So the day has come to start writing. I have watched and observed myself over the past days and seen that I have procrastinated and distracted myself so much, why? Why do I do that? When it brings me so much joy, why would I not make time to do something I love to do? My answer is this: feelings of undeserving of joy and pleasure.
The old stories going over in my head of “I have to do everything else before I can do what I want” and of course there is always plenty to do and if there is some spare time I create something to do. I will distract myself with meaningless things like social media, checking emails, then only to find myself doing some de-cluttering and sorting the hundreds of emails I receive a week. I am sure an old belief of “you can want but you can’t have” also is at play here. This is what told constantly to me when growing up, along with the habit of doing everything else before I could do something I wanted to do and enjoy myself.
This past week I have observed so many things and areas where I have created stuff to do, where I have wasted time. I wonder how much things would be different if we, (I say we, as I am sure I am not the only one that does this) turned things around and did what we wanted first, then filled up the remainder of the day with the things that need to be done. I wonder how much time is then left to creating things to do and wasting time. Imagine how our lives would be different because our vibration will be higher, we would be happier therefore attracting more joy and happiness into our lives. Our self confidence and self love would improve because we would be valuing and honouring ourselves.
If we took ourselves seriously and allowed ourselves to experience joy, happiness, life, abundance and doing what is meaningful to us instead of filling our days with meaningless things.
This brings me to think about my recent beginnings on the journey of becoming a minimalist. To live with things that only bring us joy, or has a purpose. To rid our homes and lives of meaningless clutter of possessions, situations, people and all the other activities we create to distract us. To live a more free life, with less things to clutter our time, space and minds with.
I have heard of the saying “less is more” before. I think I first heard it many years ago and I didn’t really fully understand. I think at the some stage I considered that that saying as a hippy yuppie saying along with ‘peace man’. Another time I viewed it as a way of lack and from those who have low incomes as a way to justify I guess why they have few possessions. A way to say ‘its ok to be poor and not be able to afford nice things. But now I think wow, how I have changed and realised its real meaning. There is something about and owing less that fills you up, that gives you so much more joy, peace, clarity than you ever imagine possible by removing meaningless stuff from your life. It leaves room for so much more of life to experience.
I have noticed in the past few weeks how by removing a few things that my mind has been able to focus on what is important to me. As I slowly clear away stuff, I am finding there is room now for what I want to do. I am becoming more and more clearer of what I want and don’t want in my life. I am saying no to more and more things, people and situations that don’t bring me joy. I am finding myself saying “I don’t have room or time for things that don’t being me joy”. This in itself is a huge shift for me, once being a huge people pleaser along with low self worth I would do things because others say it was good for me or doing things would please others. I can see now that all that is shifting as I clear more and more from my life. It is a big process and not one to do overnight. It has taken many years to accumulate this stuff as well as create distractions, it will take some time to to sort through it all and I have found it takes a little time for the energy to flow and shift as things are removed. I did decide to declutter my bedroom one weekend, just what was visible. I packed up all the candles, crystals, ornaments, pictures that were around my room. I put them out of sight, I cleared off the bedside tables and only left the lamp, clock and water bottle, everything else I boxed up and decided to get back out in a week to go through and see what I missed if I wanted to keep any of it, to get back out the items that bring me joy. I found only 3 things I wanted to keep. It has been refreshing and my room feels so peaceful now. Then slowly, every couple of days I go through a drawer or cupboard, bit by bit, slowly removing items that don’t have a purpose or I no longer like. As I said earlier by doing this I have noticed it has had a follow on effect to other areas in my life.
Robyn Lemsing
14th December 2017