Care more. And care less.
To celebrate the release of SLOW in Australia and New Zealand this month, we’re spending the next few Mondays diving in to four central ideas in the book. It’s a way to share some of my favourite parts of SLOW with you, but also a way to say thank you for all your support over the past few years. I know not everyone will be able to get their hands on a copy, and it won’t be out in other parts of the world until next year, so share the love, I say!
In today’s episode Ben and I talk about a notion I first came across while chatting with the delightful Erin Loechner. The importance of both caring more and caring less.
It can be really easy to become overwhelmed as we begin to walk the path of slowing down, with every blog, every podcast, every book telling us different things we need to focus on in order to do life 'right'. And the hard part is that none of them is wrong. The key is to figure out what matters to you, and what doesn’t, then spend time learning how to care more about the former and less about the latter.
Ben and I talk about our personal take on this duality of caring, and what I call my Barometer of Caring.
Being able to plot out the things I actively care about as opposed to those I don’t has been really helpful when working out how to spend my days. Before I knew what those things were I spent a huge amount of my time working on or worrying about things I really didn’t care about, and far less time on the things that really mattered to me. Using my eulogy and plotting those things out on a piece of paper means I’ve basically flipped the picture and now spend my time on things that are important (to me).
We also talk about how you can learn to care less about the things that don’t matter but that might take up an inordinate amount of time. You can do this by monitoring your inputs. That is, look at the utter BS stories we’re sold via media, social media, TV, shoulds and expectations of others, and ask yourself how you would feel if you cared a little less about those stories.
It’s not an easy task to do, and probably won’t happen quickly, but as always we like to end these Monday shows with something practical for you to take in to your week, and this week it’s this:
Nominate one of those things you want to care less about. It can be really small if you’d like - a TV show or a social media profile you follow but find yourself frustrated by - and actively let it go. Unfollow it, write the idea on a piece of paper and burn it, whatever you need to do to signal to yourself you no longer care so much. And then just see how you feel.
And a quick and massive thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of SLOW over the past few weeks - I can’t tell you just how much it means to me, and I’m stoked that the ideas of slowing down are starting to spread. Here’s to more slow!
Enjoy. xx
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