My importance on slowing down.

It has taken me a while to realise the importance of time. To be aware of it. How quick it passes when I am having fun. How slow it seems when all I am thinking about is a future point in time. How valuable time is.

The road that led me to this greater awareness of time started just over a year ago. Last year I moved into my flat, continued training in Ju Jitsu, began strength training, dabbled in meditation, worked extra hard in my job, enjoyed long walks, and lots more in between. I had spread myself too thin, I didn’t have time to rest and recover and I thought I was okay with that.

It turns out that I do not always know what is best for me even though I am me. I learnt a great tool for dealing with this kind of problem and it goes like this:

Imagine your closest family member or friend is going through what you are going through. What advice would you give them to help improve their situation?

This is a great exercise to do because it makes me see a whole new perspective on the situation. It is a type of reflection that gives me some real actions to try that have come from an external review rather than an internal review.

Internal reviews can sometimes feel like they have less weight behind them. I get caught up in everything going on in my head that my judgement is clouded. I cannot make a decision that I think is right for me. However, surprisingly it is easy for me to suggest actions for other people to try and help improve their situation.

Last year I felt overwhelmed, like there was a million and one things to do in a 24 hour day and I was only managing to do about ten of them. I had spread myself too thin without having the proper habits and systems in place to cope with them. Towards the end of the year I started with a daily and weekly reflection system. The habit was to read through a bunch of questions in the evenings and check in with myself and how I was doing.

This revealed some key problem areas that I knew I had to deal with. Step 1 was just identifying them. They are:

• Failing to get into a good household routine (cooking, washing, cleaning, sleeping) with time to spare.
• Inconsistent gym sessions at different times of day on different days of the week, putting pressure on myself to keep up with the schedule I was setting myself.
• High workload in my job that grew and grew until I felt like progress was never being made.
• I got sick with a cold and then flu in a 4 week period in Dec/Jan.
• My energy levels were always low in the evenings, no matter how great my sleep was, no matter how much I ate or drank, no matter how much I had rested during the day.

To me that seemed like a lot of problems and where would I even begin trying to fix them? Well, luckily for me, my habit of listening to books, podcasts, and motivational speakers provided me with the knowledge I needed, I just had to extract that knowledge from my brain and then give myself the advice that would solve all my problems.

For me, I needed time. Quality time. To think about what the causes of my problems are, and to then start coming up with solutions. There are several solutions I have come up with so far. The solution that this post is about is about slowing myself down. Slowing my physical movements, slowing my breathing, slowing my communication, slowing my thoughts. When I say slow I am talking about 50%-75% my normal speed. It is not easy in every situation that may demand my normal speed or perhaps faster however I am more conscious that in some situations I can and must slow myself down.

I have been putting into practice ‘slowing down’ for the past 5 weeks now and it has helped me achieve and resolve some of the issues that I listed above. Habits have been formed but more importantly it has become a system for me to deal with stress, activities, health.