Your Phone Is Destroying Your Nervous System | Do This Instead

Discover why an early morning walk — done before you check your phone, scroll social media, or turn on the news — is one of the most powerful mental health and self-care habits you can build. 

In this video, I break down why a daily morning walk changes your life: it's not the walk itself, it's the emotional regulation, mental clarity, and inner stillness it creates before the world gets a chance to influence you.

If you've been feeling emotionally drained, anxious, moody, or overwhelmed by social media, the news cycle, or constant information overload, this video explains why. 

You'll learn why our nervous system was never designed to process this much conflict, comparison, and content this fast — and how a simple morning walk outdoors, connecting with nature, breath-work, and stillness can reset your mind, lower stress, and help you start your day grounded instead of reactive.

If you've been feeling emotionally heavy, low-energy, or overwhelmed without knowing why — this video is for you. 

• Start your walk. 
• Change your life.

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:01)
Good morning, guys. Today I want to talk to you about the walk that will change your life. The walk that will change your life. It's not the walk itself, but it it's what happens within you during this walk. It is the walk that happens as early in the morning as possible. It's the walk that happens before anyone else.

gets to you before you cut on social media, before you cut the television on, before you allow anything to have an opportunity to influence you. It's the walk

The way I like to put it, getting to God before this world gets to you. It's the walk that so many of us desperately need. It's the walk that addresses one of the most

Overlooked.

Problems, situations in our society today. The overwhelm of information, the overwhelm, the flood of conflicts, problems, situations that take us on this emotional roller coaster. I once heard.

By a trusted voice. Our nervous system was never designed to be this exposed to conflicts this rapidly. They gave an illustration that made a lot of sense. They said, ⁓ you know, how many of a year's back we would get a newspaper and we'd open up the newspaper and we'd read whatever articles we'd read.

And that was our first exposure to conflicts domestically and abroad. And we could process it in our own way in our own time. Maybe we'd cut the news on when we felt like it, and we'd get a glimpse into other conflict.

But that's kind of where it ended. Maybe you have conflict in your own home or community or church, whatever it might be, but it would come in these bite-sized pieces. Nowadays, information is moving at such a rapid pace. We we get information so fast. And even as this person put it, all at once, it's an overwhelming amount.

Of information that we then try unknowingly, we try to process it, we try to make sense of it, we try to put it somewhere, we try to categorize it, we try to resolve it, we try to deal with it. But it's too much to deal with. We weren't designed to deal with it so rapidly. And a lot of it, the majority of it, I would even say, has nothing to do.

With with us directly. It's other people's lives. It's other people's influence. It's other people's

Created reality, content creation. And there's an endless scroll, an endless amount of this information. Readily available, accessible at any time, 24 hours a day. It never cuts off, it never shuts down. We become addicted to it. There's no bottom to it. There's no scroll to the bottom of it. You never know what's going to come up, and I think that.

That kind of feeds into the curiosity and the intrigue, right? Because it's like variety. So on one end, there's so much, so you never know what you're gonna get, but at the same time, so much of it is is is toxic, demanding, commanding, so much marketing, so many sales pitches.

As soon as you get pulled this way, there's something that's gonna pull you this way. As soon as one blogger says, Eat this way, another one says, never eat those things, eat this way. As one is ⁓ as soon as one trainer says, train this way, the other one says, never train that way, train this way. It it keeps you in this in this rap, rap race, ⁓ hamster wheel, chasing the carrot, internal demand, pressure, weight.

And the reason I share this, I'm not here to just get down on social media, but the reason I I entitled this one, The Walk That Will Change Your Life, is because in my own personal life, recently, I've I've noticed the distinct difference between when I'm on social.

and the emotional heaviness.

That I experience, kind of being moody, being zapped of energy, ⁓ feeling low energy, low vibe, and not really knowing why. And it's this exposure to so much conflict. Not only just conflict in terms of just issues and problems that other people are having, but conflict in within myself because you're consuming so much of it. You're trying to process so much of it.

That it emotionally wears you out. And the reason that this walk will change your life is one thing that I do, I don't remember a morning, I haven't done it. I'm either walking or running, but every morning I get out and I come out here to this park or to another, and I get in touch with nature. I get in touch with God's creation.

its most organic state possible. Of course, we we fashion, you know, some company created this park and, you know, put the grass here and you know planted the trees and stuff like that. But what I'm saying is is that it's still God's design. It's still life happening organically. And it's something beautiful about it, calming about it, regulating about it.

Soothing to the soul.

I see these mountains behind me. You can't see them right now, but there's mountains that are in front of me. The sun over here to the right.

This walk allows me to settle in. It allows me space in here and in here to center myself and to remember. Remember who I am. Remember what life is really about. To remember what I'm most passionate about, what matters to me, what's meaningful to me.

There's no demands here. There's no commands here. There's no rat race. There's no carrot dangling in front of me. There is no pressure and push and pull to buy something or do something or conform to something. There's no comparisons here. It's just observation. It's just a beholding of the beauty of the way things were meant to be.

The the the God-given design of creation of life. Something about walking and moving with that which is life, growing organically. I once heard this, and maybe you've heard this before too. It's humans are the only thing in creation that gets to decide it's not going to reach its full potential.

