Walk Away from Your Problems

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

It’s a quote about mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn that explains how you cannot escape from yourself.

Even if you try to numb yourself or fly halfway across the world, your problems(or happiness) will always follow you in one way or another.

And in seeming contradiction to this truth, whenever stress or inconvenience hits I always find that there is one simple solution:

Go for a walk.

Walks are great because you aren’t really “walking away” from what’s on your mind, but intentionally taking them somewhere you can think about them with a deeper focus.

There’s no downside to going for a walk.

In the worst case, you get some easy cardio and alone time.

The best outcome is all of that, plus you get some cool ideas or work through a problem that’s been bothering you.

Going for a walk is simply another form of meditation. The mind moves the body, but the body also moves the mind. It’s a relationship I take advantage of whenever I feel myself losing my temper.

Imagine being upset or frustrated while walking through this path:

It’s IMPOSSIBLE! You become so enamored by your surroundings that you can’t help but assume the quiet, calm disposition of the trees, flowers, and birds.

Paradoxically, when you become mindful of your surroundings and resign to the calm of your environment, you gain the ability to look at your own thoughts with a more objective eye.

You begin to see solutions you couldn’t see in anger, or consider choices you couldn’t make in your grief.

You can only see the complete picture in sobriety because any emotion taken to its extreme is a blinding intoxication.

In this age of constant digital dependence, think about all the big decisions you’ve made and how much time you’ve spent sitting down thinking about them.

Have you sat down lately for an hour and just thought about 1 decision, listing all the pros, cons, and each possible path you could take without any distractions?

If you’re honest, the answer is no.

You think about changing jobs during the stressful commute to your current job, about leaving your partner while talking to your friends about their relationships, or about starting a new diet while you’re out running errands.

Most people make their decisions on a whim, thinking about them “only when they have time”.

But you always have time.

You just have to carve it out ahead of time, and that’s where activities like walking come in handy.

You don’t need the discipline of a monk struggling to sit still. You can move around and focus on just your surroundings and your thoughts, the way decisions should be made.

So no, you’re not walking away from your problems, you are taking them for a walk. 

And when you do, you will find that they aren’t as daunting as they seem when you think of them in passing.

If “wherever you go, there you are”, go somewhere calm, and you will be calm.

And the best decisions come from a state of calm.