Escape The Pace: 15 Golden Minutes

Escape The Pace: 15 Golden Minutes by Lisa Rickwood, "The Escape Artist." "On the keyboard of life, always have one finger on the escape key." - Anonymous It's a miserable, cold Tuesday morning and you've slept through your alarm again. You race through the first part of your morning and then hit the highway like an Indy 5oo racecar driver. Your heart pounds, road rage builds and you fantasize about ditching work, returning to bed, and pulling that cozy duvet high over your head. Instead, you go to work, with the full knowledge that overwhelming tasks will undoubtedly inundate you. It's precisely at that moment you dream of cloning yourself like Michael Keaton did in the movie, Multiplicity. The film focuses on a time-stressed man who can't keep up with work and home demands, so he enlists the help of scientists and produces a clone of himself so he can be in two places at once. Everything appears find until he realized the copy has duplicated itself to achieve more. To make matters worse, the third version is less effective, like a photocopy of a photocopy. Who hasn't dreamt of having an identical twin slide into their life for a day or two? As the world spins faster and faster, the hours in the day seem to shrink. In the early 1980s, a U.S. physician called the phenomena 'time sickness' and used it to describe the belief that time is getting away and we don't have enough of it, and one must move faster to catch up. This preoccupation with time didn't happen overnight; it commenced with the advent of the calendar. Ancient nomadic civilizations used a calendar to determine when to plant and harvest crops, and when to relocate their villages. The ability to measure time was important for the survival of these cultures. Once we discovered how to measure years, months, weeks and days, we were free to slice time into smaller increments such as: hours, minutes and seconds. This measurement of time became important after the Industrial Revolution. The factories that popped up across North America used to monitor an employee's productivity, loyalty and work ethic. It wasn't uncommon for workers to spend more than 12 hours a day in factories. Now fast-forward to the 21st century to where companies sink of float based on the clock. Couriers would never survive if time wasn't a key to the success of their business. Imagine what would happen if they told a major clients his important documents for a proposed business deal would arrive sometime in the near future? Consider companies and corporations that push their products into the market before their competitors? Would they survive if they had a laissez-fire attitude? People believe our 'need for speed' is a 21st invention. It's not. Our lives move quickly due to centuries of time focus and a large dash of new technology. Mix these ingredients together and you've got a recipe for disaster. Since technology is fast, we pressure ourselves. Communication is immediate, so we must be too. We fear being labeled as 'techno-snubbers' (people who ignore technology and aren't 'with it.') It's not acceptable to return a phone call a few hours later; we must phone back within the hour. We can't take our vacation and leave our computers at home; we must keep wired so we don't lose that unpredictable client. To catch-up, we stay up late, work overtime, eliminate exercise and skip meals. Our health suffers and our mental state isn't much better. Resentment, road rage and lack of patience for others become our mainstay. If you think you don't suffer from stress or time constraints, consider how many times you've misplaced your keys, blatantly driven five blocks without remembering if you traveled through a red light, or placed your coffee cup on your car's roof before driving to work. We're all guilty, and it stems from sleep deprivation, stress and multi-tasking throughout our days. We're not living in the moment because we're thinking about the next great thing we must accomplish. I know about stress and the need for speed because I'm a recovering "speed-aholic." Years ago, I worked as an advertising consultant for a daily newspaper and was proud of the speed at which I conducted my life. I walked, talked and drove fast. Ironically, I only received one speeding ticket and that was while keeping pace with the other traffic. Another time, I was late for work and placed my purse on top of my vehicle so I could load supplies into my car. In my hasted to race to the office, I drove away with the purse on the roof. I received a call from a woman who found my purse on a busy street. Things went from bad to worse when my husband and I bought a high-end menswear store during a recession. We hired a wonderful employee to help us through Christmas and beyond and on the fourth day of this man's work, he passed away of a heart attack in our store. I went on to work six days a week, manage two small children and do everything to keep the store going. I got sick. For one year, I was severely ill and I knew, like many people, I couldn't make any drastic changes to my life. I didn't have the luxury of quitting my career and scaling back, so I decided to change my attitude about stress. I read dozens of books for the next few years and talked to many people about stress and solutions. Months later, my depression lifted and I felt happy, fairly healthy and energized. Best of all, I discovered a wonderful antidote for speed - slowing down and escaping the pace. "If slowing down and relaxing seems ludicrous, remember that everything in nature needs downtime to rest and rejuvenate. Why should humans be any different?" I have a beautiful peach tree that grows near the back window of my house. In the first week of August, the tree's branches are laden with plump and juicy, yellow and pink fruit that's warm to the touch. This tree doesn't always yield abundant fruit; every second year, it reduces its amount. Like breaks in the rhythm of music, or the poignant lull in conversation, and like the peach tree, we need to pause throughout our day to rest and recharge ourselves. Our greatest innovations and discoveries are made when people slow down and temporarily pause in life. Now imagine how different our lives would be if Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein had found themselves too busy to record their magnificent findings. Decades ago, peace activist, Mahatma Ghandhi said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed." "When you take 15 minutes to rest, walk or just 'be,' you deal more effectively with stress and challenges. If you approach each moment in a calm state, issues resolve easily and your life feels serene. " Escaping the pace is about putting your needs first and being sure to take a mini holiday every day. When you practice this philosophy for 30 days, you'll automatically make time for mini retreats. The definition of a quick retreat is anything that takes 15-30 minutes. Of course you can have longer retreats that take an hour or a day, but this may be difficult if you lead a busy life. Even in the busiest life, there are small hidden pockets of 'free time.' This time can be used for: reading walking, outdoor exercise working out at the gym or doing yoga sleeping in late dancing playing an instrument eating something delicious seeing a movie visiting friends going on a weekend excursion taking a sick day to do a hobby Your time should allow you to slow down, relax and live in the moment. For example, how much time do you waste waiting in the doctor's office? There, you might try reading a novel, listening to music on your MP3 player, watching people or deep breathing. Speed isn't the enemy; it is knowing when one must slow down to put balance in one's life. Some things shouldn't be slow, like the Internet and slow drivers in the fast lane. Balance is about knowing when to travel 110 km/h and when to drive off the freeway for a mini holiday. And, everyone's idea of balance will vary greatly. If you practice the escape philosophy every day, you'll never need an identical twin.