Life

Slow Down this Day

Most of what you experience each day, in terms of the passage of time, is based on your perception

Published

2 years ago

June 6, 2021

Jeff Davidson

Did you do a double-take when you read the title of this article? If so, read on. Most of what you experience each day, in terms of the passage of time, is based on your perception.

You can slow down time if you choose. How? Whenever you feel you’re racing the clock or trying to tackle too much at once, try this exercise:

Close your eyes for a minute. Imagine a pleasant scene. You might be surrounded by trees or with a loved one. It could be something from childhood. Let the emotions of that place and time pervade you. Get into it! Give yourself more than a minute for the visualization to take hold.

Open your eyes and return to what you’re doing. Whatever care or task you’re working on is not quite so bad and your pace is never quite so feverish.

Pause and Reflect

Imagine you’re flying on an airplane. You have a window seat, and it’s a clear day. As you gaze down to the ground below, what do you see? Life passing by. Cars the size of ants. Miniature baseball diamonds. Rivers the size of streams. There’s something about being at great heights that enables you reflect on your life.

The same phenomenon can take place from the top of a mountain or skyscraper. As often as practical things seem to be racing by too fast, seek higher ground, literally, for a clearer perspective.

If you’re among the lucky, perhaps you regularly allocate time for reflection or meditation. If you don’t, it’s no matter. There are other ways to make it all “slow down.”

After the workday, listen to relaxing music and close your eyes. A half hour of your favorite music with your eyes closed and no disturbances can seem almost endless. When you re-emerge, the rest of the day takes on a different tenor.

An effective method for slowing down time and catching up with today is periodically deleting three items from your “to do list” without doing them at all. Before you shriek, consider that much of what makes your list is arbitrary.

In most cases, eliminating three items won’t impact your career or life, except for freeing up a little time for yourself in the present.

A Change in Medium

I have long used water to reduce stress. For eleven years, I lived in a high-rise condominium in Falls Church, Virginia, complete with its own 25 meter pool. No matter how hard I worked during the day, even if I did a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. stint, at 6:05 p.m. I was in the pool. After 30 minutes of laps, I had swum out many of the stresses and strains of the day.

Now that I live in North Carolina, more rural by comparison, I have lakes! Here I can swim for a mile in one direction and rarely encounter anyone else. Find the swimming hole nearest you!

In the Animal Kingdom

If you have a dog or cat and do not consider it a drain on your time, here’s a little something about Rover or Mittens that you may not have known. In recent years, as reported by U.S. News & World Report, scientists have found proof for what was only once suspected: Contact with animals has specific and measurable effects on both your body and mind.

The mere presence of animals can increase a sick person’s chances of survival, and has been shown to lower heart rate, calm disturbed children, and induce incommunicative people to initiate conversation!

The exact mechanisms that animals exert to affect your health and well-being are still largely mysterious. Scientists suspect that animal companionship is beneficial because, unlike human interaction (!), it is uncomplicated.

Animals are nonjudgmental, accepting and attentive; they don’t talk back, criticize, or give orders. Animals have a unique capacity to draw people out.

Even if you only have goldfish, sometimes simply staring at them in their silent world can help deaden your hectic pace.

Catching up with Today

1. Constantly read your list of priorities and goals.
2. Challenge and defeat your own ritual behavior.
3. Consider the outcome of not handling something.
4. Convincingly, but politely, say no.
5. Call rather than visit.

6. Clear your desk of all but the task at hand.
7. Clear your files of everything that can be recycled.
8. Cancel something you had already scheduled.
9. Choose from what you already have.
10. Choose to get a good night’s sleep every night.

When you consider all of the ways you add unnecessary pressures to your day, you begin to see many ways to catch up with today or, at least, with this week.

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Jeff Davidson is the world's only holder of the title "The Work-Life Balance Expert®" as awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is the premier thought leader on work-life balance, integration, and harmony. Jeff speaks to organizations that seek to enhance their overall productivity by improving the effectiveness of their people. He is the author of Breathing Space, Simpler Living, Dial it Down, and Everyday Project Management. Visit www.BreathingSpace.com for more information on Jeff's keynote speeches and seminars, including: Managing the Pace with Grace® * Achieving Work-Life Balance™ * Managing Information and Communication Overload®

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Elections

Election Fraud is Massive and On-Going in America

Across the U.S., the magnitude of voter fraud that occurs year after year, election after election, is staggering.

