Want to make Christmas special?

Ah, the holidays, they are a mixture of fun, food and a plenitude of stress.  We feel so much pressure to make everything just right.  It is maddening at times.

We want to make things special because Christmas itself is distinctive.  Christmas is packed with meaning.  All the more reason that we want to make it stand out.  The memories should last a lifetime or at least until New Year’s.

3 Quick Tips to Make Your Christmas Special

I know you’re busy so I’ll get right to the point and make this brief.  There are still presents to wrap, songs to carol and hams to bake.  So, in the midst of all this, how do you make Christmas special?  Well, here are some things to consider:

1.  Start by Letting Some Things Go

You can squeeze the specialness right out of Christmas trying to pack it too full of good things.  In 5 Authentic Ways to Keep the Holidays Simple, we are reminded that Christmas is a time that we are supposed to be spending with family and friends, accentuating the important things in life.  Remember, good can be the enemy of great.  If you try to cram too much good stuff in, then you may very well crush the greatness right out of it.  This is true not only for you, but for everyone else around you as well.  Let some things go and you’ll have a much more momentous season.

2.  Be Generous to Someone Outside Your Circle

I know we buy tons of gifts for close friends and family members at Christmas.  In fact, I think we often overdo Christmas gift giving, but I’ll save that for another article.  A powerful way that you can make your Christmas special is by giving generously to someone outside your immediate circle.  You might be like Evan in How to Help a Homeless Friend? that knows someone that is down on their luck and needing a little extra generosity this year.  Giving to someone that really needs it will warm your heart and give you that special feeling inside.  This is what Christmas is really all about anyway, isn’t it?

3.  Go Deeper Into the True Meaning

The Most Unbelievable Story Ever Told has to do with Christmas.  It has suspense, mystery and twists behind every corner.  It will challenge, inspire and motivate you.  If you spend a little time with it, you cannot help but to be deeply affected by it.  The more you explore this story, the more special your Christmas will become.  It will surely touch you in a way that will make this year more memorable and extraordinary than any other thing that you can possibly do.  Want a truly special Christmas?  Then take some time to go behind the scenes and learn what the day is really all about.

I Wish You the Merriest Christmas Ever

I wish you a very special Christmas this year.  I hope it is full of family, friends, hope, peace and love.  May you experience everything Christmas is supposed to be without all the burden it was never meant to carry.  If this article sparked any ideas that you feel will help to make your Christmas special, then please do the favor of passing it along to others.  Merry Christmas!

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

Do you need a little peace in your life?

A hectic, busy and noisy life takes it toll on us.  It is draining and stressful.

Why do we continue to push ourselves so hard?  What’s the payoff we hope to get?  These are important questions to stop and ponder.

You’ve traded your peace for something.  What is it that you are getting that is worth giving up so much?  Maybe it is time to reconsider this bargain and reclaim a life of peace.

Admitting Enough is Enough

“Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”

~ Ecclesiastes 4:6

Do you suffer from always wanting what you don’t have?  I mean are you sacrificing yourself on the altar of having all the right stuff?  Let’s face it, most of us have well beyond what we need.  In fact, we don’t need a lot of what we already have.

We have two handfuls, but this surplus comes with a price.

It costs you your peace and tranquility.  You have to work at a frantic pace to pay the bills and keep up with all of it.  Is it really worth it?

What if you simplified your lifestyle? 

What if you lowered your cost of living?

What if you had one handful with tranquility instead of two with so much toil?

Making this adjustment might sound attractive to you, but it might also seem impossible.  After all, you have a lot of entanglements that keep you stuck right where you are.  There are things like mortgages, car payments, contracts, commitments and responsibilities.

Here’s the deal.  These are all just excuses.  Yes, your life might be messy.  In fact, it might be incredibly complicated, but it can be untangled.  The knots that have you in a stranglehold can be loosened.  You can break free.  You just have to make the choice.  It really is up to you.

Reclaiming Your Peace

Okay, I said it is possible so, how do you go about reclaiming some peace in your life?  Well, first, let me say that when it is done right, it takes some time.  If you do this too quickly, then you are likely going to burn some bridges and you don’t want to do that.  You could also damage some relationships.  Therefore, you want to make a plan, slowly work your way through it and gradually reclaim your peace.

Here is some food for thought to help you start to simplify your life:

1.  Evaluate Your Lifestyle

You need to take a hard look at your lifestyle in three crucial areas.  They are your finances, your career and your activities.  In which of these three areas are you overcommitted?  All three?  That would explain why you want to reclaim some peace in your life.

Take a moment and imagine what your ideal lifestyle in each of these three key areas would look like.  What would you do with your time?  What would your stress level be like?  Who would you spend time with?  How would things be different?  How would you feel?  Write some of this down in a notebook to help you organize your thoughts.  This process will define what’s most important to you.

You might not be able to achieve your ideal lifestyle, but once you define the target, then you can at least start to move the pendulum in the right direction.

