How Living Slow Encourages Us to Live Well

Slow living has been a topic of interest now for a few years as the antidote to the fast-paced lifestyle that we have all inevitably fallen into at one time or another. It’s especially easy to fall into a faster pace of life for those who work a regular job and needs to complete not only work obligations, but life obligations on a daily basis as well.  This is why I love exploring the concept of living well daily and made it the key focus of the blog, because I believe that one can live well daily if it is done so intentionally. Living slow can encourage us to live well daily in providing us space to savor times of ease and pleasure in the present.  In these moments one is not dwelling on the past or fretting about the future, they are simply present to appreciate life’s gifts at a leisurely pace.

To be unhurried is to reinforce within yourself that you have all the time in the world and that this moment is a delightful one to be in as it is. When we intentionally slow down, we find that life has so many details to delight in that we may have been missing before.  Small details such as the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, the lovely intricate floral design on a teacup, a beautiful passage in a book, the feeling of the sun on our skin on a spring afternoon, the vibrant color of the flowers when they are fully bloomed, the sumptuous feeling of a silk scarf delicately tied around our neck, the exquisite flavor of a sweet treat paired with a favorite tea are all small details worth savoring.  To observe these details that are so small, yet so pleasing elevates the moment to one where we are living well.

And while taking time to notice the small details is in and of itself slow living, here are some other ways that living slow encourages us to live well in our daily lives.

an opportunity to savor the moment

Have you ever traveled to a place and was so excited to get there and then spent the entire time moving quickly through from one experience simply to get to the next that you didn’t really get time to stop and enjoy the moment? Daily life can be the same way too in that we have all these “things to do” so we rush through them as quickly as possible to get to the next thing and miss the opportunity to really savor them.  When we begin to practice slow living, we instead make adjustments by removing many of those “to-do” things and make more time to slow down and give more attention to the details of the moment and time to savor the pleasantries of the present.  We learn to intentionally let the present be our focus and to not let ourselves wander off into another time and place. We want to savor the moment and to take our time in being there with all that we have personally curated for the experience.

our surroundings become a perfect curation of what delights us

Part of slow living is taking the time to understand what delights us and what we want to surround ourselves with.  We take the time to visit places or look through books or Pinterest and notice the details of what we find visually pleasing, cozy, comforting, and beautiful. We contemplate to understand what is drawing us in and then we start to curate our surroundings to bring in more of these details.  We find that our home is our sanctuary with carefully selected items that we enjoy using or looking at.  Our surroundings then support us in living well everyday as we have a place to fully rest, to enjoy our hobbies, a place of peace for our souls and simplicity to delight us as we come and go.  Our surroundings affect us on a deep level and slow living provides us with time to introspect on how to set up our surroundings in a way that encourages us to live well every day.

stress becomes easier to handle with grace

No matter how diligently we may try to live slowly, with simplicity, and even a quieter kind of life, inevitably there will be a stressful situation to come along to disrupt the peace.  This is a simple truth of life that is inescapable for us all.  However, when we do intentionally live slower and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, when stressful situations do come along, we are better able to handle them with care and grace. Because we have trained our mental base line to be one of calm we can take in the situation at hand and navigate through to the other side without unnecessary tension.  We have intentionally set our lives up to live slower, and so when a stressful event happens, we are able to give ourselves time to strategize and implement the tasks at hand to mitigate the issue.  We have trained ourselves not to live reactionary or to be too quick on important decisions and this encourages us to live well not only in our daily lives when everything is going well, but also in times of stress too.  We are more agile in making pivots as needed to bring us back to our baseline of contentment with ease.

leisure time is calm and quiet time

In our super-connected world, it seems we often have a hard time of letting go of our phones as a primary source of leisure. The quick dopamine rush of the next video, and then the next, and then the next has provided a feedback loop of needing constant stimuli to keep us engaged and entertained.  Slow living is a good counterbalance to this modern-day trend in where one makes time for leisure but intentionally chooses this time to be calm and quiet away from the “noise” of the world. We are more connected now than ever compared to any other time in human history and in many ways, we have still not found proper boundaries against the onslaught of information and usually the messier side of news and world events. But for those who have adopted a slow living lifestyle, they embrace disconnecting from technology for leisure time and prefer this time to be of a quiet nature.  Time to read a book, knit a blanket, bake a treat, color or paint with a cup of tea, or simply sitting outside in nature or visiting a garden.  This type of leisure helps to calm the nerves from an ever-frantic world and thereby encourages us to live well in the moment in a softer way.  Slow living creates leisure time that is sacred and not to be intruded upon by the noise of the world. We take this time for ourselves to luxuriate in the calm and quiet.

