The process of finding out what’s truly important to you

Banner Photo Source: Quino Al

The process of finding out what’s truly important to you

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This article is part of a series called “What truly matters” - all about finding out what’s really important in your life and then finding time to do it EVERY DAY. See preceding articles in this series below:

Feb 11th The 4-day workweek: Why I choose to work only 4 days a week and you can too
Feb 4th The process of finding out what's truly important (You are reading it)
Jan 28th What decluttering your home shows you about the meditation process
Jan 21st What to do with the uncanny feeling you feel in your stomach or in your body? What does it mean?

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If I were to ask you, “What’s truly important to you?” what would you reply? And are you taking steps towards that which is truly essential for you?

This question has once again become important to me because recently I found myself feeling uncomfortable sensations in my stomach - a gut feeling that something’s not right and that something needs to change. (I wrote about this in last week's article here). Not knowing what that “something” is, I have begun an introspective process for myself so that I can follow this inner-calling, figure out what the cryptic messages mean and then go about taking actions towards it. But before I can take action, I need to unearth from deep within me, what that message is and what that new path is meant to be.

Not knowing what’s important in one’s life is a plague that many of us are afflicted with.

Since this uncanny feeling emerged at the start of this year (2020), I have read the book, Goodbye Things by the Japanese minimalist author, Fumio Sasaki who says that reducing our necessary items to a minimum is one way of unearthing what truly matters to us. It's not the only way and minimalism is not a goal but a process of getting down to what's essential. There's no judging involved about how many things you have because as long as you know what's important to you and you are living the life you want to live, then things around really don't matter. But for most of us, our things and our activities cover up what we really want to do with our time here on Earth. And so letting go of things is part of this process.

Today, I am sharing something that's part of my personal story and it feels deeply vulnerable to put it down on in a blog. But sharing this with you is part of my healing and I want to share it in hopes that it may add another spark to your journey of healing and inner-peace.

For me, this process of getting clear about what's truly important began several years ago when I would repeatedly go down a spiral of sad, depressing thoughts. I was living in Germany at the time (2005-2007) and doing my graduate studies at Jacobs University in Bremen - a very rainy city. But a bit of what was happening before I got to Bremen.

The Volume That Buries What’s Truly Important

There have been times in my life that I’ve felt overwhelmed with volume. The volume of things, the volume of activities, the volume of emotions with no time or a way to process them. Then, there’s also the volume of information, the volume of social expectations, the volume of people, and the volume of noise.

This volume clouds and covers up all that’s truly important, valuable and meaningful in one’s life. Have you ever felt this? And because of all this crowding and clouding that’s going on, I’ve felt confused, unfocused and unclear about my next steps, even sad, depressed and hopeless. This was the time when I was living in New York and working at the United Nations (2001-2005). Every day, my job was to talk about all the things that the UN was involved in and each morning we had an hour-long briefing about the latest world news, filled with details of civil war, violence, and poverty which we then had to convey to the visiting public by memory. This went on for four and a half years. And towards the end of this period, I had forgotten who I was, what I’d wanted to do with my life and had spent zero hours on anything creative. Having done my undergraduate studies at New York University in Film and Television production and being a creative person part of my identity, I had honed that creative bone for three and a half years. Now, I had not done a single piece of creative writing. I was feeling empty and didn’t really understand the pent up emotions that I was burying inside.

All of that exploded or rather imploded when I moved to Germany to pursue graduate studies and to be closer to the love of my life whom I had just met and who lived in Germany. I found it incredibly difficult to get out of bed to even get to my classes and then, in between class days I filled up my time watching movies that I rented from a nearby automated rental shop just to drown out the confusion and spiraling sad thoughts. (Yes, this was pre-streaming days when DVDs were still in demand)! There were times when I would find myself weeping at the plight of wild animals who were being hunted to extinction and stray dogs and cats in developing countries that were being neglected to a life of utter misery. The news would throw me into a downward spiral.

This was increasingly getting unbearable.

I did have thoughts of being freed from this life of suffering and misery but thankfully in retrospect, I was too depressed with a lack of energy to do anything about it.

The Miracle Of One Book

Life is miraculous and you never know when the next turn of good fortune comes your way. What happened next might look like a trivial matter but it had a life-changing consequence for me. I went to visit my boyfriend (now husband) who lived four hours away from the town where I was studying. He had a collection of books in his bookshelf.

While he went to work, I decided to browse his bookshelf and find something to pass the time with. And there it was - my turning point. Among the many books he had there, there was one that caught my eye. It was a book by Steven Covey called, “First Things First”, that he had received as a gift from his Dad.

Once I picked up this book, I couldn’t put it down. I read it at home. I read it at the cafe. I read it on the tram. And it’s a pretty thick book, probably, the first book I had read that was for leisure and not for some kind of a class assignment. Graduate school doesn’t really allow time for leisure reading, in my experience!

