I attended my very first Yoga Teacher Training with the Living Yoga Program where my roommate for the 10-day, 100 hour segment portion of the training was a gal named Gwen Bell who would later become a huge social media sensation (no really... she made the Forbes list for Most Influential Women in Technology and she's far younger than I. Ironically, she no longer considers herself a social media strategist and has goals of a permanent digital sabbatical...including email of course). Over the years I have been in touch with Gwen on and off and have followed her blogs and website (which has been totally revamped and simplified with far less content including a lot of bragging rights she has earned through her fierce dedication to her ever changing work in the world) as well as her twitter (nearly 18,000 faithful followers) and I continue to be inspired by the way she lives her life.
Those who know me well, I mean really well know that I consider myself a modern day renunciate to the point of regularly cleaning out my life of un-necessary tangible and materialistic items. Simply stated, I don't like stuff just for the sake of having stuff. Furthermore, I have to love it to buy it if it's $5 or $500. To me, I find it wasteful is something does not serve a purpose (and that purpose might be simply to have something beautiful to look at that inspires me but even so, same rules apply). I don't know where this began but I'm pretty sure it was when I was married, in the process of preparing for a divorce I intuitively knew was coming and needed to happen. I remember looking at the stack year books that had belonged to my mother that I somehow ended up with, calling a friend and asking "Am I a horrible person if I toss these in the dumpster?" I also remember the relief in the realization that my mother herself would have stood there had she been alive and said to me, "Baby girl... if you are feeling bogged down because of those books or anything else, through that shit out!" And that's exactly what I did.
Ever since that moment, I have owned that part of myself to the point that when I start to feel crazy in my head, it's likely that I am surrounding myself by a bunch of un-necessary shit that clutters my life and mind. It might be people who drain me or it might be un-necessary random shit that serves no purpose or has any real use what so ever. All of this to say, I've got nothing on Gwen in comparison.
I'm actually not comparing here, just using Gwen as a term of measure actually. She's much more of a renunciate than I.
She was being interviewed and was asked the question as to when and why she got off of Facebook. Of the 3-page interview I read, it was her answer to this question that really got me thinking.
I quit Facebook when I realized it made my life smaller, not bigger. That was December 2010. I went through about a week of withdrawal and haven't returned.
This got me thinking, "how are my choices contributing to a smaller life rather than the bigger one I want to be living?"
I'll be taking a deeper look at my life as to where I can simplify to expand, where I can clean and clear out so that there is more room to grow and I'll be taking inventory on what I can let go of in every aspect of my life. I like to do this often but as I am in a big, beautiful and exciting shift in my life, I am preparing for a larger "semi-annual" big clearing if you will.
I choose the bigger life. I choose to act in a way that supports creating that bigger life. I choose to make changes where I feel there is clutter in my life mentally, emotional and literally because I know the result creates a clutter-free spiritual life. I want to be the best I can be for myself and when I am at my best, my light shines its brightest for the people I love and surround myself with.
It's never crowded along the extra mile. -Dr. Wayne Dyer
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