Is Calm Is Becoming a Luxury

As someone who spent years in the corporate world, I know what it feels like to be chasing a version of success that looks impressive from the outside but does very little for your inner world. Towards the end of my career, I was not craving another promotion, a bigger salary or more recognition. I was craving peace. A simpler life, but not in a patronising way. I did not want to stop caring or stop achieving. I just wanted to feel like myself again.

My mind and body had been asking me to slow down for a long time before I was willing to listen. The strange thing was that the more I seemed to gain materially, the further away I felt from myself as a mother, a friend and a daughter. I had built a life that ticked so many of the boxes I thought I was supposed to tick, but what I actually needed was not more. It was inner peace. Calm. A feeling of being grounded in myself rather than constantly pulled away from myself.

I think many of us are living like this now, even if the details look different. We are tired, overwhelmed and overstimulated, but we have become so used to it that it can take a long time to realise how far we have drifted from feeling well. Normal moments of quiet have almost disappeared. When was the last time you sat on the Tube and simply watched the world around you without looking at your phone or mindlessly scrolling? When was the last time you stood in a queue and just stood there ?

Feeling calm and content seems to be becoming less and less available to us, partly because we are conditioned from such a young age to be the best. Top of the class, every sport, every activity, every achievement. And not just to try things, but to be good at them. Somewhere along the way, simply enjoying something stopped feeling enough. We cannot even have a hobby anymore without wondering whether we should post it on Instagram, turn it into a side hustle or somehow monetise it.

Even ageing has become something to manage and improve. Women are rarely allowed to simply grow older without feeling there is another treatment, appointment or expectation waiting for them. It is exhausting. No wonder so many of us feel like walking zombies, tired and depleted, quietly losing touch with the one thing that actually matters: a sense of peace within ourselves.

The irony is that calm should not be a luxury. It is not a handbag, a hotel or a rare object only a few people can access. It is something every human being needs. Yet in modern life it has started to feel strangely difficult to obtain, as though peace has become something reserved for the people with enough time, money or discipline to chase it. Really, it should be the foundation of how we live.

Being able to self-regulate and feel grounded in yourself does not only feel better emotionally. It affects how we move through the world, how we parent, how we work, how we love and how we speak to the people around us. Nobody enjoys the constant anxious weight in the chest, the inability to put a phone down no matter how exhausted they are, or the feeling of being wired but tired. Sooner or later, if we do not listen, the body usually finds a way to get our attention.

Now we schedule rest in the same way we schedule meetings. We book sound baths, yoga classes and weekends away because they are often the only moments we give ourselves permission to stop. I see this so clearly in ceremonies and classes. People arrive exactly as they are. Some have come straight from work. Some have not stopped all week. You can feel the energy they bring into the room, then slowly it begins to shift. Shoulders soften, people stop looking far away and they begin to breathe a little more deeply without anyone telling them to.

Nothing extraordinary has happened in those moments. They have simply been given a space where there is nothing to achieve. I think that is what so many of us are missing. We have become so used to measuring our worth by how productive we are that doing nothing can feel uncomfortable. Rest has become something we earn once everything else is finished, but for most of us, everything else is never finished. There will always be another email, another load of washing, another appointment to book or another job waiting tomorrow.

I have spoken before about the way drinking cacao has its own ritual. It cannot really be rushed. It needs to be chopped, gently heated, stirred and then enjoyed slowly. Because of its consistency, you cannot simply throw it back like an espresso. It is made to be experienced, and in that way it almost forces you to slow down for a moment. That is part of why I love it.

It also feels no coincidence to me that cacao is one of the richest natural sources of magnesium. Magnesium is widely spoken about for relaxation, sleep quality, deep rest and nervous system regulation, all things so many of us are craving. Cacao also contains naturally occurring compounds including phenylethylamine and tryptophan, which are linked to the body’s production of serotonin and dopamine. So while the ritual asks us to slow down, what is inside the cup supports the same idea in a very real way.

If we keep waiting until life becomes quiet before we allow ourselves to slow down, we will probably be waiting a very long time. I have started to believe that calm is not something we find once life gets easier. It is something we create in the middle of ordinary days, in small moments that remind us to come back to ourselves.

Perhaps that is why calm feels like such a luxury now. Not because it is expensive or out of reach, but because our attention has become one of the most valuable things we own. Every day there is something asking for it, and every day we have to decide whether we want to give all of it away or keep a little for ourselves.

For me, cacao has become one of the ways I keep a little of it for myself. It is a simple reminder that before I give my attention to the world around me, I should probably spend a few moments giving it to myself.