You might long for a stress-free life, but you’d miss it when it was gone
For most of my life, I feel like I’ve been running away from stress, running away from busyness and challenge; the things that make me uncomfortable. I’ve dreamed of a simple, calm life.
I’ve believed that because of my introverted nature and lack of desire to have a high-flying career and fast-paced lifestyle, I’d be best suited for a quieter life, spending my days in comfort and creating value in a simpler and more understated way.
I’ve believed that maybe working on my own thing, staying at home, and allowing myself a slow, calm life, with low stimulation, designed to…
Adopting slow living to notice and work on the things that truly matter
You don’t have to pretend you enjoy the fast-paced life.
You don’t have to take on more than feels healthy, just to feel you are doing what is ‘expected’ or doing what everyone else seems to be doing.
We all have unique energies and sensitivities and ways of managing and coping. If you’re not someone who thrives on busyness and big challenges and stress then don’t feel like you must live like that in order to follow the status quo.
Your life is your choice. What you do with it is your choice. How you choose to work is your…
Sometimes the messiest and most confusing of times can lead to the greatest clarity
Recently, I’ve been feeling a lot of regret about a big life decision I made earlier this year.
The decision to leave my job as a teaching assistant and explore different working avenues. To take a chance on turning my working dreams into reality.
But now that I’ve felt what it’s like to spend all week doing the things I always thought I wanted to do for a living; now that I’ve experienced a taste of the life I believed would make me the happiest; I think I made a mistake.
The regret is painful, of course. But something I’ve…
How to recognise and take credit for your very valid growth
Something I’ve learned over the last couple of years is that pretty much nobody feels like they have their shit together. Ever.
Pretty much nobody feels like they’re achieving enough or growing enough.
We all feel like everyone else knows what’s up whilst we’re struggling to navigate this ‘real world,’ feeling like our 16-year-old self pretending to be grown up. Except we’re not pretending.
I was talking to a group of my friends the other day and we were all expressing how we don’t feel like we’ve changed a whole lot since graduating university 5 years ago. …
But you’ve got to be okay with other people not getting it
For the last few years, I’ve had an underlying worry about people asking me about work. About what I’m doing, what I want to do, and, if I’ve expressed my lack of passion for a current job, what my plans or ideas are for finding work I actually want to do.
To this date, I’ve not found a job or ‘career’ that feels truly right for me, instead, working a bunch of jobs that fit my circumstances at the time but never reflected any real dream or career-plan.
I know a huge part of that is because I have a…
Challenging the belief that you are what you do for work
Do you ever worry that your job title doesn’t do justice to the well-rounded, interesting human that you are?
If so, you’re certainly not alone.
Some people live for their work, and some occupations are absolutely callings more than just jobs. In these cases, the job may well give huge insight into the character of the person, or tell you about what they value. And that’s great.
But more often than not, the jobs we do to earn a living are not fully aligned with our souls, with who we are, and what we really want to contribute to the…
Are you sacrificing your wellbeing in the race to ‘success’?
Is there something you know you want to achieve but you worry it will take you such a long time to execute that you can’t bring yourself to start?
Or perhaps you’re feeling discouraged because you’ve seen other people achieving the thing you want to achieve far quicker than you believe you’d ever manage to.
Maybe you’ve started to believe you are not even worthy of attempting the task — that even if you did manage to do it, your achievement wouldn’t be anywhere near as impressive as that of the people who’ve done it in far less time. …
How knowing your energy type can transform your life
Do you ever look around and feel like everybody else has more energy than you, and wonder how some people seem to fly through their 9–5, leaving the office spritely and ready to move onto the next thing they want to work on or get stuck into?
Do you love the idea of being productive and achieving lots, but every time you try to get motivated and busy you end up exhausted and forced to take a step back to rest?
Maybe you feel like you’re simply not cut out for the 9–5, and long for the flexibility to work…
The dangers of comparing yourself to yourself
We’re taught not to get caught up in comparing ourselves to others. They are not us, after all.
We are all on our own journeys and unique paths; we all have unique bodies, minds, histories, and experiences. Cross-comparing makes no sense.
‘The only person you should compare yourself to is yourself,’ they say. But I think that is somewhat risky advice.
We are told we should only compare ourselves against ourselves. Should only focus on the progress we’ve made and look at how far we’ve come.
But what if you compare yourself to an older version of you and find…
No, it doesn’t make you lazy
I don’t know when we decided to believe that stress = success.
When we started to accept and function on the expectation that everything must be done yesterday.
We all contribute to this continuous, spinning hamster wheel by jumping on board. But we jump on board because that’s what we’re told we are supposed to do. That’s how we are told we are to achieve success.
The more we produce, the greater the expectation becomes. We must get better, we must get faster. But we are not robots. We can only do so much before entirely burning out.
And there’s…
Danielle Godfrey
Here to write about the messiness and beauty of being human and the wonders of learning to trust your intuition and do things your way ✨
