2500 Walks Later- What Showing Up for Myself Actually Taught Me

Walk Streak Day 1- December 1, 2019

I have walked every day for 2,500 days.

Which sounds like the kind of thing a person sets out to do.

I did not.

There was no grand declaration. No spreadsheet projecting the date of Walk #2,500. No vision board with a picture of my future self striding triumphantly through the Michigan wilderness. But it did start with a curiosity-based question.

It started in the last quarter of 2019.

I had been following someone in the personal growth space who was talking about finishing the year strong—and, because it was 2019, finishing the decade strong. Instead of waiting until January 1 to suddenly become a new year, new you person, the idea was to use the end of the year as a runway. Move your body. Drink your water. Take care of yourself now so you could enter the new year already in motion, and something about that idea made sense.

It wasn’t until I started writing this, that I fully realized it, but I guess I’ve always been decently active, but sporadically. I’ve had shorter streaks before, where I tried to hit 10k step days.  I’ve trained for marathons, half-marathons, triathlons and a 3-day walk before, usually with a very specific “let’s see if I can do this” goal.

Those goals came with finish lines. And medals. And cheering. And, if you wanted it, a t-shirt and little sticker for the back of your car announcing to strangers at stoplights that YOU HAD DONE A THING.

This was different.

This time I was exploring the question, what would happen if I created evidence I was showing up for myself?  Would I feel more confident or ‘ready’ for my goals for 2020?  For most of that last quarter, I was still inconsistent, missing more days that I made. I was warming up to the idea as much as I was actually doing it, showing up more as an afterthought rather than a priority.

Then December 1 came around.

There were only 31 days left in the year. I could do 31 days. So, I focused, prioritized and used all my grit to do it so I could have that proof.  And once I'd done that, I thought I might as well start the new year strong. Then I might as well make it three months. Then 100 days. And at some point, there just wasn’t a good enough reason to stop.

Then the world stopped instead.

When a walk became an anchor

Around 120 days into this little experiment, COVID shut everything down. Suddenly, the structures and rhythms of normal life disappeared overnight and life felt catawampus. But every day, I still went outside.

And outside, strangely, things were still happening exactly as they were supposed to. Seasons changed. Snow melted, plants grew, and light shifted. Birds carried on with whatever important bird business they had scheduled.

The human world was topsy-turvy, but the natural world kept moving. My walk became a grounding anchor that helped me feel a glimmer of regaining my bearings.

It was a place to listen to podcasts from people who helped me make sense of what was happening. A place to process. A place to move my body. A place to remember that even when so much was outside of my control, there was one small promise I could keep to myself.

I’ve kept walking ever since.

Through COVID.

Through approximately 10,000 childcare Tetris moments.

Through my kids growing to school age and our decision to hybrid homeschool.

Through leaving my corporate career and building my business full-time.

Through courses, and deadlines, and vacations, and solo parenting while my husband traveled.

Through Michigan snow and rain and heat and bugs.

Through wonderful days and terrible days and an enormous number of completely unremarkable Tuesdays (and Wednesdays and Saturdays).

And now, somehow, I’ve done it 2,500 times.

I almost feel weird telling you that. Because for most of these 2,500 days, this has been mine. I haven't been broadcasting my streak or posting daily updates. I wasn’t trying to become known as The Woman Who Walks. But 2,500 feels worth stopping for and letting you in.

Not because I think everyone should walk every day for the next six-plus years. Actually, what I’ve learned is almost the opposite.

I made this much harder than it needed to be

For a long time, I had some ideas about what counted as a “real” walk. Thirty minutes was better. Sweating was good. Running was even better. If I needed a shower afterward? Excellent, because clearly I had exercised correctly and really made the day ‘count’.

Except that requiring every walk to be A Workout made the whole thing considerably less useful. Sometimes I’d forget until late at night and drag myself onto the basement treadmill when what my body probably needed far more was sleep.

I’ve jogged in hotel bathrooms, power walked airport concourses and family neighborhoods to get my exercise minutes in.

I once shattered my Apple Watch and went through an absolutely ridiculous series of events trying to get my husband’s old watch synced to my account before ultimately running out to buy a new one late at night.  I knew it was over the top, but I did it anyway.

Why? Because I needed the evidence.

I had done the walks, but somewhere along the way the digital record had become so important that I was afraid a missing data point could somehow make the whole thing less true.

What if someone didn’t believe me? What if there was a technicality?

Never mind that almost no one even knew I was doing this. You know, totally normal, sane, behavior.

