I do not have a hard time getting off track. Pretty much all it takes is waking up in the morning.
I get up, I brush my teeth, I see the notifications on my phone, and just like that I’m thinking about what everyone else on earth is up to. They’re up to a whole lot of stuff, and I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet. (They might be in other time zones. That’s not the point at the moment.)
I look around at all those other people doing all the other things that I am not doing in the world, and I think: Oh dear. Those things they are doing? Maybe I should be doing those, too. Maybe I need to do more. Maybe I need to be more?
What are you going to do with your day, your week, your life? It’s an open question.
One thing I’ve learned about all those options out there is that most of them are not right for me.
I have to remember: There are things you were made to do, things you are meant to do, and a whole bunch of other things you don’t have to do at all.
My job is not to do everything. I don’t even think my job is to try everything. My job is to figure out what’s right for me (and my people). I choose what to include, I choose what to edit out, I choose how the pieces fit together.
That’s curating. You can curate your space, you can curate your schedule, you can curate your life.
You can decide what’s best for you. You can remove what isn’t helpful or inspiring, in your home and in your days. You can rearrange what’s left. And you can savor the life that is yours to live.
You say “yes” to the things you believe are best for you at this time, in this season. Yes to what sparks joy, yes to what inspires, yes to what offers beauty. Yes to what is true. Yes to what you value. Yes to your best commitments. Yes to whatever makes you feel more like you.
And you say “no” to everything else. It’s a lot. Maybe some of those things will be “yes” in some other season, but for now: no.
Then you take what’s left, and you work on figuring out how it all fits together. You shake things up. You move things around. You see what makes sense.
And you savor that life as you’re living it, you hold onto it and sink into it, even as you’re making your choices, even as you’re saying your “yes” and your “no,” even as you’re still figuring it all out. That’s part of the process.
(If you’re just starting to think about this stuff, and it sounds good but the idea of saying a new “yes” and a different “no” feels overwhelming-slash-impossible, I understand. I wrote an ebook to help you figure out what’s right for you. Start here.)
If you’re a parent, you get to help curate for your kids, too. We’re talking about how to do that over at Simple Homeschool this week:
If I’m hearing that chant of not enough, not enough, not enough in my heart, a box of supplies is probably not going to fix it. (That insecurity isn’t about my shelves, anyway.)
That’s my signal to remind myself: I am a curator. It’s not my job to give my kids every option ever invented. My goal is to curate my kids’ environment and their experiences.
Think of a museum curator. She’s the person who chooses what the museum contains, and what it displays, and how it’s all presented.
That’s what I try to do. I try to be a good curator of our environment.
Is that your goal, too?
Read more about simplifying your life by becoming a curator.