Intro: Why Simplicity is the Best Way to Enrich Your Life
The reasons to choose a more simple life, from the heart
Post 1 of 31 in the BYOB challenge
“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” -Henry David Thoreau
My world was spinning out of control. It was unhealthy, 60 hours a week between two jobs, no time for my family, falling asleep anytime I tried to spend time with my significant other. Studying was hard. Thankfully, I was just out of college, so I wasn’t being graded but studying has always been important to me.
Every day people would ask me when I was going to work on x. I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t making time for myself and I was past burnout. Adding anything to my list sounded too complicated. Something as easy as “go to the store and buy milk” sounded like a big and daunting task. I needed a change.
We live in a society where everything screams at us “this is imporant”. We juggle multiple hats- job/hustle/son or daughter/significant other/parent/committee member, etc.
So how do we find peace? How do we finally decide to pump the breaks and say enough is enough?
It starts with a careful evaluation. What is most important? How do we manage our time to get the most out of our days? Where do we need to trim the fat of committments and where do we even know where to start with cutting down?
By learning how to restructure our days, our habits, being mindful and choosing small, we begin to uncover what really matters. We begin to simplify our lives.
Simplicity is key because it will slow us down and allows us to make changes to enrich our lives. We find that we have more time when we focus on what is most important.
What I won’t cover in this book?
- Downsizing in detail
- Tell you how to change your space for better results
- tell you which clothes to choose and setting up a capsule wardrobe.
- Talk about consumerism and how to limit it’s influence in your life.
There are a lot of resources that cover these topics in much more detail than I would choose to. I’ll be leaving that to them.
I wanted to pick up the discussion outside of those topics. To talk about tangible changes that can be made for more simplicity.
By nature, I’m a self development and self care writer. That’s the angle I’ll be taking while writing this book
What do I seek to accomplish?
I want to convince you that simplifying is key to better living. However, for the most part I want to talk about simplifying as it relates to the aspect of self care. Once you make the decision to simplify things in your own personal universe, you will become better at affecting those around you.
I want to convince you why taking time and choosing small is better. Small changes add a lot of calm and takes away a lot of the stress that we feel on a daily basis.
I want to go into mindfulness- why it’s important to focus and protect our energy. I want to discuss methods of how to center and how to leave off some of the fluff.
I want to cover habits. How they fuel us and take us more easily from day to day. I’ll be discussing routines, planning, and how to stack habits to get more done.
Finally, I’ll be talking a little bit about going beyond: this is where I’ll allow time to go over a few bigger aspects. This is where I’ll talk about those topics in minimalism- Yearly goals (determining what is important), and a few basics that will cover space and how to craft your own simplicity mission statement.
Ready to uncover 30 ways to simplify your life?
