Living a simple life can be a great way to have less stress and enjoy your life more. We will discuss 13 simple tips to help you live a happier, more stress-free life. Many people think living a simple life means giving up all your material possessions and moving to the woods. This is not always the case as no one size really fits all! There are many simple ways to simplify your life without making drastic changes. We hope these tips will help you live a more peaceful and stress-free life!
What is simple living?
It’s not a one-size-fits-all lifestyle. While some people live off the grid and produce their food, others may want a less cluttered garage.
Living a simple life entails seeing the value in less and putting quality above quantity. It’s about prioritizing what makes us happy instead of conforming to societal norms or chasing status symbols. It’s a way of life that frequently involves reducing down on belongings and simplifying your existence—a simple life driven by what matters to you rather than by staff or status.
Here are 13 simple living and practical tips to enjoy life
1. Watch less TV
Cutting back on television might result in fewer commercials and less of the underhanded materialism that is prevalent in many motion pictures.
While spending time watching a good series can be a soothing way to wind down after a hectic day, hours of TV will ultimately leave you unmotivated and exhausted. Limiting your TV time allows you to relax in other ways, such as reading, listening to powerful podcasts, or meditating. While it may appear counterintuitive, zoning out in front of the television isn’t the ideal method to unwind.
Try a personal development hobby instead, like a yoga session, or pick up a challenging new hobby that you can do for half an hour each night. You’ll be more energetic and energized than you would after watching many TV series in a row. Make it intentional while you’re viewing TV. Make plans for your viewing and spend quality time selecting a decent movie or an informative documentary to watch. Don’t just switch through the channels pointlessly;
Reduce your news intake and watch high-quality media that provides fair reporting, decreasing your anxiety about current events and increasing your tolerance of other viewpoints.
2. Live within your means
Don’t spend money on objects you don’t desire. Make a conscious effort to work to alter your thinking that happiness is just around the corner in the next online purchase. Simple living isn’t about deprivation or austerity. It’s all about being free from that cycle of unsatisfying desire. And, if you feel like a freak among your friends and family, don’t be coerced into spending – especially around the holidays. Look for people with similar attitudes toward simple living and pick their habits as motivation.
Be thankful for what you have right now. You’ll be less likely to dwell on what’s lacking in your life and more inclined to appreciate the little things. Keep track of your experiences in a gratitude diary so you can feel grateful. Organize your assets, and you’ll discover items you didn’t even realize you had. Experiences will enrich your life, while material belongings can never compare. They’ll also help you see things from another perspective.
Invest the free time to master all you can learn about marketing and advertising techniques. When you’re more aware of the different ploys that PR people employ to entice you into more purchases, you’ll be able to spot and reject them more quickly the next time around.
3. Declutter your home
Many people begin their journey to simple living with a book like Marie Kondo or develop routines for decluttering and organizing their junk drawers. When you tidy and organize, the items in your physical health and mental health begin to serve you rather than overpower you. And this is such an incredible sensation that you’re likely to fine-tune for the rest of your life continually. It’s addicting to feel weightless and have more room after decluttering.
Clothes are like cash: they have no value if they’re not consumed. Getting rid of your wardrobe might lead to a digital declutter or reconsidering a tight schedule. You’ll wonder, “What else can I clean up and simplify?”
Here are some decluttering methods to get you started:
- Start with modest goals and keep your expectations realistic. Instead of attempting to redo the entire house, focus on cleaning one drawer or a portion of your wardrobe.
- Make a to-do list and start with the laundry. Make sorting your clothes a low priority to focus on more significant problems. Hanger an old garment and flip it over, displaying the reverse side.
- Reduce one item each day. If you don’t have time for an entire decluttering session, keep it simple and pick one less used or unwanted object daily to get rid of or donate.
4. Stop multitasking and do Single-task at a time
Multitasking, in general, is more stressful and less productive than most people believe, Stay at home moms may disagree with this. Despite many claims on people’s resumes, no one is truly good at multitasking. Work goes by slower when you’re constantly shifting your focus between a big project, an inbox full of emails, and a chatty colleague. Interruptions can’t always be prevented (such as a phone conversation with your boss), but you may ease the burden by grouping similar activities together.
When juggling many tasks and responsibilities, this means spending a half hour replying to emails followed by an hour of dedicated effort on a more challenging project. Not checking emails or Facebook is essential for full-time. Self-discipline is something that gets better with time. So, if your attention drifts away quickly, start with short periods of focused time and build up gradually.
Calendar time blocking is a great way to figure out your top goals and ensure you have time for them daily. Keeping work and personal to-do lists in a notebook can help save your mind the trouble of keeping track of everything.
