How do you simplify your life

[Forest]

I found a great question on day 22 of the structured program that I thought I would post here. It is rather common for people with TMS to take on too much, and spread themselves thin. I know that I struggle with finding balance in my life. So, If a person has a lot of current stress in their life, what are some ways they can simplify their life?

The following are the responses from the SEP Team. Feel free to post your own ideas on how to simplify your life and find balance.

another tough question, I recommend reading Stephen Covey, "First Things First". His paradigm is find what is important and do that vs trying to scheduile everything into the day that isn't long enough.

Try to relax whenever you can. Life is full of stress and most times we just have to learn to live with it. We can't always change our life circumstances..we can just deal with them in a more effective way.

Focus on what is truly important. Sometimes we have stress because we have over committed ourselves. If there is something you don't need in your life, maybe it's time to get rid of it. Sometimes the more we have, the less we truly gain.

Before doing something that causes you pain, try to connect to your emotions in the situation, instead of the physical sensation. (i.e. going to work: you feel nauseaous ... why? your boss doesn't listen to you. Why? Because you've never told your boss how you feel when he doesn't listen. You need to be emotionally honest with yourself and protect yourself too. Cut the dead weight. If you have friends who are NOT friends, dump them and make room for some new ones.

 

[NWWU]

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.

 

[TG957]

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.

 

[Vedra]

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.

 

[TG957]

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.

 

[Vedra]

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!

 

[TG957]

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

 

[BarbaraC]

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.

 

[Sita]

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."

 

[JohnnyWindtunnel]

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)

 

[ChronicVince]

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...

 

[plt4life]

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.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I find it extremely difficult to spend even 5 minutes truly focusing on how I am feeling, and what I need to be acknowledging.

Join the club! This is why a practice of regular writing is useful. One way to incorporate this is to just get in the habit of a quick check in at the end of the day, writing down something for which you are grateful from that day, or something that you appreciate about yourself, or maybe even both. There are days when I find it hard to find something specific that I'm grateful for, in which case I'll just be grateful for something I ate that I really enjoyed or something ridiculous the cat did that made me laugh. If you feel like writing more then this gives you the opportunity to keep on writing.

Nicole Sachs says it takes up to 20 minutes to really get deeper when you write, but even she recognizes that this is a pretty big commitment, and she herself says she doesn't do that kind of writing every day.

None of this is written in stone, and it certainly isn't black and white. We just do what we can, and we learn to recognize when we need to get out our TMS tools instead of freaking out if and when we have a setback.

That's not so hard, right?

 

[Vedra]

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

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

 

[Sita]

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.
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.

Good for you!

 

[homorobothead]

For me, simplifying my life has started with really thinking about what I want or don't want, rather than just focusing on what other people want and conceding immediately. I have a very hard time advocating for myself, and sometimes my mind just goes into a bizarre lockdown mode where I just let other people decide what they want. It's like my feelings don't exist during those times.

I call them my "rabbit in the grass" moments, because rabbits are so still and you can just see their little sides going in and out.

I've been doing 10 minute meditations and journalling per the structured education program and have decided to cut down on my weight lifting (I never stopped physical activity and just "pushed through the pain" every day) and instead focus on more cardio as it helps me sleep and is just simpler.

When I don't feel well, I have been saying "no" to friends and family instead of playing through the pain.

I also cut a lot of enjoyable things out of my life in service of the pain: drinking coffee, playing video games with my husband, working in my garden, doing puzzles, laying on my side, and I realized just very recently that all that was just adding more rules to follow, so I went ahead and had a single shot espresso this morning and played video games with my husband yesterday. No elbow pain this morning! I've also started sleeping on my side again and guess what? I slept great and had no neck pain this morning.

I basically have this self image of a person who needs constant watchfulness and punishment, who can't be trusted to not become an addicted, fat (nothing wrong with it - but my mother was very focused on keeping me thin because as she said "no one will love you if you're fat.", evil, unkempt woman with no purpose. So, basically I've been bullying myself for 36 years in place of my parents. I had a whole plethora of rules to follow and routines to keep. To do lists to be done. Deep internal pressures to be the best.

So simplifying for me is basically backing off my list of immutable rules and just enjoying things without fear that I used to enjoy. Feeling a delicious rebelliousness and strength in saying "fuck it, let's party a little." Have pizza every now and again. You don't have to always eat 2/3 greens and a lean protein, and no sugar. You can have a little coffee in the morning. You can say "yes" to enjoyment over responsibility sometimes. Things won't fall apart. The center WILL Hold.

 

[Sita]

There is a technique that I remembered. A breathing technique. You breathe in while counting to 6, hold the breath while counting to 6 and then breathe out slowly while counting to 6. You do the counting mentally.

When you breathe in you visualize the new positive vibrations that come into you. When you breathe out you visualize the toxic negativity stress etc. vibrations that go out. And you get rid of them.

Do this a few times, maybe 3 times. You can do it anytime when you have a little free time, between tasks, while using the bathroom, waiting in line at the grocery store, taking a short walk, before you sleep in bed etc. etc.

Try it. Take care.

 

[homorobothead]

There is a technique that I remembered. A breathing technique. You breathe in while counting to 6, hold the breath while counting to 6 and then breathe out slowly while counting to 6. You do the counting mentally.

When you breathe in you visualize the new positive vibrations that come into you. When you breathe out you visualize the toxic negativity stress etc. vibrations that go out. And you get rid of them.

Do this a few times, maybe 3 times. You can do it anytime when you have a little free time, between tasks, while using the bathroom, waiting in line at the grocery store, taking a short walk, before you sleep in bed etc. etc.

Try it. Take care.

Yes, that's called square breathing! I've actually found that 4-7-8 breathing works a little better for me, though. But, I do it all the time, just as you suggested and it is very helpful.

 

[Mtnjac]

Simplifying my life is a work in process.

As I notice them, I’ve been eliminating many OCD-driven habits. This is a major simplification for me. As an example, I can let a few dishes sit in the sink or not make my bed. I don’t have to return to a room to check on things or even get my mail. I practice chilling.

I’ve given up my mental checklist of daily accomplishments which usually tries to kick back in just as I go to bed. I am even having luck in not scheduling more than one appointment per day leaving me time to do something nice for myself.

I’ve reduced old clothing, personal belongings, extra kitchen implements, even furnishings that I longer need.

Same for relationships that do not serve me and don’t give back.

I let the phone ring or turn off the sound and let the caller leave a message so I talk to them when it’s convenient for me. Text messages, too.

I don’t engage with people who engage in gossip, division or hate.

There’s more, and it feels so good.

 

[Sita]

Simplifying my life is a work in process.
As I notice them, I’ve been eliminating many OCD-driven habits.
...........
There’s more, and it feels so good.

Yes, same here. Right now my kitchen sink has a few dirty plates in it, ha ha. I used to never permit this "anomaly". Crazy...I know. Mental relaxation - in my case - was needed regarding this and other OCD ideas.

I agree completely with your comment and I know what you mean...I recognized myself in your comment, daily list for tasks etc. etc.

Chilling feels so good...

My mom used to tell me all the time this:"Honey, you don't need to make it perfect, the Government Agency for Perfect Cleaning (mom's invention, ha ha) is not going to send their agents to come to your place in control to see if everything is perfect enough." : )