Struggling To Keep Up, Feeling Overwhelmed And Yearning For A Simpler Life?

Lessons in downshifting, from my truth to yours

The women I work with start their journey of Self Recovery with a pull to simplify their lives. They no longer tolerate feeling overwhelmed and rushed, not stopping from one end of the day to the other and feeling like they are never able to ‘catch up’ with their endless to do lists, responsibilities and obligations.

They feel like they cannot stop, even for a moment of Pause, for fear of falling behind and have a strong need to carve out more space in all areas of their lives.

They yearn to stop feeling like their attention and energy are being pulled in all different directions, so they can feel more at ease and be present for what truly matters to them.

If you’ve found your way to this post I’m guessing that is where you are too. Feeling a visceral calling to clear your calendar, find a simpler, more attainable way to live, one in which you are not left feeling like nothing you ever do will ever be enough.

You are most probably being pulled to spend more time closer nature, or perhaps to cleanse and declutter across different areas of your life.

I call this process Downshifting 

Just like shifting down the gears of a car, downshifting is the intentional process of slowing down and allowing yourself to be more aware and present of what is around you.

You’ve reached a place in your life where you’re no longer willing to tolerate feeling rushed, being busy all the time and overcommitting yourself.

Yet, resent it when anyone tells you the solution is to rest.

Of course you want to feel rested, BUT, at the moment you view rest as something that you will just have to catch up from. Rest is not the right remedy for what has become an intolerable deep rooted problem.

If you’re nodding along to this, I’m so glad you’re here, I want you to know you are not alone in how you feel and I urge you to lean into this pull to strip back.

You haven’t lost ‘it’, you are not incapable of being the woman you dream of, you are just at a point in your life when you are ready to leave the pressure and weight of expectation behind.

You are ready to start healing. You are ready to go Back To You.

What is downshifting? 

Downshifting is all about recovering your own natural pace so that you can live more in ease and be present for what and who truly matters to you. It’s the practice of living to your true rhythm - not to the one that our modern day western world has set a standard for.  

We live in a society where being busy is a marker of success, celebrated and even glorified. We’re not encouraged to fall in sync with, or even learn about, our natural cycles and seasons. We’re pushed to operate like robots. But as human beings - just like in the natural world we can’t come into bloom if we are forced to rush and become disconnected from what truly nourishes us. 

Downshifting is what the women I work with feel pulled to do, and so often it is the starting point of a fulfilling process of self recovery through what I call Soul Gardening - a journey to get orientate back to our truest selves. 

It all starts with an irritation and itch to ‘clear the way’ mentally, physically and emotionally, a pull to have less to look after, so that they can start to look after themselves. They want to create a simpler home life, to free up their calendar, live life at a slower pace and allow themselves space to be. Unknowingly what these women are ACTUALLY doing is unburying themselves from all that is not true to them, so they can recover their truest nature.

Reconnecting with YOUR TRUE nature

I so often hear from women who are downshifting that they are drawn to spend more time in the natural world. They believe this is because in nature they are reminded of who they are and where they come from. The natural world reminds us to be and of our own rhythms, cycles and seasons.

Spending time in nature slows our heart rate, reduces feelings of anxiety and gives us an opportunity to notice the everyday magic that’s happening around us.

However, what these women do not understand yet is that they start to recover their true nature spending time in the natural world because when we spend time in closer connection to nature we feel held.

We are reminded that we are supported on a much greater level than we are conscious of as we busy away in the hustle and bustle of our day to day lives.

In the absence of all the ‘noise’ we can not only hear ourselves, but we can start to feel like ourselves again. We regain clarity of our sense of self and in turn confidence.

We start to feel safe to recover our own true nature, and once we reconnect with that it is very hard to turn a blind eye to the truth of who we are and go back to living under the weight of who we think we should be. It no longer feels right.

In spaces of acceptance we can do the work of accepting ourselves.

when in nature we stop all the doing and allow ourselves to be.

Getting started with downshifting

Perhaps you love the sound of stepping away from under everything that has been weighing you down, but you just feel stuck and like you have no choice but to get on with it. After all, who will do it if you don’t? Here are some gentle starting points. 

let yourself be pulled TO STEP BACK

I’m going to reiterate this point, because it is really important.

You have not lost ‘it’, and it’s not that you are no longer able to cope with the life you have created, nor that you are no longer capable of carrying all the weight of those expectations.

You are waking up to the fact that you no longer have nor want to carry them and that a lot of what you have been carrying was never yours to carry in the first place.

The first step is to let yourself be pulled, acknowledge and give yourself permission to feel what you our feeling.

Don’t talk yourself into feeling that you should be coping better.

If you can, spend some time in the natural world and pay attention to how you feel. As you would when you meditate, try not to judge yourself and your emotions. This step is about noticing, learning to pause and checking in.

As you get into the habit of doing this regularly, start to take note of what you’re noticing and feeling. What feels ‘off’? It can take a while to fully understand what you’re feeling and what needs you are being drawn to nourish.

