🚶‍♂️ why you don't walk enough.

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Let’s talk about walking.

Or more specifically, why we don’t walk enough.

Walking used to be at the core of human experience.

There was nothing that had to be done in ancient times that didn’t require the use of your two feet.

To socialize, you had to walk to see friends.

To eat, you had to walk to the field or the market.

To travel, you had to walk across countries.

To worship, you had to walk to your church or place of worship.

Despite its relative necessity compared to today, walking wasn’t just viewed as a chore.

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, was more than aware of both the physiological and mental effects of walking.

The human body was designed to walk.

There are over 250 species of primates on the planet… and yet none walk exclusively on two legs.

Bipedalism, or the ability to move on two feet, is a distinctly human characteristic.

We don’t appreciate enough how incredible it is that we can walk.

The very act of walking down the street is in outright defiance of the law of gravity.

When we walk, we cycle back and forth between balancing on our left and right feet, spending up to 90% of the time on just one foot at a time.

Our centre of gravity is also high; much higher than most land-based mammals.

Not only is walking a skill, but it’s one that only humans can develop.

Kinda cool.

Not only that, but walking is the most basic form of human exercise imaginable.

And as Bill Bryson says…

Take a minute to look around you at our modern world.

We’ve all but engineered walking out of our lives.

We’ve built cities and designed lives that revolve around vehicles and highways.

Our lives are geographically spread out, and it’s not uncommon for people to spend multiple hours of their days sitting in traffic.

We’ve recognized the problem. Walking is not only a good habit, but it’s core to how humans were designed. It’s a skill that only humans have, and one that we don’t use enough.

Part of our problem with walking in 2023 is that we don’t see it for what it is.

It isn’t just a low-impact form of exercise (although it certainly is that).

Walking has a profound impact on our cognitive and emotional health.

Don’t take my word for it, though.

Next time you’re bored, go for a walk.

Next time you’re stressed, go for a walk.

Next time you need to think, go for a walk.

Next time you can’t make a decision, go for a walk.

See how you feel after.

There’s a ton of fascinating research on the subject… but I’m not linking it here for a reason.

I don’t want a scientific paper to convince you to go for a walk.

I want you to go for a walk, and then let your experience determine how you feel about it.

Trust me on this: it’s absolutely incredible how the simple act of getting up and moving your own two feet can have profound impacts on your life.

You see, the very act of walking slows the world down.

We’re so accustomed to barreling through life at 100km/h, both literally and figuratively.

Sure, we drive our cars fast… but we’ve also never lived in a society so fast-paced. Everything we could ever want is at our fingertips in an instant.

Our brains mimic our reality.

In a world where nearly everything is instantaneous, cultivating a life of intentionality is crucial.

The act of walking slows down both the external and the internal.

The great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote almost all of his literary works on long walks.

He would walk up to 8 hours a day, with a tattered notebook in his pocket that he’d pull out and scribble down ideas on, only to stuff it back in and keep walking before the next idea eluded him.

You see, many of the cures to our modern maladies aren’t complicated. In most cases, we’ve just lost touch with the basics.

We’ve made life so complex that we forget the most simple of things.

Read more. Scroll less.

Create more. Consume less.

Walk more. Sit less.

Take this as a challenge. Try to find a few ways to insert more walking into your day.

Find a way to anchor your walks next to an existing habit.

It doesn’t have to be a huge thing - just take a 15 minute walk after you eat every meal.

15 minutes × 3 = 45 minutes. (Impressive math from a college drop-out, I know.)

45 minutes of walking will add between 3,000-5,000 steps to your day. In a world where the average American walks only 3,000-4,000 steps a day, that makes a very real difference.

Small habits + long time period = big changes.

So go for a walk. You might not enjoy it. But I guarantee you it’ll be good for you, and you just might love it.

- Lukas