Vision For Living

Just a quick post to let you know that I am doing a talk entitled “Welcome to the Slow Life” at the Vision For Living Exhibition in Cardiff on the 31st October at 5:00pm. The talk itself is free and the entry to the exhibition is only £4.95 for the day.

You can learn more about Vision for Living here:

www.visionforliving.co.uk

If you are interested in attending it would be great to see you there. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might also be interested.

I will be hanging around the ACT (Associated Contemporary Therapists) stand for most of the day if you want to come by and say “Hello”.

Matt

It Happens When It Happens

Well, I am sorry for not blogging for over 2 weeks, I have been on holiday and on my return had a lot of little bits to sort out.

I spent a lovely week in Crete, nice food, nice wine, just sunbathing and catching up on a pile of books I wanted to read.

Whilst I was away I found myself thinking about how to continue with this blog. When I started blogging seriously a while ago I did a lot of research into what it takes to make a “successful” blog. I found myself being seduced by all the pro-bloggers out there who say you should blog every day and seem to be incredibly prolific, particularly the excellent and prolific Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. So I tried to write a blog entry every day. Even if I didn’t really want to.

I suddenly realised I had been seduced by speed again!

I was blogging every day because I thought I should, not because I was inspired to. Sometimes I would throw up an entry just to get one up there and I was worrying so much about just getting something up on this blog that I wasn’t taking the time to write some of the more indepth posts about certain subjects that I really wanted to. Blogging was making me stressed! I was starting to resent blogging, I started to dread that time of day or week when I had to sit down and write an entry. My mind would go blank, I would start to sweat and eventually I would just write anything to get it out of the way…

I wasn’t planning any entries because I wasn’t enjoying doing it and I was treating them like a chore I had to get out of the way before I could get on with my “proper work”.

You see, the pro-bloggers I had been trying to emulate just blogged (actually saying “just” sounds like a criticism, which it isn’t, it would be better to say primarily blog), however, even though I blog. Quite a lot. I write 3 other blogs than this one:

www.thepracticebuilderblog.com – where I give advice on how to run a therapy or coaching practice

mattcaulfield.blogspot.com – This was my first ever blog and has been going since 2005. Nowadays I use to write my thoughts about NLP (Neuro linguistic Programming) and related subjects.

thetaichiguy.blogspot.com – A brand new blog talking about my practice of the amazing art of Tai Chi.

I am not primarily a blogger. I would consider myself primarily a coach, consultant and trainer/teacher. I spend most of my time working with people helping them slow down. Blogging is a big part of that, but it is not the biggest part, if that makes sense?

So, by trying to emulate the people who primarily blog, I was finding the quality of my blogging was slipping, some days I would be proud of what I had written, other days I would just slap something up, not planning, not proof reading and not particularly caring. I didn’t feel many of my entries really captured my personality and the passion for the subject that I have.

Something had to be done!

And that is when I made the decision to commit myself fully to the slow blogging ideal. I wrote a couple of entries sometime ago about Slow Blogging (see the posts here and here) and then totally failed to actually start slow blogging!

So, I am now…

Slow bloggers eschew the idea of immediacy in blogging for a more measured and considered post. It is about quality not quantity and lives by the axiom “it happens when it happens”.

So, from now on I am no longer going to rush out entries just for the sake of posting. I am going to think, plan, study, draft and (endeavour) to write longer, better written entries with more depth. Hopefully. I will, of course, post shorter blogs, from time to time with news and interesting tidbits I have to say that don’t require a more detailed entry.

In fact, to move away from the association that blogging has with immediacy, I intend to call this a journal from now on, not a blog.

The aim is to write a well-developed entry once a week, with maybe the occasionally serial spread out over days or weeks. To be honest, I don’t know yet, I am still working it all out.

I will be updating this site over the next week or so to reflect this shift of emphasis and will be adding more information about Slow Blogging, including my own Slow Blog Manifesto.

I hope you stick with me whilst I experiment and find my feet.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to take the dogs for a walk.

Matt

PS, I will also be applying the idea to twitter. Where I intend to “twitter when I twitter” no sooner, no later. I have never really got my tortoise mind around twitter and hopefully this new philosophy will help. Who knows? It’s all very exciting isn’t it?!

A Bit of News…

There are going to be a few changes around here. Number 1 is that I am stopping using “The Slow Coach” title (for a variety of reasons), so you will start to see changes reflecting that. Also, I have a new coaching venue, which will cause me to stop celebrating Saint Monday, which is a shame (but when better to coach people to slow down than on Saint Monday?!), and a few other things.

Unfortunately I am tad hectic over the next few days, there will be a proper blog entry tomorrow though, and all of these changes may take a little time. I hope to continue as (a) normal as possible service through this though.

Speak to you soon

Matt

Idlers Accessories: The Walking Stick

I lament the passing of the days when a gentleman wouldn’t leave the house without a walking stick. You see, I have a bit of a “gammy” knee, nothing too serious, I can still do Tai Chi, squat heavy weights, and walk without a limp, but I can’t run and occasionally when walking down hill, or stairs, my knee gives out and I fall over. Which can be quite embarrassing. So I often walk with a cane, but I don’t limp, so I sometimes feel a bit daft strolling round looking perfectly healthy, but with a stick (how pretentious)!

