16. Why Slowing Down Actually Speeds You Up

16. Why Slowing Down Actually Speeds You Up

What if everything you’ve been taught about productivity is backwards?

What if the secret to getting more done, creating more impact and feeling more alive isn’t about speeding up, but slowing down? I know it might sound counterintuitive. We live in a culture that worships busyness.

Where walking fast means you’re important. Where exhaustion is a bit of a badge of honor and we’re slowing down feels dangerous. Like you’re falling behind, missing out, losing the race.

But the truth is, life is not a race. There’s no finish line except perhaps death. This summer I caught myself falling back into old patterns. And in this, I realized something profound. I was disconnected from my own rhythm.

The Hidden Cost of Chasing Culture

Those of you who have heard my story know that chasing was my way of avoiding the anger, grief, guilt, and shame I felt within.

I believed that if I just did enough, was busy enough, checked enough boxes, I’d finally be loved seen, and enough whole and everything I took upon myself meant a huge risk.

So I played small. I said no to opportunities, avoided leadership, I consumed myself with the small, manageable tasks just to avoid the bigger, more meaningful ones.

But paradoxically, I kept seeking out high achieving environments, the best goals, the most ambitious employers in the world.

I needed those intense high performance environments because they mirrored how harsh I was with myself.

They gave me a place to prove I was enough. But the whole time I was terrified, constantly looking over my shoulder, constantly waiting to be exposed, convinced that any minute now someone would see that I didn’t belong.

The Real Problem with Overworking

I could work on a presentation for hours and hours.

Perfect the boxes where the words go, trying different layouts, only to redo it all from scratch.

If I had 10 hours to work on something, I’d spend nine hours either preparing to do the task, or perfecting the work I had already done.

Most often, I needed a deadline because the way for me to get something done was adrenaline from stress. This was draining, and it caused me to overwork because I couldn’t afford to lose a single minute.

This is actually the problem with overworking.

Most often, it’s because you’re making things harder than they have to be. And I’m saying this with love because I’ve been there.

You’re taking on too many things. You’re trying to do all the things instead of doing the things that matter, the right things.

Recognizing Overwork vs. Flow

Overworking is not so much about the hours you put in. It’s the intention behind your work. If you’re doing something you really enjoy, you are in flow.

Even if it’s not like sitting by your computer, it can be a hobby. Let’s say you’re doing pottery or you’re painting, or you’re writing or whatever that’s creative or even actual work that feels creative and inspiring.

Yeah, a bunch of hours can disappear really, really quickly. When you work from that place, from that inspired creative place, you don’t feel drained afterward. Like, yeah, you might need a break, but it’s not like your energy is completely gone.

Rather you’ve been filled up when you’re working from that obsessive stress-based place where everything is life and death, and if you don’t get this done, you’re literally gonna die.

That is what’s draining you. And most often it looks like putting in a lot of hours, but it doesn’t have to be. It can even be one meeting or a couple of hours, but it’s overworking because you’re doing more than you have to to get the task done.

How Chasing Energy Shows Up in Daily Life

Because of this, that chasing energy doesn’t just show up at work. It shows up at home too, everywhere in our lives and often we don’t even recognize. It can be:

At Work, It Looks Like:

Like when everyone went on vacation in July, I heard it so much like “I’m going on vacation.” And people would just automatically respond, “good for you.

You really deserve it.” Like, we don’t need to deserve our rest. We don’t need to deserve our vacation.

The Science Behind the Stress State

When you’re in that chasing energy, physiologically it’s a nervous system stuck in sympathetic activation.

The stress state stress chemicals are running throughout your body.

The amygdala, the part of your brain that scans for danger goes into overdrive and the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for decision making, long-term thinking and so on, shuts off.

And when this happens, the body starts to look for something to do it can’t rest.

Sitting still feeling gratitude or joy or solving problems or being creative feels like a threat. Just imagine put yourself in a position where you’re in physical danger. Let’s say someone approaches you with a gun or a weapon.

You wouldn’t go into feeling gratitude or joy for being alive your entire system would be focused on survival.

