The Psychology Book I Think Everyone Should Read
I listen to a lot of audiobooks about health, wellbeing, psychology and personal development, and every so often I come across one that makes me think, everybody should know this stuff. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by clinical psychologist Dr Julie Smith is one of those books.
What I love about it is that you don’t have to have a mental health problem to benefit from it. It’s full of practical psychology for ordinary life: motivation, confidence, self-doubt, difficult emotions, anxiety, criticism, low mood and those times when life simply doesn’t go according to plan. Julie spent years working as a clinical psychologist before taking psychological education online, and the book essentially brings some of those useful therapeutic tools into everyday language.
This connects beautifully with something I’ve become increasingly passionate about in my own work: we need to look after our minds as well as our bodies.
We understand physical fitness. If we want stronger legs, we train them. If we want better cardiovascular fitness, we walk, cycle, swim or run. If we want to become more flexible, we practise mobility or yoga. We accept that these things require repetition. Yet when it comes to our minds, we can somehow expect ourselves automatically to know how to deal with motivation, disappointment, criticism, stress, fear and self-doubt.
Why would we?
These are skills too.
One of the ideas in Julie’s work that I think is particularly relevant to fitness is that motivation isn’t something we can simply sit around waiting for. This is enormously important because one of the most common things I hear around exercise is, “I just don’t feel motivated.”
If you only exercise on the days when you leap out of bed desperate to go to the gym, you may be waiting quite a long time.
Sometimes action has to come first.
That’s why I often use my 15-minute rule. Put your trainers on and tell yourself you’re only going to do 15 minutes. Walk through the door. Get on the bike. Start walking. Begin your warm-up. After 15 minutes, if you genuinely feel dreadful, you can stop. But very often something interesting happens: once you’ve started, continuing becomes much easier.
This is where psychology and personal training meet.
The hardest part of a workout isn’t necessarily the squat, the weight or the treadmill. Sometimes the hardest part happens an hour earlier when the voice in your head says, I’m tired. I can’t be bothered. I’ll do it tomorrow.
Learning to notice that voice without automatically obeying it is a form of training in itself.
The book also made me think about how much our physical state affects our emotional state. When somebody tells me they feel terrible, I’m interested in the whole picture. Have you slept? Have you eaten? Have you been outside? Have you moved your body? Are you exhausted? Are you stressed? Have you been sitting alone scrolling through your phone for three hours?
That doesn’t mean every difficult emotion can be fixed by going for a walk. Of course it can’t. But body and mind aren’t two completely separate systems.
Movement can be one of the tools in our wellbeing toolkit.
So can sleep.
So can eating nourishing food.
So can breathing.
So can spending time outside.
So can talking to somebody.
So can yoga, meditation, relaxation and simply allowing yourself some recovery.
And sometimes what we need is professional psychological or medical support. Wellbeing isn’t about pretending that a green smoothie and a yoga class solve everything.
Another reason I recommend this book is its approach to emotions. We have a tendency to divide emotions into “good” and “bad”. Happiness is good. Confidence is good. Anxiety is bad. Sadness is bad. Anger is bad.
But being human doesn’t work like that.
We’re supposed to have a range of emotions. Feeling anxious before doing something new doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t do it. Feeling uncomfortable during a challenging workout doesn’t automatically mean you should stop. Feeling disappointed doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
One of the most useful skills we can develop is learning to ask, “What am I feeling, and what do I need?” rather than immediately trying to get rid of every uncomfortable feeling.
This is incredibly relevant to changing our health too, because changing habits can be uncomfortable.
Starting a gym when you’ve never exercised before can feel uncomfortable.
Learning to lift weights can feel uncomfortable.
Changing how you eat can feel uncomfortable.
Walking into your first yoga class can feel uncomfortable.
Being a beginner can feel uncomfortable.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing the wrong thing. Sometimes it simply means you’re doing something unfamiliar.
Then there’s self-talk, something I think about constantly in personal training.
Listen to how you speak to yourself.
I’m useless.
I’m so unfit.
I look awful.
I’ve got no willpower.
I’ve ruined everything.
I can’t do this.
If I stood beside one of my clients saying those things to her throughout a training session, I’d be a terrible personal trainer.
So why should that be the voice we use on ourselves?
I don’t mean standing in front of a mirror pretending everything is wonderful when it isn’t. I mean developing a more useful internal coach.
This is difficult, but I can do difficult things.
I’m learning.
I’m getting stronger.
One workout doesn’t have to be perfect.
I’ve done ten minutes. Let’s do another five.
I had a difficult day yesterday. Today I begin again.
That’s not positive thinking for the sake of it. It’s learning to speak to ourselves in a way that helps us take the next constructive action.
And that may be the biggest thing I take from this book: we can learn skills for dealing with ourselves.
We can learn how to respond to difficult thoughts.
We can learn how to work with motivation rather than waiting for it.
We can learn how to tolerate uncomfortable emotions.
We can learn to recognise when we’re overwhelmed.
We can learn to challenge the stories we tell ourselves.
We can learn when to push ourselves and when we genuinely need to recover.
We can learn how to ask for help.
For me, that’s wellbeing.
It’s why my approach has gradually become about so much more than exercise. Strength training matters enormously. Cardiovascular fitness matters. Nutrition matters. Yoga matters. But so do sleep, breathing, recovery, mindset, relationships, confidence and the way we speak to ourselves.
We are whole people, not a collection of muscles.
That’s why I’d recommend Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? even if you would never normally pick up a book about psychology. You don’t need to read it because something is “wrong” with you. Read it because you have a human brain and occasionally that brain has to navigate a complicated human life.
I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by Julie herself and lasts about 8 hours 39 minutes. It’s also the kind of book you can return to rather than feeling you have to absorb everything at once.
For me, looking after our health isn’t simply about living longer.
It’s about building the physical and psychological tools that help us live better.
Train your body.
Learn about your mind.
Look after both.
Because they belong to the same person.
Selena
Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher & Wellbeing Coach
In Flow Wellbeing Studio, Cheltenham
Find the book and Dr Julie
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? — book and audio editions
Listen to the audiobook on Audible UK
Dr Julie Smith on Instagram (@drjulie)
Dr Julie Smith's official website
