Simpler Living For A Stress-Free Life
So how do you start by creating a more simple stress-free life? A much more balanced and healthier lifestyle?
Do you dream of a more stress-free life? A more simple healthier lifestyle? The reality is many of us crave deep down less stress, less anxiety, and more simplicity. But most of us today have been so conditioned to believe that happiness and success are found in our busyness and material distractions we don’t know how and where to start.
The challenge of creating a simpler stress-free life is that we are so addicted to our internal and external chaos that it can be hard at first to trust and let go of our unhealthy addictions.
But the reality is a more stress-less, stress-free life is not out of your reach. Every single one of us can make powerful yet simple changes towards a more simple stress-free life. It just takes some time, patience, and commitment.
8 Tips Towards A Stress-Free Life
List of Gratitude
Start listing all the blessings you have in life. One of the biggest ways to shift towards a more simple stress-free life and mindset. Start focusing on all the blessings you already have and have had in your life. Make a list of all of the blessings and resources you have. Have you a home, running water, enough money to pay for gas, electricity, and food?
Is your family mentally well, healthy? In today’s society particularly in the west, we take so much for granted. Many people focus on what they don’t have or what they want than being grateful for what they already have. How many friends, family, good neighbours do you have? How healthy, able bodies are you? How many modern devices, extra clothes, shoes, or things do you own?
List What You Really NEED
What truly do you need to be healthy and happy? Is it Netflix, your designer clothes, your latest mobile phone, a new car, or a bigger home? Or is it much simpler? Most people find out that true happiness and contentment go much deeper than things we achieve or the physical things we own. If you speak to anyone who has lost almost everything physically they have ever owned, you will notice that many felt after the initial loss a sense of freedom, a sense of clarity of what we really need to make us happy.
Many of the things we buy in our everyday life are actually bought unconsciously or consciously to try and fill some emotional gap and sometimes as a form of self-soothing. Are you buying that dress, shoes so you can feel more accepted or loved?
Do you want to appear more attractive, more respected, or admired? It can be a nice experience to have beautiful things. But a much bigger problem in modern-day living is the constant goals and drive that leads to self-destruction. So many people today literally nearly kill them-self with exhaustion and stress trying to achieve things that will never give them the satisfaction they are seeking, need, or want.
What is IMPORTANT To You?
What is really important to YOU? Is it your family, your values, your ethics, community? Think back to your younger self, what lights you up, what were you naturally drawn to? As we become adults it is so easy to get lost in the distortions of modern life. Most of us begin to bend or fall into being what we think others want or need us to be? We change for our boss, partner, parents, teachers…
So it is important to dig deep to find out what is still important when building a more simpler stress-free life. What is still a dream, a wish, a desire that feels pure?
It is NEVER too late, to follow your heart and soul’s desire. As adults, it is easy to lose sight of the most simple things in life that used to give us so much true pleasure. Sometimes as we get older, have kids, or other responsibilities other things become our priority. The more you get clear on what is really important now, you start to let go of what is just a distraction and addiction, superficial, or just materialistic.
What You Do Want Out Of Life?
Begin by planning the type of life you really want. I am not just talking about financial freedom but more importantly for your health and happiness. Although money can help gives us more financial freedom it is what is going at our core that creates a happier or healthier life. That is one of the reasons why many people who reach financial goals are still not happy or content.
Some are so focused on the financial goal, they destroy their relationships or health in the process. Believing the new house or new job is the solution is one of the most common life illusions of life today. For too many people, the new job, the new house have been their biggest stressors and pressure and have not led to the happiness they were seeking.
Start Listing What You Or Your Family Don’t REALLY Need
Now it is time to be brave and objective. Tick of all the things you own or have that if things changed drastically in your life you could let go off. Don’t worry you don’t have to physically eliminate everything (unless you want to lol). This is about helping you open up your awareness and perception to the things in your life you are hanging on to or are over-attached to.
This about helping you get a bird’s eye view of your present lifestyle and what you could survive without. Think of all the things you may need to let go of if you were emigrating. Again, look at those little extra things you take for granted; subscriptions to Sky, Netflix, apps, takeaway coffee, or lunch. And then make a note of the cost of these in a year. Most people are quite surprised when they look at their local deli or costa coffee bill for their year.
Start De-Cluttering
What physical things in your life do you need to let go of? What is adding extra chaos to your home, office space, garage space? What do you need to remove from your life for a more stress-free life and space. This is something I need to constantly work on. I was brought up in a big family where we were taught to save things to be reused or recycled.
To be honest, what do you really need, what do you really use, what is just gathering dust or creating blocked stagnant energy? If you could do with some extra cash, to create that more simple lifestyle, there may be a few things you could sell. Let go of the old and free your energy up for the new.
List What You Need To Start Saying NO To
Maybe you need to start saying NO to extra hours at work or to those extra things you do for your clients and customers at work that are exhausting you, depleting you? Maybe you need to say no to other commitments that are invading your personal or family time. Maybe you need to say NO to the things in your life that are not healthy or not in the best interest of your happiness.
List What You Need To Say YES To
Although creating a simple life is mostly about de-cluttering and eliminating. A simple life is also about balance and including more things that make your heart sing. Remember the best things in life are free; friends, family, and love. List those activities that you and the kids love. Especially those hobbies and activities that don’t cost a penny or very little. Start making the free fun things a priority over the things that are depleting you energetically and financially.
Need some help to create a more simple stress-free life, clarify what you want and what is important? Book a Soulful Stress Management Discovery Call to see how you can work with Eileen and discover if we are the right fit
