In Praise of Slowness is an excellent TED talk that would have been my TED talk except that Carl Honoré did it first! Ha! That's what I get for procrastinating. Seriously, though, so much of what I've been thinking about, reading, studying regarding how our crazy, busy lives affect us, Honoré discusses in this TED talk. He's also written an excellent book, In Praise of Slowness as well as a newer book, The Slow Fix, which I'd also highly recommend.
As Honoré starts his talk by saying, the speed with which we are living our lives is affecting every aspect of life - our health, our relationships, our work, our diet, environment, community - and I would add, it's unsustainable. Honoré goes on to question whether or not it's possible to break free from this mindset? So often, it takes some kind of dramatic/traumatic event to stop us in our tracks and cause us to reassess our lives and the speed at which we're living them. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make a change BEFORE I get the proverbial "wake up call".
Although, I must say, it's not easy. I recently left a job, in part because I felt like I could never quite move fast enough to satisfy all of the stakeholders.
Yet, I still feel the frequent and familiar pulls to work more (even though I work for myself now!), do more in my community, be more politically active, earn more, buy more and in order to do all of this, I need to do everything FASTER. (Thankfully, I don't currently live in an urban area where I think the pull can be even stronger.)
What ways do you have for slowing down the speed of your life?
To view the TED talk click here.
I try to carve out the things that aren't a priority for me. I try to pause before agreeing to a commitment - make sure it's important to me and not something i'm doing because i always have or i feel obligated. I try to get rid of unnecessary clutter - i think that's related to slowing down - the less stuff you have, the less time you spend managing it. I accept that my life is simpler, quiet and creates time for introspection and thinking. I moved the TV out of the downstairs so i don't waste time watching it.