Why Rituals Are So Important & Healthy Living Made Simple – SYSK Choice

Where do you do your best thinking? It’s probably not where you spend most of your time working. In fact, the environment you choose can quietly influence how clearly you think, how creative you are, and how well you perform. There’s a simple shift that can make a noticeable difference. Source: Edward Hallowell author of Driven to Distraction (https://amzn.to/3PQgv1u). Rituals are everywhere—handshakes, morning routines, lucky habits, traditions we repeat without thinking. Even people who don’t consider themselves “ritualistic” rely on them every day. But why? Michael Norton, professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Ritual Effect (https://amzn.to/3U65Zpn), explains that rituals do far more than add structure—they can reduce anxiety, strengthen relationships, and give meaning to everyday experiences. He explores why humans are drawn to rituals and how they can be used intentionally to improve your life. Health advice can feel overwhelming—contradictory studies, complicated plans, and endless “must-do” lists. But what if getting healthier didn’t have to be so complicated? Jacob Sager Weinstein, writer for The New Yorker, HBO, and the BBC, and author of Be Healthier Now: 100 Simple Ways to Become Instantly Healthier (https://amzn.to/4cZedXV), cuts through the noise with practical, science-backed ideas that are simple to implement and surprisingly effective—no jargon, no extreme routines, just small changes that can make a real difference. Revenge is often described as “sweet.” And just imagining getting even with someone can feel surprisingly satisfying. But what is it about revenge that makes it feel so good—even before anything actually happens? https://theconversation.com/revenge-isnt-always-sweet-but-it-can-be-beautiful-73653 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS DUTCH: If your pet is still scratching and you’ve tried everything at the pet store –it’s time to stop guessing and go prescription. Support us and use code SYSK for $40 off your membership at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Dutch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES : We love the Planet Visionaries podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you are listening to this podcast. 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:30Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why you probably don't do your best work at work and how to fix that. Then rituals. You have a lot more of them than you realize, and they really do help.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  One of the things that researchers suggest rituals help us with, if you think of them, they're very orderly, they're very familiar. Rituals give us a sense of being in the here and now and help us to get ready for what's coming instead of off in our own minds stressing.

• 0:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why revenge can be so sweet. And how to be healthy. What's proven to work? And the myths to avoid. For example...

• 1:07Speaker 03

  There's this idea that, for example, you have to do 10,000 steps a day. That's the magic number to be healthy. And if you look into where that number came from, it was actually made up by a Japanese company that was trying to sell pedometers, those things that measure how far you walk.

• 1:24Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000...

• 2:30Mike Carruthers?

  I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. Something You Should Know. With Mike Carruthers.

• 3:07Mike Carruthers?

  Hey, hi. Welcome and thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to another episode of Something You Should Know. We start today with a question. Where do you get your best ideas? Or where do you do your best work? It's probably not at work. Most of us work in an environment that is full of distraction. And distraction saps our creativity and concentration. This is according to Edward Hallowell, who is one of the real gurus on distraction. He's written several books on the subject. And Edward says that when people are asked where they do their best thinking, the number one answer is in the shower.

• 3:49Mike Carruthers?

  And usually, you don't have any distractions in the shower. When you're distracted from doing something, it isn't just the distraction that's the problem. Once you go back to whatever you were doing before, it takes a while for your brain to get back to where it was. And sometimes, it never gets back to where it was. So in order for your mind to work well, you need uninterrupted time away from all the distractions of everyday life. And that is Something You Should Know.

• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  Your life is full of rituals, even if you don't know it. You shake hands, ritual. You celebrate holidays, rituals. Pray, ritual. In fact, religions are full of rituals. Graduation day, ritual. Weddings, funerals, ritual, ritual. And there's more. Many of us have daily rituals we perform. Humans seem to like rituals. Maybe we need them. What role and function do rituals serve? Should we have more rituals? Well, that's what Michael Norton is here to discuss. Michael is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and he is author of the book, The Ritual Effect. Hi, Michael. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 5:07Mike Carruthers?

  So I'm curious, first of all, you're a professor of business administration, and you wrote a book about rituals. So, bridge that gap for me.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  I'm a psychologist by training, and so my favorite thing to do is observe very weird things that humans do. And it turns out, we do lots of them all the time, so my job is pretty easy. But about a decade ago, I started thinking a lot about a particular type of unusual thing that we do, which are rituals. And I started seeing them in many different places in life. So, for sure, we can think of things like holidays, and weddings, and funerals, as all times when rituals bring us together. But I also started to think about the role of rituals in our own daily lives. The way we get together in the morning, the way we might wind down at night, what we might do at work when we're nervous for

• 6:02Speaker 02

  a big meeting. And it really started to feel like, across all of these domains of life, we were turning to ritual as one solution to solve all of these different problems.

