When talking, or writing, about walking people often comment on the relaxing properties it offers but the other week I was reminded of another benefit of walking. It is a great way to channel your anger, to make sense of your feelings of injustice and indignation. Partly there is the physical act, if you’re walking when you’re angry you’ll soon realise you are absolutely flying along! However I’m actually referring to the mental health benefits of an angry march. Let me explain…

At work I often receive emails or requests which irritate and irk me but for the most part I’m able to roll my eyes and deal with it. However sometimes someone says something that really gets my goat, makes my hackles rise and my blood boil. In order to keep the peace my first step will be to send a holding message, give them some reason why I can’t respond fully now and let them know when I will. This gives me time to sleep on it, 12 hours later I may decide that while it was annoying, this is not a battle worth fighting. However when I wake if I’m still as irked, if not more so, then I know this is the hill to die on. This is where walking comes in as if I simply logged straight on to the emails and immediately replied, there’s a risk my indignation will take over and I’d type out a detailed description of why the person was wrong and I would go on to conclude that every decision this person had ever made was incorrect and that I pitied the poor people who ever had the misfortune to cross paths with them.

This approach may be briefly amusing and vaguely satisfying but ultimately leads to more trouble. However by channeling my anger into a walk, the physical motion helps expend that extra energy and my mind is free to focus on getting to the crux of the matter. Why am I so angry and what is the solution? In my recent example the walk gave me time to realise that the reason I was so aggrieved was because someone I didn’t know was trying to tell me what to do and rudely poo-pooed the sensible alternative suggestion I had already put forward. The anger was increased by the fact that I was the one doing them a favour, they needed something from me and were still trying to laud it over me. The writer was completely lacking in empathy, if they had simply acknowledged the fact that their request was going to cause additional work for me but they would really appreciate it if I could follow their suggested approach, I’d have gone along with it without giving it too much thought. However by charging in like the proverbial bull there was no way I was going to do as they asked.

Once I’d fathomed out the why I then had time to focus on next steps and I ended up coming up with three alternative approaches which all put the majority of the work back on the other party – the one that was ultimately going to gain from the work. In my mind if you want the benefit then you can earn it.

As it happened this was one occassion where my original delaying tactic was all I needed. By the next morning, when I was prepared to very sweetly and politely put the naughty nincompoop in his place, the problem had been resovled for me and all was well.

I guess the lesson here is that while in most cases, taking a step back and giving yourself time to decide if this is a battle worth fighting is enough when dealing with an aggravating request, sometimes that isn’t enough. On those occassions I recommend going for an angry march to make sense of your feelings, find a sensible solution and hopefully avoid saying something to fan the flames.

That’s how I stroll.