The Underrated Gift of Slowing Down
The only way to live a meaningful life is to break away from your productivity obsession.
You’re constantly and relentlessly pushing yourself forward and racing from one thing to the next without a break.
You’re afraid that if you lost the fast pace you’ve set for yourself, failure awaits.
The truth is you’ve ended up living with a highly impatient voice in your head incessantly asking, Are we there yet? What about now?
And things might work well for a while. But sooner or later, your mind and body will start to grow weary. You’ll realise—too late—that you’re burning out.
Sometimes, you might even find yourself going in the wrong direction. You’ve traded clarity for speed and became so caught up in details that you’ve lost your way.
You start craving peace more than ever. A precious moment of quiet where you don’t feel out of breath with worries, stress and fear.
That’s when you know it’s time to slow down.
There’s power in slowing down
Nowadays, most of us start feeling guilty when we’re not doing something productive. We might have some extra time to spend and instead of enjoying it, we spend it anxiously thinking about what task we could squeeze in.
While toxic productivity comes as a side effect of the pandemic, it highlights our erroneous belief that we only deserve to rest if we’re doing enough, learning enough, achieving enough. And the harmful effects of this seeps through every layer of our life— our mental and physical health, our relationships, our hobbies, and our motivation.
If you don’t want the hustle culture to wreak havoc on your life, you must learn to slow down.
You might feel uncomfortable at first. After all, your mind is so used to persistently switching back and forth between tasks that taking a break to savour your morning coffee might feel strange. Like one of those moments when we go into the woods and the constant sounds of cars, traffic or people are suddenly muted.
However, once you experience the benefits of slowing down, you’ll know that this is the best gift you could have given yourself.
Here’s what you can expect when you stop living a rushed life:
You regain your focus
It can be easy to get sidetracked when you’re constantly rushing to cross multiple finish lines in the shortest time possible. However, when you become intentional with your goals, you learn to prioritise when it comes to investing time and energy into a task. That’s the first step for building a realistic schedule that you can keep up with without overworking yourself. Not to mention the best way to gain clarity and achieve your goals faster.
You recharge your mind and body
Once you make it a priority to allow your mind to unwind and wrestle free of your unhealthy fixation with productivity, the feelings of anxiety and the tension within your body will fade. You’ll have less stressful thoughts haunting you at night and your sleep will improve, breaking the tired-ever-after cycle. And with a relaxed mind and body, you can then confidently face any challenge coming your way.
You make better decisions
Whenever you rush and don’t take the time to consider your options and potential consequences, you risk making bad decisions. Slowing down allows your mind to focus on the present and approach each situation with the attention it deserves. Also, when you don’t force your mind to perform under pressure, you can look at a problem from different perspectives and come up with the best solution.
You connect more deeply with other people
Becoming present helps you nurture your relationships. You invest more time listening to people, empathising with them and, ultimately, building a strong connection. Moreover, slowing down offers you the opportunity to reach out and help others thrive. At the end of the day, having a positive impact on someone’s life is the best kind of success.
You recover your creative spark
Slowing things down will increase your awareness and make you notice aspects previously hidden in the frenzy of an overwhelmed mind. Most innovative ideas were born when someone stopped to make unusual connections and identified untapped potential. So why not get inspired by nature and help your mind unplug with a daily mindful walk in the park?
Final Thoughts
There’s so much to lose when you’re speeding through life and work. When you’re taking for granted your health, your peace of mind, your connection with nature and with the people around you.
You forget what makes your heart swell with joy and what passion guides your life. You miss out on great opportunities because you’re caught in the blur of doing more faster.
Now, you have the chance to change the story and lead an intentional life by simply slowing down.