• 6:11Mike Carruthers?

  Are rituals solving problems, or are they just a comfortable kind of guardrail?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  We do see people turning to ritual in particular in times of need. So for example, speaking of being nervous for a big meeting or a big presentation, or if you think of athletes or musical performers who often have extremely elaborate rituals that they do before they serve or before they sing. It does seem to be the case that humans, as the stress level goes up, we are more likely to bring rituals to bear and we're more likely to have more and more complicated rituals. So in the world, we can observe really that when we have this problem of anxiety, one of the things, and we can do lots of things, of course, we can meditate, we can take medication, there's lots of solutions to that problem.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  But one of the things that people seem to do is turn to ritual as one solution.

• 7:07Mike Carruthers?

  Those elaborate rituals that you sometimes see athletes do before they play a game or, or run a race or serve a ball. Why is it that it seems athletes have these rituals? And, and many athletes don't have rituals, at least that we can see, but some have really elaborate ones, so why is that?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  One of our solutions when we feel anxious that is extremely ineffective is we try to tell ourselves to calm down. So I can say, you know, Mike, this isn't that big of a deal. Just calm down, it's gonna be fine. And what the research shows is that that is really one of the worst things you can possibly do because unfortunately, that's not how we're built. We can't just tell ourselves to feel a certain way and then magically feel that way. That's the problem that we're trying to solve. So how do we get out of this sometimes doom spiral of anxiety and I'm gonna blow it and now I'm anxious because I tried to calm down and I can't even calm down? One of the things that researchers suggest rituals help us with, if you think of them,

• 8:09Speaker 02

  they're very patterned, they're very orderly, they're very familiar. They actually just take up some mental space so that we don't have all of our resources brought to bear on spiraling out of control. Rituals give us a sense of being in the here and now and help us to get ready for what's coming instead of often our own minds stressing.

• 8:30Mike Carruthers?

  And where, I imagine a million places, but where do rituals tend to come from? Like, when you see an athlete do his little pre-run ritual, where do you get that?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Interestingly, so the word ritual itself, I think, and this was true for me as well, makes us think of traditions and, you know, cultural practices and religious practices with a long history. And those are for sure rituals that have enormously important meaning in our lives. At the same time, what we see in the research is when we ask people about their own rituals, they come up with them themselves pretty often, actually surprisingly often. So even with something like grief, we'll say, you know, you lost someone you loved, what did you do? People will say, well, we went to the funeral, or whatever their faith, you know, prescribes for them to do. But I also did this thing privately to honor them. One woman said for a month she listened to her mom's favorite song every morning.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Now, there's no historical sense that you should listen to your mom's favorite song. This was something that this woman came up with on her own. And we see that very, very often, that what people are doing is freelancing, thinking of things that are meaningful to them, and then building those into their own rituals. It doesn't mean they're not using the cultural rituals and the religious rituals as well. We still rely on those for a lot, but we also can come from the ground up and make up our own.

• 9:57Mike Carruthers?

  It seems that rituals tend to be solitary.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Some are, and then some are with the goal of connecting. So we use them, you know, to calm myself down, for example, if I have to go give a presentation. But teams also will use rituals. For example, before a big sports match, a soccer team or a football team will have their own rituals, and there what they're trying to do is actually bond together. So again, interestingly, we use them in very different ways in different aspects of our lives.

• 10:27Mike Carruthers?

  It seems a lot of rituals get passed down, traditions I'm thinking of particularly. But also, I think there's a lot of rituals going on in people's heads and things that they do that they don't talk about. I don't talk about it.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  You know, Rafael Nadal can stand in public and do his unusual pre-serve rituals on television, and we think nothing of it. For ourselves, we're sort of aware that we shouldn't do that in front of a crowd, because they might say something is wrong with Mike. And so we do, in fact, often do them privately. I mentioned going into the bathroom to psych yourself up in the mirror. One of the first thing you do when you go in there is check under the stall to make sure nobody's in there, so that you can talk to yourself in the way that you need to talk to yourself. So we have this sense of my rituals are private to me. At the same time, there are many rituals that by their nature occur in a group. So if you think of family rituals, in the US, you might think of Thanksgiving as a kind of a classic family

• 11:28Speaker 02

  ritual. There, we all know what Thanksgiving is. There's some sort of turkey involved, and the family gets together. But even there, people are choosing their own pies, they're choosing what time they eat, they're making it their own and imbuing it with their own traditions. So you see often people pulling from history and tradition, pulling in some of their own creations. And then, as you said, sometimes those then get passed down. So the rituals that I do at Thanksgiving with my family, my daughter may very well do some of those with her family if she chooses to have kids, you know, in 30 years.

