Life is complicated. Relationships are complicated. Friendships are complicated. Life choices are complicated. Or are they? Is it possible that our excessive need to complicate life is just merely giving us something to do?

In our utter and complete fear of being bored are we perhaps overcomplicating every single thing in our life for the mere fact that it just gives us something to think about incessantly, or to complain about to our friends, or to distract ourselves from ourselves?

Could it be that our fragile little egos claim they want happiness, and inner peace, and simplicity from life situations but deep down are deathly afraid of this because in order to have true happiness and simple joy and uncomplicated relationships with others would mean the death of a majority of the jibber-jabber mind chatter that our ego spews out all day long?

Without over-thinking, worrying, complaining, and complicating everything to the point that we overanalyze every single situation the ego would lose 90% of its hold on us.

Our true self thrives in simplicity, in fact it is simplicity. It knows that anything outside of simplicity is merely our ego or false self begging for our attention.

As long as it has our attention we won’t pay attention to what is real and true… which is that we don’t need to spend so much time thinking about how we can go about achieving happiness. We already are happiness. We don’t need to spend all our time trying to get love from another person, we already are love.

As long as the ego can overcomplicate every situation to the point that we don’t see that all is well and perfect, it has already won. But the reality of the situation is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

As Confucius said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Here are five ways you may be making your life more complicated than it needs to be:

1) You live in your head too much

Our minds are constantly trying to make sense of everything. They are going over every single “what if?”, “why did they do that?”, “what does this all mean?” so much so that they forget that all of life is happening in the present moment.

Literally only this present moment exists. So mulling over past conversations, or stressing about future events literally just drives us mad. We spend hours playing out scenarios in our head that have never happened and may or may not ever happen. We overthink everything that we are completely disconnected from what is real and the beauty of experiencing the present moment when it actually happens… in the present moment.

2) You want to make everyone happy all the time

Trying to please everyone might work every once in a while, but most of the time it will be an impossible feat. In order to please one person, it is inevitable that you will upset another person to some extent.

There will be times when everyone in your life is going to have their own opinion on how you should live yours, so trying to satisfy them all would be undoable. How about you just do what makes you happy?

Yes some people will have something to say, or may be disappointed, but this is your life right? Once people in your life catch on that you have made yourself your first priority, they will be less inclined to ask you to go out of your way just to please them.

Also, they won’t be so shocked when you tell them “no” instead of desperately trying to prevent them from being upset by just doing exactly what they tell you to.

3) You believe your perception of life is the absolute truth

Here’s a secret: Your perception does not equal truth, it only means just that… YOUR perception. So the cashier at the store isn’t necessarily a rude witch, just because you perceived her that way. Did it occur to you that maybe she is dealing with a problem in her personal life? And the girl/guy you went on a date with isn’t necessarily an insensitive jerk.

Maybe they’ve had a really difficult childhood and they don’t know how to open up to people very easily. Regardless of the situation, we must realize that there are always two sides to every coin.

When we stop convincing ourselves and others that we know exactly what is going on in other people’s heads and why they act the way they do, we stop wasting so much time judging, complaining and criticizing others.

We simply see things and people as they are, without imposing our own little story on them which may or may not be anywhere near the actual truth.

4) You don’t trust that there is a higher intelligence at work

Whether you call it the universe, or God, or Source, or the all that is, there is a force that is working behind the scenes in every single aspect of our lives. There is never a moment that we are separate from its presence because in all actuality we come from it, meaning we ARE it, just a tiny little slice of it.

Our feeble little minds can’t comprehend this, so because of that we try to make our own plans and agendas on how things in our life will go. News flash: things rarely go the way we thought they would, right?

This is because the higher intelligence knows what’s best for us, even though we are convinced we know. The higher intelligence sees a bigger picture, it knows the reason your car wouldn’t start today was because there was going to be huge collision on the highway right when you would have been driving on it.

