With the way we’re living in the world today, many of us struggle with stress, anxiety, and other harmful mental states. Many people struggle with worrying, overthinking, or ruminating. Some struggle with “monkey mind,” with thoughts swinging wildly in different directions. In some cases, we’re too frazzled to have a rich inner life, and our hearts are heavy with the burdens of the day and concerns of the world.
Enter meditation.
With meditation, we can train our minds to become more present, focused, and still. We can train our attention and awareness, helping us feel calm and clear. Meditation is a means of quieting and focusing our mind.
Though we can stop there if we wish, focusing only on the psychological benefits, we’d be missing a big part of the point—and the other potential benefits. As a time-honored practice in several religious traditions, with roots in the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions, meditation is a contemplative practice intended to help us achieve greater spiritual insight. It can awaken our compassion and help us feel more connected to others, potentially including all beings, God, and the universe. And for some, it can lead to a more mindful and enlightened state of awareness and existence.
That leads us to the deeper territory of mindfulness. So, what is mindfulness, and how does it relate to meditation?
Mindfulness
According to Jason Marsh of the Greater Good Science Center, “Mindfulness describes a moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. It’s a state of being attuned to what’s going on in your body and in the surrounding environment—being in the present moment without thinking about the future or what happened in the past.” Quite simply, we can think of it in terms of just three words:
“Be here now.” -Ram Dass, psychologist and spiritual teacher
When we’re mindful, we’re fully aware of the present moment while calmly noticing and accepting our thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in or judging them. Mindfulness is both a state and a practice. When we’re practicing it, we deliberately refocus our attention on experiencing the present moment, or what spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle calls “the now.”
Mindfulness has seen a surge of interest in recent years—from mindfulness in the workplace (including at companies including Aetna, Alphabet, BlackRock, Facebook, Ford, General Mills, Meta, Pixar, and more) and mindful eating to the rapid spread of mindfulness-based stress reduction programs at medical schools, hospitals, and other institutions around the world.
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Though some people use the terms “meditation” and “mindfulness” interchangeably, that’s a mistake. They’re related but not the same.
Meditation is a practice that can lead to a state of mindfulness, and mindfulness meditation is one of several forms of meditation. (See below for examples of different types of meditation.)
The Benefits of Meditation
University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson has conducted experiments on the effects of meditation on the brain. His results suggest that meditation may lead to changes in the physical structure of the brain regions associated with attention, fear, anger, compassion, anxiety, and depression. According to Jason Marsh of the Greater Good Science Center, brain imaging studies reveal that a half-hour of daily mindfulness meditation can increase the density of gray matter in the parts of the brains associated with memory and empathy.
According to researchers, meditation has many beneficial physical effects, including potential improvements in:
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With its long history through the ages and its practice in different parts of the world, it’s not surprising that there are many different ways to practice meditation. Here are several different types of meditation:
Mindfulness meditation. We observe our thoughts nonjudgmentally without reacting to them, acknowledge them, and then let them go. It can also include deep breathing and bringing our attention to our mind and body. Many people consider focused attention meditation and open monitoring meditation as branches of mindfulness meditation.
Body scan meditation. We direct our attention to sensations happening in our body. We can mentally scan over different regions of our body, from head to toe.
Loving kindness meditation (also known as metta meditation). We silently repeat in our mind phrases of benevolence or good wishes directed at ourselves and people we love—and perhaps other people we don’t know or even rivals, animals, and/or the world or universe.
Transcendental meditation. We use a silent mantra repeated in our mind for a certain period of time or turn our attention within and end up with simple being, perhaps leading to what’s called “pure awareness” or “transcendental being.”
Death meditation (maranasati). We meditate on the fact that death can strike at any time. The idea is that being mindful of death can help us live well. According to the Buddha, “of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.”
Mindfulness Practices
Beyond meditation itself, there are also other things we can do to help make us more mindful. Here are several:
Deep breathing practices. During deep breathing practices (also included in many different types of meditation), we can place our attention on our breath (e.g., we can focus on the top of our head when we breathe in and our diaphragm when we breathe out). This can include exercises like box breathing, in which we breathe in while slowly counting to four, hold our breath for four seconds, slowly exhale for four seconds, and then hold our breath again. (Each of these four steps forms one side of an imaginary box.)
“Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment—the key to all inner transformation.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Engage in everyday activities mindfully. When we’re doing something—anything—we can place our attention on what we’re doing and only that. For example, we can focus on the taste, texture, and smell of the food we’re eating, or on the sensations and smells of the dishes we’re washing.
Reduce distractions. It seems like the modern world is designed to agitate our monkey mind with a barrage of inputs and distractions. Put our smartphones away (out of sight) and turn off notifications. The goal here is breaking our addiction to numbing and distraction so we can be more mindful about what we’re doing and experiencing.
Play the “game of fives.” Notice five things in our immediate vicinity that we see, hear, or smell. Then, fully experience them. It may help to imagine that it’s the first time we’ve ever experienced that thing. When we do this, all our attention moves to what we’re noticing in the now. (1)
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Postscript: Inspirations on Meditation and Mindfulness
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” -John Milton, Paradise Lost
“By the practice of meditation, you will find that you are carrying within your heart a portable paradise.” -Paramahansa Yogananda, Indian Hindu monk, yogi, and guru
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.” -Ram Dass, spiritual teacher, psychologist, and writer
“As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise, you will miss most of your life.” -Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist monk, teacher, and writer
“You can learn more in an hour of silence than you can in a year from books.” -Matthew Kelly, The Rhythm of Life
“What your future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
“Regardless of how we get there, either through meditation or more directly by paying attention to novelty and questioning assumptions, to be mindful is to be in the present, noticing all the wonders that we didn’t realize were right in front of us.” -Ellen Langer, Mindfulness
(1) A similar approach is the “54321 grounding method,” in which we take deep breaths and become aware of our surroundings and then look for five things we can see, four things we can touch, three things we can hear, two things we can smell, and one thing we can taste.
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Death. We have a tendency to avoid thinking about it, talking about it, and planning for it.
For many, death is their greatest fear. So much left behind. So many mysteries.
It doesn’t help that so many of us are cut off from nature in the modern developed world. We have so many amenities and conveniences and so much sheltering that we rarely encounter the natural phenomenon of death all around us, from the animal and plant kingdoms to the birth and death of galaxies and stars.
Because of our anxieties and fears, we revert to avoidance and denial. It can be a tough and painful topic, especially if we’ve lost those close to us or faced grave illnesses ourselves or among loved ones. Conceptually, we know death is inevitable. But that doesn’t make it easier to face.
Memento Mori
Enter “memento mori” (Latin for “remember that you will die”), an ancient practice of reflecting on our mortality to help us live better. The concept of memento mori has been a recurring theme in various cultures, civilizations, and religions throughout human history. (See the Appendix for a brief history of this concept from civilizations around the world.)
In ancient Rome, acknowledging death as an inescapable reality of human existence was seen as a means of promoting humility and wisdom. The Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome encouraged people to contemplate their mortality, because they believed that doing so would lead to a more virtuous and meaningful life.
This isn’t only a curious (if morbid) inheritance from the ancients. It’s also an intriguing and important finding from modern science—and a deep conviction of those who have had brushes with mortality. Case in point:
“A review of 18 studies suggests that the prospect of death leads to greater appreciation of life, more rapid formulation of values, more thought about the meaning of life, and stronger social connections. As I have learned from the experience, when you consider how short life can be, you create more meaning in the world.” -Tom Rath, Life’s Great Question
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“It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you’ll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do.” -Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist
Perspective. In a sense, death is the ultimate purveyor of perspective. It helps us see trivial things for what they are—and face up to the fact that much of what we worry about and consume ourselves with isn’t so important after all. Reflecting on death can help us stop fretting about things that are outside our control. And memento mori also reveals how “tempus fugit” (“time flies”)—how precious moments and chapters of our lives have come and gone like the current in a river.
Clarity and Focus. The thought of death makes us, in the words of author and educator Parker Palmer, “fierce with reality.” It can help us see what’s most important in our lives with much greater clarity. And it serves as a powerful focusing agent for us.
“The confronting of death gives the most positive reality to life itself. It makes the individual existence real, absolute, and concrete. Death is the one fact of my life which is not relative but absolute and my awareness of this gives my existence and what I do about each hour an absolute quality.”
-Rollo May, existential psychologist
Prioritization. In the face of death, we’re able to see what’s truly important and what’s not—and then act accordingly. For example, if we’re preoccupied with material accumulation, we may be forced to reconsider when we pause to recall that “You can’t take it with you,” as the saying goes.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” -Steve Jobs, entrepreneur
Inspiration and Motivation. Though some assume that pondering death may be depressing or even debilitating, it can actually be quite the opposite. Recalling that we won’t live forever can light a fire under us and get us moving and taking action on the things that matter most.
“There’s something coming for all of us. It’s called death. Rather than fearing it, it can become one of our greatest counselors. So, if this was the last week of your life, what would you cherish most? How would you live? How would you love? What truth would you tell today?” -Tony Robbins, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
Courage. The perspective of mortality noted above, with its accompanying clarity and motivation, can fill our hearts with courage to start facing our fears and stop them from inhibiting our progress and development.
Appreciation. Reflecting on the inevitability of our death can also help us snap out of the trance of taking the beauty and wonder of life and the universe for granted. It’s easy to put our heads down and focus on what’s in front of us, but memento mori can help us tune back into the astonishing beauty and majesty of life. It can help us come back to savoring simple pleasures and being thankful for the people and experiences in our lives. And come back to peace and joy.
“…it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident
Mindfulness. In our daily lives, it’s easy to descend into anxiety, stress, and distraction. There are a lot of inputs coming at us, so it’s harder than ever to remain in the present moment with ease, peace, and equanimity. Remaining cognizant of our mortality can help us remain mindful: fully present, calmly aware and accepting of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive to what’s happening around us.
Intentionality and Intentional Living. One of the most powerful benefits of maintaining awareness of our mortality is how it can help us craft our life and work intentionally. No more blind following of others; no more abdication of our quality of life to our overly demanding and underlying giving workplace. The end of passive acceptance and surrender. Time to wake up, take our life back, and design it according to our purpose and values—and with input from our heart, not just our head. In this sense, memento mori leads right into that other famous Latin expression, “carpe diem” (“seize the day”).
“Every day, think as you wake up, ‘I am fortunate to be alive.
I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it.’” -Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Forgiveness. Reflecting on our coming death can also help us do one of the things we find most difficult: forgive. Such intentional release of resentment and anger can lessen the pain we feel from old wounds, while potentially also releasing others from a yoke. It may lead to greater understanding, empathy, or compassion. Importantly, it doesn’t have to mean forgetting or excusing, or reconciling. But it does mean greater peace—and getting in with our life instead of wasting precious time looking back.
“Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present,
free of contamination from the past.” -Dr. Joan Borysenko, Fire in the Soul: A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism
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How It Works: Practical Approaches for Memento Mori
It’s one thing to acknowledge all the benefits of remaining mindful of our mortality. It’s another thing altogether to get beyond the avoidance, awkwardness, and pain, and actually bring this practice into our lives. So, how to go about it? Here are some suggestions:
Reading. Since this is so foreign to our modern sensibilities, one of the best ways to access the power of memento mori is through reading, including some of the classics and religious or spiritual readings. That can help us dial into this tradition and understand its value. (See below for a list of related books.)
Reminders and mementos. Since our tendency is to avoid thinking about death, it helps to have visual or tactile reminders in our everyday lives. Personally, I like using a memento like a necklace or a medallion that I can wear or carry around, but we can also use Post-It notes on our desk or mirror. Anything that keeps this though present in our lives.
Meditation and prayer. Prayer can not only connect us with a higher power but also help us tune into the finitude of life within the larger context of the divine. And meditation can do the same. (See the section below on Buddhist meditation on death, maranasati.)
Discussions. If we’re reluctant to think about it, sometimes it can help to talk about it with family, friends, or small groups. That way, we can help normalize it instead of avoiding it. We can also connect with others around this important topic while also learning about their views about life and death, not to mention more practical matters like making arrangements for funerals, financial and legal matters, and more.
Visits and volunteering. Spend time with people in the later chapters of their lives and with people facing health scares. In many cultures today, there’s too little interaction across generations, a big problem because it leaves so much of the hard-earned wisdom of older generations unknown and unshared. There’s also a huge problem in many cultures with loneliness. This is aggravated when people avoid spending time with those facing life-threatening conditions or the end of life because it’s awkward or they wouldn’t know what to say. (1)
“Who takes care of these people when there isn’t anybody, when their support system is gone?
Do they fall through the cracks?” -Inez Russell, founder and CEO, Friends for Life
Religious services. Attend services at a faith-based institution of your choice and be open to how ancient teachings and scriptures may inform our lives today—and the importance of looking at life from a larger perspective.
Graves. Visit the graves of loved ones. By doing that, we can pay our respects and honor their memories, maintaining a relationship with them and listening to what they may have to teach us—albeit silently but often powerfully—about living.
Do you avoid reflecting on your mortality, or do you embrace memento mori as a life-enhancing perspective that can help us live well and focus on what’s important?
What will you do differently about this, starting today?
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Clayton Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?
Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old
Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing
The sacred texts of your and other religions
Appendix: Reflecting on Death through the Ages
Through the ages, various cultures, religions, and philosophical, artistic, and literary traditions have urged people to reflect on their mortality and what it means for living well. Here’s a brief history:
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptians had beliefs and traditions incorporating the concept of mortality and the impermanence of life. For example, they had rituals and customs around mummies (the preservation of dead bodies), tombs, and pyramids. The point of many of these revolved around the importance of preparing for the journey to the next world, acknowledging that life on Earth is temporary and encouraging people to lead a righteous life. Historians point to the Book of the Dead funerary text and ancient Egyptian art depicting scenes of death and judgment. Many Egyptians during that time had a strong belief in living in accordance with Ma’at (the concept of balance, order, and truth), which was seen as a way to ensure a favorable judgment in the afterlife—reinforcing the idea that how we approach this life has consequences for the next.
