Slow Down and Simplify

A New Year brings 365 new days of opportunities, chances, goal setting and renewal. The ending of a year becoming a whole new one offers time of reflection, deep thought and self-realization of wonder about where you are and where you want to be.

Creating New Year’s resolution typically feels motivating, exciting and refreshing, but will only last for a few weeks before falling back into old habits. Reality starts to kick back in, life becomes too busy to manage and you find yourself saying, “I’ll try again next year”. Why do we set ourselves up for failure so quickly? We have 365 days to try again, to be only 1% better than who we were yesterday, but, when we feel excited about something, we tend to go over the top. I get it, we want to be all or nothing, but instead we should be “attainable or nothing”.

If we create a goal that is not actually sustainable long term, such as going from not working out to working out five days a week, we have given ourselves no chance. Instead of five days a week, commit to just one day a week to start. Chances are, you are going to go more than once because you feel good about achieving the one day and want to accomplish more and if you only are able to go one day, you still achieve your goal.

As a society, we tend to over-complicate everything, on top of celebrating productivity over rest, we are giving energy to a life-sucking force that is not meant for us to happily achieve. I used to be busy constantly, only being proud of myself if I didn’t sit once all day and instead focused solely on checking off to-do list items. Taking things slow felt like failure, I would rush through every task with my head down, not even noticing the world around me until the task was finished. My heart rate was constantly high, irritability ran my life, my body was constantly fatigued and I thought it was because I wasn’t doing enough, because that is what we are trained to believe. “Do more and you’ll feel better”, it’s never, “rest more and you will feel immensely better”.

I became so tired of “living” to other people’s standards. I was feeling so many health issues along with never actually taking a moment to enjoy anything due to “just trying to get it done”, I realized I wasn’t living, I was surviving.

So, this year, I decided to try something new. I didn’t make crazy goals for myself, I didn’t make a huge new life plan to achieve, instead, I chose to slow down and simplify.

I started paying attention to my body and how it was feeling at various moments of the day. If I caught myself getting tied up in thoughts about the future or stressing about what I needed to do, I would pause, take a breath and say to myself “I am not going to give this present moment to my fear or stress”. I would then focus on what was in front of me and stop my thoughts from stealing the present moment away.

I started becoming more in-tune with how I was feeling, if I was feeling tired, I would stop what I was doing and go take a break. I never used to allow myself breaks, they felt like failure, but little did I know, every time I take a break, I feel more energized and accomplish more tasks than if I had “pushed through” the tired. I also applied this to eating, if I felt hungry, even if it wasn’t my usual “eating time”, I would allow myself a snack. Just doing this small addition has given me higher focus, energy and keeps my cortisol lower because I am not constantly stressing my body out.

I started to notice myself enjoying present moments more, looking up when walking, eating slower, walking slower and even talking slower. Allowing my body moments to pause has given me more mental clarity and focus both at home and work in ways I never have experienced before. I felt myself naturally not being interested in scrolling social media anymore, because I would rather do something in the moment such as read a book, talk to a friend or bake.

After experiencing just a small amount of this new goal, I never want to allow myself the pain of immense stress, pressure and rush that society celebrates. Each day, the only competition you should have is being better than who you were yesterday. Being better to yourself and those you love should be priority, not worrying about what social media says is “trending”.

I challenge you to take this week slow. Allow yourself to walk slower, look up, eat slower, eat when you’re hungry, savor sips of coffee, move your body and be in the moment while doing it. Life is just passing you by and the only person who you are letting down is yourself by not giving yourself the chance to enjoy the moments as they come. There is so much greatness around you that your younger self would have dream of, you owe it to them to enjoy it, this moment will never happen again, choose to make it a good memory.