The Power Of Walking – How One Habit Can Change Your Brain, Health, & Life

most people their personality their identity isn't something that they chose it's something that's subservient to the system that created it by definition meaning if you want to recreate who you are because if I could attribute my writing and Creator success to one thing it would obviously be walking I mean we can even just have Devon if you can just put up an image of like your brain when it's just sitting around and your brain when it's walking to form this new Walking habit and to get addicted to it I believe it's wise to pull the patterns and principles from video games so that we can implement it in our habit formation so that you can form the Habit if you're bored go on a walk if you're stressed go on a walk if you're uninspired go on a walk if you're overweight go on a walk most if not all of your problems can be relieved if not solved by going on a walk for those of you that know me you know that I truly love walking I cannot stop going on a walk even in this 100° and increasing Arizona heat but what most people don't know is that I used to absolutely hate walking I used to despise walking and I don't mean that I used to just not like going on an intentional walk like going out for a stroll I mean I used to hate walking anywhere I was the definition of lazy but I prefer to think of myself as efficient over lazy because I've always loved going to the gym which is funny I didn't like going on walks but I loved going to the gym I've Loved going to the gym since 15 years old I've been in the gym for I think that's 12 years now so when I was younger I would go to the gym I would watch YouTube I would work on my little side businesses that I had at the time but aside from that you'd probably just find me on the couch or playing video games most of the time like World of Warcraft Call of Duty League of Legends team fight tactics because I've always been the type to do the bare minimum and what I find funny is that I used to play League of Legends matches and team fight tactics matches in between growing my businesses like I would wake up I'd do my work I would then play a match of League of Legends and then I'd do my work again the only reason I did my work is because I was already at my computer and it just made sense to do the work but now I don't really play those anymore honestly they they're kind of enticing maybe I'll get back into him one day it's been a few years now since I've actually played a full video game because now I just go on a walk walk in the sun now to set the scene for how I fell in love with walking I started using nicotine when Jewel became popular you know the little Vapes the little pod Vapes uh I conformed and hopped on the bandwagon during college and eventually going through jewels and other disposable Vapes I eventually came across zins when those first came out and I got on those instead and for those that don't know what zins are they're like tobac less nicotine pouches I thought those were healthier and they arguably are but on a random day in 2019 I don't know exactly when or how or where but I realized that my nicotine abuse was hurting the attention I could give to others and that I also felt very tired so I was kind of just like a corpse of a human being I wasn't able to give dedicated attention to the people in my life that deserve the attention and since I was tired all the time uh that didn't help I would find myself in conversation with someone and then randomly I would just continuously think about oh I need to put in a Zen right now I need to put in a Zen right now and then they'd be like hey like are you listening to me they wouldn't say that exactly but something along those lines I'd be like oh crap and that's when I realized this is actually a problem but around that time and again I'm not sure how I came across this random post on social media and I'm assuming it talked about the benefits of walking and it was closer to the summer so I was in the mindset of I want to lose some weight for the summer I want to get shredded I want to get sixpack abs and the social media post talked about the benefits of walking versus cardio I'm sure both are very important but it talked about how you can walk 10 to 15,000 steps a day and burn x amount of calories and that simple habit can take place for cardio in terms of calorie burn maybe not cardiovascular health but you get what I mean so these Stars aligned here where I didn't want to use nicotine anymore walks came onto my radar and I decided to quit nicotine cold turkey and replace that habit with walks so it was like a complete reinvention of myself in those two domains the ones that were occupying the most of my attention so I decided okay we're going all in on this we're going to go on walks we're going to quit nicotine we're just going to focus on Improvement shredding business building Etc monk mode in a sense but like a mental monk mode I wasn't disappearing from my friends or anyone else I was kind of just disappearing from the habits the bad habits in my life so my strategy for this was whenever I felt the urge to use nicotine I would immediately train my brain it was it was actually pretty easy at first honestly just retrain my brain to immediately get up go on a walk put in chewing gum and I was able to quit relatively seamlessly now I do believe there are benefits in nicotine I still use it I don't really want to talk about that or endorse that do your own research do whatever you want but just for transparency I use nicotine definitely not as often as I used to but I still use it for its benefits and work cognition Etc so after a month of walking the glorified 10,000 steps a day just like 10 to 15 minute walks around the apartment complex that I had at the time the result was an absolute love for walking now for 5 years there has never been a time where I have walked under 10,000 steps a day it started at 10,000 