The Importance of Slowing Down.

I wake up this morning, do my morning routine, and choose to throw my agenda away. It is snowing, the flakes falling softly on the hard earth, and for the first time in a while I feel permission to pause. To sit on the couch and watch the world go by. To dream in my journal, talk to my mom, and think about all the things that lie ahead. I know I will get to them eventually, reach my hands out to that infinite future, but today is not for that. Today is for slowing down.

I think so much in the business world is about achieving. About doing—as much as you can, as often as possible, as quickly. And in a corporate environment, where you are inherently subject to your employer’s schedule, this is literally your job. But, for those of us who have taken the leap to forge out on our own, we get to create the rules. We get to set our schedules, determine what is important to us and how we wish to achieve it. And we get to do that in our own way.

And yet, still when you listen to entrepreneurs and change makers, it’s all about the hustle. The outreach. The output. But for the creatives among us, this scrapes against our fundamental need to take our time, and let our creation guide the process. A few months ago I joined a greeting card business group, of other people in the industry working to hone their product and get it in front of more folks. In many ways this group was great and incredibly educational, but ultimately left me feeling like a hamster on a wheel, struggling to keep up. And so I decided to step away and take my time. And maybe that means that right now, my business is not thriving by conventional means—I do not have a huge following, and I am not raking in money in sales every week. But, when I think about it, I think that that is where I should be at the beginning of my business. Like a runner going too fast and tripping on your own shoelaces, I think too much too soon can leave you with nothing to fall on when things go wrong. Instead, I am interested in the slow start, in which I put the necessary building blocks beneath me before I get to wherever I’m going, and then trust that I’ll get there, in time. And at that point, I will have fully arrived. This means slowing down to create, and play around with what it is I am creating. Slowing down to meditate on my purpose, and how I want to put it out into the world.

While I did throw my agenda away today, slowing down does not at all mean stopping, or overly analyzing every move to the point of stagnation. It just means making less moves initially, and valuing the time that it takes to get through the initial growing pains. It means committing to process over results, and finding joy throughout that process. It means slowing down and staring out the window, sometimes. Who knows, you might even end up getting inspired.