Thoughtful Thursday

SUSTAINABLE HEALTHY LIFESTYLES

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about the importance of sustainability in your lifestyle. It can be challenging to change your lifestyle. However, there are times in life where you may evaluate the way you have been living and want to make a change. I would argue that one of the most important things to consider when changing your lifestyle is if it is a sustainable way for you to live. Success or longevity happens far more often in consistency rather than in perfection. Whether you want to exercise and eat healthier, start a journey towards decluttering and minimalism, start a new cleaning routine, or find better work/life balance, the important thing is to make changes you can stick to!

So often when making a change in lifestyle, people try to change too much all at once and expect perfection. It can be really defeating when you don’t meet the expectations you set for yourself and often lead to giving up. But if you come up with a plan that is sustainable, then you are more likely to have follow-through!

If you are ready to start a new exercise or diet routine, it’s best to start with small changes so you can have some wins! This helps you to feel more capable and therefore you are more likely to have follow-through. This is an extreme example: but if you have never exercised before, I would suggest not deciding one day that you are going to exercise 6 times a week for an hour each day! It would be challenging to make that drastic of a lifestyle change overnight. It is more sustainable to choose to workout one or two days a week. Maybe just walking around the block at first – working up to more frequent and harder workouts. So often when we want to make a lifestyle change, we are impatient with the results and that is why we go hard and fast. If you want lasting change, there really are no shortcuts. You must work through the process and be patient. Anyone you see who is fit did not get like that overnight. Likely it was hard work and consistency that got them where they are.

Changing your diet in a sustainable way can be really challenging. I have been wanting to incorporate more protein into my diet, however I am not a big meat eater, so for me it would not be sustainable to just add more meat to my diet. I have had to get creative to find ways to add extra protein into the existing way I eat. The other day I made protein pancakes to add extra protein to something that I wanted to eat!

Maybe you are ready to start a decluttering journey, or a journey towards minimalism. Once again the key to success when pursuing something is that it is sustainable for you. Often people don’t have the time or physical and emotional bandwidth to declutter a lot of items in a short period of time. Instead of pressuring yourself to declutter everything at once perhaps focus on one area at a time, maybe choosing to do one space per week. When you declutter small amounts over a longer period of time, it will feel more achievable and then you will be more likely to have follow-through. There is that phrase “follow-through” again. When things are sustainable, we are more likely to have success. 

If you are trying to become more minimal, it is best to evaluate your lifestyle, age, if you have children, and hobbies in order to create a space that is minimal but also sustainable. If you are hasty and get rid of everything at once you may get rid of things that you actually wanted or needed. I really love fashion, but over the years as I have pursued minimalism I have thought about downsizing my wardrobe. I finally decided that a small, capsule, or basic wardrobe really wasn’t sustainable for me. I like to have a variety of items to choose from in my wardrobe and that’s okay!

Another area of life that you may want to change is your cleaning schedule/routine. Once again, in order to be successful you have to come up with a schedule that is reasonable for your lifestyle. Maybe you work during the week and don’t have time to clean during the week and you have to get all of your cleaning done on the weekend. Or perhaps you are the opposite and your weekends are full with kids’ activities or other obligations outside of the home, but you can do a little bit of cleaning each day of the week. It’s best to figure out what works with your schedule, which will make implementing a cleaning routine more sustainable.

Lastly, perhaps you are trying to find a better work-life balance. We must find ways to make that sustainable. Perhaps there are things in your job that you can delegate to others, freeing up more of your time. Or there could be things on your plate that aren’t necessary and you could eliminate them all together. If you don’t evaluate what changes can be made and you just try to fit more and more into your calendar, that will over time burn you out and will not be sustainable. You must be realistic about the amount of time you have each day, and your personal bandwidth of what you can do. 

Changing your lifestyle isn’t always easy, but it is doable. You are more likely to have success if you are able to think through ways the new lifestyle can be sustainable for you.

Here is the YouTube video I made in conjunction with this blog post.

