Move more so you can think better.

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? So, in a previous episode, I have talked about how when you're feeling mentally or emotionally stuck, you should move, you know, physically move. Do something active because it can help you get unstuck.

[00:00:34] And that got me thinking about the role of exercise and movement in our life generally. You know, a lot of the reasons why a lot people want to work out, go to the gym, have movement in their lif,e stems from wanting to lose weight or live a longer life or [00:01:00] alleviate some kind of physical problem like diabetes or you know, cholesterol issues, high blood pressure, et cetera.

[00:01:13] And a lot of those people fail, I too have been part of that camp before, but recently I was thinking about, you know, what are the things that are truly important to me? That if you looked at my life, you would see are important to me? And one of the things that you would see is that it's important to me to do good work.

[00:01:40] It is important for me to be doing mentally well in my life, right? So obviously I do a lot of things for my mind. I read, I talk to smart people, I try to learn new things, and I wondered what [00:02:00] if I approached the act of being active, um, being physically healthy and fit, from the perspective that it's gonna help me think better because movement doesn't just help you when you're stuck.

[00:02:22] Having a physically fit and healthy body helps your brain function better. It helps you think through issues better, you know? Nothing you do is just a mind thing or a body thing, right? It's all interconnected, no matter how much we might wanna compartmentalize. And when you improve the health of your physical body, you inevitably improve the physical health of your brain, which can lead to improvements in the way you think.

[00:02:59] [00:03:00] How much you retain, you know, and maybe that is a better approach. By saying, hey, I'm going to be physically active because that's gonna help me do better at this X mental work that I do. Right? Like, whether that's your professional work that you do on a day-to-day basis, or it's gonna help you with the creative hobbies that are also mentally taxing, like maybe you write or

[00:03:30] you scrapbook or you know you do carpentry. What I am, I guess, trying to say is that if you can associate what you want to do, in this case, be active and healthy, have a workout that you regularly follow, with something that is demonstrably already important in your life, it might be easier to motivate yourself, [00:04:00] right?

[00:04:00] We only have a certain amount of limited willpower and you can't spend it all in one place. So we always need to have other ways to motivate ourselves when we don't have willpower or we know that we need to spend that limited currency on something else in our day or in our week. And if you associate it with what's already important to you, it might be easier on the days that it feels really hard to move, to do that workout, I guess,

[00:04:34] Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about today.

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.