Taking time to literally stop and smell the roses will drastically increase your quality of life.
Nowadays (especially RIGHT NOW), people are spending more time in front of their TV's, cell phones, and computers than ever before. While these advancements in entertainment and productivity technology have had enormous positive impacts on the way that we consume media and work, the human brain isn't really suited to experience stimuli like this all the time.
As human beings, we have been blessed with the ability to experience cognitive thought and make decisions that are outside of the necessity of nature. Seriously, we don't really even have to eat traditional food (Soylent), sleep (Adderal), or socialize (social media/ virtual reality) like we ever did before.
But, it's been proven time and time again that this disconnect from the world around us has been negatively impacting the wellbeing of humankind as a whole.
It's time to get back to the way things used to be.
As humans have evolved and developed urban environments, we started using our prefrontal cortex significantly more. We use this part of our brain so much that it's become overloaded with stimulus.
Scientists call it the "top-down approach to life" because the prefrontal cortex sits above the less used primitive parts of the brain that get activated much less than ever before.
Scientists, monks, philosophers, and nature junkies all agree that getting outdoors is essential to human life. When it comes down to it, we are animals. Animals have specific needs, and one of them is rest. If we never allow our prefrontal cortexes to rest, we become prone to anxiety, depression, loneliness, and apathy.
Scientists believe that humans should spend slightly less time thinking, and a bit more time feeling and experiencing.
In other words, scientists want you to turn your brain off and walk in the woods for a while.