Slowing Down to the Speed of Life

Richard Carlson, Joseph Bailey

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061844508
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Mental Health & Wellbeing

"Age-old wisdom presented in a practical, easy to understand manner that can be utilized by everyone."
—Bernie Siegel, M. D., author of Love, Medicine & Miracles

Newly revised and updated to address the increased stress of our modern times, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by bestselling author Richard Carlson ( Don't Sweat the Small Stuff…and It's All Small Stuff and Don't Get Scrooged ) and Joseph Bailey is the classic guide to creating a more peaceful, simpler life from the inside out. With practical and easy exercises to help you slow down your mind and focus on the present moment, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, in the words of Dan Millman, bestselling author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, is "a life-enhancing book with insightful principles for peaceful and productive living at work and at home."

CHAPTER 1

Slowing Down to the Moment

As young children we were full of life, always playing or running around with our friends. We would turn from one activity to another with endless enthusiasm. Games of hide-and-seek were an opportunity for unlimited imagination, exploration, and curiosity. It seemed we never got bored or tired of whatever we were doing in the moment. For the most part, our childhoods were an endless series of positive feelings—joy, laughter, curiosity, surprise, confidence, and adventure. We had not learned yet to worry, to hold grudges, or to have regrets about the past.

Most young children, in fact, are generally unstressed, full of awe and curiosity, and rarely bored. Most have enormous amounts of energy, are unconditionally loving, and seem to have boundless energy that make adults envy their innocent approach to life. These uncontaminated children live from a state of mind that we practitioners of Psychology of Mind like to call mental health. They live naturally in the moment.

As adults we still have the capacity for mental health, but we have been socialized into the busy ways of Western culture, and many of us have grown serious, analytical, stressed, depressed, and unimaginative. Beginning when we reach age five or six, and steadily progressing into adulthood, our experience of mental health declines. This decline seems to correspond with our propensity to use memory and analytical thinking more often as we get older and our creative, in-the-moment thinking less often.

As you will see, it is not only unnecessary but actually unnatural for human beings to lose this experience of mental health. It is only through a lack of understanding about the nature of our psychological functioning that this deterioration occurs. Understanding how to maintain this natural mental well-being and our capacity to live in the moment is what practitioners of POM generally call wisdom or maturity.

MENTAL HEALTH, TOOLKIT OF THE MIND

Mental health is our birthright. We don’t have to learn how to be mentally healthy; it is built into us in the same way that our bodies know how to heal a cut or mend a broken bone. Mental health can’t be learned, only reawakened. It is like the immune system of the body, which under stress or through lack of nutrition or exercise can be weakened, but which never leaves us. When we don’t understand the value of mental health and we don’t know how to gain access to it, mental health will remain hidden from us. Our mental health doesn’t really go anywhere; like the sun behind a cloud, it can be temporarily hidden from view, but it is fully capable of being restored in an instant.

Mental health is the seed that contains self-esteem—confidence in ourselves and an ability to trust in our common sense. It allows us to have perspective on our lives—the ability to not take ourselves too seriously, to laugh at ourselves, to see the bigger picture, and to see that things will work out. It’s a form of innate or unlearned optimism. Mental health allows us to view others with compassion if they are having troubles, with kindness if they are in pain, and with unconditional love no matter what they believe, how they act, or what their nationality or religion happens to be. Mental health is the source of creativity for solving problems, resolving conflict, making our surroundings more beautiful, managing our home life, or coming up with a creative business idea or invention to make our lives easier. It gives us patience for ourselves and toward others as well as patience while driving, catching a fish, working on our car, or raising a child. It allows us to see the beauty that surrounds us each moment in nature, in culture, in the flow of our daily lives.

Although mental health is the panacea for living our lives, it is nothing short of ordinary. If you reflect on your life, you will see that it has been there to direct you through all your difficult decisions. It has been available even in the most mundane of life situations to show you right from wrong, good from bad, friend from foe. Mental health has commonly been called conscience, instinct, wisdom, common sense, or the inner voice. We think of it simply as a healthy and helpful flow of intelligent thought. As you will come to see, knowing that mental health is always available and knowing to trust it allow us to slow down to the moment and live life happily.

