If You Want To Keep Up With The Speed of Life, Slow Down

Try this when you want to quit feeling like a hollow jumping ping pong ball

Photo by Ellen Qin on Unsplash

Slowing down is considered rather inappropriate in our busy world.

But slowing down doesn’t mean less acceleration.

Rather, it means that we must learn to stay with ourselves when we are permanently pushed by a hectic world.

You feel exposed to the external forces of stress, hectic and pressure as if they make you bounce around like a ping pong ball?

You are like that lightweight plastic ball with a hollow body being struck by the paddle of the hammering, speeding world from one end of the table to another.

But you are tired of being that hollow body and your weapon to fight against this is to be filled up with a sense for yourself and an awareness that slowness fosters high-end performance.

„Living SLOW is not about eliminating action from your life. It’s about giving each moment the time and attention it deserves.“ — Carl Honoré

Let’s rethink how slowness helps your speed.

Polar Opposites Are Not Limiting

I am a firm believer in the concept of “as-well-as” as opposed to the concept of things, people, or situations just being “either-or”.

The world tries to sell us the concept that polar opposites are limiting. I don’t buy it. In most cases, if you are this as well as that you are much better off. As the old saying goes, there is always two sides of a coin.

We can be patient, pause and slow down a bit while we keep moving forward and take advantage of a high-speed world.

Having lived in Tokyo I learned a thing or two from the Japanese how to “survive” the buzzing hustle and bustle of a crazy crowded, noisy, and blinking 37 million inhabitant’s city. Walking through this city makes you feel overwhelmed and overstimulated. But every once in a while, I turned a corner and found myself in an amazingly quiet, small temple which gave me some peace and quiet. The noise of the city was gone for a moment.

So, amid the chaos there can always be found some islands of sanity and tranquility. You have to look for it…