REFLECTIONS FROM A SOLO ROAD TRIP

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Hey friends, I just returned from a two week solo road trip through Arizona! It was a bit scary to do this trip, but it was so amazing and I definitely had thoughtful take aways that I wanted to share for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post! Part of why I drove through Arizona was to meet a few YouTube friends who I met online and have gotten to know online over the past few years. It was amazing to see them in person! If you want to see the YouTube video I created in conjunction with this post, I will have it linked at the end of this post!

The first thought I wanted to share with you today that I had during this trip is that nature speaks to me. I’ve always known I’m an outdoors type person and that I love nature, but this trip reminded me how important it is for me to experience nature daily for my soul. I can’t tell you how many times I teared up just taking in the nature around me. I had never been to Arizona, so it was all new to me. I honestly didn’t realize how beautiful Arizona would be. Tumamoc Hill in Tucson in particular really had me in awe! At the top I just enjoyed time up there. I took off my shoes to do some grounding and listened to worship music and I’m telling you this was feeding my soul!!!

Something else I decided to do while on this trip is to get my first tattoo! I thought I would share with you a little about that experience! At first I was a bit hesitant to go get a tattoo by myself, especially my first tattoo, but I decided it was apropos for this trip and because of the tattoo that I got. I got the word “enough” tattooed on my wrist so every time I’m feeling down on myself or like I need validation, I can look down and be reminded that I am enough. I am enough just as I am. I am enough on my own. I don’t need external validation to feel enough. So getting this tattoo on my own made sense! As far as getting the tattoo itself – honestly I didn’t think it hurt that bad. Granted this is a small tattoo. It felt more like buzzing, like an electric toothbrush or something. It was sore afterwards, but it healed quickly and nicely. There was a point where she had to stop for a few minutes. She told me to eat a good breakfast and hydrate. I was nervous so all I could do was drink a protein shake. I think I was using a lot of energy talking to her, because that’s what I do when I’m nervous. I started feeling a little light headed, so she stopped and ended up giving me a glucose tablet! I guess this is common since she was prepared! I’m so happy with the results and I have no regrets! I have wanted this tattoo for over 10 years, so this was not a spur of the moment decision. I thought for a long time about it, and honestly one of the reasons I had not gotten it was because of my people pleasing tendencies and I didn’t want to be judged for having a tattoo. But at this point in life I’m letting go of being a people pleaser! 

Something else I learned from this trip was to really problem solve on my own. I have been married since I was 21 years old and so I feel like I’ve always had that partner there to help me solve any problems. It was good to learn to just figure things out on my own! I definitely had a few snafus with getting into AirBnB’s, and issues with the AirBmB’s in general, but in the end I was always able to figure it out!

Along with problem solving, I learned to not allow my anxiety to drive my life. In those moments when things would go wrong, I would just take a deep breath and remind myself that I am an intelligent woman and I can figure things out! Being alone in general taught me to calm myself down when I felt that anxiety rising for any reason! So many people said to me things like they were worried for me traveling on my own or they could never do a trip like this. But I realized it just takes standing up to your anxiety! I truly think anyone COULD do this, but maybe they are just too afraid.

Another thing I learned on this trip is to be okay by myself. Enjoying my own thoughts and my own company. Sometimes this was a bit rough admittedly, like the one time I went to a restaurant by myself and sat and ate alone. I wasn’t a fan and can now cross this off my bucket list, but I’m glad I experienced it. I got my tattoo by myself, and visited the Grand Canyon for the first time ever and I went alone! Another thing that was really tough is the cabin I stayed at in Sedona didn’t have wifi! I actually didn’t realize this, live and learn – next time I will read the entire listing! But I really thought all AirBnB’s had wifi!! But it was good to be alone in the woods with my thoughts and it did force me to do some reading.

The last thing I took away from this trip that I wanted to share is the importance of doing the scary or hard thing in order to live life to the fullest! I really wanted to do another hike in Sedona before I left. I went on a hike with my friend Jacque and her husband and it definitely feels less scary hiking with others. It was outside of my comfort zone to do a solo hike because I am not directionally oriented. I can easily get lost. I carefully studied the map before I left and took notes to remember which directions I needed to go. I was so proud of myself for accomplishing this hike and I only asked for directions once!

