How do you simplify your life

To simplify my life, I have to remind myself that saying "no" to someone or something is saying "yes" to someone else. This helps alleviate the guilty feelings when I want to say no.

 

Even a 5 minute meditation in the middle of the day seems to balance me out enough and bring me to senses. I can say 'no' to work and I stress less.

 

For a 5 minute meditation do you have any tips on this? I realise that everybody will have their own style and mantras even. but sometimes on these forums a posting gives a new insight to be tried or adapted. Thanks. I'm a returning user and have obviously not got to the root of my TMS but am determined to persevere.

 

My biggest issue is anxiety. Took me a while to understand that my anxiety led me to many problems. So my 5-minute meditation consists of deliberately slowing myself down. Slowing my breathing and thinking. It does give me a pause and prevents me from making wrong decisions and saying wrong things which will even more exacerbate my anxiety. However, I started seeing truly therapeutic effects of meditation only after I was able to meditate for at least 30 minutes, because it takes me at least 15-20 minutes to get into the calm state of mind. This is just my experience. I am a firm believer that meditation is a very private experience unique to every person, and every person should figure out their own patterns and their own practice.

 

Thanks for replying, TG957. I'm working on it and can see the benefits of longer sessions of meditation, trying to ignore pain or sometimes exploring the nature of the pain or anxiety by viewing them objectively, trying to find physical analogies. Not sure at the moment whether this is counter productive but it distracts me enough if I'm waiting for painkillers to take effect or, conversely, riding out the withdrawal symptoms when trying to stop taking the tablets: on the see-saw of my TMS existence!

 

Vedra, congratulations on your first success! Be patient. Re-wiring your brain takes time.

 

Very interesting question. Lately, I've been simplifying my life a lot. For one, I've embarked on a minimalism journey, which means that I've learned to live with much less (smaller house, less clothes, less stuff in general), which gives me more time for the things that are truly important.

Secondly, I reviewed my priorities and realized that a lot of those things that I thought were important were not that important. So I let go of them, which was a very freeing exercise.

 

Yes, I find this issue interesting too. Simplifying: the things around me so basically stuff. I started to do it some time ago, a year or so ago. Keeping also the necessarily (the best) and donating the rest. Then simplifying the thinking patterns so ... mentally. This is more difficult to do and takes more time but ... oh, it's so so nice. Yes, it is freeing to discard stuff from the mind and to keep the mind clean. Meditation helps.

Regarding a 5 min meditation, I concentrate on breathing in and breathing out. I also like to use an affirmation for ex. about peace. Something like, I say mentally slowly: "Peace into my heart, peace into my soul, peace into my mind, peace into my body, peace into my consciousness, peace into my family, peace into my neighborhood, peace into my city, peace into my country, peace into my world, peace into my cosmos. Om, peace, shanti, shanti, Amen."

 

Day 22 Simplifying.

I definitely have been thinking about this lately. For starters, I'm caring less about political differences with my wife and family. I need to accept that these exist but make my primary focus on resolving the issues that compounded into the tension response.

I need to also be more present with my kids and have my primary concern pretty much all the time being connecting with and taking care of them, if I'm not working (theyre all very little, s this won't be forever but is necessary now). I need to be even more responsive to them and their needs, as I also do need to do this more with my wife.

For the time being, perhaps the next year, I have to not consider expanding my business, unless expansion falls into my lap. I'm making good enough money, in a family with two working parents so the kids needs should come first.

I also need to start to spend time with friends more again, and reestablish my social life. I now avoid many of my lifelong friends because of political differences.
(I was really in a pretty isolated and bad place prior to the vaccine becoming the TMS trigger, and there really is a lot of rebuilding to do, but that can be done in a low pressure simplified way)

 

Some ideas, I already had :

• Reducing time calculating and optimising money, like comparing pricing on Internet and stores for hours... => prioritizing my energy & peacefulness
  
• Same on optimizing my agenda, and say yes to every friends invitations even if I do not really want to. => prioritizing my needs
  
• Less trying to work at all cost and stop doubting every hours which kind of job I should look for, especially now when I'm waiting for my second kid and we plan to move out in 1 or 2 years, and my family needs me. I tried but stress too much about what to do, will I succeed to do it, I have to train for it and test myself. => prioritizing quality of life right now

But I struggle to really put them into practice. It's like I forgot them, and dive inside with excitment and a lot of raisons/excuses... and if I don't do it, I ruminate, thinking of it...

 

I am trying to look at time spent on things other than work and family. So much of it is spent staring at my phone. I have tried giving up social media in the past, and then allowed myself to get sucked back in. For the past 2 weeks, I stopped looking at Instagram and Reddit. I allowed myself to look today, and I noticed how little I cared about it. I am going to avoid it for another week, and either allow myself to look once a week, or decide whether I'm going to just give it up for good. Youtube has also become a major time suck. I would like to use that valuable time to" continue journaling after this 30 day program is completed, maybe look at the new Pain Recovery Program as well, reading for pleasure, meditation, working out, my other hobbies- building bamboo fly rods, tying flies, sewing, etc. There are a million things that I could be doing that will either bring me joy or make me a better person, and wasting hours of my life staring endlessly at social media is not one of them!
I would really like to start with meditation. I downloaded the Healthy Minds app on a recommendation from a forum member, but have not started it yet.
My goal is to create a habit of checkin in on myself every hour or two, especially while I am at work. I find it extremely difficult to spend even 5 minutes truly focusing on how I am feeling, and what I need to be acknowledging.

 

Thanks. The Curable app with Alan Gordon snd Lara Burke helps to kickstart meditation

 

Good for you!