How to Slow Down
Last week we talked about integrating and recalibrating your next level. You learned that in order to recalibrate and be able to operate at a high capacity- you need to feel safe in that new level. I touched on how to do that but today we're going to dive deeper into the topic of slowing down. Slowing down used to be my kryptonite. I had no idea how and I glorified my business. In fact, my therapist worked on this concept with me for months and I really thought she was crazy. So you're going to learn this from someone who is flawed. I don't pretend to be perfect and I am constantly checking in with my highest self to take the foot off the pedal when I revert back to my old tendencies.
How to Identify if You Need to Slow Down
I’m going to share a couple of indicators to help you identify if you need to slow down. You need to slow down if:
You worry your life/business is not going “to work” if you are not constantly working--This is that fear that if you take your foot off the pedal, everything is going to come to a crashing halt, you feel that you need to constantly be “on” in order for your business to thrive
You don’t have any true days off in your schedule
You take a day off and then think you should be working
You’re going through transitional season in your life--This one is huge. If you’ve experienced a loss, an external change or an upgrade in your system you need to slow down in order to work through it rather than hustle through it
You feel badly when you’re not productive--This is for all my overachievers out there! You put your self-worth in your productivity and if you’re not constantly doing something, you don’t feel productive. This might even show up as a limiting belief of not deserving a day off.
You’re busy doing a lot of stuff but the big needle movers are not getting done--In business, needle movers are what increase your revenue and move your business forward.
I think the biggest setback as to why some of us don’t want to slow down is due to the fact that we are ambitious. We have these goals that we want to achieve and success that we want to feel; and because of the past, we have this general understanding that we’re not going to get anywhere by doing nothing. There is this common truth that we have to work hard in order to get what we want. Yes, that is true but it’s not the whole truth. When you get to a point in your life when you are operating from the wounded masculine (scarcity, hustling, constantly go, go, go) at the detriment of your overall wellness, then that’s where working hard to achieve something isn’t the full truth. Slowing down is going to be the thing that brings you success. You just don’t know that and don’t trust that because it feels very uncertain and uncomfortable to you. I quantum leaped so far in who I am and my business when I decided to slow down despite the discomfort it brought.
Inner Child Healing to Connect to a Deeper Meaning of Slowing & The Energetics Behind it
When I work with my clients on this because a lot of them are just different versions of me; I’d say that 95% of my clients struggle with slowing down. When we work on this, the way I help them move through it is with inner child healing.
Here are a couple of journal prompts I invite you to reflect and connect with your inner child and bring light to why slowing down doesn’t feel safe for you:
What is the trauma associated with slowing down?
Who modeled this behavior for you?
Is this serving you or hurting you?
A lot of times, the resistance that comes with slowing down is a result of a trauma experienced with slowing down. Perhaps you have a history like me where I had to be the one to make ends meet. What I mean by this is that I was kicked out of my house when I was a senior in highschool and I’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with my parents. My dad was in the military so he was super strict and with my stepmom being Japanese she was also super strict. My biological mom didn’t raise me, she raised me for 4 years of my life and I didn’t see her for at least 6 years of my life as a child. I always held this belief that I was abandoned and I did not matter. The trauma associated with slowing down for me was in 6th grade. I was living in Japan at the time and I went to school on base but I lived off base. If I missed the bus to school, it would mean I needed to walk 45 minutes to get to school. As a child, that’s a heavy burden to carry. Along with getting kicked out at 18, I wanted to make sure that I was providing for myself through the rest of highschool along with college. In college, I was working three jobs in order to make ends meet and was constantly hustling. This is my trauma of not wanting to slow down because I understood that slowing down meant my basic needs were not going to be met.
Looking back at your life, try and look at it as a puzzle; and imagine all these puzzle pieces laying around. When you’re doing this shadow, deep inner work it’s almost as if taking all the puzzle pieces in your life and really seeing how they all fit to make and really see this masterpiece of your life. I know it can be daunting to shed light on your trauma, I’m aware of how deep this work can be. I want to offer you my compassion, love, and acknowledgement for really seeing yourself. I know this can be heavy, but as you reprocess these experiences this is where your healing comes in. You are not broken, these are just experiences in your past that haven't been integrated into your current life of who you are.
Sometimes this behavior is modeled for you. From 0 to 7 years old, your subconscious brain is a sponge that’s downloading everything around you. The moment I was born, my subconscious brain downloaded my cultural conditioning of being half Mexican and half Japanese. So when understanding how it was modeled for you, understand that you could have seen it from who raised you or it may have been something you were born with. As for me, my stepmom modeled behavior that I didn’t want for myself which could also be similar for what you may have experienced.
