(Video link here.) After we posted the anxiety-producing riff on Banksys “No stopping”, we found this great post called  Slowing Down by Leo Widrich. It’s worth reading Widrich’s process of slowing down. Here’s an excerpt the essential, powerful technique he learned from Paulo Coelho in his book The Pilgrimage; it’s called The Speed Exercise:

It is very simple. You pick a route to walk and you walk at half the speed that you normally do. You do this for 20 minutes.

Doing this exercise was very difficult for me at first. In such a busy place like Hong Kong, where everyone is rushing through the streets, you get a lot of impulses to just speed up again. But after the first five minutes I was ok and in a good rhythm.

And after those five minutes, things changed a lot. I started to look around. I started to see things I have never seen before—small side streets where people where finishing their day’s of work, piling boxes on top of each other, loading them on a dirty truck. A woman greeting a man with a great smile, waiting for him to cross the street at a red light. It was a different smile again. That kind of smile when meeting someone you really like is just seconds away. Then I saw two people, both seemed to have just started their night shift as security guards, chatting and laughing away as if they were at a party.

Everything seemed different during those 20 minutes. I could feel my head getting a lot heavier and then all of a sudden lighter. As if every step made me lose a few pounds.

I felt extremely happy.

Then Wildrich talks about a second challange: to cultivate more habits for feeling happy.

Because: The only way to be happy, is to teach yourself how.

 via Lifehacker

Related posts: maira kalman on life, death, work, love…
discover the ‘negative’ path to happiness
‘the top 5 regrets of the dying’ = a tool for living
‘what’s not wrong?’ and other ways to start your dayx

If you’ve found illumination, joy, or inspiration in this post, please consider supporting Improvised Life. It only takes a minute to make a secure donation that helps pay our many costs. A little goes a long way towards helping Improvised Life continue to live ad-free in the world.

Support Improvised Life ♥

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *