For a long time, the word “growth” was associated with the idea of speed. To grow was to accelerate. It was to do more and arrive first.
But after years of entrepreneurship outside of Brazil, leading people in different cultures and facing challenges that demanded much more than strategy, I learned a truth that changed everything: true growth requires knowing how to slow down.
When we are always rushing, we fail to observe what really matters.
We lose sensitivity to people, to the signs, to the changes that are coming.
Autopilot allows the path to be followed, but without the journey being understood.
And without understanding, there is no evolution, only repetition.
Slowing down is not weakness, it is intelligence.
It is the moment when you allow yourself to think before reacting, to choose before being pushed, to look at the purpose before the next goal.
As a leader, I realized that the best decisions I made, the most strategic, the most humane, didn’t come at the height of the movement, but in the silence between one action and another.
Haste creates noise. Pause creates clarity.
Today, when I observe the global market, I see companies doing everything to accelerate.
And I see few preparing to sustain. Speed may put you ahead, but only awareness keeps you there.
Slowing down is also an act of care.
For the business, for the purpose, and especially for the people. No one delivers their best when they live on the edge all the time.
A team needs to breathe to continue believing. A leader needs to breathe to continue seeing.
And we, as individuals, need to breathe to continue being who we are.
Because growth that costs our essence is, in the end, just a very sophisticated type of loss.
The world will continue to accelerate. Demands will increase. Distractions will multiply.
But what will differentiate the leaders of the future will not be the ability to run, but the ability to pause, adjust course, and proceed with intention.
Therefore, slowing down does not distance us from growth. It brings us closer to it.
Because it is in the pause that the vision matures, the purpose aligns, and the next step ceases to be an impulse and becomes a choice.
