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Slowing life down: 3 tips to help keep moments from passing you by
Life has a tendency of slipping by, doesn’t it?
We’ve all experienced it to some extent either by making comment on how fast the year has gone or reflecting on how long it’s been since talking to an old friend. But have you ever wondered how that happens?
If we’re going through life and the things we want, places we want to go, and relationships we want to enrich are out of reach, what are we doing?
We have one life to live, why can’t we live it capturing the moments that mean the most to us? There has to be a way to slow it all down, to somehow be present in the areas that are most important to us, right?
Our non-negotiable responsibilities, time restrictions, lack of resources or whatever it may be that we feel is getting in the way of us and the things we’ve always wanted to do, are actually more controllable than we realize.
With intent, a little planning, and discipline, we can grab ahold of our life and lead it, instead of watching it pass us by. Life is too short for us to react and reflect on it. Don’t just dwell. Live, and take the reigns and determine how your life plays out.
Live decisively
A lot of times we’re reactionary to life because we don’t make a decision on what we actually want. We may have a desire or thought to follow through but we never concretely determine what we want for ourselves until after the moment has passed us by.
Write down what you want for yourself and live decisively. If you want a stronger relationship with a family member, make it an objective to strengthen that relationship and give yourself a quota of outgoing calls to make a week. If you want to be closer to your friends from college, set up a group chat, set up chill dates, and try not to flake.
The time we spend won’t be as elusive if we track it. Take control of your life by taking time to stop and plot out the life you want, then follow through.
Schedule everything
I remember being given a planner at the beginning of each term in high school and feeling like was nothing more than a waste of trees.
Now that I’m adult with more moving pieces than ever, a planner is literally the only thing that helps me stay on top of what I want and need to accomplish.
There’s something about having everything out in front of you that makes execution a lot easier. Proper preparation prevents poor performance, so when we pencil down our thoughts, desires and loose streams of consciousness, we’re breaking down big-picture ambitions down to daily, digestible task.
Maybe the reason you’ve never vacationed in the countryside of Spain is that you never started to plan it. Maybe the reason you never got that body you’ve wanted is because you never set a game plan.
When we decide we want to get something done, and we make a plan on how to get it done, the chances of us accomplishing it heightens exponentially.
Sacrifice
To receive, we must give. It’s a rudimentary and universal concept to living that’s long been proven, yet it’s something we fail to acknowledge whenever we feel defeated about what we fail to achieve.
Along with living decisively and planning, if we want life to slow down and if we want to do what we’ve always wanted, we must learn to give something up; to sacrifice. It can be junk food, a life of partying or maybe a relationship. If we want life to fall into place the way we’d like, it may take us giving something up.
Life zooms past us when we’re unprepared, but it also flies by when we have too much luggage. Living the life we’ve always dreamt of calls for us to periodically take a step back in order to evaluate what we don’t need, then making the necessary adjustments to get there.
LeBron didn’t have everything fall into his lap without sacrifice. Neither does anyone you see who lives the life they want, it all comes with a price. The point is that it’s in our control; it’s just a matter of figuring out what you need to drop completely.
We don’t have to react to life. We don’t have to live a life of what-if’s and always be in wonderment of how fast time flies. We can slow life down and live it in the way we desire.
It’s just up to us to do so.