Daily Dose of English 4
Walks
Daily Dose of English 4
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about walks. Going on walks, that time when you go outside to move your body from one place to another place using your feet, that's the definition of walking, of what a walk is. But there's lots of different kinds of walks. My favorite kind of walk is when there's no reason, actually, when you're just going out to walk for the sake of walking. It's good for your body, it's good for your mind, and it functions as like a mental reset in a lot of ways. Actually, just a little bit ago before recording this episode, I didn't feel like doing much at all. I was pretty tired, I felt sort of exhausted after work, and I decided to go out for a short little walk. I went outside for 10, maybe 15 minutes total and just walked and it was a really nice way to reset and feel a little bit healthier, a little bit more focused in such a short amount of time. Going on walks without a real purpose, I think, is a fantastic way to reconnect with yourself. I try not to bring anything with me. I leave my phone, I try to leave my AirPods, my earbuds, and take as few things with me as possible when I go on these types of mind-clearing walks because it helps me focus on my thoughts. I almost always have something in my head, maybe it's a sentence or phrase or ideas just bouncing around, and forcing myself to be with those thoughts is a nice way to hear them and to listen to them. I've actually been doing that more in general recently, trying to not have maybe an audiobook or podcast playing all the time because it gives me more time to sit and address and think about my thoughts, rather. And so if you have a lot of things going around in your head, I definitely recommend that you try to take some time to just listen to them. However, when you go out on walks, especially if you live in a big, busy city, it can get pretty loud, and so that's when I definitely think it's worth having something in your ears just to protect from the loud noises because it can make a walk way worse if you're in somewhere that maybe smells bad or it's just a really ugly place or there's just so many cars and it's really loud. And so trying to find a place that works for you, that makes your walk really nice, is I think a great way to make that better. In my last apartment, I was able to walk to a great big park and do a full round trip, so going to the park, walk around a bit and then come back in about 45 minutes, which is a pretty long walk, but it's really nice if I ever needed a little bit of, like I wanted to get some exercise in but I didn't actually want to like go to the gym or do something big and heavy. And so having something like that, like a simple circuit or a walk that you can do multiple times is really nice for if you need to fill some time in the day or you're feeling a little bit restless or antsy and you wanted to move or do something, that can be a really helpful thing to have. You don't necessarily have to go walking on your own either. Walks are great with other people, with multiple people, friends, family, loved ones, and so finding good people to walk with is fantastic. There's the sort of classic stereotype of the grandma's meeting up or the mom's meeting up in the mall to go walking in the US. Not a lot of people actually do that, but my grandma definitely had a walking group for many years and she would go out with people that she didn't really know otherwise, like that was their, the thing that they did together was walk, and they would chat and they would do things, different people would host the walks, might sound sort of silly but it can be a great way to force yourself to get outside and get a little bit of exercise. Because walking is actually a great sort of baseline amount of exercise. If you're somebody who really struggles to do regular exercise, that's a lot more, not hardcore, that's not the right word, more difficult, or like going to the gym, lifting weights, going for runs, like if that's difficult for you, then going on a 20 or 30 minute walk every day, every couple days is also a fantastic way to get that exercise in. Walking is one of the things that we are meant to do as humans, right, and so it does work a lot of the good muscle groups and gets your heart pumping a little bit more, and whether or not you listen to a podcast in English or you just think about your own thoughts, it can be a great way to work on your mental and physical health. But like I was saying, you can go on walks with family or friends or a loved one, walking hand in hand with somebody and talking to them is a great way to improve your relationship, just going on walks generally is a great way to talk to people that you know well or don't know at all because it removes maybe that difficulty or the burden of sitting next to or looking directly at someone and talking, because sometimes that can be difficult. But if you're on a walk, you're experiencing the world together, you're both looking forward and then occasionally looking over at each other, and so it almost makes it easier to talk and to bring out ideas and to maybe talk about difficult topics. And so if you're really struggling to talk to somebody, instead of like sitting them down and saying, okay, we need to talk, you can say, hey, can we go on a walk, I'd really like to talk to you for a little bit, and I think a walk is a great way to do that. And you can then talk. Pets are also fantastic partners to go on a walk with, especially dogs. I know some people walk their cats, but I don't think it's that common. I don't think I've seen somebody walk their cat like ever. But dogs all the time, pretty much every dog owner knows what it's like to go on a walk with their dog. And one of the things that I think is so great about walking with your dog is that your dog is always thrilled. Your dog is always so excited that you're going on a walk that it guarantees that you're going to do that, that there's going to be a positive mood in the walk. No dog is like ever thinking about work and their taxes and all of these difficult things they have to do in their life. The dog is focused on the walk. And you can do that too. You can join them. You can say, all right, I'm going to have a nice walk with my dog. We're going to have a good time. And then I can go back to the real world and focus on maybe my difficult adult problems. And so if you really do need a mental reset, going with a dog is a great way to also boost your mood a little bit. Walks are also great ways to get from point A to point B. If you need to go somewhere, if you need to be somewhere, walking to get there is a fantastic option if it's reasonable. Obviously, you shouldn't walk three hours to go to the supermarket. But if you're close by, it's almost always the fastest option if you're just going around the corner or to a store just right around on the other street. And so it's a fantastic way to do that every single day, to get a little bit of movement in you. It's my preferred option if I'm going to go shopping or to go get something quickly because it means that I don't need to do anything else. I don't need to get a bike. I don't need to take the public transit or the metro. And I can be there and back very, very quickly. That's one of the things I do really like about living in a big city is the fact that a big walkable city, I'll say as well, is because there is kind of everything that you need right within a three, four minute walk from you. Yesterday, I realized that I needed to get just something really quick from the market. And I was able to do that and go get a little coffee snack, a little coffee treat at a local bakery, all within like 15 minutes. And that was kind of going slowly, like I had to go in two different directions. But the fact that that's totally possible without having to make any plans, get into a car, whatever it is, it's just so available and quick. And that's something that's really made me more content with the way that I interact with the world is knowing that that's a possibility and that I can do my little errands and things like that via walking. And so if you're feeling a little bit tired, if you're feeling a little bit mentally overloaded or you need to run a quick little errand, I definitely recommend that you go for a walk, maybe throw on this podcast while you're there if you don't have too many extra thoughts floating around and do some English listening while you're out and about experiencing the world. But that's everything for today. I thank you so much for watching. I hope that you enjoyed and I will see you tomorrow. Have a good one.
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