Simplify Your Life
Module 1: Identify Your Issues

Meet Your Coach: Andrea Molloy

andreaAndrea is a Personal Coach with a particular interest in Life Balance issues who is passionate about helping clients to identify and live their ideal life.

Our lives are demanding and it is easy to be caught in the ‘do it now’ trap.  But that is about to change for you.

Over the next 6 weeks you will learn to:

  • Reorganise your life
  • Clear emotional and physical clutter
  • Manage your time better
  • Increase your personal efficiency at home and work
  • Control of your finances and simplify your money management
  • Manage stress for a balanced life.

Take your time working through the modules, complete each week’s actions before you move on and in 6 weeks your life will be a different, a better and a simpler one.

Let’s go!

Recommendation

While all the material in this course is available to you right now, I strongly suggest that you complete each of the modules in order. Each module includes a number of exercises (“Actions of the week”) that require you to do some work!

You will get most benefit from the course by taking your time and completing all the exercises before moving forward to the next module.

Part One

Welcome to the first module of Simplify Your Life

By the end of this course you will have challenged your thinking and tested many new techniques to transform your life to an easier, simpler way of living. In this first module, you will explore some of the key principles behind simplifying your life. You will begin this six week process by identifying what you need to reorganise and simplify in your life.

You don’t need to become a monk and live in silence without electricity to benefit from a more simple approach to life. Achieving simplicity is about finding a balance in alignment with your personal priorities.

Why simplify?

  • Is your life cluttered with physical and emotional junk?
  • Are you constantly in a race against time?
  • Do you struggle to find a balance between home and work?

Any of these are reasons why you need to simplify your life.

If you hurry from one stress induced situation to another, simplifying will help you refocus and gain a clear direction for your life. You may find it difficult to manage time, keep organised, arrange paperwork or rid yourself of energy draining clutter.

By taking control and reorganising your daily life you in turn streamline your efforts, meaning you have more time and energy to focus on your bigger picture or vision for life.

Instead of focusing on the negativity of your stress induced lifestyle, constantly ask yourself ‘what can I do to simplify my life?’ Over the following six weeks, ask yourself this question repeatedly to refocus your attention on the best possible action you can take that will make a lasting difference in your life.

From a practical perspective, maybe you go grocery shopping twice a week when you could organise and plan your meals and shop once a fortnight. Or if you run four or more errands in a day you could consolidate your efforts, doing everything that needs to be done at once, saving time and energy that you could better spend elsewhere (preferably on your big life goals or your personal priorities). For some people this will take some practice but is an effective and proven way of streamlining your life.

Too many people are defeated by everyday problems that can be easily overcome through a streamlined approach to life. Clear clutter (more on this next week), organise your life and you will have more time for the things you enjoy. By simplifying your approach you will also have more time to focus on achieving your goals and reaching your dreams and aspirations.

If you want to make fundamental changes to your life, first you will need the time and space.

Often clients ask me how they will know when they have achieved this step of simplifying their lives. Aside from a spotlessly clean home and office, many comment on a combination of feeling relaxed and energised at the same time. This is what creating space is essentially all about.

Spend some time considering your ideal scenario – what will your life feel, look or sound like when you have simplified it?

Part Two

Will simplifying really make a difference?

We’re all so busy these days that we rarely take time to evaluate our lives fully. Clarity often only comes after we’ve given our lives a bit of a ‘spring clean’.

In today’s world of information overload (including emails, television, newspapers, magazines and mail) learning to eliminate both physical and mental or emotional clutter at its source deals with the problem at a root level. Don’t underestimate the impact your surroundings have – after all, the Chinese have an entire art based on balancing their surroundings – feng shui.

From a practical perspective, a pile of messy paperwork and unpaid bills on your bedside table will be the last thing you think about at night before you go to sleep and the first thing when you wake up in the morning – and no doubt you will spend much time fretting bout the due date, and if you will be able to access money at the right time.

For this reason, clearing clutter will help eliminate worry and ‘sweating the small stuff’, so you can focus on your bigger picture in life.

Traditionally, many of us view the onset of spring as the ideal time overhaul our homes, to clean from floor to ceiling and dispense with items we haven’t used for years.

I encourage you to spring-clean your home and life right now.

Why wait!

