Slowing down your life

Anxiety says that every moment matters. Your mind arrives at what you should be doing, you need to be doing, or how things are supposed to go. You get stuck. Anxiety can’t think flexibly or change its course.

Society can make us feel this way too. In school you’re expected to master certain content at a certain pace. In work there are deadlines that you must be able to meet. Pressure from your family or social media can make you feel like you must be achieving social goals at a certain time and in a certain way.

Your anxiety can make you feel urgent in any given moment about getting rid of your sensations or your thoughts. It can give you a global sense that time is just moving too quickly and that you can’t keep up. There’s always something you need to be doing and you are always behind on getting it done.

Many theories of psychology focus on your values. I agree that identifying and being intentional about what you value and how you want to live it out is a great way to help you build a life that is meaningful for you.

In any given moment, slow down.

It’s okay that you aren’t achieving your goals. It’s okay that you don’t even know what your values are, not to mention how you’d live them out. It’s okay that your life isn’t turning out how you hoped. You might be spending a lot of time coping with physical or mental illness. Maybe a break up or a death set your life on a course you weren’t expecting. It may seem like there’s a path ahead of you and you just have to find it, but there is no path.

Life is about taking a guess. It’s about making an attempt to understand yourself and who you want to be and then enjoying the scenic route while you get there. When you aren’t in a hurry to become who you think you must be, you have the chance to be open to who you might become.

An open, flexible you will not just be happier, but will see more opportunities than a urgent and rigid version of you.