The problem is that this system has gotten stuck in this flight or flight state, and it’s not necessarily in full on alarm mode. It can also be just a slight activation, where your body doesn’t know how to get back. So it’s gotten stuck in that state. So it’s constantly running on these stress hormones.

The Negativity Bias Connection

Another example of this actually is people who always complain. I am sure you know them, people who see the negative in everything, who have hard time to even find laughter. And quite honestly, this used to be me.

I focused on the negative. I would see all the problems everywhere. There was a strength to this, because I was usually the one who quickly spotted where improvement was needed. But in life it meant that much of the beauty in the world went past me.

Like it’s the example: If you go into the forest looking for blueberries, you’re not gonna find any mushrooms because you’ve given your brain the task to look for blueberries.

And the same goes for negative and positive things. If you’ve given your brain the task to look out for danger, look out for all of the threat that could potentially exist there, it’s gonna go and find all the negative things. We are more wired for fear. We are more wired to find the negative.

And as Brené Brown says, joy is the most vulnerable emotion.

This means that in order for you to be able to feel joy and happiness and laughter and trust and all of that, you need to be able to be vulnerable.

You need to risk the potential of being hurt. And if you are in a place where you’re stuck in sympathetic activation, you are not safe to be vulnerable because that could kill you.

How This Plays Out in Business Culture

If we zoom out to the business world, this is business culture in action. This is hustle culture. This is the zero sum game where if you win, I lose. It’s the “I don’t have enough because the world is already greedy” belief in action.

And the tricky thing is it’s so ingrained in Western culture. It’s ancestral, it runs in our genes. We have been conditioned to believe that if you suffer, if you work hard, you’ll end up in heaven.

It’s even seen as a sign of success, a way that you’ve proved yourself a way to earn your right to be here, as if self-sacrifice is the way to contribute to the world. As if you are giving graciously when you lose yourself.

The Corporate Busy Badge

You can see this if you go to any corporate office, the person seen as the most important is the one walking the fastest. The one who has back to back meetings, who doesn’t even have time for a five minute chat. The one who’s late to every meeting because their previous more important meeting ran over.

The one who brings their laptop to every meeting and reads emails instead of listening to what’s happening in the room. Busy is seen as important, multitasking and working late as productive. The more exhausted you are, the more deserving you are of rest and success.

When I worked in sales, every single meeting from October through December would start with a five to 10 minute rant about how busy it is because it’s Q4.

And if you didn’t say that you were busy and drained, there was something wrong with you, like you weren’t working hard enough.

Breaking Free: My Summer Awakening

It plays out in the workplace because that’s where we spend most our of time. But as I’ve come to realize this summer, it doesn’t stop when you leave the office. It doesn’t even stop if you quit your job and change careers. It doesn’t even stop when you retire, quite honestly.

Unless you regulate your nervous system and reprogram your beliefs, you will keep acting the same way. Because how you act is determined by how you think and feel, and how you think and feel is 99% determined by your subconscious.

So if your subconscious holds the belief it’s unsafe to slow down, you’ll avoid slowing down regardless if you’re taking vacation, regardless if you quit your job, regardless if you do something else, if that belief is there, slowing down will feel unsafe.

My Core Limiting Belief

This particular belief that it’s unsafe to slow down has been one of my core limiting beliefs. As I’ve already shared I used to live a life where I, every day woke up already feeling behind at 7:00 AM I’d already be stressed about the day soon ending.

This summer I got the opportunity to slow down and really look at this belief and reprogram it even more deeply. Let me share my process.

Creating an Extraordinary Life

The vision I have for my life is extraordinary, to me. That means doing meaningful work, doing work that I love and enjoy living in alignment with my values and being committed to my growth, my responsibilities, and a positive life in general.

Like that is an extraordinary life for me. And yes, that includes external things too, like the money I wanna make, the place I wanna live in, the relationships I wanna have.

But I also know that the things I dream of on the outside are only reflections of what is going on on the inside.

The past five years, but more so the past year, how I’ve been living my life has shifted. How I’m relating to myself, my thoughts and my feelings and so on has shifted. And as a result, things on the external has shifted.

But this summer, the limiting belief “slowing down is dangerous” showed up. I forgot my truth.

The Summer Trap

I was coaching a few women. I also wanted to take the opportunity of the slow season to build systems, plan for the fall and get things in order and so on. So I basically saw it as a season to catch up.

Exactly that word, catching up, made my achiever show up again. My inner achiever has always been a bit uneasy during the summer, maybe because summer’s been one of the few times I’ve ever truly taken a break in the past.

And when I’ve done that, she’s felt lost. Like, what is she supposed to do if we’re not achieving? She found other ways to achieve, how many books we’re gonna read, how to have the optimal break and so on.

The Cultural Pressure of Nordic Summers

I’ve felt a stress around summer, and this is also cultural in the Nordics especially life kind of builds up to summer and when it finally arrives, we either complain that it’s too hot or too cold.

Because in the north, the seasons are so extreme. Winters are so incredibly dark and cold. And the summers are like the sweetest, tropical fruit you can find. The days never end. The sun is always there. Everything blooms like it’s so sweet.

And because of that, it’s difficult to enjoy that sweetness because we’re kind of like, “oh, it’s gonna end soon.”

That pressure, which I think is cultural, that culture of pressure I have also felt inside. I’ve had thoughts like:

I had this even as a child, I remember feeling stressed when the summer break hit its halfway point.

Usually like after my birthday, my birthday is July 8th and I remember like the week after my birthday I would be so anxious and stressed and grieving that so much of summer had already passed and fall was getting closer and closer.

The Moment I Chose to Stop

So with this context in mind, it makes sense that achiever part came back. She was trying to get somewhere into the future instead of enjoying the season I was in.

For a week or so, I could really feel the stress energy. I was a bit busy. I was overwhelmed by the tasks that were ahead of me.

At the same time I was worried, like, am I working too much? Should I maybe rest more? But then when I rested, I felt that I wasn’t doing enough. So I felt like I had to work more. And yeah, it was messy and exhausting.

And here’s the win of this story. I noticed this, and when I did, I stopped.

I stopped and I asked myself, how can I slow down?

The Process of Awareness

I allowed myself to feel, and when I did that, I noticed the belief that was running this behavior. I noted the story, the story of being behind, and I started to question it.

I felt the busy energy in my body. I tracked the energy of the teenager or the child in me, and I started to tune in to the woman I am now, and most importantly, the woman that I want to be.

And with this, I could notice how I shifted between the two energies. How it felt to be in my grounded, higher self, and how it felt when this teenager achiever was in me.

She would pop up right before I started to work, or sometimes she was there as my first thought when I woke up. And when I noticed that I again went back, I questioned the belief and I asked what’s true for me right now?

And slowly and steadily, I started to feel how absurd it is to see life as a race.

Finding My Perfect Rhythm

When I did that, it became easier for me to just simply focus on the next step, the one right in front of me, because the next step, the one in right in front of me is always there. I always know what to do next because it’s right there in front of me. I don’t have to plan 400 steps ahead of me.

The thing to focus on is right in front of me.

I started affirming that I’m not behind because opportunities don’t live on a fixed timeline. They live in the unknown, in the infinite web of possibilities that exist. Now, my timeline is perfect. Everything happens as it should, when it should. I’m not missing out because I’m here alive in my body.

My Daily Mantra

I’m gonna say that again because this is the mantra that I’ve been meditating on almost daily this summer:

“I’m not behind because life is not linear. It’s not a race.

There is only this moment, the present, and my only job is to live it fully. I

‘m not behind because opportunities don’t live on a fixed timeline.

They live in the unknown, in the infinite web of possibilities that exist.

Now, my timeline is perfect. Everything happens as it should, when it should. I’m not missing out because I am here alive, present in my body.”

How to Reprogram Your Subconscious Beliefs

So, as I said, I’ve been meditating on that mantra, writing it in my journal over and over again, affirming it before I start working, affirming it as soon as I felt stressed. In doing so, I have been reprogramming my subconscious.

