Resource Management Innovations

When Less is More: Rick's Recipe for De-Stress

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a whole episode, but I have to admit that the current reality series of programming on Hoarding has captured my attention. Not from a voyeuristic perspective … maybe more of a life lesson point of view. You know the central theme … some poor soul wants help, agrees to a camera crew following them and a coach in a day in the life of an intervention, ideally leading to a process of un-cluttering their physical circumstance.



I think the dichotomy I struggle with is that the clutter and mess we see that surrounds these folks physically … often relates so very well to most of us (yes most of us) emotionally. Consider if you will all the clutter & baggage we quite insist on dragging forward with us from our childhoods, into adolescence into our adult lives … that just ’accumulates’.

If someone was to capture a picture of all the baggage in our emotional garage & basement, I suspect it would look very much like the house of the hoarder on TV … with very narrow pathways for us to navigate each day. The evidence for my hypothesis is this. In North America alone … we spend $13 billion dollars a year (yup, that is Billion with a B) on anti depressant pharmaceuticals … which allow us (just) to cope with our day to day reality. That is more than the GDP of some countries! As emotional-hoarders … we can’t seem to cope very well in the absence of a chemically induced push. Which of course is a matter of degree, based on dosage. You get the idea.

Part of our emotional dis-connect is in the fact that our vision is obscured. Maybe the stacks of clutter in our emotional hoarding contributes to this … as we (don’t miss this) … ‘don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are’. Let that settle in.

You have heard the hoarders explain ‘how things got this way’. ‘It wasn’t always like this’. Now … the cumulative effect is, we have trouble navigating … making our way. I think the analogy of emotional hoarding translates really well.



Previous guests of my blog are familiar with the fact that my wife is an artist. That translates into many giftings, one of which is decorating. I have so often heard Joy say “less is more”. Less … is more appealing. (See where we are going with this?). Well ‘what if’ … in our daily lives, we applied the less is more theory, emotionally? Can we accept (at least in theory) that the physical hoarder will have less stress in their lives when they de-clutter their living environment? The freedom they will experience in all likelihood will blossom exponentially? Well, the same is true for us emotionally.



The key to de-stress and concentration is elimination. Less is more. Narrowing our focus. Defining our target, and bringing clarity to our purpose and the related key tasks. Doing, what you do best, and giving away the rest. Our stress doesn’t come from doing too much. It comes from doing the wrong things. Let me explain.

When you are in your ‘sweet spot’ you can’t get enough of it can you? Activity, even in great quantities doesn’t stress us. Do you remember your first love? Could you get enough? Time & activity wasn’t terribly relevant was it? Whatever the sweet spot … now I am bringing focus and clarity to my purpose … as a result of having narrowed my focus, allowing a much more concentrated approach.

A golf club has a sweet spot. So does a tennis racket. I suppose you could use either one to stir paint … which sounds goofy … but that isn’t what they were made for. How about you? What were you made for? You have a sweet spot. Do you know what it is?

By engaging in the practice of less is more, working intentionally at not emotionally hoarding … and jettisoning those tasks and activities that can be done better by someone else … it gives us the opportunity to focus on our sweet spot. Eliminating all that clutter & junk that has obstructed us.

Lots there to think about. Pour yourself something nice, retreat to some place quiet (maybe that in itself is Job #1?) and consider how you can employ a less is more strategy in eliminating that which does not directly contribute. The beauty in this is … you can’t get it wrong. It’s your story. Define it. Enable it. Live it.



The stress by default reduces proportionally.

Cheers;

Rick @ RMI
 

Posted By: Rick Kneeshaw 2010/08/07
Categories: Ricks ~ Recipes