I always think about that when I'm walking and I see these trees and they just grow so tall. They grow and they stretch towards the heavens and they just keep growing and they reach their full capacity, their full potential. All that's possible for them, right? Every tree reaches that because

What it it's been designed to do. And so many times we have also been designed this way, to reach our full potential, to be all that God's created us to be and to do and to have and to enjoy and to experience in this world and

Sometimes we miss out on some of those things because life has become so heavy because we're processing so much. We're exposed to so much. We're looking at so much. We're concerned with so much. I mean, every time we're and it doesn't have to just be social. It can be social media, but it could be anything. It could it can be Netflix, it can be TV, it could be ⁓ just being in a toxic relationship, it can be in a

a toxic community, whatever it is, right? It's just this full on, never stopping, never ending inundation of things that we have to process and calculate and try to strategize around and try to overcome. And it's like we we weren't built and designed to be constantly having to overcome something. I mean life is hard enough, right? Maybe it's on your job or at church, in ministry or within your relationship. Like we we already have enough problems of our own.

You know, as they once said, I can do bad all by myself. It's like there's enough things that we have to do and process and wrestle with just because we're alive. But then we're adding on by exposing ourselves to everyone else's conflicts and made-up issues and problems and marketing and sales and the pushing and the prodding to do something else, to be something else, to have something else, to look

like something else. It's never enough. And I think that's the that's the main thing. I don't wanna just start babbling or just or just kinda going without making sense here. I think that's the main thing that I wanted to get across. It it's it's never enough. There's this feeling of just kind of heaviness that there's never enough. Because there's always something more to conform to or compare ourselves with or

Try and achieve or look like or be like, and sometimes it's not so apparent, it's not so obvious. It's happening beneath the surface on a subconscious level. We're having these internal conflicts with other people because they may post something or say something that we don't like, that we disagree with. Because we have our own values, our own belief systems. We have the things that we believe in, and when we

Are exposed to something that goes against what we believe in. It goes against something that that we value, that we hold near and dear to our hearts. We in that moment, whether we're aware of it or not, we have to deal with that. And sometimes we leave a comment or we say something or we share it with the family or whatever it might be. I'm just using social media as a as a ⁓ example. But this can

happen in so many different ways. My point today is the walk that will change your life is the walk that gets in front of all of this and gives you the space and the place to just to just be, to just be without all of these additional things that you have to wrestle with. It'll change your life because it gives you an opportunity to be reminded of what settling feels like, centeredness feels like, emotional regulation feels like.

It reminds you of what the calm feels like. It reminds you of what it feels like to.

Live as God designed us to.

And then we can carefully, strategically, purposefully, intentionally proceed into the day. Before the overwhelm, before the flood, we can choose what we're going to enter into. Today I'm not going to cut that on. Today I'm not going to watch that. Today I'm not going to engage in that. Today I'm not going to go over there. I'm not going to talk to that person. I'm not going to engage on that, on that channel of communication.

Whatever it might be, this walk that will change your life, it just it's a walk that gets in front of the conflict and it allows you the space consciously.

Process the calm and the peace, even the stillness. Sometimes I come here and I just sit. Even the stillness before all of the work within, the rapidness, the stuff happening within us. And we're not so emotionally worn out. I was just sharing on, I think it was one of my podcast episodes the other day, ⁓ just how.

You know, work never really wears us out. Physical labor, that's that's not what wears us out. It's the it's the emotional weight, the emotional burden of knowing so much about so many people.

About being aware of so many conflicts, where do you put them all? Especially if you're a Christian and you just or any person of faith, or any person that just believes that you know we are to contribute to the wellness or to the well-being of society. We want to be contributors to to to to life in a positive way. Man, we it really hits us because we're we're problem solvers. We want to address problems. Well,

At your core if you wanna solve problems and you have so many problems coming at you.

Where do you where do you put all of that? So that's it. I wanted to wrap it up here. I just wanted to encourage you to make time each day to get up as early as you can, find you a safe space and place where you can go for a walk, get out, move the body. There's something that's very precious about the nervous system and connecting the breathing and the walking, the physical movement with the mind and how it all works together.

And just allowing yourself to breathe and to observe life happening. The grass is growing, the birds are are flying and chirping. Flowers are blooming, the sun is is rising, the mountains are standing boldly. I mean, there's so much life that's happening all around us. And the more you get into this, the more you'll see little critters on the ground and you know, little ants crawling or little chipmunks running around. It's it's amazing the things that you observe.

Life is happening all around us. It's beautiful, it's calming, it's peaceful, and it ⁓ it just sets you up, man, to operate at an optimal level emotionally, right? Inwardly. ⁓ and then you can you can choose more intently what I will and will not engage in for the day. So I think that'll change your life. I know it helps me. ⁓ so.

Just wanted to share that for anyone that may need it. ⁓ I wish you well. I'm praying for you. I believe in you, I love you. Please remember that change is possible. Your change is possible with this practice. And always, never forget, your presence is the permission that you've been waiting for. So give yourself permission.

To do whatever you need to do to be at your best. God bless.