steps increased to 15,000 there was a time when I lived in Austin Texas and just didn't spend any time in the house I was just outside all day long I was averaging 20,000 to 25,000 steps a day and now I hover around 15,000 and those that have been here a while kind of know that my name has become more or less synonymous with walking where there's even a podcast by Danny Miranda that I went on while I was in Texas that was literally tit titled the king of walking Dan Co I also discovered that the greats or some of the greatest creatives were right in that like Charles Darwin Steve Jobs they considered walks to be a massively important part of their day I discover the same thing and now some ask how do you get work done if you're walking for multiple hours in a day because it takes time to walk 10,000 15,000 20,000 steps and my advice to that would be to go watch my 4-Hour workday videos or pick up my book The Art of focus or go read chapter 7 of antifragile by NN TB Nasim Nicholas TB I recently read that and it actually gave me a new perspective on my own philosophy of the 4-Hour workday or like procrastination as a the natural filter a way to filter signal from noise meaning that I don't really work I mean I work on my consistent things every single morning but I don't really work unless I have to work because if I don't have to work on something then it's usually just noise it's usually just a distraction and I could be doing much better things with my time like going on a walk being outside in sunlight getting the health benefits from that and being happy another thing is that you probably wouldn't be watching this video if it weren't for walks my ideas wouldn't be the same my content wouldn't be the same my body wouldn't be the same my identity wouldn't be the same so in this video I want to share with you the raw power of walking so you have multiple wi to keep you going with this habit and how to turn walking into a game so you can seamlessly form the Habit yourself my hope with this is to transform your life with one simple habit so let's begin by talking about how walking is the ultimate holistic habit and what I mean by holistic habit means comprehensive or all-encompassing so Mind Body Spirit business business can be exchanged for work or life's work or whatever it is that you do and a popular tweet of mine a few years ago when I was tweeting all the time about walking is long walks are the secret to a lean body and mind now I hope that I can get this point across to you this point is extremely important for understanding the importance of walking and just good habits in general you only have so much time in a day meaning there are only so many habits you can adopt also meaning the habits you choose to implement are of utmost importance because they create your future and influence your quality of life most people aren't in control of the habits they choose so their life is on a trajectory that they didn't set and it becomes increasingly hard to change who you are habits aren't only physical but mental you distract yourself by scrolling on your phone your attention span shrinks because your mind is is in the habit of receiving novel information every 30 seconds so you can't focus on meaningful conversations you can't focus on building a business you can't focus on putting on your shoes and going to the gym your mind reacts to almost everything with memes and random bits that others programmed into your mind you can't take anything seriously you think anything worthwhile is a joke meanwhile you feel depressed and hopeless but there isn't a solution because your mind is too busy stuck bouncing on the surface to see one so let's stop and think about that for a bit you you can only have so many habits in your life most of the habits that you have right now were not chosen by you if your identity determines what your habits are then that means the habits that you do right now reflect your identity and your habits reinforce that identity through conditioning because you become what you repeatedly do so most people their personality their identity isn't something that they chose it's something that's subservient to the system that creat created it by definition meaning if you want to recreate who you are you need to focus on changing the habits that occupy your day the very few habits that can be there because that will create a new conditioning cycle that will eventually turn into a new identity of your choice and if your habits and identity bounce back and forth to create the quality of your Human Experience then the reason you feel depressed or bad or anxious or overwhelmed all the time is is because you aren't in control of it so the solution to most of your problems is this you must reclaim your focus so you can Implement new habits you must Implement new habits because you can only choose a few the habits you choose must be high leverage high impact and highly enjoyable the habits you choose refocus your attention on the depth of life where you focus your attention programs your mind creates who you are and determines your future walking as a habit covers all bases Mind Body Spirit and business so first let's let's talk about walking as meditation so walking for the mind I personally used to be very skeptical about meditation I always thought it was for hippies who were just sitting there channeling some Divine energy so they could become like avatar from the last air bender and it turns out like most things I dislike or we dislike I just didn't understand the concept meditation is the act of freeing your mind meditation is decreasing your attachment to thoughts meditation is the practice of being at one with reality not expectations for the future or happenings of the past in other words with a consistent meditation habit life gets better because you're actually living it most people don't realize how surface leveled their lives are they Bounce Around in their heads creating problems that don't exist and spiral out of control into a state of deep anxiety and overwhelm their lives are ruled by stressful past situations that influence how they perceive the future the boss that yelled at you yesterday makes you dread going to work today the writing that sucked yesterday makes you work worried that it won't get done tomorrow and you continue projecting into a future where you don't get it done your side business fails and you start creating a plan B without realizing you are creating that reality with your thoughts because your actions will follow you trap yourself in a narrow-minded state of suffering and your only path out is by reprogramming your mind with meditation now the problem here for me at least is that I always failed with a seeded meditation habit so I decided to try that out with a walk and do a walking meditation because that's actually a thing so some of my walks I do what we're going to talk about later but in a lot of my walks mainly morning Walks Like first thing in the morning I will try to just meditate on the walk I'll focus on the feeling of the ground on my feet or the breath going into my nose especially if it's cold or hot I will count in my head and breathe and if any time my attention floats to a thought or a task or something that I need to do I simply refocus on my breath because that's how you recondition your mind to detach from the thoughts and give less attention to them so you can live more in the present and truly pay attention to the signal around you rather than the noise and we will discuss this more later how to do it when we actually turn walking into a game so you can form the habit now walking for health is a very important aspect of walking so what I'm trying to illustrate to you here is that walking is more than just going on a walk it has so many different benefits for Your Mind Body Spirit business so for your health this one isn't difficult to understand walking equals increased calorie expenditure and I don't know how true this is but I read somewhere that if you walk and run the same distance time doesn't really matter cuz obviously you're going to run there faster than you walk so it's going to take longer to walk but walking and running the same distance Burns around the same amount of calories so I personally would rather go on a 45 minute walk than a 20 minute run or a 15minute run that's just me because I can do more on that walk I can actually get into some kind of meditation or I can listen to a podcast or read an audiobook or jot down ideas on my phone or literally write my newsletters or my books or outline things so if you struggle to lose weight or you just want to get outside you want to increase the benefits of just getting outside and getting sunlight then walking could help you and you don't really need to worry about oh I'm not exercising today I'm not doing cardio this is just a good first step the next thing is that being outside equals sunlight and a lack of blue light now we can go deep into this I personally haven't collected and I'm not able to articulate my thoughts on my own health philosophy very much all I can do is point you towards the people that I've learned from because many people are not ready to hear this health philosophy but at the same time I also feel like way too many people take it way too seriously to their own detriment so I'm talking about a blend between flexible dieting the rapat diet The ancestral diet and the carnivore diet and how those have kind of evolved over the years I integrate patterns and principles from those diets to create my own but they're not just diets they're also Lifestyles and sunlight and blue light are very big topics within those domains so blue light is quite a bit more dangerous than just like oh you're not going to be able to sleep at night it destroys your MIT andrial health and definitely contributes to chronic disease now a lot of people have heard about Andrew huberman's advice to get sunlight first thing in the morning this has a lot more benefit than just optimizing your circadian rhythm and of course I don't want to get too deep into this I don't want to contribute to hearsay so I'm just going to list off a few people that you can follow the first Is Zade K Dage both on Instagram and X the next is analyze and optimize on YouTube X and Instagram the next is grim Hood mainly on x and then kind of following them and see who they interact with to get the gist of everything it's going to take a while to kind of absorb the knowledge but for reference of something that I recently discovered or not recently a few years have recently discovered and Implement implemented is I'm like the palest guy you will ever meet or at least I was I get extremely white during the winter or at least I did and now that I'm out walking shirtless 15,000 steps a day I can be out in the Arizona heat on the top of the roof for for 45 minutes at a time and I do not burn and that's mostly contributed to building my solar callus which is a tan pretty much and easing your way into that as well as diet and the certain foods that contribute to inflammation and other things I don't know the science too well I'm just stating what could be possible if you had an open mind and chose to integrate some of their perspectives now what I'm saying here is I'm not dogmatic about any one of their diets if I'm presented with different information I'm going to experiment with it and see what I experience in my direct experience so what I'm saying here is that if you go and follow these people please do not if if they tweet a belief do not assume that my belief is that so moving on let's talk about walking for creativity because if I could attribute my writing and Creator success to one thing it would obviously be walking I mean we can even just have Devon if you can just put up an image of like your brain when it's just sitting around and your brain when it's walking and you can see the