Episode 112
How to Declutter Your Daily Schedule
See the show notes at: https://3in30podcast.com/captivate-podcast/112-declutter-schedule/
Rachel Nielson: So by way of introduction, Miranda is a blogger at Live Free Creative Co, and she’s also written a book which is called More Than Enough, which has been on my list for months to read, and I just started listening to it yesterday. I had a three-hour drive, and I’m loving every minute of it. And it was funny, Miranda, because I had a doctor’s appointment in Boise yesterday, which is like the big city, so after my appointment I went to the mall, and I like got a whole bunch of stuff and then I was driving home, I was like, “I really wish I would’ve listened to this before I went to the mall”. The book is all about “practical minimalism,” is what Miranda calls it, and a whole year that she spent without buying anything. She just bought consumable goods, but she didn’t buy any stuff for a whole year. So on my way home from the mall, I was listening thinking, “Okay, well I’m going to make some changes.” So excited to have you here. Miranda also has an incredible podcast all about living with intention that’s called Live Free Creative. You can check that out and so welcome to our group Miranda. Awesome.
Miranda Anderson: Thank you. What a kind introduction.
Rachel Nielson: Okay, so she’s going to give us three takeaways, kind of like a 3 in 30 episode. Do you just want to start?
Miranda Anderson: Just dive in?
Rachel Nielson: Yeah, you can just tell us about your life, and then go for it with the first takeaway.
Miranda Anderson: Great. Okay. Well hello. I feel like you did a great introduction. The only other things that I would add, just cause I don’t know where everyone is around the country, I always think it’s fun to hear where people are from. So I’m right now, I live in Richmond, Virginia. I have three children ages ten, eight, and five. I have a three-year-old dog and four one-year-old chickens, and I always have to mention them because they are one of the things that have brought the most joy and satisfaction to my life in the last year. I love having backyard chickens so much.
So I have been on a journey of intentional living for the last five years, really when my third child was born–actually when I decided I wanted to become pregnant with my third child, I felt like my life was already full to capacity. And I came home from a conference that had really impacted me, and I told my husband I want to have another baby. And at the time he was in his third year of law school. We had two little boys. We were living in a 900 square foot apartment in D.C. I was running a full-time blog. I running a full-time sewing business from home–I did custom sewing and wedding dresses and costumes and all sorts of things. I was doing everything, all at the same time. And then I said, “AND I want to have another baby.” And my husband said, there’s no way that we can do everything we’re doing and add more. It was the very first time in my life that I realized that I needed to start subtracting. Life wasn’t just about always adding more and more and more; at some point I needed to actually make decisions and not just choose everything. I had to choose what was not going to fit in my life. And so I decided that I was going to stop blogging for a year, which was crazy because it had been something I had done consistently daily since 2007. So for for six years it had been part of my regular practice. But as I evaluated my life, I realized that that was my lowest, uh, my lowest priority. And it was like, I actually had to shift. It was like the application of, you know, I know we all know that things can be prioritized in our lives, but it’s not very often that our priorities come in direct conflict and we have to actually make a choice where we say we’re going to keep one and get rid of the other. And starting on that journey of, okay, I’m going to stop blogging gave me the confidence to realize that I am in control of the choices that I make of not only how I spend my time, but then fast forward a year or two, my family undertook this huge challenge of spending an entire year, not shopping for consumable goods, the actual possessions that I bring into my life, the way that I spend all of my resources, my time, my money, my energy. And it’s kind of something that I have gone step-by-step, and at each step I learned new things that then enabled me to apply more and more and more. And it’s been really, it’s been really fantastic.
Rachel Nielson: Can I just jump in and say that before I knew that much about you, I heard you on a podcast episode and I heard you say that you had after blogging for six years and pouring and building this whole business that you decided to stop for a year so that you could have the have a baby and that you had faith that it would still be there when you got done and when you were ready to jump back in. And I was like, Whoa, because that is not what we hear in the industry about creative work. In fact, if anybody has listened to my episode this week on my podcast, I talked about how I’m taking the month of December off, and I mentioned in there that the gurus and the podcasting experts say, don’t do that because then all of the momentum that you’ve built and everything that you’ve put in will be lost. I have to refuse to buy into that. Like that mindset that it will all be lost and I need to make intentional choices for my own life. And I really credit people like you Miranda, for being an example of that and showing others it’s possible. Because you came back to your business and built it, continued to build it. And it’s thriving today, even after that year long break. Right?
Miranda Anderson: Yeah. It was interesting. I had to make the decision to stop not knowing. Well, I mean my hypothesis was that my traffic would crash and then all the people who had been followers for so long would not be there. And even in the face of that decision, my choice was I want to do what’s right for my life and be relevant in my own life, even if that means that I’m not relevant on the internet because this is where I actually live, like in my body, in my home with my family. And so the surprising thing was that my traffic not only stayed consistent, but it continued to grow and I came back to my blog with more clarity, like my own mental space was better. I had taken enough of a pause to reevaluate and to put some plans in
place. And that next year that I came back, I came back stronger and better than I ever had before. And I think it’s because of the pause because if I had just continued on, I would have done what I was always doing–because that’s what we do. We do what we always do. We want to do what’s comfortable, even if it’s not working. We will opt as humans to do the things that we’re already doing because we know what the outcomes are and not knowing the outcome is scary enough that it keeps us from making changes. But if we make changes, that is the only way to understand what we’re actually capable of. So this is such a great setup for my Takeaway #1 for decluttering your schedule: Everything is optional.
I was talking to my sister a little bit earlier today and she was telling me, she’s so overwhelmed with the holidays. She has four kids. They just got back from a Thanksgiving vacation. She feels like she’s up against, you know, the holiday season is shorter this year than it has been in past years. And she said, I need to decorate my whole house. I need to buy all the gifts. They need to put up all the trees. I need to do all the parties I need to, they cookies, I need to do my neighbor gifts. And she was listing off all of these things that are overwhelming her in her, in her schedule. And I said, you know that you don’t have to do all of those things. And in fact you don’t even have to do any of them. Every single thing she mentioned that was causing her stress and overwhelm was something that she had put upon herself. There were no hard deadlines. I mean it was all her own self-imposed ideas about what the holiday season is supposed to look like. And when I started to mention, “Maybe you, maybe you just don’t make five dozen cookies for all the neighbors this year. Maybe you run to the dollar store and grab them. So you know, if you want to do gifts, like let’s simplify it, can you simplify it?” And she had such a hard time and I think this is what we were just talking about, that we want to do what we know how to do, what we’ve always done. We believe, we truly believe that there are things in our schedules that are absolute. And I think if you allow yourself to consider that every single thing on your schedule is optional, that you are immediately able to feel some freedom. You clear everything off of your schedule and you decide what actually adds value.
What is something that brings joy into your life and into your family’s life? There are things that will serve you really well in some seasons. Like last year was a perfect year for my sister to do all of the things, and this year because of the circumstances it might not be. And so rather than keeping ourselves confined in the box of everything that we have signed up for or everything we raised our hand for or everything that we’ve said yes to, I think that we owe it to ourselves to understand that we can say no, we can clear things off, we can discontinue things that we’ve been doing for a long time–like the example of not blogging, you know, after six years of consistently doing that–saying, “You know what, this is something that I felt like was like my right arm, but it’s not. I can put it down for a while and that will be okay.”
Rachel Nielson: This is a topic that we’ve talked about in the group with “decluttering your motherhood.” So we talk about it like it’s decluttering your closet: you take everything in your life out, and then you decide what deserves to go back in because it actually
brings you joy. But there are those things that don’t seem optional, like feeding your family, laundry. That’s what I, the pushback I always get in my workshops is what about those things? What do you do with those things that don’t seem optional?
Miranda Anderson: Yeah. Okay. So I think that we…okay, we’re going to get a little bit existential for a second. Let’s talk about laundry. What would happen if you just didn’t do the laundry for a week or two weeks or a month? Would anyone in your family die? Would your house burn down? Would you no longer be able to survive?
People would wear dirty clothes. I’m not saying that I think that you should stop doing your laundry, but I am saying that we believe that every single thing is like crucial to this overall picture. And I think that not all of it is and people are so different. So like ask a few different people, how do they do their laundry? I have friends that do their laundry the same day, the same time every single week. This is their system. I have people who do laundry every single day. I know people that do laundry like honestly once a month because they either re-wear their clothes or they have enough clothes that they just don’t have to do it that often, but if you ask any of those people to switch up their own routine, they would think that it was crazy-talk because the way that they’re doing it is the only way that they believe it should be done. Right?
Like this is a kind of an overarching principle that just gets you thinking whether or not you’re going to stop doing your laundry. It’s just recognizing and acknowledging that you have choices in your life. In fact, everything in your life is a choice and recognizing that everything is a choice is really powerful.
Yeah. It really is. For the most part in America, in our society, the women in the household bear the brunt of the household duties, even if you have a really solid partnership. For the most part, the women are the ones who feel the pressure of the tasks, even if you’re equally divided. My husband does a ton of work around the house, but I know for a fact that he doesn’t lay in bed at night thinking about the things that need to happen in the household the next day: the laundry, the dishes, the meals that need to get made. He helps with all of that, and in fact in a lot of cases he does a lot of it, but he doesn’t do it feeling the pressure. He just does it when he sees it and it needs to happen. And so there’s this ease about it that if we just release the pressure, that’s all self imposed pressure.
I like to play that movie to the end with anything that I think is not optional. Play it out to the end. What if I decided to not do this anymore? Maybe the outcome is not favorable, and so you decide to do it. But it is important to know that you always have the choice. And I think that what it requires is just a little bit of mindset tweaking. As soon as you start to feel yourself feel that pressure of like, “O but what about this thing or that thing? My life is different. I’m unique. I have things in my life that are not optional.” I want you to understand that that pressure is where you need to actually do a little examination because that tension is where you have a blockage against your capabilities are in your choice. You feel like
there are things that you don’t have freedom in. When my hypothesis is that that we have far more freedom than we give ourselves the option of choosing. Why? If we have all of these choices, why don’t we use them?
Rachel Nielson: Alright, perfect. I love it. So how can we make this actionable for them right now?
Miranda Anderson: So I would just say I think that just asking yourself this question or asking yourself the question, “What things do I feel are not optional?” And writing a few things down that have come up for you as we’ve been discussing this. What are those things that feel like barriers to me doing the things that I want to do? What are the things in my life that don’t feel optional? Write those down so that you have them there to start giving a little bit more thought to. Those are your obstacles and then your job is to come up with, use your creativity to come up with, “How are some ways that I can get around these feeling like challenges or obstacles in my life? ”
Rachel Nielson: Great. Okay. Let’s go on to Takeaway #2.
Miranda Anderson: So Takeaway #2 is something that I feel like has absolutely transformed my mindset, and I use it every single day to coach myself through things that feel a little bit difficult. Takeaway #2 is that time is a cycle.
I want you to think about a circle. Think about the seasons that we go through in the year. Right now, we’re headed into winter, right? So the leaves are falling from the trees. All of my flowers are kind of going into dormancy: They’re going to put their roots down deep for the winter; they’re not going flower; they’re not going to grow any new leaves. Everything kind of gets quiet for a while. And then we get this deep freeze.
And then we go into the spring where everything starts to warm up again, and everything starts to bloom again, and everything kind of like flourishes. And then the heat of the summer when there’s an abundance of growth in vegetables and fruits and all of those things. Then we come back around to the fall and the harvest and the partaking of all of that goodness that has come, and then back into where things are closing down and falling again. Right? So we all understand the seasonal nature of weather, but do we really believe that time itself is a cycle? That time is seasonal?
I’ve seen, I don’t know if you guys have seen, a lot of these memes and things coming up with like, “We only have 30 days until the end of the decade! What are you going to do with your life, with your last 30 days of the decade?” Is there anything that causes more overwhelm and stress than saying, “You have 30 days to like make this the best decade ever!”? Time doesn’t end at the end of the decade. It simply turns over into a new year. Everything is a cycle. Everything is a circle. And we tend to think about time in our schedules as having an open and a close of opportunity. We think there are time slots where
things are available to us, and if we don’t do it within that space that we can no longer do it or it’s no longer valid. Does anyone feel like that? Will it add value because of the energy that I bring to it or does it actually make me feel worse? And so this is where you allow yourself the grace of our lives ebb and flow.
The seasons of our life, like actually physically seasons, as women, we have a month long cycle, right? Our physicality, our bodies have a cycle with time. I notice when my cycle is high and my energy is high and also the days that I want to just lay in my bed and eat chocolate for like three days of the month. Anyone else have, you know, some consistency with their cycle? I think that it’s really powerful to acknowledge in our scheduling the seasons and cycles of time. And so I ask myself, “Does my schedule reflect the cycles, the natural cycles of my own body, as well as the cycles that are existing in time?”
