How To Slow Down Your Busy Life
We live in a world that preaches that everyone should be high achievers in their personal and work lives. You should have at least one side hustle, a perfect home, and active social life while maintaining your appearance. Many are trying to keep up with all of this while caring for children or elderly parents. Keeping up with the demands of this rat race requires all of our time and energy, eventually affecting one’s physical, emotional, and mental health.
Luckily for us all, it’s never too late to start developing new habits that can help reset old patterns. So today, let’s go over some of the things you can easily do to help you slow down and enjoy life more.
How To Slow Down Your Busy Life
The slow living movement is a mindset that encourages a slower approach to all aspects of everyday life. This concept of slow living is about creating opportunities to disconnect from our fast-paced environment. The goal is to live a more balanced, meaningful life that will bring happiness and deepen life’s connection.
Benefits Of Slow Living
- Stronger Relationships
- Better Health
- Less Anxiety And Stress
- More Time To Savor Life’s Moments
- You’ll Have More Time
- Richer, Deeper Life Experiences
- You Feel Happier
- You’ll Get More Exercise
Wake Up Earlier
I know this is much easier said than done, especially when you already feel sleep deprived. But waking up earlier will give you the time you need to develop a peaceful morning routine. You’ll also be able to leave the house on time, if not early, and eliminate the stress and anxiety that comes with being late.
Enjoy Your Morning Brew
Mornings tend to be a hectic time for most people. Rushing to get ready for work while also getting the kids ready for school, the pets walked and fed while watching the morning news is hardly favorable to a slow living lifestyle. But if you can, find a way to sit and enjoy your morning brew without any other distractions. Focus on positive thoughts and enjoy living life in the moment.
Enjoy The Silence
How often do you really sit in silence? No background tv, music, or conversations. It can be hard to find a quiet place when you live in a busy city. But if you can, try spending time in silence, even if it’s just a few minutes each day. One of my favorite things to do is sit on my balcony and watch the sunrise. I always enjoy the quiet of the city before it wakes.
Spend More Time Outdoors
Spending time outdoors and in nature has been proven to improve your mood, reduce feelings of stress and anger, reduce stress, and plenty more. That’s easy to do when you live in the countryside. But if you live in the city, you can spend more time in local parks, on hiking trails, by lakes or the ocean.
Go For A Walk
When you have a busy life, going for a walk to get some fresh air might seem like an activity you can’t afford to spend time on. But even a short 5-10 minute walk can really help relieve stress and clear your head. The fresh air combined with movement improves digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate and provides a natural energy boost. You’ll also burn some calories as a bonus!
Do One Thing At A Time
It turns out that multitasking isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s because the brain can only focus on one task at a time. When you try and juggle two or more activities simultaneously, your efficiency and performance are reduced. Instead of trying to maximize the amount of work you accomplish each day, try to slow down and enjoy, or at least focus, on one thing at a time. You may get less done during the course of the day, but you’ll feel much more relaxed.
Give Yourself Double The Time
We often underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task. Especially when outside of our homes. Things like accidents, traffic, no parking, or long checkout lines, are all variables that are out of our control and unaccounted for. But if we give ourselves even more time than we may need, we reduce the chance of running late and adding extra stress to our lives.
Breath
It sounds easy, and that’s because it is. If you want to work on slowing down your life, one of the simplest things you can do is pay attention to your breathing. The benefits of slow deep breaths include reducing anxiety and stress, lowering blood pressure, relieving pain, and more. If you don’t have 5 minutes to meditate on breath work, instead focus on taking 3 deep inhales and slow exhales a few times a day.
Read A Book
One of the easiest things you can do when building a self-care routine is to read a book. That’s because reading sparks your imagination, reduces feelings of anxiousness, increases empathy, increases linguistic skills, and promotes better sleep.
Spend Time With The People You Love
Spending time with family and building connections with people we love is one of the simplest pleasures in life. It’s also been shown to significantly reduce the occurrence of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. As much as possible, try to remove distractions like cell phones and computers and practice being present with them. This will also help you feel like you have a healthier work/life balance.
Set Boundaries
Learning to say no, and set boundaries when you feel uncomfortable or don’t want to do something can be hard. But I promise the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the more peace you will have in life. So often in life, we agree to do things to avoid conflict. But that brings so much unnecessary stress into our lives and eventually becomes resentment. Our time and energy are our most precious commodities, once it’s gone, we can never regain them. So be mindful of how you spend that time, and use it doing the things that truly matter. Kindly but firmly saying no and sticking to the boundaries you set for yourself will help eliminate a lot of that. People will eventually learn what they can and can’t ask of you and respect you for that.
