Discover 12 surprising benefits of a slow living lifestyle.

After a few decades of prioritizing corporate life, I started to have issues with my overall wellness.

I was overweight, my blood pressure and labs were not good, and I didn’t just have stress; I experienced anxiety, complete with panic attacks, several of which landed me in the hospital for observation.

Fortunately, most of my issues were addressed with significant lifestyle changes: eating nutritiously, exercising, and learning to slow down and focus on the essential things.

I learned to incorporate slow living practices, which helped me identify and prioritize what mattered most in my life (and mostly ignored the rest).

By slowing down, I could eliminate all anxiety and panic attacks and handle stress effectively; this all started several years ago, and slow living is still a cornerstone in my lifestyle to maintain my health.

So, in this article, I wanted to share my thoughts on the benefits of slow living in my life over the years because it may help you, too.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but with a little effort and time (patience), you’ll start noticing the benefits of living a slower life.

I live the life I want

One of the main benefits of slow living is crafting and curating your lifestyle; this involves identifying what you genuinely need and what you truly want to have in your life.

It helps to write out a list of what you want to do during the day: work, play, family, friends, food, sleep, and everything. Be honest and itemize what you need to live and what things you don’t want to live without. No fluff allowed. If you are unsure, it does not make a list.

The more honest and diligent you are in creating and monitoring your lifestyle list, the more slow living will work for you.

I focus on things that matter

When you practice slow living, you only spend time on the meaningful and essential things that made your lifestyle list. When you do not allow distractions in life to enter your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much free time opens up.

Here are some examples of things that I ignore daily:

• I ignore the news.

• I ignore who’s dating in Hollywood.

• I ignore what other people do.

• I ignore what other people think.

• I ignore what other people have.

• I ignore 90% of my emails.

You also don’t have to worry about feeling busy all the time, something I call the busyness myth, which says that if we are busy, we think we have self-worth. People believe in this myth so much they often boast about how busy they are and wear it as some weird badge of honor.

When we focus on what matters, we can skip being busy and focus on productivity. You can have a ton of tasks on your to-do list and finish them, but you still may need to be more productive.

Said another way, you do not need to be busy to be productive. Granted, we can’t always keep distracting things we don’t want out of our lives, but slow living can teach us how to limit them.

I am creative and focused

Slow living can open up more time in your day, which can be used in many ways. Among them is focusing more meaningfully when working on a task. You are not being rushed to finish one job, only to start another that must be done quickly.

You know, the hampster wheel effect.

Spending more time on a task can allow you to do a better job. More time will allow you to use your creative powers to expand on the task or go off in a new direction. I have been practicing slow living for several years now; I will tell you slow living is not about avoiding work or hiding from life. It is about identifying and doing your best to accomplish what needs to be done (not trying to finish everything).

Slow living allows me to focus and create much better work than when rushed. You will find the same if you give it a try.

I reduced stress and anxiety

Everyone experiences some level of stress and anxiety in their lives. Still, when our lifestyle limits our abilities to deal with them, more serious problems may arise, such as the case with my life. I spent decades living a lifestyle that led to severe stress and anxiety issues.

Once I learned some essential slow living practices, I noticed my stress and anxiety began to fade away. It stands to reason, too. Slow living is about avoiding all the nonsense you don’t need or want while focusing on what you do need and genuinely desire.

Getting rid of the noise in your life frees up time to do things at a much slower and more meaningful pace than you may be used to. For me, having more free time allows me to work on my physical and mental well-being, which dramatically helps reduce my stress and anxiety.

It takes some time and practice, but slow living helped reduce my stress and anxiety levels. It may help yours, too.

I started to enjoy my job again

When I started implementing slow living, I had difficulty applying it to my work environment, but trust me, it is possible. I knew I wanted to eventually work for myself as a content creator in the long term because that was what I put on my lifestyle list (we discussed earlier).

But that was something to work towards over time, and I needed to work on slow living at my current job. For context, I was VP of Marketing for a sporting goods company at the time, where I managed departments and people. I usually had many meetings in addition to my own work.

In that respect, I had a relatively typical corporate workplace to navigate while trying to implement slow living practices.

Here are several examples of how I applied slow living to my work:

• I reduced the amount of time I spent socializing.

• I stopped micromanaging people.

• I focused more on each task I was doing.

• I took mental breaks in between large tasks.

• I also started to enjoy my job and could spend less time at work but actually get more done.

As time passed, I was able to start working for myself and travel as a digital nomad. Again, creating the lifestyle you want takes time but is worth it.

I practiced mindfulness

As it relates to slow living, mindfulness is about learning to be aware of how you are feeling and being able to calm and center yourself when you feel out of sorts. I’ll give you a few examples.

Learn ways to calm and center yourself. I practice sitting quietly with my eyes closed and breathing in and out, listening to my body breathe. I try to keep my mind still. Over time, I learned how to quickly calm my body and mind with this technique, which also helps me get to sleep.

Learn to be mindful of your emotions. As much as I try to practice slow living, sometimes life just gets the best of me, and I can’t help getting annoyed at something. I travel full-time as a digital nomad, and recently, there was a long line at the passport check. It had already been a long day, and I was clenching my jaw and stressed thinking about the next hour of standing in a line. So, while standing, I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, as mentioned above; this centered me emotionally, and I felt better in minutes.

So, being mindful, at least for me, is twofold. First, you need to practice and learn tools to center yourself. Second, you must be aware of your emotions during the day and practice applying these tools to keep your stress down and enjoyment up.

Once you do it a few times and see how well it works, you’ll learn to get better and better at it.

I learned to be grateful

Slow living has many moving parts; among them is being grateful to live the life you want. It takes work to create your lifestyle, and being grateful is one of the true blessings and rewards.

