The Surprising History and Psychology of Board Games & Cracking the Fitness Code

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Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, does having more sex make couples happy, or do happy couples just have more sex? Then, why humans love board games, chess, checkers, monopoly.

Speaker 1 And what happened to Backgammon? It used to be hot, then not.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Backgammon went through this renaissance where it became really cool, where like the Rolling Stones were playing, but then you go to somewhere like Syria or Iraq or Turkey, and this is a game that has never gone away.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Speaker 1 Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Well, here's an interesting question.

Speaker 1 Do happier couples have more sex?

Speaker 1 Or does having sex make for happier couples?

Speaker 1 We'll start with that question today. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know.
You've likely heard from books and self-help experts that increasing intimacy makes couples happier.

Speaker 1 Simply put, having more sex will lead to more happiness.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe.

Speaker 1 There's something called reverse causality, and that may explain this relationship between intimacy and happiness, according to research at Carnegie Mellon University.

Speaker 1 What they found in surveying couples is that happier couples have more sex. In other words, it isn't the sex that makes couples happier.
It's that happiness is causing couples to have more sex.

Speaker 1 And in fact, simply having more sex did not make couples happier, in part because the increased frequency led to a decline in wanting and desire for the enjoyment of intimacy.

Speaker 1 The authors of the research noted that the desire to have sex decreases much more quickly than the enjoyment of sex once it's been initiated.

Speaker 1 So instead of focusing on increasing the number of intimate encounters, Couples may want to work on creating an environment that sparks their desire and makes the intimacy they do have more fun.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 People like to have fun. It seems we're wired to have fun.

Speaker 1 And there is one very specific type of fun that people have always liked, continued to like, and will continue to like, and that is playing games. Specifically, games on a tabletop.

Speaker 1 Board games, chess, checkers, parcheesi, backgammon, games where you move pieces around a a board have been played for thousands of years.

Speaker 1 So what is it about these kinds of games that have made them so popular? And even with the introduction of video games, board games continue to be very popular.

Speaker 1 Here with some insight into this is Tim Clare. He is an award-winning writer and author of the book Across the Board, How Games Make Us Human.
Hey Tim, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Hi, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 So there does seem to be something very human that we like to play these kind of games, whether it's rolling the dice or dealing the cards or moving your pieces around the board.

Speaker 1 Human beings like to play those kinds of games on the top of a table, right?

Speaker 2 There is something incredible

Speaker 2 about how games in completely

Speaker 2 disconnected civilizations pop up sometimes around the same time and look remarkably similar and there was no contact. So you take something like knucklebones, right?

Speaker 2 Rolling dice made out of sheep's ankle bones or goat's ankle bones. That appears like up in Skara Brae, sort of an island north of Scotland.
And it appears right down in Egypt, in ancient Turkey.

Speaker 2 It play appears across, say,

Speaker 2 the Pacific Islands. You see knucklebone games appearing, played maybe with shells.

Speaker 2 these games that are we have this idea we're going to roll some oddly shaped things and we're going to mark some sides and depending on what side lands on it you're going to score points or you won't score points you see that that idea is created by humans again and again and again all over the world independently and it doesn't feel like an obvious idea to me to do that.

Speaker 2 Well, it does now because we take it for granted. But every civilization at some point has invented the technology of dice and often completely independently of one another.

Speaker 1 You know, I remember hearing that, for example, children play ball because they like to play ball.

Speaker 1 But another reason was that back when human beings were hunter-gatherers, that children playing ball was a way to train them to hunt.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 playing ball in and of itself, but it had another purpose. And I wonder, do board games have another purpose or is it just the game?

Speaker 2 Well, you've hit upon something really key there, which is that evolutionary psychologists often look like something, look at something like play and they go, this presents a problem because

Speaker 2 what is it for? You know, this is a technology that keeps appearing, but it doesn't increase our chances of survival on the face of it. It doesn't increase people's chances of winning a war.

Speaker 2 So what's going on?

Speaker 2 And we've studied animals because we see play in animals right and we've studied say kittens that play and evolutionary psychologists looked at them and went hey come on there must be this must be training them to hunt but when we've done studies there have been expansive studies on preventing kittens from chasing bulls chasing uh doing these kind of pretend hunting behaviors and does it affect their ability to hunt when they grow into adulthood not at all not at all so this presents us with a huge conundrum.

