“It’s much better to have five minutes of discomfort by saying no, than having months of resentment.”

Welcome back to another season of the Slow Home podcast! 

As we mentioned in last week’s sneak peek, Season 5 of the poggie has a new format that I’m pumped to share with you. Each episode comprises of two parts, the first which will see Ben and I diving deep into an area of slow living that you’ve told us you want to know more about (think topics like self-care, waste reduction, tech and our relationship to stuff). The second part will feature a follow-up with guests from Season 4 to see how they have been tracking since we last spoke and whether they’ve implemented any changes. 

Having recorded a couple of these catch-ups already, I am so excited to share them with you this season. I knew my guests from Season 4 were amazingly insightful people and what these follow-ups are showing is that they’re also not afraid to put in the hard work of showing up, making changes and living a life aligned with their values. It’s incredibly inspiring and I’m grateful to every single one of them.

Ben and I kick the season off with a deep dive in to rhythms (as opposed to routines), which is a topic we’ve discussed a lot on the podcast before. Establishing rhythms is a slow-living strategy I use a lot to ensure life runs smoothly enough to feel slow, but not so rigid as to feel stressful, and today we talk a lot about what they are and how they can be applied to real life to create a sense of right-pacedness amidst the busy-ness.

Some of the questions we answer include:

• What exactly are rhythms?
• How do we apply rhythms to different parts of our life?
• What do rhythms look like since settling into our new town?
• What have we discovered about rhythms and how they best work for us?
• Is there room for flexibility and fluidity within our rhythms?
• How do we set up and maintain rhythms?

I then catch up with my Season 4 guest, Kate, who you might remember was struggling with the question of whether slow living might actually be robbing her of ambition. 

Kate shares how she has embraced the ‘messy middle’ and has started to get comfortable with the unknown since she and I last spoke. She also talks about how saying no to things has given her energy, and shares a few examples of opportunities she would have previously said yes to, and the power she felt by saying no instead. 

In a word Kate has slayed the last few months and our conversation is testament to the power of choosing to be present and mindful. There’s so much inspiration and practical slow living ideas in this episode and I hope you enjoy it! 

Head over to iTunes to subscribe to the show and play the episode.

Or you can listen to the show directly, simply by hitting the Play button above. Enjoy!

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Things to Check Out After Today’s Episode:

• Destination Simple – check out the chapter on creating rhythms for some more practical ways of applying them to your life
• Forest app
• Freedom app
• The Swedish podcast I referenced has unfortunately been discontinued and I couldn’t find anywhere to link to it
• If you haven’t already, do yourself a favour and read Kate’s debut novel Skylarking
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown
• Episode 41 – How to find your rhythm
• Episode 5 – Rhythm, Baby

As always, thank you for listening.