You have probably heard the terminology ‘slow living’ a lot, and if you’re here reading this article chances are that you know what it feels like to operate on autopilot and feel like life is rushing you by.

Though slow living doesn’t necessarily mean to do things slowly, there is a sentiment of slowing down time by actually truly and actively experiencing and feeling life. A sense of experiencing life more fully. Living more fully not necessarily by filling it to the brim with more things but living more fully by truly experiencing everything that’s already there and being very selecting about what we bring into our lives.

Along the way you may find that your health improves, you get more done (of the important things that matter anyway), you’re able to enjoy your favorite activities more and you live in less stress and anxiety.

My personal journey to slow-life

In what feels like a different lifetime, I have lived the fast-paced and conventionally successful life for many years. Living in big cities like London and Istanbul. Traveling to different cities, countries and continents for work every week. Getting private cars to pick me up at the airport. But under the surface the story changed. The big salary and no time to spend any of it. The new experiences and nobody to share it with. Late nights working for a promotion, but I’d miss most get-togethers with friends. Lunch at the fancy restaurant, but rushed inbetween meetings and emails. No time to snuggle my dog in the morning, not home long enough to buy and enjoy fresh flowers.

My life these days looks very different. Most days I take a lunch break to make myself a home-cooked meal. My dogs and I have a morning cuddle routine and we go on walks in our neighborhood. I enjoy slow road trips and day-hikes, meeting friends in the climbing gym every now and then. The journey that led me here included quitting my job cold turkey and selling most of what I owned to travel for 2 years while living out of suitcases looking for myself out there. it was a bit of a dramatic cut to be honest. Asking a high-achiever to not worry about financial, to not achieve goals and to not do anything is a difficult feat I can tell you!

But what if you don’t need to uproot your entire life. What if you can create pockets of slowness in your everyday life as it is. Pockets of room and space for yourself that allow you to lead the life you want.

Create room for yourself

I don’t think there are set ‘rules’ for living a slow life. To me it’s all about creating the space to enjoy the aspects of life that we often take for granted or brush by (like - Goodness! How crispy and buttery is that croissant!! Instead of gulping it down mindlessly) and going on a journey of exploring what truly brings you joy versus going through the motions of what you think you should be doing (by whose standards?).

If that sounds intriguing or exciting to you, here are a few tips to get started on creating some space in your life.

1. Implement a tech-free hour

According to recent data the average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day. That’s more than a day per week and over 53 days in a year! A big chunk of that time is likely mindless scrolling. Consider tech-free hour a gifting yourself. A gift of time. And what could possibly be more valuable than that?

Pay attention to when you spend most time on your phone. For many of us this might be the first 30 minutes in the morning or the last hour before going to bed. Or maybe it’s a welcome distraction during working hours. You could implement your tech-free hours between 7-8pm and put your phone out of sight into a drawer or cupboard.

If you’re worried that you might be bored, here are a few things you can do: go outside for a walk, pick up a book or magazine, meditate, play with your pet, have a conversation with a friend or family member, sketch a drawing, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea or by all means - spend time being bored and just pottering around the house. Your brain is on 100% of the time - whether you’re actively thinking, making decisions, evaluating the environment for threat, etc. Doing ‘nothing’ and being bored has shown to foster creative ideas, fill up our tanks (ever got an ‘aha’ moment while in the shower or pulling weeds? There you go!). Consider this an hour to yourself where you can do something you usually feel you don’t have the time for!

2. Set a morning routine

Instead of jumping straight into emails, to-dos, communication with others - take some time to decide on and set the tone for the day.

This doesn’t have to be a two hour routine consisting of matcha, meditation, workout, and journaling. Of course, if that’s your jam - that’s great! If not, that’s great, too! Find something that works for you and your schedule. Maybe you go for a 30 min walk in the morning. Or you make yourself your favorite coffee/tea and sit down in the kitchen for 15 minutes to write down your priorities for the day. Or you spend some time reading 10 pages. Maybe meditation is something you have been considering. Try out different apps and see if you like it.

3. Learn to say No.

Many of us hesitate to say No, and often time this means we spend time doing things that we don’t want to or that add mental load. Being able to say No (without a massive guild trip), is a valuable skill to practice. It’s ok to not put everybody else before you, and you are not insulting your friend by not wanting to go see that movie. There will be other opportunities to connect! Here are a few things that might be helpful to try out:

I have other commitments.
Let me get back to you on this.
Thanks for thinking of me, [I’m not a fan of that movie]
I’m sorry, I can’t do this right now.

There is no need to over-explain or be overly apologetic, that would probably make it more awkward when a simple ‘no’ is perfectly acceptable.

4. Set realistic priorities and goals

How many of us start with a to-do list and as the day goes on, the list keeps on growing! And by the end of the day you don’t even know what you did or what you wanted to do to start with.

