December 17, 2024 • 33 mins
This is a time of year that seems to move at lightning speed. it can feel like, if we don’t also move at lightning speed, we’ll fall behind and miss something truly important. What if moving fast isn’t the flex you’ve been told it is?
It might seem like FAST is the way to get more out of life. Think of all the magic we can experience and things we can accomplish if we move at the fastest possible pace!
But what if we’re wrong about that?
In this weeks episode I want to give you permission to move much more slowly than is culturally normal this time of year, and maybe even more slowly than you’re used to moving. Fast might be “normal” for you but take a minute and ask if it feels gentle or even good in your system.
What if you could move more slowly and actually get MORE (rather than less) out of your life?
Today, I suggest exactly that. It’s a little benediction for you as you move through the busiest time of year.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's down to let
them out and write them down and cold it's all
about and write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host. Today is the last
full episode of the year for twenty twenty four, which
is so exciting and bizarre and strange and sad and
all the things. But there'll be a couple of recap
episodes that come out in the final two weeks of
the year as you're hopefully resting with family and friends
(00:50):
and doing some fun festive things and celebrating you know,
the Christmas holiday and the New Year and all of that.
But as far as full episodes go, this is the
last full forty minute episode that we have together, and
so I want to cover a topic that I think
is really important to this time of year. In particular,
this is a topic that applies all the time to
your creativity, your sense of you know, making something out
(01:13):
of nothing in your life and in the world. But
it's also a topic that is especially applicable this time
of year, in December, which can feel like one of
the most rushed and hurried times of the year, and
then also January, which has such a specific kind of
vibe and feel to it. This has been, you know,
driven into our brains. We've been indoctrinated with the kind
(01:34):
of new Year, New ye mentality and January. As much
as we try to unravel and unpack those beliefs, still
has that kind of essence to it. And so I
want to talk about how important it is to allow
ourselves give ourselves the permission to go really, really slow
this time of year, all times of year, but this
(01:56):
time of year in particular. First, I want to say
that if you want to understand the value of going slow,
all you have to do is look to nature. Every
single thing that grows in nature grows slow. And I
think about this every time that I see stuff out
in the world, or read things, or see content that's
(02:17):
from kind of like a self help creator that talks about,
you know, quantum leaping, or that you can manifest something
kind of like zero to sixty out of nowhere. I'm
not saying that those things aren't possible, or that miracles
aren't possible. I do believe that miracles take place, and
I believe in a world that has miraculous possibilities. And also,
(02:37):
when you look at nature, you see that every single
thing in nature takes time to grow, Every single thing
in nature moves slowly, and nothing in nature apologizes for
moving slowly. An oak tree does not go from seed
to tree overnight. It goes from seed to tree over
the course of tens or hundreds of years. And a
garden grows the same way, and the blades of grass
(03:00):
grow the same way. And you know what, every time
when winter comes, we go through a period of time
where things in nature even slowed down even further. So
this idea that we have that we can move at
a breakneck pace without ever stopping, that we can just
constantly race our way through our life and never slow down,
is arrogant, I think at best, and really really damaging
(03:20):
to ourselves and to our communities at worst. So the
idea of slowing down, as countercultural as it can be,
is such an important part of being an artist, of
sitting in the driver's seat of our own life, of
writing our own story of getting to decide the pace
at which we want to move. In fact, one of
the things that I have caught myself saying a lot
(03:42):
in the past couple of months, as I've been telling
people about this space that we're building next door my
mother in law's house, and then there's an addition on
the house where we're going to do a homeschool kind
of co op for our kids, And people have asked
me like, oh, what inspired you to do homeschooling? And
it's funny because I grew up in an environment where
there was a lot of homeschooling happening around me, and
(04:04):
because of the environment that I grew up in, a
lot of people who were choosing to homeschool in that
time in the nineties, I guess it would have been
I was born in eighty three, so in the nineties
when people were choosing to homeschool in my environment, at
least in my circles, most people were choosing to do
that out of a desire to have more control over
the curriculum that their kids were being exposed to. There
(04:26):
were conversations around like sex ed, Do I want my
kids learning about sex at school? Evolution? I remember being
a big one in science class. Do I want my
kids learning, you know, that the world started with a
big bang? Or do I want them learning the Judeo
Christian kind of origin stories of the world. So those
were the conversations that most people were having back then.
And what's funny is like, I don't feel any of
(04:48):
that around homeschool and my kids now, don't. I want
my kids to be exposed to a lot of different ideologies.
I don't feel like I need to protect them from
learning something specific at school. My main motivation for wanting
to homeschool my kids, and this is also side note
a giant experiment. So if it doesn't work, If I
try to homeschool them but it does not work or
they end up going to school for whatever reason, don't
(05:10):
hold me to this. But this is my main motivation.
And this intention that I'm setting right now remains true
whether or not we homeschool or public school or private
school or charter school, or whatever we choose to do
for school. The intention is about slowing the pace of life.
And there's nothing wrong with public school. I worked in
(05:31):
public schools. That was my first job out of grad school.
I have a long history of teachers in my family.
My mom worked in the public school system, and we
need public schools. So thank God to all the teachers
out there who are working in public schools, and to
all the parents who send their kids to public schools.
This is not a commentary on public schools necessarily. The
thing that I have noticed as I've paid attention to
(05:54):
school environment is how quick the pace of life moves.
How early these kids start school in the morning, how
late they stay at night, the demand of sports and activities,
and I mean this was something that I was a
part of too. I went to public school growing up,
and I was a part of student government, and I
was on the dance team. I was a captain on
the dance team, and we went to state and did
(06:15):
all kinds of competitions. And I was at school in
high school at least kind of around the clock. I mean,
from dark, dark, dark in the morning, you know, sometimes
like five in the morning, until it was dark again
in the evening, doing all kinds of things, you know,
being involved in all kinds of activities that were really
such an important part of my development, and that fed
(06:36):
and nourished me in really amazing ways. It's not that
it's bad necessarily. But one of the things that I
have felt really strongly about is wanting to create an
environment for myself and for my kids and for my
family where we can move just a little bit slower,
where we don't have to wake up quite so early
or force ourselves to get up before the sun is
up necessarily, where we don't have to stay up late
doing homework after dinner time. Again, nothing wrong with homework.
(07:00):
I'm not necessarily making a commentary on homework in particular.
I'm just saying, if I can create an environment for
my family where we have a little bit more control
over our schedule, where we have a little bit more
control over the pace of life, then the decision that
I'm going to make is to move things forward a
little slower. And yet this is complicated because we live
(07:20):
in a world where we're indoctrinated with fast, where fast
is the way of the world, where the faster you go,
the better, the more productive that you are, the better.
And so to move slow is incredibly countercultural. And I'll
say this too in the month of December in particular,
for whatever reason, it feels like slow is even more
countercultural than it is in other times of the year.
(07:42):
And it's strange because when you think about nature, speaking
of nature and how nature responds to the cold and
the winter, this time of year, setting in nature moves
even slower now than it does in the summertime. And
yet we kind of take our time off during the
summertime and slow things down and everyone goes on vacation.
(08:02):
But then in December, it's like the pace just speeds
up astronomically and we're going one thousand miles a minute.
