Moment: When Slowing Down Became a Way of Shrinking

I uncovered a pattern of slowing myself down to avoid making others uncomfortable, only to realise I was actually shrinking my own potential. This moment explores how high-achieving women often temper their natural pace and ambition out of fear of being "too much" or leaving others behind.

• The danger of learning early that moving too fast threatens others around you
• How slowing down can become a form of self-sabotage and protection
• The distinction between moving at your natural pace versus hustling from pressure
• Why adding unnecessary struggle to "earn" success diminishes your natural gifts
• Moving quickly while still bringing others along through clean energy and systems
• Embracing your natural pace without shrinking your dreams or intelligence
• Learning to trust your instincts and make decisions efficiently

Take our new quiz designed for high-achieving women who are outwardly holding it together but quietly running on empty. Visit the link in the show notes to discover your burnout archetype and unlock your hidden powerhouse potential.

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Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments
• 1:02 Slowing Down as Self-Sabotage
• 2:55 Natural Speed vs Hustling
• 4:48 Moving Fast Without Burning Others
• 8:46 Stop Shrinking, Start Shining
• 9:35 Quiz for High-Achieving Women

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments, your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less. Whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. I slowed down to avoid burning people out, but what I didn't realize is I was shrinking myself too Before we dive in. This moment is talking about slowing down and speed, but I want to clarify this isn't about pushing or hustling. If you are already depleted and on the verge of exhaustion, the work is to restore your nervous system first. However, if you are like somebody like me, who perhaps has slowed down out of fear or guilt, not truth, then this moment is for you. Truth, then this moment is for you. In today's moment, I want to share a really big revelation I have had lately, and what I've come to learn in time is that I have uncovered something. There's a pretty good chance that people in my ecosystem are also either struggling with the same thing, need to realize the same thing, or have somebody in their life who is also stuck in this pattern. So if you have ever been called too much or moving too quickly or leaving everyone behind, then you might relate to this. So I talk fast, I think fast, I move fast, I pivot fast, and for a long time, hurry up was very much my modality of the world, because it felt like everyone else around me was going too slow, that nobody else could keep up. One of my life's work is impatience, because nobody else can or very few people, I should say, can tend to evolve at the speed I can. Who can keep up with me. And so I learned pretty young, as a child, that it's dangerous to go too fast because other people around you are threatened. They will say mean things to you, you'll be accused of being bossy or having a big head, or you have to play small so that you don't make other people feel bad. I used to remember a moment as a child when I was going into a family function and was told not to talk about a recent achievement because it might make other people in the room feel bad because they weren't achieving as much as I was. So what happens then, if you are somebody who is naturally fast, is you end up slowing yourself down because you don't believe that it's safe to go fast.

Speaker 1: 2:57

But here's the pattern I got trapped in is, I would want to go fast. Things would come relatively easy to me, whether it was ideas or concepts or you know, I don't know take this step, or working through fear, whatever it was. But then, because it came easy, that was dangerous because I would go too fast, so I would sabotage myself and then go and do all this extra work and make it look really, really hard, so that it looked like I'd done enough to earn it. And then that doing it really, really hard would slow me down and make my pace more palatable to others around me. So slowing down almost became a protective mechanism. But what I didn't realize is that slowing down so that I didn't burn others out or I didn't lose them actually became a way of shrinking myself. It became a way of playing small and staying safe, because I was always told that if you go too fast, you will be alone. If you leave everybody else behind, there'll be nobody standing there beside you, and that can really be soul crushing if you are someone who wants to move at pace.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Now there's a distinction I want to make here, and that is that there is a very big difference between moving quickly because your brain moves fast or because you're able to make fast decisions, or because you don't mull over things and hustling and pushing and white knuckling and shoving and going because you feel like you have to. What I'm really talking about here is our let's call it our natural speed. Just like when we walk, we all walk at different speeds. When we move through life, we all move at different speeds and that's okay. There's no right or wrong here. But this theme has played out now, with the benefit of hindsight, in so many different ways. I found it's played out sometimes in client containers where I've slowed things down or I've not moved on to something when I wanted to, and this can be just so, so soul crushing. Now a few caveats I want to make here. When you are a leader, you need to make sure other people come with you. However, here's the thing you can actually move fast and bring people with you when you are not sabotaging yourself, because you will find other people will be looking to rise to your level or looking to move at your speed. They can see your speed as inspiration when it's clean, when it's not sabotaged, when it's not dirty, when it's not pushed, when it's not hustled. So this habit that I know many other women have fallen into.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Since I've discovered this, I've had some fascinating conversations where we slow down to protect everyone else. We slow down or we temper our ambition because we're worried that it's too much. We want too much. I still remember the first time I told a friend one of my revenue goals and she went what? That's a bit too much, isn't it? I said why? Why is it not too much? Why can't I have that? It doesn't mean that I'm going to burn everything down in the process. It doesn't mean that I'm going to push really hard. But why can't I have big goals and big dreams? Why do I have to shrink them for other people?

Speaker 1: 6:40

And so I really want to encourage you if this resonates and it may not resonate for you, and that's okay but I know that for myself, learning to move quickly, learning to trust my instincts and then learning to do this in a safe way that means I can bring others along the journey at speed with me without them kicking and screaming when I am energetically clean, that I can continue to move at the pace I want to, and put systems and frameworks and layers between myself and others so that I don't burn those that perhaps can't move at the pace I can, but I really encourage you to not slow yourself down. Don't temper your ambition. Don't add in extra work that doesn't need to be there if something comes easily to you. We need more women in this world stepping into their full power. When you start to run from a place of empowerment, from a place of intuition, you can collapse time really easily. You can move really fast, you can make fast decisions and you can execute on them. You don't have to be bound by other people's rules and timeframes, especially if that means that you are going to abandon part of who you are.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So if this resonates, I really encourage you to do some reflection. Are you slowing yourself down? Are you playing small? Are you shrinking your dreams and ambitions because you're worried that you will lose everyone or everything you love in the process? Because I encourage you to dream big. Don't be too much. Embrace that side of you and yes, there is a skill here in learning how to move fast without leaving others behind. But don't slow yourself down. Don't dumb down your intelligence. Don't slow down your intelligence. Don't slow down your decisions. If you are a naturally fast mover, let's embrace being too much and we will see where this can take us.

Speaker 1: 8:55

If you have ever slowed yourself down to protect others, then I want to make sure you take this new quiz I have created, very much designed for high achieving women who are outwardly holding it together but quietly running on empty. Let's name the burnout pattern that's shaping your pace, your choices and even your leadership. Chances are, if you resonated with this episode, with this moment, then you're an untapped powerhouse. You have speed, you have intelligence, you have capacity buried in you, perhaps buried under exhaustion and burnout and life is going to be better when we can unlock it for you. Visit the link in the show notes and let's see what your archetype is. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.