2.  Start Making Gradual Cuts

Once you know where you are overcommitted and you know ideally how you’d prefer to live, then you can start to gradually make some cuts.  You want to slowly cut out the things that stress you the most.  Let me be clear.  You are going to have to cut some “good” things to get to what is “great”.  This will not necessarily be an easy process.  However, it will be life-giving.

Cut in the area that is costing you the most peace.  For example, if you are stressed out about money, then start reducing your monthly expenses.  Ask yourself, “Which will give me more happiness, keeping cable television or knowing I can make ends meet every month?”  Again, sometimes you have to cut what is “good” to get to what is “great”.

Occasionally, you can’t cutback in one area until you’ve made changes in another.  For example, you might want to move to a less stressful job, but your personal finances won’t allow you to make this change.  You’ll need to work on your finances first and then look at changing jobs.

3.  Get Control of Your Finances

I made finances a topic all its own in this discussion because this is often where we get out of control and cost ourselves all our peace.  Have you raised your lifestyle so high that it is killing you to maintain it now?  This may be the root cause of all your trouble.  Stress from trying to make ends meet will drain your peace so fast it will make your head spin.

I am fully qualified to talk about this because I’ve been there, done that.  A few years ago, I finally got tired of it and so I put myself through a personal economic makeover.  Trust me, it was worth every sacrifice I had to make.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

If money causes you a lot of stress, then you need to get control of your finances.  This is often the one best thing you can do to reclaim your peace.  In fact, I’d challenge you to think about paying off everything you owe.  It will bring a new sense of tranquility to your life.  You can read some of my observations about living a debt free life to decide if it is for you.

4.  Make Bigger Adjustments

In the beginning, you need to take baby steps toward your goal.  I can’t emphasize that enough.  However, at some point, you have to learn to walk like an adult.  You have to put on grown-up pants and adopt a grown-up attitude and make some BIG adjustments.  It will be scary.  I won’t deny that, but you’ll get through it if you just press on.  Scary things generally work out much better than what we imagine.

Plan your big adjustments carefully.  Seek the counsel of smart people that you trust and that have a personal track record of success in the area in which you are making your adjustment.  What I’m saying is don’t rely on the advice of your broke brother-in-law when you are making financial decisions.  And don’t listen to your unemployed neighbor when it comes to adjusting your career.

Get some good advice and then do what needs to be done.  You’ll be happy you did.  These big adjustments, done correctly, will take you a long way down the path to reclaiming your peace.

5.  Learn to Enjoy Your Peace

Finally, I want to let you know that you’ll likely have to learn to enjoy your peace once you get it.  I know that sounds strange, but most of us have lived with stress, anxiety and fear for so long that we have forgotten what it is like to live in peace.  Therefore, we have to retrain ourselves to relax and enjoy a more tranquil existence.

You will likely feel a bit nervous and awkward at first when you don’t have as much to worry about.  You might feel like you are missing something or that a problem is going to sneak up and surprise you.  This is natural.  Only time will help you to learn that you don’t have to be so anxious anymore.  You can relax and soak up the peace.  It is a wonderful place to be.

What do you need to do to reclaim your peace?  Have you taken steps in the right direction?  If so, tell us what you’ve done so we can all learn from it.  Leave a comment to share your experiences.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

Are you living a simple, but enjoyable life?

Keeping your life simple makes your luxuries all the sweeter.  When your life is crowded, it is next to impossible to really enjoy what you have.

In addition, you appreciate your indulgences so much more when they are fewer and farther between.  The contrast they create makes them stand out.  So, if you want the best life possible, keep it simple.

Keeping Life Simple

For some reason, humans have an amazing tendency to complicate every situation they touch.  We clutter up our lives by always wanting more.  We have been deceived into believing that “more is better” when in fact it is not.  More is draining.  It costs too much to continually want more and I’m not just talking about money.  More stuff costs you time, resources and energy.  Is it all really worth it?  Does it truly make your life more enjoyable?  Is it even possible to truly appreciate it all?

A few years ago, I began a personal economic recovery.  Initially, it was all about money.  I was living above my means and I needed to correct that.  I started by becoming a lot more frugal and cutting many unnecessary things from my life.

What I found was that there are a multitude of benefits to simplicity that lead to getting a lot more enjoyment out of life.  In other words, I found that more is NOT better.  It was quite an eye-opening realization for me.  I’d never really thought much about simplifying.  I always thought the path to happiness was paved with bigger houses, more toys and lots of luxuries.

As a result of my awakening, I continued to simplify and pretty quickly adopted some completely new attitudes about money, spending and possessions.  These drove me to continue down the new path I was on to see where it would lead.

Now, in terms of my finances, I’m debt free except for my house and that alone has tremendously improved the quality of my life.  Overall, I lead a fairly simple existence.  I’m not fanatical about it.  I don’t live an austere life by any means, but I have learned to keep things simple because it is more enjoyable, less stressful and just a better way to live.