Speaker 2 Why do we play? Now, there are plenty of archaeologists who will look at things like chess,

Speaker 2 any game that involves some kind of strategy and say, well, this must be teaching us lots of lessons about war. This must be training our generals.

Speaker 2 But the fact is that being a great chess player doesn't make you particularly good at commanding an army.

Speaker 2 The skills aren't hugely transferable. So

Speaker 2 I don't know. I do think that games for me are like politics you can touch.

Speaker 2 To be able to play a game, to be able to sit around a board and say this piece represents this, this piece represents that, to come up with rules, it requires the ability to negotiate and for abstract door.

Speaker 2 And I think those things are definitively huge components of any successful civilization.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But that's interesting that

Speaker 1 as you point out, kittens, if you stop them from playing, it has no impact on their development.

Speaker 2 Not at all.

Speaker 2 And the problem is that when you see human beings who haven't had the chance to play growing up, there is evidence that those humans have various emotional and cognitive challenges when they're growing to adults.

Speaker 2 But the key thing there is you can't experimentally randomize that. You know, you can't have a an experimenter saying we're going to stop these kids from playing.

Speaker 2 So it can only be children who, for whatever reason, haven't had the opportunity to do that. And they've often been deprived of other things in their life.

Speaker 2 And what they did find when they've studied kittens is kittens who've been deprived of the chance of lots of bonding time with their mothers do become worse hunters.

Speaker 2 So this is the thing is game playing games are tied up with all sorts of other things,

Speaker 2 including just hanging around and socializing and all the other wonderful things that human beings do.

Speaker 2 So we don't know whether playing games actually teaches us key life skills or whether games are what they would call an epiphenomenon of happiness and normal development, which is that games are something that spontaneously happens when human beings and indeed members of the animal kingdom are thriving.

Speaker 1 But it does seem just common sense wise

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 having to play games requires that you develop some sort of ability to negotiate, deal with conflict, things that you're going to need in life.

Speaker 1 I mean, it seems to make sense, but as you say, you can't randomize the test, so it's just going to have to be more of a theory than anything else.

Speaker 2 My, okay, so I want to admit a bias here, which is that sometimes people will talk about games teach children the ability to negotiate. They teach you numeracy skills.
They help

Speaker 2 good cognitive development, right? All of that may be somewhat true, but there are probably activities that they could be doing that would do that more efficiently, right?

Speaker 2 Like certainly if you play a lot of games that involve counting, your maths skills will get better, but there are other things you could be doing that would do that better.

Speaker 2 And there's always this niggling worry that I have in the back of my mind that when we start doing that, it's part of it is the guilt that we have to justify play.

Speaker 2 on the grounds of achieving something important rather than being an end in itself, that they create create joy, that they're a wonderful way to spend our time.

Speaker 2 So, if I sound a little bit resistant to that, if I keep landing on this side of, well, we don't know for certain, I have to admit a bias, which is that part of me resists that with my heart, which is to say games don't need to earn their keep, in my opinion, based on optimizing us to be productive adults who thrive in the workplace because they have their own wonderful, wonderful ability, which is to make us enjoy our life and enjoy time with others.

Speaker 1 Well, I have no reason to doubt what you're saying, but you know what comes to mind is an example of a game I find excruciating is Monopoly. That when it's over, it's over.
I am so glad this is over.

Speaker 1 It's gone on forever, and I'm sick of it.

Speaker 1 I don't feel joy at the end of that game. I feel relief that it's over.

Speaker 1 So maybe it helped me be a better negotiator and buy real estate and all that, but

Speaker 1 there is that, that, God,

Speaker 1 please stop. Please, could this be over?

Speaker 2 One of the key things about Monopoly is that it was never originally designed to be fun. It was designed to teach an economics lesson and a lesson about

Speaker 2 how monopolies can destroy a healthy economic system. So the game was meant to feel unfair.
It was meant to end with one person

Speaker 2 slowly accruing all the real estate and money. And you were meant to get to the end of it and think, that was incredibly unfair.
And the game was meant to be a teaching tool.

Speaker 2 It was not meant to be fun. So when people say, oh, I feel like that was frustrating and drawn out more than anything else, they're getting at something fundamental about the game design.

Speaker 1 We're talking about why it seems the world loves board games. And my guest is Tim Clare, author of the book Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human.

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Speaker 1 So Tim, Parcheesi, Monopoly, a lot of other games that I can't remember the names of but I know I've played have one thing in common and that is this this race around the track.

