“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

- E. F. Schumacher (Economist, founder and exponent of “Buddhist Economics”)

Slowing down is a constant journey of discovery. This blog is as much a record of that journey as it as a place to offer advice, hints and strategies for how you can Slow Down.

The one thing I discovered about myself and the one thing I have been struggling to break is that I was a very “grass is greener” thinker. I was a marketers dream! As soon as I had something I would yearn for something new or something better! I always had the feeling that I was missing out on something and if I had “just one more thing” I would finally be happy.

Of course that never happens and all you do is want more and more. I know I am not alone! In fact that is typical of our high speed hare-brained society (and what our consumerist economy is based on – see my minor rant about toasters!). How far I had been distracted from my Buddhist studies in my early 20’s!!

So, how do you break that cycle of wanting and craving for something bigger, better, newer, faster?

Well first we have to understand why we crave those things:

Habituation

A sneaky trick of our nervous system (that dates back to cave(wo)man days) is something called habituation. Basically, the way this works is that we stop consciously paying attention to, or ‘habituate’ repeated experience – what is around us everyday. But when something new turns up we pay attention to it.

This was a useful and important survival strategy. It allows the limited attention of the conscious mind to be available for spotting difference. And in cave(wo)men days difference could be a threat (or an opportunity to take advantage of).

The Reticular Activating System

Another part of our nervous system is called the “Reticular Activating System” or “RAS” for short. Its job is like the doorman of our conscious mind. It decides, from the billions (or something like that) of stimuli we are bombarded with makes it to our conscious awareness. It decides through a series of criteria, but mainly by what we deem to be “emotionally” important to us.

So, what we focus on we get more of. Ever bought a new piece of clothing or new car and suddenly seen it everywhere, even though you never noticed it before? That is because the RAS now deems it important and makes you consciously aware of it, therefore you notice it more. Make sense?

It is no wonder that consumerism has thrived, it plays on these 2 basic “cave (wo)man” parts of our nervous system! We are bombarded by very cleverly crafted adverts that tap straight into our emotional response, therefore tricking the RAS into making us pay attention to it.

And combined with the process of habituation, it makes us very aware of what we haven’t got. No wonder we crave new things all of the time!!

But the good news is that, once we are aware of them, we can control our RAS and habituation process to reduce or remove our cravings for the “next big thing”.

So how do we get around process and rewire our nervous system to stop (or reduce) habituation and get our RAS working for us and not against us?

Well, a process I discovered was, ironically, from that film “The Secret”, I am sure you know the one, the one that tells you that you can get everything you want just by thinking about it? You have to be very specific with your greed though…

Well, one of the (very few) sensible things they recommend in that film is the idea of the gratitude rock (although you don’t need a rock to do it).

All you need to do is be (consciously) grateful for what you have. Simple huh? How often are you grateful for what you have? How often do you sit down, look around and recognise how good life really is?

To start with, think of the things you take for granted. The things you really don’t think about, like the fact you have a house, you have your health (hopefully), you have food to eat. You have friends and people who care about you. The real basics. Then move onto the more “luxurious” things that you have (these are often the places we have the most craving to replace), you have access to a computer to be reading this. Which means you have access to all the knowledge that the internet has to offer.

Do it now, think of 10 things that you are grateful that you have. It can be as basic or as detailed as you want. I often spend 5 – 10 a day thinking of things I am really glad that I have got! Give it a go for a few weeks and see how much your craving and want reduces over that time.

SC

Right, we are onto the last step of de-cluttering your mind. Tomorrow I will post a short review of the steps.

The final step is to deal with those annoying “shoulds”, you know the things on the list you found it very difficult to get rid of or cross off because they seemed very important you think you should be doing them.

Well, who says? We spend a lot of our time doing and stressing about things we think we should do. Yet we rarely stop and question why we should be doing them. They are things we have picked up as habits from other people telling us to do things. Often we have picked them up at an early age and just do them over and over again, until they become habit and we carry on doing them even though the reason we did them (if there ever was one) is long gone.

So, if there is anything on your list that you feel compelled to carry on doing even though it doesn’t have an obvious reason or creates as obvious result, or you have thought of a better way of doing it it, it is probably a “should”.

How do we deal with “shoulds”? Well it would be very easy for me to say “jut stop doing them”, but it isn’t as easy as that is it?