Try not to force it - you’re unlearning years of pushing down your true feelings and needs buried underneath all the doing, busyness and everyone else’s needs and expectations of what you should do and who you should be.

While it can feel frustrating that there seems to be no way out from this life you have created for yourself; in time and through the process of learning to trust yourself again you will understand that their is always an opening, you are just not ready to see it yet.

Start small, start with one area of your life

There’s real temptation to go all in and overhaul your life in one fell swoop, make drastic changes.

This can often leave us with a whiplash from the rush of emotions that comes from not pausing long enough to make sure that we are heading in the direction of our truth.

Through my own experience of and when I witness other women passing up the pause, the path leads to burnout and often takes you back to where you started in the first place.

If you’re itching for change and are been drawn to ‘declutter’ I recommend that you start with your physical space and start small.

Less time looking after ‘things’ means more time that can be spent on caring for what truly matters.

Having less physical stuff to care for and energetically weigh you down, allows to you pivot and navigate back to your truth with more ease.

When I started to become aware of a deep need to ‘clear my path’, I took great inspiration from The Minimalists.

Remember we are cyclical, curious and creative souls so our living spaces, minds and emotions will become cluttered again on a periodic basis. But if you are able to sit in the Pause and take responsibility for yourself, each time you actively downshift you will head in a more aligned way towards your truth.

When life feels too noisy step back, and away into nature if you can. This is important because, when you take time to pause, you give yourself space to notice what’s coming up for you and lean deeper into your truth.

If you also trudge ahead and dive headfirst into your next step and try to tackle everything at once, you will end up confusing your inner compass and find yourself heading further and further away from your truth and ease. 

Be kind to yourself

When you start downshifting it’s going to feel just as uncomfortable as it is freeing. After years of conditioning, rushing, living under the weight of expectation and feeling like you should be able to cope better, it’s going to take some time, and some gentle flexing of the self compassion ‘muscle’ to get comfortable with the concept of unburying yourself from all that feels heavy.

What I notice in my clients is that as they start to downshift and let go of the weight, feelings of guilt, shame and not enoughness creep in and they end up picking up something else to replace what they have laid down. It may be something different, but it takes time to understand that you don’t have to pick anything else up in its place.

As you reduce the pressure you put upon yourself it can feel frustrating when you no longer tackle as many things in a day as you used to. When these feeling rise, remember WHY you wanted to downshift in the first place and how you actually want to feel.

Rather than punish yourself for not being as productive as you once were or not packing as much into a day as you once did, get curious about why you immediately go to punish yourself and what has led you to believe you must be 100% productive every day or put other people’s needs before your own.

Ask yourself what YOU truly need and want as you downshift and you’ll be much more likely to be on the path to more sustainable, long lasting change and true transformation.

Start soul gardening

As you start to downshift and notice the benefit it’s having on your headspace, your health and other areas of your life, you’ll likely get curious about where else this journey of self recovery is going to take you.

Downshifting is so often the gateway to even bigger positive changes in your life, I call this self recovery rather than self discovery, because the journey you’re embarking on is ultimately one that will equip you with the tools to be able to continually reorientate yourself in the direction of your ease.

My journaling guide below can help you take some gentle steps, deeper onto your path of self recovery.  

Common hurdles with slowing down the pace, decluttering and simplifying your life

So much ease can be found in acknowledging and accepting your natural pace and in learning your natural cycles of unfolding. 

But as much as we feel pulled to downshift, it’s not something we tend to feel comfortable with. When the women I work with really lean into their downshifting something that nearly always comes up for them is a sense that they are getting left behind. 

I see my clients being hard on themselves because they feel frustrated and guilty that they used to do so much more, and in downshifting they feel they are losing their ability to be as productive.

They compare themselves to other women who are seemingly getting more done each day. Or they compare themselves to the former version of themselves and feel frustrated that they used to be able to cope with so much more. 

Perhaps you’ve already been making some downshifts and discovered the frustration that can come with choosing a slower pace of life?

I want to reassure you that you are not in anyway behind.

You are enough.

Downshifting is all about recovering your natural pace, and the chances are that your true rhythm will be a lot slower than the one you have been trying to keep up with for years.

Remind yourself that that rhythm was no longer sustainable, nor true to you.

Getting comfortable with downshifting

As I have said above downshifting is all about recovering your natural pace so that you can live your life with more presence and ease.

Downshifting requires us to become self aware and be mindful of how we feel, when we feel and what makes us feel that way, so that we can continuously orientate ourselves towards our ease.

Like every other natural cycle the journey of self recovery has its own seasons... from Summers when we feel so connected, clear and confident, through to Winters where we feel like everything has slowed, we feel completely disconnected and lost.

Each season serves its place in this journey and as we spiral from the light to the dark and back round again, remember that there is NO finish line, no place we arrive at, and there is no reward for getting anywhere faster, the race you’re comparing your journey to was created by a system based around ‘productivity’ not truth.