Why you may need more spaciousness (and how to get it)
Image: Mike Meroz
We often talk about the dangers of glorifying “busy,” and there are so many ways in which that constant hustle negatively impacts our overall wellness.
But it also erodes our foundations.
One of the most useful things that we can do in our lives is to develop a clear awareness and understanding of who we are and how we are operating in our world. And you can’t do that without space to reconnect to yourself and take an honest look at what working well and what’s not.
This type of self-awareness may seem like an obvious asset, but it's also often overlooked or underestimated — and it’s nearly always buried when busy takes over. Yet there are few areas of development that deliver a stronger or longer-term return on your time and energy investment.
When I trained as a coach, we talked about building this kind of awareness as a foundation. It’s a term that still resonates deeply with me and one that I explore with many of my clients. Just as a structurally sound building needs a solid foundation to rest upon, so too, do we need to build our individual lives on a stable, supportive and structurally sound foundation.
I tend to think of it as structural engineering for our lives.
Far from being optional or nice to have, it informs everything we do, including how we approach change and personal or professional development. The condition of our foundation is informing our lives every day— whether we are paying attention to it or not.
Focus your attention on what holds you up, and your experience of your life will begin to change from the inside out.
When we channel our energy into understanding and shoring up this framing and footprint of our own life, we're custom designing. No more frustrating attempts to modify a prefab life design or career path to suit us; we are now working with the real thing, the one that’s authentically ours.
Whatever you're working towards building in your life and through your work, getting there is a lot easier with a strong structural framework, or foundation. When it's regularly attended to, we naturally have more structural integrity. We're aligned with who we are and what really matters to us.
Before we can build a strong foundation, we need open space.
If you're like most people, you'll need to clear a bit of space to do this work. On any given day, our busy minds may be running off in a million directions. After years of that, our mental space is crowded. The slates of our brains are anything but clean. When you're working with personal space that is overgrown with self-dialogue, stories, beliefs and habits, thinking about the past, unfinished business, worries, small things that have been on your to-do list for weeks— well, that's a good recipe for overwhelm, stress and ultimately, running to stand still.
How are you supposed to do what's in front of you right now, never mind optimize for where you’re headed when you're always mentally somewhere else? At some point, I ask nearly all of my clients to explore this area and make some changes. Why? Because when we have even a small sense of personal spaciousness right here, right now, we’re just more effective in everything else we do. And a little always leads to more.
Here are a few of my favorite, time-tested tools to clear space — and keep it that way so that you have room for building a sustainable, healthy and integral foundation.
Sealing your personal energy leaks
These are the items that follow you around, mentally, day after day, week after week — perhaps for years! They are the nagging items that are always in the back of your mind because they haven’t been resolved. It might be environmental, such as backlogged maintenance issues (that's been one of mine!). Or it might be your rushed mornings or lack of restful sleep. It could be the mental space being taken up by an important conversation you've been avoiding or a financial concern.
Our energy leaks out in all kinds of ways, large and small. Some of these leaks may seem critically important to plug and some you might judge as trivial. No matter their seeming size, these items are taking up valuable mental and emotional space — space you need to be at your best. Solve each one fully and completely and cross it right off your list. And be sure to check in regularly to catch new ones as they arise.
Develop a 10-minute mindful habit
Science continues to reveal the benefits of what mindfulness meditators (and many spiritual traditions) have known and practiced for years. Silence is, indeed, golden. For many of us, though, it can also be confronting to sit alone with our thoughts or our breath. Starting small is perfect and it may be all you need. There’s plenty of confusion out there about what it means to practice mindfulness. Please set all of it aside. For the purposes of clearing space, there's no doing it wrong. There is only doing it or not doing it.
The only thing you need to remember is to spend a few quiet moments with yourself on a regular basis. Choose a time and try to make it a regular routine. You might choose to focus on your breath, a word, a prayer, your senses — whatever keeps you present — as a means of meditating. You might also practice being fully in the moment when you are doing chores, taking a run, practicing yoga, sitting in traffic. Every time your mind wanders — and it will — just start over. Even 10 minutes of mindful silence each day can have profound impacts on your brain, your health and the spaciousness you feel.
Make one self-empowering choice
Mindset is an essential piece of our foundation. The power of our thoughts and attitudes and their results on our behaviors, habits, patterns and results can be transformational. What we think truly is a key that can unlock entirely new experiences and viewpoints, leading to an upward spiral of related experience.
For example, as we learn optimism, we see more reasons to feel optimistic. As we shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we experience our capabilities in a different way. As we rewire our thinking towards an empowering thought pattern, we start to feel and act differently than when we were wired into a more self-defeating thought pattern.
Which thoughts, patterns or habits of mind have been influencing and cluttering your mental space? How might you turn it around to find a more empowering, more energizing thought, habit adjustment or change in your routined patterns? Where do you need to clear space to be at your best?
Rest.
If reading the R-word elicited any kind of response in your mind or body, then I am speaking directly to you. It can be hard to fully rest. At first. But as you begin to honor yourself with small breaks during the day, larger breaks during the week, downtime scheduled regularly, you’re not just replenishing yourself and alleviating the tiredness. Opening up regular space for rest opens up your creativity, productivity and flow. It opens up capacity to build truly sustainable and sustaining foundations across your life. When you regularly plan for your rest, you’re more resilient and able to navigate whatever is in your path (even when it messes with your rest plans!).
If you’re feeling like you need to reinforce your foundation, reconnect to the one that’s already pretty solid when you remember to tap into it, or just crave a more sustainable version of your success, I challenge you to choose one way to clear space this week. Even better, let’s make it an ongoing practice as much as possible.
