10,000 Steps

I have been walking 10,000 steps a day for years. Recently, that routine changed in a way I did not expect.

What started as a workaround for my schedule became something visible. And over time, something I did for myself started to show up in the behavior of the people around me.

This episode is about what happens when consistency becomes a signal. When your habits speak before you do. And what it really means to influence without a platform or following.

Transcript

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I'm Ashley, and this is Dear Sovereign Self, my audio journal on the way I walk through life, practicing sovereignty, living from truth, not wound, and choosing alignment over self-abandonment. Here's today's entry.

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Everyone who knows me knows that I have been doing 10,000 steps a day for at least seven years now, I'll say. And it started off as a supplement to physical exercise, but it then it very much became about the mental health benefits. And now, years later, it's just a part of my daily routine. When my daughter was born, obviously that 10,000 steps came to a grinding haul, came to zero steps for a while. About two years postpartum now, and so I'm pretty much back to my normal routine. Um, but I did find myself in a bit of a conundrum when I started back because I used to do my walks outside. That was my thing. Walking around my neighborhood and my bike shorts and my big beats headphones. And when I had my daughter, for a number of reasons, I couldn't just take long leisurely walks in the middle of the day whenever I wanted to anymore. So I needed to figure out a different way to get my steps done, a different system. Shout out to the last episode. Something that actually worked inside my life as it exists now. And in my building, we have a gym. So of course, there's the option to walk the treadmill. And I even very shortly into postpartum, I got a walking pad for my apartment. So I had options. But I very quickly realized that neither of those really worked for me. That weirdly, not all steps feel the same. And I tried the walking pad and I've done the treadmill. And by the way, if that is your thing, I love that for you. Truly. I'm sure there will be a season of my life where that's exactly what I need. But right now, what I eventually realize is that my body can tell the difference between moving and actually going somewhere. I can get the same number of steps, I can get the same quote unquote benefits. But if I know I'm not actually going anywhere, something in me resists it. I actually have the same issue with swimming. I can swim from point A to point B just fine, but if you ask me to stay in one place and tread water, my body just does not compute. But that's a story for another day. So that's exactly what a treadmill feels like to me. So I had to find a version of this routine that still gave me that feeling of movement, even within the constraints of my life now. And somehow I landed on walking in my hallway. Yes, the hallway of my building where my neighbors can see me. And not just sometimes, but every day, same place, same loop, end of the hall, to the other end of the hall, to the other end of the hall, and back. And here's the kicker. As if walking back and forth on my floor wouldn't already make people think that I belong in an asylum, I live in what's considered an indoor-outdoor building, which basically means you can see the hallway from the outside, like from the parking lot, from the street, from anywhere, really. So this whole time I'm thinking I'm just walking in my building. Like this is a very contained, private little routine, and it's not at all. It's my neighbors, it's the people on my floor, it's the people on the floor below me, which yes, I do like to walk on that floor sometimes too. Don't judge me. But it's also just whoever happens to look up. So what felt like a small personal habit was actually very visible. Uh, which leads us to the reason why I'm even recording this episode. So the other day I was finishing one of my walks. I was coming back into my apartment, and as I was doing that, my next door neighbor was walking out of her apartment, fully dressed in workout gear. And she's an older woman, probably in her 50s or 60s. And I don't know why, but in that moment, it just clicked like, oh, this thing that I've been doing, this hallway pacing situation that I kind of joke about that I know looks a little unhinged, is not invisible. It's not neutral. It's actually doing something. And to be clear, I'm not saying she saw me and was like, yes, let me go work out. Right? It was more like I would notice things here and there. Like I'd see a woman walking laps in the parking lot, or I'd pass someone on another floor doing their own version of it. Nothing dramatic, nothing coordinated, just more movement than I remembered seeing before, right? And I didn't think too much of it because I'm living my life, I'm not tracking what everyone else is doing. But for some reason, this week it started to register somewhere in the background. Like, okay, something about this is echoing. And then it hit me. I have been broadcasting this entire time, not intentionally, not strategically, just by showing up every day. Same place, same thing, same timing, same pockets of my day to make sure that if I do 2500 in the morning, a five in the middle, and 2500 after she falls asleep, right? Like I can get a full 10,000 in a day. And that daily consistency became a broadcast, whether I meant for it to be or not. And the thing about a signal is you don't have to explain it, you just have to send it. A repeated behavior in a visible place is a broadcast, whether you claim it to be or not. So this week I started noticing more, I started seeing women walking in the parking lot, started seeing more people walking the halls on their floors, I started seeing movement in a way that felt connected. Not in an I'm in the center of this way, but in a this might be part of the environment now way. And I just stood there for a second, like, huh. And that small moment this week of passing that woman as I was going back into my house and she was coming out to start her walk, that stayed with me this week. Obviously, enough to be what I talked about this week because I didn't explain anything, I didn't announce anything, I didn't make a case for anything. I just kept doing something consistently in a visible way. And eventually it spoke for itself, eventually it turned a mirror on my neighbors, their relationship with their habits and their own consistency. And that to me is a very different kind of power. Because they certainly don't listen to my audio journal. And it's not about convincing, it's not about being understood immediately, it's not even about being understood at all. It's about embodiment, it's about me being so consistent in what I do that it becomes real without explanation. And the other thing I realized is no one is gonna come up to you and say that you influence them. No one is going to be like, I see you out here every day, rain or shine, literally, because it's an indoor-outdoor building, walking the hallway like your life depends on it, and it changed something for me. That's not how this works. People don't announce that. They don't always even know it. And I think you have to get comfortable with that, with the fact that your influence might never be named, it might never be acknowledged, it might not even consciously be understood by the people it's affecting. But it's still happening. And over time, if you're paying attention, you start to see it, you start to notice the environment shift, you start to see things mirror back to you, and that becomes its own kind of validation. Not because someone told you, but because you can see it and you trust yourself enough to recognize it. And that's what sovereignty looks like: not knocking on doors, not organizing people, not trying to get anyone to do anything, but being so anchored in your own behavior, so consistent in your own process that it shapes your environment without you ever having to force it. And the wild part is, all the while the environment is catching up to you, you've already gotten everything you came for. You've already taken the steps, you've already burned the calories, you've already cleared your mind, you've already kept your word to yourself. Your body is not waiting for recognition to release the benefits. It's happening in real time. Which means the influence, the mirroring, the shift in the environment, that's all extra. That's not the point, that's not the reward. That's just what happens when something is real enough, long enough. And when I think about what it really means to be an influencer, this is what I think about. Whether your way of being actually moved something, whether your consistency shifted the environment around you, whether your internal alignment created an external response. Because that's real influence. And it doesn't require an audience, it doesn't require a platform, it just requires that you're willing to be seen doing the thing. So I'll leave you with this. What are people watching you do over and over again? If someone studied your behavior for a week, what would they think matters to you? But also, where are you holding back from showing up consistently for yourself because other people don't get it, aren't ready, or haven't given you permission to exist that way? Let me know.