Morning Routines That Just FLOW

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Flow is the state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing, at a peak performance level

  • For most of us, this doesn’t happen to us automatically when the alarm clock goes off

    • However, there are things we can leverage, biological tricks to get our brains into good order for our day, and they include:

      • Getting our brains full of the right neurotransmitters, including:

        • Cortisol (yes really, just a quick dose in the morning, it’s healthy in quick doses)

        • Serotonin

        • Dopamine

      • See today’s main feature for the tricks and hacks for these!

• We can also be clever about the order in which we do things in the morning, so that before we know it, we’ve switched effortlessly from sluggish morning inaction to peak performance.

• It’s vitally important to keep our brains sharp as we age

  • Today’s sponsor, Brilliant, are offering 10almonds subscribers 30 days free use of their habit-building daily learning app

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Things Most People Don’t Know About Coffee

Coffee can have many health benefits for the body overall, but it also depends on how your body reacts to caffeine:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Coffee menu:

• Coffee may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes: 01:08

• Coffee might decrease the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease: 01:56

• Coffee increases your fiber intake: 02:32

• Coffee supports brain health and power: 03:20

• Coffee has almost no calories: 04:23

• Coffee can reduce the risk of gout: 06:01

• Coffee can help you lose weight: 06:54

• Coffee can reduce the risks of chronic liver disease: 07:36

• Coffee may help fight depression: 08:28

• It could improve your immune system: 09:01

• The two main types of coffee 09:43

Prefer text? Here’s a text-based version! (with links to studies supporting claims)

☕️ MAIN FEATURE

Morning Routines That Just FLOW

“If the hardest thing you have to do in your day is eat a frog, eat that frog first!”, they say.

And, broadly speaking, it is indeed good to get anything stressful out of the way early, so that we can relax afterwards. But…

• Are we truly best at frog-eating when blurry-eyed and sleepy?

• Is there a spoonful of sugar that could make the medicine go down better?

• What do we need to turn eating the frog into an enjoyable activity?

Flow

“Flow” is a concept brought to public consciousness by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it refers to a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing, at a peak performance level.

Good morning!

What is a good morning, to you? Build that into your morning! Set parameters around it so you don’t get carried away timewise and find yourself in the afternoon (unless that would work for you!), but first thing in the morning is the time to light up each part of your brain with appropriate neurotransmitters.

Getting the brain juices flowing

Cortisol

When we wake up, we (unless we have some neurochemical imbalance, such as untreated depression) get a spike of cortisol. Cortisol is much-maligned and feared, and indeed it can be very much deleterious to the health in cases of chronic stress. But a little spike now and again is actually beneficial for us.

Quick Tip: if you want to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning cortisol spike, a cold shower is the way to go. Or even just a face-plunge into a bowl of ice-water (put ice in it, give it a couple of minutes to chill the water, then put your face in for a count of 30 seconds, or less if you can’t hold your breath that long).

Serotonin

Serotonin is generally thought of as “the happy chemical”, and it’s stimulated by blue/white light, and also by seeing greenery.

Quick tip: to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning serotonin boost, your best friend is sunlight. Even sun through a partly-clouded sky will tend to outperform artificial lighting, including artificial sunlight lighting. Try to get sun between 08:30 and 09:00, if you can. Best of all, do it in your garden or nearby park, as the greenery will be an extra boost!

Dopamine

Generally thought of as “the reward chemical”, but it’s also critical for a lot of kinds of brainwork, including language processing and problem-solving.

Quick Tip: to artificially stimulate* a dopamine surge to get you going, do something that you and/or your body finds rewarding. Examples include:

• Exercise, especially in a vigorous burst

• A good breakfast, a nice coffee, whatever feels right to you

• An app that has motivational bells and whistles, a streak for you to complete, etc

Note: another very enjoyable activity might come to mind that doesn’t even require you getting out of bed. Be aware, however, gentleman-readers in particular, that if you complete that activity, you’ll get a prolactin spike that will wipe out the dopamine you just worked up. So that one’s probably better for a lazy morning of relaxation, than a day when you want to get up and go!

*there’s no “(or enhance)” for this one; you won’t get dopamine from doing nothing, that’s just not how “the reward chemical” works 😉

Flow-building in a stack

When you’ve just woken up and are in a blurry morning haze, that’s not the time to be figuring out “what should I be doing next?”, so instead:

• Work out the things you want to incorporate into your morning routine

• Put them in the order that will be easiest to perform—some things will go a lot better after others!

• Remember to also include things that are simply necessary—morning bathroom ablutions, for example

The goal here is to have a this-and-this-and-this-and-this list of items that you can go through without any deviations, and get in the habit of “after item 1 I automatically do item 2, after which I automatically do item 3, after which…”

Implement this, and your mornings will become practically automated, but in a joyous, life-enhancing way that sets you up in good order for whatever you want/need to do!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Keep Yourself Sharp (and Ever-Improving!) with Brilliant's Bite-Sized Learning

We all know the benefits to keeping our brains sharp, especially as we age. And yet it's very easy (and tempting!) to throw our hands in the air and leave math, computer science, and coding to "kids nowadays". But it doesn't have to be that way!

If you'd like to learn some very cool skills, Brilliant is... Well... Brilliant at teaching it.

The premise of Brilliant is: interactive learning in a way that feels almost like playing a game, but the level-ups are levelling up your actual real-life skills (including the aforementioned math, computer science, and coding—you get to choose what you learn).

Best yet, it's also designed to make it as easy as possible to make learning a bite-size daily habit. In other words, instead of a scheduling commitment for classes, it's something you can do while you drink your morning coffee.

In short, we very highly recommend it!

You don't have to just trust us though, because they offer a 30-day free trial 😎

Click here to visit Brilliant and give it a try!

Please do check out our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• People With 5 or More Symptoms of Insomnia Have 50% Increased Stroke Risk

• Need for formal bereavement support in dementia care is largely underestimated

• Regular Exercise Could Increase Your Tolerance For Pain

• Smoke from wildfires is especially tough if you have asthma. Here's how to protect yourself

• Scientists Witness Patients' Brains De-Aging After Changing Their Diet

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage - by Dr. Kelly McGonigal

We know that exercise is good for us. Obviously. We know that that exercise will make us feel good. In principle.

So why is that exercise bike wearing the laundry instead, or the weights bench gathering dust?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal explores our relationship with exercise, both the formal (organized, planned, exercise that looks like exercise) and the informal (ad hoc, casual, exercise that looks like just having a nice time).

Moreover: she starts with the why, and moves to the how. The trick she plays on us here is to get us very fired up on the many tangible benefits that will make a big difference in all areas of our lives... And then shows us how easy it can be to unlock those, and how we can make it even easier.

And as to making it stick? Exercise can be addictive, and/but it's one of the few addictions that is almost always healthful rather than deleterious. And, there are tricks we can use to heighten that, thresholds that once we pass, we just keep going.

She also looks at the evolutionary tendency of exercise to be connection-building, as part of a community, friend group, or couple.

And, yes, she gives attention also to undertaking exercise when circumstances aren't ideal, or our bodies simply won't allow certain things.

In short: if any book can get you shaking off the cobwebs, this is the one.

Click here to check out The Joy Of Movement on Amazon today, and get your body moving!

May your weekend flow with joy,

The 10almonds Team