Greg McKeown:
Welcome. I’m your host, Greg McKeown, and I am here with you on this journey. Have you ever set a New Year’s resolution to get healthier? It’s an annual tradition to sign up for gym memberships and then never use them. It’s so established that the entire gym business model is based upon people not actually using the service. After all, it’s long been thought that to significantly improve your mental and physical health takes expensive gym memberships, newfangled equipment at home, workout trainers, and more. But what if all of this is false? What we know now is that there is a much simpler and easier alternative.
Today, I have invited Anna McKeown back to the show to talk about this. Anna has this uncanny ability to cut through the noise to get to what’s really essential. She does it in conversations in our marriage all the time, and she’s doing it right now with her new essential intent for the year. As you’ll see, by the end of this episode, you will be able to establish the simplest lifelong habit necessary for avoiding cognitive decline and improving physical health. Let’s begin.
Well done to all of you who are learning faster, understanding more deeply, and increasing your influence by teaching the ideas from these podcasts to other people within the first 24 to 48 hours of listening to them. Thank you, really, thank you for doing that.
Anna, welcome back to the podcast.
Anna McKeown:
Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Greg McKeown:
This last week you read a quote to me that really hit both of us hard, and I shared it on social media, and I just want to read one of the comments to the quote before we even get to it.
Juliet Potter: “There are no words to adequately capture just how true this statement is. It’s the reason everything has shifted now post the pandemic. It’s the reason employees are demanding better work-life balance, and it’s the reason people would rather work for themselves.”
It’s had loads of likes in and of itself, her response to the quote. So, could you just launch us off with the quote itself?
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. It’s by Dr. Stephen Ilardi and he said, “Human beings were never designed for the poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep deprived, socially isolated frenzied pace of a 21st-century life.”
Greg McKeown:
Oh, it’s such a great statement. It covers so many challenges. What drew you to that quote in the first place? Give us some context.
Anna McKeown:
Well, there’s been a recent wake-up call in my family history and in my circle of family and friends of cognitive to generation as people age, and it’s a very present and newly real threat to my own health.
Greg McKeown:
Well, and I don’t think you’re alone in this. I think that everybody listening to this knows somebody who has suffered from dementia or has something in their own family history or has heard that it’s an inevitable part of aging, that you will have mental deterioration. And so all of this combined leads to this awakening. But what really is the awakening? It’s not just that there’s a problem, the awakening for you is that we can do something about it.
Anna McKeown:
That, combined with just not feeling great with habits around the holidays of not eating very well and not sleeping, not having the same sleep habits perhaps as normal, I was feeling not great and was looking for something helpful. And I found something helpful. And it was really interesting because the article was actually about long-term healing for like anxiety and depression, but I recognized that many of the tools that were listed in this article were consistent with books on cognitive decline on how to prevent Alzheimer’s and geriatric cognitive decline.
Greg McKeown:
I think that the term that stood out to me as you were talking about your insights was this sense of the need for deep healing and that that phrase deep healing versus just surface recovery or surface health. The idea that if you can be deeply exhausted, deeply burned out, all of this terminology, then, therefore, the antidote must be equivalent to it. A deep healing is necessary. And I think that seemed to be when I was listening to you, the thing that really triggered for you like, yes, this is a sustained effort. In fact, you described it to me just this morning as your own essential intent for the year.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. My essential intent for the year is to improve my mental health by improving my physical health. So in one sense, what we’re talking about today, people may just go, oh yeah, I totally know this, and maybe a lot of people have got this down. I know there are people who have good physical exercise habits and mental health habits, but I’m part of that percentage that has my ups and downs, and that can definitely improve in these areas. And so for me, as I went through these lists, I did not feel called to tackle them all at once to try and do them all. I would like to eventually, but I believe and hope that I’m going to live a few more decades here. And so long term, my essential intent is to become really good at all of these things. But this year, the priority has become clear to me, and I need to do better in my movement and exercise and better in my sleep habits.
Greg McKeown:
And when you shared that with me, there was a certain fire in you, almost a ferocity, but that’s overdoing it as you described, the, therefore, what of this for our lives. Do you even know what I’m talking about when I say that?
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, I do. It’s one of those moments when you learn a truth, and it hits you on a very deep level. And when that happens to me, I feel intensely motivated to live that truth. So when I read the various list of healthy habits and things to do, it became clear to me. And for me, it was a spiritual experience. So that’s the only way I can describe it. But for other people, they’ll have different ways of describing it, but those moments where something sinks into your soul as a call that you need to stand up and do something about this. And for me, in this moment, I needed to stand up and take control of this aspect of my life that I’ve been neglecting.