Adding Back a Few Luxuries

When my wife and I began correcting how we handled our money, we cut back on just about everything.  We trimmed most of the luxuries out of our budget so we could throw every possible penny at the debt snowball we used to pay off everything we owed.

We were so convinced that our debt was stealing our joy that we were willing to do just about anything to get it paid off.  Now that we’ve accomplished our goal, we’ve decided to lighten up a bit and add back in some luxuries.

We are still trying to keep things fairly simple.  We don’t want to complicate our lives with things that don’t add much value or that we can’t afford (i.e. pay cash for).  We have a whole new appreciation for getting something new and we really do get joy out of the luxuries we are consciously choosing to add back to our lives.

Here are a few of the things we’ve done:

1.  Bought a Newer, Nicer Car

Last year, for the first time in my life, I paid cash for a new car.  Well, it wasn’t really new.  It was just new to us.  But, after driving a couple of cars that were several years old and had some ongoing issues, this newer car is truly a luxury for us.  Of course, it lacks one feature that all our other cars had when they were new – a payment!  I can tell you that it drives even better without lugging around a multi-year loan.  The simplicity of just paying cash for a car is awesome.  I’ll never go back to the old, complicated way of making this purchase.

2.  New TV, Cable and DVR

When we got frugal with our finances, we cut our cable television service back to just the first 25 channels.  It was just enough to get the local stations.  About a year ago, we bought a new flat-screen, LCD television to replace our old clunker.  Along with it, we added back full cable service and a DVR.  I know there are a lot of negatives to watching television, but with the DVR we are able to record and watch what we really like.  Our family has definitely enjoyed this luxury.

3.  Replaced Several Household Items

In the last year, we have bought new privacy fence, a hot water heater, a new dishwasher, a new washer and dryer and a new central air conditioning unit.  I don’t know that all these things are luxuries, but if we weren’t debt-free yet and if we didn’t have cash in hand to make these purchases, then we wouldn’t have bought them.  We would have done without most of them at least for awhile.  These items make our lives more comfortable and simpler.  I’d hate to have to heat up water on the stove just to avoid a cold shower.

4.  Took a Trip or Two

My wife and I love to travel, but it can be expensive.  We cut back quite a bit there for a few years while we were working on our finances, but since then we’ve been able to take a few nice trips.  We don’t go overboard, but we do enjoy the luxury of being able to travel.  Again, we pay cash for these trips so we don’t complicate our lives by charging up credit cards along the way.  This way, when we get back from our travels, our lives are still simple and unburdened.

5.  Thinking of Starting a New Hobby

Now that there’s a little more discretionary money in our budget, I’m thinking of starting a new hobby.  For a long time, I’ve wanted to have a home aquarium.  I think aquariums are so beautiful and the whole thing really intrigues me.  To this point, I’ve just been reading about it and trying to learn what all is involved, but I’ll probably make some purchases pretty soon.  I’ve decided to go with a freshwater aquarium at first because there’s less startup costs and I think it might be a little easier to maintain.  Our simpler lifestyle gives me the freedom to try things like having my own aquarium and that makes me happy.

Simplicity with Luxuries = Great Life

Our simpler, debt-free lifestyle has definitely added quality to my life.  Yes, I love having a few luxuries around, but I’m cautious not to overextend myself financially or otherwise.  I’ve learned that everything you bring into your life comes with some responsibility.  So, I’m embracing two ideas – a simple life is a good life and less is more.

What are your thoughts on this?  Have you tried simplifying your life?  How did it go?  Leave a comment on this article and let me know.  I’d love to hear from you.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

Do you need some simple beauty in your life?

The world is full of bad news.  Life is stressful.  Things don’t always go your way.  Sometimes it can all seem like too much.  It can be overwhelming.

How can you maintain a positive outlook and remain hopeful in the face of all this negativism?

I think the best way is to find and focus on the simple beauty of life that is all around you.  No matter how crazy it gets, there is still plenty of basic, unadulterated pleasures you can appreciate if you train yourself to do so.

3 Ways to Find and Focus on Simple Beauty

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finding beauty starts from within.  You have to set your mind right and then you’ll start to see things all around you that are beautiful.  I think this was what Emerson meant in his quote above when he said that we have to “carry it with us”.  It starts inside us with the way we look at things and fix our minds.

Here are three suggestions to help you “see” more of the simple beauty all around you:

1.  Focus on What Is Right

There are a lot of loud voices out there shouting about all that is wrong with the world.  It is difficult to close off all this negative talk.  However, training yourself to focus on what is right and pleasing is a much better and more productive way to live.

Seeing what is right with the world and trying to build upon that is a much more hopeful and effective strategy.  Haven’t you ever heard that you usually get what you focus your mind upon?  Whatever you think about is where your mind leads you.  Therefore, it is imperative that you find positive inputs that reveal beauty to you instead of constantly listening to or reading bad news.  Check this out if you need awesome ideas to help you focus on what’s right in the world.

