“More is lost by indecision than wrong decision,” Marcus Tullius Cicero.  I can vouch that more time is lost waiting for something to happen and trying to find the way running on the same path than taking a wrong turn and heading toward something.  A few days ago we talked about a look don’t touch approach to life.  That is the perfect storm for someone to develop indecision.  When you don’t trust your instincts you lose sight of how to create, pivot, and adapt.  You expect things to go a certain way, you think that certain actions will yield specific results and when that doesn’t happen, you lose your way.  I’ve spent many a night crying over my frustration with doing the right thing and nothing happening. 

Most of my indecision has come from exactly that.  I thought I was doing the right thing—I spent my life doing exactly as I was told—and I still wouldn’t get what I was “promised.”   That made me question everything.  I started asking myself why anything mattered if people could literally do what they want with no consequences but I felt like stepping a toe out of line would rain down punishment for me.  Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but the feeling is true.  It’s easy to lose sight of your own intuition and instinct when what you think will happen, doesn’t.

What I learned, however, is that we waste more time thinking things should be a certain way when we could simply accept them as they are.  I’ve mentioned it before that we waste more time wishing and thinking things should be a certain way than if we were to simply accept what is around us.  And the truth is, no matter what, the universe will operate on its own timeline with its own plan whether we like it or not.  It’s pretty futile to fight something that just IS.  That isn’t to say we don’t have influence or power, it’s just that our power is bound within the scope of what we are meant to do and what we are capable of doing.    

The other thing I learned is that there really is no wrong decision.  I lived linearly where x leads to y because that is the natural course of things.  And then I saw it wasn’t.  Things would happen exactly as they SHOULDN’T regardless of my input.  A very small example was a password to my bank account.  I knew what it was, I typed it correctly and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get into my account on the computer.  The app was one thing, but the computer wouldn’t cooperate.  I called support and they confirmed I did nothing wrong—I still had to create a new password.  Sometimes life just does what it needs to and it doesn’t make sense.  No matter what we do, we will be guided exactly where we are meant to be.  Who knows, maybe someone figured out my password and the universe was protecting me.  The same for all of our decisions: even if we make a wrong turn, we will find where we need to go eventually.

So don’t paralyze yourself with overthinking or believing it has to be a certain way.  Simply accept and make a choice with the information you have.  All is well and it will always turn out exactly as it is meant to be.  Don’t waste the time you have with doing nothing.  Spend your time enjoying life and living and learning and loving.  That is never a wrong decision.  In those experiences, you will see the bigger picture, the lesson you are meant to learn.  You will even find your purpose.  So live.  Make the choices, take another road, stop what isn’t working.  Start over as often as you need to, but keep trying.  Keep moving and keep deciding.  No one makes it out alive anyway, so spend the time you have doing what you love.  Go toward love, always.  You will find the way. 

I read a parable today about a woman who constantly killed her plants.  No matter what she did, they would die.  She decided to try a final time and she took extra care and diligence with watering and making sure the plants received proper light.  The plants still began to yellow and wither.  In a seemingly unrelated event, a water line broke near where she kept the plants.  While that was being fixed, the plumber saw that somehow the line had been attached directly to a water softener; she had been watering the plants with straight salt water.  The point is this: you can do everything right, but if the environment or the nutrients are toxic, nothing will survive. 

I’ve found myself playing this game of trying on different faces nearly every day, specifically at work.  I felt so angry and helpless at the way I was being treated that I felt like I had to adopt a different persona to be accepted.  No matter how much work I did, it was never enough or it was treated as superfluous, completely unnecessary.  Nothing I did was “right” by anyone’s definition and there was no clarification on what direction to take but it was still my fault for not knowing.  And it hit me after reading the parable: this is how it is and this is how it will be.  I can’t change how they behave toward me.  I can’t make them see what I do.  This environment will always be sick and I will never get what I need out of it. 

When we see and accept that there are some things that have nothing to do with us, it is easier to see the course of action.  It’s easier to feel what we have to do.  It’s easier to understand that how people perceive us is a mark of their experience and not of who we are.  We can’t allow their definition of us to define who we actually are.  we are interpreting their interpretation of us and making it into something that doesn’t exist.  When we feel like no matter what we do things are just failing, when we feel like everything around us is eating away at who we are, it is time to evaluate what is actually going on.