Hinduism
This religion, practiced by about 1.2 billion people today, addresses the concept of mortality and the impermanence of life. Several aspects of Hinduism emphasize the idea that all living beings will eventually die. With Hinduism, there’s a belief in samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and the soul (atman) continues on a journey through various lifetimes until it reaches moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth). The Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text, emphasizes the idea that the soul is eternal while the physical body is temporary. Practices like meditation and yoga, closely associated with Hinduism, can help people gain insight into the nature of their existence, including the impermanence of the body and the importance of spiritual growth.
Ancient Rome
In ancient Rome, according to legend, when a victorious general took a victory march in the streets, a servant would follow him and repeat this: “Respice pose te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.” (“Look behind. Remember thou art mortal. Remember you will die.”). The idea was that this would help the victorious general put things in perspective right at the time when his hubris was bound to trip him up. As noted above, memento mori is also an important precept of Stoicism.
Judaism
Judaism contains teachings and practices that address mortality and the impermanence of life. For example, the Talmud, a central text in Judaism, contains discussions and teachings about the transitory nature of life and the importance of living a righteous and meaningful life. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, includes reflecting on our sins and our mortality. It’s a time for Jews to repent and seek forgiveness, acknowledging the need for spiritual renewal. Judaism has funeral and mourning traditions that are symbolic of the impermanence of life. Also, consider the teachings of the Psalms:
“You turn people back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust, you mortals.’… you sweep people away in the sleep of death…. Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away…. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” -excerpts from Psalm 90 NIV
Buddhism
Buddhism, practiced by about 500 million people today, emphasizes the recognition of suffering as part of life and the impermanence of all things. Together, these serve as a means to encourage mindfulness and a deep understanding of our shared human condition. The “Four Noble Truths” (the foundational teaching of Buddhism”) begin with the recognition of suffering (dukkha)—including the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death. One of the three marks of existence in Buddhism is anicca (impermanence).
A common Buddhist practice is maranasati (meditation on the fact that death can strike at any time). Meditating on or being mindful of death is essential to good living. According to the Buddha, “of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme,” presumably because it’s so important and powerful. Buddhism also includes funeral and death rituals, including chanting of sutras that emphasize the transient nature of life. In Buddhist art, the Wheel of Life (Bhavacakra) represents the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The “Five Remembrances” of Buddhism, which are statements about the nature of life, include the following:
I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid aging. I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness. I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.
Taoism
Taoism is a philosophical and spiritual tradition from ancient China that drew inspiration from nature, such as the changing of seasons and the cycles of life and death in the natural world. It encouraged people to cultivate a harmonious relationship with the ever-changing world around them. That mean embracing the Tao (often translated as “the Way” but meant to describe the fundamental principle underlying the universe). Living in harmony with the Tao involves accepting the natural cycles of life, including birth and death.
Taoism’s most famous concept is “yin and yang,” the dualistic nature of reality, which notes that life and death are two sides of the same coin. (Without death, there can be no life, and vice versa.) The concept of Wu Wei (translated as “non-action” or “effortless action”) suggests that we should go with the flow of life and avoid unnecessary resistance, including resistance to death.
Artistic depiction of yin and yang. Source: Adobe Stock
Christianity
In Christianity, currently practiced by about 2.4 billion people worldwide, we see reflections on death in crucifixes, tombs, funerary art, and the Psalms. Many of these serve as reminders to believers of the importance of leading meaningful and righteous lives. Christian theological teachings include the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. Its liturgical readings include themes of mortality, repentance, and the need for salvation and grace.
The Christian liturgical calendar begins with Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent (a time of reflection, fasting, and repentance). During Ash Wednesday services, a minister or priest applies ashes in the shape of a cross on the foreheads of worshippers while saying the phrase, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Christian funeral services often include readings and prayers that emphasize the brevity of life and the hope of resurrection. The cross is, of course, the central symbol of Christianity. It represents the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, and it’s a powerful reminder of the Christian belief in salvation through Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.
“Keep death daily before your eyes.” -St. Benedict, 6th century Italian Christian monk, writer, and theologian
Islam
For Muslims (currently about two billion worldwide), there are daily prayers, funeral prayers, sermons, and other reminders of the certainty of death. Take the five daily prayers (Salat), for example. During these prayers, people recite specific verses from the Quran, including verses emphasizing the fleeting nature of life and the Day of Judgment. The Khutbah (sermon) of Jumu’ah (Friday Prayer) often includes reminders about death, the importance of good deeds, and the Day of Judgment. Muslims are also encouraged to engage in the remembrance of death (dhikr al-mawt). The Arabic phrase, “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un,” translates to: “Verily, we belong to Allah, and verily, to Him we shall return.”
Art
We also see memento mori depicted in art, including the “danse macabre” (“dance of death”) of the Late Middle Ages, when the plague (the “Black Death”) was ravaging Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. It features depictions of death personified as a skeletal figure, often accompanied by living individuals from various social classes and all walks of life (from kings and clergy to peasants and children), engaging in a dance or procession. Its central theme was that death is the great equalizer, because death eventually comes for everyone, regardless of their station in life.
We also see memento mori depicted in the “vanitas” still-life paintings of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, with skulls, hourglasses, clocks, candles, wilting flowers, rotting fruit, fraying books and scrolls, and broken musical instruments symbolically representing the transience and futility of earthly life and the impermanence of material possessions. The Latin word “vanitas” means “vanity” or “emptiness.” These artists were urging viewers to reflect on the vanity of their worldly pursuits and the excesses and distractions of earthly life—and to focus on the eternal instead.
Example of vanitas painting. Source: Adobe Stock.
Literature
We also see memento mori themes in literature and philosophy. Writers and philosophers, famously including Montaigne and Shakespeare, explored the concept’s implications for human existence and the pursuit of wisdom.
“To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us… let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death….
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere.” -Michel de Montaigne, French Renaissance philosopher
In Leo Tolstoy’s novel, The Death of Ivan Ilych, the main character had a medallion attached to his watch chain with “respice finem” (“consider the end”) inscribed on it.
Postscript: Inspirations on Memento Mori
“The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” -Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo
“Plan with your whole life in mind.” -Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day.… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, ancient Roman Stoic philosopher
“Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river…. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here…. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“O remember how short my time is.” -Psalm 89:47
“Celebration is only possible through the deep realization that life and death are never completely separate. Celebration can only really come about where fear and love, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles can exist together. Celebration is the acceptance of life in a constantly increasing awareness of its preciousness. And life is precious not only because it can be seen, touched, and tasted but also because it will be gone one day.” -Henri Nouwen, Ministry and Spirituality
“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.” -E.M. Forster, English writer
“If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritizing your life.” -Mitch Albom, writer
“…the more you confront the facts of finitude… and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.” -Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“It’s easy to lose track of that mortality, to forget time, to think that you’re going to live forever. The idea that you’re gonna die and that life is short is only depressing if you’re thinking about it wrong. If you’re thinking about it right it should give you a sense of priority. It should even give you a sense of meaning; it should let you know what’s important, what you’re trying to do while you’re here on this planet.” -Ryan Holiday, writer
“I can’t think of a sadder way to die than with the knowledge that I never showed up in this world as who I really am. I can’t think of a more graced way to die than with the knowledge that I showed up here as my true self, the best I knew how, able to engage life freely and lovingly because I had become fierce with reality.” -Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything
(1) Many years ago, I got the chance to interview Inez Russell, founder and CEO of Friends for Life in Waco, Texas. She met several elderly people in the local hospital who were alone and confused or despondent. She was touched personally and also discovered that about one in three seniors over 65 are socially isolated. So, she got busy and started an organization to improve the quality of life for seniors, particularly those who are without family to care for them. Through its programs that help with life skills, independent living, money management, guardianship, and more, Friends for Life helps the elderly and people with disabilities live independently as long as possible, protects and cares for those who are unable to do it themselves, and brings generations together to enrich lives.
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Self-awareness is critical in our life, work, and relationships, but many of us struggle with it. How to develop self-awareness.
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To be self-aware is to have a good understanding of ourselves, including conscious knowledge of our feelings, motives, and desires. Self-awareness (also known as self-knowledge) involves having a clear, accurate, and deep understanding of our emotions, values, strengths, and weaknesses. It also involves having a realistic view of ourselves, including a good and true sense of how we’re coming across to others.
In her book, Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think, organizational psychologist Dr.Tasha Eurich defines self-awareness as “the ability to see ourselves clearly to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us.” She calls it the “meta-skill of the 21st century.” It may be an important skill in this century, but we’ve known about the importance of self-awareness for millennia.
“Know thyself.” -inscribed on the temple wall at Delphi, 6th century BCE
According to researchers, there are two types:
Internal (or private) self-awareness is about how clearly we see ourselves and whether we notice and reflect on our own internal state.
External (or public) self-awareness is about being aware of how we appear to others.
Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness is closely associated with emotional intelligence (EQ). Pioneering psychologist Daniel Goleman considers self-awareness one of the four domains of emotional intelligence (along with self-management, social awareness, and relationship management)—and emphasizes that it’s the foundation for the other three.
According to Goleman, self-awareness involves certain personal competences, including:
Accurate self-assessment: knowing our strengths and weaknesses
Emotional self-awareness: reading our own emotions and recognizing their impact
Self-confidence: having a good sense of our capabilities and self-worth
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
When we lack self-awareness, we have blind spots that get us into trouble, and we don’t know the underlying reasons for our actions. As a result, we’re likely to keep making the same mistakes, and we’ll be less likely to take responsibility for them, damaging our credibility.
Think of the compulsive talkers who don’t let others get a word in during conversations, unaware that people find it off-putting because it shows a lack of interest in others. Consider the frequent criticizers who spend so much time judging others instead of addressing their own issues.
Think of the people who keep bringing up politics out of the blue and saying things that hurt or offend the people around them without realizing it. Consider the people who speak loudly in public places, unaware that they’re disturbing everyone around them.
Think about the reserved introvert who unintentionally comes across as aloof or uninterested. Note the chronic complainer who never asks others how they’re doing. Consider the perpetual dreamers who never get around to the things they need to do to get started.
We’re all flawed—and prone to self-deception—so we should approach these cases with empathy and grace. But in many cases, a little self-awareness would go a long way toward helping people get out of their own way.
“Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.” -Khalil Gibran, Lebanese writer and poet
20 Benefits of Developing Self-Awareness
The good news is that we can develop self-awareness, even if we’re low on it (as many are). Having a high level of self-awareness can help us in many ways. For example, it can:
help us see our blind spots for the first time—or see them more clearly
help us answer the question of what we should do with our lives based on what we’re good at and how we can best add value to others
help us connect with our dreams, including a vision of our ideal self, in the process invoking our energy and excitement for life
Developing our self-awareness is a necessary step in honoring our nature and becoming who we want to be instead of conforming to the desires of others. It’s also a necessary step in developing self-acceptance and self-compassion. Developing self-awareness also helps illuminate our “shadow side”—the parts of our personality that we don’t want to admit—which is a necessary part of human development.
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Organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich and her colleagues researched self-awareness via multiple investigations with nearly 5,000 participants. She describes their results as follows:
“…even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality:
We estimate that only 10-15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.”
Why is this so hard? Several reasons.
We’re subject to all sorts of influences from our family and friends, and from our culture, that cause us to question who we are and pull us away from it. We’re confused by the cultural influences that don’t align with our own values. Sometimes, we end up defaulting to the values given to us by our parents, peers, or culture (e.g., values related to money or success) and rarely take the time for self-inquiry—or to consider the downsides of those values and whether there may be better alternatives.
We’re used to hiding tender parts of ourselves when we don’t feel safe admitting or revealing who we really are. We fear harsh judgment by ourselves or others.
We tend to default to emotion-driven interpretations of events and encounters instead of pausing to reflect on our inner state and how we may have contributed to things.
We’re accustomed to leaping right into action instead of having the patience and humility to inquire into the deeper reasons for things and our self-sabotaging patterns.
We feel uncomfortable with the cognitive dissonance between the messiness of reality and ourperfectionistic tendencies. It’s too painful to look at our shortcomings, so we remain in denial.
How to Develop Self-Awareness
Clearly, developing self-awareness is difficult, for many reasons. But given all its powerful benefits, it’s worth our focused and ongoing attention.
So, how to develop self-awareness? Before answering that, we’re wise to ask: Awareness of what, exactly? What does self-awareness include? Ideally, it includes our life story, purpose, values, vision, strengths, passions, emotions, motivations, needs, desires, successes, curiosities, weaknesses, shadow sides, traps, vulnerabilities, and blind spots.
Given that, here are things we can do to facilitate greater self-awareness:
Develop a propensity for frequent self-reflection (1), including taking time to reflect on meetings or other encounters and their emotional wake. Also, pay attention to what we love and long for, and what makes us come alive. This requires a commitment to self-inquiry and an intentional discovery process (what I call “discover mode”), including listening to our inner voice.
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.” -Frederick Buechner, Presbyterian minister, theologian, and writer
Seek input and guidance from family, friends, mentors, and coaches. Ask for honest feedback, including about our weaknesses and blind spots. At work, this should include “360-degree reviews.”
Convene asmall group to facilitate deep conversations about meaningful things in members’ lives. Make sure the conversation includes self-reflection with input from the group, so participants have a chance to consider new insights in a safe environment and search for patterns.
“…inner work, though it’s a deeply personal matter, is not necessarily a private matter:
inner work can be helped along by community.”
-Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
Try using theJohari Window. It’s a framework that helps us identify what’s known to ourselves (or not) and what’s known to others about us (or not). See the image below.
Source: Adobe Stock
For many of us, we don’t let many people see our true selves (limiting what shows up in the upper left “Arena” quadrant). Also, we may have several blind spots—things that are known by others about us that we’re not aware of (in the upper right quadrant). Consider writing down ten words that describe yourself (your main characteristics) and then having one or more people who know you well do the same for you. Then, compare the lists to see the extent of overlap on the different lists. One goal of this work is to get us to show more about ourselves to others, in the process shrinking how much of ourselves we hide or that remains unknown to others.
Journal intentionally, since it can help us reflect on our feelings and experiences, sometimes uncovering insights or patterns.
Take time forrenewal and sanctuary, including daily restorative activities (e.g., gardening or yoga) and places or practices of peace that help us recenter our hearts. Without time for renewal and sanctuary, we’ll be too scattered and frazzled to maintain self-awareness.
