The Best Thing You Can Do For Yourself Right Now
Take a walk to enhance your thinking and improve your health
The moment I step outside and take my first breath, I feel lighter. Almost instantly, as I begin to stride, my mood improves. In the long morning shade of the cottonwoods, I begin to ruminate, thoughts languorously drifting into my mind, spilling onto the grass and slipping away.
It is on my morning walk that I get my best thinking done.
It comes as no surprise that a study from the National Institute of Health shows that getting outside for such a simple act as to take a walk, whether for 10 minutes or for 30, can jog thinking, and increase not only the amount of thinking, but the depth of thought and understanding.
Imagine if we each took a few more minutes per day to strut about our environs — imagine what we could do with the thoughts we’d conjure.
Henry David Thoreau heralded the art of strolling in his aptly-named essay, “Walking.” In it, he describes his rambles through woods and fields, heading to nowhere in particular for hours on end, seemingly with the goal of getting lost. Pity that we all can’t be like Thoreau, with ample time to roam and to think. Imagine the thinking we could get done if we did.