Chances are, it’s time to move environments.  It’s time to check the connections to make sure we are getting all that we need and that we are connected to the right source.   That action alone will clarify what works for us and what doesn’t.  That makes the goal clearer.  The goal is to thrive and to get to the place, both physically and mentally that allows for that thriving.  We are meant to grow and develop in order to thrive and carry our messages forward.  Find the place that allows for you to be you and allows you to serve as you are meant to, with the innate talents and gifts you have. Thrive, don’t just survive.

Even though it was never explicitly said, I was made to stay within the confines of what people expected of me and made to do the right thing in their eyes.  I was trained to be afraid of what other people think and to tailor my behavior to the audience, there was no sense of identity.  Anything that was unique to myself was demanded to be hidden or treated as too much.  I remember my grandmother telling me that her generation was always meant to be seen and not heard.  I remember telling my grandmother things aren’t the same but I also remember that disheartening feeling in my stomach. That immediate sense of unworthiness and disdain and questioning why my laugh was considered too much or why my voice didn’t deserve to be heard. 

When we are taught that our words and our actions are never meant to see the light of day, that we have nothing of value to contribute, we lose the confidence and the ability to be who we are.  We learn to hide and retreat and to keep silent even if we know we have something of value to contribute.  The other problem with this is we lose the confidence to explore.  We question our ability to learn or do things so we treat life as look don’t touch.  We think that our actions alone will destroy the world if we step a toe out of line.  With all of the healing I’ve been working on (especially generational) I’ve come to realize that my mother was raised like this as well.  Even though she never said it outright, she passed on some of that as well.

Even as a child I’ve always been sensitive to what other people thought and felt.  I could pick up on their frustration and anger or even their sadness and depression very easily.  My mother was tired all the time.  She was never happy with her life because her mother believed that certain things were mistakes and that you needed to pay for them forever.  As my grandmother professed forgiveness to others as a good Catholic, she scorned her own child for being human.  My mother never carried that level of contempt for her children but she did carry the weight of making everything look good.  She was raised believing she was an inconvenience and a disappointment and she thought her job as a parent was to keep her kids in line so they wouldn’t do the same.

Honestly, this never bothered me before until I saw myself doing the same thing with my child.  Everything he did out of curiosity or simply exploring or even letting off steam felt like such an expenditure of energy that I couldn’t keep up.  I saw myself putting more energy toward work and trying to make the house look a certain way and feeling like I had to keep him in line that I missed the point: he was experiencing joy.  Joy leads us infinitely further than guilt or being coerced into a certain belief ever will.  I don’t ever want to put that guilt on my child.  He is wild and free and, as long as he is safe, that is exactly what he is meant to be.  He isn’t meant to fulfill anyone’s expectation of what he should be.  He is his own person learning about life.  And so am I. 

Learning how to reparent myself and how to accept the things I’ve always been has been tricky.  You get very used to behaving a certain way because you were trained to believe that so stepping out of that mold feels unnatural.  With time and experience, I’ve learned, however, that stepping out and exploring and being honest about who we are is THE most natural thing in the world.  Just because people have a hard time accepting it doesn’t make it wrong.  I have to remind myself daily that it is ok to be who I am.  I have to remind myself that my gifts are needed and I have things to bring to the table.  We all do!  As we accept ourselves, we can accept others.  As we learn new ways to include and shed the old, the more we inspire others to do the same.  Life isn’t look don’t touch—it’s meant to be messy and fun and loud and we are meant to learn from it and experiment and create.  Creation is messy, but it’s beautiful—start creating yourself.

One of the cards I drew today was the shovel.  The interpretation talked about doing the work, no longer sitting there and waiting for things to happen but making them happen through aligned action and effort.  As we were unwinding for the evening, we were watching an old movie and one of the lines was about people always waiting for things to happen to them and needing to make them happen.  It’s important to remember that we need to set a goal and have belief, but we also have to DO.  I’ve had dreams and fantasies about different lives I want to live and different things I want to do but I find myself running in circles doing different things because I’m not patient enough to wait for them to happen.  So I end up doing random things thinking the activity is moving me forward rather than actually creating.