Eventually, another tracking glitch failed to record the day properly, and I didn’t notice until days later.  I was surprised that I felt shame and grief, wondering whether the streak was technically over, even though I’d put in ‘the work’ for the day.  Maybe I should stop calling it a streak and just keep the healthy habit.  And that reaction told me something much more important than my watch could.

My relationship with the evidence needed to change. So did my definition of showing up because this was never about anything other than creating an evidence trail of showing up for myself when I needed it. I eventually created a Minimum Daily Promise (MDP) to set what it means to keep my streak: at least a 15-minute walk, outside when possible. I still close my rings, but I’ll adjust the calorie goal based on my actual capacity. Because the goal was never really the calories. I weigh basically the same as I did when I started this. The deeper goal was to create evidence that I would show up for myself. And somewhere along the way, I learned that showing up for myself could not require abandoning myself in order to do it.

Consistency doesn’t necessarily mean sameness

Most days, sometime in the late afternoon, I feel a tug. It’s time to put things down. The exact time shifts with the seasons, but I love that golden-hour-ish part of the day when the light starts to feel more reflective than pressing.  On days that are full, I like to use my walk as a time to transition and reorient myself before focusing on dinner and family time and not feel like I’m running on fumes.

My dog, who joined our family three years ago, knows the signals- Socks. Headphones. Swipe of chapstick. Tissue in my pocket. Potty stop. Shoes. Harness. Tap the watch.

We head down our long driveway, cross the street, and within a few minutes can be on paths surrounded by nature.

And here’s something I’ve only really understood after doing this for so long: I usually don’t decide what I need from the walk before I leave. I get myself there first, then I notice-

• Do I want my earbuds in or out?

• Do I need silence? Music? A podcast? A friend?

• Do I need to talk an idea out loud?

• Do I want to catch up on the news?

• Do I want to scroll my phone and zone out for a while?

• Do I want to walk hard enough to get my heart pumping, or does my body want to wander and release?

Sometimes a walk becomes my creative studio. I’ve talked out entire blog posts, business ideas and recorded Instagram stories that felt impossible to articulate while sitting at my desk (aka dining table).

Sometimes it’s a phone call with a friend.

Sometimes I find the exact song that matches my energy and suddenly I’m doing some sort of one-woman walking flash mob through the neighborhood.

Sometimes I notice the sunlight through the trees or across the pond and take pictures because something about it feels magical about the moment.

Sometimes I meet a neighbor.

Sometimes I cry, sing or do basically nothing except get one foot in front of the other.

And sometimes my kids call and blow it all apart because they need me to approve screen time, report whatever catastrophe has erupted during the 20 minutes I've been gone, or ask when I'm coming home because they want me to read at bedtime.

Sometimes a walk is just a walk. That’s an important reminder I need from time to time.

Not every walk needs to mean something

I think we put enormous pressure on practices that are supposed to be good for us and that we need to do them with some sort of measure of ‘success’.

If we’re going to meditate, we’d better become centered.

If we’re journaling, we’d better uncover something.

If we’re walking, we’d better be mindful.

If we’re resting, we’d better emerge RESTORED.

I don’t want my walk to have that job. I don’t usually plan to use it for anything. I just know it’s a place that can give me what I need. And sometimes I don’t know what I need until I’m there.

You don’t have to know what you need before you begin the practice. The practice can create the conditions in which you become able to hear what you need.

That’s become one of the biggest differences between the way I understand this practice now and the way I understood it when I started.

Some walks are like the stars. Most are the space between them. But I encourage you to look at the night sky. Most of it is empty space, and still we marvel at the stars. We make stories from them. We use those tiny points of light to orient ourselves and navigate across oceans. The empty space doesn't ruin the constellation, it makes it visible.

Or maybe more appropriately, some walks are like fireflies yet most are like the field of play where we run through the grass for the possibility of catching a bit of magic in our cupped hands that inspires us to show up the next time.

Maybe our lives work that way, too. Not every leg of an adventure is noteworthy. Not every day needs a breakthrough. And maybe toughest to accept that not every time you show up for yourself needs to change your life. Sometimes you just put one foot in front of the other while your dog gets his business done. It still belongs to the story.

The walk didn’t change. I did.

If you’d asked me early in this streak what I was learning, I probably would have said one of the conventional promises of personal development- discipline, consistency, showing up, building strength, proof that I could do what I said I would do. I still believe those things… But they’re not the most interesting or important part anymore.

