses, they're called, these little divots in a board. Those games, you can teach them to a five-year-old, and they can learn the rules, but the skill of high-level Onwaiso players is breathtaking.

• 27:17Mike Carruthers?

  Have there been, I've been trying to think as we've been talking, any games that have come out, I mean, I may not have my finger on the pulse of this, but games that have come out lately that have been big successes. The last game I remember that was a big phenomenon was Trivial Pursuit, and I can't remember since then, any big, huge, successful game.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  So, the classic one that's spoken about, that's just having its 25th anniversary this year, is Catan, or Settlers of Catan. It has sold over 40 million copies, which puts it, you know, it's sold more than, say, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Killer Band, or any of the Beatles albums. And that's a game where you are... Settling on an empty island and you're building farms and roads and things like this. That game has done phenomenally well and continues to sell like hotcakes. In the last couple of years, a game like Wingspan, where you are collecting different wild birds and putting them into this sanctuary, has sold millions of copies.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  So, there was a revolution in tabletop games that has passed a lot of people by, you know?

• 28:29Mike Carruthers?

  But there do seem to be, just mostly, it seems like, a lot of the same games that I played as a kid, kids today would play. That they, once you're a hit, you seem like you're a hit for a while.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  It's certainly true that Snakes and Ladders is going nowhere. And, fair enough, I happen to think Snakes and Ladders has a brilliant design. I remember playing it with my daughter when she was four. And I was like, "Hey, we're equals around this table, right? I can't bring any skill to this, the dice don't care that I'm older than her." And so we got to play as equals, I think that's a terrific piece of game design. But, yeah, sure, classics are always going to be classics. I don't think there's anything that's going to topple chess from its pedestal soon, because it's a terrific game. But, a lot of the new games, a lot of the new party games, a lot of the new kind of deep strategy games, are so, so well-designed.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I think there's a great deal of stuff to reward people. I don't think there's been a better time in human history to be a board gamer.

• 29:36Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I have played board games all my life, and it is really fun to hear the backstories and realize how old some of these games are or variations on the games, it's fascinating. Tim Clare has been my guest, he is an award-winning writer and author of the book Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human, and there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes if you'd like to read it. Tim, thank you.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you, take care, have a lovely day.

• 30:04Mike Carruthers?

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  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify. Book just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 32:18Mike Carruthers?

  I can't imagine there is a single person listening to this podcast who does not know that physical activity, exercise, is good for you, that the human body is not meant to be sedentary, we need to move. Still, many of us do not follow that prescription. Part of it, I think, is how we define exercise, how we look at it. You know, you did something wrong in gym class in junior high school and the gym teacher demands 20 pushups, sending the message that exercise is punishment, it's painful, it's hard. And the benefits of exercise, they're off in the future somewhere. So you're doing something difficult for

• 32:59Mike Carruthers?

  some future reward, and maybe we need to reframe this whole thing. That is what Katie Bowman is here to discuss. Katie is the author of 11 books, and she speaks frequently on the topic of movement and exercise. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping. She's been on The Today Show, she's been on Joe Rogan's podcast, and her latest book is called, I Know I Should Exercise But: 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. Hi Katie, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 33:36Mike Carruthers?

  So the reason people are often told that they should exercise, where they should get their motivation from, is that exercise is good for you, that it has health benefits, and that in and of itself is reason enough to get up off the couch and go do something because it's good for you.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  It being good for you is not enough to motivate an individual. We all have really complex inner worlds, and we are motivated by different things. We all have different values, and certainly we all value...

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Our health, but maybe not necessarily more than all the other obligations that keep showing up in our, in our day to day living. So finding another way in to harness motivation is really key. And what we tend to do is just say, it's really good for you. Well, no, it's really, really good for you. Here's more evidence. It's really, really, really good for you. And people aren't still up taking that prescription. So we need a different way in.

• 34:39Mike Carruthers?

  So do you think, because I've seen this in cases where there is that, well, but I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. So why waste all that time exercising when, you know, when your number's up, your number's up and it just doesn't matter?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Well, and that is the problem with framing movement, physical activity, exercise as something with future rewards. You're going to live longer. Your health numbers when you go visit the doctor next year are going to be better. It's really hard to orient yourself to something with a payoff that's so far down the line. So we need to change the messaging to this is something that makes you feel better today. This is something that gives you a boost of creativity, a boost of joy, more mental clarity for maybe you value your productivity level at work. Maybe you value connection with your friends or your children. So to reframe movement as a conduit to those experiences today is going

• 35:41Speaker 02

  to be key in why someone can't use that, well, I might be hit by a bus tomorrow reason.

• 35:47Mike Carruthers?

  What often happens is people with the best of intentions will start to exercise and stick with it for a little while and something happens and they stop. You know, they join the gym for New Year's and then by February they're done. Something derails them. What tends to derail people?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Well, the top derailers are going to be time. I don't have enough time, a loss of motivation.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Discomfort can be a reason that people fall off the movement wagon, so to speak. More and more recently, I would say environmental factors, like I'm addicted to my phone. I, you know, I plan to do my morning walk, but now I grab my phone, that alarm goes off and I start swiping and an hour later, I'm still, you know, looking through short form videos and that was my, my walking window and I missed it. So those are the things that we see again and again.

• 36:52Mike Carruthers?

  One of the things that I noticed, I work out pretty regularly. I, I go to the gym at least four times a week and have for years, many, many years. But I early on realized and saw in other people that there's an over promise in the physical education world, that if you go do your exercise, you're going to look like that model on the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine and you never will. And you get discouraged because you don't see the results, you don't start to look like those people and you either have to come to terms with that, that that's never

• 37:34Mike Carruthers?

  going to happen, or you say, well, since it's not going to happen, I give up.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think the industry also needs to change some of its messaging where our motivation, there are some people who are going to be motivated for aesthetic purposes and then there's going to be people who are motivated by that boost of energy that they get or mental relaxation that they get, the fact that they feel better in their own skin, no matter what it is. So there's definitely been a shift of messaging around movement to transition from the idea of the reason you move is for aesthetic purposes versus for all of these other...

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Not only health benefits that are not related to how you look, but are just based on how you function in a day-to-day basis, that there's regular inputs in just that. And you can track that. Like, you can see, as soon as you're done exercising, "Wow, I feel great." You feel great. It does not matter necessarily how you look in nine months from now. Again, those are those farther-down-the-road benefits that we're talking about.

• 38:39Mike Carruthers?

  Not to mention the mental health benefits that have been pretty well documented, that exercise is good for your mental health as well as your physical health. But you would know, and I think this is the big question people have, is we know that a lot of people try to exercise and give up. So, the people who don't give up, what works for them? What are the things that actually seem to work to get people started and then continue to exercise?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Figuring out what your values are would be first. We have to use our values, our internal values, as sort of our north on a compass so that even when we don't feel like it, we can muster, essentially. So, you know, if you're a parent, you value perhaps taking care of your kid, but when the kid wakes up in the middle of the night and they're sick or they need something, you don't really want to do it. You're just like, "Oh, you know, I'm so exhausted. I'd rather stay here in bed." But you value that, so you get up anyway. And so, how do you recognize the values that you have around, not necessarily exercise, but staying, keeping up your physical capacity? And once you identify those,

• 39:58Speaker 02

  then you can use those to sort of draft behind, even when emotionally you're feeling like you're not up to it. That's how you're going to motivate yourself, day after day after day.

• 40:10Mike Carruthers?

  But what works in terms of, you know, if you say, "Okay, I'm going to start moving and I'm going to go to the gym five days a week," yeah, I doubt it, not for long. What works in terms of actually what it is you do to start the ball rolling and keep it rolling?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I think I would look for places of moving that are easiest for you. So if going, I mean, going to the gym five days a week from nothing, that's a really big goal that you've set yourself up for. So what if it was something more like, I'm going to start taking a walk every morning? And then you have to, again, drafted behind those values. So maybe it's like, I noticed that if I, if you value connection with people in your family, it's like, I'm gonna maybe ask my spouse or my child to get up and walk with me for 20 minutes in the morning. Or maybe you're gonna walk your kids to school.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Or maybe you want to walk your dog, because that's a high value, is to making sure you take care of those animals. And then you set up that practice with something that's doable, that doesn't have as many physical stumbling blocks, that's not so easily derailed. And then maybe you're trying to get to the gym once a week. So not over-promising yourself is a big one. And then also staying flexible with what you are defining as exercise. So going to the gym five days a week, what is your plan for if your boss is requiring that you stay afterwards?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Like, how are you going to adjust your entire schedule around this spontaneous thing that comes up? And then, once you tend to miss one, then you're like, are you to the point where you throw your hands up in the air? And you're like, well, I can't do any of it because I missed Wednesday. Now, none of it's good, so now I'm not gonna go Thursday and Friday. Or do you have a backup plan where, well, if I don't get to the gym, what I will do then is I'm gonna hop on my bike? So that you're finding other domains of your life in which you can pepper in movement, as opposed to setting it just aside for what we consider leisure time. Exercise is essentially a leisure time activity. The more we can distribute it through the other domains in life, the more likely you are to get those minutes of physical activity that you need.

