Slowing down to speed up
It feels like most of society rewards us for being fast, accomplishing a lot, planning our lives, months, years or decades into the future. I bought into this brand of craziness. I spent my life on overdrive, planning and pushing my feelings away. The short story is I lived in the future and the sad part is that I thought that I was better than people who lived in the past. Neither is good as I don’t ever really experience my life as I am never present.
What does it look like, feel like and act like when I live in the future?
Life on overdrive - head down, plowing ahead. I can’t see what is going on around me. I am disconnected from myself and others.
Life on planning - creating lists of things that must be accomplished for myself and others, checking things off the list, rechecking the list to ensure I didn’t miss anything. If I try to create the list in my mind rather than writing it down it complicates the situation further. I find myself having to start my list again and again.
Life pushing my feelings away - I don’t have time or interest in feeling my emotions. I typically push away the tough ones like frustration, loneliness, anger, and grief to name a few. The truth is when I won’t or don’t experience my hard emotions - at minimum my “good” emotions like happiness, joy, amusement, and contentment are muted. When I push my feelings away, I also push down or away my gut feelings, intuition and inner knowing.
In all of these scenarios my mind chatter becomes incessant. My feelings are on overdrive and need to be drowned out. I find myself doing anything not to feel them; watching a lot of tv, eating a lot. My energy level is low, and I feel exhausted most of the time. And the next day, I do it all over again. Life passes and I don’t even notice. I wake up days, weeks, months, years or decades later and wonder what happened to my life.
I end up missing out on experiencing my life, on human connection, and becoming the best version of myself. When I stop and realize what is going on I know that is way too high of a price to pay.
So, when I find myself in the future. I pause, close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, feel into myself and find my center. I begin again to be present. By slowing down I bring myself back to the present moment where I can live my life.
By being in the present I can listen and truly hear my gut feelings, inner guidance and intuition. I can hear my friends, family, co-workers and loved ones. I then can experience human connection.
So for me, what was needed was to slow down and be in the present moment. In doing that I found the riches of my daily life. The texture of the couch I am sitting on. The colors in the room I am sitting in. The feelings inside of me to be acknowledged. The human connection I enjoy so much.
This is what I mean by slowing down to speed up! By being present I experience my life!