The walk has become something more like a dynamic infrastructure. It is sturdy enough to hold me and flexible enough to respond to me. The same path can help me work through a business problem one day, release emotion the next, connect with a friend the next, challenge my body the next and give my brain absolutely nothing useful to do the day after that. The practice can stay consistent while the way I practice it changes. That’s a very different relationship with consistency than we’ve been taught. And it’s deeply connected to what I now call Human Orientation.

Over the years, I’ve gathered and curated language and frameworks that help me contemplate and understand myself differently—my Glow, Human Design, astrology, the Enneagram, my energy, my capacity, the terrain I’m navigating, the goals I’m pulled toward.

I didn’t have all of that language when I started… But I was practicing some of it before I knew how to name it.

Glow is the energy within you, the thing you can often sense in another person before they tell you anything. The buoyancy, juiciness, resilience and capacity available for all the things life is asking of us.  Recognizing the different facets helps me see the flow and friction they are experiencing.

Some days my capacity has more of a buffer zone. Some days the exact same thing that wouldn’t bother me at all can feel enormous.

My walk has become one of the places where I can put down some of what I’ve been carrying long enough to notice the difference and reorient myself.

I can step away from other people’s needs, pressures, feelings and energy.

I can get out of my head and into my body.

I can put the shields down for a minute.

I can notice.

…And then I can respond.

Sometimes I leave the house without knowing what my Glow needs. A few minutes into the walk, though, I’m scanning without really thinking about it.

Silence or sound?

Connection or solitude?

Push or recover?

Think or stop thinking?

Where is the tension?

Where am I stuck?

Is that stuckness fear, exhaustion, uncertainty, resistance, or something else?

I don’t always get the answer right. The walk isn’t magic. It’s simply a place I’ve practiced listening.

Maybe you don’t have a consistency problem

This has made me wonder about all the things we call failed habits. What if some of your inconsistency isn’t evidence that you're bad at consistency?  What if it’s inviting you to use your curiosity to unravel what’s going on.

Maybe you noticed something wasn’t the right fit.

Maybe you misinterpreted the signal.

Maybe the practice asked for more capacity than you actually had available or cost you more than it was worth.

Maybe you were trying to perform someone else’s version of what “showing up” should look like.

Maybe you kept encountering a friction point and treating it as a character flaw instead of a data point. I’ve abandoned plenty of things over the years. I used to see that as evidence of inconsistency or not wanting it enough.  Now I wonder whether I’ve actually conducted a lot of field research. Those attempts were test flights. They helped me build the runway.

If you want to create a practice that lasts, I don’t think you necessarily start by asking yourself What habit should I do every day?

I think you might start by understanding the terrain.  Terrain is what shapes the context and conditions of what you’re navigating in life right now.

What are you actually trying to support?

What replenishes you?

What keeps draining you?

Where do you naturally find ease?

What has kind of worked before?

What are you trying to prove?

What do you need more evidence of?

And what about the thing you’re considering feels completely delusional or impossible?

There’s information there you can use. Then you experiment based on the terrain you’re actually navigating now, in this season of life. Your practice should be resilient enough that you don’t constantly feel like you’re doing it wrong.  It should be something you can step back into and restore you where you are while supporting where you're going. Because a supportive practice isn’t supposed to preserve you exactly as you are. It’s supposed to help you navigate the terrain between here and wherever you’re headed next.

2,500 days look different from up here

This may be what has surprised me most about reaching this number. Day to day, the difference can be almost invisible- I take a walk, I come home, life continues. But when I step far enough back to see 2,500 of those days together, they look different. They become a collage. And whew, even writing that gets me when I feel that as a response to my mental visual of it, seeing all of it in context of the whole journey.  Because I can be very good at looking at one day and deciding I didn’t do enough.

I’m behind.

Things are taking too long.

I should have figured this out by now.

Maybe you know that feeling, too. But it’s harder to tell yourself that story when you can step back and see thousands of tiny moments when you made room for yourself. This is especially moving when I put it in contrast to other daily habits. I certainly haven’t done all of things we’re supposed to do every day for the last 2,500 days…

I haven’t eaten a vegetable every day.

I haven’t taken my vitamins every day.

I haven’t gotten 8 hours of sleep every day.

I’m quite confident I haven’t drunk enough water every day.

I know I haven’t even brushed my teeth every single day.

But I walked even as the terrain changed.

