Check Out 5 Easy Ways to Simplify Your Life
5 Easy Ways You Can Simplify Your Life
Coaching Question:Are you hijacked these days by the hustle? How do you know you’re hijacked? …the things you value most begin to take a backseat.
What’s the upside for you when it comes to the hustle in life? What do you get from that? A sense of purpose? Significance? “When I’m hustling about, I feel important, I’m busy getting things done” …so that? “So that I’ll be able to do I really want to do: exercise, meditate, get a good night of sleep, read a book, spend time with the people I love and care about, get outside, enjoy the moments.” The problem with connecting your hustle to your desire to do what you really want to do is that too often than not, you never get there. Hustle gets replaced with more hustle. Your identity gets hijacked by your to-do list.
“When I am what I do, when I don’t, I’m not.”
– Wayne Dyer
You are the gatekeeper when it comes to halting the hustle behaviors that are robbing you of simplicity which gives room for authentic joy and refreshment. Stop it.
When the doctors told me they were trying to get me 5 more years of life at 38 years old with 3 young children, the hustle was halted for me, my business, my life being important, my full calendar of essential to do items and meeting…all of it came to a screeching halt. I was forced to stop and in the midst of it all, something magical started to happen, the wonderment of life started to sprout through the concrete of what I thought was essential and important in life.
Don’t wait until your life is halted for you before you choose to step in and resurrect the simplicity of enjoying the moment of life in front of your face.
There is no moment of life that occurs outside the present moment.
As soon as we start to think outside of the moment at hand, we lose something very essential to our sense of wonderment: the sweet spot of our next breath which activates the part of our brain that triggers creative solutions. Stress goes down quickly when the mind is fully present to the task at hand. Jesus taught us to embrace the present moment when He said: “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” Luke 12:25-31 and again when He taught us how to pray: Give us this day our DAILY bread (not tomorrow’s bread or yesterday’s bread) Matthew 6:11.
Below are five ways you can simplify your life:
- Stop and intentionally make time for the people you care about in life. Simplify it: text or email one co-worker a day a few words of appreciation. Your greatest sense of purpose is in direct proportion to your ability to show up and encourage people around you.
- Rather than using social media to post what you think about this or that situation, use it to send simple messages of encouragement and inspiration. Reduce the time spent on those platforms in order to recover time to spend appreciating the life in front of your face.
- Intentionally look for the beauty in life: people laughing, children playing, sunsets, random acts of kindness. Be the one who intentionally creates beauty: laugh more, hum, whistle, sing. Each of those activities actually reduces the stress hormone in your body.
- As you are creating your to-do list for the week. Inject time for personal refreshment. Simplify it: 3 times during the day I will get up and go outside, declare 3 things I am grateful for and breathe deeply for 1-3 minutes. Be creative.
- Simplify your mind by intentionally participating in a negativity fast. It takes 3 positive thoughts to override the damage in our minds from 1 negative thought. Stop complaining. Complaining actually shrinks your brain, whether you are the one complaining or you hang out with people who complain. Simplify your life and surround yourself with people who speak into the possible and who practice grateful living. “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.Be very careful what you think because your body is listening. As you Intentionally seek to create moments of simplicity, calm and presence will result in inner peace along with an ability to discern what is essential and what is non-essential. Meditate on what is good, true, beautiful, excellent and praiseworthy more today than yesterday.” Philippians 2:14-16
Support Resources to Help Give You Victory over Stress in Life:
- Now available: Edge God In Podcast:Set Ground Rules & Boundaries with God to Build Your Inner Game
- 5 Minutes to Stress Relief: (book and audio available) How to Release Fear, Worry, and Doubt….instantly.
- Take a 6 Week Journey and become the boss of your thoughts:Emotional Intelligence in Christ 6 Week Study Guide
