102 - Ginny Muir: How to Slow the Pace of Your Life
Today I’m welcoming back my friend Ginny Muir for a conversation about what it really takes to step out of urgency culture.
After a big life transition and international move, Ginny discovered how to slow her pace, honor her capacity, and build a life rooted in presence.
If you’ve been craving more spaciousness in your days, this episode offers both inspiration and practical wisdom for releasing urgency and finding your own rhythm — no matter how hectic your life may feel.
Join us in slowing down and opting out of urgency this fall.
Connect with Sarah
Connect with Ginny
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:
Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello, welcome to Threshold Moments. Today we have with us Ginny Muir. She has been on our podcast before when she was speaking to us about midlife and her program Ripe, which she's running again this year.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:54]:
And Ginny is somebody whom hosted a trip to Scotland which helped me remember more and more of who I am, helped to remind me when I was in the inquiry, like, what even makes me feel alive. And I just got to kind of keep feeling into that texture. And since then I've been able to hang out with Ginny and have some conversations. And Ginny is in a place right now where she is, I would say, like testing out, putting her toes in the water of living in another place. And we've talked a little bit about how this has changed. Now I'm going to speak to you, changed your understanding and your feeling of the urgency that is built into the culture in the US and so I thought it would be great to pop on and do this. Almost like a mini musing here on your experience with pacing, with life, with vitality. And as the theme for us in September, here is urgency, how that's shown up for you and how I almost like imagine you, if you were looking at urgency, that as you change cultures, it's almost like you can see it from a different angle. Like you can check out from underneath and above it and start to like separate yourself from it a little bit and make more choices.
Ginny Muir [00:02:22]:
Yeah. So I'm in Costa Rica and I've been here off and on for four months now. And that decision really came from a place of intuition. I didn't exactly know why I needed to leave the U.S. i mean, there were some clear threshold moments. There was I got married in January and we both had very full separate lives in Colorado, getting married in our 40s. And it felt like trying to merge those two lives felt kind of clunky and almost like not as deeply unifying as the two of us starting over somewhere else.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:03]:
Wow.
Ginny Muir [00:03:04]:
Even just temporarily. So it was a conscious decision. And I had been in a season of so much fullness in my life in Colorado with my business thriving and a beautiful home and a very robust community. And I, you know, by all accounts was in a great season of life. And there were these markers mostly from my Body that had started to kind of give a different opinion, let's say to like, I'm doing great. And every single time I went to acupuncture, the first thing she would do is feel my pulses and say, oh, but they're jumping out of your skin again. We sorted it out last week, but here we are again. I had stopped sleeping through the night.
Ginny Muir [00:03:52]:
Not because I have children, not because I, you know, have a thing that's getting me up in the night, but just because it was like I couldn't. It was. My system would not go into deep rest. I hadn't done a full like, for my heart, for my being practice longer than a 20 minute meditation or movement, right? I hadn't done anything like really spacious and wide and robust in a long time. And so all of these things were just adding up. And we went to Costa Rica on our honeymoon and both of us in that 10 days, I just felt a down regulation in my system that almost made me feel like I was stoned. A distinct difference. Like, my husband kept looking at me like, you're so different.
Ginny Muir [00:04:42]:
And I keep wanting to ask you if you're okay, but you seem really good, but it's just such a different texture in your energetic field than I'm used to with you. So we kind of just followed intuition and decided, let's explore being in Costa Rica for a longer amount of time. And within one week of getting here, I felt just how exhausted I actually was. And as someone who teaches about the cycles of life, I would say the connective thread through all of my work is a deep devotion to the feminine, which is a cyclical way of being, a way that waxes and wanes, a way that shines bright and then goes dark. Way that is meant to give states of rest in equal measure to states of productivity. I was not walking my talk. I basically hadn't had a downshift, a wane, like time of, of real spaciousness in five years. And I also felt for the, in the first couple weeks that we were here, everything that, choosing to take that space because I cleared a lot of my work off of my plate.
Ginny Muir [00:05:59]:
I was, you know, consciously taking spaciousness, not just moving location, but I stopped doing in person immersions. I changed my work structure a lot so that it was very minimal. It bumped up against so much for me in those first couple weeks. That was like, it was like in every moment I felt myself going like, what should I be doing? What should I be tracking? What should I be doing? What should I be tracking? And Just noticing how hard it was for me to allow myself to choose all the way into rest, just for rest's sake. What made it easier was that I'm now in a culture where that is much more the norm. You know, the people who live here really value chilling super hard. And, you know, I'm in a surf town, so there's definitely Western influence here. But if you go a little bit outside, I mean, there are places in Costa Rica that capitalism hasn't even really touched where it wouldn't make sense to someone.
Ginny Muir [00:07:04]:
You could go to someone and say, could I buy your land and offer them a huge sum of money? And they would go, why? Like, what would I then do? Like, my land and my few cows and my. Whatever is. Is my life. And I love the rhythm and I love the pace of my life, and I'm not feeling a lack in the form of money, just the different driving. And the other thing that's true here is that the nature is wild and the infrastructure is not as robust. So there's a lot of surrender to the elements that has to happen. And one of the things that I've seen about urgency, and I feel curious if you've been discovering this is urgency is really tied to a sense of control and power. Like, I could do anything.
Ginny Muir [00:07:56]:
I am in charge. I am in control. I am the boss of whatever it is, and so I should be, because I can.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:05]:
Mm.
Ginny Muir [00:08:05]:
And here there are so many moments where it's like, oh, well, no one can go anywhere because it's just raining too hard and the road washed out. And everyone is so accustomed to being like, okay, that there's a really strong muscle of no urgency because it's been so practiced. Everyone has had multiple examples in the past several weeks of their life where they thought something needed to get done on a certain timeline, and it didn't, and they were fine.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:36]:
Not on the bingo card.
Ginny Muir [00:08:38]:
No. And so what I really think is, like, the. This. The way that I feel about urgency in the United States is it's so driven by scarcity, I think, underneath a lot of it. So driven by scarcity, missing out on something. And it is really tied to, like, over emphasis on how much we can control. There's not a lot of humility in urgency.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:04]:
When I started working with this idea of opting out of urgency, so much of it, for me, when people said, well, what are you deeply invested in? What is your why? And I'm like, liberation of women. Right. So for. With that, when I say liberation of women, to me, there's a domino effect where that is like liberatory for all. But for someone to pause long enough and be able to notice, like, is this my pace or somebody else's pace? Do does this give me a sense of control? And is that where I want to live? Like just to pause for a moment and say, what are little practices where I can downregulate, maybe physically while my mind can still move fast enough so that my downregulation doesn't trigger me into more panic, Right? So like we're going to be working with like ways of how can I move slowly when my environment is in, say like Costa Rica, where everything around me is like, yeah man, like lay back, relax. And as I was working this out, I was in conversation with Tel Darden and she sent me an article that is the 15 tenants of white supremacy culture. And urgency is one of the 15. And when I look at Amina Altai's work, which her book is called the Ambition Trap, and she talks about where the word hustle came from and then how it was weaponized and used and I just more and more I'm like, whew.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:29]:
In everything that she lists in her book for the type of ambition that would drain us, instead of be regenerative, it all falls into nervous system dysregulation. This is how you would act in if you felt like you had to fight for your life. This is how you would act if you feel like I would do this at all costs. This is how you would act if you were fleeing from something. And so to live our lives, to feel like that we are always in the fight to survive when it's not really lined up with most of our realities, but it feels like it is. It feels like if I don't hit this deadline, I won't have my job and then I can't pay my bills. It's a system that's set up to make it as real as possible. And for some people there is a lot of reality to it.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:19]:
So we just begin to ask the question, in what micro way can we find a moment of pleasure, a moment of self care, to begin to create a little bit of space between us and our complete attachment, interwovenness over coupling with the systems that are around us. And so as you remove yourself a full country away in a culture that has not been fully taken over by the supremacy culture, by all the systems that we have in place, you get to feel a new reality. Because as long as we are surrounded by something all of the time, it's hard to differentiate what is true from what we perceive to be true. Like what are our options when we're only seeing one way and we're experiencing it in our bodies in that way. One other thing I would say is as you're describing, and maybe we talked about this before we started recording the consistent work it might take to opt out of urgency and to build the skill of spaciousness in a culture that makes it feel impossible for many reasons, like many financial reasons, many like what's next? What's like, how do you grow? Even if you have resources financially, there's, there's still like we, we have demands that kind of chase us even as we get more money and do the next thing. And so I was thinking about the bougainvillea that my mom had at her house in New Hampshire and how sometimes there would be white flies and she'd have to treat to plant for the white flies and she'd have to water it a half a cup every week. And you know, just this real attention to get something to grow in an environment that it's not meant to be in. And then you go to Florida and you see these bougainvillea like taking over trees and climbing over houses and you're like, wow.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:17]:
When it's in a different environment, it's not as much effort. And so I'm not necessarily saying that everybody, we all need to like up and move. But I do think it's nice to know like, oh, it's not just me, it's not because I'm doing something completely wrong. The environment I'm in doesn't make it easy necessarily to access the spaciousness which feels a bit like the opposite of urgency. Or even the trust, I might even say like the trust or the, the co creation or the flexibility that would be opposite of urgency.