Published

2 days ago

March 29, 2023

Jeff Davidson

Jay DeLancey is founder and president of the North Carolina Voter Integrity Project, and has much to say about voting in America:

Our system begs for transparency at all points along the election process. Who can vote, who did vote, how did they vote, and what was the tally? Today, unfortunately voter fraud is real and of enormous magnitude, as we saw in 2020 and 2022. Nowhere is this more evident than with absentee ballots.

Who, in any voting precinct, literally visits the homes of voters who filed absentee ballots to ensure that they are out of town? Even among those who have a legitimate quest to vote by absentee ballot, who can assure that their vote is counted properly and tallied accurately?

The absentee ballot initiative started as a viable effort to increase the ability of qualified citizens to vote, but has now become into a primary tool of manipulation. The more we can see, the fairer the elections are likely to be. The less we can see, the greater the likelihood that fraud will occur. Centralized absentee ballot collection is exactly the opposite of local voting in a precinct where there’s a chance that those with whom you register or vote alongside are your neighbors.

Ensuring the Rights of Qualified Voters

The local voting precinct is better positioned to spot perpetrators of voter fraud. Local poll workers on the scene are better able to assess if you are not the person you claim to be. They will tell you to leave, but by law that’s all they can do.

They can’t retain someone and hold them until authorities arrive, even in the case of blatant voter impersonation. Why? Because in the 1960s, to safeguard the voting capability of those who had been disenfranchised, laws were passed to reduce the incidence of intimidation, accusation, and retention.

Those times have long passed, and now we need ways of ensuring that qualified voters’ civil rights are upheld. Every time an unqualified voter is allowed to cast a vote, it demeans and diminishes the rights of all citizens. As such, voter fraud is the civil rights crisis of our time.

Fraud Occurs Year After Year

If you hear from anyone or from any group that voter fraud does not exist, or that it’s minimal and inconsequential, rest assured most of these proponents believe they are in the right. As long as you vote for their candidate, they’re content to ignore the magnitude, of voter fraud that actually occurs, year after year, election after election, across the U.S. They know they are ‘right,’ so why forsake their ironclad view that voter integrity groups are secretly voter suppression groups?

We’re always asked, how do you know that voter fraud exists? We have case histories, anecdotes, cross tabulated data, eyewitness testimony, and more. Voter fraud is real and rampant. Yet, we will routinely encounter some academic, usually from some law school, saying, “The science is settled on this. Voter fraud is a myth.”

Professors will proclaim from on high declaring that few people ever engage in voter fraud. Such professors are people of influence, they teach students, write papers, give lectures, attend symposiums, and spew authoritative misinformation. Cognizant or not, the damage that they do to society is ongoing and significant.

A Mortal Threat to Democracy

“The science was settled” in the early 1500s, that the sun rotated around the earth. Copernicus and other brave souls risked death to proclaim that earth was not the center of the universe as we knew it, or even our solar system.

We swim against the tide of what was launched in the 1960s but today has morphed into a mortal threat to democracy. The challenge we all face is to guarantee transparency in elections so that everyone can see the results and, more importantly, accept the results when their candidate does not win.

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Life

Creating a Little Heaven on Earth for Yourself

When you carve out few moments for yourself, the world is a different place

Published

5 days ago

March 26, 2023

Jeff Davidson

What would your life be like if you had the ability to drop back when you wanted or needed to do so? To have time for true rest and relaxation? To have time for quiet reflection?

Despite the pace of change in society, the constant development of new technology, all the paper and information that confronts you on a daily basis, and everything that competes for your time and attention, you have the ever-present opportunity to remain resilient.

Carve It Out

When you carve out even a few moments of breathing space for yourself, the world is a different place; it does not seem so hectic. Often, things work out for the best. You have a sense of control almost independent of your environment.

The feeling of being in control of your life, while acknowledging that you are only a small part in the overall scheme of things, enhances your experience of the world around and within you, every day.

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