Life Stops “flying by” and instead slows down and stays with us a while

Sometimes people around me quip, “life is just flying by, don’t you think so?” My answer is simple, “no, I feel like I’ve been alive for 100 years and I’m only 40.” People are often pleasantly surprised when I say this and also wonder how I feel that way, but it’s simply from practicing slow living in my daily life. When you slow down and stay in the present moment then time stops flying by, it simply slows down and stays with you for a while. It takes intentionality to practice this concept because admittedly the mind wants to either dwell on the past or scheme for the future and when we are mentally away from the present moment then it’s almost as if the present moment didn’t exist at all. We were too busy being some other place but here in our presence, so our consciousness just skims over that present moment not taking note of anything extraordinary to commit to memory.  The reason why time seems to go by fast is because we have no memory of anything special that punctuates the time for us, it blurs together in almost one homogenous memory and nothing exceptional stands out as a memory touchpoint.  But when you live slow and start to take in these special details then the touchpoints become easier to identify, and life suddenly seems to slow down and stretch out before us with ease.

reading becomes a pleasure, not a goal

With so much of our lives that are already held to standards and benchmarks, living slow helps us to release that mindset that everything needs to be quantified in some kind of way to give it purpose and instead gives us back the joy of doing something strictly for pleasure.  Sometimes at the end of the year I see things on Instagram about people trying to hit their reading goal for the year. I have seen things such as people reading books that they weren’t necessarily excited about, but it was short, so they could count it as a book read, or trying to listen to audiobooks on twice the speed, people skimming over the plot of the book and reading only the dialogue, or just outright dismay that they are not going to hit their book goal regardless. Slow living encourages us to indulge in reading (or any leisure activity) as a way to provide pleasure at a pace that is right for us.  It encourages us to slow down and really take in the details of the story or of a non-fictional book.  We will start to look at books with discernment as to whether or not we will actually enjoy the book at hand, not because it’s hyped or short and therefore quickly readable so as to add to the number of books read. You take the power back away from the needless quantification of a goal that does not need to be and instead learn to fall back in love with reading because it provides enrichment for you. A goal is a great tool to measure progress on something that one is genuinely trying to work toward such as saving money for retirement, eating better for better lab results for things like cholesterol and blood sugars, learning new tasks at work to move into the next phase of a career, but there is no particular reason to set a goal for the number of books read within a year.  You can still track the books on apps such as Goodreads, but instead of setting a goal, why not just look at the year-end wrap-up and be pleasantly surprised? That is a much better energetic feeling than tracking how many books you’ve read all throughout the year and causing possible disappointment that wasn’t necessary to begin with.

meals are savored for pleasure and nourishment

When living slow we start to take this practice into all aspects of our daily life and that includes mealtimes.  We start to slow down and make each meal a time for pleasure and nourishment. Small details such as setting the table with flowers, candles and a beautiful tablecloth and plating the food in a beautiful way becomes a habit in living well.  Cooking from fresh ingredients and taking our time to season the foods to perfection becomes a simple pleasure not to be rushed through. Then, we take the time to savor the meal with special attention to the look and flavors of the dish at hand. Simply taking the time to enjoy a good meal delights all the senses with the look of a beautifully set table, the sound of soft music playing in the background, and the aromas of the food as it simmers or sautés.  There is no need to rush though these moments, they are to be savored and slowed down for maximum pleasure. Mealtimes therefore become sacred and becomes its own component to living well in our everyday lives.

simple pleasures becomes a part of our daily routine

When slow living becomes a focus for our overall lifestyle, simple pleasures simply become a part of an everyday routine. While there are many routines that we have created for ourselves throughout the day to make sure that we accomplish what is important, we also create simple pleasure routines sprinkled in throughout the day to help us live well in our everyday lives.  Simple routines such as a favorite podcast while doing a commute to work, morning coffee and jazz to start the workday, a favorite tea and small treat savored leisurely in the afternoon after lunch, an evening teatime and reading a book or watching a favorite show after dinner, or even a moisturizing face mask before bed are examples of simple pleasure routines.  Simple pleasures are not put off until the weekends or holidays, they are instead incorporated into daily life as a way to savor some slow time throughout the day, even on a workday.

Slow living is an intentional way of life that yields so many benefits for living well.  It can be so easy to get into the mindset of a constant leveling up, glowing up and grind culture where it seems normal to always be striving for more as quickly as possible.  But when that happens, we miss these beautiful details of life that are in plain sight if we would only slow down to take notice of them.  Let life surprise you, delight you and slow down to really enjoy the moment when it does because once the moment is gone it can never be retrieved. Let slow living encourage you to live well every day and to appreciate that now is the only moment you have, so why not savor it?