Time-Induced Anxiety: Slowness is a Kindness
Time is about to get weird. Really weird.
I crave quick change, all the time. I dream big and expect my efforts to produce near-overnight results. I have a long history of getting frustrated when things don't go quickly.
Society knows this about me, it knows this about all of us. Everywhere I go, I'm inundated with these kinds of promises:
"lose those pesky pounds in just one week"
"go from zero to 100k in under a month"
"back pain gone in one easy application of bla bla bla"
"find the love of your in three simple steps"
"(Whatever your problem is) we can fix it fast and easily with (insert solution)"
Every sales funnel employs this tactic because we as people want it to be true. We've been trained to crave the quick, easy solution to our most complex and deeply nuanced issues.
There's A Peculilar Pace to Transformation
After my trauma and loss last year, I bought in completely to the work required to heal, inside and out. I was deeply driven by both the pain I was in and the dream I clung to in my head.
I ate right. I made sleep a priority. I got sunshine. And I worked my ass off in the gym, every week, like clockwork. I went to therapy, I committed to feeling my grief. I committed to do all the things. And yet it was a terribly inglorious and painfully 'slow' process.
In the gym alone, there were so many phases to get through; being comfortable in an ultra-masculine environment, learning form and technique, understanding how to connect my mind to individual muscles, mobility, strength building, updated nutritional intake- all of it was new. All of it was challenging. My muscles were being broken down every week. I’d sweat and make mistakes, I got lightly injured a few times and cried often. I put in more consistency than I thought I could handle. Most weeks I saw zero physical change. The slowness felt like torture.
Week after week I showed up and did the work. Yet, there was barely any visible change. My frustration would flare up. Between my impatience and the fresh grief, I felt overwhelmed with the process.
Quitting wouldn’t have made it go faster. Trying shortcuts would’ve hurt my body and soul. Staying consistent when I wasn’t getting the result made me want to throw a fit some days. But I stuck with it.
It was difficult for my mind, my emotions, and my expectations. My body was ok, it is designed to heal. My muscles are meant to be challenged and to form solid structures around my bones and vital organs. It was made for this and it was thriving. My soul needed it too. The process that felt like torture formed something deep and irreplaceable in me by pacing my healing, internal and external, in a way that I could integrate the new parts of myself that were gained through the loss and recovery journey.
Nine months in I started seeing some change. At ten months more drastic changes became visible. By a year I was close to a new me. A year. It took my body a year to gently, but powerfully, move from one reality to the next. And it did. I have a new body, a strong body, a wildly capable body that was hard-earned. I went from a deficit to being in a place better than I was before my trauma and loss.
Slowness is a Kindness
True transformation- in the body, in a relationship, in a business, in a country- is not a quick process. To acquire the real deal as a result is something that, much like the soul, cannot be faked, bought, or short-circuited.
When I was in the belly of the beast (the worst part of my grief and suffering) this was the last thing I wanted to hear. And perhaps that's why we all crave the quickness; we're terribly uncomfortable and want relief. That's understandable, but it's not the whole picture.
What happened with my muscles in the gym is very similar to the path of the inner world. The inner landscape, like the body, is meant to heal, to perform great things, to expand. It knows how. We give it the right environment and it heals itself. It takes time and consistency. Just as the muscles are meant to be challenged to grow in a way that serves and protects the rest of its host, so too are our inner worlds designed to be challenged in the process.
Don’t fear the heavy lifting. Don’t fear the big emotions. Don't resist the slowness. We’re designed to handle it all.
I can't tell you how many clients have expressed the sentiment with coaching "Will this last forever? I feel like all I do is the work, it feels like it never ends, it's so painful, I don't know if I can keep going".
That's how every workout felt last year. That's how the depths of the inner work feels. But bit by bit, things transform, and it's truly incredible. Those same clients a year later, two years later, start casually reporting things that would have been miracles before; but now it's just their reality. They grew into it, gently, and with deep maturity. It's never like the ads or the fantasy in our heads; it's much more beautiful and subtle than that.
The slower process is often full of kindness. My body paced my healing. I could not have handled going any faster in retrospect, it wouldn't have been kind to myself to go any faster.
The slowness contains a maturation that is unavailable at a much faster pace. The slowness is where we actually transform. The slowness is where we get all the answers to our prayers, our desires, and our dreams. In our limited perspective, it happens slowly. This slowness, the thing I absolutely detested, in the end, is both attractive and deeply grounding. It not only healed me but is now preserving me for a lifetime.
A year and a half out, the need for a quick-paced transformation was beaten out of me. I want the real deal, so I've learned to surrender a bit more to the real process of transformation. This is where time gets weird...
Urgency: A Simple Law of Power
Our inner world and outer world are designed to work together in perfect harmony. But they've been separated in our consciousness. They've been manipulated.
The outer world is a fast-paced society. The noise and pressures are constant. This pace is embedded in our lives. This reinforcement of a particular pace, namely a quick one, is largely due to the simple power of urgency governing every sphere of public life that is open to the market's influence.
Urgency is one of the top manipulators in every realm; sales, social behavior, conformity, and even religious agendas use urgency. Urgency and Scarcity are taught in every higher-level operation in almost every institution. Thus, we're all affected. There is an outer world pace that has been ingrained in each of us, it's not a natural pace, it's intentionally fabricated to move people.
The outer world operates by these laws of power and manipulation, skewing our whole relationship with reality. This outer world pace is not in sync with the laws of nature, nor is it aligned with the realms of the inner world.
When we rush, we hurt ourselves and unintentionally slow down the process. When we resist and stall the pace, we get dragged. When we listen and surrender to our custom pace of development, things flow differently. We end up exactly where we need to be when we need to be there.
Like we learned in Jurassic Park, "Nature finds a way", and it's about to get really weird. The true nature of our inner worlds and the true nature of the outer world are moving quietly and powerfully forward, despite the mess we've made collectively. So its reintroduction might be a bit bumpy.
Thus, when the pace of progress in the inner world is revealed, it can be extremely difficult to accept. It'll feel 'slow'. The inner world governs all transformation, regardless of how attuned you are to it in your own life. It does not care about the rules of the outer world, like nature itself, it'll keep on marching to the beat of creation. We can fight it at our own peril, but I'm pretty sure nature wins in the long run, every time.
Nothing is what it seems. Learn your pace. Know the signs of being out of sync with your inner world and begin to course correct.
What's Coming Next for Game Changers
The much anticipated Solar Eclipse of 2024 is here.
Time might feel weird for the rest of the year.
Well, maybe not for everyone.
But for those who feel like they're here for a reason, time may feel like it's running out. You'll be tempted to spend your precious thought energy worrying that you might've missed your opportunity to be or do that thing you're here to do.
This is not true.
"The tides of your life are magnificently orchestrated to come in and out in perfect unison. Don't race ahead and ride a wave that was never meant for you." - Rebecca Campbell
There may be a great deal of anxiety in the air for a while, don't let that confuse you. Trust the season you're in. Trust your custom pace. Trust the inner world's kindness as it guides you through your necessary transformations.
You're not late, you're never too old, and nothing is what it seems.
Game Changers are not here to be like everyone else, they are here to be their unique creation in this wild time. Hold your ground and know, that those who surrender to the slowness in return produce the best performances.
You’re not alone. GCs all around the world are having a different but similar experience to yours. Though separated by time and distance, we are in this together. It takes time. And it’s all worth it.
