How To Prune Your Life

As the flourish of Spring and the haze of the holiday season begin to subside, it’s time to cut back. Literally and figuratively. Pruning is one of those counter-intuitive actions… it requires a sharp eye, a sharper blade, and a dash of blind faith that more growth and goodness still awaits.

As we clip away at the excess growth in our gardens, we’re making way for more abundance and sweeter fruit in the months ahead. And it’s the same with our internal lives…

So quickly, they can become full-full-full of activities, stuff, stress, and overwhelming expectations.

Like the un-pruned plant that bolts and whose growth is obvious and yet obviously unbeneficial, we all need to learn how to prune our lives from time to time.

Cutting away the complexity isn’t easy or pain-free, but on the other side, in the next season, a sweeter, simpler harvest awaits.

As we all hurtle into another busy year (especially after the unpredictable chaos of the last two years), here are 5 tips to pruning your life.

SIMPLIFY YOUR STUFF

– Donate any shoes you haven’t worn in a year.
– The same should go for your clothes.
– Remove any glasses, dishes, silverware, serving dishes, or cooking utensils from the kitchen that you haven’t used in the last 6 months. Box them up and then put the box out of sight. If you miss something over the next month, go and get it from the box. After a month, donate what’s left in there!

CLEAR THE DECKS!

– Physical clutter leads to mental clutter, so try to deal with the areas in your office and home that seem to attract unwanted items.
– Clear as many countertops as you can.
– Find a place for everything and then put everything in its place. Try to do this daily, instead of once in a blue moon – a daily ritual in honor of outward and inward order!
– Remove all expired, stale, and unwanted items from your pantry and fridge.

WRITE A “NOT TO DO” LIST

– Many of us tend to continuously add things to our ‘to-do’ lists without ever taking other things off! The result: Major Overwhelm! Instead of simply saying ‘yes’ in the future, first pause and ask yourself: what am I going to say ‘no’ to in order to fit this ‘yes’ in?
– What are the things that you are currently doing that are simply cluttering your day and diary? What are the activities that generally leave you feeling exhausted, stressed, or empty? Is there anything that you can simply stop doing, or delegate to someone else?
– Come to terms with the fact that there will always (always) be too much to do. Especially in this day and age, there are simply too many impossibly high expectations to meet and too many balls to keep juggling! If you want to live a happier life, stop feeling bad about this – and rather start consciously choosing what to neglect, in favor of what matters most to you.

PRUNE YOUR ONLINE LIFE

– Open any email that you didn’t sign up for, or signed up for but don’t need/want/like anymore, scroll to the bottom of the email and click “unsubscribe”. Of course, mumbox newsletters do not apply!
– RSVP with a “no thank you” to any requests that you’ve been sitting on for a week or longer. If you are still thinking about it, you probably aren’t that excited to do it.
– Turn off your phone and computer at a routine time in the evening – every evening.
– Make a set time to check your social media accounts and emails. Studies have shown that most people who ‘quickly’ check a social media account take 23 minutes to get back to what they were originally doing! If you’re constantly checking your accounts, you’re losing far more time than you probably realise.

CELEBRATE THE SMALL STUFF

– Be kinder to yourself. Instead of focusing on everything you’re not getting right, or how far you still have to go, take some time to reflect on what is going right.
– If your house is a mess, but your kids are healthy and happy, celebrate that. If you forgot a good friend’s birthday, but you remembered to feed the dogs, you’re doing alright! If you had a bad day, but still extended some kindness to a stranger – you made someone else’s day a whole lot better. Go you!
– Perhaps form a new habit of writing at least one thank-you note a week (it could even just be a thank-you what’s app message). Gratitude is a wonderful tonic to the global endemic of entitlement.

And if the prospect of pruning your life leaves you feeling a little daunted, consider just doing one small action from the above list every day.

Over time, you’ll find the extra space you create might just inspire the momentum you need to keep pruning. And above all else, moms, be patient with yourself… your life and home didn’t get cluttered overnight.

It happened little by little. Use the same process to slowly reverse it.