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and lighter. The ‘Simplify Your Life’ course
was developed by the American author and
space clearing expert Stephanie Bennett
Vogt, who, among other things, wrote A
Year to Clear: A Daily Guide to Creating
Spaciousness in Your Home and Heart. The
core theme of her books and courses isridding yourself of clutter. By ‘clutter’ she
means anything that has been piling up,
whether it be things, thoughts or feelings.
Clutter in your house, head or heart. A
lighter life only comes about when we learn
to clear it out.
The first lessons were about awareness.
What would it feel like for me if life would
‘stream smoothly like a river’? How do
moments of flow, comfort and silence feel?
And what is it like to be stuck? In the
evenings, I dutifully committed my answers
to paper in the twilight. For me, flow is aquiet focus on things. For me, it’s a great
luxury when I get to concentrate on
something that interests me without any
concerns or distractions. Being stuck, on
the other hand, is the feeling that you are
always running behind on an overcrowded
schedule. The sense of never having enough
time. A sense of never enough, always.
To learn how to make more time for
yourself, the course then talked about the
power of slowing down. I was advised to
start a ‘daily practice of slowing down’. The
question was: Can you take five minutes
longer to do something? I decided to do this
when getting up in the morning and when
going to bed in the evening. I set the alarm
fifteen minutes earlier and, after waking up,
made a cup of coffee, slid back into bed,
thought about the day ahead and stared at
the trees. I did the same when I went to bed:
staring out into the night with a mug of tea,
listening to the noises in the city square
below through the open windows. Those
two small steps already felt really beneficial:
At the beginning of the day, I no longer let
myself be immediately tugged away from
myself by all kinds of inconsequential
distractions, and at the end of the day I took
time to return to myself. What it also taught
me is that these are the skills we need today
to survive in an overwhelming world.FEEL MORE SPACE
Bennett Vogt experienced a burnout herself
just over twenty years ago. ‘In 1996, at the
peak of my career, I resigned from my job
teaching—for twenty years already—at one
of Boston’s foremost schools,’ she writes in
an email. ‘I was completely burned out. I >INTERESTED IN
TAKING A COURSE?DailyOM offers online
courses for better
and healthier living.
Depending on what you
sign up for, you will
receive a new lesson
in your mailbox daily
or weekly. You decide
for yourself what you
pay. Dailyom.com‘A LIGHTER LIFE
ONLY COMES
ABOUT WHEN WE
LEARN TO CLEAR
IT OUT’