We have all these parties, we have all these activities,
we have all these things to be at, events, appearances,
work stuff, getting everything done before the end of the year,
getting all the loose ends tied up, and it can
feel like December is this absolute sprint to the finish line.
(08:23):
And while this has always been obvious to me, I
think this year it has been even more pronounced, if
for no other reason than that I'm grieving this time
of year. I lost my dad in October if you're
new here, and this was a really unexpected loss. My
dad had a cardiac arrest while he was on a
bike ride, and I feel like my brain is still
(08:45):
trying to catch up with the fact that my Dad's
not here, and still moving through the realization that he's
not here, the ramifications, the feelings that I have that
are connected to that, and so the presence of that
grief is just an added weight and an added reminder
to go slow. It's like I can't go at the
(09:08):
normal pace that I would normally go at. My nervous
system just can't support it. I just can't keep up
with the normal pace. And so in another year, when
I maybe would just go like, Okay, we're just going
to muscle through, We're going to get through December this year,
my body's going no, no, we're not doing that. I'm
not going to move at that pace this time. I'm
not going to move at that pace this December. And
(09:30):
so this intention that has been with me for the
past couple of years to kind of slow our family's
life down, to move a little bit slower, to have
a slower and more grounded pace of life is being exemplified, exacerbated,
is being amplified this time of year, this December, and
I just keep thinking, Okay, how can I continue to
(09:53):
build this slowness into our existence, to give us permission
to not have to attend every party, to give us
permission to say no to certain activities. So, just as
a quick example, over Thanksgiving we had but my mother
(10:16):
in law. I talked about this on last week's episode.
But my mother in law's house is newly finished. She
hosted the Thanksgiving gathering this year, so she's literally directly
next door to us. We had Thanksgiving at her house,
which was so sweet and special. I made the turkey
that my dad has made every year since I was
a child, for as long as I can remember. I
used his recipe and made the turkey. That was something
(10:36):
that I really wanted to do, and I opted into
this by the way, over and over and over again.
I kept telling everyone. Everyone was like, are you sure
you want to make the turkey. I'm like, yes, I
absolutely want to do this. This is something that feels
really important to me. I don't care about any of
the other sides when I'm making the turkey. This year,
we had a friend of mine and her son and
her partner over to the house also for dinner, and
(10:58):
so it was a small gathering. It was me and
my husband and our kids, my mother in law, my
brother in law, and then our friend, her partner and
then her child also and so like under, what is
that ten people at the gathering? It was not a
massive gathering, and we tried to keep things as simple
as possible. Like I said, I made the turkey, my
mother in law, I made a bunch of the other sides.
(11:19):
We kept things kind of at a bare minimum. And
I was the whole time thinking to myself, like, Okay,
we're going to keep it simple. We're going to move
really slow. I'm not going to be running all over
town trying to get as many ingredients as possible to
make as many sides as possible. I was very conscious
of keeping things nice and slow and easy, and choosing
every decision I made along the way with that intention
(11:41):
in mind. And yet during Thanksgiving and after Thanksgiving, and
this was mostly because of the grief, but during and
after the day, I just felt my nervous system on
absolute complete overload. It was like I wanted to do this.
I enjoyed the moment on the one hand, and also
the experience of being with that many people in the
(12:03):
room and having that much stuff going on and having
my kids running around. It was fun. It was really fun,
and I loved every minute. And also and also my
nervous system was maxed out, and I just wonder if
I'm not the only one who's feeling this. I know
I have the loss of my dad that's kind of
layering on top of this, But we've also all all
of us, every single one of us been through so
(12:24):
much in the last four years, in particular since March
of twenty twenty, when the pandemic happened. Every single one
of us has been through massive life transitions, lots of changes.
Even if you haven't been through stuff personally, we're going
through so much collectively. There's so much happening in the
world that you are absorbing and taking in, and it's
(12:45):
saturating us. And there's a sense of heaviness to that
that all of that stuff that's taking place around us
energetically in the world has to be metabolized. It has
to be otherwise it just sits inside of you. It's
like a sponge that has absorbed all of the moisture,
but it hasn't been squeezed out. So the sponge just
gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and after a while
(13:06):
it can't absorb anymore. It just can't. It's reached its capacity.
And so for every single one of us. No matter
what you've been through, no matter what the last five
years have looked like for you, you've absorbed a lot.
And I just want you to take that in for
a second and let it be okay that you've absorbed
a lot and you are at capacity. And it will
(13:27):
look different for every single person, and so the pace
that feels good for you will be different than the
pace that feels good for me. And maybe for you,
going out and going to all these parties feels great
and all these activities or whatever, and maybe you, like me,
are having a hard time absorbing more energy, more activity,
more you know, chaos around you, more things on the calendar,
(13:51):
more stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, even physical stuff in
our house is making me feel overwhelmed right now. And
I'm in like a purge, a purge season. So I
don't know how that lands for you or where you
are specifically, but I do know that as a collective,
we've been absorbing so much that we have to metabolize this.
(14:11):
And in order to metabolize it, there are a lot
of things that we can do. And I talked about
teaching you about writing exercise. I talked about that last
week on the episode, So I will teach that exercise
at the end of this episode to help you kind
of metabolize what's going on. But in order to metabolize it,
we have to slow down. You just have to There's
(14:31):
no possible way that you can create out of that chaos.
And we don't have a lot of control over what
happens in the outside world, but you do have a
lot of control over what happens in your interior environment,
so meaning like in your heart, in your spirit, in
your soul, in your emotional space, and also in your home.
You may not have a one hundred percent control over what
(14:52):
happens in your home because some of that could classify
as kind of outside stuff. Like for example, my kids
are slightly wild, so I don't have total control over
what they choose to do in any given moment. I
don't have control over them. I'm not going to try
to take control over them. And but and also I
recently hired a coach to help me as a parent
(15:14):
to get a little bit better about setting boundaries and
creating a common environment and stepping into a position of
leadership with my kids so that I can create a
more common environment in my home, so that all of
us can thrive. And that's a whole other topic that
I don't want to necessarily get into right this second.
But I'm saying that to say, like, I just decided,
(15:35):
like I can't live like this anymore. I need help
taking control over the environment of my home so that
this is not a miserable place for any of us
to be. I want it to be a fun and
special place for us to be. I want it to
feel peaceful, I want it to feel grounded, I want
it to feel calm. And of course we have moments
of chaos in our house, and with toddlers, everything is messy.
(15:57):
But I'm telling you, since I started working with her
four weeks ago, it's only been four weeks. My kids
are sleeping through the night, they're taking a rest time.
They're sitting at the dinner table until their food is done,
which you know, I mean they're three and four, So
this is they're not sitting for twenty five minutes at
a time, but they're sitting for ten or fifteen minutes
(16:18):
and finishing their food and asking to be excused and
then leaving the table. So the energy in our home
has gone from being very frenetic to less frenetic in
the last four weeks. And this is what I'm getting
at with this episode, is that you may not have
control over the world out there. You may not be
able to stop the wars from happening. You may not
(16:39):
be able to stop the school shootings from happening. You
may not be able to stop the crazy political kind
of jargon and propaganda and whatever all is going on
on social media. You can't stop that, but you can
decide how do I want to live my life, how
do I want to be what's the pace at which
I want to move through my own life? And if
(17:00):
you're going to choose a slower pace of life, you're
choosing something that's profoundly countercultural. And it will feel at
times like you're traveling uphill because you are. It will
feel like you're traveling against the current because you are.
