we learn to thrive

I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is

I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.

Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.

Here’s proof of what I mean:

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Do you gender trans people correctly even when they're being absolutely terrible people? Do you refuse to use the r-slur against someone who suicide baited you but is neurodivergent? Do you refuse to snark at a mentally ill person who is being genuinely unpleasant, "go take your meds!"

Do you allow members of marginalized groups to be terrible people without judging their entire demographic for it? One of the most invisible yet vital forms of privilege is the right to be terrible people as an individual rather than as a group. Do you acknowledge that there are bad people in every group, that it doesn't make their group less worth fighting for? Or do you shake your head if you happen to get mistreated by some who belong to a group and insist the entire group is awful and not worth your allyship?

The fire alarm went off at school today because of a mistake, but your teachers did the right thing to take you outside to be sure it was safe.

Some people use wheelchairs because their legs don’t walk very well. It can happen because they are old and tired, or because they got hurt, or because they were born that way.

Your Uncle Jerod talked to mom and dad, and wants you to call her Aunt Kari now. We will call her Kari too, and we can all practice together if it takes some getting used to.

Anticipate age-appropriate fears the child might have so you can assuage those that are not a threat.

Yes, Kitty died at the vet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not safe for Puppy to go to the vet.

Yes, Peyton and Jo are getting a divorce, but they are both still part of our family and love you very much.

Yes, Grandma has cancer, but cancer is not contagious, so you are not going to get cancer by visiting her.

Anticipate fears that are realistic, and give the child clear direction about what to do, and what happens next.

If someone asks you to get in their car without permission, find Mom, Mama, or a teacher and tell them right away. We will make sure you are safe.

If Sparky’s sickness makes him hurt very badly, we are going to take him to the vet and she will give him some medicine, and he will die, but then he won’t hurt any more. Because Sparky is very sick, we are going to spend some special time with him over the next few days.

If the fire alarm goes off at school again, follow the teacher’s directions. If the fire alarm goes off and you are somewhere alone, go outside, and ask a grownup to call 911.

Reassure the child that they’re safe and loved, validate their feelings, and see if they have follow-up questions. Give them the option to take space to process, or to stay near you to feel safe.

I’m sad about Sparky too. Do you think we could make his favorite peanut-butter treats, while we are spending special time with him?

I understand why Grandma’s cancer makes you feel angry. It doesn’t seem fair that people we love get sick. Would you like a hug?