SIX REASONS WHY IT IS CRITICAL TO SLOW DOWN TO THE SPEED OF LIFE

• Reduction of stress
• Improved physical health
• More present, intimate, and loving relationships
• Heightened sensory awareness and enjoyment of the natural beauty around us
• Greater peace of mind and serenity
• Dramatically improved ability to be productive and creative and to stay focused

UNLEASHING INNATE HUMAN POTENTIAL

Mental health is an innate capacity that is complete in itself. It is the human potential for healthy psychological functioning—self-esteem, creativity, insight, wisdom, unconditional love, healthy relationships, motivation, humor, problem solving, optimism, and many more virtues. It lies dormant in each human being in its complete form, waiting to be unleashed.

You can think of innate mental health as a one-hundred-watt lightbulb, burning constantly and consistently. The light that we see in our lives is limited by the aperture of our thinking in the moment. We may live in total darkness most of the time and have only a momentary glimpse of this light. We call this flash of light an insight, a peak experience, or a moment of happiness. As we gain more understanding of how our mind and life work, this aperture stays open farther and farther, exposing more of the light of our innate mental health. Though our mental health will fluctuate with our moods and our thoughts, the source of the light we see remains constant. As we mature, we realize more of this innate mental health in our lives. The power of this innate mental health is the unlimited human potential to live a happy and productive life.

LIVING IN THE MOMENT, ENTRY POINT INTO HEALTHY FUNCTIONING

The entry point into healthy psychological functioning is living in the moment. But what does being in the moment really mean? We all have experienced living in the moment many times—during a crisis, being struck by the beauty of a sunset or some other natural phenomenon, falling in love, taking a shower, listening to music, hearing an inspiring speaker. During these moments, time seems to stand still and the buzz of our personal thinking briefly subsides. We see life firsthand, for we have slowed down to the speed of life. These rare moments have the ability to reduce our stress, give us hope, and fill us with joy and inspiration.

The key to making these apparently serendipitous moments the norm for our daily lives is to understand that our experience of life is directly linked to the way we are thinking. Your thought process can be either healthy or unhealthy, a topic we will discuss in great detail a little later. Knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy thinking is one of the most important insights you can gain about your mental health.

THOUGHT, THE CREATOR OF EXPERIENCE

Thought is the power that creates human experience—the ultimate force that creates, shapes, and transforms our lives. We create our experience of life through our thinking. We can’t have an experience without thought. It’s as though thought is the ink in the pen of life, and we are the illustrators. What we think becomes our emotions, perceptions, sensations, decisions, behavior. It also influences the reactions we get from others and our interpretations of those reactions. Without thinking, there would be no experience. The tree may fall in the woods, but someone alive and conscious needs to experience it. We are not saying that our thinking creates the outside world in any absolute sense—the tree still falls even if we don’t experience it—but our thinking does create our experience of the event.

It’s impossible to experience any negative feeling without first creating a negative corresponding thought. The truth is, our thinking will always create the reality we perceive. For example, when we see life as being full of demands and we feel overwhelmed, our thoughts coincide with this view of life. When we are impatient, we are thinking impatient thoughts: “When is he going to call me back for that order?” When we are stressed, we are thinking stressed thoughts: “I hate my supervisor. He demands a ridiculous amount out of me. Does he think I’m Superwoman?”

These thoughts, and so many others, have the capacity to rob us of our mental health in any given moment. And because we believe that outside circumstances create our feelings, most of us try to restore our mental health from the outside in by altering those circumstances—taking a tranquilizer to relax, throwing a temper tantrum, buying another time-saving device, or quitting our job. If we believe that our feelings are determined by outside forces, it follows that we will seek something equally external in response. As we gain an understanding of our psychological experience, however, we can recognize that the actual source of our experience is always our thinking. Thus we can begin to restore the power in our lives.

How and what we think are the only determinants of our experience. Regardless of what happens to us—what we are going through or what circumstances we face—it is our thought process that creates our experience of that event. For example, when you are in a traffic jam, you could be thinking, “I can’t believe this traffic! Why don’t they build more freeways? I should move out of this city to where life is sane. I would but I can’t. I’m trapped because of my mortgage and other obligations. I hate traffic!” Or you could have a totally different experience: “Boy, it’s nice to just sit back and enjoy a rare, unhurried moment. I’ve been so busy this week. I think I’ll just relax and enjoy some good music on the radio.” The traffic’s the same, the amount of time it takes you to get to work is exactly the same; only your experience of the event is different, and that experience is caused by your perception of it. In the second example, you’ve slowed down to the speed of life. It’s important to know that although circumstances and difficulties vary greatly in difficulty and severity, the mental dynamic we are discussing here is always the same. In other words, although each of us will face problems far more serious than a simple traffic jam, our thinking and perception will always determine our response.

