6 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy Life

Here's something we all need to think about in today's busy world.

Written by Nicole Spencer  Categories: Simply Happy

Do you feel as though you have so little time to relax that you wouldn’t know what to do even if someone plopped you in a beach chair and stuck a coconut-umbrella drink in your hand?
You CAN slow down and enjoy more of the life you’ve been missing.
Here are six ways.

Slow Down and Enjoy Life

1. Eat your meals at a table, preferably on a plate. Make it a rule that you won’t eat in front of you computer or in your car. Instead, carve out times during the day when you can pause and concentrate on nourishing your body. Not only are you likely to make healthier choices and eat more reasonable portions if you pay attention to what you are eating, you’ll be making sure you have times during the day to unwind and take a much needed breather.
Note: this will not work if you just decide not to eat at all instead of eating at a table. The point is to understand that taking care of your body’s needs is one of your highest priorities, and that you deserve to spend time taking care of yourself, not shoehorning it in wherever you can while taking care of other things.

2. Walk rather than drive. Whenever it’s feasible, leave the car at home and walk. You’ll not only get fresh air and exercise but you will save yourself a lot of driving related stress. When you’re walking, you get to concentrate on what is going on in the world around you, instead of having fractions of seconds to see what’s going on outside your car windows.
Although you can’t walk as fast as a car can drive, you might be surprised how little extra time walking takes than driving over short distances and how effectively you can use those extra minutes to think, daydream, or simply relax.

3. Leave the phones and laptops at home. I’m as addicted to my iPhone and laptop as the next person, but I find that I enjoy myself a lot more when I accidentally leave them at home and have no choice but to interact with the world around me. There is something about constantly pulling out a phone to check messages that puts us in a sort of high alert, stressed state. Even if we’re not waiting for anything urgent, the act of constantly checking tricks our minds into thinking we’re in a stressful situation and we tense up accordingly.
Although it’s not possible to always leave the phone or laptops at home, train yourself not to keep checking. Keep it put away until you have a real need to use it. Let yourself get bored. You’ll find that once you give in, your mind will wander and you’ll either find something interesting to do or have a nice, productive daydreaming session.

4. Be nice to kids and animals. If you have a child or animal in your life that you can spend time with, make the effort to do so. Children and animals are absolute geniuses at throwing themselves in the moment and enjoying life as it comes. Even a half hour throwing a Frisbee around with a dog or twenty minutes of coloring and making up stories as you go along with a preschooler can take you back to a simpler time in your own life. We can all use a reminder of what it’s like to be completely absorbed in nothing but having fun.

5. Learn something new, preferably by taking a class. There is nothing like learning a new skill or applying ourselves to a new field of study to get our minds engaged. It might not seem like slowing down to make the commitment to learn something new, but giving your brain a workout is one of the best ways to enjoy life. Too often we’re on autopilot, doing the same things over and over again, until all we’re tasting is the memory.
When we approach something unfamiliar, we not only need to slow down in order to take it all in and fully incorporate it into our repertoire, but we are also doing the most effective thing to keep our minds young and suppleand maximize the enjoyment we can get from life.

6. Realize you don’t have to do everything. Take a look at your to-do list and ask yourself what will happen if each item doesn’t get done. Even if you reach for the worst possible scenario, it’s probably not really that big. Thinking about the what if might make you realize how unimportant a lot of the items really are.
Of course, there are some things that will need to be done by you and in a timely manner, for everything else, decide if you can:
·    Eliminate entirely
·    Outsource
·    Delay
If you can’t let go of the feeling that everything needs to be done in a certain way by you, it will be worthwhile to examine why you feel this way and explore ways you can become comfortable being less than perfect and relinquishing some control. It’s okay to be ambitious and to have high standards, but if you want to slow down and can’t find a way to make that happen, something’s gotta give!

Nicole Spencer likes to walk rather than drive and realizes that she can’t, in fact, do everything.

Visit http://masterbusiness.webs.com for an uplifting and often humorous daily thought.