درسنامه اصلی

Golden Gate Park – Coaching Lesson

Hello and welcome to this month’s coaching lesson. About five years ago, six years ago actually, I was depressed. I was depressed, not happy, bored and depressed with my life. And most days I would wake up late and then I would hang out, sit around my apartment for several hours, maybe make breakfast.

Then finally I’d get up and I’d walk to a coffee shop.

And then I would spend almost all day, the daytime, at the coffee shop, doing work on my computer, reading, whatever, but inside the coffee shop, in the café. Then I might go to a restaurant, eat dinner, and then I would walk home, and then I would stay indoors, watch videos, all evening. And this was my pattern, my routine, day after day after day.

This was in San Francisco. And, day by day, week by week, month by month actually, I started feeling more and more bored, more depressed. And I thought, oh, what…how can I do…how can I help with this…this is terrible. I’m doing really bad. My energy’s dropping. I need to do something. So I tried different things. I tried starting to do some exercise. It helped but it didn’t completely change the problem.

I thought, oh, I need goals. I need bigger goals so I started to work harder on the business and try to do different things with the business and have bigger business goals, better financial goals. Gave me a little bit of purpose, but, still again, didn’t completely change it. Still felt depressed. Still felt kind of tired. And it just kept getting worse and worse, little by little. And everything I tried just didn’t work.

Well, finally, I had a trip planned, a trip to Japan. And so I took this trip to Japan, and I’ve talked about this in other lessons and on social media, but my wife and I we did a one-month walk around the island of Shikoku in Japan. It’s a famous pilgrimage, famous walk. And so we went. I came to Japan and still feeling kind of depressed, honestly.

We went to Shikoku and we stayed in a hotel and then the next day we got up and we started our walk.

And for the next month, we walked every single day, almost all day long. We’d get up fairly early in the morning and then we were outside and then walking the whole time outdoors, the whole time until, y’know, late afternoon when we finally would come to our new accommodation, our new place we were staying and then repeated that day after day after day.

What I found was this. Very quickly, my whole mood, my whole feeling, my whole mindset completely changed. I was bored, I was depressed, I was tired. And then, boom, after just a day or two I felt theopposite. I felt exhilarated. Exhilarated means super happy and energized. Super happy and energized.

I felt exhilarated.

And as the trip went forward, day after day, that feeling of exhilaration, the noun, that feeling of exhilaration grew and grew and grew. Even though physically I was quite tired, right? We were walking every day. I had a backpack so my legs were sore and tired many days. My back and my shoulders hurt many days. But still, mentally and emotionally I felt exhilarated.

Why? Well, one reason, of course, exercise. I was getting a lot of exercise so that certainly helped. But I believe the main reason was I was outdoors all day. Just being outdoors. See, in San Francisco, I was indoors all day, right? Most of the day I was indoors. I was in my apartment. I was in a café. I was at a restaurant. Maybe I would visit my friends, again, indoors. I was constantly inside walls and ceilings.

Whereas, when I was walking in Shikoku, I was outside every single day. Out under the hot sun, in the fresh air, in the countryside. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, it was because you had great weather and everything was wonderful.” But that’s not even true. Even on the days that had terrible weather, I still felt that exhilaration. In fact, I can think about one of the days where it rained all day long.

So it was raining all day so I’m in my rain gear. Got my little umbrella. We’re walking along all day. My feet were wet the whole day, so kind of miserable feet. The wind was blowing sometimes. And yet, I felt fantastic. In fact, something about that was kind of exciting. There was kind of an excitement. Again, a feeling of exhilaration. Walking in the rain. Walking during a rainstorm all day long instead of hiding indoors.

So why is this? I’ve thought about this many times because I’ve noticed this in my life again and again and again, that just going outdoors a lot is like an instant cure for boredom and depression. Just that!

Even without exercise, even just going outside and sitting down and reading a book and just being outdoors a lot seems to be an instant cure for depression and boredom.

And I know it’s not just me. I know lots and lots of people talk about this. See, when we’re indoors, let’s talk about the negative part first. Indoors gets comfortable and most of us spend a lot of time indoors, fine. But the problem is when we’re indoors we tend to be very sedentary. See, they kind of go together.

They’re connected, being outdoors and being more active, being indoors and being sedentary. Sedentary is the opposite of active. Sedentary means being still, sitting a lot.

And think about it. When you’re at home, when you’re at your office if you work in an office, when you’re in a restaurant or a café, when you’re indoors, what are you usually doing? Sitting, right? You’re usually sitting on your butt and not moving. In the classroom, in a school, whenever you’re indoors you’re usuallysitting. So being indoors is connected to being inactive, not active, to being sedentary. There’s a strong connection there.

Another thing about being indoors is that it’s mentally boring. It’s less stimulating mentally. There’s less sensory input. Sensory means like your eyes, your ears, your feeling of touch, right? Taste, smell, those are your senses. So sensory is the adjective. So sensory input means things coming in. Alright, our brain responds to input, sensory input.

When we get a variety of sights and sounds and smells coming in, our brain kind of wakes up, it feels more alive. But the opposite is also true, right? If there is less input or if it’s just the same all the time, your brain kind of gets less energetic, starts to feel bored and even depressed. So if you think about it, being indoors, right, the environment is much more boring, much more predictable, right?

There’s walls everywhere. Even if you have a window, there’s still walls in most places. You’ve got a ceiling. Also, the indoor environment doesn’t change very much, right? It tends to be exactly the same.

It’s the same furniture. It’s the same colors, right? Paint, whatever. Everything is mostly the same and this kind of makes your brain get bored.

