How to Slow Down Your Life & Dramatically Boost Your Happiness [Premium]

We live in a stressful world. 

Yet so much stress is actually caused by our own lives.

And when you finally start slowing life down, downshifting your gears, and finding the inner calm and tranquility that’s already within you, you will unlock so much natural power and energy. 

By doing so, you’ll reduce a ton of stress, navigate life’s setbacks a lot better, and boost your quality of life. And by tapping into that limitless potential within you, you will feel much happier too.

I’ll explain why it’s so incredibly important to dial down your life, the reasons we get in our own way, and the exact steps to start slowing down your life today. Ironically, by decelerating your speed, you’ll actually be able to achieve more and savor more moments in life. Let’s jump right in:

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The Problem So Many People Struggle With

Nowadays, we live at a frantic pace with our minds going a million miles an hour. We’re always planning, analyzing, thinking, and getting bombarded by tons of information. (The average human has over 6000 thoughts per day.)

Yet once we finally get a few minutes to enjoy silence and aloneness, we simply can’t—we’re so used to the frenzied nature of life and our constant dopamine hits of entertainment that we find the calm uncomfortable.

Then, a few minutes later, we scurry off to the next thing.

Finding silence for many people is like driving a Formula 1 car at 200mph… and then throwing it into reverse.

Because of that, we never reach a full point of rest. Instead, we “think” we’re resting—but there’s always a latent amount of stress going on in the background due to our frazzled mind and constant ADHD-like existence.

Here’s a simple example:

During my travels, I often go to famous attractions that are packed with visitors around the world. At these historic, monumental places, my thoughts tend to drift away—I can’t even think or speak. After all, what can someone possibly say to capture the magnificence of what they’re seeing?

Yet the most common thing I notice from other visitors is the opposite: They’re talking endlessly. It’s just non-stop noise. Oh, look at that! Look how tall it is! It’s so pretty! Blah blah blah. They gab and gab, take a bunch of photos, and then, a few minutes later, they leave. 

Sure, it’s great to point out and share interesting things, but a part of me — perhaps the introverted side of me — just wants to say, “Shut up…”

“Only by going in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”

— John Muir

Their minds are full of so much noise — not external, but internal. They can’t get into silence or stillness; it’s just constant restlessness. That’s how you end up with places of natural beauty — created without human intervention — filled with the cacophony of humans.

But the more you talk, the less you see. The moment you label something, it loses its meaning. As Anthony De Mello, the Jesuit priest, once wrote:

“The great Krishnamurti put it so well when he said, “The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.” How true!… Ideas actually fragment the vision, intuition, or experience of reality as a whole…Words cannot give you reality. They only point, they only indicate. You use them as pointers to get to reality. But once you get there, your concepts are useless… You don’t need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts. To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.”

Many travelers are also in such a rush to see things that they don’t actually see anything. It’s like National Lampoon’s Vacation when Chevy Chase and his family visit the Grand Canyon… only to rush off after a few seconds:

Sure, I understand people don’t always have a lot of time to spend in one place. But don’t miss the forest for the trees. This isn’t about travel — this is about how we approach our lives. 

Many people have so much going on in their minds that, if they try to sit down and empty their minds for 10 minutes, they can’t.

Many people are in such a hurry to get “there” that they miss everything along the way.

“Do you want to break out of your prison? Then look; observe; spend hours observing. Watching what? Anything. The faces of people, the shapes of trees, a bird in flight, a pile of stones, watch the grass grow. Get in touch with things, look at them. Hopefully you will then break out of these rigid patterns we have all developed, out of what our thoughts and our words have imposed on us. Hopefully we will see. What will we see? This thing that we choose to call reality, whatever is beyond words and concepts. This is a spiritual exercise — connected with spirituality — connected with breaking out of your cage, out of the imprisonment of the concepts and words.”

— Anthony DeMello

How to Slow Down

Let us return to silence. Let us return to calmness. Let us return to our thoughts and ourselves. Let us turn meditation NOT into something we do once a week in a class, but into a way of life. Let us calm our minds so we can be more alert, more resourceful, more patient, and more alive.

Here’s how:

1. Filter Your Inputs

The first thing to improve is the balance between your “input” and “output.” 

And in our 2022 world, we have too much input. From the moment we wake up (and, hell, even in our sleep), we are always “on.” Everyone has access to us 24/7. The world can bombard us with news, information, obligations, demands, stresses, and more—even in the comfort of our own home. 

Eliminate this. 

There’s a saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Then the solution, it would seem, is quite easy: Stop letting garbage come into your life. 

