Shaping Me

When I tell people I love minimalism, the way they look at me makes me think that they picture me living in a bare house, with no joy, no furniture, no toys- sterile and devoid of life. Oh, and everything’s greige. Well if you’ve seen where I live, it’s the opposite of that. And we are happy with it! Finding our family’s version of minimalism has been a journey that keeps on winding. Minimalism speaks to me because I want how I spend my time to align more fully with what is most important to me. I want to find meaning in activities I enjoy instead of cleaning up fruitlessly during all of my free time. Before minimalism, I felt like I was spending my time taking care of stuff instead of taking care of people . I felt like I spent my time and energy doing laundry, dishes, cleaning up messes everywhere… Yet we still lived in a mess. It felt hopeless, always cleaning and never living in a clean space. I craved the rejuvenation that comes from playing with my kids on the floor, reading my ...

Why are more and more people these days finding it hard to concentrate? Why does it feel hard to get into a task, accomplish “deep work”, or sometimes even form a coherent thought? I find it ironic that we live in a day that more and more juice is concentrated than the people who drink it. The culprit of our fragmented minds? Phone over-use. The average American picks up their phone 144 times a day, and uses it for an average of 4 and a half hours a day (1). I don’t know a single person who sits down and uses their phone for 4 straight hours, so where does that time come from? Moments throughout the whole day. I would argue that it would be better for someone to sit down and use their phone once a day for four hours straight than to have a habit that “shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life” (2). If the average person picks up their phone 144 times a day, and sleeps for 8 hours, then there’s 16 hours for those 144 time...

Gratitude is one of the most important elements of joy! Focusing on the people, experiences, relationships, skills, and blessings we already have fills us with joy by appreciating those things. It also helps us take advantage of our opportunities, capitalize on our strengths, and draw on our relationships. Changing my mindset to be more grateful and creating a habit of intentional daily gratitude practice has changed my life.  “ There is not one area of life that doesn’t improve when we use gratitude as the lens from which to view it. ” -Robert Emmons, world leading expert on gratitude Gratitude is universally recommended by both science and religion to improve every facet of our lives. Research has proven that with consistent gratitude practice people flourish. Socially,  they feel less lonely, feel less isolated, and are more outgoing, forgiving, compassionate, and generous! Physically, people who consistently practice gratitude have fewer aches and pains, have lower blood p...

  It started when I was looking for some new running shoes. I began looking into some shoes that had good arch support, and found some Brooks that looked promising. Then I searched “best running shoes with arch support.” In the results, the top five results were blogs with various versions of “Why Brooks are the best shoes for you!” I thought it was eerie that I had just been looking at the Brooks website, and now all of the search results were saying that Brooks were the best. It felt like they were making the results tell me exactly what I wanted to hear. Turns out, they were! As an educated consumer, I knew that there was more information to be had, and when I scrolled to the bottom of the page, I saw a button there that hasn’t always been there- “Try without personalization.” Seeing this button confirmed my fears were true. I was being fed information that would only confirm, not contradict, what I already knew. I was in the echo chamber. Wikipedia describes an echo chamber as ...