Lily Tomlin

Slow Down to Feel Better, Faster

Finally, Tomlin’s quote can be read as an invitation to practice a repeatable technique rather than a vague lifestyle motto. “Slowing down” can be as simple as inserting a three-second pause before answering, taking five slower breaths, or doing one task with full attention instead of three tasks hurriedly. Over time, these micro-pauses become a kind of reflexive wisdom: when pressure rises, you reach for the brake instead of the accelerator. In that sense, the relief is genuinely fast-acting—because the moment you slow, you stop feeding the urgency that was hurting you. [...]

Ambition, Identity, and the Humor of Vagueness

At first glance, being “more specific” can sound limiting—like narrowing possibilities too soon. Yet specificity can be freeing because it reduces anxiety and comparison. When you choose a clear direction, you stop auditioning for every audience at once. A small anecdote illustrates this: someone might say they want to “work in tech,” but only after naming a role—say, “UX researcher focused on accessibility”—do their learning, networking, and daily decisions become coherent. That coherence matters because it shifts ambition from performance to progress. Instead of asking, “Do I look like somebody?” you begin asking, “Am I building what I actually value?” [...]

Winning the Rat Race Still Traps You

The “rat race” implies a maze built for endless running—motion without meaning. Even the “winner” remains defined by the same rules: constant comparison, fear of falling behind, and rewards that never quite settle into satisfaction. In that sense, Tomlin is less interested in personal failure than in the structure of the competition. This connects to a long tradition of doubting status-driven striving: Thorstein Veblen’s concept of “conspicuous consumption” in *The Theory of the Leisure Class* (1899) describes how people chase signals of rank that require continual upkeep, ensuring the race never really ends. [...]