Permission to Simplify

You can complicate your world, or simplify it as much as you want.

But let’s not pretend that simplifying your life is easy. Or fast. Still, I am going to confront you with the fact that your life can be as complicated, or as simple, as you allow it to be.

Because many of us fall into the habit of overcomplicating our lives without even noticing that we’re doing it. Too many projects, too many friends? Too many commitments? Too many things we say yes to?

Or, simply wanting too many things, pursuing too many goals and desiring too many changes – all at the same time.

Life is complicated enough already.

There are problems we don’t choose, responsibilities we can’t avoid, and circumstances we have very little control over. But then we go and add other layers of complexity.

The complexity of our minds and choices!

You don’t just want things done; you likely want them done a certain way.

You don’t just have a dream or ambition, but you likely have a timeframe and a preferred methodology for achieving it.  And none of that is wrong.

But it adds inner complexity to a life that’s already quite complicated.

3 Things You Should Know About Your Mind:

• The mind is quite procedural. Our minds are naturally drawn towards familiar procedures, rules and routines.
• The mind seeks efficiency. It looks for the simplest, easiest sequence of steps for doing something, learns them and forms a habit of repeating them again and again.
• The mind circles around unfinished goals and targets we set for ourselves. Think of this as your inner nagging voice that can loop endlessly, unless interrupted.

So, we are likely to repeat what has worked before, and unfinished goals tend to remain mentally active. These are useful abilities—but they can also keep us circling through details, obstacles and plans long after we have lost sight of the main outcome.

Trapped in too much detail and too much complexity, thinking, planning and decision-making become exhausting and doubt or indecision, leave us with a sense of overwhelm.

Not to mention the exhaustive mental juggling.

Start simplifying from the inside!

Desires. goals, even ambitions and expectations of what needs to happen and how or when it needs to happen, to keep you happy.

A lot of that could be over-complicating detail that overloads and overwhelms your thought process.

You don’t have hundreds of goals…

You likely have a handful that you really deeply care about and believe in enough to really achieve.

At any given moment, you don’t have dozens of tasks. At any given moment, you have 1 top priority and the few tasks waiting in the pipeline.

Not to compromise, but to simplify.

You don’t have to abandon a single ambition or compromise on a single goal.

But you can simplify the way you think about your ambitions, your goals, and your life in general. You can stress less about the details and still get to where you’re going.

And when you Simplify?

Some of the things that seemed important stop looking quite so important.

Some of the things that actually are Important, become glaringly obvious!

Some of the details become obviously unnecessary.

Some decisions become much simpler.

And what looked like a very complicated problem can gradually become a much easier one to handle.

Not because the world became simpler.

Because you did.