Q: Which better defines Slow Living?
- Waiting in a long line at the too-expensive brunch spot your friend guilted you into trying
- Running down the beach chasing your new puppy, waves lapping at your ankles
Slow Living invites you to intentionally and mindfully act in your life, instead of anxiously reacting to outside forces. Speeding everything up to match others’ careers or the beautiful lives on your Instagram feed can wear you down. Slow Living teaches that simplicity helps you cut through the clutter of expectations that can push you past your limits and values.
Learning the Importance of Rest Defines Slow Living
Many of those early to Slow Living stumbled across the concept as a reaction to extreme exhaustion. For them, it wasn’t a decision to step away from hustle culture, lack of rest, digital demands, or chase for status and material gain. Their minds and bodies chose for them. They instead learned to stretch out experiences, tune into their real needs and values, and detach from being mindlessly busy.
Emma Gannon, author of “A Year of Nothing,” told the BBC that, “We were designed to have naps, and [walks in] the park. To go for a swim, and look at the sky. That stuff’s really important.” To sum up her own experience of recovering from deep burnout, “Nothing is worth your health.”
Rachel Schwartzmann wrote the book “Slowing” and told Elle that she closed her successful online content business, also due to burnout. She then started interviewing others about the topic of slowing down. Schwartzmann says that slowing down ebbs and flows, and cautions against viewing it as a trend to be performed for others’ approval. She’s found benefits – gratitude, creativity, and a better connection with her body.
Slow Living Started with the Now Worldwide Slow Food Movement
When you walk into a scratch-made restaurant’s kitchen, you’ll hear the sound of ingredients being chopped, smell the aromas of a long-simmering sauce, and see a flurry of activity. Again, the word slow probably won’t pop to mind. The Slow Food movement, founded in Italy in 1986, chose its name as a contrast to its opposite, fast food.
Slow Food works to ensure, “Access to good, clean, and fair food.” Fast food boasts the same products in every location, emphasizes speed in preparation and delivery, and seems willing to cut corners with sourcing and nutrition. By contrast, Slow Food takes its time in creating relationships with farmers and maintaining traditional methods of preparation. Not just for the elite, but for all.
Taking the time to appreciate the food we eat, surrounded by friends or family, more deeply nourishes our bodies, our senses, and our hearts. Similarly, Slow Living emphasizes that anxiety need not act as our primary fuel. It looks beyond a competitive urgency that tells us to maximize how much stuff and status we have. Instead, Slow Living invites us to prioritize personal values, relationships, and self-awareness. It’s about taking the time to care.
Reconnecting to Life’s Rhythms Brings Slow Living Benefits
As a business student, I learned that new teams of people, coming together for a project, go through predictable phases: forming, norming, storming, performing, and adjourning. It takes time to get to know each other a bit and to establish group norms, even work through a bit of conflict, before hitting the point where good work takes place. There’s a pace, a rhythm to life. Transitions from one task to another take a bit of time. Humans are not digital and have no on/off buttons. We all need time to process events, interactions, and the things we learn.
Slow Living suggests we honor the limits of the day, our bodies, and our relationships. Get enough sleep. Take time to rest when exhausted. Eat nutritious food, read healthy books, and ease into conversations that connect rather than divide. Sometimes this means slowing down to watch the sunset dip below the horizon, or pausing to really listen when a child needs to talk.
Other times, Slow Living requires speed – racing your child up the stairs, or flying across the country to see your father-in-law on his 95th birthday. We all deserve goals, and maintaining our values at times calls for a fight. Like the rest pose at the end of a yoga class, however, Slow Living resets our capacity for calm.
A Quality over Quantity Lifestyle Challenges the Myth of the Limited Good
Competition tells us to do more, faster, in order to win. But what if there’s enough to go around? My college anthropology professor explained the myth of the limited good. Supposedly a product of less developed societies, a look around shows how it still holds sway. This worldview teaches that goodness is finite and any time someone wins, another must lose. It pits us against each other for money, food, prestige, and even love.
It’s fundamentally a fear-based concept. Yet everywhere we see it, still. It tells us that more is always better because that means we’re winning at life. Ironically, when some take far more than others, even way past what they could possibly need or even ever use, the actual natural limitations of our earth start to fray. By contrast, Slow Living prioritizes the journey over the destination and people over things. Take the time to create something beautiful, nourishing, or meaningful, rather than purchasing as many of these things as possible.
Mental health and the Psychology of Slow Living
Jennifer Caspari, PhD, writes in Psychology Today that one way to keep from buying into needless stress from rushing to and fro comes when you, “Practice noticing your shoulds and hold them lightly. Just because you think you should be doing something doesn’t mean the thought is true or helpful.” Consider, instead, what you need to do, followed by what you want to do. Lastly, who is saying what you should do? Is this an accurate message from your conscience, in which case it’s important to pay attention? Or is this coming from a less-healthy source?
Ten Ideas on How to Start Slow Living
Critics of the Slow Living trend question whether it’s an unattainable, privileged concept. They argue it’s only for those with lots of money in the bank and the kind of job that lets them take time off, work from anywhere, or write about their newest experiment. It need not be an all-or-nothing framework, though. Instead, think about what parts of your life you must accept as occurring at a pace outside of your control. Examples include traffic, airline schedules, school tests, and quite possibly your workplace.
Now focus on what you might adjust. Look at weekends, your own home, even your own thoughts. Some ideas to get started:
- Get up 10-15 minutes early and use this time to meditate. Sit comfortably, feel the ground. Empty your thoughts and just sit. Focus on your breath if that’s helpful, or the physicality of where your body touches the floor. Let yourself slow down into the moment.
- Create a capsule wardrobe from your own clothes to make getting dressed simpler.
- Take a walk outside. Look for one new detail of your path. Feel the air. Notice the feel of the ground beneath your feet.
- Say no today to one thing you don’t like, don’t want, or feel like someone has used guilt to pressure you into doing.
- Set a bedtime for yourself, one that gives you the possibility of enough sleep. Noting that plans don’t always work out, nonetheless try to stick to it every day for two weeks.
- Choose one calm thing to do before sleep that will help you feel restful. Light a candle for 10 minutes. Listen to slow, comforting music. Cuddle with your partner.
- Take a road trip this weekend to somewhere, 1-2 hours away, you’ve never visited. Pack simple, healthy food to eat, and a camera, sketchbook, or smartphone. Explore on foot. Bring home only the pictures and memories.
- Plan a tea party with a few friends. Make cookies, biscuits, and hot chocolate, coffee, or tea. Put together conversation-starting questions and encourage each person to start one.
- Take a bath once this week instead of a shower. Lock the door and read a bestselling paperback book you bought at a used bookstore. Leave your phone somewhere else.
- Take time every single day this week to pet your dog or cat.
- Say something kind to your boss.
Slow Living can be a good approach to bringing more calm, fewer material things, more experiences, and better mental health to your life. It shares space with minimalism, intersects with sustainable living, and pulls in slow fashion and slow travel. Start your next day with intention, and discuss how to find the rhythm in your life with someone you like.
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