Episode 196 - How-To Slow Down When Life Won’t Let You (Holiday Edition)

In the midst of holiday chaos, full calendars, and the strange pressure to both rest and do more, this episode is like a little pixie sitting on your shoulder, whispering just what you need to hear.

Rather than another list of things to optimize, you'll hear simple, embodied ways to soften your pace from the inside out, and reclaim your energy without needing life to cooperate first. Pour the cocoa, pull up a pouf, and let's dive in. 

• Transcript. How-to Slow Down When Life Won't Let You

  Hello beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode, which is being recorded about an hour and five minutes before I need to leave for the airport for some holiday travel. And I've been planning to record this episode. Simple ways to slow down when life won't. And I thought to myself, gosh, what a perfect example of meaning to record this for several days, but life continuing to get in the way. And I woke up 18 minutes ago. I've got my tea. I'm in my warm fuzzy robe, and I'm excited to get down and dirty with you for a few minutes because my suitcase is packed. I did a little future self-care last night where everything is ready to go, and I can just be fully present with you.

  And this week here in the United States and across the world, is the week of the Christmas holidays. We have just passed over the celestial holiday of the solstice. We are coming upon a new year, and so this time of year, there's this interesting dynamic tension of there being winter break for the kiddos often time off from work, but also this acceleration of pressure around doing. And what a perfect example of those moments when you yearn to slow down but you just can't. Or those moments when you yearn to slow down because you should. You have time off. You have all the parts and pieces assembled, but inside your mind is racing and you feel like no matter what the conditions are, you're always feeling like you're going too fast and too slow at the same time.

  And so we're going to jump right into our gems on this. And when it comes to any of these topics, you know, there is a wheel of an approach. Meaning sometimes when I'm in these states, I think to myself, oh, it's my thoughts. I got to change my thoughts and I changed my thoughts, and that helps for a short period of time. And then I'm like, no, no, no, it's my body. I need to do something for my body. And the truth is, in my experience, it's a holistic approach, meaning all of these facets. But what brings them all together? What is at the heart of this desired state that we sometimes call it slowing down is actually presence. You know, I know I don't need to tell you that you can be seated on a mountaintop, cross-legged, and feel absolutely crazed and insane, as I have many times in meditation. Or you can be in the middle of a room of seven people opening Christmas presents and be, like, ecstatically alive amidst the chaos. that presents is really the thing that's at the heart of every desire.

  In my experience, whether it's wanting a better time with our families or wanting more of those moments to savor the holiday season. And again, the holiday season is really just a metaphor for these times of life that we so deeply yearn to imprint into our bodies and minds. Presence is the way. And the good news about that is that there are many different portals to presence. I know sometimes if I'm having a day where I'm like, oh, I'm not, not in my most grounded presence, I can kind of beat myself up a little bit for not being more disciplined about my presence practices. And that in itself is a thought that tends to yank us out of presence. It gives us a way of feeling the shame of not having practiced, or the rigor of resolve to practice, instead of actually being with what we're feeling and experiencing. And I love me some rigor.

  Do not get me wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about those feelings, but it is illuminating to me to see when I'm seeking that experience of embodied presence, all the ways that my mind can help protect me from the vulnerability of that through making promises and trying to figure it out. An architect, how I'm going to change this.

  And so we're going to start with the first gem, which is you need to record a podcast. How about you do it right before you leave for the airport while you're in your robe and slippers? In other words, what is the most imperfect way that you can give yourself to a task? So my ego wants this to be a 25 minute deep dive masterclass into these different topics. But my soul. Knows that it's not the level of perfection that transmits the message, it's the level of presence.

  And so a question you might ask yourself to drop this into your own life is what's the bare minimum that I can do in any specific task? You know, I love my linen ribbon, dehydrated orange slice, rosemary sprig packages. But sometimes you got to throw that shit into a gift bag from CVS and be on your merry way. And so that question is like, what is the bare minimum? Not as a way of just speeding through life, doing as much as we can per se. But the orientation is more like is the pursuit of perfection or giving my all in this task worth the cost of my presence? Is there a way I could do it less perfectly that would allow me to contain and maintain more of my own energy? And that word orientation is really meaningful to me because, you know, I love mindset work. I love the way that shifting one thought can have a ripple effect that changes my entire experience. But sometimes, and I know I'm not alone in this because I work with clients on this all the time.

  The pressure to just think right can kind of be self gaslighting. You know, especially if you experience complex trauma, which is kind of a chronic low grade orientation of the nervous system, as opposed to post-traumatic stress, which is often described as an acute response to a traumatic event. You know, when the nervous system is in a trauma response, no matter how low grade it is, it's sometimes not possible for us to change our thoughts by changing our thoughts alone. And again, this can create a snowball of pressure that we're not doing it right. We just don't have a positive enough attitude. And a question that I like to ask myself that I invite you to try on is, what is my orientation to this thing that's stressing me out? So I noticed this last night. I'm traveling today. I'm going to be on an airplane for six hours, then picking up a rental car, then driving two hours to where my family will be. And yesterday I just felt so low energy and felt like I just couldn't. Couldn't drop into my own life. And I asked myself this question and I realized, oh man, I am orienting to this day of travel with just abject dread and fear, like I'm already living the expected experience that I'm dreading because my mind was orienting to it as, oh God, 12 hours of travel? Oh God, do I have enough snacks? Oh, you know, so much tension. And when I asked myself that question, it was like, oh, right. Like, I can't choose the fact that I'm going to be traveling for 12 hours tomorrow. That's a fact. But I can choose how I orient to it in the sense that I can turn towards the way that my body and mind and nervous system are expecting this event to be, and I can reclaim my presence from that whole story of this is going to suck. And this is where what if questions can be really helpful.