Speaker 1 There's a track around the edge of the board and we're all going around in the same way.

Speaker 1 What is it about that

Speaker 1 seems to show up in so many board games?

Speaker 2 You hit upon something

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 is so compelling to human beings. It's one of these magical formulas.
The archaeologist Dr. Irving Finkel at the British Museum said that they're called roll and move games in academic literature.

Speaker 2 And he said that there's something fundamental about that that wherever in any society a game where you roll some dice and race around a board first past the post games appears it spreads like wildfire it always comes to dominate the culture that it's in why is that exciting well i suppose what those games do is they take simple dice rolling and maybe you make tally marks and get a score they turn that into like a horse race and human beings love a race.

Speaker 2 And even something like the game Pooh Sticks, right?

Speaker 2 Where come from Winnie the Pooh, where you throw sticks over one side of the bridge and then you run to the other side of the bridge and there's a river underneath and you see whose stick comes out first.

Speaker 2 I think there's something fundamental in the human spirit, something irreducible about

Speaker 2 racing.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this is something you looked into, but it's a question that I've wondered about. Do we know how video games have impacted

Speaker 1 the use of and the sale of board games? Has it made an impact or not?

Speaker 2 My first

Speaker 2 thought when video games came out is that board games are doomed. That has not been the case at all.

Speaker 2 I think if anything, the ubiquity of video games has fueled this desire to get away from screens and get away from digital experiences. Not that I don't love them, but I think that

Speaker 2 really crave that physical experience round the table with other people. Board games have never been doing better in terms of sales.
They are doing phenomenally well at the moment.

Speaker 1 So when I think of old school board games, I think of chess. Chess has been around, I don't know how long has chess been around.

Speaker 2 It depends who you ask and where you date it from. The game Chaturanga, which was an Indian game, has been around for at least a millennium.
But the current rules of chess

Speaker 2 would probably only solidified in the past 500 years, I think. The last thing that chess decided upon was the movement of the queen.
The queen could only move one square at a time.

Speaker 2 And then they created this variant called Mad Queen's chess, where

Speaker 2 the queen could move as far as you wanted, what we have now.

Speaker 2 And universally, everyone went, this is brilliant. And that's where the final rules of chess that we have today solidified.
So probably about 500 years.

Speaker 1 So if the queen could only move one square, so can the king. So what was the difference?

Speaker 2 There was no difference except that you could lose the queen without losing the game.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm no great chess player, but I know enough about it and have played it enough to think that that game where the queen can only move one square would be just so dull. And

Speaker 1 when you allow her to go where she can now go, that just, that's a real, that's a game changer right there. I mean, it makes the game so much more fun

Speaker 2 Absolutely. I think chess is this completely magical game that

Speaker 2 through tiny rule changes became the version it is today became the game it is today. You know, it wasn't designed so much as discovered, really.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's an incredible game in terms of the complexity that can come out of a relatively few number of rules.

Speaker 1 What's the connection between chess and checkers? And I ask only because they're played on the same board.

Speaker 2 The answer is that we don't, at some point, it disappears into the ether and we're not sure.

Speaker 2 Checkers or drafts, as it's sometimes known in the UK,

Speaker 2 goes back

Speaker 2 about as long as chess. And there's

Speaker 2 the thing that has happened with checkers that hasn't happened with chess is we've never decided. The world has not decided on the definitive version of checkers, right?

Speaker 2 You go to any country, it has its own version of the rules. It's like Canadian drafts, which has like a much bigger board.
There's Frisian drafts where you can jump backwards.

Speaker 2 There's versions, Turkish drafts, where you move forwards and backwards instead of diagonally. How related is it to chess?

Speaker 2 Well, checker boards go all the way back to the time of the Buddha, which is one of our earliest lists of board games.

Speaker 2 He's telling, he gives this list of games that monks aren't allowed to play, and he talks about checkered boards.

Speaker 2 So did, it makes sense to a lot of people that drafts and checkers came before chess, because it appears to be the simpler game.

Speaker 2 We don't have any evidence for that, but it seems like it's still a game that's in flux.

Speaker 2 Do they have any relationship? As far as we know, one didn't come out of the other, but they may have used the same boards. But that checkerboard has existed for at least five millennium.

Speaker 1 What about Backgammon? You know, there was a time, I think it was in the 70s or 80s, where Backgammon was so hot, at least here in the US.