And yet in a way, you aren't traveling against the current,
because you're traveling at the pace of nature. Look around you,
you're traveling at the pace of nature. It's a winter
(17:22):
right now, at least if you're in the northern Hemisphere.
If you look out of your window, you're going to
see trees with no leaves on them, You're going to
see that nature is slowing down, it's shutting down for
the winter. We're about to move into a season of wintering.
And I mean, I talked about this on my Wintering
episode this time last year, that I've been in a
season of wintering for what feels like five years. I mean,
(17:44):
it hasn't been one hundred percent wintering, but a lot
of wintering has happened in my life in the last
five years. A lot of staying at home, a lot
of saying no to things, a lot of you know,
miss quote unquote missed opportunities, a lot of saying no
to work opportunities that could have increased my reach or
expanded my platform or grown my business or given me
(18:05):
more money or whatever. I've chosen to step back from coaching,
even though I love my work coaching, and even though
it's incredibly profitable for me, and even though I love
my clients. But I've chosen to step back because I
keep feeling and hearing over and over and over again
that creating a slower pace of life is of the
utmost priority right now. So if that feels true for
(18:28):
you too, if it doesn't feel true for you, if
you're like, listen, I like to move fast. I'm enjoying
moving fast. Fast works for me. Fast as good, then
by all means, move along, move as fast as you'd
like to move, and don't let me stop you. In fact,
if you were to ask my parents, they would tell
you that from the time I entered this earth, that
from the time I was a tiny, tiny baby, that
(18:49):
I have moved at a lightning pace. That when I
was young, I learned to walk before I ever learned
to crawl. I started pulling myself up on furniture at
five months. By nine months, I was on the move.
And I was a miserable, miserable, miserable child until I
could walk. And as soon as I could walk, I
could run. And as soon as I could run, I
(19:09):
was happy. And that pretty much classifies it, pretty much
describes how I was as a teenager, as a twenty
something in my thirties. I've always had a profound amount
of energy. I've always liked moving very quickly. So for
me to sit here and say I'm enjoying moving slow,
I have this intention to move slow is not just countercultural.
(19:30):
This is counter to how I've acted my entire life.
So it feels disorienting to me. It's bizarre because I've
always loved moving quickly. So where is this coming from
and what is it about? I don't know yet, But
I am trusting this wisdom that's coming through me that's
asking me to find a way to move slower for
myself and for my family, and for the environment and
(19:52):
the community that I'm a part of. I'm trusting it,
I'm leaning into it, and I'm doing everything that I
can to try to create an environment where slow, oh
is possible, where slow is allowed, where I have permission
to move as slow as I need to move. Here's
an example of how slow is not necessarily in my
born nature, but I've learned to move slow. Here's an
(20:23):
example of how slow is not necessarily in my born nature,
but I've learned to move slow. When I met my husband,
I was the type of person who would set my
alarm for early, early, early in the morning, and the
minute my alarm went off, my feet hit the ground
and I was like off and running, and sometimes quite literally.
I mean I can remember in my early years when
(20:44):
I graduated from grad school and was teaching, and I'd
have to be in the classroom by like seven forty
in the morning or seven thirty or whatever. So I
would set my alarm for four forty five. I would
get up immediately, put on my running clothes. I'd be
out for a five or six mile run, come back, shower,
get ready, get in the car, get to school, you know,
go teach all day, go to some activity in the evening,
(21:04):
come back home bed by nine, do it all over
again the next morning, and just kind of going, going,
going all day long. When I met my husband, I
noticed that he would do this thing where he would
wake up in the morning and have a slow morning.
He was equally is still equally a hard worker to me,
and has always been one to kind of work long
hours and has a similar sentiment that way. He's always
(21:25):
been someone who likes to work a good long, ten
or twelve hour day. But for the first hour in
the morning, you know, when his alarm went off at
five or six or whatever, he would set it for.
He would sit for like forty five minutes or an
hour in the morning to drink his coffee, to meditate,
to read, to think, to chat with me. And this
was foreign to me at first. It was so uncomfortable
(21:46):
to learn to just sit there for an hour in
the morning. I was just like, think of all the
things that we could be getting done during this hour
that we're just sitting here. And now now I've become
indoctrinated in the way of Matt four that's my husband's name,
to the point where if I have a morning where
I have to get up and move quickly out the door,
which is very rare. But if I do have a
(22:08):
morning like that, it feels really abrasive on my body.
It does not go well for me. I don't enjoy it.
I'm so used to having my hour to sit and
hang out in the morning, and with two little kids,
that hour of sitting to hang out is not quite
as peaceful as it used to be. But it's still
a really beautiful practice where we don't immediately jump out
(22:29):
of bed and start prepping to get out the door.
We get out of bed, we get our coffee or
our tea or our try or whatever it is that
we're drinking. We sit on the couch. We have a minute.
The kids read books, they sit in color, they play
with playto whatever they do, and we just have some
time to kind of slowly acclimate to the day. Now,
while I'm on the subject, I thought I would share
(22:50):
a couple of other things that we do as a
family that help us slow things down that are challenging
to do any time of year because they're countercultural, but
are especially challenging to do in December, and I thought
I would just share them with you in case they're
helpful for December and also for January, because January is
its own animal. Okay, January is wild. I feel like
(23:10):
December is kind of like all rules out the window.
Do whatever you want to, eat whatever you want, go
wherever you want, to have as much fun as you want.
Then January we move into a whole different kind of
fast pace, which is like catch up on everything you
missed out on on January. So it's like only eat healthy,
you know, get to the gym, catch up on work,
get your ducks in a row, accomplish as much as possible,
(23:31):
get these new routines in place, get your new habits
in place, get yourself in order. So January and December
are similar but different. They both have this same very
quick energy to them, or can in our culture, but
for very different reasons. So if these practices, if you
find them helpful, to you, then feel free to steal, take,
borrow them however you want to see it. If they
(23:53):
don't feel helpful to you, then you can just toss
them out and move on, no harm, no foul. But
one of the things that Matt and I have been
doing doing for the last couple of years is following
a rule that we call the one big thing a
day rule. The one big thing a day rule means
that we only do one big thing a day. That's
exactly how it sounds now. When I first started doing this,
(24:13):
I was like, wait, what, how can I only do
one big thing a day? That feels impossible. There's so
many things that need to get done today. How will
I ever get them all accomplished? And here's the thing.
I do lots more things in a day. I don't
just do one thing in a day, but I only
do one big thing. So a day in the week
becomes about one outing, one activity, one project, one effort,
(24:39):
one big thing, and then anything else that gets done
in that day is secondary. Lots of things get done,
the dishes get done, there's meals that are made, whatever,
those are things that have to get done as part
of the day, or things on my to do list
get checked off, just like, Oh, I happen to be
in the neighborhood, so I picked up this thing. But
I'm not going to plan in one day, for example,
(25:00):
a big trip to the mall and also a party.
