Six Ways to Simplify Your Daily Life

Begin today to simplify your work and your personal life. Set it as a goal, make a plan, and work on simplification every day. Here are some ways to get started.

Clean up the clutter in your life. Clear off your workspace completely before you begin work. Even if you have to put things on the floor, you should only have one task on the desk in front of you at any one time.

Go through your stacks of reading material with a garbage bag and begin throwing things away. Much of it no longer has value. Any magazine that is more than six months old is junk. Any information you can get somewhere else is junk. Most materials put aside for filing or storage are never looked at again. There are warehouses full of dead files that eventually have to be thrown away. There are homes, offices, and desks with piles of materials that will never be looked at by human eyes again.

To increase breathing space in your life, try leaving things off. Resist the temptation to turn on the radio at home or in your car. Leave the television off when you get up or arrive home. Create periods of silence in your life so that your mind can relax and function better. One great advantage of leaving things off is that you will find yourself spending more time talking openly and honestly with your family and friends. As soon as you turn on the television or radio, all communication grinds to a halt. You can dramatically improve the quality of your life simply by developing the habit of leaving things off.
Many people have gotten rid of their television sets completely or moved them to a separate room. They are astonished at the improvement that takes place in the quality of their personal lives as a result.

Go through your car, your closets, and your garage and get rid of everything that is out of fashion, obsolete, unnecessary, or irreparable. Break yourself of the "pack rat" mentality so many people learned from their parents. Give things away to needy people and needy causes. Keep your life clean and simple, refined and elegant.

Practice solitude on a daily basis. Take thirty to sixty minutes each day and sit quietly by yourself. Allow your mind to relax. Breathe deeply and let your mind float, wandering from subject to subject, with no pressure or direction.
The daily practice of solitude can change your life. Every person who has ever accepted this advice and begun practicing solitude has been astonished at the overall improvement of the quality of his or her life. Sometimes, in solitude, you will come up with ideas and insights that are so profound and powerful that they change the entire direction of your career or your personal life. Just try it a couple of times and see.

Make a specific action commitment. Do something. Do anything. But take action immediately to begin to simplify your life. Once you have taken the first action, you will find yourself automatically propelled into taking action after action. In no time at all, you will have your life completely under control.