Keep Moving Forward

Hey all,

I hope you've had a good two weeks. Sorry if it feels like I've been slacking on these posts recently. I don't think I've felt as inspired to write these, and I believe it is largely because I haven't been thinking of or encountering that many new ideas lately. In addition, I feel like the newsletter has been stagnating a bit because I haven't been doing too much to support it - especially in other areas of content creation, advertising the newsletter online, and being more vocal about its existence.

Eventually, these things will change, and I will start creating other content, possibly working on search engine optimization, and generating/encountering more new ideas, but for now, I wanted to let you all know I will be moving the newsletter to Substack soon.

There's an in-depth explanation of why this is happening in the toggle bar below, but for the casual viewers, all you need to know is that you might end up reading these posts in a different-looking email from Substack. Your free subscription should be migrated automatically though.

Anyway, onto my thoughts. As we are on the theme of moving on, this week's idea is about movement:

Start using the power of walking more.

In some ways, I feel like walking is an equivalent bodily activity to sleeping or drinking water. To me, it's on that checklist of items you should do every day, or you risk having a bad headache.

Of course, this is partly because walking is a form of exercise, and exercise is one of those essential things people need to feel and function well daily. However, I feel like there's another side of walking that makes it slightly better than raw exercise for the average person - especially if you're walking without distractions.

This extra side is that walking promotes thinking - one of the other necessities for human well-being. Walking is one of those boring activities that's just stimulating enough to prevent you from being distracted but not stimulating enough to keep your brain fully focused (especially if you aren't listening to something). As a result, it becomes pretty easy to walk into new ideas, your best thoughts, or into making plans for the future. Your mind can't help but wander away from what's holding you down and into what's challenging you in the present or what's coming up next. So, if you harness that power, you can get your brain to do its best abstract thinking on whatever topic you'd like.

That's quite powerful.

So, even if you exercise, you should still start walking (and thinking) too. Plus, if you're feeling dangerous, try walking and listening to a book or podcast that forces you to learn something because attaining intellectual stimulation through learning is just as important as obtaining it through original thinking.

On this same topic, you should probably start "walking" more in other aspects of your life. For example, you could:

• Slow down and walk through your thoughts to solidify or convey them.
• "Walk" towards your goals bit by bit rather than resolving to build them in a sprint.
• Read books by leisurely walking through them.

The point is, that "walking" is both an incredibly beneficial activity and a great metaphor for slightly overzealous writers (like me) to talk about the benefits of taking things slow.

Because for some things like planning out your future, coming up with good ideas, reading books, achieving your goals, and getting your exercise, it's alright to go (relatively) slow as long as you put in continuous effort. For these things, it's more about the accumulation of ideas or exercise that creates that one good idea or that healthy body.

So, do yourself a favor and make a habit of walking. Whether physically or mentally, walking will help you be creative, healthy, and grow into whoever you want to be.

Until next week!

-Ethan