So what I propose is a series of “should” fasts:

Get the list of things you think may be “shoulds” , start at the top and resolve to stop doing the first one for two weeks, just two weeks, that is all. If there is a need for you to do it, you will notice within those two weeks and you can start doing it again. If you don’t find a reason or doing it in those two weeks, cross it off the list, never do it again and move on to the next list.

Why one at a time and for two weeks?

Well, remember the best way to slow down is slowly, if you try and slow down too fast you will end up getting in a mess and fluster and be back at square one before you know it.

So, by doing one at a time you can focus on it and make sure you do it properly, and the 2 weeks thing  is to give you enough time to consciously break the habit.

Make sense?

Matt

Well, so far we have got you to capture all the stuff rushing round in your head, so it is out and  written down. That probably made you feel much better already! I often carry a notepad with me, so that I can scribble stuff down as I think of them. Makes me feel better.

Then we got you to organise that list into the reasons why you wanted or needed to do that task.

Then we got rid of the initial “capture” list and, with the goals in mind started developing ways to achieve that goal in a fun and creative way, so that the journey becomes the important part, not the goal setting.

But, on that initial capture list there would have been things you NEED to do, that you couldn’t get rid of your capture list, things like paying the bills for example. You don’t enjoy doing it, but you need to do it.

Remember being slow is not about being slothful or disorganised or not doing what needs to be done.

So, simply with these tasks you need to be disciplined, develop a process for doing them and stick to it.

I, for example, do my finance stuff once a month. I hate doing it, but because I am organised, it doesn’t take too long.

What process you do is up to you and what suits you best, but 2 quick tips:

1. Automate or Outsource.

Get someone or something else to do it for you! The obvious example of this is direct debits. If you set up direct debits, you know the bills will be paid and you don’t need to worry about the. With outsourcing, is there someone else you can get to do it for you? You could offer to do something in return for the exchange or pay for it. There is a big growth in virtual assistants, Timothy Ferris talks about them a lot in his book The 4-Hour Work week!

Be creative about your options.

2. Reward.

If we give ourselves a treat for doing something we don’t like we will be more motivated to do it (obvious really!). But you have to be disciplined with yourself (don’t trust yourself? Get someone else to reward you once you are done!). Don’t do half a job and then have the reward, thinking “I will finish it up later…” you won’t!

Tomorrow we will look at the final step, the dreaded shoulds!

Matt

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Hello again, carrying on from the mini-theme I started last week I am going to carry on talking about how to de-clutter your mind and your thought processes to streamline your daily activities so that you can find space to be slow and really appreciate what you want to in life…

OK, so you have now got all your stuff sorted and chunked into categories. Remember there is no right or wrong answers, just what feels right to you.

Now you have go your categories. Ask yourself why you want to do it, or why you think you should do it. Why are you doing that category. Make sense?

So, if one of your categories was “fitness” ask yourself why. Write down a few sentences about why you want to be fitter. Something like “so that I can be healthier and have more energy and confidence to enjoy life”.

If you cannot think of a why, the chances are that you are doing this category because you think you should.

Should is an awful word! Think about anything you think you should be doing and you probably don’t want to do it do you? And, if you really think about it, you probably don’t NEED to either, it is just some silly habit you have picked up often by external pressure of people making you think you need to do it. Abandon anything you think you SHOULD be doing (more about that in later posts) and you will instantly free up a lot of your time!

Next we talk about generating creativity and choice to finally get out of the “to do” mentality…

Matt

The slow life is the simple life, is the easy life. To be able to slow down you need to create space to do so.

To create space you need 2 things:

1) (Ruthless) elimination of non-essentials. This frees up time and resources to embrace the slow lifestyle, spending more time doing what you want rather than what you think you should…

2) Discipline (so that you can do number 1!)

These make the difference between slow and sloth. Sloth is about not doing what you need to and generally ignoring things that need to be done in favour of doing something (or nothing) else.

A slow person organises their life so that they get done what they need to get done in a way that gives them plenty of time to do what they want.

Make sense? The only thing that stops you from embracing your slow life is the emotional attachments you have to the clutter you have gathered, the old habits, the junk in the loft, the stuff piled behind the sofa… All the things you know you don’t need but are clinging on to, just in case…

You need to start de-cluttering by de-cluttering your mind. Creating slow habits. If you don’t do that you will not get very far at all. A lot is talked about creating habits, but, as you know if you have ever tried, it can be quite tricky, so over the next few posts, I will talk you through a simple process to create your tortoise habits!

Matt