It may seem like a bit of a pipe dream—but there are many of us who wish we could just live a simple life. Stress, the Coronavirus, demanding jobs can all make life complicated and overwhelming, wishing we could live a simple life thats quieter.

There is a certain beauty that comes from a when live a simple life. It allows you to focus more on what really matters in life. It helps you appreciate the relationships you have and it teaches you to have better principles.

When you live a simple life it can help make you a better partner, a better parent and a better person.

While, this can be easier said than done, one of the best things you can do to start living more simply is to learn from others and to learn from their own life lessons. Whether you turn to mentors, friends or family members to help you gain perspective and learn how to live more simply—turning to others for guidance is a great choice.

And I am here to help you get started. Here are five important lessons that can help you learn how to live a simpler life.

1. You need to let go of your physical attachments. There is nothing wrong with placing sentimental value on inanimate objects. However, if you have too many attachments to physical things, it can start to make your life more cluttered. If the physical space around you is cluttered with items that you don’t need, then the rest of your life will only feel more closed in and cluttered. If you are really attached to physical objects, attached to doing certain things, or living in a certain way that makes things busy and complicated—it is going to only make you feel more chaotic. Learn to accept and address the attachments that you have and let go of them. It will not only help you with your spring cleaning, but it will help you feel less busy and overwhelmed.
2. Single-tasking is better than multi-tasking. Living a simpler life will give you space to breathe and help you readjust your views on what matters most and what really can make you happy. While everyone these days seems to think that multi-tasking is what makes us more productive and successful—multi-tasking can make our lives much more complicated than they need to be. When we try too hard to multi-task, we can end up only putting a part of our attention on what we really need to be focusing on—and it can end up making us feel stressed, overwhelmed and as if our life is much more complicated than it needs to be. Sometimes having a million balls in the air at once, is only leading up to a big crash. Focus on one thing at a time. Start single-tasking instead of multi-tasking. If you get one thing done at a time, you may be surprised by how accomplished you feel, how light your work load seems and how much you are able to get done (all while getting it done right).
3. Finding joy in the simple things in life, will make you look at things much differently. If there is something you enjoy doing, no matter how simple it is… do it more. It will make you happy. Plain and simple. Whether it is reading, walking the dog or eating ice cream. Adding these little, simple, positive elements to your life and valuing them for what they can do for you will really change your perspective. If you focus on these simple things and on the joy that they can bring you—instead of on doing things bigger or better—you will find much more balance and happiness in your life.
4. Giving yourself room to breathe will speed you up not slow you down. There are so many people who try to cram as much as they can into one day, and then ultimately get upset with themselves when they can’t do everything. Trying to overbook yourself isn’t going to make you get more done, it’s just going to make you more stressed and leave you feeling like your life is even more chaotic.
5. Many of the struggles you face… you created yourself. This can be a hard life lesson to hear—but it is one that many people have learned the hard way. Think about all of the frustration, the stress and the unnecessary anxiety that you face on a daily basis. These are all things that can make your life seem more complicated than it needs to be. Many times, all of these things that are cluttering and complicating are lives are situations we have created. They are concepts we have over-exaggerated. And if you learn to let go of these types of situations and work on changing the things that you can to help simplify your life—it will only help you moving forward.

Give yourself some room to breathe. Space out the things you need to get done. Take it from people who have learned these life lessons before: sometimes you feel like you don’t have enough time in the day, because you are just putting too much on your plate. You’re trying to fit 48 hours of work into 24 hours—sometimes it just isn’t possible.

Give yourself some room to breathe. Under-book yourself instead of over-booking yourself and in the end you will find you can be much more productive than you ever thought was possible, and much happier while you do it!

Just because you didn’t experience something personally or haven’t experienced these live lessons for yourself—it doesn’t mean you can’t learn from an experience. Take these life lessons to heart. Think about what you can learn from them and how you can use these lessons to help reorganize, simplify and better your life.