Speaker 1 And now you don't hear much about it. I mean, we have a Backgammon set.
I can't remember the last time we got it out and played it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Backgammon went through this renaissance where it became really cool, where like the Rolling Stones were playing.

Speaker 2 People were were going to Monaco and playing these high-stakes games of Batgammon.

Speaker 2 So certainly it did go through a Renaissance, but then you go to somewhere, you know, like Syria or Iraq or Turkey, any of these countries, and this is a game that has never gone away and can probably trace its lineage back

Speaker 2 at least 4,500 years. You know, it is an old, old game in various forms.

Speaker 1 Backgammon seems like a game that should not have fallen out of favor because it has so many things that people seem to like in a game. It has skill, it has chance,

Speaker 1 you get to move around the board.

Speaker 1 It

Speaker 1 seems like it should still be more popular than it is.

Speaker 2 You could imagine Batgammon. All it would take is a couple of celebrities to become, I think, Batgammon fans.
It's a game that

Speaker 2 has some skill, has some chance. You know, you roll dice, you move, but there's a great deal of strategy that you can develop by playing the game.
But there's still some luck, right?

Speaker 2 It's a game, I think, that could easily have a revival at any point. I think you're absolutely right because it's very accessible.

Speaker 2 Like, I could teach it to my eight-year-old daughter, and I think she'd enjoy it. But the skill ceiling of getting really good at it is actually quite high.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, right. That's a good way to put it that you can get really, really good at it or you can be a novice and still enjoy it.

Speaker 1 And I guess maybe that's kind of the magic of a game where anybody can play and

Speaker 1 develop in that game.

Speaker 2 I think that's true of some of the lesser known games, at least in

Speaker 2 the US and the UK, like the Mancala games that are so popular across Africa, like on Weso and Wari, games like that.

Speaker 2 These games that you play with stones or pebbles, where you capture each other's pieces, you pick them up and drop them in these different houses, they're called these little divots in a board.

Speaker 2 Those games, you can teach them to a five-year-old and they can learn the rules. But the skill of high-level Um Weso players is breathtaking.

Speaker 1 Have there been, I've been trying to think as we've been talking, any games that have come out?

Speaker 2 I mean, I may not have my finger on the pulse of this, but games that have come out lately that have been big successes the last game i remember that was a big phenomenon was trivial pursuit and i can't remember since then any big huge successful game so the classic one that's spoken about that's just had it having its 25th anniversary this year is katan or settlers of catan it has sold over 40 million copies which puts it you know that is it's sold more than say sergeant pepper's lonely hearts club band or any of the beatles albums um and that's a game where you are settling on an empty island and you're building farms and roads and things like this that game has done phenomenally well and continues to sell like hot cakes in the last couple of years a game like wingspan where you are collecting different wild birds and putting them into this sanctuary has sold millions of copies so there is there is a get a revolution in tabletop games that has passed a lot of people by, you know.

Speaker 1 But there do seem to be just mostly, it seems like a lot of the same games that I played as a kid,

Speaker 1 the kids today would play.

Speaker 1 Once you're a hit, you seem like you're a hit for a while.

Speaker 2 It's certainly true that Snakes and Ladders is going nowhere. And fair enough, I happen to think Snakes and Ladders has a brilliant design.
I remember playing it with my daughter when she was four.

Speaker 2 and I was like, hey, we're equals around this table, right? I can't bring any skill to this. The dice don't care that I'm older than her.

Speaker 2 And so we got to play as equals. I think that's a terrific piece of game design.
But yeah, sure. Classics are always going to be classics.

Speaker 2 I don't think there's anything that's going to topple chess from its pedestal soon because it's a terrific game.

Speaker 2 But a lot of the new games, a lot of the new party games, a lot of the new kind of deep strategy games are so, so well designed. I think there's a great deal of stuff to reward people.

Speaker 2 I don't think there's been a better time in human history to be a board gamer.

Speaker 1 Well, I have played board games all my life, and it is really fun to hear the backstories and realize how old some of these games are or variations on the games. It's fascinating.

Speaker 1 Tim Clare has been my guest. He is an award-winning writer and author of the book, Across the Board, How Games Make Us Human.

Speaker 1 And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes if you'd like to read it. Tim, thank you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you. Take care.
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Speaker 1 I can't imagine there is a single person listening to this podcast who does not know that physical activity, exercise, is good for you, that That the human body is not meant to be sedentary.

