When I sat down to write this, I was struggling with ideas. I stared at the blinking cursor, feeling it mock me from the screen, and wracked my brain for something—anything—to hold onto. Several half-formed ideas raced around my head, but grabbing one, and actually putting it down into words, proved elusive. Feeling progressively more stuck, I got up, put on my coat, and took a walk. It was late afternoon, the light was fading, and the wind was blowing. By the time I returned thirty minutes later, I had three coherent, almost finished essays floating in my mind.
When we talk about walking, it’s usually in the context of gentle exercise. In fact, walking is a well-studied tool that benefits the mind as much as the body. From reducing anxiety to improving cognition, it has long been recognized as a solvent for many daily challenges. There’s even a branch of meditation cleverly called “walking meditation,” which is the practice of simply moving mindfully.
Despite this, walking as a tool to help us get unstuck is underutilized. Part of the reason is that it doesn’t naturally occur to us—it’s outside our usual repertoire for addressing challenges. Our built environment doesn’t help. We spend most of our time sitting in cars, at desks, or in front of screens. When movement isn’t habitual, its benefits are hard to experience, and it is harder for us to remember that it's a useful tool.
We tend to forget about walking as an option to help us get un-stuck. Once we sit down to tackle a problem, we convince ourselves that staying put is the way to make progress. Urgency, stress, and habit narrow our field of view until the simplest reset disappears. Many of us live and work in spaces designed to keep us seated, which means walking rarely enters our problem-solving toolkit.
When we do remember it, we underestimate how powerful it can be. A short walk can shift mood, perspective, and cognitive flexibility far more quickly than we expect. Most of us have experienced this at some point. But in the moment, we often underestimate how beneficial this can be. Stress makes things worse: when we feel overwhelmed, our minds constrict around the immediate problem, and every delay feels unacceptable. In our minds, the value of a walk gets discounted, and we tell ourselves it probably won’t help that much, that it's an optional tool rather than essential for clear thinking.
The benefits of walking extend beyond work. When we are angry with someone, pausing and taking a walk can calm the nervous system and allow us to feel less trapped in our intense emotions. The same improvements in cognitive flexibility we experience at work apply when we feel trapped in relationship problems. When trying to make major life choices, a walk can provide clarity when thinking alone or weighing pros and cons leads nowhere. For people working to break habits—whether cravings for substances, food, or even our phones—walking offers a similar benefit. A walk is rarely a distraction or a way to “turn off” difficult feelings; instead, it creates a little space to notice them without being consumed by them. This shift in our relationship with our thoughts and feelings allows us to work with them rather than denying them.
Walking outdoors provides a reset that’s hard to replicate inside. Light, wind, and open space refresh attention. Physical motion matters too: rhythm and movement steady the nervous system, lower tension, and give thought room to flow freely. Walking is a form of embodied thinking. Even when we don’t consciously solve anything while walking, insight often emerges once we return. Our perspective naturally shifts when we are moving through space, and that shift can make problems feel smaller, more manageable, or simply different than when we were trapped in place.
The holidays are coming up fast. While they can be a wonderful time to connect with family and friends, they can also be stressful; family can be both wonderful and maddening at the same time. Taking a walk is a concrete tool to help get through the season. The hardest part isn’t putting on your shoes—it’s remembering that it's an option when we feel we don’t have any.
Love,
Doc
PS. Next week, I’ll be sending out my post on Wednesday, rather than my usual Friday, as it is timely for Thanksgiving, and I want you to have it before the big day.
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