Ginny Muir [00:13:57]:
Yeah, you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording about the perfectionism that can seep in in this world of personal growth and development that like full agency. And it's up to me to change everything. And my reality is of my making. And I over the years have really pushed back against that. And because I can really see so clearly, sometimes we take over responsibility for things that are actually sociocultural. And if we are beating ourselves up, for example, for not being totally just like free flowing and spacious and we're ignoring the bigger picture, the bigger thing which we're taking over responsibility for, which is what is the programming not just that you received growing up, but that you are continually and constantly swimming in and so understanding that with compassion, I think gives us a little bit of like, oh, right, that feeling of, I'm not broken. It's not like everyone has this figured out. We're all actually dealing with this same external pressure.
Ginny Muir [00:15:07]:
And then we, once we adjust to that or once we see that, then we can get curious about how do I want to be with that inside of myself, you know? But it is really helpful. I mean, people talk about even going away for 10 days to another country, coming back in with just like the level of always on ness. Like people can't pause and sit down and have a meal, not on the go. Like, there's always multitasking happening. And when we go somewhere where that's not the case, we actually adjust to that pretty quickly.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:49]:
I'm thinking about how sometimes it's just nice. I went to a cabin last week and there is something. Now I'm just gonna say, without being in your own house when you get away, because so many of the things you can put down that when you're at your house, there's always something to do. And when I'm thinking about living. I lived in Italy for six months and my black and white film got developed over at the Vatican, and my color film got developed 45 minutes in a different direction. And I was on top of Monteverde up on a mountain. And so I'd have to walk 45 minutes in the drive this direction, then across the city over to the Vatican, then up the mountain. And it would take at least an hour and a half just to pick up my film.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:35]:
This is before digital. So, like when I was home, I don't know if you remember, like, one hour photo where you drop off your, like, I'm really aging myself. You go to cvs, drop off the one hour photo. And I loved that I, that I quote, unquote, had to walk everywhere because I would see the same old men playing bocce ball together every day. And you would see the various people who would gather and you'd see the ritual and you'd say hello. And you might, you know, sometimes getting on the buses and. And it could be inconvenient at times that everything closed at 4. And how amazing that in the culture everyone understood we're going home for lunch, we're going to close down the shop.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:22]:
Or maybe it's not like it didn't open up until after 4, right? And we're not opening again until after 4. And then if you go out to dinner, you're there from 7 till 10. It's not like you gotta turn this table over. It's slow, it's conversational. Like, it is a whole different vibe. And when I came home, I remember thinking, like, I'll walk to meet my friends at breakfast. And eventually they just drove by me. It was snowing.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:46]:
They're like, bitch, get in the car.
Ginny Muir [00:17:48]:
I'm like, okay.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:49]:
It lasted like 10 minutes. Trying to pretend I was living in Italy while in the us but there again is just something about being in another culture that is not my own, was not my own. You know, by ancestry is my own, but not by current life. And gosh, it does. It slows the whole system down. If you've been living in a rhythm of rush, always moving, always holding it all together, you're not alone. Most of us have been taught to override exhaustion, keep looping in old patterns and call it strength. That's why I created Opting out of Urgency, a free three day workshop where we slow down enough to find a different way.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:45]:
Together we'll explore how pacing opens up choice, how to move beyond the trap of either or thinking, and how slowing down creates space for new relational patterns that actually feel nourishing. Each session weaves science thematics and story with tools you can start using right away. Join me for this free workshop. It might just change the way you move through everything. You can sign up at the link in the bio. I hope to see you there. I would love to ask you in that transition period in the first week or two when you cleared your schedule and there is the, the vigilance that's still going, just making sure, like are, am I sure there's nothing I need to do? Should I be doing so should I? For people listening if they are trying to slow down even 1% or drop a half a percent of things that are on their calendar. Do you have any tips that worked for you of how to be with yourself in what is often called the attention field between your old ways and something you're moving into?
