However, I dislike large corporate enterprise (in general, there are a few exceptions) and the lazy, wasteful, arrogant and insulting way they carry on their business. Let me give you an example of the contradiction, in Malta each local bus route was run by an individual driver, he would pay a licence for a route and supply his own bus, this created a marvellous multitude of buses in crazy and brilliant designs. Now the government for some reason (I imagine financial) has given the contract for ALL the bus routes to Arriva, not only putting all the bus drivers out of work or forcing them into the employment of Arriva, but creating a dull homogeny of buses that are (I have been informed) of worse value and service than before. How is that better?

But of course, in my original belief that I like private enterprise, I could not fault the man who, through hard work and offering better service, manages to purchase two bus routes, then employs a man to drive the second route for him. If he then bought another and another, how  does that make him any different to Arriva and their big operation?

Then it struck me, it is about knowing when to stop, when you have enough, when growing your business won’t actually give any more benefit to you, your employees (if you have any) and your customers, beyond the profit motive.

There is, in fact, a model in business and management theory (I used to be a management accountant) called Greiner’s Lifecycle Model that addresses this. It states that, in order to grow, an organisation passes through a series of identifiable phases or stages of development and crisis. Step one, or the first crisis, is “crisis of leadership” where the enterprising persons business grows to the stage where they cannot do everything themselves and they need help. This tends to correspond to the business owner having to take a step back from the day to day work and take on a more management role. So for an example, a carpenter who gets so much work needs to employ another carpenter, he (or she, I am using “he” here for simplicity not to suggest all carpenters are male!) then delegates some work to this other carpenter. As the business grows more, he has to delegate more and more and therefore ends up in a role far removed from what he was originally doing (and the reason he started the business in the first place). This may lead to “success” in the financial or traditional capitalist model, but is the carpenter happy doing paperwork? Probably not!

(If you are a management theories I know you will recognise this is a simplification of the model, but I have done so to illustrate the point of this post. It is not meant to be a discussion on the model, which would be a post in itself!)

So I now propose a new, alternative business model or category called the “Enoughpreneur”.

Why Enoughpreneur?

The title is inspired by John Naish’s excellent book “Enough” where he posits that the secret of (material) contentment is to earn close to or just above the average earning level of your country and to avoid the desire for more and social competition (for more detail on that, read Alain De Botton’s equally excellent “Status Anxiety”). I admit, avoiding or undoing your desire for social competition is in fact the hard part (but quite simple once you have a plan).

The metaphor or story that illustrates this model and the contradiction of the old idea of a successful business can be seen in this post about the business and the fisherman.

It is easy to get carried away, get over excited and seduced by the “success” of building a big business. The skill really is to recognise when to stop, when your business is successful enough (financially) to fulfil all your needs and desires. Do you need that second bus route? That other carpenter? Will it really enhance your life?

The example of Enoughpreneurship I am most aware of is Charles Martell and Son at Laurel Farm who make the Stinking Bishop Cheese. The cheese was brought to international attention by a brief but important role in the Oscar-winning film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, in which it was used to revive Wallace from the dead. Demand for the cheese subsequently rose by 500%. Charles Martell was offered £1000’s to increase supply, but he refused. He made enough to keep him happy. He was not seduce by more. As he said “I’m quite happy with what I’ve got at the moment. I don’t need more money. I can only wear one suit at a time, or drive one car. And I certainly don’t want fame.”

Are you an Enoughpreneur? I would love to hear from you, please email me your case study and I can run it in a future post.

Matt

When we stop doing something we often slingshot in the opposite direction, we go from one extreme from the other. This is rarely anything to do with the possible addictive nature of the behaviour that has changed (smoking and drinking are the most common examples), but to do with how the person identifies with that behaviour. Often the people who become rabidly anti-something (that they used to do) are the ones that still identify themselves with the behaviour they are now no longer allowing themselves (often for very good reasons) to do. A rabid ex-smoker, for example, will often still consider themselves a smoker, just one who doesn’t smoke. No wonder they are frustrated! They become judgemental and outspoken because, well, why should you enjoy it when they can’t any more?