Greg McKeown:
Well, and what that makes me think of is this idea that the longest journey will ever take is the 18 inches from our head to our heart. That the actual specific habits of our lives are well known, you know, the things that we need to do, but it’s a big difference between knowing that and being able to quote that and being able to feel that internal change of conviction that leads to real trade-offs. I think it was just the last episode where I was talking about essential intent, one decision that makes a thousand. It felt like that when you were talking, you had an awakening that was one decision that I could feel was going to make a thousand decisions this year and beyond.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, and it’s important to me because my life is complex in that I feel obligations, and I want these obligations, but I feel obligations to many people, not just to myself. And so I’ll just be honest in that the change that I’m going to make right now is probably quite small, but it is significant in that it will have an impact on many people. And so I’m starting small with walking. I just need to get walking, and to do that consistently every day is where I’m going to begin.
Greg McKeown:
What’s profound to me about that isn’t the idea of walking. Everybody knows that. If everybody listening to this that isn’t doing that, that feels that they need to do this, could suddenly wave a magic wand, and this became a normal part of their routine for the next year, for the next decade, for the next 20 years, so that their life quality improves and that their longevity increases and that their mental capacity increases. That’s profound. And so that’s the difference. I think that’s so significant. It’s not the idea, but it’s the actual execution and the feeling that one can make those changes. But what’s the obstacle in doing that for you?
Anna McKeown:
Time.
Greg McKeown:
What you said to me was, Greg, you might not like the trade-offs I’m going to need to make to really implement this every day, every week, every month going forward. You said there may be things that you’d like to do, and I’m just going to say no to you. Oh yeah, that’s be nice, but I’m not going to be doing that. I’m going to be doing this.
Anna McKeown:
I love that you created that little dialogue at the end. I don’t think I actually said that at the very end. Oh, I’m going to say no to you. Did I say that?
Greg McKeown:
Oh, I think you did. I don’t think I’m making that up. At least, that’s the story I heard as you were explaining.
Anna McKeown:
No, I think you’re right, though. I think that what you have concluded is right. You know me so well.
Greg McKeown:
Let me say it this way to the people listening now. You are listening in all sorts of situations. You might be listening as you are on a walk. Well done, first of all. You might be listening as you are on a run. You might be listening while you’re doing some other exercise. This should be a moment of congratulations for you. There’s other people here listening as they’re doing many, many other different activities. And I think the message for you is that you are an exceptionally valuable asset in your life that you are fully worth investing in. And that even if that does mean that there are awkward conversations and trade-offs at the margin that need to be made, it’s worth doing it. And that’s what I think I saw in you was an awakening that this is worth it, it’s worth the investment, and it’s worth any social difficulty.
Anna McKeown:
Well, I think I’m at a place where I recognize that if I don’t make these changes, then I will decline, and I will decline both cognitively and physically. And I think cognitively is even scary for me for some reason.
Greg McKeown:
I don’t think you’re alone in that. So what have you been learning about this?
Anna McKeown:
Well, I’ve been reading an article on the benefits of walking, and one of the things that it states is a clinical trial of older adults in Japan, published in the Journal of American Geriatric Society in 2015, found that after 12 weeks, men and women in a prescribed daily walking exercise group had significantly greater improvements in memory and executive function, which is the ability to pay focused attention and to switch among various tasks and to hold multiple items in working memory compared with those in a control group who were told just to carry on with their usual daily routine. (1)
Greg McKeown:
That’s crazy to me. Such a small, simple change could affect mental capacity in that way. Carry on.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, just walking, which is amazing to me. And then also walking in nature is definitely connected to lowering our stress and improving our mood. It stimulates the production of neurotransmitters in the brain, such as endorphins. So that’s definitely connected. There’s a really interesting article about that, in particular, walking with nature around you, seeing things like trees and birds and grass and bushes as compared to an urban landscape.
Greg McKeown:
And I think that this is so helpful to have the peer-reviewed articles to go with this, and we’ll put that in the show notes because otherwise it just seems like vanilla advice you might get all over the place, but to actually see the speed with which these things can have a direct and measurable effect, I think is startling.
Anna McKeown:
I do too. And the studies that have been given aren’t all in nature. So these are all independent things that if you can occasionally go to a park to walk if you don’t live somewhere near a nature landscape that it can help to improve things, but just walking on a treadmill or on the sidewalk are going to have positive benefits.