I hope this post maybe inspired you to do something outside of your comfort zone! There were certainly moments that we scary, but overall I am so glad I took this trip! I highly recommend solo travel to anyone!

The YouTube video I created in conjunction with this blog post.

MINDSET SHIFT ON REGRET

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about regret. We all to a certain degree have regrets in life. I am someone who truly tries to not live with regret. If I have those thoughts of regret pop up, I remind myself of a principle I believe in: that things happen for a reason. As you age, it gets easier to see the big picture of life. You may question why you made the decisions you made that you regret, or worse yet why things have happened to you because of chance or other people’s choices. But I truly think there is a big picture story happening in our lives that is hard to understand.

Another thing I do when I have feelings of regret is shift my mindset around it because regret can be a great learning experience for us. If we evaluate the regretful decisions we made, they can inform decisions we make moving into our future. Unfortunately time machines have not been invented, so we are not able to go back and make different choices. All we can do is make better choices moving forward. When we embrace this mindset shift, we can learn to forgive ourselves for past mistakes, and to give ourselves grace for not being perfect. It can be hard to forgive ourselves, but it’s necessary so we can move forward in life and view these regrets as lessons instead of dwelling on them.

Oftentimes with regret, it FEELS regretful because it is pricking some value we have and that decision didn’t align with that life value. I believe we will live more fulfilling lives when we make decisions that are truly in line with what we say we value. Sometimes we just give lip service to certain values, but our behavior and choices don’t reflect that value. So, if you have a regret, really evaluate why you feel regretful and what value it’s pricking. What can you do today in the present, and moving forward to better align with those values?

Regrets can be a great teacher to us, but also those decisions you made, while they may have been wrong they are leading you towards something better. Sometimes I can sit and think about the butterfly effect and it can really boggle my mind! I’m sure many of you know what this concept is, but basically it is the idea that the world is deeply interconnected and one small occurrence can affect a much larger complex system. This term was originally coined by meteorologist and mathematician, Edward Lorenz in the 1960s. In his scientific findings, he learned that weather predictions are often not accurate because of this idea. He suggested that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings represented the tiny change in the atmospheric condition that could change the trajectory of the weather. In the same way, some small change or different decision in our lives could cause a totally different outcome.

Hopefully I’m not getting too far off track here, basically I bring up this idea of the butterfly effect to demonstrate that perhaps we all have a path that was supposed to happen, so we should not live with those regrets. This idea reminds me of that Jim Carrey movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Have you ever seen that movie? It’s an older movie, but it is so good! There are a lot of psychological ideas around relationships explored in this movie, but one is this idea of what is meant to happen will happen in the end. The basic premise of this sci-fi type movie is a couple faces struggles and they decide to go through this procedure of erasing their minds in order to deal with the pain of the relationship so they will forget about one another. But somehow they keep returning to each other and falling in love all over again.

I hope this chat today encouraged you to look at regret differently. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments! What are your thoughts on regret?

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this post!

51% SURE

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about something that has been on my mind lately. I have shared recently how I have been struggling a bit lately. Some of that has been trying to figure out what exactly I’m doing with my life. I have really enjoyed sharing creative content on my YouTube channel the last four years, but I’ll be honest, I have been feeling a bit burnt out with it lately and struggling to know what to share as I have been feeling like I have exhausted a lot of the ideas I had when I started my channel. I had a lot of spaces in my home that I was working on getting decluttered and organized and I shared that process throughout the years on my channel, but now I have gotten to maintenance mode, which affords me more time and margin in my life. I’m trying to figure out what exactly I want to do with that time. 