I was so obsessed with the how and the details that I never allowed things to happen as they were meant to.  I had a specific vision on certain aspects of my life but I wasn’t clear on what I actually wanted.  I wanted to control everything about the how but I didn’t even know where I was going.  How can we have any direction if we don’t know which way to go?  How can we know where we are going if we don’t know where we are?  And, honestly, doing isn’t the same as intentional effort.  Controlling isn’t the same as doing what we are meant to.   It’s in the details and the effort you make that yield the results.  No amount of control can force something to happen that isn’t meant to. 

There is a divine order and timing when it comes to making things happen.  We are still a player in the game but we didn’t get to write the rules.  We didn’t even invent the game.  But that doesn’t mean we aren’t a part of it or that we aren’t important to the result.  We have roles to fulfill and there are objectives we are meant to fulfill that are not our own.  When the time comes, we are called to do the work.

My husband and I were rewatching a show that discusses different beliefs and different faiths and how those things lead us to take action.  In the course of the show, I noticed that no matter how different the beliefs were, the variety and the depth, the things they believed in were nearly always supported.  They believed in nature and nature supported them.  They believed in light and the light guided them.  They believed in spirit and spirit answered.  The same is true for us.  Our beliefs lead us down the path we think is right. Talking about belief and what it means is this: our reality is based off of what we believe.  And what we believe makes reality.  Anything we believe becomes real.

We always have a choice in what we entertain.  In what we take in and in what we share.  We know what makes sense to us and we have a choice to follow that or deny it.  But I have seen in more cases than not, when we follow what makes sense and what feels right to us, amazing things happen.  Miracles happen.  Suddenly new ways open up and we find our way out of the dark.  The bottom line is we have to choose.  We have to commit and we have to believe.  There is no half-way around a belief.  I’ve spent a lot of my life on the cusp, the precipice, the edge, dipping my toes in the pool and waiting to see what feels right.  And suddenly, watching this incredibly violent yet meaningful show, it clicked.  Making the choice and dedicating to it is what makes things happen.

So I guess that’s the next step, right?  Figuring out what beliefs fit.  I’m not talking about zealotry or even idolatry,  I’m talking about the principles we define for ourselves and how we follow them.  I’m talking about making peace with our identities and honoring that.  I’m talking about where that identity takes us in the grand scheme of things as it relates to our purpose.  The things we like aren’t just about acquiring things or power, they are about guiding us toward what we are meant to do.  I know there has been the age old discussion about right and wrong, good and bad which naturally evolves into WHO is right or wrong and good or bad.  But the truth is it doesn’t matter.  Those definitions are arbitrary in the grand scheme of things because the point is that the universe responds to frequency and vibration and when we believe, the universe answers.

It isn’t up to us to make the distinction between things and their worth.  All we are meant to do is fulfill our purpose based on what we know is right for us.  But we need to honor other people’s rights to their beliefs as well.  We aren’t all meant to believe the same things because we do not have the same purpose to fulfill—I know that seems pretty basic and even redundant but the point isn’t lost.  In Dogma, the thirteenth apostle says, “I think it’s better to have ideas.  You can change an idea.”  And this still ties into belief.  Yes, ideas create the foundation for belief because at that stage we can still shift and stack and move them.  But beliefs become the guiding force as the ideas solidify.  We need both, the flexibility and the foundation in order to create what is right for us.  Nature isn’t one thing and we are part of nature.  Do not become so rigid you can’t see a new way and do not be so flexible there is no direction. 

The cards today spoke of recalibrating toward joy and having fun to allow the universe to work and reminding us of our connectedness.  We are all one.  I read a daily reminder/book of passages to keep my inspiration going and it told the story of a family separated by distance but always held together by their bond as family.  What we need to remember is that we are all family, in every sense of the word.  We are all connected; our joy is everyone’s joy and our pain is everyone’s pain.  We need to work on lifting each other up and work on realizing that there is no room for the type of power play, competitions we have endured for millennia.  We need to remember our connection to everything always.

We were brought here as a gift, to live in tandem with the natural course of things.  There was a time when survival meant creating a hierarchy of sorts, but we are not meant to operate from that state forever.  We are meant to evolve and develop and learn new means of coexisting.  But we develop beliefs (more on that this week) that steer our course and we become rigid with the ability to pivot.  The truth is this is all about staying connected with our intuition.  We know when things don’t make sense and we know when they don’t fit.  This is when we develop moral conundrums like, “I know this may hurt people but my beliefs tell me to do this,” and we wrestle with which direction to go.

