Low & Slow or Fast & Frenetic? (Episode 75)

Join me in this episode to learn how to break free from the chains of ceaseless busyness and cultivate a lifestyle that enriches your soul. We're going to notice the difference between going fast & frenetic (where we create productivity but the result often leaves us overwhelmed, exhausted, and depleted), and going low and slow, which creates true efficiency and peaceful productivity.   Choose LOW & SLOW!

• Main points: 
  • Seek the delicate balance between achieving your goals and healthy self care
  • Notice and decide what kind of energy you want to be in
  • Practice Sabbath- taking 24 hours a day each week to slow down and rest
  • Do regular breathing exercises to anchor you to the moment
  • Consider the importance of listening to your internal dialogues and physical signals

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm Life Coach Kelly Tibbetts, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Hey friends, today we're back to talk about another idea to use this winter as we are creating peaceful productivity by going low and slow. And today we're going to notice the difference between going low and slow to create that peaceful productivity and going fast and frenetic, where we create productivity but the result is often we start to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, depleted. The reason this is so important to me is that is how I lived most of my life. I was so proud of how I multitasked, how I could handle being a mom and having a job in the morning as a kindergarten teacher and a job in the evenings and the weekends as a children's pastor, and that my three daughters were in a bunch of activities and we had friends at our home every week. But what happened was I became exhausted. And what happened when I became exhausted is I ran out of emotional energy and I was often very sharp to the point of I would yell with no notice, I would get very angry, and I wasn't living life with a sense of peace. And so when I got my first life coach, my eyes were really open to why I think and feel and do life the way I do, and I began to notice that I have what's called a compliant energy. I tend to merge with the people around me and look to them to decide my yeses and nos. I discovered that I was heart centered and that when I got depleted emotionally, it was hard for me to do anything physically or mentally. And I discovered that as an enneagram too, I was able to notice other people's feelings and I was doing all kinds of things, trying to change how other people felt, instead of honoring the fact that each of us create our feelings with our thoughts. It's our decision to focus on our thoughts, our feelings and our actions and to allow everyone else to live the lives they live, knowing that they're doing the very best they can. So because of that, these last few years, I've been working very hard to create these productive results in my life which are still important to me, from a place of peace, peaceful productivity. So today we're just going to notice the difference between being somebody who is in a fast and frenetic energy and being in that low and slow, peaceful energy. So, if it's safe to do so and you want to close your eyes for a minute, take a few of those deep breaths to reconnect, to love, to who you are, 100% loved, 100% valuable. What energy are you currently noticing? Is it that peaceful energy, aligned, enthusiastic energy? Or are you noticing yourself a little depleted, a little resentful, a little frustrated?

Speaker 1: 2:56

The first important gift we give ourselves every day is just a moment or two to notice. Maybe you have a journal, maybe you use the Notes app. I even noticed that in the latest download of my phone, the Apple phone comes with a journal and I found that pretty interesting. It gave me a couple pictures to look at and some journal prompts, and I actually did it the last night. I thought it was a really kind of fun way for me to be a little more reflective.

Speaker 1: 3:17

So first we're going to notice what kind of energy we want to be in, and you might think I don't want to give up fast and frenetic energy. It's what allowing me to live the life I live, where I can do all the things that I'm doing and the only struggle that you may not be noticing yet is there's going to be, at some point, an inability to keep running at the pace. If it's past your limits, if it's more energy than you actually have, if you're giving up sleep, if you're giving up time with people, if you're giving up the practices that fuel your soul, at some point you're going to notice that it's not going to serve you, and so we're just offering you a new thought for this year. What if you could go low and slow and still be productive, but from a place of peace? So when you take a few moments every day and you just grab that piece of paper or take out your notes app and you just notice what steps am I currently taking to live in peace? One of the things I discovered on my path to becoming this version of me is the idea of Sabbath, of taking 24 hours a day to stop and to rest. I currently work for someone who is Jewish and she stops and rests every Friday evening at sundown until Saturday evening at sundown, and what's beautiful is sundown goes with the seasons, so it's a little bit earlier in the middle of winter and it's a little bit later in the middle of summer, and I've noticed by watching her that that kind of aligns with the energy of being human. We just have a little bit less energy in the winter and a little bit more in the summer. So what would you decide today is a practice that could help you move into that low and slow energy and still create those results that are important?

