4 Ways to Slow Your Day Down

I have written an article HERE about busyness. Jessica Stillman also wrote a great article called the Cold Hard Truth: you’re overwhelmed because you want to be.

Being busy has become a sign of status – we are proud of it. We bitch about how busy we are to assert our importance.

The answer to feeling oppressively busy is to stop telling yourself that you’re oppressively busy, because the truth is that we are all much less busy than we think we are. And our consistent insistence that we are busy has created a host of personal and social ills: unnecessary stress, exhaustion, bad decision-making – all of which affect your IBS.

I won’t go on about it any longer because you all, if you put down your defensiveness just for a moment, will recognize you do this to yourself. You are a part of the latest cult of busyness.

So, the first step towards reforming your ways is to stop complaining about your busyness cold turkey.

Now let’s look at a few ways to make you feel less overwhelmed.

1)         Get up 15 minutes earlier

Get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning so that you can start your morning routine sooner.  In that way, you can do everything in a more relaxed manner. You can make sure you get your breakfast before you leave the house so that you are not eating on the way to work or at work once you get there. Eat it before you leave and everything will seem so much calmer at the beginning of your day. We already know that you have to eat within about half an hour of getting up so that gas doesn’t accumulate in the gut and cause you issues. Also, eating in a rush means you gulp down air and tense up your abdomen – both of which are going to give you a very bad start to your day.  So get up 15 minutes earlier and feel refreshed and calm before you step out into the world.

2)         Daily Downtime

Take some downtime every day – about half an hour. It can certainly be longer, but at least 30 minutes. This needs to be scheduled – put in your diary, on your phone or wherever you schedule your activities for the day. And schedule it for the whole week. Work out when the best time will be for that day and put it in so that you don’t book anything else for that time.

Make your downtime really pleasant. It could be reading a book; if you love exercising, it could be exercising; it could be meditating or picking up the phone and having a conversation with a friend you haven’t spoken to for a while – anything that is downtime from what you do for the major part of the day.

No one can tell me they can’t find half an hour in the day because we know from research that much of what happens in the day is just like white noise. It’s stuff that fills the day but hasn’t actually been productive or advanced your life or goals in any way. Even if you are a mother with three young children and working full time, you have your lunch break or you’ve probably got a partner, husband or wife who can look after the children for just half an hour while you do your own thing. Everyone has that half hour and no one can tell me they don’t.

So find the time each day and schedule it.

3)         Stop Thinking

Yes, stop thinking. I am referring to all that chaos that goes on inside your head all the time. The analysing, the rationalising, the obsessing, the going back over conversations, re-writing history, thinking about the future and what you are going to say and do, the household chores, the finances, the kids’ parents meeting – all going around and around inside your head, and you end up exhausted, just from thinking.

So, what you have to do to stop thinking is to take a couple of deep, rhythmic breaths, which slows down your heartbeat and clears away any adrenaline that has built up due to this obsessive thinking, then come back to your senses – away from your mind and back to your senses. Focus on your breath, on what you can hear, what you can see and what you are feeling. Go through the five senses and reconnect with this moment right now and what is happening. And that will slow your brain right down.

Do this several times a day. You’ll be amazed at what is going on inside your brain if you stop and think about it, and I assure you most of it is completely unnecessary and changes nothing, while draining you.

4)         Hands-Free Hour

Where does much of our busyness come from? From the gadgets we think we can’t live without. Have a hands-free hour every day. That hands-free hour means you can’t touch your phone, your iPad, your computer or any of that kind of technology for one hour per day.  For some of you, it is possible that you already do have an hour when you are not touching those things, but I imagine for the majority that is not so – that you don’t go for an hour when you never check your phone or your emails.

If you find that hard on the first day, schedule it in so that you have that time when you are simply not allowed to touch any of them. It will be tough at first but soon you will be looking for longer and longer periods when you are not tethered at everyone’s beck and call.

So yes, getting your life back on track so that you are not overwhelmed with busyness which affects your digestive system will take some effort but it is well worth it. The results will show in a calmer gut and mind. Give this some serious thought and choose one of these to start with and then build up to include the others.