Our Fast Paced Life and 5 Slow Living Tips to Make It Count
How can we manage this modern fast-paced life and make the minutes count? Here are 5 slow living tips to promote peace in a troubled world.
These are the days of May: graduations, ceremonies, last day of school picnics and programs.
How did the year get here so fast?
Maybe it doesn’t seem that way for the school children, or the teachers, but for the parents and grandparents, it was just the first day of school. Wasn’t it?
My oldest grand child just started first grade the other day.
And now she’s been passed to seventh grade.
Why is life so fast paced?
She spent 5 minutes (seems like) learning the first grade curriculum, how to read and print and add and subtract and tie shoes and wear two colors of socks. She’s so much smarter now than she was, well, 5 minutes ago. And 24 inches taller. Yes, the body grows just as fast as the brain.
The passing of time appears variable. Time seems to go slower when you’re young than when you’re older.
Now as a grandma, time goes so fast that half the time I don’t know if I’m getting up or going to bed.
Yeah, that’s a stretch of truth. A little. Or a lot.
How can we slow this fast paced life?
There are 24 hours in every day, and whether it seems possible or not, every one of us has the same number of minutes in those days.
The question really is, how can we make the time count?
How can we slow the minutes into “important and remember” and “let it go and forget?”
Thinking about this problem put me into list-making mode.
Here are the results of my mind search.
5 Slow Living Tips to Make Your Fast Paced Life Count:
- Enjoy the small moments. Someday you’ll realize they were actually the big moments.
- Set aside some quiet time with God in every day. This time in the Word has a way of stretching the rest of the day into enough time to do more than you thought you could.
- Keep a journal. My sisters used to have these five year diaries that were about the size of your palm. Either you had to write like a Lilliput or you could only put 10 words to each day. But the neatest secret of that? Ten words is all you need to record what you’re thankful for or what you learned that day. Taking the time to write ten words a day gives the mind slow time. These are the words you are more likely to recall, even if you don’t go back and re-read them.
- Slather your spaces with uplifting sticky notes. The first benefit is taking note of a worthy quote, the second is writing it on the note. The third, fourth, fifty-fifth, etc. is the times you see it and re-read it. Because it’s there in your face and you can’t miss it.
- Write a note a day, or a note a week, that compliments someone in your life. Taking the time to verbally appreciate someone makes more of an impact for the good in you, perhaps, than in the person who receives your note. One of my husband’s clients always sends her check in a beautiful note card with jerky, old lady script. It might take awhile to make out her writing, but the result is a spreading warmth in the heart. One card is a thank you for a card we sent her, which satisfies “our universal need for love and connectivity.”
- Bonus Tip: Schedule at least 30 free minutes into your day planner every day. Minutes when you can sit and stare into space, dream without intense focus, and totally rest your mind and your body. No worries, no appointments, no activity. Walking, or other exercise, can relax you, but only if it’s not on your schedule as a “must do.” These thirty minutes are for you only. If you have small children, the thirty minutes might mean taking a nap when they do. The best thing I ever did was lay down with my littles after lunch every day. I’d read to them till they fell asleep, relax for awhile and then sneak out of bed, as hard as it was to leave their cozy bodies, to do my own thing till they woke up. Ahh, bliss!
And that’s the way we promote slow living and peace in this fast paced life.
