I’m sure there are some people out there who can decide they want to lead lives of simplicity, flip and a switch and voila, they are instantly living simply. That hasn’t been the case for my family. Far from it in fact. We have found that taking baby steps toward simplicity is the best way to reach our goal.

In fact, we’ve found that, for ourselves, trying to do it any other way is actually counter-productive to our desired end. Part of our simplicity quest is to reduce stress. When we push ourselves too far outside of our comfort zone, or make decisions too hastily, we get stressed.

As I’ve mentioned before, the first step we took toward simplicity was changing our mindset. We had to retrain ourselves to view things in a new way so that we were simplifying on the outside and not just the inside. Depending on your view of simplicity, outward simplicity is fairly easy to achieve. But it’s wasted if your mind is still cluttered with to-do’s, stressed out, and on the go all the time. If you’ve given away unnecessary things, cut back on obligations, rearranged your lifestyle, and simplified your diet but still do not have time to take a deep breath, what have you really accomplished?

Once we shifted our perspective, we took a good look at every aspect of our lives to determine what needed simplifying first. Then we began to tackle that slowly, bit by bit, until we were comfortable with the result. We didn’t just get rid of all of our belongings in a mad sweep of simplifying. We pondered, we debated, we truly examined what was crucial to our functioning and happiness as a family, and what was just fluff. In fact, it took a few years, and we still have a ways to go.

But that is the good thing about baby steps. It can take a while to see the final product but the work involved in the process is just as important. Also, steps can and must overlap. Each new step is delicately intertwined with the last though, so this makes sense. And what an amazing learning and growing experience.

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