You only live once, make it worth your while
When the time comes, I want to die in peace.
I want to die knowing that I lived my best life. For that to happen, I have to live my best life right now.
It can only be done with the right knowledge and skills. Whether it is exercise, sleep, nutrition, or the importance of managing emotions and time, we need to learn more about how we can make our lives more meaningful.
This will allow us to live healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives.
Today’s list of books will show you exactly how.
Embrace focus and flow!
This book has some role in me almost quitting social media. I say almost because I still have my accounts but all of them are logged out, and the apps are deleted (or deactivated) on my phone.
I am working better, and managing my life better.
“Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.”
Cal Newport asks us to establish the feeling of flow in our work. That means focusing deeply on the task at hand without being distracted. It expands our cognitive abilities.
Newport calls it deep work.
Multitasking and distractions create havoc on our ability to do deep work. Hence the author’s disillusionment with social media.
Interestingly, the author also asks us to allow our brains to be bored.
“To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
Concentration is a skill that is developed over time. You cannot just turn it on and off.
During your shutdown time, resist your urge to answer emails or scroll social media.
This will allow your brain to go into a deeper state of relaxation.
And this is how the brain restores and recharges for the next day. Don’t interrupt that!
Fix your breathing, fix your life.
The lesson of this book is simple.
Breathe from your nose, not from your mouth.
To make this case, the author shows us studies and experiments. The proposition is quite convincing.
“Mouthbreathing begets more mouthbreathing.”
Mouthbreathing is like a downward spiral. When you do it, it deforms your airways. And that makes us more prone to breathe from the mouth.
Not only that, it contributes to poor outcomes of physical health.
To prove this the author and one of his companions performed an experiment. They spent ten days exclusively breathing from their mouths. Their nostrils were plugged and taped. And then they spent ten days breathing only from the nose.
“It turns out that when breathing at a normal rate, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air.”
The results conclusively showed the negative effects of mouthbreathing.
The author’s research also shows that for long, humans have known about the importance of breathing correctly. This can be seen from the ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts.
Healing the invisible.
Dr. Paul Conti tells us all about trauma, its effects on the body and mind, and how it can spread.
“We’re not meant to face trauma alone. To that end, it’s important to rely on allies — family and friends, doctors and therapists, pets, support groups, medicine, gardens, you name it.”
The author emphasizes the importance of ‘compassion, community, and humanity’ for trauma healing. We need other people. We need their kindness and wisdom.
In addition to this, Conti also impresses on the importance of being better allies to ourselves.
In short, we need our own kindness and that of others.
“Damaging stories about ourselves are sort of like myths that no one really wants to read but that get knitted together anyway into the collection of stories that become our false life narrative.”
The author calls trauma the author of false narratives.
It writes negative and untrue stories. We have to edit these stories to avoid being stuck with them.
This book provides a comprehensive discussion of trauma and its healing.
Work smarter, not harder!
This book brings us the concept of MED. Minimum Effective Dose. It means the minimum amount of effort needed to produce a desired result.
The author gives us examples of MED in play. He gives us practical exercises that we can inculcate in our lives. These include The Russian Kettlebell Swing and Myotatic Crunch.
“Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.”
The author is a proponent of a slow-carb diet. He himself lost 20 pounds in a month with it.
In the slow-carb diet, you have to get rid of all the white carbs. Each of your meals should include one item from the categories of protein, legumes, and vegetables.
“Stop wishing and start doing.”
Tim Ferriss is a fan of oversimplification.
Instead of making many complex changes, we need to simplify them. This will allow us to implement them easily.
“Don’t use skepticism as a thinly veiled excuse for inaction or remaining in your comfort zone.”
This book is an important resource for health.
Here is why we need to sleep well.
The author discusses the sleeping habits of humans and how they have evolved over time.
We stay awake longer and create havoc on our circadian rhythm.
“Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended. The number of sleep bouts, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs has all been comprehensively distorted by modernity.”
Sleeping well is important for our health and lifespan. It also helps in our emotional and cognitive development.
The author also contrasts our monophasic sleeping pattern (sleeping at night only) with the biphasic sleep pattern of the tribes whose lives haven’t changed much with time.
Their schedule includes an afternoon nap along with nighttime sleep.
“…shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.”
Sleep aids in memory.
When we sleep after learning something new. Our sleep works to consolidate those memories. If we don’t sleep then, it doesn’t matter how much we sleep later on.
“Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing event.”
