10 Tips for Slow Living -Powerful Ways to Live a Softer, Intentional Life

On my healing journey and quest to live a softer, simpler life, this one question kept popping up:

"What does it actually look like to live a soft, intentional life?"

For me, it's choosing presence over pressure.

It's living a nervous system–first life.

It's protecting my peace above all else.

As women, we are powerful creators. And no matter how your life looks right now, you can plant seeds for the reality you actually desire—the one your soul has been whispering for.

You can plant seeds right now and start watering them, one seed at a time, one step at a time, with grace and with trust, and watch a softer, slower, and more wholehearted life begin to bloom from the fertile ground you've planted those seeds in.

Because it's not really about where you live that makes your life soft. It's how you live, where you are — how you pour your tea in the morning, how you speak to yourself when you get ready, how you pause in a world that glorifies the rush and accomplishment.

We've been taught that we have to choose:

the hustle or the soft life,

the dream or the peace,

the success or the soul.

But I want you to know that was never true, and those were never the real options.

Success and softness can coexist. Abundance and ease can become so beautifully integrated together. Not because you did it all, but because you did it with love, with slowness, with intention.

This is your reminder: you get to define success on your own terms, and it gets to feel like home.

How to Live a Slow, Intentional, and Healing Life

In this video, I'm sharing 10 simple and powerful ways to begin living a slower, softer, more intentional, wholehearted life—starting today. So let's begin.

Watch the video or continue reading if you are ready to learn how to live a slow, intentional life & take meaningful action towards a life that feels as good as it looks.

1. Prioritize a Nervous System–First Lifestyle

You cannot live softly if your nervous system is in constant fight-or-flight. Hustle culture has trained so many of us to feel like we must always be “on,” but the truth is: softness begins with safety.

When you regulate your nervous system, life stops feeling like survival mode and starts feeling like a sanctuary.

ways to heal your nervous system

• Practice somatic healing tools like EFT tapping, breathwork, and/or grounding.

• Create a calming environment that signals safety to your body. This can look like decluttering your space, bringing in decor that brings you peace, baking in your space and making it smell cozy & comforting, lighting candles to bring warmth and light (aim for non-toxic when possible), anything that makes your space feel like a cozy refuge.

  
  

• Work on healing and releasing thoughts that keep you in hypervigilance, that keep you in fight or flight mode.

• Create safety in your body... through fluid movements, somatic practices, and rituals/habits that comfort the body.

2. Live in Sync with Your Cycle

We were never meant to operate like men on a 24-hour clock. Women are cyclical, and our energy rises and falls with our monthly rhythm; we follow the moon. When you honor your cycle instead of pushing against it, you unlock a deeper ease in both life and business, and you start to reclaim your power & potency as a woman.

ways to live in harmony with your cycle

• Rest, reflect, and set new intentions during your menstrual phase.

• Use the follicular phase for brainstorming, creativity, and birthing new life into things.

• Plan bigger projects and visibility during ovulation when your magnetism & energy peaks.

• Lean into luteal for finishing projects and deeply nourishing yourself before your cycle repeats.

Living in sync with your cycle is living in sync with yourself. I see it as living seasonally within each season. If you live somewhere that does not have significant seasonal changes, I highly recommend leaning into this even deeper.

the seasons of your cycle

Menstrual phase (first day of bleed - last day of bleed) is your inner winter

Follicular phase (after menstruation - ovulation) is your inner spring

Ovulation (your most fertile day when the egg is released) is your inner summer

Luteal phase (between ovulation & next cycle) is your inner fall

3. Define What Your Soft Life Looks Like

Your soft life doesn’t need to match someone else’s aesthetic. It might look like raising babies with joy in the hills of a small countryside, living in a chic city apartment, or running a thriving business that doesn’t cost your peace from your cozy sky-rise flat overlooking a beautiful bustling city.

How you live is far more important than where you live.

If you do not love where you live, then do something about it, and find a way in your power to be fearless and make a change. If, for whatever reason, you cannot move but wish to, find a way to bring softness to where you are right now and start there.

Decide where and how you want to live, how you want it to look, and, more importantly, feel for you.

Success and softness can coexist.

Define your dream life on your own terms and release the pressure to match someone else’s “perfect life.”

Start getting curious.

4. Do an Energetic Detox

Living softly requires space — physically, mentally, and energetically. Clutter keeps us stuck in overwhelm, while clearing creates flow, ease, and space.

An energetic detox is a way of decluttering the things (physical and energetic in nature) that weigh us down, steal our time, stress out our nervous system, or otherwise hinder the soft-feel-good life you desire.

This clutter can be literal clutter in our homes, clutter on our devices, energetic clutter in our mental or emotional space.

You do not have to be a minimalist to live a simple & soft life, but if there is clutter that you don't love overwhelming you and your senses... I highly recommend releasing it from your life.

how to start energetically decluttering

• Declutter your home, start with visible surfaces, work your way deeper.

• Release outdated beliefs like “success requires sacrifice” or other mental clutter that doesn't serve you.

• Declutter old/overwhelming strategies or other clutter in your business or on your schedule.

• Simplifying your commitments so your energy goes where it matters most.

Every item, thought, or obligation you let go of creates more space for peace, creativity, and deeply fulfilling joy. Your energy is precious, protect it, nourish it, and make room for it to breathe.

5. Simplify Your Schedule

A packed calendar isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a fast track to burnout. Soft living is about protecting your time as sacred. This tip builds off of the previous tip, but my heart tells me this one deserves a separate mention to really drive home the importance of protecting your schedule.

