Simple is Mighty: 3 Practical Steps to Simplify Your Life
A few weeks ago, we nearly got a dog. Buddy - a tiny, fluffy, red pup with huge blue eyes and curly hair - attached himself to us, and we were instantly goners. We already knew that this would happen: I doubt anyone’s ever walked away from a puppy thinking they aren’t ridiculously cute. Soon enough though, (after the deposit was paid, annoyingly) the plan came crumbling down. We knew puppies were hard work, but speaking to the dog’s owner about the details helped us to see and understand just how much. Our images of playing with a dog that wants cuddles all day didn’t include the reality of 24-hour care, including multiple night wake ups, constant training and 5am rises.
‘Count your blessings’ is a worn-out phrase, but its meaning never gets old. The ‘puppy incident’ helped us step back, see what we actually have space for and what we already have that we could appreciate more. With 3 kids and work balanced around childcare, my husband and I are pushing full capacity as it is. Buddy the pup brought a life lesson that’s rippling weeks later – the difference between what we think we want and what we actually need. Rather than throwing ourselves into puppy chaos, we actually needed to simplify – and in the process, we’ve gained much more space, peace and gratitude.
So - how do we reap the benefits of simplicity? Today I’m sharing a practical, 3-step process to help bring more peace and ease into daily life. These steps invite you to pick up a pen and paper and do some self-reflection, so if you have time for that now, go ahead. Or, you might want to read over it first, and then come back and do it more fully.
Step 1: Take Stock
‘Taking stock’ doesn’t sound very sexy – but it’s incredibly useful when it comes to simplifying. Unless we can see our lives clearly as they are, it’s hard to see how to simplify them. In my daily teaching, I so often see the myth of ‘doing it all’ at play in our lives: the idea that if it’s possible to achieve something in a day, we should strive to achieve it. In our high-producing culture, we often need to look at whose yardstick we’re using when it comes to what we actually want from life – and what success means to us. To maintain our sanity and simplicity, we often have to give up on perfection along the way.
There are three main ways I recommend to take stock:
1. Taking stock of the detail
2. Taking stock of the overview
3. Taking stock of your values
1. The Detail
When it comes to the details of day-to-day life, what most drains your time and energy? This could be small things – for example, clunky tech or clutter in the house, constant meetings at work, feeling like we simply have no time for ourselves.
It’s important to also take note of the way you generally feel day to day; are you feeling time-starved or like you’re running around feeling stressed more often than not? Do you have times when you feel more mellow, calm, peaceful? What helps with that?
Take some time to make a list of the daily details: the things that most drain your energy and time.
Now take some time to make a list of the activities or experiences that fill you up: the things that most refill your tank and make you feel more energised.
2. The Overview
In terms of the bigger picture, what does the ‘overview’ look like - your life goals, where you’re heading, what you want to experience more or move towards. This could be the milestones you want to experience in the future as well as what life will look and feel like on the way – e.g. travelling, having new experiences, doing a particular job.
Take some time to make some notes on the overview – what do you see when you vision into the future?
3. Values
Taking stock is most powerful when you can review your values. This is about having a strong awareness of what’s most important to you and what you value the most - e.g. what brings you happiness, rest, passion, joy, a feeling of abundance. You can type ‘values list’ into a search engine and see what jumps out at you most to help with this. Your values might include family, friends, fitness and wellbeing, integrity, honesty, connection; these values will be as unique as you are.
Make a list of your top 10 values – what are the things you most value in life?
Step 2: Streamlining
Based on what you have identified from the ‘Take Stock’ section, maybe you have already identified something you’re ready to release from your life, get support with, or experience more often. Some of these findings might be immediate changes you can make - and they can be big or small.
For example – is there anything you are currently doing regularly (likely as a habit) that doesn’t contribute at all to the bigger picture? Can you streamline or release it? Ideally, any changes we make will leave us with some more time to rest and reflect – even if for 5-10 minute a day. Research shows that these small windows of rest have a huge impact on our wellbeing and balancing out our nervous systems, leading to feeling more peaceful and calm every day.
Some ideas here could be:
deleting an app you spend ages scrolling on that doesn’t give you anything
taking more breaks during the day
occasional support with cleaning or laundry to lighten the load
having food delivered rather than going to the shop
occasionally getting a (healthy) takeaway
adding a short mindfulness exercise to your day – e.g. the 1 minute grab (taking 1 minute to focus on your breathing at the start or end of the day, or anytime)
childcare support – potentially doing a swap with friends every week
introducing more physical exercise into your week
thinking about creative ways to restructure your working day/exploring flexitime options at work
If you feel it would be useful to do an exercise to better understand what’s currently holding you back and how to release it, you might find this visualisation helpful.
Step 3: Giving Gratitude
Taking stock and streamlining are boosted even further when we regularly give gratitude. I’ll be honest; I spent a long time thinking gratitude was the territory of greetings cards, gimmicky jingles and advertising campaigns. However, the science is conclusive: giving gratitude for 3 things a day increases our wellbeing, not just in the moment but months and even years down the line. While our brains like to focus on negativity (a throwback from our early survival story as humans) gratitude rewires our brain towards the positive. Giving gratitude regularly swerves our mindset in transformative ways - it’s even been found to change our physiology and cell structure too. Gratitude helps us cut through the bumph of daily life that can so easily get in the way of feeling clear and happy: we refocus our energy, become less scattered and remember what really matters, gaining back perspective.
Take some time to note down 3 things you’re grateful for today, right now. If you can, put them somewhere you can see them for the rest of the day.
Having a daily gratitude practice – ideally in a journal – can help us switch from feeling life is too full, busy and overwhelming to being able to simplify, ground and look around at what we can give thanks for.
So, with gratitude in mind, rather than sharing a YouTube video this month, I’m challenging myself to do a daily gratitude practice for the rest of September on my social media. I would love to invite you to join the challenge over on my Instagram - it’s going to be a good one ;)
Here’s to a Simple, Grateful September.