And I’m fascinated by what those tiny acts become when you stitch them together. It’s hard to see the difference a small supportive practice is making while you’re inside today’s version of yourself. Sometimes you need enough altitude to see the collage of those moments layered together to fully appreciate it.

“I’ve got you.”

Walk streak day 2,500

When I imagine finishing Walk #2,500, I picture coming back up my driveway with my dog and stopping my watch.

And I imagine December 1, 2019 Me standing there.

She doesn’t know what’s coming. She doesn’t know about the pandemic or homeschooling or leaving corporate or building this business. She doesn’t know about Human Orientation or Glow.

She doesn’t know how many versions of herself she’s about to become.

And I imagine her looking over and asking me- Was it worth making room for me every day?

I would put my arm around her and say Abso-fucking-lutely.

It won’t always be easy. Sometimes you’ll worry that taking care of yourself is selfish. Sometimes you’ll make it approximately 726% harder than it needs to be. You’ll stay up when you should sleep. You’ll jog in hotel bathrooms. You’ll buy a new fitness watch at an absurd hour because apparently we’ve decided the integrity of the historical record is at stake.

You’ll learn.

But every time you step out that door, you’re practicing a message to yourself- I’ve got you.

And I think that may be the most important evidence I’ve collected. Not evidence that I’m exceptionally disciplined or that everyone else should walk every day. Not even evidence that an unbroken streak matters more than one with gaps.

I’ve built something that I trust I could return to even if the streak eventually breaks. The chain isn’t what makes the practice resilient anymore… I am. Without some way of making room for myself regularly—walking or otherwise—I don’t know exactly who I would be today. But I suspect she’d tolerate a much higher threshold of fine. She’d probably feel farther from herself than she’d like. And perhaps that's what these 2,500 walks have really given me- a recurring opportunity to notice when fine isn’t where I want to live.

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads

Now I’m curious about Walk #5,000. When I imagine that version of me coming back to visit, I don’t picture a woman who has finally optimized herself into perfection- Thank G*d.

I picture a brave explorer.

Someone living far beyond the edges of what I can see from here because she got better at noticing the signals and following the threads. She understands connections I can't see yet. She knows which nudges mattered. She’s figured out how to make bigger leaps not because everything became easy, but because she’s increasingly fluent in her own signal intelligence and bold enough to follow it.

Basically, Future Me #5000 arrives with Back to the Future Doc Brown energy and the book with the winners of the next six World Series. Excellent. Tell me where we’re betting.

I want these walks to help me keep finding the language for what I’m building.

I want to bring Human Orientation into the hands of people who have felt like the old systems weren’t built for them, people ready to thrive and Glow on their own terms.

I want to tell stories that make another way feel possible.

I want to live it rather than merely explain it. Not so anyone reveres my example- so they can see the human reality inside it.

I want this practice to keep me grounded while letting me soar like a kite on a string. 

To replenish me like a supply stop on the trail.

A place to recalibrate while the field of play keeps expanding.

A way to keep it between the beacons while I venture farther into territory I can’t map yet.

Because perhaps that’s the thing I understand differently after 2,500 walks- I don’t need to know the whole route. I need practices sturdy enough to hold me and flexible enough to respond to me. I need to notice the signals. I need to make room for the humanness of being Human.

And then I need to take the next oriented step.

Maybe that’s what consistency can be. Shifting from the belief of needing to do exactly the same thing perfectly forever or overriding yourself in service of the metric.  Noticing when you are turning your life into one more system you have to perform correctly.

Maybe consistency is responding to the signal when you notice it. Maybe it’s being curious enough to keep trying.  Perhaps it’s building a practice that can change with you instead of requiring you to stay the same for it. Or as radically freeing by remembering that today’s ordinary effort doesn’t have to carry the weight of your entire transformation. It’s one point in the constellation. One firefly in the field.  One step across the terrain. One piece of the collage you’re crafting with glitter and glue stick gumming up your fingers.

And someday, when you have enough distance to turn around and see where all those seemingly insignificant steps have taken you, you might discover you’ve traveled somewhere your earlier self couldn’t have imagined.

“Roads?

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

— Doc Brown, Back to the Future

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Stephanie Rose is the founder of Firefly Scout and creator of the Human Orientation practice. Through observation, pattern recognition, and self-authorship, she helps people become more accurate interpreters of themselves and their lives so they can navigate change, growth, and “all the things” with greater clarity, capacity, and self-trust.

If you enjoy exploring a different way of seeing, join the Firefly Scout newsletter or download your free personalized Field Report to start noticing what your life may already be trying to show you.

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