The Power Of Less…

Unique Perspectives: The Power Of Less…

By Kim Stevens

The Power Of Less…

I was at a retreat at the Omega Institute this past weekend, and one of our exercises was to create a vision board.

There were piles of magazines spread across the tables, and I had brought a few of my own. One was called Breathe, and across the cover were the words:

The Power of Less.

I knew immediately that was going on my board. Because lately, I have been craving less. Less noise. Less multitasking. Fewer commitments. Less pressure to figure everything out. Less of that feeling that there is always something else I should be doing.

We live in a culture that is pretty obsessed with adding.

There is always another practice that will supposedly make us healthier, happier, calmer, more successful, more enlightened. Meditate. Exercise. Journal. Cold plunge. Take the supplement. Start the morning routine. Set the goal. Learn the thing. And I actually do a lot of those things. I love many of them.

But when I look back at what has created the most profound change in my life, It’s clearly what I've stopped doing. What I've let go of.

Old habits. Old ways of reacting. Commitments that no longer fit. And maybe most importantly, old ways of thinking.

Richard Rohr writes in Breathing Under Water about addiction in a much broader sense than we usually think about it… including our attachment to our own habitual ways of thinking.

We tend to think we're thinking different things all day long, when very often we're simply thinking the same thoughts we've thought a thousand times before. I mean seriously… think about it.

Changing my mind, literally changing the way I think about something, has probably changed the trajectory of my life more than anything else. And changing the way I think about “less” is definitely one of those things.

Which brings me back to another phrase I found in that magazine: Monotasking.

Don’t you just love that!?

For good or for bad, I happen to have a pretty impressive capacity for multitasking. My mind can go in twelve directions at once, and sometimes I actually enjoy it. But just because I can do something doesn't mean it serves me.

More and more, I'm enjoying the experience of doing one thing at a time. One conversation. One project. One meal. One walk. One problem. One moment.

The article offered six simple ways to practice monotasking: turn off the tech, set aside time specifically to monotask, clear your work area, cluster similar tasks together, make yourself unavailable for interruptions, and take a break, or even a nap.

Nothing revolutionary. And maybe that's the point.

Because I've noticed when I'm multitasking… I can often diminish my access to something. Something BIG.

Call it intuition. Wisdom. God. Infinite intelligence. Inner knowing. Whatever language works for you.

And strangely, the answers I work so hard to find tend to arrive when I loosen my grip. When I'm walking. Meditating. Driving. Sitting quietly or taking a shower… doing one thing and actually being there for it.

Here is another thing that I am noticing… less isn't about making my life smaller. In fact, quite the opposite. It's about creating enough room to experience more of what's already here. And what is here, is so very good.

More presence. More ease. More creativity. More joy. More connection. More love. More access to the wisdom I already possess.

And that feels very, very big.

I shared in a previous blog that this year I was making room… and it's working. So I will continue to ask that very simple and oh so powerful question:

What else could I less of?

How about you?