Thank you all for sharing your experiences with Slowing Down and for encouraging many of us during this busy time of year to prioritize the eight points.
When we’re more slowed down during the day, we’re more likely to be aware of our conditioned habits. Slowing down is about slowing down our thinking process. We invite you to try a tiny slowing down experiment this month. Please make it very small! Ideally, it will fit into something you are already doing. For example, you might choose to:
Proactively remove one activity or chore from your calendar each week, at the start of that week.
Show up 5–10 minutes early to a weekly or monthly meeting, or an upcoming appointment.
Try consciously speaking more slowly to elders, or children.
Get up just 5–10 minutes earlier than normal, one morning per week.
Create your own slowing down experiment.
Please let us know what experiment you’d like to try and if you have ideas of other small ways we can slow down in our busy lives!
To inspire us for the week ahead, enjoy this short reading below by Easwaran from the book, Take your Time.
Don’t Crowd Your Day
The desire to fit too much into a fixed span of time is pervasive, and technology merely adds to the pressure. We are expected to keep up with more and more information at work and at home, and the media obligingly drown us in it. I know people who feel duty-bound to read it, too. After all, some of it must be important. We really ought to know what’s in it . . .
Often we cope with this by trying to skim through everything that comes our way. It is a race – like so much else in our lives. But is it a race we want to participate in? When we feel robbed of time already, do we want to spend what little we have on activities that only add to the noise and clutter in the mind?
To relieve this pressure, we simply have to stop trying to do everything possible. It is important to realize that we can’t read everything, can’t keep ourselves entertained every available moment, can’t absorb or even catch all the so-called information that is offered to us every day. We have to make choices – which requires an unhurried mind.
Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully.
I have always loved to read. I grew up appreciating Carlyle’s statement that “a good book is the purest essence of a human soul.” Even as a student I would seek out something truly worth reading and read it slowly, with complete attention, so as to absorb all the author had poured into it. Even today I don’t like background music or a cup of coffee at my side. And when I reach the end of a chapter or a section, I close the book and reflect on what I have read. I would much rather read one good book with concentration and understanding than to skim through a list of best-sellers that will have no effect on my life or my understanding of life. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all.
Trying to read everything that comes our way is just another aspect of trying to do it all. With television, the equivalent is channel surfing. Once we have learned there is nothing worth watching, why not turn it off? Flitting through fifty or more channels just divides attention even more. And when we can’t get our mind to slow down enough to stay on the same focus, how can we expect to enjoy anything? How can we do a good job at anything we do?
Because our lives are so fast, we take a short attention span for granted. A truly creative mind has a very long attention span. When a great painter, musician, or scientist turns to a subject, he or she stays with it not for minutes but for hours, days, and even years, going deeper and deeper.