• 12:04Mike Carruthers?

  The idea of ritual, I imagine, goes back forever, right? I mean, this is just kind of a human coping thing.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  The earliest known text, Gilgamesh, actually has rituals in it. So from the very first time that we can see people recording things, we see that people are reporting on their rituals. And in fact, if you think about with archaeology, how we identify that a group of people had a culture, it's very often we look to see if they bury people ceremonially or not. So dinosaurs, the bones are just all over the place. We know that dinosaurs did not have funerals for each other. There's no pattern to it. But with humans, even thousands and thousands of years ago, we see them burying people very carefully with treasured objects and with care.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  And that tells us really that that was a very early ritual. And that means that that was a culture, or that was a group that mattered to each other. They do go very back, very far back, and they are very deeply embedded in human psychology.

• 13:08Mike Carruthers?

  But are rituals also inherent in other creatures?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  The experts are mixed on that for sure. So the closest species that people, many people believe have rituals are elephants, who have what appear to be mourning or grieving rituals. They will, not all elephants do this, but if you observe some elephant groups, they will, when someone, when one of the elephants dies, they will mourn, in a sense. They will gather and they will mourn publicly in order to grieve the elephant that's gone. Other people say that's just an instinct. You know, it gets to be kind of a discussion and a debate. But it does seem that humans are the most likely to use them across the most contexts.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  As is very often the case, we're very, very creative and innovative. So we'll take a tool and then use that tool not just for the original purpose, but for all sorts of purposes.

• 14:06Mike Carruthers?

  The rituals that are, you know, the tennis player who bounces the ball so many times, or those kind of rituals. If you ask the people who do them why they do them, my sense is that they would, there would be some element of good luck in it. And that it isn't about thinking about something else. It's like, you know, if I don't do it, or maybe it's that if I don't do it, it'll bring bad luck. But it seems that luck plays a role, or perceived luck plays a role in this.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  That's right. And I think that that also points to the fact that it isn't just that rituals are good. So I wish I could say, add 50 rituals to your life and you'll be happy from now on. That really isn't the function that rituals serve. When you ask athletes, for example, about their rituals, they do say, you know what, when I do it, I feel like I'm ready to go. Or I feel like I'm in the zone. I feel like I can get done what I needed to get done. However, if they can't do the ritual, if something interrupts them or they don't have time, well, now they're in a worse off state. In fact, they might have been better off to not have a ritual at all. Because now, if they can't complete their ritual, they feel off. They feel not ready to go. They feel like they can't do the thing that they're supposed to do.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  So when we have rituals, they have a lot of meaning and emotion built into them. And if we do them the way we wanted to do them, they can be very positive. But they also have this risk where if we can't enact them the way we had hoped, they can in fact have negative consequences.

• 15:42Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, I guess I guess so. But but that means you better plan time to do your ritual if you want to do your ritual.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Exactly, and you saw, you know, in baseball, they instituted a pitch clock. And some of the pushback against the pitch clock was, well, I'm not going to be able to do all my tapping and glove adjusting in time for the next pitch. You know, people really want to make sure they have time to enact those rituals that matter to them.

• 16:07Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about the importance of rituals in our lives. My guest is Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book, The Ritual Effect.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  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.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the Eternal City. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine-leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com.

• 17:16Mike Carruthers?

  So, Michael, ultimately, as important as rituals seem to be, I think if you ask people, you know, if you do that thing, whether you do, you know, bounce the ball or whatever it is, we all know it doesn't really do anything, you know, scientifically, and yet we cling to them.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  If you look very broadly at the function of rituals, it's sometimes the case that we are enacting a ritual with some goal in mind, and sometimes we actually achieve that goal. But at other times, we're enacting a ritual, and it ends up actually helping in a different way. So one example of this that I find very interesting are rain dances, rain rituals. In cultures where there's drought, many independent times, humans have come up with the idea of some sort of dance or ritual to try to encourage rain. Now, we know that it is unlikely, at least we have no evidence that our movements on the ground will cause it to rain. So why would so many cultures engage in these sorts of activities?

