How Movement and Nature Changed My Blurry Day
Yesterday I was having one of those days when the glass looked half empty.
Problems were all over my mind. I was pessimistic about the decisions I made in my past and the ones I made for the future. I will switch cities soon, and I was nervous about where I would live, who my friends would be, and whether I would meet the expectations of my new job. Overwhelmed by the challenges to come, I was seeing with outstanding clarity how all the things I envisioned for the future could go wrong.
My mind was all over the place, yet my body was still.
After a few hours of overthinking, I realized I hadn’t moved. I had been stuck in my work chair for the last hour or so. Also, I had been inside for a long time, I hadn’t gone out of my apartment for a while.
When my day is meh and things don’t look fantastic, it is harder to have the motivation to move. When my day is blurry, an act as simple as going for a walk is a little more complicated. I call them the tiny challenges that compose daily life.
Yet, I somehow found the courage and energy to go out. I got off the ugly chair, changed my outfit and went out for a run despite the blah day.
Life looked so different during and after the run.
The moment I started moving my body was the moment my thoughts began to crash one another in my brain. The worries and pessimistic views didn’t go away instantly, but they were flowing as if my mind was a river, my thoughts and feelings were little boats, and the strength of the water stream increased little by little to the rhythm of my speed.
When I let myself get sucked into the run, ideas and emotions were rolling across my mind more easily. They were less stuck; the glue that held them to my neurons when I was sitting in my work chair was losing its power. Other thoughts started to arise, and different feelings, related and unrelated to my worries began to set in motion.
The physical movement led by my legs gave my thoughts and feelings the feet to move.
The nature, the sun, the people around me.
The sound of my steps, my breath.
My heartbeat, the sweat.
I couldn’t believe, and still can’t, how my perspectives transformed during and after that few minutes run. Just by the act of movement, of going out to nature, of letting my thoughts and feelings freely pass by, I started forgetting whether the glass holding my past and future was half empty or half full.
It is not an easy magic twist. Some minutes outside didn’t solve the half-empty or half-full glass dilemma. Still, it questioned it: movement and nature gave my feelings and thoughts the legs to move, allowing other sensations to arise and different perspectives to flow.
The shift was on the interior, not on the exterior.
I had the same problems to solve and worries to deal with as when I started running. Yet, going for that dose of body motion and contact with the outside changed my attitude towards them. Body movement and the outside refreshed my mind and provided me with fresh lenses.
