Yup, you read that right, Reader.

Recently, I've been seeing a lot about going slower, and resisting hustle culture.

Coaches and solopreneurs are talking about slowing down, doing less, and un-scaling growth.

You may even hear or believe wanting more means you're bad and ungrateful.

Here's why that's just not true.

Wanting more is natural and expected

Being told that 'wanting more' is wrong felt odd to me.

If we're not 'supposed' to want more, then why am I always wanting more?

Am I wrong to want more - like wanting a better life for myself and my family?

Should I feel guilty and bad I'm not scaling back and living a more frugal life?

As usual, I turn to nature for insights. And of course, she never fails me.

Look at nature, and you'll find that growth is the default mode.

Plants will grow even if you don't take care of them - somehow, they find a way towards water and sunlight.

Since we're part of nature, it makes sense that we have this innate desire and need for growth and wanting more.

When wanting more becomes bad

Here's where wanting more gets a bad rep.

It's when we humans want more, faster, bigger, on our terms and our own time lines.

When we trample over others, exploit resources to make more, move faster, get bigger at an accelerated speed that's unnatural.

When is it unnatural? When our resources can't support our desired pace of growth, when we artificially speed up growth.

In other words, when we ignore our natural pace for where we are now and push through unnaturally.

Doing this comes at the expense of our wellbeing - mental, emotional, physical and spiritual.

Here's how wanting more showed up badly for me the past week.

I wanted to end the year strong by signing more clients.

So I thought I should do more - create more content, do more outreach, and pick up the pace.

With limited time in my day, I thought I'd wake up 30 minutes earlier at 4.30am so I could get one more thing done before my workday started.

But instead of getting more done, it exhausted me. (You know it's bad when you start falling asleep at the wheel.)

I had to go back to the drawing board. I knew this wasn't sustainable long term.

How I've embraced growing at a natural (and best) pace for me

I went back to my trusted MAP and meditation sessions to get clarity and guidance.

Realistically, my uninterrupted business building time is lunch break at work, some weekday evenings and early weekend mornings before the family gets up.

I reassessed the activities that truly move the business needle.

That's always the marketing, sales, fulfilment and client retention activities.

It looks like that for me:

• creating content for LinkedIn posts
• the weekly podcast and newsletter
• connecting with my network
• getting on calls with leads
• fulfilling my coaching calls

It's not about going slow or wanting less, but flowing in harmony

The lesson here is that it's not about going slow or wanting less from life.

It's about knowing where you are now in relation to where you want to go and learning to flow towards it in harmony.

Watch how plants grow and you'll see they flow to where they want to go with quiet resilience and awesome strength.

They always find a way to move forward and grow bigger and stronger - just like we have, growing from kids to becoming adults.

It's an understated confidence that says,

Here's how you can do this

• Reflect on what you've been 'hustling' on that's been exhausting or frustrating you.
• Look at what resources you have right now and where you are.
• Identify where you want to go, do you have the resources? (If not, get them, if yes, are you optimizing them?)
• Brainstorm how can you make things work with what you have without going against the laws of nature, i.e. at the expense of your wellbeing, strength and health.

This takes thinking out of the box, getting creative and doing things you may not have done before.

And if you need help with this in your coaching business, I'm that pair of eyes and ears outside the box who's here to guide you.

​Click here to book a free call with me to learn more.​

Happy Sunday!

Sharon