For the most part, I'm not going to plan two
Christmas parties. For the most part, I'm not going to plan,
you know, a big Thanksgiving dinner and also an outing
to see Christmas lights. For the most part, I'm not
going to plan those two things in one day. It's
I'm not saying it will never ever happen, but this
(25:20):
is a general rule that Matt and I like to
live by. We do one big thing in a day.
So if there's a project that we need to work on,
like cleaning out the garage or something like that, then
that's the project that kind of dictates the day. And
if there's a place that we need to go, a
big outing that we want to do with the kids,
or something fun we want to do, that's the that's
the outing that kind of dictates the day. I'm not
going to go to Costco on the same day that
(25:41):
I take the kids to the zoo. It's just not
going to happen. It's two big things and they don't
fit in one day. Oh my gosh, just thinking about
that kind of gives me hives. Doing both of those
things in one day. It's a lot on the nervous system.
It's a lot to expect of yourself. And if you're
someone like me who's like, well, we can that's sure,
we can tackle that. We can accomplish that, then take
a minute to think about what it might feel like
(26:04):
to not force yourself to accomplish as much as you could.
Of course, you could accomplish it in a day, but
what would it feel like to let yourself off the
hook and give yourself permission to slow way down. So
that's one rule, And I use rule in air quotes
because we do break the rules sometimes when it's necessary,
but for the most part, we follow this rule. We
only do one big thing a day. Another rule air
(26:27):
quotes rule that Matt and I have started to follow
in the last couple of years is the rule of
waiting twenty four hours to make a decision. When Matt
and I first met and were dating, and even when
we first got married and didn't have kids yet, we
were double income, no kids, as they say, and so
we had a lot of kind of extra breathing room
(26:48):
in our budget. And I say budget, but we didn't
even really budget. I mean, we had like a top
line number that we knew we spent each month, but
we didn't sit around thinking like how much do we
spend on groceries, how much do we spend on coffee?
How much do we spend on gas. It was just like,
you spend the money until the money in the account
is gone, and then you move on to the next month.
So this is the first time in our lives in
the last couple of years where we've had to sit
down and actually say like, Okay, here's our hard cost
(27:10):
for the month, here's how much money is left over.
How are we going to make that work? And if
you've been listening for a while, you know that this
is all kind of the runoff of making a business
investment that didn't work out the way that we thought
it was going to, and us Matt and I both
making some career transitions and having kids and all of
the changes that life can bring. So we're getting used
(27:31):
to this idea of operating inside of a budget that's
a little bit more restrictive than what we're used to.
I mean, we still live a really lovely life, but
it is more restrictive than what we were used to beforehand.
And so one of the things that we implemented as
a way to help us stay on budget was this
twenty four hour rule. In other words, if there were
something that we wanted to spend that was going to
(27:51):
take up a significant portion of our budget. So in
our case, it was like, if it's over a couple
hundred dollars, then we're not going to make a decision
about it right away. We're going to give our selves
twenty four hours. And we so enjoyed the feeling of
having twenty four hours to make those decisions, even if
it's like, you know, you might see something out and
be like, oh I want this. Yes, it's an immediate yes,
(28:12):
but giving ourselves twenty four hours to really think about it,
sometimes you get to the next day and be like, actually,
I don't really need that as much as I thought
I needed it. It's almost like the dopamine hit of
the retail experience wears off and so you go like, oh,
never mind. Or you'd have the opposite experience where you'd
be like, I really want to do this thing, you know,
but I'm not sure I want to spend the money,
And then you wait twenty four hours to make the decision,
(28:34):
and you realize, no, this is something that's really important
to me, and it's in line with my values, and
it's worth it to me to sacrifice somewhere else so
that we can have this item that I want to
choose to spend my money on. Having that time to
kind of breathe and think around a decision started to
feel so good to both of us that we decided
to implement the twenty four hour rule around other big
decisions as well, like going on a trip or going
(28:55):
to a party or anything where we were like not
one hundred percent aligned on it, or or even sometimes
we are aligned and we'll get invited to something and
we'll be like, sure, we'd love to go, but let's
give it twenty four hours just to make sure that tomorrow,
when tomorrow gets here, we want to go tomorrow as
badly as we think we want to go today. And
implementing that twenty four hour rule has slowed the role
(29:18):
on how quickly we are often asked to make decisions.
In our culture, we're asked to make decisions like a
thousand decisions. I don't know I'm making that number up.
I've never counted the number of decisions, but just hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of decisions in a day, in
any given day, and to slow the role on some
of those decisions might feel like an impediment to your progress.
(29:40):
In some ways, it does feel uncomfortable at first. I
will admit that that the sitting still in the morning,
the twenty four hour rule, the rule of only doing
one thing a day, feels in the beginning when you
start to implement it almost like a frustration. It's like
a speed bump that you're like, well, this is getting
in my way. I want to just get to my destination.
But over time it has started to really force us
(30:04):
to slow down, and I've begun to really enjoy this
slower pace of life that it creates for us. And
this is what I want to leave you with today.
I want to leave you with this permission to in
spite of how you came into this world. Let's just
say you came into this world as lightning fast as
I did. In spite of how we've been indoctrinated by
(30:26):
the broader culture, in spite of what December usually looks
like for most modern Americans, in spite of what January
usually looks like for most modern Americans, In spite of
all of that, in spite of what culture is screaming
at us, I want to give you permission to move
at the pace that you feel like moving, and to
look at nature and realize, oh, my gosh, nature moves
actually very slow. And the tree outside of my window
(30:49):
is not at all concerned with the fact that it's
taking a break right now, that it's slowing way down
for the next several months so that it can produce
again in the spring. It is not worried about that
at all. It just knows that this is the cycle
of life. This is this is how production happens, is
by leaning into the slow when the slow is available
(31:11):
to you. The winter is a beautiful time to lean
into the slow, to be honest, I mean, I know, summer.
This is kind of like we have the school calendar
that we live by, which is that I've lived by
the school calendar for a lot of my life because
I was a student and then I was a teacher,
And so if you're living by the school calendar, then
you're kind of off in like July and August or
June and July, depending on where you are in the country,
(31:32):
and that's your those your slow months. But think about
how nature is kind of flipped opposite, like it's it's
nice to think about December and January being your slowest
months of the year. What if December and January could
be your slowest months of the year. What if you
could give yourself permission to just kind of power down
and not read any of your emails, and not get
(31:52):
on Slack and not you know, record any new podcast episodes,
and not get on Instagram and not make any new content,
and not need to make progress on your book. You know,
maybe you choose to do those things because it feels
aligned for you, and that's fine, But what if you
could give yourself the permission to not also, And I
think that's really where I want to land, is that
(32:14):
you have all the permission in the world to move
as slow as you want this holiday season. Do not
get caught in the riptide of speed speed speed. The more,
the better, the faster, the better, the more stuff you know,
the faster you can move, the more you can accomplish,
the better, the better, the better that isn't true. There
is a lot of nourishment, a lot of enrichment, a
(32:36):
lot of beauty to be found in the slowness of
just your life. You're allowed to slow way down and
just you know, as they say, stop and smell the roses.
Just slow down, take it in, take a deep breath,
and breathe in this beautiful life that you've been given.
