Modern life is a lot of things.
It’s amazing in its conveniences and tech advancements.
But it can also be crazy chaotic, with its relentless pace, and endless demands giving you the feeling of living in a space where everything is spinning too fast.
It feels like you’re running a marathon that you didn’t sign up for, and leaves you feeling disconnected, and exhausted.
The pressure to constantly keep up can sneak up on you.
Before you know it, you’re facing burnout, physical fatigue and overwhelming stress.
It’s tough when these pressures strain your relationship, and affect your well-being.
But hey…
You can slow down, you know?
Slow living offers a holistic solution by helping you to slow down.
Prioritise your health and your relationships.
It brings the kind of mindfulness that helps you nurture deeper, and more meaningful connections with yourself, and with the important people in your life.
By choosing a slow and more mindful approach, you can create not only a healthier, but also a more meaningful lifestyle.
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Intentional living and slow living
Simple and slow living are closely intertwined lifestyles that prioritise decluttering, minimising, and valuing experiences and relationships over material possessions. And speaking of declutterring, Marj Bates has Amazing Tips on Decluttering, after reading this post.
Both emphasise a deliberate approach to life, mindfulness, focusing on quality over quantity, and reducing unnecessary complexity.
Slow living extends this concept, to include a broader approach to time management, promoting a slower pace of life, to reduce stress, and increase overall well-being.
Intentional living shares similarities with slow living, in its emphasis on mindfulness, quality of life, and conscious decision-making.
It encourages living in alignment with personal values for a more intentional and meaningful life.
While slow living highlights pace and quality, intentional living highlights purposeful alignment with personal values and goals.
And you can certainly embrace both lifestyles simultaneously.
In fact, they complement each other.
When you adopt a slow lifestyle, you can create a space and time needed to reflect on your values and goals, making it easier to live intentionally.
Conversely, intentional living can naturally lead to the slower, more mindful pace of life, as you become selective with activities and commitments.
Only keep those that align with your values and let go of those that do not.
Benefits of slow living lifestyle
The art of slow living has many benefits. When you choose slow lifestyle, you’ll have:
- improved mental health
- better physical health
- more meaningful relationships, and
- harmony between life and work
All those benefits of slow living lead to a more intentional life. Let me explain a little bit more about them.
Improved mental health
Embracing a slower pace of life allows you for regular relaxation, and stress reduction, which is important in maintaining a healthy nervous system.
Taking deep breaths, and setting aside time for play, and creativity can lower stress levels.
Slow life is also a great way to improve mindfulness practice. It is something you can easily incorporate into your daily routines.
Stay present in the moment, to get mental clarity and emotional stability. Being in the moment can be applied in different aspects of life.
One of my favourites is practising money mindfulness. It allows us to live a simpler yet satisfying and meaningful lifestyle.
Better physical health
Think about this for a second. You have one life, one body and there’s only one you.
You can’t have a physical clone of you.
And so, your overall well-being, especially physical health needs to be a top priority.
We all know the importance of having a good quality sleep. Yet, having a good sleep hygiene is often overlooked.
Small changes, like slowing down, and establishing a calm evening routine, can improve the quality of your sleep. It leads to better physical health, and increased energy.
Before blogging, 3 years ago, I had bad sleep hygiene. It took me about 9 months to fix it. I decided I wanted to sleep better. Then I tracked my sleep habits and made small changes every week.
In terms of movements, you can incorporate slow movement activities, such as slow travel, short walks and regular breaks. These are tiny steps that can improve your physical well-being too.
More meaningful relationships
More meaningful relationships
One of the areas of life that suffers when you get too consumed with doing more, wanting more, and “being more” is relationships.
So, to avoid being too consumed” by pressures, you must prioritise making time for yourself, and the important people in your life.
Slow living can help you make time to deepen connections and be more intentional with your interactions with people that matter in your life.
There’s no rule in the amount of time you need to make. The right amount of time is whatever time you are happy to make for that intentional interaction.
I have an 8-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son.
Every single day I make sure I make time for them. Some days I spend hours and hours with them, and some days I can only give 10 to 20 minutes of my time.
What matters is I make time for them every day.
One of the lovely people in a coworking group where hang every week, has an amazing idea on how to have a blast with family and friends. Go check it out and have some fun soon with friends and family.
Harmony between life and work
I don’t believe in life-work balance because I chased it for a long time, and never achieved it. This is purely based on my personal journey.
Letting go of this concept gave me the freedom to treat life, work, and side gig as extensions of each other.
