Simplify Your Life with Balance

What is the most difficult part about simplifying your life? It is fairly easy to clean your closets and organize your belongings. It is possible to eliminate activities that are not really important to us (watching TV, web surfing.) Even simplifying your finances is not too complicated if you have a general plan.

The most difficult part about simplifying life is dealing with emotional attachments. Let’s say that you have an old picture frame (vase, shirt, shoes etc.) in your house. If it’s just a thing that you picked up on sale or bought ten years ago you will probably be able to change its permanent residence to “trash.” But how would you deal with this thing if you got it from your late grandmother? Maybe your parents gave it to you as a graduation present? Parting with this thing (even if you do not like it too much) gets much more difficult.

Another difficult part about simplifying life is going against social approval. We are so used to a certain order of things and certain cultural rules that we do not even doubt them. We assume that we need to have cable with 200+ channels only because everybody else has it in their homes. We break are backs to sell things for the fundraisers at our kids’ schools just because everybody else does. This list goes on and on.

I had trouble simplifying my life for all the reasons mentioned above and this is when I found a balanced approach to simplicity. Balance helped me find the simplicity that I was personally comfortable with. I didn’t have to limit my belongings to just 100 things and I didn’t get rid of all social commitments. However, I realized what is really important in my life and what is just clutter.

Here is the balanced approach to simplicity that I use in my life. Can you use it in yours?
 
This is an article from http://zenhabits.net/  by Anastasiya Goers

Have faith in yourself and your abilites

Ok, so I have been a stay at home mom  of three small kids for about three years now. I love to be at home with my kids but sometimes I feel like I need to get out there and accomplish something more and make more money. I know that it is utterly important for me to be home with my kids and be the one to take care of them because I trust myself over any babysitter. Now that they are a little older, I would like to focus on a career. To be able to provide them with things that I never had growing up. Sounds like a typical story of a stay at home mom? well thats me right now. But am I on my way to change it? Absolutely. Staying at home so long and not really going out much, I had to be creative and make the four walls of my house interesting to be in. I started to rearange things and keep changing the curtains and mirrors until they looked perfect in harmony together. I started to get compliments from everyone that came into our house. They asked me "why dont you decorate houses for a living? " I never thought of that, I was just doing this for fun to keep me interested in staying home so much. After a while I realized that I had something special and thats an eye for design. Before this I had felt like I had no talant or passion for much but now it feels so good to know I am good at something. It felt like a blessing from God; to know something good about yourself is amazing and only God allows you to have that feeling. I was a person who was interested in many things but couldn't find my niche, I dindnt know what I was good at or if I would be interested in something long enough to persue it until I realized my passion for design and its beauty.

So what now? I know I'm good at something but will I make it? There is alot of unknown factors in being an interior designer. The business aspect, marketing, sales. I had already applied to nursing schools which is the safe way to go. It would be stable income, good benefits and I would have no homework. Which way should I go? The stable way or the way that is fun for me? For my kids I would do nursing but for myself I would do designing homes. I will do both, Nursing for now and interior design for later when the kids are older. Im glad that I had the chance to discover something about myself during my endless hours of staying home and feeling like my career was drifting away. In conclusion, no matter what you are doing right now if you have the passion for something, you will find your self at some point making a desicion to either go for it or leave it. That is when your life changes and you either have the faith in yourself or your not strong enough at that moment to do what your made to do. If you are looking, you will find. Good luck!