Trusting Your Pace
The view from our new home on move in day.
For the first time in my business I’ve gone several weeks without blogging, posting on social media, or offering free workshops.
The reason is because Billy and I have spent the past year looking for a house, and after spending dozens of Saturdays at open houses, one came along this spring that we loved.
Overnight we moved homes and communities – transitioned from renters to owners, urbanites to “ruralites”, and one bedroom to a few bedrooms, a yard, and a lawn mower.
It’s been lovely exploring our new life, and in our first week, meeting more neighbors than we had our entire ten years in the city.
I’ve wanted to soak in as many of these precious moments as I can – allowing other parts of life to wait – knowing I don’t get a repeat with this novel time in our lives.
Meanwhile, I’ve sensed a fear running in the background.
The fear is around taking on a slower pace with my work.
I’ve found myself worrying about how I’m writing less and not getting regular and consistent messages out to my audience (a decree that is drilled into your head as a “must” by entrepreneurial leaders if you want a successful business). There have been waves of:
Am I behind?
Am I wasting time?
Am I lazy?
Am I doing this right?
Will this be okay?
I believe it takes a lot of practice to honor the ever-changing pace that comes with just about any process – whether it’s settling into a new home, growing a business, learning to not let food run your life, or trusting your imperfectly perfect body.
It’s often easy for me to feel threatened by the slower aspects of the process, especially if our experience is that it’s “too slow.” We start to doubt our trajectory and ourselves. We often feel like we should be further along than we are.
We are more comfortable with quick, tangible, and “efficient” progress, even if it means overdoing. As long as we are "productive" our culture praises us, even if we are running on fumes.
Wow – look at you go!
But what if we truly honored our own pacing?
And instead we said to one another (and ourselves), Wow – look at you go – taking your time, going at the pace that you need. Dang girl, you know how to move in a quality way.
The reality is that all of us will have our unique pacing, depending on who we are and what stage and season of life we mind find ourselves. In fact, I’d say that’s one of the important teachings we encounter while making peace with our nutrition path — to also make peace with our pacing.
When you begin to follow your own pace is when you really begin to step into your own.
Which, is no small task in a world of 21-day fix this and instant 7-day that. In a culture where we are sold an unrealistic pacing. In a time when we are constantly fed unethical marketing of overnight fixes.
In which case we take on the hustle as the “only” way. In which case we carry an unjustified level of shame if anything takes longer than a crash course 30-day membership.
We become so inundated with urgency that anything that takes time means we are going about it all wrong. We become so afraid we won’t reach the destination, we let fear sit in the captain seat (not to mention wreak havoc on our metabolism.)
But allowing ourselves to go at our own pace means we choose our own voice over the voice of another.
It means we embrace our process over a process that is thrust upon us. It means we allow ourselves to be in our process, with permission to settle in.
It means saying “no” to a culture obsessed with instant gratification, competition, and perfectionistic standards.
It means learning to say there’s room for my pace too, because by the way, paces come in all shapes and sizes, and it would be a lot less cool if we were all robots marching at the same speed.
It means exploring your way – and acknowledging (or leaning into the idea) - that your pace has oh such great wisdom.
It means trusting your timing. It means trusting life’s timing.
When you trust your pace, what you’re really saying is you trust yourself.
So go at your pace.
It’s okay to take your time.
It’s okay to be human.
It’s okay to be you.
It’s okay.
I trust my process. And I trust your process, too.
With love,
McKenzie