When I was pregnant with all three of my children, I was down for the count, like so sick, so tired. I had a super textbook pregnancy where like I didn’t want to smell anything. I didn’t want to hang out with anyone. And I remember especially with my first and second pregnancies feeling so frustrated and sad that I didn’t feel like myself. I’m a go-getter. I’ve always been a high-energy person, a high-achieving person. And I remember feeling like I was wrong. Something was wrong with me because I didn’t have the energy to do all of the things that I wanted to do while I was pregnant–rather than respecting this Takeaway #2, understanding that time is a cycle and that I was in a season of growing a child. Like that was the most energy that I’d ever put into anything, but I didn’t recognize it as such, and so I felt frustrated. And so kind of embracing the season that you’re in in the present,knowing that just like the leaves will fall from the trees, and then they’ll hibernate and then they’ll grow back and flourish again, that it’s okay for you to not feel the same all the time. It’s okay to not be motivated every single day. It’s okay to have entire weeks that your schedule is really clear because you recognize that you’re sick or you just need some time. I guess the takeaway from knowing that time is a cycle is that you don’t expect that your life always looks the same. We often want to just replicate this ideal of what we think we should be accomplishing, doing, feeling. And if we have a little bit of perspective on the seasons and the cycles of time, we know that, it’s just all going to flow back around, and that where we are right now is just right.
Rachel Nielson: So there’s a question here from Sarah Bennett. Why don’t you just, do you want to just unmute and ask it, Sarah?
Sarah Bennet: Okay, my husband, he is super high energy. Like it’s one of my favorite things I love about him, but I don’t know if it’s because of being married to him, but I struggle with the ebbs and flows. Because I want that high energy all the time because honestly that’s where he is. He goes all the time constantly. So you were just talking about that, but I’m still like, how do you respect that and be okay with that? That’s a mystery to me because I probably way more respect when I have the high energy, but the low energy, you know, that’s what I shame. That’s when the negative chatter comes in. Like, why am I not doing more? And I mean I’m a nap person. I’m not saying I don’t nap, but cutting the shame out, I guess, and respecting it more.
Miranda Anderson: I love that. I think that, so the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s really important to understand where that high energy comes from because it doesn’t come from nowhere. Think about a plant. For example, let’s talk about a tree. I’ve got a beautiful one outside my window, except for it’s not beautiful right now because it’s a stick right now. But in four months, my tree, it’s a Tulip Magnolia, it is going to be full of bright purple flowers on the branches. The entire tree looks like a giant bouquet of purple tulips. Where do you think that energy came from for the tree to be able to burst into flowers and grow all of that beauty and sustain it for the next couple months? Where does it get that energy?
Sarah Bennett: Well, for sure from those low times, right?
Miranda Anderson: Yes! It gets it from this season of repose. The reason that nature is able to spring forth in the spring and sustain that through the summer is because it spends half of the year in dormancy gathering energy. This is exactly what I’m talking about because the struggle that you’re facing, this idea that we need to be high energy all of the time, doesn’t respect that time is a cycle. It doesn’t respect that there are seasons. Have you ever known anyone who has gone full energy all the time for their whole lives? Usually what happens?
Rachel Nielson: They have a major breakdown.
Miranda Anderson: They have a breakdown! That is what happens. If you try to go full energy all the time and push through those seasons that you feel like, “Oh I don’t really feel like it or I’m tired or you know, I need to rest but I’m not going to because I think that I need to be full energy all the time,” you will burn out. You will get to the point where you can no longer have energy at all. And it’s interesting, I went to a conference a couple months ago where I heard all of these incredible, world-class motivational speakers. Guess what the storyline of almost every single one of them is? Their storyline is “I hustled and hustled and hustled and hustled and hustled, and then I had a major breakdown, and I couldn’t do anything. And I threatened my family; I threatened my health; I threatened my business because I didn’t understand that there were seasons and that I needed to take a break.” That tells me that this is a universal principle, and I think the first step is to acknowledge it and to start to understand that time is a cycle and time has seasons. We may still be frustrated. Sarah, I know that I still have days that I think to myself, “I don’t really feel like doing anything today,” and I have to tell myself that probably means that I am having a little bit of dip in my energy, like my natural energy. I’ve probably put forth a lot of effort, whether it’s emotional effort because of things that I’m working through with my spouse or my kids or my family or like the school, or it’s physical effort, like I ran a couple of miles and then I raked my whole yard, or whatever the reason. When I start to feel like my energy is waning, because I understand this, I can first acknowledge it–“okay, my
energy is a little bit low”–and then I can try to match whatever I expect of myself to that level of energy rather than trying to push through it.
