⏰ 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:

• Our mental health is just as important as our physical health; at the end of the day, it is also simply health.

  • We must be careful, however, to ensure that our mental-health self-care is as intentional (and actually beneficial) as what we would do if we needed to recover from a physical malady or over-exertion. Otherwise, we risk falling into self-indulgence and—paradoxically—neglect.

• Do you know what’s bad for digital safety? Data brokers collect and compile information about you, which can then be used by everyone from scammers to insurance companies to the government.

  • Today's sponsor, Incogni, are offering a data removal service that scrubs your sensitive info from the web.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Dr. Sharon Berquist | How Stress Affects Your Body (4:42)

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Prefer text? Click here to check out the full TED-Ed lesson 🤓

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

🥐 MAIN FEATURE

Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence

Source for cartoon: “Pocketss” on Tumblr

Self-care is often seen as an excuse for self-indulgence. Worse, it’s often used as an excuse for self-indulgence—in ways that can end up making us feel worse.

It’s a bit like dietary “cheat days”. If your diet needs cheat days, your diet probably isn’t right for you!

How to recognize the difference between self-care and self-indulgence?

Statistically, the majority of our subscribers are parents (whose children are now mostly grown up, but still, the point is that parenting experience has been gleaned), and/or are or have been caregivers of some form or other.

When a small child is ill, we (hopefully!) look after them carefully:

• We don’t expect too much of them, but…

• …we do expect them to adhere to things consistent with their recovery.

Critically: an important part of self-care is that it actually should be care.

Let’s spell something out: neglect is not care!

How this works for physical and mental health

If you overdo it in physical exercise, it’s right and correct to take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery. For example:

Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise

But it’s well-known that if you just do nothing, your condition will likely deteriorate. Also, “a break to recover” is going to be as short as is necessary to recover. Then you’ll ease back into exercise, but you will get back to it.

For mental health it’s just the same. If we for whatever reason need to take a step back, it’s right and correct to do take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery.

Sometimes, if for example it’s just a case of burnout, rest is the best medicine, and even rest can be an active process. See for example:

How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

So the question to ask, when it comes to self-care vs self-indulgence, is:

“Is this activity helping me to get better?”

Some examples:

Probably not great self-care activities:

• Oversleeping (unless you were sleep-deprived, in which case, it’s better to get an earlier night than a later morning, if possible)

• Overeating (comfort-eating is a thing, but your actual problems will still be there)

• Mindless activities (mindless scrolling, TV-watching, game-playing, etc)

Probably better self-care activities:

• Enjoyable physical activity (whatever that may be for you)

• Preparing your favorite food, and then enjoying it mindfully

• Engaging in a personal project that might not be that important, but it’s fulfilling to you (hobbies etc can fall into this category)

• Scheduling some time, and committing some resources, to tackling whatever problem(s) you are facing that’s prompting you to need this self-care.

• Doing the tasks you want to hide away from, but making them fun.

What’s your go-to self-care? We love to hear from you, so feel free to hit “reply” to this email, or use the handy feedback form at the bottom!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Personal wealth associated with health care costs in people with Alzheimer's disease

• Ending the HIV epidemic may require addressing everyday discrimination

• The world needs more empathy—here is how science can harness it

• Research examines how to stay on task

• Developing a positive outcome from negative emotions

• UN: we can end AIDS by 2030 if frontline services get proper funding

• High hopes: the quest to turn cannabis into a potent medicine

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed – by Carl Honoré

This isn't just about "taking the time to smell the roses" although yes, that too. Rather, it's mostly about looking at what drives us to speed everything up in the first place, and correcting where appropriate.

If your ancestors had time to eat fruit and lie in the sun, then why, with all of modern technology now available, are you harangued 16+ hours a day by the pressures of universally synchronized timepieces?

Honoré places a lot of the blame squarely on the industrial revolution; whereas previously our work would be limited by craftsmen who take a year to complete something, or the pace of animals in a field, now humans had to keep up with the very machines that were supposed to serve us—and it's only got worse from there.

This book takes a tour of many areas affected by this artificial "need for speed", and how it harms not just our work-life balance, but also our eating habits, the medical attention we get, and even our love lives.

The prescription is deceptively simple, "slow down". But Honoré dedicates the final three chapters of the book to the "how" of this, when of course there's a lot the outside world will not accommodate—but where we can slow down, there's good to be gained.

Bottom line: if you've ever felt that you could get all of your life into order if you could just pause the outside world for a week or two, this is the book for you.

Click here to check out In Praise of Slowness, and make time for what matters most!

Wishing you a peaceful and restorative Sunday,

The 10almonds Team