"Strolling and chatting with someone you think you don’t have much in common with can help you make progress on your toughest challenges."
Adam Kahane, a director of Reos Partners, an international consultancy that helps people move forward on their most intractable issues, says that he relies on a paired walk exercise a lot. "It’s so simple" he says, "and yet it’s one of the exercises that participants say has the biggest impact on their understanding of their situation and their relationships with others. Why is this ordinary activity so fruitful?"
He submits that the Catholic theologian Lucila Servitje offers a good explanation. "She suggests that the walk and the informal sharing of stories has impact because they involve mutual acceptance, and this feeling of being accepted is what enables us to change our thinking and actions. The sequence here — first, we’re accepted, and then we reconsider our position — is the opposite of the traditional Catholic confession, where, first, we confess, and then we’re forgiven. The walk, she says, is like God’s grace: love we receive that we don’t have to earn."
Article: Walk Your Way to Transformation