There’s a lot of low energy things that we can do that are still accomplishments, right? Laundry is a great example of something that doesn’t require a whole lot of creativity or a whole lot of physical stamina, right? Like you can, you know, do a couple loads of laundry and sit and watch a favorite show or listen to a podcast when you have very little energy and that’s a great time of day or of the week to do those things that don’t require a lot of energy. And then save the things that need creativity, that need more energy and effort, for the times that you have it. And as you start to understand this and acknowledge it for yourself, like we’re all different, right? Our natural energy levels are different, what our life requires of us is different. As we start to pay attention to it, you may start to notice some things that are true for you, and then you can actually start to align your personal schedule with that energy. I think that it is really helpful as a very first step,iIt’s just helpful to understand that low energy means building. It means building up for what’s next.
Rachel Nielson: That’s beautiful. Miranda, and I want to read this other comment by Christie because it goes right along with the nature metaphors, which I love. Christie said, “My aunt wisely told me once that trees drop their leaves or their branches would break. There are seasons to let things go, knowing opportunities will cycle back through and timing will be better during a different season. I think it’s the same principle.” And that’s so true. If that beautiful purple tree outside your window continued to get more and more blossoms on it, it would break. It couldn’t support it. And it has to drop it all and regroup, and then spring forth again, and it’s all just part of the cycle. An image that I loved from one of my mentors–her name is April Perry, she runs Power of Moms and Learn Do Become–and she told me once that she gets overwhelmed by opportunities that she really wants to take, like an opportunity to go to a conference or to speak at something or an opportunity to help with something and like genuinely she wants to do those things. It’s easy to say no–well it’s not, it’s never easy to say no–but it’s easier to say no to something when you actually don’t want to do it; but when you want to do it, but you recognize that it doesn’t fit in, that’s much harder to say no to. And she said that she started thinking about conveyor belts at the airport and how they go around and if something passes you by, it will come around and you’ll get to grab it again–versus like conveyor belts at the grocery store where it like drops off at the end. She’s like,, “You have to think about the opportunities in your life. If you miss this one this time because it’s not the best season, have faith that something else great will come around the conveyor belt, and you’ll get to grab it later.” And I think about that a lot when I choose deliberate nos and I think, “Something good will come back around for me.”
Miranda Anderson: Yeah. There’s something too about just an overall abundance mentality and understanding that there is always an abundance of opportunity, there’s abundance of wealth, there’s an abundance of time–there’s like all of these things exist in abundance. They don’t go away because someone else uses them. They don’t go away
because the day ends or this decade ends. All of these things are available to us all the time, and so when we are ready, that is when the opportunity will also be right.
I think also we can get caught up in the idea of like, “I don’t feel well right now, and I’m never going to feel well ever again,” but that’s not true. So I know that my motivation will come back. I know that I’ll have times that I want to just accomplish all of the things. And so if I spend a couple of days resting and catching up on podcast episodes and doing my yard work because that feels less hard to me than doing some creative work for my business, then that’s okay. And understanding that it’ll come back around.
Rachel Nielson: Yeah, definitely. Okay, let’s go into your third takeaway.
Miranda Anderson: Okay. And so then the final takeaway for today is to put the big rocks in first. How many of you have read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey?
Rachel Nielson: Well, I actually haven’t read it, but I feel like I know this metaphor, along with “sharpen the saw,” like all these things that come from it. I’ve never actually read the book, but I need to because there’s some pretty great things that come from it.
Miranda Anderson:Yeah, it’s a really great one. If you haven’t heard this story, I’m just going to quickly recount it. The idea is that you get a jar, and if you have some big rocks and some small rocks and some sand, and you put the sand in first and then the small rocks, the big rocks won’t fit. But if you dump it all out, and you put the big rocks in first, and then the small rocks, the small rocks will kind of filter in around the big rocks. And then you pour the sand in, and you can put–this is an actual, like you could do this at home with your kids–you can pour the sand in and the sand, because it’s so small, will trickle into all those little spaces around, and you can fit everything. But it only works to fit everything if you start with the big rocks. So the third takeaway for your schedule is to put the big rocks in first–and I want to let you know that one of the big rocks is yourself.
We tend to think of ourselves as the sand, and we want to put the big rocks in which are taking care of our kids, doing our church responsibilities, doing our school or work responsibilities, doing the laundry. We think of everything else before we think of ourself. And then we see what’s left over, what little bits of sand can we do to take care of our own health, to take care of our own wellbeing, to take care of the things that we need. And if you do that, you won’t have room for the sand. And if you don’t fit in your jar, then you are unable to serve in any capacity–as a good mom, as a good wife, as a good worker and employee, as a sister, all of the roles that you fill–you will be unable to fill with purpose if you have not put yourself in the center of your own life.