I already love ‘sleep’. Matthew Walker is making me love it even more. Don’t judge me, okay?
A new approach to life and health.
We want to live long. We also don’t want to spend the end days of our lives dependent on other people.
Then we have to make sure that if we live long, we are healthy.
“We need to think about prevention early, and the more the deck is stacked against you genetically, the harder you need to work and the sooner you need to start.”
Peter Attia is a physician who tackles this topic.
He brings us the concept of Medicine 3.0. This approach focuses on prevention rather than intervention and prioritizes healthspan over life span.
Sign me up!
The author focuses on nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and exercise in order to improve the quality of life.
“Radiologists see so much degeneration in the cervical spine, brought on by years of hunching forward to look at phones, that they have a name for it: ‘tech neck.’
This book is a very important read for those who want to live long while being healthy.
Balancing the scales of pain and pleasure.
Don’t run from the pain. It will make it even worse.
Anna Lembke makes us realize how running from misery is making us even more miserable.
“The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.”
Pleasure and pain regions in the brain overlap. And they maintain an equilibrium. More pleasure means more dopamine. And that tips the balance in favor of pleasure.
Then our brain works in order to restore the balance.
“Pleasure and pain are co-located.”
Here is the thing, we are not allowing that balance to occur. We eat to induce pleasure.
We scroll on social media to induce pleasure. We medicate every type of pain away.
As a result, mental illnesses and addiction are on the rise.
“…boredom is also an opportunity for discovery and invention. It creates the space necessary for a new thought to form…”
The author tells us to observe our thoughts and emotions, even if they are uncomfortable or painful. When we allow ourselves to be bored, we have to face scary questions. And that is important.
We cannot just use the noise of podcasts and music to suppress our thoughts.
The concept of the pleasure-pain balance in this book has stuck with me. Whenever something undesirable happens, I remind myself that my balance is being restored.
The ins and outs of creativity.
This book is an invitation for us to observe the nature around us and to seek inspiration from it.
Rick Rubin, a long-time music producer shares his thoughts on creativity. He motivates us to create. To bring the fruit of our labor into this world.
“The person who makes something today isn’t the same person who returns to the work tomorrow.”
He also tells us about the pitfalls of the creative process.
Being a perfectionist or engaging in unnecessary competition can hinder the artist’s work. It feels almost as if Rubin is likening the creative process to that of a spiritual state.
“As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.”
He also says that good art divides people. If no one is critical of your work, it means you haven’t gone far enough.
Doesn’t matter whether you create music, stories, or paintings. If you are an artist, then this book is for you.
The complex network behind our emotions.
Lisa Barrett is a psychologist who studies emotions.
“Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.”
Our understanding of emotions is that they arise in response to something. The author shows us that emotions are constructed by our brains.
The brain predicts what is going to happen next with the help of emotions. The emotions arise based on past experiences, cultural conditioning, and body processes.
“Everything you feel is based on prediction from your knowledge and past experience. You are truly an architect of your experience. Believing is feeling.”
Lisa Barett’s research shows that there is no universal way of interpreting emotions.
Interpretation of feelings is highly contextual.
The author tells us about interoception. It is the brain’s ability to process external and internal stimuli.
Interoception is geared towards survival. It has a predictive role by helping us understand a situation. It also guides us to what an appropriate response is.
Interoception has a role in emotion forming as emotions are not only in response to external events.
This book is as fascinating as it can get. If the human mind intrigues you, you should pick it up.
Fix your life by understanding time.
This book has made a significant impact on my life.
Originally written in German, this book tackles the topic of our most important treasure, time. The interesting thing is, that time can be expanded or shortened.
Er… what?
“Nature has programmed our minds to register the passage of minutes and hours, but how we do so is up to us.”
When we are engrossed in something meaningful, we lose the passage of time. When we are stuck in an uncomfortable situation, minutes start to seem like hours.
But what about the clock?
Klein makes us realize that we have started to rely too much on mechanical clocks while ignoring the one nature blessed us with. Our body has an internal rhythm. And by understanding it better, we can work in a more productive way.
“No matter how remarkable the moments of our life are, we fail to notice them if we are not receptive.”
This book will make you think long and hard about time. It will also motivate you to make your life productive by embracing your biological clock.
If you found this article useful and want to support NovelNest, join my email list below to get notified whenever I publish something new.
If you enjoyed these book recommendations, check out the rest of my book lists on my blog- https://www.thenovelnest.com/blog
Affiliate Disclaimer: This post features Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links.