massive difference in brain activity and that's pretty good argument for walking in my opinion so to me walking is a creativity block what I mean by creativity block is we all have productivity blocks where we're sitting at our computer and doing our thing and getting work done with the ideas that we've generated throughout the week but how many of you actually sit down and read how many of you sit and listen to long form content I would argue that it's very little and because of that I would argue that the depth in your life is very little and that you're missing out on so so much of life because of that so A creativity block getting outside for 15 30 45 minutes however long it takes that's dedicated time for zero distraction if you can stay off of your phone or just use your phone for a good purpose like listening to a podcast for longer than 5 minutes or actually getting through an audiobook over the course of a month on your walks so I use these creativity blocks to listen to audiobooks and Long YouTube lectures like actualized.org he's my favorite to read physical books yes I have literally brought physical books with me on walks in the morning so sometimes I do the meditation I've been experimenting with literally bringing a book with me on a walk when nobody's outside at 5:30 a.m. in the morning and reading it for 30 minutes to write down ideas that I want to write about and if you don't have ideas to write about or know how to capture ideas correctly I have a free course called 7 days to genius ideas you can download that with the link in the description and that will actually lead into cortex the software because that is one of the initial ideas that led to to our writer the course and the system in that is being used as the foundation of our writing app that we're building cortex and lastly I also use these creativity blocks to walk in silence to allow my mind to solve a problem relieve stress or bring Clarity to my goals or Vision okay we have made it past the wise or the reasons why you should go on a walk and I feel like that's ample everyone could use those benefits in their life this isn't a oh walking is only suitable for this Niche or this Niche it's suitable to everyone because everyone has legs and everyone can go outside uh I take that back I know some people don't have legs but you can still get outside the only reason I say that is because you get the point of what I'm saying but there's always the people in the comments where they're like you're en aist like you I can't focus and you're saying I should do this this and this just click off the video if this doesn't apply to you so let's get into it why do we get addicted to video games one there is a clear hierarchy of goals so how to win or requests two there is clear feedback for Progress like leveling up or Milestones three There are rules that narrow your attention and remove distractions four there are tutorials to get you up to speed with the game and five there are challenges according to your skill level so you don't get anxious or overwhelmed in a nutshell video games are addictive because they put us into the Flow State the flow state is characterized by absolute Clarity zero distractions pure progress that is like no other feeling in the world and you can tap into to it with most habits especially walking you know what you need to do how to do it when to do it and it isn't easy or well known so it is Meaningful and the extra dopamine from novelty doesn't hurt either in terms of getting into the Flow State so to form this new Walking habit and to get addicted to it I believe it's wise to pull the patterns and principles from video games so that we can implement it in our habit formation so that you can form the Habit because one that's what I did without realizing it and two 4 years in 5 years in no four years in to walking that much every single day I have this Cornerstone Habit in my lifestyle and lifestyle trumps almost everything even diet I would argue and certain work hacks just having a healthy lifestyle cover so many bases that's like at the top of the health pyramid so I don't really have to worry about getting overweight or being unhealthy or not being able to come up with creative ideas that help me build businesses and make an income all be because I walk and that's the a pillar of my lifestyle so step one to Turning walking into a game is to clarify why you are walking that means vision and antiv vision the things that I continue saying and drilling into your head because they are absolutely important vision and anti vision for both your life for your business they need a vision for everything if you are not making decisions in alignment with a vision for the future you're making decisions in alignment for someone else's vision for your future whether you think of it that way or not that's what's happening the memes and everything that you're scrolling your attention where your attention goes where your focus goes and your the actions that result of that information programming your brain is moving you towards a specific goal if you're watching self-deprecating memes all day or just content all day you're working towards a vision of mediocrity and destruction and that's not good so to form this Vision or anti- Vision think deeply about how walking as a habit can revolutionize your life do you want the benefits that come from quitting a bad habit walking can be a replacement for that habit do you want to be more creative in your work do you always struggle to write or come up with ideas that will change your future can you see how a simple walk can change the direction of your life do you want to drop 10 lbs of fat get a tan and reap the benefits of consistent sunlight exposure if your mental health is in shambles isn't it worth a shot so list out every single thing that you don't like in your life right now from that list think about the opposite list out every single thing that you want in