Take assessments that facilitate our self-awareness and personal growth. Examples include:
Self-awareness is sometimes painful—like when we discover hard truths about how others see us or first learn about major blind spots. Still, it’s well worth it. Without self-awareness, we’re likely to fall into several traps—and perhaps remain in them unknowingly, blind to our unhappy predicament.
Developing self-awareness can help facilitate real growth and development—and sometimes breakthroughs. We can only grow and develop when we have the courage to admit the traps we’re in and acknowledge our shadow side.
As we commit or recommit to developing our self-awareness, we’re wise to consider where many people get it wrong and trip up. Here are three final cautions about this process of becoming more self-aware:
First, self-awareness isn’t only about introspection and talk. The real value comes when we take action in the world based on a high level of self-awareness, such as when we build our life and work around our strengths and find viable workarounds for our weaknesses and blind spots, like asking for help from people who are strong in those areas.
“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” -Witold Gombrowicz, Polish writer
Second, self-awareness isn’t only about the self. It’s also about the self in the larger context of our lives, including our family, friends, community, work, convictions, and commitments. As Quaker teacher Douglas Steere wisely noted, the ancient question “Who am I?” inevitably leads to the question “Whose am I?”
Third, our identities aren’t fixed. We’re multifaceted and dynamic, so our self-awareness needs to keep up with the changes in our inner and outer lives. New challenges and changes will continue—both imposed on us and chosen by us—giving us opportunities for more depth and insight in our quest to know ourselves so we can live more fully and freely.
Reflection Questions
How well do you know yourself, and how can you be sure?
Do you keep falling into old traps and patterns that hold you back, indicating that you may have some blind spots?
Are you asking for feedback regularly and truly being open to it?
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Tasha Eurich, “What Self-Awareness Really Is (And How to Cultivate It),” Harvard Business Review, January 4, 2018
“How can man know himself? It is a dark, mysterious business…. It is also an agonizing, hazardous undertaking thus to dig into oneself, to climb down toughly and directly into the tunnels of one’s being…. Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: ‘What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?’ Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self. Compare these objects, see how they complement, enlarge, outdo, transfigure one another; how they form a ladder on whose steps you have been climbing up to yourself so far….”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
Related Books and Videos
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Tasha Eurich, Insight: The Surprising Truth about How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More than We Think
William L. Sparks, “The Power of Self-Awareness,” TEDx Asheville
Tasha Eurich, “Increase Your Self-Awareness with One Simple Fix,” TEDx Mile High
Postscript: Inspirations on Self-Awareness
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.” -Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher
“Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.” -Epictetus, ancient Greek Stoic philosopher
“Full wise is he that can himself know.” -Chaucer, 14th century British storyteller
“If a man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and his powers?” -Michel de Montaigne, 16th century French Renaissance philosopher and writer
“Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action. Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, poet, scientist, and statesman
“The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint man with himself.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century American essayist
“…the world’s wisdom traditions offer a valuable secret. They teach that the unsettled mind comes about through one thing only: losing sight of who we really are…. The answer lies in finding out who you really are—a conscious agent who can choose, at any time, to live from the level of the true self.” -Deepak Chopra, spiritual teacher and author
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” -Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“Most folks go through most days on automatic pilot and don’t reflect upon it. When you say, ‘Why did I do that? What was that in service to inside of me? What old button, or issue, or agenda did that hit in me? When have I been here before?’ these are questions that begin to open up the mechanism working within each of us. And through that, you gain some greater sense of self-awareness. And with that, the potential for a great sense of freedom in how you live your life.” -James Hollis, quoted in Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.” -Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
“Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about—quite apart from what I would like it to be about—or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live—but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
(1) Caution: introspection is helpful but can sometimes lead us astray, especially when we use it to ask the wrong questions. Based on data from her research on the most self-aware people, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich recommends asking ourselves “what” instead of “why” questions to improve the value of our introspection. The “why” questions (e.g., “Why do I feel so bad?”), she notes, often concern unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives, and our instincts about them are often wrong. What’s more, those “why” questions tend to invite negative thought patterns, including rumination. Better questions, she proposes, are “what” questions: “What are the situations that make me feel bad? What do they have in common? What are the patterns?” Those “what” questions are more likely to lead to productive insights. (Source: Tasha Eurich, “What Self-Awareness Really Is (And How to Cultivate It),” Harvard Business Review, January 4, 2018.)
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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Many of us suffer with a large volume of negative thoughts. Reframing is a powerful practice that can change the way we see the world and ensure that we’re responding intentionally and not reacting automatically (and negatively) to things. On the power of reframing.
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Many of us are walking around much of the time in a mild state of anxiety, frustration, or negativity, and it colors almost everything we think and do. Our thought-streams are heavy with negative self-talk, worrying, rumination, and harsh self-judgment from our unhealthy propensity to engage in flawed and superficial comparisons. According to researchers, we humans have a negativity bias: we tend to over-focus on negatives and underweight positives.
One factor at work here is the prevalence of cognitive distortions, which occur when our thought patterns are flawed or irrational—and usually unhelpful or even damaging. Common cognitive distortions include:
Assuming the worst
Discounting the positive
All-or-nothing thinking: imagining there are only great or terrible outcomes to a situation
Blaming: finding fault with others or circumstances instead of looking within
Catastrophizing: assuming the worst and blowing things out of proportion
Overgeneralizing: seeing negative events as an ongoing pattern of problems
Mind-reading: making assumptions about what others are thinking (e.g., that people are judging us negatively), with little or even no evidence
Mental filtering: focusing only on negatives and ignoring positives
Emotional reasoning: drawing conclusions or labeling ourselves from how we feel (e.g., leaping from “I felt stupid in that meeting today” to “I am stupid”)
“Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.” -Byron Katie, Loving What Is
The problem with such thinking traps and cognitive distortions is that they have an array of negative influences, including:
loss of our sense of control, agency, and responsibility
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
This is also dangerous in teams and organizations, because such negative thinking can become normalized and spread rapidly through groups, poisoning the culture. Whole teams can get stuck in downward spirals of negative thinking.
What to do about it? Enter cognitive reframing.
Cognitive Reframing
Cognitive reframing—also known as cognitive restructuring—entails shifting our mindset to look at a situation or relationship from a more helpful perspective. With such reframing, we can replace flawed or destructive thought patterns with better ones. In doing so, we can change the way we view people, situations, and even memories—and thus our experience of living and our behavior.
“The essential idea behind reframing is that the frame through which a person views a situation determines their point of view. When that frame is shifted, the meaning changes, and thinking and behavior often change along with it.” -Amy Morin, psychotherapist and author
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
When our mental frameworks are causing us distress, cognitive reframing can help us shift them to more helpful ones. This has all sorts of benefits, including positive effects on our mood, mental health, general wellbeing, and self-esteem.
Reframing can help us promote gratitude and appreciation, attract new opportunities, strengthen relationships, reduce stress, and manage loss and grief. Perhaps this explains why cognitive reframing is used to treat a variety of conditions, including: addiction, anxiety, chronic pain, depression, eating disorders, insomnia, pain disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, and stress.
Practical Reframing Approaches
Reframing is something we can all do, whether we’re students, parents, workers, salespeople, managers, or CEOs. It’s relevant across all areas of life, from personal happiness and marriage to teamwork and work performance.
There are many different reframing approaches. Here are several of the main ones:
Asking questions and investigating the evidence. When we’re experiencing negative thought-streams, we can ask ourselves if there are other ways to look at the situation. What evidence supports this thought, and what evidence contradicts it? If we’re judging ourselves harshly, we can ask what our manager, colleagues, and/or staff would say about our work.
Puzzle framing. We can reframe problems not as weights that bring us down but as puzzles to be solved. Problems are a downer, but puzzles come with challenge, fun, and mystery. Here, we can take a cue from Quincy Jones:
“I don’t have problems. I have puzzles…. I can solve a puzzle. A problem just stresses me out.” -Quincy Jones, record producer, songwriter, and composer
Reframing failure. A manager who sees people on the team making mistakes can jump right into corrections and reprimands, or the manager can reframe it as evidence that team members are stretching themselves, trying new things, and attempting to innovate. All these, of course, are essential for high performance over the long haul.
Three gifts. In his book, Positive Intelligence, Shirzad Chamine writes about the “three-gifts technique”: when facing a bad situation, we brainstorm three scenarios in which that situation could turn into an opportunity or even a gift. It could take days, months, or years to unfold, but the situation ends up having benefits. Example: the head of sales of a company that had recently lost its biggest customer was initially skeptical about this exercise but, with some thought, she realized:
It could be a wake-up call for the company that it’s losing its edge, thereby triggering more urgency in new product development, which could attract many more clients over time.
The loss could help the sales team be more open to new skill development.
It could free up the service staff to provide better service to existing customers, resulting in more referral sales.
Gratitude recasting. Here, we change the focus from a regret or loss to what we’re grateful for. Example: If a grandparent regrets not having had enough time with the grandchildren when they were younger, a recast could be: I’m grateful for the time we did spend together, and we still have time to get to know each other and do fun things.
According to researchers, subjects who engaged in grateful recasting had more healing, closure, and redemption as well as less unpleasant emotional impact from upsetting experiences. They also demonstrated fewer intrusive memories, such as wondering why a bad event happened, whether it could’ve been prevented, and whether they caused it.
“Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity.” -Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis
“The work.” In her book, Loving What Is, Byron Katie notes that we’re all a mirror of our own thinking coming back at us. Her methodology of “inquiry,” with its four questions, is a powerful form of reframing. When we have a troubling thought, she notes, we can ask:
Is it true?
Can we absolutely know it’s true?
How do we react when we believe that thought?
Who or what would we be without the thought?
Context reframing. Here, we change the way we think about the set of circumstances around our challenges. For example, if our flight is delayed, instead of focusing on the hassle, we can pause to consider the larger context of having so much wealth and privilege to be able to fly to places we want or need to go.
Stop taking things personally. In his book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz notes that most of the things we experience in the world aren’t directed toward us, though we assume they are. Too often, we’re quick to take personal offense and let resentment fester. Instead, we should consider the likelihood that the situation had nothing to do with us: perhaps the person who made that comment was having a bad day or is struggling with some personal challenges or past traumas—or just lacks emotional intelligence or social grace?
Big view lens, to view our lives from a broader perspective
Present view lens, to help us see what we’re missing now—and what each moment can bring
Rear view lens, to help us see how we’re wired and how our past is affecting us so we can retain faith for what’s ahead
Higher view lens, to help us see that our life may be given to us for a purpose much bigger than ourselves, in the process seeing more of what God wants us to see
“Where we choose to focus makes all the difference in what we see.” -Laurie Polich Short, When Changing Nothing Changes Everything: The Power of Reframing Your Life
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Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
Those reframing approaches can lead to an incredible array of possibilities in virtually all areas of our life and work. Here are examples of this phenomenon in action in common scenarios:
If we’re stuck in traffic, instead of getting frustrated, we can appreciate the opportunity to practice deep breathing or listen to nice music or interesting podcasts.
When facing a challenging situation, we can ask ourselves questions like: Is there another way to look at this? What are some other possible reasons for it? What would I say to a friend faced with this?
If we have limiting beliefs, we can simply add the word “yet” to our thoughts about them or change the focus to things we know we can do. For example:
Limiting Belief
Reframe
“I can’t do this.”
“I can’t do this yet.”
“I’ve never led anyone before. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I’ve helped lots of people figure things out. I have good people skills and lots of valuable experience to draw upon.”
“I’m not good enough to manage this project.”
“I’m committed, hard-working, and capable. And I have what it takes to figure this out.”
If we’re feeling helpless, we can change our focus from helplessness to curiosity about what it might take to address our challenges, much like becoming a detective trying to solve a mystery.
If we’re feeling stuck, we can realize that we’re never truly stuck because we always have the capacity to generate new ideas, as Dave Evans and Bill Burnett point out in their book, Designing Your Life.
When feeling nervous about public speaking or leading a meeting, we can change our focus from fears of screwing up and being embarrassed to a more positive frame: Great, all this adrenaline shows that I care and will give me the energy to share my passion for this subject.
“Every single important thing we do is something we didn’t use to be good at,
and in fact, might be something we used to fear.” -Seth Godin, entrepreneur and author
If we’re struggling with a daunting transition, we can view it as a challenge to overcome or even an exciting opportunity for learning, growth, and adventure.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” -Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, and statesman
If we’ve been handed a tough assignment at work, instead of dreading and resenting the pressure, we can view it as an opportunity to learn something new and raise our profile by adding more value to the team.
When we receive tough feedback or criticism, instead of shutting down and feeling resentment or self-righteousness, we can extract value from the feedback, noting that it can help us improve—and that it shows the person cares about our development.
If team members are feeling frustrated and disempowered, they can reframe their mindset about their role (and manager). Too often, workers give too much deference to their managers or are too quick to abdicate responsibility for what’s happening in the organization, blaming people in positions of authority. The best workers do all they can to help the organization achieve its goals. This means taking risks, shaking things up, and helping leaders get better (e.g., by informing them of problems they may not be aware of, asking tough questions, and letting their manager know what they need to succeed).
If managers are concerned about conflict on a team, they can reframe conflict from a behavioral taboo to a necessary practice in the quest for excellence. (See my article, “Why Conflict Is Good—And How to Manage It.”)
If we’re struggling with micromanagement or a need to swoop in and save people, we can change how we see a situation involving someone in need. For example, instead of believing the thought that the person will suffer without our help, we can note how the person can develop new coping skills that will serve them well going forward.
Conclusion: The Power of Reframing
Reframing is a powerful practice that can change the way we see the world and ensure that we’re responding intentionally and not reacting automatically (and negatively) to things. This will help us become more resilient.
For reframing to work, we must learn to recognize distorted thinking and have the motivation to change our ways. Since our thought patterns can be deeply engrained, sometimes it’s wise to get help from a therapist or coach.
Reframing can be the difference between a life of frequent disappointment and one with more satisfaction and ease. What’s more, its effects are cumulative. Positive thought-streams have favorable effects that ripple out, helping us and others.
