There’s nothing like travelling with kids to teach you about simplicity.
It took me only a few hours into our Boracay trip for me to decide it was time to cull. I’d spent weeks in the lead up to our departure going through the gruelling process of minimizing possessions.
I have a post coming soon sharing how I coped with this process and tips on how you can mange it too. It’s waaaaaay harder than you think and brings up a lot of emotional issues and deep-rooted beliefs to work through.
It’s a perfect opportunity to reflect, look inwards, and guide yourself calmly through the chaos of change.
The deeper I go into this new chapter of travel, the more I want to unplug, minimize and simplify
The more stuff you own and have to manage, the more you’re pulled away from the present moment towards a path of stress and discontent.
I want moments and memories and present awareness instead.
Once we finish this South Australia trip I’ll be going through my possessions and minimizing them again by at least a third. I’m ready to release. (Except for my UGG boots, I just can’t part with them yet, they provide my life with far too much meaning!!!)
It’s not just possessions either that I’m culling, but stuff I have to do. Stuff I don’t really care about. Stuff I’m doing because I feel I should. Stuff that doesn’t help me grow, but only makes me feel stressed, inferior and depressed.
Snapchat – delete. Instagram – reduce and outsource. Inbox – delete, delete, delete.
You know I’m so guided by my inner feelings and voice. I always look for signs to help validate where I’m being guided to. After I felt the grumblings of discontent, the stress and overwhelm and frustration, I went in to uncover what was bothering me, not working and why.
I first looked at my values, my purpose and things that make me genuinely happy.Then, most importantly, what are my strengths and how can I best serve? (these are a few of the 7 principles of creation that I share in my 30 Day Money Mindfulness Cleanse that guide my life)
It isn’t the latest social media channel. It’s not 5,000 likes on an Instagram photo. It’s not documenting every second of my life on Snapchat.
It’s providing content – useful, inspirational and epic content. It’s reaching out to my email subscribers to help them create a life they love. It’s the power of my words.
How do I know this is true? Because it’s where my life flows and how things grow. And it feels so authentic and blissful to me. The other stuff feels awful – draining, confusing, and self-worth crushing.
As I was going through this introspection the other day, I received five emails in one hour from subscribers. Saying words like this:
These emails are just so amazing. You’ve ignited the travel fire within us and I will be forever grateful…
Each one validating that my strengths lie in my words and that’s how I can create change for people.
That’s my path. Anything that takes me away from that purpose and the present moment of my travel experiences gets the chop.
Mind you, when I was researching for our current South Australia road trip I was beyond frustrated at the lack of quality and useful information online
. It made me even more determined to keep writing content that helps people effortlessly create an epic travel experience. We can do that. We know what information to write about, as we’re lifelong travellers, which is also why we receive consistent messages like this:
I want to thank you because you made our trip very special. The only advices we take are from the Lonely Planet and from your blog. We love your best of lists and we always live up to them.
Our new focus of our blog is about unplugging – not necessarily digital unplugging, but unplugging from the crap we continue to bring into our life that doesn’t serve any purpose except to make us feel wound up and stressed.
It’s about simplifying and living a life that only as purpose – alignment to your dreams, alignment to feeling joy, alignment to serving authentically and intentionally.
It’s scary to cull your possessions and the stuff you feel you should do – especially if you are a blogger like us. You’re told you should be doing so much and you want to grow, but sometimes you can get swallowed up by the stuff to do.
Social media is powerful for connecting and building community, but it can definitely distract you from what’s important, keep you away from the beauty of present life experiences, and bring into your life the very damaging disease of comparititus.
Ensure you put in strict boundaries so it does not affect your life negatively.
I will no longer be on Snapchat. We’ll be sharing some behind the scenes on Instagram – on our y travel account and my personal Caroline Makepeace account. Simple snapshots of our day that don’t require much effort from us to be drawn away from our travels with our children and our content creation for the blog. Facebook will continue in much the same way.
But, the best way to get the best from us is to subscribe via email.
These are the types of emails I send to my subscribers each week. I get so much positive feedback from it. Our VIP email tribe is THE Best! Jump aboard with us here! I have a new Unplugged Travel Toolkit coming soon for all subscribers. Totally free and life changing.
My Notes from the Road emails are sent a little more regularly and are the best stories and inspirations offering an insight into life on the road.
They take such minimal time for me to produce and are a huge focus for intimate conversations and content moving forward. I’d love for you to jump in our virtual car so I can help inspire you to travel more and create better memories.
Pin to Pinterest:
How do you simplify your stuff – the possessions and the things you HAVE to do?
[ad_2]
