Embracing Slow Living: A New Way of Being
There’s no denying it, our modern world is busy, fast paced and pressured – the antithesis of slow living. Increased expectations, loftier demands and a ‘need it now’ mentality are adding unwelcome stress to our daily lives. If you are tired of the endless push and pull, then the concept of slow living is your new best friend.
Slow Living encourages a gentle lifestyle based on simplicity, mindfulness, and intentionality. It can be the catalyst for profound transformations for those who choose to align themselves with its principles.
Discover five of a multitude of benefits below:
Simplicity at it’s Core
The wonderful thing about beginning your slow living journey, is that it starts with a mindset. This means it is free, doesn’t require any major changes or upheavals (although this could come later) and is possible to do at whatever stage of life you are in.
Slow Living is about simplifying your life and making it easier. Exchanging complications, chaos and stress for simplicity, clarity and ease. Of course, the nature of life is thus that challenges arise, however harnessing the slow living mindset helps to maintain balance throughout these difficult times.
Discover the slow living mindset here.
Enhanced Mental and Physical Health
Research indicates that embracing a slower pace of life has immense benefits on our general wellbeing.
Numerous studies (such as this and this) show that those who live mindfully and in the present, have lower levels of anxiety and depression, decreased stress levels and an increase in immune function.
Stronger Sense of Self
Do you know yourself? Really think about that and give yourself the courtesy of answering honestly.
Imagine getting to the end of your life and realising you don’t understand why you behaved in certain ways, or that you have lived a life that doesn’t mean anything to you.
The most profound benefit of slow living, is the privilege of truly knowing yourself. Slow living encourages self reflection and curiosity and rejection of competition, judgement and blind living. If you are willing to remove the veil and unlearn lifelong patterns, you will be rewarded with the most gratifying journey of all. Your true self.
Deeper Connections
Slow living affords the time and the space to forge deeper bonds with those around us (animals and nature included).
Without the distractions and constant high alert of ‘what next’, we create the opportunity to develop our communication skills, better understand those in our lives and experience greater emotional intimacy. This can lead to a stronger sense of belonging and community, something which is vital to our emotional wellbeing.
A Golden Outlook
Gratitude is a key element in slow living. Specifically gratitude for the small things. That soft breeze that gently caresses your face, the patch of green grass that breaks up the monotony of a concrete landscape, the sweetness of that apple that you threw in your bag.
Slow living encourages you to not only find the micro joys in your daily life, but to take the time to register their existence. Practicing gratitude has a compound effect, really absorbing the numerous small joys that can be found within a single day creates a more positive outlook, which in turn creates greater life satisfaction.
How can you say no?
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