Want a simple idea to spur happiness? Live life, don't race through it. Simple, right?
We are a world obsessed with speed. Today, the faster the better, mentality rules our world, while the slower things ( or people) are, the more irritating they become.
Line ups never move fast enough, people never talk quick enough, deliveries don't arrive soon enough. And we often end up frustrated, because our expectation of time is warped. Technology makes big promises, and quick, inflated promises seem easy. But they are not.
Imagine a world where we could slow down and take the time to appreciate life. Appreciate what it takes to make things happen.
Speed takes a toll on our work and life. Health, work and relationships suffer when we operate on fast pace.
When you can't slow down, you lose out on so much.
Speed is fun, even sexy, while being slow is not. People who are slow are often called slackers or stupid. Yet, who do you prefer to spend time with- the busy, distracted professional? Or the more calm, focused, casual person? The clash between speed and slowness is most easily seen with a busy parent and a child. The hurried adult pressures a child to move faster, while he is easily enjoying the moment. Years later, a parent complains how their children grew up too fast.
The activities we do quickly are usually the high priority, urgent but low focus, less creative tasks. The tasks we do deliberately and slowly are the innovative, conscientious, engaging things.
Further, speed fills our head with busyness, so we don't have to contemplate the important questions in life. We trade this in, because we love the buzz, feeling of being needed and adrenaline rush of busyness.
Darting from one stressful thing to another may keep us busy. Yet, if we really contemplate what fills our time, we may discover these low priority things are distracting us from what really matters.
In the near future, low priority things will be replaced by technology and we may be left struggling to find skills that are relateable.
As a Humorous Motivational Speaker, I love seeing audience laugh. For some people, it is not something they do often. When you laugh you are automatically more present and in the moment.
