20 Ways to Simplify Your Life and Live Intentionally - Life's Little Pleasures and Struggles

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Do you want to simplify your life and live intentionally – on your own terms? It’s never too late to take that step towards simplicity. Simplifying and streamlining all the areas of your life has the potential to reduce your stress significantly. And once all that unnecessary stress is gone, you’ll have more time, space, and energy for what truly matters.

Make 2021 a year for the much needed positive change, a year for you to work on how you can simplify your life and live the life you have always dreamed of. The start of saying “no” to things you don’t want to do and “yes” to things that you have wanted to do for too long. Before you step into the new year, take a step back and reassess what is important and what isn’t, what you want more and less of, and what is adding unnecessary stress in your lives.

How You Can Simplify Your Life and Live Intentionally:

In this day and age, we seek happiness through material possessions so deeply, that we sometimes lose ourselves in the process. We lose touch of what truly matters – personal connection, solitude, and chasing our dreams.

In this article, I’m going to share some ideas to simplify your life so you can finally do things that you love and enjoy, and focus on the things that matter most. You don’t have to be a prisoner of your current lifestyle if you don’t love it.

Make a few intentional changes to slow things down, reassess your priorities, declutter your home, your mind, your online/offline life, and reclaim your mental and physical spaces to restore yourself. Life will get so much simpler and happier!

1. Declutter Your Physical Space:

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This one is very important if you truly want to simplify your life and live intentionally. A cluttered, disorganized home takes a lot of your time for cleaning, maintaining, and organizing stuff. So, declutter your home. It has a profound impact on your mind and your spirit. When we remove the excess, we can focus more on the essential.

By decluttering, you’ll make space and time for the things that matter most. Get started today – one room at a time. Go around the room and eliminate the unnecessary. Keep only what you can use and what is truly valuable. Try to leave only the things that add value to your life, and let the unwanted and unloved ones go.

By reducing the amount of clutter in your home, you’ll improve the quality of your life significantly. When you have less stuff in your home, you have less stuff requiring your time, energy, and attention to manage it all.

If you need extra tips on how to declutter and improve your life, you can refer to this wonderful book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White, for help.

2. Organize Every Corner of Your Home:

Once you are done with decluttering and reclaiming your precious living spaces, take some time to organize the things in your kitchen, in your bedrooms, in living room, closets, bathrooms, and all other parts of your home. Find a right place for everything you are going to use. As soon as you are finished using something, put it back where it belongs. That way, everything will be where it’s supposed to be when you need it.

Remember – decluttering comes before organization. If you declutter enough, you won’t need to organize much. A neat, organized home helps you create a calm, peaceful home environment where you can relax and concentrate on your most important life-goals.

3. Minimize Shopping – buy less, own less:

The journey towards a simple life starts with owning less. Make sure anything you have in your life has a good reason to be there, and serves your purpose well. Most of us have much more than we actually need. Despite this, a good sale or a cool item may inspire us to buy and add more to our collection. In so many ways, our society reinforces this belief that more possessions will make us happy and will impress the people around us. This focus on the materials keeps our minds and our homes cluttered, and drains our bank accounts, and creates further problems.

Don’t buy anything if you know it’s something unnecessary or you can do without. Live simply by shopping less, and only go shopping when you genuinely need to, not just to pass time. In order to simplify your life and live intentionally, you have to shop intentionally, too. Unnecessary shopping steals your time, your money, and your energy.

4. Say “no” more often:

It took me a long time to learn to say ‘no’ politely without feeling guilty. As a result of that, I was unnecessarily making my life harder by keeping busy with the things or people that only added clutter and stress to my life. The sooner you learn it, the better. It’s okay to say ‘no’ to people and events, and put your needs first.

Remember that every time you say ‘yes’ to something you don’t like to do or don’t have time to do, you are saying ‘no’ to something else that you want to do. Saying ‘no’ when you need to say ‘no’ is actually one of the key habits for those trying to simplify their lives and live intentionally on their own terms.

