The Discipline of Slowing
This week we conclude our study of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Cutting the hustle out of our lives is a dubious task that requires intentionality, planning, and sacrifice. But hopefully, you’ve been convinced of the “why” for doing it, and have begun to make small steps in the slow direction. I want to conclude this series with some more practical steps to take in slowing down. Some spiritual leaders have labeled slowing as a spiritual discipline in addition to those we are more familiar with like reading our Bibles, praying, and giving. John Ortberg defined it as “cultivating patience by deliberately choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.” Waiting is hard, even painful at times. We get super impatient whether we’re waiting in line at the store, waiting in traffic, or waiting for a website to load. We are not good at waiting, but to intentionally put ourselves in a position to wait seems crazy! Why would we torture ourselves like that?
John Mark Comer points out that the basic idea is to slow down your body and therefore slow down your life. He explains that we are whole persons. We can’t just go at the problem of hurry by addressing our minds. We have to throw our bodies into the practice as well. If we’re able to slow our minds and bodies, then we’ll have a much better chance at slowing our souls “to a pace at which they can ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’” He goes on to give twenty ideas for slowing down our overall pace of life. I’ve shared them with you here, along with some personal thoughts and applications from my life. Check out his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, for more details.
Drive the speed limit. We all drive over the speed limit but try driving right at the speed limit as a way of slowing your pace. Driving is a great time to regroup.
Get into the slow lane. Instead of pretending you’re driving at Daytona, be ok staying in one lane….the right lane, even if there’s a really slow car there. These first two will require you to leave in enough time to get where you’re going, legally.
Come to a full stop at stop signs. You may think you already do this, but next time, actually stop and then count to two. Why are we in such a hurry to roll through? Does that much depend on us?
Don’t text and drive. I promise these are not just copied from the driver’s test handbook. This is a big problem! We can’t leave our hands off our phones from one red light to the next, much less at the red light. Enjoy your drive without the need to pick up your phone. It’s very dangerous, and it’s annoying when the light turns green and you’re still scrolling.
Show up ten minutes early for an appointment, sans phone. Take a few minutes to refocus, relax, or pray.
Get in the longest checkout line at the grocery store. This is almost irrelevant since everyone uses self-checkout or orders groceries online. But the idea is to force yourself to slow down, reflect, and even prepare your heart for an interaction with the cashier. Comer also points out that it’s good to deny ourselves what we want sometimes, even if it’s as simple as denying ourselves the quickest checkout experience. It teaches us we don’t have to get what we want to be happy.
Turn your smartphone into a dumbphone. This takes some work, but it’s well worth it. There is plenty of information on this if you search it, but here’s a few ideas:
Take all social media off of your phone. Use a desktop to check or update once a day or once a week.
Delete all notifications, including those for texts or emails. You can still check them, your phone just won’t ding or buzz when you get them.
Remove news apps.
Delete apps you don’t need or use. Simplify!
Set your phone to grayscale mode. It helps reduce the dopamine addiction.
Get a flip phone. Or ditch your cell phone all together. There are several good options for phones that are just…..phones.
Parent your phone; put it to bed before you and make it sleep in. Use the Do Not Disturb settings or Airplane mode to put your phone to bed at a certain time every night, and then don’t pick it up first thing in the morning. Personally, my phone is set to Do Not Disturb from 9:00 pm to 7:00 am. I only get a notification if my immediate family is trying to reach me.
Keep your phone off until after your morning quiet time. 90% of people check their phone as soon as they wake up! That is sure to set your day off on the wrong foot. Let prayer and Scripture set the tone for your day, not the “breaking news,” your email, or your social media feed.
Set times for email. Instead of letting email roll in constantly and feeling the pressure to read and respond, set certain times of the day to check your email. I realize some jobs don’t allow this. However, even those that rely heavily on email aren’t as demanding as we’ve allowed them to be. Recently, business gurus and proponents of “deep work” have pushed this idea as well. There are many benefits.
Set a time and a time limit for social media (or just get off of it). Social media is worse than email because it allows mindless scrolling that sucks you in and devours your time and mental capacity. Set certain times in the day or a certain time in the week to catch up on social media, but also give yourself a set amount of time to be on. John Mark’s best suggestion, however, is just to get off of it. I agree! For several years now I have had no social media on my phone, I don’t use any social media, except for Facebook on my laptop occasionally for work-related communication. It’s been a game-changer for me for several reasons.
Kill your TV. Not only does TV consume a ton of our time, but the content is also rarely, if ever, acceptable according to our Christian beliefs and standards. Not to sound too pharisaical, but is Jesus honored by our favorite shows or movies? We watch TV in our house, but we do try and limit TV time and closely monitor the things that are watched (there’s always room for improvement). At least twice a year, we do a TV-free month which is always fruitful as a mental, behavioral, and spiritual reset. TV feeds our appetites for worldly things. We need to keep our guard up.
Single-task. I think I’m a pretty good multi-tasker, but smarter people say multi-tasking isn’t actually possible. And when we attempt it, it hinders our productivity and outcome rather than helping it. Walter Brueggman said, “Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.”
Walk slower. This one makes me laugh a little because I’m a fast walker. I get it from my momma. I have to work hard not to walk ten paces in front of people I’m with. But again, slowing our bodies helps to slow our overall pace of life.
Take a regular day alone for silence and solitude. Refer to our recent sermon and article for more on this practice, but taking the time to quiet our minds and emotions is essential in drawing near to Jesus.
Take up journaling. Journaling goes well with silence and solitude. The point is not to just write stuff down but to take the time to be reflective and articulate ideas, feelings, or prayers. Putting these things into words can be a slow but transformational process.
Experiment with mindfulness and meditation. This is popular in the secular world. For Christians, this is the mental work done in silence and solitude, with prayer as the bookends. You can focus on breathing, focus on Scripture, and allow the Holy Spirit room to work. Tim Keller said, “Persons who meditate become people of substance who have thought things out and have deep convictions, who can explain difficult concepts in simple language, and who have good reasons behind everything they do.”
If you can, take long vacations. A three-day cruise is nice. A weekend trip to the mountains is good. But when is the last time you took at least 2 consecutive weeks to unplug and remove yourself from all work? Comer states that one study found that happiness levels peak on day eight of vacation and then hit a plateau. For most of us, it takes a couple of days to unwind and then we start winding back up a couple of days before returning to work. So, if we’re truly going to rest, we need longer than 3 or 4 days. Not everyone can do this, but if you have the luxury of extended vacation time, consider how you should use those days to maximize their potential.
Cook your own food. And eat in. When I was growing up my mom cooked every night, and we ate as a family around our dining room table. Eating out was a luxury and, honestly, there weren’t that many restaurant options. Today, people eat out as much, if not more, than they cook and eat at home. It’s largely because of our busy schedules! There’s no time to plan and prepare the meal, or energy at the end of the day to put towards cooking and cleaning up. The Bible teaches and models the importance of meals. Jesus used meals strategically to emphasize his teaching and lifestyle. Meals are prime opportunities to connect with people, namely our family, and to reflect on the day, God, and His Word. This has been one of the most protected patterns of our family over the past 16 years, and I’m thankful for the conversations and connections that have developed over our dinner table at home.
Hopefully, this gives you some practical ways to begin slowing down. The purpose is not to have more rules to follow but to intentionally position our lives to be more devoted followers of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t in a hurry…ever. Why should we be?