The last question is for you to start taking personal responsibility for how you’re allowing these past experiences/beliefs to have power over you in this life. Just because we have these experiences, doesn’t mean we have to be a victim to them. No matter how much you’re not being a victim to it, I guarantee that there is still so much room for improvement. A lot of times we can allow these past experiences to serve us and vice versa. This brings me to my story with my stepmom. When I was working with my therapist, it occurred to me that if I slowed down it meant that I would be like her. I have a fear of not reaching my full potential. I say this with unconditional love: we cannot change the people around us but we can change the people around us. I can’t change my stepmom and I don’t want to. My stepmom is extremely talented with sewing and jewelry making. However, she is not doing anything with her talents. She is not selling her gifts and is not taking control of her happiness. I looked at her life and realized that I don’t want this to be me; I don’t want my potential to not be met the way hers is not being met. Because of this, I have this trauma of slowing down because I don’t want to end up like her where I’m stuck in this victim mentality and not reaching and living out my fullest potential with the gifts that I have. The learning lesson for me was to acknowledge that it’s not a crime for her to be this way and I can accept and love her for the way she is and that I am in control of my own life. Just because my parents wanted to live their lives a certain way does not mean I am going to end up like that. I can look at this story and fall victim to it or I can look at these experiences and allow it to serve me. Inner child healing is reconnecting to the wounded inner child and reparenting ourselves so that we can become the wonder child. You don’t need to know all the pieces in order to heal. Identify the experiences that you went through and determine what the learning lessons are.
Now, let’s get into the energetics of slowing down. Slowing down is the embodiment of the healthy feminine, the divine feminine. Last week, we talked about integration and how that is the embodiment of the divine masculine. Healthy feminine is loving, compassionate, empathetic, and supportive; she is naturally intuitive and listens to her heart rather than her mind. The wounded masculine is driven from ego, scarcity, and hustle. The wounded feminine is neediness and codependency; needing to be taken care of. I’ve experienced being in my wounded feminine during my past relationships that were unhealthy and toxic. I didn’t know how to operate from the healthy feminine because it wasn’t modeled for me and it was not something I learned. When we slow down, we are operating from our divine feminine. We are giving ourselves time and space to nurture; to connect with our inner Mother, to connect with our inner Grandmother energy so that we can really take the time to nurture and nourish ourselves. This is the process of reparenting. If you struggle with this, you are allowing yourself to operate from your wounded inner child. The only way for your inner child to feel heard and acknowledged is through taking the time to actually hear and acknowledge them. In order to do this, it’s about doing the work and being aware of when these patterns are arising and in those moments choosing to shift your pattern instead of defaulting to your autopilot.
If you have a pattern of overworking yourself and being overly critical, doing the work looks like becoming aware of that pattern and shifting it once you’ve brought awareness to it. Maybe that looks like a small promise to yourself or maybe it looks like being gentle with yourself in that moment and creating time and space for you to be present with yourself and calling in divine feminine energy of being compassionate and nurturing in that moment.
Practical Steps on How to Slow Down in Your Life
When you’ve been in survival mode for a very long time it might be hard at first to start to slow down. Here are some practical steps that can start implementing today while also allowing you to connect with your divine feminine energy:
Step 1: Start with a “no should” day once a month--this is best done on your first full bleed of your period. No should days are the best way to start cycle syncing. No should days are where everything we do does not have a should. Even if you feel like you “should” rest, there’s still internalized pressure. No should days are the first stepping stones of connecting with your intuition.
Step 2: Make space for your hobbies--You can do stuff that you normally tell yourself that you don’t have time to do. Doing stuff with your hands can also be very grounding.
Step 3: Adopt cycle syncing fully--Start to track where you are with your period cycle so you can see where you are creative on some days and assess what your energy levels are on other days.
Step 4: Change your environment--This can be interchangeable and could be done as step 1. Take a trip and get out of your usual day-to-day grind. Do something that’s outside of your comfort zone!
Step 5: Continuously push yourself out of your comfort zone--Slowing done will feel uncomfortable. If you’re extra courageous, slow down until a state of discomfort and recalibrate from there. What I mean by this is not filling up your calendar when you have an extra timeslot. This is all mindset; having the awareness of when you want to push yourself and instead choosing to slow down.
