Slow Down Your Haste is Making Waste

Slow down you’re moving way too fast
(Your feet don’t ever touch the ground)
Slow down You know you’ll never last
(You’re seeking that which can’t be found)
Slow down your haste is making waste
(Your feet don’t ever touch the ground)
Slow down and join the human race
(You’re seeking that which can’t be found)

-from Slow Down by Ozzy Osbourne

It is not often that people look to Ozzy Osbourne for advice with life; however, even the least likely of sources can provide insight into life and good advice at times.

If you look at the lyrics above, Ozzy offers up some good advice, slow down. Too often in life we find ourselves running around like the proverbial chicken with its head chopped off. This is unhealthy and unproductive. Rushing around leads to a lot of extra waste in our life, wasted effort, wasted time and wasted stress.

The more we rush around, the more stress we add to our day. When we rush around, we put ourselves in a constant state of flux, trying to figure out what we need to do next, where we need to be next, etc. Each of these things stress more and more. Rushing around also leads us to make more mistakes and not just more mistakes, but bigger mistakes.

Rushing around also leads us to burn ourselves out; it causes us to wear ourselves down physically and leaves us exhausted. We can only keep up a hectic pace for so long before we run out of steam. The more physically exhausted we are, the more emotionally sensitive we are and more difficult it is to regulate our emotions.

These days, when I feel myself starting to rush or get impatient, I make a conscious decision to slow down. For example, if I am walking to the metro and get behind someone that is moving slowly, and I feel myself getting impatient and wanting to rush, I slow my pace down, at times even coming to a dead stop for a few seconds and taking a deep breath before continuing.

Slowing down has helped me deal with stress quite a bit. It has also reduced the number of mistakes I make and the severity of the ones I do make. Both of these things have reduced my stress even further.

So like Ozzy says, “Slow down and join the human race.”