We’re likely aware of the importance of incorporating exercise into our daily lives, but often times ‘working out’ ends up being the first thing to fall off my schedule when my day/night becomes full of meetings, activities, and responsibilities. When not being able to ‘fit in a workout’ would happen a few times, I considered it an exception, but when it started happening on a continual basis, it became an uncomfortable norm.
You see, I was allowing myself to believe that my health could be considered a lower priority than anything else on my ‘to do’ list as taking care of myself felt selfish. Even when
I knew it wasn’t selfish to take care of my own health, I
still couldn’t silence the critic in the back of my mind saying, “you have commitments that are more important…you gotta skip the workout.”
This inner critic is also the part of my mind which tends to worry. So when I stumbled on research during a recent class in my Drake graduate program sharing evidence about the connection between exercise and worry, I paid extremely close attention. Howard and Howard shared that there is a biological connection between exercise and worry in that exercise elongates arousal triggers that lead to a decrease in worry and stress responses (2010). Thus, exercise directly impacts how our brain responds to worry.
In addition, the benefits of exercise have been shown to be especially important when one needs to use her or his mind for solving problems, creativity, or decision making (Howard & Howard, 2010). For these higher-thinking tasks to take place, an individual must rid the body of stress and clear out cortisol in her or his system as stress shuts down the higher thinking areas of the brain by as much as 80%. The authors shared that even a fast-paced, 10-minute walk would create biological benefits to help recalibrate one’s body and mind in order to tap into higher-thinking tasks. Just think of all the higher thinking tasks we do on a daily basis and how exercise could help elevate the outcome of those tasks.
Again, the importance of incorporating exercise for one’s overall health is not new information, but for some reason, the connection I learned about decreasing worry and increasing effectiveness of higher-thinking tasks through exercise has been incredibly meaningful. If you are someone who also has a tendency to worry and/or spends a good part of the day focused on higher-thinking tasks, I hope this research speaks to you as profoundly as it did me.
Howard, P.J., & Howard, J.M. (2010).
The owner’s manual for personality at work. Charlotte, NC: Center for Applied Cognitive Studies.
Dena Quist
Communications Manager
