When I got COVID, I knew it was an opportunity to listen to my body’s wisdom. I couldn’t continue to ignore the presence of exhaustion and fatigue and finally surrendered. It was time to turn hustle mode off.

I got COVID for the first time this year, and it came with a gift of a transformative awareness moment. I recognized how deeply embedded the feeling of burnout was in my body. How for the last 16 years, from the day I became a mom, I entered my Hustle era, building a successful business from scratch while co-parenting with no village in the beautiful but chaotic City of Los Ángeles.

I couldn’t continue to ignore the presence of exhaustion and fatigue. My body and nervous system were paying the price in a big way, and I hadn’t slowed myself down enough to be able to listen to the signs they were sending me.

When we’re in hustle mode, we become so accustomed to how chronic stress and fatigue feel in our body that we normalize it because that’s what we know. We forge forward day in and day out, ultimately from a place of lack so that we can achieve all the goals and milestones of success that society has made us believe are what life is about.

Make a bucket list. Make millions. Own a home. Get awards and recognitions to validate your worth. Look a certain way. Consume, consume and consume. And make more to consume some more.

All that we’re ultimately consuming and depleting are our bodies, health, longevity, spirits, home, and Mother Earth.

I’m done living like that. I’m done with the hustle. I am done glorifying the pursuit of success.

I got COVID while traveling in México on the first day of a girls’ trip to Oaxaca. As I isolated myself in my Airbnb, I had the precious gifts of time, space, and silence as I allowed my body to heal. As my healthy 51-year-old body fought the virus, I connected with it. I asked her what she needed to heal. Where was the ancestral pain hiding? In what ways have I mistreated her? Where were the layers of hurt and abandonment that were weighing her down?

The replies came in and continue to do so. She showed me how fatigue had installed itself so profoundly that I couldn’t even feel the heaviness it caused or understand how my body had to adjust by increasing my cortisol levels to combat the intense stress or how my womb and my heart needed to be tended to continue being the vessels of creation.

She told me that I had to tend to it so I could gently release what didn’t serve us anymore. I had allowed burnout to find a home in me by taking on so much responsibility over the last 16 years from a place of survival with a hustle mentality when the odds have been stacked against me. I haven’t been able to access my true well of creativity in a long time because I allowed this exhaustion to take over me and weigh me down while moving at an unsustainable pace.

 She told me that there is another way, the way of our healed ancestors and that it feels so much better. To get there, I needed to slow down. To slow down, I need to disengage from the hustle culture I had bought into. To disengage, I need to heal the part of me that believes that productivity equals success. That the only way to earn is by getting things done within the work ethic paradigm of always being “on” and that your physical output mandates your worth. It doesn’t.

 Our worth is intrinsic. We are worthy beings who chose to exist in this lifetime to be cycle breakers and paradigm shifters. We are to live in divine alignment with our bodies so she can serve as the vessel for us to show up in full brilliance for our calling. We each have a calling. The hustle makes us believe we’re serving our calling because it does yield material rewards. But the price we pay isn’t worth it.

 We are worthy creators. The paradigm shift embraces the divine feminine principles of nurturing, creation, intuition, and compassion.

 I invite you to ask yourself and journal these questions:

–      How am I nurturing my body?

–      How do my body and mind feel when I am in aligned creation mode?

–      Where do I receive intuitive hits in my body?

–      What does compassion towards me feel like?

 Ask yourself, allow the answers to come in with brutal honesty, and feel all the feels. It’s your Higher Self guiding you through the language of your body. Yes, she talks to us through our aches, pains, emotions, and even stress.

Listen to your replies and assess what small shifts you can make in your daily life to create more time and space to slow down. Porque no hay prisa, amiga.

 Let’s start by envisioning what a slow life disengaged from the hustle looks and feels like

 For me, it’s…

–      Waking up rested with no alarm.

–      Ritualizing my mornings to alchemize the energy of the day by stretching, meditating, praying, and journaling.

–      Communing with nature, whether by immersing myself in it or just by observing a flower or a plant.

–      Checking in on loved ones.

–      Creating from a place of inner connection and ease.

–      Cooking and nurturing myself.

–      Listening and paying attention to what manifests in and around me.

–      Being present for my body.

–      Mindful use of technology.

–      Taking baby steps.

–      Trusting the energy that creates, shapes and grows all life.

–      Being intentional with my choices.

–     Trusting divine timing.

–      Knowing that life is a ceremony to be revered.

What’s your vision of a slow life disengaged from the hustle mentality?

I invite you to share in the comments and call it in.

Con amor siempre,

Ana 

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