Speaker 1 We need to move. Still, many of us do not follow that prescription.
Part of it, I think, is how we define exercise, how we look at it.

Speaker 1 You know, you did something wrong in gym class in junior high school and the gym teacher demands 20 push-ups, sending the message that exercise is punishment. It's painful.
It's hard.

Speaker 1 And the benefits of exercise, they're off in the future somewhere. So you're doing something difficult for some future reward, and maybe we need to reframe this whole thing.

Speaker 1 That is what Katie Bowman is here to discuss. Katie is the author of 11 books, and she speaks frequently on the topic of movement and exercise.

Speaker 1 Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping.

Speaker 1 She's been on The Today Show, she's been on Joe Rogan's podcast, and her latest book is called, I Know I Should Exercise, but 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. Hi, Katie.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 So the reason people are often told that they should exercise, where they should get their motivation from, is that exercise is good for you, that it has health benefits.

Speaker 1 And that in and of itself is reason enough to get up off the couch and go do something because it's good for you.

Speaker 3 It being being good for you is not enough to motivate an individual. We all have really complex

Speaker 3 inner worlds and we are motivated by different things. We all have different values and certainly we all value

Speaker 3 our health, but maybe not necessarily more than all the other obligations that keep showing up in

Speaker 3 our day-to-day living. So finding another way in to harness motivation is really key.

Speaker 3 And what we tend to do is just say, it's really good for you. Well, no, it's really, really good for you.
Here's more evidence. It's really, really, really good for you.

Speaker 3 And people aren't still uptaking that prescription. So we need a different way in.

Speaker 1 So do you think,

Speaker 1 because I've seen this in cases, where there is that,

Speaker 1 well, but I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. So why waste all that time? exercising when, you know, when your number's up, your number's up, and it just doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 Well, and that is the problem with framing movement, physical activity, exercise, as something with future rewards. You're going to live longer.

Speaker 3 Your health numbers when you go visit the doctor next year are going to be better. It's really hard to orient yourself to something with a payoff that's so far down the line.

Speaker 3 So we need to change the messaging to

Speaker 3 This is something that makes you feel better today. This is something that gives you a boost of creativity, a boost of joy, more more mental clarity.

Speaker 3 Maybe you value your productivity level at work. Maybe you value connection with your friends or your children.

Speaker 3 So to reframe movement as a conduit to those experiences today is going to be key in why someone can't use that, well, I might be hit by a bus tomorrow reason.

Speaker 1 What often happens is people with the best of intentions will start to exercise and stick with it for a little while and something happens and they stop.

Speaker 1 You know, they join the gym for New Year's and then by February, they're done. Something derails them.
What tends to derail people?

Speaker 3 Well, the top derailers are going to be time.

Speaker 3 I don't have enough time.

Speaker 3 A loss of motivation.

Speaker 3 Discomfort can be a reason that people fall off the movement wagon, so to speak.

Speaker 3 More and more recently, I would say environmental factors, like I'm addicted to my phone.

Speaker 3 I plan to do my morning walk, but now I grab my phone, that alarm goes off, and I start swiping. And an hour later, I'm still

Speaker 3 looking through short form videos, and that was my walking window, and I missed it. So, those are the things that we see again and again.

Speaker 1 One of the things that I noticed, I work out pretty regularly. I go to the gym at least four times a week and have for years, many, many years.

Speaker 1 But I early on realized and saw in other people that there's an overpromise in the physical education world that if you go do your exercise, you're going to look like that model on the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine.

Speaker 1 And you never will. And you get discouraged because you don't see the results.
You don't start to look like those people.

Speaker 1 And you either have to come to terms with that, that that's never going to happen, or you say, well, since it's not going to happen, I give up.

Speaker 3 Yes. And I think the industry also needs to change some of its messaging where our motivation, there are some people who are going to be motivated for aesthetic purposes.

Speaker 3 And then there's going to be people who are motivated by that boost of energy that they get or mental relaxation that they get, the fact that they feel better in their own skin no matter what it is.

Speaker 3 So there's definitely been a shift of messaging around movement to transition from the idea of the reason you move is for aesthetic purposes versus for all of these other,

Speaker 3 not only health benefits that are not related to how you look, but are just based on how you function.

Speaker 3 in a day-to-day basis that there's regular inputs in just that and you can track that like you can see as soon as you're done exercising, wow, I feel great. You feel great.

