Harmony

I told you I would be vulnerable. Here goes.

It was somewhere around the year 2012 when I admitted mental defeat. I felt like I was losing my mind and it scared me. It wasn’t something I could pray myself out of or pick myself up from. Something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t cry. I didn’t care about life. I was numb. In fact I kept wishing for something to happen that would land me in the hospital. Not paralysis or death, just enough to put me in a bed, on meds, and make it “OKAY” to be numb. Then I could fully embrace it, I thought. It was my rock bottom.

Depression is real and serious. I definitely didn’t understand that until going through it. And even then it is different for everyone. But the feeling of utter helplessness is the same.

I began seeing a therapist and she prescribed me medication for depression. Up until that point in my life I had never taken meds consistently for anything. I mean, how do you think I ended up pregnant at the age of 17?  “I don’t need birth control!”   Denial is my middle name. No, seriously... Denia-Leah. DENIALeah. It’s my middle name. I’ve accepted it.

If you’ve never seen a therapist you should try it. Put it on your bucket list. It’s worthy. My therapist would ask me thought provoking questions that led me to new realizations of myself and my life. It was as if she would sit in front of me with a mirror and make me look at everything I had been avoiding. That sounds miserable, but it brought healing.

Self-Awareness is the conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

She asked me if I knew what the word congruent meant. “No.” I thought. “I’m not here to learn new words I’m here to get well.” She told me she thought my life was incongruent with my expectations.  “huh?”

Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist that defined congruence as the matching of experience and awareness.

I like to call it Harmony. Once I became aware of just how off base my life had become in a specific area I was able to make some changes and begin to heal.

Adam Baker asked a group of folks at a TED talk (<- google this) one question. “What does freedom mean to you?”

Each person must answer this for themselves. Step back to analyze your life and see if you are living a life that is congruent to what you really want. You may just find that you are living a life you didn’t choose but someone else chose for you. The media, your teachers or parents, who/what has had the most influence in your life? There is nothing wrong with your life unless it’s not the one you want.

Nigel Marsh said “There are thousands and thousands of people out there living lives of quiet, screaming desperation who work long, hard hours, at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.”

The curse of STUFF

In the spring of 2016 the seeds of minimalism were planted in my heart.

I remember gazing dreamily at all of the tiny homes my husband and I walked through in Mountain View, AR. They were the creation of a company called Slabtown Custom Tiny Houses. After having spent a weekend at the Wildflower Bed & Breakfast (owned by our beloved friends Chris and Shelly Smith), my husband, Donnie, and I drove by Slabtown and asked for a tour. Then it happened.

Think back to a moment in time when you fell in love with something or someone. Did you get those chills that made the hair on your arms stand up? Call me crazy and some do, but that totally happened to me when I fell in love with tiny homes. I almost cried.. right there for no seemingly apparent reason to a typical, burly Mountain View man. “We are meant for this.” I breathed from behind my hands covering my mouth. THIS… is meant for us. Somehow. Someway. One day. THIS is going to happen for us.

I still don’t know what that looks like. I am not even sure that I want to live in a tiny home. But standing there in that tiny, open space I knew things would never go back to the way they had been before.

On the way home from Mountain View that day Donnie and I talked of our hopes and dreams for our future. I am a natural dreamer. Bless him, Donnie keeps my feet on the ground.  We both knew that change would be coming. Something shifted.

We began the pursuit of minimalism in September of 2016.  And although I haven’t been at this for long, it has already begun to impact my family’s life for the better.

Life is simple. And yet stuff makes things unnecessarily complicated. The more STUFF you own the less you have. Less time and less money. You only have more things. More possessions. And how does that make you feel? Does your stuff make you feel important?

 In the book “Do Less” Rachel Jonat says that “we confuse owning things with doing things.” And she is right. Just this week I asked a friend to make a list for me. (You know, because I am analyzing everything in my life and I’m dragging her along with me.)  A couple of days later she sends me a picture of a journal and pen set and jokingly comments that she “needs” it! Hinting to the idea that if she owned that journal and pen set THEN she could make a list.

How many times have you said “If I only had                           then I would                         ”? And you buy said item and it doesn’t happen. For example: “If I had trail shoes I would be a trail runner” or “If I had this fancy kitchen gadget then I would cook?” Owning things is not the same as doing things. 

A couple of months ago I decided to go through my house and remove items that we weren’t using. And there were A LOT. I shared this with my friends on Facebook and some of them were more upset at me getting rid of my childhood treasures than I was! That tells me how much of a problem we have. We are too connected to our belongings.

Once you detach yourself from the things you own you find you are free from the restrictions they place on you.

You are probably in one of two camps at the moment. Either you are becoming or have become aware of the clutter in your life and are ready to make a change. Or you think you are happy with your stuff. And maybe you are. But what if you’re not?

I love challenges. It’s a way to put yourself to the test. So, for those of you ready to make a change look at the list below and find one that you can commit to. Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to give away all of your possessions or to buy a tiny home.  We can take baby steps together and go from there.

THE GOAL:  to live with less stuff and more time for what matters most

·      Make a list of simple things you enjoyed this week. (ex. Going for a run, having coffee with friends, cooking dinner for family.) Then list the things that didn’t make you happy. 

·      Remove 1 item a day from your home for 30 consecutive days. At the end of your 30 days sell or donate your items.

·      Purge your closet! For those who mean business…check out project 333 by Courtney Carver. Dress with 33 items or less for 3 months. Put all of your other clothes in a box and store them away.

Happy Purging