Slow as a Sloth

My mantra these days.

I never intended for my newsletter to only be a twice-a-year kind of thing. My intention has always been to send it out at least monthly. But here we are, five months from when I wrote the last one.

You might say I’ve been as slow as a sloth.

Photo by Javier Mazzeo on Unsplash

There’s been alot going on in my life since December. I bought a home. I sold a home. I moved. I’m settling in. All while trying to finish up my second book. All against the backdrop of the wider political and cultural uncertainties.

It’s been an anxious time.

It was sometime in January, I think around the time of the inauguration, a couple weeks after I had put an offer on my new home, after it was under contract, after I had put my old home on the market but before I knew if it would sell in time, that the phrase “slow as a sloth” came up in a meeting. Someone said, “I feel like I’m moving as slow as a sloth,” indicating that she was feeling sluggish, not her usual energetic self.

For days after that, I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head. Slow as a sloth, slow as a sloth, slow as a sloth.

Then I started noticing that when I was feeling particularly anxious about things that were out of my control, that’s when the phrase would rise up. Almost like my inner voice, my inner knowing, was saying, “Slow down. Breathe. Be mindfully slow.”

It made me notice how when I’m anxious, I tend to speed up. I tend to fidget, move around with no particular focus, succumb to racing thoughts that get jumbled together in the great ocean of “what if” scenarios.

Slow as a sloth.

As I began to really pay attention to those words, I began to see them less as a critique, a judgment, and more of an invitation. Slow down. Re-center yourself. Bring yourself back into the present. Breathe.

And then, I noticed that when I was feeling overwhelmed because there were too many things on my ‘To-Do List’ and I would never get them all done unless I scurried hither and yon, I would hear it again.

Slow as a sloth.

It seemed counter-intuitive. My thought process was if I have alot to do, then I better move fast. But I came to recognize that ‘moving fast’ often had more to do with scampering about without actually getting things done quicker. Like a squirrel who has to backtrack to find the acorn that fell out of his mouth because he was too hasty in carrying it to where he was going. I realized that keeping pace with the ticking clock didn’t always correspond with ticking the boxes off my ‘To-Do’ list.

Slow as a sloth.

Take your time. Put one foot in front of the other, slow and sure. Steady on.

Photo by David Gomez on Unsplash

It’s my mantra now. Not just something that pops into my head, but an incantation I choose to invoke. To steady my nerves. To slow my nervous system. To remind myself to breathe. To be present. To carry on.

Here’s to the journey,

Melynne