Why I Choose a "Slow" Life

Most people spend like 95% of their lives in ordinary everyday moments. And yet all of us feel like we're missing out if we're not chasing the other 5% of the things that are generally uncommon, like travel or buying things, those dopamine hits or hitting achievements. I wake up and do pretty much the exact same things, pretty much the exact same order almost every single day. I'm super routine, I don't leave the house all that often. And a lot of times, honestly, I feel like I should be doing more. And I kind of experimented with that when I said yes to something I normally wouldn't say yes to. A friend invited me to go on America's worst flight with him. He was doing a video, he just needed somebody to sit next to him. We're hitting three countries in 47 hours. We landed at Disney World and rode rides for an entire day. It was one of the craziest and busiest weekends I have ever had in my entire life. And yet something really strange happened about 12 hours into that trip. We're in Vienna, Austria. I hadn't had my phone during the first flight from New York to get over there. And then I purposely didn't buy service while I was there. And I realized that something really strange was happening. I was standing in line, getting soaked, waiting to get into a cafe that Sigmund Freud used to drink coffee at. And I realized that like, I haven't been on my phone in a long time. I can feel the raindrops. I can see the beautiful architecture around me. And it was kind of like that feeling of like, this is what being alive feels like. And I know that kind of sounds strange. So I wanna explain. Despite it being the busiest weekend of my life, it was also one of the most present weekends of my life. I feel like we equate being busy to like being distracted. And it's not always the same thing. Like I could be home, I could be on my phone, listening to podcasts, listening to music, checking social media, every chance that I get. And while I'm not really doing anything, my brain is just constantly going in a million directions, getting all the input from everything in the world specifically catered to me. Or I could be doing amazing things and feel very slow doing it. Like even the flight back was 11 and a half hours. It was probably the worst flight I've ever been on technically. And yeah, it wasn't that bad because I was literally there for the journey. I wasn't distracted the whole time. We chatted, exercised, walked around, got bored. And it was something that I haven't done in a really long time. Like this ability to be bored, this space in our lives to see what's out there. And I think most of us are living pretty distracted lives and it's because we live in a attention economy. And this is something that I have literally studied and read books on as a influencer because companies literally pay money, not for ad space, but for attention. Depending on the amount of other people's attention that I have, that'll determine the amount of money a brand is willing to pay me. I've noticed I've done a lot less brand deals recently because of this. But the one thing that we cannot get more of is our attention. And that is the one thing everybody is fighting for. Billions and billions of dollars are being spent and people's full-time job is to figure out how to get more of your attention so that they can sell you more things. And that's something that I got trapped in. It was consumption. The average person spends between three and five hours on social media every single day. That is consuming. It's when you're at a red light, it's when you're in the bathroom, it's when you have a break, when you're feeling bored, when you're feeling stressed, when you're at work hiding on that second browser. I feel like I was always trying to escape actually being alone with myself, actually being alone with my thoughts. And going back to Vienna and then London, I felt like my brain starting to defragment. I don't know if people still do that. I used to do that with my computer. But it's like this thing where you're getting rid of all the clutter and having blocks of hours on end where my brain's just kind of processing things, just thinking through things. And then suddenly I just didn't feel stressed or anxious or worrying about work constantly or checking my email constantly. It was just being there in the moment, which is literally all there ever is. There's this quote that changed my life, which is that the future never comes, life is always now. And yet most of us spend most of our time thinking about how we're gonna be better in the future, what could have been different in the past when the literal only thing that we can do to make the future better is right now. We can plan for it, but you plan for it right now. We can take actions towards it, but you take action towards it right now. And so that was the choice I have started to make over about that past month, to live more in the now. And it's not like that trip I was hoping that it would all stay and I felt very present. It was like a whole weekend totally off my phone, almost like a social media detox. I was like, all right, this is great. And then I got back home and it's like right back into the same habits, the same routines. And I realized that this wasn't like a one-time fix. I needed to continue to fight this battle almost every single day, to say no. And so I started to add in some habits to my life that made being present, being alert, in the end, enjoying my days a lot more, being a lot more happy and helping other people more by just like kind of shifting a few things that I've been doing. So to start off in the morning and at night, I've been putting my phone down, making sure that I have specific times where phone is not gonna go on before 8 a.m., even though I wake up at 5 a.m. I just don't need it. Nothing important is gonna happen. And I'm just starting off my day, looking at a screen, listening to music, listening to a podcast. And then I just kind of follow in that cycle. Same thing at night. It doesn't need to be on. I don't need to be consuming to the moment I go to bed. When I go in the car, and this is a decision I have to make every time, I don't actually listen to music anymore, which I used to do, or podcasts, or whatever. And just like a 20-minute car ride completely by yourself is amazing. It's life-changing. If you used to constant inputs, and now you're having this time where you can just look at the car next to you, look at traffic, look at the trees, feel the wind. It's this great experience, and I feel refreshed and rejuvenated when I get to where I'm gonna go. And again, my brain is processing all the stuff that it needs to process from the stresses of our lives. I've also been really focusing and dialing in on physical activity. So I do things like a sauna and a cold plunge, and also working out more. I'm trying to get back into that because I was falling off that again from just being too distracted and thinking I was too busy. I'm just completely lying to myself. And let me tell you, when you were in a sauna and it's 170 or 200 degrees, you cannot think about anything else besides trying not to die. Same with the cold plunge. You get in there and it's 45 degrees, and your breath is just taken away. And then what the president tweeted, what the stock market's doing, what your friend offhanded their remark, what a celebrity's doing, nothing else matters but that moment. And I've been really focusing on these things that ground us and make us present, which is generally physical activity. When I'm playing a sport, I can play pickleball for like two hours and not really remember the time because I'm in the zone. And I feel like that zone, which is also like a flow state, which I also get when I'm making these videos, is something that is as close to being alive as you can get. Doing this right here, it is not living your life. You would never watch a movie where the person's just staring at a screen or listening to something. There's always like this random input coming into their lives. But doing things, I feel like you are built and you're also just more happy, more present, more alive. Like not all presence is built the same. The average American doesn't spend a lot of time with their kids. And even that time that they do spend with them is often distracted. The TV's going, something else is going on, you're thinking about tomorrow and setting that up. And it's just like all this distraction. And so I've started putting in rules to make sure that I stop doing this because I was doing that. So when my kids are around, I'm not on my phone. I'm not listening to something. But five minutes spent checking Facebook Marketplace for dumbbells versus five minutes spent feeding the chickens grass with my son are two completely different experiences. And I want more of those in my life. We only have one life. We only have so much time. And that time is not all created equal. It depends on where our attention is. So if I could leave you with one thing, it would be to try to go out and be bored today. Pick something that you're doing that you know doesn't really add anything to your life or is distracting you from what is truly important. And just stop doing that. Take literally an hour and look out the window. It might just change your life. Maybe when you're in the car next, if you think of me, just don't turn on the radio. See what happens. Don't be in a rush to get there. Actually just drive the actual speed limit and just don't be in a rush to get there. You don't have to optimize for that extra two minutes.