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Slow Sunday: Feeling

Us Finns are great at suppressing our feelings. The Finnish "sisu", the stoic determination and resilience is highly regarded here. Falling apart, having a breakdown, being happy and loving, crying or expressing other "big" feelings is considered weak. However, feelings and emotions are there for many good reasons, and recognising them is very important. Your feelings aren't wrong nor they should be ignored. While a constant turmoil of emotions isn't healthy either, and can increase your stress and anxiety, the stoic emotionless existence is bad as well. Suppressing feelings makes you tens...

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Slow Sunday: Relaxing

I'm a highly strung person. I'm easily scared and have a hard time of getting to sleep. Relaxing is difficult for me. Which is part of the reason I started this series. To learn myself how to slow down, relax, de-stress, and deal with my depression and anxiety. Today I will talk about little methods that even me, a wound up person, has found useful for relaxing. First, it's important to note that relaxing is different for everyone. We have several ways to relax. No relaxation method is better than another, and it's okay to find relaxation the way you do. Unless, of course the way you find re...

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Slow Sunday: Drawing the line

You are stretching yourself thin. Saying no isn't easy for you, and you get bad conscious when you can't accommodate the wishes of other people. You feel you are getting walked over constantly. Your clients (or your boss) keep expecting you do everything and a whole lot more. For the same price. Or maybe you keep doing something you have decided not to do, just one more time. And then another one more time. And another. In case any of this sounds familiar to you, you have trouble with drawing the line. Over a decade ago I was working in an educational organisation. Part of my job was to acce...

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Slow Sunday: Starting anew

When you have spent lots of time, effort and money in building a certain kind of a life, career and business, starting over feels like the craziest thing to do. Did the time, effort and money you spent go in vain? Is it pointless to start over, especially if you aren't that young anymore? Does it seem like you failed, weren't good enough? Starting anew is scary and it can be lots of work. It may feel like a failure, instead of a beginning of something great, exciting and fulfilling. Starting over isn't a failure. You haven't failed if you decide to ditch your career and go after another. You...

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Slow Sunday: Finding focus

This year I've been mainly struggling. With my work, with my life, with everything. I was stretching myself very thin. It all came down in November, when I found my breaking point. I had lost my way, trying to be everything to everyone. I was all over the place, doing stuff I didn't want to do just because I felt I had to. I was trying not to upset people, I thought I had certain obligations. I hadn't wanted to do web design and development for a while, but instead of ditching it, I had kept it and added on other services. There was no focus. Backup plans are great. Like safety nets, you c...

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Slow Sunday: Getting over yourself

The first thought on your mind is I'm talking about you. Not a group of people, not an unspecified person. You, specifically. Who else would I be talking about? Your mistake is understandable. You, specifically and personally, are taking it personally. Your mind works that way. It's built to be selfish, to believe everything is about you. If you want to stop making this mistake, believing that everyone is always talking about you, you must first get over yourself. First, our own conduct online is to blame. The way we are talking about each other, when we don't want to name names. Subtweeti...

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Read for your life

One thing is painfully clear. The technology has made information easy to access, and easy to create. This has led to incredible amount of lies being spread around. If an orange guy yells it loud enough, everyone will be sure to hear it. If someone wants you to believe a woman is crooked, all they need to do is to write a couple of articles and spread them around social media. The amount of information and disinformation is incredible. While you can always be fooled by all that disinformation, however smart and educated you are, this doesn't mean you shouldn't try and learn to see the differ...

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