“Your life isn’t built in the big moments—it’s crafted in the tiny choices on your daily schedule. What you repeat becomes your life.”

audit your schedule & commitments

• Cancel what drains you.

• Make space for slow mornings, naps, long lunches, nature strolls, dinner with loved ones.

• Build intentional rest into your week.

• Unsubscribe from hustle culture

• Simplify your business schedule, let it be less complicated.

• Try to design your schedule around your menstrual cycle.

Saying “no” is one of the most overlooked feminine forms of power. Boundaries are what allow softness to actually take root.

6. Romanticize the Everyday

Life is happening all around you, things are happening all the time, some good. Some bad.

Often we want to wait until our life is vision board perfect before romanticizing it... I challenge you to start romanticizing your life even before it feels "romantic."

Romance your daily life and watch the mundane transform into magic. When we are truly present in our lives and make an effort not to overlook the small, fleeting moments that shape our lives, we become fully awake to the beauty that surrounds us.

ways to romanticize your life

• Light a candle while you do the dishes.

• Play music while cooking dinner.

• Smell your morning tea as if it’s a sacred ritual before savoring.

• Focus on how the sunlight illuminates your space during different parts of the day.

• Intentionally focus on how good it feels to get into bed.

When you choose presence and beauty in everyday life, life stops feeling like a checklist and starts feeling like art. The most beautiful art we can create is what we do with our lives.

7. Align with the Seasons

Nature has always been our teacher. When you align your lifestyle with the rhythm of the seasons, you step into a more natural flow of energy and softness.

For me, following the seasons keeps my life feeling juicy and intriguing, helps me stay more grounded, gives me something to look forward to, and helps me balance various interests and activities without burnout.

quick seasonal living tips

• Summer: Play, adventure, connection, fresh or raw foods, fruit, new places, time outside.

• Fall: Start slowing down, release what no longer serves you, more baking, warmer foods.

• Winter: Internal rest, reflecting, warming foods, baked goods, go inward, cuddling, deep connection.

• Spring: Plant new intentions, breathe life into new dreams, create, embrace renewal, bring more movement, also a good time to start detoxing after the winter months of cold (bad energetically for detoxing).

Seasonal living reminds us that life is not meant to be a constant hustle — it’s meant to ebb and flow. There is a season for everything to get done intentionally.

8. Practice Being Fully Present

The softest thing you can do is be here, now. Stop rushing toward the next milestone and start treasuring the moment you’re in.

Even if your current reality isn’t your ultimate dream, it is your life right now. And you’ll never get this exact moment back, so cherish it.

Presence turns ordinary days into sacred ones. Every moment of this life we have been blessed with is sacred.

Don't be so busy living in the past or future that you don't live your present life.

ways to start being present

• Practice using all of your senses more often.

• Resist the urge to always multitask, do one thing well.

• Make a practice of taking breaks from technology to go notice nature.

• Be there with the person you are with, give them attention.

9. Give Yourself Permission to Live Simply

We’ve been taught to overcomplicate everything — from healing to business to motherhood. But simplicity is where softness thrives.

On my own healing journey, I have found that often it is going back to the foundational basics and simplicity that brings me the most breakthroughs.

This has been true for me in business, the less strategies and complication, the less burnout I feel, and the more I feel I can actually manage it.

tips for simplifying your life

• Meals don’t need to be elaborate to be nourishing.

• Your business can thrive on soft & simple strategies.

• Healing doesn’t have to feel like heavy shadow work every day.

• Healing doesn't need to be complicated, give the body the basics. Start there.

• Eat real, whole food from nature, eat what feels right for you.

• Don't complicate stories in your head or make things more dramatic than they are.

Let it be easy. That’s the soft life.

10. Build Supportive Routines That Feel Like Home

The point of routines isn’t rigidity — it’s rhythm. Create routines that make your life feel safe, supported, and aligned with the version of you you’re becoming and the life you are intentionally creating.

As a woman who is also inspired by "my morning routine" videos, I feel it necessary to remind you (myself here too) that as women we are bioindividual, have unique needs, and our own set of desires to fulfill in this life. Meaning don't feel pressure to have your night, morning, or any other routine look a certain way because another woman's routine seems more perfect/aesthetic/productive (and definitely not based on men's routines!).

Do what works for you, what makes you feel good about yourself, what leds to your dream life, what makes you fully alive and grateful about it!

soft routine suggestions

• Gentle morning waking with the sun instead of rushed alarms.

• Prioritize adding movement you genuinely enjoy skip the demanding workout.

• The habits for building health, add them to your mornings or nights, so you don't forget.

• Evening wind-down practices that soothe instead of overstimulate.

• Create routines around your cycle, allowing times for deeper rest when needed.

• Weekly rhythms that honor your energy may be helpful (dedicate specific days of the week to specific habits/tasks)

Softness is built in the everyday structures you create. When your routines support your nervous system and your goals, softness flows naturally. Try not to feel pressure from overcomplicating your routines, simple is good.

I hope these 10 tips met you where you are and expanded your mindset around what a soft, intentional life can be like, and gave you a deep sense of inspiration for making small but impactful changes.

I would like to end this by reminding you that these tips are suggestions meant to bring you inspiration and actionable steps to heal your life, not make you feel like you are behind or like there is so much more you need to add to your to-do list. Take the tips that resonate and slowly integrate them into your life with grace and acceptance.

To listen to these tips on Spotify here, or on YouTube here. If you are currently feeling burnt out in your business, this post is for you.

xoxo Heather Fin