228 | One Word to Help You Make Things Simple & Reduce Stress this Year

[00:00:00] Have you ever made a plan or said yes to something only to realize that you are over committed and you are struggling to keep up with everything you’ve already have going on. You realize that. Your wellbeing is suffering because you have said yes to something else when you really should have said no. And the last episode, I believe it was episode 2 27. I shared some of my thoughts on how less is more in 2024. I love that phrase. And I do believe that less is more well less sees. Actually more, not just in 2024, it’s less is more in 99% of the time. When it comes to our schedules, workers wants ability is home tasks. Overwhelmed general overwhelm the rooms in our home is where stress is coming from.

The [00:02:00] answer is often less. We need to subtract rather than add to our already full bleeds and our already full schedules. Instead of focusing on all the things that are causing you, stress and the annoyances that are happening in your house right now, or even the things that are hanging over your head, just waiting to be completed, the things that you need to get done, the things that need your attention, something you have been putting off, but constantly you have that nagging feeling that it has to be done soon. And really the symbol thought of those things.

It’s like this dark cloud hanging over our heads. Now you have things to do that need to be done all the time. That’s the reality of life. And until the systems and routines are truly dialed in and your home and, and told they’re customized for the phase of life and let’s get tactical here. So tactically speaking, what your day-to-day schedule looks like right now. That’s going to determine how these routines fit into your day.

You have to spend time creating these intentional systems and routines, because that is what is going to be there to take care of the basics. Those things become habits, and that’s what makes everything. Be something that is now completed instead of one of those daunting tasks that you have to get done.

It’s now has a check mark. It’s completed. It’s finished. Because it’s part of your day. Now, the routine made it a habit. That’s what allows you to wake up to a clean kitchen, to have your dishes put away on a regular basis to get the laundry washed and not just to put it in the washing machine. To actually wash it, dry it, fold it and put it away on a regular basis.

That routine is what is going to help you with this without that routine. You’re going to get back to that place where there’s piles everywhere. The routine is going to change this, those good quality [00:04:00]systems and the routines that you set up in intentionally. And that is something that is so important. Th they have to be created into Julie for the season of life and the needs of your family right now. Those routines are what prevents you from having to go back regularly and figure out what needs to be done to always have these things hanging over your head and keep your house orderly. So that the clutter and the thing is that are out and about and messy and not put away. Are not just another excuse or another stressor routines make everything easier.

They give you your time back and you’re seeing any. Because you want to get to that goal. You’re on this journey to a home that stays picked up orderly, organized. Oh, a home that ed routines that help you maximize the minutes in your day. Well, you’re actually doing less because the routines carry you through.

You want to get to that place where you have more margin in your schedule for the things that are truly important to you, that they get that are important pieces of life. That so you don’t miss out because you’re always feeling like I have to do this. I’m behind on this. I’m running late. There’s so much to do.

And then you’re missing out. We want to remove that. We want to give you margin to your day so that you can be present. So yes, creating and implementing routines, of course, decluttering and organizing that all has to happen. All of those things are going to work together and getting you to the new goal of the simplified home.

But something else that has proven to be extremely beneficial when we’re talking about this kind of thing. Is knowing what your priorities are, what is important for your family and give yourself permission to not do things that don’t align with those priorities, if it’s a not important to you. And it. If you don’t have fine value in it, then why are you doing it? We have to get to this place where being okay with [00:06:00] not being everywhere and every moment and not over committing ourselves, we don’t want to commit to everything.

We don’t want to say yes to every opportunity you want to get to a place where you can be okay with all of that. When I look back or take a quick scan over the last many years, I guess I can positively say that there were many things that I have said yes to, or I’ve committed to that. I really wish I would have had the confidence to say no to whether it was something like attending a child’s birthday party that we didn’t really know very well or volunteering for something in an extremely busy season of life or having visitors come stay with me when I really needed those days for work. And it put me behind like weeks behind or I was scrambling to get caught up again.