“Our key to transforming anything lies in our ability to reframe it.” -Marianne Williamson, spiritual teacher and author
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Laurie Polich Short, When Changing Nothing Changes Everything: The Power of Reframing Your Life
Postscript: Inspirations on the Power of Reframing
“It’s only a thought and a thought can be changed.” -Louise Hay, author
“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.” -Sharon Salzberg, world-renowned meditation teacher and best-selling author
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” -John Milton, Paradise Lost
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” -Marcel Proust, The Captive
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.” -Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and author
“Everything can be taken from a man but…the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” -Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor
“The secret to living your best life lies largely in your ability to see all that is in front of you.” -Laurie Polich Short, When Changing Nothing Changes Everything
“There is enough light for those who choose to see, and enough darkness for those who are of a contrary disposition.” -Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” -Matthew 6:23-23 NIV
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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How much time do you spend inside? How about staring at a screen? These days, we’re spending more and more of our time indoors and online. Many people don’t get outside enough.
Too many of us are nature-deprived. It’s part of a larger historical trend from the Industrial Revolution. With bigger cities and factories and more office work and indoor living, more and more of us have started feeling separate from nature—or even alienated from it. This has real implications. Richard Louv, an author and co-founder of the Child & Nature Network who coined the term “nature deficit disorder,” noted:
“Nature is not only nice to have, but it’s a have-to-have for physical health and cognitive functioning.” (1)
The Benefits of Getting Outside and Being in Nature
Being in nature has all sorts of benefits. According to the research, being in nature can lead to a reduction of anxiety, blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormones, anger, attention fatigue, muscle tension, the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder (a mood disorder in climates where there’s less sunlight during parts of the year), and more.
Furthermore, spending time in nature can help promote the following:
greater attentional capacity, including focus and concentration
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people.
I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
To be clear, being in nature doesn’t have to mean deep wilderness expeditions. Many people these days live in cities or suburbs, and they’re wise to take advantage of what Linda Åkeson McGurk, author of The Open-Air Life, calls “nearby nature.” That means just getting outside in our local neighborhoods and finding whatever green or blue (water) spaces we can.
Sunlight plays an important role here. Direct sunlight has about 200 times the intensity of office lights. Our body’s internal clock depends on the daily cycle of sunlight and darkness. Getting exposure to sunlight helps us feel more tired at night and shorten the time to fall asleep. Sunlight exposure can help with fatigue and low mood. It also helps us get Vitamin D, which is important for our bones, blood cells, and immune system, as well as absorption of certain minerals (e.g., calcium and phosphorus). Also, it helps keep our serotonin levels up, which keeps our mood calm, positive, and focused.
Getting outside can also help us be more social. When we go outside, we get more chances to see and connect with people, which is essential for our health and happiness. (See my article, “The Most Important Contributor to Happiness.”)
There are different theories as to why being in nature is so beneficial. One is “biophilia theory”: since we evolved in wild, natural settings and relied on the environment for survival, we have an innate drive and need to be in nature. Another is “attention restoration theory”: being in nature replenishes our cognitive resources, like our ability to pay attention and concentrate, when they get depleted.
“If you’ve been using your brain to multitask—as most of us do most of the day—and then you set that aside and go on a walk, without all of the gadgets, you’ve let the prefrontal cortex recover. And that’s when we see these bursts in creativity, problem-solving, and feelings of well-being.”
-David Strayer, professor of cognition and neural science, University of Utah
Most likely, it’s a combination of these and other factors.
Quality of Life Assessment
Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
When we learn about all the benefits of getting outside, it can motivate us to do so. Still, we have work obligations, time pressures, and all sorts of online distractions and temptations. It’s a challenge for many of us. So, here are ten tips for getting outside more:
1. Keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be trekking into the deep wilderness. Take advantage of your nearby nature and do simple activities like walking.
2. Make it a habit and create outdoor rituals, like morning coffee on the deck, mid-day walks, or evening chats on the patio.
4.Limit screen time, since it keeps us from enjoying the great outdoors. Don’t check your phone first thing in the morning. Check those daily screen time stats regularly. And be sure to unplug sometimes when out there walking or running so you can listen to the birdsong and be present where you are.
5. Experience nature with a friend. This comes with several benefits: deepening our social relationships (a primary contributor to our happiness), exercise, and all the advantages of nature.
6. Try gardening. It has many positive health benefits, according to a large body of research. Gardening, with its digging, planting, raking, carrying, squatting, kneeling, and more, entails functional movement that incorporates whole-body exercise, including movements similar to squats and lunges. According to the research, gardening can:
lower levels of stress and anxiety
improve our cognitive function and mood
reduce our body mass index
provide helpful structure to our days or weekends
increase our psychological wellbeing, quality of life, and sense of life satisfaction
enhance self-esteem and creativity
reduce the effects of dementia
What’s more, it’s gratifying to plant, tend, harvest, eat, and share home-grown food. It’s healthy and good for the environment as well. Gardening is also a great activity for practicing mindfulness.
7. Visit city parks, nature reserves, and national parks. They’re there for a reason. They can help bring calm, gratitude, or awe back into our lives.
8. Go camping, boating, climbing, or trekking. These are great ways to bring fun and adventure back into our lives.
9. Try forest bathing (spending time in a forest environment). The Japanese call it Shinrin-yoku. Studies show that it can help boost our energy and immune system as well as help us sleep better and recover more quickly when we get sick.
10.Go wild sometimes, i.e., do go to the forests, jungles, prairies, mountains, lakes, seas, or oceans sometimes. As writer Linda Åkeson McGurk points out, the wilder it is, the more restorative it’s likely to be.
What about Office Workers?
Thankfully, office workers aren’t doomed to nature deprivation. They’re wise to take breaks (including lunch) outdoors and have walking meetings whenever possible. It helps to have a supportive workplace. (3) For example, managers wanting to support the health, wellbeing, and productivity of their team can:
provide a space for employees to relax and get away from the office (e.g., an outdoor area with comfortable seating)
give workers flexible hours
offer wellness programs
have bicycles on the workplace grounds, if applicable, and/or provide incentives for commuting by bicycle
employ outdoor team-building activities
incorporate nature in company meetings and retreats
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
When I moved to Sweden many years ago, the temperature dropped to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 degrees Celsius) that first winter. A bit colder, and we could have reached the place where Fahrenheit and Celsius converge (minus 40 Fahrenheit equals minus 40 Celsius). For this man who grew up in southern California, it was a shock. But not as big of a shock as seeing all the Swedes get out into that bone-chilling cold. There’s a famous saying in Swedish:
Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.”
Enter what the Swedes and Norwegians call friluftsliv (which we can translate as “free-air life,” “fresh-air life,” or “open-air life”). Linda Åkeson McGurk wrote a book about it: The Open-Air Life: Discover the Nordic Art of Friluftsliv and Embrace Nature Every Day.
Friluftsliv is about connecting with nature in simple ways. It’s a lifestyle in the Nordic countries that’s been passed down across generations, that’s taught in schools, and that’s used as preventive care for mental health (nature therapy), often for people with burnout.
When in the Nordics, you can see it all around you, from people enjoying time in their summer cottages for weeks at a time, to grilling hot dogs outside in the middle of winter (grillkorv), to baby strollers placed outside on the porch of daycare centers and preschools in the middle of winter, with the children swaddled in cozy blankets and breathing fresh air. It’s also a part of the work culture, with gå och prata möten (“walk and talk meetings”). There’s also a conservation aspect: the more connected we are to nature, the more likely we’ll be good stewards of natural places and resources.
During that first winter in Sweden, my inclination was to hunker down by the fireplace. Eventually, I learned a better approach. In Sweden, you just pile on with about seven layers of clothing, including snow pants and great winter gloves, boots, and hats, and you get out there in that magical winter. And in the dark rains of November. Rain or snow, you just get out. It makes a big difference. Friluftsliv.
What are your favorite ways to get outdoors? How can you build more of them into your routines?
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Book: Linda Åkeson McGurk, The Open-Air Life: Discover the Nordic Art of Friluftsliv and Embrace Nature Every Day (TarcherPerigee, 2022)
Book: Linda Åkeson McGurk, There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (Touchstone, 2018)
Richard Louv, Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life (Algonquin Books, 2016)
Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2008)
Podcast: “We Know Nature Is Good for Us. Here’s How to Make Time for It, Scandinavian Style,” Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris podcast interview with Linda Åkeson McGurk, August 28, 2023.
Postscript: Inspirations on Nature
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” -Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher
“They will forget the rush and strain of all the other weeks of the year, and for a short time at least, the days will be good for their bodies and good for their souls. Once more they will lay hold of the perspective that comes to those who every morning and every night can lift their eyes up to Mother Nature.” -Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. president, naturalist, and conservationist
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” -Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher
“Nature itself is the best physician.” -Hippocrates
“If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.” -Buddha
“It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.” -Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
“The earth has music for those who listen.” -William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor
“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“I have just come from four days rest in Yosemite… Lying out at night under those giant sequoias was lying in a temple built by no hand of man, a temple grander than any human architect could by any possibility build….” -Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. president, naturalist, and conservationist
Appendix: Research on the Benefits of Nature
A study of 19,806 people by University of Exeter environmental psychologist Mathew White and his colleagues found that people who spent two hours a week in green spaces (e.g., local parks or other natural environments) were substantially more likely to report good health and psychological wellbeing than those who don’t. This finding held true whether the visits to green spaces were all at once or spread out over multiple visits. Source: White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J. et al. Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Sci Rep 9, 7730 (2019).
“Walk in nature and feel the healing power of the trees.” -Anthony William
In a Japanese experiment, researchers measured the heart rate and blood pressure of people who were assigned to either walk in a forest or an urban center. The walks were of equal length and difficulty. Those who walked in forests had significantly lower heart rates and reported better moods and less anxiety than the others. Finnish researchers found that city dwellers who walked for as little as 20 minutes through a city park or woodland reported significantly more stress relief than people who walked in a city center.
Dr. Gregory Bratman and his Stanford University colleagues conducted a 2015 study in which 60 participants were randomly assigned to walk for 50 minutes in either a natural setting of oak woodlands or in an urban setting along a four-lane road. The people who walked in nature experienced less anxiety, rumination, and negative affect (likelihood of experiencing negative emotions), plus more positive emotions and better performance on memory tasks. Dr. Bratman and his colleagues noted evidence from a review of the research that contact with nature is associated with increases in happiness, subjective wellbeing, positive social interactions, and a sense of meaning and purpose in life—as well as decreases in mental distress. Source: Gregory N. Bratman et al., Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective. Sci. Adv. 5, (2019).
According to a meta-analysis from Dr. Alison Pritchard at the University of Derby in England and her colleagues, people who feel more connected to nature have greater “eudaimonic wellbeing” (experiences associated with living a life of full flourishing, growth, authenticity, meaning, and excellence). Source: Pritchard, A., Richardson, M., Sheffield, D. et al. The Relationship Between Nature Connectedness and Eudaimonic Well-Being: A Meta-analysis. J Happiness Stud 21, (2020).
Peter Aspinall and his colleagues at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland studied participants while they walked through an urban green space. Mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) monitors showed lowered engagement, arousal, and frustration while in the green space and higher engagement levels when departing from the green space.
Roger Ulrich and his Texas A&M University colleagues conducted an experiment in which participants viewed a stressful movie and then either videos of natural scenes or videos of urban settings. The people who viewed natural scenes demonstrated a much quicker and more complete recovery from their stress. In a study of gallbladder surgery patients, with half of the patients given a view of trees and half given a view of a wall, the patients with the view of the trees tolerated pain better and spent less time in the hospital. Nurses also reported that they had fewer negative effects from the surgery.
Juyoung Lee, Dacher Keltner, and other University of California, Berkeley researchers showed participants nature scenes, independently rated for their levels of beauty, and then observed their behavior in two games, one measuring generosity and another measuring trust. Those who viewed the more beautiful nature scenes experienced greater positive emotions and acted with greater generosity and trust in the games than the others.
Penn State University sound researcher Joshua Smyth has found that when people hear songbirds, the tension in their nervous system falls. The opposite occurs when they hear cars and airplanes. Another study compared participants who listened to nature sounds (e.g., waves crashing and crickets chirping) to those who listened to urban sounds (e.g., traffic and the noises of a busy café). Those who listened to nature sounds performed better on demanding cognitive tests. Source: Van Hedger, S.C., Nusbaum, H.C., Clohisy, L. et al. Of cricket chirps and car horns: The effect of nature sounds on cognitive performance. Psychon Bull Rev 26, (2019).
According to a 2015 study of 2,000 people in the United Kingdom, more exposure to nature was associated with more community cohesion and substantially lower crime rates. Source: Netta Weinstein et al., Seeing Community for the Trees: The Links among Contact with Natural Environments, Community Cohesion, and Crime, BioScience, Volume 65, Issue 12, 01 December 2015.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
-William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor
The benefits of nature aren’t limited to green spaces. They also come from blue spaces, including marine and freshwater environments.
(1) According to researchers, concentrations of air pollutants are much higher indoors than outdoors, and there’s a risk of respiratory problems because of that. Being outside can also help reduce the chances of contracting airborne viruses like the flu and covid-19.
(2) When study participants viewed nature scenes, it activated the parts of the brain associated with empathy and love, according to fMRI scans.
(3) More and more organizations are paying attention to and investing in this. We’ve even seen an increase in “forest schools” in many countries. Forest schools are found in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, and Japan, among other countries.
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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Good nutrition, exercise, and sleep are three key drivers of our health and wellness.
No surprise there, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got them covered. In this article, we focus on great sleep for health, wellness, and great work. (We covered nutrition and exercise in previous articles.) Sleep is the “sleeper” of the three—often overlooked but hugely important. I used to focus mostly on exercise and nutrition but have recently come to see how sleep really is the linchpin.
“Sleep is the most underrated health habit.”
-Dr. Michael Roizen, chief wellness officer, Wellness Institute, Cleveland Clinic
Many People Struggle with Sleep
Many people struggle with not sleeping well. The National Sleep Foundation reports that about 40 million Americans have a chronic sleep disorder, 62% of U.S. adults have trouble sleeping at least a few nights a week, and 30% of Americans experience insomnia at some point over the course of a year. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than one in four U.S. high school students gets the recommended amount of sleep per night. (1)
Of course, this is a worldwide problem. According to the International Journal of Epidemiology, about 30% of adults report having had “some insomnia problems over the past year”—and about 10% report having chronic insomnia.