Accept and surrender to whatever it brings to you or brings you to. It is always giving you exactly what you need in any given moment, your only assignment is to: TRUST

5) You’re not honest with yourself

This is a big one and actually a lot harder than it seems mainly because so many of us hide ourselves from ourselves so much that we don’t even know what the truth is anymore. Believe it or not a lot of people are comfortable in their misery. They have become so accustomed to it that the mere thought of not having something to be miserable about sounds like the scariest thing ever. So they fool themselves.
admire the simple beauty in life
They rationalize, justify, and make excuses of why they still need to work at the job that they feel sucks the soul out of them, or they need to continue to cling on to an addiction of whatever the object of their desire is.

As long as they can evade actually being honest with themselves, which 9 times out of 10 is that they are afraid, they can stay comfortably unhappy. This for some reason sounds better than simply admitting that whoever or whatever or wherever is never going to bring them any closer to the happiness they claim they want.

Life really doesn’t need to be hard. In fact, when we start to simplify it we realize that the simple life is where true joy and happiness actually lives. We take things and people at face value. We trust the process of life and don’t overanalyze everyone and everything. So, if you do anything, do this… keep it simple.

~via FractalEnlightenment.com

We are living fragmented lives in an increasingly frenetic world. Overworked and overstressed we spread ourselves thin flipping between several roles in a single day. We can be a parent, spouse, employee, organiser, blogger, expert in a field, coordinator, entertainer or whatever role we have assigned ourself or have identified with.

Society and culture have also put on us pressures and beliefs that have sucked us in all this madness. Clearly, we are living a consumeristic culture in overdrive. The expectations from our peers and the messages from the mass media and cultural icons are all set to trance us into this consumeristic mass hallucination. In moments of clarity, many have stopped to ask themselves “How do I make it stop? Where is the emergency stop button? How can I break free from all this and return to a simpler, authentic and stress-free life?” — I’m sure you have, as have I too.

The good news is that living a simpler, stress-free life is not something that is a world apart. Like anything else it comes from our will and resolution but also from making some simple realisations and keeping them present in mind. I have listed seven key ideas about simple living that our constant doing and rushing has alienated us from.

Life Purpose Is Simplicity Itself:

Knowing your life purpose is the most powerful information you can acquire in a whole lifetime. Knowing your life purpose means knowing who you truly are which in turns means doing only those things which resonate with your authentic talents and motivations. Life becomes effortless. On the other hand not being aligned with your life purpose means creating friction and wasting time and energy doing things which do not flow with you.

In my book The Art of Simple Living, I make this very important point — that knowing your life purpose does not require looking for it in some special place or doing something extraordinary. It comes from simplifying. When you start discarding all those things which do not belong to you and simplify your day to day living, your life purpose comes in sharper focus because you understand better who you are.

Your Wants Are Not Your Needs:

The consumerist culture has sold us wants as needs. As we are constantly bombarded by advertising messages on all media, we are made to believe that we ‘need’ that latest gadget or that cool accessory to be at pace with our times and our peers. The clear boundary between needing and wanting has been blurred. So we end up spending time, money and energy trying to acquire stuff or reaching goals because we believe we actually need them when in fact we only want them. As the latest fad passes away, we are only left with clutter and wasted resources.

Being sober about what are those things you really need and those which you only want can drastically simplify your life. You eliminate those things which are inessential to your core living thus opening up more time and space to fill in with meaningful things that are genuinely part of your life purpose.

Less Is More:

Another thing society has seduced us into is the idea that more is better. We measure our success partly by how much wealth, status and accolades we accumulate in a lifetime. What is not measured is the stress and strain produced as an effect of pursuing these socially transmitted goals. Not to mention how far we deviated from our more authentic goals and happiness while doing this. We have been alienated away from the practical truth that less is decisively more powerful.

When you have less stuff, work and false ‘needs’ cluttering your physical and mental space, your life is more streamlined and frictionless. With less noise, it becomes much easier to bring your true aspirations and motivations in clear focus. This is the real power of less.