2.  Be Intentional About Enjoyment

A good deal of the beauty in our lives comes from doing things we enjoy.  However, with all the busyness and distractions we have going on it is easy to go days, weeks or even months without doing much of what we really like to do.

I’d highly suggest becoming much more intentional about your enjoyment.  Yes, it takes a little effort, but it is well worth it.  Plus, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think (unless you make it that way).  Here’s some excellent advice on how to get more enjoyment out of every day.  When you do the things you love, your eyes will be opened to beauty.  You’ll naturally appreciate the world in a more meaningful and fulfilling way.  Get intentional about your enjoyment.

3.  Work From the Inside Out

Once you are focusing on what is right and intentionally seeking enjoyment, then you can move on to the advanced level of finding simple beauty.  You can arrange your inner life so it is beautiful.  This gets back to Emerson’s idea of carrying beauty with you.  You won’t really be able to hang on to the beauty you find until you are beautiful on the inside.

So, how do you make yourself beautiful inside?  Well, as I’ve implied all along in this article, the greatest beauty is usually found in simplicity.  Therefore, you can make great strides toward carrying beauty with you by simplifying your mind, your emotions and your thoughts.  How do you do this?  I’d recommend checking out these 7 steps to inner simplicity for some terrific advice.  These suggestions will have you well on your way to a beautiful state of mind in no time.

Find Simple Beauty for a Great Life

Life is definitely a better place to be when you appreciate the simple beauty that surrounds you.  It isn’t difficult to find more of this beauty.  It just takes following the the three suggestions above.  With a little effort you can greatly improve your outlook and hopefulness about the future.  This will have an amazing impact on your life as a whole.  So, what are you waiting for?  Go find some simple beauty!

What in life is beautiful to you?  How do you carry this beauty with you?  Leave a comment so others can learn from what works for you.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

This is a guest post by Angela G. Horn.

In July of 2008, I came up with the brilliant idea that we should sell all our furniture. 

In our eleven year relationship we’d lived in more than twenty places, not including those interim times when we stayed with our friends before leaving for Dubai or when we came back from Canada.

Clearly, we have a penchant for moving.

Yet, still my idea was met with resistance.  Sporty did have a good point though, we had a house full of brand new furniture.  Why on earth would we want to sell it?  Surely we’d lose money?  I wasn’t backing down though, and countered with my hidden ace: a list of removal costs for the last two years alone.  The total was staggering.

“We’re movers babe,” I told her, “we don’t settle so why not make it easier on ourselves?”

She agreed.

When I was younger, I was all about stuff, my favorite saying was “whoever dies with the most toys wins” (the irony of which was completely lost on me).  I’d had – what I believed at the time to be – an unhappy and deprived childhood, and I was stuck (again, my perception) in a dead-end relationship.

Obviously I was going to turn to retail therapy to fill the void inside me.  I’d read a book called Mr. God, this is Anna, which addressed (amongst a great many other things) our need to fill the spaces inside ourselves with stuff.

It spoke to me, but not loudly enough.

I needed labels and toys and clothes and knickknacks and, and, and, all of which I cleaned and dusted obsessively.  I wasn’t happy unless I had a credit card in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other.  Anything not to take stock.

What changed?

My partner at the time found the courage to do what I couldn’t, and opted out of our seven year relationship.  Liberated, I took my clothes and left.  After a year of floundering, I found my feet and my personality.  My cupboards were still organized with a military precision, but they weren’t nearly as full.

Then one day I fell in love. Utterly. Helplessly. Completely.

When Sporty moved in I said, “Rearrange the closets to suit yourself,” and I meant it.

Sometimes when we’re really stuck (i.e refusing pointblank to read the signs), life will give us a kick in the pants.  Much like colonic irrigation, the end result is a great deal more desirable than the process itself.  The more pleasant alternative is to take small steps in the right direction, because in doing so, change will be incremental, and thus easier to cope with.

The stuff we own is indicative of where we are in our lives.  Take stock on your own terms rather than risk being unceremoniously booted in the derriere like I was.

Have a good, hard look around your house.  If you’re not at home, then take a quick mental jaunt through the rooms.  What do you own?  Have you got a garage (attic, spare bedroom, basement) full of stuff you never use?  Are your closets bursting at the seams with clothes you never wear?

If your have a regular house, filled with stuff that is proportionate to the number of people who live in it, congratulations.  Collect $200 and move directly to GO!

If not, it’s time to start asking yourself some tough questions.

Why do you keep the clothes you haven’t fitted into in twenty years?  Even if you do lose the excess weight they’ll be so out of style, people will point and laugh.  Give the clothes to charity and feel good about the fact that someone else’s backside will look good in your circa 1983 Ronald Sassoon jeans.

