Whether it’s mental health, physical health, relationships, schoolwork or career, or all of it, it’s all worth doing slowly.

You don’t always have to be brave. And, in fact, sometimes you should stop being brave, especially if you’re forcing yourself to be brave. Slow down long enough to take care of yourself. Notice that you’re actually already safe.

It’s exhausting to be anxious all the time. It’s exhausting to hang out between bracing against and dreading thoughts and feelings and knowing that you have to go towards them to get better. It feels like a torture zone. Yes, we can try to make a hierarchy of fears together, but you might have so much anxiety that it’s hard to even see what the triggers are. It’s just happening all the time. It’s very real and really painful.

We will put the work in and observe the process enough to see what the triggers are, what you’re avoiding, and what you need to go towards. It’s okay for you to relax along the way. Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. You don’t have to figure it all out today. You want to let yourself piece it together slowly at whatever pace your mind and body needs.

This may seem highly unrealistic to you. The real world is highly impacted by how you perceive it. You have the power and control to slow things down when you need to, especially if it’s mostly internal. We all need both the courage and willingness to go towards hard things and the patience and compassion to slow down and relax. We have no control over much of what happens to us. And, also, we miss opportunities that are right in front of us when we’re hyper-vigilantly scanning for what we think we need. Try slowing down your internal experience and expecting less from any given moment. You may find that you already have what you need or that getting what you need is actually quite easy when you’re relaxed.

Here are a few self-talk concepts that build upon the idea that anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

It’s okay to skip my homework. Shh… it’s a secret. I promise I won’t tell your second grade teacher or the CBT gods. You don’t have to do ERP perfectly. If you do it perfectly, you’re doing it wrong. You’re missing the point. We’re trying to use the CBT techniques to change our attitudes towards ourselves away from fear, seriousness, urgency, criticism, shame, and distance from our values. We’re trying to shift towards curiosity, playfulness, compassion, and alignment between our beliefs and our behaviors. We use exposure to what we fear as a technique, because avoidance maintains fear, seriousness, and urgency. If you expose yourself fearfully, seriously, and urgently, you miss out on the attitude shift.

It’s okay to relax. It’s especially courageous to relax when you think you shouldn’t. You might say, I’m in an important meeting. What if I just let myself blush, stutter, or cry? It’s such a big moment. If you had a kid, and you watched her get pushed down, and get back up, you’d be so proud. It’s so great. Try to approach yourself this way. This can be a public moment like a meeting or date. It can also be a private moment, like when you’re awake and scared in the middle of the night. It’s okay to relax. And, it’s okay to be proud that you let yourself relax.

It’s okay to redirect my attention. Redirecting attention to the present is probably going to be helpful most of the time. You can figure out what will be helpful based on what you don’t want to do. If you have thoughts you don’t want to think or say, you should think or say them. If you have thoughts you can’t stop thinking about, you should practice redirecting your attention away from them. They may hang out in the background in your mind, especially when you’re sensitized. It’s okay. It’s the effort that matters on this one. Notice what’s happening and make an effort to redirect. You have to do a half pull-up before you can do a full pull-up. Bring your intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions along with you while you go about your day and practice redirecting your attention whenever you notice that you’re in it. Your attentional redirection muscle will get stronger over time, especially as you stop believing that it’s useful to you to engage in worry or rumination.

Anxiety says that every moment matters. Your mind arrives at what you should be doing, you need to be doing, or how things are supposed to go. You get stuck. Anxiety can’t think flexibly or change its course.

Society can make us feel this way too. In school you’re expected to master certain content at a certain pace. In work there are deadlines that you must be able to meet. Pressure from your family or social media can make you feel like you must be achieving social goals at a certain time and in a certain way.

Your anxiety can make you feel urgent in any given moment about getting rid of your sensations or your thoughts. It can give you a global sense that time is just moving too quickly and that you can’t keep up. There’s always something you need to be doing and you are always behind on getting it done.

Many theories of psychology focus on your values. I agree that identifying and being intentional about what you value and how you want to live it out is a great way to help you build a life that is meaningful for you.

However, in any given moment, slow down. It’s okay that you aren’t achieving your goals. It’s okay that you don’t even know what your values are, not to mention how you’d live them out. It’s okay that your life isn’t turning out how you hoped. You might be spending a lot of time coping with physical or mental illness. Maybe a break up or a death set your life on a course you weren’t expecting. It may seem like there’s a path ahead of you and you just have to find it, but there is no path.

Life is about taking a guess. It’s about making an attempt to understand yourself and who you want to be and then enjoying the scenic route while you get there. When you aren’t in a hurry to become who you think you must be, you have the chance to be open to who you might become.

An open, flexible you will not just be happier, but will see more opportunities than a urgent and rigid version of you.