Maybe you're striving to optimize your daily tasks to save time, or perhaps you're feeling concerned about meeting your future milestones, such as starting a family or purchasing a house. Wherever the weight of time feels most prominent for you, it's crucial to notice these struggle spots. The pressure of time often triggers impulsive or hasty decision-making, driven by perfectionism and an inclination to over-plan, leaving you perpetually unsatisfied with your current situation without fully understanding why.
Take this as an example. You're a woman in your 30s, wanting to settle down with your partner and think about having kids in the next couple of years. But recently, you and your partner haven't been getting along as well as you usually do - they seem more distant and less communicative. This isn't just concerning to you because you care about your relationship, but this could potentially mess with your overarching timeline of wanting to have kids before you're 40! So, based on your timeline and the various pressures you feel, you decide to "do what's best for you" and let them know that if things don't get better in 1-month, you'll be ready to cut your losses and move on. Now, not only does an ultimatum interfere with the natural ebbs and flows of interpersonal relationships, it drives a wedge deeper between you and your partner that will probably need to be repaired on top of the communication issues that led to this moment in the first place. Whether you two decide to stay together and work it out, or you decide to move on and start anew, you will end up with "wasted time" regardless. Starting fresh with someone new will not absolve you from the pressures of time you feel - rather, they will probably get more and more exaggerated with each relationship, leading to more reactive decisions and less tolerance for the ups and downs that relationships hold. If this is a familiar pattern, it's best to slow down and address the pressures you feel from a place of curiosity and kindness to yourself.
As another example, let's say you are a hard and ambitious worker, with a calendar that is almost always full. Somedays you find yourself so busy or overwhelmed with tasks that the pressure of time feels impossible to not get stressed about. You all of a sudden find yourself replying to emails quickly and getting other tasks done as efficiently as possible. But then you realize that not only did a couple of your emails have some typos in them, but in your scramble to get those messages sent out, you also didn't explain yourself very well and forgot to include some important information and the attached documents. You then have to send out a follow-up email with the added info and the documents and maybe even call a meeting with your coworker to make sure everyone is on the same page. In your efforts to save time amidst your stress, you ended up costing yourself time.
So, what's the solution here? Find the areas in your life that feel like you're racing the clock, and begin developing your capacity to withstand the discomfort those stressors bring. If you can start to take a step back and notice what's going on, as opposed to getting sucked into the whirlwind of thoughts and anxious sensations, you will be shocked at how much more you can get done mistake-free and how much stronger your relationships can become.
Tips for starting to slow down, instead of speed up:
1. Practice grounding when your stress sensors start going off. Some effective grounding exercises include slow, deep breathes, carrying a grounding object with you that you can hold or wear (e.g. a bracelet, a small crystal, etc.), feeling both feet planted firmly on the ground, noticing sounds and smells around you, amongst loads of other effective practices.
2. Notice how you feel inside your body: Describe the sensations you feel without trying to change them.
3. Notice and describe the emotion you're feeling: This works best if you're able to write this down on a piece of paper. This will help externalize your emotions and bring some sense to what's happening.
4. Notice any impulses to act on your emotion: The key here is to notice these impulses without acting on them. Keep breathing and playing the role of observer.
5. Do the opposite action to what your impulse is telling you: if your impulse is to rush, commit to slowing down; if your impulse is to get angry at your partner, practice coming from a place of compassion instead, and the list goes on.
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