A Restless Soul on Recovery: How I’m Learning to Slow Down and Stop Racing
Monday Editions
March is an interesting month. Between turning 24 and this publication’s one-year-anniversary around the corner, I’ve somehow half-what accidentally found the intention I want to set for this year – calmness.
This insight was of course inspired by some of my favourite people. Spending more time surrounded by friends who seem to be quite balanced and less in survival mode mirrored how much I’m still operating in fight or flight, while neither is required from me anymore. This is the tricky part for a cautious mind – you just can’t seem to find the off switch.
Getting there fast shouldn’t be the only priority.
For the longest time, I was boldly convinced that it had only been the last couple years where ‘a lot of unfortunate things piled up’, but lately I’ve realised that I had gaslit myself a little into believing that. It’s not necessarily just about the last couple years, but more like myself and my personal way of handling things. I filled my pace, my actions, and my decisions with an incredible intensity I repeatedly mistook as drive. A well-intended attempt to achieve my goals, rooted in my own misunderstanding of what being successful has to look like. I see it now.
I’ve need-for-speeded myself through pretty much every stage of life so far, always fearing that I might fall short behind expectations or miss out on a once in a lifetime opportunity. While I thought I was thriving, I was just using my personally developed skillset to exceed in survival mode. I know I’m not alone here, many of us have what I lovingly refer to as restless soul syndrome (don’t worry, it’s not a clinical diagnosis, you can google it). What I mean by it is this tendency to stay in a constant state of inner restlessness, with a chronic sense of urgency. What we don’t always realise early enough, though, is that this way of driving most likely has us end up in a crash against a tree.
Speed alone doesn’t determine how efficient our drive is. We need some proper sense of direction, too. We can’t blow up our whole gas reserve in the first half of the journey when we know the next gas station is double the distance away. And driving as fast as we can still won’t turn a car into a plane.
And now?
I want to learn how to drive slower from now on (not just due to the insane Gas prices, thank you for that). A speeding mind costs you long-term, and there are prices I’m not willing to pay, money unrelated. I want to cultivate an inner sense of stability, wellbeing, and mental clarity, which I think is more than ever important, given the times we’re living in. I want to leave the survival mode my nervous system has perfected over the years and prioritise active stress relief over senseless scrolling. I want to build a new drive, fuelled with intention instead of pressure.