Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 406 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast. Im so grateful for you. Yep you. You listening wherever you are, what ever you’re doing….Im happy to be here with you. We are in the minority of people who want to be aware of our thoughts and know we are the creators of our own reality so we may as well make it a good one right? What are you doing to make your reality a good one? All the things? Eating healthy, watching what you allow into your mind, getting movement wherever you can……..It IS within our power to create a life that’s full of joy.
I was doing yoga this morning and Kenzie one of my yoga instructors said that music is the space between the notes. That’s a quote by a French composer Claude Debussee (Deb you SEE). For the record, I had to look up how to pronounce his name, I love that feature of the internet, if you don’t know how to pronounce something just search how to pronounce it and you’ll find audio recordings that will show you how. Very cool. Anyway the thought that the the music is the space between the notes resonated but I didn’t really understand what it meant.. So I did a little research, and there are different interpretations of course that’s what makes the world go round but in theory, the spaces before or after the notes give those notes a chance to settle in, or gives you a chance to get excited for the next note, the space between the notes enhances the notes itself. In other words the silence makes it better.
Ok, That, I get. As a self proclaimed minimalist, actually I’m a middle of the road minimalist, not a complete minimalist….I get that. Having a little bit of empty space allows for so much enjoyment.
This can apply everywhere. Have you ever been in the middle of an event maybe a work event or a party and you step outside for a little breather just to clear you head and have a little silence before you head back in? It’s not that you aren’t enjoying yourself, it’s just that we all need a little break in the middle. And then when we go back in we are refreshed. Maybe you get that when you’re leaving work, you’ve had a chaotic day and you’re looking forward to the drive home all alone, that’s your pause before you get home and you know that the “notes” so to speak will start again because you have family waiting for you! How you handle that car ride can be all the difference in the world, if you listen to chaotic music or get an earful of on the phone with someone going through drama….or worse you listen to talk radio or the news….you aren’t allowing yourself that space to just be. To have that much needed silence.
We have a party at our house every year, there are a lot of people and it’s so fun, but it can be a bit chaotic and I love it, this year I had my alarm set for 7 because that’s when Kenzie needs her meds, so at 7 I run upstairs leaving the party downstairs just for a few minutes while I give Kenzie her medicine and when I closed the door, it was so silent and I thought wow, just a little breather feels so good and then of course I go right back downstairs and rejoin the party. A friend of mine who has two little precious, maybe a little rowdy boys was at the party, they had a babysitter for the boys so this was a night out for them, at one point in the party, I notice she has pulled a chair up to our fireplace and is sitting there looking relaxed but she was alone and she is a super social girl and so I thought oh Im going to go chat with her, never wanting anyone to feel left out and so I said what you doing over here, and she basically said Im in heaven right now, I don’t have any kids crawling on me, no dog licking me, no-one needs anything from me and Im just enjoying this moment. I laughed because now here I am coming into her little zen moment because I was worried she wasn’t having fun and here she is “in heaven”. I realized quickly that every single one of us has different a need for space. Just a little space. She wasn’t not enjoying the party, she was just giving herself a little breather because she also knew that in a couple hours she was picking the boys up from grandma’s house and they were probably gonna be full of sugar and ready to go, not to bed, like to GO.. gotta love it. SO I love that she was taking that moment right in the middle of a party…it was perfect.
My friend deserved that little breather by the fireplace and it was self care for her to do that. You may need the breather in the car drive from the chaos of work to the chaos of home. On the thought of home….I read an article on
missminimalist.com where she said “Think of every possession, every activity, every moment of your life as a note in your symphony. When a musician composes a song, he doesn’t fill it with as many notes as possible – instead, he carefully chooses just enough to make a pleasing melody.” She goes on to say
“We can do the same in our homes, and our lives: instead of accumulating as many possessions as we can, or taking on as many tasks as our schedules allow, we can exercise some creative restraint. We are curators of our lives, and what we leave out of them is as significant as what we include.”
We don’t have to say yes to every invite. We don’t have to fill every wall with art, we don’t have to be exasperated every time we walk in our closet. I try to cull my closet as much as possible, I love clothes and shoes, that is one thing I have to admit, our closet is not very big so I have to be very choosey with what I keep, but I notice I still feel like it seems cluttered, I walked in to my closet the other day and just felt so frustrated because there are still so many things in there I don’t wear, and It makes it where I have trouble seeing the things I do wear. So because of this episode Im going to create space in my closet to let the things I do wear have space by eliminating the things I don’t wear and that I know I am not going to wear again.
We want to hang onto things because “what if”. Right? What if I decide I want to wear it again? What if I miss it? That’s too much baggage. It is so freeing to let go of things that don’t bring you joy anymore. It gives the things that do bring you joy the ability to be a little more visible. Remember the things we leave out or let go of are as significant as the things we include or the things we keep. They both matter. That’s why it’s important to allow yourself to be the curator of your own life. So often we worry well, my friend gave me this, or my mom gave me this when she redid her house, so your mom didn’t want it, but you have to keep it? Where’s the self love in that? I have said this before and I mean it, if something, anything doesn’t bring you joy, You have to let it go. Someone else could be looking for that exact thing and now it brings them joy to have it. Don’t deprive them of that.
How about our thoughts, it wouldn’t be a wildly successful lifestyle episode if I didn’t talk about mindset, right? But that is a HUGE area where space can give us respite. Our head, our thoughts, our mind. Man it causes a lot of problems doesn’t it? Is there something you’re hanging onto in your head that keeps you from being able to experience joy in the way you’re meant to? Maybe someone said something or did something that you just can’t let go and now it’s affecting and infecting every area of your life because you cant stop thinking about it and even when you do, it’s there in the back of your mind ready to pop up at any hint that reminds you of it which makes you sad again or angry again. How would you feel if you were able to free that thought from your head? What joy is being blocked because of the clutter of that thought? And let’s be clear. It is a thought because the thing that was said or the thing that was done is in the past. It’s hurting you now, because you wont let it go. It only exists in your mind because it’s over. It cant hurt you unless you think about it. Now, I’m not talking about shoving it down or avoiding the pain, this is once you’ve done the work to feel through the pain of what happened or once you’ve forgiven the person for what they said or did, it’s about realizing that that thought is blocking you from finding joy in that moment. Don’t give it that power. How can you free up that space in your head so that the next time something reminds you of it, you just tell yourself, that thought has no power over me anymore. I’m bigger than that thought. That’s a powerful statement. Try it. That thought has no power over me anymore. Now that frees space in your head.
Our lives are going to have chaos but if it’s just all chaos then we literally drive ourselves crazy.
So, Where do you need to free up space? Is it in your closet? Is in your car? Is it in your friend group, your family? Maybe it’s in your head. We all have an area that we know in the back of our mind, we need to free up a little space.
So yeah, I need space, but so do you, of course we do. We weren’t meant to be constantly overwhelmed or burdened. What’s one thing you can do that gives you a little pause within the chaos in whatever area that’s feeling overwhelming. How can you find the space between the notes of the symphony that is your life so that the moments we want to enjoy aren’t blocked by the ones we should have let go a long time ago?
My challenge to you this week is to let go of one thing you’ve been holding onto that isn’t serving you and you know it. Drop it like a hot potato, I think you’ll be surprised at what that freed up space allows you to see. Share this with 3 people who might need some space. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