I want to share this as a reminder that those moments are the signs that we need to question everything. Just because we have always done things a certain way doesn’t mean they need to continue that way.  Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.  We have an inner knowing that tells us what is right and what is wrong and guides us toward a greater peace.  We need to recalibrate that as well.  We need to recalibrate the sense of love we have for ourselves and others.  Our stories and experiences may be different, but that doesn’t mean the heart of who we are as humans is any different.  We all bleed the same.

So when I make my choices, I lean toward not only what feels good, but what feels right.  Some days are harder than others to steer that way because it’s easy to fall into victim mode or even martyr mode upon doing the “right thing.”  We have to trust that we are guided and that we will do the right thing, not just for ourselves, but for everyone.  We all go different directions at times, but at the core, we are all connected.  There is room for us to do what we need to do AND to do good.  We don’t have to live in a world of “or,” we can create a world of “and.”  That is the beauty of it all: we can always redirect the sails and get somewhere new.

Today I am grateful for expanding experiences.  I’ve been focusing on my physical health lately and I joined a friend yesterday with a group she runs/walks with.  We went to a park not too far from me and we caught up a bit while we worked out.  I got to meet some new people and hear about some wonderful causes and experiences that they work for.  I’ve been working out in isolation for the last few months so it was a nice change of pace and we could not have asked for more beautiful weather.  Everything is coming alive and it’s green and the water of the river is flowing and there is life everywhere.  It’s a beautiful reminder of connected ness to see that life while taking care of yourself.

Today I am grateful for healing.  Healing is not a new topic in this blog, but I feel the need to express gratitude for it because the healing is what moves me forward.  The healing is where I make peace with what happened (that can’t be changed) but feel an understanding for where it fit in.  There are events in all of our lives that we have zero control over and it feels helpless.  We can make the choice to become a victim or we can incorporate the lesson.  In full transparency there are lessons I’ve had to repeat nearly my entire life—I’m still repeating some of them.  But the beauty of healing is when those lessons finally click.  The beauty of healing is when we no longer feel controlled by what we need to learn and we accept it and then bring out the next level of ourselves.  Healing brings more hope for the future than pain over the past.

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  I’ve been following people that keep me motivated for a long time.  They have similar goals and mindsets and a lot of them have goals and mindsets that I’m striving for (even if I’m not there yet).  Recently one of the women I follow got a book published for the first time.  In Gabby Bernstein’s teachings, she says that when people around us start manifesting the goals we have for ourselves, we should get excited.  It means we are on the same frequency if someone seems to be getting what you want.  When I saw this woman was getting published, my first reaction was shock.  I had no idea that she was going the author route.  Then I had a moment of jealousy and victimhood, feeling like everyone was achieving something but me.  And then I saw her reaction video to holding her book and I remembered Gabby’s words: that is my goal.  I’m so grateful to remember that our power is linked and that there is plenty of room for all of our words in this world.    

Today I am grateful for listening to my body.  I’ve been pushing hard mentally and physically for a good stretch of time now and today, the weather is a bit gloomy, so it is a perfect day to listen to my body and rest.  To hear what I actually need and stop all the busyness for a while.  To readjust and recalibrate.  To simply be for a little while.  I’m trying to take care of my body better but there are moments when, even if you’re doing something good for yourself, you can push too far.  It’s too much and you need to heal. I’m letting my body adjust to this new me and it’s about listening to what works now.  It’s not about giving up, it’s about protecting my longevity. 

Today I am grateful to dream.  I’m grateful to get out from under the weight of reality that traps me where it feels like I deserve the anxiety and believe the lies it tells me.  I’m grateful to enjoy the moment and spend time with my husband and son, watching some TV, resting my body, reading a book, and connecting.  Sometimes we have to create our own peace in spite of what’s happening around us.  The truth is we always have to create our own peace.  We need to find what keeps us steady so we know how to adjust the sails when the storm comes or when to find harbor.  Today is a day of harbor but it is no less productive.  I’m in touch with me. 

