“Slow Living” – What You Need to Know
I posted about the “Slow Living” Movement on a recent Instagram post and had so many great responses to it. I asked people to tell me everything they know about slow living and, it turns out, lots of folks wanted to know more…so here we are!
Now, I don’t claim to have this whole slow living thing down to a science. It’s a framework for my life that’s still in construction. That being said, I fully believe in its ability to change lives because it has changed mine in more ways than one.
Also, keep in mind that the Slow Living Movement isn’t a new concept. It’s simply a new label for an age-old call to higher quality living. A framework for the 21st century.
This post is part fundamentals of slow living and part philosophy on the topic.
Alright, that’s enough of a disclaimer. Here we go!
These are the fundamentals:
Zoom out with me for a second. What is life made up of?
It’s made up of seconds, days, years, decades…time. Time is a tool. How we choose to use it dictates the outcome of our lives when all is said and done.
Living “slowly” is, essentially, a construct for how we utilize our time. Fundamentally, it’s all about two mindset shifts:
- Viewing our time as abundant rather than scarce (sounds backwards, I know…bear with me)
- Prioritizing the quality of our focus in the present moment.
If you can do those two things then you can benefit from “slow living”. But we’ll come back to those two bullet points. Right now, all you need to know about it is this:
The outcome of a life lived in the “fast” lane – quantity.
The outcome of a life lived in the “slow” lane – quality.
How do you know if this slow living thing is for you? Because maybe you’re happy with your busy life. However, since you’re reading this post, I suspect you’re at least curious about another lifestyle framework.
Let me start by asking some (super heavy personal) questions:
** I hope you don’t mind. Your answers are safe with me.
Do you feel disconnected from your authentic self?
Maybe you’re trying to figure out who your authentic self is?
Do you find yourself constantly buzzing with thoughts of your to-do list or running from one thing to the next?
Have you been hopelessly trying to figure out what ignites a fire in you…what your “passion” (hate that word) in life is?
Do you feel like you’re never satisfied with your life?
If you resonated with ANY of these questions (I know I have at one point or another), I think you’re going to like the slow living concept because, at the heart of it, this is a lifestyle meant to anchor, satisfy, and fulfill you!
But first, I want to be clear about what slow living IS NOT!
It seems that lots of folks have some misconceptions…and I understand why. The term “slow living” could mean a lot of things. My definition of what it is may not appeal to you but I can certainly tell you what it is not.
First, slow living is NOT NECESSARILY about doing less! It’s about being intentional about the things we fill our time with.
Second, Slow living IS NOT about quitting your job and moving to the woods.
If you’re a city person, be a city person! If you love running sprints, run your heart out! Living slowly does not require you to physically slow down, move to a new home, or change who you are. Matter of fact, it helps you fully sink into who you are.
“Ok…but you DID quit your job and move to the woods!”
Right! I did this the long way. I’m a slow learner. But now I can share my story and distill the beauty I’ve found in this lifestyle for you so you can plop it right into yours.
I don’t think you should have to uproot your life to benefit. You just need to listen to your heart and have someone to hold your hand as you set up the framework for yourself.
**Extending my hand to you
We’re getting off into the weeds here though. Perhaps two blog posts should follow this one. Maybe one about my personal stories with slow living and one about how to implement slow living for yourself. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.
If you want to know why I originally quit my job, I explained IT ALL in this blog post.
Let’s get to the heart of it- what is slow living?
Now that we know what it’s not, let’s return to the two bullet points from the beginning.
Starting with the first: Viewing our time as abundant rather than scarce
We’ve probably all heard people say things like “life is short” or “be grateful for every second you’re alive”.
I’ve said those things too. The sentiment of time being limited creates a sense of urgency that inspires us to take chances, achieve our goals, be with the ones we love, be our best self while there’s still time.
I love those ideas as much as the next guy but I’m going to be blunt, time is a crapshoot. None of us really know how much of it we have. Yes, time is finite, limited, fixed, nonrenewable but, since none of us know how much we have to begin with, we get the chance to define how we think about it. We can see our time as scarce or abundant. Which sounds negative and which sounds positive?
Neither means we should take time for granted. However, choosing one will dictate the speed at which you live.
As a society, we’ve chosen scarcity. As a result, we live fast because living slowly would be a ridiculous idea if life was considered short.
So we try to cram so much into our days and years, do more, more, more with the same amount of time. There isn’t enough time so we better do it all while we can!
