slowing down

There's only one thing that really helps when we're in trouble. When trouble starts, we tend to speed up. Speeding up is not what helps. But because we're going quickly, the thing that helps is slowing down. Whenever we feel wrong, the best bet is slowing down.

It might feel terrible at first. We might experience pain when we try. But the pain we go through is what we need to experience. The pain is the reason we are going too fast in the first place. We did not want to feel it. So we accelerated inside and ran away for a while.

We might try all sorts of distractions when we get going too fast. We might cling to our gadgets or run all over town. The energy of not wanting to feel something painful is extremely powerful at times and it tends to possess us. We lose ourselves in it and get frantic.

Sometimes we wear ourselves out. That's one method of slowing down. It's the method of no other choice. We simply play out our frenzy and collapse into a slower state. In its extreme forms, this manner of slowing down is called personal crisis or exhaustion.

But other options exist. They depend on our willingness. They depend on an honest assessment of how quickly we're going as we speed up, and a choice to pull out of an impending tailspin before it crashes to the ground. We can make the right response into a practice.

The right response is slowing down. That's the only thing to do. Whenever we notice ourselves in a big hurry, whenever we start down the slippery slope into trouble, we can pause on the inside and let ourselves know better. Slow down right now!