Walk Your Way: The Inspiration Walk
Welcome to Walk Your Way - Week Six.
This week, I’m pleased to introduce you to The Inspiration Walk.
About
One of the most wonderful benefits of regular walking is the boost to your creative powers that it can bring.
Spending time in the great outdoors has been scientifically proven to reduce stress, relax the body while also inducing a more positive state of mind. These are now known to be two baseline conditions for achieving personal change.
Meanwhile in a 2014 study carried out by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz of Stanford University, experiments demonstrated that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after.
In this walk practice, you’ll get a chance to discover this for yourself – to let your walk be your source of inspiration using one method to help you harness your natural creativity both practically and immediately.
Preparation
Before you set off on this walk, you have a short task to do first. You’ll need two clean sheets of paper and a pen or pencil.
Taking the first sheet of paper, consider a question or challenge that you are facing in your life right now. When you’re doing this, pick an area where you feel a bit stuck, and could really do with taking a new, creative or inspired approach. And also choose something fairly light. This is not really an exercise for tackling deep-seated emotional or psychological problems which might be better addressed with a professional.
Top Tip: frame your question so that it begins with ‘What’ or perhaps ‘How’? That will keep the question open and potentially more generative.
To give you and idea, examples of questions might be, ‘What could make the school holidays more fun for me and my children?’ OR ‘What is missing from my work right now that could help add more meaning or purpose?’ OR ‘What other approaches can I take to communicating with my mother that might improve our relationship.’ OR simply a choose a topic heading like: ‘Ideas for the village carnival theme.’
When you have your question, write it at the top of each sheet of paper. Keep it simple. One sentence will do. Now taking just one of the sheets, take a moment and write down all the thoughts, perspectives and beliefs you currently hold about this issue. Add in anything that might be contributing to the stuck-ness.
For example, ‘There’s nothing to do when it’s raining’ or ‘The kids find me boring’ or ‘I have no flexibility in my job’ or ‘My mother isn’t interested in what I have to say.’ Or ‘We don’t have much money.’
The third step is to write down the emotions that have been coming to you as you wrote these words. If it helps, read back over what you’ve written and just notice how you feel. Write it down. Fill the sheet with all your thoughts and emotions. As many as you like.
Now fold your sheet of paper twice and put it out of sight. Make up your mind to leave the these thoughts and emotions behind you at home, while you take your body – and your question - out on an Inspiration Walk.
Now take your Walk (audio guide below).
When you return, go find the second piece of paper. Read the question or heading and start writing whatever comes to your mind. Keep going, and at pace, as if in a steady stream of consciousness. Take as long as you need. Don’t pause until you’ve completely exhausted your ideas.
If successful, you will have generated at least a few new ideas that may not have come to you easily prior to your walk.
And even if you didn’t come up with anything new, give it time. Very often ideas can surface later on. The important thing is not to force it.
Resources
Listen to The Inspiration Walk practice
And for your post-walk reflections, here’s a handy structure to guide and note down your thoughts.