Soft Life or Slow Living: What's the Difference?
…And how do I live both everyday
…“People use these phrases interchangeably. They aren't the same thing.”
If you spend any time on Pinterest or Instagram or the algorithmically steered corners of YouTube, you will hear soft life and slow living used as if they were the same life experience. As if both were the same aesthetic being used to describe: a woman in linen, a beige kitchen, a fully completed to-do list, a perfectly clean house, a gently steeping cup of herbal tea, and an obscenely large amount of free time.
These two life experiences are not the same thing. I repeat: They are not.
They overlap, but they aren't the same. And once you can feel the difference between them, both become more useful and more honest.
Slow living is what you do with your time = Doing
A soft life is what you do for your nervous system = Feeling
Both practices are about removing things.
Or if you want to get all technical, they're about what you stop doing more than what you start doing. Both reward attention, and both have aesthetic versions on the internet that have almost no resemblance to the actual practice. Here is how I see them and live them both in real time.
Slow living, as I understand it
It is the practice of choosing slower tools, slower decisions, slower routines, slower rhythms, not because slowness is a virtue, but because speed is often a mask of something else. Maybe hustle culture or girl-boss era, for example. Most of what we automate, optimize, and speed up doesn't actually buy us time. It buys us the appearance of time, which we then immediately fill with more stuff to do.
Slow living asks one quiet question: What would I do if I let this take the time it actually takes?
It's the woman hanging laundry in the sun instead of using the smart dryer that's two feet away. It's writing a real letter when a text would do. It's driving the longer route home. It's a slower tool, deliberately chosen, because the slowness was never the problem.
How do I embrace slow living every day?
It is the practice of choosing slower tools, slower decisions, slower routines, slower rhythms, not because slowness is a virtue, but because speed is often a mask of something else. Maybe hustle culture or girl-boss era, for example. Most of what we automate, optimize, and speed up doesn't actually buy us time. It buys us the appearance of time, which we then immediately fill with more stuff to do.
Slow living asks one quiet question: What would I do if I let this take the time it actually takes?
It's the woman hanging laundry in the sun instead of using the smart dryer that's two feet away. It's writing a real letter when a text would do. It's driving the longer route home. It's a slower tool, deliberately chosen, because the slowness was never the problem.
Like most of my readers, I have a Monday through Friday 9-5. I work in the mortgage industry, which, if you don't know, is a high-stress, fast-paced job. I am a mortgage underwriter so I spend the day making six-figure decisions; if I make the wrong choice, it can cost my employer a small fortune. I also have to make those decisions all day on a rush basis. In addition to the underwriting part of my job, I also have 6 other job duties - ranging from setting up new loan files to mentoring team members to being the “floating” underwriter, which essentially means I cover for whoever is out and had better be able to understand every decision they make on every loan file, while also scrubbing their files for mistakes. Companies literally sell their employees speed and service to get business in the door. Sounds like a fun job, right?
I also work from home, so I have laundry, cats, and trash day to weave in. Oh, and don't forget. I have 3 adult daughters living at home with me. And each of them comes with her own “opportunities”.
Here are some of the things I do to practice slow living.
I use an analog clock next to my bed - not the phone. Using the clock means I can see the time and know if it’s time to get up or not. By choosing not to use my phone - I am preventing myself from automatically jumping into life, checking emails, and seeing what is going on in the world.
I don’t start work until I finish my 1st cup of coffee. This might sound trivial - until you try it. I am claiming my morning - that first 20-30 minutes as mine. I do not check emails or call my mom. It is just me, my coffee, and the morning. Me, being present. Occasionally, that looks like me doing morning pages; other times, I just sit there and watch the birds out the window. My only commitment is to drink my coffee.
I have a hard cut-off time. I used to work until 7,8, or even 9 pm (and my day would have started at 7:30 am). I now have a hard cutoff of 4:30. 4:00 if I can swing it. I have made a point over the last year of saying, at 4 pm, I am going for my walk. This is a hard stop. Everyone knows. If you have a last-minute rush, you'd better ask Tiff before 4 pm; otherwise, it’s a tomorrow problem.
Tea at 1:00 pm. While I do tend to work through lunch almost every single day - it’s the trade off, of being able to leave at 4 - I take a tea break for 15 minutes every day. That is my time. I regroup. Make a cuppa. Maybe switch out a load of laundry or empty the dishwasher while I wait for the kettle - but ultimately - it is my time to make a cup of tea and do things that future Tiffany will be glad I did.
I won’t pretend that asserting these changes was easy. It takes time and practice, and believe it or not, YOU will be the biggest hurdle to overcome. It won't be work, your coworkers, or your kids. It will be you. You have to be willing to choose what you will and will not do, and when and how you will (or will not) do it. I invite you to try just 1 of these for 2 weeks. I bet you will see a difference not only how your days move, but in how others move around you.
A Soft Life, as I understand it
Soft life is about feeling.
It is the practice of refusing the chaos that other people are running on. Of refusing to absorb other people's emergencies as your own - think - Procrastination on your behalf does not necessitate an emergency on mine - kinda vibes.
Soft life is not soft. That's the trick of the phrase. The aesthetic version sells it as spa days and pastel feeds, but the actual practice requires a kind of raw, hard refusal that most lives don't currently allow. Saying no without explaining. Holding boundaries without apologizing for them. Letting other people's panic stay other people's panic.
Soft life is what happens when a woman stops being available for everyone else's everything.
How do I live a soft life every day?
Two years ago, I had a series of mini-strokes. The neurologist said, " Your body is telling you that if you do not change the way you feel, you will have a major stroke.” That was a huge wake-up call for me. So, for the last 2 years, I have been choosing to live a slow life. To paying attention to how I feel.
Deep breathing. There is a lot of this in my life. Deep breathing, even for 30 seconds, can activate your parasympathetic nervous system. When someone snaps at me? Deep Breathing? Someone broke my favorite mug? Deep Breathing. I have had some real challenges with one of my daughters this year. It sounds pointless, but I promise you, it kept me grounded, calm, and present.
Reading. I read every day. From a real book. Not on a screen. I feel the book in my hand. Smell the paper and the ink. I read to connect with my body and my mind. I read to feel something aside from the same old same of my day-to-day life. This reminds my nervous system that there are other things to feel aside from stress from work, bills, grief, worry, or whatever emotion I am carrying that day. The point is to read something to remind my nervous system that today is not the status quo. There are other emotional options to feel and not to get stuck in the negative ones.
I choose my level of crazy. My boss uses me as a catch-all. All day long, it’s can you do X or can you do Y. She tells me all the time how grateful she is that “I can pivot”. While I do say yes, I will X - I do not let her list of X’s cause me to rush or speed through my tasks. Have you ever seen the ad for Relacor? Stress raises cortisol, cortisol causes belly fat - I’m 50. My boss is not adding to my belly fat, thank you very much.
Knowing the difference between soft life and slow life lets you ask better questions of your own life and then make choices from there that support you. That's the work. Not aesthetics. Not pastels. Not a feed.
Just attention, paid carefully, to the pace and the vibes of your own days
I hope that sharing a bit of my real life, along with how I move through it, will help and encourage you. Life is hard. We just have to look for the soft spots.
If this resonated, you might like: [Link to “Fifteen Minutes in the Florida Sun” — the slow living example] | If you want to start to make some small changes in your life, maybe this free worksheet I created will help link to freebie