It sounds like this technical term or like a secret code. It’s not, it’s basically replacing old thoughts with new thoughts. Like, if you wanna make it simple, it’s creating new pathways in your brain.

And one way to do that is to affirm something that’s true and to really feel it in your body, to write it, to meditate on it, like let it flow through you.

The Wrong Way vs. The Right Way

It’s not just simply picking an affirmation you don’t believe in. So let’s say you hate your body and you just start affirming, “I love my body, I love my body, I love my body.” Like that might not work, because you’re just smashing an affirmation on top of a belief that you still believe in.

What you need to do is to first question the underlying belief, the false assumption, “I hate my body,” or “I’m not worthy of rest unless I perform,” or whatever it is. It needs to start at the root.

Once you’ve done that, you can then go into, okay, what would be an alternative truth here? And when you’ve then found the alternative truth or the truth or a belief that’s more supportive then you can start be like, okay, how can I take this into my life? How can I feel it in my body and my system?

Can I let the energy work through me? Like what happens when I say “I love myself”? What happens when I say “my timeline is perfect”?

If you feel calm and relaxed, I’m like, yeah, that’s that’s true. That’s true. Then keep on going, keep on affirming it, writing it in your journal over and over again if you feel like, no, it’s not.

“My timeline is not perfect. I am stressed, and I should be there, but I’m here.” Okay. Then you need to go back to the belief. Then you need to go back, feel the feelings related to that belief.

I hope you get the difference here between picking an affirmation and just repeating versus questioning the belief and then creating an affirmation.

The 1% Progress Method

When I’ve started to do this, I can tune into my rhythm. I have a rhythm that is unique to me. I’ve stopped thinking that I need to do all the things. And instead focus on the progress.

One question that I’ve asked myself is: What would make this day 1% better? How can I take 1% more responsibility of my life? What would move me one percent closer to my goals?

Then you give your brain the task of what’s the one thing that creates progress instead of seeing this to-do list that never ends?

When you do that, there’s no winning, because you’re never going to complete all the things on your list. Asking the 1% question allows yourself to feel into momentum and progress to celebrate what’s here instead of chasing that imaginary finish line.

The Ripple Effect of Slowing Down

I’ve worked with a few women this summer, on exactly these things. The coolest thing, is that this has completely shifted how I show up as a coach.

I show up with much more power, presence, and this has been translated and reflected in the results of the women I’ve been working with. They have reprogrammed their way of looking at productivity, how they view themselves and the achieving part. It blows my mind quite honestly.

I’m sharing it to show you that when you slow down, you step into your power. When I slowed down, when I gave myself the permission to slow the F down, I stepped into my power.

The Real Work of Transformation

That’s how reprogramming your beliefs can look like in action moment to moment. It’s not so much about just throwing out the old and bringing in the new, like you do when you’re cleaning your closet or something.

It’s really about slowing down to notice what beliefs are currently running your actions. And then switching out your thoughts, moment to moment, feeling what’s going on in your body moment to moment. Noticing when you slip back because you will, and taking yourself back.

It is about sitting with the mantra of the new belief, repeating it so your body hears it, and then again meeting yourself when you sleep back into the old. That is the work.

Understanding Time Itself

I wanted to talk about something that I reflected on in all of this. It might sound abstract, but it actually the key to everything, and it’s our relationship with time itself.

Life is not linear. Time is not linear. It doesn’t exist the way we think it does. It’s not a fixed line with a past behind us and a future up ahead. It only appears to be because the mind needs time to exist. The mind has created time, it needs contrast, relativity movement.

That’s how the mind organizes experience, like filing cabinet for memories and plans.

But in reality, all moments exist simultaneously. The past isn’t behind you. It’s alive in your nervous system. The future isn’t far away. It’s shaped by the frequency you hold now.

Time as a Construct

So time is a construct, a dimension we move through, but not a force that moves us. It’s how consciousness measures change. It’s how we mark cycles, tell stories and build meaning. It’s a lens, a language, or a way of perceiving, but not the source of perception.

