You Can Keep Racing Through Life With The Rest Of The Sheep Out There
You Can Keep Racing Through Life With The Rest Of The Sheep Out There
Or you can slow down to be ahead of the pack
Dare To Slow Down And You Create More
You slow down - you create more.
In this world slowness and patience have negative associations.
If you take your time you should be ashamed of it and speed up.
If you are forced to “slowness” by external circumstances, you feel cheated of your time. You perceive time as wasted and not used efficiently.
But there are more and more people, companies, and researchers who recognize that "slowing down" is a promising strategy, especially in times of acceleration.
Dare to go against the stream
In times of permanent acceleration and the demand that everything should go faster, further, and higher, we are constantly in a hurry and under pressure. This leads to mistakes and short-term thinking.
And then we waste time again cleaning up the mistakes. In the rush, it is easy to lose sight of the essentials and the ability to focus.
Guess what? Whoever dares to go against the stream and has the guts to slow down ends up being a better listener, observer, and thinker.
"Slowing down can spark richer thinking, creating, collaborating, innovating and problem-solving," according to Carl Honoré, author and voice of the Slow Movement.
Multitasking is for slackers
When multitasking, nothing goes faster, in fact, it goes slower. The brain processes multiple tasks serially, jumping back and forth between tasks - and that reduces the speed of thinking and solving or finishing tasks.
Conscious control of a situation requires full attention. When we start moving too fast, we often don't see what we need to see.
When we slow down, we notice details and potential consequences. We are then better equipped to ask more thoughtful questions and follow up, leading to better solutions. We learn to drop less important things and put more focus and attention on the things that move us forward.
Digging deeper while walking
In many areas of life pacing yourself will reward you with positive effects. Even in the business world and the health sector, the message has arrived that stress resistance, creativity, health, and empathy are the benefits of a slower pace.
"In times of information overload and accelerated development of new technologies, four skills, in particular, become critical to success: keeping calm, setting focus, cultivating creativity, fostering emotional intelligence." - writes the Future Institute in Frankfurt, Germany (www.zukunftsinstitut.de ).
Barack Obama, Richard Branson or Steve Jobs are not the only ones known for having important and productive meetings while walking outside in nature. Taking the time to walk and dive deeper into conversations can lead to new ideas and satisfying results.
According to research conducted by Stanford University, a person's creative output increases by 60 percent when the person walks.
When you dare to slow down…
“Some start fast, fade, and cannot handle the volume; others start slow and build, embracing the amount of work.” – Coach George Raveling
Slow down and you create more.
Your creations won’t be any better just because you got them done quicker.
We need to live a more contemplative life. A contemplative life is not a life of inaction though. It’s a life of being mindful of the right actions to take.
“In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.
In an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention.
And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as being still.” - Pico Iyer
Who is Cool and Why?
Before I start with a series of WHO is COOL I will first write about what it actually means to be cool.
I consider a lot of people to be “cool” - and way more people rather to be quite “un-cool”.
I am sure you feel the same.
But have you thought about why you look at some people thinking THIS is a cool dude or a cool lady? What makes you think that?
Although there is no single concept of cool, its definitions fall into a few broad categories.
Coolness is behavior and a state of being
One is behavioral characteristics. How you compose yourself and act with your body and voice.
Next, Coolness is a state of being. You are. Cool. (Or not.) It’s a way of being.
And this means your mindset, your attitude, and your state of well-being.
Cool people have an internal state of peace and serenity, a state of harmony and balance.
Cool people know themselves; they reflect and have an understanding of what keeps them calm and balanced, hence they act, respond and treat themselves accordingly.
The good old virtues
It doesn’t seem cool to talk about virtues but being cool has a lot to do with it.
If we look at the characteristics of a cool person, what are we looking at?
Imagine a person who has unwavering principles, who speaks his mind unequivocally, but who also knows when to keep silent and when to turn a blind eye. A person who is confident but never arrogant, who is helpful but never patronizing.
A person with poise and character yet calm enough not to be caught off guard by events. And with an indestructible eye for the big picture.
You meet a person like this, and you think: wow, this is a cool person!
There are a bunch of “old virtues” behind these descriptions.
- Calmness and Serenity
- Self-Awareness
- Not taking any shit
- Honesty and Integrity
- Self-Discipline
- Humility and Modesty
- Being educated, literate and cultured
- Decency
In the next Newsletters, I will look at people who I consider cool, based on the above description.
Book Recommendation
All my life I loved books and reading. For my work, I read a lot of books – and there are many I would like to recommend to you. Each Newsletter will include a book recommendation for you.
Do/Improvise: Less push, more pause, better results. A new approach to work - by Robert Poyno
From the wonderful Do/… book series by The Do Book Company this book is about
improvisational skills that can be applied to the everyday business of work and life. An end result is a new approach that embraces change as a natural process and has creativity and innovation at its heart.
Besides all the crazy stuff happening to us in life, life is also about taking time, rebounding, not always reacting negatively to everything that gets thrown at you, being flexible and going with the flow – and improvising.
You can leave a comment and share your thoughts or questions regarding Un-rushing your life.