What if you had a garage sale and sold all those unwanted wedding gifts.  Yes, even the gaudy floral tea set from great aunt Hilda.  How can keeping it in the attic all covered in dust possibly be better than selling it to someone who will really appreciate it?  And when last did you even see great aunt Hilda?  Not since your wedding day I’ll bet.

How about giving your kids’ baby clothes to the young family down the road who are just starting out and still struggling to make ends meet?  Rest-assured your teenagers won’t be emotionally scarred if you don’t hang onto their milk stained baby-grows.  And neither will you.  If you want a trip down memory lane, take out the photo albums.

At least be open to the possibility that less is more.  Change, when approached incrementally, can be refreshing.  That said, don’t be a baby either. It’s true that you need to be able to walk before you can run, but conversely, if you can walk there’s no need to crawl.

We’re starting small here, but if you’re looking for inspiration check out these guys.  To use a sports analogy, if the rest of us are Sunday joggers, then this bunch are ultra-marathoners.  They’ve all ditched their “stuff” in favor of a footloose and fancy-free existence that affords them the freedom to travel.

• Colin Wright – Exile Lifestyle
• Everett Bogue – How to Live/Work Anywhere
• Karol Gajda – Ridiculously Extraordinary

I recognize that not everyone has the desire or the means to live like that, or perhaps you have responsibilities (kids, aging parents, pot plants) that keep you in one spot.  That’s cool too, for you Joshua offers some interesting and informative insights into the art of simple living over at Becoming Minimalist.   Tanja from Minimalist Packrat has something she calls Clutter Bootcamp, and of course you can always take Oprah’s What Can You Live Without Challenge.

Start anywhere, but just start.

Angela G. Horn spends her time writing for The Balance & Life Blog, harassing Sporty, and loitering at coffee shops.  She hates shopping.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

In my previous article, I proclaimed the first mystery in life that is so incredibly hard to explain.  But, I’m not done yet.  There is another mystery that we don’t usually grasp when we first hear about it either.

Again, you’d think by this time in history that we would have figured out a way to convey this wisdom so that everyone could get their minds around it.  You’d think it would be so well understood that no one, and I mean no one, would be caught by surprise by it. 

Yet, millions are surprised.  Millions wake up one morning and go, “Oh, that’s what they meant when they told me that.”  Unfortunately, this is usually well down the path in our journey.

Getting a handle on today’s mystery early on will open up doors of opportunity that you could miss.  It is an important mystery to understand for living life to the fullest.

Here’s the Second Mystery That Cannot Be Explained

Again, despite the fact that very, very few ever really grasp the full meaning of this mystery until much later in life when it doesn’t matter so much anymore, I’m going to give it a go.  I’m going to try to explain it in hopes that it will make a difference for someone.

This second mystery is just as hard to understand as the first.  I’ll admit that I didn’t really get it.  I know that others much older and wiser than me tried to explain it to me, but I failed to understand.  It remained a mystery to me and only now do I see its most of its meaning.

Here is the second mystery that cannot be explained:

The Precious Simplicity of Youth

The precious simplicity we enjoy in our youth is a mystery.  It  is hard to understand until it is gone.  People try to tell us to live it up, enjoy it while we can and to pursue our dreams before the opportunity slips away.  Most of us fail to grasp the full breadth of this mystery.

Remember the days when you had nothing to worry about?  Remember when you spent your days riding your bike, soaking up the sun, swimming, playing, creating art, watching cartoons and dreaming about your next toy?  We created whole worlds in our imaginations back then. 

Slowly, we became teenagers.  We began hanging out with our friends, having boyfriends and girlfriends, learning to drive, cruising around town, going to the drive-in, cheering on our high school teams and thinking about what we wanted to be when we grew up.  We were happy, carefree and relishing in our new found freedom.

After high school, we felt the world was ours to conquer.  We were invincible with big dreams and high expectations.  It was an exciting place to be.  About this time, someone probably tried to explain to us this mystery.  We probably dismissed them because we thought we had it all figured out.

We just couldn’t conceive of how we would fall for the same traps that our parents fell into.  That’s the way we saw it back then.

We didn’t understand how life sneaks up on you.  We didn’t know the weight of responsibility.  We didn’t really know what it meant to grow roots and to get busy.  We thought we had our whole lives ahead of us.  We believed we would have plenty of time to do all the things we wanted.

Of course, adulthood comes with a lot of complexities that are hard for young people to grasp.  We get jobs, careers, businesses, contacts, networks, friends, families, mortgages, payments, bills and children.  We don’t get them all at once, but we get them and one day we wake up with all of this and more.  The simplicity of our youth has slipped away.

We have a lot more to consider now.  People depend on us.  We have responsibilities.  Yes, some of them are good.  Some of them we love, but they also hold us in place.  They limit our choices and our options. 

It isn’t so easy now to chase our dreams.  They seem too risky, too distant.

That time we wanted to spend living in Europe?  It is a distant memory.  That shot we wanted to take at making it on the stage?  It seems a little too far-fetched now.

