Lessons from Nature on Slowing Down and Letting Go

It's Monday morning, and like most Monday mornings, reality kicks in roughly about five minutes after I set foot in the office. I make my cup of tea and turn my computer on.

I’m greeted by my inbox and twenty emails. That’s actually not too bad. Then there’s my calendar. That tells a different story. I count meeting after meeting every day of the week. Guess I’ll have to perform a juggling act again of learning how to balance timely replies to emails with attending meetings.

By Friday, those twenty emails have morphed into 172, all needing some form of attention.

Welcome to my job. I’ve been doing a similar dance for the past 15 years. Different roles, different countries, same deal.

For the longest time, I assumed that’s why I was always balancing on the edge of burnout—because I was constantly holding the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was juggling so much, both in my personal and working life. It’s normal to be tired when you’re doing this much.

I have made more than one fresh start, changed jobs, changed houses, changed countries, but still, that heavy fatigue always lingered.

It made me think: I love my job, I don’t feel any need to quit my 9 to 5, so why am I tired? Why am I always feeling drained? I already moved 20,000 km away and changed my environment more times than I can count - so why am I still feeling the same?

Moving into the woods didn’t immediately fix my problems, but it did help me finally get to the root cause. The issue wasn’t the job or my location. It was my mindset. I was still deeply influenced by hustle culture and the need to “always be on”, optimising every minute and maximising my outputs. Even when we moved off the grid, I was trying to be the most optimised and efficient off-gridder the world would have ever seen.

But that’s not how this way of life works. Nature definitely wasn’t having it. I was like a toddler throwing a tantrum in a supermarket, and nature just stood there, like my patient parent, waiting for me to tire myself out and trying to show me a different, slower way of life.

I resisted. I resisted hard. Nature doesn’t care about your to-do lists or timelines. She takes her time. Eventually, she taught me that resistance is futile. You can change your surroundings a million times over, but the real shift has to come from inside.

Slowly, I learned to be present. I soaked in the sun. I learned that it’s okay if things don’t get done immediately. I sat in silence, listened to birdsong, and felt the rain on my skin. I started to breathe differently, think differently. I accepted that I don’t know everything and that maybe, just maybe, that’s perfectly fine.

I’m still learning, still struggling. Every day, I’m taught new lessons. But I now know, all I have to do is listen and slow down. I try and bring these lessons with me, back into my work. I accept the ebb and flow, just like the rain and sunshine. Some days, emails flood in like the pouring rain. Other days, my inbox clears up like a blue sky.

For anyone thinking the answer lies in quitting your job, disappearing to a desert island, or reinventing yourself as the modern Henry David Thoreau, I want you to know: running away isn’t going to solve anything. The answer, oddly enough, is to stop resisting and start accepting. Accept what you can’t control, and find beauty in the little things you can control.

And here’s the thing: I’m still figuring it out myself. This is why I write, to try and make sense of the thoughts floating around my head. I’m not the expert. I’m just here, on the journey with you.

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Something that inspired me this week

A short video from Mark Manson - love his work, his podcast, his books, his YouTube channel.

“You too are going to die and that is because you are fortunate enough to have lived" - Give it a watch, you won’t regret it.

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This is what you can expect from me every week! A long-form article related to a reflection or life lesson on personal growth and one thing that inspired me this week. If you liked this, don’t keep it to yourself; share it with your friends:

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