Living Unhurried in a Hectic World

Ever feel like the whole world is rushing—and you’re expected to keep up?

Living unhurried in a hectic world can feel almost impossible sometimes. But choosing a slower, steadier pace may be one of the most quietly powerful things you can do.

Because sometimes the most heroic thing you can do… is simply refuse to hurry.

If you'd like to go deeper into this month’s topic, you can also find the companion workbook in my shop!

Transcript

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Welcome to Living a Simple Life with a Back Porch V. Thanks for stopping by. Grab a class literally and join me for conversations about living a simple life. Go ahead. Get comfortable and settle in for a good visit. It's time to relax and enjoy.

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It's a beautiful day outside, so grab a glass of lemonade, pull up a rocker, and settle in for a nice visit. For those of you who are just joining us on the porch, I'm Julie, and this podcast is just part of what I do. I'm also a blogger and a writer of both the Nonfiction Simple Life series as well as Southern Suspense Fiction. If you want to learn more about it, just check out the show notes for links to my websites and books. This year we are working on how to be someone's hero through the lens of a simple life. Each month, we'll talk about how you can be someone's hero in different areas of your simple life. And if you want to dig even deeper into the topics and apply what you're learning, each month I'm offering a downloadable workbook that follows along with the monthly conversations. To get your copy, simply click the podcast workbooks link in the show notes. Now that we have the we've covered the business end of things, let's dig in. This month we'll be talking about the hero who brings peace. And with the hectic, fast-paced world we live in, we all need a healthy dose of that. Originally, I was a city girl and knew nothing about farm life. When we first moved to the farm, I was still trying to juggle two different worlds. In one world, I had to learn so many new things, including how to care for cows, chickens, and guineas. The garden was a whole lot bigger than the Clawfoot bathtub garden I once had in my city backyard. And then I had to learn how to preserve everything the garden produced. In the other world, I drove back and forth to Shreveport an hour each way and managed a busy office with two bosses, ran errands, helped my mom, and still participated in a monthly bunk-up group. That didn't count the normal errands such as grocery shopping, picking up supplies, paying bills, and filling up my car at the gas station at 9 o'clock at night. I felt successful, but that overly saturated schedule quickly began to get exhausting. There wasn't any energy left over at the end of the day to live the simple life I had always envisioned. Somewhere along the way, we all go through the same thing. We start believing that the busier we are, the more important we must be. If your calendar is packed, your phone never stops buzzing, and your to-do list stretches onto the back of yesterday's grocery receipt, then clearly you are doing life right. Well, at least that's what the world keeps telling us. But here's the thing I've noticed, and maybe you have too. The world isn't just busy, it's breathless and not in a good way. And a breathless world doesn't actually need more people rushing around with their hair on fire. What it needs desperately is someone with a fire extinguisher who is willing to put that fire out. Today, I want to talk about what it means to be the one with the fire extinguisher and how to live unhurried in a hectic world. Because I'm convinced that choosing an unhurried life may be one of the most underrated, countercultural, quietly heroic things a person can do. If you stop and look around, the world is loud and it's exhausting. We live in a world that runs on urgency. Everything is urgent. Every email is marked important, every notification feels like it needs an immediate response. Every decision is supposed to be made quickly, confidently, and preferably yesterday. Even rest feels rushed now. Have you noticed that? We don't just rest, we schedule rest. And I hate to confess this, but I'm guilty of that myself. We optimize rest. We download apps to track it. We try to get the most rest in the least amount of time, which somehow completely misses the point. And then we wonder why everyone seems so irritable, so anxious, so worn thin. It's because we're always bracing for the next thing, always rushing to catch up, constantly feeling like we're behind. We feel like if we slow down, we'll fall behind for good if we don't just end up falling flat on our face. But let me ask you something. When was the last time rushing actually brought peace into your life? Not efficiency, not productivity, not accomplishment, but peace, real peace. Because efficiency, productivity, accomplishment, those are not the same thing as peace, no matter how often we pretend they are. Somewhere along the line, hurry became a badge of honor. I'm just slammed right now. I've been so busy. I don't even have time to think. We say these things almost proudly, like proof that we matter, like proof that our lives are full and meaningful. But hurry doesn't actually mean your life is full. Sometimes it just means your life is fragmented. You're pulled in too many different directions, interrupted too often, crowded with things that feel urgent but aren't actually important. And here's the uncomfortable truth I've had to face in my own life. Hurry robs us of the ability to be present. When we're hurried, we're not really there, even when we're physically in the room. And it adds an intense amount of stress. We're thinking about what comes next. We're mentally rehearsing our to-do list. We're checking the clock. We're half-listening and whole worrying. Now let me clear something up before we go any further. Living unhurried does not mean you do nothing. It doesn't mean your house magically cleans itself or your responsibilities disappear in a puff of smoke. It doesn't mean you move to a cabin in the woods and never interact with another human again. As tempting as that may sound some days, living unhurried is not about how much you do. It's about how you do what you do. It's about refusing to live in a constant state of internal panic, even when life is full. It's about choosing to move through your days with intention instead of urgency. You can be busy and unhurried at the same time. You can have a full life without having a frantic one. Here's something I've noticed on the porch and in the kitchen and in ordinary conversations with ordinary people. There is a quiet power in slowing down. When you slow down, even just a little, things begin to shift. You hear what someone is actually saying, not just what they're talking about. You notice the tension in the room before it boils over. You sense when someone needs kindness more than advice. Slowing down creates space, space to think, to pray, space to respond instead of react. And that's where peace lives. Not in perfection, not in having everything figured out, but in that small intentional space between stimulus and response. Let's be honest, hurry actually makes everything worse. Conversations, mistakes, conflicts, decisions. Have you ever noticed that most of the things you regret didn't happen when you were calm and unhurried? They happened when you were rushed, tired, pressed, overloaded. Hurry shortens our tempers. Hurry sharpens our words. Hurry makes us forget grace. And if you're wondering why peace feels harder to come by these days, it might be worth asking how much hurry you're carrying around with you. This is where the hero part comes in. An unhurried person changes the atmosphere of room without ever announcing it. They listen without checking the clock. They respond thoughtfully instead of defensively. They don't rush to fill silence or fix everything. They're steady. And steadiness is contagious. Let's bring this down to real life, everyday moments, and take a peek at what living unhurried looks like in a real life. Living unhurried looks like leaving a little margin in your schedule instead of packing every minute full, choosing to focus on priorities and letting the unnecessary busy work slide or disappear from your schedule altogether. It looks like finishing one task before starting the next instead of juggling everything at once. Or taking a breath before you speak, especially when emotions are high. Living an unhurried life isn't flashy. It won't impress social media, but it will change the way you move through your days. One of the most freeing realizations is this: you are not required to match the pace of the world around you. Just because everything is loud doesn't mean you have to be. Just because everything is rushed doesn't mean you have to be, you don't have to be in a hurry. Just because everyone else is reacting doesn't mean you have to join in. You get to choose your pace. And choosing a slower, steadier pace doesn't make you irresponsible or out of touch. It makes you grounded. We often think peace is something we'll find once circumstances calm down, once things settle, once life gets easier, once the schedule clears. But peace doesn't wait for ideal conditions. Peace begins with how you move through the day you have right now. It begins with choosing presence over pressure, attention over distraction, intentionality over urgency. Here's something you can try this week. Not a challenge, not a list. Let's just call it an invitation. Pick one place in your day to slow down. Just one. Maybe it's your morning routine. Maybe it's how you answer emails. Maybe it's the way you listen to someone who usually tests your patience. Notice what happens when you stop hurrying. Notice what changes in you. Notice what changes around you. You may find that peace doesn't arrive with fanfare, but with a quiet sense of rightness. And in a world that's constantly rushing, that quiet presence, that's heroic. And if we're honest, the world could use a little more of that right now. And sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is simply refuse to hurry. Thank you for joining me today.

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And don't forget, be sure to check out the other links where you can find my books, websites, and this month's eWorkbook. Thanks again for stopping in. I'll see you next Monday on Living a Simple Life with the Back Porch View. And while you're waiting for the next episode, grab that glass of refreshment, pull up a rocker, and sit back for a while. It's time to relax and enjoy.