How to Enjoy Life: The Art of Slowing Down

What if I told you that the reason why life feels like it's speeding by is because your brain has stopped storing your boring memories. From kindergarten on, we're programmed to chase the next level, but nobody ever taught us how to actually live. So, if you feel like your life is just slipping through your fingers as you get older, then today we're going to show you how to actually slow it all down and start experiencing life fully. Because, let's be honest, most of us live life like it's one long conveyor belt and it just keeps moving, and we don't really question what's going on. We just grab the next item before it passes, and then we're like, I don't even like this item anymore. I want this next item. And you have to realize, from the moment that you step into kindergarten, all of this programming, like I said, began. They tell you that you have to be a good little boy or be a good little girl so that you can get into first grade, and then do well in first grade so you can get into second grade, and then third and fourth and fifth, and then you have to do really well so you can get into middle school. And then middle school, you better do really well so you can get into high school and get better classes in high school. And in high school, it's all about ninth grade, tenth grade, twelfth grade, and the whole thing is you're building up towards this thing. College is coming, and college matters because you want to get a good job, and since you work really hard in college, and then you end up getting your degree, and then you get a job, and then you're chasing the next promotion, and then the next promotion, and on and on and on and on. Do you see the pattern here? At no point throughout this entire process were you told, hey, just pause right here. Hey, just breathe here. Live here. Enjoy this moment. Instead, it's next, and next, and next, and next, and next, and we're programmed to basically always want the next thing, and then people wonder why they're so anxious. And then one day, we wake up on top of the corporate ladder, or some ladder in life, and you realize that you're standing in a place that you never truly wanted to get to in the first place. That's why midlife crises exist because people wake up and they think, what the f**k have I done with my life? I don't even want to be here. And then you don't know how you got there. You were too busy running from from one thing to another thing to even notice. Listen, all of us have done this. I have done this. I feel lucky to have gone through a midlife crisis at 24 and another midlife crisis at 29. And so what I want to do is I want you to take a step back, and I want you to look at your entire life and ask yourself, what's the point of all of this? It's like we've been brainwashed to go, go, go, go, and to never stop, and to get to the next thing. And then when you get the next thing, you have to go to the next thing. But we never really have any idea where we're actually going, or why the hell we're actually doing it in the first place. Is that the reason why you're alive here? Is it just to chase the next thing, and once you get the next thing, you don't even notice it? You just go to the next thing? Is that the reason why we're both alive here? To just get to the next thing and never even appreciate it? To not appreciate that thing and just go into the next thing? I know somebody who just accomplished a massive life goal. Something big a few weeks ago. Something that took him 10 years to build. And when he hit this massive milestone, I asked him, I was like, so how does it feel? And it was like he didn't, it was like it didn't even register on his face how much he cared. It was like he didn't care at all. And he was like, well, it's just, it's pretty exciting. This just shows me what's possible, and I can't wait to see what's next. I was like, what? Like you can retire right now. And to be honest, it made me kind of sad. Because I've done this. I've done that exact thing. Like I feel like I missed years of my life chasing this unknown finish line. And I want to make sure you and I never do that again. And we will be right back. Hey, I want to interrupt today's episode to tell you about my sponsor. It is me, myself. If you didn't know, I obviously have some coaching programs outside of the podcast to help you learn and grow and become a better version of yourself. Step-by-step programs and processes to help you become better in your life and create the life that you want. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. Check it out. And let's get back to the episode. And so let's dive in and talk about it, right? One thing that I realized when I was younger, probably 27, 28 years old, I realized that we've been raised like sheep. Like we've been domesticated. To just basically follow the leader, to do what we're told, to sit in a chair. If you need to go to the bathroom, you need to raise your hand and ask for permission. You've only got five minutes to go to the bathroom. You need to sit in your chair. You need to face the front. You can only get out of your chair whenever the bell rings. And so we were kind of trained this way, like to chase grades and to chase jobs and to chase money and to chase promotion. And we call it quote-unquote success. But I don't actually think that's success. Like when you take yourself out of this game of success, you look at that and you're like, that doesn't look like success at all. But what if success for us is actually learning to take ourselves out of this race and say, you know what, I don't like this game. I refuse to play this game at full speed anymore. I want to slow down and experience my life. Because slowing down and experiencing your life, which is what we're going to dive into and I'm going to teach you how to, is the only real way to experience a real meaningful life. And it's scary because slowing down means you might fall behind this race that you never wanted to run in the first place. It feels scary because you might disappoint some people who benefit from your busyness. You might face the terrifying silence of your own thoughts. But slowing down is the only way to actually live and the only way to actually experience life versus just exist. Otherwise you're just a hamster in a wheel that doesn't know how to get off. Have you ever noticed that as you get older it feels like time actually starts to move faster? There's actually a neurological reason for this. And I was doing research on it because I got back from a trip to Italy with my wife. We were there for about three weeks and while we were on the trip we were so blown away at how long the trip felt like it was. We kept saying, oh my god, can you believe we've only been here for a week? And then we'd say, it feels like it's so much longer. And then we'd be like, can you believe that we did that? It was only 10 days ago. It feels like it was so much longer. And then when I'm at home and I'm in my routine, it's like three weeks will just pass so fast. And so I did some research because I was like, are we crazy or is there something behind this? And it turns out all of this is neurological. So the hippocampus, which is your brain's memory center, thrives on novelty. And so when you encounter something new, your brain lights up. It starts encoding all of the details of this thing. It starts storing new snapshots and creating these rich memory files. But when you're in routine and you're just doing the same thing and chasing the next thing and chasing the next thing, your brain says, oh yeah, I've already seen this before. And it just is like, we don't need to record any of this. And then your life basically becomes like a highlight reel of everything's the same. That's why when you look back on years and years of routine, they like collapse into a blink. And so in neuroscience, what they call this is they call it temporal compression. It's when experiencers are so repetitive that your brain compresses them into less perceived time. And so when you look at your life, the translation is that if you rush through life and you go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, you literally experience less of your life. I don't know about you, but that terrifies the hell out of me. And so this isn't, this slowing down thing I'm going to be talking about isn't just about like meditating on a cushion. Slowing down is an entire rewiring of your life and your nervous system. It's about training your nervous system and your attention and your values to stop chasing these phantom goals that you're not even going for. And so let me give you a few ways that you can actually do this, okay? The first thing is called sensory presence. So when you're doing something, you want to bring as many of your senses online as possible. So I've been doing a lot of research on this because I want to, I keep seeing videos of people talking about how much they miss their children when they leave the house or when they're teenagers, how much they miss holding on to them. And so for me, like when I'm with my son, I'm trying to like see him as much as I possibly can. I'm trying to hear him as much as I possibly can. And so when you're with your children, for instance, you're trying to be in the moment and be present. You bring all of your senses and you notice the curve of their cheek. You notice the exact sound of their giggle. You try to bring all five of those senses into this moment and try to burn this thing into your brain. Another way of doing it is to do something that's called micro pauses. And so like, I don't know about you, but there's some days, yesterday was one of them for me. I had a Tokyo drift from like one meeting to another meeting to another meeting. I was on from like nine o'clock until six o'clock. I was straight on calls. So micro pauses basically means before your next meeting, before whatever your next thing is you need to do, close your laptop, take a deep breath, like notice the smell that you smell, look out the window, try to really notice the trees, notice all the curves of them or notice the curves of the mountains that are out there. And then you notice them and you just try to bring in the presence like notice how slow nature moves. Like the trees when you look at them outside, they're not moving very fast. Well you're a part of nature that moves very slow. You're not separate of it. And so let the world remind you that it's still here with these little micro pauses where you can kind of take a second to be here, to be in this moment before you go into your next meeting. The next thing of another way to really slow down is to try to disrupt your routines. Because I talked about how your your hippocampus stores everything, I don't know about you and I told you it terrifies me. I don't know about you but I don't want to not experience my life. I don't want to not, I don't want to be stuck in so many routines that I don't do anything different. And so try to start adding some novelty to your days. If you drive to work the exact same way that you've driven for the past seven years, that you just do it on autopilot and your brain is off, try taking a new route home. Try a new restaurant. Try a new recipe instead of the same old recipes you always