That's exactly what I'm going to be doing over the
course of the next couple of weeks. I hope you
get a chance to do the same. I'm sending all
(32:57):
my love to you. Marry Mary, Merry Christmas. For those
of you celebrate, Happy Hanukkah, whatever it is that you
celebrate wherever you are in the world, I hope that
you get some downtime, some breathing room, and some time
to spend with family and friends over the next couple
of weeks. And I am so excited for what we
have coming in January of twenty twenty five, for this
show and in other ways too. I can't wait to
(33:19):
share more. And I'll see you back here after the
new year.
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's down to let
them out and write them down and cold it's all
about and write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host. Today is the last
full episode of the year for twenty twenty four, which
is so exciting and bizarre and strange and sad and
all the things. But there'll be a couple of recap
episodes that come out in the final two weeks of
the year as you're hopefully resting with family and friends
(00:50):
and doing some fun festive things and celebrating you know,
the Christmas holiday and the New Year and all of that.
But as far as full episodes go, this is the
last full forty minute episode that we have together, and
so I want to cover a topic that I think
is really important to this time of year. In particular,
this is a topic that applies all the time to
your creativity, your sense of you know, making something out
(01:13):
of nothing in your life and in the world. But
it's also a topic that is especially applicable this time
of year, in December, which can feel like one of
the most rushed and hurried times of the year, and
then also January, which has such a specific kind of
vibe and feel to it. This has been, you know,
driven into our brains. We've been indoctrinated with the kind
(01:34):
of new Year, New ye mentality and January. As much
as we try to unravel and unpack those beliefs, still
has that kind of essence to it. And so I
want to talk about how important it is to allow
ourselves give ourselves the permission to go really, really slow
this time of year, all times of year, but this
(01:56):
time of year in particular. First, I want to say
that if you want to understand the value of going slow,
all you have to do is look to nature. Every
single thing that grows in nature grows slow. And I
think about this every time that I see stuff out
in the world, or read things, or see content that's
(02:17):
from kind of like a self help creator that talks about,
you know, quantum leaping, or that you can manifest something
kind of like zero to sixty out of nowhere. I'm
not saying that those things aren't possible, or that miracles
aren't possible. I do believe that miracles take place, and
I believe in a world that has miraculous possibilities. And also,
(02:37):
when you look at nature, you see that every single
thing in nature takes time to grow, Every single thing
in nature moves slowly, and nothing in nature apologizes for
moving slowly. An oak tree does not go from seed
to tree overnight. It goes from seed to tree over
the course of tens or hundreds of years. And a
garden grows the same way, and the blades of grass
(03:00):
grow the same way. And you know what, every time
when winter comes, we go through a period of time
where things in nature even slowed down even further. So
this idea that we have that we can move at
a breakneck pace without ever stopping, that we can just
constantly race our way through our life and never slow down,
is arrogant, I think at best, and really really damaging
(03:20):
to ourselves and to our communities at worst. So the
idea of slowing down, as countercultural as it can be,
is such an important part of being an artist, of
sitting in the driver's seat of our own life, of
writing our own story of getting to decide the pace
at which we want to move. In fact, one of
the things that I have caught myself saying a lot
(03:42):
in the past couple of months, as I've been telling
people about this space that we're building next door my
mother in law's house, and then there's an addition on
the house where we're going to do a homeschool kind
of co op for our kids, And people have asked
me like, oh, what inspired you to do homeschooling? And
it's funny because I grew up in an environment where
there was a lot of homeschooling happening around me, and
(04:04):
because of the environment that I grew up in, a
lot of people who were choosing to homeschool in that
time in the nineties, I guess it would have been
I was born in eighty three, so in the nineties
when people were choosing to homeschool in my environment, at
least in my circles, most people were choosing to do
that out of a desire to have more control over
the curriculum that their kids were being exposed to. There
(04:26):
were conversations around like sex ed, Do I want my
kids learning about sex at school? Evolution? I remember being
a big one in science class. Do I want my
kids learning, you know, that the world started with a
big bang? Or do I want them learning the Judeo
Christian kind of origin stories of the world. So those
were the conversations that most people were having back then.
And what's funny is like, I don't feel any of
(04:48):
that around homeschool and my kids now, don't. I want
my kids to be exposed to a lot of different ideologies.
I don't feel like I need to protect them from
learning something specific at school. My main motivation for wanting
to homeschool my kids, and this is also side note
a giant experiment. So if it doesn't work, If I
try to homeschool them but it does not work or
they end up going to school for whatever reason, don't
(05:10):
hold me to this. But this is my main motivation.
And this intention that I'm setting right now remains true
whether or not we homeschool or public school or private
school or charter school, or whatever we choose to do
for school. The intention is about slowing the pace of life.
And there's nothing wrong with public school. I worked in
(05:31):
public schools. That was my first job out of grad school.
I have a long history of teachers in my family.
My mom worked in the public school system, and we
need public schools. So thank God to all the teachers
out there who are working in public schools, and to
all the parents who send their kids to public schools.
This is not a commentary on public schools necessarily. The
thing that I have noticed as I've paid attention to
(05:54):
school environment is how quick the pace of life moves.
How early these kids start school in the morning, how
late they stay at night, the demand of sports and activities,
and I mean this was something that I was a
part of too. I went to public school growing up,
and I was a part of student government, and I
was on the dance team. I was a captain on
the dance team, and we went to state and did
(06:15):
all kinds of competitions. And I was at school in
high school at least kind of around the clock. I mean,
from dark, dark, dark in the morning, you know, sometimes
like five in the morning, until it was dark again
in the evening, doing all kinds of things, you know,
being involved in all kinds of activities that were really
such an important part of my development, and that fed
(06:36):
and nourished me in really amazing ways. It's not that
it's bad necessarily. But one of the things that I
have felt really strongly about is wanting to create an
environment for myself and for my kids and for my
family where we can move just a little bit slower,
where we don't have to wake up quite so early
or force ourselves to get up before the sun is
up necessarily, where we don't have to stay up late
doing homework after dinner time. Again, nothing wrong with homework.
(07:00):
I'm not necessarily making a commentary on homework in particular.
I'm just saying, if I can create an environment for
my family where we have a little bit more control
over our schedule, where we have a little bit more
control over the pace of life, then the decision that
I'm going to make is to move things forward a
little slower. And yet this is complicated because we live
(07:20):
in a world where we're indoctrinated with fast, where fast
is the way of the world, where the faster you go,
the better, the more productive that you are, the better.
And so to move slow is incredibly countercultural. And I'll
say this too in the month of December in particular,
for whatever reason, it feels like slow is even more
countercultural than it is in other times of the year.
(07:42):
And it's strange because when you think about nature, speaking
of nature and how nature responds to the cold and
the winter, this time of year, setting in nature moves
even slower now than it does in the summertime. And
yet we kind of take our time off during the
summertime and slow things down and everyone goes on vacation.
(08:02):
But then in December, it's like the pace just speeds
up astronomically and we're going one thousand miles a minute.
We have all these parties, we have all these activities,
we have all these things to be at, events, appearances,
work stuff, getting everything done before the end of the year,
getting all the loose ends tied up, and it can
feel like December is this absolute sprint to the finish line.
