One of the most beautiful and enlightening lessons that I’ve learned in life is about simplifying life. I’ve learned to keep activities at a manageable pace so that I can still enjoy life and the journey of life, as I accomplish goals and do activities.
I remember when I began to learn this lesson about simplifying my life, I was at University. I loved to learn and I loved to learn about a variety of topics. Often when I would sign up for my class schedule each semester I would sign up for an extra class, one more than I should have taken, or I would audit classes just to get something extra to learn about our world. However, what would happen is that a few weeks into the semester I get overwhelmed and decided that ‘this was just too much.’ I would stop that extra activity or class I took shortly after, so that I could go back to a manageable schedule. This was something healthy for me that I learned; just to stop and make sure that my life was manageable. Throughout my life this lesson keeps coming back to me and it’s an important lesson to learn: to simplify.
When I had my kids and they were younger, even though I really liked working with the media and with being involved with teaching people around the world, I stopped all of that extra activity for several years. Instead I was involved with raising my young children. Even more recently I was producing a show called The Holistic Success Show. It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work. What had happened was that even though the show was doing well and we were able to meet some wonderful people and teach people around the world, I was having trouble managing everything. I was in the show, I was finding the guests for the show, and I was producing the show. What I really needed was help in finding people to sponsor the show. I was able to get sponsors for the show but based entirely on my efforts, with nobody else helping me in that area. I realized that with everything else I was doing, it was just too much. I tried about seven different people who could do what I was doing, trying to help find sponsors for the show, but not one of them could really help me with it successfully. So, in the efforts of everything I was doing I decided that my plate was too full to both produce and be part of a show, so I stopped it. I simplified my life.
Simplification is really an important lesson to learn as we go through life; because life will throw us many things that can overwhelm us, wear us down, and exhaust us. So we need to learn three important lessons in order to keep our lives simple and be happy. When we get overwhelmed it is very challenging to be happy. Since we’re exploring the world of happiness here, let’s look at these three lessons about how we can keep our lives manageable and happy.
If you agree that simplification and keeping our lives from becoming too overwhelming is important, then the first thing is that we have to get good at two letters of the alphabet. “N” and “O” – NO. Because as we progress in life, what will happen is that as we become good at doing things, meeting others, and being involved in life we will be addressed with having others asking us to participate, to help, to do things with them, for them or for their cause. What’s important is not to do too many things; not to become overwhelmed, or that overwhelmed feeling will begin to attack us and bring us down. So it is important that we understand we may have to say “no” to things, even good things, in order to keep from being overwhelmed.
When I was in graduate school I really loved those extra classes I signed up for, but I needed to say no to them so that I had time to keep my life healthy. Similarly, with my Holistic Success Show it was a lot of fun and it helped people all over the world. However, it was time to stop the show because with my own personal work as a psychologist, producing the show, and being in the show, plus getting guests and sponsors, it was just too much. It was overwhelming. It was time to say no and to move on to new things as they came up; making my life manageable.
Sometimes it can be hard to say no, sometimes we have to say no to good things, sometimes we have to say no to peer pressure or the pressure from other people and the thought that we “should do these things”, but we know if we do these things we will become overwhelmed. These things we feel we “should” do can take away from the time we need to do other things in our life that are healthy for us. For example, if you’re good at your work and people really like you then you get “more opportunities” to do more of what you are good at; however, that’s going to be at the expense of your own self-care, your family life, and the things that are important to being healthy. So, you have to say no to things, even good things. You need to ensure that there is time to metaphorically “stop and smell the roses” because we need those times just to be present in the moment. It is important to realize that even though there are great opportunities there for us, sometimes we simply must say “NO” to them.
The second lesson is that we have to be careful in keeping our lives healthy and happy when trying to “keep up with everybody else.” So many people are just too busy; they’re going all the time at a fanatic pace until they are exhausted, and if we try to keep up with these people we’re also going to become exhausted. We all know someone in our lives like this and we simply cannot try to keep up with them for the sake of keeping up with them, because eventually they will crash at that pace and it’s not good for them. We have to live our lives at a healthy pace for us. So it’s important for us to perhaps say “Yes I see that so-and-so is doing so much more than I am doing” but we also have to realize that their pace is not healthy for them and that we must do what is right for us and in doing so be able to say “No” when we need to. We need to choose the things that are important for us: going on a date with our significant other, going to the gym for ourselves, spending time with our children, or whatever it may be. If we try to keep up with what everyone else is doing we’re going to get exhausted. We can work really hard, but at the same time make sure that there is time for the things that are important to us. Sometimes those things are the simple things like watching the sun set, going for a walk, or exercising.
Keeping up with others can even have a financial consequence to it. We want to have a nice house like our cousin, we want to drive a nice car like our neighbor, and so we buy all these nice things only to be forced to work maybe a second job or longer hours at our job. In the end we are giving up our true happiness for the sake of “keeping up with others” once again; so it’s not always actions but it can even be materialistic things that force the lifestyle that makes us unhappy. The beautiful thing about not trying to keep up with others but doing what is manageable for others is that we can then keep our lives simple and do the things that are healthy for us. So keeping up with others can be very costly and hurtful. It’s best to say “maybe I need more sleep, maybe I just need more time to be with nature, I may not even know exactly what it is but I do know that I need this down time and I’m going to make sure I have it.” The way to make sure we have that down time is to make sure we are not too busy. You have to say “no” to things, even things that may have consequences, such as causing people to look down upon us and judge us. We have to understand not to judge them for doing what we feel is “too much”; we have to understand that their judgment of us is unimportant to us and what matters is our own happiness and not worrying about what they think.
The third thing, and perhaps the most important thing that we can do to keep our lives healthy, happy, and not overwhelmed, is to plan for it. What I do and what I encourage others to do is to plan what is important to me. This includes exercise, being in nature, having time to eat well, spending time with my loved ones, doing things that I enjoy and that are good for the soul. I make sure that those things come first and then I say, “What’s left?” and I fill in the blank with those things in life that I need to do that are left. I don’t first say that I’m going to do the things that I need to do and then if I have time I’ll exercise or spend time with my loved ones, etc. I say, “I need to be in nature every day. I need to make sure that my body gets exercise every day, I need to meditate every day.” And after I do these things, then I make time for what’s left and fill that time in. Now, this way of life does have consequences, of course. When we make time to keep our lives healthy, to keep our lives in a good place, it may mean that we don’t make as much in our jobs; it may mean that we don’t accomplish as much; it may mean that others may even disapprove of our lifestyle or behavior. However, if we are happy, if we are healthy, isn’t that perhaps more important than getting the approval of others? Isn’t that more important than having a nicer car than other people or nicer ‘things’ than others? Isn’t it perhaps more important to be happy? If we plan for the things that we know are critical for us to make our lives flow well and make time for those things first only to then fill in everything else, life will flow beautifully.
Now mind you, right now this may sound incredibly daunting and overwhelming. You may not be able to even remotely clear everything out of your life overnight; but, when we start making efforts in that direction and we ask ourselves, “Do I really have to do this? Can I let this one go?” and we start making small improvements, we begin to simplify. We simplify our lives to take time to go for walks, so that we have time to listen to the birds singing in the trees. By doing these things, we are going to find that with time this is going to be a wonderful experience and we are going to want more of it. We are going to do more things to make sure that these things can happen. Again, it’s important not to judge ourselves when our lives are so full that we may not even have the time to go for a walk. However, if we say “hey, perhaps I can miss this event… perhaps I can let this new project I’m working on go… perhaps I can let my husband go to this game and I’ll go to the gym for me and next time I’ll go to the game and he can have time for himself”. When we start working on making these items important, what will happen is things will just start happening that are good for us. We’ll find that we really do well when our lives are pretty simple, not too overwhelmed, and we enjoy life as well as the journey of life. We’re not waiting for “Someday” as we put off all of the things we truly love in life; but instead we enjoy life now.
It’s important to enjoy life now. That’s why I think taking these three steps to making things simplified in our lives is important. Saying “no” to things, not worrying about what other people think, and making time for the things that are good for us first: these three things can help us to improve our lives and keep them simple so that we can have beautiful lives.
