185I would become more like the great football coach Amos
Alonzo Stagg, who lived to be 103 years old. Amos Alonzo
Stagg was asked how he lived to be so old (the average
life expectancy during his lifetime was 65) and he said,
“I have, for the greater part of my life, indulged in run-
ning and other vigorous exercise that forced large
amounts of oxygen into my body.”
I increased my walking just to see what would hap-
pen if my lungs became my mattress. I began to get hap-
pier. I began to enjoy life more. I began to be more moti-
vated.
As I walked, I wondered: What if the spirit lives as
an aura around us? What if the spirit were a cloud of
energy that exists around and outside our bodies ready
at all times to be breathed in? Drawn right into the soul?
What if when you breathed deeply, you pulled in
your own spirit? And you received energy for action—
energy for an explosive take-down of one of your out-of-
control problems.
What if the solution to problems outside you was
inside you?
Deepak Chopra quotes an ancient anonymous Indian
sage as identifying humanity’s near-fatal superstition:
“You believe that you live in the universe when in real-
ity the universe lives in you.”
Many modern scientific books are now referring to
the human brain as the “three-pound universe.” When
the body moves, so does the mind. So does that inner
world. When you’re walking, you are organizing your
mind whether you want to be or not.
Soon we realize that the mind and the body are con-
nected. When the Greeks said the secret to a happy life
was a sound mind in a sound body, they were on to a
powerful truth.
Keep walking