The Speed of Want... and the dream of slowness

I’m reading a great book at the moment, ‘Maybe you should Talk to Someone’ by Lori Gottlieb. Gottlieb is a therapist who is sharing her journey into the profession, her experiences with some of her clients, and her experience with her own therapist. I’ve folded over so many corners of pages where there are little gems that I want to come back to. And I want to share one of those little gems with you… 
 

In the chapter ‘The Speed of Want’ Gottlieb says: 
 
”…There’s an irony to all of this. People want a speedy solution to their problems, but what if their moods had been driven down in the first place by the hurried pace of their lives? They imagined they were rushing now in order to savour their lives later, but so often, later never came. The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm had made this point more than fifty years earlier: “Modern man thinks he loses something – time – when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it.” Fromm was right, people didn’t use extra time earned to relax or connect with friends or family. Instead they tried to cram more in.”

There is something my clients and I all have in common. We’re ambitious, we want great things for ourselves, but we also want to live a slow paced, calm, and present life. The dream of slowness is often the primary thing that is said when I ask about how they envision their future selves… “I long for a slow, present life in which I… (live here/work there/have this kind of relationship)”.  
 
I used to be a people-pleasing perfectionist who had high functioning anxiety and very low self worth. I used to feel constantly stressed and would wear my busyness as a badge of honour while I looped around a good old burnout cycle. I spent my time speeding towards a future me that ‘had their sh** together’ and getting nowhere. I was cramming all my time with doing more so others would be impressed, or worrying about what I wasn’t doing and what everyone else was thinking. I killed my time. I was unhappy, anxious and exhausted.
 
Between then and now a lot has changed. Firstly my self-awareness and acceptance that something had to change. I’ve fact checked my inner beliefs – I now know my self-worth is not dependant on my busyness. I’ve learned to set boundaries around my time and energy. And I’ve learnt that it’s safe to slow down. And in slowness there is mental clarity, the opportunity to be present, and the space to bring in all the things that enrich my life. 
 
Slow and steady wins the race!