EMMA'S STORY
I’ve always been a bit of a whirlwind. One of those people with 47 tabs open in her brain at any given moment. I loved being busy, getting shit done, saying yes and making things happen.
I was running a business, raising four children, travelling, working and generally behaving as though I had a secret battery pack hidden up my arse. I was pretty good at spinning plates. The problem was, I had no idea how many were about to come crashing down.
In 2022, I was in New York on a work trip when I went into cardiac arrest. I basically dropped dead. By some extraordinary twist of fate, three doctors happened to be in the same restaurant and kept me alive until the ambulance arrived. Eight days in intensive care later, and against odds of about 96:4, I survived.
When you come that close to dying, you see life differently. I had four children and a husband I adore, and I’d come within moments of leaving them behind. Lying in that ICU bed, I started questioning the relentless pace I’d accepted as normal. I’d become very good at being busy. But had I become so focused on getting through life that I’d forgotten to actually live it?
So I wrote something. Nothing polished. Just a simple message: stop for a minute, look at your life, think about what really matters. And then four words: Slow the fuck down.
The replies came flooding in. “This is me.” People were exhausted, overworked and missing the things that mattered most. That’s when I realised this wasn’t just my story. It was all of ours.
And that’s how Slow the F*ck Down began — a movement that’s grown into a keynote, a podcast and a bigger conversation about how we want to spend the time we’ve got.
Now, through Glow London, we take that conversation into businesses, helping them glow from the inside out — creating healthier, more energised, more human workplaces where people can do brilliant things without burning themselves into the ground.
I’m still a whirlwind. But I know now that slowing down isn’t about doing less. It’s about being more intentional with your time, energy and attention.
Because you don’t get a prize for being the busiest person in the room.