Reframe Your Slow: By Choice or By Force ?

Two women I know from my online community, and for whom I have great respect, both spoke in their newsletters about how they felt twitchy about feeling slowed down and awaiting things. The global trend to embrace the slow life as a way of living sounds so lovely but it’s a whole other thing to feel forced to slow down. Anna Lovind, the teacher of my Creative Doer course, said,

“I find it incredibly frustrating to not be able to create swift change the way I’m used to. But maybe slow is what I can handle right now”.

To have children who’s needs you have to negotiate and to be in search of a new home are real stress factors that she and many people have to deal with on top of global pandemic problems. Honoring where we are will help us move on.

Michelle GD of Michellegd.com was speaking about impatiently awaiting her cosmos flowers to bloom. And when they finally did, she pondered,

“I feel like there’s some kind of message for me, tucked into these late-blooming cosmos. Some message about allowing for surprises, or maybe a message about being patient. Though what if the feathery cosmos stalks hadn’t ever bloomed?? Well, I think the message would be the same: allowing for surprises, or maybe being patient. Also, maybe there isn’t a message.”

The messages are what we translate them to be. And if deep down we wish for more patience and more space to think and create, we need to honor that. That might be slowing down we need to do for ourselves that has nothing to do with the outside world. This whisper may speak to honoring our being instead of our doing.

Michelle ended her newsletter with this quote,

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” –Alice Walker–

Expectations will mess with you every time. But there’s one thing I have discovered from my slowed down life: you have to plant the seed for the idea or project or plant to grow. It may grow on it’s own terms but it needs to be started and nurtured. Life is born of intention.

You have to plant the seed and nurture it with hope for it to grow at all.

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And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.