Slow Down

March 4, 2014 3 Comments

Enjoy the Moment

I’m just getting back from a four-week sabbatical, a special gift from IISC after seven years of service.  I grew in leaps and bounds.  A lot of what been brewing inside of me for the last year or two started to come together in a powerful way.  My time off was anchored by a week-long, life changing, couples’ retreat in Mexico.

I have believed, for a long time, that there is something terribly wrong in the way we work.  I don’t mean just here at IISC, I mean in the culture as a whole.  Our pace runs counter to our goals, it runs counter to life itself, it is counter-evolutionary.  Turns out things like sleeping, eating whole and prepared food (with others!), and leisure time, are all essential to our health, well being and creativity.

And when we are well, we are better for others.

I like the way my mentor, Robert Gass, has promoted the concept of “personal ecology.”  It reminds us that we are biological entities.  And that it makes little sense to work for sustainability in unsustainable ways.

Going back to human essentials, I like that there is a Slow Food movement, and a Slow Sex movement.  Something powerful happens when we slow down – we learn to notice the magic that is unfolding around us.  Within us.  Among us.

Slowing down is not about having a chilled out life.   Slowing down is about becoming more effective in our evolutionary project.  Slowing down is about tapping resources that we have neglected.  Slowing down is about building a better world together.

3 Comments

  • Curtis Ogden says:

    YES!

  • Linda says:

    Thought you’d appreciate this old blog post as well: https://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2009/09/09/lazy-days/

  • vanessailc says:

    Thank you for this commentary. I recently stumbled upon this website in the search for info on changing the work space, my workspace. And I am constantly thinking about the hows and the whys and the whos. Who makes these decisions and why wasn’t I included in them as they have HUGE impacts on my life and the quality it is capable of holding. It begins with a dream and a LOT of “no” and “it’s just the way it is” but is isn’t the way it has to be. Every reality begins as a dream. And I am always so glad when I run across something like your post, showing me one more person who feels exactly the same, that the way we run our lives with work are not in harmony to quality living. So, somethings gotta give (:

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