I am a big fan of writing down the most important things for the day to help prioritize what you do. They key is to actually stick with the list and to not add more to it throughout the day. You can write your priorities on a post-it and put it where you see it throughout the day. You can write them on top of your to-do list so you can gate-check whenever you’re about to add something to the list. You can decide to not do anything else unless you have worked on your priorities.

And don’t forget to reward yourself for achieving your goals / finishing your to-do list!

5. Evaluate your coffee intake

First off, don’t worry! I’m not here to tell you to stop drinking coffee. BUT. What I am here to say is - while coffee can be great to improve mood and focus, there can also be a point where it turns into irritability and jitteriness. Everybody metabolizes caffeine differently and while 4 shots of espresso first thing in the morning might be good for some, a cappuccino later in the day might be more suitable for others. Jitteriness takes away from being able to live mindfully.

It’s good to know your boundaries and play around with different ways and times to consume coffee. If you are more sensitive to caffeine, having food before or while having a cup of coffee might be helpful. Maybe there is a cut-off time during the day - e.g. coffee until 11am is good. Keep in mind that coffee can impact you for up to 12 hours.

6. Stop comparing yourself and start defining your own standard of success.

As human beings we are wired to compare ourselves to the people around us. We evaluate the society we live in and evaluate how we fit in. In a study at Harvard Graduate School, students would rather make $50,000/year while their peers made $25,000 instead of making $100,000 while their peers made $250,000! And with social media now our comparison pool has become bigger with everyone sharing their accomplishments online.

The problem with it is that comparison really takes away from the joy of everything we already have and gets us antsy worrying about all the things that we don’t have. It also is great in making us think we SHOULD have a lot of things, while if we stopped and thought about it, maybe it’s not something that’s important to us. There will always be people who have something we don’t have, and we will never ‘get there’ unless we define our own ‘there’.

A beautiful and full life looks very different for all of us, and the first step in building some resistance to fomo is to be clear and confident in what a beautiful life means to YOU. Remember that you have your own timing and your own path!

I saw somebody share a thought exercise the other day:
Name 5 olympic athletes or 5 people who won the nobel prize recently. Who comes to mind? Likely you are unable to remember names. Now name a few of your favorite teachers in school.

7. Do it with ease Look for the beauty and the joy

We spend a lot of mental energy resisting the idea of something and anguishing over it before it actually happens (or sometimes it doesn’t even happen like that). Our brain has a negative bias - it’s a natural mechanism to keep us safe from danger. “I don’t want to go to that appointment” “I don’t want to go into that meeting” “Work is such a drag” “I hate my job.” and then the appointment is just fine. Maybe not great, but fine and we get done with it. The meeting gets done and we still show up at work.

Here is the thing. If you are going to do it anyway - why do you use up so much of your mental energy resisting it? It’s not that spending all the negative energy in anticipation is going to make the actual thing less likely to happen or less painful. Au contraire! If you think that something is going to be awful, it’s more likely that you will actually perceive it as awful and ‘the worst’.

It’s so easy to simply get used to the ‘dread’ and resistance as our modus operandi. On some level maybe it provides us comfort, because we are so familiar with that feeling. Doesn’t that sound crazy? Think about what you can do with the energy that you don’t spend having negative thoughts in anticipation of events! And it takes a lot of energy to dread and resist something!

So today, notice your thoughts and ask yourself “Can I do it with less resistance.” Hopefully you will find that the answer more often than not is ‘yes’.

8. Seek new experiences

Monotony speeds up time. Switch things up and seek new experiences. I have found that the key here is to actually schedule these experiences in your calendar as otherwise they are unlikely to happen.

This can be anything from trying out different coffee shops to work or read from, getting roller skates or a skate board, trying a new recipe a week, traveling to a new place, exploring different podcasts or switching up your workout routine. Doing routines differently can also switch things up, like brushing your teeth with the other hand, taking the alternate way back from work.

9. Midday reset

It’s only normal to get swept away by the day. Make an effort to take a break midday to have lunch or take 15 min to reset. Step away from your computer, leave the office for a quick change of scenery. Go to the mailbox, listen to some of your favorite music. You can also try a brief breathing exercise. Close your eyes and breath in for the count of 3, hold for the count of 4, breath out for the count of 7. Repeat this 3 times.

10. Take the scenic route

More times than not we rush from one place to another. What if every now and then we chose to take the scenic route instead? The one that takes longer but goes past a pretty part of town, offers some beautiful views, is more fun to drive with less traffic, goes through a canope of trees offering shade on a hot day or has a few good stops along the way. If you take public transport - can you get off a stop earlier or later and take a longer walk home? If you take the car - instead of using the tollroad, can you take the side streets through the neighbourhoods?

10 tangible tips to slow down your life