“I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” Soren Kierkegaard
I have lost count of the number of times I have sat slumped at my desk at an impasse with a project, proposal or blog post only to finally admit to that my best and only option is to extract myself from the chair, put my walking shoes on, get a leash on the dog and head out for a walk.
Slogging through it. Grinding it out. Trying harder. These all have their place. But without a sustained attention to the energy they demand, their gravitational pull can lead us into a one-dimensional orbit of limited perspective.
When I get up and get moving I invite my body to join my brain in a conversation of possibility. Turning hard questions over in my mind, my movement acts as a sharp spade, knifing through the impacted soil of my narrowed thought. I open up the gravelly earth of my thinking and discover what is hidden there, what can only be found with the gifts of space, movement, air and sun.
Inevitably, I surprise myself with a key word or thought that feels so obvious and so clear that I can only wonder why I waited so long to get this change of scenery. Sometimes, instead of insisting on figuring it out in a sustained glut of effort, the best I can do is to create the conditions most likely to aid my search for a new way forward.
We were not made for slumping in chairs. We were made to move.
Leader’s note: You are a “Chief Energy Officer,” to borrow a phrase. The more you activate energy in yourself the more you will activate it in others. Get moving, they’re waiting for you.
