It's Okay to Slow Down Sometimes
I’m one of those people who enjoys being busy and staying active.
When I have a free weekend, I will usually find ways to fill it up quickly - even if that means simple things like reading a book, playing outside with the kids or watching a movie.
I like the idea of slowing down, but it’s not my natural state of being.
I have moments of quiet and stillness throughout my day - whether that’s expressing gratitude to others around me, taking 5 minutes of mindfulness or just standing outside and taking a deep breath.
But, the idea of really slowing down is not one I regularly consider.
Until now.
We have had an intense few months in our house.
It started with my 4 year old daughter breaking her leg.
Beyond the physical pain and emotional stress she endured from the leg break, she was also unable to go to daycare for several weeks during her healing process, which meant my husband and I did a lot of juggling of schedules to care for her.
It was stressful for our whole family and, of course, most stressful for our daughter.
Even though she has healed physically, it doesn’t feel like we as a family have fully recovered from the frenzy and stress of the past several months.
I have followed my own advice and reached out for support from others. While this was helpful and a good place to start, I knew we needed something more.
I began to feel like something needed to change in our day-to-day lives.
So, I made a decision to slow our family down for the summer.
I’m not talking about drastically pulling the kids from all activities.
Keeping my kids involved in camps and sports are important to everyone’s well-being, trust me!
For me, slowing down included declining a work opportunity that would have taken me away from my family for a week and making changes to my daughter’s daycare schedule so we can have more time as a family.
In making these decisions, I followed my intuition— making a decision based on the inner feeling of what feels right instead of making a decision based on what I felt like I should do.
Trust me, it wasn’t easy. In the past few weeks, I’ve had lots of thoughts that sounded like this:
Why would I give up a great work opportunity?
I don’t think I can trust my instincts.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m going to struggle hard core this summer if I’m at home too much with the kids and don’t have enough time to rest.
