Something I’ve noticed: whenever I take some sort of short-cut—and I mean really micro-short-cuts, like: contorting my body to reach too far for something when I could walk around to get in a much easier physical way, or rushing myself to get to something I am late for, or simply taking the “easy way out” on some mental task—something tends to go wrong because I refused to slow down. Either I create more of a mess, I slightly injure myself extending my body in a way it isn’t meant to go, I forget something, or I just otherwise create avoidable-chaos. This has made me think about how (and why!) I seem to have a consistent level of resistance to just go slower, take my time, and ease into what I’m doing with care.
reflections from youth
As a child, I was as close to a perfect pupil as any teacher could have hoped for: I was insatiably curious, well-behaved, and rather assertive in the way I asked my questions and absorbed the material that was being taught. I was studious. I paid attention. I studied. I was always prepared. There was very little to “pick at” about me, except for one small piece of feedback that my parents would always relay back to me after their conversations in parent-teacher interviews: Isabel needs to slow down. She rushes through her work and doesn’t check it over. She makes silly mistakes that don’t come from a lack of knowledge or preparation, but from an unwillingness to go slower.
I remember being surprised by this feedback; it was something I was not even aware that I was doing at the time (such is the nature of the shadow!). I didn’t realize I was going so fast; from one thing to the next without pause—without, well, presence. I was always rushing to get to the next thing; I had a habit of always looking ahead. Of always knowing what was next and wanting to be prepared for it when it came, instead of making sure I was meeting where I already was with that same attention and devotion. This habit left me making what were then-called “careless mistakes” — doing things (or forgetting to do things) I otherwise wouldn’t have if I just took my time.
This habit manifested itself in my gymnastics at that time, too. I was brave, I was ambitious. I always wanted to learn new skills. I always wanted to move on. Go forward, with a sort of reckless abandon for what I hadn’t yet perfected. While everyone around me was absorbed in their technique, devoted to perfecting the skills they could already do, refusing to move on until the thing they were working on was done in its optimal form of execution, I was on a completely different wavelength. I was fantasizing about what I could do next and pushing myself to get there when my coaches weren’t paying attention or when they gave up on their efforts to get me to slow down and hone in on better execution at the cost of slower progression.
This tendency to rush through what I do is my blessing and my curse, as all our most potent qualities are. The blessing of this trait is that I always know what is coming, because I always seem to be thinking a few steps ahead. While my peers waited for the taste they had for their jobs after graduation to turn sour after a few years, I had already considered how I would feel 2-3 years into any path and did my best to optimize against having to learn what was right for me the hard way. These days, this trait manifests in me finding myself fantasizing about motherhood more than I probably should, simply because I know it is the most pronounced next phase, and I want to make sure I am ready for it when it comes. I want to be prepared. The irony, of course, is that this keeps me from taking full advantage of the moment I am in right now — one I approached with the same level of eagerness that I am now approaching the next phase I will be in with. The trouble is that as soon as I arrive at the thing that I spent all of this time anticipating, I am then thinking about the next thing, and then the next thing, and then the next thing. It’s not that I am totally absent-minded of the phases I am in and the moments they enable for me (baseline, I am actually quite present), but that I don’t get to fully squeeze the juice from each phase because I tend to always be preoccupied with being prepared for what is going to come next. This causes me to sometimes forget that where I am is where I once yearned to be.
muscles are built slowly
I have recently started doing pilates quite religiously, and one thing I have found particularly powerful about it is that it forces me to go slow. The benefits of the movements come from taking your time as you do them; they come from focusing intently on what you are doing and being highly meticulous and attentive as you do it. I’ve realized that most other sorts of exercise I gravitate to are all about speed, hustle, intensity. They are very sprint-like in nature. You go fast and your goal—usually—is to go even faster. Pilates (pleasantly) challenges this pattern. Gymnastics was also great for this. Our performances were sprints, yes, but how we prepared for them was through slow, methodical training, conditioning, skill-building and drills that forced our attention on execution and trained us for the moments we would need to exert ourselves aggressively on so that we could do so with ease. So that we could trust ourselves when that moment came, so that we could sprint with full confidence.
go slow to go fast
This lesson—that slowness is the only real way to prepare for the moments where life demands that you move fast—translates to almost everything in life. You train yourself carefully, thoughtfully, slowly, safely, so that when the moment comes to exert yourself, you can trust in your preparation. We have, at that point, done the work to show up proudly, with confidence. We can exert ourselves powerfully—yet with ease—because we have practiced. Because we have prepared. Because we are ready. And then, when we need to exert, we are held by our preparation. We are protected by the practice done in advance of that moment.