Whereas, when you’re outdoors, especially if you’re moving, you’re constantly getting new input, new sights, new smells, new colors, new things happening. All the time it’s happening. It’s much more interesting. There’s much more variety outdoors for your eyes and ears and nose and etc. So it’s more stimulating which wakes you up and makes your brain feel more active.

There are other benefits for this. Sunlight, sunlight is massively beneficial to our bodies, to our health, mentally and also just physically. The number one reason is Vitamin D, right? When the sun hits your skin, your body changes it to Vitamin D. We’re seeing a lot of research, a lot of studies, you read a lot of articles now about the importance of Vitamin D.

Vitamin D is almost like a hormone, right? A chemical that changes a lot of things in your body so your body needs Vitamin D. It needs plenty of Vitamin D to be strong, to fight disease, to feel good. And the sad thing is because nowadays, now, in our modern life, most people spend so much time indoors, most people do not get enough Vitamin D.

So most people are Vitamin D deficient. Deficient means not enough. And this causes all kinds of problems, mentally and physically. So just getting outdoors, you’re getting Vitamin D. Automatically, you’re going to start feeling physically better and therefore mentally and emotionally better.Another one is serotonin. Serotonin is a brain chemical, a brain chemical that tends to make you feel calm and happy, right? It’s kind of the calm, happy brain chemical. It also helps with sleep because it gets changed to melatonin which helps you sleep. At night it changes, your body changes it. So, again, if you’re not getting enough natural light, and artificial light is not the same.

If you’re not getting enough natural light, you don’t get enough serotonin. So your body, when you get natural sunlight, your body creates more serotonin, which makes you feel happier and calmer. There’s actually a physical thing happening in your body. When you don’t get enough natural light, your body creates less serotonin, therefore your mood goes down. You feel more bored, more depressed, etc.

So again, this is another physical thing that happens when you get outdoors and get that natural sunlight coming into your eyes, your brain starts creating, your body starts creating, this section of your stomach creates some, too, more serotonin which makes you feel better.

Air, fresh air, that’s another benefit. Indoors, think about it, if you’re indoors and the windows are all closed, you’re kind of breathing air that’s not fresh, right? That same air is being circulated again and again and again and again. Whereas, when you’re outdoors you’re getting fresh air. Unless you live in Los Angeles with terrible air quality or Beijing. But if you’re in a place with decently clean air, you’re getting nice fresh air, which again, stimulates your body, wakes it up, all that fresh oxygen is good for you.

And I already mentioned another benefit of being outdoors a lot is activity. We just naturally tend to be more active when we’re outdoors, right? We tend to walk more, for example. When you’re outside, you kind of have to walk more, right? It’s natural. You can avoid walking. If you’re really lazy, you could just go outside and sit on a bench and not move.

But most people when they’re outdoors tend to move. It’s just natural. The outdoors encourages a little more physical activity, sometimes a lot more. And as I mentioned already, the opposite, indoors we are almost always sedentary, right? When we’re indoors, we are almost always sitting. We’re sitting hours and hours and hours when we’re indoors.

And then when you’re outside, you just tend to stand more. Even standing is better than sitting all the time. And finally, as I mentioned, the stimulation. There’s all that sensory stimulation coming in when you’re outdoors.

So if you feel down, if you feel your motivation is lower, if you’re feeling even sad and depressed, I have a magic cure for you. Go outside. And when I say go outside, I mean go outside four hours or more every single day. Four or more hours every day will cure most depression, will cure most boredom. Just that.

You don’t need a psychologist. You don’t need a psychiatrist. You don’t need to take a lot of pills.You don’t need to go, “Oh, what should I do?” You don’t need to change your whole life necessarily. Just get outdoors four hours or more every day. If it’s sunny, if it’s raining, if it’s cold, if it’s super hot. It doesn’t matter. Outdoors four hours or more every day. This will cure most depression and sadness and boredom. It will certainly help nearly all depression, boredom, sadness. So simple. So simple.

Sometimes I forget this myself. I’ll be, y’know, my mood, everything will be down a little bit and, oh, what should I do? And I’m thinking about my life and all this stuff. And I just, finally, I’ll wake up and, oh, just go outdoors more. And I’ll just start going outdoors a lot more and I start feeling a lot better. This also will help your English learning. You know I recommend this all the time.

It is much better to learn Effortless English outdoors. How do you do that? Well, you’ve got a phone, right? You just put the lessons on your phone or your mp3, your iPod, whatever, and you listen to the lessons outside. Especially good if you walk at the same time. So go outdoors and walk and listen to these lessons. Every single day, that’s an hour or two hours or more, outdoors listening to English.

So much better than sitting inside. I know what happens when you sit inside listening to English. Your energy drops. You start feeling a little bored. You start feeling tired. You get distracted. You start looking around at other things. You’re sitting on your butt. There’s not enough mental stimulation. Your body’s not moving enough.

But when you go outdoors and you listen to Effortless English outdoors while you’re walking, especially, well then your heart starts pumping a little bit more. You get more blood going. More oxygen coming in.

Visually, you’re looking around, there’s more visual stimulation, light. All of these things are happening and it wakes up your brain and you learn faster and you remember more and it’s more interesting and it’s easier. All of these things will improve your English learning, just by going outdoors.

So your task, your assignment this month is simple. Increase your daily time outdoors. Increase your daily time outdoors. So right now you spend, it doesn’t matter how many minutes outdoors you spend each day or hours, increase it. Add one more hour per day, or more if you want, but at least add one extra hour outdoors per day.

Tell me about it on Twitter. Tell me about it on Gab. On both of those I am ajhoge, AJ Hoge. See you next time. Bye for now.