How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

EXERCISE YOUR MIND
Earlier in the book, I talked about how even a small amount of moderate
exercise is enough to deliver useful intellectual benefits. But exercise doesn’t
just help us think straight and perform well. It’s a reliable, high-caliber way to
steady our mood and reduce anxiety when we’re feeling stressed. In fact, studies
suggest that it often matches antidepressant drugs in the treatment of mild to
moderate clinical depression.
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And although the positive effects of exercise get
better with repetition, research has shown that even a single moderate workout
can alter our neurochemistry enough to make us feel calmer. A really energetic
workout goes even further, by feeding our brains endorphins—the body’s own
painkillers and mood boosters (the word “endorphin” effectively means
endogenous morphine).
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Kira, a communications director, got plenty of endorphins when she was a
student. She spent her spare time working as a lifeguard, and she played varsity
volleyball. Then, like many of us, Kira fell out of her youthful exercise habits
once the structures of college life dropped away. Her job was demanding, and
there never seemed to be enough time to go around. Because she was working
for a global firm, urgent requests flowed into her inbox at every hour of the day.
It was hard to switch off, let alone take time to look after herself.
After years of just about managing to push through mental and physical
exhaustion, she finally tweaked her routine to include some exercise and
relaxation time. What prompted the shift? “Honestly, I realized it made me a
better person when I did. It would mean the difference between yelling at
people, or not. I was able to think more intelligently about my response to
annoying emails, able to not write the angry reply, or at least better able to pause

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and rethink before sending it. So I started to pay attention to my body again, for
the first time in many years.”
What’s her technique for fitting some physical maintenance into a busy
schedule? “It starts right at the beginning of the day,” Kira says. “When I’m
setting my intentions for the day, I always ask myself, ‘What three things would
make today a great day?’ and what I do is make sure that one of the three is a
physical thing. Then I look at my schedule and work out when I can fit it in, and
I view it like any other professional priority.” The big shift behind these small
changes, Kira says, is “realizing that my body is as important as my brain. That
it is effectively an extension of my brain, and vice versa. So I treat it like a friend
now, rather than beating it into submission.”
Bartek added bursts of extra exercise to help him stay centered during his
Olympic soup crisis: “When things are tough, I know it helps to pause and take
my mind somewhere else. I do judo, and that was good because you simply can’t
worry about work when someone is about to throw you on the mat. But in the
summer of 2012, I also started running for the first time. I found it allowed me to
switch off the endless thinking for a bit, and it really helped me regain the logic
of the situation.”
Of course, it’s one thing to know that exercise is a quick route to feeling good
—but it’s quite another to find the time for it. So as we learned in 
Chapter 2
, on
goal-setting, it helps to start with something achievable, an activity that readily
fits into your day and that feels at least mildly enjoyable, so that your brain’s
reward system gets a kick out of it—a fast head-clearing walk on your way to or
from a meeting, for example. (You might recall several of the interviewees in
this book mentioning that this is part of their strategy for getting some activity
into each day.)
And it’s important to remember that exercise isn’t time out; it’s time invested.
Ros, the healthcare executive we met earlier in the book, says: “I’ve got deeply
held beliefs about what deserves my time, and exercising had never made it to
the top of that list in the past. Yet it’s obvious how much better I feel and think
after I’ve taken more care of myself. I become more optimistic about my
abilities and have more of a sense of possibility that I can make things happen.”
So now she thinks about exercise as “a practical investment in dealing better
with everyday stress. Then it doesn’t feel like an indulgence, or a chore, and I’m
more likely to do it.”

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