We’ve glorified the idea of being busy, achieving more, and doing it all.
But what do we lose by doing more? Our connection.
We lose our connection to ourselves, to our relationships, to our spaces, to our planet.
On the flip side, if we choose to view our unknown amount of time on earth as abundant (while still maintaining an attitude of gratitude) then we stop to smell the roses…we savor life instead of rushing through it because we aren’t scared of having so little left.
Coming from the school of thought that time is scarce, it has taken me a while to wrap my mind around abundance. But, hindsight being 20/20, I can look at the way I used to live my life and realize that the scarcity model wasn’t working out too well for me.
Making this mindset shift is fundamental to “living slowly”.
Which brings us to the second and last fundamental: Prioritizing the quality of our focus in the present moment.
You hear those two words a lot nowadays, “present moment”. That’s because we have SO MANY WAYS to jerk ourselves out of the present moment, more ways than ever before.
So let’s say a person can start seeing their time in this abundant way we talked about. Let’s call this person Phoebe.
She can now literally slow down to smell the roses on the walk home from work because she’s not cramming everything under the sun into her schedule. But what if Phoebe’s brain is still running a million miles an hour?
She’s physically got her nose all up in these roses but she’s thinking about the email she needs to send when she gets home and then the workout she should really do and then she starts thinking about what workout outfit she’ll wear and oh there’s a sale on leggings at the mall…
Is Phoebe savoring the roses? Nope. Her mind is elsewhere.
I get it. My brain is like a little Capuchin monkey four espresso shots deep at the coffee house. I’m an introvert with a really rich internal life, meaning I LOVE living in my head.
But life is not happening in our heads, as much as my brain wishes that were true. It’s happening in front of our eyes. The Slow Living Movement prioritizes the quality of focus because it requires us to slow down that little hamster running in our mind so we can be present when we want to be.
“Great but how is this going to help me feel more fulffiled in life or find what I’m passionate about? Remember all those personal questions you asked at the beginning? Where do those come in?”
That’s where I can tie this whole conversation up with a big pretty bow for you!
When you can slow down to smell the roses like Phoebe AND actually savor the experience, you can tune into whether or not you even care about smelling roses!
It enables you to tune into the richness of life by snapping your existence into perspective and tapping into YOU. Isn’t that the hardest part – finding yourself?
The things that sparks a fire in your heart, mind and gut…the things that bring satisfaction, excitement, joy, and meaning to your life have always been there, unique to you. But, for most people (myself included), it’s a tiny little spark that’s tough to see at first.
Throw in the fast pace at which our society lives and it’s a miracle anyone finds their spark!
So, after all that, here’s my once sentence definition of “slow living”:
Slow living is an intentional way to spend the moments that make up your life – a knife by which to cut through the fog in search of your spark and fuel to feed it for all your days after.
Happy (slow) Trails,
Resources:
I posted about the “Slow Living” Movement on a recent Instagram post and had so many great responses to it. I asked people to tell me everything they know about slow living and, it turns out, lots of folks wanted to know more…so here we are!
Now, I don’t claim to have this whole slow living thing down to a science. It’s a framework for my life that’s still in construction. That being said, I fully believe in its ability to change lives because it has changed mine in more ways than one.
Also, keep in mind that the Slow Living Movement isn’t a new concept. It’s simply a new label for an age-old call to higher quality living. A framework for the 21st century.
This post is part fundamentals of slow living and part philosophy on the topic.
Alright, that’s enough of a disclaimer. Here we go!
These are the fundamentals:
Zoom out with me for a second. What is life made up of?
It’s made up of seconds, days, years, decades…time. Time is a tool. How we choose to use it dictates the outcome of our lives when all is said and done.
Living “slowly” is, essentially, a construct for how we utilize our time. Fundamentally, it’s all about two mindset shifts:
- Viewing our time as abundant rather than scarce (sounds backwards, I know…bear with me)
- Prioritizing the quality of our focus in the present moment.
If you can do those two things then you can benefit from “slow living”. But we’ll come back to those two bullet points. Right now, all you need to know about it is this:
The outcome of a life lived in the “fast” lane – quantity.
The outcome of a life lived in the “slow” lane – quality.
How do you know if this slow living thing is for you? Because maybe you’re happy with your busy life. However, since you’re reading this post, I suspect you’re at least curious about another lifestyle framework.