Fastoholics are people have changed their lifestyle, sold the car (or got a Prius), embraced whole-food, the whole nine yards, but BOY do they want you to know about it! They become po-faced, pious and judgemental. Why? Because they still crave the old fast life, they are only slowing down because they think they should and going about it completely the wrong way. They are still “hare-brained”, they still identity with the old fast life and secretly miss it. They may have changed their external world, but haven’t made the effort to change the way they think about themselves or identify with their behaviour.

Slowing down really does come from the inside out, before you even think about changing your lifestyle, you need to change your relationship with that lifestyle; how you think and feel about. In essence, you need to change your identity. You must consider yourself “tortoise-minded”, not just a “hare-brained” person who has happened to slow down.

Take minimalism for example (a very hot topic right now). Extreme minimalism often seems to be a knee jerk reaction to clutter, like a junkie going cold turkey. It almost becomes a competition about who can own the least. It is much more useful (and healthy) to change your relationship with stuff before you just chuck it all in the bin. The cold turkey approach rarely works and you will just end up regretting your decisions (and very quickly start to horde things again).

Unfortunately most people I meet who claim to be slow are really just Fastoholics. People who are trying to give the impression (for whatever reason) that they have slowed down, but their mind is still racing. Fastoholics are reactive, they just change their external world in response to their unhappiness with their relationship to it.

Tortoise minded people are proactive and take the time to explore, understand and change their relationship with their external world. When you do this, you will find your behaviour and lifestyle will just start to change naturally, without needing to force it.

Matt

Then a little voice in my head said “STOP!”. I stood still for a second or two (it seemed like forever), took a deep breath, relaxed my tense muscles, bent down and calmly and slowly untied the knot in my lace, and slipped my shoe on.

If I have only acted like this in the first place, I would have been out of the door much faster than wasting time effort and energy trying to rush to put my shoes on.

Our hare brained mind goes so fast it often slows us down.

Slow is not actually about being slow. It is about being unflustered, unhurried, calm and collected (centring our energy, rather than letting it scatter). By thinking and acting in a thoughtful and focused manner we WILL go faster…

Well, it is December and I have lifted my self imposed Christmas embargo. I refuse to even think about Christmas until now, no matter how much adverts and Tesco try and make me (I am sat here watching Love Actually. It is the one film that cannot fail to make me feel Christmassy!).

I don’t like Christmas. Well, that is not strictly true. I don’t like what Christmas has become. It seems to have become this secular celebration of consumerism.

All people care about is what presents to get, what presents they will receive, what food they need to buy (and, boy, do they buy! It is only 2 days, yet people seem to shop like they will never be allowed to buy food again), it is all spend, spend, spend…

Go and walk around your local high street now and you won’t see much the “season to be jolly” (or much “good will to all (wo)men” for that matter), all you will see is crowds (and crowds, and crowds…) of stressed and angry shoppers shuffling around.

It is ridiculous, and about as far removed from the original meaning of Christmas as we can get…

What is Christmas? Really?

What are the ancient roots of Christmas and the festivities that surround it?

Well, I am sure you are all aware of the song “12 Days of Christmas’”…

“Fiiiiiiiiiiivvvveeeee Gooooooolllllldddd Riiiiiinnnnggssss….” And all that.

That was because Christmas would last 12 whole days! It would start on the 25th December and finish on the 6th January (12th Night). Originally Christmas Day was celebrated on January 6th, when presents were given in honour of Saint Nicholas (the forefather of Father Christmas).

It was a time of merriment, feasting and general festivity (but still a holy day, with 3 masses on 25th December to start the ball rolling), with plays, processions and merry-making. It was not the family orientated affair we know today, but a celebration that involved the whole community.

Christmas (or Yule, or Christmastide, or the festival of Epiphany, or the Winter Solstice!) was a time of revelry, of community spirit, of celebration and feasting that lasted days (some sources say they started in November!), ending on 12th Night, or the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th January. It combined pre-Christian traditions and Christian elements to give thanks and distract ourselves from the cold, dark winters…

The Christmas We Know Today

The Christmas we know today (with the 2 days – Christmas Day and Boxing Day) was really an invention of those lovers of speed; the Victorians, to reduce the festive period into a manageable 2-day holiday so we could all get back to work as soon as possible (this was in the midst of the Industrial revolution).

However the rot set in a long time before those harebrained Victorians got their mitts on Christmas, around the time of Reformation, when Martin Luther created the Protestant Church (and the gave name to the dreaded “Protestant Work Ethic”) and started to cull the Pre-Reformation holidays and festivals as they deemed them “hedonistic” and “superstitious” (Christmas was even BANNED in Britain in 1647).

The blueprint for the modern Christmas celebrations was laid down in Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” (thanks Charley), with the idea of the one-day of feasting and celebration (Boxing day wasn’t traditionally classed as holiday unitl 1871, when the Bank Holidays Act in the UK was designated a Bank Holiday). It is suggested that Dickens (being a popular author of the time) was unofficially employed to do a bit of PR job on the new, shorter Christmas celebrations, as the workers were somewhat reticent of giving up their festivities (and who can blame them?).

Because of the truncated nature of the celebration and the fact that people were moving into the cities and away from the traditional village community, the onus moved away from the community as whole and focused much more just on the family (remember, most families all lived under one roof back then…).

When you describe Christmas like that, and discover the modern celebrations cynical roots, can you see why I am not a huge fan?!

How Can You Slow Down Christmas?

“We’re all dreaming of a pre-Reformation Christmas, when the festival really did last twelve days and during which time work and trade were forbidden, and instead we all danced, sang, ate, drank and generally made extremely merry. The sour-faced Parliamentarians of the Cromwell state actually tried to ban Christmas altogether, considering it Popish, old-fashioned and far too much fun. Luckily Charles II brought it back in 1660 and the medieval spirit of Christmas has survived.” - Tom Hodgkinson

The fact is, we are going to celebrate Christmas aren’t we? And why shouldn’t we?! I am not against Christmas as festival, I am just not too comfortable with it as the modern celebration of consumerism and speed that it has become.

Christmas should be a little bit of a revolt against the increasing pressure and stress of work and the consumer society and, in my humble opinion, the old Pre-Reformation celebrations were a much “Slower” than our current ones.

The idea here is to introduce (or re-introduce) some of the Pre-Reformation intentions that you may find will reduce you Christmas stress and turn it back into a time for you to enjoy!

1) Celebrate the full 12 Days!

Try and plan to do something for the full 12 days, rather than rushing to get everything done in the 2 days we have allotted to us. The time between Christmas and New Year is often a bit of an empty space and we are not sure what do to with ourselves. Well by celebrating the full 12 days you can use that time to catch up with friends and family at a more leisurely pace.

There are still some organisations that shut between Christmas and New Year (and good on them!), but if not, you can still do something in that time.

2) Go carol singing (or Wassailing as it was traditionally known)

Ancient carol singing was a bit of a rowdy affair, where people would go from house to house and sing and be offered alcohol by the inhabitants. I am not suggesting you go and harass your neighbours for booze, but a spot of drinking and singing does wonders to lift the spirits!

3) Don’t bow to pressure to do things that are “expected” of you

Christmas is a time for celebration not “duty”, if you don’t enjoy it at the rest of the year, why do it now?  Spend it with people you really want to, not people you think you should.

4) Buy gifts that mean something, not that cost the earth

The giving of presents seems to have become the central tenant of the modern Christmas with people stressing and panicking about what to buy people and often going into debt to pay for it.  Don’t buy pointless gifts just because you think you should, take some time to consider what that person would really appreciate and it (or make it!) for them. Presents don’t need to be expensive to be good.

5) Don’t go shopping

The internet is a godsend for this. You can do all your Christmas shopping from the comfort of your own sofa without needing to go out and face the hordes (unless fighting your way through crowds of angry shoppers makes you feel Christmassy).

6) The thorny issue of Christmas Cards

Hand written? Electronic? Don’t bother? Every year we seem to have to send cards to more and more people; work colleagues, neighbours (who we often don’t even know the name of), distant relatives we can barely remember. It gets more and more expensive, it is strain on the poor postal service and all that paper is hardly good for the planet (even if it is recycled or from a sustainable source).  I like the idea that seems to have sprung up of recent years (at least with people I know), and that is to donate the money you would have spent on cards to charity and then just send a generic email telling everyone that is what you have done. Of course, still send cards to people who are close to you!

7) Give something to the community

Boxing day got its name from giving gifts (or Christmas “boxes” to the poor) and Christmas was traditionally a time for community. So why not give something back? You can do anything you want from giving a donation to a charity (see the suggestion about Christmas cards), to getting more involved in something, it is up to you. Giving something back honours the Christmas spirit and will make you feel surprisingly good!

This is will probably be my last post of 2009. So I wish a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (and, in fact, the new decade) and I will see you in the 2010.

Matt

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The ideal Christmas Present for the Harebrained person:

Sorry for the lack of blogging of late. I have been away on holiday and whilst I was away I have been finding myself mulling over the future of the blog/journal part of this site. I will publish a full entry about this and what I intend to do in the next few days. Please bear with me until then (I am sure you will, this is a Slow Blog afterall!).
Matt

Humour is incredibly important to the Slow mindset. Humour has power. If you can laugh at something you remove it’s control over you. It is why satire is considered so potent and we used comical propaganda during WWII.

I remember once, when I was still working as an NLP therapist, talking to a group of other therapists and we were chatting about some of our work that we had done. All of a sudden, one of the more earnest therapists just lashed out and said to me “I think you are disgusting! I can’t believe you treat your clients in such a way, you show no respect to them, making fun of them all the time”. I was a bit taken aback, but then explained calmly and gently that I took my clients 100% seriously and treated them with the utmost respect, but what I never did was take their “problems” seriously. As, taking a problem seriously often makes it worse, and if you can get your clients to truly laugh that their problems that can often be enough to make them go away (the problem, not the client!).

In the Slow movement I often meet quite a few earnest people, who take slowing down very seriously. They are somewhat evangelical and critical of other people who do not conform to their understanding of the world (and their understanding of how we should slow down). A friend and I often refer to them as “lentil knitters” and poke a bit of light hearted fun at them. This attitude isn’t helping at all and is often counter productive as turns people off the Slow Movement. Besides, the Slow Movement has no leaders or structure, it is a collection of people embracing the idea of slowing down and rejecting the ethos of “faster is best”, in all it’s forms, there is (as far as I can tell) no “right” or “wrong” way to do it!

So, in this post I thought I would explore the more humorous (yet still important) side of Slowing Down.

The Idler

www.idler.co.uk

I have mentioned the Idler here a few times. It has recently re-invented itself in a more serious guise as a journal of radical thought, but before then it was a tongue in cheek look at the life of loafing. In both its guises I highly recommend it!

The New Escapolosgist

newescapologist.wordpress.com

A new periodical in a similar vein to the Idler. Edited by the Glasgow flâneur Robert Wringham, its purpose is to help its readers “flee the humdrum spreadsheet of prescribed reality into an exciting world of one’s own invention.”

The Church of the Latter Day Dude (Dudeism)

www.dudeism.com

Inspired by the antics of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, in the Coen brother film “The Big Lebowski”, they espose a laidback lifestyle. In it’s own words “Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world – Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh…lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you’d like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we’ll help you get started. Right after a little nap…”

The Church of the Subgenius

www.subgenius.com

The aim of the subgenius is to attain SLACK, the “sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you achieve your personal goals.” Although a parody of the major cults and religions, the idea if slack is an excellent one!

Discordianism

Similar to The Church of the Subgenius. The Discordian movement is either a “religion disguised as a joke, or a joke disguised as a religion”. It has no central body as one of the basic tenants is that “us Discordians must stick apart”, but you can learn more at it’s Wikipedia page here. Discordianism reminds us not to take anything too seriously and to just let go.

If anyone has any other lighthearted Slow organisations out there, please let me know.

Matt

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He even posits that the human race should not be called “homo sapien” (thinking or wise man), but “homo expetens” (wanting man).

However, we have now got to a point where those natural cravings have become a hindrance to our development (both socially and evolutionarily) and we need to get beyond them so that we can continue to develop and evolve…

I have been involved in Buddhism since I was about 19. I was sort of aware of it from an early age, when I took up martial arts at the age of 12, but that was really just the draw of a far off and distant land (the mythic “east”) and the iconography and aesthetics of it all.

But I remember when I real became interested in Buddhism was when I was sat in a bar in Cheltenham, I was a little bit drunk and rambling on to this bloke I had just been introduced to about how I thought the majority of problems people have is because they were always wanting more and more things and if they were just appreciated what they had got then the world would be a much better place and we would all be happier (see I was even “Slow” back then…). He interrupted me to ask me “How long have you been interested in Buddhism?”, I had no idea what he was talking about and asked him what he meant, he said I had almost, word for word quoted the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is craving (or attachment to things).
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable by relinquishing cravings.
4. We can follow the path to the cessation of suffering.

Turns out this guy was an ex-Buddhist monk and he introduced me to Buddhism, recommended books, and groups and events where I could learn more (I feel a bit guilty, as I can’t even remember his name!).

I studied Buddhism through my early 20’s, getting involved with varies groups including The “Friends of the Western Buddhist Order” (FWBO) and “Sanbo Kyodan Zen”, but around 2004 I found myself getting more and more distracted by the world of more, until I peaked in 2007 and found myself the craving, striving, stressed “success coach” that I had become.

What has this potted history of my relationship and involvement in Buddhism have to do with Slow or John Naish?

Well, over the years studying the Buddha’s teachings and methods I starting to formulate the idea that Buddhism was not really a religion but a process of therapy and the Buddha was in fact the first “psychotherapist”! His teachings helped you undo our natural propensity to want and crave and evolve beyond our instinctive urges.

I was not alone in this interpretation and notable Buddhist scholars such as Stephen Bachelor, Caroline and David Brazier, to name a few, have discussed Buddhist techniques and ideology, particularly Zen practices in a therapeutic context. Philip Kapleau has explaines:

“Bompu (or Ordinary) Zen, being free from any philosophic or religious content, is for anybody and everybody. It is a Zen practiced purely in the belief that it can improve both physical and mental health. Since it can almost certainly have no ill effects, anyone can undertake it, whatever religious beliefs they happen to hold or if they hold none at all. Bompu Zen is bound to eliminate sickness of a psychosomatic nature and to improve the health generally.”

This has finally led to Western psychologists and therapists, particularly Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg, to have researched and studied Buddhist practices, particularly mindfulness, and recent research supports promising mindfulness-based therapies for a number of medical and psychiatric conditions, notably chronic pain, stress, depression and substance abuse and recurrent suicidal behaviour.

The more I study, explore and develop the slow life, in particular the slow mindset (which, to me, is where it is at), the more I recognise that mindfulness is the corner stone to that mindset and the spring from where everything else comes.

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The problem with our goal/success/achievement driven society is that we spend so much time fixating on the goal that we miss the process.

Whenever I have something I want to achieve (and Slow is not about NOT achieving things that you want), once I have defined my goal I always ask myself, “What is the most fun way?”.

It may not be the quickest way, but at least I enjoy getting there! And by picking the most fun way, you are much more likely to “succeed” as you are enjoying yourself so much on the way you keep going, rather than struggling, hating every minute of it and giving up!

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The Little Things
Where I muse on how it is often the little things that we don’t really pay attention too that makes us the happiest in life, not the big bucks stuff we would expect.

Tempo Guisto
About how Slow doesn’t always mean ‘slow’…

Slow Time Part 1

First (and so far only) entry in an occasion series discussing time…

Secret Agent of Slow

How, by slowing down you will start to help and inspire other people to do the same, just by your actions.

How to Be Slow in Fast Environment Series

Part 1:  Centering

Part 2: The Key Traits to be Slow in a Fast Environment.

Part 3: Breathe!

I started this series again and continued it  in the SlowCasts (see yesterdays “Best Of”)

Cleanliness is Next to Slowliness
About how being slow isn’t about being lazy or slothful (a re-occurring theme) and how disorganisation and mess is “anti-Slow”.

Slow Odes Part 1: Public Transport
First (and so far only) post in an occasional series praising Slowness.

Twittering Nonsense.
Being rather critical of Twitter. I have been experimenting with it recently here and will post a follow-up entry soon.
Part 3: The Podbean Days will be up tomorrow.

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