Slow Living 101... the antidote to 'hurry sickness' with Mindfulness Teacher, Therapist & Author Frances Trussell from Mindfully Happy
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Full Transcript:
Slow Living 101: Overcoming ‘hurry sickness’
We live in an incredibly fast-paced age
and life in the fast lane may appear
very shiny and glamorous
into the new the next the bigger the better, the ‘hustle’,
the gotta grind harder,
go faster, get more, society that most of us live in…
& we can all of us
(me too)
get swept up in this.
In my work I see people with burnout,
breakdown and illness
because they have pushed themselves too hard for too long.
If we don’t listen to the signals of the body,
we get sick -
the body and the mind make us slow down.
And anxiety,
which is rife in our modern age,
is one of these signals.
Anxiety is often a symptom of what I call
‘hurry sickness’.
It comes from this busyness state of mind
where we have a perpetual mental whirring of
‘on to the next, on to the next’.
And this accompanying feeling of
rushing,
sometimes that might come on really strong
and other times this underlaying unease,
even when we are at rest -
this feeling that
‘there’s something I should be doing, there’s somewhere else I need to be.’
I personally suffered with hurry sickness
and the accompanying anxiety for years.
It’s highly infectious,
if we are around people with
it or grow up with people who have it
is easy for us to normalise it.
Ask most people how they are
and a fairly standard answer is ‘busy’.
I don’t feel that we are here on this beautiful planet to feel that way.
Thankfully there is an antidote to hurry sickness
and it is ‘slow living’.
Slow living doesn’t mean we need to go at a snails pace
or choose to go ‘off grid’
(although I do know quite a few people who have).
Slow living is a state of mind.
It is a conscious stepping back
and choosing not to buy into busyness.
It is choosing to savour simplicity,
To bask in the here & now,
not to pin happiness as a future destination.
It is a shift from trying to
‘get through it
or get to it’
to arriving to where we are
and being alive to what is unfolding moment by moment.
When we slow down
we catch our breath.
And whenever we catch our breath
we get to see things as they really are,
rather than what the frenzy might make them.
None of us know how many breaths we will get to take,
or how many moments we will get to spend
with the people who are precious to us.
So what do we value the most?
Stuff or time?
Getting there or being here?
The Slow Living state of mind is also a social movement
Where people are choosing to move towards greater sustainability,
questioning - is the pace that I’m living sustainable for me,
my life,
my relationships
and is the pace that I’m consuming sustainable for the environment?
Am I working to live?
Or living to work?
And of course we are where we find ourselves
with the pressures and responsibilities of our own unique situation.
They’ll be things we need to do,
and we can do them, normal speed on the outside,
still with this essence of slow living,
being in them rather than getting through them.
At our core.
Even in the busiest of us can take a moment to step back and look,
to tune in to what we value;
to what serves us
and to what depletes us.
Where are we spending our time?
What are we giving our energy?
Can we give ourselves permission to slow down,
savour and enjoy the little moments of our life?
It’s like as we sip on those moments
we recognise that the wonder of life is in the little stuff.
That wonder soothes the hurry sickness,
in moments we feel gratitude we want for nothing,
in moments we feel connection
we recognise that we have everything.
When we stop looking for the thing
we think we need in the next thing we might find what’s already here.
What if we already had enough?
what if we already were enough?
How might we live differently?
If any of this resonates with you
Please do like & subscribe…
I’d love to hear from you on this
Are you already embracing slow living?
Can you offer any advice on overcoming hurry sickness?
Please do comment below or pop me an email
Big Love
Frances x
About Frances: mindfullyhappy...
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6 сен 2024