Greg McKeown:
Hmm. Tell me anything else that you’ve been reading recently as you’ve been scanning and studying all these things that has captured your attention.
Anna McKeown:
I’m just going to read it directly to you. “The 10,000 steps goal is thought to be a realistic minimum, and it’s good, but for complete risk reduction, people should aim for more. Says William Tigbe, a physician and public health researcher at the University of Warwick and lead author of the study showing that 15,000 steps per day can lead to greater benefits. He goes on, “In our study, those who took 5,000 extra steps had no metabolic syndrome risk factors at all.” (1)
Greg McKeown:
This is crazy to me. We think of highly complex workout routines. We think about all the things that we ought to do. Sometimes we can be completely overwhelmed to the point that we take no action at all. In Effortless, I remember the idea that we get overwhelmed about the 10,000th step instead of taking the first step, but in this case, it’s sort of literal. It’s like instead of thinking about all the different things you could possibly do to improve your cognitive function now and into the future, literally just start walking.
Anna McKeown:
Yes. Isn’t there something that you say where you talk about just lowering the bar or the courage to be rubbish?
Greg McKeown:
The courage to be rubbish.
Anna McKeown:
This is my courage to be rubbish because I have to do something, and so I’m going to do what may be considered as the rubbish job of walking because I believe that if I can just walk every day, I can do that for the rest of my life. I may not be able to run my entire life when I’m in my eighties or nineties. Maybe I will be able to, I don’t know. I hope to live that long, but I know I can walk if I start now and if I do this every day.
Greg McKeown:
Well, and there’s power in establishing not just a good habit or just a healthy habit but any healthy lifelong habit. I mean, there’s a difference there.
Anna McKeown:
Well, and maybe I should say, of course, I don’t know what the future holds regarding health, but I know that if I don’t walk every day now, I will not be walking every day into my eighties and my nineties.
Greg McKeown:
Well, I think that’s an absolutely valid point, and it’s the kind of habit that I am drawn to myself because I want things that are truly sustainable. I want to be investing in activities that don’t just last for a year or five years or 10 years, but for literally the rest of my life, let’s say that’s 40 years, let’s say it could be 50 years. Those are the habits I’m interested in because I’m interested in consistency over intensity.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, and something else I learned about walking versus running is that running is going to be a more efficient workout. If you work out for a half an hour of running, you’re going to burn more calories than, say, an hour of walking. But it’s pretty close. So if I walked for a bit more than an hour, I’m burning as many calories as if I’d run for half an hour.
Greg McKeown:
And we’re a little bit lucky this way because since we came to this kind of eureka moment, we’ve gone walking together for that hour-ish just about every day, or we’re only a few days into it. Yeah. What has the overall effect of that been, would you say, over the last few days?
Anna McKeown:
Well, it’s felt very empowering. It’s one of the things I felt like I’ve taken a step into doing something that is vital for my mental and my physical health in the long term. So that’s been amazing. And, of course, it’s been good time with you being able to talk
Greg McKeown:
What else are you going to say right about now?
You can’t tell this. Hopefully, you can’t tell this, but we’re recording this using one microphone, talk about cognitive decline, and we wouldn’t normally do that, but this is the circumstances we’re in today. You couldn’t record this way with any other person that I was having on the podcast, that’s for sure. But even under some circumstances, on some days, we wouldn’t want to be this close while we were having this kind of conversation, but it’s working here.
Anna McKeown:
No, it really has been good, and I’ve appreciated your support, but even if I didn’t have it, I need to get out and walk.
Greg McKeown:
And I think that’s the right attitude there. To be honest. I think that protecting the asset does begin with personal conviction, and it’s not enough. You really do need support. You have to make the execution as effortless as possible. And, of course, one way to do that is to bring in other people, is to exercise together. I’m reminded of our friends 20 years ago, we were on tour, and they told us the story about how they became black belts in karate, and there was three people that did it together. And there wasn’t one week where one of them didn’t want to go, but cause the other two were going to be picking them up, or they were meeting them, and they had that responsibility, they all ended up getting the black belt within those several years that they were doing it. And so, put aside that goal. The fact is, if you can have people support you, of course, it makes the task much more doable. And that’s what we are finding already as we’re doing this.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. My goal right now is to get out at least once a day for at least 15 minutes, although we’ve done much better than that. But if I have a rubbish goal and I can achieve that rubbish goal, that will really help me to maintain and build upon that goal.