As someone who overthinks things, and struggles to make decisions, I am struggling to know what to do moving forward. I still really enjoy creating content and I would like to continue to share in some capacity on my YouTube channel, and other media platforms, but I am pondering other ideas I would like to pursue in life. And I wanted to share with you an inspiring principle I learned about on a podcast I recently listened to where Mel Robbins was interviewing Steven Bartlett, who is a British entrepreneur and podcaster. He talked about this idea of taking risks when making decisions. He explained that so many people want 100% (or near 100%) certainty that the decision they are making is the right decision. He suggested that we really only need to be 51% sure about something to go for it. He said oftentimes when we make these decisions we need to recognize that most of the time they are reversible so we might as well try! This perspective really inspired me! Because I overthink things, I am definitely the type of person who wants more certainty than just 51%, but if we don’t take risks we likely won’t be successful! Taking more risks leads to more likelihood of success, which makes sense just from a statistics standpoint!

One thing that can be challenging when we want to pursue something new or change direction in life is motivation. It is much easier, and more comfortable to continue doing what we are doing. We can end up on autopilot, which is beneficial in some ways. It requires less decisions and is predictable. On the other hand, autopilot causes us to kind of float through life and may prevent us from being intentional. Living on autopilot doesn’t allow room for growth. We grow outside of our comfort zone. But, back to this idea of needing motivation to grow and change and get outside of our comfort zone… Maybe instead of doing some big thing to make a change, we start with something small. We can’t make a change until we take a step towards change, and that step can be a small one.

Today I was listening to another podcast by Mel Robbins, obviously I’m a big fan of hers so I highly recommend checking out her YouTube channel. I linked that interview with Steven Bartlett above. In the podcast today she was talking about this very idea of the importance of just getting started. She was sharing this analogy of how when you put tulips in a vase, they will begin to bend to the direction of the sunlight. She suggested we need to “bend towards the light” – bend towards whatever change we are trying to make in life. If we just stay where we are, we will not grow or thrive!

I hope this post encouraged or inspired you in some way today! Leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts!

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.

THE STRUGGLES OF CONTENT CREATION

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to share that I’m struggling. I did have a topic planned for this post, but the reality is I was not feeling the topic I had planned to discuss today. It took everything within me to quit staring at that blinking cursor on the screen as it mocked me and to just start typing SOMETHING! Admittedly, sometimes it’s difficult being a content creator and consistently sharing content publicly. And for me in particular, as a recovering perfectionist, I always want to share really high quality content. However, I’m learning that maybe it’s okay to sometimes share things in a little more raw and uncurated way.

Some days it can be challenging to feel inspired and that’s tough since as a content creator I tend to share out of inspiration. But, I also strive to share content consistently. For the most part I absolutely love content creation. I am a creative person in general, and over my lifetime that creativity has been channeled in different ways. When I was very young I enjoyed writing poetry and short stories, or even just journaling to process thoughts and feelings. In high school and college I was really into photography and enjoyed that as a creative outlet. Later as a wife I was able to express creativity in the kitchen and in decorating our home and making it cozy. Then when our children were young I enjoyed spending time with them and coming up with fun activities for them. As the kids became school aged, I got involved in volunteering with their schools and working with some non for profit organizations, which seemed to usually involve communication and community building. I was also able to express creativity when I ran my own business as a professional organizer. Currently a lot of my creativity has been channeled into sharing creative content. For those of you who don’t know, I did graduate with a journalism degree and I never anticipated using my degree in this way, but I do feel like content creation is adjacent to journalism. 

I think in addition to sometimes feeling uninspired and unsure of what to share for Thoughtful Thursday thoughts, I sometimes feel unsure or uninspired in general with what to share on all social media outlets. For my YouTube channel, I have been feeling like I have exhausted all of the organizing, decluttering, and cleaning projects around my home. Hopefully even in the redundancy I inspire or motivate people though my videos. I’m not sure how most people feel, but I wonder if over time content creators become repetitive and therefore boring. For me it’s not just about making sure my audience isn’t bored, it’s also about feeling creatively inspired in my sharing and for my YouTube channel I get tired of editing the same type of footage over and over. Because of that, there will be some changes on my channel and part of that is a shift in my own personal focus – away from decluttering and organizing my spaces now that most of my spaces are in maintenance mode and towards living a slower life and incorporating more travel in particular. I have several trips planned coming up and I will be sharing those experiences in travel vlogs. My hope is this type of content, while different from what I have shared in the past will still be enjoyable and my viewers would get value from some of my upcoming content.

