Do you wish your life was simpler? Here’s what you need to know:
Most of us have been taught that we have to push ourselves in order to be able to achieve anything significant.
The old saying: ‘No pain – no gain’ has morphed into ‘No stress – no success’.
We’re driven to achieve, to succeed quickly and in a way that is highly visible, so that we can provide social ‘proof’ of our success.
We’re caught in a highly demanding way of living – one where we respond to demands from all corners of life at the same time.
Our ability to juggle competing deadlines with family, friends, charity and community has become the yardstick by which we measure our success.
And we have to do it all while being manipulated and having our trigger points hit constantly with the marketing messages that invade our space 24/7.
It’s confusing. It’s stressful. It’s overwhelming and it’s completely exhausting.
I know this, because it was my way of life until it broke me.
I used all my energy ticking the boxes I was conditioned to believe I needed to tick.
I studied the ‘right’ courses, got the ‘right’ degree, stepped into an ‘acceptable’ career, dressed ‘appropriately’, always had my hair done ‘properly’, had the ‘right’ jobs on my resume, and achieved far too much at far too young an age.
I kept going until I had nothing left to give – and then I found a way to give more.
And then, in less than 60 seconds, I fell. I shattered into a million pieces and I was broken.
Sheer will had kept me going, long after anyone should have been able to stand.
Suddenly, I was faced with asking myself the question: ‘What if there’s a better way to live?’
Simplicity was my answer.
Working out what’s important to you doesn’t take long.
Things mean something to you, or they don’t. When you give something your attention, it often becomes easier to see what has been right in front of you for a long time. It’s not unusual for most of us to find that the things that are most important to us are sadly lacking in our lives. Instead, we’ve somehow found a way to enmesh ourselves in things that keep us disconnected from who we really are.
In fact, we’re brilliant at chasing after the things that others tell us we have to do. So much so that when we experience a situation where something we really wanted comes to us really easily, we believe that it must be ‘too good to be true’.
This belief is so ingrained that most of us will find a way to make the situation harder, not believing that it could actually have been that easy.
We’ve been taught that ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’ and that ‘you have to work hard for everything you want’. It is this conditioning that makes it harder for us to accept the ease and the grace when it appears effortlessly in our lives.
The simplest path is always your best answer.
Change is only difficult because we’ve been taught that it should be that way.
The truth is that life can be simple without having to deprive yourself, become a minimalist or stop doing things you love to do. Living a simple life is as easy as taking some time to work out what’s important to you – and understand WHY it’s important to you – and then use that information to step forwards in the simplest possible way.
Start by asking yourself the following questions:
- What are the three things that are the most important to you?
- Do you have them in your life right now?
- What simple step can you take right now to start to give yourself one of these things?
Life doesn’t have to be any more complex than that.
You have all the answers you need.
The above questions are so simple that you didn’t need to ask anyone their opinion on the answers – you knew them off the top of your head.
All the information you need is inside you. You just need to take a little time to learn how to reconnect with that information and trust it to show you the way.
A simple life is waiting for you. It’s as easy as starting with the three simple questions above and then using the answers to help form your steps forward in a different way.
Adopting simplicity means you’ll be recharged every day. You’ll lose the desperation for an escape from your life and you’ll easily focus on tailor-making the world that is perfect for you.
Will you give yourself a chance to experience a simple way of life?
If you want to some help in finding new ways to understand how simplicity can help you, you can access tips in the articles and videos in my FREE email series – it’s a great way to help you begin your journey. Simply click here to start you on your way.
Bronwen Sciortino is a Simplicity Expert, an internationally renowned author and professional speaker and. You can follow her at her website; Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
This article was first published on Arna Online in November 2o20. You can read the article by clicking here.
