Feeling rushed: How to slow down and find your natural pace in work and life

Do you sometimes feel like your time is not your own? From the moment you wake, you are feeling rushed by your agenda full of everything you have to attend to, racing you through the minutes and the hours until you look at the clock in amazement and dismay. What happened? You long to fit in yoga, meditation, reflection time with your journal, or a run in the park, yet once again your day ran away from you. Whether you work on-site at a job or work from home with a job or your own business, it’s important to find your rhythm for doing your work and taking care of your body and soul. Some people are fast-paced and others are more slow-paced. Whatever type you are, if you consistently overstretch your limit of what you can comfortably do, you may either burn out, or experience physical and emotional symptoms indicating that you’re out of balance. Fast-paced people may find that they don’t notice the warning signs when they are piling on too much and starting to burn out. Slow-paced people can often push themselves so they can keep up with other people’s standards for productivity while judging themselves for being the way they are. Eventually, if you keep pushing yourself and feel rushed a lot of the time, you get so out of sync with yourself that you get tired, sick or even injure yourself. Often people injure ankles and knees, which are about fear of moving forward. Or, they have back or shoulder pain from carrying too much on their shoulders. Slow down and move at your natural pace rather than letting the world dictate your pace.

Five Feeling Rushed Signs That Are Telling You to Slow Down

1. Feeling tense, noticing tightness in your ribs or stomach, shallow breathing or holding your breath.
2. Finding it difficult to focus and easily getting distracted.
3. Hearing your negative self-talk, judging yourself for not being fast enough or pushing you to do more.
4. Worrying about other people judging you for not getting everything done or not getting something done fast enough.

Feeling rushed and going faster than your natural pace is a habit. Take a deep breath. Take back control of your happiness and your life. No-one can make you overstretch yourself and get out of whack. Only you do that to yourself.

Why do you get out of balance and feel rushed?

It always comes down to fear. Fear of losing your job, not getting a promotion, fear of failure, fear of not making as much money as you need or want, fear of losing face, fear of losing love, fear of rejection, fear of being too late. The list goes on. You don’t get out of balance through love, only fear. When you slow down and move past the fears, you can hear your intuitive wisdom. You can listen to the whispers, that small voice within that knows what’s best for you.

How to Begin to Slow Down to Find Your Natural Pace and Balance

• Have one day a week, at the weekend or when you’re not working, where you go at your natural pace. Decide to only do what you feel like doing in each moment choosing to do what makes you feel good.
• During your next work day, observe how you are feeling, especially in contrast to how you felt when you were going at your natural pace on your day off
• Make a note of what happens to you physically and emotionally when you feel rushed and are not going at your natural pace
• Experiment by taking a chance and going at your natural pace in your workday, even if it is just for an hour. See what happens. What do you do differently? What are the results of approaching a task at your natural pace? Make a note of your findings
• Take short breaks that refresh your body and soul throughout the day, especially if you notice that you are getting tense.

You can change the habit of feeling rushed by becoming more self-aware and by incrementally changing the way that you do things. When you try out a new habit in bite-size pieces you discover that much of what you feared might happen was an illusion. Life is too short to feel rushed and out of sync with yourself. You want to be focused, while feeling free inside, which means being free of fear so you can be free to be you!

Nicola Walker has been an inner freedom coach and hypnotherapist for over 20 years. She is creator of The Ease Experiment, working with women, who are birthing and evolving a business and creative projects, and find it’s harder and more overwhelming than they expected. With a focus on healing, mindset and joyful productivity, she supports her clients to activate ease and flow in their business each day. She is also a WomanSpeak circle leader and the author of the forthcoming memoir and self help book, Joy in the Middle of the Mess: An Evolutionary Adventure on the Quest for Success. 

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