Embracing the slow down
Today’s blog post is going to be about how you can embrace the slow down in your life. Since I started talking about living slowly on my Instagram page I have definitely started noticing more of an uptick in questions about just what living slowly entails. I find it a really difficult question to answer because living slowly can mean something different to everyone. However, I do go over some of the things that I consider living more slowly in my own life.
I think it’s important to understand where the idea of living slowly came from in my own life. Again, if you follow me on Instagram you know that I sometimes talk in-depth about my experiences within a multi-level marketing company and you may, as a blog reader, have seen that here too. Multi-level marketing has a culture of hustle, of being always switched on, and having to constantly work because if you’re not constantly working or constantly hustling then there is absolutely no way that you will be able to make money. I speak in greater depth about the pitfalls of multi-level marketing in some of the posts I posted here so be sure to check those out.
Leaving hustle culture behind and embracing the slow down
Leaving a multi-level marketing company and the onset of the global pandemic provided the perfect opportunity for me to look at my life and embrace slowing down. While the pandemic has of course been dreadful, it did provide us, as a family, with ample opportunity to rethink our priorities and the way we live our life. When I think about slow living I often think back to that first period of lockdown, where the world completely changed on its axis in the blink of an eye. For us as a family, we were able to embrace being home with nobody having to work outside of the home which did provide us with some comfort. I often remember standing outside on my balcony just looking out into the world and wondering the sorts of things that were occurring out there. It’s something that I still do to this day.
There were so many aspects of slow living that we had already embraced in our lives but it was definitely the beginning of a whole lot more. When the world started to open up again all of the things that I did before, to some extent, I was in no hurry to rush back to. Everything just seems so insignificant now I have embraced something else.
The pandemic opened my eyes to slow living
Throughout the pandemic we embraced so many different things, always trying to become less dependent on the outside world. In a way, we have always embraced so many things that lend us to this way of living, but the pandemic turned us inward and enabled us to look at some of the other things that we could be doing to create a life that felt good. I have long hated overconsumption, hustle culture, always being switched on, and everything that exists in this capitalist culture that we find ourselves so ingrained in.
Slow living is about what that means to you. It is about detaching from a world that would rather you stay always connected, always switched on, always consuming, and always spending. It is about leaving behind some of the more problematic aspects of life that society pushes on us. It is about slowing down and embracing a slower more intentional way of living. What that looks like might look different for everyone, but I have put together this fun, free checklist for you to download as you get started in your slow living journey.
How we maintain a slow life
Living slowly seems to buck the norm but that being said it’s a theory that once adopted you will find very easy to continue. Today our days are filled with slowness, no hurry (unless really necessary – sometimes it’s just not always possible to embrace in a world that is set on going fast), and taking our time. In our home, we particularly embrace things like growing our own, slow food at our allotment (you can follow our allotment journey here), embracing an abundance of time in nature, embracing slow food practices at home, and disconnecting, where possible, from the outside world. Living slowly is a process that can mean different things to different people. For us it embraces a lot of our home life, how we live, work, and function and that is a huge privilege.
I would love to hear what slow living means to you, so be sure to leave me a comment or message me on Instagram. You can, as always, email me too: hello@amypigott.co.uk
