Things That Actually Make Life Feel Less Rushed
unlearning urgency culture to enjoy my freaking life
Last year I caught myself rushing my children in and out of the car even though we had nowhere we actually needed to be. We were going to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then heading right back home with no real agenda. And yet, I was still hurrying them along. It was as though I was watching myself from the outside, slightly embarrassed, judging my own urgency as I pushed them forward, “Come on, let’s go,” for no real reason at all.
One of them stopped to adjust her baby doll, another started telling me something that clearly felt very important…and I almost rushed that, too. That moment screamed at me in the way life tends to. Because there’s a difference between being busy, feeling rushed and rushing through your life. One is about time, the other is about your nervous system, the external/internal pressure that keeps whispering hurry, be more productive, get sh*t done. And the last is about missing out.
Standing there that day, three little humans with perfectly round, marble-shaped, curious eyes looking up at me, I was washed with clarity that I don’t want to treat the very life I love as something to get through. I don’t want to treat the ordinary parts of my day like obstacle courses…the slow walk to the car, the shoe that needed to be tied again, the story that began three different times before finally landing. I know there will be a time, sooner than I’m ready for, when no one needs help with their shoes or their hair or their buttons. When no one is telling me a backseat story or pulling on my arm to show me a bug or when getting out of the car isn’t a whole to-do. And when those moments come, I want to look back knowing I didn’t spend those years rushing through the very moments I’ll miss most. Because the ordinary, messy, in-between moments aren’t the obstacle, they are the our life.
I drove home, mad at myself, and decided then and there that I was done with unnecessary rushing. I was going to, very intentionally, rush less. And avoid passing down the low-grade, anxiety-laced urgency that seems to hover just beneath the surface of our culture. I don’t want to teach my children to rush through their lives, but instead to be present in them, to savor them, to enjoy them.
What I’ve realized, as I’ve been unraveling the rushing ways over the last several months, is that so much of what feels frantic in our days isn’t the schedule itself, it’s the speed we bring to the room. The self-manufactured urgency that we’re drumming along to. When we slow down, it changes the energy and the day becomes something we’re inside of, instead of something we’re trying to outrun. Paying attention to the moments I’m tempted to fast-forward through has been the single most effective way to feel and be less rushed. And besides the self-awareness, these 21 changes made a big difference:
