The Power of Going Slow

We live in a fast paced, even frantic world. It is only natural then that people internalize this fast pace and apply it to their goals in therapy. It is common that people want problems that took years or even decades to come to the fore to be solved yesterday.

And hey, it is wonderful to be motivated to change! The truth is, that change can happen miraculously quickly with willpower, openness, and elbow grease. But there is also a paradox involved in the change process. 

The client frantic for problems to miraculously and immediately go away can be like a bull in a china shop. Wanting things to be “all good” right now can make things worse in the process. There’s a toxic feedback loop at play here. The more anxious we get about resolving the things that are making us anxious, well, the more anxieties we have! And then on and on and on… All of these anxious feelings and thoughts pile up and then half-baked “solutions” end up getting tried that wind up making things even worse. 

How many times have you tried enacting a solution to your problem that became worse than the problem itself? The person anxious to not be alone ends up settling for a partner that closes off real prospects for intimacy. The parent anxious to do a good job ends up being over-zealous in setting limits and alienating their child who inevitably rebels more than they would if left to their own devices. The person anxious to lose weight tries many crash and burn fad diets, losing 10 pounds, but always gaining 15 more back and creating a more estranged relationship with their body in the process. We can see these principles at work at the macro level too. The country anxious to reopen its economy after disaster strikes ends up skipping many crucial steps along the way, thus ensuring the economy it prematurely reopens is operating at a near permanent state of half capacity. (Ring any bells?)

In our fast paced, anxiety ridden world there is a real power in going slow. This time, paradox works in our favor. 

Once we slow down and take a look around we are able to see things more clearly. There is less anxiety clouding our vision and we can make the few small tweaks needed to shift things in our favor. Instead of years of banging our head against the wall with attempted solutions that only create more problems, we can spend weeks or months carefully enacting small, actionable changes that end up creating a snowball effect of real, meaningful paradigm shifts.

Those who study the wisdom nature has to teach us, know the wisdom of going slow. As Lao Tzu wisely put it: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

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