First Steps to Simple Living — Do This First!

When we hear about simple living it’s such an alluring and yet intimidating prospect. How can we possibly simplify our frenzied lives? Before we can do so, we must take some initial steps to find out where and how to begin.

photo credit: funadium

I’ve been thinking a lot about simple living, and I’m about to unveil a new mission statement that truly brings together all my thoughts and values and plans for the blawg. But simultaneous to my meanderings on simple living, I’ve also been posting a lot about DIY methods, home cooking, and starting a meditation practice — all time consuming things! If simple living is all about simplifying, is it truly possible to do all these time-intensive tasks and still “be simple”?

One of my readers posed exactly this question on my earlier post about DIY and empowerment. Sarah pointed out:

Working full time and an opposite shift from my partner really puts a damper on my mindset when it comes to these things though. Sometimes it takes every ounce of my energy to pick up my CSA and prep all that (steam, boil, spin, etc.) for the week. Any suggestions on making such things less intimidating to the time-crunched novice?

This is such a familiar lament for us moms!

Setting Priorities

In order to rise to Sarah’s question, I realized I needed to consider my own weaknesses regarding simplifying. It’s a common one: with the plethora of books, blogs, information and inspiration out there it’s easy to want to do it all as a part of our grand project to be the best we can be.

For me, that has admittedly meant more stress in my life than I would like, lately. In fact, it was the main reason I decided to go ahead and slow my posts for one month as I focused on some of the behind the scenes issues I was having with blogging.

But before I could make a decision like that, what I had to do was take a moment to really listen to myself, and set some priorities. Simplifying your life, reducing your stress and feeling full and enriched about what you do with your time is not about being fan-tabulous and impressive to all, it’s about choosing what’s important to you and willfully saying no to what’s not!

Although I’ve already made quite a few sacrifices to get closer to finding my true self, I realized upon reading Sarah’s response that it was a good time to do some reflection. So I created an exercise that would help me and others to begin a path to setting priorities by first examining what is truly personally important and in need of attention.

Getting Started with Simple Living: An Exercise

The goal of this exercise is to establish an awareness of where you’re at, so that any further efforts toward simplification will set you on the right path. It’s far too easy to get distracted by fighting fires, taking up the “squeaky wheel,” or following someone else’s dream.

This exercise will hopefully help you to set some priorities that relate to you alone.

1. To do this activity, choose a good hour when you will be interrupted. Turn off the phone and anything that beeps or buzzes, put the kids to sleep and arrange for someone else to check on them for an hour.
2. Grab a raisin or a piece of fruit, take it with you or toss it in your pocket. (Bear with me, all will make sense in the end!)
3. Then take a 5 minutes just to get relaxed. Do whatever works for you — walk around the yard, do some stretches, or just lay on your back and stare at the ceiling. (Not on your bed! Don’t fall asleep!)
4. Now take some time to just focus on the raisin or piece of fruit that you brought with you. The goal here is to get your mind off any current issues or problems and bring yourself into the here and now. Take a look really close at this object in your hand and see it like you’ve never seen it before. Notice the textures and color variations that only appear when you look closely. Notice its smell. Now take a bite. Feel whether it’s easy or difficult to chew and appreciate every taste sensation. Appreciate the minute details of every flavor and every sensation as you chew and finally swallow, and feel that too!
5. Set your fruit aside and close your eyes. Feel the weight of your shoulders and allow them to slump down a bit (comfortably). Totally relax and feel all the tension move out of your upper back, shoulders and arms straight down into the floor with the heavy weight of your arms.
6. Now ask yourself: What’s hurting me now? Just listen and accept the first thing that pops into your head.
7. Next ask: What’s important to me? Once again just listen for an answer.
8. Finally ask: What do I need to feel proud of myself?
9. Take mental note of your answers to these three questions and just let yourself breathe for a few minutes. When you’re ready, get up and write them down.

That’s it! Not too, too trippy dippy was it?

Going From Here

What you’ve learned will most likely be a combination of things you already knew with some surprises. You may learn that something was bothering you more than you realized. Or that the thing you truly want is easier to achieve than you thought.

What you’ve discovered will become a guide to what you should trim from your life as you simplify, a target area of your life to spend more time in, or a red flag on an issue to be resolved before you even take up the cause of simplification.

For example, if you find that what’s hurting you is a relationship issue, you may need to give that your full attention now rather than splitting your efforts between work at simplification and work at communication and relationship. A good resource in this regard is Nonviolent Communication (aff) by Marshall Rosenberg.

If money is an issue, then you might place an emphasis on frugal DIY projects and thrift shopping that help save money and reduce stress. These can also serve as great opportunities for social time when done with kids or good friends and family. The book Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (aff) was written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, simple living gurus who successfully lived on $500/month for years. When I first read their book it changed my whole outlook on what it means to trade my time for money! Although I don’t currently follow their money-management strategies now, my current successful budgeting system owes a lot to their book.

If money doesn’t crop up in your exercise but time or stress does, you’re probably better off putting aside any efforts at DIY, frugal shopping or de-cluttering and put the bulk of your efforts for into gaining more time. It’s impossible to do anything well when you’re stressed out, and your health suffers dramatically when you’re stressed — losing you more time and making you more stressed out!

Just remember that saving time is not just about efficiency — in fact that’s probably the least effective approach. To truly save time in your daily life you must cut things out. This is such a challenge for me, but as time wears on I’ve gotten better at it in the same way that you get better at riding a bike the more you fall down!

If you’re still not sure what to cut out from your life, try this exercise again (as many times as you need to!), and feel free to use other relaxation and mindfulness techniques before you ask yourself the three questions. The raisin exercise I used above comes from the book Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (aff) by Jon Kabat-Zinn (aff), author of several other books on mindfulness and mindful parenting.

Simplicity: Steps Toward Less

In a response to a post on BlogHer recently, I wrote the following words, which somehow continue to ring in my mind:

Be humble, love yourself, lower your standards.

In our fast-paced achievement-driven society, “lowering standards” is usually seen as a bad word. “Standards of excellence” is what we are all about in America. If we are to be truly happy, however, it is my belief that what needs to be raised is our level of well-being, not our level of “excellence” according to some objective judge that doesn’t truly exist.

Good luck to you in setting the kind of priorities that matter to you, and moving with me toward a simpler, more fulfilling life.

Love,

Mama Hope