Transcripts
1. INTRODUCTION: Hello. My name is Carl Honore and I'm a speed aholic. Or at least I used to be back in the bad old days. My life was a never ending race against the clock. I was stuck in fast forward, always rushing, always busy, always distracted, never really there and it took a toll. But then everything changed. What happened? I slowed down. And guess what? The world did not come to an end. On the contrary, life got a whole lot better. Slowing down made me happier, healthier, more connected to others as well as more productive and creative. I am now living my life instead of racing through it. And along the way, something quite unexpected happened. I literally wrote the book on Slow and became the world's number one advocate for the slow movement. Now the time has come to move things to the next level. That means taking everything I've lived and learned over the last 15 years and distilling it into this course. My aim to inspire you to reconnect with your inner tortoise and show you how to start your own slow revolution. So what are you waiting for? Let's get started
2. My Wake-Up Call: When we get stuck in fast board, it often takes a shock to the system or a wake up call, something to make us realize that we've forgotten how to slow down and that this is doing this riel harm. For many people, that wake up call comes in the form of an illness. One day your body just says I cannot take the pace anymore and you suffer heart attack or a burnout, or you just can't get out of bed one morning. Or maybe a relationship goes up in smoke because you haven't had the time or the tranquility to listen to the other person, to be with them to switch off your smartphone in bed. My wake up call came when I started reading bedtime stories to my son, and at the end of the day I would go into his bedroom and I just could not slow down. So I'd sit on his bed with one foot on the floor and speed read Snow White trying to skip a line here, a paragraph there, sometimes even a whole page. I became an expert in what I dub the multiple page turn technique, your apparent that probably sounds horribly familiar, doesn't it? You know, you get to the end of a page and you try to turn 123 even four pages at once. But of course, these tricks never worked because my son, like every four year old, knew the stories inside out. So he'd say, Daddy, why are there only three dwarves in the story? What happened? Grumpy. And so what should have been the most relaxed, the most intimate, the most tender, the most magical moment of the day, when a father sits down to read a story to his son became instead a battle of wills. It was a war between my speed and his slowness, and this went on for some time until I caught myself speed reading a newspaper article with time saving tips for fast people like me to go even faster. And one of those tips mentioned a book called The One Minute Bedtime Story. So Hans Christian Andersen Brothers, Grimm and even Snow White boiled down to 62nd chunks, and my first reaction when I read those words was Galileo your foot. Great idea. I must get the whole set from Amazon tomorrow. Drone delivery, but then my next reaction was very different. It was like in the cartoons, when a light bulb goes on over your head and I suddenly thought, Whoa, has it really come to this? I am I really in such a hurry that I'm prepared to fob off my son with a sound byte at the end of the day. That's when I decided that I needed to change. So I set off on a journey around the world, and what I discovered is good news. Wherever you go nowadays, more and more people are doing the unthinkable. They're slowing down in every walk of life, and they're finding that, contrary to what conventional wisdom tells us, which is that if you slow down, you're lazy, boring, unproductive. Your road killed the opposite turns out to be true that by slowing down judiciously at the right moments, people can work better, play better, live better, add it all up and you have a slow movement. But it's not about doing everything at a snail's pace. That would be absurd. Slow is about doing everything at the right speed, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, sometimes completely stopped and not doing anything at all. slow is about quality over quantity, doing things mindfully. It means doing things not as fast as possible, but as well as possible. And you know what? It works. And trust me, if it works for me, it can work for you too.
3. Quick SLOW Tip: before we dive into the course, I want to kick start your slow revolution right here, right now. Why? Because you may be experiencing the same doubts I once did. You may be hearing a little voice inside that says, Love the idea of slowing down. But I can't even go there. My schedule won't allow it. My type. A character won't allow it. My boss won't allow it. My life. I won't allow it. I have a one word answer to that little voice. Phooey! The truth is that all of us can slow down. And if I can do it, then you can, too to get the ball rolling for you. I want to share one of my favorite techniques for beating the virus of hurry. I call it the speed check, and it works like this from time to time. Throughout the day. Take a moment to gauge how faster doing whatever it is you're doing. It could be taking a shower, reading a work document, eating lunch, driving the car or even taking notes to this course. Whatever it is. Pause, create a real moment of awareness and ask yourself, Am I doing this too fast? could I slow down? If the answer is no, then just carry on as before. But if the answer is yes, and you'd be surprised how often the answer is, yes. Then take five deep calming breaths and then go back to whatever you were doing more slowly . Job done. That is the speed check. And like many of the tips and tools in this course, it's simple, free and open to everyone. But it could make a big difference to how you live your life. So now let's move on to the course itself.
