This week's video is sponsored by Fidelity Investments.
There's endless research on the benefits
of slowing down and embracing a quiet life.
Simplicity leads to less stress, better sleep, improved mood,
increased creativity, and more.
While slowing down is a nice idea in theory,
it can be difficult to achieve in our high-stress,
high-pressure world.
And additionally, for those of us
who naturally identify as type A,
these aspirational goals can feel even more unattainable.
So what is type A?
While I personally think most personality types are
a spectrum more than a concrete label,
type A people tend to be defined by their work
performance, productivity, competitiveness,
and more high-strung nature.
We love a checklist and live for a spreadsheet.
We don't have hobbies.
We have side hustles.
It's hard for us to relax as a lack of productivity
feels like wasted potential, and we can often
fall into what I call toxic productivity.
As a type A person, I've found a few tactics
that helped me embrace simplicity
when my brain is screaming at me to stay
plugged in and productive.
Number one, find a reason to get outside.
Depending on your location, nature
is not always easy to come by.
However, for those of us who have a hard time divesting
our attention from our social media feeds and to-do lists,
nature can do wonders.
Before I started making conscious efforts
to simplify my life, the concept of getting away into nature
felt like a huge waste of time to me.
I'm deeply pragmatic and felt like the outdoors had nothing
to offer me besides spotty cell reception
and a wasted afternoon.
But there are deeply therapeutic benefits to being outside.
When we struggle to maintain perspective,
nature exists as a gentle reminder
that the world has functioned for millennia
without our efforts and will continue to function
long after we are gone.
Earth is bigger than our problems
and does not need our stress to keep turning.
As biologist Rachel Carson puts it,
"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated
refrains of nature--
the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring
after winter."
I have a confession to make, however,
which is that I have had to proactively find
reasons to go outside.
Again, my toxic pragmatism keeps me
from doing things without a purpose.
So I meet myself halfway.
Geocatching, drone photography, and rock painting
are ways I motivate myself to get outside.
Finding a way to push yourself to do something uncomfortable
based on what you already enjoy will
keep you going back out of desire instead of obligation.
Number two, stop trying to buy your way to a more organized
life.
We type As love a good product.
We love the idea that our problems
can be solved with the perfect paper planner, the most
Instagrammable closet organization
system, the highest rated to-do list app.
But after many years of trying to lower my stress
and buying many, many aspirational products aimed
at helping me live more simply, the one thing
I found that actually helps is nothing.
There's no book or ideology that replicates
the therapeutic power of owning only what is essential
because the truth is life is hectic
and fast paced and stressful, and you can't organize yourself
out of the clutter.
This applies to both physical and mental clutter.
When you surround yourself with unnecessary stuff,
it owns you more than you own it.
"Minimalism" can be a loaded word for some people.
But for me, it's been a several year journey
of reducing the items, obligations, and people
in my life that don't add value.
That's it.
There's no subscription service or e-book
that will teach you how to make this happen.
It's internal emotional work.
Number three, get to the root of your productivity obsession.
One of the major turning points in my journey
towards living more simply as a type A person
is to address the why.
Why am I high strung?
Why is relaxing so hard?
How am I expected to slow down when your worth feels
defined by your productivity?
Through therapy and self-reflection,
I came to realize that I held such impossible standards
for myself not out of a desire to be
the best but out of a crippling fear of failure.
I don't want to think of myself as a loser.
I don't want to be surpassed by my peers.
But comparing my journey to others
kept me constantly spinning out, tired, irritable, and insecure.
I valued productivity because I felt like it was
all I had to offer the world.
While I have made significant progress
towards simplifying my life through embracing nature,
decreasing the clutter and noise in my life,
and living more intentionally, the thing that tends to help me
the most is surrounding myself with people and media
that remind me to constantly shift my value system.
One mantra that I recite to myself almost daily is
"time enjoyed is never wasted."
Many of us just need frequent reminders
that the sum of our character and time on Earth
is not calculated in hours worked or deadlines achieved.
Hard work has its time and place.
But it is not the only reason we're here.
As I mentioned, this video is sponsored
by Fidelity Investments.
They are here to help you reach your savings goals.
And if you're looking for an easy way
to finally start investing what you save, check out Fidelity.