Why Slow Living?

Whose mum, aunty, gran or girlfriend has ever looked at old photos of themselves and said they wished they realised how young, beautiful and slim they looked back then? Maybe you've said that yourself.

When I was about 25, I had this experience..the women in my life were saying this about themselves. Then I found a photo of myself from when I was about 16 and thought the same thing. At that moment it dawned on me...I'm going to continue thinking this every year as I look back on old photos. One day I'll look at photos of myself from now and think it and I don't want to spend my life doing that. What a waste. Why can't I just think nice things about myself, now?

That was the catalyst for me to stop dieting once and for all and learn some deep self love. It starts with self-acceptance and I think it's a life long process but I can hand-on-heart say that learning to love myself was the greatest gift I ever promised myself. I don't want to live with regrets.

I feel the same about slow living. Sometimes I hear mums (myself included) say things like 'the time is going so fast', 'the kids are growing so quickly', 'I promised myself I'd enjoy this baby but I'm so busy' or 'where did this week/month/year/childhood go?'. Those sound a little like future regrets to me. I realised that the antidote to all this was to slow down a little. Find ways to pare back. Figure out what was essential in our lives and significantly reduce or entirely remove the rest.

That's easier said than done of course, which is why I'm indulging in this project! 

Slow living is not just about your kids though. It's also about you. It's about enjoying parenthood but it's also about enjoying your wider life. The standard life structure is; be a kid, go to school, get a job, work, work, work, have a family and work, work, pay for stuff, work, work, work, retire, start living, die. Ok wow, that actually sounds quite bad when I read that back. Sadly, though, it's basically true. 

Here's the crux of it: slow living, minimalism, essentialism, frugal hedonism - whatever you want to call it, is about removing the excess of life, making a decision about what your limited priorities are and finding ways to go deep with them, instead of spreading yourself thinly and half heartedly across many moderately important things. Whatever that looks like for you is just perfect.

I hope you liked this post! If you did, please consider sharing it with someone! And check back tomorrow for the next instalment...How Did I Get So Busy Anyway?

Rachelle xo

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