Justin here, and in an effort to be real with you, this is what went down one morning last week:

• Chloe, 4 yrs old, doesn’t want to put on her winter jacket. It’s 4 degrees C out. Alicia wants to tell her to put it on, I want to let her go outside in a t-shirt and figure it out on her own. Queue the argument.
• Levi, 2, spilt his orange juice everywhere. I put our youngest, Rhys (15 months) back in his high chair and unbeknown to me, it was covered in spilt milk and strawberries, which he is all over him now.
• Alicia is heading out to get some headshots done and complaining about a breakout. I can’t see anything, but to her, it’s a huge deal and I’m probably not as empathetic as I should be.

In about a 30 minute time span, there were a multitude of opportunities to become frustrated, upset, irritable.

Then as we start the work day, we’re quickly reminded that being entrepreneurs and creating/building something is much harder than we predicted.

Add on family issues, financial strain and thinking about a friend’s sick mom and it can feel like we’re being put through the wringer well before noon hits.

So irritability mixed with a little frustration + overthinking + sleep deprivation = sounds like we need a one-way ticket going anywhere else ha, but in all seriousness, it equals real life.

• Life can be a boiling pot of emotions.
• And when you are controlled by emotions, logical thinking and good decisions are hard to come by.
• Emotions turn us inward, away from reality. We dwell on our anger or our insecurities. If we look out at the world and try to solve problems, we see things through the lens of these emotions; they cloud our vision. (Robert Greene in The Laws of Human Nature)

So how can we help our irritable selves?

• Well, we’d like to say to train yourself to never react in the moment and never make a decision while under the influence of a strong emotion.
• But if we’re being realistic, while you can get better at it and train yourself to step back more often, that just isn’t going to happen all the time.

A few things we can commit to:

• Give your partner a break.
• And equally as important, give yourself a break too.
• Try to reach for calm and clarity and step back from your emotions. But know that it’s not going to happen all the time, you are going to snap, lose it and be irritable sometimes. And that’s okay.

When the milk spills, talk to yourself like a friend would and remind yourself, you got this. And more importantly, we all got this together.

Justin here, and in an effort to be real with you, this is what went down one morning last week:

• Chloe, 4 yrs old, doesn’t want to put on her winter jacket. It’s 4 degrees C out. Alicia wants to tell her to put it on, I want to let her go outside in a t-shirt and figure it out on her own. Queue the argument.
• Levi, 2, spilt his orange juice everywhere. I put our youngest, Rhys (15 months) back in his high chair and unbeknown to me, it was covered in spilt milk and strawberries, which he is all over him now.
• Alicia is heading out to get some headshots done and complaining about a breakout. I can’t see anything, but to her, it’s a huge deal and I’m probably not as empathetic as I should be.

In about a 30 minute time span, there were a multitude of opportunities to become frustrated, upset, irritable.

Then as we start the work day, we’re quickly reminded that being entrepreneurs and creating/building something is much harder than we predicted.

Add on family issues, financial strain and thinking about a friend’s sick mom and it can feel like we’re being put through the wringer well before noon hits.

So irritability mixed with a little frustration + overthinking + sleep deprivation = sounds like we need a one-way ticket going anywhere else ha, but in all seriousness, it equals real life.

• Life can be a boiling pot of emotions.
• And when you are controlled by emotions, logical thinking and good decisions are hard to come by.
• Emotions turn us inward, away from reality. We dwell on our anger or our insecurities. If we look out at the world and try to solve problems, we see things through the lens of these emotions; they cloud our vision. (Robert Greene in The Laws of Human Nature)

So how can we help our irritable selves?

• Well, we’d like to say to train yourself to never react in the moment and never make a decision while under the influence of a strong emotion.
• But if we’re being realistic, while you can get better at it and train yourself to step back more often, that just isn’t going to happen all the time.

A few things we can commit to:

• Give your partner a break.
• And equally as important, give yourself a break too.
• Try to reach for calm and clarity and step back from your emotions. But know that it’s not going to happen all the time, you are going to snap, lose it and be irritable sometimes. And that’s okay.

When the milk spills, talk to yourself like a friend would and remind yourself, you got this. And more importantly, we all got this together.

How many ordinary moments do you think you go through every day? Is it 30, 50, or 100?

We don’t know the number but we are challenging ourselves to pick up on more of those ordinary moments. Which means taking notice of the small moments. Not necessarily watching paint dry, but rather, the things you will likely look back on and wish you could live through again.

An example, you’re raking the leaves outside, seemingly to no avail, because it feels like it’s raining golden leaves as they are falling so quickly.  And then your 15 month old son waddles over using his mini hockey stick to help rake some too. Raking leaves is annoying – not my favourite pastime. But in an effort to be more present, this ordinary moment becomes so much more than nothing. 

And that’s exactly the type of ordinary moment that we, over here at Slowlii HQ, are going to count just for a day. To see how many we get to. It’s nothing spectacular or special. It wouldn’t normally stop you in your tracks. But if we’re present enough, something as small as this can bring us joy. 

It’s crazy how our brains just want to be stimulated with a phone all day long after building that habit. Your brain says, “Damn, what you are doing right now is so boring, please check your phone and look at some random person so that I can be a little excited”. Pretty sure we can relate to a moment like this one.

If you do find yourself having trouble enjoying the small, ordinary moments, it is possible you have saturated your dopamine circuits. If you stop engaging in activities, like screen time, you may feel irritable or uneasy, but through this period of uneasiness is more enjoyment around the corner. So don’t worry, it is normal to feel blah or even agitated. Just try your best to control what you are engaging in. Here is an interesting twitter thread  about being addicted to a dopamine inducing activity. 

So join us in this little experiment, count these so-called ordinary moments, just for one day and see how many you can hit. You may find that in order to shift your focus from doing or thinking about doing, you need to slow down to really take count of the ordinary moments.

Hello 2023

Slowlii

Alicia and I were chatting, and our goal this year is to cultivate joy, and we hope you come along for the journey!

• Why? Well, to be honest we kinda feel like we were missing it in 2022 – “lost it” amidst the daily grind. Launching a business took a huge emotional toll on us and we want to get back to why we started Slowlii in the first place – to enjoy more of the small stuff.

But enough about us, here are three reasons why we all should focus more on joy:

1. Financial & career goals are cool, but ranking joy as a new year resolution just sounds like more fun. And we are ready for more fun :). 
2. Thinking about joy through the eyes of a child is pretty remarkable and we’re lucky to be reminded of this with our three littles ones on the daily. Childlike joy is constant curiosity, connection and wonder. Obviously we don’t want to look like we are on shrooms regularly, but we hope just the intent itself sparks more connection.
3. Seeing someone joyful is like a magnet, so it’s a wise way to be. 

Elsewhere 

Since January is all about relationships, with yourself (mind + body) and with others, here are two worthwhile insights:

1. “It is the erosion and eventual loss of safety and trust that creates the conditions for the death of a marriage” This is How Your Marriage Ends, Matthew Frey 

• Okay this title is intense – and Alicia was alarmed when she saw it on my desk ha –  but, seeing so many marriages dissolve around me, I thought it was worth a read.
• This book is eye opening. How small things in a relationship can become big things over time. There is a story of a man explaining that his wife was “losing her mind” that he ate a fish sandwich. He thought it was petty and that she was blowing it out of proportion. So he perceived himself as fair minded and mature and his wife was someone who didn’t know how to maintain a healthy perspective aka a little crazy. But really, the fish sandwich was a trust thing because they both agreed that they would go vegan.  So long story short, the book helped me become more aware of a few “fish sandwich” examples in my own life.

2. “I think my why is, ‘Can it make people happy?  Now that is something on which you can build a career. It isn’t following a path. It isn’t doing something just because. It is a mission. A purpose. And the blueprint for how to build even bigger”, Jimmy Fallon, source. 

• After I read the “DADA” book to my kids I was wondering what Jimmy Fallon was doing writing a book. So I dug a little deeper and this answers it.
• His purpose is literally to make people happy and it radiates off of him, doesn’t it?  He is a walking smile machine. Jimmy had two failed movies and was pretty lost for a while, but once he slowed down and pieced together his why, which actually happened over a long period of time, his path became a little more clear. Even when he was bagging groceries as a teen, people would request him because of those smiles he created in others. 
• Thanks to him, our son said dada before mama. There is a smile. 

*Image via @jacquiemunguia Unsplash