Page 125 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

greater part of my life, indulged in running and other vigorous exercise that

forced large amounts of oxygen into my body.” I increased my walking just to
see what would happen if my lungs became my mattress. I began to get happier.
I began to enjoy life more. I began to be more motivated. As I walked, I
wondered: What if the spirit lives as an aura around us? What if the spirit were a
cloud of energy that exists around and outside our bodies ready at all times to be
breathed in? Drawn right into the soul? What if when you breathed deeply, you
pulled in your own spirit? And you received energy for action—energy for an
explosive take-down of one of your out-of-control problems. What if the
solution to problems outside you was inside you?

Deepak Chopra quotes an ancient anonymous Indian sage as identifying
humanity’s near-fatal superstition: “You believe that you live in the universe
when in reality the universe lives in you.”

Many modern scientific books are now referring to the human brain as the
“three-pound universe.” When the body moves, so does the mind. So does that
inner world. When you’re walking, you are organizing your mind whether you
want to be or not. Soon we realize that the mind and the body are connected.
When the Greeks said the secret to a happy life was a sound mind in a sound
body, they were onto a powerful truth.

I try to talk myself out of that truth many times a week. I’m too tired to
exercise. I have an injury. I haven’t had enough sleep. I should listen to my
body! I would be short-changing my children of the important time they need
with me if I selfishly went out for my long walk. But I am always better off if I
choose the walk. I am even better at relating to my children, because walking

takes me to the soul. That’s why I can’t leave it out. I can’t pretend it has
nothing to do with this subject, because it’s how I pull the truth to me. I pull the
globe around toward me under my feet by walking. As the world turns, the lies
leak out of my mind, into space. As the body becomes sound, so does the mind.
It’s true.

There is something about walking that combines opposites. Opposites:
activity and relaxation. (This very paradox is what creates whole-brain thinking.)
Opposites: out in the world and solitude. (Alone, but out there walking.) This
combining of opposites activates the harmony I need between the right and left
brain, between the adult and the child, between the higher self and the animal.
Great solutions appear. Truth becomes beauty.

You have your own walking available to you, too. Yes, indeed. It might be