10 Benefits of Walking to Work

1. It’s good for your health. Walking reduces your risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, can assist with weight loss, and keeps you fit.
2. It gives you energy and reduces fatigue. Gentle exercise like walking gives you a natural boost of energy through enhancing circulation and oxygen supply around your body. Who doesn’t want to feel energetic when they get into work, and when they get home from work?!
3. It’s free!
4. It might actually be faster – you don’t get snarled up in that pesky rush hour traffic.
5. You don’t have to do or think about anything else. The thing you are ‘doing’ is walking, and if you are walking a route you know well (which you are likely to be if you walk to and from work), it is the perfect time to let your mind wander. Daydream, be creative, think about things you don’t have time to think about when your attention is taken up with work or home.
6. Inspired solutions. On the other hand, being able to think in an unconstrained way can actually help you to solve problems and come up with creative solutions to them, whether this is a challenge at work or in your personal life.
7. It can increase your sense of wellbeing. Walking releases endorphins which can make you feel happier. It also gives you time to yourself (which in most of our busy lives we don’t get very often!)
8. Appreciating the world around you. Walking is naturally slower than being in a car, on a bus or even cycling, and this different pace means I often see things on my walk to work that I might well miss if I used another method of transport. This could be specific things like a really beautiful morning sky, a rainbow or more general like watching the seasons change – it really makes me appreciate the beautiful city we live in.
9. Switching off. I am definitely guilty of checking social media as soon as I wake up, then spending my day in front of a computer, followed by an evening in front of the TV and on my phone. My walks to and from work are a great way to unplug and switch off, and I know that despite my good intentions if I was on the bus I would be browsing the internet on my phone. Having half an hour at the beginning and end of the day where I am not using any sort of technology is really refreshing.
10. Transitions. Having this time to yourself to think and just ‘be’ can help you to make the emotional and mental (as well as the physical) transition from home to work. It can help you to feel ready for work when you walk into the office and leave work behind when you walk into your home.

 I love walking to and from work, and if you are able to, why not try giving it a go?