It’s funny how much time we spend looking up systems and courses and videos and how-tos and listicles on how to live our lives better. I am helplessly guilty of this problem.
But I want to get better at it.
Take personal health for example. We spend all this time and money on workout plans, memberships, dietary supplements, get-skinny-quick schemes, but you know what would probably make us loose weight and get in shape better than any of these?
Moving our bodies, and eating healthier foods.
Yet we waste away trying to figure out the best possible way to become healthier without actually taking physical action to get there.
The same goes for minimalism.
I recently had an email pop in my inbox selling a new decluttering course by a very popular minimalist. Now, don’t get me wrong — there are probably great actionable steps to take in this course to make decluttering a bit easier and help you incentivize getting rid of certain things you wouldn’t really think would be possible to give up.
In fact, I sent the course to my wife and asked if she would be interested in buying it and taking the course together since we are currently looking to declutter our stuff again.
And she nailed it with her response.
“No, I just don’t have time”.
She was either referring to not having the time to take the course together, or simply not having the time to declutter. Both are true!
Many times, improving our lives simply starts with taking action. It’s the idea that if we got rid of one item per day for a year, we would have 365 less items at the end of the year.
There are stacks and stacks of books out there trying to help us take action in the most efficient and effective ways.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they aren’t helpful.
I just think that one of the biggest problems with all these options are that they can cause overwhelm and cause us to freeze and take no action at all.
I have a close friend (you know who you are ;)) who gives amazing life advice in his online content and it always makes me laugh when we have a conversation a few days later where he is stuck in a decision or having trouble with something that he already knows the fix for… because he just talked about this exact issue in his last video!
Many times things are easier said then done.
At times I wonder if we would do better just thinking of what our end goals are and then take actionable steps to get there, no matter how messy or crooked our line from A to B might be.
For example. If you want to become a YouTube content creator, you could spend hours and hours pouring into how to make the best videos, how to optimize them well, and how to catch people’s attention best; or, you could make 100 videos and try to get better with each one, learn from what worked and what didn’t, and do light research along the way.
Everyone wants to teleport from novice to pro. We can thank Amazon’s 1-day shipping and on-demand television (among other things) for this.
We can have every material possession we can afford at our fingertips within seconds… why can’t we have success like that?
“Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last.” — Hamilton Holt.
Good luck out there, friend — whatever your goals are. Thanks for reading. See you Thursday.
P.S. Some things are worth fighting for… other times you may be swimming up a stream you aren’t meant to. Prayer and communication with those you trust can help in these situations.
My thoughts exactly , Spencer! Fat blobs being settled around on automatic flying chairs being taken care of by some super computer.
This is part of the movement to the metaverse. Where we abandon the real world and our bodies in it (save for some zapping contraption that we will probably wear to stimulate our muscles, in favor of the "choose your own adventure" of virtual reality. I write about the Healingvrse which is what I've dubbed the internet of the sick and healing which guides so many in their recovery whether long haul Covid or other chronic ailment.