As you may already know, this year I’ve been working on launching a second hand apparel company, Fold and Fray. Despite any resistance that occasionally comes up, I firmly believe that moving slow is essential.

Trying to honor this slow movement, means listening to my intuitive guiding system for each next right step. Through this process: I’m rewriting my beliefs around overworking hustling culture, challenging the idea that value/self-worth is based on speed and quantity of output, and learning self-trust.

While my vision for Fold and Fray (and Life Made Light) has shifted since I began, in many ways, it’s been me that’s had to change. Creating a business has called me to grow into a new version of myself. I’ve had to rise to meet the creative potential of my business, and grow into a person who can hold what I’m making. It’s been like a dance, guiding this creative thing and then allowing it to guide me. Feeling out where I need to expand, so that it can expand.

Change can feel like a tug of war, between what’s familiar and what you’re growing into. It’s unrealistic to expect yourself to super-speed forward to some future you without doing the work in real human time which is often slow. It’s like expecting to kick a shopping habit overnight; you may have decades of unlearning, and need practice in the present to rewire a new pattern.

Often there’s an uncomfortable grey space, between where you’re at and where you want to be. If you’re trying to race towards an imaginary finish line, or do something beyond your current skills, there’s going to be a disconnect because you need time to adapt, to learn and unlearn.

But what if we learn to value a slower process of becoming? Honor the middle ground, the space in-between, the slow transition? Perhaps it’s these slow baby steps that are actually what make something sustainable.

By taking slow conscious steps, you give yourself the space to integrate and understand the change; you give it time to absorb. And through the space of allowing time to unfold at the rate it asks, what you’re seeking naturally becomes who you are, there is no forcing.