More Ways to Simplify Your Life

In part 1 of this series, Ways to Simplify Your Life, I provided some tips on how you can simplify you life.  The 3 tips from part 1 were a detailed discussion into how to move towards financial freedom, the importance of having peaceful relationships and how to balance your entertainment and level of stimulation.  Simplifying your life is essential in order to make time for spiritual practice and to un-clutter your mind for meditation to blossom.  Today I will continue this important topic and provide you some more life simplification tips.

5 More Ways to Simplify Your Life

1. Be With Nature:

You are an animal on this planet.  Forgot?  If you forget you will lose your connection with nature and not being able to connect with nature will make it very difficult to connect with other human animals.  This wonderful world, with wide rivers, tall trees and starry skies is your world. When was the last time you looked up at the night sky and wondered about it all?  When did you last sit in the shade of a tree and enjoyed the singing birds?  

We get so entangled in our lives and are caught in so much ego aggrendization and self protection, that the simplicity and joy of just living has become a distant memory.  So get it back by getting back to nature.

Spending time in nature will help you break the ever isolating activity of the ego mind. You will be able to step out of the clutches of society and your busy life for some time and just be aware of and connected to life.  This will give you some much needed perspective of your life as you will be able to step back and observe from afar.  This is not just contributing to simplicity, but is also part of the process of meditation.

2. Be in the Moment:

One of the best ways to simplify your life and thinking is to learn to live in the moment.  All the worrying about the future and all the rehashing of the past can be swept aside by adopting this all important approach.

Live moment to moment, day to day and see what happens.  Don’t be afraid.  Having a plan about things is fine, but fretting and endlessly obsessing on what is going to happen is the surest way to miss living your life altogether.  Books have been written on this topic and here is an article on the website which discusses more on how to live in the moment – Zen Mind – The Secret to Living in the Now. 

3. Be Honest:

I should rephrase that to “Be Totally Honest”.  A lot of time and energy is wasted in planning what to say and in manipulating situations to gain desired results.  If you decided to be completely honest instead, then you would not need to play all these games, waste all this precious time and complicate matters unnecessarily.  

This may not be as easy to do as it seems, but it is eye opening if you try it.  Be honest in word and action.  So no deception of others and more importantly, no deception of yourself.  Just resolve to be totally honest and see how it makes so many situations simpler and how it gives you so much more insight into who you really are.

You can read more about this topic as well in the following 2 articles – SM Meditation Program – Honesty and How to Live Life.

4. Be a Rebel:

You may wonder what being a rebel has to do with living a simple life?  I say it is essential for doing so, as otherwise you will be caught in the rat race of society and will succumb to the burning ambition which is so much a part of the human consciousness you inherit.  In order to reject the great momentum of materialism and demand for outward success, you will undoubtedly have to rebel.

Furthermore, you will have not just have to rebel once, but will have to be in rebellion to guard against getting swept up in the madness.  As a rebel you will be able to think for yourself and forge a different path.  If you have people around you wondering what the hell you are doing, that is a good sign, keep doing it :-).

5. Eat Simple Foods:

This is along the lines of balancing your stimulation and pursuit of pleasure, but as it is such an important area, it deserves it’s own place on the list.

Eating simple, fresh, wholesome food is not just excellent for you health, but it also lends itself to creating an organism which is sensitive and refined.  Furthermore, it helps you master your mind and senses, as you learn not to be a slave to your taste buds.  Such discipline goes hand in hand with being able to live simply and with composure.

Simplifying your diet sends a message to all the sensory aspects of your life, that you are indeed not the slave but the master.

Summary of Ways to Simplify Your Life

From time to time all our lives get complicated, that is unavoidable, but there are certainly steps you can take which help to prevent such complications and at the very least by following these tips, you will not invite complications unnecessarily.  Also these suggestions will help you untangle your life, if indeed it has become overly busy and complicated.

The reason that simple living is so vital is that it helps you towards fulfilling the ultimate goal of human life, Self-Realization or Enlightenment.  Enlightenment is the greatest challenge we face and we ought to do everything we can to help set the stage for it to occur, and simplification of your life and decluttering of your mind certainly help you to walk this difficult path.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this series as I am not done sharing life simplification tips with you just yet :-).