the off button

Mae West said “Anything that is worth doing is worth doing slowly”There will be times of regret in all our lives when we have acted in haste, spoken before thinking, or made snap judgements about people and places. These regrettable instances will by their nature almost certainly have occurred during times when we did not have time to do it any other way.

Modern life can feel like you are stuck in top gear with your foot pressed to the floor. We become so obsessed with getting there that we don’t enjoy the journey. We all need to slow down, living in fast forward is not really living at all and with no time to think things through we make instant decisions to show others that we are capable and dynamic. These decisions are often the wrong ones, making us despair when there is no going back and they cannot be put right.

The consequences of wrong decisions can make us afraid to trust ourselves to make any decisions at all and life can become one long list, upon which we always seem to be writing yet one more thing we have to do. Living with a constant sense of urgency is draining and all consuming, it leads to feelings of inadequacy and low esteem.The mind can sink into depression as a way of slowing us down.

We need to find a balance, to stop extolling the virtues of multi-tasking and to learn how to just be again. Only then can we take back control and create quiet, calm and unstructured periods of time to recharge and re-energise.

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over”

John Wooden