I had a conversation with a woman earlier this week, and what she said struck me really hard.
She was tired of the hustle culture where everything should be fast and everything should be done tomorrow, or today, or probably yesterday.
So she had started to build her own thing in a very slow way.
And five years can seem like a very long time in the future.
But the most interesting thing I learned was that when she realized she had a long-term goal, she was actually able to do much more in a much shorter time.
And that’s the thing.
At the end, I feel that we all should acknowledge that things can actually take a shorter time than we think when we accept that they will take time.
That was the same thing I explored during my illness.
When I was so ill that I had to move into a wheelchair, I had no choice but to slow down.
And when I accepted that I needed help, I needed aid, I needed support from someone else, I actually moved into a position where I accepted where I was.
And when you accept where you are, it’s actually easier to move on, to have progress.
Because then you are in control of your own future. You stop negotiating with reality. You stop pretending you are somewhere else.
You start working from where you actually stand.
And something shifts there.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But steadily. Because once you stop trying to rush time, you start using it.
And when you start using it, things move.
Often faster than they did when you were trying to force them.
Not because you pushed harder.
But because you stopped pushing in the wrong direction. And that might be the part we don’t talk about enough. That accepting the pace is not the same as giving up.
It’s what makes real progress possible.