Full video

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Transcriber: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

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What you're doing,

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right now, at this very moment,

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is killing you.

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More than cars or the Internet

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or even that little mobile device we keep talking about,

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the technology you're using the most almost every day

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is this, your tush.

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Nowadays people are sitting 9.3 hours a day,

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which is more than we're sleeping, at 7.7 hours.

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Sitting is so incredibly prevalent,

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we don't even question how much we're doing it,

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and because everyone else is doing it,

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it doesn't even occur to us that it's not okay.

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In that way, sitting has become

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the smoking of our generation.

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Of course there's health consequences to this,

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scary ones, besides the waist.

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Things like breast cancer and colon cancer

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are directly tied to our lack of physical [activity],

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Ten percent in fact, on both of those.

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Six percent for heart disease,

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seven percent for type 2 diabetes,

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which is what my father died of.

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Now, any of those stats should convince each of us

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to get off our duff more,

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but if you're anything like me, it won't.

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What did get me moving was a social interaction.

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Someone invited me to a meeting,

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but couldn't manage to fit me in

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to a regular sort of conference room meeting, and said,

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"I have to walk my dogs tomorrow. Could you come then?"

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It seemed kind of odd to do,

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and actually, that first meeting, I remember thinking,

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"I have to be the one to ask the next question,"

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because I knew I was going to huff and puff

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during this conversation.

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And yet, I've taken that idea and made it my own.

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So instead of going to coffee meetings

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or fluorescent-lit conference room meetings,

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I ask people to go on a walking meeting,

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to the tune of 20 to 30 miles a week.

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It's changed my life.

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But before that, what actually happened was,

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I used to think about it as,

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you could take care of your health,

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or you could take care of obligations,

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and one always came at the cost of the other.

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So now, several hundred of these walking meetings later,

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I've learned a few things.

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First, there's this amazing thing

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about actually getting out of the box

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that leads to out-of-the-box thinking.

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Whether it's nature or the exercise itself, it certainly works.

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And second, and probably the more reflective one,

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is just about how much each of us

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can hold problems in opposition

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when they're really not that way.

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And if we're going to solve problems

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and look at the world really differently,

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whether it's in governance or business

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or environmental issues, job creation,

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maybe we can think about how to reframe those problems

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as having both things be true.

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Because it was when that happened

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with this walk-and-talk idea

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that things became doable and sustainable and viable.

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So I started this talk talking about the tush,

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so I'll end with the bottom line, which is,

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walk and talk.

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Walk the talk.

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You'll be surprised at how fresh air drives fresh thinking,

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and in the way that you do,

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you'll bring into your life an entirely new set of ideas.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)