(08:23):
And while this has always been obvious to me, I
think this year it has been even more pronounced, if
for no other reason than that I'm grieving this time
of year. I lost my dad in October if you're
new here, and this was a really unexpected loss. My
dad had a cardiac arrest while he was on a
bike ride, and I feel like my brain is still
(08:45):
trying to catch up with the fact that my Dad's
not here, and still moving through the realization that he's
not here, the ramifications, the feelings that I have that
are connected to that, and so the presence of that
grief is just an added weight and an added reminder
to go slow. It's like I can't go at the
(09:08):
normal pace that I would normally go at. My nervous
system just can't support it. I just can't keep up
with the normal pace. And so in another year, when
I maybe would just go like, Okay, we're just going
to muscle through, We're going to get through December this year,
my body's going no, no, we're not doing that. I'm
not going to move at that pace this time. I'm
not going to move at that pace this December. And
(09:30):
so this intention that has been with me for the
past couple of years to kind of slow our family's
life down, to move a little bit slower, to have
a slower and more grounded pace of life is being exemplified, exacerbated,
is being amplified this time of year, this December, and
I just keep thinking, Okay, how can I continue to
(09:53):
build this slowness into our existence, to give us permission
to not have to attend every party, to give us
permission to say no to certain activities. So, just as
a quick example, over Thanksgiving we had but my mother
(10:16):
in law. I talked about this on last week's episode.
But my mother in law's house is newly finished. She
hosted the Thanksgiving gathering this year, so she's literally directly
next door to us. We had Thanksgiving at her house,
which was so sweet and special. I made the turkey
that my dad has made every year since I was
a child, for as long as I can remember. I
used his recipe and made the turkey. That was something
(10:36):
that I really wanted to do, and I opted into
this by the way, over and over and over again.
I kept telling everyone. Everyone was like, are you sure
you want to make the turkey. I'm like, yes, I
absolutely want to do this. This is something that feels
really important to me. I don't care about any of
the other sides when I'm making the turkey. This year,
we had a friend of mine and her son and
her partner over to the house also for dinner, and
(10:58):
so it was a small gathering. It was me and
my husband and our kids, my mother in law, my
brother in law, and then our friend, her partner and
then her child also and so like under, what is
that ten people at the gathering? It was not a
massive gathering, and we tried to keep things as simple
as possible. Like I said, I made the turkey, my
mother in law, I made a bunch of the other sides.
(11:19):
We kept things kind of at a bare minimum. And
I was the whole time thinking to myself, like, Okay,
we're going to keep it simple. We're going to move
really slow. I'm not going to be running all over
town trying to get as many ingredients as possible to
make as many sides as possible. I was very conscious
of keeping things nice and slow and easy, and choosing
every decision I made along the way with that intention
(11:41):
in mind. And yet during Thanksgiving and after Thanksgiving, and
this was mostly because of the grief, but during and
after the day, I just felt my nervous system on
absolute complete overload. It was like I wanted to do this.
I enjoyed the moment on the one hand, and also
the experience of being with that many people in the
(12:03):
room and having that much stuff going on and having
my kids running around. It was fun. It was really fun,
and I loved every minute. And also and also my
nervous system was maxed out, and I just wonder if
I'm not the only one who's feeling this. I know
I have the loss of my dad that's kind of
layering on top of this, But we've also all all
of us, every single one of us been through so
(12:24):
much in the last four years, in particular since March
of twenty twenty, when the pandemic happened. Every single one
of us has been through massive life transitions, lots of changes.
Even if you haven't been through stuff personally, we're going
through so much collectively. There's so much happening in the
world that you are absorbing and taking in, and it's
(12:45):
saturating us. And there's a sense of heaviness to that
that all of that stuff that's taking place around us
energetically in the world has to be metabolized. It has
to be otherwise it just sits inside of you. It's
like a sponge that has absorbed all of the moisture,
but it hasn't been squeezed out. So the sponge just
gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and after a while
(13:06):
it can't absorb anymore. It just can't. It's reached its capacity.
And so for every single one of us. No matter
what you've been through, no matter what the last five
years have looked like for you, you've absorbed a lot.
And I just want you to take that in for
a second and let it be okay that you've absorbed
a lot and you are at capacity. And it will
(13:27):
look different for every single person, and so the pace
that feels good for you will be different than the
pace that feels good for me. And maybe for you,
going out and going to all these parties feels great
and all these activities or whatever, and maybe you, like me,
are having a hard time absorbing more energy, more activity,
more you know, chaos around you, more things on the calendar,
(13:51):
more stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, even physical stuff in
our house is making me feel overwhelmed right now. And
I'm in like a purge, a purge season. So I
don't know how that lands for you or where you
are specifically, but I do know that as a collective,
we've been absorbing so much that we have to metabolize this.
(14:11):
And in order to metabolize it, there are a lot
of things that we can do. And I talked about
teaching you about writing exercise. I talked about that last
week on the episode, So I will teach that exercise
at the end of this episode to help you kind
of metabolize what's going on. But in order to metabolize it,
we have to slow down. You just have to There's
(14:31):
no possible way that you can create out of that chaos.
And we don't have a lot of control over what
happens in the outside world, but you do have a
lot of control over what happens in your interior environment,
so meaning like in your heart, in your spirit, in
your soul, in your emotional space, and also in your home.
You may not have a one hundred percent control over what
(14:52):
happens in your home because some of that could classify
as kind of outside stuff. Like for example, my kids
are slightly wild, so I don't have total control over
what they choose to do in any given moment. I
don't have control over them. I'm not going to try
to take control over them. And but and also I
recently hired a coach to help me as a parent
(15:14):
to get a little bit better about setting boundaries and
creating a common environment and stepping into a position of
leadership with my kids so that I can create a
more common environment in my home, so that all of
us can thrive. And that's a whole other topic that
I don't want to necessarily get into right this second.
But I'm saying that to say, like, I just decided,
(15:35):
like I can't live like this anymore. I need help
taking control over the environment of my home so that
this is not a miserable place for any of us
to be. I want it to be a fun and
special place for us to be. I want it to
feel peaceful, I want it to feel grounded, I want
it to feel calm. And of course we have moments
of chaos in our house, and with toddlers, everything is messy.
(15:57):
But I'm telling you, since I started working with her
four weeks ago, it's only been four weeks. My kids
are sleeping through the night, they're taking a rest time.
They're sitting at the dinner table until their food is done,
which you know, I mean they're three and four, So
this is they're not sitting for twenty five minutes at
a time, but they're sitting for ten or fifteen minutes
(16:18):
and finishing their food and asking to be excused and
then leaving the table. So the energy in our home
has gone from being very frenetic to less frenetic in
the last four weeks. And this is what I'm getting
at with this episode, is that you may not have
control over the world out there. You may not be
able to stop the wars from happening. You may not
(16:39):
be able to stop the school shootings from happening. You
may not be able to stop the crazy political kind
of jargon and propaganda and whatever all is going on
on social media. You can't stop that, but you can
decide how do I want to live my life, how
do I want to be what's the pace at which
I want to move through my own life? And if
(17:00):
you're going to choose a slower pace of life, you're
choosing something that's profoundly countercultural. And it will feel at
times like you're traveling uphill because you are. It will
feel like you're traveling against the current because you are.
And yet in a way, you aren't traveling against the current,
because you're traveling at the pace of nature. Look around you,
you're traveling at the pace of nature. It's a winter
(17:22):
right now, at least if you're in the northern Hemisphere.
