It’s been four years now since I decided to embark on my slow year, and it’s fair to say that what began as a year of restoration has officially become my slow life. If you’re new here, here are a few facts to set the scene: I live in a little studio apartment in the city. I have a career I love, I pay my own bills, and yes, I still enjoy the occasional cocktail and a good night of dancing.
Slow living hasn’t meant abandoning the world or moving to the countryside to grow my own vegetables (though that sounds lovely too). It has meant creating a life that feels vibrant, intentional, present, and aligned with what truly matters to me.
For a long time, I had massive ambitions. I wanted to become famous as a TV host, make millions of dollars, and somehow still manage to hang poolside mid-week with my pina colada (ha!). One day, I woke up and realized I was missing my whole life, unhappily striving and pushing for what was next.
I was so focused on what my life looked like on paper that I placed little emphasis on how it actually felt. In chasing what I thought life was meant to be, I ignored what wasn’t working—my marriage, my health, my work—and missed the joy that had been underneath it all, waiting for me to slow down long enough to see it.
As I began to strip my life back by doing less of what didn’t matter, baking small moments of stillness into my days, and changing the way I spoke about my life, I began to see the beauty, the joy, and the wisdom woven into every ordinary moment. Slowly but surely, my life began to change from the inside out.
By the end of my official slow year, I had made some bold, terrifying decisions. I ended my 11-year marriage. I stopped forcing work that wasn’t aligned. I let myself fall apart, then over the course of the next few years, I rebuilt… slowly and intentionally.
Today, I’m living in my dream studio in Miami Beach, where I work coaching clients from my laptop. I’m healthier, happier, and feel sexier than I have in my entire life. I’m not famous and I’m not yet a millionaire, but I make more money with far less effort… and I can sip on a pina colada by the pool in the middle of the week! Yay!
I’m living a version of the dream life I always believed was possible, but that took an unexpected kind of courage to attain—the courage to slow down, and to turn inward, again and again.
It’s not that my dreams are any less bold or audacious now. It’s just that I’m no longer desperate for them to come true, because I’ve come to know that the life I always desired… is already here.
What Slow Living Means to Me Now
At first, slow living meant something hilariously basic: slowing down my actual movements. I remember thinking, If I could just sit down to put on my heels instead of teetering around the room trying to keep my balance (as if doing it standing would somehow save me time) maybe my whole life would feel more relaxed.
Then I thought I’d try slow living the way Pinterest promised it would look. I bought my first plant. I booked a solo trip to Tulum so I could spend a weekend in the jungle. I started watching closely what my friend Ky was doing, because from my vantage point she was slow living personified—running her raw chocolate company, raising her daughter in a homeschooling co-op on Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by ocean and wild fields. Ky wasn’t just living beautifully… She was living right. I wondered, what would it take to become that woman? The one who composts, slow cooks, volunteers on weekends, and wears only linen?
What I’ve come to know over four years of slow living is that slow living has nothing to do with perfect ethics, plants in every corner, or having a wardrobe that makes you look like you permanently live in the Tuscan countryside.
Slow living is not a checklist. It’s not what you do. It’s first and foremost, a way of being. A stillness that arises from within you, and ripples outward into every aspect of your life. It’s an invitation into deeper presence with yourself, with the people you love, and with Life itself.
Slow living, for me, continues to unfold as a spiritual path. A path that has made me more relaxed in the way I see and relate to the world. A path that has made me more loving, more peaceful, more grounded, and far more free. And as time goes on, it keeps revealing new layers of living in harmony with my body, my dreams, my work, my loved ones, and with the natural flow of life.
Related: What is Slow Living? An Unexpected Path to Freedom.
How Slow Living Continues to Change Me
I was highly suspicious that slow living would actually change my life… which is exactly why I told myself I needed to commit to a full year of it. One year felt long enough to give slowness a real chance. My theory was simple: if, moment by moment, I could whisper to myself, “Slow down, Candis,” maybe things would finally change.
But another part of me was convinced that at some point life would need to speed back up again, because how on earth was I supposed to “make it” when everyone else was moving so fast?
Well… four years later, here I am. Slowness hasn’t just changed my life; it has become an essential quality I embody. It shapes how I live, how I love, how I make decisions, and how I show up professionally to support my coaching clients, even those in high-stress corporate environments.
Here are the ways slow living continues to transform me:
My Mind is Clearer
Overthinking used to be the bane of my existence. I make a living asking questions, so as you can imagine, overanalyzing and questioning every single thing was kind of my jam. My mind was constantly jam-packed with questions, strategies, plans, and problems.
I spent years believing that if I could just “figure out” this person, or crack that business plan, or fix myself into someone better, then I’d finally reach my potential and be happy. Having a growth mindset, in the way most people interpret it, meant I constantly felt like there was something I needed to do to be worthy of the life I wanted.
My thoughts were so overwhelming that I’d walk to the coffee shop and then wonder how I even got there. Days would pass where everything felt blurry, like I was living slightly outside of my own life. Can you relate?
When I began my slow year, I knew that slowing down my thinking was the first thing that needed to happen. Not numbing it or suppressing it. Just learning to relax my mind.
Today, it feels like a veil has lifted. I see the beauty around me. I get lost in my thoughts less and less often. My mind is clearer, more spacious, grounded, and free to make decisions that genuinely support my happiness.
My Body is Healing
I spent most of my adult life ignoring my body and viewing “health” mostly through the lens of how I looked (despite my upbringing!). Low body fat? Great. High body fat? Not great. That was about the extent of my wellness philosophy.
Because I never had any major health problems, I assumed the struggles I did have were normal. Actually, I was told they were normal by well-meaning doctors and by fellow women who were also suffering.
Acne? Something I’d “grow out of,” so I chalked it up to hormones. Problematic periods? The only solution I was ever offered was another variation of hormonal birth control. Nightmares and insomnia for twenty years? Apparently just my personality.
So I lived with it all as though this kind of misery was simply part of being alive.
As I started to slow down, I became increasingly aware of how deeply my body is wired to nature. How the more in sync I become with the sun, the seasons, the natural environment, and its healing foods and herbs… the more my body seems to heal on its own. When I surrender to my body’s wisdom rather than override it, it responds with clarity, vitality, and ease.
These days, I’ve embraced a slow food lifestyle and I’m refining my slow beauty routines. And as I do, my skin is glowing again. My periods are regulating and becoming a sacred, intuitive time each month. And after two decades of broken sleep, I’m finally finding my way back to deep, restorative rest.
Slow living has become not only a lifestyle choice, but also a healing practice.
My Heart is Growing
I used to think I was the absolute best friend around and that no one ever showed up for me in the same way I did for them. I thought most people needed to “do better,” because how hard could it be to be a “decent human”?
Outwardly, I appeared kind and gracious (and I was, most of the time). But inwardly, I was overly judgmental, perpetually frustrated by people’s lack of availability, and baffled by what I saw as a shortage of common sense. My heart was good, but it was stretched so thin that I didn’t know how to see people clearly, without the lens of my own unmet needs.
Living a slow life has transformed me on the inside. It has made me more gracious, more patient, and infinitely more compassionate. Because now I know what it actually takes to let go of old identities, old beliefs, and old behaviors that are familiar but are draining the life out of you. I know how deeply slowing down tests your faith, and how much surrender it requires. I know how humbling it is to confront your own ego again and again.
As I spend more time in stillness, I feel my heart’s capacity expanding, right alongside the gradual quieting of my mind. I know it sounds a little goofy, and maybe even idealistic, but sometimes my heart feels so full I don’t know what to do with it. It quite literally feels like it’s overflowing. And with it comes a joy that I can barely describe.
My Spirit is Lighter
As my mind becomes clearer, as my body heals, and as my heart grows, it feels like my spirit has had no choice but to get lighter. It’s as though every layer that once weighed me down has slowly been dissolving—the overthinking, the emotional dysregulation, the tightness in my chest, the constant pushing.
As an Aussie, I have a long-standing relationship with light-heartedness. If you know Aussies, you know we’re notorious for “taking the piss” out of even the most serious situations. Humor was my first language of lightness.
But these days, I feel lighter not because it’s culturally ingrained in me, but because I’ve finally seen the error in attaching my happiness or success to anything outside myself.
Slowness has given me a spaciousness of spirit. I feel less reactive, less pressured, and less “up against time.” I laugh more easily and I let things roll off me once again. I trust life more deeply. And because I know that I am held, supported, and guided, my spirit feels buoyant.
My Life Feels Easier
There was a time when I would wake up at 4 a.m., work on my business for hours, then head to my day job like it was nothing. I have videos of myself from that era with bloodshot eyes and a croaky morning voice trying to “inspire” people while I was completely exhausted and falling apart.
There were years when I worked my ass off and still barely made enough to stay afloat. In fact, when I got divorced, I had an unpredictable TV hosting job and a coaching business that was generating almost no income at the time. For all my effort, nothing felt stable in my life, and it hadn’t for a very long time.
The thing about slow living is that it requires a certain kind of surrender. A willingness to trust that when the mind is calm, the heart is open, and the spirit is light, Life will meet us where we are. Life will bring the next step and show us what’s meant for us—if we stop pushing long enough to hear it.
It’s not that challenges never face me now. My loved ones still pass away, my work is still uncertain at times, my bank account still fluctuates, and yes… I still get pimples. But despite what’s happening externally, I’ve learned how to come home to myself. I know how to relax back into stillness and locate the deeper ease within me that isn’t dependent on circumstance.
I’ve come to know that this kind of ease only becomes available when you live from the inside out. When you’re living slowly… and from your Center.
What Slow Living Continues to Reveal to Me
Four years ago, at the height of my ambitions, I made a decision that felt both rebellious and wildly obvious: enjoying my life, my body, my friendships, and my days mattered more than any misguided notions I had about “building an empire.”
I decided that feeling connected, nourished, and alive right now was more important than how much money or recognition I accumulated in the future. I decided I didn’t want to wait for “someday” to live. I wanted to start living in the present realizing that it is the only place Life is actually happening.
Slow living has shown me that nothing external is stable enough to build my joy on. Not a relationship, not a job title, not money, not recognition, not productivity, and not the approval of the world. And as I continue to surrender the frantic urge to control everything and everyone, I’ve found an incredible sense of relief. A sense of coming home.
Slow living keeps revealing to me that life is never meant to be gripped so tightly. It’s meant to be lived, felt, and enjoyed. It’s meant to be experienced with an open heart, a relaxed mind, and a spirit light enough to follow where life leads.
And the most surprising thing is this—the slower I go, the richer my life becomes. In every way.
So, let me turn the question to you: What might become possible for you if you embraced slow living as a path to a richer life? Let me know in the comments below.
