You must examine your choices if you are not happy with the quality of your Life!
We bumped into a friend who has been wanting to meet us for several months now. Every time he receives an invite for any of our public events, he will promptly message me saying he’s going to try and make it. Then on the day of the event, he will cry out citing a business schedule. Most of our events are on weekends and almost all weekends he is traveling. When we met him yesterday, he was apologetic. “My Life’s not in my hands. I am just a slave of the work I do. I am always rushing, from meeting to meeting, from city to city, from crisis to crisis,” he confessed.
I have been in that place. I have run for over 20 years of my Life like a maniac. I have been so rushed for years on end that I did not even know how my children were growing up. Until Life brought everything, all my busy-ness, to a grinding halt and helped me value slowing down. So, what I am sharing here comes from personal experience. Do take some time off to calmly evaluate your Life.
And you may like to begin by employing a weekend, perhaps this one, to reflect on how your week has gone by! Meetings. Deadlines. Delays. Stress. Anxiety. And before you knew it, the week’s over. Where did it disappear? And how much quality time did you get for yourself – to focus on what matters most and why?
If you found those questions uncomfortable, you must ask yourself another one – why are you rushing through Life, chasing your tail most of the time, and not savoring any moment?
You have a choice though to slow down. And to go through Life slowly, soaking in each moment, is a skill that can be learned just as any other.
But begin with a re-examination of yourself and almost everyone around you. From the time we wake up, to the time we sleep, we are rushed. The way we read our morning papers, the way we bathe, the way we eat, the way we drive, the way we walk, all of it is gripped by a sense of busy-ness that ultimately will lead us to the same point that everyone will arrive at: death! Why will you want to hurry towards an appointment with death? Well, that’s what we are doing precisely – by being rushed all the time!!!
Ask anyone who’s rushing why he or she is in a hurry and you will hear them say: “Well, I am saving time!” Saving time? The irony is, at the end of the day, everyone who’s rushing always complains that there isn’t enough time! Your rushing may help you cover the distance faster but will not enable you to enjoy the scenery. At the end of all the rush, when it is time to depart, you will regret never having lived, never having arrived where you intended to, never having smelled the flowers in Life’s garden!
Here are 10 simple changes you can make to your routine so that you can live and savor this experience of living – and not just rush to earn-a-living!
Reduce the number of meetings that you have to have in a day: one big or two small ones is all you can take
Arrive at the airport with 2 hours to spare before a flight
Eat you meals slower than you normally do relishing each morsel
Spend 15 additional minutes with your family each day; when you kiss your spouse and children goodbye, look at them just a wee bit longer.
Take an additional few minutes in the bath thinking not of the day’s schedules but of how rejuvenating bathing is
Read one inspiring passage over 30 minutes daily
Read it at least once more before you retire for the day
When you see Nature in full bloom__a sunrise, sunset or trees swaying in the breeze or birds chirping__pause, admire, soak in, before you proceed
Spend 15 minutes daily on Facebook connecting or chatting with childhood friends
Be silent for 20 minutes daily.
Spiritual thinker Eknath Easwaran says, “Where hurry prevails, there can be no satisfaction for the doer.” So, stop rushing, stop the hurrying…simply flow with Life. And, well, if you are not happy with the quality of your Life, you now know who is responsible and where to start!