"I'm not one of those people"

Under some of the resistance there's an identity, and it's worth naming so that it can be put down.

You know the people who walk everywhere. The one with the boots and the rucksack who talks about routes. The cyclist in the office who arrives in lycra and makes a thing of it. The colleague who takes the stairs and mentions it. You don't want to be any of them, and walking to the shop feels like the first step towards becoming one.

It isn't, and the reason is that the errand walk isn't a type. Nobody has ever been described as a walker for going to the shop on foot. The rambler is defined by the Sunday and the boots. The cyclist by the kit. The stair-taker by the mentioning. What you'd be doing is going to the shop, with a bag, in your ordinary shoes, and coming back, and nobody at the shop or in the street will register it as anything at all. There's no identity available to you here even if you wanted one. It's too ordinary.

That's the thing I'd most like you to see about this habit. The change it asks for is invisible. You won't need equipment, a club, an app or a story about yourself. You'll need a coat on the peg and shoes by the door, and the person you'll become is the person you were with slightly more distance in their day. The colleague who mentions the stairs is a different problem, and this book won't make you into them, because it doesn't ask you to mention anything.

If anything, the identity runs the other way. The person who drives half a mile for milk and rides two floors is, from the outside, a type too, and not one anybody chooses. You'd be leaving that one, quietly, and joining nothing.