Yes, you give up your brain fog. Yes, you give up the self-made friction in your life. Yes, you give up the lack of clarity in your life. Yes, you give up a lot.
We often think giving up is something we need to avoid and getting more is something we need to focus on. But most of the time, it’s the things we have accumulated, unknowingly, that no longer serve us or no longer benefit our lives, that trouble us the most.
And focusing on them and spending time filtering them out and giving them up would benefit us 100 times more than focusing our energy on what we should acquire next to improve the quality of our lives.
Would it be helpful to move forward while carrying a lot of clutter that you don’t even know exists?
Take your storage space, where you store all your medical supplies, tools, and things you kept because you thought, “I might need them someday.” One day, when you decide to declutter that storage space, two things are going to happen:
1. You would find things that make you think, “But I never used them. I forgot they even existed.” These things never get used; they just take up space while you wait for that someday when you might need them.
2. You would also find things that make you think, “I was looking for this everywhere. I didn’t know it was here.” These things would be handy if they weren’t buried under a pile of clutter.
You are managing your mind exactly like that. There are two types of things taking up space: one that you forgot existed but is still taking up space, and the other that comes in very handy when needed but is buried under a pile of clutter.
A pile of clutter that makes the useful things hard to reach or even inaccessible.
So, I would never know what I should add?
Adding something that you might feel is useful doesn’t serve us. Knowing what you need serves us. Remember, don’t prepare for that someday. Prepare for the things that have already happened multiple times and think about what you would need to handle them better when they happen again.
If you observe, it’s often the same things that come to us again and again in different forms, and they take up a small percentage of what you carry. Giving your attention to them can have a much larger effect on your life.
This is where I find the 80/20 principle useful as a way of thinking about what deserves our attention. But we spend most of our lives preparing ourselves for the things that might happen “someday.” So, knowing what you need always serves us better than adding something that we might need. Basically, here too, you are eliminating a lot. You are taking your attention away from “somedays.”
And as I said in the beginning, you would give up a lot in a meditation practice.
To be in a meditative state where you know what serves you best.
We often think giving up is something we need to avoid and getting more is something we need to focus on. But most of the time, it’s the things we have accumulated, unknowingly, that no longer serve us or no longer benefit our lives, that trouble us the most.
And focusing on them and spending time filtering them out and giving them up would benefit us 100 times more than focusing our energy on what we should acquire next to improve the quality of our lives.
The concept of decluttering
Decluttering is a useful concept for our homes, garages, and workspaces, but it works very well for our minds too.Would it be helpful to move forward while carrying a lot of clutter that you don’t even know exists?
Take your storage space, where you store all your medical supplies, tools, and things you kept because you thought, “I might need them someday.” One day, when you decide to declutter that storage space, two things are going to happen:
1. You would find things that make you think, “But I never used them. I forgot they even existed.” These things never get used; they just take up space while you wait for that someday when you might need them.
2. You would also find things that make you think, “I was looking for this everywhere. I didn’t know it was here.” These things would be handy if they weren’t buried under a pile of clutter.
You are managing your mind exactly like that. There are two types of things taking up space: one that you forgot existed but is still taking up space, and the other that comes in very handy when needed but is buried under a pile of clutter.
A pile of clutter that makes the useful things hard to reach or even inaccessible.
So, I would never need to add anything?
Actually, no. Not a “no” as an answer, but a “no” to the question being asked. This is not the right question to ask.So, I would never know what I should add?
Adding something that you might feel is useful doesn’t serve us. Knowing what you need serves us. Remember, don’t prepare for that someday. Prepare for the things that have already happened multiple times and think about what you would need to handle them better when they happen again.
If you observe, it’s often the same things that come to us again and again in different forms, and they take up a small percentage of what you carry. Giving your attention to them can have a much larger effect on your life.
This is where I find the 80/20 principle useful as a way of thinking about what deserves our attention. But we spend most of our lives preparing ourselves for the things that might happen “someday.” So, knowing what you need always serves us better than adding something that we might need. Basically, here too, you are eliminating a lot. You are taking your attention away from “somedays.”
And as I said in the beginning, you would give up a lot in a meditation practice.
To be in a meditative state where you know what serves you best.
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