A goal worth pursuing

(and the art of slowing down)

When you quite literally stop and smell the roses. (Photo by me)

*This was a piece I originally wrote (back in June) on what was going to be a seperate substack that I did publish, however after sitting with it, I’ve decided to share it here instead. We are all multi-faceted human beings, and I need this substack to be a place for me, my creativity and self expression in all its forms. While most of what I write here is related to style, I also want to share pieces of my writing that touch on mental health and identity. For me, style has always played a part in both of those things (plus i’m no longer trying to be for everyone), so it makes sense for me to share it here.

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I used to run, (hit runs to be specific) but now I walk.

I used to revel in the sweat fest that came after 20 minutes of a Peloton instructor yelling at me to ‘show up for myself’, and ‘to not quit now’. I felt assured and accomplished when the mirror reflected back my beetroot face post run. For a few short moments, I felt like a good girl. I felt worthy. Worthy of the food I ate, the things I owned and the people who loved me.

But today, things are different.

The vision board is gone, in its place is a photo of my husband and my dogs.

I removed it from my phone, my iPad and my laptop screen, because I had always felt the need to remind myself what was at stake if I stopped, if I dared to slowed down. Vision boards used to be exciting, they used to inspire me, but somewhere along the road called ambition, they became a way to taunt myself as to how far away I still was to something I wanted, or needed to achieve.

Any trace of ‘scaling’ (the vision boards, the motivational quotes, the journal prompts) have been removed from sight, but the sneaky desire to prove myself is still there like a sleeping dragon nesting in my brain that i’m trying hard not to disturb. Don’t wake the hungry beast who feeds on validation and approval of anyone but myself.

The productivity apps have been removed from sight, and I no longer churn out tasks like a machine, trying to get the most done in the least amount of time.

Everything is paused…for now.

What I did know, what i’m well versed in, is chasing goals.

I’m an expert in being consumed by my work, and obsessing over how quickly I can hit a certain goal, preferably before someone else can. Bonus points. My father races cars, so the concept of winning is something I understood from a young age. Watching him race from the rundown grandstand with a homemade sign that said ‘Go Daddy go’ I knew he didn’t race to come second.

I understood the chase, and even though I wasn’t driving a race car, I wanted to win. I wanted to win big. Winning looked fun. People looked really happy when they stood on the podium spraying champagne, holding trophies and celebrating. Winning will make me happy I decided.

Growing up I wasn’t the smart one. Jokes were made in jest, and I joined in. It was clear to me no one presumed I would be the one curing cancer, making millions or doing anything that society would deem impressive. But I didn’t let that stop me from believing I could be good, even great, at something. I remember my year 6 maths teacher telling me ‘you won’t be a mathematician, but you’ll go far’. I clung to that idea, to that possibility.

I was the child who found solace in arts and crafts. Give me a glue stick and an episode of Blue Peter and I could entertain myself for hours. I was the kid who woke up in the middle of the night to draw at my fisher price desk. I made short stories. I performed plays for my relatives. I was always making something. But if i’m truly honest with myself I think more times than not I always wanted someone else to see it. I longed for someone to tell me what I made was good. That I was good, smart and talented.

That feeling never left me. Even when I did do something good by society's definition, even if I was successful at something, it didn’t satisfy my craving, I just longed for more. More of that please. My brain told me if you can do that, you can do better. I was addicted to the feeling of being successful. Whether it was winning the school sports day high jump, winning a national makeup competition, or building a multiple 6 figure business. There would always be another step to reach, another trophy to win, another financial threshold to cross.

Goals were there to be beaten.

I would try to convince myself (albeit poorly) it was all a fun experiment, that it was the taking part that counted, but all I could think secretly to myself was ‘it’s the taking a-part that really counts (a race driving joke about winning and taking part that I always enjoyed that my dad wore proudly on a t-shirt.)

During my 30’s, I checked off more of the traditional boxes associated with success, and I remember my sister saying, ‘you make this look so effortless’, a statement which made me feel all kinds of strange. It was the first time I questioned my own process. Effortless? My drive for success was many things, but effortless? It did not feel effortless. Far from it. It felt like a cage I had built around myself, an addiction, a bad relationship I couldn’t walk away from.

I don’t remember when I first started to hear the voice, a very quiet, slightly concerned, softly spoken voice from deep within, that asked kindly ‘do you still want this? Are you happy? Do you want to stop?’

Don’t worry, I shut that shit down pretty quickly and put that voice down to a malfunction, a temporary glitch in the matrix. I took solace in my endless to do list and all was right with the world again…or so I thought.

But every now and then, usually after I’d find myself chasing a new goal or feeling empty at the realization that the previous goal I achieved had not given me the high I was looking for, I would hear that voice again. Still soft, still gentle, but it was there. It would ask the same questions:

Do you still want this?

Are you happy?

Do you want to stop?

I can’t remember the first time I spoke back, but I imagine it went something like this?

‘Stop?

Stop now?

We’re so close! (close to what I have no idea) It will feel good again, I just got the number wrong, I just miscalculated what was needed in order to get the high to be the right kind of high.’ Like a heroin addict trying to get the dose right.

I would reassure that voice they had nothing to worry about, they didn’t need to worry, kind of like a ‘thanks but no thanks’ kind of relationship, and tbh my energy was that if you’re not here to help me, do one thanks!