Here is my most recent video on my YouTube channel!

Part of the struggle of being a content creator is for sure coming up with content and consistently sharing from a place of inspiration. But, another challenging part of being a content creator is everything going on behind the scenes as I share somewhat benign content online.

Most content creators are sharing within a niche. For me I’m sharing organizing, cleaning, decluttering, and minimalism content. Obviously this is one small facet of my life. I have been trying to share a little more candidly through these Thoughtful Thursday posts, but I want you to know there are a lot of things I don’t share about my life. This is something that is intentional. I think it’s important to have boundaries online with what I share. I don’t share details about my personal life or about my family, and that is intentional. My intention has never been to hide anything, but more so to protect my family and to keep my content within my niche.

However, because of that, when I’m having a rough day or a rough few days it can be especially difficult to share content. I am someone who is pretty vulnerable and open with people in my real life, so it does sometimes feel odd to have heavy stuff going on behind the scenes and not talk about it the places I share creative content. But like I said, this is an intentional choice I have made.

I think a lot of content creators are the same way. We all are real people with real problems in life. Just because we don’t talk about them doesn’t mean we don’t have them. Most content creators curate what they show you. Not because we are deceitful, but because we are showing you a very small facet of our lives to motivate, inspire, challenge, or encourage our audience.

With all this said, the past few days have been pretty rough for me, and it’s been challenging to share content publicly. It feels like I’m hiding heavy stuff that is going on behind the scenes. That is why I am sharing about this today, being as real as I can while also honoring my boundaries. If you look at someone’s online presence and think they have it all together, they have a near perfect life, they seem so happy, or they don’t seem to have many problems, I can guarantee that there ARE things going on behind the scenes that you know nothing about. And I can attest to this with my own life.

I know for the most part I come across as very positive and upbeat, and that truly is who I am. I am in general someone who is an optimist and sees the silver linings, but some days are harder than others. And some days it’s too much to handle the heavy stuff going on in life and I feel down. So I want you to know if you feel like you don’t have it together, your life is a mess, you are struggling to feel happy, or you are dealing with some heavy problems in life – YOU ARE NOT ALONE! 

Today, the sun is shining in Austin, and it is helping me to feel better. I am just going to continue all of those healthy practices that I strive to make a part of my everyday life – getting exercise, getting good sleep, eating healthy, drinking plenty of water, and meditating. When we can’t change the people around us, or change our circumstances, we CAN change how we react. And we can do everything within our power to make OURSELVES better. Because we are the only person we are in charge of. We have autonomy over our actions, our thoughts, and the way we handle things. I hope this encourages someone today! 

GET UNCOMFORTABLE

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about something I shared a little bit about in an Instagram Reel and a YouTube short earlier this week, but I wanted to take some time to elaborate on this topic. I shared how it is human nature to fight for what is comfortable. To fight for the path of least resistance. To fight for the familiar. But just because that feels natural, doesn’t mean that’s what’s best for us. Sometimes in the comfortable we become robotic. We stop being present. We stop engaging with our lives. What if the fulfilling life you want happens when you get uncomfortable?

You might have heard that it is common for people who were abused as children to gravitate towards those types of abusive relationships as an adult. I don’t think it’s because they are sadistic, I think it’s because as humans we tend to gravitate towards what we know, what feels normal, or what feels safe. This can be true even if that may be toxic. We must fight against the toxic narratives that were programmed into us.

It’s not easy to change behavior or thought patterns. A great analogy is likening our thought patterns to creating a pathway, like a roadway in our minds. When we keep traveling down the same path over and over – that route becomes like a highway. It is so much easier to travel on that highway than to take side roads or back ways. But as you work to change your thought patterns and go down the new way, the healthier way of thinking, THAT pathway over time becomes the predominant thought process instead.

We must be patient with ourselves. In order to stop fighting for what is familiar and do something different, it takes time and work. Retraining our minds is not easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. Most people don’t like to hear the truth that we grow and change slowly, organically over time. Especially in our fast paced culture where everything is a click away, we are impatient and want quick fixes. We must learn to submit to the fact that personal growth just doesn’t work that way. 

