“Move a muscle. Change a thought.”
I love this cognitive behavioural principle. The cycle for me (and most humans) is getting stuck in rumination and overthinking, which leads to worry, sadness, or challenging feelings and then typically less than optimal behaviour (more wine, salty food, cake, Netflix binge anyone?…).
We tend to think that we just have to think differently or feel differently. But that doesn’t work. It just doesn’t.
The proven remedy to thinking and feeling better is taking action. Literally doing something. This could be as simple as talking a walk, yoga, running the vacuum around or as intense as a cross fit class. Really, anything in between works as long as it involves physical movement. There’s no magic number but research indicates that physical movement of even 10-15 min at a time can have beneficial results in reducing anxiety. While ideally we meet the 30 min a day 3/5 x a week metric (add to the list of “…floss, save for retirement, take omegas and meditate…”) this isn’t always realistic or possible. But the message here is this: get out of the chair, office, car or bed if you are feeling down and MOVE a muscle.
Here’s the bottom line in my professional books: you can’t “feel” yourself better. It takes some form of positive action and while reaching for the snacks might qualify as moving, well, that’s more like coping.
So the next time the world feels like it is closing in, your stress and worry levels start to soar or the thoughts just keep churning stand up and make your move to change your thoughts. Learn more, link to Momentum’s website in bio.
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