5. Set realistic goals and reward yourself
We frequently underestimate how long a job will take and beat ourselves up over not making enough progress. Alternatively, we may set unattainable goals when attempting to embrace a new lifestyle. Then we tell ourselves that we’re just too busy or lack the motivation to change. And the self-fulfilling prophecy comes accurate as a result of our words.
To-do lists and impossible standards only lead to stress and burnout. While a weekend away getting rid of all your stuff is appealing on Instagram, it does not work that way for everyone.
To embrace a slow lifestyle, begin by re-examining your job and gradually reducing commitments until you focus on what truly makes an impact. Working overtime at the workplace is frequently glamorized, but it rarely results in progress.
If you’re looking for a more basic lifestyle, start with modest objectives. And if you fail, reduce your expectations even further. Start by eliminating one item each day or exchanging one vacation present for a ticket to an experience. Those little deeds will make you feel fantastic and encourage you to continue. Trying to change your life but failing is far less inspiring than attempting to make small changes and succeeding.
6. Appreciate the little things and practice gratitude
Putting down everything you’re grateful for is a powerful practice that boosts your satisfaction and prevents those nagging doubts that your life isn’t perfect. It’s easy to feel inadequate when constantly bombarded with advertising and other people’s aspirational social media postings. Then comes the self-esteem slump, comparison shopping sprees, and low mood.
When you practice thankfulness, you’ll appreciate the little things in life. You’ll be far less likely to envy others and more aware of everything you have. You’ll learn to see the best in any scenario, which will help you become calmer and more patient. If you want to practice gratitude regularly, start a diary and write at least once a week.
Try these gratitude-inducing statements:
- Write three things you’re grateful for at night.
- List three aspects of your spouse or family that you admire and appreciate.
- Describe a recent difficulty and what you learned from the experience.
- Write about the three individuals who have had the most beneficial influence on your life.
7. Embrace the white space and white noise
The importance of doing nothing is frequently overlooked. We’re pressured to produce a lot at work and rewarded for being productive. This attitude also tends to seep into our personal lives. We’re uncomfortable sitting still on weekends, so we fill every minute with activity or entertainment.
TV shows and social media feeds are only too eager to offer us a remedy for our boredom. And when we get bored, that annoying sense that we should do something about it twinges at us all the time. But allowing yourself to feel bored has several unexpected advantages.
White space provides you with mental space to examine new concepts. If you’ve ever had an excellent notion in the shower, you know how beneficial a few minutes away from your screens and responsibilities can be. White space also allows you to reflect on things and learn from them. Your brain will slowly rebuild its attention span as long as you don’t frantically try to fill up your white space with fun entertainment.
Take a day off on the weekend and do some self-care to relax and make no plans. Alternatively, go on a long walk and explore your area without a goal.
8. Don’t expect miracles.
Even dramatically, simple living will improve your life.
But it will not stop stress or guarantee you total pleasure and fulfillment. And maintaining a simple lifestyle will be an ongoing learning experience. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll relapse. What matters most is the intention and perseverance behind it all.
Decluttering may be a helpful first step toward living a simpler life, but it isn’t the end of the story. Decluttering your home might help clean up some mess, but it won’t necessarily lead to more attention or purposefulness.
The goal is to raise your standards. Over time, if you can sustain a slower lifestyle without compromising your values, work ethic, or social life (which is often difficult), you’ll be more likely to make better decisions and feel more confident.
It takes time — there are no shortcuts for this, and it doesn’t happen over the weekend when you clean out your closets and change the color scheme in your bedroom. Living a simplified life entails a rejection of materialism and popular culture’s traditional ideals. This requires effort, reflection, and self-awareness.
9. Want less
Happiness is not always found in what you desire, but you can be satisfied with what you have. Everyone understands that obtaining what you want makes you ecstatic for a little while, after which you are immediately lusting after the next thing. We see this with toddlers and toys, people and money, officials and power… And there are so many other examples. So how do you learn to be satisfied with what you have despite this?
Wanting less is difficult, but it’s a must. Recoding our desires is not simple, but it’s an essential aspect of simple living. So, how can we do this? You may begin by limiting your TV viewing, social media usage, and other activities, encouraging you to want more things.
If you have companions who make you feel inadequate, you might also need to limit your time with them. And staying occupied undoubtedly helps with that!
10. Work hard for something other than money.
It’s not just about making your life simpler. We compare contemporary individuals to those in the past who lived a less complicated lifestyle than we do. But, regardless, life was considerably more difficult. Simple life does not imply an easy life.
You must work hard to spare yourself of the desire for more, more, more. Consider how wonderful it is to sit on a concrete step all day. You’ve revised your goals and expectations through all that hard effort, so the tiniest occurrence makes you satisfied.
Even a nice soft chair will not satisfy you if you sit around all day. If you spend the whole day watching television, it’s time to get up and have something to eat. So, if you snack all day, what happens? It loses its efficacy as well. So maybe you buy some goodies over the internet because of this. And so on.
Showering and drinking a hot cup of coffee feels fantastic if you get up early and weed your garden for an hour before painting a fence.
Find a job that is difficult for you. Stop thinking about how to save time and money and get started. And notice how your level of contentment with what you have changed. This is how you discover a method not to obtain what you desire but already have.
11. Quit anything that leaves you feeling overwhelmed
Hard work is an essential component of simple living. Does that imply you should start a new and complicated project like obtaining a law degree even though you despise reading? No. There’s a distinction between putting out effort and being overwhelmed.
If you have many small children, your own food may be more than you can manage. There is nothing wrong with spending a little extra for grocery shopping delivery during these times. Even though it costs more, it makes life easier.
Do you want to live a slower, simpler life at home?
Are you exhausted after a lengthy drive to see your in-laws every other weekend but do not have the energy to do much for days afterward?
That’s not necessary, either!
There are so many things that we feel compelled to accomplish in life, yet the reality is that 99 percent of what we spend time on is optional. Simple living asks you to eliminate everything you despise and focus on what matters.
12. Rise above others’ perceptions of you rather than your own.
We do things to please others, or we think that if others are doing it, we should also.
peer pressure for adults
“Keeping up with the Joneses” is another name for it. Perhaps you should have one like your next-door neighbor completed a basement makeover theater. When she had her second child, your sister purchased a new SUV.
Consider why you’re doing it before you buy that new thing. Is it to make a statement? Because your friends have one and you believe you should as well? Don’t let others take away your peace of mind if you’re happy with your life.
Furthermore, you’ll probably discover that no one is paying too much attention to what you have or don’t have, and the pressure you thought was coming from other people is coming from yourself. You may believe other individuals are interested in what you’re doing but aren’t as concerned about it as you are.
Yes, being the only one of your friends to not go on vacation might be challenging. It’s more difficult, though, to have a lifestyle you can’t afford because you’re too busy keeping up with the Joneses. (Who are most likely putting up a show for everyone.)
Instead of being ashamed of being unique from your neighbors, see it as a badge of distinction. You live your personal life differently because you choose to, not out of obligation. What could be more honorable?
expectations from others
This may also be a reaction to meeting or exceeding expectations set by others. So your sister is a lawyer, as is your father. You determined not to go to law school as everyone expected. You must show them that your marketing career can be just as successful. You will need to work hard and be creative. And that’s why you can’t stop, start a flower shop, and slow down your life to relax.
Once you understand that everyone has their own life to live, you’ll notice that such decisions are more straightforward.
Furthermore, you’ll probably discover that no one is paying too much attention to what you have or don’t have. The pressure you thought was coming from others is originating from yourself. You may believe other people are concerned about your actions but aren’t as interested in them as you are. Take on the role of the weird aunt who dropped out of school to pursue a career as a writer in a rural community. Other people will not fault you. You must stop self-doubt.
However, this isn’t to say that you should do the same. It’s OK to be different if everyone else is doing it. You will discover that everything becomes more manageable if you stop trying to keep up with people you know. Before committing yourself to anything new, consider whether or not you would continue doing it if no one knew about it. How often have you done something you don’t care about to impress others?
13. Start creating space for what matters.
We’ve been focusing on eliminating things: stress, clutter, overwhelm, and peer pressure. And now, we must consider what we wish to retain or reintroduce. What are the essential aspects of your life?
What have you been clearing away to make room for it? More time with your family? Do you have enough space to start a new interest? Has travel always been on your bucket list? Or perhaps it’s just that life no longer terrifies you.
Some individuals get a lot of value from making a list of their most important objectives. Then compare your timetable to how you use your time. Is it true that spending little time with your family and friends because of your work affects your quality of life? Perhaps something must be adjusted in such a scenario.
Of course, we all have obligations, and a job is essential to life. For most of us, financial independence is not a reality. But don’t work your life away to acquire money for things you don’t need it for. These are very personal choices, but if you start devaluing material goods, you’ll go a long way. Consider how much time spent on something has value. And unlike money, there’s no way to increase your supply.
Final thoughts
Living a simple life can be a great way to reduce stress, have more time for the things you enjoy, and live a happier life. We hope these 13 tips will help you start living a simpler, less stressful life!