It’s not easy to be uncomfortable. It’s not easy to change and grow. There is a reason when children grow and have physical pain we call it “growing pains.” It hurts to grow, and no one likes pain. But that pain should remind you that you are making progress! When we workout our muscles get sore. That is a sign that our muscles are growing. They are sore because they were stretched and pushed to the limit, but the outcome is we are stronger!

As I look back over my life, I am reminded time and time again that when I have stepped out of my comfort zone and did something scary that has led to the most fulfilling experiences in my life! I know it’s hard to do something uncomfortable or scary, but it’s also hard living a passive life where you feel like you’re just on a treadmill going nowhere! You choose your hard!

Well friends, I hope what I shared with you today was encouraging or maybe challenged you! As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts down in the comments!

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post!

INTENTIONAL LIVING, VALUING EXPERIENCES OVER THINGS

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Hey friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about part of my life ethos with regard to intentional living. Part of choosing to live intentionally for me is valuing experiences over things. Some people may say that when you spend money on an experience, it is over after that experience is over, whereas with things you will have it for as long as you would like. But I would argue that experiences actually last you a lifetime. You will always have the memories you make. I think now more than ever it’s important to be intentional about spending time with family and friends, or even by yourself off of screens!

This year I am turning 50 years old. I was joking with some friends that some people celebrate their birthday week or even their birthday month, but Joy is going to celebrate her birthday year! I plan to do lots of traveling in 2024 as I am focusing on this principle of experiences over stuff!

We recently returned from a family ski vacation in the mountains. The mountains are for sure my happy place! I love skiing for lots of reasons, one being the peace I feel on top of a mountain and as I ski down. There is nothing like the sound of silence in the mountains. The mountains are a place that also moves me emotionally and spiritually. There were several times where I just started crying because of my awe of the beauty and majesty of the mountains. That feeling really can’t be replicated.

I also wanted to share a little story about some of the things that went wrong on our trip. This seems to be a theme for our ski trips! I shared a ski vlog a couple of years ago on my YouTube channel, which I can link below, and you can listen to the stories I told from the adventures of that ski trip! But I wanted to throw in here this idea that it’s okay when things go wrong or we endure hardships when we prioritize experiences. I’m learning that just goes along with the territory and it can teach us lessons as well!

So, it was snowing when we entered the resort. Our condo was at the top of a hill on a small road which had not been plowed. AND we don’t have four wheel drive… you can probably tell where this story is going. We tried getting up the hill from two different entrances AND we tried helping push the vehicle up the hill while my husband hit the gas, to no avail! So, we decided we would park in the parking lot of the resort and walk our stuff the 400 yards or so up the hill to the condo! I have never experienced altitude sickness, but I think between working hard carrying bags up a hill immediately upon entering the mountains, and also not really getting enough to eat or hydration for the day since we were driving all day, made me more susceptible to getting sick. That night, in the middle of the night I got a text from my son saying he felt really sick too. I was then wide awake, not feeling well myself but also worried about him. I tried to get up to go to the bathroom, but took two steps before I passed out. I called for my husband to help me and I was trying to stand up again and passed out again! I woke up to him standing over me asking if I was okay. I was like, no I can’t stay conscious haha! He helped me get back into bed, gave me electrolytes, and a trash can cuz I was feeling nauseous. Sorry for the TMI, I did end up throwing up, but felt better after that. I thought for sure I wouldn’t be  able to ski the next day but surprisingly I was able to rally! Unfortunately my son felt sick for most of the trip and was only able to ski one half day of the three we were skiing!

Also, the morning we were supposed to leave it was predicted to accumulate close to 11 inches of snow, so we tried to get out as quickly as possible! It was a little precarious, but we did in fact make it out of the resort and down the mountain and then home safely!

One other thing I wanted to share with regards to valuing experiences: look for opportunities to experience whimsy. I find that I basically turn into a five year old child who is enamored with whimsy when I’m in the snow! Maybe this is a result of living in a climate where I rarely get to see snow, but nevertheless, it reminds me of the importance of finding joy in the little things in life. Look for moments or opportunities to experience playfulness. Sometimes we need to just stop taking ourselves so seriously!

