Find Beauty in a Smaller Life

On Friday I put a message on all of my social media that I’m out for a bit. Then I turned off notifications, closed Facebook, and checked out. I almost uninstalled the app, but I am still running The Good Life, so I need that! But for all other intents and purposes, I’m out for now.

Then I got out a notepad and a pen and wrote at the top of a new, clean sheet of paper: “The Whole Point of This.” I didn’t plan to write those words, they just came out. So I went with it.

I sat there for a second or two, and then my pen wrote, “to help people live healthy, balanced lives.” I loved that my mission statement is so much a part of me that it came out like that. 

I listened for more, but there wasn’t more. There was nothing more for me to do. I help people live healthy, balanced lives. Period. The world keeps shouting that in order to do that, I need followers and likes, and Tik Tok videos and a YouTube channel, and that I need to do Instagram stories with links in the bio, and I don’t even know what it means to have a link in the bio. 

And I don’t care, because trying to get people to like me is 100% exhausting. It’s not that I don’t want them to, because of course I want people to like me. I just don’t want it to be my job. I just want to help people live healthy, balanced lives. 

It made me think about my friend who recently received a beautiful bouquet of flowers. You know the kind, like out of a magazine. And like any flower arrangement, it was gorgeous for a day or two, and then it began to wilt and fade. That’s the point when I usually toss them out, thanking the universe for the beautiful flowers as I push them into the trash can, letting them fade into what was, moving on to what’s next. 

Of course, my beautiful friend didn’t do that. She pulled out the dead and dying parts, transferred them to a new vase, and made a new arrangement. She showed them off in a Zoom call, sharing that she likes to re-purpose arrangements into smaller pieces that continue to bring her joy. I’ve included pictures here so you can see the original arrangement and the new one.

I immediately asked if I could share this with you, because it was such a relief for me. (Thank you, Sheree!)

The world is really noisy and confusing right now. It has been for a while, but particularly now, it is getting to me. I personally have gotten to a level where I wonder, is this it? Is this what we have created? Is this really the time in which I am living? The negativity, sadness, vitriol, confusion, contradictions, spite, and hopelessness that I see in my newsfeed is overwhelming to the point where I wanted to toss the whole thing out.

Then I remember my notebook paper, and its silence. I remember how there were no words to write after my personal statement of purpose. And I realize that I was so wrong, and that I had confused social media with the world, and that the actual world is pretty quiet. 

And then I thought about the flowers, and how when some of them began to wither and die, my friend had taken them out and rearranged what was left into something new. So I did that, too.

I help people live healthy, balanced lives. Period. I do it in The Good Life, in my podcast, and as a health advisor for Wellview Health. Those are all of the flowers I need.
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Do you need to weed out some wilted areas of your life? Are there any dead pieces that need to go? You may want to pull them out, too, and create something fresher, smaller, and new. I’ll help if you need it, because that is what I do.