It’s Not What You Thought About Thinking:

One of the greatest ways to hack into a simpler life comes from your thinking — or rather lack of it. This is another belief we have been sucked into — that we must think to figure out our way and solve problems. Counter-intuitive as it may sound, thinking is on many occasions, the obstacle to the solution rather than the path to the solution. Not because thinking is bad or futile but because thinking or over-analysing a situation can at times create more noise while blocking our inner intuition.

Masters in the art of simplicity know very well how to make use of their intuition and when to refrain from analysing a given situation. This is because while thinking is energy intensive and can complicate matters rather than simplifying them, intuition gives us instant access to information that may have been overlooked by our conscious rationalisations. It is effortless, fast and simple.

You Don’t Need Approval By Anyone:

Most of the time we are not aware how much our life is complicated by the need to be approved of by others. Some people seek approval constantly and feel the need to have their actions and aspirations confirmed by the stamp of approval of their peers or those in authority. The need for others’ approval, whether explicit or tacit, becomes in some cases a compulsive unconscious behaviour. It limits our possibilities but more importantly, it keeps us from being ourselves and living an authentic life.

The effect of all this is that our life becomes complicated and inefficient since we are putting others’ consent, approval or admiration in the equation every time. People who are completely free from what other people think of their life choices, have a much simpler and straightforward line to follow – their heart. Once you ditch the subconscious fear of being disapproved by others around you, you clear up the space to fill in with your own dreams and aspirations rather those of others.

Money Can Wait — Your Dreams Shouldn’t:

How many times have I heard people (and myself in the past) declare: “Once I will settle myself financially, I will be on my way to follow my dreams and aspirations.” The general sense to it is that “right now I am not living my dream — I have put it on the side while I try to make a living doing things I am not passionate about”.

There is a certain rationale that we believe is sane to follow but the truth is that it is partially insane at best. We limit ourselves thinking that we need to get a financial boost to jumpstart our life project. While it is agreed that some form of financial input or funding is needed to create certain projects, it doesn’t mean that you need to shelve it while you are acquiring your funds. What often happens is that you get derailed into other things while you are not actually doing your real stuff and your dream becomes only that — a ‘dream’. Other times, the financial aspect becomes an excuse to procrastinate or else we do not realise that the situation is not as bad as we fear and that for instance quitting your full-time job to get on your project is not half as financially strenuous as you may believe.

The Space Odyssey — Decluttering:

Read any literature about simple living and it is invariably tied to the idea of decluttering. It does a lot of sense of course because living a simpler life means above anything else being free from clutter that makes your life less simple to manage. My idea of decluttering spaces is a bit broader than that. While clearing physical spaces (and maintaining them clutter free) is an absolute necessity for making your practical living hassle free, I also like to emphasise that keeping our inner spaces clutter free is as much, if not more, important.

What do I mean by inner spaces? It is that space through which we listen to our innermost feelings, intuitions and reflections. It is of course not a space in the physical sense although it behaves like one because it can be blocked by clutter — mental chatter, too much information from the media, worries, beliefs, fears, etc. Likewise when it is free from such clutter, it opens up to allow more authentic things to flow into — joy, creativity, solutions, intuitions, etc. Once again, we are limited as too how much of that space we can free up (if at all) by our social demands and expectations.

We are made to follow certain social models and templates — like for instance being the self-motivated manager who is always on the ball and has little or no time for his inner life or introspection. Inner life is seen as belonging to those who are on the ‘wayside’ or have retreated from life rather than those who are on its mainstream. Wrong assumption, of course.

Dedicating no time to declutter your inner spaces through for instance, quiet time alone, meditation, play, art, relaxing, traveling, etc., is what will knock you off from life’s ‘mainstream’. Instead of giving time to listen to your inner authentic aspirations, you would have lived the life of an automaton filling in a role laid down by society.

This article was originally published on The Mind Unleashed in 2015.

~via SoulHiker.com