The Problem of Not Sleeping Well
There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is widely considered to be a form of torture. With poor sleep comes a wide range of risks and side effects. For example, it leads to a higher risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, hypertension, obesity, and depression.
Sleep loss slows our metabolism and triggers food and sugar cravings. (2) It elevates cortisol, a key stress hormone, and scrambles our blood sugar.
Poor sleeps impairs our memory—both short- and long-term—including our ability to consolidate learning during the previous day. It downgrades our mood, negatively affecting our relationships and parenting. And it reduces our productivity.
“When you are tired, you are not yourself. Well, at least not the best version of yourself.”
-Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter
Generally, sleep deprivation may facilitate or intensify all sorts of problems, including:
accidents
addictive behaviors
anxiety
appearance issues (e.g., dark circles under our eyes)
appetite surges
attention problems
blood pressure problems
concentration problems
confusion
depression
reduced enthusiasm about positive events
headaches
increased stress hormone levels
immune system suppression
impulsiveness
irritability
lower libido and sexual health in both sexes
memory lapses or loss
motivation drops
obesity
relationship problems
violent behavior
temper tantrums in children (and some adults)
“Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.”
-JoJo Jensen
According to a study in The Lancet, surgeons who had not slept the previous night took 14% longer to complete a task and made 20% more errors than those who had a full night’s sleep.
Effects of Poor Sleep on Leaders
For leaders, poor sleep can be an occupational hazard—especially if they work in an organization with a culture of burnout.
Too many leaders brush this aside. “Sleep is for wimps,” they say, or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“The Western workplace culture… is practically fueled by stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout.”
-Arianna Huffington, Thrive
Unfortunately, poor sleep negatively affects skills and capacities that are important for leadership effectiveness, including:
ability to focus
cognitive speed
decision-making capacity
mathematical processing
performance on tasks
In a nutshell, being tired is a terrible state for leading and living. Importantly, sleep deprivation also makes us less ethical, according to researchers, in part by reducing our resistance to pressure. In his book, Sleep Smarter, Shawn Stevenson notes that when we don’t sleep, our parietal lobe and prefrontal cortex lose a significant amount of their glucose, impacting our social control and ability to tell the difference between right and wrong.
According to researchers Christopher Barnes, Brian Gunia, and Sunita Sah writing in their Harvard Business Review article, “people who didn’t sleep well the previous night can often act unethically, even if they aren’t unethical people.” In an experimental study, tired participants (after an all-nighter) were given the opportunity to play along with a lie to earn money. The result? Tired participants were more likely to abandon their morals for cash.
Author Ruth Haley Barton, founder of the Transforming Center, distinguishes between what she calls “good tired” and “dangerous tired”:
“Dangerous tired is an atmospheric condition of the soul that is volatile and portends the risk of great destruction. It is a chronic inner fatigue accumulating over months (and sometimes years)…. it can actually be masked by excessive activity and compulsive overworking. When we are dangerously tired we feel out of control, compelled to constant activity by inner impulses that we may not even be aware of. For some reason we can’t name, we’re not able to linger and relax over a cup of coffee. We can’t keep from checking voice-mail or e-mail ‘just one more time’ before we leave the office or before we go to bed at night.”
Our state of sleep deprivation impairs our judgment and can bring out the worst in us, causing damage to our health, families, teams, and organizations. (See my article, “The Problem with Tired Leaders.”)
“We continue to live by a remarkably durable myth: sleeping one hour less will give us one more hour of productivity. In reality, the research suggests that even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a significant toll on our health, our mood, our cognitive capacity, and our productivity.” -Tony Schwartz, “Sleep Is More Important than Food,” Harvard Business Review, March 3, 2011
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
By contrast, quality sleep comes with an incredible array of benefits. For example, it has positive effects on:
appearance
bones
cognitive function
disease prevention
emotional regeneration
hormonal balance
immune system function
inflammation (reduction)
longevity
memory
performance
relationships
sexual function, including desire and arousal
skin health
stress resilience
weight loss
“Sleep… will magnify the results you get from your food and movement in the most amazing way if you allow it to…. Sleep is the secret sauce. There isn’t one facet of your mental, emotional, or physical performance that’s not affected by the quality of your sleep.” -Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter
Good sleep is also a driver of athletic performance. It’s no secret that top organizations, from the U.S. Olympic Committee to professional sports teams, as well as athletes (including LeBron James, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Phelps), musicians, and artists, have worked to tap into the amazing power of great sleep. Stanford University researchers tested members of the men’s varsity basketball team after increasing the amount of sleep they got and discovered the following:
increased speed (faster sprint times)
improved shooting (9% improvement in free-throw and three-point shooting)
faster reaction times
less fatigue
improvement in mood and overall physical wellbeing
According to Cheri Mah, a researcher at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, “What these findings suggest is that these athletes were operating at a sub-optimal level” before their sleep time was extended. “They’d accumulated a sleep debt…. It’s not that they couldn’t function… but that they might not have been at their full potential.”
Quality of Life Assessment
Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
So how should we go about it? Here are top strategies for getting great sleep:
Make sleep a priority, since it affects everything we do so profoundly. Turn the good sleep practices below into rituals and habits. Reject a “grind culture” at your office or a mentality of toughing out late nights.
Get enough sleep, consistently. Most adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. (1) Find out what works best for you by learning to listen to your body. If in doubt, start by increasing sleep by just 30 minutes for a few days and see how it feels—or take a short nap (20-30 minutes) during the day, if possible.
Awaken early in the morning. According to researchers, waking early can help reduce negative thoughts and set us up for better quality sleep the next night. Also, “night owls” tend to sleep less overall than early risers, and they’re more likely to develop sleep disorders.
Get adequate sunlight during the day—including some sunlight as early as possible after waking up. Our sleep cycle depends in part on the amount of sunlight we get. Not getting enough sunlight can disrupt our circadian timing system.
Get adequate exercise. When we sleep, our body releases many beneficial hormones and does the repair work necessary for us to benefit from our workouts. The relationship between sleep and exercise is powerful—and bidirectional. Getting good exercise—including strength training two or three times a week—helps us sleep better, and getting good sleep helps us exercise and perform better. Morning workouts are ideal for the best sleep, so be sure to move in the morning even if you do your main workout in the afternoon. When we exercise early in the day, it gets us in a good cortisol cycle. Meanwhile, exercising too late in the evening raises our temperature, which can make it harder to fall asleep.
Limit screen time, especially before bed. According to researchers, using electronic devices before bed can negatively affect our alertness and our circadian clock. Shawn Stevenson notes that eliminating screen time at night is “likely the number one thing you can do to improve your sleep quality immediately.” If we shut off all screens at least 90 minutes before bedtime, we help our bodies normalize our natural melatonin and cortisol levels. Little things like blue light blockers and “Do Not Disturb” phone settings can go a long way.
Manage caffeine intake and set a caffeine curfew. Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that excites our nervous system, and it causes our adrenal glands to produce adrenaline and cortisol, both of which work against our sleep. If taken in excess, caffeine can make us jittery and can cause insomnia. It has a “half-life” of between five to eight hours. Avoid energy drinks because they provide excessive amounts of caffeine (e.g., 80-300mg) and use natural sources (e.g., green and black tea or coffee) instead. According to many experts, most people need a caffeine curfew of 2:00 p.m. (3)
Calm our inner chatter. Many people have difficulty falling asleep because their mental wheels won’t stop spinning. Many struggle with overthinking, rumination, and worrying. Simple calming or relaxation techniques can go a long way. For example, try deep breathing or meditation, or listen to calming apps (e.g., the Calm app), stories, or audiobooks.
“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”
-Charlotte Bronte, English novelist
Create a sleep sanctuary—a cozy place that your mind and body associate with rest and sleep. That begins with a comfortable bed with a quality mattress, sheets, pillows, and blankets. Set it up for peace, quiet, and comfort.
Create a relaxing bedtime ritual. Start winding down 30 to 45 minutes before bed. Do something relaxing, like listening to light music, journaling, or reading a book (ideally, fiction, poetry, or something spiritual—and not something that will generate stressful thoughts about work).
“A bedtime ritual teaches the brain to become familiar with sleep times and wake times.
It programs the brain and internal body clock to get used to a set routine.”
-Jessica Alexander, National Bed Federation
Maintain a regular bedtime. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule (both going to bed and arising in the morning—even on weekends) can dramatically improve our sleep quality because our body gets into a good sleep rhythm.
Set an eating and snacking curfew well before bedtime. It’s best to give our bodies at least 90 minutes to digest food before bedtime—and even better with more time.
Avoid or reduce alcohol consumption. Alcohol can significantly disrupt our REM sleep and prevent our brain and body from fully rejuvenating. When we do consume alcohol, it’s best to stop at least three hours before bedtime.
Remove devices from the bedroom. According to a 2023 Reviews.org survey of 1,000 Americans, 60% sleep with their phone by their sides (e.g., nightstand) at night, and many check alerts and notifications in the middle of the night, seriously disrupting their sleep. Watching television before bed also disrupts our sleep cycle.
Make sure it’s dark when we sleep. Light sources can disrupt our sleep patterns significantly by throwing our biological clock out of whack. We sleep better when it’s dark enough that we can’t see our hand in front of our face. Blackout curtains are a good investment.
Maintain a cool temperature in the bedroom—ideally, between 60-68 degrees Fahrenheit, or 16-20 degrees Celsius.
Use technology to measure sleep duration and quality (e.g., sleep tracking devices), and make adjustments accordingly.
What to Do If You’re Having Trouble Falling Asleep
If you’re having trouble falling asleep, get up out of bed after a while and go do something relaxing (without a screen), instead of just lying there and getting frustrated. If there’s a lot on your mind, such as unfinished projects or ideas about how to address a problem, write it down. That way, you can avoid having your working memory churning on it. (A caution: Don’t try to suppress unwanted thoughts because that only makes it worse. Consider scheduling worry time in the afternoon and writing down worries and stressors so they’re captured on paper—leaving no need for your mind to keep spinning on them. See my article, “What to Do About Overthinking, Rumination, and Worrying.”
Other recommended practices:
Think of three things you’re grateful for about your day while lying in bed.
Count backward from 100 to zero as slowly as possible.
Check with your doctor for underlying sleep conditions (e.g., sleep apnea) if the problem persists.
When needed, take natural, herbal supplements (e.g., nighttime tea with chamomile)—and don’t go straight to sleeping pills or melatonin. (4)
Conclusion
In the end, sleep is pivotal to everything we do. It affects everything. If “sitting is the new smoking,” as they way, then sleep is the new cool. So hit that pillow without guilt and enjoy the experience of life when we feel rested, fresh, calm, energized, and ready for the day. Our lives are too important to spend them in a foggy state of fatigue.
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
“Sleep is a necessary part of life, though most of us scrape by with as little as possible. Most physicians and public health officials ignore it as a cornerstone of optimal health…. It turns out that sleep can make or break your ability to lose weight, age slowly, prevent cancer, and perform at a high level.” -Dr. Sara Gottfried, physician-scientist
“Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” -Thomas Dekker, English dramatist
“Proper sleep has helped me get to where I am today as an athlete, and it is something that I continue to rely on every day.” -Tom Brady, American football quarterback and champion
“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” -Irish proverb
“Never waste any time you can spend sleeping.” -Frank H. Knight, economist
“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” -E. Joseph Cossman, inventor, entrepreneur, and author
“When you’re sleep deprived at work, it’s much easier to simply go along with unethical suggestions from your boss because resistance takes effort and you’re already worn down.” -David Welsh, a University of Washington professor
“With too little sleep, people do things that no CEO in his or her right mind would allow.” -Dr. Charles Czeisler, Professor of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School
“Tired officers are always pessimists.” -General George S. Patton, World War II U.S. Army General
“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” -Vince Lombardi, legendary football coach
“Every important mistake I’ve made in my life, I’ve made because I was too tired.” -Bill Clinton, former U.S. president (famous for getting five hours of sleep a night)
“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.” -John Steinbeck, writer
References
(1) Most teens should get between eight and ten hours of sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation. The amount of sleep we need changes throughout our life. Here are guidelines for recommended amounts of sleep by age group:
newborns: 14-17 hours
infants: 12-15 hours
toddlers: 11-14 hours
preschoolers: 10-13 hours
school-aged children: 9-11 hours
teenagers: 8-10 hours
adults: 7-9 hours
(2) Sleep deprivation triggers higher activity in our amygdala, an emotional and reactive part of the brain associated with our motivation to eat. Also, it reduces activity in the more advanced parts of the brain associated with judgment, maintaining social appropriateness, social control, and decision-making.
(3) Those who take too much caffeine are wise to consider reducing it gradually, because it can have withdrawal symptoms, including headaches, nervousness, and fatigue. Few people realize that decaffeinated coffee actually contains some caffeine (e.g., 2 to 15 milligrams), though much less than regular coffee.
(4) Stevenson points out that many experts agree that melatonin supplements can be very effective for some people, but it’s a hormone that has a risk of potential problems, including down-regulating our body’s natural ability to use melatonin on its own and creating a dependency. Many people turn to sleeping pills prematurely without understanding the causes of their sleep problems (e.g., too much caffeine, irregular schedule, anxiety, depression, chronic stress, physical problems, side effects from other medications, etc.).
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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There are three key drivers of our health and wellness: good nutrition, exercise, and sleep.
They may seem simple and obvious, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got them covered. In this article, we focus on exercise for health and wellness. (We cover nutrition and sleep in separate articles.)
The Problem of Not Enough Exercise
Many people struggle with not getting enough exercise—and with too much sitting and sedentary behavior. Adults between age 20 and 75 (from a sample of more than 2,600) reported spending an average of 9.5 hours of sedentary time each day, not including sleep.
It’s been said that “sitting is the new smoking” because of its serious adverse health effects. Our bodies were made to move, and they pay a price when we don’t. When we’re sedentary, there’s a dramatic drop in the production of enzymes that burn fat (a drop of as much as 90%) and our metabolism slows.
“Sitting is the new smoking….
Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting.” -Dr. James Levine, professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic
Excess sitting is associated with a shorter life span. According to Dr. Michael Greger in his book, How Not to Die, “men who sit for six hours or more per day have a 20% higher overall death rate compared to men who sit for 3 hours or less, while women who sit for more than 6 hours have a 40% higher death rate.”
“…exercising for 30 to 60 minutes does not come close to making up for the damage done by sitting….
We are built for motion.” -Jonathan Fields, How to Live a Good Life
24 Benefits of Exercise
Exercise comes with an incredible array of benefits. For example, it has positive effects on:
management of anxiety and depression
appearance
balance and coordination
blood pressure
bone health and strength
brain health and cognitive capacity and function, including concentration, focus, learning speed, mental stamina, memory, and mitigating cognitive decline
body weight (both preventing excessive weight gain and maintaining healthy weight levels, which is important for blood pressure and cholesterol as well as lower risk of heart disease and diabetes)
disease prevention (including the flu, pneumonia, covid-19, Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke, and cancers such as bladder, breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, lung, stomach)
energy
happiness
immune system function
longevity
mental health and wellness
mood
motivation
muscles and strength
relaxation
sex drive and sexual function (including enhanced arousal for women and fewer problems with erectile dysfunction for men)
Exercise improves our ability to do daily activities, and it helps us avoid falls—a leading cause of injury and deaths, especially among older people. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one out of four Americans aged 65 or older falls each year. Falls are the leading cause of injuries (both fatal and nonfatal) among older adults. Exercise helps lower the risk of premature death from all causes, according to the research.
Because it stimulates brain chemicals, exercise leaves us feeling happier, more relaxed, and less anxious. Also, it delivers oxygen and nutrients to our tissues and helps our cardiovascular system work more effectively.
“If we want to live good lives, we need to move our bodies. Nearly every marker of vitality—from reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes to enhanced brain function, elevated mood, better ability to deal with stress, reduced anxiety and depression, and amped cognitive and physical abilities—is made better by exercise. Exercise is powerful medicine.” -Jonathan Fields, How to Live a Good Life
Exercise, Productivity, and Work
How does exercise affect our work capacity? According to a Leeds Metropolitan University study of the effects of daytime exercise among more than 200 office workers who had access to a company gym, workers—on days when they exercised at the gym—reported managing their time more effectively, being more productive, having better interactions with colleagues, and feeling more satisfied at the end of the day.*
Equally telling, when we don’t exercise, we get tired more easily and lose energy and stamina. We get stressed, irritable, and more forgetful and impulsive.
Importantly, exercise is also a “keystone habit” with multiple spillover benefits in other areas, from mood and mental health to confidence, nutrition, and productivity.
“Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.” -Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
Though we know exercise is good for us, that doesn’t mean we’ll do it—or stick with it. When we were children, most of us moved a lot naturally. Exercise came naturally through play and curiosity.
That often changes as we grow older. Why? Many reasons. We tell ourselves we’re too busy to exercise. We say we’re too tired, or we don’t feel like it. Perhaps the weather isn’t quite right (too hot, or too cold, or wet or humid). Perhaps we think of ourselves as lazy.
In some cases, we’ve had bad childhood experiences with exercise. Maybe we felt self-conscious in gym class at school. Or we were embarrassed in sports—or felt guilt about letting our teammates down. Maybe we were hurt by overly critical parents, coaches, or physical education teachers.
Some have pain, injuries, or disabilities that make exercise harder. Others view it as punishment or something to be endured instead of something fun.
Many of us nowadays feel time-starved. We’ve allowed our days to get so packed with meetings, activities, deadlines, and deliverables that we’ve cheated ourselves of the health and energy needed to allow those to continue effectively. It’s a recipe for stress, resentment, and burnout.
“Instead of viewing exercise as something we do for ourselves—a personal indulgence that takes us away from our work—it’s time we started considering physical activity as part of the work itself. The alternative, which involves processing information more slowly, forgetting more often, and getting easily frustrated, makes us less effective at our jobs and harder to get along with for our colleagues.” -Ron Friedman, “Regular Exercise Is Part of Your Job,” Harvard Business Review, October 3, 2014
There are also biological and evolutionary factors at work. According to Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, we humans are hard-wired by evolution to tend toward inactivity. When food was scarce, going for a workout was maladaptive because it wastes precious energy. By resting as much as possible, our ancestors would wisely conserve their energy for when they really needed it. In today’s world of material abundance for so many, people have to override those ancient instincts to conserve energy.
Top Strategies for Getting Enough Exercise
So how should we go about it? Here are top strategies for exercise and movement:
Start small and keep it simple. Exercise doesn’t need to be complicated. We don’t necessarily need workout clothes, equipment, or a gym membership. Walk more. Take the stairs. Park at the back of lot. Get off the bus a stop early. Walk or bike to work or school, if possible.
“Some physical activity is better than doing none.” -World Health Organization
Make exercise and regular movement as easy as possible. Keep those running or walking shoes by the bed. Have that gym bag packed and ready to go. Eliminate barriers and excuses.
Choose activities we enjoy. A little fun factor goes a long way. We tend to feel more confident and perform better when we enjoy what we’re doing. Incorporate play or a challenge into exercise, making it fun again, with novelty and change. Use the principles of “flow”: ensure there’s a clear set of goals, immediate feedback on our progress toward goals, and a good balance between perceived challenges and our skills (so things aren’t too difficult or too easy). Facilitate exercise through enjoyable hobbies that require some movement (e.g., gardening).
Find powerful and sustainable motivation to drive our exercise. Connect our exercise to a deeper why and our higher aspirations and life goals—ones that have emotional resonance for us. Keep those higher aims front and center in our minds. Examples:
“I exercise and stay healthy so I can feel great when I work on my new business.”
“I work out so I can be alive and energetic with my kids (or grandkids).”
Create habit loops for exercise so we stop thinking about it and just do it automatically. In his book, The Power of Habit, investigative reporter Charles Duhigg notes that we create more effective and lasting habits when they have a three-step loop:
Cue: a trigger that tells our brain to go into automatic mode—and which habit to use.
Routine: a physical, mental, or emotional practice that becomes standard.
Reward: a psychological or emotional payoff that helps our brain decide that this habit loop is worth remembering and repeating.
Duhigg writes, “The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.” He provides an example:
“Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day.” -Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
Set challenging but realistic goals. Too many people don’t have any goals or set unrealistic goals and end up quitting out of frustration when they fall short. Good goals help us with focus, motivation, and commitment—especially when we keep them visible and top of mind. Write them down, display them, and talk about them.
Set milestones to shoot for and celebrate on the way to achieving goals. This will help us avoid the problem of insufficient or fading motivation from goals that are distant. Examples: 500 more steps walked per day on average vs. last month, or celebrating each pound lost on the way to a target weight. (See my article, “Goal-Pursuit: Best Practices.”)
Use implementation intentions. These are concrete plans to follow through on our goals. They come in a specific form: “I will (BEHAVIOR) at (TIME) in (PLACE).” Example: “I will exercise for 40 minutes at noon on weekdays at my local gym.” In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear cites research from the British Journal of Health Psychology on 248 people and their exercise habits. Researchers placed the people into three groups:
the control group (asked only to track how often they exercised)
the “motivation” group (asked to track their workouts and to read and hear from the researchers about the benefits of exercise, e.g., improved heart health)
the “plan” group (who received the same presentation as the second group but were also asked to devise a plan for when and where they would exercise: “During the next week, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on [DAY] at [TIME] in [PLACE].”)
The results were surprising: a much higher percentage of people in the third group exercised at least once a week (91% vs. 38% and 35%). See the chart below.
Find out what works for you and do more of that. There’s no need to try everything. Start with one or two simple approaches that seem promising and see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t expect perfection and risk getting frustrated.
Replace bad habits with good ones. For example, go without devices for an evening and focus on walking or moving instead. This comes with a double benefit of building momentum while reducing harm.
Build in social and group components to exercise. Join a team or enlist a workout buddy, trainer, accountability partner, or hiking hive. Note that there are different types of “social.” In one type, we’re doing things individually but in the presence of others (e.g., at a yoga class). In another type, we’re working together as a group on things (e.g., doubles tennis or pickleball, or a sports team). The latter can be more effective in instilling routine and accountability because it involves more mutual dependence.**
“We tie physical activity to community. I think that has ancient and deep roots…. The most effective exercise programs are ones that are social and communal and it’s always been that way.
People for millions of years went out [hunting and gathering] in groups.” -Daniel Lieberman, expert in human evolutionary biology
Quality of Life Assessment
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Here are 10 more things we can do to ensure we’re moving and exercising more:
Walk more, including a brisk walk daily***
Use a step counter or other technology to track our progress
Calendarize exercise to help instill regularity and accountability
Build movement into regular microbreaks
Engage in both cardio and strength training
Get out into nature and get some sunlight (e.g., try “forest bathing”)****
Build in enough recovery time to avoid injury and ensure our exercise is sustainable
Drink enough water and ensure proper hydration
Don’t exercise too close to bedtime, as it may give us too much energy and make it harder to fall asleep
Give ourselves grace and avoid harmful self-judgment
How to Make It Stick
How to ensure we keep exercising and don’t give up? A New Mexico State University study of 266 people looked into not why people exercised but why they continued to do so regularly.***** The reason, in a nutshell, was the reward they began to crave. The majority of people in one group continued exercising because they felt good after doing so (with the endorphins and other neurochemicals generated by exercise), and they grew to expect and crave that feeling. The majority in another group reported that they continued exercising because it gave them a sense of accomplishment, and they craved the positive feeling they got when they tracked their performance.
In the end, one of the most powerful things we can do is change our mindset about exercise and movement. Not everyone has the gift of health and movement. Too often, we take it for granted. Better to view movement as a privilege, not a chore—and something we can invest in so we have the ability to do all the other important things in our lives.
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete,” Harvard Business Review, January 2001
Bonnie Hayden Cheng and Yolanda Na Li, “To Improve Your Work Performance, Get Some Exercise,” Harvard Business Review, May 30, 2023
Ron Friedman, “Regular Exercise Is Part of Your Job,” Harvard Business Review, October 3, 2014
Related Resources
Books:
Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage (Avery, 2021)
Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett, Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully (Knopf, 2023)
Caroline Williams, Move: How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free (Hanover Square Press, 2022)
Michael Greger, How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (Flatiron Books, 2015)
Michael Greger, How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss (Flatiron Books, 2019)
Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter (Rodale, 2016)
Podcasts:
Feel Better, Live More (Dr. Rangan Chatterjee)
Model Health Show (Shawn Stevenson)
The Rich Roll Podcast (Rich Roll)
The Driver (Dr. Peter Attia)
Found My Fitness (Dr. Rhonda Patrick)
20 Minute Fitness Podcast
Nutrition Facts (Dr. Michael Greger)
Postscript: Inspirations on Exercise and Movement
“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits and keeps the mind in vigor.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero, ancient Roman statesman and philosopher
“Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.” -Thomas Jefferson, former U.S. president
“Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.” -Joseph Pilates, German-born physical trainer, writer, and inventor
“A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement.” -Jess C. Scott, writer
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” -Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author
“The greatest wealth is health.” -unknown
“Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” -Denis Waitley, speaker, writer, and consultant
“Happiness lies first of all in health.” -George William Curtis, writer
“Good things come to those who sweat.” -unknown
“Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do. Not a punishment for what you ate.” -anonymous
“When it comes to health and well-being, regular exercise is about as close to a magic potion as you can get.” -Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, and teacher
“If you don’t make time for exercise, you’ll probably have to make time for illness.” -Robin Sharma, Canadian lawyer turned writer
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” -John F. Kennedy, former U.S. president
“A feeble body weakens the mind.” -Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher and composer
“Exercise is amazing, from the inside out. I feel so alive and have more energy.” -Vanessa Hudgens, actress and singer
“A healthy outside starts from the inside.” -Robert Urich, actor and producer
“Physical activity can be an effective treatment for mental health problems.” -Ben Singh, lead author of a large new meta-analysis with 97 reviews and more than 128,000 participants, research fellow, University of South Australia
“Sustained high achievement demands physical and emotional strength as well as a sharp intellect. To bring mind, body, and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know: recovering energy is as important is expending it…. When people feel strong and resilient—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—they perform better, with more passion, for longer. They win, their families win, and the corporations that employ them win.” -Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete,” Harvard Business Review, January 2001
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” -1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (New International Version)
* Coulson, J.C. & McKenna, Jim & Field, M.. (2008). Exercising at work and self-reported work performance. International Journal of Workplace Health Management.
** Finlay, Krystina & Trafimow, David & Villarreal, Aimee. (2006). Predicting Exercise and Health Behavioral Intentions: Attitudes, Subjective Norms, and Other Behavioral Determinants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
*** According to Dr. Michael Greger in How Not to Die, “Walking 300 minutes/week (about 40 min./day) drops overall mortality by 14%.” Try walking meetings. They get us moving instead of sitting and they can also make the meeting more collaborative and enjoyable, with added benefits of fresh air and sunshine.
**** Forest bathing (shinrin-yoku) was started in Japan in the 1980s. According to the research, it can help us manage stress and anxiety, improve our circulatory health and resilience, and generate an enhanced immune response.
***** In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg points to fascinating research conducted by a social scientist and a mathematician to help the YMCA figure out what got people to keep working out at their facilities. Emotional factors were big drivers of retention. An example: whether YMCA employees knew members’ names and greeted people when they walked in. “People,” Duhigg writes, “often go to the gym looking for a human connection, not a treadmill.”
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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Three things can rev up our health and energy engine: good nutrition, exercise, and sleep.
They may seem simple and obvious, but that doesn’t mean that they’re easy to implement consistently over time. Here, we focus on good nutrition for health and wellness.
The Problem of Poor Nutrition
Unfortunately, many people struggle with poor nutrition. The “standard American diet” as they call it is, well, SAD.
In his book, How Not to Die, esteemed American physician and author Dr. Michael Greger notes the following:
“Our diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability.”
“More than two-thirds of American adults are overweight.” (A healthy weight is important for heart health, blood pressure, cholesterol, avoiding diabetes, and more.)
“We may be in the process of raising the first generation of children in America with a shorter predicted life span than their parents.”
“Health is not valued until sickness comes.”