You can get the book here.

Anyways, this book by Covey had a certain grip on me. I can’t remember any more details except two ideas which I am paraphrasing:

1. He wrote in the book that we need to focus on what we can influence. I think he called it our zone of influence.

and

2. Take a few moments after something is said or done and respond consciously and with good intent, instead of reacting.

The first idea literally freed me from my suffering for world events that I could not directly influence or change. It reminded me that instead of having my mind worry about faraway matters that I can have a minuscule difference on (or none), rather focus on my immediate life, surroundings, people and on most importantly on myself that I can most directly and massively influence. This was life-changing and I could feel a kind of a burden lifting from my heart.

The second idea was all too new and unfamiliar to me but it did capture my attention. I had thought of reacting and responding as just two ways of expressing the same thing. To be alerted that there was a difference alone was eye-opening. However, it was only years later that I truly understood the distinction between the two and even now am still learning and figuring out how to truly respond with compassion, patience, and equanimity.

Over the next ten years, I found my way to visualization and meditation exercises that have gradually liberated me from the burden of my own thoughts.

What’s Truly Important To You?

To find out what’s truly important, we do need to dig a bit deeper. Quieting the chaos, calming the helter-skelter life and slowing down the running around from here to there, is an important component of the process. When you look outside a moving car, you see the outside world but in flashes. As you slow down the car more and more and eventually to a standstill, you begin to really see the details of the scene outside. This is what we need to for our inner-world as well. In order to really see what’s going on in there, we need to slow down more and more and come to a complete stop. Then the insights, the wisdom, the clarity arises within us. That’s how we can get in touch with what’s truly important to us, what’s truly of essence in our own lives.

Sometimes, the stepping stone to slowing down and meditating is clearing up our outer world. Reducing our belongings and activities to only those that we consciously choose to have in our live - like the Japanese minimalist authors such as Fumio Sasaki and Marie Kondo propound, can be one way to help us slow down, and to reduce the volume that is filling up our lives.

Another way, is to do an introspective exercise of closing your eyes and allowing some questions to flow over you. You may hear, see or feel the answers bubble up to the surface in response to these questions. Some of these questions are:

What do I truly want in my life?
What do I want to create in my life?
What do I want to do with my time on this planet?
What’s of real essence?
What matters?
What is truly important to me?
What path can I take to find and create the above?
What one thing do I want to create, have or experience that will make all the difference?
If I could have it all my way, what would I truly want in my life?
If time and money were of no concern, what would I do?
If I only had six months to live, what would I do with my time?

You can journal your answers and see what emerges.

This is what came up for me:

What is truly important to me right now?

Time invested in meditation
Time invested being with hubby 
Time invested being with cats
Time invested being in nature, in silence

What do I want to create in my life?

Simple minimalist life with very minimum things
Happy life with no burdens
Lots of openness, spaciousness in my living environment
Creative expressions - in the form of writing and creating videos
Reading and learning about how to create a life of peace and joy
Creating more than enough income to support our life and needs (Cristof, myself, our cats, our parents)

What do I want to do with my time on this planet?

Create videos, books, articles that help people live a life of happiness

What path can you take to find that true peace, true fulfillment?

Write, create and publish
Grow a following of people who want to cultivate inner-peace and help them
Sell courses and books to make a leveraged income
First, simplify and declutter my things and my time

None of these answers was a real surprise, but to have this kind of clarity is very helpful as I move forward to create what’s truly important to me and experience it in my life.

Peace,
Sophia

PS: If you’d like to see more book recommendations, see my list of favorite books here.

*There are affiliate links on this site such as the one linking Steven Covey’s book. When you purchase via such links, I will receive a small affiliate commission without any extra costs to you.

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Now, it’s your turn to share:
What do you think you will find when you remove the
excessive things and activities that fill up your life?

I’d love to know so please share in the comments below.

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What decluttering your home shows you about the process of meditation

Banner Photo Source Roma Ryabchenko

What decluttering your home shows you about the process of meditation

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This article is part of a series called “What truly matters” - all about finding out what’s really important in your life and then finding time to do it EVERY DAY. See preceding articles in this series below:

Feb 11th The 4-day workweek: Why I choose to work only 4 days a week and you can too
Feb 4th The process of finding out what's truly important
Jan 28th What decluttering your home shows you about the meditation process (You are reading it)
Jan 21st What to do with the uncanny feeling you feel in your stomach or in your body? What does it mean?

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”There’s happiness in having less”. That’s the first sentence in the book, Goodbye, Things written by the Japanese author, Fumio Sasaki. This morning, I took up reading this book for the second time as I am freshly in a new wave of decluttering my home. As I read the first few pages, it dawned on me that the process of decluttering - at least decluttering in the minimalist way - is similar to the process of meditation.

Sasaki defines minimalism as having two parts: “1. reducing our necessary items to a minimum, and 2. doing away with excess so we can focus on the things that are truly important to us.” He points out that we think having more and more things will make us happy. Whereas saying goodbye to things is an exercise in thinking about true happiness.

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He radically transformed his cluttered apartment filled with collector’s items, books, knick-knacks, and clothes into a streamlined, tidy, spacious home filled with only the necessary items that he needs. This process of clearing out his home allowed him to get rid of false pride over rare cameras or showing off books that he never had time to read and many other personal changes he outlines like reducing his alcohol consumption, stopping to waste time watching TV, losing excess weight and treating women better. He says in the book that he feels happier now and he attributes it to his minimalist life.

You can get the book here.

The way Sasaki defines minimalism is how the process of meditation can also be similarly defined: 1. reducing our mental chatter to a minimum. 2. doing away with the excess distractions in our mind so that we can focus fully on the present moment. It is the cluttered mind full of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are unprocessed and in excess that removes us from our true happiness. It’s all the activities that we fill our lives up with. It’s all the experiences we feel we need to get a taste of. It’s all the places, events, attractions we feel we need to record. It’s all the things that we feel we need to see, touch or own. And there are countless other ways of filling up our minds and our lives.

When we can slow down, and start removing the excess that fills up our time, we can then sit down to meditate. When we sit down to meditate, we become instantly aware of the barrage of thoughts and emotions that seem to flood our awareness. Many beginner meditators seem to drop meditation after their first few experiences because they think they need to have a completely quiet mind in meditation. And since they notice the raucous cacophony of mental activity, they think meditation is not working. But it is working exactly as it is supposed to. In our daily lives, we are experiencing these thoughts and emotions but we don’t fully process them. We don’t have the capacity to do when we are moving so fast - just like when you are inside a moving car you can only see flashes of the scenery outside. It’s only when you stop the car, and start walking slowly and eventually when you stop and stand still, can you see the details of the scene before you. Similarly, when you sit down to meditate, you begin to see all that is filling up your mind.

And that experience is just like decluttering your home. You’ve decided to find the most necessary items like Sasaki or the things that spark joy like the author Marie Kondo and you’ve piled all the things into the middle of the living room.

Just like that, when you sit down to meditate, all your thoughts and feelings start rushing in to fill up your mental living room. When you are in reducing your belongings, you can’t just chuck out everything. In fact, Marie Kondo asks you to pick up every item and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” If it doesn’t, out it goes.

You can get her book here.

Similarly, in meditation, when you close your eyes and thoughts begin to arise, you need to look at that thought, observe it - as if holding an object in your hands. But unlike asking yourself whether it sparks joy, all you do is notice it. You are a silent observer. Notice the nature of the thought. And allow it to fade away like clouds in the sky. Some thoughts may be more intense, even more like strong emotions. In such a case, you work with these emotions. These emotions may be those of irritation, anger, sadness, frustration and so on. The Vietnamese Zen monk, Thich Nhat Than says that we need to care for our emotions, welcome them and care for them. How do you care for them? You take the role of a caring mother who holds a crying child to soothe it. Just by holding it and saying kind, gentle words to the distressed child, it starts to relax and calm down. You can do the same to your emotions that arise in meditation. Welcome those thoughts, emotions and give them love, give yourself love and compassion because you are experiencing them. In this way, your mind starts to calm down.

As you become more and more adept at the meditation process, your mind becomes calmer and calmer. Thoughts get processed just by your bare attention and awareness of them, allowing them to exist without judging or resisting them.

As the mind becomes quieter, space arises for peace and wisdom. Seeds of peace, compassion and wisdom that are already within you, start to blossom. You’ve removed the weeds of mental chatter and created the fertile ground for serenity and inner-peace to thrive. You are able to be present with what is, be present in the moment without resisting, just allowing and dissolving and processing everything your experience into peace.

This is the path of peace and happiness.

This is peace and happiness that we can experience here and now, not just sometime in the future or in the next life. So as I create a minimalist life for myself in my surroundings and in my mind, I begin to experience more and more peace, joy and happiness. Coming less from things and the outside world and more from within.

Peace,

Sophia

PS: If you’d like to see more book recommendations, see my list of favorite books here.

*There are affiliate links on this site such as the one above linking the Goodbye Things book by Fumio Sasaki. When you purchase via such links, I will receive a small affiliate commission without any extra costs to you.

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Now, it’s your turn to share:
Have you experienced the peace that comes from decluttering the mind or your home? What do these process have in common in your experience?

I’d love to know so please in the comments below.

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