Emotions were always challenging for me to share. All that changed since I started practicing slow living because I made time to work on living a life I enjoy. Then, I learned how to be more grateful.

The cornerstone of becoming grateful is getting in touch with yourself emotionally. We cannot be thankful without recognizing positive emotions, feelings, and relevant experiences that occur in our lives.

How do I work on being grateful? I spend a minute or two throughout the day thinking of things I am thankful for. For example, I am grateful for a place to stay and food. I am thankful I have family and friends. I was grateful for my view from the top of the hill I climbed today. Sometimes, I’ll write on the back of a grocery receipt, “I am grateful for these groceries,” because writing it down makes it real. I know it may seem silly, but try it; you’d be surprised.

You can’t be thankful until you consciously acknowledge it. Make it tangible by saying it out loud or writing it down somewhere.

I found contentment

Contentment is about loving yourself and allowing yourself to be proud of where you are in life (without being pretentious). It’s about not worrying about what others are doing or their status in life.

Through slow living, I learned to focus on who I am and what I want and how to design a unique lifestyle for me that lends itself to a healthy, well-balanced life. When we can live our lives based on our values and beliefs, we can find ways to become content with our lives. When we are satisfied with our life, we are truly blessed.

Contentment can also include living beneath your means, consuming less, and experiencing more. It is about realizing you can’t control the future, so you decide to plan for it but not fear or worry too much.

You can work on being content by noticing when you feel grumpy, unsatisfied, or displeased with something or someone. These are trigger emotions; when you become mindful and aware of when they occur, you can pause and determine what caused them.

Working on genuinely feeling content is a tricky thing. I have improved over the years, and I will tell you it is worth the work: practice, practice, practice.

I resolve negative feelings

Negative feelings are unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean we should accept them or let them manifest into more damaging emotions over time. When something negative happens, we need to find a way to take it, process it, and then release it from our lives. The last thing we want to do is react to it in a way that only exacerbates the problem.

Slow living is about eliminating what you don’t want in your life. Still, things will happen anyway, and we need to learn to deal with these inevitable negative feelings. For example, I allow myself to admit when my feelings are hurt instead of lying to myself by saying I don’t care. I do care. If someone sends me a mean message online, it hurts my feelings and makes me sad. But here’s the thing. It is fleeting. I acknowledge it hurts. Allow a minute to go by, and then ensure I am mindful that it is over. If it still bothers me, I may do a breathing exercise to center myself again.

Don’t try to hide negative feelings because they will build up and manifest into natural stress and anxiety over time. Acknowledge these negative emotions and deal with them as they happen. Then move on.

You will be amazed at how light you feel when you learn to do this.

I make wellness a daily priority

Nothing is more important to me today than maintaining my physical and mental health; in other words, my overall wellness. Before I started practicing slow living, I never consciously decided to prioritize my wellness.

As I mentioned earlier, I used to be too busy focusing on work and making money to notice my poor health started to interfere with my lifestyle. My poor health did not happen overnight but through years of neglect. It began by ignoring what my mind and body were telling me it needed. Then I ignored the signs for a week, a month, and before I realized it, years, even decades, passed.

Before practicing slow living, I never considered my mental and physical wellness when making life decisions; I was on autopilot. Slow living enhances our lives, including making health a priority.

Here are some examples of wellness topics that made my lifestyle list:

• I will make time each day to be silent.

• I will make time for breathing exercises daily.

• I will eat nutritiously and exercise every day.

• I will not overwork myself.

• I will be okay with not finishing everything today.

• I will rest when I notice I need to.

• I will sleep 9 hours each night.

That is what makes slow living an excellent promoter of wellness. Think through your mental and physical needs to be healthy and happy, and then work to fold those needs into your lifestyle.

I spend less and save more

For many, slowing down and enjoying life means decluttering and buying less. I promise you the less you own, the less stress you will have. And, look, there is nothing wrong with buying something we need or genuinely want or splurging on something once in a while.

We really want to focus on reducing as much clutter as possible and reducing our overall spending. Everyone is different, but the less I own, the less stress I have; the more savings I have, the more secure I feel.

When you downsize your living space and regift furniture, clothing, and stuff you do not need, you are left with only things you want and need. Only having what you need and desire, whether emotionally or with possessions, is a critical theme repeated in slow living.

A smaller living space usually costs less and is cheaper to furnish and keep up. Find a place without a yard, and save time and money on upkeep. Learn to buy matching clothing instead of single outfits and save money while freeing up closet space.

These simple things add up to a lifestyle that encourages you to save more by spending less without sacrificing anything you really need or want.

I have more patience

Sometimes, it is just hard to have patience. And the world can seem filled with impatient people seeking instant gratification who get flustered and irritated at the first sign of something not going their way.

But, the good news is patience is something we can develop with a bit of slow living practice and, well, patience. It makes sense why people seem to be more impatient in recent years. Fast food is taking the place of home-cooked meals. Many items you buy online at Amazon can even be delivered on the same day. Amazing. Even our favorite movies and music are just a click away from instantly playing.

However, by practicing slow living, we make conscious efforts to do things at a natural pace. We do things manually to find meaning in action and feel content by accomplishing something.

With slow living, when we feel rushed, we slow down. When we notice stress and impatience brewing, we are mindful of that and use our knowledge to replace those negative feelings with patience.

Patience is a choice we make. It is entirely up to us to be patient or impatient, but slow living helps us embrace patience.

A final word

Well, these are the benefits I’ve noticed since I started practicing slow living many years ago. Your mileage may vary, but the lifestyle helped me enjoy a healthier and more meaningful life. It may be something you can benefit from, too.