• 42:33Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know what the statistics are, but I'm sure a large number of people with the best of intentions, I remember earlier in my life, you know, bought some sort of exercise equipment, a treadmill, a stationary bike, something, a Bowflex, and put it in their home. And just like on the cover of your book, it soon becomes a clothes hanger, a place to put junk, and people give up. But they've made a financial investment in it, and it's right there. It's not, it wouldn't take much to get on that and push the start button, but people give up.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  The reason we put this on the cover of the book is because it's so relatable.

• 43:16Mike Carruthers?

  Right.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  So practically, practically speaking, I do question if it is right there. You know, what would happen if you cleaned it off and actually put it in your, in your way? And I think that this is something that, you know, this is an aesthetic choice. I don't know how practical it is. But in my own home, for example, I have found too, that the more pieces of equipment are tucked out of sight, the more they are put into rooms that I barely go into. You know, with the best of intentions, I set up an exercise room in my house. But the more physical activity sits outside of the flow of your

• 43:57Speaker 02

  daily life, the less likely you are to interact with it. So I bring a lot of my pieces out into the living room. I have teenagers and noticed this as well with them, like the idea of stepping away from where other people are. I can absolutely recognize the value of a focused place for movement. But when you're trying to bring movement into your own house, it can get tricky because those dark spaces quickly become where you're throwing your laundry, or you just have cobwebs. We sent out a photo contest of people sending in some of their equipment, and we got pieces that had bird's nests built into them because they had just been sitting in the garage, you know, sitting in their workout garage. And it was just a testament to

• 44:42Speaker 02

  The less likely you are to see it, the less it is in the flow of your day-to-day life, the less likely you are to engage. So scoot it out. Don't throw your laundry on top of it, or just recognize that maybe that's not the best situation for you to motivate yourself.

• 45:00Mike Carruthers?

  But people paid a lot of money. That home gym equipment is not cheap. And so at one point, they were pretty motivated, and then it just kind of evaporates.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  It's sort of like committing to going to the gym five days a week. It's a really big step. And so I do think that for many people, it's like, well, the gesture of a big investment is perhaps being confused with how big your motivation is to pick up that particular mode of exercise. So knowing yourself a little bit more here is going to be a little bit more helpful. So yes, you had the big intention, but maybe there wasn't as much thought going into the steps behind wanting to move more. So again, identifying

• 45:54Speaker 02

  your values, asking yourself what types of physical activity do you actually enjoy? Many people love going to the gym. Like, it's a great sense of community. That works for a lot of people. But if it doesn't work for you, and if it's never really worked for you, maybe it's not that mode of exercise, maybe the reason the treadmill, or the bike that you have in your house, isn't motivating you because it's hard for you to choose movement within your house. And so maybe it's better if you actually go to a place that has those pieces of equipment, because maybe you're easily distracted in your home space. And so you need to rethink your approach in this case.

• 46:34Mike Carruthers?

  I wonder too how many people give up because they think they're not doing enough. That, you know, if I go for a walk around the block after dinner, that's not really doing much, so I'm not going to try. And, and it probably isn't doing that much, but is it better than nothing? Or, or is it nothing?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  It's absolutely better than nothing. So all movement counts. We just want to make sure that over time, doesn't have to be over the course of a day, but maybe over the course of a week or two, that you're thinking of all the different ways that you, that your body needs you to move and try to blend them again through the different domains of your life.

• 47:16Mike Carruthers?

  And as quickly as you can, what are all the ways my body needs to move?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Well, all of your joints, cycling through regular joint range of motion. So that would be just, you know, you could look at it as stretching, but one of the things that I recommend is, you know, if you're going to sit down in the evening instead of sitting in that same shape that you do, you know, in your chair, in your car, where you're just always at that 90 degree hip and knee, you know, sit cross legged on the ground. Try getting up and down from the ground a few times, just in the course of your day. Walking is another big one. Carrying, carrying, being able to load weight onto your frame, whether it's directly on your spine, or it's really good to practice carrying in your arms and you could get that, you know, instead of pushing a cart at the grocery store, just hold that basket and load that weight up in there. And that's a practical way of getting a little bit of, you know, so-called weightlifting,

• 48:07Speaker 02

  but while you're doing something else besides exercise.

• 48:10Mike Carruthers?