The precious simplicity of youth is a fading memory.  Honestly, I yearn for some of that simplicity at times.  My life is full.  It is good, very good, but weren’t those the days? 

What would it feel like to be carefree again?  If only the mystery would have been clearer to us.  Would we have drank deeper?  Would we have pressed on despite our fear?  Would our lives be different now?

It is all hidden in the veil of the mystery. 

The Two Mysteries in Life That Cannot Be Explained

These are two mysteries that cannot be explained until you live them and your eyes are opened.  They both have a lot to do with the quality of your life.  Our understanding of both seems so lacking at times.  I know my understanding was very small and is only now really beginning to grow.  I hope I’ve given you some things to think about and to contemplate. 

Photo by Jaci Berkopec

A simpler life is a better life.  Clutter, busyness and disorganization cause stress.  They also waste time and energy that could be better spent on more enjoyable activities.

We all need to make simplicity a priority in life.  However, it may not come naturally to you. 

Well, I have some good news because I’ve assembled some incredible resources to help you get started with simplicity.  In these articles, you’ll find a lot of no nonsense, practical advice that will have you leading a simpler life in no time at all!

10 Fabulously Free Resources for Achieving Simplicity

Toss out all the stuff that is cluttering up your life so you can live light and free!  There is no need to hang on to piles of seldom used possessions or to other complexities.

Let’s get started!  Here are the resources you’ll need:

1.  Start with learning the benefits of simplicity

Every endeavor in life requires you have the right motivation to succeed.  Once you have a clear understanding of all the benefits of simplifying your life then you are sure to jump into the process with enthusiasm.  I highly encourage you to take a look at the 14 Benefits Of Simplicity That Lead To A Good Life to get the proper motivation.

2.  Go even deeper to get the proper perspective on your stuff

How much stuff do we actually need to be happy?  You’ll find a very interesting discussion on this topic in Stuff-onomics: Hidden Side of What You Own.  Even when we know we should let go of some of our stuff, it isn’t always easy.  This article will prime you emotionally to turn loose of unneeded stuff and it will give you a system to evaluate what to keep and what to ditch.

3.  Stimulate your mind with ideas on where you can simplify

Simplicity is something to embrace in every area of life.  However, everyone is different.  You may do fine in some areas, but need help in others.  Take a look at the Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life as a resource to help zero in on where you could improve.  Don’t get overwhelmed!  Just use this list to stimulate some ideas!

4.  Zero in on 2 or 3 areas where you can really make a difference

Want an easy-to-digest list to help you identify just a few areas of focus?  Check out 30 Ways to Make Your Life More Simple.  It is brief and to the point, yet extremely useful.  You can scan these suggestions in just a minute or two and walk away with some truly meaningful ways to make your life more simple.

5.  Embrace a step-by-step methodical approach to simplifying

If you are the type that likes to breakdown big projects into bite-sized chunks, then read Simplify Your Life in Six Simple Steps.  It will help you to systematize your simplification efforts.  I particularly like the idea of becoming a “90-percenter” so I can enjoy more of the good stuff that life has to offer.

6.  Simplify and get more out of life all at the same time

Simplifying does not mean giving up things.  It means letting go of the bulk so you can live a lighter and more enjoyable life.  I think this is best expressed in 27 Simple Ways to Simplify Your Life.  This list really offers some fantastic ways to simplify and get more from life all at the same time.  Trust me, there is more to abundance than just accumulating piles of stuff!

7.  Rid yourself of the waste that is dragging you down

What wastes your time?  Identify this and you will instantly add hours to your days.  In 10 Ways to Simplify and Eliminate Waste in Your Life, you’ll find a powerful method to find and destroy the things that are draining you of your most precious commodity.  The recommendations are all excellent and there isn’t a word wasted!

8.  Wrap your mind around uncluttering

Uncluttering or decluttering, whichever you prefer, is a specialized task that is a big part of simplicity.  If you have packrat tendencies, then you definitely want to read the Seven benefits of uncluttering to help wrap your mind around this concept.  Clutter costs us in a number of ways that often go unrealized so there are probably benefits on this list that never crossed your mind before.

9.  Step into decluttering with these terrific techniques

Eliminating all your clutter at once may be too overwhelming.  If so, then take a look at Decluttering 101 for some excellent techniques that will help you get started without freaking out your inner packrat.  Personally, I like the “just a box” strategy mentioned in this article, but you might find one of the other suggestions more helpful.

10.  Graduate to a clutter-free home

Once you’ve mastered the basics of clearing the clutter, then you will be ready to move up to the big leagues of simplicity.  In Keep Your Home Clutter-Free, you’ll learn a proactive approach to preventing clutter.  This approach will not only simplify your life, but it will also save you money.  What a terrific bonus!

