Slow down, just slooooow down.

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I have had no less than 3 conversations this last week with life coaching clients about the need to slow down and take things a little, or in some cases, a lot easier.

If you are stressed out or worried sick about something I can almost guarantee that you’re breathing and heart rate will be increased. In turn, that can lead to higher blood pressure and all the long-term health risks associated.

So, slooooow down.

If you remove sports from the mix there are few things in life that cannot benefit from being done more slowly and consciously. Eating a pleasant meal, taking a walk, driving the car, reading a book and one other thing that jumps to mind that I’ll not go into here.

Society tends to make us believe that we always need to be somewhere else, that we need to get whatever it is we are doing done as quickly as possible and then move on. We don’t.
 
Try for a few days eating lunch sat down and not worrying that you need to be back at the office. Try slowing down on the Interstate and see if you actually get to your destination any slower. Research has shown on this by the way that driving aggressively in traffic seldom makes much of a difference except to your frazzled state of mind. Even if you do save 30 seconds on your journey time, what are you going to do with them? You had them all along just in a different place.  Is your day really planned to the second? Have you ever been fired for being 40 seconds late? Have you ever missed a plane by 22 seconds? Have you ever had somebody divorce you for turning up 17 seconds late for a date?
 
So slooooow down.
 
Check your breathing now. Where is it coming from? If it is your chest then slow it down and move it down. You should be breathing from your diaphragm unless you are in the middle of a Pilates exercise class whilst reading this! Slow abdominal breathing has an instant beneficial an immediately start to reduce stress levels. If you have had years of breathing high up in your chest it will feel weird, really weird, but stick and it will soon become normal.

The best bit of all this, is that once you have slowed yourself down and mastered this breathing technique you can control your stress levels too.

So, are you going to slooooow down now?