All I wanted was a simple life

If something is important, it has to be complicated, is this fact or fiction?

If everything we want is easy then everyone would be successful and fulfilled.  I have found that while the road to success and happiness isn’t always smooth sailing, it’s usually us who overcomplicate matters.  When I learnt to get out of my own way, I got the results I wanted a whole lot faster.

I’ve been aware of this idea of creating space, slowing down, and simplifying for a very long time, but it’s only recently that I’ve fully grasped what it’s all about from a deeper level of understanding.  Growing up I was never creative or physically skilled and as I moved into my teenage years I was first introduced to this idea of simplicity of both form and message.  My Religious Studies teacher once told me that it wasn’t how much knowledge you were able to retain that was important but how you were able to communicate and share this knowledge was were the beauty was hidden.  At the time I kind of understood what she meant, but more on an intellectual level rather than insightfully.

I had found myself overcomplicating everything so much so that it stopped being fun. I was trying to control everything and in life something's are never meant to be controlled. The worst part of all this was that, intellectually speaking at least, I knew this. I knew that simplicity was the key to creating anything good in the world.  My grandfather Peter, once told me that when something is stripped down, pure and totally authentic, it cannot help but be rich with energy, spirit, and truth, he was of course talking about his acoustic guitar but I knew this could be applied to everything in life.  I think back then I only knew it in my head, not in my heart. I wasn’t confident enough to trust in it. In a way, complicating things felt safer because it tricked me into thinking I was being productive, while taking the focus off my own insecurities and vulnerability and this is when I began to struggle.  I overcomplicate things because doing so takes the attention away from the root of who I was.

In life a high percentage of us are scared of sitting quietly with ourselves, so we do everything we can to keep the lights on and the dance floor full.  We worry that if we let go of our habitual, insecure thinking, we might not like what we find in those quiet moments.  I have found that these quiet moments are actually the times when I can allow real progress to be made.  When my mind is clear and I am connected to myself, before all the thinking and stories and beliefs were piled on top of me since birth, I am more resourceful and resilient than I ever believed I could be.  I do not need to think myself into getting better results; I just need to trust that my innate wisdom is always there if I slow down and connect with it.

Virtually everyone in this modern world, is willingly plugged into the matrix.  They do not want to get off this never ending hamster wheel.  Most people believe that simplifying their life and experiences will leave them devoid of fun.  People believe that unless they keep latched on to thinking that they can’t possibly get to where they are going.  Yet in reality, the space we allow to open up when we slow down and simplify actually fills up pretty quickly.  And, instead of that cold unforgiving abyss, what actually comes flooding in is love and resilience. And with it, a clarity of mind that promotes insight and high performance.

 I have learnt that by allowing myself this space, I easily accessed better results than if I stayed stuck in my heads, overcomplicating my life with stressful chaotic thinking. 

When I ground myself in the realization that insecure thinking never gets me what I want, then I move forward with a much stronger footing.  Overcomplicating matters has never worked well for me.  When I drop out of thinking and connect myself to the present moment, the answer often shows itself to us,  Because I gave it the space to appear.  Without that space, all I have is the same old thoughts and ideas cluttering up my heads.  

Einstein famously wrote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I used to believe that if I wanted to achieve something, or if I had a problem I had to solve, the only way I’d get there was to go up in my head and think my way to a solution, But this too was just a symptom of overcomplicating matters.  As I’ve traveled further on my journey of self-awareness, I’ve come to understand the true inside-out nature of how life works. I recognize more and more how the old way of being never helped me,   to be honest, hand in heart becoming poorly has saved me, saved me from myself in some many ways, I have given myself space and clarity of thought.  The less I have in my mind the better my life is.  I begun to trust that going up into my head and doing loads of that really, really good thinking only really took me out of the present moment. I learnt to become more insightful which enabled me to take action.  This allowed me to create exponential results when I allowed myself the space and clarity to fully connect with me and the world.  I found I was calmer and more relaxed, everything seems to come to me a lot more easily. 

I have become me, this is who I was before the world put all the thoughts and worries and crap on me.  This is me, uncomplicated, unencumbered.

I wouldn’t change anything about my journey, and with these new insights I have no desire to be anywhere else than where I am: here. In the moment.  

Letting myself go and really trusting in stillness took courage.  My life suddenly feels a whole lot richer, and less complicated in the best possible way.