Today I am grateful to simply be alive.  I feel my body and I hear it speaking to me again after not speaking for so long.  I hear my intuition ramping back up and I know it is right on time.  I have no idea what some of it means and I’m still learning to fully listen without my anxiety chiming in, but there are signs everywhere.  I watched a movie I used to watch as a kid yesterday and today while my husband and I were watching a show, one of the songs I used to sing from that movie was in it.  I’m grateful to be alive and remember that there is a reason for it all and that I am right on time.  I’m grateful to do what I can with that time.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Our theme of productivity continues this week.  I think a key thing most of us overlook in this day and age is the acceptance of the need to constantly be moving and the need to be connected.  Before we get too far, I want to note that I think connection is incredibly important—as long as it is the right type of connection.  But it is not normal to constantly be on.  We are not meant to be alert and at attention 24/7/365.  We need downtime and we need internal connection, connection with nature, connection with people. We’ve lost the ability to separate time and the ability to focus on one thing at a time. We move too fast and try to do too many things at once thinking we need to accomplish everything or we need this constant state of busyness. We don’t know how to slow down and focus and savor and plan.  We lose track of what we are meant to do.  This nostalgic idea of going back to childhood when in reality it is trying to create safety.  I’m not sure if I truly ever was safe and I know that led to control issues—I digress.

 I notice this in my 9-5 the most.  I’ve mentioned before that my job covers multiple unrelated areas and I’ve also mentioned my struggle to navigate between them on a daily basis.  The brain isn’t meant to switch and pivot more than it’s in a state of focus.  Setting that as an expectation is a recipe for failure.  We are not machines and the fact that our computers, tablets, and phones are able to have multiple tabs open and shift with a click does not mean that we are able to do the same thing.  And honestly, all of that tech needs to shut down every now and then as well.  You give your phone a break, you charge it every night, if there are too many apps open you close them.  We have forgotten and willingly given up the fact that we are human for the sake of an extra hour of time behind a desk. 

I notice this in conversation with nearly everyone as well.  We can’t have a conversation about one thing or it’s at least very rare to be able to focus to long enough to get a point across.  We also have this expectation that people will automatically understand what we have to say and that we don’t need to explain anything.  I wrote about that earlier this week as well—I felt that struggle myself as I placed the expectation on my teams that they knew what I meant.  I felt the same expectation placed on me as well from my boss and coworkers.  There is so much pressure on us, both self-created, societal, peer to peer, and in relationships that we don’t even realize that we are placing our unmet needs on the shoulders of everyone around us. 

We do this distraction technique more often than not because there are often feelings we don’t want to acknowledge.  Even if we can’t place our fingers on it, chances are we are feeling something we don’t want to work through.  There is pain and anger and things we forget because we can’t keep it in our minds so we find any and every way to distract ourselves.  I’m guilty of that.  I mentioned in the first paragraph looking for safety.  I faced loss early in my life and my siblings being older than me meant they left me early.  School was easy but forming friendships was not.  I relied heavily on my parents and the times I remember feeling the best were with them.  I remember always being able to count on them.  They were my source and my friends and I was happy to be the same for them because they were constant.  Trying to numb the lack of security I feel now along with the latent feelings of loss as a child means doing things to keep me away from what I need to.

Finding safety means slowing down enough to do one meaningful thing at a time.  It means recognizing that we are safe enough to do one thing at a time and we don’t need to rush through anything.  Rushing through life won’t get us further from what already happened.  The only thing that can do is get us further from where we want to be.  Keep centered and trust you know what is best for you.  Set boundaries and limits and learn to disconnect from the constant connection and the expectation that you will always be available.  We do not owe anyone unlimited access to our energy and it is up to us to set that limit in spite of how quickly things move.  We are entitled to our space and to refill our cups as much and as often as necessary.  It’s only when our cups run over that we can sufficiently share with others without depleting ourselves.  Let’s create some new expectations and use our capacity for good.

I want to talk about divine timing as it relates to stagnation.  I’ve always been impatient.  I’m a doer and I literally always had to be doing something whether it was productive or not.  My mind races a million miles an hour in a million different directions on about five or six different tracks at the same time, so I HAVE to do something to keep myself occupied.  For example, even as I write this, I have three other pieces going through my head at the same time—and I know I will forget them if I don’t acknowledge them now.  The point is that I’ve struggled to accept or believe that anything will result from my actions and now it makes sense: I’ve never allowed for the follow through.  I’ve never allowed anything to get done because I was always doing and not finishing.  It kept me exactly where I was, running the same track over and over again for years, thinking I was possibly getting somewhere when I was just widening the circle (we’ve talked about that before).

