397: A Soul Minimalist's Guide to Fall

Emily P. Freeman (0:00)

I'm Emily P. Freeman, and welcome to The Next Right Thing. You're listening to episode 397

This is a podcast about making decisions, but also about making a life. If you struggle with decision fatigue, chronic hesitation, or if you just need a few minutes away from the constant stream of information and the sometimes delightful, but distracting hum of entertainment, you're in the right place for discerning your next right thing. I'm an author, a spiritual director, and an occasional workshop leader. I live in North Carolina with my family, and through my work, I've helped thousands of spiritually thoughtful people overcome decision fatigue so that they can discern their next right thing in faith work and life. We're a few weeks into a new season, which means there's a good chance that you might be feeling a little overwhelmed, overstimulated, something over. Well, in today's episode, I'd love to guide you through five simple movements to help clear some space on the inside and provide all of us with a bit of a reset.

In his book Simplify, author and minimalist Joshua Becker says minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it. And so I say a soul minimalist is a person who does the same thing, but for her inner life. It's someone who looks inward and intentionally elevates what you most value and work to remove what distracts you from it. This can never be done perfectly, nor is it meant to be. In fact, Joshua Becker himself, while he talks about minimalism more externally in our homes and in our spaces, he talks about it using the word becoming, becoming minimalist, and that's on purpose. It's because it's a lifestyle. It's an intentional posture. It is not a final destination. When it comes to our homes and our spaces, having a minimalist mindset begins with being honest about where you are and then imagining where you'd like to be.

The first action in your home might be to declutter. We can apply that same principle as soul minimalists as well. As we continue into this autumnal season, let's get honest about the state of our soul. And as we do, I want to invite you to imagine what it might look like to move forward with a little more clarity than you have right now. Hopefully by the end of this episode, that's what you'll be able to say. We'll clear some space on the inside in five movements, and they all begin with the letter S.

Number one, stance. Where are you? The optimism of the beginning of the year has fallen away, way back in the spring. Now, we've got our faces set like flints to these final three months of this year. Can we do this? Yes, we can. But the question is, where are you right now? What is the state of your body? One word here will do, exhausted, numb, sore, disconnected, confused, energized, hungry, tensed, full. I gave you many words. Choose one word about the state of your right now body. And then, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? Pay attention here to what comes first. What comes up first in your mind? Don't edit, solve, or try to make sense of it right now. And then finally, what emotion gets your attention today? And as I say that, what are you feeling? What emotion is rising up? Pay attention to how you feel even hearing me say that. In other words, does it feel like an invitation or an intrusion? How do you feel? And then another key component to your just your right now stance could be to consider what old questions are you still carrying and what new questions have come up, maybe even since the last season or since the beginning of the year. And remember, there's not any wrong answers.

It could be beneficial for you to think of it in terms of what's helpful and what's not helpful and what's for now and what's for later. What's helpful is what's true. What's not helpful is your commentary to yourself about what is true. If you name what's true and then you immediately begin to try to explain or diagnose or find reasons for, for now, that's just going to add more clutter. So what is true and let it be, just let it sit there. There may also be, by the way, some helpful things that are true, but they're not for now. So as you consider your stance where you are right now, mind, body, soul, ask yourself, is it helpful or is it unhelpful? Is it for now or is it for later? Let this exercise simply be a way of noticing without an agenda, put down your clipboard, this is our stance. Number two, space. What practices, rhythms or routines will help create room for you to feel like a person this season? And those last two words are key, this season. Something I've realized about myself is sometimes my rhythms need to change with the seasons in order to feel like I'm part of a community or part of an embodied experience of being a person at this particular time and in this particular place. And I mean that both in the grand scheme of like big picture history, but also in the small scheme of my very own home. For example, in the summertime, when the sun rises early in the day, I like to read and drink my coffee and think and stare out the window from this room where I'm recording this episode, my sun room. That's where I'm at right now. To be in this room in first, at the first light of sun, at the first moment of the morning is life-giving for me. And I really enjoy that. But as the days get shorter and the sun sleeps in, I've realized I don't enjoy sitting in a dark sun room in the mornings during the fall and winter. Plus this room gets pretty cold. So for me to create space for myself, and I'm talking literal physical space in the mornings, this season means that I'm going to move my morning spot into a lamplit corner of the living room. It's not drastic. It's not going to change the world. But it's a small way to pay attention right now to my physical space. And it's an intentional way to create some space for myself to feel like a person in the season. What's the big deal, Emily? What if we don't do that? Well, here's the big deal. The big deal is, if I was not paying attention to my physical space, what could happen is, as the days grow shorter, and I still wake up at the same time in the mornings, I'm not naturally drawn to the sun room, and so I don't go in there in the mornings. And instead, I distract myself with something else in the house, and I've not paid attention to the fact that the reason why I don't want to go in there is because it's dark or it's cold. If I'm not noticing that, then I might skip that morning reading time all together, which by the way, is a really important part of my day. But if I'm not paying attention and taking inventory, that part could get pushed aside, put off, ignored for a reason that I don't really know. I just haven't read, oh, it's been two months, I haven't read that much in the morning and I feel a little scattered. So you see why this reset is helpful, is because it helps you pay attention to your spaces around you, and what you need, maybe it's just a smallest little tweak that you need to do, and all it takes is just for you to pay a little bit more attention. And that's hopefully what this exercise will do for you. Number three, see.