-Thomas Fuller
Unfortunately, most of our calories come from unhealthy sources, and very few come from the healthiest sources (such as whole plant foods), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. See the chart below.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
15 Benefits of Good Nutrition
Good nutrition comes with an incredible array of benefits. For example, it has positive effects on:
energy
growth
repair
heart health, including lower risk of heart disease (the top killer in the U.S. and around the world)
immune function
muscles
bones, including lower risk of osteoporosis
skin
eyes
teeth
blood pressure
cholesterol
weight
sexual function
longevity
Good nutrition can also play a big role in prevention of diet-related illnesses, including some cancers and Type 2 diabetes, and avoidance of vitamin deficiencies, which can weaken parts of our immune system. And it affects not only our mood but also our mental capacity and stamina.
“The foods we eat affect us more than we realize…. Food has a direct impact on our cognitive performance.”
-Ron Friedman, “What You Eat Affects Your Productivity,” Harvard Business Review, October 17, 2014
With four healthy lifestyle factors (eating healthier, not being obese, exercising 30 minutes a day, and not smoking), we may reduce our risk of having a heart attack (our top killer) by more than 80%, reduce our risk of developing diabetes by more than 90%, cut by half our risk of having a stroke, and reduce our overall cancer risk by more than a third.*
“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” -Francois de la Rochefoucauld, 17th century French author
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
Many of us grew up learning about some form of food pyramid, a basic guide to healthy eating. A food pyramid was developed in Sweden in 1974, and in 1992 the U.S. Department of Agriculture developed its own “Food Guide Pyramid,” updated in 2005 (renamed “MyPyramid”) and then replaced in 2011 by “MyPlate.”
More recently, Harvard University researchers have developed the “Healthy Eating Plate,” a guide for creating a healthy and balanced diet. It offers updated and more specific and more accurate recommendations for following a healthy diet. It’s based on updated nutrition research, and it’s not influenced by the food industry or other special interest groups.
The Healthy Eating Plate recommends the following:
“Make most of your meal vegetables and fruits – ½ of your plate. Aim for color and variety, and remember that potatoes don’t count as vegetables on the Healthy Eating Plate because of their negative impact on blood sugar.
Go for whole grains – ¼ of your plate. Whole and intact grains—whole wheat, barley, wheat berries, quinoa, oats, brown rice, and foods made with them, such as whole wheat pasta—have a milder effect on blood sugar and insulin than white bread, white rice, and other refined grains.
Protein power – ¼ of your plate. Fish, poultry, beans, and nuts are all healthy, versatile protein sources—they can be mixed into salads, and pair well with vegetables on a plate. Limit red meat, and avoid processed meats such as bacon and sausage.
Healthy plant oils – in moderation. Choose healthy vegetable oils like olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut, and others, and avoid partially hydrogenated oils, which contain unhealthy trans fats. Remember that low-fat does not mean ‘healthy.’
Drink water, coffee, or tea. Skip sugary drinks, limit milk and dairy products to one to two servings per day, and limit juice to a small glass per day.
Stay active. The red figure running across the Healthy Eating Plate’s placemat is a reminder that staying active is also important in weight control….
The type of carbohydrate in the diet is more important than the amount of carbohydrate in the diet, because some sources of carbohydrate—like vegetables (other than potatoes), fruits, whole grains, and beans—are healthier than others.
…avoid sugary beverages, a major source of calories—usually with little nutritional value….”
(Of course, not everyone agrees. For example, some people advise going oil-free, if possible, so they take issue with its mention of healthy plant oils, even in moderation.)
Tips for Good Nutrition
What can we do to eat better? So much! The Healthy Eating Plan is a great place to start—and even better when supported by additional tips and tactics addressing mindset, behavior, and habits. Here are dozens of things we can do to ensure we’re eating well:
Eat more whole, plant-based foods, including more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and nuts
Consume less processed foods (products created by the food industry with unhealthy artificial ingredients to extend shelf life and in some cases to become addictive)
Eat less meats
Consume more fiber (which helps with digestion and our microbiome, and makes us feel full so we stop eating)
Shop for groceries intentionally
Have more home-cooked meals, eating out and ordering takeout less often
Plan and prepare healthy meals on a regular schedule (e.g., for the week)
Limit portion size with smaller plates and other strategies
Stop eating when full
Eat more organic and locally sourced foods
Consume a rich variety of foods—and shoot for all the natural colors (from white, green, and yellow to orange, red, and purple; see the “Rainbow of Health” image below)
Make unhealthy foods inaccessible
Minimize soda
Reduce sugar
Minimize salt
Avoid or reduce junk food and eliminate it from the pantry
Minimize saturated fat
Avoid or reduce fast food
Use less frying in preparing meals, with more grilling, roasting, braising, baking, stewing, broiling, and steaming
Maintain regular mealtimes
Eat slowly and mindfully while savoring the taste, texture, and experience
Enjoy meals together as a family most days, if possible
Pay attention to our body’s reaction to food during and after meals
Drink water before meals
Ensure proper hydration throughout the day**
Impose a curfew on eating, including snacking, at a certain time in the evening
Try time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting (ideally under medical supervision)
Avoid binge and emotional eating and drinking
Consume healthier caffeinated drinks (e.g., with green and black tea, not artificial ingredients)
Check food labels and learn about natural versus artificial ingredients
Track our food intake
Experiment with vegetarian or vegan eating; start by replacing more and more of our plates with plant-based foods
“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
-Michael Pollan, author and journalist
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The tips above will serve us better when supported by higher-level principles and strategies related to health and nutrition, including:
1. Develop a healthy mindset about food, with clarity about the benefits of good nutrition and a positive attitude, including a good balance between self-discipline, self-acceptance, and self-compassion. And don’t equate health with weight loss—or a healthy body with a skinny one.
“Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.”
-Bethenny Frankel
2. Find out what works for you and do more of that. There’s no need to try all the tips above. Start with one or two and see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: don’t expect perfection and risk getting frustrated.
3. Replace bad habits with good ones. This comes with a double benefit of building momentum while reducing harm. For example, creatively sneak in more vegetables during meals (including at breakfast), and curb snack cravings with healthier options, including protein. Consuming a good variety of healthy foods every day leaves less room for foods that are processed and high in sugar.
4. Make healthy eating as easy as possible—not only by making healthy foods accessible and unhealthy foods inaccessible but also by building habits and routines out of healthy eating.
5. View health holistically. Consider not just good nutrition but also exercise and sleep (which we address in separate articles), and not just physical health but also mental and emotional health. Together, their effects compound, creating incredible value across all dimensions of our lives over time.
“Looking after my health today gives me a better hope for tomorrow.”
-Anne Wilson Schaef, clinical psychologist and author
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Michael Greger, How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (Flatiron Books, 2015)
Michael Greger, How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss (Flatiron Books, 2019)
Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter (Rodale, 2016)
Podcasts:
“Feel Better, Live More” (Dr. Rangan Chatterjee)
“Model Health Show” (Shawn Stevenson)
“Nutrition Facts” (Dr. Michael Greger)
“The Rich Roll Podcast” (Rich Roll)
Films:
“The Game Changers” (Netflix)
“Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” (Netflix, forthcoming)
Postscript: Inspirations on Healthy Food, Nutrition, and Eating
“The greatest wealth is health.” -unknown
“The first wealth is health.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and essayist
“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” -Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader
“He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.” -Chinese proverb
“Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” -unknown (though often misattributed to Hippocrates)
“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” -Ann Wigmore, Lithuanian–American holistic health practitioner, naturopath, and raw food advocate
“Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.” -Julia Child, American chef, author, and television personality
“Any food that requires enhancing by the use of chemical substances should in no way be considered a food.” -John H. Tobe, researcher, naturalist, and author
“Vitality and beauty are gifts of nature for those who live according to its laws.” -Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, scientist, sculptor, and architect
“Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” -Denis Waitley
“Happiness lies first of all in health.” -George William Curtis
* Source: Dr. Michael Greger, How Not to Die (Flatiron Books, 2015).
**Water is the main component of our blood. It’s essential for carrying nutrients to our cells and eliminating waste products. We tend to feel fatigue when we’re dehydrated.
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We humans just want to fit in. A big part of our sense of security comes from feeling accepted by the group.
But what about accepting ourselves? Many people struggle with self-acceptance. That means acceptance of all of our attributes, positive or negative. It means accepting our strengths and faults without judgment.
For us to enjoy life and thrive, we must learn to embrace all aspects of ourselves, not just the positive or admirable. We must get better at accepting our thoughts, feelings, intuitions, values, preferences, and actions. Can we acknowledge our faults, weaknesses, and mistakes without beating ourselves up over them?
Unfortunately, we tend to be bad at this. Many of us are brutal self-critics.
How might our lives change for the better if we could learn to appreciate, respect, and love ourselves—unconditionally, and free of any qualifications?
Self-Acceptance Doesn’t Mean Settling
It’s important to note that accepting ourselves in this way doesn’t mean settling for less. It doesn’t mean that we call it quits and just accept whatever’s in front of us, or that we stop learning and growing. Not at all.
It does mean that we stop rejecting ourselves for having struggles or not being perfect. By accepting ourselves in full, we can find great comfort, relief, and security.
“Accepting ourselves as we are today doesn’t mean we’ll be without the motivation to make changes or improvements that will make us more effective, or that will enrich our lives. It’s simply that this self-acceptance is in no way tied to such alterations. We don’t have to actually do anything to secure our self-acceptance:
We have only to change the way we look at ourselves.” -Dr. Leon F. Seltzer, PhD, author and clinical psychologist
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
A lack of self-acceptance can come from many sources, often starting with childhood influences. Disapproving or overly critical parents may have given us the message that we’re somehow flawed—annoying, unruly, a hassle, too demanding, not smart enough, not attractive enough, etc. (Siblings, other relatives, teachers, coaches, or peers can reinforce this.) Overly critical parents can instill in us a bad habit of brutal self-criticism that echoes throughout our lives.
Our personality can also work against us when it comes to self-acceptance. For example, many people struggle with perfectionism. The assumption behind it is that the only route to self-acceptance is flawlessness—an impossible and self-defeating standard. Others struggle with “imposter syndrome” (the fear of people viewing us as a fraud or undeserving of our successes).
A dearth of self-acceptance can also come from living or working in an environment where diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are lacking. When we feel excluded by others, it’s harder to accept ourselves.
Our circumstances and experiences can contribute as well. Perhaps we got cut from the sports team or drama troupe in school, or we dropped out of school. Maybe we didn’t get promoted or make partner, or we got fired. Perhaps we’ve felt beaten down by divorce, bankruptcy, addiction, or trauma. Life can be painful and messy for all of us at times.
Surprisingly, many high-performers struggle with self-acceptance. In his book, Positive Intelligence, executive Shirzad Chamine notes that “hyper-achievers” depend on achievement for self-acceptance. He writes:
“The Hyper-Achiever makes you dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation. It keeps you focused mainly on external success rather than on internal criteria for happiness. It often leads to unsustainable workaholic tendencies and causes you to fall out of touch with deeper emotional and relationship needs. Its lie is that your self-acceptance should be conditional on performance and external validation.” -Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence
Many people these days are needy—excessively attached to recognition, praise, or success, or to saving others—for self-acceptance. They have an excessive desire for affirmation or reassurance from others, making their happiness dependent and fleeting.
Quality of Life Assessment
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Without self-acceptance, we can be trapped in self-doubt, self-judgment, or even self-hatred. The problem is when we turn the inherent messiness of our lives into an identity and start rejecting ourselves because of it. That can lead to many problems, including:
The effects of low self-acceptance are pervasive, potentially touching every aspect of our lives.
“Without self-acceptance, people essentially devalue themselves and this often has a negative impact on all areas of their life, including their work, friends, family, health, and well-being.” -Dr. Meghan Marcum, PsyD, psychologist
The Benefits of Developing Self-Acceptance
What happens when we learn to accept ourselves as we are, not only with all our gifts and talents but also our faults and quirks? A healthy level of self-acceptance can help us:
build our capacity to distance ourselves from outside expectations and extrinsic motivations
improve work performance
boost happiness
“Happiness and self-acceptance go hand in hand. Self-acceptance determines your level of happiness.
The more self-acceptance you have, the happier you allow yourself to be.
You will only be as happy as you feel you are worthy of being.” -Dr. Robert Holden, Happiness Now!
How to Develop Greater Self-Acceptance
Clearly, self-acceptance affects many areas of our lives, from mental health and wellbeing to relationships and work. So, how can we develop greater self-acceptance? There are many things we can do, including:
Re-examine our repeated self-criticisms and old feelings of guilt and shame. Interrogate them.
Delve into the things we don’t accept about ourselves—perhaps with the help of a therapist—and then bring understanding and compassion to them. Understanding and insight can sometimes bring welcome relief.
Forgive ourselves for mistakes we’ve made and resolve to move on, ideally focusing on the lessons we’ve learned from them.
Give ourselves permission to be imperfect, since we all have issues and faults. The point is to live life fully as who we truly are, not to pretend we’re some perfect being capable of existing without flaws and faults.
Replace our negative self-talk with positive self-talk, focusing on our capabilities and accomplishments.
Avoid self-blame and rumination on past grievances or suffering. Change the channel on those negative thoughts and tune into a more uplifting station.
Stop comparing ourselves to others, since little good comes of it and much harm can follow. Why? Because we lack visibility into the challenges of others while viewing their curated social media feeds. Also, it’s easy to compare our messy beginning with their more refined middle or end. We each have our own unique context that’s often vastly different from others.
Practice self-compassion. That means treating ourselves with warmth and understanding in difficult times—including instances of suffering, perceived inadequacy, or failure.
Identify, clarify, and embrace our personal core values. In the process, we’ll be strengthening our sense of identity and self-respect.
Spend more time with people who accept us as we are—and less time with those who don’t. Surround ourselves with people who believe in us, support us, embolden us, and bring out our best—including family, friends, colleagues, coaches, mentors, and small groups—while avoiding people who tear us down.
Try mindfulness meditation. Focus on observing our thoughts and feelings and then letting them go without judgment and attachment.
Keep a journal.Journaling can help us reflect on our experiences and feelings, understand them in new ways, and reframe them.
