After a year at full-speed-ever in my life with study and job search in Finland, I have been slowly back to my preferred slow life.
Trying to take back my old habits
When I was in Vietnam just right before coming to Finland, I had a habit of going to bed around 10 PM and waking up at 5:30 AM to read a book, which was just life my daily ritual before really starting my day with work and other things in the world. After work, I do Yoga at home in the afternoon at least 3 times per week. One more of my favorite habits at that time was, on the weekend, if I did not hang out with friends, I would go to my favorite coffee shop to write my blog post to publish, or simply writing my journal which is only kept for myself (or simply ordered my favorite drink and stay in my room, turned on great songs and started to dive deep into writing).
Quiet morning time
I really enjoyed that period of morning time because everything around me was silent. The closer the clock moved to 7 AM, the noisier things around became because most of everyone woke up and started their day as well. The sound of vehicles became clearer since everybody ran to work at that time in Vietnam. Also, starting a day early like that made me feel like the day was longer, and I had more time to do things I wanted.
Yoga and meditation = my spa time
Every time I finished yoga and mediation, I always felt like I just completed my spa time. I felt relaxed in my whole body and my mind as well. To be honest, meditation along with other things like yoga, books, and writing have helped me a lot in my life. Those help me live my life slower and more consciously with things around me and things I choose to do in my life. Now I am still trying to practice Yoga to build my exercise habit again, I left it for too long already.
Turn from fast to slow living
I have never been a fan of “fast living”. I mean, besides being so quick at work that even my old bosses were surprised, I enjoyed doing things slowly with a conscious mind for examples when I was doing dishwashing or cooking. For me, this kind of lifestyle requires a lot of practice, and it will become a habit if we live like that every day. I used to be “fast” while witnessing my mom has acted fast in everything since I was a kid, I felt a bit stressful back to that time, running around doing things quickly but I felt like my days were too short. Actually, waking up early in the morning allows me to live slower but more efficiently.
There is just one problem right now that I have spent a year running with school study and work for a job search, so now reducing my speed sometimes made me feel like I was a bit “useless” because of not done many things within a day (like before). However, I am trying to be conscious about that, and I am taking my time to learn to live slowly again because I know I need time to adapt to that. This is when I want to say that habits are very powerful. Our lives are really made by our habits, and this is the reason why I always care and try to be conscious of those.
A little difference that affected my time organizing compared to Vietnam is that the light time in Finland is very different from Vietnam. Especially in this season when the light time during the day is quite short. At this moment when I am writing this post, today the sun rose at around 7:45 AM and went down around 4 PM. Therefore, I am still struggling with the idea of getting up early at 5:30 to read a book… but let’s see how it will go 🙂
Just a little sharing about my thinking after my yoga time (this is the reason why I love meditation and yoga, it really brings me ideas and creativity. See how many words from thought I just wrote within only 1 hour after my meditation and yoga session 😀
Something about my recent personal lifestyle 🙂
Lahti, Finland, 03.11.2023