Here is the YouTube video I posted in conjunction with this blog post.

DO YOU WANT OPTIONS OR FREEDOM

/ OrganizedWithJoy / 3 Comments

Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday I wanted to talk about something that I have been thinking about with regards to minimalism. I have talked frequently about my quest to simplify my life. I’m sure many of you who have been around for a while know that I have spent several years decluttering our home. I’m finally getting to a point where I have reached maintenance mode.

One big lesson I have learned from this process is the idea that we have a choice between options or freedom. What I mean by this, is we can have a lot of options in any given personal possessions category, or we can have freedom from those items. Take clothing as an example. We can have a closet full of clothes, which offers us lots of options, but it comes at the expense of freedom – of time, choosing what to wear can be more difficult with more options, and it also takes more time to maintain a larger wardrobe.

You might have heard people talking about how paralyzing making decisions can be these days because of our options. The internet offers us so many options – from different types of jeans to purchase, to job opportunities, to dating partners. Having endless options can be overwhelming and take up a lot of mental capacity to sift through all of the information presented to us to make a decision on any given thing.

I have been thinking about how as we pursue minimalism, we must decide which categories are important for us personally to have options and which it’s important to have freedom. This will be different for each person since we all have different interests and passions. Maybe you don’t cook or bake much, so you can have far less kitchen and pantry inventory on hand – giving you more freedom to spend time on other things. There are some people who find that freedom is more important than options in most categories of possessions. But we must each decide what works best for us and for our families.

For me, I used to have lots of extra decor on hand. I loved decorating for each season and rotating out different decor, but as I age I’m realizing I would rather own a smaller collection of items I truly really love and rotate them less frequently. I choose the freedom of not switching out decor often and having that time to pursue other things.

Everything we own will cost us. It will of course cost us the initial monetary price, but then it will cost us time and energy to clean, maintain, organize, and store these items. It will also cost us the mental energy of one day perhaps deciding to declutter that item. 

I was especially thinking about this as I put away my Christmas decor this year. I realized it really was quite simple to put everything away because of how much I have pared down my holiday decor. And I have several transitional pieces that can stay up through the winter.

Stuff can own us, or we can own the stuff. I have learned that it is a balance trying to decide what’s important enough to have options and where I want freedom instead. The longer I pursue minimalism and simple living, the more I become drawn to freedom over options! Each of us must decide what works best for us, our lifestyles, and our families!

The YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.

HABITS ARE HARD TO CHANGE

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Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about how challenging it can be to change habits. It is challenging to incorporate new healthy habits, and it’s also challenging to change the unhealthy habits. As we end out the year I know many of you are thinking about some changes you may want to make in the new year. The new year is a great time to evaluate behavior and think about what you may want to do differently moving into the new year.

I thought this is a good time of year to address this topic and share some thoughts with you. There are a few things I have been thinking about recently with regards to habits. First, I just want to acknowledge how difficult it is to incorporate new habits into your routines. I have been doing intermittent fasting for the past 3 or 4 years, and while this may be considered a healthy habit I decided I wanted to change things up and eat protein prior to my workout in order to gain muscle. Y’all I did this for maybe two weeks, but slowly reverted back to my old habit of not eating until noon – which is after my workout. Even though my previous habit wasn’t a bad habit it was still nevertheless challenging for me to incorporate a new habit. As we think about incorporating new habits moving into the new year we must acknowledge that it will be hard. If you are wanting to change a bad habit or add a healthy habit, it will likely be extra challenging! 

I think it’s important to first be aware of the internal struggle you will experience as you make changes. It can be difficult to make lots of changes at once, and I have noticed for myself I have more success if I just focus on one or two changes at a time. If you choose one thing to focus on per month in 2024, by the end of the year you will have changed 12 habits! 

Something else that can derail new habits is failure. It can be easy to give up when we have a day where we fail to meet the expectations we have set for ourselves, but I think we will have more success if we pick ourselves up and dust off and move forward the next day. It can be hard to accept that we won’t do things perfectly, but once we do we begin to see the change sticking over the long haul.