your life or you think you want in your life one year from now then contemplate how walking 10,000 plus steps a day can contribute to that step number two is to set a daily goal and break it up all Behavior starts with a conscious or unconscious goal every single action you take can be mapped to a goal you are pursuing the question is did you set that goal or were you quietly programmed by the media your parents your teachers and your friends a simple habit is no different set a goal and start small the goal should be in alignment with your vision and the Habit should be so frictionless that it's nearly impossible not to actually do the thing here is is that many people will argue that they don't have the time to go on 10,000 steps a day and well that's fine you can believe that I would also try to be honest with yourself here considering the gravity and importance of going on a walk and potentially walking 10,000 steps I think that should be a baseline you can start with less if you'd like but if you are realistic with how you can rep prioritize and reorganize your life I think you can find the time to walk 10,000 steps a day you can wake up earlier you don't have to indulge in bad habits at night you don't have to do really anything that you're doing if walking holds more importance to you but if walking 10,000 steps a day makes you anxious and you don't think you'll be able to stick to it then it's okay to start lower and you can think of walking 10,000 steps a day as level 100 and think of maybe 3,000 steps a day as level one and then you progress and you can create these sub goals for yourself where level one is 3,000 level two is 4,000 etc etc and maybe you can treat yourself to some kind of reward by achieving those things so now that you have a daily walk goal it's smart to break those down into specific blocks that you can knock out throughout your day are you going to knock it all out Allin one walk are you going to space them out what route are you going to take on the walk are you going to walk to a specific landmark or location are you to walk to the local cafe for focused work bring Clarity to your new habit by sticking to these goals until they just become habit until they are programmed into you step number three is to create rules for your walk now Flow State the flow state is about narrowing your attention on a task and it becoming the only thing you becoming at one with the task so if we want to narrow our attention further and increase the enjoyment of the walk we need to create rules Like rules of a game and and if we don't then we don't have structure in our mind we don't have something to refocus on and our mind will default to thinking about something it better it could be doing or just complaining about how it's too hot outside or whatever it may be like I don't like walking it's too hot or cold outside boohoo I need my comfortable air conditioned box I don't live in a walkable City all of these are excuses and you can walk even if you don't feel like walking you go in a sauna and you don't care that it's hot your expectations and limiting beliefs are ruining your potential so here are some rules that you can play with but you aren't bound to these you can create your own never step on a crack in the road as you walk come back with three ideas to write about from a book or audio book get 15 minutes of sun on each side of your body alternate 5 to 10 minutes of walking meditation and 5 to 10 minutes of learning finish one chapter of a book or module of a course write one section of your newsletter or write a few content pieces for the writers out there just try one out so step number four is to go on the walk and have a trigger for going on the walk because the walk is the easiest part but getting yourself to go on the walk is the hardest part if you have a trigger like I did with nicotine and whenever I had a craving I opted for going on a walk then use that moment to immediately get up and go on a walk this could be like the moment you feel bored or uninspired in your focus work session that's another reason I go on a walk now is like if my work starts to suffer and I've only been sitting for an hour and a half and I'm supposed to knock out 4 hours of focused work I'm going to get up and go on a walk so I can realign and set the intention for my next work block so I can get straight into it because if I didn't do that then I'd probably be sitting there for 2 hours getting less work than I'd be able to get done if I went on a walk realigned came back and actually had pure Focus now if you don't have any motivator or trigger then you need to just reduce the action that you are going to take into the most frictionless and small action you can take right now it's like the whole tip of going to the gym is to just put on your shoes to put on your gym shoes and by then it's like you've already invested some energy into it you might as well get in the car you might as well go to the gym then and if that's too difficult for you ask yourself why you can't even control your body to the point of walking a few feet and putting on a shoe and then at the same time just break it down further can you walk to your room no can you at least stand up no okay move your foot still no and at that point nobody can save you except for yourself so that's it start walking have a good rest of your day check out the links in the description if you want more on walking creativity and focused work in the onep person business buy my book The Art of focus just check out the links down there if you like them click on them thanks for watching bye

Channel: Dan Koe

Views: 59,816

Keywords: self improvement, mindset, personal development, online marketing, online business, make money online, spirituality, entrepreneurship, motivation, personal growth, social media growth, self mastery, actualization

Id: lU1wgq-2Isg

Length: 28min 13sec (1693 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024