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Can You Go Slow, so You Can Go Faster?

Dec 5, 2022

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Can you go slow to speed up?

 

Can you allow yourself to go slow so you can speed up?

 

What do I mean by this?

 

Well, we’re wired as a society for instant gratification, in so many different contexts, and if we don’t get it we often give up and in the process make a tonne of negative assumptions about ourselves.  

 

Or at least berate ourselves for something not happening instantly and then beat ourselves up some more and think everyone else can do it instantly so there’s something wrong with me.

 

We then seek the evidence for that being true.

 

But the trouble is we’re not often looking at the whole picture and making assumptions about what it took for people to have what they have.

 

We take the same approach whether it’s working towards something we want or our own healing.

 

We want everything to happen now.  

 

And there are plenty of people who are ok with setting us up to fail by telling us we can bypass the hard work.

 

Again there are parallels in so many areas of life, business work, healing, weight loss etc.

 

There are some fundamental issues with this mentality. 

 

Which by the way is absolutely not your fault. Too often we’re sold the ‘you can have this right now…without doing the hard work’ messaging. 

 

First of all it really is setting people up to be disappointed. 

 

It’s also often going to result in you spending a lot of money and a lot of time chasing the quick fixes when in fact you’d get where you want to be so much more quickly (and cheaply!) if you took and focused on the slower road.

 

I know it sounds counter intuitive. 

 

I love to illustrate this as thinking about wanting to build a bridge from one place to another place where you’d rather be. 

 

If you build one bridge slowly and consistently and really take the time to do it properly, how long would it take for you to get there?

 

Vs how long would it take if you constantly rush, start frantically building one bridge and it either crumbles or you realise it’s not robust enough or the right method for you so you start building another one and the same happens. Then you start building another one and the same happens. 

 

How long is it going to take you to get to the other side?

 

You won’t, right?

 

You’ll spend the same amount of time, usually more, and create more frantic and frenetic energy stopping and starting and building using shoddy materials on shoddy foundations vs allowing yourself the time to do it properly and allow that bridge to last a lifetime. 

 

Even if some of the bricks were a little heavier, and things may have been a little harder along the way, even though at many points you wished there was a quicker way, but you feel in your bones how solid your bridge is and how it will last a lifetime.

 

Which sounds more productive and better in the long run?

 

We live in a pressure cooker and nervous systems can’t heal in pressure cookers.

 

As much as we’d love it to be different.

 

Nervous systems heal in the slowness and the softness, what i’m always calling softly softly catchy monkey.

 

Allowing yourself to take your time, dip your toe in the water and create safety as you go.  At the same time allowing yourself to completely rewire your brain and nervous system.

 

Dysregulation cannot heal dysregulation.  

 

Think about it logically. How could that happen?

 

This is why burnout takes TIME to heal. There comes a point where your body forces you into it.

 

You need to think about what you’re actively doing while you’re healing.  Literally creating new neural networks.  Undoing and reworking decades of patterns into your nervous systems. Creating a new story of what safety looks like to your brain and nervous system.

 

It’s flipping magical that we can do that!

 

But we do have to put the work in and often that means taking it slower than you’d ideally like to.

 

We need to stop trying to PUSH everything. Stop trying to FORCE everything and seek unicorn quick fixes that leave you feeling ten times worse than when you started.

 

Like I said, there comes a point where all that pushing takes its toll and you’ll be forced to slow down.

 

Remember your bridges!

 

Give yourself the gift of really good, solid foundations.

 

I know in the festive season lots of things often feel like they speed up. 

 

There’s less rest. Less sleep. Less time for you. That in itself can be hugely triggering.

 

This usually happens when you’re being run by obligation so I invite you to ask yourself what you really WANT to say yes to and what you don’t this festive season. 

 

Remind yourself, it actually takes less time if you allow yourself to take it slow than it would if you constantly try and use quick fixes and quit.  You will heal faster if you let yourself take it slow.

 

I know how tempting it can be to seek quick fixes when you’re in any sort of pain. It makes perfect sense. I’m certainly not saying things won’t feel better before you reach your end goal.  If anything I believe it’s LESS painful in the long run. 

 

So, how could you take things a little slower? 

 

What could it look like?

 

How could it feel?

 

As always, you’re a rockstar and you’re capable of huge things.

 

Allow yourself the time to make it happen.

 

Fx