Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

There are many common threads between my clients in terms of their struggles, wishes, fears, longings, etc. Of all the connecting points, though, one theme stands out: “I’m too busy to get anything done.” Whether it’s a mom managing the onslaught of the back-to-school routine; a college student juggling academic, social, and personal responsibilities; a professional spinning too many plates; or an average Joe who wants more for his life, but continues to go headlong into old patterns that maintain the status quo, each of these individuals shares a knack for getting in his/her own way. The fault in the “if I just work harder-go faster-think less-act more” thinking is that the hustle to achieve/attain/acquire/stay comfortable inevitably results in disconnection, lack of fulfillment, burn out, and, so often, a feeling of joylessness that paints a gray cloud over life in general. It’s at this point that people often describe their experience as “going through the motions”, “coasting”, “showing up, but not really being there”, “flat”, or “blah”. It’s the difference between surviving life and thriving in it.So, how do you change it? How do you thrive?As Brené Brown says, “You can choose comfort or you can choose courage. You can’t have both.”  In other words, we are all creatures of habit in some form or another. If we’re not paying attention, our habits become our automatic pilot approach to life. As a result, we become increasingly rigid, walled off from vulnerability, disproportionately focused on outcomes, and paralyzed by fear of failure, rejection, and/or the unknown. To do anything different would require taking the risk to change. For so many, if the choices are: A) figure out what’s broken and do the work to make it different, or: B) keep piling on more things (i.e. errands, activities, excuses, resentments) and make yourself so busy you don’t have to think about the elephant in your psyche – most choose option B. It’s easier in some ways, but its sustainability is as slippery as Bambi’s walk on ice.Mustering the courage to go a different path – a path that will inevitably challenge your patterns, demand introspection, and hold your feet to the fire on being accountable to the life you say you want – requires that you do less of the same old, same old -- not more. Slowing down does not put you (or, if you have them, your children) behind the eight ball or all of a sudden make you a deficient, unworthy person. What it does do is create a space for something new to develop. That something could be as simple as feeling yourself inhale and exhale fully for one whole breath. Or, maybe, when you put all those spinning plates down, you notice a flutter of feeling lonely. Whatever it is that you discover, welcome its presence as best you can and allow it to teach you…even, and especially, the things that you want to resist. What we don’t want to know about ourselves is typically what we need to learn the most. You can either choose to be awakened or choose to stay asleep – either way you have a life to live and you can decide if you want to barrel through it in survival mode or dive into it with an intention to thrive. Your choice only affects everything about your life.