Speaker 3 It does not matter necessarily how you look in nine months from now. Again, those are those farther down the road benefits that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 Not to mention the mental health benefits that have been pretty well documented, that exercise is good for your mental health as well as your physical health.

Speaker 1 But you would know, and I think this is the big question people have, is

Speaker 1 we know that a lot of people try to exercise and give up. So, the people who don't give up, what works for them?

Speaker 1 What are the things that actually seem to work to get people started and then continue to exercise?

Speaker 3 Figuring out what your values are would be first.

Speaker 3 We have to use our values, our internal values, as sort of our north on a compass, so that even when we don't feel like it, we can muster essentially.

Speaker 3 So, you know, if you're a parent, you value perhaps taking care of your kid, but when the kid wakes up in the middle of the night and they're sick or they need something, you don't really want to do it.

Speaker 3 You're just like, oh, you know, I'm so exhausted, I'd rather stay here in bed, but you value that. So you get up anyway.

Speaker 3 And so, how do you recognize the values that you have around not necessarily exercise, but staying, keeping up your physical capacity?

Speaker 3 And once you identify those, then you can use those to sort of draft behind even when

Speaker 3 emotionally you're feeling like you're not up to it. That's how you're going to motivate yourself day after day after day.

Speaker 1 But what works in terms of, you know, if you say, okay, I'm going to start moving and I'm going to go to the gym five days a week. Yeah, I doubt it.

Speaker 1 Not for long.

Speaker 1 What works in terms of actually what it is you do to start the ball rolling and keep it rolling?

Speaker 3 I think I would look for

Speaker 3 places of moving that are easiest for you. So, if going, I mean, going to the gym five days a week from nothing, that's a really big goal that you set yourself up for.

Speaker 3 So, what if it was something more like, I'm going to start taking a walk every morning? And then you have to, again, draft behind those values. So, maybe it's like, I noticed that if I

Speaker 3 if if you value

Speaker 3 connection with people in your family, it's like I'm gonna maybe ask my spouse or my child to get up and walk with me for 20 minutes in the morning, or maybe you're gonna walk your kids to school, or maybe you wanna walk your dog because that's a high value as to making sure you take care of those animals.

Speaker 3 And then you set up that practice with something that's doable, that doesn't have as many physical stumbling blocks that's not so easily derailed.

Speaker 3 And then maybe you're trying to get to the gym gym once a week. So not over promising yourself is a big one.
And then also

Speaker 3 staying flexible with what you are defining as exercise. So

Speaker 3 going to the gym five days a week, what is your plan for if your boss is requiring that you stay afterwards? Like, how are you going to

Speaker 3 adjust your entire schedule around this

Speaker 3 spontaneous thing that comes up?

Speaker 3 And then once you tend to miss one, then you're like, are you to the point where you throw your hands up in the air and you're like, well, I can't do any of it because I missed Wednesday.

Speaker 3 Now none of it's good. So now I'm not going to go Thursday and Friday.
Or do you have a backup plan where, well, if I don't get to the gym, what I will do then is

Speaker 3 I'm going to hop on my bike so that you're finding other domains of your life in which you can pepper in movement as opposed to setting it just aside for what we consider leisure time.

Speaker 3 Exercise is essentially a leisure time activity. The more we can distribute it through the other domains in life, the more likely you are to get those minutes of physical activity that you need.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the statistics are, but I'm sure a large number of people with the best of intentions.

Speaker 1 I remember earlier in my life, you know, bought some sort of exercise equipment, a treadmill, a stationary bike, something, a Boflex, and put it in their home.

Speaker 1 And just like on the cover of your book, it soon becomes a clotheshanger, a place to put junk, and people give up. But they've made a financial investment in it, and it's right there.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't take much to get on that and push the start button, but people give up.

Speaker 3 The reason we put this on the cover of the book is because it's so relatable. Right.
So practically, practically speaking, I do question if it is right there.

Speaker 3 You know, what would happen if you cleaned it off and actually put it in your

Speaker 3 way? And I think that this is something that, you know, this is an aesthetic choice. I don't know how practical it is.

Speaker 3 But in my own home, for example, I have found too that the more pieces of equipment are tucked out of sight, the more they are put into rooms that I barely go into.

Speaker 3 You know, with the best of intentions, I set up an exercise room in my house.

Speaker 3 But the more physical activity sits outside of the flow of your daily daily life, the less likely you are to interact with it. So, I bring a lot of my pieces out into the living room.

Speaker 3 I have teenagers and notice this as well with them, like

Speaker 3 the idea of stepping away from where other people are. I can absolutely recognize the value of a focused place for movement.

Speaker 3 But when you're trying to bring movement into your own house, it can get tricky because those dark spaces quickly become where you're throwing your laundry or you just have cobwebs.

Speaker 3 We sent out a photo contest of people sending in some of their equipment, and we got pieces that had birds' nests built into them because they had just been sitting in the garage, you know, sitting in their workout garage.

Speaker 3 And it was just a testament to

Speaker 3 the less likely you are to see it, the less it is in the flow of your day-to-day life, the less likely you are to engage. So scoot it out.

Speaker 3 Don't throw your laundry on top of it, or just recognize that maybe that's not the best situation for you to motivate yourself.

Speaker 1 But people paid a lot of money. That home gym equipment is not cheap.
And

Speaker 1 so at one point, they were pretty motivated,

Speaker 1 and then it just kind of evaporates.

Speaker 3 It's sort of like committing to going to the gym five days a week. It's a really big step.

Speaker 3 And so I do think that for many people, it's like, well, the gesture of a big investment

Speaker 3 is perhaps being confused with

Speaker 3 how big your motivation is to pick up that particular mode of exercise. So knowing yourself a little bit more here is gonna be a little bit more helpful.
So yes,

Speaker 3 you had the big intention, but maybe

Speaker 3 there wasn't as much thought going into the steps. behind wanting to move more.
So again, identifying your values, asking yourself, what types of physical activity do you actually enjoy?

Speaker 3 Many people love going to the gym. Like it's a great sense of community.

Speaker 3 That works for a lot of people, but if it doesn't work for you and if it's never really worked for you, maybe it's not that mode of exercise.

Speaker 3 Maybe the reason the treadmill or the, you know, the bike that you have in your house isn't motivating you because it's hard for you to choose movement within your house.

Speaker 3 And so maybe it's better if you actually go to a place that has those pieces of equipment because maybe you're easily distracted in your home space.

Speaker 3 And so you need to rethink your approach in this case.

Speaker 1 I wonder too,

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 many people give up because they think they're not doing enough.

Speaker 1 If I go for a walk around the block after dinner, that's not really doing much. So I'm not going to try.
And it probably isn't doing that much, but is it better than nothing or is it nothing?

Speaker 3 It's absolutely better than nothing. So all movement counts.

Speaker 3 We just want to make sure that over time, doesn't have to be over the course of a day, but maybe over the course of a week or two, that you're thinking of all the different ways

Speaker 3 that your body needs you to move and try to blend them again through the different domains of your life.

Speaker 1 And as quickly as you can, what are all the ways my body needs to move?

Speaker 3 Well, all of your joints, cycling through regular joint range of motion.

Speaker 3 So that would be just, you know you could look at it as stretching but one of the things that i recommend is you know if you're going to sit down in the evening instead of sitting in that same shape that you do you know in your chair in your car

Speaker 3 where you're just always at that 90 degree hip and knee you know sit cross-legged on the ground try getting up and down from the ground a few times just in the course of your day

Speaker 3 walking is another big one carrying carrying, being able to load weight onto your frame, whether it's directly on your spine or it's really good to practice carrying in your arms and you could get that, you know, know, instead of pushing a cart at the grocery store, just hold that basket and load that weight up in there.

Speaker 3 And that's a practical way of getting a little bit of, you know, so-called weightlifting, but while you're doing something else besides exercise.

Speaker 1 There is a point in time,

Speaker 1 because I imagine a lot of people think, and it's very discouraging, that this is not fun. I don't enjoy this, and this is always going to be not fun.

Speaker 1 But there does come a time, at least I would think for most people who exercise, that they can't, they kind of can't live without it anymore. Like if I didn't exercise, I'd go nuts.

Speaker 1 And I don't remember how long it took to get to that point, but do you know how long?

Speaker 3 Well, I know that what happens is we have a bias in sort of recognizing the discomfort, the negativity, the effort of something and sort of overly focusing on that when we first start.

Speaker 3 Because it does take a little bit for the benefits of movement to pay off. Where, especially if you are really focused on the negative aspects,

Speaker 3 you have to really choose to pay attention to,

Speaker 3 I feel really good right now.