  There is a point in time, because I imagine a lot of people think, and it's very discouraging, that this is not fun, I don't enjoy this, and this is always going to be not fun. But there does come a time, at least I would think for most people who exercise. That they can't, they kinda can't live without it anymore. Like, if I didn't exercise, I'd go nuts. And I don't remember how long it took to get to that point, but do you know?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Well, I know that what happens is we have a bias in sort of recognizing the discomfort, the negativity, the effort of something, and sort of overly focusing on that when we first start. Because it does take a little bit for the benefits of movement to pay off where, especially if you are really focused on the negative aspects, you have to really choose to pay attention to, "I feel really good right now." You know, like, you're sitting there on the couch, and it's so comfortable on the couch. You're doing your thing. The idea of having to get up, and you perceive all of this negative effort. And then, for anyone who's trained for anything, it kinda hurts, you know? Exercise is that you're out of breath. You might be sweating.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Your body is kinda flopping around, and you don't feel as coordinated. And so, there's this period of time where the negative feelings sort of outweigh the positive benefit, especially if you're choosing to not focus on it when you're done. So, one thing you could do, if you know you're prone to the "I don't wanna, it's so hard, it's uncomfortable" feeling, is just to, when you do it, savor. That's a big psychological step, is savoring the feelings that you have afterwards, or maybe even the feelings that you have while you do it. Like, "Wow, I got outside. Look, I can, the sun is so beautiful. I can hear birds. This is so much better than building a document on my screen. I'm away from my family, and I'm getting a break."

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Or, "My family's right here, and we're together." You're choosing to savor the feelings that you have while you're doing this bout of movement. And then, over time, it doesn't take that long. You know, after a week or so, then you are gonna start, yes, like you said, craving that feeling, because your brain has been trained to pay attention to the positive feelings that happen while you're actually doing it. That negativity...

• 50:38Speaker 02

  It's sort of like just a whiny kid who doesn't want to do the thing at front. Just know your body's going to whine. It's just, I don't want to go, I don't want to do it, I don't want to clean my room. I get it, we're grown adults, we don't want to have to do anything that we ourselves maybe didn't choose. But once you get over that whiny hurdle, then you become someone who has autonomy around movement and you want to do it and then you can go from there.

• 51:00Mike Carruthers?

  There is that feeling. I mean, I've never seen anybody walk out of the gym and go, oh God, that was horrible. Even though it probably was horrible, but the feeling of having completed it is a great feeling and it stays with you for a little while. I mean, it's not, it's like, I crave that feeling at the end. I don't crave necessarily doing the exercises, but when it's all done, I feel pretty good.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you just don't see people going, well, that wasn't worth it. Taking that evening walk wasn't worth it. Like, these are just not sentiments that you ever hear, but in your mind, they are sort of like these psychological barriers that help justify continuing to sit in one space. You've sort of logically thought it out and can't imagine that it would pay off, but it does, it does every time. I've never taken a walk, I've never went for a bout of exercise and never regretted it.

• 51:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think it's great that people like you continue to try to motivate people, help them find whatever motivation will work because the benefits of exercise are so great and we are not moving enough. I've been talking to Katie Bowman. She is author of the book, I Know I Should Exercise But: 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Katie, I appreciate you coming on and talking about this.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Mike.

• 52:34Mike Carruthers?

  While the advice to follow your passion may sound good, a lot of us don't really know what our passion is, or what our calling is, or at least we're not sure. So here are some ways to determine whether or not what you think is your calling really is. First of all, it could be a calling if it keeps coming back, no matter how much you ignore it. A true calling tends to come at you from multiple directions: gifts, talents, dreams, body symptoms, synchronicities, the books that mysteriously make their way onto your nightstand, the way events and opportunities unfold in your life.

• 53:15Mike Carruthers?

  Also, there's a feeling of rightness about it. It just feels right. You may not be able to explain it, but you can't deny it either. Your enthusiasm for it tends to sustain itself over time. It doesn't really peter out. You even feel a kind of affinity or affection for all the mundane tasks involved in bringing these passions to fruition, and they all have mundane tasks. It will scare you. If a passion feels safe and easy, it's probably not a passion. If it's scary, it means you're close to something vital, and that is a passion. And that is something you should know.

• 54:00Mike Carruthers?

  If you found this episode fun, entertaining, and worthwhile, I hope you will share it with someone. It's easy to do by using that share button that's on the app that you're listening on, and it helps us out. It helps us grow our audience, which is what we're trying to do. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 54:49Speaker 04

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