Fast-Forward Families

How to Slow Down and Start Living Again

By Dr. Dave Currie, with Glen Hoos

How fast is your world spinning?

Some of us have been running so hard for so long that we scarcely know what we would do with ourselves if we were ever forced to slow down. Life goes by in a blur as we jump from one appointment, activity or obligation to the next, punctuated only by the time spent in the car that gets us there.

Somehow, the technologies that have been created to save us time and make us more efficient have only served to make us busier. Instead of enabling us to slow down and smell the roses, they’ve allowed us to become increasingly productive, fitting into one day what would have previously taken a week or longer to accomplish. And rather than using that extra time to relax the pace of life, we just get involved in more things.

Of course, all of this has a significant impact on our families. Without the time to really connect and build relationships, many homes consist of four or five people who share a roof and a fridge but little else, scattering to the four winds each day in the race to get more done, before coming home at the end of the day too tired to truly engage with one another.

If all of this sounds just a little too familiar, it’s time to talk. Take a timeout with your spouse and talk through the questions provided throughout this article. Together, you can bring sanity back into the picture.

Priorities Determine Limits

You’ve got to start by deciding what you value as a family, because your values determine your priorities, and your priorities are the basis for the limits you will need to set. Clearly, none of us has enough time to do everything that we could potentially be involved in. Our priorities direct us in effectively allocating our valuable, but limited time.

As husband and wife, talk about the big picture. What kind of family do you want, and what is it going to take to get there? How busy do you want to be? Identify the non-negotiables in your schedule and make room for them. Schedules have a way of filling themselves up, especially as kids become increasingly involved in outside activities. If you’re not careful to put the most important things in the calendar first, you may find some of them getting lost along the way.

Once you’ve determined your priorities, it becomes easier to say no to those things that don’t line up with them. It provides a grid through which you can run all your scheduling decisions.

Talk About It

What are our five most important priorities as a family?

Does our current schedule reflect those priorities?

What are two steps that we could take to better align our schedule to what we say is most important?

Relax Your Pace

Our Western society runs at an incredibly fast pace - fast than any other society in history, in fact, and faster than most other areas of the world even today. We’re all swept up in it, and if we’re not careful, we run the risk of drowning in it.

A certain level of busyness is inevitable. Short of pulling out of normal society altogether, life is going to busy. Add two, three or four kids, and the busyness grows. So there needs to be an element of acceptance that, to some extent, this is the way things are going to be - especially when you’ve got kids in the home.
On the other hand, there are ways to intentionally relax the pace of your life. Understand that being a good parent doesn’t require you to have your kids involved in everything. Choose activities that are conducive to maintaining a healthy family life. Don’t get bent out of shape if you’re occasionally late for something, or even if you have to cancel something once in awhile. Also, allow yourself the freedom to take all the time off allotted to you, to just pull back and spend some concentrated time connecting as a family.

Talk About It

How busy do we want our family to be?

Are there things we are doing that make us unnecessarily busy?

What are we going to do in the next month to intentionally slow down and connect as a family?

Make Room for People

At its core, life is about relationships, not activities. No one gets to the end of their life and wishes that they’d worked more, or took one more class, or played a few more games of golf. What they regret is not spending more time with the people they love most.

You’ve got to keep what’s important central. People - your spouse, your kids, your friends - don’t always fit nicely into a time slot in a daytimer. You never know when they’re going to need an extra hug, some extra time spent talking over coffee, or a helping hand with something they’ve got going on in their lives.

Don’t be so tied to your agenda that you miss out on those times. Leave some margin in your life so that there’s room for interruption, and on those occasions when the needs of people collide with an activity in your schedule, remember what it’s all about. Don’t live to serve your schedule; instead, allow your schedule to serve you by creating time for what is really important.

Talk About It

Does our schedule get in the way of our relationship with one another and our kids?

How can we better demonstrate to one another that our marriage and family come before our individual agendas?