Let me start by asking some (super heavy personal) questions:
** I hope you don’t mind. Your answers are safe with me.
Do you feel disconnected from your authentic self?
Maybe you’re trying to figure out who your authentic self is?
Do you find yourself constantly buzzing with thoughts of your to-do list or running from one thing to the next?
Have you been hopelessly trying to figure out what ignites a fire in you…what your “passion” (hate that word) in life is?
Do you feel like you’re never satisfied with your life?
If you resonated with ANY of these questions (I know I have at one point or another), I think you’re going to like the slow living concept because, at the heart of it, this is a lifestyle meant to anchor, satisfy, and fulfill you!
But first, I want to be clear about what slow living IS NOT!
It seems that lots of folks have some misconceptions…and I understand why. The term “slow living” could mean a lot of things. My definition of what it is may not appeal to you but I can certainly tell you what it is not.
First, slow living is NOT NECESSARILY about doing less! It’s about being intentional about the things we fill our time with.
Second, Slow living IS NOT about quitting your job and moving to the woods.
If you’re a city person, be a city person! If you love running sprints, run your heart out! Living slowly does not require you to physically slow down, move to a new home, or change who you are. Matter of fact, it helps you fully sink into who you are.
“Ok…but you DID quit your job and move to the woods!”
Right! I did this the long way. I’m a slow learner. But now I can share my story and distill the beauty I’ve found in this lifestyle for you so you can plop it right into yours.
I don’t think you should have to uproot your life to benefit. You just need to listen to your heart and have someone to hold your hand as you set up the framework for yourself.
**Extending my hand to you
We’re getting off into the weeds here though. Perhaps two blog posts should follow this one. Maybe one about my personal stories with slow living and one about how to implement slow living for yourself. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.
If you want to know why I originally quit my job, I explained IT ALL in this blog post.
Let’s get to the heart of it- what is slow living?
Now that we know what it’s not, let’s return to the two bullet points from the beginning.
Starting with the first: Viewing our time as abundant rather than scarce
We’ve probably all heard people say things like “life is short” or “be grateful for every second you’re alive”.
I’ve said those things too. The sentiment of time being limited creates a sense of urgency that inspires us to take chances, achieve our goals, be with the ones we love, be our best self while there’s still time.
I love those ideas as much as the next guy but I’m going to be blunt, time is a crapshoot. None of us really know how much of it we have. Yes, time is finite, limited, fixed, nonrenewable but, since none of us know how much we have to begin with, we get the chance to define how we think about it. We can see our time as scarce or abundant. Which sounds negative and which sounds positive?
Neither means we should take time for granted. However, choosing one will dictate the speed at which you live.
As a society, we’ve chosen scarcity. As a result, we live fast because living slowly would be a ridiculous idea if life was considered short.
So we try to cram so much into our days and years, do more, more, more with the same amount of time. There isn’t enough time so we better do it all while we can!
We’ve glorified the idea of being busy, achieving more, and doing it all.
But what do we lose by doing more? Our connection.
We lose our connection to ourselves, to our relationships, to our spaces, to our planet.
On the flip side, if we choose to view our unknown amount of time on earth as abundant (while still maintaining an attitude of gratitude) then we stop to smell the roses…we savor life instead of rushing through it because we aren’t scared of having so little left.
Coming from the school of thought that time is scarce, it has taken me a while to wrap my mind around abundance. But, hindsight being 20/20, I can look at the way I used to live my life and realize that the scarcity model wasn’t working out too well for me.
Making this mindset shift is fundamental to “living slowly”.
Which brings us to the second and last fundamental: Prioritizing the quality of our focus in the present moment.
You hear those two words a lot nowadays, “present moment”. That’s because we have SO MANY WAYS to jerk ourselves out of the present moment, more ways than ever before.
So let’s say a person can start seeing their time in this abundant way we talked about. Let’s call this person Phoebe.
She can now literally slow down to smell the roses on the walk home from work because she’s not cramming everything under the sun into her schedule. But what if Phoebe’s brain is still running a million miles an hour?
She’s physically got her nose all up in these roses but she’s thinking about the email she needs to send when she gets home and then the workout she should really do and then she starts thinking about what workout outfit she’ll wear and oh there’s a sale on leggings at the mall…
Is Phoebe savoring the roses? Nope. Her mind is elsewhere.
I get it. My brain is like a little Capuchin monkey four espresso shots deep at the coffee house. I’m an introvert with a really rich internal life, meaning I LOVE living in my head.
