As a child of the 1980s, I grew up in a world where if it wasn’t raining, you were outside, and you didn’t come home until the street lights came on. I spent my days looking for evidence of fairies in the woods, making friends with the bugs, and building forts in the bushes and trees. My favorite place was the library, and there was never enough time to read all the books that I wanted to read. As an adult, I work on the computer an average of 10 to 12 hours a day. My time off is spent reading or playing games on my phone or computer, and I have to remind myself to slow down and unplug. I need to make it a point to stop the world and grab those moments where I can sit outside for a bit, or even stop and stare out the window, watching the birds or the rain falling on the tiny pond that is outside my window. I look for those moments every day that I can stop the world, breathe, and look at everything happening around me, and they make all the difference. They help me to keep control in a fast-paced world that I honestly don’t think anyone was built for.
We all live in times that are incredibly loud, fast-paced, and stressful. I don’t want to blame technology because I feel like it has its place, for sure, but the amount and types of exposure it provides take a toll on all of us. There’s a strong part of me that misses the days that I didn’t pay attention to anything in the news, really, because the only way I was going to get that was at night on TV or maybe in the paper on the weekends. Now it seems like it’s honestly unavoidable. It’s one of the things I actively try to control.. not because I don’t want to know things that are happening but I find that too much of it gets my stress level too high.
I don’t want to make it sound like technology is to blame for my inability to slow down. In fact it can be and is an amazing tool to help me with that. I have an app on my phone that I use for meditation that I love. I have a simple game that I find helps me to drop my stress level incredibly quickly when I’m not in a situation where I can get out for a walk. It brings me music that helps to relax me and can help me to feel like I’m slowing down. Sometimes it’s not so much as everything that is going on as it is making that conscious decision to slow down the pace of things and to actively look for places to slow things down.
Look for simple things that you can do to change things. Set your alarm an extra 15 minutes early each day so that before you set off running for the day you can just step outside, say hello to the world and breathe. Try to do what you can with your schedule to loosen things up so that you can enjoy the time that you have in between activies and maybe enjoy the journey to each activity you do in a day rather than having to run. Once you bring awareness to this, you can get creative finding little things that you can do to help. Remember that little things can add up to big results. Have fun with it and know that anything that you do will help your overall health and well-being.
Have an amazingly magickal day!
Much Love and Many Blessings,
Jasmeine Moonsong