Simplify Your Life to Be Accepted and Loved as Your Authentic Self

Image by Jon Hoefer from Pixabay 

A friend of mine was relating what a beautiful New Year’s Eve she had had with a few special friends and they each chose a word for 2022, which got me thinking about my own word for 2022. Simplicity was the one I landed on, and it’s certainly come through as a theme this week in my life.

Many years ago, a mentor of mine talked about the need to make space and let go of things in order for the new to arise. I thought about this again when I read a recent observation from Teal Swan that most people are so overwhelmed and stressed out right now, managing the multitude of interconnected elements of their lives, that they are stretched to the limit.

It’s her view that a mass move towards simplification will happen naturally, out of sheer necessity, as people are pushed to the distress/overwhelm breaking point. She says “At its essence, to simplify is to strip away the nonessential; so as to be able to put your focus, time, energy and action on the things that matter the very most to you”.

Having had the last week of the year to myself, which is the most me-time I have had in years, I really got a definite sense of how burdened I can feel by my usual day-to-day responsibilities. Of course, being in the middle of a separation also brings its own complexities and thus opportunities to simplify, as well as the social restrictions imposed by governments and the opportunities to simplify that exist around that.

Certainly during lockdowns I have used the time to go through all my physical belongings and radically declutter, especially the boxes of stuff in my attic. I’m also looking forward to the split of households to let go of even more. I have found simplifying physical things to be cathartic and relatively straight forward, and therefore a good place to start.

But lockdowns have also given me the opportunity to get a felt sense of release from social obligations, and I have very clearly noticed the areas in my life where I was doing things out of a sense of duty only, and have begun to set healthier boundaries around these.

Teal’s advice is “In order to simplify, you have to be completely honest with yourself and others about your values and how they are prioritised. No person can tell you what your values should be because no one can tell you what should be most important to you.”

That said, I can – at times - find it tricky to distinguish what I do actually value from unhealthy embedded beliefs. Many unhelpful beliefs still lurk from childhood experiences that led to ingrained people pleasing behaviours, enmeshment trauma, codependent ways of relating and perfectionism to name a few.

Yet, as much as experiences with people can create complexity on many levels, I suspect is it only through interacting with people that I will also get more clarity on what else I have to simplify within me, and it would certainly be a lonely experience without other people in my life.

A friend of mine sent me a photo of something he had read which he thought would appeal to me, I think it’s from A Course in Miracles:

“To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind. No one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego.”

As I said a few years ago in The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth: “It’s no coincidence that we form relationships with people who trigger us. We are drawn to people who are – in some way – a match to our own issues, and they both challenge us and help us heal and grow.”

So much of my personal growth has come from recognising the dysfunctional thoughts, beliefs and behaviours I had cultivated. And, as I have grown, my friendships and relationships have changed, attracting new challenges. I get a strong sense that there is still more to clear out.

Someone was telling me that one of the first things people learn in AA is “keep it simple”. We had been discussing various concepts and I jokingly said “why would I use 200 words when 2000 will do”, acknowledging I have a tendency to delve deep into things which can lose a lot of people.

Words have been my go-to for so long, keeping me safe in the same way a buffer of any kind creates space between me and being hurt, it’s a hard habit to break despite it fuelling a sense that I am too much for other people.

But words are just one facet of it, feelings and insecurities are another. I became conscious this week in dealing with a shy person that I have a propensity to overshare my own feelings in order to attempt to make them feel safer to express their own feelings. But if I’m honest with myself, I don’t give people enough space to actually do that, scared of the silence that brings an opportunity for rejection.

I also notice that when I share something with someone about my own feelings (when it’s actually their feelings I’m interested in) instead of asking them the question directly, it’s possibly because I am scared about seeming too needy. This is another dysfunctional pattern arising from old hurts and old habits.

The next lines in that excerpt from A Course in Miracles are quite beautiful, it says “The truth in both of us is beyond the ego. You believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love”. In simple terms that translates to me as worrying about something makes it worse, trust is paramount.

So to simplify my life from an emotional standpoint, I have to continue to be radically honest with myself about my motives in the way I interact. I then have to learn new skills and practice them, which is likely to be kind of clunky at first. That creates another fear in itself, of looking stupid or inviting rejection. Rejection of a false self is one thing, rejection of my true self is quite another.

And yet, another possibility exists. That is the possibility that by simplifying on every level of my being, and by offering up my authentic self in each interaction, my true self will not only be accepted, it will be loved.

A simple truth occurs to me at this point, is it not better to lose those people who reject my authentic self than to continue to feed the illusion of the false self in order to not lose those people? This has come at a huge cost – my happiness. And, on the flip side, what would it feel like to attract into my life those who resonate with the true expression of who I am?

Yes simplicity on every level is the way to go in 2022 for me.

What would benefit from the process of simplifying in your life? Is it time to strip away the nonessential; so as to be able to put your focus, time, energy and action on the things that matter the very most to you, and to be accepted and loved for more of who you truly are?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think?, How to Receive and Be More Confident in Your Needs, Desires and Opinions, Embrace Your Authentic Self, Shed the Toxic People in Your Life and How Living Your Passions Fully Combats Feeling Lonely. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog