Slow Seminars – Some Tortoise Training Events

Written by on

I have added some seminars to run this autumn. I have done my best to make the price as fair as possible at £55 per place.

If you can’t attend don’t worry, hopefully the events will be recorded and made available on this site (for a small charge).

All seminars are taking place in Birmingham UK. If you are interested in running any events near to you and would like to organise one, please contact me to discuss it.

Welcome to the Slow Life

Date: 10th October 2009

The Slow Life is the Simple Life is the Easy life. But how do you start slowing your life down?

This day will introduce you to the slow philosophy including the key steps to help you start slowing down straight away!

Learn how, my developing your “slow” mindset you can:
•    Increase focus and concentration
•    Relax and de-tress
•    Become calm and collected
•    Focus on the things you really want to get out of life
•    Reconnect with life and appreciate the present moment
•    Sleep better
•    Become healthier and more energised
•    Get control on your spending and your finances
•    Melt away worries and concerns
•    Much, much more

Finding Time to be Slow

Date: 7th November 2009

The biggest excuse I hear for not slowing down is that “I just don’t have the time. I have FAR to much to do”.

This seminar will take you through a tried and tested process that will help you organise your tasks so that you free up your time and allow to concentrate on what you really want to do.

You will learn to stop reacting to the external environment and banish “to do” lists once and for all you allow you take control of you time and your life!

A Day of Mindfulness

Date: 21st November 2009

Slow is about savouring the minutes not counting them. But how much attention do you really pay to the present moment?

Mindfulness is originally a Buddhist concept and although mindfulness meditation techniques originated as spiritual practices, they have a long history of secular applications with teachers and authors such as Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced Buddhist mindfulness to the West.

Psychotherapists have adapted and developed mindfulness techniques into several promising cognitive behavioural therapies. Clinical research shows Buddhist mindfulness techniques can help alleviate anxiety, stress, and depression.

Present moment awareness is at the core to the Slow philosophy and in this day you will learn ways to be more mindful in your day-to-day life (without needing to spend hours contemplating your navel – unless you want to of course!)

For more details and to book, go to the training page

SC

A Beginners Guide to Slowing Down…

Written by on

If you are new to the slow philosophy, often starting to slow down can be thoroughly overwhelming.

People are often not sure where to start, so I have produced this “slow start guide” to get you heading in the right direction right from the start.

These “tips” are not designed to be done in order. I recommend you do the breathing and the posture exercises first followed by the thought experiment. After then do the ones you fancy.

To  see these tips in much more detail, including exercises and additional hints and tips please see the ebook “Unleash the Tortoise Within – A Beginners Guide to Slowing Down”. It is only $4.99, Click here to Buy Now and download instantly!

1. Don’t Slow Down Too Quickly

We are used to rushing at things and expecting instant result. Don’t. Don’t try and slow down all at once. All you will do is overwhelm yourself, get flustered, not feel any better and give up. Doing something “slow” for five minutes each day will be much more beneficial that doing it for 30 minutes once a week.

2. Breathe!

I don’t say that flippantly or lightly, we all, obviously have to breath, but very few of us pay attention to our breathing.

By focusing on and controlling your breathing, you can calm yourself, focus yourself, energise yourself.

3. Check Your Posture

Relax, stand up straight, don’t waste energy. We gather all sorts of tensions in our muscles. We collect tension from our worry and our stress from our bad posture, we rarely pay attention to our bodies and allow ourselves to slump or bend or slouch.

Relaxing isn’t about collapsing to the floor in crumpled heap. Being slow is about being calm and relaxed and as Phil Hine has observed “Confidence is about being relaxed in the present moment.”

4. Do This Thought Experiment

Why do you want to slow down? And what will you get out of it? These are very important questions, you need to know where you are going and why you are going there, otherwise you will just drift.

Imagine tomorrow you have slowed down, someone has waved a magic wand and you have got everything sorted so that you have the space to be slow. What would you see?! How would it feel? What would it/you look like?

5. Do Something Deliberately

Pick something that you do every day, cleaning your teeth is a good one, or having a shower. Pay attention to the process, engage all your sense; see, feel, hear, smell and taste (be careful with the last one, don’t go licking things inappropriately). Notice all those stimuli and how it feels like it is the first time that you have done it!

6. De-Clutter

Make space to be slow. How much of what do you do, do you really need to do? We collect baggage, old habits, thought process and behaviours that we no longer need, but never discard.  We find we do things that serve no purpose, but can’t seem to find a way to stop.

7. Single Task

We consider multitasking as the pinnacle of our ability to be productive, doing more than one thing at once means we get much more done, faster. Right?

Wrong.

Multitasking makes us less productive, not more.You see, multitasking isn’t really doing several tasks in parallel, it is just constantly interrupting yourself.

It is better to focus on a single task for its entirety (or for a fixed period of time, until you reach a natural break point), you will get more done, more quickly, to a higher quality and less stressfully than if you are trying to do several things at once.

8. Make The Effort to Connect with People

No person is an island and slowing down is as much about community as it is about the individual.

By being polite, well mannered and conversational with everyone you meet, it encourages you to remain calm, centred mindful and observant.

9. Talk More Slowly

I don’t mean take like a record on half speed, I mean take the time to formulate your questions and answers, breath properly, leave gaps between word, plan ahead, don’t trail off half way through.

10. Notices the spaces where you can be slow NOW.

There will be times, (ironically, probably be the times that you currently find most frustrating) when you are waiting for something. Like on hold on the phone, in a queue at the bank, waiting for the kettle to boil. These are spaces, RIGHT NOW where you can be slow.

For much more detail about how you can slow down NOW, I have produced an ebook “Unleash the Tortoise Within” it is 30+ pages of hints and tips about how to start slowing down. It is only $4.99.

Click here to get it for absolutely nuffin, free, gratis…

Matt

De-clutter your mind to give you space to slow down. Part 6: Shoulds

Written by on

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

De-clutter your mind to give you space to slow down. Part 3: Why?

Written by on

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

Slowing downing with the pressure of family and work

Written by on

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

I am going to be uncharacteristically blunt here. That is an excuse. Plain and simple.

To slow down you need :

1. Slowing down has to be something you’re excited and passionate about; and

2. You have to make it a top priority, and structure your day so that it really is a priority.

It’s that simple. If you really want to do it you need to make it number 1 priority. It is not about neglecting your family or work life, far from it, by slowing down you will be able spend more time with your family and be more productive at work, but in the short term this may not seem the case.

Why?

Slowing down is an alien concept in these fast times and it is counter to all those hare brained habits and believes you have developed about what you should be doing.

It’s the little things…

Make it a priority in your day to do 1 thing “slowly” whether that is “single-tasking” and not letting your self be interrupted until you have finished the task you have started or making the effort to sit down with the family for an evening meal around the table rather than gobbling it down in front of the tv.

These tiny changes will start to make a very big difference over a short period of time. The biggest mistake people make…

When trying to slow down is trying to it all at once (our hare brain is used to wanting and getting results NOW!) and getting overwhelmed and giving in.

To slow down successfully, you need to slow down slowly! Implement one small change a week and you will be surprised how fast you find your are going slower…!

Matt