Greg McKeown:
That’s really important, isn’t it? To have that lower and upper bound to have a minimum. This is the rubbish version so that even on a rough day, even when you’re not really feeling up to it, or it’s disrupted in all sorts of other ways, we’re traveling, we’re in an unusual place, and we’ve done that a lot this last year. We have a lot more of it to go this coming year, you need to have the ritual that you can do in easy days, in routine days, but also in times that are disrupted.
Anna McKeown:
That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Greg McKeown:
To be honest, what we’ve talked about today is so much more focused on walking than I expected because it isn’t just walking. You have us drinking green smoothies morning and night. We’ve eliminated sugar.
Anna McKeown:
I just want to say I’m not making green smoothies in the morning and night. I just make a bunch of it, and sometimes people don’t want it, and so we have, we have enough to last us through the entire day. So sometimes I’m having some in the morning, and we just started trying to drink it at night as a substitute for something sweet because we really like sweet things at night, but I don’t want to send a message that I’m making a ton of changes.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, but you are.
Anna McKeown:
No, I’m revisiting smoothies. We just haven’t had a blender in England. We finally got back here, and I could use it again,
Greg McKeown:
But I would say that what’s happening is that the intent is there. That’s the one decision, but it’s already filtering into many micro-supporting mechanisms. The daily walk is a clear one and a major one, and it’s supported in peer-reviewed journals, but it’s also immediately affecting diet, and there’s urgency to it.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. Well, I think think that is the principle of small changes having
Greg McKeown:
A disproportionate impact.
Anna McKeown:
Yes. I think that when you start small, it has an upward cycle.
Greg McKeown:
What I think is that it’s this combination of clear essential intent that has conviction and clarity and enough strength in order to make trade-offs almost before you know what the trade-offs are going to be combined with these infinitesimally small micro-changes that you keep making all along the way so that overall, your intent becomes a strategy and the system supports that strategy and so that over time you really are living as a healthy person, investing in your much older self.
Anna McKeown:
I will say that I felt the worst during this month as I got worse sleep. ate poorly. So stepping away from those things had a kind of a downward spiral. We’ve been biking a lot in England. That’s been very good. We haven’t been biking since we’ve been here. And so taking that one step of empowerment into walking while we’re here has empowered me to make another small change, which empowers another small change.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. So it goes from a decision into these small immediate changes, and that builds momentum. Over time. So nevertheless, I think it’s been a multifaceted change, and some of it’s just been getting back to what was before, but I think the thing I want to say is that this is one decision that’s made a thousand. Yes, the thousand has not fully all been made. It’s not all conscious, but many things have happened almost spontaneously out of that single decision, and I’ve known how to support you without really even talking about every single change because I know what the essential intent is. I know how clear it is and how much it matters, and that’s always the benefit of being able to get really clear, not just sort of clear.
Anna, thank you for being on the show again.
Anna McKeown:
Always a pleasure.
Greg McKeown:
As you’re listening to this, what is one idea that you’ve heard that has caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you, and who is one person who you can share that with? Either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening? Perhaps it has something to do with this counterintuitively powerful habit of simply walking, getting outside, and walking, and if you can walk with your partner or walk with somebody else, all the better. If you can have a chance to talk while you’re going, all the better. Or maybe it’s something about the power of having an essential intent around protecting the asset for the whole year that you keep coming back to that again and again and again. Or maybe it’s more to do with this idea of making a single decision that makes a thousand decisions, that your health, of course, is not one decision, but the overarching objective is, and once you commit to it, once you think of yourself as a healthy person, you start to make many small adjustments over time.
Whichever idea is that captures your attention, I hope you’ll agree with Dr. Stephen Ilardi, “That human beings were never designed for the poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep deprived, socially isolated frenzied pace of 21st-century life.”
Thank you, really, thank you for listening, for learning, for investing in yourself so that you can make your highest contribution and for decades to come. If you found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do so so that you can get new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday as effortlessly as possible. If you are new to the One Minute Wednesday newsletter, please sign up for that. You can sign up at gregmckeown.com/1MW, and I’ll see you next time.
(1) Consumer Reports. (n.d.). How to Get the Biggest Benefits of Walking. [online] Available at: https://www.consumerreports.org/exercise-fitness/benefits-of-walking-a3407007507/?EXTKEY=NH2CHTHB5&utm_source=acxiom&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20230101_nsltr_health&utm_nsltr=health&utm_segment=basic [Accessed 6 Jan. 2023].