Last weekend I woke up on Saturday and the laundry list of things that needed to be done immediately went through my head.  I got overwhelmed and I couldn’t tell if it was because I overcommitted or if I just wasn’t happy or if this is just life.  So, I started checking some things off the list and then I sat down to do my cards and they talked about flow and I wrote a brief caption about adjusting the sails and letting it happen.  Shortly after that, I came across the opening quote from yesterday’s post about healing and releasing baggage that can’t be taken with you.  And immediately after that, I read a piece by Logan Ellisen talking about trusting divine timing.  There is no way those three things can be coincidence.  So I listened and I realized that all of the emotion I’ve been harboring has been about that.  I’ve been carrying too much with me when I need to leave it where it belongs: in the past.

It’s funny how that type of timing works because for weeks I’ve been wrestling with the idea of the type of person I am.  My brain isn’t always a kind place so I’ve been edging on some darkness with these thoughts.  I’ve said it before, learning the truth about who we are is not work for the weak.  It is heavy and it hurts.  For example, all this time with my son, I’ve thought I was engaging with him and showing him different experiences (aside from video games) and trying to make him happy.  Trying to give him memories that I had as a child and things I enjoyed doing.  We had a conversation, and as five year olds do, he told me he doesn’t like me.  He also said I wasn’t the only parent in the house and those things got me really thinking.  I’ve been trying to make my kid like me.  Instead of meeting him where he is, I’ve been seeking approval from my child just as I’ve sought approval from everyone else my whole life.  That isn’t fair to him to carry that burden. 

So, when it comes to stagnation, I’ve learned that waiting for someone’s approval or permission isn’t going to move me forward.  That is some of the baggage I need to leave behind.  I can’t carry that with me.  Making people like me isn’t allowing me to be me.  It isn’t allowing for authentic expression because I’m tailored to what you expect of me.  THAT has to stop.  What moves us forward is doing—but in the form of productive action, not activity.  For the brain that veers off easily, this is when you have to learn to pause long enough to assess whether or not that activity is aligning or getting you closer to what you want.  Then you can make a decision to continue or to find something else to do.  The more you can do things that get you closer to what you are meant to do, the further ahead you will be and THAT is the farthest thing from stagnation—that is productive.  

Someone told me, “Whenever your life is feeling stagnant or as if nothing is happening, that means you’re being given the time and space to heal and release the baggage that you cannot carry to where you’re meant to go soon,” via beingawoke. Healing is a doozy.  It is vulnerable work and time consuming.  And to do it right, it exposes the parts of us we either keep hidden or protected.  Healing and releasing for the sake of moving forward means letting go of what we carried as an identifier and stepping into who we are.  Healing looks different for everyone whether it is ending a relationship or habit or changing a way of being that we are used to. 

I personally always felt frustration with stagnation.  I wanted to do as much as I could and that goes to the speed my mind operates (more to come on that tomorrow).  I couldn’t handle sitting still and I certainly couldn’t handle waiting for the results to come when I put in all the effort and wasn’t seeing any fruit.  I interpreted that as not doing enough.  I had no concept of patience, I merely wanted the reward—they say the fruit is always the last thing to bloom on the tree but I expected it when I wanted it, not when it was ready. Regardless, I’ve told you the stories of how I’ve repeated the same day for a long time, thinking it was getting me somewhere only to continue the same pattern day after day.  Sometimes those patterns aren’t ours.

Sometimes those patterns and the healing work we are supposed to do comes from someone else.  For me, I remembered my grandmother talking about my great grandmother and her anxieties related to illness and disease.  I knew exactly what my grandmother had described because I do that myself: I exaggerate and fixate and automatically go to worst-case scenario in my head.  That is something that needs to be healed after carrying it for over 100 years in the family—that we know of. The patterns we learn about our worth and our place and the things we are supposed to do also need to be released.  There comes a time when we have to find who we are on our own.

Part of that healing is learning to actually slow down in the slow times.  As the quote says, we are being given space to heal and release the baggage we can’t carry to where we are going.  When you have a busy mind, you can physically slow down easier than you can mentally.  But that is the trick.  You have to learn to be ok with shutting off every now and then.  The operating system isn’t designed to go at peak level forever.  It needs to heal, pause, reboot, and reset.  The only way to do that is to accept the lessons in the slow time.  Stop looking for activity when rest and healing are what you need. Stop looking for distraction from what is really going on.  Get ready to level up by being who you are.  Allow.