  So the frightened mind will always be asking catastrophic questions about potential outcomes. What if there's a delay? What if we get the rental car and there's a line snaking around the block, blah blah blah. What if there's a surprise waiting for me at the airport, like somebody that I haven't met yet? What if I actually can sleep the night before the flight? Those magical nights where I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to sleep, and then I just slip right in to sleep. What was I watching last night? Can't even remember. Oh, sweet home Alabama. I love a rom com to put me to sleep at night. I got it eight hours of sleep last night. What a miracle.

  You know, in these what if questions with more positive outcomes are really powerful for pollinating a positive experience. Because once I send out these seeds of a more positive, what if my brain begins to look for evidence of that? So last night, what if I actually can't sleep tonight? I then had the wisdom to get in bed at 930, and to not record this episode late into the night, and to turn on Sweet Home Alabama. And I floated right into sleep. And now I'm rested and resourced, and I feel even more in a state of hope that my travel is going to be smooth today, like a really pleasurable cascade effect, when often we might think of like, oh God, it's one thing after the other. It's like, oh God, it's one thing after the other, one positive joyous outcome after the other. So orientation can be really powerful to helping you access that sweetness of presence that comes when we stop to question some of the stories that our minds are telling. The next gem is planning for presents by planning for pleasure. So an example from my own life is as I was planning for this holiday.

  I was thinking, what are the things that really helped me have a joyous experience over the holidays? And I'm a Libra moon. I don't know if you study astrology, but lately I've been diving in a little deeper, and Libra is a sign that's ruled by the planet Venus. It's a huge lover of beauty and harmony. And so, you know, when my family and I were choosing the Airbnb that we were going to stay in, they were like, okay, let's talk about what's most important to us. And one of in it was location. The other, it was accessibility. You know, for my mom to have a bedroom on the first floor, they were like, Mary, what about you? I was like, um, charm. Hello. Like fireplace and cozy wainscoting interior. You know, like, I know about myself that aesthetics are not just a want. They are a need for my spiritual wholeness. Okay. And so we chose a beautiful Airbnb that I'm very satisfied with. Everybody satisfied with it. And as I was thinking about this trip and what I need, it's like, okay, my outfits, especially when it comes to athleisure, are so integral to making me feel like I can settle and have a cozy experience. And so for me, an essential aspect of this upcoming holiday is my pajamas. My like whole pajama wardrobe, my slipper booties, the very robe that I'm wearing in this moment. It's all part of the matrix of my pleasure. My family also is not hugely into cooking, and I am not either, but I'm really into food. And so for the entire year I have been keeping a Pinterest board of recipes like a Norwegian hot chocolate recipe and a prosciutto wrapped blue cheese chicken breast situation made with apple butter.

  And so before going to the destination, we're going to. I did the research to pick out where's the grocery store. Can we get it picked up so we don't have to shop? Like really planning for those moments that generate a sense of pleasure. I also have a Pinterest board of crafts that I want to make with my family, and watercolor methods. I want to try that. I just haven't had the space to try in my day to day life. But when I have some time off, I am going to just dive right into my watercolor journal and practice these new techniques. And you might be hearing this thinking, but wait, what about the bare minimum? And yes, I stand by that recommendation, but I strongly recommend Placing your planning energy and putting it towards that which brings you the greatest return. So this is the theory behind essentialism, which is a book that talks about less but better, like doing only the essential thing. And for me, in this case, that might look like not having the most expertly grasped gifts, but luxuriating in front of the fire with the cutest cable knit slipper booties. Okay, so I give you permission to invest your energy where it matters to you the most, and you don't have to explain why it matters. It just does. And this is how pleasurable moments happen is by not necessarily making a moment happen, but nurturing the environment with what matters to you so that pleasure can naturally arise. And that brings me to our final gem. Which is one very native to you, come to your senses way of life. And that is the little details. So I'm a big Pinterest connoisseur and I love it. And there's also a lot of images on there. And wherever you are in the world of self-generated media, you are probably surrounded by images of baths with a thousand candles and an entire grove of fluorescent flowers in your bathtub kind of thing, and you look over at your bathtub, your humble, sweet little bathtub, and you're like, oh, what's even the point?

  Which is, again, an orientation to the pressure to do it perfectly or to do it all the way instead of an orientation to the presence, just one candle while you fill up that steamy bath. Just one moment of sustained eye contact with your kiddos while they're spooning mashed potatoes onto their plates. Just one moment of seeing your family member that you disdain as a whole person around the holidays. Stringing together like a string of pearls. These tiny moments of lifting the lid on a pot of soup and taking a deep inhale of taking a snapshot with your senses of the bracing cold when you leave the house, and the way it refreshes you of sprinkling adornments on top of a baking sheet of cookies. You know, this is what those photographs of perfection are actually trying to imitate is something that is already within you, which is your sense of presence and your willingness to devote yourself to the imprints you desire around this holiday season, or whenever you happen to be listening to this episode. Because this is wisdom that can carry over into any time of our lives. So, my friends, I am so grateful for your listenership.

  I am so grateful for all of the episodes that we tended and harvested this year, and that word tending. You know, this whole episode is really inspired by the planning I've been doing for the sanctuary community for the next year, and I will be announcing a brand new theme in our next episode. That is very true to everything that I've shared here today.

  So the sanctuary opens for new members on December 30th, so keep an eye on your inbox, keep your ears open and I will see you in our next episode. If you enjoy what you hear here, you will love my new book, Sensing the Sacred. This book invites you into a world of beauty, aliveness, and exquisite presence through the magic of your senses. You'll find over 20 everyday rituals to enliven your senses, spark your creativity, and come back to your body every day. Pick up a copy today and fill your days with wonder at Mary Lofgren com.