Show Notes
In the fast-paced, achievement-driven world of business, stepping away from the grind can feel counterintuitive. Yet, this is precisely the journey I undertook, a deliberate transition from the relentless hustle of multilevel marketing (MLM) to a life rooted in intention, simplicity, and slow living. This is not just a personal evolution; it is a profound reconnection with what truly matters. The Allure and Pitfalls of Hustle Culture The MLM model promised everything I thought I needed: independence, financial freedom, and the ability to create a life on my terms. It offered the enticing possibility of success fueled by effort, charisma, and relentless determination. The dream was persuasive, and I, like many others, became captivated by the vision of thriving as my own boss. For a while, I thrived, or so I believed. I immersed myself in a whirlwind of activities: coordinating team meetings, engaging with customers, crafting compelling social media content, and hitting lofty sales targets. However, this perpetual busyness came at a steep cost. My relationships grew strained, my mental health suffered, and I felt increasingly detached from the life I was supposedly building. Hustle culture perpetuates a toxic cycle of productivity at any expense. While I achieved milestones and gained recognition, the fulfilment promised by the MLM world eluded me. Instead of freedom, I felt tethered to an unending cycle of urgency and pressure. The grind left little room for reflection, creativity, or genuine connection. Let’s slow down and journey together through the seasons with simplicity and intention. Subscribe for simple musings directly to your inbox.
A Moment of Reckoning My breaking point arrived in an unassuming moment. After I had my first baby I wondered about the people who did it all. My world had inexplicably shifted and I asked a question, as to how people managed with newborns and still running their business. The answer: that I should pass my newborn to my husband and get to work. As a new mother it felt the most counterintuitive thing I had ever heard, and I knew there and then I was done. The lifestyle I was marketing no longer resonated with me. The glossy portrayal of success was far removed from my own experience of exhaustion and dissatisfaction. Simultaneously, the global pandemic enforced an abrupt pause. With the world slowing down, I found myself re-evaluating priorities I had long neglected. The stillness posed questions I could no longer ignore: - What am I striving for? - Whose vision of success am I chasing? - What would life feel like if I traded hustle for harmony? The answers did not emerge overnight, but they marked the beginning of a shift. Slowly and deliberately, I dismantled the life I had constructed around constant activity. In its place, I began cultivating a lifestyle defined by intention, balance, and authenticity. Defining Slow Living Transitioning from an always on mindset to slow living was a challenging yet transformative process. Slow living is not about abandoning ambition; it is about realigning priorities to honour what genuinely enriches life. For me, this shift involved embracing four key practices: * Cultivating Presence: I replaced multitasking with focused engagement in everyday moments. Whether cooking with family, reading, or simply observing nature, I prioritised being fully present. These moments became a source of joy and grounding, far more fulfilling than the fleeting achievements of my MLM days. * Establishing Boundaries: Recognising the toll of constant connectivity, I began protecting my time. Work was confined to specific hours, and I detached from the incessant demands of social media. For the first time, I felt ownership over my schedule. * Simplifying Commitments: A deliberate decluttering of my home, calendar, and to-do list created space for intentional living. By reducing distractions, I could focus on pursuits that genuinely nourished me, such as creative projects, s
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There are some things I used to compromise on without really noticing and I would explain them away as nothing more than practicality. Listen, I don’t think all compromise is bad because obviously it isn’t and sometimes life requires compromise… none of us are moving through life getting exactly what we want at every moment. But slowly, over the past few years, I have started to realise that some of the compromises I was making weren’t neutral meaning they were costing me something.
I think one of the most grounding things seasonal living has taught me is that not every season asks the same thing from us, and I don’t just mean the seasons outside the window, although I do mean those too. I mean the quieter seasons of our lives, the less obvious ones, the seasons of holding things together, of building. The seasons of rest, of tending, recovering, recalibrating, waiting, grieving, beginning again. The seasons that don’t arrive neatly on a calendar like the actual seasons, but still shape the way we move through our days.
I think one of the most uncomfortable parts of living intentionally is realising that your life might stop making sense to other people and that’s not because you’re doing anything wrong and it’s not because they are doing anything wrong either, but because difference, when it is lived honestly, has a way of unsettling the stories people carry about what a good life is supposed to look like. There is an unspoken expectation in modern life that our choices should be broadly recognisable. Ideally, they should also be explainable. If we choose something different around work, family, home, ambition, money, education or pace, we are often expected to justify it in a way that reassures other people we haven’t made a terrible mistake, it’s as though our lives need to pass some kind of public approval test before we are allowed to feel settled inside them. But life doesn’t need to be universally appealing to be deeply right for you, in fact, it only needs to be coherent to the person living it snd this is something I have had to learn slowly, and sometimes uncomfortably, over the years. I live a life that many people wouldn’t choose; I home educate my children, I live in a small, 650sq ft home by choice, I centre my days around home, rhythm, presence and ordinary life rather than constant expansion, I identify as a homemaker and I have opted out, where I can, from certain forms of pace, productivity and visibility. Not as a rejection of modern life entirely and certainly not because I think everyone should live like me, but because this is how I stay well inside the life I am actually living. And those choices are not meant to be persuasive (a very common assumption) they are simply mine and I speak to those who either associate with this way of living too, or desire to live in a similar way. I think that is where so much unnecessary tension begins. We assume that when someone makes a different choice, they must be making a statement about ours. * If someone home educates, it can be read as a criticism of school. * If someone stays in a small home, it can be read as a rejection of ambition. * If someone chooses a slower pace, it can be read as laziness. * If someone centres home, family or care, it can be read as regressive, especially for women, whose choices are so often treated as public property and moral declarations rather than personal decisions. But someone else’s inability to imagine themselves in your life is not a verdict on yours; it just means they wouldn’t choose it, it is that simple. And it’s also fine, they don’t have to. I wouldn’t choose lots of other people’s lives either. I can scroll through Instagram and see all sorts of lifestyles that make me think, “Absolutely not for me, thank you kindly”, but I don’t need to announce that in the comments section like a woman holding a clipboard at the gates of acceptable living, because it isn’t my life. And this is the bit we seem to forget… not everything needs our approval or agreement and not everything needs to be filtered through the lens of whether we personally would choose it. Sometimes another person’s life can simply exist. When I first started home educating, I noticed this very quickly. I had made the decision before my first child was even born, so it wasn’t sudden or impulsive. It was something we had thought about deeply. It was a long standing choice rooted in our values, our family rhythm and what we wanted for our children and yet even saying that can make people uncomfortable. Because if I say home education is the best choice for my children, some people hear, “School is the wrong choice for yours” and that’s not an assumption, I have literally had this accusation levied at me more than once. But that is of course not what I am saying… I don’t think every child should be home educated and I don’t think every parent has the capacity, desire or circumstances to home educate. I don’t think school is wrong for every child but I do think home education is
I think many of us are exhausted not because our lives are too small, but because we’ve been taught they should always be bigger, better, more remarkable, more productive and more visible.
Opting out is often presented as the answer isn’t it? The way back to yourself or the antidote to burnout. Or even the thing that will finally make life feel manageable again.