5. Have Fewer Goals:

Many of us have tons of goals in life that keep us busy with things that are not truly important and meaningful. Also, it’s a lot harder to accomplish things when you have more goals than what you can manage to achieve. That can complicate your life, and make you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and unhappy. Go through your priority list, remove those that don’t go with your current values and principles, and only focus on those goals that are truly important.

By reducing the number of goals that you are striving to accomplish, you will improve your focus and your success rate that will also increase your happiness.

Understand that everything being a priority actually means nothing is a priority. By simplifying your goals, you’ll simplify your life and live intentionally.

6. Stay Away From Negativity and Toxic Relationships:

Do your best not to even entertain it. Negativity drains your energy and makes your life complicated. If you want to live a simple, peaceful life, you can’t afford to stay in touch with those who are not positive-minded or like-minded.

If someone is draining your energy and adding nothing but stress to your life, you may need to reevaluate your relationship with them. Toxic relationships add drama and stress to our everyday lives. They can consume us, take our focus off our goals, and hold us back. Also, ensure that your own self-talk is positive, and you don’t get in your own way.

7. Limit Your Screen Time & Watch Less TV:

Find ways to free up time for the the important and meaningful stuff in your life. That means eliminating the things that are not useful, cutting back on time wasters, limiting your screen time, and making room for what you want to do. We waste so much of our precious time by staring down at a screen for hours. You probably don’t even realize how much time you are losing on it.

Make a conscious decision to use social media less. It doesn’t have to be permanent but deactivating social media and significantly cutting back on TV time, even for just a few days-once in a while, can help remind us of what’s truly important. Social media can be a great way to stay in touch with people, but it can also be wasting our valuable time each day.

Spending too much time on social media can even lead to low self-esteem and unhappiness by comparing yourself to others and trying to keep up with the Joneses.

8. Spend More Time With Those You Love and Care For:

Once you let go of the things and people that don’t make your life simpler, easier, or more enjoyable, start spending more quality time with the people you love and care for – that inspire you, that support you, and that you enjoy spending time with.

Whether those people are a spouse, children, parents, siblings, other family members, best friends, or neighbors, find time to do things with them, talk to them, share with them, and be honest with them.

9. Consider Downsizing:

Downsizing is an important part of simple living. Anything large or big can be downsized with careful planning. If you get rid of all the clutter or unnecessary stuff from your home, you may realize that you actually don’t need that much space or a bigger home.

A bigger home means more time cleaning, more energy for tidying up, more money for maintenance and repair, and more stress, too. Living in a smaller home can make your life better and easier by eliminating all the stress and distractions that usually comes with a bigger home.

simplify your life and live intentionally

Same with a bigger car or SUV. It comes with bigger monthly payment, uses more gas, needs expensive insurance and more space. If you have young kids, you can’t probably go for a very small car. But if you can manage to get by with a smaller car than what you have right now, go for one.

10. Learn to Be Content With Less:

Without being content with what you have, you can never simplify your life and live intentionally. Contentment is a feeling or state of mind that comes with being satisfied with what we currently have in our life. In a world that glorifies bigger homes, nicer cars, and newer gadgets as symbols of success and a source of happiness, being content with what you have is the cure.

Your happiness comes from loving and appreciating what you have. Contentment is powerful and an essential part of your overall well-being. Without being content with what you have now, you won’t be able to focus on what is more important and meaningful in your life.

11. Pay Off Your Debt:

Having to deal with debts can be pretty stressful and overwhelming. Debt can be a huge contributor to your mental and emotional clutter. So, reducing or eliminating your debt is one of the most effective ways to simplify your life and live intentionally.

Challenge yourself to get up close and personal with your debt. Instead of ignoring your financial problems, face them head on one by one. Cut out unnecessary spending, make a sustainable budget, and get rid of any debt. It will feel great to have one less thing to worry about.

Related post: 15 Possible Reasons Why You Are In Debt

12. Build an Emergency Fund:

You might be wondering what an emergency fund has to do with simple, intentional living. But believe me, when you know that you have a cushion to fall back on in case of an emergency, you will sleep better at night and enjoy your life more.

