Feeling the pressure to rush? Learn how to slow down, be strategic about your goals, and reap more joy and peace in your life. Break the cycle of unrealistic expectations. Be realistic and enjoy life at your own pace.

Learning and teaching myself and the kids to slow down lately rather than rushing and doing things quickly. When inexperienced this will turn out to look real sloppy. Other times we set that parameter in our lives through rushed and unrealistic goals or expectations. Or we start pursuing goals at the wrong time in life. SLOW DOWN. Breaking  both of these patterns can lead to last more peace and joy.

GOOD GOALS TAKE TIME:

I recently listened to a beautiful podcast by Jody Moore titled What’s the Rush. Her podcast totally got me thinking and reminded me of how much as moms we often feel pressured to do everything. Society has us all thinking that we need to have it all and be successful by our mid twenties basically. 

We are told that the peak of our career should be at that age. That our travels and adventures need to happen during that time. Basically it’s become a live while you are young because it won’t be worth it later mentality.

Often sold on the idea of the overnight success type person. We see people who seem to have achieved success so fast. But little do we know that it’s similar to a person who went viral once and deleted all of her previous posts for us to see. Life doesn’t happen that way. A lot of successes and triumphs are a result of many years living in silence being noticed by no one.

CONSISTENCY that is sustainable long term, is what we need to be on the look out for. Being realistic as to what can be consistent for us will become an achievable goal.

GOALS NEED TO BE ACHIEVABLE:

When setting goals we often can be unrealistic. As women we juggle many things. And sometimes we want to juggle too much. We also can set out unrealistic goals that are not sustainable long term. That is what can cause us to quit.

We all have dreams and aspirations. Often times what we desire is something that will require more of a long term climb rather than a more rigorous schedule.

Too many times if we take all of the other elements above we don’t realize that we are setting goals for ourselves that will make our lives fall off  balance. Even though we have dreams and aspirations that we know can bring us happiness. We need to realize that we need to slow down.

GOALS CAN BE TABLED TO A LATER TIME:

To slow down sometimes may mean tabling something until a later time.

To slow down other times may mean to acknowledge that we only have a short amount of time each day to dedicate to a specific dream or aspiration. There is nothing wrong with staggering and spreading out our own dreams and ambitions.

To slow down may also mean to accept that we can be successful at something even if we start when we are older. That we have a long life ahead of us. It’s ok to wait and keep some dreams in the closet for a little later.

For example. I have some desires and dreams of things I want t o do in the fashion world. I have many fashion ideas. I also want to teach and go back to school for additional degrees. I have often contemplated starting right now. I see other women younger than me who started even before they had their own kids. If anything I from the outside am sometimes tempted to believe that because they stand before having a family they are ahead and now they have all the systems going and have it easy. Maybe they do. Or maybe they stay up at night time wishing they could quit. It really doesn’t matter though. Everyone’s joinery is unique. And we can only start from where we are at.

As women sometime we forget that we have lots of life ahead of ourselves.

Our kids are only here for a season.

It’s hard because moms get very little acknowledgments. But the regret on not being there for our kids far will outweigh anything else we will ever do. Even if it’s after.

This is some advice I have gotten many times from women older than myself. It’s what often pushes me to remember that even though I have many lofty goals. If I start something I need to be able to do it slowly. And I need to pace myself so that I can be here with the kids.

GOALS NEED TO BE SUSTAINABLE:

These are some truths that we can apply to our daily life:

1. Our daily life needs to be sustainable

2.  We need to leave room on our busy schedules to do something fun daily if possible.

3.  When committing to anything we need to consider if our life quality will truly improve.

4.  We also need to leave room in our lives to grow and improve. Grow in the way we learn and educate ourselves.

When committing to a goal, a financial obligation or a career responsibility, or even when considering adding something else on our plate, we need to consider if we will still have time to sleep adequately, eat properly, have a little bit of a break throughout the day, and if we will still have room in our budgets and schedules for periodic time off and vacations.

To live a balanced life we need to take into account that we need to be able to have a sustainable schedule. And I understand that there are seasons where some things need to be set aside. For example when I had a new born I had to focus only on making sure I exercised, cooked good meals for our family and that we stayed upfloat. during that time never could I have had time to take on a course or even go on a vacation with a newborn baby. I couldn’t even thin of packing for our family. And we were starting a business so for a year we barely even had date night between my husband and I.

Finances were tight and life was busier than usual. But we gave each other a year before we made the adjustments necessity to have other things that we wanted added back into our schedules.

GOALS DON’T NEED TO BE RUSHED:

What I learned from Jody Moore is to ask ourselves this question:

What is there rush?

Why do we feel like we need to do this right now?

Why do need to do it by this set date and what is pressuring me to do it right away?

I found that when I dig deep before taking on something new I am better able to make decisions as to what I bring into my life with peace.

BE STRATEGIC ABOUT YOUR GOALS:

We often get pressured by being told that life is short. We jump into things out of fear of missing out or never doing it. But sometimes we also need to keep in mind to be strategic.

Some things will only be received by the world when the world is ready for it. Some things are truly a matter of setting them up and building them slowly. so slowly that the are crawling and the world or even google sometimes, will only perceive them after they have seasoned for weeks, months, or years. Learning to give ourselves times, years sometimes, will allow us to approach our goals with more love and patience.

Another example I have is of my son this time. He has been practicing basketball. He takes 50 shots every day. One day he came in the car super frustrated because he barely made any baskets during his practice. I reminded him that muscle memory is built slowly.

He could have probably stayed that day and would have kept being bad at shooting. But sometimes when you go to sleep, and your brain takes the time to cement information, your muscles recover. Then you come back another day. Refreshed. ready to start again.

With a new mindset. sure enough a few days later he came after taking his shots super excited that his personal stats of how many baskets he was making had nearly doubled. But he had to go through the process of making barely any baskets at first.

He had to also set that goal aside, put blinders and go do something and give his body and mind time.

Life is often like that. Some goals can’t be rushed.

Rushing also often brings sloppy results. There are times when we will have our back against the wall. To slow down won’t be possible. Those are the times I have seen that miraculous results happen. Other times, other processes will truly require time and patience.

It’s like a workout. you can take supplements to recover slowly. But you still can’t make it recover. You can’t physically move your body cells where you need them to be and create new skin to heal a wound or repair a muscle on your own. You just need to trust the process.

Read my other article on pursuing your passions here.