Another thing that is important to acknowledge is that even if you have stuck with a good or healthy habit for a long period of time, it doesn’t mean that it is easy to stick to. There will be days that you don’t feel like following through. I have been someone who avidly works out since I was in middle school, but I can promise you there are some days when I am not feeling it and I want to skip the workout. It is on those days that the habit drives the behavior more than my feelings. Just because we have a habit doesn’t mean that it will always be easy to stick to it!

I do want to address that there are some habits that become an addiction and you might need to seek professional help if you are not having luck changing those habits on your own. Addiction can come in many forms these days. So many people think of substance abuse, but we can be addicted to our phones, social media, shopping, food, and more! Sometimes we need to get help from a professional to get out of these unhealthy cycles. I’m mentioning this briefly to acknowledge it, but I know that there is no simple solution to these sorts of unhealthy habits. But I did want to mention it.

I hope this post encouraged or inspired you today! I would love for you to check out my YouTube channel if you haven’t already done so! I will link the video below that I made in conjunction with this post!

LISTENING TO YOUR BODY

/ OrganizedWithJoy / Leave a comment

Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to encourage you to listen to your body. This is a time of year where it can be really easy to run ourselves ragged trying to get everything done for the holiday season, but we must listen to our bodies and eat when we need to eat, and sleep when we are feeling run down.

It’s inevitable that we will have more to do during the holiday season probably than any other time during the year. There are presents to buy, wrap, and potentially send. There are Christmas cards to send (if you’re still doing those!) There are parties to attend, kids’ holiday concerts or events, extra food to prepare, and of course decorating our homes! It can all be a bit overwhelming.

If you are finding year after year you feel overwhelmed and run down, perhaps evaluate all of the commitments you make this time of year. It is okay to say no or to scale back. I know that is not always easy for sure! But we need to create margin in our lives this time of year to have down time and time to take care of ourselves – either special self care type time or just time to get proper nutrition and rest!

Earlier on in our marriage we would get gifts for all of our siblings and the nieces and nephews. As we added more and more nieces and nephews we decided to do a gift exchange with the adults and buy for all of the kids. Then as the kids got older, we decided to do an exchange with all of them as well. Over time I realized that it seemed like we were essentially exchanging money as everyone would send wish lists with specific items – especially as the nieces and nephews got to be teenagers and a little more challenging to purchase for. I decided that it was silly for us to continue doing these exchanges because we live far from both sides of the family and do not get together for the holidays, so I not only had to purchase and wrap gifts but also stand in line at the post office to send them. It was so freeing to step away from those gift exchanges.

Next I decided to quit sending physical Christmas cards. This has been a relatively recent decision. I believe the last one I sent was in 2019. It was a big ordeal and I understand that I could have simplified it instead of quit all together. But we would get our family photo professionally taken in the fall, I would order the photo cards, write a family letter updating everyone on the happenings during that year, print those out then stuff envelopes. I am really thankful for the years we did it and I have kept those for us and for each of our kids to have for memories, but as my kids got older I felt like there was less to share in those letters. You could choose to quit sending physical cards all together, or you could just simplify the process.

Food preparation and decorating are other big commitments this time of year. Again, we can choose to scale back. Perhaps instead of making eight different types of Christmas cookies you could choose your favorite four. Perhaps you could go through your Christmas decor and declutter items that you don’t love, only keeping your favorite items that you love and are meaningful to you. Having a smaller collection of Christmas decor will simplify the decorating process making it less overwhelming.

Something else that I am still learning to do is to enlist help. If there are tasks you can delegate to your spouse or children, find ways they can help. It’s great to get the whole family involved in prepping for the holiday season! I admit that this is really not easy for me. I struggle in general to ask for help, but I recognize that sometimes it’s difficult or even more time consuming to delegate tasks – explaining what needs to get done.

I share all this with you to give you ideas or help you think of ways you can simplify or streamline responsibilities during the holiday season. This time of year can become so overwhelming and busy, but there are ways we can simplify so we have time to enjoy the season!

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post!