And I was sacrificing sleep and balance and overall wellbeing to be back on track. And just to keep up with what I needed to do now I can look back at those experiences and there’s many. I could come up with a big long list if I really. Went through the months and the years in the past. And looked back and now I realize that how these instances and many others. They could have been avoided if I just simply had a different answer.

If my response was different, if I would’ve simply said no, instead of saying yes and adding one more thing to my schedule. I’ve been lucky enough to see this work. And it’s harder than it seems when I’m saying, just say no, instead of saying yes. That idea. It seems really simple, but I know personally I struggle with saying no to some things that I should have, and that happens more often than I would like to admit. Take time to make a mental note right now, or write it down or save it in the notes app on your phone.

If that would be helpful to you so that you can come back to it and come up with what is important to you. You [00:08:00] can also do this with your family, especially if you have kids that are a little bit older, you can all do this together. Everyone can come together and talk about. What is important to us as a family include the kids, especially if they’re older and or even teenagers or tweens. Hello. Have them help you in developing or elaborating on some of the type of things that are important to your family and to your home?

What priority is do they think. Are the things that you guys want to focus on and you might find that you are surprised, but all the thing is that they come up with because kids and teens are okay with. Saying no to thing is when we oftentimes are filling the schedules because we think that’s what they want and you’re trying to make them happy.

But in reality, quality time. And the less is more mentality. Comes through when you break it down and you really talk about what are the priorities, what do you want to have more of? And what can we do without. The commitments that we seem to have in our lives. So much these things that we’re always doing, they are more okay with not participating in certain things.

And of course it’s going to be different for each family and every child. And. Some kids are going to want to do more than others. But I think you’re going to be surprised if you talk to your kids about the priorities and the things that they really want to do, and they really want to focus on when you get down to it.

It’s usually these conversations, they’re usually a bigger realization for how simplicity isn’t valued. The more that we have it, the more that we crave it as well. And we don’t even realize that having as little as 30 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day to play a game together, or a movie night every so often, or just lounging around instead of constantly [00:10:00] running from one thing to the next is often desired by our kids and young adults and teenagers, more so than we ever realized.

And we don’t. Even know that that exists or that the kids really want this until we talk about it. Because we are. As a society. Kind of trained to do constantly do more, do more, go, go, go Bobo. And that’s the mode that we’ve been in for so long. Downtime is something that is so, so important and often is something that we overlook.

We forget it. And we forget to value and prioritize it, unless it is something that we have set up with intention so that we are purposely having these times where we don’t have a full schedule. We’re intentionally saving space in our calendars to have downtime, to have that time, to just be together and enjoy, or even time by yourself.

That’s important too. So not saying yes to every single thing is beneficial in numerous ways, you don’t have to have an excuse or you don’t have to have something on your calendar. You don’t already have to have a plan or an obligation to say no to something. I guess the point I’m trying to kind of share today is that you don’t have to have a reason to not commit.

You don’t have to have a reason to not sign up. You don’t have to have a reason to not say yes. To do something else. You can say, no, even when you aren’t already busy, you can say no. When you don’t already have something scheduled on your calendar, you can say no, because it is best for you, for your family, for your overall wellness. When you have your family priorities in the back of your mind because you made a list or they’re saved on your phone, or maybe they’re put up on a bulletin board someplace or stuck on the wall in your house. If you have potentially [00:12:00] created these, they will be in the back of your mind.

And that is one thing that is a tool that you can use that will make it easier to say no to the thing is that aren’t serving you because you’re going to start saying no, it’s going to be more obvious to you. What aligns with your priorities and what is not part of that? What does that part of that?

It’s not part of that value system. So, if it’s not serving you, you can say no more confidently because you have other priorities. It doesn’t align with the priorities that you came up with. In a month, in a year, are you going to look back and wish that you had not done it or are you going to be so happy that you did it?

If you’re saying no to something you’re saying no to the things that aren’t aligning with your priorities. If you’re like me.

Your go-to is. Probably to figure out how you can fit something else in, how can you do something else for someone else? How can you make this happen when you don’t really have the time or it’s going to cause you sleep or stress or extra mental load that you don’t really have to put out right now? It’s beyond your mental capacity to do this, but. For me, especially, I always want to make other people happy.

