Six Surprising Benefits to Spending Time Outdoors

Is that RGP again, telling you to get up and get outside??? You’re goddamn right. Buckle in and get ready to receive these benefits. And then get up and go outside and realize ’em .

1. Helps Improve Quality of Sleep

We’re going to start out here with one of the fundamental benefits. Insomnia plagues our society today. People staying up late, and accidentally oversleeping. That’s not what we need. We need restful sleep.

So get outside.

Studies show that spending time in the great outdoors helps you sleep better at night. This should be pretty intuitive because if you’re outside you’re active, and if you’re active you get tired. Yet simple though it is — it works. Get outside already.

2. Relaxation

Being outside de-stresses us. If you have too much pent up negative energy, you’re chalked. In other words, you’re going to have a bad time.

Release the valve.

Get outside, hear the birds chirping, and walk it off. The science backs it. You’ll feel better — less compressed, less stressed, more alive. No matter which way you spin the data you’ll find that people who get outdoors have less negative emotion and more positive. You’ll be more at rest.

3. Boosts Creativity

These benefits all follow suit. Get rid of negative emotion, replace with positive emotion, reap benefits. When you’re outside feeling good, you won’t worry about what’s wrong.

You’ll get excited about what could be right.

You’ll be seeing all sorts of different stuff out there, and it triggers your mind to act in different ways. Henry David Thoreau, one of the great writers of history, was also one of the most famous walkers of history.

Other people on that list? Charles Darwin, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Von Beethoven. Who couldn’t even see and yet he still got outside and did the thing. Want to add your name to this list? Get outside !!!

4. Helps You Heal Quicker

Get this — people with injuries who get outside have, on average, shorter hospital visits. What it seems is that they have lower levels of cortisol, which promotes stress.

So reducing these cortisol levels helps them heal quicker.

Who knew that getting outside produced pretty much every benefit imaginable? I wouldn’t be surprised if being outdoors long enough could make you psychic.

And not only does it help you heal quicker, but it also can prevent those same illnesses that get you hospitalized in the first place.

Get outside, get some vitamin D, live an active lifestyle, and worries dissipate. Don’t ask me — I’m just the messenger.

5. Increases Social Interaction

This one should be fairly obvious. When you get outside, it turns out your odds of meeting new people increase, rather than decrease.

Maybe you get out there and meet your wife (or husband.)

Maybe you just run into someone you know. Or maybe you strike up a conversation with a random stranger. Meeting new people tends to have asymmetric upside, and putting yourself out there, therefore, increases that upside.

And think about it this way — when was the last time something incredible happened to you while you were laying around on the couch or in bed?

Now get out there and have a random interaction that makes your day.

6. Become Jacked & Tan

Glad you all made it through the fluff, because this is the key benefit everyone’s looking for. It’s a little less scientific than the others. But you, yes you, could be jacked and tan (or if you’re a chick maybe you just want to be fit and tan, also works.)

Let me break it down.

You get out in the sun. You absorb vitamin D. Something happens with the pigment in your skin and you get that nice bronze. Now, while you’re outside, you’re presumable walking around. So not only are you tan, but you’re getting in great shape.

Look good, feel good, play good. Said first by the immortal Deion Sanders, but echoed by me, here, on medium.com. So what are you waiting for? The only thing you have to do before going outside is follow on here, follow on IG @theregrowthproject, and subscribe on patreon. Love ya.