We live in a world of abundance. A world where we can have almost anything we want at a click of a button. It provides us with extreme convenience but at what cost?
We are taught from a young age to strive for more, dream big, reach for the stars! But what happens if we strive for less? I have been toying with the idea over the last 3 years and the results of striving for less have helped me create a lifestyle beyond my wildest dreams.
Let me explain.
The best thing I have ever learnt is material things won’t make me happy.
People don’t give a shit about what I wear or drive and those that do, do I really want them in my life anyway.
Focusing on me and my family needs and acquiring materials that bring a level of joy and comfort in our lives has enabled us to focus on what’s important and eliminate the rest regardless of what people will think of us.
An example of this is we recently built a house, we could have afforded to buy a bigger block of land and build a bigger house but why? Instead, we focused on what would best serve us and our young children and built a small functional home that suited a family who enjoys spending time in the kitchen and travelling often.
A big house for our current situation was unnecessary. The old me would have wanted the biggest house on the street but by striving for less we now have a home that allows us to spend time doing the things we love without being bogged down trying to keep the place tidy.
Another example is stripping away all of the digital clutter that distracts me from the things that matter the most.
I went through a stage of feeling like a slave to my phone. Phone calls, emails, texts, social media were in control of my life. I needed it to change.
A simple method was to identify the things that were most distracting and either eliminate or put restrictions in place. I went through my phone and deleted all of the unnecessary apps that no longer served a meaningful purpose in my life.
For the remaining apps, I grouped them all together and then placed them onto the second page of my phone.
This meant when I opened my phone I am greeted with a blank screen. This helped me overcome my subconscious habit of opening my phone without even thinking and start opening apps like a zombie.
For any apps, I do need I just use the search function on my iPhone. This helps me be more conscious of my actions on my phone and really helped shake the habit of opening my phone to see the time and then finding myself 15 minutes deep in Instagram watching funny cat videos.
The next thing I focused on was eliminating unnecessary tasks to free me up to give me space to work on the things that were going to propel me closer to my goals.
It is so easy to sleepwalk through life and be busy being busy. When was the last time you allocated a chunk of your day just to focus on you and your goals?
I call these growth tasks. Rather than filling my day with “Things” I ensure I get the hard things done first and then it gives me the mental space and creativity to focus on the things that help me and my businesses grow. Part of the process was saying no more often, delegating more work, switching meetings to online conference calls and automating certain processes with software.
By trying to do less I have been able to achieve so much more.
It is so easy to fall into the false belief that in order to achieve more we need to do more. It is often the act of doing more that causes us to start pulling ourselves in different directions. By focusing on doing less it gives us the clarity and time we need to do more.
So what is something you could less of? Leave a comment below and let me know I would love to hear from you.