La Dolce Vita

My study & travels in Italy taught me the beauty of slowing down, savoring beauty, and embracing pleasure. La dolce Vita (ie. "The Sweet Life.")

I awed at the Italian lifestyle, but my nervous system didn't know know how to embody it. I was so familiar to patterns of hyper-productivity & hyper-control that while I awed at their way of living, I found it brought a lot of internal resistance & clashing with how I operated.

I took this inspiration to train my nervous system (which actually took years, but that was due to lack of guidance or poor guidance. It doesn't have to take that long.)

I learned how to balance the discipline—so natural to my character and accentuated by the American hardworking morales I was raised with—and the pleasure of La Dolce Vita that was so well exemplified in this romance country.

• I stopped rushing through meals or eating protein heavy meal replacements, which I realized didn't feel natural to me at all.

• I began appreciating walks and public transportation over the speed of driving my car.

• When men complimented my physical appearance (which in the US is usually "objectifying," but is largely non-offensive in Italian culture), I took after the Italian women around me and simply took the complement, without making it mean anything offensive, and moved along.

• I learned that getting ready for your day was a sign of self-respect, and to avoid walking out of the house in wet hair or an unkept t-shirt.

• I learned the home was a sacred place for family and resetting.

• I learned breaks in the afternoon after lunch optimized energy for the rest of the day.

I learned from this culture—so historically driven by art, food, passion, and awe—how to appreciate the beauty around me, and to see them in myself.

This manifested a side of myself I didn't even know I was neglecting. A way of living that felt foreign, but possible.

Now, almost 10 years after my first visit to Italy, I live in my European architecture inspired apartment, I love enjoying espresso from my Italian coffee maker, I keep fresh flowers on the table, and I live at a slower pace than I ever used to allow.

But getting here wasn't easy. I had to rewire the part of my brain that felt guilty for slowing down and prioritizing pleasure. The part of my psyche (in survival mode) that told myself I wasn't doing enough, or that this was selfish in some way.

Rewiring your nervous system is one of the most LIFE CHANGING tasks you will ever take on. If you don't, it won't matter how much you accomplish in life, you won't be able to appreciate or enjoy it because your nervous system is still wired for survival mode.

Choose the way you want to live and train your nervous system with the necessary shadow work, inner child healing, and somatic release work to fully embody that choice. For me, I wanted to live La Dolce Vita; and you can live a sweeter life too, if you make the decision to.