• 18:17Speaker 02

  And of course, one reason is that in times of drought, what happens is social conflict starts to happen. With scarce resources, I don't take care of you, you don't take care of me. And the kind of fabric starts to fray of our society. When you engage in these rituals together, what you're saying is, we have a shared history together, we are a people, and by the way, people have been doing this for hundreds and thousands of years, and they got through it also. So maybe we can get through it as well. So you can see that they're trying to make it rain, and that's probably not going to work. But by enacting these rituals, they're actually accomplishing an incredibly important goal, which is making sure that we stay together rather than drift apart.

• 18:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's interesting, because that only comes when you, it seems like when you look back on it and kind of understand and explain it, but you wonder if the people doing the dance are thinking that, or are they thinking, God, I hope this makes it rain?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  It's so interesting to think about the inside the ritual versus observing the ritual, whether the experience is the same or not. In fact, if you think about, as a social scientist, if I observe a religious ceremony, I'm Irish Catholic, so if I observe a Catholic mass, everyone in the church is engaged in the exact same actions. You know, we kneel at the same time, we stand at the same time, et cetera. But for some of the people in the church, that is an incredibly deep reflection of their faith. It connects them with their grandparents who had faith as well, it connects them with their spirituality. It may be one of the most important things they do in their life.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  And literally, the person sitting next to them might be there because their parents made them go. They're doing the exact same actions, but for one person, they are getting this enormous benefit out of it, and the other person can't wait to leave. And I think that's quite important because it means that it isn't just that it's the specific movements that cause something to be a ritual and be meaningful. It's the meaning that we bring to it often that imbues rituals with their power.

• 20:27Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem, well, let me ask you, does it seem that there are plenty of people who probably have few, if any, rituals, I imagine, that this isn't a real thing for them?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  So I was a skeptic of rituals. You know, I'm supposed to be a scientist and this sort of thing. And so the word ritual for me also was, I was a bit skeptical of it. I will say, when people say, I don't have any rituals, the first thing to do is ask your spouse, or your children, or your coworkers, and they may very well tell you that you've got some that you weren't aware of. But I think the other thing is that it depends how you define them, you know. So if I say, have you ever been out and had liquid in a glass, and everyone around the table lifted up the glass and clicked them together and said a one or two word phrase? Nearly everyone says, oh, yeah, of course, you know, cheers,

• 21:20Speaker 02

  or in Gaelic, slancho, you know, whatever your language is. And I say, well, why did you do that? And they say, oh, I see. Doesn't have a functional purpose to clink your glasses. All you're trying to do is, in a sense, drink something out of a glass. But we do these rituals, and you could, of course, we see the benefit of it. We're connecting, we're celebrating each other. The words that we use often mean luck, or health, or good wishes to each other. It's just liquid in a glass, but with ritual, we can turn it into something that's a little deeper. And when you start thinking of your life like that, people say, you know what, I actually do, of course, have rituals that I engage in, that not only do I engage in them, but I actually like them, and I think that they're helpful.

• 22:00Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think church is a good example of, I think, one of the reasons people go and find comfort is in the rituals, that the rituals mean something to them.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  I do think that there's something in us that really responds to ritual. And we found the oddly named Seattle Atheist Church. If you think about atheist church don't usually go together very well. But what's the Seattle Atheist Church? It's a group of people who gather together, often in a church, who enact many of the same behaviors. For many people, religion is very important to them because it connects them with other people. So by having a religious service, in a sense, you can connect with others. The Seattle Atheist Church wanted to keep all of those good things about religious services. They just happened to not want to include the part about God or a higher power.

• 22:54Mike Carruthers?

  Well, just in everyday life, I mean, just think every time you greet somebody for the first time, you shake hands or you hug, I mean, that's a ritual.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I'm astounded if you look cross culturally at how people greet each other. The variety in greeting is extremely wide. You know, even if you think about, do you kiss on the cheek or not? Do you kiss on both cheeks or only on one cheek? Do you shake hands? Do you fish butt fist bump? Do you high five? Do you hug? We have, do you bow? We have all of these across the world, very specific greeting rituals that we use. But the thing that you see is all cultures have one. In other words, we've decided that when we meet someone, we do something to signify that we're meeting. It just varies really widely from place to place.

• 23:46Mike Carruthers?

  I find it really interesting that during COVID, people were saying, you know, the handshake is dead, that we just, we just can't do that anymore. We're just spreading germs and, and when it was appropriate, the handshake came roaring back because people just weren't going to have that.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  And even during COVID, you could imagine that during a situation like that, you might say, well, let's just dispense with this thing altogether. If we can't shake hands or hug, let's just not do anything. But that's not what we did. We came up with a brand new one, which was bumping elbows, which did not exist before and really doesn't exist anymore.

