Slow down to Speed Up

Posted on November 09, 2019 by Namrata Seetharam, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

I have heard the phrase–slow down to speed up in the world of meditation and self-improvement. In this post, I want to explore this phrase, what I believe it means and how I believe it can be done.

In my career as an HR leader and a Life coach, I meet several people who mention that they feel ‘stuck’ in spite of being successful. In their pursuit of being successful in their work (both professional and personal), their lives have grown busy and they have forgotten the concept of ‘free time’, ‘family time’ and most important ‘Me time’. This reminds me of a story of how Gautam Buddha explained the concept of slowing down to one of his disciples.

Here is the story:
Once Buddha and his disciples were travelling from one town to another town. While travelling they stopped by a lake and decided to rest.

One of the disciples asked, “How can we calm down when we feel anxious?”. Buddha said to him, “I am feeling thirsty. Can you bring me some water from the lake?”.

The disciple walked towards the lake. As he was trying to fetch water, he noticed that few villagers were washing clothes, thus he decided to go further down. As he was about to collect the water, a cart passed by and water became muddy. It was busy time during the day, the disciple waited, but then he never got a chance to collect clean water. He thought to himself that giving muddy water to Buddha will be inappropriate and thus decided to return without carrying water.

He returned empty handed and told Buddha about his experience. After an hour Buddha asked him to go back to the lake and bring some water. The disciple went back and to his surprise this time he was able to find clean water. He filled the pot with water and brought it back to Buddha and asked, “What is the reason behind water being clean?”. Buddha replied, “When you went last time, mud was unsettled and it was mixed with water. But, when you went after an hour mud had settled down on its own and you got clean water”.

Our lives are also like the ‘muddy water’ mixed with our daily chores, fears, limiting beliefs, complexities and thus the feeling of being stuck. If we slow down–let the ‘mud’ settle down, we will be able to get ‘clear water’ i.e. clarity on what we want and how to get there and thus we will move faster, further with a greater purpose.

When people tell me that their life is like a run on a treadmill and they are unhappy about it, I suggest the following:

Our Life–The whole life grid
Remember that our life is more than our work-life, our careers or the daily chores. In her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers talks about the ‘whole life grid.’ The whole life grid is a box divided into 9 squares which represent our physical, emotional, intellectual and mental well-being. Susan talks about the large square is our life and the smaller 9 squares inside the large square are the 9 most important components to our lives that we must maintain to stay happy, successful and whole as a human being. The 9 components differ for all of us, but we need to devote enough time to each to stay healthy, both physically, intellectually and emotionally.
Here is an example of a whole life grid :
1.Career 2.Spouse 3.Children
4.Friends 5.Self-development 6.Health & Fitness
7. Finance 8.Social work 9.Me-time

Let us evaluate our life – What do we want? How to get there?
Another way to slow down is by creating a map of where we are today. Listing down areas in our lives (such as career, money, health, family time, me-time) that are important for us today and evaluating our level of satisfaction for each of area. Once we have evaluated, then it is about focusing on that particular area.

Time-we all have the same time-24 hours in a day.
When I hear people saying that they ‘don’t have enough time’ or ‘life is so busy, where is the time’, it reminds me of a quote ‘Many things are not equal but everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We make time for what we truly want’.

One of the ways to manage time is by waking up early–even if it is 15 minutes early from our usual time. Those extra minutes can help us in doing something for ourselves such as exercise, meditate, read or even write a journal. Robin Sharma in his book ‘Who will cry when you die’ writes about the ‘5 a.m.’ club wherein he says that ‘Joining the ‘Five o’clock club’ will allow us to start controlling our day rather than letting our day control us.

Being Self-Aware
Being aware of ourselves and our surrounding also helps in slowing down. I wrote about self-awareness in on my blog–Do we really know ourselves?
We are all aware of the fact that our mind and body can only go so far without self-care. It is about taking care of oneself in a way that works and is sustainable thus helping us lead a more effective and productive life.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I hope you found it useful. The fact you have read this article means that you would like to read about NLP ( Neuro Lingustic Programming) and Coaching. For more on Coaching and NLP, do read my previous articles on my website.

Reference : Moral stories