Part Three

Set effective goals

When it comes to simplifying your life, goal setting is important just as it is for any other area of your life like career, health and fitness. Set SMART (specific, measurable, attractive, realistic, timed) goals for areas of your life you would like to simplify. Do this by first considering the areas of your life that are complicated and messy. Imagine each area when it is as you would like it to be – notice all the details. Then formulate a specific goal – this will give the SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE course some personal direction for the coming weeks.

If you need a little extra help in clarifying your life simplifying goals, use these self-coaching questions to refocus:

  1. Can you put into one sentence, what you want to achieve?
  2. Imagine your new simplified life when you are organised, efficient and have time for your priorities.
  3. How will you know when you have achieved this?
  4. When do you want to be in this position?

Before you begin to realise each goal, give yourself a reality check, by asking yourself:

  1. What is happening now that shows you that you have an issue?
  2. What is currently working that you want to keep doing more of?
  3. What have you done so far to improve things?
  4. Based on what you are doing now, what is missing?
  5. What obstacles could potentially get in your way?

Use our top goal setting tips to simplify your life:

  • Write your goals down, even buy a new journal to record your goals and track your progress.
  • Use positive language when setting goals. Focus on what you want to create, rather than what you don’t want.
  • Assess your goals against the SMART rule. Your goals need to be
    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Achievable/attractive
    • Realistic
    • Timed to a deadline.
  • Set short term goals to achieve within the next three months and longer term goals for six months or longer. This way you will build some momentum and continue to reach your life simplifying goals.
  • Break down each large goal into manageable bite size segments or ‘action tasks’. For example clearing clutter at home, may involve several action steps like clearing your wardrobe, home office, filing cabinet, spare room and garage.
  • Focus on two or three goals at a time. Don’t overload yourself with 30 different goals and achieve none.
  • Regularly evaluate and track your progress, adapting to new options for a way forward as necessary.

In the coming modules you will be presented with many options to assist you to simplify your life. Start brainstorming your own options during the next seven days so you can choose the best options as they are presented to you to make a lasting difference in your life.

Part Four

Review your personal priorities and values

Values represent what is most important to us and they are foundation blocks for living life. Use your values as a reference point to keep your life simplifying goals on track. There’s no point simplifying your life if you don’t focus on your values.

This may sound like a vague, new-age concept, but put simply, values are your personal priorities. Values are the sum of your preferences and priorities. Identify your personal values and use them as a reference point in your everyday life.

Here’s a list of some values to get you started

  • achievement
  • adventure
  • arts
  • authority
  • autonomy
  • career
  • community
  • creativity
  • environment
  • family
  • health
  • honesty
  • independence
  • integrity
  • learning
  • loyalty
  • money
  • leadership
  • privacy
  • recognition
  • relationships
  • religion
  • security
  • service
  • status
  • travel

Explore the gap between what you deeply value and the reality of your daily life.

Check your goals and behaviour are aligned to your values. For example:

  • If you rate health as your number one value, yet you smoke, drink excessively and don’t exercise, you are out of balance.
  • If honesty is one of your core values but your work requires you to sell a product you don’t believe in you will find this imbalance will impact on your entire life.

By giving your values a reality check you are highlighting areas for action to bring the value into alignment.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Write a list of everything that bugs you at home and work

What are you tolerating? We will revisit this list in next weeks module on clearing clutter and use the information you have collected to start the process of clutter clearing.

2. Record your feelings

During the next week, keep a small notebook with you and record tasks that frustrate you or where you feel bogged down? Maybe when you sit down at your workspace, evaluate if everything is accessible. At home, is there a specific area of clutter that irritates you? Perhaps you procrastinate on paperwork at home because you have an inefficient system?

3. What can you simplify?

Continually ask yourself ‘what can I do to simplify my life’ as you go about your day,  to start the process of simplification.

4. Get SMART Goals

Write a set of SMART goals that relate to simplifying your life. Use the self-coaching questions in this module to set effective goals and reality check your current status.

5. Review Your Priorities

Review the values listed in this module and compile your own list of personal priorities. Then list your top 10 values in order of importance. Remember not to censor yourself, values are exclusively yours so focus on what is significant in your life.

NEXT WEEK: How to clear physical and emotional clutter to further simplify your life, plus plenty of tips and ‘how to’ advice.