If you pause to consider just how long we have been led to believe that our lives will be enhanced with stuff, it’s kind of shocking, really. From meticulously making out our Christmas lists to those TV commercials that duped us into thinking as soon as we bought a toy, we would be presented with an endless slew of fun.
Not to mention the fact that every fairy tale we ever heard basically had a checklist of things to accumulate:
* The right dress
* The right mate
* The castle
BOOM! Happy ever after. Now, I don’t ever want to act like the accumulation of a mate, a living, breathing, human being is the same as accumulating a toy. People are people. Stuff is stuff. We know this on a fundamental level, but yet, without realizing it we can kind of lump them all together in one big blur.
As kids we went from believing we just needed the hottest Christmas toy to adults who believed there was a list of requirements we needed to accomplish before some make believe set timeline and it bordered eerily closely to that fairy tale checklist.
* The right job
* The right spouse
* The house
* The family
While I love the fact that times are shifting away from these fake lists, the truth is there are still quite a few of us who bought into them and forgot to dream about a life bigger than a checklist.
I have no doubt that this is why so many people hit 40 and, well, basically, freak the F out. They are in jobs they never really wanted, are married to a person they don’t feel connected to, have a crippling mortgage payment, and a family that they wish they had made more time for.
Right?
Today, I want to encourage you to go way back before all of this started. I want you to take your grown up brain and mesh it up with that childlike wonder that you had before anyone was telling you who to be. This is tough to do because people start telling us who to be basically the minute we are born.
Answer this question, “What does a life bigger than stuff look like for you?”
Basically, it’s not about what you want to have, accomplish or achieve – but how do you want to feel?
This was a concept I started asking myself when I opened up a book called Wishes Fulfilled written by spiritual self help author, Wayne Dyer. One particular paragraph stood out within the first chapter of this book, and it was as follows:
Ordinary is, well, so ordinary. It means that you do all of the things that your culture and your family have programmed you to do. It implies that you fit in, study hard, follow the rules, take care of your obligations, fill out the forms, pay your taxes, get a job, and do what every law-abiding citizen does; and then you retire, play with your grandchildren, and ultimately die. I want to emphasize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this scenario–it is perfectly find–but if it were completely acceptable for you, you wouldn’t be reading this book.
The reason these words resonate so deeply with me was because for the first time in decades I couldn’t help but feel like someone else was saying, “Hey, you know those big dreams you had…it’s cool that you have them. So do I.”
So…if no one has told you yet, dear reader, if you have big dreams and aren’t feeling totally fulfilled with an ordinary life, I get it. I felt that way too nearly a decade ago when I first read these words.
Without realizing it, you and I both filled our lives with the checklists, with the stuff, the things we thought we needed to have and never paused to realize in doing so, we detached ourselves from the bigger dreams we had for our life, worse yet we stopped believing they were possible and starting aiming to fill the void with the latest bargain deals and home renovations.
If you are feeling trapped in the ordinary, might I suggest first of all practicing gratitude for all the things in your ordinary that are amazing.
I love sitting in my ordinary bed, in my ordinary house with my ordinary dog at my side. I love my simple home, my typical suburban neighbors, and my standard eggs and bacon breakfast with coffee that I just consumed.
Don’t forget that some ordinary things are truly extraordinary, they are amazing and we are so lucky to experience them. And the more we can enhance and gain clarity on the good parts of ordinary we have, the easier it will be to spot the parts of ordinary that don’t feel as fitting.
Maybe that’s a relationship where you keep letting someone walk all over you.
Maybe it’s a “good job” with “good benefits” and “good pay” that leaves your soul feeling empty.
Maybe it’s a car payment for a beautiful car that makes you cringe every time you get in it.
What parts of ordinary aren’t working for you? What parts could you get rid of today in the name of detaching a little more from stuff in order to reconnect to your vision of a life well lived?
How do you want to feel in your day? What parts of your daily routine rob you of that feeling? Yes, I know, we can choose good feeling thoughts in any bad situation – but if there are areas of your life that take a lot of effort to “feel good” in, maybe it’s time to consider that those are things that are not meant to be.
Declutter Prompt:
Today go through your home, just being a little more mindful. When you come to an ordinary area that makes you cringe, set a 5 minute timer and declutter it. Maybe it’s the frustration you feel when you open the junk drawer and it jams up because it is too full. Perhaps it’s that damn Tupperware cupboard where nothing has a match and everything is jumbled.
Remember, start by decluttering FIRST. Organizing junk is simply a way of making unwanted items feel more at home. If there are things that are not working toward the highest good of your day, let them go.