Simplicity Resources to Help You Find the Best Life

Underneath it all, you have a great life!  You just need to uncover it from all the entanglements that have accumulated over the years.  Simplicity is like ripping off a band-aid.  Getting from here to there just hurts for a moment and then you’ll see with your own eyes that everything is all better!

What tips do you have to offer for achieving simplicity in life?

Photo by Parvin ?( Internet Problem )

Christmas should be simple and enjoyable.  It shouldn’t be a time that adds burden to your life.  It should be a time of reflection and celebration.

Of course, it is incredibly easy to fall into the traps that complicate and distort our Christmas.  They often sneak up on us without us even realizing it.

Five Things You Can Do to Keep Christmas Simple

Now is a good time to take a step back to see where we are at.  Are you keeping Christmas simple?

These five quick tips will help you evaluate yourself and realign your efforts:

1.  Remember that true joy is often found in the simplest of things.

We are often happiest when our life is the simplest.  Take a moment and read the 7 Ways to Find Happiness Through Simplicity.  Are you incorporating these principles into your Christmas?  We often let family, retailers and our desire for the perfect holiday work us into a frazzle.  A simpler approach is less stressful and will probably be more enjoyable for everyone.

2.  Don’t let good things crowd out the best things.

Shopping, decorating, traveling, visiting, baking, cooking and cleaning often crowd out the best things about Christmas.  Making Time for Family is really what is important.  Many times by the time Christmas Day actually arrives we are too tired to really enjoy it.  Is anyone going to really notice if a few things don’t get done this year?  I doubt it.  Scale back on the good things so you can savor the best things this season.

3.  Give gifts that really have meaning and purpose.

Finding the right gift for that special someone is often very stressful.  We can spend hours fighting crowds, traffic and our own indecisiveness only to wind up with something that falls flat on Christmas morning.  I like the idea of getting your significant other a gift with purpose as presented in 10 Awesome Christmas Gifts for Married Couples.  These gifts are easy to find and are of true value.

4.  Spend less this year.

We all know we should spend less, but it seems like we never do.  Many people have serious regrets when the bills start arriving in January.  Why do this?  Can you even recall what you spent so much on last year?  Christmas doesn’t have to be a dud just because you are thrifty.  Check out Buying Bargains: How We Will Spend Less But Give More This Christmas for some great ideas on how to cut back.  Heck, you can even Save Money on Gift Wrap while still making everything look beautiful.  Don’t ruin your Christmas with too much spending!

5.  Contribute online to making someone else’s Christmas special.

Do your holiday giving online this year!  It is quick, easy and a little donation can really go a long way.  In fact, just $5 provides more than 45 pounds of food or 10 bags of groceries to a family in need at the One Dollar Give where they are Feeding America.  This is a great opportunity to make a difference without ever having to leave your computer!

A Simple Christmas Is an Enjoyable One

These ideas will help take a lot of the stress and frenzy out of your Christmas experience this year.  Of course, no one can make it happen but you.  Choose a better Christmas for yourself and your family this season.  Keep Christmas simple!

What other tips can you offer to help keep Christmas simple?

Photo by Michal Osmenda

We have lost sight of the old adage that less is more.

The over-consumption and rush to get things done in our world today has us stressed out, buried in debt and on a treadmill to nowhere.

This is no way to live!  Fortunately, there are a few simple life blogs out there that serve as voices in the wilderness.  They call us to embrace simplicity for a better life.  They truly believe less is more and they try very hard to show us this road less traveled.

The simple life blogs I recommend to learn about living with less

These simple living blogs are wonderful resources to help you turn your life around.  They are practical, no-nonsense and passionate about simplicity.

At each of these four simple life blogs, I have selected an article to highlight so we can jump right to the crux of their message.  I hope this will help you get started simplifying your life.

Let’s look at the four that I have chosen:

1.  Seven reasons to simplify your life at MySimplerLife

7 Reasons to Simplify Your Life lays out the specific benefits of simplicity.  Beth says, “…without specifics “simplifying” never reaches high on the priority list.”  I agree.  The more we understand the true value of simpler living, the more committed we become.

Her article is really a jumping off point that includes links to a whole series detailing the gains one can expect from simple living. 

Beth also points out, the purpose of simplifying isn’t so we can sit around and do nothing.  It is so we can fully commit ourselves to what is truly important.  Bravo!

2.  Ways to start making your life more simple at On Simplicity

Once you understand the reasons to simplify, you’ll want ideas to get started.  Fortunately, Sara at On Simplicity provides us with 30 Ways to Make Your Life More Simple.

Let me highlight three of her suggestions to give you a flavor of what to expect:

• Stop trying to be perfect
• Sign up for automatic bill-pay
• Single-task as much as possible

This list is indicative of the kind of regular, practical advice Sara provides.  She will help you examine your life regularly and question what really matters. 

Sara says, “If you’re interested in having less but enjoying more, then On Simplicity is written for you.”

3.  Get rid of all the clutter at Neat & Simple Living

Clutter is the enemy of a simple life.  Ariane takes a commonsense approach to letting go of what we don’t need in My Top 10 Tips for Clutter-free Living. 

