it's weird, but it'll skyrocket your mental clarity overnight...

To skyrocket your mental clarity by tomorrow morning, go for a walk and talk to yourself out loud tonight.

Why this matters…

Experiences are like meals. If you don’t digest them properly, they’ll sit heavy and you’ll feel bloated until they’re digested.

You’ll know this as…

The thoughts on repeat, unwanted emotions that linger and situations you can’t stop looping in your mind.

A few days - let alone weeks - of these loops and your energy drains, clarity blurs and mental noise gets cranked up.

So to let these loops unwind, your brain needs two things…

Movement, not sitting.

Expression, not bottling it all up and expecting the loops to disappear.

Walking provides the regulation.

Talking out loud to yourself provides the expression.

Here’s why it works…

In the late 1980s the American psychologist Dr. Francine Shapiro was walking through her local park when she accidentally discovered something strange; the more she walked and allowed her eyes to move around, the less distressing her memories and thoughts seemed.

Fascinated, she wanted to test this again.

So she quickly formed her observations into a brand new type of therapy that took the psychological world by storm, known as EMDR - eye movement desensitisation reprocessing.

EMDR shows that by moving your eyes horizontally while talking about a distressing memory, you reduce the activity in your brain’s fear circuits, freeing up your brain and nervous system to do their natural healing work; un-sticking heavy material and digesting them.

The upside for you…

You don't have to see an EMDR therapist to reap all the benefits from this because your eyes make the exact same movements when you go for a walk, helping you soothe your nervous system and digest what you need to.  

(Obvs see a therapist if you want therapy, emdr is great for ptsd and emotional processing).  

So walking and talking to yourself out loud isn’t weird. It’s just what your brain needs to get unstuck.

So tonight, try this…

Go for a walk around the block and leave your phone behind.

As you’re walking, start speaking out loud to yourself.

Let it feel awkward at first.

Give yourself permission to ramble; half-baked thoughts, pauses, whatever comes out.

If you’re worried about other people looking at you weirdly for talking to yourself out loud, you don’t have to speak so loudly they hear, just a volume that makes you feel comfortable. So you can always pause your thoughts as they walk past.

Talk about whatever is on your mind; the way you would to a friend who’s offering open ears.

How to know it’s working?

Metrics don’t matter.

Because success here isn’t productivity, it’s a state change.

Your steps will gradually feel lighter.

Like you began with a heavy backpack - and things are slowly falling out as you move.

My protocol? - I do everything I just said right when I wake up, at 9pm before I sleep and sometimes during the day when I need it.

That's the main takeaway of this video.

But if you'd like to go one step further, here’s the two biggest mistakes most people make when people start this new habit...

Go deeper...

a.) The two mistakes most people make

They either walk silently or filter what’s on their mind through rationality first.

Here's why neither of these lead to a clarity refresh...

There are two crucial brain areas that control your behaviour.

One is emotional (the chimp).

The other is rational (the human).

The key takeaway: the chimp is 5x stronger than the human. So you don't control the chimp, you can only manage it.

But this is the part most people miss…

Your chimp doesn’t calm down just through logic, it calms down through expression.

So when you walk in silence or try to “think rationally” the whole time, you’re not letting this part of your brain do what it needs to do to calm down.

And the worst part?

When the chimp doesn’t get to express itself, it gets louder.

That’s why silent thinking spirals you into feeling worse and why listening to podcasts on a walk distract you from the problem instead of digesting it.

Talking to yourself out loud about whatever emotional stuff is on your mind while walking works. Because it's like taking a chimpanzee (an animal 5x stronger than you) to a closed, private space to unload.

Because it needs to.

Without judgement or interruptions until it has calmed down.

Once the chimp has burned off its energy (perhaps after 5-10 minutes of crashing out with irrational and emotional outbursts), it settles.

And then the calm, human part of you can step in and choose what’s worth paying attention to and ignore what’s noise.

The bottom line…

Silent thinking is like holding the cage of a strong chimpanzee shut.

Walking without speaking helps a bit.

Walking while talking out loud to yourself actually finishes the job.

The wrap up…

When your mind feels heavy and the same thoughts keep circling, walking and talking to yourself out loud is something you can always rely on to get you back to calm clarity.

Thanks for reading :)

Lew

P.s. cut through all the social skills noise & build unbreakable social confidence here.

P.p.s I'm going to Malaga Spain for a few days, wuu2?

P.p.p.s look at the bootiful sky

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