I tried to think of a title for this week’s blog that was a little bit ‘sexier’ than the wording above, but to be honest I think the title is important because it really says it all.

Look, some of the things I may espouse here are not new: ‘Life is short’ and ‘Stay away from toxicity:’ these things are pretty self evident and of course there are many more of these sayings that recommend we do not waste our time on awful people and things. However, what may be new is the idea that we don’t have to spend time with these people and things, and that if we literally decluttered them out of our lives, we may start to notice many resulting positive effects.

Finding joy is the name of the game: what brings you joy? Whatever your answer is, spend more time with those people and things; these are the things that make you happy. Its just not hard! I know, it may seem like a difficult thing to achieve but it honestly is not. When we make decisions on how and with who to spend our time on and with I promise you, your life will become more joyous. This does not mean we will be able to get rid of any and everything in our lives that is non-joyous, but what it does mean is making these negative components a smaller part of your everyday. If you are a ratio or percentage person, think of the 80/20 rule - spend 80% of your time on joy and perhaps 20% goes to the rest. Literally, what I am suggesting is only allow toxicity into your life to a small degree and throw the rest in the garbage (as we do with the rule of 3 decluttering theory). Ideally we will get this number down to 90/10 but Rome was not built in a day…

Conscious decisions, planning and forethought are musts in this scenario, so it will require attention, but once you start to figure it out, I am sure you will find so much more joy. Spend time with good people, spend time doing things that make you happy and the rest? Well, only allow it to take up a small portion of your life. Decluttering most definitely applies to our tangible worlds, but trust me, it can be a global task of literally getting rid of the unwanted parts of our lives that do not serve us well.

Spend some time thinking about how you can bring more joy into your life and it will come - I promise!