Why Slowing Down will Improve your Daily Life!

Slowing down, taking breaks, taking the time to daydream, in short adopting the “turtle attitude” quickly makes us more efficient, more lively and more alerted. Quick, let’s get started!

They are called snails, buggers, they are accused of having “Two-tension” or lack of responsiveness. In an ever more connected world, where it is good to twitter faster than its shadow and “hit” immediately, slow people are not always popular.

Of course, if you spend your time making others wait, no doubt they will resent you for making them lose theirs. But if your train as a senator only impacts you, don’t panic! According to researchers, living at your own pace, however quiet it may be, is also a great asset. The proof with these recent studies which rehabilitate the “turtle attitude”.

Lizards fuel our neurons!

Don’t you like watching your partner crows yawning as you bustle around next to him? Let it daydream, maybe it will be much more effective later! Indeed, a study conducted in 2009 shows that, contrary to popular belief, daydreaming significantly stimulates brain activity, thus helping to solve complex problems.

The team led by Kalina Christoff, director of the neurological sciences laboratory at British Columbia University, Vancouver (Canada), examined the brains of several subjects using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), divided into two groups: some performed different chores, while others daydreamed.

In dreamers, the middle prefrontal cortex – the seat of language, memory, and reasoning – was intensely activated. “When it is not stimulated by external demands, the human brain often works with great rigor,” explains Kalina Christoff. Let your mind wander from time to time! Being in the moon – an activity that would occupy a third of our time – is much more fruitful than it seems.

Hanging out gives us a head start!

Many famous people were not the kind of rush. Leonardo da Vinci began painting The Mona Lisa in 1503, before returning to it in 1519, shortly before his death. And how did Isaac Newton discover the law of gravity? Taking a nap under an apple tree. Sometimes taking your time is good.

According to psychology professor Adam Grant, putting things off until later even promotes creativity. In his book Dare to get out of line! How original minds change the world (ed. De Boeck), he cites an experiment conducted with students to whom he had given the mission to find ideas to replace a mini-market which had closed.

Those who responded immediately came up with fairly conventional ideas, while those who started playing video games before tackling them came up with proposals that were considered 28% more creative.

Stop feeling guilty if you’re the procrastinator type. Change your mind, indulge yourself. You may take a little longer than the others to tick off the various points on your “to do list”, but during this time your brain is working without you realizing it and will perhaps give you back more. inventive when it comes to taking action.

Strolling in thought maintains our youth capital!

It’s not always easy to take a moment to yourself in the middle of the day, to stop the mad rush of time for a few minutes, just to sit down, breathe, close your eyes. Yet meditating is not a lazy bohemian whim.

According to a study by Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), published in December 2017 in the journal Scientific Reports, the practice of meditation throughout life would even delay the effects of age on the brain.

The researchers, based in Caen and Lyon, thus gave brain imaging examinations to 73 people aged 65 on average, including 6 meditation experts (15,000 to 30,000 hours of meditation to their credit) and 67 witnesses who did not practice.

Result: the frontal cortex (related to the control of emotions), the cingulate cortex (decision making, empathy) as well as the insula (emotions) of meditation experts are larger than those of witnesses of the same age.

However, the correlations between the volume of these areas and cognitive performance are proven, especially for attention and memory capacities. Give yourself a few minutes of meditation each day and you will build up a “cognitive reserve” that may well delay the effects of age on your brain.

Getting intoxicated with actions harms the gray matter of our brain!

Watching TV while cooking dinner and replying to a text message: a terrible idea! Under the pretext of increasing your efficiency, you are actually decreasing your brainpower.

According to a 2013 study by the Sackler Center for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex (UK), “multitasking” behavior comes with risks. The participants, 75 healthy men and women, were first asked how often they used multiple media at the same time (television, phone, computer, etc.) before having an MRI.

Result: gray matter is less present in the daily “Shiva”. However, reduced production of gray matter in part of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex) could impair memory, but also promote stress and anxiety, and even depression.

Other researchers, those at the University of London, conducted a survey in 2010 among 1,100 British employees subjected to “electronic multitasking” and concluded that their intelligence quotient decreased even more significantly than that of smokers. cannabis or sleepless nights. Stop zapping and try to rediscover the pleasure of only doing one thing at a time! Your health, morale, and even your IQ should take a hit.

Eating in slow motion preserves health!

Gone are the days for a quick lunch break before the next meeting. So much the better because, on the plate too, slowness is good. The University of Hiroshima, Japan, conducted a study, published in the scientific journal EurekAlert, which looked at 1,000 people with an average age of 51 and divided into three groups: fast eaters, slow eaters, and normal speed eaters.

Five years after the study began, in 2013, the participants with the fastest feeding speed gained weight and developed high blood pressure and high blood sugar. There is no point in running… especially if nothing forces us to do so.

Reference: https://www.positivityblog.com/slow-down/

Photo de Frans Van Heerden provenant de Pexels