Welcome to the positive corner of the internet. Every weekday, we make sense of the confusing world of wellness by analyzing the headlines, simplifying the latest research, and offering quick tips designed to make you healthier in less than 5 minutes. | Today’s Health Upgrade | | | | | Want more stories from Arnold? Every day, Arnold’s Pump Club Podcast opens with a story, perspective, and wisdom from Arnold that you won’t find in the newsletter. And, you’ll hear a recap of the day’s items. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts. |
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| Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation | If you watch a lot of news or spend hours scrolling your social media feed, you might be convinced the world is worse than ever. | It is easy to become a pessimist when you only see the bad. | But we know that bad news is what attracts eyeballs. This isn’t anything new. Newspaper editors have known this for a couple hundred years, and TV producers have known this from the moment TV took us on. Social media has taken it to a new level, but the story is the same. | You can’t blame the media or social media companies. They are selling advertising, and more eyeballs make the business work. | All that you can do is learn to focus on the positive. | One of our Pump members, Tony, put this in perspective in a beautiful way in this weekend’s hangout at the positive corner of the internet. | | I have to give him credit for hitting the gym after spending 6 hours digging a ditch, but I love his message more than his resilience. | Here’s what you can learn from Tony: if he stayed inside watching the news and different politicians yelling about the storms instead of going out with his neighbors to do something, I doubt he’d have such a positive view. | He became part of the solution, and by doing that, he saw his community coming together to help instead of just absorbing the anger on his TV or phone. | We are more connected than ever. We have more news channels and social media feeds than anyone in history. | But sometimes, you must turn it off and go outside to see your community and offer help. | These hurricanes were devastating for so many people. They also gave many of them an opportunity to step up and show that there is still plenty of good in the world. | Last week, I talked about the power of doing something — anything — to help others as the real cure for pessimism. This week, Tony’s reminding you of your power. | Mr. Rogers had a famous quote: | “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” | There are always helpers. | People clearing trees and digging ditches for their community doesn’t make great TV, and it’s certainly not going to be viral on social media. But it happens after every disaster and tragedy if you’re willing to look for it. | I saw it over and over in California with all of our wildfires. Every single time, people came together to do what they could. At some of our fires, I’d meet nurses and doctors who had shown up to do whatever they could to help, supermarket CEOs donating diapers, water, and other supplies, and tons of ordinary people who just showed up to give an extra set of helping hands. And let’s not forget the brave firefighters and first responders literally putting their lives on the line to keep people safe. | The helpers are always there, no matter what you see on your screens. You have to choose to look for them. Or even better, to become a helper yourself. | If you’re looking for a way to help, the Red Cross is actively helping people after all of these storms: | Or you can be like Tony and lend a hand. | The world will always need helpers. | We all need to learn to look for them and highlight them whenever we can. | That’s real positivity. | Together With Eight Sleep
How To End Restless Nights | An estimated 70 million people in the United States struggle with sleep. And while a good night of sleep depends on many variables, chilling out — literally — might be a good first step for better rest. | Research suggests that your core body temperature determines how easily you fall asleep, stay asleep, and the quality of your rest. | Scientists recently analyzed how cooling your body influences parasympathetic nervous system activity, which is your body’s rest-and-digest mode. | The study found that participants who experienced a drop in core body temperature before sleep had better sleep quality, marked by quicker sleep onset (the time it takes to fall asleep). Lowering body temperature signals to the brain that it’s time to sleep, helping the body transition into deep sleep more easily. | Sleeping in a colder room or bed also resulted in better heart rate variability (which is good for recovery) and more time spent in stage 3 sleep (a sign of sleep quality). This means it’s easier for your body to maintain a state of relaxation and restorative sleep. It isn’t that life is short, Seneca reminds us, it’s that we waste so much of it. We squander time arguing with strangers online and answering emails that could just be deleted. We sit in boring meetings. We gossip and whine. We stay stuck in jobs we hate to chase money or because we’re too timid to change careers. Or even just how we hide parts of ourselves because we're worried how we’ll come across—too weird, too rude, too much—or do activities we don’t enjoy just to fit in with the popular crowd. Marcus Aurelius, frustrated with some obnoxious thing that was consuming his days, once asked himself. “You’re afraid of death,” he said, “because you won’t be able to do this anymore?” That’s the power of memento mori—the clarity it offers. By keeping death close, it reminds us what we truly cherish about life. David Kessler, a grief and loss expert who has spent serious time with people on death’s door, recently told us on the Daily Stoic podcast (it’s a powerful episode, listen here) that this is what stands out most about the dying. “Everything we worry about day to day,” he said, “you just don’t worry about at the end.” He shared a story with us of someone at home, enjoying the company of some friends and family in the last chapter of their life. One of their friends asked if they wanted to see their new car, which was parked outside in the driveway. “And [the dying person was] like, ‘No. No, I don’t.’ It’s like how ridiculous was that concept all of a sudden? You just realize everything that what we thought was going to make us happy and become how we identify ourselves just means nothing. It means nothing. What matters is the people, it’s the love, it’s everything else.” Again, this is the insight that memento mori provides us. By thinking, by imagining that we’ve just been given a few months to live, we too can see immediately what we should stop doing. We realize we don’t have any more time to waste. And before you know it, there is this urgent emergent need to do the things we love in place of the things don’t, to spend time with the people we love instead of wasting it on those we don’t. This is the positive side of the memento mori thought exercise: not “What would I stop doing?” but rather “What would I start doing?” How would I spend the limited time I had left? Where would I find meaning and purpose and joy? Whatever that is, do more of it today. Because you are mortal. Because what matters is people, it’s love. Everything else is besides the point. And while Halloween is often a playful time of year here in America, full of tricks and treats, it’s also an opportunity to practice memento mori, a reminder to treat our time as a gift and not waste it on the trivial and vain. Soon we’ll be just like those skeletons we’re decorating with. Soon we’ll be under a tombstone ourselves. |
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