How To Simplify Your Life

I was at the supermarket this morning and I was speaking to my bread guy, Bruce. Bruce is great. He is probably in his 60’s and does yoga outside, he knows about earthing and even has earthing mats for his bed.

When I went to grab the bread I wanted I had a sudden indecisive moment where I looked at the bread and didn’t recognise it. Was this the bread I usually bought? He tried to steer me in the direction of  another brand and I said, “Oh no, I need this brand, the rest have preservatives.”

He said, “How do you know?”

I said, “Because they have numbers on the ingredients list and this brand doesn’t.”

He said, “I have the book. Do you have the preservatives book?”

I said no I don’t need the book. He was shocked, “But then how do you know?”

Because to simplify my life I don’t need to categorize preservatives or look them up in the book, what I do is just don’t buy items with numbers in the ingredients.

Simple.

If you go to buy a lasagna in the supermarket, all you need to do is compare brands just once to see that some have ingredients that you assume it would have in there, flour, eggs, mince etc and some have that and a whole lot more stuff with a list of numbers in brackets. Just don’t buy that one.

This year has been a bit of a dream run for me. We are in the new house which is totally designed to let the kids run around, we can walk the kids to school, we have a park close by and I keep Mondays free.

Because Monday’s are my reset days. I’m not trying to do activities. I have enjoyed the weekend and now I can prepare for the week. Today I will be washing clothes, cleaning floors and tidying up the house but I kind of love it because I have made space for it in my life.

I can grocery shop a little bit, if I want to, snooze, write, study, meditate, read. Mondays are beautiful. The boys have yoga in the afternoon and when I drop them i can pop into the shops for anything else I need.

Simple.

My boys aren’t doing swimming again until the next summer term because when things are hard, life is hard. So even though I got lessons at the same time and Elijah liked having his own swim. I found that getting three boys out of the pool, dressed and dried at the same time too hard, plus we got home late and then dinner had to be made and kids needed to be bathed as they were freezing. I had started to dread Tuesdays.

Maybe you say, suck it up that’s the way life is.

Or maybe you say, its my life and my choices and if you can make your life beautiful by simplifying then you should do it. 

Do you see empty space and fill up the calendar? I don’t. I need that blank space to embrace the opportunities that life is going to give me this week. Maybe a beautiful spontaneous playdate, time to do my assignment, practice my presentation, give thought and time to any activities we might undertake.

Because when I say yes, I really want to do them. I am committed and present and I show up as my best self.

So to simplify you need to:

Look at where your life is easy : What do you love doing? When does life flow effortlessly for you?

What do you not like doing? What makes life hard? Can you simplify it?

For example if you really don’t like cooking then don’t put pressure on yourself to make really complicated meals. Sometimes an omlette is perfection! With a little cucumber, tomato and cubed cheese on the side its a whole meal. Steak and a salad or steamed veges.

Life is for living.

You make your own choices. You are that powerful.

Use your power wisely.