How Your Hurry Becomes Their Lifelong Worry: An invitation to slow down

“What a lovely lovely day!” Declan declares as we step outside to play in the snow before we get in the car to drive to forest school. 

By this point, it had taken me over an hour to get my son out the door. He was pretty adamant that he didn’t want to go. It’s a usual thing in our household, I presume it happens with all three and four-year-olds whose home life is stable, inviting and welcoming (maybe even fun!). Even if not, most kids want to stay with her mothers, anyway. But I digress. 

Here’s my conditioned story, and we all have one …The fact that it took so long to get him out of the house meant that I now start work late. I eat breakfast late. I lose precious time over nothing because I’m in a hurry. And damn it, I have 1209877767899077 things to do and only four solid hours to do them! 

The power of the pause…

& the invitation to slow down.

As my brain starts this nonsense chatter, I notice. I realized as I’m engaging in this habitual and familiar process of “hurry up, we have to go”, the effect of that is causing my son to speed up. Yikes! 

The gift of giving myself permission to notice became my invitation to slow down. To mindfully and intentionally take three deep breaths before I tell him to move along. 

There’s a certain kind of energy associated with a frantic mother. Everything becomes about appeasing the frantic nature of it. I know that one well, because illegal refugees my family found ourselves constantly fleeing countries for safety or for the sake of a better life elsewhere. 

We fled Albania because of political persecution. We fled Greece because we squatted there illegally. Then we fled Albania because war started. Here’s my experience of all that: As soon as I felt rather stabilized in one spot, I would come home and all of our bags would be half-packed and my parents would be in a state of frantic and panic “we have to go now”. So we would hurry to get in on the next boat or train or bus, whichever would come first. There was no opportunity to pause, or ponder, or wonder. There was no opportunity for consideration. There was just reacting and more reacting and more reacting with no consideration of the impact of the reaction on something as frivolous as the children. 

Of course, I’m not blaming my parents for this, I have finally fucking grown up about it. Truth is, I couldn’t imagine what that life was like and the kinds of pressures that people feel under such circumstances, especially when they’re rather resourceless in their coping mechanisms already. Such is the natural consequence of intergenerational violence and political persecution, internalized. It leaves a mark inside us that can last a lifetime, when we don’t know how to process the information … 

Truth is, I don’t live at a time or space where even thinking that I can choose would put my life in danger, and I’ve come from a historical background where speaking your mind was indeed, profoundly dangerous. But, that’s the story of my ancestors, it is not mine. 

I’m not them. I’m not there. 

I’m here. I’m now.  

Choosing to choose is an act of courage.

I’m living a very different life, in many ways, much more privileged . Not privileged because I have cool stuff but privileged because I know, as the creator of my own reality, I get to choose how I think. I am not stuck in compounded mindsets that have been imposed upon me. I get to choose if a thought or a line of inquiry supports the creation of my life, or if compresses potential into a singularity. 

How does it resonate with you, that you get to choose how you think? 

At my most recent Decloaking and Living Authentically experience one of the participants made a comment which made for very interesting conversation around choice being frivolous, a privilege.

Here’s what I know to be true in my life: It all depends on your perspective (everything is context dependent). From my perspective, and this is what I teach women, once I know that I can choose, I can never unknow it. Once I know that I AM the Choice Point, choosing, I viscerally relax into the fact that by choosing I create my reality. The question then becomes: how do I choose to choose? 

This is where stuff gets interesting, and fun! 

The most critical choice that I can make in any moment of internal chaos is the choice to pause. In doing so, I give myself permission to notice my own internal state. 

And then, breathe. Mindfully and intentionally invite three slowwwwww, loooooongggg, deeeeeeep breaths to be in flow. 

From that expansive place of having created Space inside my quantum-biological device (the body), I can actually see the bigger picture of what’s unfolding rather than get trapped in the constriction of tunnel vision. This is a gift from myself to myself and to everyone around me. 

In the case of today, if my attention had stayed focused on how late we are, how difficult my kid is being, how everything is a challenge, and taking it all personally, or even worse, believing my kid to be defying my parental authority, whatever the fuck that means, then the way that I would engage with him would be veeeeery different. 

There are consequences to our choices…

If I didn’t intentionally pause and I would not look at him and notice the innocence and confusion in his eyes. I wouldn’t allow myself to know a different truth than the one that my conditioned brain kept making up. I wouldn’t give myself permission to notice that half an hour here or there makes no difference whatsoever in my life. I wouldn’t notice that what matters to my core is being Present for and with my son, so that he feels calm and safe in his body.

In other words: I wouldn’t notice the things that matter to me. 

I wouldn’t pause sufficiently to even wonder! What is my son picking up as a lifelong habit from me, in this moment? Modeling, after all, is our greatest teacher. It’s never been do as I say, it’s always been do as I do (apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and all that). Given that, I choose to be meticulously intentional in how I engage with my son. Which means, I must always turn the kaleidoscope inward. He is the provocation; but my inner state belongs to me.

Intentionally pause to notice what matters to you.

When the invitation presents, turning inward is an act of courage. No one taught us how to, so it is something we must learn and intentionally adopt in our adult life. Truth is, habits are a bitch. They always show up and we always think they’re ‘pull’ is real. So we mindlessly give the power of our attention to seeking to mitigate feeling anything (the strategy of lockdown rather than pausing and noticing). 

But when we intentionally pause, we might notice what’s really real…

The fact that my son’s nervous system co-regulates with mine, because he’s still too little. The fact that if I engage “being late” with frustration or uncertainty or insecurity and then blame him for it, that’s what my son picks up as a lifelong coping strategy. That’s what normalizes as the baseline of his nervous system. Yikes! 

When I take that pause and I choose to engage Quantum TLC and give my body permission to do what it’s designed to do, I am able to see the bigger picture of what’s unfolding. I don’t tunnel vision on the half an hour, I conclude that who I am becoming in this process matters more. Being Present in my life matters more. Showing my son how to stay Present matters more. 

When I pause, I notice that the quality of my life is a reflection of the compilation of choices that I make moment to moment. 

It’s never about the half an hour… 

It’s always about the process we engage in the moment we are in. 

If we don’t choose to pause in the moment of the perceived chaos that’s presenting, we will never know how staying with the chaos might coalesce into order inside of ourselves. 

When we mindfully and intentionally choose to notice and pause and redirect our attention inward, magic happens by the sheer power of how energy works. When we pause, we create Space. Space invites movement. And movement begets flow … and what can be more powerful than Life Force in full flow?! This is how we heal … 

Noticing is a choice. 

Pausing is a  choice.

Breathing is a choice. 

Engaging Quantum TLC is a  choice. 

…

If you don’t notice, pause and breathe all you’ve got available to you is your habit (which might feel familiar but is it giving you the life you want?!). 

In other words, what stands between your habituated life (the recreation of everything you’ve ever known) and the life that you’re seeking to live (that would be meaningful for you to create) is that mindful choice to pause. 

Question is: will you choose it? 

I do the work I do because it has profound transformational impact. I know the women who work with me become more because of it. WEL-Systems® based conversations have been transforming the lives of women for over 30 years. It is a solid platform on which to stand on if you want to take ownership of the quality of your mind, body and life. 

What you learn through the WEL-Systems journey is how to expand the context of your life (what are you as a human being? What is your body? What holds you captive? What process to embrace as a way of life? etc…). How to connect the dots of your own experience so you embrace profound and regenerative change for yourself. 

Choice is at the center of it all. That simple choice in the moment: mindfully notice and pause (hardest thing to do!) … or mindlessly stay in the habit (easy peasy), is what has the power to transform your life.