But that voice WAS the help I needed. But the problem was I didn’t want the help, unless ‘help’ got me closer to more success.

The voice continued to speak softly to me, and more frequently as the months went on, but I learned how to turn the volume down until it was on mute.

Naturally, because of my unsustainable approach of harder, better, faster, stronger, there was an inevitable tipping point. I was mid way through an important launch in my business and it felt like all of a sudden someone turned off the lights. I searched with desperation for the switch but it was gone, nowhere to be found no matter how much I slid my hands along the wall in the dark. I couldn’t turn the lights back on.

I was burnt out. I broke down.

It was sudden. It was no longer a question of did I want to stop, now I had no choice but to. Choice had left the building, and with it my ability to show up in my business, or my life the way I had done in the past. I could no longer just get on with it, or hustle my way out of it. I didn’t even care about hitting the goal. I don’t think I cared about anything. I felt numb.

When I did feel, it was mostly extreme anxiety at the realization of what had just happened. The realization I couldn’t keep my shit together. A generic client issue that would have been an easy solution to handle in the past, suddenly left me in uncontrollable tears. I would wear myself out like a child who cries themselves to sleep after teething all day or after having an uncontrollable tantrum.

The confusion that happens when you’ve been so used to ignoring your needs, pushing past the voice that says slow down, is a shock to the system. Why now? Why couldn’t you wait a little longer? How did we get here?

But the truth is your body and brain will humble you, time and time again if you continue to ignore them. I was truly humbled.

The idea of slowing down sounds good in theory, but anyone who relates to what i’m sharing will be the first to attest that the brain doesn’t slow down on command.

Three decisions were made.

1. I would pause my business for a month

2. I would take a break from social media

3. My mum would fly out to visit

I didn’t have resistance to any of the above, but I felt guilt and shame. Guilt that I couldn’t hack it and shame that my burnout was now affecting the people I loved most, and that I had caused them worry.

I’ve created content for free for over 12 years, In addition to various other aspects of my work (I’m a multi hyphen). The pull to leave the world of social media behind felt like a novelty, in a world where people talk of digital detoxes, I thought i’d last a week tops!

But a month in without social media in my life, and the first thing I noted that felt good in my bones was the quiet. No longer was I opening an app where I was constantly reminded how i’d already failed before the day had even begin. No one to tell me I should be taking an ice bath, or meditating for 20 minutes upon leaving my bed. No one telling me I was a bad person for not trying to put right every bad thing that is happening on the news, and the planet in general. I felt relief.

The quiet was both luxurious and spacious. My brain slowed down enough to read. Before this break down I had got to the point where I couldn’t read more than the first line of a book without re reading that same one line over and over again, each time getting more frustrated with myself and my hyperactive brain.

Even audio books stopped working for me, and I found it impossible to do anything that wasn’t related to my work.

When my mum arrived, I defaulted to trying to plan all the fun things we could do and how I could make her stay with us a good one, only to be reminded she was here for me, that we didn’t have to do anything. Seeing her read her book all afternoon was the first push I so desperately needed to give myself permission to just be. It felt good, and at the same time…more guilt.

I was scared to trust the slowness. What if I liked it too much and I never did anything extraordinary again? I had to ask myself why that would be a bad thing or problematic?I asked myself…

What was so terrifying about being ordinary?

I don’t think i’d ever seen it as a choice. To know one can be extraordinary felt like something I couldn’t walk away from, nor the relentless pursuit of being extraordinary based on a belief that if it can be so, then it should be.

To at least not try felt like I was letting myself down, like I was letting womankind down. I owed it to the sisterhood. How quick we as women forget that feminism is about choice. It is the ability to choose that we must honor. Before the slowness, I had lived a life on autopilot.

But the slowness helped me notice all the beliefs, the should’s and the musts that became entangled along the way, as I strived to be better than a past version of myself and what she had achieved.

Slowing down helped me turn up the quiet, kind and gentle voice I had encountered early on. For the first time, I listened to the voice and I didn’t argue. When the voice put forward new observations, new awareness of what a slow life could look like I was intrigued.

I heard my heartbeat.

I could recognize the worries I had about death, about being enough and doing enough in this lifetime. I observed from a safe distance all the things my brain had told me were true. I looked above and below these truths, inside and out in order to determine the accuracy of these ‘truths’. It was painful to confront a lot of those beliefs, those truths I had never before held up to the light. The belief I had to earn rest, I had to earn love and that the feeling of being enough could never come from something I achieved or that which is outside of myself.

But I kept coming back to the slowness. To not having to do anything, even though my brain would understandably look for an action I could perform in order to validate and grant permission to do nothing.

I reconnected to the idea of values vs goals, especially when it came to my decision making and how I wanted to design my days. I let myself ponder, what do you want your life to look like now? If there genuinely wasn’t a right way to live. What would I choose? What would I walk towards?

Values presented a new kind of safety net, and a new way to connect with the ‘enoughness’ I had been trying and failing again and again to capture, to hold on to tightly. I never expected to feel happy all the time, but to feel enough, it hadn’t even occurred to me that was the real goal.

But to do that requires curiosity, the ability to keep asking questions and to keep listening to the gentle voice that lives in the grey area. I have to practice how to disentangle what a goal is and isn’t, and how to lead with my values instead of my ego. That is truly a goal worth pursuing.

Thank you for reading

Harry x