If you look out of your window, you're going to
see trees with no leaves on them, You're going to
see that nature is slowing down, it's shutting down for
the winter. We're about to move into a season of wintering.
And I mean, I talked about this on my Wintering
episode this time last year, that I've been in a
season of wintering for what feels like five years. I mean,
(17:44):
it hasn't been one hundred percent wintering, but a lot
of wintering has happened in my life in the last
five years. A lot of staying at home, a lot
of saying no to things, a lot of you know,
miss quote unquote missed opportunities, a lot of saying no
to work opportunities that could have increased my reach or
expanded my platform or grown my business or given me
(18:05):
more money or whatever. I've chosen to step back from coaching,
even though I love my work coaching, and even though
it's incredibly profitable for me, and even though I love
my clients. But I've chosen to step back because I
keep feeling and hearing over and over and over again
that creating a slower pace of life is of the
utmost priority right now. So if that feels true for
(18:28):
you too, if it doesn't feel true for you, if
you're like, listen, I like to move fast. I'm enjoying
moving fast. Fast works for me. Fast as good, then
by all means, move along, move as fast as you'd
like to move, and don't let me stop you. In fact,
if you were to ask my parents, they would tell
you that from the time I entered this earth, that
from the time I was a tiny, tiny baby, that
(18:49):
I have moved at a lightning pace. That when I
was young, I learned to walk before I ever learned
to crawl. I started pulling myself up on furniture at
five months. By nine months, I was on the move.
And I was a miserable, miserable, miserable child until I
could walk. And as soon as I could walk, I
could run. And as soon as I could run, I
(19:09):
was happy. And that pretty much classifies it, pretty much
describes how I was as a teenager, as a twenty
something in my thirties. I've always had a profound amount
of energy. I've always liked moving very quickly. So for
me to sit here and say I'm enjoying moving slow,
I have this intention to move slow is not just countercultural.
(19:30):
This is counter to how I've acted my entire life.
So it feels disorienting to me. It's bizarre because I've
always loved moving quickly. So where is this coming from
and what is it about? I don't know yet, But
I am trusting this wisdom that's coming through me that's
asking me to find a way to move slower for
myself and for my family, and for the environment and
(19:52):
the community that I'm a part of. I'm trusting it,
I'm leaning into it, and I'm doing everything that I
can to try to create an environment where slow, oh
is possible, where slow is allowed, where I have permission
to move as slow as I need to move. Here's
an example of how slow is not necessarily in my
born nature, but I've learned to move slow. Here's an
(20:23):
example of how slow is not necessarily in my born nature,
but I've learned to move slow. When I met my husband,
I was the type of person who would set my
alarm for early, early, early in the morning, and the
minute my alarm went off, my feet hit the ground
and I was like off and running, and sometimes quite literally.
I mean I can remember in my early years when
(20:44):
I graduated from grad school and was teaching, and I'd
have to be in the classroom by like seven forty
in the morning or seven thirty or whatever. So I
would set my alarm for four forty five. I would
get up immediately, put on my running clothes. I'd be
out for a five or six mile run, come back, shower,
get ready, get in the car, get to school, you know,
go teach all day, go to some activity in the evening,
(21:04):
come back home bed by nine, do it all over
again the next morning, and just kind of going, going,
going all day long. When I met my husband, I
noticed that he would do this thing where he would
wake up in the morning and have a slow morning.
He was equally is still equally a hard worker to me,
and has always been one to kind of work long
hours and has a similar sentiment that way. He's always
(21:25):
been someone who likes to work a good long, ten
or twelve hour day. But for the first hour in
the morning, you know, when his alarm went off at
five or six or whatever, he would set it for.
He would sit for like forty five minutes or an
hour in the morning to drink his coffee, to meditate,
to read, to think, to chat with me. And this
was foreign to me at first. It was so uncomfortable
(21:46):
to learn to just sit there for an hour in
the morning. I was just like, think of all the
things that we could be getting done during this hour
that we're just sitting here. And now now I've become
indoctrinated in the way of Matt four that's my husband's name,
to the point where if I have a morning where
I have to get up and move quickly out the door,
which is very rare. But if I do have a
(22:08):
morning like that, it feels really abrasive on my body.
It does not go well for me. I don't enjoy it.
I'm so used to having my hour to sit and
hang out in the morning, and with two little kids,
that hour of sitting to hang out is not quite
as peaceful as it used to be. But it's still
a really beautiful practice where we don't immediately jump out
(22:29):
of bed and start prepping to get out the door.
We get out of bed, we get our coffee or
our tea or our try or whatever it is that
we're drinking. We sit on the couch. We have a minute.
The kids read books, they sit in color, they play
with playto whatever they do, and we just have some
time to kind of slowly acclimate to the day. Now,
while I'm on the subject, I thought I would share
(22:50):
a couple of other things that we do as a
family that help us slow things down that are challenging
to do any time of year because they're countercultural, but
are especially challenging to do in December, and I thought
I would just share them with you in case they're
helpful for December and also for January, because January is
its own animal. Okay, January is wild. I feel like
(23:10):
December is kind of like all rules out the window.
Do whatever you want to, eat whatever you want, go
wherever you want, to have as much fun as you want.
Then January we move into a whole different kind of
fast pace, which is like catch up on everything you
missed out on on January. So it's like only eat healthy,
you know, get to the gym, catch up on work,
get your ducks in a row, accomplish as much as possible,
(23:31):
get these new routines in place, get your new habits
in place, get yourself in order. So January and December
are similar but different. They both have this same very
quick energy to them, or can in our culture, but
for very different reasons. So if these practices, if you
find them helpful, to you, then feel free to steal, take,
borrow them however you want to see it. If they
(23:53):
don't feel helpful to you, then you can just toss
them out and move on, no harm, no foul. But
one of the things that Matt and I have been
doing doing for the last couple of years is following
a rule that we call the one big thing a
day rule. The one big thing a day rule means
that we only do one big thing a day. That's
exactly how it sounds now. When I first started doing this,
(24:13):
I was like, wait, what, how can I only do
one big thing a day? That feels impossible. There's so
many things that need to get done today. How will
I ever get them all accomplished? And here's the thing.
I do lots more things in a day. I don't
just do one thing in a day, but I only
do one big thing. So a day in the week
becomes about one outing, one activity, one project, one effort,
(24:39):
one big thing, and then anything else that gets done
in that day is secondary. Lots of things get done,
the dishes get done, there's meals that are made, whatever,
those are things that have to get done as part
of the day, or things on my to do list
get checked off, just like, Oh, I happen to be
in the neighborhood, so I picked up this thing. But
I'm not going to plan in one day, for example,
(25:00):
a big trip to the mall and also a party.
For the most part, I'm not going to plan two
Christmas parties. For the most part, I'm not going to plan,
you know, a big Thanksgiving dinner and also an outing
to see Christmas lights. For the most part, I'm not
going to plan those two things in one day. It's
I'm not saying it will never ever happen, but this
(25:20):
is a general rule that Matt and I like to
live by. We do one big thing in a day.
