Why don't I ever actually notice nature when I exercise in it?
Nasreddin raced his donkey to the river every morning, counting his steps the whole way. One day a boy asked him, "Hodja, how was the river today?" Nasreddin said, "I don't know. I was working." This is you, running, cycling, training, with your eyes open and your mind closed. You are outside, but you are not there — you are at the gym, and the gym happens to have trees in it. That is not a character flaw. It is a habit of attention, and habits can be moved. The fix is not trying harder to notice the sunset while you're mid-interval — that almost never works. The fix is deciding, on purpose, when you're working and when you're just outside. Right now your body makes that choice for you, every single time.
You are not failing to see the trees. You are succeeding at counting them. Your body picked a job — beat yesterday's time — and nature just happens to be where the job takes place. Nothing wrong with that job. But if you want the river, not the gym with leaves in it, you have to sometimes clock out.
What changes unlock by starting
- You start noticing small ordinary things again — light changing, weather, smell of the air.
- Some workouts stop feeling like a job and start feeling like a walk that happens to include exercise.
- You get better at switching on purpose — performance mode when you want it, noticing mode when you don't.
- You stop treating nature and training as competitors and start treating them as two different choices you get to make.