But life is not happening in our heads, as much as my brain wishes that were true. It’s happening in front of our eyes. The Slow Living Movement prioritizes the quality of focus because it requires us to slow down that little hamster running in our mind so we can be present when we want to be.
“Great but how is this going to help me feel more fulffiled in life or find what I’m passionate about? Remember all those personal questions you asked at the beginning? Where do those come in?”
That’s where I can tie this whole conversation up with a big pretty bow for you!
When you can slow down to smell the roses like Phoebe AND actually savor the experience, you can tune into whether or not you even care about smelling roses!
It enables you to tune into the richness of life by snapping your existence into perspective and tapping into YOU. Isn’t that the hardest part – finding yourself?
The things that sparks a fire in your heart, mind and gut…the things that bring satisfaction, excitement, joy, and meaning to your life have always been there, unique to you. But, for most people (myself included), it’s a tiny little spark that’s tough to see at first.
Throw in the fast pace at which our society lives and it’s a miracle anyone finds their spark!
So, after all that, here’s my once sentence definition of “slow living”:
Slow living is an intentional way to spend the moments that make up your life – a knife by which to cut through the fog in search of your spark and fuel to feed it for all your days after.
Happy (slow) Trails,
Resources:
Want more? I've got you covered ↓
Wow Ashley spot on with that perspective. Some points that I never looked at that way…truly reinforcing slow living. Beautiful written with so much depth to still explore thank you for sharing such a life enriching purpose/change.
PS my vote is two blog posts on personal slow living experience and how to slow live.
….. not looking for the high road or low road, just wandering on the slow road.
Thank you. I have wanted to “slow” myself for awhile and you brought a clearer picture on how to do that. Meaningful to me is people (and animals!) not things or how many places I can go. But i do struggle with the busy mind; that infinite check list of things i “have” to get done “today”. Can you offer some wisdom on this or insight on how or what has worked for you?
Hey Vicki, I hope you don’t mind but your comment caught my attention. I used to drive myself crazy doing all the things perfectly all the time. Over the years I learned to ask myself if it’s important.
I mean, is it really going to matter if I prune my tomato plants? No. The only reason I was doing it was so it looked pretty and our neighbors didn’t complain about what dirty messy hippies we are. There are so many things I stopped doing or restructured, for instance, we clean our house once a month now, not weekly.
Finally, stop trying to do so much. I try to only have 3 (really important) things on my to-do list each day. Honestly, I usually add a 4th or 5th, and never get to them. But having a growing list that gets longer each day isn’t helpful. I’ve found that narrowing my focus to what’s important and attainable has helped. It’s defintely a journey. Hope that helps a little.
So much to chew on here. First off, I didn’t know that there was a slow living movement and this delights me, maybe even more than the slow food movement.
I’m on board with everything you’re saying here. I walked away from the corporate world almost 5 years ago and we’ve been very intentional with all of our tools and resources, including time, ever since. We’d never go back to our old way of life. I honestly don’t know how I did it.
I think about this topic a lot and I’ll try to be brief. I think that for most people, once we hit a basic level of income where we can make ends meet and have a little left over for fun, the satisfaction we get from more money and “success” levels out. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have enough money for a home on the North Shore of both Minnesota and the island of Hawaii. But what am I willing to trade for that?
I could write a whole darn book on this, but I think that’s where we go wrong in our culture. We’re taught to chase “success” and to look successful at all costs. We might be $350,000 in debt, but at least we look like we made it. All while being miserable, working a job we hate but can’t afford to lose, and maybe even popping some pills or other forms of numbing.
Most of us were never taught to stop and ask what we *really* want and what’s *really* important. And let me tell you, those of us who are brave enough to actually do it, better be ready for plenty of snide and hurtful comments. Not to project our experience, but I find this is pretty universal.
That’s why I love that you’re sharing this message and your story. We need more people to step up and say it’s okay to create your own life. Going to college, getting married, buying a house, having a baby, getting a promotion, buying a bigger house, …. None of these things guarantee happiness. (<- Another loaded word) Figure out what's right for you and start taking the steps to get there. And if your people don't support you, they're not your people.
Okay, this is where I cut myself off. Thanks for sharing and giving me even more to get lost in my head over.
[…] you read my post on Slow Living, you’ll know that the quality of your focus in the present moment is everything when it comes […]