So if there's a project that we need to work on,
like cleaning out the garage or something like that, then
that's the project that kind of dictates the day. And
if there's a place that we need to go, a
big outing that we want to do with the kids,
or something fun we want to do, that's the that's
the outing that kind of dictates the day. I'm not
going to go to Costco on the same day that
(25:41):
I take the kids to the zoo. It's just not
going to happen. It's two big things and they don't
fit in one day. Oh my gosh, just thinking about
that kind of gives me hives. Doing both of those
things in one day. It's a lot on the nervous system.
It's a lot to expect of yourself. And if you're
someone like me who's like, well, we can that's sure,
we can tackle that. We can accomplish that, then take
a minute to think about what it might feel like
(26:04):
to not force yourself to accomplish as much as you could.
Of course, you could accomplish it in a day, but
what would it feel like to let yourself off the
hook and give yourself permission to slow way down. So
that's one rule, And I use rule in air quotes
because we do break the rules sometimes when it's necessary,
but for the most part, we follow this rule. We
only do one big thing a day. Another rule air
(26:27):
quotes rule that Matt and I have started to follow
in the last couple of years is the rule of
waiting twenty four hours to make a decision. When Matt
and I first met and were dating, and even when
we first got married and didn't have kids yet, we
were double income, no kids, as they say, and so
we had a lot of kind of extra breathing room
(26:48):
in our budget. And I say budget, but we didn't
even really budget. I mean, we had like a top
line number that we knew we spent each month, but
we didn't sit around thinking like how much do we
spend on groceries, how much do we spend on coffee?
How much do we spend on gas. It was just like,
you spend the money until the money in the account
is gone, and then you move on to the next month.
So this is the first time in our lives in
the last couple of years where we've had to sit
down and actually say like, Okay, here's our hard cost
(27:10):
for the month, here's how much money is left over.
How are we going to make that work? And if
you've been listening for a while, you know that this
is all kind of the runoff of making a business
investment that didn't work out the way that we thought
it was going to, and us Matt and I both
making some career transitions and having kids and all of
the changes that life can bring. So we're getting used
(27:31):
to this idea of operating inside of a budget that's
a little bit more restrictive than what we're used to.
I mean, we still live a really lovely life, but
it is more restrictive than what we were used to beforehand.
And so one of the things that we implemented as
a way to help us stay on budget was this
twenty four hour rule. In other words, if there were
something that we wanted to spend that was going to
(27:51):
take up a significant portion of our budget. So in
our case, it was like, if it's over a couple
hundred dollars, then we're not going to make a decision
about it right away. We're going to give our selves
twenty four hours. And we so enjoyed the feeling of
having twenty four hours to make those decisions, even if
it's like, you know, you might see something out and
be like, oh I want this. Yes, it's an immediate yes,
(28:12):
but giving ourselves twenty four hours to really think about it,
sometimes you get to the next day and be like, actually,
I don't really need that as much as I thought
I needed it. It's almost like the dopamine hit of
the retail experience wears off and so you go like, oh,
never mind. Or you'd have the opposite experience where you'd
be like, I really want to do this thing, you know,
but I'm not sure I want to spend the money,
And then you wait twenty four hours to make the decision,
(28:34):
and you realize, no, this is something that's really important
to me, and it's in line with my values, and
it's worth it to me to sacrifice somewhere else so
that we can have this item that I want to
choose to spend my money on. Having that time to
kind of breathe and think around a decision started to
feel so good to both of us that we decided
to implement the twenty four hour rule around other big
decisions as well, like going on a trip or going
(28:55):
to a party or anything where we were like not
one hundred percent aligned on it, or or even sometimes
we are aligned and we'll get invited to something and
we'll be like, sure, we'd love to go, but let's
give it twenty four hours just to make sure that tomorrow,
when tomorrow gets here, we want to go tomorrow as
badly as we think we want to go today. And
implementing that twenty four hour rule has slowed the role
(29:18):
on how quickly we are often asked to make decisions.
In our culture, we're asked to make decisions like a
thousand decisions. I don't know I'm making that number up.
I've never counted the number of decisions, but just hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of decisions in a day, in
any given day, and to slow the role on some
of those decisions might feel like an impediment to your progress.
(29:40):
In some ways, it does feel uncomfortable at first. I
will admit that that the sitting still in the morning,
the twenty four hour rule, the rule of only doing
one thing a day, feels in the beginning when you
start to implement it almost like a frustration. It's like
a speed bump that you're like, well, this is getting
in my way. I want to just get to my destination.
But over time it has started to really force us
(30:04):
to slow down, and I've begun to really enjoy this
slower pace of life that it creates for us. And
this is what I want to leave you with today.
I want to leave you with this permission to in
spite of how you came into this world. Let's just
say you came into this world as lightning fast as
I did. In spite of how we've been indoctrinated by
(30:26):
the broader culture, in spite of what December usually looks
like for most modern Americans, in spite of what January
usually looks like for most modern Americans, In spite of
all of that, in spite of what culture is screaming
at us, I want to give you permission to move
at the pace that you feel like moving, and to
look at nature and realize, oh, my gosh, nature moves
actually very slow. And the tree outside of my window
(30:49):
is not at all concerned with the fact that it's
taking a break right now, that it's slowing way down
for the next several months so that it can produce
again in the spring. It is not worried about that
at all. It just knows that this is the cycle
of life. This is this is how production happens, is
by leaning into the slow when the slow is available
(31:11):
to you. The winter is a beautiful time to lean
into the slow, to be honest, I mean, I know, summer.
This is kind of like we have the school calendar
that we live by, which is that I've lived by
the school calendar for a lot of my life because
I was a student and then I was a teacher,
And so if you're living by the school calendar, then
you're kind of off in like July and August or
June and July, depending on where you are in the country,
(31:32):
and that's your those your slow months. But think about
how nature is kind of flipped opposite, like it's it's
nice to think about December and January being your slowest
months of the year. What if December and January could
be your slowest months of the year. What if you
could give yourself permission to just kind of power down
and not read any of your emails, and not get
(31:52):
on Slack and not you know, record any new podcast episodes,
and not get on Instagram and not make any new content,
and not need to make progress on your book. You know,
maybe you choose to do those things because it feels
aligned for you, and that's fine, But what if you
could give yourself the permission to not also, And I
think that's really where I want to land, is that
(32:14):
you have all the permission in the world to move
as slow as you want this holiday season. Do not
get caught in the riptide of speed speed speed. The more,
the better, the faster, the better, the more stuff you know,
the faster you can move, the more you can accomplish,
the better, the better, the better that isn't true. There
is a lot of nourishment, a lot of enrichment, a
(32:36):
lot of beauty to be found in the slowness of
just your life. You're allowed to slow way down and
just you know, as they say, stop and smell the roses.
Just slow down, take it in, take a deep breath,
and breathe in this beautiful life that you've been given.
That's exactly what I'm going to be doing over the
course of the next couple of weeks. I hope you
get a chance to do the same. I'm sending all
(32:57):
my love to you. Marry Mary, Merry Christmas. For those
of you celebrate, Happy Hanukkah, whatever it is that you
celebrate wherever you are in the world, I hope that
you get some downtime, some breathing room, and some time
to spend with family and friends over the next couple
of weeks. And I am so excited for what we
have coming in January of twenty twenty five, for this
show and in other ways too. I can't wait to
(33:19):
share more. And I'll see you back here after the
new year.
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