I’m currently trying to embrace a movement that is all about living a ‘Soft Life’. You may have heard of this as one of the latest trends on social media. Or perhaps you have even heard of its counterpart ‘Slow Living’, something I have also tried to incorporate into my life this year. We can see similar pushback in trends such as ‘Quiet Quitting’ which saw people doing the bare minimum at work, their job description and nothing more.
The Soft Life movement originated in the Nigerian influencer community, where Black women rejected ‘strength’ as being their sole identity. Being ‘strong’ is a stereotype that is often placed on Black women. The purpose is to reject struggle, limit stress, putting yourself first and embracing joy and happiness.
What is a ‘Soft Life’?
A soft life consists of taking care of yourself and your mental wellbeing. This can manifest in creating realistic boundaries for yourself and indulging in everyday self-care, although if you take it solely from social media it looks more like luxurious travel and frequent fine dining. Living a soft life means limiting stress in your life (although it’s unrealistic to attempt to eliminate it completely), limiting how much you spread yourself to avoid spreading yourself too thin, and generally engaging in healthier routines. Soft living is learning to say ‘no’ when you don’t want to do something but feel obliged just to please others; instead put yourself first. You may lose people by setting boundaries, but, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that you don’t want to surround yourself with people who don’t respect those boundaries and want you only on their terms.
Where once ‘Girlboss’ era ruled, with the trend encouraging women to embrace hustle culture and the grind all in the effort of reaching the very heights of their careers, entering one’s ‘Soft Life’ is the opposite. I think this shift has a lot to do with the Covid-19 pandemic during which people reexamined what in their lives held the most importance, reconsidering what ‘success’ looked like for them.
While this trend is predominantly aimed at and for women, particularly Black women, men have been leaning into a soft life too. This pushback against hustle culture, with working twelve hour days, eating lunch at the desk and always being ‘on’ is felt by increasing amounts of people.
Why Should You Embrace a ‘Soft Life’?
For people like me, the answer is a no brainer. If anything, I’d probably ask why haven’t you embraced a soft life? With hustle culture, while your bank balance may reap the rewards for your efforts, you find you never have the time to actually enjoy those rewards. Of course, for some women and men the grind is fine (some even thrive) but for others (including myself) that culture of working is a hard ‘no’.
Of course, we live in a world where bills have to be paid. We can’t all just quit our jobs and live our best lives. But soft living is about frequently doing the things that make you happy. If quitting a job you don’t like isn’t an option, are there parts of the job that you enjoy? If there are, can you lean into them more? Or maybe you have tasks that need to be dealt with regularly. Is it possible to delegate those jobs elsewhere and ease the burden off of yourself?
Soft living means living a life of enjoyment, limiting stress and setting boundaries. And for that, I’m firmly leaning into this trend.
