Why am I always rushing? (and how women move from overdrive to inner knowing) | Read time: 4 minutes—or as long as you want

I’ve noticed that women who are drawn to this community often step in when they feel disconnected from their “real life,” from what brings them joy—not surface-level happiness, but a deep reservoir of sustenance and nourishment.

This makes sense because life at the pace of modernity has taken away our ability catch our breath, to reset. What I have found in my conversations with honest, self-aware women is this: She realizes she’s bogged down by life (and her patterns of response), but she feels like she can’t get a break from the things that make her constrict.

She knows something isn’t aligned, so it makes sense, too, that she would feel a natural resistance even as she tries to meet her daily demands. Without adequate time to listen to her inner direction, her true priorities feel buried.

Yet, if you are a perceptive woman who has been conditioned to live within the constraints of the “speed of life” you have likely felt the longing to touch into your own presence and the understanding of its necessity. 

The women I work with intuitively sense their body’s discomfort and tension as a signal to take seriously their longings. 

I’ve been noticing that gently inquiring with our bodies is the first step. The feminine nature already knows what will bring her into balance in the outer world; it is a matter of her having space to safely meet and express her inner world so that things may fall into place and right priority.

Often I see incredibly intelligent women cut off from their inner knowing. Instead they feel feeling pushed, rushed and living in overdrive. One of the roots of this is the fact that we live in a world where, despite our best efforts, we have been conditioned to function in a state of hyper-arousal. Constant connectivity creates immense pressure, and its velocity leaves us feeling frayed.

Notifications, alerts, and the ever-present demand for instant responses keep our nervous systems in a state of readiness mimicking the fight-or-flight response. Neurologically impossible multitasking makes us feel exhausted. We text and Google while driving. We unbuckle our seatbelts before we’ve even pulled in the driveway, and sometimes we forget to turn the engine off as we transition into the next thing that ‘needs’ us.

Enough, she says. 

Enough of life moving at too fast a pace to tune into and stay connected with what the intelligence inside of her truly needs and deserves. 

At the height of my career in mindfulness and wellness, I made the difficult decision to take a sabbatical from work. Through the infancy of my motherhood, postpartum anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain, chronic overwork, recovering from a global pandemic—I received the call loud and clear: STOP. 

Without ‘rest stops’ life becomes a speeding blur because we start to believe we don’t have time for this-here-moment. I know this all too well when I pause myself after 30 minutes of “getting out the door” in the morning and ask my son to look me in the eyes for the first time that day.

The truth is, it’s not the just speed of life that drains us—it’s the lack of contact with what we really love.

For the women dawn to this community, some common noticings arise that lead them into a gentle, honoring relationship with their own wisdom path:   

❥ Seeing that there is this thing you care about so much, you try to bring your best to it (but actually you’re bringing your stress to it)

❥ Feeling mentally and physically ‘fried,’ like all of your resources are used up before you get to what truly has meaning for you

❥ A longing to find a deeper breath, full exhales and more restful sleep

❥ A desire for a more natural pace of living and freedom from the complaint, “Why am I always rushing?” 

❥ A wish to live in harmony with time and feel there’s enough of it to care for yourself in an unhurried tempo (that actually yields results)

❥ The remembrance that you have something meaningful to give, a dharmic path to follow, and that you need space to prioritize it

These are the ‘questions’ I’ve been living into, tenderly, over the past years. 

Alongside, I’ve noticed a growing space filled with resonant new ideas—restorative, warm and inspiring. 

So many women are craving this reconnection. 

Something that I have had to become very intimate with in my own work and life is the knowing that when I least want to stop, I most need to. Every woman has an innate connection to her own balance—it’s simply a matter of entering a supportive container that quiets the noise and allows her to hear it.

This is why I have been creating a healing space for myself and others to be restored. I’ve whole-heartedly come to believe that nourished women nourish the world.

—Shari xx

Wildflower Bouquet in a Persian Vase by Odilon Rodon, pastel on paper