• 24:24Mike Carruthers?

  Thank God.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  But it shows how strong the urge was to engage in some kind of greeting ritual, rather than just have nothing there, that we literally, humans invented a new way to greet that they had not used before, when pressed.

• 24:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's so clear, listening to you and looking at this through your eyes, how important rituals are, really to the point of it seems like we need them, we crave them. They're like guardrails to help us navigate life and they're probably a lot more important than people think they are. I've been speaking with Michael Norton. He is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the name of his book is The Ritual Effect. And there is a link to that book in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on and talking about this. Thank you, Michael.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  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.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the Eternal City. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com.

• 26:16Mike Carruthers?

  You already know that exercise and a healthy diet are important to maintain your weight, stay healthy, and live longer. Everybody knows that. But putting it into practice and sustaining it, that is a real challenge. Here with some really great advice to get you and keep you motivated is Jacob Sager Weinstein. He is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and on HBO and the BBC, and he is author of a book called, Be Healthier Now: 100 Simple Ways to Become Instantly Healthier. Hey, Jacob, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

• 26:56Mike Carruthers?

  So before we get into the specific advice, what is the general outlook, your philosophy? What are you saying to people about getting healthy?

• 27:05Speaker 03

  So I think there's broadly speaking, two different ways of framing the idea of health. If you say, Jacob, tell me about your health, I could say, well, I'm a 52-year-old guy with mild asthma. And that's true, that's accurate, because I'm answering in terms of what I am. But it's not very useful, because I cannot change what I am. But if instead, I say, well, I got a good night's sleep, I had a healthy breakfast, I took a 30-minute walk after lunch and had more energy when I was done than when I began, then I'm framing my health in terms of not what I am, but what I do. And I find that a much more useful

• 27:45Speaker 03

  way to look at it, because I can change what I do at any moment. So I think if there's one big takeaway people take, I'd like it to be that.

• 27:54Mike Carruthers?

  But the goal is what? To be healthy is always a journey? Or, I mean, obviously, you can't stop. But what does it mean to be healthy?

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Well, the funny thing is that, you know, I said, don't frame it in terms of what you are. But if you do enough, if you frame it in terms of what you do, and you do enough of those things, then it does change what you are. You become healthier. You have more energy, you live longer, you're less likely to get a heart attack or dementia. So for me, the ultimate goal of anything you do to be healthy is to get more pleasure out of life. And that might be from living longer, and it might be from being healthier and more with it while you're there.

• 28:34Mike Carruthers?

  So how does someone decide what to do first and what to do that will actually sustain them, that will allow them to keep doing whatever it is they're doing so that they do become healthy?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  I'll dive into the nuts and bolts, but let me give you two big picture things that guide me. One of them is to think of health as an ongoing experiment. So if you're supposed to eat vegetables, and you eat a vegetable and you don't like it, don't conclude you don't like vegetables. Conclude, I don't like this specific vegetable prepared in this specific way. I'll give you a really, maybe this is a weird example, but apples. If you might think you don't like apples, but there are a bazillion different kinds of apples. There's cox, pippin, gala, delicious. And having one apple doesn't tell you anything about whether you like even other apples, let alone whether you like fruits. Same with

• 29:30Speaker 03

  exercise. If you try some sort of exercise and you don't like it, that's an experiment. It successfully told you one kind of exercise that you don't like. But that shouldn't be the end of the experiment. It's a first step. And that ties into the second overall point that I think is really crucial, which is the value of incremental change. That, you know, you are not going to become an athlete by trying one athletic activity today. You might not even like it, like I said. But if you try it, whether or not you like it, you've moved yourself one step closer to having a sport or an exercise that you actively enjoy. And if you keep taking those steps, keep experimenting to find something you

• 30:11Speaker 03

  like, and then once you like it, gradually and sustainably increasing what you're doing, you are on a path that will take you to a much healthier and more sustainable place than if you just said, okay, I'm going to do 30 minutes of this thing I hate and just grind through it.

• 30:28Mike Carruthers?