do. Call someone that you haven't spoken to in years. And you have to remember this, novelty expands time in your brain and makes you enjoy your life more. Another way to kind of help with this is to slow, have these slow rituals that you bring into your life. So like if you're making coffee, try doing it without multitasking. You don't need to be on the phone at the same time or watching YouTube videos at the same time. Try to do one thing at a time and to have your rituals be slowed down. So make your coffee and then just notice the smell of the coffee. Make sure that when you take a sip of coffee you're not just pounding it before you get out of the door, but you're tasting every single sip. If you decide to have dinner with your family, do something different. Bring in a different thing that will have a slow ritual which is like you can put a candle on the table at dinner and you can notice something being a little bit different. If you are going for a walk, this might scare some of you guys, go for a walk without headphones. Some people are listening to me on your headphones right now on your walk, right? So go for a walk without headphones. These aren't just like small acts. What they are is they're interruptions in a culture that's addicted to speed and going to the next thing. So you can experience this human experience that you're in. You can actually be there. It's a corny cliche phrase to stop and smell the roses, but really that's what it's about. I remember a couple years ago we were in Santa Barbara and I was walking our dog and they had these big huge beautiful roses and I walked by them and I was like, whoa, I've never seen roses this big. I wonder what they smell like and I smelled them and I was like, holy ----, I've never smelled a rose like this before and we stay in the same place. So I went by them five days in a row and every day I stopped and I was like, oh, this is what they mean to stop and smell the roses. Like I'm literally, of course, stopping and smelling the roses, but how often should I start doing this in my life now to actually notice what's all around me and try to take in as much as I can? And the reason why is because we're here to experience life. We're all moving towards one thing. We might not know what we're moving towards with our goals, but we're moving towards one thing, everybody, and we're moving towards death. And that's the thing that people don't want to talk about. You're going to die. You are. I am. And when you do, none of your resumes, none of your promotions, none of your followers in your Instagram, none of the money in your bank account, any of those things will actually matter. The only thing that really matters is did you live fully or did you just race past your entire life? Hospice nurses have documented this again and again that the number one regret of the people who are dying is not I wish I made more money or I wish I would have worked harder. It's I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expected of me. And when we're on this hamster wheel of life, that is the life that other people expect of you. So slowing down is how you live a life that is true to yourself and you get yourself off of the hamster wheel and you actually experience this one life that you have. And so here's what I want to ask of you today. Think about this. Ask yourself the question and really think about these. If I slowed down, what would I notice that maybe I've been missing? If I died next year, what moments would I regret not savoring? If my children already lived out of the house, what would I have missed? You know, if there is no destination, then you get to decide what the point of your life is. The art of slowing down, it's not about trying to be lazy and not doing anything and scrolling on Instagram. It's about being here and now. Here and now. I have a tattoo on my wrist that says be here now. It's right here on my right wrist. Why? Because when my son was born, I was like I want to be so freaking present that I'm experiencing every single moment that I possibly can because I keep hearing from people over and over and over and over and over I miss my kids being that small. They had so much fun when they were that little. So I was like I want to remind myself by getting a tattoo on my wrist. I see it all the time. Just be here. Be in the moment. Don't be on your phone. Don't do anything else. Don't think about being anywhere else. It's about refusing to let your one precious life be reduced into just a giant blur. It's about reclaiming your time as not something just to spend but something to actually experience because life isn't about a race to the end. It's about creating a series of unrepeatable moments that are in your life that are just begging for you to notice them. And so my challenge to you. Slow down. Pay attention. Burn the details of every single moment today into your memory. Smell the roses. Listen to your wife's laugh. Watch your kids run around. Get off your phone and watch your children play because there will be a day in 40 years where you wish that you could be back in that moment watching your children play in the front yard. You would trade every single dollar that you have, everything that you own to be right back in that moment watching your children play in your front yard again. That's where your meaning lives but you have to experience it. Hey thanks so much for watching this video. Based off of what you have been watching recently YouTube thinks that you should watch this one next. It is perfectly crafted for you. And if you don't want to miss any more videos click that button right there and subscribe.