A short spoken monologue by Dr. Arthur Brooks arguing that humans are biologically adapted to walking, that walking benefits mood and persistence, and offering a practical 30-day dawn-walk recommendation for young graduates to reduce negative affect and gain clarity. The speaker links anthropological evidence and religious practices (pilgrimages) to walking’s psychological benefits.
Here's what to do. Go for a walk. Human beings, Homo sapiens, were made to walk. This is one of the interesting things that anthropologists have found that we're so successful in hunting, not because we're fast, not because we can climb, but because we can just walk and walk and walk and walk all day long. You can basically outrun any animal just by walking. And they get tired, they stop, and pretty soon they're exhausted. And if you're persistent enough, you've got the walking capacity to get that done. You're made to walk. That's one of the reasons that all major religions have walking pilgrimages. There's thought that walking, per se, is a form of prayer. Some people write to me, young men and women who are struggling after graduating from college, and they don't know what to do. And they feel really, really aimless, and they don't know how to get started, just how to get started on life. And I was given the same recommendation. Over the next 30 days, get up before dawn, walk for an hour, watch the sun come up before you've ingested any calories at all. That's all you do. And then get on with your day and then write me again in 30 days. Inevitably, things have changed in their lives. This is the single best intervention, at least to begin with, to lower your negative affect, is to walk and walk all the time. You can do that starting today.
