[BONUS EPISODE] Mom On Purpose Book Club: Essentialism by Greg McKeown

In today's Mom On Purpose Book Club episode, we're are going to revisit Greg McKeown's book "Essentialism". This was one of the very first books that I did when I started the book club and it was crazy to go back and reread it and see how many things from the book I applied.

This was one of those life changing books for me and I hope that it will also help you identify what is important for you right now by adopting essentialism. Even if you have read it before. I would highly recommend listening to this as we talk about it, and discover how to live with purpose and intention.

What you'll learn:

• Ideas for decluttering life to focus on what's most important
• The significance of focusing on the "vital few" instead of the "trivial many"
• The importance of solitude, inward reflection, play, sleep, and selective focus
• The value of boundaries and when it's okay to quit

Featured on the Show: 

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mom on Purpose Podcast. I'm Lara Johnson, and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, claim more with your kids. Manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose with my proven method. This is possible for you, and I'll show you how. You're not alone anymore. We're in this together.

Welcome everybody and thank you. We were testing some sound on this so, we won't be able to hear anybody's comments, but I can read them for some reason. I think it's my speakers that aren't working and I'm not sure why. So, we are doing Essentialism today, and this is by Greg McKeown, and this was one of the very first books that I did when I started the book club in 2021.

So, February 2021, we did this book, and it was crazy to go back and. Reread it, but see it in a completely different light, like how many things from the book I applied and how much deeper I'm able to go this time into the principles that he teaches. And so, I'm really excited to talk about it today because it was one of like those life changing books for me and my own life.

And I hope that it will be life changing for you, even if you have read it before. I would highly recommend listening to this as we talk about it, but also going back and reading it for yourself. So, Greg McKeown, he is a speaker, a writer. He kind of shares his story that in the very beginning he was in law school.

He's from the UK and he was there going to school, and he had come to the US for a wedding, a friend's wedding. And while he was here, he was just kind of touring some things. And I like the way he shares that story because he kind of goes into detail about how he just was keeping all his options open. 

And that's basically, how he got into law school was he just didn't decide not to be a lawyer and just kind of ended up there. So, I appreciated that because I think we can all kind of relate to that in some point that sometimes we're not really making a choice to move forward in our life and therefore things just happen to us than us like deliberately deciding them.

So that's kind of his intro to essentialism is that without making a decision, someone will make a decision for you. So, you said, when we have all of these decisions that we can make, our energy is being spent in lots of different directions. So, you said, when it comes to being an essentialist, this is essentially what your energy feels like.

And I think we can all relate to that, but he said, when you are actually living an essentialism life, what you are doing is you are having more energy for one specific thing. And it actually takes you a lot further. So, this is what he calls living by design and not by default. And I really liked that phrase.

He said, you, you start to focus on the vital few instead of the trivial many. So that's kind of where we want to start today when we're thinking about how we live a life by design and not just a life by default? How do we really start encompassing what is essential for us in our life and making those decisions on purpose?

What I love about this book is as he's going through, you will see a column in the book nonessentialist and essentialist. And essentially what he's teaching us in this is how we think differently. And when we're looking at, like, how do we become an essentialist, it's not just the things that we do.

It's the person we become. And at the very end of the book. He has another image, and this is where I think having read it a time before, this was important for me to think about it in this way. He said, sometimes you have someone that is a non-essentialist trying to live an essentialist life. But he said the goal here is that we want to, at our very core, live an essentialist life.

And over time, we start to grow this, so it takes over the non-essential. As I stepped back and thought about this, like, how does this actually look in practice? How can I, you know, check in with myself? One of the things that really stood out to me is that I feel like I am an essentialist on a lot of things.

I'm very deliberate. I do things on purpose, but I don't actually have the overarching thing that I'm trying to create. I don't have that vision or that mission for myself and for my family. Yeah, I want to raise great adults with my kids. Yes, I want to increase my spirituality with God, but that's kind of the only thing.

Like, it's not really concrete when I think about, like, what is the mission of our family? What is the criteria that I can run through in order to see the decisions I'm making and run it through those criteria to see if it fit with what I would like to accomplish. So, as I thought about this, I probably fall more into like the non-essential living and essentialism life.

And I want to work on swapping those two. So that's what we're going to talk about is even if you feel like you're pretty deliberate in your decisions, and you're really working hard on, like, being intentional and on purpose with things. We want to take it just a little bit further to kind of create, like, your mission statement as an individual with, as a mother or an employee or as a spouse.

So, when he is walking through this. This is kind of what he outlines in here. He breaks the book into four different sections, which I love alliteration anyway. So, we have Essence, we have Explore, we have Eliminate, and we have Execute. When we are doing these four Es, that’s what leads us back to essentialism.

That's how we become an essentialist. And I do love that he picked ease for all of that. So, we're going to dive into this first one, essence. Anytime I think of the word essence, it sounds very vague to me. I don't know if you feel the same way, but you're like, what's the essence of something? I appreciated that, like, he spent some time explaining it because it's kind of hard for me to think, like, what's the essence of something?

So, as we look at it, you know, high level. It's kind of like the, it's kind of the high-level overview of something like the 5, 000-foot view of what it is. So, like when I'm thinking about like, what's the essence of my parenting, it's probably like, I believe that joy brings out our God given gifts and talents.

And that's what my children can use in their life. That's like, that's the essence of like my parenting. Is a very joy-based connection approach. So, when we're looking at essentialism, the essence that he first introduces is our power to choose. He says, we often think of choice as a thing, but a choice is not a thing.

Our options may be things, but a choice. A choice is an action. It's not just something we have, it's something that we do. And he talks about how our options can always be taken away, but our core ability to choose or our free will cannot. So, when I was thinking about like, how have I seen this in, in everyday life?

I think about it in terms of my children on the grid that he lists, you know, the, the non-essential. way of living would be a half to like I have to feed my kids, but an essential way of living would be I get to choose. I chose to feed my kids. And when we're looking at essentialism, it's important to always bring it back to what is our choice in the matter.

Life will be hard, hard things will happen. There are things that you can't really avoid, but the way you react to them, you do have a choice in the matter. So again, going back to the example of children. And I remember at one point I really honestly sat down and gave myself that permission of, okay, where is my choice here?

What is it that I am choosing to do? And I realized that I was choosing to stay with my children, and I gave myself that permission. To choose something different. And I'll be honest, like I really sat with it. Not that I had any intention of leaving my family, but because I wanted to make that deliberate choice that I was here, that I was feeding my children, that I was providing love for them instead of like, I have to do these things.

And it's so overwhelming. I will tell you, that was probably the most impactful choice that I ever could have made was to come back to the fact that I chose motherhood. So that's an example of like, when you're really getting down to the essence of essentialism, that's the first one. So, then he then talks about the second one is learning how to discern.

And I really like this word discern. It's one that I think about in terms of spirituality, where you have to discern things, but often it's more crystal clear where it's evil versus good. That's a little easier to discern, but when we're looking at it in terms of essentialism, it gets a little trickier because what we're discerning is a lot of good options. 

So, one of the things he says is that when you're looking at essentialism, it's less but better. That's what we're discerning. It goes back to what he was also saying. This is the trivial many versus the less but better or the few. This is really hard to do. And so, I started thinking about examples of where I had been practicing this discernment in my home.

So, I started thinking about, okay, the first one was like clothes. I remember the first time I read this book, I realized that my closet was taking over, and I didn't want it to. So, I started at that point realizing that sometimes less is better. I would much prefer to spend a little bit more on a higher quality item and enjoy that item a lot more than walking through and just throwing things in my cart and then forgetting to return them.

But they were like low-cost things. So that was the first example when I really thought, okay, less can be better and how I've been applying that. But I also started thinking about this in terms of, all right, well, what about health? Can we have less desserts, but have the desserts be better thinking about this, like, okay, how can this work?

And so, I started to, like, spend time with that, like, discerning it, like, I would much rather instead of snacking on, like, chocolate chips, you know, throughout the day, I would rather have one dessert that I actually enjoy. And so that's another example of how I was able to like toy with my mind to get more of the essence of essentialism.

So, the other thing when you're looking at this is. I started thinking about ideas and I see this a lot in all of my clients at some point or another. It's like they wake up and they feel so much excitement with life. And it's like all of a sudden, the world is your oyster, and you can literally do anything you want, and the ideas start flowing.

I have this exact same thing and I remember making a list of all the things that I wanted to do. And it was a huge list. I even remember, you know, one of, one of my clients, let's see, you know, she wanted to be a doctor and she wanted to be a French tutor and she wanted, like, there were all these different things.

And I remember talking to her, like when we really get down to discerning our purpose, for example, it's really taking time to see, okay, what are the things that are going to move me towards my purpose? So, even discerning like less ideas. Sometimes can be better because you're going to spend more quality time doing that thing.

So that's just an example of discerning less, but better. So, then he goes on and I would say the last thing that he talks about is the tradeoffs. And I really enjoy thinking about tradeoffs. I think about it in terms of exchange. Like I'm going to exchange this for that same thing with a tradeoff. So, for example, recently, you know, within, you know, the last year or so we had our baby.

