There’s a particular kind of tired that comes from choosing your own calm every single day. You know the routine — the candle, the ten minutes of stillness you promise yourself, the self-care day that keeps getting pushed to “this weekend, for sure.” It’s not that you don’t want it. It’s that wanting it, every day, is its own kind of effort. Almost like another to-do on your list. This isn’t how calm should feel like.
Remove friction
It’s easy to advise you to “make it a habit”, but the advice won’t be enough. Make calming and slowing down easy and personal. In a page of your journal or planner (something you open every day, and you keep around) add a QR code to a calming playlist, a piece of perfumed paper, a picture of your favorite artwork or a letter. Whatever brings you to calming state quickly and undoubtedly.
Decide once
Once you know what a slow life means to you, decide when you… let it happen to you and simply do it as if it were on your calendar (maybe it can be). Coffee chat with my sister on Thursday mornings (even via video call), a walk outside after work, reading classics every Wednesday evening. Sure in the beginning it might not be consistent, but if it really is something you yearn for, and you’re not somehow influenced into wanting it, you’ll start being more and more consistent with it.
The outside help
Use outside cues to gamify the process of adding more calming moments to your day. Whenever I see a baby blue car, I’ll take three deep breaths. Whenever I hear a seagull, I’ll quickly check with all my 5 senses. Whenever I receive a letter, I’ll make my favorite seasonal drink and read while enjoying it.
Set the calm up for a year
A yearly membership removes that decision. Instead of choosing stillness fresh each month, you choose it once — and then simply receive it. A letter arrives. A quarterly magazine arrives. A small, ongoing practice arrives, without you having to remember to start it again.
I built Maison Eviève around that idea: that rest works better as a rhythm than a resolution. The letters begin in October. The first issue of “(meditating) On Art” — a bilingual magazine on paintings, music, places, and quiet rituals — arrives in January (or late December). A year of both, decided once, arriving on its own from here.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi