A short Optimize plus one podcast by Brian Johnson explaining that not all breaks are equally restorative. Drawing on Kelly McGonigal (and the APA) and a NASA guideline, Brian lists evidence-backed "good" break activities (exercise, social connection, nature, meditation, creative hobbies, etc.) versus less restorative "bad" ones (gambling, excessive TV, heavy drinking, scrolling). He frames choices as "energizers vs enervators," urging small repeated positive swaps to compound into a better day and life, and closes with calls to Heroic.us resources and his book.
Questions this episode answers
No more than 90 minutes or so.
Kelly McGonigal, referencing the American Psychological Association.
Hey hero, if you're enjoying these daily plus ones, make sure you head to Heroic us to access a ton more resources to help you move from theory to practice to mastery and express the best, most heroic version of yourself today. And now, here's Brian with today's plus one.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. So we know it's important to take good breaks. We want to work for a certain period of time, NASA says no more than 90 minutes or so, and then take a break, repeat, making waves as we oscillate from being on to being off. But do you know that how you take a break matters? Yep. Science says some breaks are better than others, according to Kelly McGonigal, referencing the American Psychological association in her book the Willpower Instinct. Here are the good stress relief strategies she tells us. Exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga and spending time with a creative hobby. Those are all good strategies. And here are the bad ones. Gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. Which of course begs the question, what do you do to take a break and to relieve stress? Kelly tells us why some breaks are better than others. She says rather than releasing dopamine and relying on the promise of reward, the real stress relievers boost mood enhancing brain chemicals like serotonin and gaba, as well as the feel good hormone oxytocin. They also help shut down the brain's stress response, reduce stress hormones in the body, and induce the healing relaxation response. She continues by saying that because they aren't exciting like the dopamine releasers, we tend to underestimate how good they will make us feel. And so we forget about these strategies not because they don't work, but because when we're stressed, our brains persistently mispredict what will make us happy. This means that we'll often talk ourselves out of doing the very thing that will actually make us feel better. That's really powerful stuff. I like to think of our choices as energizers versus enervators. Some things energize us, others enervate us. We want to get really good at knowing what behaviors fall into each bucket and then swap out the innervators for some energizers. Remember, every time we rock a plus one when we almost did, a minus one isn't just a gain of one, it's actually a gain of two plus one instead of minus one equals plus two. Aggregate and compound. All those little plus two's over a day and what do you get? A pretty awesome day over a lifetime. A pretty epic life.
2 +2 +2 We hope you enjoyed today's 1. For more resources to help you move from theory to practice to mastery and express the best, most heroic version of yourself, head to Heroic Us today and if you liked this episode, please leave a positive review and hit the Follow subscribe button on your platform of choice. And if you liked this episode, please leave a positive review and hit the Follow or Subscribe button on your platform of choice. Also, have you heard the news about Brian's book? Activate your heroic potential. Head to Heroic Us Book to learn more and get your copy as well as check out exclusive content and bonuses. That's Heroic Us Book. Let's go hero.
