If you ask someone who massively changed their life during the pandemic what spurred them to do it, you almost always get some variation of this answer: “Once everything stopped, I could finally see my life for what it was. I didn’t like it.”
This certainly happened to me during that strange spring of 2020, and it happened to this month’s interviewee, Samantha Rae, too. In all my reading and conversations with people about how the pandemic changed them, this has been a common thread. Big personal change starts not from actively doing more, but less. First this happened by force, but then it became a choice.
This sounds easy but it’s not—especially if you’re like me. Sometimes, I have to ask my partner: “Do you think it’s okay if I don’t do this thing today I had planned to do?” He—a person who very much does not struggle with this issue—looks at me like I’m an alien and says “yes, it’s always a good idea for you to find ways to do less.” I’m working on skipping the part where I ask for…