10 Ways to Simplify Your Life
by Randin Brons, Ph.D., C.M.H., M.S.L.C.
These days, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by an overly complicated life. If you’re looking for ways to gain control over your life or your current situation, consider simplifying.
Simplifying your life can mean cutting unnecessary to-do list items, eliminating clutter from your home, fine-tuning your priorities, or otherwise gaining perspective on what truly matters to you.
You can use these strategies to simplify your life, beginning today:
1. Identify what’s most important to you and then get rid of everything else. Know what really matters the most to you. Things that don’t matter are simply wasting your time and energy, so purge them as soon as you can.
2. Make a list of the top 4-5 priorities in your life. Keep this list with you all the time so you always remember what counts the most. Put a copy on your bathroom mirror, another above your bed, and keep one in your wallet for good measure.
3. Evaluate your current commitments. Look at absolutely everything going on in your life right now. Which of these commitments actually deliver value or joy? Which are in line with the 4-5 priorities you listed in the previous step? Eliminate everything else.
4. Assess how you spend your time. How are you spending your time? Make a list of everything you do in a day and compare that to your list of priorities. What can you eliminate?
5. Simplify your work tasks. Rather than trying to knock off every single task on your to-do list, focus on only the most essential tasks and then find ways to eliminate all the others. To do this, you can try delegation, outsourcing, moving them to other days or simply dropping them.
6. Simplify your home tasks. Repeat the above process with your home tasks, removing the things that you’re not reasonably going to accomplish in a day. Simplify your list of home tasks by automating, delegating, outsourcing and removing anything that doesn’t fall in line with what’s most important.
7. Learn to say no. When you learn to say no, you’ll begin to take on only as much as you can handle. Then you can give your attention to the tasks that matter the most.
8. Limit your consumption of media. The abundance of media available today can overwhelm nearly every second of our lives. Try to simplify your own life by limiting media and information consumption whenever possible.
9. Be selective with your methods of communication. Designate certain times for communication by only e-mailing at certain points in the day, only using the phone during certain hours, only chatting via IM in your off-hours and so on. Limit the ways that you communicate throughout the day to prevent communication from overwhelming you or your day.
10. Purge unnecessary stuff. Devote one weekend every month to getting rid of absolutely anything that you don’t want or need in your life. Removing everything that doesn’t really matter can be therapeutic and cathartic. Purging your home and your life once monthly is a really beneficial process to your overall health and well being.
This is only a small sampling of the things that you can do in order to simplify your life. Consider this to be a foundation, though, that will guide you to find new and interesting ways to create a simple life. With just a little conscious effort, you can achieve simplicity in all aspects of your life.
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Creating Avenues
by Daris Reno Blickman, M.L.C.
Today’s economy has changed many lives, these changes have brought about difficult life experiences for many. Employment has changed, jobs lost, companies have shut their doors, libraries closing their doors and schools losing their funding sources. Corporations have lumped two jobs into one employees position, thus eliminating jobs and cutting their wage cost. Unfortunately this is added stress upon the employee creating exhaustion in our work force and family life at home leaving many of us wondering what should we be doing.
This past week I participated in a lecture at my son’s non traditional school. It is a great place for young teens and young adults who want to embrace being an individual in today’s society. It was so telling to see their faces, like sponges soaking up our words, listening to their ideas on many subjects. Many were bright students but not fitting in with the traditional public schools and their style of teaching. I looked out at the crowd in front of me and realized what a gift I had just been given. I had just figured out what was standing before me.
These students were asking, how do I find my interest, my passion and where is my path from here? What if I am different then what the traditional employers want? Are our paths all the same? I took a quick review of my own path in life and said , No, we are all unique and should embrace our individuality. In saying such I decided that Creating Avenues for ourselves must begin. These children are not our future, they are our Today, our Now. So I began to speak about creating our path, our journey. We own our paths, others do not, We have the right to create much of our path, sometimes we give this power to others for various reasons.
During the discussion we came to the conclusion that in today’s world, we need to create our place, our jobs and our connection to the community. Not everything needs to be traditional, in fact, creativity is more alive and well today then ever before. So if you look around and see that the jobs are limited, do not give up. Explore, find what you are good at, see if your passion in art, music, helping others, socializing, can become your career, part of your path.
These days more then ever, we need to step outside of the box, maybe even run around it a little bit, pick up some speed and find our way, just like our fathers, grandparents did many years ago. Maybe we can be inspired by our today’s children, to seek instead of waiting, to create instead of being created by others and find our passion, our path. Networking with others can also be a powerful tool and will create new avenues. After all, some knowledge, a lot of creativity and a whole bunch of motivation can take you a long way in life. Let’s aspire to be inspired together!
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About the Author: Ms. Daris Reno Blicknan, M.S.L.C., is a Certified LIFE Coach and Master SPIRIT LIFE Coach. Daris is currently working with several Non Profits in the areas of disabilities, at risk teens and domestic violence issues. Daris is also a member of the Cherokee’s of Alabama and is involved with Public Relations work for the tribe. You can contact the author through our corporate email: rhema-int@shaw.ca.
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