Author: Lori Deschene

Do you ever feel like you’re living your life racing toward someday when everything feels better or easier? Like you’re constantly chasing something—maybe a dream, money, the perfect body, or love and, at the core of it all, happiness?

I chased all these things for years, filling most of my time with activities to attain them, all the while neglecting my deepest needs and ultimately feeling stressed and overwhelmed.

It’s one of life’s greatest ironies—we  push ourselves so hard to find peace and fulfillment in the future without realizing both are available right now if we could only create space to access them.

And when we finally allow ourselves a little downtime, we often fill it with screens and sensory overload, so it rarely feels truly restful.

If you’re tired of living in a state of rush and anxiety, like you simply can’t switch off, I have a feeling you’ll appreciate today’s free download, Living Without Hurry, from Tiny Buddha contributor (and this week’s site sponsor) Cristina Bonnet-Acosta.

In this short PDF, Cristina presents seven days of easy steps to take to help you slow down and reinforce to yourself that your well-being matters.

The activities suggested might seem simple, especially since most take five to ten minutes. But when you’re used to constantly pushing and distracting yourself, it can be challenging to take even a little time to simply be.

Once you surrender, however, it can be incredibly nourishing and healing. Because slowing down our bodies often calms down our minds.

While I already practice many of the activities Cristina recommends, I realized when reading Living Without Hurry that I sometimes let them slip when I need them the most—when life feels busier than usual and I convince myself that I simply don’t have time to relax.

But rest is often most beneficial when we feel we don’t have time for it. And sometimes it’s the quiet moments of stillness within periods of chaos that remind us we don’t want to be so busy. That we might have responsibilities and people depending on us, but we can also choose to do less. Say no. Set boundaries. Ask for help. And ultimately protect our peace.

In a world that constantly pushes us to go faster, achieve more, and fill every moment with productivity, we’ve forgotten how to live at our own pace—and how to thrive within it.

That’s why I’m excited to share Living without Hurry with you. It’s not just another guide to slowing down—it’s a pathway to restoring the natural balance and harmony that your nervous system craves.

And this guide is crafted by someone who truly understands the deeper layers of this struggle. With degrees in Buddhism and psychotherapy, Cristina is an insightful and compassionate coach who has spent years exploring how our fast-paced, overstimulated world impacts our nervous systems and well-being.

In her work, she recognized that the epidemic of hurrying, rushing, and multi-tasking is one of the greatest harms of our industrialized and information-heavy times. Now, as an emotional wellness and Organic Intelligence® Coach, she has lovingly created this resource to help you break free from that pressure.

We are wired to thrive in rhythm with the world around us. Nature moves in cycles—there’s no rush, no forcing. There are seasons for action, but there are also seasons for stillness, reflection, and rest.

Living without Hurry can help you find your own rhythm, trust the intelligence of your own body and mind, and find calm in a world that constantly demands more of you.

If you’re ready to break free from busyness and enjoy the peace and ease of simply being, download Living without Hurry here and watch your stress slowly turn into peace.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your life isn’t changing because you’re holding yourself back but don’t know it?

Like maybe there’s something in your conditioning or a subconscious belief that’s preventing you from doing something that could bring you the change you seek?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I took Nadia Colburn’s five-day mindful writing challenge because one of the prompts elicited a profound insight about why I’ve struggled to create the change I want most in life.

Part of the prompt was “Don’t go off somewhere else,” and after a brief meditation at the start of the challenge that gave me a deep sense of calm and clarity, the following insight came to me: 

Roots and wings—that’s what I’ve always wanted. And I always thought roots meant my home, my family of origin. Life away from them was wings. But I’ve spent my whole adult life feeling like I’ve had one foot out the door because I haven’t allowed myself to have roots and wings at the same time. And that’s what I really want. To allow myself to be fully where I am. To believe it’s safe to be where I am. It’s not wrong to be where I am. I’m not wrong, wherever I am.

This was a big aha moment for me because it gave me further insight into something I’ve been reflecting on lately: that in all my moves—fifteen of them within twenty years—I never allowed myself to really settle in. To commit to things. To become part of a community.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy my varied chapters or that I regret a single one of them. I did and I don’t. I just never allowed myself to do anything that might make me feel hemmed in.

For a long time, I thought it was insecurity and self-protection—my conditioning from abuse and bullying telling me that no one would truly love me, and that it wasn’t safe to be part of the group. To some extent, it was.

But I know now that I was also trapped by the invisible fence of a limiting belief—that it’s wrong to live far from my family. Both of my siblings still live not just in my home state but in my parents’ home, mere minutes from extended family. And I’ve always felt like the black sheep while desperately wanting to be part of the flock.

So I’ve lived in many places like a traveler, not a resident, to avoid digging my heels in too deep to ever go home, or to visit home whenever I wanted.

That’s all changing now that I have kids because I want them to feel at home. To make real friends. To have commitments and routines. So I’m putting down roots, a second set, and working through the fear that this might mean losing my family.

I have more responsibility and ties than I’ve ever had as an adult, and I always assumed this would mean clipping my wings, yet I feel free. Because the thing I’ve feared the most is also the thing I want the most. And I’m finally overcoming the biggest barriers to experiencing it—the limitations of my own mind.

It’s hard to get past our own internal blocks because they’re often hidden. They’re the stories we’ve told ourselves over and over for years, the lies we tell ourselves so regularly they feel like truth.

But they’re not truth. They’re misinterpretations of past events that have hardened into worldviews. They’re assumptions based on (often painful) experiences that we’ve backed up with so much ‘evidence’ they now seem like facts.

They’re essentially circus mirror glasses, distorting what we see and limiting our options—unless we decide to start the work of taking them off.

It starts with asking ourselves some questions to discover how and why we’re holding ourselves back, including:

What’s the story I’m telling myself about why I can’t do what I want to do? What do I gain from holding onto this narrative? And what might I gain if I let it go?

Which beliefs have I inherited or absorbed from others? Why don’t these beliefs serve my highest good? And what would I do differently if I considered that they’re not actually true?

How might my inner critic be lying to me, attempting to keep me safe? How is this ‘safety’ actually a prison? And what’s the truth that would set me free?

It’s taken me over two decades to get past my internal block to settling in, and only in recent years did I even recognize it was there.

This makes sense, given that I also spent decades cementing the paralyzing beliefs that family should be close but distance = safety.

That’s often the case for a lot of us: Our beliefs were engrained over many years, which means it can take time to unearth and challenge them—and even longer to find the courage to consistently act in spite of them so that we can slowly build up evidence that it’s safe and beneficial to do so.

But it all starts with internal inquiry. It starts with looking within. It starts in silence and stillness and a willingness to question what we think we know.

If you do this, perhaps, like me, you’ll find that sometimes the most important piece of knowledge is the one you’re willing to let go.

If you’re interested in taking the mindful writing challenge I mentioned at the beginning (from Tiny Buddha contributor Nadia Colburn, who’s one of this month’s site sponsors), you can access it for free here.

Each day for five days, you’ll receive a fifteen-minute recording including a short meditation, an evocative poem, and a writing exercise inspired by that piece.

I hope you find the practice as illuminating and empowering as I did!