In this article, she admits that it is probably impossible to live completely clutter-free.  Instead, Ariane provides us with “…strategies and habits that make it much easier to “maintain” a reasonable amount of clutter.”

I like how she emphasizes creating good habits for simpler living .  By improving our habits, we ensure a lasting change and not just a one-time Spring cleaning project.

Ariane is an organizing coach.  Besides just reading her blog, you might want to check out her free e-book called 100 Surefire Ways to Organize Your BUSY Life.

4.  Clear your schedule and reduce stress at Unclutterer

Stress and anxiety plague many of us.  In Uncluttering your schedule to keep clear of unnecessary stress, Erin points out that this pressure often brings out the worst in us.

Erin emphasizes that we need to be realistic about how we schedule our time.  We often try to pack too much into a day. 

We constantly rush from one thing to the next and do not leave ourselves any time to unwind and reflect.  This leaves us prone to performing below our potential.

I think we also teach our kids to do the same.  We enroll them in every activity imaginable thinking we are giving them all the advantages in life.  However, when do they have time to just be a kid?  Shouldn’t we also be teaching them that quality of life is at least as important as quantity?  Just my thoughts.

I also like what is said in the manifesto at Unclutterer.  In particular, I liked the definition of simple living:

Choosing to live simply, to me, is trying to find balance in order to enjoy what one does have, and to avoid becoming overwhelmed by clutter. It means consciously choosing to have fewer things, but knowing that what you will have will be high quality items that you truly cherish.

Good stuff!  I like this perspective and believe it is a one to hold for living a full life.

Simplify to get more out of life!

Simplifying your life doesn’t mean that you have to give up all modern conveniences.  It is about voluntarily and consciously choosing to say no to certain things in our lives to win back time, peace of mind and sanity.

I hope you find these sites useful and thought-provoking.  I am convinced that simplicity is something worth pursuing!  I hope you are too.

Are you interested in simplifying?  In what ways?

Photo by Zanastardust

Fortunately, there is a ton of great guidance available to help us stay on track in each of these three important areas. 

Today, I want to share with you six excellent articles from each of the other members of the Life Skills Network that offer indispensable advice for staying motivated, managing your finances and keeping it simple.

Life Motivation

Without motivation our lives become stagnate.  We fail to achieve anything.  We grow bored and disillusioned.

Revitalize your dreams!  Create a vision for your life.  Pursue significance!

In How To Walk On Water, Marc lays out a very specific set of steps for maintaining and pursuing our life motivation.  I love his suggestion to follow your heart and to be who you were born to be.

Once you’ve set your heart on achieving something specific, then follow Ron’s advice on how to Use the TRACK Method to Achieve Your Goals.  This plan will help you to be consistent and to measure your progress toward fulfilling your dreams!

Living Below Your Means

In our economy it is more important than ever to be financially responsible.  Money is the grease that makes our lives whir.  It opens up opportunities and enables us to invest in significant causes.

Debt is like a ball and chain.  It makes us a slave to those we owe.  We can’t afford to move to the place we really want to live because our cost of living is too high.  With debt, we can’t take our dream job or strike out on our own as an entrepreneur because we can’t survive any dip in our income.  We are shackled to paying our bills.

However, as Madison points out, Gettin’ Out of Debt is possible.  All you need is determination and a clear plan.  Becoming debt-free isn’t always easy, but it is simple!

I believe frugality and avoiding debt are essential to good financial health, but some ask Is Frugality The Anti-Stimulus Plan?  Are we being bad citizens by saving instead of spending?  The government and media seem to believe so.

I would side with Frugal Dad on this question.  I believe that true economic recovery begins when individual citizens start living below their means!

A Simpler Life

Remember the old saying, “Keep it simple stupid”?  This is wisdom to live by.  Complications rob us of our joy.

Sara asks, Does Decluttering Make Sense in Hard Economic Times?  When scarcity seems to threaten us as a part of this recession, we might develop the tendency to hoard things.  However, there really isn’t any shortage of goods to buy.  In fact, bargains are plentiful.

Hoarding just creates clutter which frustrates and burdens us.  We are better off dumping all the extra weight we carry in our lives to make ourselves lean and mean.  This way we can be prepared no matter what happens.

Of course, it isn’t just stuff that complicates our lives.  We can also mess things up by allowing external circumstances to distract us from what matters the most.

In Putting First Things First – Where Are You On The List?, Corey points out that we need to make time to take care of ourselves.  If we want our relationships to survive under stress, we first have to tend to our own needs.  The article is written mostly to moms, but it applies to us all.

Motivated, Frugal and Simple

I truly believe that these are three keys to a rich and fulfilling life.  It takes effort to stay focused and on track in each of these areas, but the payoff is well worth it.  A super-charged life is available to us all where these three exist.

Photo by pasotraspaso