Having money set aside for unexpected financial emergencies will take a weight off your shoulders that many of us carry every day!

13. Automate Things:

Getting some of the daily and monthly work of your life into an automated system can help simplify your life and reduce your stress significantly. You don’t have to spend time doing the work and you don’t have to stress your mind by remembering to do that work.

Making little changes that take steps out of your daily routine like setting up automatic timers to water your plants, or turn off your lights, and signing up for automatic bill payment options can be an easy way to simplify life and live intentionally. This financial hack will make it easier to pay all your bills on time without any ongoing effort, thought, or stress on your part.

14. Slow Down:

In order to simplify your life and live intentionally, you have to learn to slow down and become unbusy. You can’t, despite your best efforts, be in constant motion and be at your best.

You need to know when to slow things down, take peaceful breaks if needed, and do things mindfully. If you are always rushing to get your chores done, you’ll end up feeling emotionally drained, mentally stressed out, and physically exhausted.

Know that it’s okay to be not busy all the time. Simplify your life by identifying things that cause stress and aim to minimize or eliminate them. By slowing down, you can pay more attention to what you do, enjoy things more, and have the ability to live intentionally.

15. Stop Multitasking:

Instead of multi-tasking, try to do one single task at a time and enjoy what you are doing. That way you won’t have to deal with the pressure of doing several things at once, and you can accomplish more things in a productive manner. Doing two or more things at a time can be overwhelming and very stressful.

Multi-tasking doesn’t always increase your productivity either. While you focus on more than one task at a time, you usually accomplish less and feel more stressed in the process.

16. Learn to Delegate:

You don’t always have to do everything by yourself, even if you can manage to do it all. Delegating tasks – whenever possible, will make your life so much simpler and more enjoyable. You’ll have time to relax and do the things that are important and meaningful to you.

So, if you have too much to do, and you always find yourself overwhelmed and stressed out due to the workload, ask for help from your spouse, kids, colleagues, or assistant.

17. Create and Follow a Simple Meal Plan:

Food is a major part of our everyday life. Cooking and preparing food can be a major source of frustration and complication in your life. And when you are the one in charge of buying and preparing it for multiple people on a daily basis, it could be very much time consuming and stressful. It’s easy to reinvent the wheel every single week, and allow meal planning to suck up multiple precious hours.

Advanced meal planning and preparing simple, healthy food at home will save your time, money, and energy, and help you and your family live a healthy life. Being unhealthy is complicated, and it can make your life very stressful.

18. Establish Daily Routines:

A great way to simplify your life is to create daily routines to get your important tasks done on time without rushing or stressing over things. Get some regular routines in place and stick to them, and your home will function so much better without you running out of food, clean clothes, or having to do a whole day deep cleaning session.

Also, incorporate some self-care ideas into your daily routines so that you can show some love and much needed care to yourself, and feel recharged to take good care of your home and family.

19. Enjoy Little Pleasures of Life:

You don’t need to buy the latest iPhone or go on luxurious vacations every few months to find joy. Make time to do things that bring you joy in every day, and take the time to appreciate them. It could be playing a game with your kids, watching an interesting documentary or your favorite TV show with your whole family, reading a good book, having a piece of homemade chocolate cake, or enjoying a cup of tea/coffee in a nice, quiet corner of your home.

When you take time and allow yourself to enjoy simple pleasures of life and be grateful for that, you will experience an increase in your level of happiness and mental well-being. So, make a list of your favorite simple pleasures and sprinkle those throughout your day.

20. Practice Gratitude:

Gratitude is all about shifting your focus from what your life lacks to all the things you currently have – big and small. Gratitude makes people more resilient, improves physical, emotional and mental health, and reduces stress. Research has shown the link between living with gratitude and multiple health benefits including better sleep, less stress, improved relationships, and increased happiness.

Focus on all the good things in your life, appreciate all your blessings, and express gratitude for those. Make your own gratitude list and read them often. Every day find at least 3 reasons/things to be thankful for. Just by doing that consistently, you will notice a significant increase in your happiness and overall well-being.