Welcome back! After a much-needed summer hiatus, The Acorn will be rolling out heaps of positive + fresh ideas in wellness, coming your way in the weeks to come.
Let’s get it started with one of the freshest ideas I’ve seen in a long while: the enormous power of simplicity.
A New World Unfolds
As the world continues to spin in directions none of us thought possible just six months ago, as the hourly news alternates between disasters, as we consider what our new normal may hold, many of us are taking stock and considering what the future may hold.
One of the most positive outcomes of recent months has been the fact that we’ve had time to get off the hamster wheel and re-assess what really matters. If, like me, you’re undertaking a big rethink of well, everything, that reinvention can seem equal parts thrilling and daunting.
Before you get overwhelmed with the prospect of ‘how long can this go on’, or ‘what will our world look like’, or ‘what’s my next step’, let’s take a look at an overlooked, yet tremendously powerful tool: how to simplify complex challenges into bite-size, manageable chunks.
Inch by Inch
I’m a firm believer that with a plan anything is possible.
The execution of that plan, however, marks the difference between failure or success. Say you wanted to lose fifty pounds, move across the country, and change careers. Would anyone try this all at the same time? When we put it like that, it’s laughable.
Yet we often expect far too much of ourselves, and are highly critical when we can’t seem to pull it off. The key to making big changes is to break any goal down into small, simple, increments.
The Simplicity Principle
One of the most thought-provoking books I read this summer was Julia Hobsbawn’s “Simplicity Principle: Clarity in a Complex World”. In it, she offers a refreshing antidote to our current, often chaotic, reality. In a nutshell, ‘keep it simple sweetie’.
Hobsbawn’s advice is to never undertake more than six things a day. This advice sounds too simple to be true. But truthfully, how often can we say we actually pull this off?
Consider that,
the average adult consumes five times more information every day than their counterpart 50 years ago (much of it alarmist news)
smartphone users experience concentration interruptions every 12 minutes of the day
over 250 billion emails are sent every 24 hours (and sometimes it feels like every one of them lands in your inbox ;)
parents and children pre-pandemic were the most scheduled generation the world has ever known
Her advice is to take advantage of this global pause and move forward by rejecting unnecessary complexity in every conscious decision you make.
Keep it Simple Sweetie: How to Reinvent Yourself in Six Easy Steps
1. The cardinal rule: don’t schedule more than six items a day.
2. Avoid info-besity: stop bingeing mindlessly and cluttering your brain.
3. Determine what’s a priority, what’s curiosity, and what’s pure escapism.
4. Consciously decide when it’s time to look away from your screen.
5. Give yourself time each day to do nothing. A pause is powerful.
6. Break it down into small, definable steps. Take any change inch by inch.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve been given an enormous opportunity.
One in which we can rethink our world globally, but also on an individual scale. It’s entirely possible that, as a society, we hit critical mass: too much of everything was making us, and the world in which we live, sick.
Maybe it’s time to dial it down and get back to basics. To simplify. To reinvent ourselves for the better. To give ourselves the space to decide what we want our world to look like in the months and years to come.
A boundless future awaits.
Heather Martin is a Naturopath & Wellness Coach, and the founder of The Acorn Wellness. Heather has contributed to various publications, including Mantra Mag, Medium, and the Globe & Mail. Her first book, The Wheel of Wellness, will be published later this year.