Turn your home into a “black box” of sorts where you wouldn’t know what’s happening in the outside world unless you tried. 

Cut all phone notifications that aren’t important. Use Airplane Mode more often. Set a Do Not Disturb setting during certain hours of the day so no one can reach you. 

Also, stop watching the news. I’ve written about this before, but I’m a big proponent of this. If ever I see the news, immediately after, I struggle to concentrate. Because now my mind is overwhelmed with all this emotional information (most of which doesn’t affect my life anyway) and my mind is scattered until it can reset and think again.

Also, avoid commercials. Download TV shows or stream them. There are a lot of free websites out there where you can watch all your favorite shows and live sports without commercials. 

2. Come Back Home to Yourself

It’s utterly astonishing how unaware the vast majority of people are of their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

Without self-awareness, they let their emotions control their lives as opposed to them controlling their own emotions. They get carried away with their own thoughts or internal dialogue and they can’t mentally calm themselves down or reign themselves in, especially when they need it most. 

After all, how can you influence and change something that you aren’t even conscious of?

Instead, to start slowing life down, slow your thoughts down. For this, mindfulness is key. I like to meditate — which is a form of mindfulness — but there are many various other forms that you can use if meditation just isn’t your jam. For example, yoga can be a form of mindfulness.

“Quieting the mind means less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering or distracting. The mind is still when it is totally here and now in perfect oneness with the action and the actor.”

— W. Timothy Gallwey

The purpose is to stop yourself, watch your thoughts, and become aware of them. As you become aware of them, you become more detached from your emotions, stresses, anxieties, etc. 

Suddenly, you’ll find there’s “you” and “the thinker” and that they are two separate things. And over time, you’ll find your thoughts becoming less and less frequent and you can become more and more present.

3. Reduce your stimulants

The average American eats more sugar in one year than the average American ate in a lifetime 200 years ago.

I never realized how much sugar I was consuming (even as a health professional) and how it affected my life until I cut out all sugar for 30 days. After my fast, I had a few bites of a pastry and I had the biggest sugar rush of my life.

As I lay in bed wide awake that night, I thought to myself, “Is this what I’ve been doing to my body my entire life!?”

Now, I don’t believe refined sugar is “evil.” Everything in moderation, right? (After all, what’s life without a few scoops of gelato or a Nutella crepe or cheesecake?)

But too much sugar, caffeine, energy drinks, and other stimulants actually jacks up our anxiety and makes it harder to find that calm and stillness.

Be more conscious about what you consume.

Hell, we drink so much sugar that many people don’t even like the taste of water! Can you imagine that?

If you drink a lot of coffee or consume a lot of sugar, cut it down. Reset your taste buds and your tolerance. It might feel hard at first, but as you wean off your stimulants, you won’t feel the “stressful” energy that comes from a can of Coca-Cola, but instead, you’ll feel a calm, gentle, glowing energy that comes from eating good food, drinking clean water, and living a good life.

4. Stop blocking your senses.

Whenever I take the subway, I notice that everyone is on their phones, listening to music on their headphones, or both. While I’m not criticizing them for their choices, remember that it’s all input. 

And if you want to slow down your life and return to your senses, all that stuff is just going to cloud your brain because you’re distracting, entertaining yourself, and filling your mind.

Instead, this might feel weird, but I want you to practice sitting in silence. Do not look at your phone. Do not listen to music. Just stare out in front of you. Just look at the map.

Or when you take a walk, don’t call your friend. Don’t listen to music. Don’t try to remember all the words to “American Pie.” Just be there and walk. 

I’ll tell you something: Years ago, I used to sing a lot in my home. (I have a very eclectic music taste so I’ll sing everything from Huey Lewis and the News to Andy Williams to Chicago.)

But as I’ve slowed my life down and downshifted, I almost never sing anymore. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t need to. To be honest, I think a big reason I sang so much was because I was always needing to think and occupy myself with noise. (Either that or I was always trying to think of different things or do different things.)

Every now and then you’ll hear someone say they have a song “stuck in their head.” I never have that problem anymore because there’s nothing in my head. (Then again, people have been saying that for a long time… hey-o!)

Nowadays, I actually feel that constantly having a song in your head isn’t really an optimal thing because you can’t find silence. You’re trying to fill that quiet with noise and chatter. 

But it’s the silence that will free you.

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

― Leo Tolstoy

As the saying goes: Speech is silver, silence is golden. 

Let’s try to live more like that.

It’ll improve your life more than you can ever imagine.