4. Reboot your RELATIONSHIPS: There are some things that you just cannot speed up and relationships are top of the list. You can't make somebody fall in love with you faster because you want to get married in June. You can't download a friend from Amazon because you need a companion to backpack around Asia with you next week. Time is the soil and the sunlight that make every relationship grow time spent together. Talking, listening, learning, sharing, crying, playing, laughing, arguing when life gets too fast, too busy, too distracting. We stop investing enough time and attention in our relationships, and those relationships suffer as a result. We end up with 821 friends on Facebook, but no one to turn to in a crisis. We're more connected now than ever before, but many of us feel alone. That's the bad news. The good news is that we can turn things around. We could all build strong relationships how, by slowing down, of course,
5. Personal audit 1 : The most important relationship you have is with yourself. That's the anchor for everything. If you're out of sync on the inside, or if you find it hard to be alone, then you'll struggle to forge meaningful bonds with other people. How can you start to reconnect with yourself? Meditation is one way, but in this part of the course, I want to deploy another exercise. I call it the personal audit. Pick a day this week and block off 2 15 minute time slots outside working hours. Switch off your gadgets and settle into a quiet, comfortable place with a cup of tea or coffee or whatever. Set your mind to pondering those personal questions that often getting for gotten as we charge through daily life. Am I? Well, am I living the life I meant to be, or just going through the motions? What makes me happy? What kind of life do I want to live? Where do I want to be in 5 10 or even 20 years? Again, be ready for your mind to wander off towards your grocery list for the latest gossip about the Kardashians. Don't beat yourself up over it. Just notice the detour and gently steer your thoughts back to those big questions
6. Personal Audit 2: sitting comfortably. Good. Then check in with yourself to see how the personal audit went. How did it feel to take time for deeper reflection? Was it scary or uncomfortable? What did you learn about yourself? Did the experience make you want to change anything in your life? How can you make that change happen? The personal audit is an immensely useful exercise to do throughout this course. I especially recommend doing it each time you fill in the questionnaire before you fill it in that IHS. But it's also worth making it part of your routine. It will help you keep in touch with yourself and what you want from the long term. After all, there's no point slowing down your life if you're living the wrong life to begin with, so make a promise to yourself to do the personal audit once a week. Now let's explore another way to slow down and rebuild that relationship with ourselves.
7. Play More 1: it's time to talk about play. Play is a basic human need, and not just for Children. It's a wonderful way to slow down and de stress, but it could be so much more than that. In its purest form. Play is a profound way to engage with the world, to stretch your mind and body and soul away to find other people and find yourself when you do something with a playful spirit for the sheer joy of it, you forget the clock and remember who you are, which is why your next exercise should feel more like recess than homework. Sit quietly for 10 minutes and spool back through your personal play archive in your head. Which activities left you feeling recharged and fulfilled? Which one made you feel most in touch with yourself? Maybe it's yoga or Scrabble or building train sets. Or maybe it's a competitive sport like tennis, volleyball or football. My favorite ISS hockey. But I also make time for slower, gentler forms of play, like doing puzzles. It's amazing the calming effect puzzles have on people. You spread out 1000 pieces on the kitchen table and instantly becomes a an oasis of Zen. I forget the clock and sit there for ages, putting the puzzle together, my mind wandering here and there, chatting with whoever else happens to sit down to help. And believe me, everyone will want to pitch in. What activity has that effect on you? Whatever it is, let's now look at ways to get more of it.
8. Play More 2: I want you to pull out your calendar again. It's time to play more if it's an organized group activity like touch Football or coed softball that floats your boat than book one extra session this week. If it's something more private and flexible, like Tai Chee or puzzles than block off at least 20 minutes for it every day for the next week, it might be in the morning before work or during an afternoon break. It could be the first thing you do when you get home from the office or the last before you hit the sack. Maybe you do some in the morning and some in the afternoon. Whatever fits and feels right after the week is over, hold a meeting with yourself to figure out what difference did bumping up my playtime make . Did you feel less rushed, more grounded? More yourself. Now you need to embed playtime in the schedule. Try to rope off a block or two of time every day for some kind of play, Right? That's enough about rebuilding the relationship with yourself. Now let's turn our attention to building stronger ties with other people
9. Connect More: Okay, so you've started getting back in touch with yourself. Great. Now it's time to begin reconnecting with others. Let's get the ball rolling with another exercise. I want you to keep a time diary for the next week, logging how much time you devote to all the things you do at the end of the week. Add up the hours devoted to moments that nourish your relationships. Ask yourself what made those moments possible? Where your gadgets turned off? Did you feel relaxed or rushed? How important was listening during the encounter? What did you like about those moments? And what would it take to engineer Mawr of thumb now resolved to increase that relationship , building time by one hour next week, then one more hour the week after that, until you feel reconnected with the people in your life. But don't make relaxed riel world meetings. You're only contact with people. We live in a digital world, and Elektronik connections can bring us together in lots of wonderful ways. So check in from time to time with a quick phone call or a humorous text or up Facebook comment or even a Snapchat photo, and remember that it's not enough just to put in time with people. You have to make the minutes and hours count by giving them your full attention to. And that means listening. And I mean really listening.
