You’ve read — maybe even been told by a friend or family member — not to live in the past. That’s good advice, for sure.

But are you sure you know how to do so?

I thought I did. I thought wrong. Not terribly wrong, but still.

For while I was being fully aware in the present moment as often as practically possible, I was still giving too much credence to decisions and truths from the past. I now can see that was hurting my mental health.

I came to see that after learning Ellen Langer’s views on the matter.

The learning began by listening to a podcast by Andrew Huberman when he asks the Harvard University psychology professor for her definition of mindfulness. Hers is as spot-on as any I’ve ever heard.

“It’s the simple process of noticing.”

She then explains what keeps us from noticing and being less than mindful: a feeling of certainty. Yet “virtually everything we’re taught is [taught] as if the world is constant and going to stay that way ... that the answer today is going to be the same answer as tomorrow.”

Now all this hit me like the proverbial 2-by-4 across the forehead, but not because it was news. But because there’s one specific time when I forget all this and drink the-world-is-constant Kool-Aid.

When I evaluate a just-completed bike ride.

For instance, if the goal is to complete a hilly course as fast as I’ve done before and I don’t, I can’t help but feel I’ve failed. Even though I know it shouldn’t, feeling I failed bums me out.

Which is why it’s so good to hear Langer say, “We need to let things vary [to] recognize that everything is always changing. [That] everything looks different from different perspectives.”

So if the slower ride time occurs because I need to pedal easily for longer than normal because I went up the hills harder than normal, I should be able to see that as something other than failure.

Just as you should be able to see that 1 plus 1 doesn’t always equal 2.

I’ve listened to three different podcasts where Langer is the guest, and during each she’ll ask her host what’s the answer to the aforementioned mathematical equation. When the host says, “Two,” she’ll explain that’s not always true.

That if you add one piece of chewing gum to the one already in your mouth, the answer to 1 plus 1 is 1. That the same answer is correct when one cloud makes contact with another.

Her point is, “When you know you don’t know, you pay attention [and then] you have choices you’re otherwise blind to.” Those are the sorts of choices I’d like to think this column presents to you.

With that said, something now will be said about a study on flavanols and the potential harm done to your blood vessels by prolonged bouts of sitting. Which in this day and age — and even for really fit individuals — has become common.

What’s not nearly as run-of-the-mill is knowing flavanols are one of the sub-groups of flavonoids. Specifically, they’re the chemical compounds found in various fruits and vegetables, tea, and cocoa that give those foods their colors and your body what it needs to reduce inflammation, oxidation, and aging.

This study, performed at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and published by The Journal of Physiology in October 2024, began with researchers recruiting males between the ages of 18 and 45, giving them a Max VO2 test to determine cardiovascular fitness, and then getting 20 found to be “high fit” and 20 found to be “low fit” to agree to the following. Fast for 12 hours, refrain from caffeine, alcohol, and foods that could affect the experiment, exercise no more than lightly the day before, and then return to drink a drink and sit quietly for two hours.

Before the drinking and the sitting, a baseline of blood flow for each participant was determined. The drink they consumed was a cocoa concoction designed to be either high or low in flavanols.

Just before the sitting ended, the blood flow tests were given again. Those who had consumed the high-flavanol beverage were found to have maintained better blood flow — whether in good cardiovascular condition or not — when compared to those who drank the low-flavanol beverage.

Possibly even more important was the discovery that a high degree of fitness “did not protect against declines in vascular function and blood pressure during sitting.” Which means if you work out more than the average American but sit just as much as they do — about six hours a day — you still experience “declines in endothelial function, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.”

So besides breaking up any prolonged bouts of sitting with standing, stretching, or walking, it may be good to sit back down with some cocoa, green or black tea, maybe even an apple or handful of carrot sticks. All are high in flavanols.