Upgrade our mindset by reframing our problems not as weights that bring us down but as puzzles to be solved, with all their challenge and mystery. Here we take our cue from Quincy Jones:
“I don’t have problems. I have puzzles…. I can solve a puzzle. A problem just stresses me out.” -Quincy Jones, record producer, songwriter, and composer
Many of the practices above relate to self-regulation—our ability to monitor and manage our energy states, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in positive ways (e.g., promoting wellbeing and healthy relationships).
Some Cautions
As we work on developing self-acceptance, we should avoid using accomplishment to bolster it, as that can make us dependent on factors outside of our control. If we can’t accept ourselves unless we’re successful, wealthy, or whatever, we’re missing the point.
We should also avoid focusing too much on ourselves and how we’re appearing and doing (e.g., Are we good enough? How do we stack up?). Instead, focus on contributing to others—our family, friends, colleagues, organization, community, and beyond. This will help us feel good and connect with people while having a positive impact.
Personal Values Exercise
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Lacking self-acceptance can have devastating consequences in our life and work, while developing it can provide an incredible grounding power in so many aspects of our lives. It can facilitate relief, confidence, happiness, and success. It’s well worth developing and will serve us well in all we do.
Wishing you well with it. –Gregg
Reflection Questions
To what extent do you embrace all aspects of yourself with full self-acceptance?
Do you struggle with negative self-talk or self-rejection?
Are you willing to put in this foundational work to set yourself up for more enjoyment, happiness, and success?
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” -Louise L. Hay, author
“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” -Amy Bloom, writer and psychotherapist
“All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.” -Nisargadatta Maharaj, Indian guru
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” -Lucille Ball, actress, comedian, and producer
“Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.’” -Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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Many people struggle with asking for help. It just doesn’t feel right, or it goes against their nature.
This fits with a narrative we’ve been fed all our lives. In our culture, we tend to worship the self-made man or woman. We’re told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps (a truly ridiculous phrase, if we stop to think about it).
Perhaps we grew up admiring the Lone Ranger, Superman, Ironman, or Wonder Woman. It’s part of U.S. history, with the rugged individualism and self-reliance inherited and lionized from the frontier days of the Wild West.*
We value being independent and self-sufficient, a grinder who can push through hardship and get things done.
There’s surely value in much of this, but it comes with a hefty price. If we’re reluctant to ask for help, it can get us into big trouble in life by keeping us stuck or slowing down our advances.
Asking for help is an important life skill, work skill, and leadership skill. Those who struggle with it are wise to address it urgently.
“I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn’t defeat the British, it didn’t get us to the moon, build our nation’s highways, or map the human genome. We did that together.” -Cory Booker, U.S. Senator, former Mayor of Newark
The Problem with Not Getting Help
When we fail to reach out and ask for help, we’re more likely to get and stay stuck. We’re more likely to struggle with overwork and burnout. And we’re bound to experience the emptiness of going it alone.
It can prevent us from maintaining closeness with friends and family. When we let our relationships and social ties lapse, it reduces our happiness and can lead to anxiety or depression.
Types of Help
Since many people aren’t accustomed to seeking and accepting help, they may not be clear on the many distinct types of help available to them. For example, types of help we can receive include:
listening as we process difficult emotions
sharing their experience with similar challenges
brainstorming potential solutions
serving as a sounding board
providing input and feedback
reviewing our work for errors or things we’ve missed
encouraging us to stay the course despite challenges
giving advice or counsel
teaching us a new skill
asking tough questions
holding us accountable to our commitments
introducing us to people who can help
At any given time, any one of these can be significant. We’re wise to be open to them so we can operate at our best.
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
We may “get” the conceptual case for seeking help, but that doesn’t make it easy to do. There are many reasons we may be reluctant to do so, including that we:
don’t want to feel stupid or embarrassed
are too proud
don’t want to be a bother
are too shy
would rather just figure it out on our own
are afraid of appearing weak, stupid, or incompetent (at work here is the deeply mistaken belief that vulnerability is weakness)
fear rejection
worry about losing status (e.g., tarnishing our image of being a go-getter) or control
don’t want to feel beholden to others
believe we don’t deserve help
Sometimes, we can trace one or more of these common thoughts and feelings to a source. For example, maybe someone criticized or belittled us as a kid when we asked for help. According to Deborah Grayson Riegel, coauthor of Go To Help: 31 Strategies to Offer, Ask For, and Accept Help, “starting at about seven years old, we start to associate asking for help with reputational costs. We’ve been conditioned to think ‘They’re going to think I’m dumb/bad/lazy/weak if I admit I need help.’”
Additionally, we may have inherited a personality trait that makes it difficult to ask for help. For example, perfectionists often insist on doing everything on their own because they feel strongly that things must be done a certain way and believe it’s better just to do it all themselves—even though that often makes them a bottleneck and prone to overload.
Our mindset is also relevant here. Dr. Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist, distinguishes between a “fixed mindset” (in which we believe our intelligence, abilities, and talents are static and fixed) and a “growth mindset” (in which we believe we can develop them). A fixed mindset, she argues, leads to a desire to look smart in front of others, making it harder for us to ask for help.
Our personal core values can also get in the way. Those who have self-reliance as a core value, for instance, may pride themselves on being able to manage things on their own. Or perhaps we identify as a high-performer and overachiever and feel like it’s beneath us to ask for help, or we’re a martyr and wish to make others feel guilty for our suffering.
Cultural influences are also relevant. Many Western societies value individualism, as do many families and organizations. It’s part of their ethos. People don’t want to ask for help in cultures where it’s looked down upon.
Finally, we often misjudge how others will respond to our requests. According to a 2022 study by researchers Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley published in Psychological Science:
“Those needing help consistently underestimated others’ willingness to help, underestimated how positively helpers would feel, and overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel…. Undervaluing prosociality could create a misplaced barrier to asking for help when needed.” **
There’s research indicating that serving others may promote feelings of happiness, increase social connection and self-esteem, lower stress levels and blood pressure, and promote longevity. *** In other words, when we ask for help, in some ways we’re helping those we’re asking, because it allows them to do things that help them enjoy life and thrive. It’s called the “helper’s high.”
“The person who is being asked to help also gets a huge benefit from being in that position. They are strengthening social ties and they are able to feel generous. Asking for help is quite generative for both parties.” -Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, M.D.
At the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates said, “there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others,” and we’re most successful when we’re driven by a “hybrid” engine of those two forces.
The Benefits of Seeking Help
Getting good at asking for help can lead to big wins in our life and work, because it can affect so many things. For example, it can help us deepen our relationship with others, because asking for help involves courage, vulnerability, authenticity, and trust, which are powerful connecting forces in relationships.
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.” -Brene Brown, researcher, speaker, and author
Asking for help can help us gain clarity on the issue at hand as we describe it to others. It can set up a powerful dynamic of reciprocity that benefits all. And it can inspire others to stop going it alone and ask for help more as well.
In her book, Daring Greatly, Brene Brown recounted the personal implications of this in her life:
“…my greatest personal and professional transformations happened when I started asking hard questions about how my fear of being vulnerable was holding me back and when I found the courage to share my struggles and ask for help…. I also learned that the people who love me, the people I really depend on, were never critics who were pointing at me while I stumbled. They weren’t in the bleachers at all. They were with me in the arena. Fighting for me and with me…. Sometimes out first and greatest dare is asking for support.”
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Though it’s sometimes hard to ask for help, thankfully there are many things we can do to develop this valuable skill. For example, we can:
recognize that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness, because it means we’re committed to our goals and confident enough to demonstrate some vulnerability
consider that the alternative (not asking for help) means continuing our frustration or suffering
recognize that nobody succeeds in life without the help of many people from different areas of life (e.g., parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, friends, even rivals sometimes)
recognize that our fears about asking for help (e.g., that we’ll lose status) are misplaced, given all the research on how people underestimate others’ willingness to help
recall that most people like to help others, as it makes them feel good
evaluate whether it’s a good time to ask for help, given that most people tend to wait too long to do so (good things to consider include how much time we’ve already spent on the issue at hand, whether we have the time to keep working on it alone, whether it’s something we’re good at solving, and whether there are better uses of our time and energy)
flip the script and recall times when people asked us for help and whether that made us feel burdened and resentful or glad to be asked and happy to help
consider the worst-case scenario (i.e., the person refuses to help or can’t right now, and perhaps we feel awkward for a bit)
tally the potential benefits of getting help (e.g., having more bright people working on potential solutions or sharing how they’ve solved a similar problem, as well as the support and solidarity that may arise)
start small when first learning to ask for help, and build out from there (this will make it more manageable and less likely that we’ll abandon it)
share with others that we struggle with asking for help but want to improve (this will make it easier to ask when the time comes and help us be accountable for improving)
set a target for how many “asks” we’ll make in a week or month—and keep track
Things to Do When Making the Ask
Sometimes it’s helpful to address the mechanics of how exactly to go about asking for help. Here are some tips:
Do substantial initial work and thinking on the issue before turning to others. Don’t be the person who goes straight to asking others without putting in some initial thought or work, as that can drift into taking advantage of them. Sometimes, Google and YouTube searches can go a long way.
Ask in person or by videoconference or phone and not email or text, if possible. That will help make it more personal. (According to the research, in-person requests are much more successful anyway.)****
Provide enough information and context for the person to make an informed decision about whether and how they can help. The more clarity and transparency upfront, the better.
Respect their time, expertise, context, and preferences.
Be specific on what the ask is and isn’t, with clear boundaries, including why it matters to us and how we think the person we’re asking can contribute. Many experts recommend making what they call “SMART” requests for help, an acronym that stands for Specific, Meaningful, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-bound. The clearer we can be on exactly what kind of help we want and need, including the time and resources involved, the better. But even while we make our requests specific, we should be open to new information as we learn what people know, who they know, and how they can help. Let the people we’re asking for help decide how much help they can offer (or not)—and how.
Don’t apologize for asking and don’t minimize the request. That can take away from the other person’s generosity. Be straightforward and matter-of-fact.
Don’t emphasize reciprocity when making the ask. By promising a return favor, we risk turning the request from altruistic and noble to transactional.
Follow up afterward to thank them and let them know how things went (and, ideally, what impact they made).
Watch out for the “illusion of transparency” (the mistaken belief that our thoughts, feelings, and needs are obvious to others). Don’t expect people to read our minds about what we want and need. Also, watch out for the “curse of knowledge” (when better informed people find it difficult to adopt the perspective of others—or subconsciously assuming others know what you know about a topic or situation).
Recognize that it can take time to become comfortable with and good at asking for help, because old habits die hard. We can surely get better at it with practice. According to Dr. Wayne Baker, faculty director of the Center for Positive Organizations and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, “You’re working to become desensitized to the fear of what might happen when you ask for help.”
Develop this practice into a habit, not a one-and-done activity.
Ensure this is reciprocal. If we want help from others, we must be willing to give help—and sometimes actively to seek ways to help others (but without being needy about it). Ideally, we can earn help from others by being a helpful person—not just once but consistently over time. Still, someone has to start the cycle of helping first, which means that someone needs to receive help first.
Try a “reciprocity ring,” a fun and rewarding approach created by Wayne and Cheryl Baker. In such a ring, a group convenes so that each person can ask for something they need and can’t easily get or do themselves. As each person takes a turn articulating their request, the others think about the resources they might have to help. They can make as many offers of help as they like. Even if they can’t help personally, they can connect the person to someone in their network who might be able to help. Such a practice is powerful because reciprocity is hardwired into our brains, and it can normalize the act of asking for help.
Implication for Leaders
Leaders are wise to create a culture in their team or organization in which asking for help is not only encouraged and common but also rewarded. At IDEO, designers receive coaching on this and executives model it. And at Zingerman’s, a Midwestern food company, all attendees at the induction of new managing partners state what they’ll do to help each new partner succeed. The company’s founding partners participate as well, sending an important message from the top.
Notably, asking for help can help reduce burnout levels in organizations. A global study conducted by Rebecca Zucker from Next Step Partners found that lack of help-seeking was one of the top two predictors of feeling overwhelmed at work. Those who don’t ask for help, she found, scored 23% higher on overwhelm.
Conclusion
For many, asking for help is difficult—and one of the most important skills we can develop because of the connections and breakthroughs it can engender.
Be patient with this process. It may take time, because it involves unlearning old habits. But it’s well worth it.
“If I can leave you with only one piece of advice to increase your probability of creating an earned life, it is this:
Ask for help. You need it more than you know.” -Marshall Goldsmith, The Earned Life
Reflection Questions
Are you in the habit of powering through adversity without asking for help—or even considering it?
Do you wait too long before seeking help, wasting precious time along the way?
In what areas are you comfortable asking for help?
In which cases did you not ask for help when you should have, and why?
What will you do today to develop this important skill?
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
“Going it alone in times of hardship is never a good idea.” -Jonathan Rauch, The Happiness Curve
“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.” -Madeleine L’Engle, writer
“Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“Isolation is fatal…. The burden of going it alone is heavy and limiting—and potentially dangerous…. In fact, social isolation can take up to seven years off of your life. Isolation contributes to heart disease and depression; it influences your immune system and leads to faster aging and advanced health problems.” -Richard Leider and Alan Webber, Life Reimagined
“Economists call it the warm glow of giving, and psychologists call it the helper’s high. Recent neuroscience evidence shows that giving actually activates the reward and meaning centers in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose signals when we act for the benefit of others. These benefits are not limited to giving money: they also show up for giving time.” -Adam Grant, Give and Take
“How have you felt when you have helped others? I think we can agree that’s one of the great feelings, right? Why would you deprive others of the same feeling?” -Marshall Goldsmith, The Earned Life
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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* There are cultural differences at work here. For example, many Western societies value individualism, while East Asian and Latin American societies tend to place a greater value on the group, the community, and the collective.
** Zhao, X., & Epley, N. (2022). Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped: Underestimating Prosociality Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Asking for Help. Psychological Science, 33(10), 1708–1731.
*** Oliver Scott Curry, Lee A. Rowland, Caspar J. Van Lissa, Sally Zlotowitz, John McAlaney, Harvey Whitehouse, Happy to help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 76, 2018, 320–329.
**** M. Mahdi Roghanizad, Vanessa K. Bohns, Ask in person: You’re less persuasive than you think over email, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 69, 2017, 223–226,
