Is Slower Better? How To Stop Rushing - Self-development, Society

How to learn to move through life without excessive speed? So, not only to hear the absolute silence on a summer evening at the dacha or the rustling of a hedgehog in the grass, to see an amazing sunset shining with many colors, but also to remember this beauty of nature

The slow life movement with the motto "Slower is better" is developing and gaining supporters in the world. In psychology and psychotherapy, this practice involves slow mentoring and is aimed at reducing the stress of too hectic pace of life, rush and many tasks at the same time.

It seemed that quite recently everyone was just talking about the need to accelerate in order to have time to live in the rhythm of multitasking, special technologies appeared, everyone rushed to study. British psychologist Guy Claxton believes that haste has become a habit for us. An internal psychology of haste, minimum time, maximum efficiency has developed, and every day this need for the race is becoming stronger.

The realization that the quality of life on the run cannot be improved at speed has sobered many. Never mind that it all started with slow food with the famous culinary manifesto for slow food.

Now this movement covers the most important areas of life for a person. Among them are "slow" education, medicine, art, religion, science, tourism, reading

Geir Bertelsen founded the World Institute of Slowness, where a new philosophy of life is being studied. Canadian researcher Carl Honore has done extensive research and has written three books on the quality of slow life. As the author of the book "No Fuss: How to Stop Hurrying and Start Living" Carl Honore gained worldwide fame, actively gives lectures and master classes around the world. He calls for doing everything at the right speed, doing everything well, not fast.

“When you are in a hurry where you should not rush, when you drive yourself away and cannot stop, sooner or later you have to pay for it. It is important to find your own pace of life, and this will improve its quality."

Carl Honore

We invite you to familiarize yourself with the main ideas of Carl Honore's book "No Fuss: How to Stop Hurrying and Start Living" and understand how to get rid of haste.

1. Slow city

The slowdown is just the beginning of the necessary transformation of urban areas. The redevelopment of residential quarters is carried out in such a way that, first of all, people live well, not cars. In the 1970s, the Dutch invented the Woonerf - a street with a reduced maximum speed, limited parking spaces, benches, play areas, green spaces. In the United States, urban centers and residential areas are designed with people first, not cars.

The front line in the war against the cult of speed runs through our heads. For Slow Motion to take hold, a deeper change is required: a change in the way we think. Put your mind in a lower gear and the reward is health, peace of mind, high levels of focus, and creative thinking. What Milan Kundera called "the wisdom of slowness" will come

2. Slow medicine

In clinics and hospitals around the world, doctors are forced to quickly deal with patients. The public health system in the UK is so overwhelmed that an average GP visit lasts six minutes. Disillusioned with formal health care, millions of people are turning to complementary and alternative medicine, which is based on the principles of holistic, leisurely treatment. The World Health Organization has launched a large-scale campaign to bring the best alternative practices to the mainstream. To lower blood pressure, eliminate pain, anxiety, depression, relaxation is often used, patients are taught to live in a more relaxed rhythm.

Mainstream medicine is finding different ways to slow down. Doctors are increasingly using relaxation techniques, and in order to achieve this state, they recommend gardening, drawing, music, knitting, or getting a pet

3. Slow labor

Where legislators are hesitant to regulate labor market relations, people themselves oppose the culture of around-the-clock "watch". A recent survey in the UK confirmed that twice as many people dream of cutting their working hours as winning the lottery big. In addition, the best specialists are increasingly switching to freelancing or working as independent contractors. They arrange a rush for themselves when necessary, and leave time to recharge the batteries, devote leisure time to loved ones and their hobbies.

Research has shown that a person who is self-managing their time is calmer, more creative, and more productive than an office worker. Of course, it will take a tectonic shift to give people back the right to control their time in the workplace. But this shift needs to be made wherever possible

4. Slow reading

If a book is worth reading, it is worth reading it slowly - it can be considered as stressful for the mind as slow lifting of the barbell is for the body. Slow reading doesn't mean fewer words per minute, it allows you to better understand what you are reading. And this is a great antidote to the general haste.

Any pleasure is much more beautiful when you drink it in small sips and are in no hurry. And reading as well. As you rush through the book, you do not notice many jokes, hints and how the author gradually reveals secrets, intricate and hidden branches of the plot

5. Slow art

Drawing, sculpture, all kinds of artistic creation need slowness. The American writer Saul Bellow once remarked: “Art is silence in the midst of chaos. Silence … like the epicenter of a hurricane. Focused attention in a whirlwind of distractions. In all galleries around the world, you can see how artists, like under a microscope, examine our relationship with speed. Many pictures seem to switch the one who sees them into a calmer, contemplative mode.

The deliberate use of music for therapeutic purposes is not new. In 1742, Count Kaiserling, who served as the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, ordered music from Bach for insomnia and received the Goldberg Variations. 250 years have passed, and there is hardly a person in the modern world who did not seek solace in classical music

6. Slow Science

The same approach - "less is more" - is recommended for scientists. Doing nothing is a prerequisite for good thinking work. When I urge you to slow down and reduce the load, I am not at all suggesting that you give up high achievements, from striving for perfection, but the intense and constant effort that is required to write an outstanding scientific work is easier if a person does not deprive himself of leisure, rest thinking alone.

Appropriate and thoughtful deliberation will help you learn and live better. The intense and constant effort that is required to write an outstanding scientific work is easier if the person does not deprive himself of leisure, rest, and meditation alone

7. Slow growing up

The world of turbo speeds, having absorbed the adult population, is already sucking in the youth. Children are in too much of a hurry to grow. Six-year-olds use mobile phones to organize their own parties, teenagers do business right from their bedroom. Parents compete with each other, and children participate in the races. Psychologists have the term "hyperparenting" - the obsessive need to achieve perfection from the child.

To save a new generation from the cult of speed, we will have to completely rethink our ideas about childhood. To revise is to give the learning process more freedom; make it more flexible and fun for the child; give him the opportunity to just play, not be accountable to you for every second; relieve children of the responsibility to copy adults

8. Ways to slow down

It is better to start slowing down gradually. Make a homemade dinner. Take a walk with your friends. Read the newspaper off the TV. Massage each other before making love. Sit in silence for a minute. If this attempt to slow down is to your liking, try something more difficult. Redesign your work schedule or start a campaign to have pedestrian streets in your area.

Set aside time for those things in which it is impossible to rush: for meditation, knitting, gardening, yoga, painting. There is no general formula for slowing down for all occasions, everyone chooses his own pace

Speed is by no means the best policy. Try to live slowly, which means deep and meaningful. You might like this.