7 Things I Quit To Simplify My Life
🎥 Watch this on Youtube instead:
I’m just as guilty as the next guy of thinking a new journal, or workout class, or morning routine will fix me.
It’s actually kind of wild how our brains are always reaching for “more” whenever we feel like something is off. We think the answer is another strategy, another routine, another thing to track.
Psychologists call this addition bias, which describes our tendency to try to solve problems by adding things, rather than taking something away.
And it makes sense! We’re conditioned to believe that progress means accumulation. That the harder we work, the more we do, the better off we’ll be. If we’re overwhelmed, the fix must be somewhere out there.
But more isn’t always better. Sometimes more is just more. More noise, more steps, more friction, and sometimes subtraction is actually the subtle, powerful fix that you’re looking for.
7 things I quit to simplify my life
🎞️ Stressful media
I did not watch this season of The White Lotus, and tbh, I’m glad I didn’t! I watched the final episode with my girls and I was so stressed out it made me think — have I deprogrammed myself from being able to watch suspenseful things??? (yes, gratefully, my nervous system is that healed)
I have never seen The Handmaids Tale or Game of Thrones or The Last of Us (I never even felt like I was missing out) I have never listened to a murder podcast and recently stopped listening to the ones about scams and white collar crime too.
Basically, I’m no longer interest in consuming anything that will stress me out! Even if they are critically acclaimed and everyone tells me I have to watch them! (*ahem*, Severence) I do not care!!!! I have survived a lot of dark things in my life, and I prefer to keep it light when it comes to my media choices.
Want to explore lower-stimulation entertainment? Get my Ultimate Guide to Slow TV here
📰 Following the news
In economics, there’s a theory called “Rational Inattention” that suggests that our capacity to process information means that we have to rationally choose which information is a productive use of our energy to retain.
Acquiring and processing information has energetic and emotional costs (especially in this economy), and I’ve decided to be much more careful about how I use that energy. Everything you need to know will still find its way to you. There will still be plenty of people in your life who will stay addicted to the cortisol-dump of the news-cycle, but if you feel like it’s making your days harder to get through, you might want to think about muting it as much as you can.
If we want the world to be a better place, the best way to do that is organizing in your communities, and you can’t do that when you’re letting the news stress you out and make you anxious.
We need to get off our phones and be around people and remember what it is like to be human: beautiful, tender, and sometimes kind of annoying, but that’s okay.
📱 Social media on the weekends
Two years ago I started doing social media free weekends as a part of my Tech Rest practice. This is connected to the Rational Inattention theory, because I spend so much time on social media for work that I needed clear and regular boundaries to help keep my head screwed on straight.
And it works!!!! This practice has seriously changed my life as a digital creator.
We are a generation of discontent, disconnected, and dysregulated people who can’t get off our phones. It truly breaks my heart, because there’s no cut and dry answer about how to curb this addiction. There’s no “cold-turkey” solution — it takes good habits and an extraordinary amount of grace for yourself.
Deleting Instagram and Tiktok off my phone every Friday night and redownloading them on Monday for work has brought such a peace of mind that I can’t even explain. Oh also, Threads and Substack are never on my phone. They stay on my laptop intentionally. As a result of taking this Tech Rest, my weekends are richer, fuller, more productive and connected than they’ve been in years.
If you’d like to hear more about Tech Rest, check out this episode of my podcast:
💬 Gossip and Complaining
This is going to piss a lot of you off and I’m fine with that, because minding my business has given me a peace that’s hard to describe.
There’s a lot of discourse about how gossip is a good thing, which I find to be completely hilarious and misguided. When gossip is a good thing, it’s because we are sharing valuable information to help others. But gossip (as we do it these days) is rarely that.
It’s usually a rehashing and doubling down on our own insecurities. It’s our own shit we project onto other people. I find it really silly and unproductive, if I’m honest. Complaining is the same. I gave up complaining about men and money last year, and it made me sit up straight and start taking responsibility for my actions and inactions.
I actually tried a whole week of no complaining recently! Here’s how it went:
🤳 Worrying about how many followers and subscribers I have
Girl… I needed to r e l a x around all of this, because it truly does’t mean anything. In fact! Obsessing over it all only makes it worse and harder to grow, which is what I wanted more than anything. It’s like the old saying that watching your kettle doesn’t make it boil any faster.
My job as a creator is to wrap language around my experiences and lend those words out to anyone who might need them. My job is not get lost in the analytics of my platform.
Likes, follows, and subscribers can quickly spiral into a subconscious pissing contest with your self worth… and let me remind you, it is an insatiable monster. It will never be enough.
🎧 Listening to podcasts and music when I go for walks
Last summer, I started walking my 79-year-old neighbor’s wolf-dog named Laika. Laika is a beautiful beast who requires my full attention and presence, and I love her for it.
When I started walking her, I would listen to 60 minute podcasts, which slowly shifted to 15 minute meditations on Youtube, until suddenly absolutely nothing at all.
When I started going on these walks with nothing in my ears, I began to build a relationship with that dog. I started meeting all the neighbors. I started noticing the trees and the flowers and how gently the late Summer evenings would unfold in front of me on our daily walks.
I now preach the gospel of headphone-free walks to everyone I know, because I cannot emphasize just how much this has helped my creative practice, my ability to solve work problems, and start dreaming about a much bigger and brighter future for myself.
Want to hear more about headphone-free walks? Check out my recent article about this:
🔮 Astrology and Manifestation Content
I’m actually sad that these two ended up this list, because at one time they brought me an immense amount of joy. But, eventually they because a weird outlet for my control issues and trying to explain everything in my life.
I still think astrology is so fun and silly, in the way that I think crystals are pretty rocks that might make me feel something, but it’s probably just placebo. I think manifestation is real, but when you try to systemetize it and turn it into a formula you can use it predictably, it can become a problem that keeps you stuck in Destination Happiness — the promise of a perfect one day that will never come.
Life has actually started to feel much better and easier since I stopped obsessing over the process and learned to just trust it.
🚧 Worrying so much about my boundaries and rules
When you first start doing inner work, it’s so easy to wrap your arms and legs around the pendulum as it swings from no-boundaries all the way over to too-many-boundaries. At first, putting up a lot of boundaries made me feel safer. And then, it made me lonely.
I like to know what the rules are and to follow them strictly. But this is the same behavior that led me to self-isolate and nurture an eating disorder.
Establishing heavy boundaries in my life made a lot of sense at first, because I was practically swiss-cheese level porous when it came to mine. But now, I actually think one of my great missions in this life is to f*cking relax — around relationships, food, family, my body, and my general expectations of how I want things to go.
Is there anything you’ve relinquished that made your life feel better? Anything from this list you want to try? Let me know in the comments!
This is a wonderful list. I'm going to work on releasing social media on the weekends. I know it will be a struggle, but it'll be worth it!
Fun fact: also sad if you dig a bit deeper. but there was a dog named Laika that was the first dog to orbit the Earth in the Sputnik 2! And even more random: this year there is a Eurovision Song Contest entry from Ireland about said dog