Latest / Just For Today / 92. The Power of Walking
Transcript
- Jessica Figueroa: Good morning, lovely, lovely people. Thank you so much for tuning in again to the Just For Today podcast. My name is Cindy Marlar. Today we are going to make time, if you can, for a very long walk. I want to tell you something about these long walks. This is not for the faint of heart historically. So Charles Dickens, who you might know as the author of a Christmas story, used to spend four to six hours a day. walking. He didn't consider this something he did for exercise. This was something he did for his thinking, for his writing. He had a schedule. He'd wake up and write every morning from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Then he'd have lunch and then he would walk for hours. And then by the time he got home he'd have solutions to his plot problems. He'd have his characters developed. This was in London. He would also get insomnia and then wake up in the middle of the night, I don't recommend this, and walk the city. And he was not just walking around his neighborhood doing the same loop. He was going around and looking for places that were unlike where he lived. He was studying people, he was studying things, he was learning the store windows. But hours, you guys, not a weighted best kind of walk, just a stroll. Because he understood, even without anyone telling him, that there was a link between his ability to think and how much walking. He understood that walking fueled his imagination. He was famous for taking guests on a walk. Imagine being invited over to someone's house for lunch or dinner, and then you show up and there's a four to five hour walk included that you weren't expecting. But his discipline in this exercise was remarkable. And I love that he didn't separate physical movement from intellectual work. And this is one of the things I love teaching about in any of my platforms. It's one of the five pillars I teach on. We cannot separate our physical from everything else. From our financial, from our spiritual, physical. We are physical beings. And walking, just strolling, is good for the mind in ways we can't imagine. And it doesn't, we don't need a weighted vest. We don't need weighted ankle weights. We don't need to be speed walking. Just a regular, relaxed walk at about two and a half miles per hour for a long period of time is going to have so much benefit. And Look up people. You'll see that people that have done that, that continue to do it, these long, slow walks, especially people that require a lot of thinking and imagination in what they do in their careers. So just for today, you are going to try to make time for a longer than normal, slow, leisurely walk. If you don't have time today, I want you to make a plan to do it in the next seven days. And then drive somewhere and do it. Drive somewhere that's new and different. Look at the stores. Go to the mall. That's safe. There's security. Did you know mall walking is a thing before the mall opens in the morning? Most malls are usually open and they provide security guards for people to walk. And just go on a leisurely walk through the mall for a couple of hours, do the upstairs, do the downstairs, look at the windows, study the things you see, and just be opening your mind. While you're moving, you're solving problems that your own mind needs to understand. So just for today, we're going on a long walk. I'll see you tomorrow. You're gonna be nice, good. Tired and rested from that long walk too.