And those self care habits may be different for everyone, depending on your spiritual practices, depending on your physical practices. But what are the
things that you need to do for your own physical, spiritual, mental, and, I guess, social wellbeing? If you don’t have aspects of your life in your schedule, in your calendar, that fulfill those areas of your personal life, then you are not putting one of the biggest rocks in first, and there might not be room for it at the end. Okay?
So recently, just like a couple months ago, my third child went to school all day. So I all of the sudden, for the first time in 10 years, have from the morning until the late afternoon every single day that my kids aren’t home. And I felt like there was a lot of pressure, like it was exciting, but there was also a lot of pressure involved with like, “What am I going to do with all this time?” I mean, I know what I’m going to do, like I have so many things I want to do with it, right? But I am. So I backed up, and I cleared my whole schedule and–kind of like we were talking about earlier with cleaning out your closet–this is what I would suggest for you to do after this call with your own schedule: Take everything out because remember Takeaway #1, everything is optional. Consider what adds value right now in this season. What are the things that I want to do right now in this season? And I did something new. I asked myself the question, “What are things that I love that I’m not doing on a regular basis? What are things that I, that I know bring me joy and fill me up that I haven’t included in my regular life?” And I put those things on my schedule.
So I walk outside every day. I ride my bike at least once a week, and I usually am riding it to somewhere in town where I can like go get lunch. I live right downtown in Richmond, which is so fun, but I wasn’t taking advantage–we’ve lived here for two and a half years and I wasn’t taking advantage of this area that I live in. But one of the things that I love is living right in the city where I can ride my bike to the market and get lunch. I wasn’t doing it, but there wasn’t a reason except for that I just hadn’t decided that it was important enough. And as soon as I scheduled it in, I have felt like I have more time and more energy because I’m doing the things that light me up. And then because of that, I have added wellbeing and energy and excitement and enthusiasm that I can then share with others: I’m a better mom, I’m a better wife, I’m a better employee when I’m doing work for other people, I am better overall because I’ve decided the things that matter most to me are the things that really deserve the first place within my schedule.
Rachel Nielson:I love that because I feel like when we hear this concept of the “big rocks” we think that they have to be self care things like exercise, eating well, sleeping, or like spiritual, like prayer, and those are all great things.
Miranda Anderson: Those are great.
Rachel Nielson:But a big rock could also be taking myself to lunch once a week because I love it so much. And we’ve talked about the term “self-centered” and how really you should be self -centered, as in like centered in your true sense of self and aligning with who you really are. But one thing that you said Miranda is you said, you were talking about you as the rock–you as a rock in your jar–and you said something about “you have to put yourself in
the center of your jar.” And I think of that as self centered in a good way, right? You are the center of your jar. You go in first, your big rock, and then everything else can fill in around it, and it will fit. Everything else that matters will fit if you put yourself in the center of the jar.
Miranda Anderson: Yes, and the things that you find that don’t fit are the things that don’t actually matter. As you adjust this, and you clear your schedule and you reevaluate, and you decide, “What are the things that I need to do for me, the things that for years I’ve been saying I wanted to do that I just haven’t done yet?” and you decide to do them, there will be things that no longer fit. There will be things that you have done, that you thought you “should” do–that “a good mom does this,” “a good churchgoer does this,” “a good wife does this”–and you decide on other things, and so those things just don’t fit anymore. That means that they aren’t right for right now, and that doesn’t mean that they’re never going to be right again, but it’s okay for your life to look different if the way that it looks different is better. It’s okay to make changes that actually bring more joy and satisfaction and wellbeing into your life. So don’t be afraid of your life feeling and looking different as you do these exercises to declutter your schedule because if it looks better in a good way, then you’re doing it right.
Rachel Nielson:Absolutely. Well, thank you Miranda for these three takeaways.
Miranda Anderson: Thank you so much for inviting me and letting me share some thoughts, and I hope that it’s been helpful or at least has adjusted a mindset shift here or there.
Rachel Nielson:Yeah, for sure, to get you thinking, and then go and apply it in your life, and see what it feels like. And one thing that I love that Miranda often teaches is, “What do you want your life to feel like?” Think about the feeling that you want in your life, and then build a life around that feeling. Thank you so much. And everybody, Miranda is going to hop off, but we can stay on and keep discussing.
Miranda Anderson: Okay, have a good discussion. Yeah. Bye!
Rachel Nielson: Thank you!
Episode 112: How to Declutter Your Daily Schedule
https://3in30podcast.com/captivate-podcast/112-declutter-schedule/