  What I've noticed is that a lot of people, and I've done this in my life, to dabble in healthy. They, you know, buy an exercise bike, ride it for three days, and that's the end of that. Or they start walking after dinner for a couple of weeks, and that's the end of that. And then they don't really do anything else. They just decide, "Exercise is not for me," and give up.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Right, which is totally natural and understandable. So let me dive into a few specifics, because one thing that can help you keep up with it is if it's a habit, right? Obviously, habits by their nature, by definition, are things you don't even think about doing. You just do them. So I've experimented. I've found that running is a sport that I generally enjoy, but even so, it's effort, and it's not always easy for me to stick with it. So, as silly as it sounds, I found that if I take my running clothes out at night, and I put them where I'm gonna see them first thing in the morning, and just automatically put them on while I'm sleepy and not thinking clearly, then just the fact that I've got those running clothes on makes me much more likely to go running.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  And in a sense, what I've done is I've made each step smaller. I don't have to decide to go running, find my clothes, get going. I've made as many of those steps mindless and automatic. I just get in the habit of putting out my running clothes in the morning. And it shouldn't make a difference, like, the health benefits of exercise should get me going every day, but as silly as it sounds, just the habit of already being dressed for running makes a huge difference.

• 32:04Mike Carruthers?

  So let's talk about your concept of thinking healthy, because I think people often think that healthy is something you do in between the fun stuff.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:15Mike Carruthers?

  Rather than incorporating it, because, as we discussed, healthy doesn't necessarily equate to fun. So maybe a shift in mindset is important. So let's talk about thinking healthy.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  One thing that I think is a useful distinction is between physical activity and exercise. And we think about exercise, like we've been saying, as this unpleasant thing that you've got to do if you don't want to die. But the fact is, if I spend 10 minutes running dutifully in circles, or I spend 10 minutes chasing my dog around the yard, those are equally good for my body. My body doesn't really care why I'm doing them. But the one that doesn't feel like exercise, the one that is just doing stuff, the chasing the dog, I actually enjoy, and it's just as good for me. So the more you can find ways to think in terms of physical activity. So for example, when you park,

• 33:13Speaker 03

  if you drive to work, take the farthest parking space from your office, rather than looking for the closest. And automatically, you've now built in a few extra minutes of walking into your day. If you can, if your building has multiple floors, get in the habit of pushing the button in the elevator for one floor below where you actually want to go, and walk up that last flight of steps. It still counts, even if you're not in the gym in your sports clothes, that's physical activity that is good for your body.

• 33:43Mike Carruthers?

  But how good? That's the thing I think a lot of people struggle with, is going up one flight of stairs really going to matter? So screw it.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  And I think sometimes there's certain myths that get in our way. So there's this idea that, for example, you have to do 10,000 steps a day, that that's the magic number to be healthy. And if you look into where that number came from, it was actually made up by a Japanese company that was trying to sell pedometers, those things that measure how far you walk. And it wasn't really based on any science. When they've actually done real studies of this, they've found that going up to about 4,400 steps a day has a big jump in your life expectancy. And if you keep going past that, if you go up to about 7,500 steps, that gets better for you with every step. But once you actually

• 34:34Speaker 03

  hit that 7,500 steps, it doesn't hurt you to keep walking. But there's not really any gains they've seen in life expectancy beyond that. And even more broadly, what they've often found is that there's diminishing returns with almost any exercise you do, which means that the most benefits you get are when you start doing it. So If you walk up two flights of steps, that's better than one. But if you walk up one flight of steps, you've still gotten most of the benefits or a good chunk of those benefits just from that one flight. And most importantly, you've gotten more exercise than you would have if you had walked up zero flights of steps. And if you can, if you can stick with one flight a day, that's great.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  If you can add an extra flight once a week or once a month, then over the course of the year, that really adds up. If you can just do a little bit healthier stuff today than you did last week, that really adds up.

• 35:33Mike Carruthers?

  One of the things that sabotages people, I think, is, well, it's food. Because, you know, if you have it in the house, you're gonna eat it. And if you don't have it in the house, you're not gonna eat it. And so talk about the hot, cold empathy gap and how that works.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  It's a weird quirk of human nature that when you're full, it's surprisingly hard to predict how you'll behave when you're hungry. And that seems to be true of all emotions. If you're calm, it's harder to predict how you'll be when you're angry. Believe it or not, they've actually done a study where they had people study things underwater while scuba diving. And they found they could remember them better when they went scuba diving again than they could on dry land. There's just something about our brains that has a hard time picturing ourselves and how we'll react in other circumstances. So where that comes into health and healthy eating is if you're at the grocery store and you're feeling full, you're going there after lunch and you see a big bag of candy. You think about, well, you think about how you feel in that moment.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  And because you're full, you can resist that big bag of candy. So you think, I'll go get home, I'll have one piece every day, it'll be fine. Then the next day, when you're actually hungry, you eat fistfuls of it. And you think, why didn't I know I was gonna do this? Why did yesterday me do this to me? And it's because yesterday me was in a different state of mind. And to some degree, that's inevitable. It's just part of human nature. But there are some things you can do to get around it. If you have plans for what you're gonna buy, try making those plans when you're hungry and seeing how you feel, seeing what you think you're gonna do. If you make plans while you're full, take another look at them later when you're hungry. And if you are shopping when you're full,