So my go-to is to just do it. It’s to commit, to make the plan to say yes, to be part of something. When I know when I am committing to these things that really, this isn’t in my best interest, this isn’t aligning with what I want to be doing. But I feel bad because I think that I’m letting someone down. If I say no. But that is something that is in my head. It is a false, because we are not going to let someone’s out. We will get it done. We have this mentality, like we will get it done because I said I was going to do it. I said, I would be there. I’m going to show up because I said yes to this, I [00:14:00] made the commitment.

But the reality is I’m not letting anyone down. If I would have just simply said no. I put myself in this position where I might be letting someone down, or you might be letting yourself down or even your immediate family down, and you feel bad about this and you don’t want to do that. Really you have good intentions.

We have these good intentions too. But this is something I have been working on for a long time. I’m definitely getting better at saying no. When I show to say no, this isn’t going to be something that happens easily, especially if you’re the kind of person to always take on more than probably you should be taking on.

So I’m going to challenge myself to get better at this this year. And I encourage you. Let this be the year that you take a few seconds or a few minutes. Or even a night to think about some things when, when they’re really big asks. Give yourself time to think about these things before responding with an immediate yes.

If your go-to is yes, you can do it and you’ll figure out later and you’re not going to let anyone down. You’ll always get it done. You’ll always be there. And you figure out a way, give yourself permission this year to say no, or at least to take the time to give yourself a few minutes or an overnight to think about.

Does this align with my priorities? Is this getting us to the life that we want? I want, is this helping us stay balanced and letting us live with our values and the things that are important to us? Would it be better if we said no? So give yourself that permission to say no. And to think about answering before you immediately say yes. You can say, no, even when you aren’t booked you, aren’t busy because you just simply do. I mental check and you’re presented with something, you do this mental check and you could say, okay, does this [00:16:00] align with my priorities that I am setting? Moving forward or is this something that is going to take away from that? Give yourself permission to say no, not this time.

Not now, or simply just say no and move on. On the last episode, episode 2 27. We talked about the idea of less is more in 20 to 24, and there are so many reasons behind that and why that is important, but specifically pertaining to this topic of saying no less is more because when we are stressed out, when we have feelings of overwhelmed, like there is too much to do.

Like we are at our breaking point. We can’t handle another thing.

we answer. we take on more. We are more stressed out. We are adding to that overwhelm. If we answer with a no, it’s going to help us lighten the load. Saying no is bringing us less saying no is actually a gift. Think of that as it is. It’s a gift to yourself. It’s a gift to your own family, your immediate family. You can say no to something without an excuse.

I’m just reminding you again. You don’t have to have an excuse. You don’t have to have a commitment. You don’t already have to be busy at that time. Something doesn’t already have to be happening for you to be able to say no, you’re saying no, because you value your time. You value your piece and saying no allows you to bring down the level of overwhelming. The level of overwhelm. To not be busy.

It’s allowing you to have a time where you can have peace and not be constantly busy or not be over committed, to not be tired or exhausted all the time. And to have less overwhelming stress in your life all together saying no to something. It can actually get you more of what you want. It can get you to the [00:18:00] entire goal of a simplified home of a simplified life faster. Because again, less is more in 2024. Thank you for joining me for another intentional edit podcast episode, I will meet you back here next week for a Tuesday episode where I answer questions from a listener.

Just like you. If you have a question that you want me to answer, if you’re stuck on something and you want help solving the problem, I can dedicate an entire episode to discussing. And diving into that topic. I would love to help you and answer your question relating to organizing decluttering, coming up with routines that work for your family or anything else related to simplicity and simplifying your home and life.

So whatever that question is, leave it for me. Ask the question on intentional edit.com. All you have to do is go to intentional, edit.com and a little record. Now button pops up, you click on that record button and then you can. Can ask the question. And I will use the question that you submit and dedicate an entire future Tuesday episode of the intentional podcast to answering that question.

And we will get your question answered to help you and get you moving along the line to assemble a fire at home sooner. Thanks again for being here. See you next week. [00:20:00]