Taking it Outside
How to live a happier, healthier life on two feet
When I was 8 years old I had an astonishingly clear vision of the future I wanted as a grown up.
In my 30’s I visioned that I would be working, wearing a suit. I would be married with two children and I would be content.
It is a deeply satisfying feeling to have grown into the person that the little boy visioned. I am happy in my work and my life and October brought our second beautiful daughter to the world. But there is one difference. I don’t wear a suit.
That same vision has been in my consciousness a lot in recent weeks. Settling back into life and work in the UK has brought more in-person work, and more outdoors and walking work.
I’ve sloshed along muddy trails, skirted puddles and meandered through meadows with clients. Coaching hoods-up in the rain through misty forest and facilitating sessions by the side of vast bodies of water.
To have replaced the suit that I wore both in my earlier vision and in my 20’s with a well-worn pair of muddy boots and a waterproof jacket is a nourishing and satisfying experience.
But why?
Desk Use & Screen Time
The amount of time that you, yes… you, spend sitting down is probably unhealthy. It is likely that how your working life is currently set up means that you spend more time sitting down, often in unnecessary meetings than is good for you, spiritually or physically.
Whatever your work, I believe very simply that it will be of net benefit to you and your organisation if you were to reduce your sitting time, increase your walking time outdoors.
Shifting your 1:1 meetings from a little cubby hole without much legroom to a spacious stroll through your nearest park will improve the scope, the perspective and the quality of your meetings.
Working for myself, I’ve come to realise that I’m ultimately responsible for how much time I spent in front of a computer, sitting down. So I’ve radicalised my set up.
From April, anyone wanting to book a chat with me will be sent a link that no longer includes Zoom, Teams & Google Meet. They will simply get my phone number and an invitation to join me for a walking call.
While we won’t get to see our lovely faces or beautiful backgrounds, the person will get the very best of me. With utmost freshness, vitality and perspective. They might get the odd pheasant or blackbird in the background too.
I have no doubt that this one tweak will add many years of good health to my life.
And I wonder, what tweaks and edits could you make to your set-up to increase your health and happiness?
Rewild your habits
Recent weeks have also seen the conclusion of a very special piece of coaching work. I have never seen this person, and we have only spoken over the phone for our coaching sessions. We have both walked through green spaces, at a reflective, slower pace welcoming in nature when it wanted to make itself known.
Across nine months, the scope of the coaching took in career change and relationship change and in feeding back the client spoke of the valuable re-grounding regularity of these nourishing conversations outside. In their words, it was a life-changing experience, and I put that as much down to the rejuvenating, stimulating experience of wandering outside in nature as I do to anything I said or did.
So many of us are so, so busy. Striving, rushing, beavering away and scurrying around trying to do our best, to make others happy and to grow into the expectations placed on us. Be they the unfulfilled projections a parent wished us to be, or some bullshit OKR’s or arbitrary KPI’s or sales targets.
We know we will be happier, healthier and more productive if we walk more outside - but why do we let the busy-ness get in the way?
So much of your life has been engineered to wrench your consciousness away. We operate in the ‘attention economy’ where your phone is a battleground for Meta, Google, Microsoft and Bytedance to conduct a war over your very attention.
Where you have been conditioned like a Pavlovian dog to enjoy a pang of joy every time you hear a ping, a like or see a red notification dot. Netflix and Youtube will autoplay the next episode perfectly curated for your path of least-resistance.
There is a mountain of things to do, to watch, and infinite photos, videos to scroll through. And nowhere is there the reminder, the encouragement, the offer that you put your phone down and go for a nice stroll.
Counter-cultural Working
The 8 year old me bought into a vision that a successful person wears a suit. Perhaps that was true in 1992. Perhaps it was just a myth.
If you’re anything like me, the best ideas you’ve had don’t come sitting down in front of a screen. They definitely don’t come when you’re scrolling through Instagram, Tik Tok or LinkedIn. They will probably come when you give your mind what it LOVES. Fresh air. Movement. Kaleidoscopic blues and greens. The visceral experience of wind on your skin. The polyphonic sound of surround-sound birdsong.
In my work up here in Snowdonia or in forthcoming trips to London, the first invitation will remain for a walking session in a green space. It does wonders for the quality of thinking and the quality of the work. And it does wonders for the soul.
A dear colleague of mine once offered, ‘I have two doctors. My left leg and my right leg’. Indeed, I connected with a sentiment from philosopher Alex O’Connor recently who offered, ‘You can’t fix the mind with the mind. You fix the mind with the body’.
With Spring very much springing here, my challenge to you is to flip some of those unhelpful, unhealthy and immobile routines you may find yourself in. To invite your mate out for a walk instead of going for a pint. To offer the next 1:1 to be walking. To find the routine of a daily walk that will serve you. To spend more time in a pair of muddy shoes and a rain jacket.
At this time of unfolding ecological devastation and crisis, the world, mother nature, our whole environment needs us to care for it deeply. To adjust our relationship to it. To deepen our connection with it. The best way I can recommend we get there is for us all to spend more time immersed within it.
With gratitude,
George
If you would like to explore working together through:
coaching for yourself, or within your organisation
workshops, training, facilitation and offsites
consulting and mentoring for your business
supervision and development if you’re a coach yourself
Feel welcome to email me - george@edgeofcoaching.com - or book a phone call here and go for a stroll together
A beautiful vision, George. Thank you.