But, with my experience of using a stick, I think it needs a bit of a resurgence, it is an excellent idlers accessory. It is incredibly useful and can make walking a more leisurely experience. You seem to walk with a better, more casual rhythm when you are walking with a cane, like it is a metronome swinging at you side, counting out a slow beat.

Beyond that it has a host of uses: You can use it balance yourself; lean on it when you are bending over, or staring into space, or sitting on a bench; you can point with it; poke things with it; and (if you use a crook handle cane, which I recommend) you can reach for things. You could even (with a bit of practice), use the walking stick as a very effective form of self-defence, in the unfortunate event that you should ever need to (learn the Tai Chi walking stick form).

I think it is about time the cane had a renaissance!

Looks like rain? Get a hook handle umbrella instead…

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Getting Rid of Want 1: Gratitude

“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.

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Saint Monday

The Slow Coach is celebrating Saint Monday. He will be back tomorrow.

Hare-Brained or Tortoise Minded?

Coming from a Personal Development background (although I have come to hate that phrase, but I don’t think is the remit of this post!) the thing that fascinated me about the Slow Movement (and because of my experience and interest, the first thing that I thought about when I discovered the Slow philosophy) was the psychological side of it: the thoughts, actions, behaviours, processes and beliefs that make us a fast or slow person.

That is why I define “Slow” as a philosophy that leads to a mindset, that creates a lifestyle. I see it in that order and focus on the mindset. To quote Michael Jackson “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then make a change. Yeah, Na, na, na, na, na, na oh ho…” And all that.

It is something I have been fiddling with for some time and it is still in it’s embryonic stages, so I thought in this post I would list what I see as the difference between the Slow “Tortoise Minded” person and the Fast “Hare-Brained” person and see what your thoughts are, I will carry on with this as I get it all sorted out in my head.

Hare Brained Busy Hurried and flustered Scattered Distracted Impatient Controlling Serious Aggressive Analytical Stressed Superficial Active Quantity THEN Quality Selfish/ self centred

Tortoise Minded Productive Unhurried and unflustered Centred Mindful Patient Co-operative Fun and Humour Calm Intuitive Relaxed Depth and resonance Receptive Quality THEN quantity Making real meaning connections with people

What do you think?

I will explore more about this as my thoughts develop. But the idea is to map the “tortoise mind” of a slower person or idler, so that we can model and mimic that to help everyone slow down!

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Practical Idling #2: Adventures in Baking Bread Pt1

Over the weekend I was catching up on the new River Cottage TV series, River Cottage: Summers Here. I am a terrible armchair downsizers, I watch all these TV shows and read the books and then don’t do anything about it! I remember starting “The Slow Guide to Downsizing” way back in October last year, which was meant to plot my attempts to grow my own veg etc and give you handy hits about what I had learned (partially to motivate me to do it!). Then I did nothing about it! And here we are in June and it is a tad late for any of that.

Which just reinforces my point that slowing down is not about being lazy or slothful. In fact it is the exact opposite. The fast lifestyle we live, with the convenience food and throwaway culture is the lazy, slothful way of life. Slow is about taking control and making the effort to reconnect with our lives and the things that our fast lifestyle is losing…

So, back to River Cottage. One of the things I have wanted to do for ages and I think a great place to start when reconnecting with our food (the current Slow Movement, after all, started with the Slow Food Movement back in the mid 80’s) and how it is made and where it comes from is to bake bread. It really isn’t that hard (so I have been told) and doesn’t take that long (there is a lot of hanging around and waiting where you can, if you want, go off and do other things). But I have never got round to it. Until now…

One of the episodes of River Cottage showed you how to bake bread and, inspired and motivated by this segment, I have decided to finally give it a bash. I have ordered “Bread: River Cottage Handbook No. 3 (River Cottage Handbook 3)” and will be posting my experiences, good or bad, on here, maybe even with some pictures and video!  More reports as events develop…

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Saint Monday

The Slow Coach is celebrating Saint Monday. He will be back tomorrow.

The Best of Tortoise Knows Best So Far… (Part 3: The Podbean Days)

In the final instalment of this “Best of So Far… (up to June 09)” series is the Podbean days. Remember I will be continuing to be using Podbean for podcasts…

Save Your Money, Save the World!
Being Slow is not just about appreciating the time we have, it is a philosophy built on reducing waste. Wasted time, wasted resources, wasted money…

Finding the Space to Be Slow
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.

Slowing downing with the pressure of family and work.
I often here the “reason” that people can’t slow down is because of pressures of work and family…

De-clutter your mind to give you space to slow down.

Part 1: Capture

Part 2: Chunking

Part 3: Why?

Part 4: Lets Get Creative!

Part 5: Needs

Part 6: Shoulds

A Time Out, Practical Idling Number 1 – A Tea Break
The first (and so far only) entry into an infrequent series on “Practical Idling”…

2 Surprisingly Slow Books

1 – “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey

2 – “Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity” by David Allen.

How Slowing Down Can Make You (Appear) Psychic
The title says it all!

Mindfulness

Part 1: An Introduction

Part 2: Do Nothing

Part 3: A Simple Meditation

I will be continuing this series very soon…

Well, that is it for the “Best of So Far…” series and new posts will start again next week.

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