Speaker 3 You know, like you're sitting there on the couch and it's so comfortable on the couch, you're doing your thing, the idea of having to get up and you perceive all of this negative effort.

Speaker 3 And then for anyone who's trained for anything,

Speaker 3 It kind of hurts, you know, exercise is that you're out of breath, you might be sweating, your body is kind of flopping around and you don't feel as coordinated.

Speaker 3 And so there's this period of time where

Speaker 3 the negative feelings sort of outweigh the positive benefit, especially if you're choosing to not focus on it when you're done.

Speaker 3 So one thing you could do if you know you're prone to the I don't wanna, it's so hard, it's uncomfortable feeling is just to, when you do it, savor, that's a big psychological step is savoring the feelings that you have afterwards or maybe even the feelings that you have while you do it.

Speaker 3 Like, wow, I got outside. Look, I can, the sun is so beautiful.
I can hear birds. This is so much better than building a document on my screen.
I'm away from my family and I'm getting a break.

Speaker 3 Or my family's right here and we're together. You're choosing to savor the feelings that you have while you're doing this bout of movement.
And then over time, it doesn't take that long.

Speaker 3 You know, after a week or so, then you are going to start, yes, like you said, craving that feeling because your brain has been trained to pay attention to the positive feelings that happen while you're actually doing it.

Speaker 3 That negativity, it's sort of like just a whiny kid who doesn't want to do the thing at front. Just know your body is going to whine.
It's just, I don't want to go. I don't want to do it.

Speaker 3 I don't want to clean my room. I get it.
We know we're grown adults. We don't want to have to do anything that we ourselves maybe didn't choose.

Speaker 3 But once you get over that whiny hurdle, then you become someone who has an autonomy around movement and you want to do do it, and then you can go from there.

Speaker 1 There is that feeling. I mean, I've never seen anybody walk out of the gym and go, oh, God, that was horrible, even though it probably was horrible.
But the feeling of having completed it

Speaker 1 is a great feeling. And it stays with you for a little while.
I mean, it's not, it's like, I

Speaker 1 crave that feeling at the end. I don't crave necessarily doing the exercises, but

Speaker 1 when it's all done, I feel pretty good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you just don't see people going, well, that wasn't worth it.

Speaker 3 Taking that evening walk wasn't worth it.

Speaker 3 Like these are just not sentiments that you ever hear, but in your mind, they are sort of like these psychological barriers that help justify continuing to sit in one space.

Speaker 3 You sort of logically thought it out and can't imagine that it would pay off, but it does. It does every time.
I've never taken a walk. I've never went for a bout of exercise and ever regretted it.

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's great that people like you continue to try to motivate people, help them find whatever motivation will work because the benefits of exercise are so great and we are not moving enough.

Speaker 1 I've been talking to Katie Bowman. She is author of the book, I know I should exercise, but 44 reasons we don't move and how to get over them.

Speaker 1 And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Katie, I appreciate you coming on and talking about this.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much, Mike.

Speaker 1 While the advice to follow your passion may sound good, a lot of us don't really know what our passion is or what our calling is, or at least we're not sure.

Speaker 1 So here are some ways to determine whether or not what you think is your calling really is.

Speaker 1 First of all, it could be a calling if it keeps coming back, no matter how much you ignore it. A true calling tends to come at you from multiple directions.

Speaker 1 Gifts, talents, dreams, body symptoms, synchronicities, the books that mysteriously make their way onto your nightstand, the way events and opportunities unfold in your life.

Speaker 1 Also, there's a feeling of rightness about it. It just feels right.
You may not be able to explain it, but you can't deny it either. Your enthusiasm for it tends to sustain itself over time.

Speaker 1 It doesn't really peter out. You even feel a kind of affinity or affection for all the mundane tasks involved in bringing these passions to fruition, and they all have mundane tasks.

Speaker 1 It will scare you. If a passion feels safe and easy, it's probably not a passion.
If it's scary, it means you're close to something vital, and that is a passion. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 If you found this episode fun, entertaining, and worthwhile, I hope you will share it with someone. It's easy to do by using that share button that's on the app that you're listening on.

Speaker 1 And it helps us out. It helps us grow our audience, which is what we're trying to do.
I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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Speaker 1 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns. Imminently.
I am Robin Ince, and I'm sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series. Primarily eels.
And what else?

Speaker 1 It was fascinating though, the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 1 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagaso C?

Speaker 1 Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.