Think about it. You meet someone and feel like you’ve known them forever. You lie awake at night and then 10 minutes feel like hours or you meditate, fall into stillness and suddenly 30 minutes are gone.

A Practical Guide to Slowing Down

Okay, let’s get back to slowing down. The question you might be asking then is like, how do I slow down?

If I just tell you, slow down, it might be triggering to hear that it has been for me. Because no one is not relaxing on purpose, if that makes sense. The key is in your body really.

Step 1: Notice What’s Present

Notice what is present in your body, like what is going on. Go to that uncomfortable place, meet the pain, lean into the pain you’re feeling, orient yourself back into the reality you’re in.

Notice what’s around you. Just take in the environment that’s one of the most effective ways to regulate your nervous system.

Noticing what is present here, because nothing that is untrue exists in your body. So if you are feeling something that is your truth right now.

The key to change is in your existence right now.

What pain am I feeling? What gets in the way of my peace?

Step 2: Ask the Deep Questions

The most important thing is the question. And really like keep on asking why. Don’t just stay at the surface level.

Like, okay, if I don’t finish this quickly, my manager’s not gonna be happy. And what happens is your manager isn’t happy? Oh, well, you know, he’s gonna be angry at me.

And why is that so bad? Maybe he’ll tell me off. Okay, well, if he tells you off, why is that so dangerous?

I’ll feel like a failure. Okay. So if you feel like a failure. Why is that so bad? Why does that risk your survival? I might not feel worthy of this job or worthy to be here.

Okay. Well, if you’re not worthy of this job, what would that mean about you? Then I don’t know if I’m worthy at all. And what’s so dangerous about not being worthy at all?

If I don’t know if I’m worthy, I dunno if I get to exist. Okay, now we’re talking. So if you don’t get to exist here, what does that mean about you? That means that you essentially need to die. Yet you can’t live here on planet Earth unless you finish that presentation in a rushed way.

You see where I’m going here, and now I did it quite quickly. But the thing is, is to go deep here. This is what we do in the coaching in a very deep way, to really question it and it’s most powerful when you’re doing that with someone else, with another person who can mirror you.

But with that said, you and a journal, you can also do it.

Step 3: Find Your New Truth

And when you find that pain, then be like, okay, so what would I want to believe instead? Is it true that I’m not worthy unless I perform?

Your body will be like, yes it is. But you as your higher self can be like, no, it’s not. And then you can gently start to introduce a new truth, writing it down, feeling it in, meditating on it, and again, not as an empty affirmation that you just smash on, but as a felt sense.

That’s the reprogramming. That’s how you introduce this as a new way of being. And that’s what slowing down looks like in action. You start shifting out the old with the new you start taking action in a different way.

So you feel something different. You think something different. You take different action, you get different results, and that’s how you reinforce your new identity. Then you can let go of the old, not as a dramatic like “I’m letting go of this,” but more that it just falls away very gently and naturally and all of a sudden you’ve made a leap into something different.

Why Slowing Down Actually Speeds You Up

That is why slowing down is actually speeding up. Because instead of rushing and pushing and forcing and then maybe getting some results and doing it again and having anxiety if you did it right or wrong and then you know all this mess, which is the busy energy, that’s the busy energy in action.

And then you go, “oh, I’m behind.” And you think “I just need to go faster.” And then you go faster and you burn out eventually.

As I record this, I’m sitting by a window watching the trees move with the wind. And I’m noticing they’re not rushing anywhere. They’re just trees being trees doing what trees do in perfect timing with the season they’re in.

We are the same. You are exactly where you need to be. Learning what you need to learn, becoming who you are meant to become.

Your Invitation

And the invitation is simple. Slow down enough to remember this. Slow down enough so that you can have awareness of what is running your life, what thoughts and beliefs are running your actions. Slow down enough to feel your own rhythm, to realize that you are life.

Thank you for choosing depth over speed. For remembering that the most radical thing you can do in a world obsessed with more and faster is simply to be present.

Remember, the race is an illusion. Your rhythm is perfect.

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TOPIC: Claim Your Self Worth, Overworking, Perfectionism, Self-doubt