I went out for a really hilly bike ride on roads I’d never tried before. It was quite spectacular and I discovered a secret little wild camping spot that I shall be taking the family back to this summer.
I love cycling for all the reasons you can google for yourself and what’s more I get to observe my thinking while I’m at it. (Hiking’s the same.) Something about the mind-body unit being mostly on autopilot during these activities, seems to free up capacity.
I noticed two different modes of thinking.
The first I’ll call “active” or “analytical” thinking. This was all intellectual: the mind having a chat with itself, judging what was happening, and dragging my feelings with it, wherever it went. It fell into two camps: