“Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.” —Thomas à Kempis
Simplifying your life will bring balance, freedom, and joy. When we begin to live simply and experience these benefits, we begin to ask the next question, “Where else in my life can I remove distraction and simplify life to focus on the essentials?”
Once we’re able to answer that, we will understand what is important in our own lives.
How to Simplify Your Life
Based on our personal journey, our conversations, and our observations, here is a list of the 10 most important things to simplify in your life today to begin living a more balanced, joyful lifestyle:
1. Your Possessions
Too many material possessions complicate our lives to a greater degree than we ever give them credit. They drain our bank account, our energy, and our attention. They keep us from the ones we love and from living a life based on our values.
If you will invest the time to declutter the non-essential possessions from your life, you will never regret it. For more help, check out my book, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life.
2. Your Time Commitments
Most of us have filled our days full from beginning to end with time commitments: work, home, kid’s activities, community events, religious endeavors, hobbies… the list goes on. When possible, release yourself from the time commitments that are not in line with your greatest values.
3. Your Goals
Reduce the number of goals you are striving for in your life to one or two. By reducing the number of goals that you are striving to accomplish, you will improve your focus and your success rate.
Make a list of the things that you want to accomplish in your life and choose the three most important. Focus there.
4. Your Negative Thoughts
Most negative emotions are completely useless. Resentment, bitterness, hate, and jealousy have never improved the quality of life for a single human being. Forgive past hurts and replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
5. Your Debt
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6. Your Words
Use fewer words. Keep your speech plain and honest. Mean what you say. Avoid gossip.
7. Your Artificial Ingredients
Avoid trans fats, refined grain (white bread), high-fructose corn syrup, and too much sodium. Minimizing these ingredients will improve your energy level in the short-term and your health in the long-term.
Also, as much as possible, reduce your consumption of over-the-counter medicine. Allow your body to heal itself naturally as opposed to building a dependency on substances.
8. Your Screen Time
Focusing your attention on television, movies, video games, and social media affects your life more than you think. Media rearranges your values. It begins to dominate your life. And it has a profound impact on your attitude and outlook.
Unfortunately, when you live in that world on a consistent basis, you don’t even notice how it is impacting you. The only way to fully appreciate its influence in your life is to turn them off.
9. Your Connections to the World
Relationships with others are good, but constant streams of distraction are bad. Learn when to power off the phone, log off social media, or not read a text. Focus on the important, not the urgent.
A steady flow of distractions from other people may make us feel important, needed, or wanted, but feeling important and accomplishing importance are completely different things.
10. Your Multi-Tasking
Research indicates that multi-tasking increases stress and lowers productivity. While single-tasking is becoming a lost art, learn it. Handle one task at a time. Do it well. And when it is complete, move to the next.
As Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!”
Great list! I wish I could get my whole family to agree with it!
We have the debt licked (never had any) and have reduced our goals recently with an end date in mind. thanx for bringing up the others – will be printing it and posting it by my desk.
This article put into words for me several thoughts that had been floating around my mind regarding life and faith and the complexity of everything. I hope to be further down this road before my little one makes it through the toddler phase.
thanks for the post. keeps me going. :)
Fantastic post. I’ve simplified my life quite a lot over the last few months but I’ve felt it becoming more cluttered again gradually, this has definately helped kick me back into action.
Great reminder.
I found 3 & 4 to be very helpful. A couple years ago I slacked on a major goal of mine simply because I was sidetracked by quite a few others.
Needless to say those other goals took my focus off my main goal. So now when I even think something is sidetracking me I cut it out of my focus immediately with the snap of a finger.
Time management is important too. I totally agree that sometimes we need to simply take time out for ourselves instead of piling our day up with task after tasks. What are we going to do when our body fails us?!
Great post, Joshua. As a dad of three small children I can’t help but think about how these life lessons are important to learn early. Here is to helping to shape the next generation! Thanks!
This list is dead on — especially numbers 1 – 4 for a beginner like me. I’ve found that to become more organized and more punctual, I’ve had to cut back on the stuff, activities, goals and negativity and life has become a lot easier in general. Great reinforcement!
Excellent article. I just finished reading news that Mercury has been found in a high amount of high fructose corn syrup…. yet another warning to stay as natural as we can….
Great tips, mental clutter is harder to get rid of, but it is also as important.
Excellent. (Keeping even my comments simple:))
Good post! Thanks for sharing…
Great compilation. This post describes exactly the happy life I’m living.
lovely list, and a correct one. one could almost use it as a focus/mantra while sitting zazen, one thing for each breath in or out. thank you.
As always, great post! I especially agree with the one about artificial ingredients… that’s one way of minimizing we don’t often think about!
thanks bruce – that’s not the first time i’ve been called out on my use of less/fewer. i’ll try to get it wrong “less times” in the future.
“Use less words.”
I think you mean “Use fewer words”; and maybe “Use a few right words, rather than many wrong ones” is also good advice.
I absolutely LOVE this post. So simple yet so challenging. Thank you.
I loved every single item on this list. I am happy that I feel very comfortable about each one of these items and while there is always some room for improvement my life right now is completely balanced. I just need to put more focus into single-tasking because sometimes I still catch myself doing a few things at the same time :-)
Great summary of minimalism techniques! The process of simplifying is a bit overwhelming at first. I often find myself pondering the irony that simplicity can be such a complex process. I find the gist of minimalism is best distilled in a quote from Cody Lundin and Mors Kochanski: “The more you know, the less you need”. Learning is difficult but the application is easy. ;)
Thanks for this post. We are following the same path in our life as a family. My wife just told me that “purging our stuff is addictive!” I couldn’t agree more…
I love your post! Absolutely beautiful! Thanks for sharing!
/Sandra
Joshua — Fantastic post. Personal benefits aside, the benefits for families like yours and ours (three young children) can go a long way towards changing the tide for the next generation. Thanks for the inspiration.
This is exactly what I have been trying to explain to my friends and loved ones. It is a very liberating experience. A wake up call for most. If they are willing to open up their minds to change and commit to following just one of your steps, I think they would see the truth behind your words. A positive ripple effect would get them hooked to follow more of your advice.
On the journey…