Tool: Go for a Walk

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“The journey is what brings us happiness, not the destination.” - Socrates, in the movie Peaceful Warrior

Going for a walk is absolutely one of my favourite life tools. 

Walking is good for the soul.  Humans have been walking for millennia.  It’s like one of the very first things we accomplish in life.  “Look!  Mikey took a step!  He’s WALKING!!!”

Walking can be part of creating the space.  Taking a five-minute break.  Asking for help.  Changing your perspective.  Getting perspective.  Finding beauty.  Feeling gratitude.

Also, multi-tasking.  With a good cell signal and an earpiece, you can walk and phone-a-friend, do some work calls, listen to an inspirational recording, or get some coaching.  Some of the biggest pivots in my life have happened while I was walking… and I can tell you right where I was.  My friends - including my coaching friends - have helped me through some humdingers.  I have helped myself through some, too.  Walking helps shift our perspective, partly because we’re shifting our perspective the whole time.  You can just leave the old stuff, as you take steps into the new.

Walking can involve trees, neighbors, buildings, stoplights, gardens, flowers, rain, shining sun, squirrels, traffic.  It can be with your friends or alone.  Or, with some new people.  A Meetup group.  A support group.  Your family.  Some of my favourite walks are in the spring… touring lilac bushes in the neighborhood.  I get a little obsessive during lilac season.

One year I broke my toe - right in the spring.  The lilac obsession drove me to get outside; to see how far I could get.  I walked in soft flip-flops, so the broken toe wasn’t squished in tennis shoes.  That is the year I remembered about walking barefoot in the grass.  As I was walking through an open park-like area in my ‘hood, I realized I was in a beautiful grassy area.  Since I was in flip-flops, it wasn’t hard to go barefoot.

Holy cow.  Going barefoot in grass takes walking to a whole other level.

Sometimes we go back to the basics.  Last year after a major leg break, I had to learn to walk again.  It's still a work in progress, but I'm getting out there.  Every time I do, something shifts.  Every single time.  Sometimes, it's just my view.  That's still something.

That’s my experience.  Who knows what yours will be.  Walking takes us up mountains, down paths, through neighborhoods... and back home.  Or wherever.  We never know who we’ll meet along the way.  We never know where our mind will be when we get back, but we do know it can be somewhere different than where we started. 

“The journey is what brings us happiness, not the destination.” - Socrates, in the movie Peaceful Warrior

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