“I put my pen to paper on one of the best days of spring 2021. With new life and colour appearing around us in the natural world, it is an apt time to ask. What brings you vitality and lifts your spirits? What could you let go of to allow more room for this?”
The power of simplifying
The power of simplifying has a ripple effect which results in a capacity for greater presence in our day to day, improved awareness and a sense of balance and alignment.
When we are proactive and discerning. We can choose to channel our energy and resources into the activities, environments and outcomes which most light us up and leave the rest behind.
Easier said than done. I hear you. Clouded by a long list of duties and obligations, we can forget that we have choice and agency.
You can choose what to focus on and what to set aside and leave behind. In fact, it is your individual responsibility to step back. Reflect and curate what you bring into the foreground and spend your time attending to.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hofmann
Ask yourself, do I feel energized at the thought of this project or do I feel a sense of dread? Am I over committed or bored? What could I eliminate to make more space for reflection?
Use your experience to sidestep historic stumbling blocks and combine your logical process with listening to the body.
Your body holds wisdom and guiding signals that we often cannot hear because we are in motion, ploughing ahead and in habitual ways of being which obstruct our listening.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The sunk cost fallacy can lead us to deny the data and our own instincts. If you have spent a lot of time and money and energy on one project, then it can be particularly difficult to step away from.
If you step away
Yet if you step away, your energy may be renewed and the lessons you have learned all the more potent for your next endeavour. Or the project which has been neglected as a result of a blinkered view.
Then I stepped away from a business I believed in and had poured heart and energy into for years. When I realised that I was being drained and I was not filling up my cup. Invest in what Lights you up The exchange was out of balance and the likely next page: total burnout.
I redirected my focus and have not looked back. Except fondly at my past self who learned many self preservation and development skills by making mistakes in my 20s.
Choose what lights you up, invest your time and energy in the areas of life and work which produce a resounding YES within you.
Set aside some time
Therefore set aside some time to draw the areas of your life and work down on paper and circle those that are unquestionably appropriate and relevant areas to channel your attention and energy. So, consider eliminating or reducing the rest greatly.
Chart a new path to success, remaking it in a way that includes not just the conventional metrics of money and power. But a third metric that includes well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving, so that the goal is not just to succeed but to thrive.
Arianna Huffington
Louise Wellby, Head of Content