Cropping Out, Focusing In

LESS,

BUT

BETTER.

~Dieter Rams


I love the idea of Minimalism, but I can't quite go all the way there. Still I do believe decluttering what's not serving us makes all aspects of our lives richer and more full of joy.

Arianna Huffington's quest to get us to Thrive by talking about how overwhelmed we are and how money and power are not the only metrics of success is a long overdue conversation. Are we all going to take up meditation and sleep with no electronic devices in our bedrooms? We should, we totally should-- but it might take us some baby steps to get there.

So what can we do today, right now? Choose!

Choose what's most important. I'm just beginning to read the book Essentialism which focuses on eliminating the non-essential so you can do/have: less, but better. Love this concept and it reminded me immediately of studying photography. Cropping was my thing. I took decent photos but they were so much more meaningful when I got to cropping them. I shoot photos like I'm striving to live my life: get the big picture then focus in and rid it of everything that's distracting so the true essence comes out.

So above is my Twitter icon and to the left is the original photo. It's not a particularly flattering photo -not bad- but the reason I wanted to use it was because I was having a very happy day when I took it and I wanted to be reminded of it daily. To me the close-up version is all about my happy smile the full version just another photo to me.

Focusing in, cutting out, less but better is a great clarifier. We can do this with everything from food to parenting to work.

Better to enjoy a few Godiva chocolates then a one pound generic bar. Better to engage in quality activities and conversation with kids then to run them (and you) ragged with every activity under the sun. Better to kick-ass on one dynamic project then to be all over the place with mindless busy work and meetings.

Less in life is a little uncomfortable to get used to when we are such a more, more, more, busy, busy, busy society. But it's not working for us so maybe we -for sure I- need to try to get down to the essentials, crop out what's not needed, and focus in on less but better.

Don't Live With Crusty Burners!

We think in life we need to make big sweeping changes to make us truly happy- and those are awesome and we should totally push ourselves to live into our BIG dreams- but sometimes it's the little things....

The shower curtain hook story I tell in my workshop is a favorite to many that hear it but since it entails some theatrics that are better to see live-- today I'll share a different one still in a similar vein. I have an old stove and every time I cooked I hated looking at the burner covers- no matter how "clean" they were they were old, rusty and crusty and seeing them just annoyed the heck out of me. I put up with them for years because I didn't really think through what another option would look like other than getting a new stove.

Well here I am teaching people they should declutter anything that isn't working in their lives and as I'm telling them I'm living with my own hypocrisy. Why am I putting up with such a small but deeply annoying thing in my life? So one afternoon I trek over to my local Lowe's and ask for help to see if I can get new burner covers- then buy recommended covers, only to get home to find they're not a fit :( But now I'm a woman on a mission, so online I go and within a short time the find correct ones on Amazon for under $15.

Now the entire thing took less than an hour total and less than $20 and I can not tell you how happy this little kitchen upgrade made me.

Point is: don't live an annoyed life. Fix the little things that bug you during your day. One of the free things that made my life so much easier years ago was placing a pretty glass dish by my door and putting my keys in there every time I enter my place. Simple and no more time suck and aggravation looking for keys before I leave the house.

It's Spring cleaning time so give yourself a real treat and get into the habit of once a week getting rid of one annoyance. I dare you to get creative to see if you can make it as quick, painless, and low cost as possible.

Decluttering the crusty burners of our day-to-day starts adding up to a happy life pretty quickly so start small and find the joy :)