Speaker 1: 4:51

I mean, the goal in my program is a hundred percent for you to be able to be creating purpose filled results. I think that you were made on purpose for a purpose. I think there's a dream in your soul that the world needs, and I want you to be able to create those goals and results that are important to you. And there's so many. There's the goals that you have for yourself personally. Maybe it's how many books you want to read this year. Maybe it is how many weights you want to be able to lift. Maybe it is how many connections you want to have with people you care about. It could be the home you live in that you want there to be spaces that are inviting and warm, and maybe it's the fact that you want to go on a lot of trips. There are places you want to see in the world. Whatever the goals and dreams that you have, I want you to honor them, to notice them, to decide their worth, the energy required to create the results. I think, though, that most of us have spent much of our lives not noticing where we are mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and we give past our capacity and we end up resentful, frustrated, exhausted, burnt out, and so if there are practice steps we can take now to prevent that in the future, I think that is a really great thing to focus. So we always start with noticing where we are, and then we decide, and I think a great practice step to decide is to decide to stay present, Whether you use breath work.

Speaker 1: 6:09

One of the breath works that I learned when I first started to learn this was picturing a square where you would breathe in, kind of going up the square, holding your breath as you go across, breathing out deeply as you go down the square, holding your breath again as you go across, and doing those square breaths, whatever it is that you need to sort of get back into the present moment, and then, maybe, a power thought like in this breath, all is well. That might be something that serves you. I know it serves me. When my brain starts to rush into the future and think of all the possible calamities that could happen, one of the best gifts I can give myself is to bring myself back to the present. In this breath, all is well. So let's do that together for a minute.

Speaker 1: 6:49

You just close your eyes, hand on your heart if it's safe to do so, breathe in like we're going up the square, hold your breath like you're going across, breathe out deeply like you're going down the square and then holding your breath as you go across, in this breath All as well. That can really help realign us back into that low and slow, peaceful, productive energy. And then, once we've made the decision that that's what we want to do, it's going to create in us a healthy mindset. It's eventually going to become part of who we are, not a habit that we need to practice. Most of us, when we're two or three, needed somebody to help direct us so that we would brush our teeth properly. But now, if you're the age that I am, in that midlife age, generally we're all pretty good at our oral health care, right, like it's just you wouldn't go to bed without brushing your teeth. Just part of who you are, and so that's what we want to create with my life coaching program a community of people who are as passionate as you are about creating the kind of life where you are living in the aligned energy that you want to be in.

Speaker 1: 7:54

I love the idea of being aligned, energetic, passionate, determined, committed, and so to do that, I need to be careful that I don't naturally fall over to that fast and frenetic energy which is just so easy for me to fall into, and the struggle with it is, if I move too quickly, I tend to make mistakes, and when I make that mistake, I then have to go back and correct it, and it ends up taking more time than if I just did it right the first time. Do one thing, do it well and then move on, and so, for today, the goal is to notice the difference between low and slow energy and fast and frenetic energy. So here's a little practice that you could do Take out a piece of paper, notice your thoughts, your feelings, the things you do and the things you don't do when you're going low and slow, a thought might be there is enough time. I can take as long as I need. I'm 100% valuable and 100% loved. I'm safe to create these results, the feelings that might happen when you take those breaths and connect to love. You might feel love for yourself, you might feel peace, you might feel some gentleness, you might feel some kindness, especially towards yourself.

Speaker 1: 9:01

And one of the verses that Jesus said? He said love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And if there's anything I've learned in my years of being an educator and a parent and a pastor, it is really hard to love other people when you don't love yourself. That self-annoyance, that self-frustration, that self-anger, it can't help but seep out and then we end up judging the people around us. So just notice, when you are in that low and slow energy, what kind of feelings are in your body. And if you don't know the name of the feeling, just notice where it is. Maybe your jaw isn't tight, maybe your shoulders feel loose, maybe your hands feel open, maybe there's no tightness in your stomach. Whatever you're noticing, take a few minutes and write it down, because we want to compare the two. And when you're willing to be in that low and slow, peaceful productivity, you're going to notice yeses and noes, things that you can say 100%, I'm in. This is the thing I want to do, and in this season I'll have to say no, thank you. I can't join you that whole day, but I could do an hour. Would that be okay? I'd love to send you a birthday card, but I won't be able to visit this week. You'll begin to notice the yeses and noes that you want to say.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Now let's look on the other side of the line. Fast and frenetic energy and again, there is no judgment here. This is where I constantly fall Without intention. I'm going to fall fast and frenetic. Well, what thoughts get me into fast and frenetic energy? There's not enough time. I'm not going to be able to do this unless I work harder. And what is my value if I don't produce all kinds of silly thoughts? I don't even believe, but they've been on repeat for so long they're just easy to come out of my brain.

Speaker 1: 10:40

So what are you noticing with your thoughts when you're in that fast and frenetic energy? What are you feeling? It's probably the opposite of just these gentle drop shoulders that probably tighten up near your ears. You might notice your jaws kind of tight, your hands feel clenched, your stomach feels a little bit sour. That's what we want to notice. What's the difference between the low and slow energy and the fast and frenetic energy. And the more attention you pay, the more nuance you'll notice.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Sometimes it helps to have a community around you to say did you notice? That's one of the things we do in our coaching circle is when people are willing to share where they're getting stuck. I can often notice while they're speaking the thought that's keeping them from moving forward in the action. If the thought is it's going to be so hard and you don't even notice that's what you're thinking. Your human brain loves you too much to do something. That's going to be too hard so you'll end up not taking the actions in order to stay safe. So noticing that thought and deciding that's not even what I want. On repeat, I want the thought there's more than enough time to create the result I want. And when that doesn't feel true, we can put a few words in front of the thought that serve us, words like it's possible it's possible that the path that I'm on will create the results that I want to see, and we probably have a lot of evidence for that that you look back in your life and you think I don't even know how this all worked out.

Speaker 1: 11:59

I started over here at this job and then somehow I ended up getting into college. That's what's true of my life. I look back. I'm not even sure how I moved from somebody who was working at the Yum Yum Bakery in Lowell and was able to finish college and become an educator and then move over into ministry. I went to Bible college for two years, but I didn't finish Bible college yet. I still ended up in ministry. And then, in the middle of my season of ministry, I moved from one church to another, and it was at the second church that I got my first life coach, and the day I met her, something deep in my soul said this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. But that was in 2016. It takes the time that it takes for things to happen, but I know the path I'm on, and so I can find low and slow peaceful thoughts, like I know that I will get there, even with this podcast. I started this in 2020.

Speaker 1: 12:46

And for the first couple of years I produced one episode a month, and that was all I had the energy for. It would have been really unkind to expect that I had the energy for an episode a week. But now I'm in a different season and I have more time and I've gotten better at recording so I can do one episode a week. I could never have produced episode 75 on the first try. I had to learn how to record. I had to learn how to talk to a microphone instead of talking to you face to face, and it took the time it took. I'm a little bit uncomfortable when I listened to some of the first ones because I truly didn't know what I was doing. But there's no other way forward than trying the first time, seeing what worked, what didn't work, what we would do differently, edit, try again, and I think that's why there's that phrase.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Third time is the charm. It does take more than one try to get better at things. I might offer 100 times is the charm, 1,000 times is the charm. It might take longer than you and I expect, but the thought might be. I can believe it's possible that I will get to that result. I don't know how long, I don't know the way, I don't know what needs to happen in order to create that result, but I can trust that I'm on the right path. So you're going to notice your thoughts, your feelings, the things you're saying yes and no to, when you're in the peaceful energy and when you're in the fast and frenetic energy.

Speaker 1: 14:07

And then you get to decide what do I want to prioritize, and I hope part of what you're prioritizing is future you. What does future you benefit from that you're doing today? When you get to a place where you are overwhelmed and exhausted on repeat, you are getting to a place of burnout, and that will affect future you. So what if the next five years, you're not constantly in a state of stress where your stomach is sick and your blood pressure is high? What if you make some decisions today to say some no's, to hold space for the things that are important to you, for the dreams that live inside of you? And if you'd like a community to help you on this path, I would love to have you join us.

Speaker 1: 14:48

My Live a Vibrant Life program is a one-year program where we go low and slow, but we are creating productive results. I'm not offering a one and done fast fix, because I don't think that's true. Most of us need time and practice to take the small baby steps that help us become the people who are creating results, from who we are not from a place of fast and frenetic energy. That's exhausting. So if you're looking for that, head over to kellytipitzcom.

Speaker 1: 15:14

You can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram and I hope, right now that you're making a decision, that for the next hour, the next day, the next week, month, year, you can choose peaceful productivity and go low and slow. I look forward to connecting next week. Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encouraged you and will equip you with the tools you need to move your life into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative, purpose-filled life and if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook I'm Kelly Tibbetts Life Coach or visit my website, kellytibbettscom. I look forward to connecting again soon.