Ginny Muir [00:20:09]:
You know, it was really just interesting to actually go into conversation with myself, to feel the reflexive thought that would have me want to check a to do list or am I okay? And to. Instead of following that thought or trying to just smush it down, to actually be in conversation with it and to go, oh, that's so, that's. That is so habitual. It just popped right up and let me just follow it. Why and why and why and why and where I would always get to would be a place where I was like, see A laughable level of self importance. And that was what always dismantled it for me. Like why must I respond right away? Because they need me, they don't have anybody else. You know, in how many instances was that actually true? 1%.
Ginny Muir [00:21:12]:
And so that was something that was really helpful for me is to, to like kind of be in the cosmic joke of oh, the reason that I am, that that's happening is based I was like calling myself out for this sort of elevated self importance and, and actually allowing myself to be in the experiment. Like what if, what if I'm not necessary? What does that feel like? What about what's uncomfortable about that? And it's uncomfortable like a moment and then it's quite relieving.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:44]:
Wow. As you say that, I am thinking we could say it's only true 1% of the time. But how often do we create a loop within a relationship even for them to think that they need us? And that makes us feel, feel like that is feeding a survival instinct. Because as long as we felt needed, especially as women, it was a really great way to increase chances of survival. That like if someone were going to attack us, that people would protect us because we were so essential to the village. We cooked, we took care of them, we were there emotionally, whatever it was. I think that for women in particular, and I wonder how this, you know, I'm sure there's some truth in here for men too, but that us feeling needed is a deep survival.
Ginny Muir [00:22:35]:
I mean this is an over overgeneralization. But I think it's like, I think for women it shows up most relationally and for men it shows up most in their work, in their career. Like for men, I notice it's very challenging for them to confront like that they might be non essential at their job, someone else might be able to answer the question, do the thing. Which then like, yeah, for all of us it's basically pushing on am I replaceable? And if I'm replaceable, why do I get to be here? How do I know that I belong? If I'm not over functioning to secure my place, how do I know that I belong?
Sarah Tacy [00:23:18]:
I do not want to go on this tangent and I just feel like I need to voice it, which is I was at a table and I think it was, I think it was Emily Fletcher. We were talking about AI and it was like, well like you could put a hologram of like the sexiest woman on earth up there and AI could have like all the algorithms of like the best meditation teachers, weave them into one and then what is a conversation? Like if I, we start looking at like what if I'm not needed on this planet for the work that brings me money anymore? Like, or like of my service? Like what if I'm replaceable and something else, someone else can do it better than me. Like what if we all for various reasons start to look at what if we're replaceable? Then what then what is life about? If it's not just about what we provide and proving our value?
Ginny Muir [00:24:16]:
Because anything that you do most likely is, could be done by someone or something else. But what you be right, the actual essence of who you are moving through the world, if you're not attaching your value to what you accomplish isn't replaceable. Your light, your spark, your particular way. And I think when we try, and I mean I feel like this whole AI conversation, I mean we could go on so many tangents about that, right? But what I think it's showing us is it is the non roboticness of humans that is not replaceable. Anything that we push ourselves to do in like a robotic fashion, which has been rewarded by a capitalist patriarchal society, like the more just productive you can be, it's, it's rewarded. And what if we're moving to a place where like that's not the currency productivity and we actually got to be like what else? What's beneath and behind that?
Sarah Tacy [00:25:26]:
Pretty trippy, pretty trippy. It feels like the most potent reminder in this moment for me. Like on the verge of a launch that feels really important to me that I can even self reflect on anywhere that I'm making self importance to, right. Like I want to step away from like the good or bad of, of what can happen in the spiritual world of no, I shouldn't have this, I should, but just, it just feels really beautiful when I think of the opposite of the urgency that's extractive and I lean into the possibility or just the inquiry of who I be, like how I am. There's so much to that that, you know, it makes me feel close to like a weepy feeling of like what a relief. Like all the charts that I'm going to show and some of the embodied things that we're gonna do. But just getting back to, I love the idea of just being curious about in essence and what that brings forward. And so I know it feels good to me just to have that as a North Star.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:49]:
If I focus too much on urgency, right then I get too focused on what not to be or how am I going to get out of it and It's a system and it's all around me and do I need to move first? Okay. This is true. And it's been a thing for the last like eight years. Especially when I really let go of my work is the. The who I am and the way that I feel in moment to moment. So this is just the thing that keeps coming back to me. I'm not saying it with a lot of clarity, but I know that it's amplifying something in me that needs to be amplified right now. So thank you for that.