10. Listen Better 1: listening and I mean really listening is a dying art. Often, when it's our turn to listen, our mind wanders. Is that my phone? My running late or when we should be listening were actually reloading, getting ready to fire back with the return volley. And even when we do want to listen, it's hard to do because the world is so full of noise and distraction. So I want to give you some exercises to re learn the art of listening. The 1st 1 is silence. Set aside three minutes every day for a week to sit in silence somewhere. If you can't get absolute silence, quiet will do. This will help reset your ears. The second exercise is a little harder when you find yourself in a noisy environment. Pick out a single sound from the cacophony. It might be the pouring of the air conditioning or a colleague tapping on a keyboard and really focus on that sound. I noticed the tone and texture, how it changes and shifts the way it compares. Two similar sounds in your own sonic library. Do this for three minutes per day. After one week of rebooting and retraining your ears, you'll be ready to start listening properly in your day to day life
11. Listen Better 2: Okay, so you're starting to listen again. How do you now apply that with real people? By selling down? Of course, No matter how much of a rush you're in, you can never listen faster. You have to decelerate and match the rhythm of the person speaking to you. You have to practice slow listening. Let's explore how to do that with this next exercise. Next time you're in a one on one conversation, make a real effort to pay attention to what the other person is saying to you. Asked lots of questions. Everyone loves to feel interesting. The answers will reveal what makes your companion tick and help cement the relationship as the conversation flows. Repeat back in your own words. What the other person has said sometimes do this summarizing out loud. The word. So is a very useful tool. At other times, do it quietly inside your own head. When the conversation is over, look back on how it went
12. Listen Better 3: after your experiment with slow listening, investigate how it went for you both. Did the other person enjoy the chat? Did they feel more heard than usual? How did the conversation feel to you? Harder work or more interesting and more fun? Do you remember more of what was said? Hours or even days later? Make slow listening your default setting in every conversation?
13. END OF COURSE: you made it. Here you are at the end of the course, although it's actually not the end at all. It's really the start. It's the start of your slow revolution, a revolution to help you become the best version of yourself. This will take time. It won't happen overnight. One of the ironies of today is that we're all in such a hurry that we even want to slow down fast. But that won't work. Slowing down is a process or a journey. It takes time. Slowing down could be, well, slow. And maybe the journey never ends. In a world built for speed, the pressure will always be on to go faster than you should. And that means you always have to be on guard. You have to work. It's slowing down and living your life at the right speed for you. Before ending. I want to leave you with some final thoughts. So turn now to the last video
14. Three Final Thoughts: I want to leave you with three final thoughts. Number one slow is good. It may seem redundant to say so at the end of a course like this, but it needs saying over and over. Why? Because the taboo against slowness runs so deep in our culture. Slow is a dirty word, a four letter word synonymous with lazy, boring, unproductive, stupid. That's why I named this course how to be slow in a good way. The aim of the title is to smash that taboo and remind us that slow can be a force for good . So always remember and remind yourself slow is good. Number two, you are not alone. Everyone wants to slow down and everyone struggles with it. It is never too late to slow down, so do not lose heart. And don't try to do it all by yourself. There is strength in numbers. Reach out to the people around you so that you can slow down together. Number three, keep in touch. Though this is the end of the course. I hope it won't be the end of the road for us. Contact me on here or through my website. Tell me how it's going. What's working? What's not working? What would you like me to add? This will help me improve the course in the future. But I also want to create a community where all of you who have done the course can share ideas, insights and inspiration. Together we can defeat the virus of hurry. Together we can become better people living better lives in a better world. We just have to give slow a chance. So good bye for now and good luck.
Carl Honore, Voice of the Slow Movement