• 37:18Speaker 03

  then think about, okay, last time I was hungry, how did I react to this bag of candy? And if I reacted badly, why do I think I'm gonna do things differently this time? And that's maybe as close as you can then get to picturing yourself in that alternate decision-making state.

• 37:38Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that is such an interesting thing is when you are, when you are full, it's like so hard to imagine hunger. Like, it's like, well, no, I'm so full, I can't eat for days. But that's not true, and you'll be eating again soon. But it is that weird quirk that we can't imagine ourselves in the state we're not in at the moment.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  And sometimes the best you can do is to, what I would say, lay healthy traps for yourself. So I got to a point, at one point, where if I was writing, if I would stop and think, I'd get up and wander around my flat, and I'd end up in my kitchen grabbing a fistful of chocolate chips. And I knew I was gonna do that. And so to, to, even though I couldn't stop myself from being hungry at that moment, what I could do in a more rational moment was move the chocolate chips out of reach and put a bowl of washed grapes in my fridge right at eye level. And so I would still do that thing where I would get up, walk to the kitchen, open the fridge. But the thing that was right in front of me,

• 38:44Speaker 03

  the thing that was easiest to grab, was now a healthy snack. And I was able to, to sort of hack my hot-cold empathy gap by doing that.

• 38:53Mike Carruthers?

  Something that, that I'd like you to address, and this is something that I think happens to everybody who tries to get healthy. They're gonna eat healthier, they're gonna exercise, they're gonna do something, and inevitably, They fall off the wagon. Something goes wrong and they don't do what they thought they were gonna do, and then they throw in the towel.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Okay, so they actually did a study of 60,000 gym members to find out when they stopped showing up to the gym, or when they missed one workout session, what was the most effective incentive to get them to come back to another. And I mentioned that it was 60,000 people involved in this study, because when I tell you the results, you're not gonna believe it. So I want to emphasize, this was a big study. And the thing that got people to go back after missing a workout was a payment of nine cents, which is insane. That, again, that increasing your lifespan, improving your health, that's not an incentive to get back on it and get

• 39:55Speaker 03

  back to the gym, but nine cents is. And I can tell you, in my own experience, when I've had really like little crazy small things of accountability like that, it does work. And maybe it's because it's so small, it feels almost silly, and you just wanna, it makes you just wanna say, okay, I'm gonna go back to it, but it does seem to work. So what you can do, and what people do sometimes, is they make bets with friends. They make accountability bets, where you and I make a deal. I say, I'm gonna go to the gym three times every week, and if I don't, I'm gonna owe you 25 cents. And obviously, the 25 cents is not

• 40:39Speaker 03

  a financial incentive, but the, maybe the embarrassments, the silliness of having to actually pay you that quarter, could be enough to get me to go back to the gym when I miss it.

• 40:50Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I know there's advice about when you should exercise, but the best advice I've ever heard about when you should exercise is to exercise when you can. And if it's in the afternoon, and you can stick to that, great. If it's in the morning, great. If it's at night, it's great. As long as you do it is better than not doing it.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Absolutely, and I think that's true about most fitness advice in general. It seems like, you know, every year, some new superfood hits the headlines of this specific berry is the best berry for you. But I kind of think that the, you know, the healthy food that you will actually enjoy and eat is the best healthy food for you. Uh, now I am happy to talk to about some of the science about what time of day to exercise, if that's interesting. But I do agree with you that the the far and away best time to exercise is whenever you can walk it and work it into your schedule.

• 41:40Mike Carruthers?

  But assuming you're available, what's the science say about time of day?

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Okay, so there is some evidence that exercising in the morning before you've had any food may help you burn more fat. There is some evidence that exercising either in the afternoon or right after you've had a meal may help you control blood sugar. Uh, there is definite evidence that doing vigorous exercise, uh, less than an hour before you're going to bed will make it harder for you to sleep. So based on all those things, depending on what you do or don't want, if you have the flexibility, that might help you schedule your exercise.

• 42:23Mike Carruthers?

  I've always found it interesting how many people just, you know, really can't find the motivation or the desire to do things to improve their health until they get some bad news from the doctor. Or maybe a good friend or a family member gets some bad news from the doctor, that it's that dreadful news that works to motivate.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it definitely is a another weird quirk of human nature. And I think the flip side, insofar as you can make it work for you, is to try to remember in the good times where you're not facing a disaster, what you want to exercise for or what you want to be healthy for. You know, there's a classic story of the guy who wants to quit smoking. So in the pocket where he would normally keep his packet of cigarettes, he puts a photo of his daughter. And every time he automatically reaches for a cigarette, he ends up with that photo and he remembers why he wants to quit. And even if you're not trying to quit something, if you're trying to start something. I think that can help too. If you want to exercise, not just because of some vague idea

• 43:26Speaker 03

  that it's good for you or you're supposed to, but you want to exercise so you can be hiking with your grandchildren in when you're 80, or if you want to exercise so you can visit that city you've dreamed of visiting a year from now and have the energy to walk around all day. I think sometimes having a specific positive image in mind can help keep you going.

• 43:46Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about some other things that you have in in doing your research for this and found that maybe people haven't heard before of some advice that run through of like three or four tips that people could use.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Sure. So something that really changed the way I eat. For most of my life, I have been a really fast eater. I just wolfed down my food, which is a bad habit I picked up as a teenager and carried through my whole life. So I saw the advice, and as simple as it is, it's made a big difference to me, to put down my fork while I'm chewing. So I pick up the fork, I put the food in my mouth, and I put the fork down till I'm ready for the next bite. And as simple as that is, that has made me a much more mindful eater. I eat more slowly. I noticed as a result of eating slowly when I'm full, so I eat less. And I'm not just mindlessly shoveling the next bite into my mouth, so I'm actually enjoying my food more than I was before.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  And to me, something like that, like mindful eating, which isn't just healthy, but actually is pleasurable, that makes me enjoy food more rather than less, is the kind of health advice that that I I love to find, that I think we're all seeking out. Along those lines, another tip is I think we have this stereotype that healthy food is bland. And you know, that's because too much salt, too much sugar, too much fat. Yes, those are all bad for you. If you have too much, you need to cut them down. But most herbs, pretty much almost any herb you can name, basil, cumin, oregano, that they're actually healthy for you. Garlic, onions, those are things that can can are good for your heart. There's evidence that they can reduce the risk of cancer.

• 45:31Speaker 03

  There's evidence that chili, fresh chili, changes your taste buds in a way that makes you crave less salt. So if you, now I'm a wimp when it comes to spicy foods, so I can't follow this tip myself. But if you like spicy foods and you can substitute chili for salt, that's a virtuous cycle. The more you do it, the less salt you will crave. And chili itself is helpful, healthy as well. I will say another bit of good news is that if you like coffee and tea, there is evidence that those are probably, on the balance, good for you. If you have too much, you lose sleep, you get stressed. But generally about two to five cups a day of coffee or tea are actively good for you.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  They reduce the risk of dementia. They reduce the risk of stroke. There was one study that moderate coffee intake actually made people less likely to commit suicide. So there's evidence that it improves your outlook. So those are things that people sometimes think of as vices that are actually virtues.

• 46:33Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what I like about your advice and suggestions, they're fact-based, so they're backed by science, but they're also relatively simple. They take some commitment, but not a lot, and to put your toe in the water. And I think it makes the whole idea of trying to be more healthy pretty easy. I've been talking to Jacob Sager Weinstein. He is a writer whose work has appeared on HBO and the BBC and The New Yorker. And he is author of a book called Be Healthier Now: 100 Simple Ways to Become Instantly Healthier. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Jacob.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Okay, thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

• 47:17Mike Carruthers?

  You've heard the saying that revenge is sweet. Well, when you think about it, revenge is kind of harsh. So why is it considered sweet? Well, scientists say that just the thought of revenge lights up the feel-good regions of our brains. What they did was hook up some people to a scan and then played some games. When one player was cheated, that player was given the option to punish their opponent. And the thought of doing that proved to be scientifically sweet, stimulating the same areas in the brain that sex and chocolate affect. Sometimes, players even opted for revenge at their own peril, proving that revenge can cloud our judgment.

• 48:02Mike Carruthers?

  And that is something you should know. I'd love it if you would share this episode, just, you know, in the next day or two, when you have a moment. Share this episode right there on the app that you're listening to. There's some way, easy way to, there's a share button. There's an easy way to share it and send it to someone you know. I'm Mike Herbrothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 48:27Speaker 00

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• 48:55Speaker 06

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