Episode 36 - Carl Honore
The Upsides of Enforced Slowness in Lockdown.
If you’re feeling really over the whole pandemic thing this episode will lift your spirits.
The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly changed our lives. We’ve been forced to accept changes to the way we live in order to try to control the disease, some of which have been inconvenient, to say the least. Some families have found the enforced lockdown extremely difficult and for some isolation has really affected their mental wellbeing. But it hasn’t been all bad.
Carl Honoré has written extensively about the benefits of slowing down –he calls it embracing our ‘inner tortoise’ - and recently he has been musing about how Covid might be just the force that compels us to slow down with all the benefits that brings us and our families.
Listen to this episode with Carl if you want to learn:
What the detrimental effects are on us of the busy way we live our lives and what are the prices we pay, the things we sacrifice, for our ‘roadrunner’ lives, the biggest of which are human connection and opportunities for self-reflection
How the cult of productivity has grown up in pursuit of the perfect CV but as a consequence children lose may the ability to think and be creative
How attentiveness, presence, joy, good health and love can be lost in the rush from one activity to another
How your children can really enjoy activities if they winnow down to a few that they really love. Top tip: you’ll know your child is really passionate about an activity if they talk about it even when they’re not doing it
How ‘buffer moments’ between activities are essential for processing and building memories
How to create conversation time in which you really get to know your child and indeed yourself
What some of the lessons of Covid might be, what aspects of lockdown do we want to retain and what do we want to be different when we go back to ‘normal’
How productivity can be increased when people have more autonomy
How important it is to remember what we value and what we’ve learnt from our pandemic experience. Memory is impacted by living life too fast so Carl encourages us to write down our thoughts about this to avoid forgetting when life speeds up again, maybe in the form of a family mission statement.
You’ll enjoy his very simple top tip for raising children to slow down and be adults who have more balance in their lives.
If you want to get in touch with Carl check out the links below:
Links
https://www.facebook.com/carl.honore
https://twitter.com/carlhonore
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-honor%C3%A9-81806ab3/
https://www.instagram.com/carlhonore/
This is the link to Carl’s piece on ageing on Radio 4: