Marie Kondo is all the rage. If you haven’t discovered her Netflix series and learned a new way to fold you t-shirts, you’re missing out.
Her KonMari method of tidying up is pretty simple, yet it forces you to take stock of what’s important in life. Take everything you own and put it all in a pile. Pick up each shirt, sock, plate, book and piece of paper and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy in my life?” If it doesn’t, you throw it out. If it does, you keep it.
The Life Edits I write about in When In Doubt, Delete It! are just as simple.
Recognizing the things that bring more joy into our life sounds simple, but what I’ve learned over the years is many people have a hard time using that as a gauge to determine whether to keep things in their schedule or not. If you’ll start implementing that thought process more and more in your decision making, I think you’ll find it to be a very eye opening process.
We have a hard time letting go of the things we’re “supposed to do.” Or maybe it’s because we don’t like to tell someone no because it makes us uncomfortable or we’re afraid of how they’ll feel about us if we don’t do what they ask?
Here’s an easy starting point
One of my Life Edits is called the High 5 Approach to decision making.
This principle is about prioritizing right at that moment. It’s about finding a balance. Your balance point will change. I don’t think it can be the same day in and day out. One week you may have to sacrifice some family activities because of work, others you may have to tell the boss politely you can’t attend an after hours function because you have a child playing in an important sporting event. It’s about choices. The High 5 Approach is a way of looking at the consequences of our choices and actions and works on a large or small scale.
Think of it this way — how will a choice impact you in 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 months? 5 years? When you break it down like this, the decisions become clear. How you choose to proceed shows you what your true values and desires in life are at that moment.
Insert more gratitude
Another principle Kondo incorporates into her tidying up method is gratitude. She feels it’s important to acknowledge what a piece of clothing or book meant or did for you before you can release it. You should tell your sweater thank you for keeping you warm or your book thanks for the knowledge it imparted. Once you’ve done that, you can let it do with a clear conscious and it can be a blessing to someone else.
Life Edits share her belief in utilizing gratitude and finding both large and small ways to incorporate it into our daily life. It’s important to say thank you daily for people, things and opportunities in our life. When we look for ways to acknowledge thankfulness each day, we begin noticing them more and more frequently. This in turns makes us happier. Our moods improve. Our relationships improve. We live longer, better lives.
I think the biggest correlation between KonMari method and Life Edits boils down to taking the time to appreciate what each of us has in our life. While she deals more with the material things — clothes, books, home — Life Edits teaches us to appreciate the people, accomplishments and vision we each have.
So today and everyday, I urge you to take a moment, either as your day begins or as it comes to an end, to give thanks for the good in life. Think about your impossibles and begin planning how tomorrow you can make a step in the direction of bringing them to life.
