If You Want to Improve Yourself, You'll Have to Slow Down

David Stamation, Executive Life Coach

The fastest path to change is the one that feels the slowest.

I'm slower now. Partly age, partly wisdom. When I want real change in my personal development, the approach has to be counter-intuitive: go slower.

Most people, myself included, respond to wanting more by adding more. More activities, more commitments, more drive. It doesn't work. I've seen it fail in my own life and in the lives of every client I've worked with.

Think about the last time you tried to make a real change. What did you do? You probably added something: a new habit, a new goal, a new system. And if it's like most attempts, it didn't stick. Not because you lacked discipline. Because the approach itself was working against you.

My most recent reminder came on a two-week solo trip that centered around a 7-day men's retreat I drove 1,200 miles to attend. I lived in a tent. Most comforts were stripped away. Days started with a long walk and group meditation at 6 am and didn't end until 9 pm. I turned my phone off for the entire week.

I used three days of driving to decompress and settle into myself before I arrived. Then three days driving back was used for integration, sitting with what had happened and letting it settle. I could have flown in and flown out. I'm glad I didn't.

Slow transportation. Slow retreat.

The wild landscape of Zion National Park did something to me. The teachings, the practice, the company of other committed men was exactly what I needed. Quiet, undistracted, alone with my own heart in a way I rarely manage at home. Things surfaced, things I needed to let go of, and things I needed to get clear on. How I want to show up for my wife. Who I am now, not who I used to be.

I came home feeling what I can only call calmly manly. The good kind of masculine energy, the kind that comes from the inside and shows up in how you walk, how you hold yourself, how present you are. I felt confident, grounded, and more purposeful in the details of my life. My wife noticed it immediately. The ten men in my weekly men's group said I was different. They liked it.

I don't think any of this would have happened on a fast timeline. The depth came from the slowness. Right now I'm carrying a level of quiet confidence I haven't felt in a while, and it radiates from the inside out.

I had to go slow to get what I actually wanted: to become more present, to reconnect with my mission and purpose, to let my life now reflect who I've become rather than chasing a version of myself from five years ago.

This is available to you too. Not by doing more. By doing less, more deliberately, and giving yourself permission to actually slow down long enough to hear what you already know. The answers are already within you.

This is the work I do with clients. Make time to talk with me, here.