This is perhaps just another way to frame the whole “keep small promises to yourself to build confidence” idea: keep small promises to yourself so that when life demands a big promise from you, you know that you are capable of delivering on it. Practice consistently, patiently, slowly, so that when you do need to sprint, you have built the strength to push yourself, to go fast, to exert fully. And then when you’re done sprinting, you can slow back down.
we train to sprint
Ideally, sprinting shouldn’t come from a cold start, without a proper stretch or warmup beforehand. Hopefully, there is some momentum there to drawn upon, some strength built already that you can rely on. And the more you practice, the more strength you build, and the more you can trust yourself when you need to go fast. I’ve been trying to apply this not just in how I relate to my physical body, but also towards my inner world. I’ve been trying to build strength around the things that I want to exert myself on. To practice what I’ll need to eventually “sprint at” so that I can be prepared for those moments where exertion is required. This requires an attunement to self that I hadn’t previously employed when I was in a constant rhythm of “rushing” through life. I never paid attention to when I needed more gentleness, when I needed ease, when I needed to stop sprinting and start walking, when I needed to catch my breath—because I was so focused on the next race, on the next time I could taste the intensity of exertion.
But I am evolving. And now, when I do exert, I try to do so from a place of calm, from a place of ease, from a place of groundedness. And then, when I do the sprinting, develop the awareness to slow down, to check back in with myself when the sprint is over, to not get so “hooked” on the rush that I forget to pause and honour the recalibration period afterwards, the moment where you enjoy what you just sprinted towards!
to be, without being in a rush
So, I guess my teachers were onto something: I do like the rush of rushing. And to an extent, I am quite good at rushing—at doing things in a high-intensity, high-pressure way. But my sense is that I am much better off when I enjoy the pause, slow down, be where I am, and build strength patiently. I’m better off when I remember to take my time, to realize that the journey is long and it should be treated with patience. This is the muscle I have spent the last two years or so cultivating: the ability to be, without being in a rush. Because I want to be ready for the sprints to come, but I don’t want to be someone who goes out of my way to find them, who seeks out the rush just to feel normal. I want to get to a place (and am well on my way there) where I see that things are more enjoyable when done slowly, with care. I want to remember that I don’t always need to be accelerating towards the next phase with such haste. That I can slow down and ground myself where I am before moving on to something else. I want to remember to “check over my work” by checking in with myself, and making sure that I feel strong, steady and prepared before I rush into something new. I want to remember that going slower isn’t worse; and sometimes it’s the only way to build the strength we need to go fast.
You can now read Part 2 of this essay: embracing the exhale. You can sign up to get all future Mind Mine posts here:
Related essays you might enjoy: on slowness, taste and living well, get out of your head, forward momentum. You can also find my daily thoughts on Twitter.
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I liked your point about taking things slowly to enable future performance. Running is very different from Pilates, but the same idea of slowness applies: you mostly train slowly (at low effort) to build the base that enables you do the faster running later. There's a reason runners tend to spend most of their time running slowly!
Thanks Isabel for this essay. Establishing a practice of slowness is hard, but I've found it to be worthwhile.
It's perilously easy to get caught in the doing trap where you race to accomplish all the things you "should do" while a slow, deliberate effort to tackle one thing at a time actually leads to a greater output. You're right that it's a muscle we need to train, I find it to be helpful narrowing in on the things that I get physically uncomfortable taking slow (workouts, house chores, email responses) and turning it into a practice where I try to be as mindful as possible of each movement or noticing finer details as a sort of meditative exercise