I didn't think this day would ever come, but life is full of unexpected twists and turns. It turns out Kanye West, who laughably egomaniacal public persona fills me with actual, physical pain, he and I have something in common, according to one of Yahoo's morning news stories: a focus on intention and mindfulness.
I've seen many dots connect themselves in my life in the last few months. I've got a budget. I'm de-cluttering my spaces. I'm exercising and eating better. Even my personal and professional relationships have improved. Until recently, it felt like I was making progress by pushing many different fronts, but I had a conversation yesterday that made me realize all of these threads were woven together by one grand central theme, so significant that for me it represents a major shift in thinking. I've been developing a practice of mindfulness. Kanye wears a bracelet with the word intention stamped on it, and it's probably not a terrible idea, but it's a paradigm shift that can affect every aspect of your life.
For instance, it's completely shifted how my wife and I budget. On a recommendation from a friend, we started using a budgeting software very creatively titled You Need a Budget. Although it seems superficially similar to many other budgeting products (you put in income, expenses, allocate money, etc.), it incorporates a crucial difference - you only budget the money you actually have. You abandon the idea of forecasting, and instead ask yourself what jobs do the dollars in your accounts NEED to do before you expect to get paid again. Every dollar is given a job. And somehow this subtle shift has allowed me to approach my day to day impulsive spending more mindfully. When the fast food signs call out to me, I can say no to temptation because the dollars I would spend on that processed chicken sandwich have another job, and if I wanted to buy it, I would have to decide what was less important to me than the chicken sandwich. Re-framing the question in that way, it has been much easier to stare into the eyes of compulsive desire and say no. Not only do I have the pleasure of seeing my money doing things for me, rather than feeling it mysteriously slip away, but I have a framework for intentionally and clearly considering all my purchasing decisions, large and small.
Similarly, Christina has been reading this amazing book by Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up that flips some of the organizational logic I used to use on its head. Rather than starting with organizing, the first step in the process, Kondo argues, is to seriously consider what to keep and what to get rid of, and more importantly, to decide what you want to keep. Not what you want to throw away - what you want to keep. I went through every article of clothing in my closet and asked myself the question, "Does this garment bring me joy?" and it made it incredibly easy to pare down my wardrobe without feeling the pain of loss. Kondo's process forces mindful intention - she asks you to interrogate the reasons that you feel attached to the possessions you hold onto, and helps guide you to an effective praxis for deciding what you really value and getting rid of what you don't.
I could go on, but I hope you can see the trend emerging. In both of these cases, and in the other areas of life where I've got my mojo cranking, it's because I've forced myself to be mindful. When you work to understand your intentions and unpack the swarm of societal and subliminal voices that mess with your decision-making, it becomes much easier to walk through life with clarity and contentment.
And really, if the opposite of being mindful is to be mindless, who could really argue that we shouldn't be more mindful as we walk through life?
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