3 Things You Need to Quit Doing to Live a Simpler Life

“Life is pretty simple, but we persist on making it complicated.”

Confucius

This essay is about a few blunders I've made.

About a few bad behaviors that may make life fairly untidy and miserable.

And it's about what you can do instead to replace those errors and habits with something better.

This post is all about discovering simplicity if you feel yourself having overcomplicated your life.

Few habits and blunders are as frequent as becoming trapped in overthinking.

I used to do that all the time.

And it led to a lot of analytical paralysis, to little action being made on what I deep down desired and to so much time and energy lost.

Things to do instead:

Set short deadlines.

When you have all the time in the world to ponder something then it may sometimes wind up in you spending a lot of time thinking about the subject at hand from every imaginable aspect.

I have found that learning to create small deadlines is incredibly beneficial for this, but it take a little to practice.

So for little things like whether should go and clean the dishes or go and work out I generally allow myself 30 seconds or less to make a decision.

For slightly bigger choices that in the past would have taken me days or weeks to think through I set a deadline for 30 minutes or for the end of the workday.

Say halt in a scenario when you know you can't think clearly.

I know that I'm more sensitive to negative thinking and overthinking things when I'm hungry or when I'm near to my bedtime.

And thus I have learnt to keep away from thinking about anything essential at that period.

And if such ideas with a negative twist still spring up then I tell myself: No, no, we're not going to worry about this now.

Because I know that I will be back to thinking clearly and positively again if I simply get some food or sleep.

I strongly advocate discovering your personal situation(s) when you are more sensitive to overthinking or pessimism. And to catch yourself and redirect your thoughts at such moments.

It's quite simple to become trapped in the same old rut at work or at school. To spend your hours there as you typically do and like most of the other people do too.

With a lot of time spent on busy work, procrastination and on being worried on weekends or shortly before a deadline.

Things to do instead:

Breathe and discover what genuinely counts in the long run.

Then, sit down and take a few of deep breaths to relax and to concentrate your attention.

Then ask yourself: what is the most essential thing I can accomplish today?

Consider about what would matter most in the long term when you ask yourself this question. Find just that one assignment.

Get started with that one task.

If you have problems taking action and are drifting into procrastination then go smaller.

Convince yourself: I will work on this activity for only 2 minutes.

Make getting started so simple on yourself that there is very little or no inner opposition in your thoughts.

So if you simply get started then it's in my experience very simple to stay going for a bit longer and to make a meaningful dent in the work or even complete it.

The pleasure, excitement and delight in a relationship of any sort may frequently be considerably lessened by simple and common mental blunders.

Two such blunders I've done too frequently in the past are to attempt to read minds and to go all in with generating drama.

Things to do instead:

Ask.

Attempting to mindread frequently finishes up in generating nightmarish situations in your own mind.

Since reading minds is pretty much impossible and thus it is extremely simple to project your own darkest worries onto what this person could be thinking.

Instead instead start building a habit of being a little more straightforward. Develop a practice of asking and more clearly communicating to better understand each other.

Examine your own drama.

There might be a type of transitory joy or thrill in generating drama and making things larger or more unpleasant than it is.

In the short term and much more so in the long run it tends to be pretty harmful however.

Then start questioning your own drama.

Ask yourself:

Will this matter in 5 years? Perhaps even in 5 weeks?

Ask it before you start generating and distributing drama to the people in your life.

Obviously, the topic at hand may still have to be handled but reduce it to what it actually is before you do so to prevent unneeded arguments, rage and broken emotions.

And don’t forget to challenge other people’s drama too by asking yourself the same question.

Just because they want to generate drama doesn’t mean that you have to be sucked into it.