Ginny Muir [00:27:24]:
Yeah. And just to kind of connect it back, like, you know, one of the things. And it's not bad or wrong. Right. We're getting away from the binary. But in general, the masculine in us and in society is achievement oriented and the feminine is process oriented. So whereas the masculine is like, what are we accomplishing? The feminine is. And how does it feel on the way.
Ginny Muir [00:27:51]:
And I just noticed that when. And the feminine is like, it's the shakti that's animating all things. It's the life force, it's the creativity, it's the spark, it's the joy just for the sake of joy. And so the more I get entangled with urgency, the more those parts of me feel diminished. And in the days when I'm the least aligned with urgency, those are the days where I had like the sparkly conversation that was just like my personality interacting with someone else's personality. There was space and time and it was funny. And these little things actually, it was funny. It was funny, you know, like a little back and forth, me trying to Spanish and them, like indulging me and, you know, and it's just like cute.
Ginny Muir [00:28:40]:
Those are the days where I'm like, oh, right. I existed as me moving through space and time today, not as the list of things I think I need to do in order to be safe. And it doesn't get to, you know, I don't stay in that a hundred percent of the time, but when I do, it's like, oh, right, this me. Who is she? Who is this? Like, and it doesn't mean that what we do isn't great and that it is important sometimes, you know, but just to right size it.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:08]:
Totally. In a culture where the masculine is the prevalence to pendulate back and really experience a part that often is really hard. It can be really hard to touch into. And as you said the word funny. I was thinking about how many times in the last few months I've had these really silly encounters with friends. Like we're being really silly and I can be a very serious person. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a side effect of this work. Like, I'm just giggling and we're just laughing and we're being ridiculous.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:49]:
And it's not out of effort. It's not by trying to fit in. It's the moments that can't be planned. And it's just been such a joyful side effect of being in this inquiry is the exact moments that you were just describing.
Ginny Muir [00:30:05]:
And it's the point of living right? It's like, the more we're aligned with urgency, the more that, like, what's even the point question kind of arises. Whereas when you're not in urgency and your day is full of whatever those kinds of interactions are, you don't find yourself typically asking at the end of a day like, that, what's the point?
Sarah Tacy [00:30:25]:
Just last week, my episode with Tel Darden came out. It was the hundredth episode, and she shared a moment of like, a what's the point Moment. And I have shared a moment on this podcast before where I'm like, man, I've resourced myself and like, I have now all the things that I thought were the reasons why I was in such deep struggle. I have done it. I have done pacing, I've done right distance. And like, I'm good, I'm steady. What's the point? Like, I like, had that, like, really harrowing, scary moment. The question then was, well, what brings me alive? And, you know, a new journey began.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:01]:
And so I am appreciating in this moment what you're drawing to my attention is that possibly the more. Not that it has to be an always, but the more that I'm in that feminine and the more that I'm out of the urgency, that the question's less likely to arise because the juice is just happening and the feeling of aliveness is just running through. And when those things are happening, generally my feeling is more of just gratitude.
Ginny Muir [00:31:31]:
And awe and you don't need more money, and that's why they don't want you to know.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:39]:
I really, really do get that at some. That money is really useful and that it can be a way to make choices that can make a difference in society and to help people who are in like, I get that. And what I have seen of people as they get more and more money is that as we then are like, okay, now we can pay for these things that were demands on us. Somebody else can take over, but we don't then leave it as spaciousness. It allows us to do more of something else. And now we're responsible for these other people we're paying plus all the other things, so the risks actually feel bigger. And that like, more money, more problems thing, I see it all the time, and this is the sticky part of the urgency cycle, is that it's very cliche to say there's no someday, there's no day where the to do list ends. So it's just gotta get juicy now.
Ginny Muir [00:32:38]:
Exactly.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:40]:
Thank you so much.
Ginny Muir [00:32:42]:
My pleasure.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:43]:
I appreciate you.
Ginny Muir [00:32:44]:
Thanks for being in this conversation and making this food for thought.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:51]:
And I'm going to say I appreciate your ongoing consistent inquiry and your, I'm going to say, like, your dedication to aliveness is really something.
Ginny Muir [00:33:07]:
Thank you.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:09]:
Love you.
Ginny Muir [00:33:10]:
Love you. Bye for now.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:17]:
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it@SarahTacey.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:43]:
So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you. Sa.