That way there’s no need for me to balance anything. I only need to be intentional with my actions. They don’t need to compete with each other. Each of them is important to me and makes my life more meaningful and purposeful
A simpler life is the key to making time for life, work, and side hustle without stress and unnecessary pressure.
Know what’s enough. Establish limits where it makes sense.
Components of Slow Lifestyle
I don’t think there’s a rule on how to live a slow living lifestyle. Just like intentional living, it will all depend on your preference.
For me, I have created my own version of intentional living.
It’s a purposeful lifestyle that pays attention to money mindfulness, and intentional productivity, and purposeful lifestyle, that extends to intentional side gigs.
At the end of the day, slow living is a lifestyle choice.
You design and create it.
It’s a conscious lifestyle that gives you permission to be in a slower mindset and be in slow motion temporarily when you need a breather.
Of course, there are moments when being slow won’t cut it, otherwise you’ll be stressed later, but at least you know that you can take things slow when you need to.
Start with small steps and then level up when you’re ready. Consider this a perfect opportunity to start embracing a slower way of life.
Mindfulness
This is being present. Savour the here and now.
There are a lot of things you can do such as regular meditation or conscious walking/driving. Try mindful eating. It helps with digestion and improving healthier relationship with food which contributes to a healthier life.
Simplification
Simplifying your living space by decluttering can create a more peaceful and organised environment. It’ll reduce stress and improve mental clarity.
Simplify your process and your systems.
Prioritise. Only do what really needs “doing”, and let go of other things that won’t matter in a year or more later.
Sustainable Living
Embracing sustainable practices such as mindful consumption, and intentional spending isn’t only good for your over all well-being and the environment, but it’s also good for your wallet. Using fewer resources and choosing eco-friendly products supports a slower and more intentional lifestyle.
Minimalism is another concept that supports slow living and intentional living. Reducing unnecessary possessions and focusing on more meaningful experiences, people and moments lets you live a simpler and more fulfilling life.
Slowing down
Rest. Relax. Enjoy the present moment.
Appreciate that the only time you have is now. Take a break from your to-do list. Only do the important things.
Give yourself to do nothing when you don’t feel like it. Just don’t do it every day. If you let yourself be in a constant “don’t-feel-like-it” mode, this is a serious problem.
Incorporate regular breaks in your busy day. Schedule downtime into your daily routine.
Take a break from social media when it gets too much for you.
Take on fewer things. Honour your capacity.
​Make time for leisure activities, hobbies and self-care. Doing this will improve the quality of your life, and it’ll promote slower, more mindful living.
A great way to slow down is to do a weekly review. Self-reflection and tracking weekly progress not only keep you on course but also gives you enough productivity boost to keep going.
Tips on how to live a slow and intentional living lifestyle
- Take a more deliberate approach to your daily routine and daily activities. Be present.
- When it comes to time management, choose quality over quantity. Do fewer “high impact” tasks rather than doing “less to no impact” tasks.
- Avoid over-commitment to reduce stress. You don’t need to fill every space in your calendar.
- Practise appreciation of the present moment and meaningful experiences to cultivate the power of awareness
- Choose personal well-being and growth, meaningful relationships, and meaningful experiences over productivity and material pursuits.
- Create a home that promotes relaxation and tranquillity. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to do this. Incorporate elements of slow interiors such as natural light and calming colours. Have some nice candles.
- Organise your working space.
- ​Establish morning routines that set a positive tone for the day. Try setting daily intentions or eating a healthy breakfast.
- Schedule rest and regular breaks so you can recharge.
- Be efficient by limiting multitasking. Multitask in some tasks that don’t require deep thinking. Always single task when you’re doing your most important work of the day.
- Establish boundaries between life, work and personal life to make sure you have harmony between them.
- Be selective with what you consume, whether it’s food or information.
- Focus on nurturing deeper connections with a few key people rather than maintaining a large number of superficial relationships.
- Make time for meaningful interactions with family and friends, prioritising quality time over quantity.
- ​Practise saying no a little more and often. If it’s not a clear “yes” then it’s definitely a “no”. And you don’t owe apologies for saying no.
- Stay true to your values and principles. Think about your beliefs and core values. Beliefs are what you think is important and core values are.
- ​Maintain awareness and assess your progress periodically. Adjust as needed to keep your vision, goals and actions in alignment.
- Have a goal, make a plan and create a system to bridge your plans and goals.
- Embrace change. You can expect the same outcome by not making changes in what you do.Â
Take your next steps
Given what you learned about slow lifestyle and intentional living, I gently challenge you to pick a few tips from the tips above and implement them.
Include them in your weekly plan and implement.
It’s ok to be slow, as long as it’s intentional.
Need a planner?
