We tend to stuff our lives with well-intentioned commitments and activities. Like that drawer or closet that’s so easy to throw stuff into, our lives get cluttered with many good and important (and not-so-important) things.
Over time, our lives, like that drawer or closet, get stuffed. Our days become packed and we become overwhelmed.
One of the key truths in the spiritual life is simplicity, less is more. And so, one of the key practices in the spiritual life is sorting.
Reducing and sorting is essential. One of the most emotionally taxing things we face in adult life is letting go of attachments, activities, and relationships that no longer align with our deepest self. But when we finally do get around to it, the liberation we feel is more than worth it.
For me, I need to look no further than my email list. Here I see the many wonderful causes and opportunities that are meaningful. The problem is, the more messages there are clamoring for my attention, the less each individual one stands out. Their meaningful messages get watered down, and my focus gets drained.
I am currently in an intentional process of evaluating and eliminating. I often set an intention to look around and see what I can let go of, or what can I clean up.
The deeper sense of this is that it’s a way of designing my life, rather than letting cluttered commitments and things design me. Letting go of emails, books, clothes, activities, meetings, and on and on.
As I’m getting clearer about my values and making hard choices, the result is I’m feeling more energy and space for what really matters to me. The result is I have more clarity about the contributions I want to make in this world. The result is more freedom.
The disciplines of reducing and sorting sharpen what we say YES to and increase what we say NO to. What it comes down to is choosing who we want to be in this world.
It’s not easy. It requires difficult trade-offs and cutting through noisy opportunities and demands. But the cumulative effect of these choices is becoming more of who we long to be.
So, what if you took one or two steps today, to clear some clutter from your commitment closet?