We are not saying that thought stands between us and life. We are saying that thought is our life. Emotion is thought. Sensation is thought. Perception is thought. Even awareness is thought. Without thought there would be no experience. Have you ever been so engaged in a task that you didn’t realize you had not eaten? It’s only when someone says, “Haven’t you eaten yet?” that you become aware of the sensation of hunger. Or have you ever been so engrossed in a good movie or book that you completely forgot about a problem you were having? Our moment-to-moment experience is directly linked to our moment-to-moment thinking. Your problem may in fact need your attention, but you will not experience it without thinking about it.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness is the human faculty that makes thought appear real. It’s the special effects department of the brain, taking any thought that comes into our mind and making it our experience of reality, in that moment, through the senses.

Consider what happens when you turn on your television. What you see on the screen is determined by what signal you are receiving. The television itself has nothing whatsoever to do with the programming. However, without a television, a signal can’t be experienced.

Consciousness is like the television. It brings to the screen whatever signal the television is turned to—the murder story, the rerun, the game show, the soap opera. Whatever you are tuned in to does not originate in the television itself. The television merely transmits what’s on the screen.

Like the television, consciousness brings thought (the signal) to life. Whatever we are watching comes into view through the senses (the sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and textures). As we become engrossed in the TV show, it becomes our reality.

THOUGHT + CONSCIOUSNESS = EXPERIENCE

Consciousness doesn’t decide what thought to see as reality; it’s much more impersonal than that. Consciousness simply serves our thinking by making it appear real. Thought and consciousness are simultaneous. For example, if you realize in the middle of your bad traffic experience that the way you are thinking is creating your upset feelings, your mind will begin to clear and a new thought will automatically replace the old perception. You may take the opportunity just to relax and enjoy the music and the time-out. Thus you will have a totally different experience—a more enjoyable one—and the time will pass more quickly. You have changed your thinking through your realization, and your experience will change accordingly.

We can’t control our experience once we have created the thought. Consciousness is the passive servant of thought, automatically turning thoughts into experience. The only variable we have control over is our thinking. What is it that determines which channel we tune in to?

THOUGHT RECOGNITION

We all have the capacity to call a time-out and recognize our thinking—to see that thought is not an absolute reality but merely our experience of reality in the moment. This process of self-awareness, or thought recognition, is perhaps the most powerful tool we have to restore our mental health. When we begin to recognize that our thinking is creating our experience, we become less attached to thinking in a particular way. Then we can see that there are many channels to choose from, not just the one we are currently experiencing.

Whenever I can recognize a thought that is a negative habit—let’s say it’s a tendency to blame someone or get angry—I can notice myself in the act of creating a reality that is adversely affecting my state of mind. For example, I may get irritated with my co-worker for not doing what I think she should be doing. Then in the next moment I recognize that my irritation is a thought. At this moment of thought recognition, my thinking will automatically shift away from the irritation. What thought(s) occur to me next will be determined by my level of wisdom, my maturity, and my mood. We will explain this relationship in more detail later.

TWO MODES OF THOUGHT

1. The Processing/Analytical Mode

Although thought creates all experience, thought may proceed in two very different ways or modes. When you know which mode of thinking you are in, you are in a position to live in healthy psychological functioning. The first mode, the processing mode, resembles the way a computer processes information: storing existing data and dealing with situations that require solutions where all the variables are known.¹ We will refer to it by the terms processing mode, process thinking, analytical thinking, and computer thinking. The processing mode of thought performs the following functions:

• It stores information (memory).
• It analyzes this data (sorts it, compares it to existing information, and organizes it into beliefs, concepts, and ideas).
• It plans our lives (creates a simulation of the future based on past memories and our imagination).
• It computes and calculates existing data in our memory in order to organize our lives and respond to situations.
• It remembers information that we have previously learned.

This analytical mode of thinking is essential to living our lives effectively. It allows us to learn everything from language to mathematics. With its help ...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Resources
• About the Authors
• Books by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey
• Copyright
• About the Publisher