I was not anticipating having a baby and I thought this would be the year my youngest goes to kindergarten and I would be able to do more within my business that I was wanting to and feeling called to do. But then we had a baby and I want to be home with them. So, it meant that we were bringing more help into the home so that he could still be here.

I could see him in between calls, play with them, that kind of thing. But because of that, that was a tradeoff that we decided to make it. It felt very important to me to be with my child. And again, this was a situation that was applicable for us. I'm not saying this is everyone's situation, but for me, it was essential that I wanted to be there with my child in between my calls.

I wanted him here in the home. So, we brought help into the home. But because of that, we don't travel as much. much because that was the added expense. We are not taking as many trips as we once were. Another one that I explored, like when I thought about, you know, being able to fulfill my purpose, one of the hardest things for me was having to say no to girls nights.

I love being out. I love being with other people, but because I was spending more time. Building my business and coaching clients. That meant I didn't have as much time with my husband in the evenings. Cause that's how I built my business. I was taking clients in the evening in the beginning. And so, I started saying like, okay, well, what's essential for me right here.

I want to make sure that I'm fulfilling my purpose and I'm keeping my marriage strong. So, one of the exchanges that I did was attending every girl's night. I still do that. I still go. I love it. I was out last night. It's so important to me to have those friendships and those relationships. And they just don't happen as often because it doesn't fit.

Like I disturbed and made some choices and made some exchanges. Okay. So, I want you to think about this for yourself. Okay, when you are looking at things that you have to do versus things that you choose to do, or things that you are wanting to trade in order to do something that fits within your essential category.

Just take a moment for yourself to think about that. You can even go over to the chat box and share with us what's something that you have felt you have to do, but now that you choose to do instead. Or what's something that you used to feel like you had to do all of it and now have decided to only do a few things with regards to it.

So, you can be thinking about that as we move on to our next section. So, we kind of have an overview of what it is now we're going to start exploring. We're going, this is our first step where we start to dive just a little bit deeper into essentialism. And when we're diving just a little bit deeper, it allows us to reflect a little bit more and to look at different areas of our life.

So, he says the critical parts of exploring are to escape, look, play, sleep, and select. I will say that I am a natural escape artist, and we'll call it that. I very much feel the need to escape regularly. When I escape from my life, it's often to the mountains. Oftentimes it's, you know, like escaping to my closet, so I have space.

But this is something that's very essential to me because in my, like, physical makeup, I can feel that. I am able to recalibrate and get back to my, my bearings when I take that time to escape. And so he talks about like having that space to concentrate, to just sit down and to think. He shared a couple examples, one of which was from Bill and Melinda Gates.

They have Bill Gates. He takes what he calls a think week where he just escapes for one week. So, as I was thinking about this, I thought about how challenging that is for moms to escape. It's not always easy. We have lots of people around. I always laugh that anytime I step away, it's like warfare level.

Coordination in order for a mom to leave sometimes, and that can be very challenging. So, this is where I would invite you to make space to escape somewhere in your life, even if it's only for a couple minutes. You know, some of the, my favorite ways, like I mentioned, is going to the mountains. But one of my other things is after I drop my kids off, and I have a couple minutes before I have to be home, I'll go through and get a hot chocolate at a drive through at a Starbucks or whatever.

And I'll just go and park in the parking lot and I'll just sit and just be quiet. And it's beautiful. It takes no time away from my family, but it is just a moment for me to take space to just think. So that's one way that I do it. I want you to start brainstorming ways that you would be able to escape.

So, one of the things he says is that the non-essential is that you're too busy to do that. But the essential is that you create space, find those pockets of the window where it can happen. And I guarantee it already is because at some point you're scrolling your phone and that's a way you're escaping. Use that same time and just be deliberate and allow yourself that space to think.

So, the next one where he talks about looking, we're not going to spend a lot of time on this, but he says it's important to just drowned out some of the excess noise that's happening. So, he talks about it in terms of the news. Like, there's a lot of excess noise that's filling us. That's not to say we put our head in the sand, but that's to just like, take a step back and figure out what is essential for us to be learning.

I always laugh at that, like, at night, my husband's like, did you hear about this? And I'm like, no, I literally hear about nothing, but he helps me figure out what's essential to hear about. And we kind of talk about, you know, some of the current events that way, because for me, that's not the most essential thing.

That's one of those things that I've traded off to do something else. So, just always be on the lookout for that. The other thing that he talked about is really getting clear on what is the question that you want to focus on. What is the most important goal or the thing you're trying to answer? So, when I stepped back and thought about this, this kind of goes back to what I said in the very beginning, is I wanted to really start keeping a better criteria for my family.

I wanted to know what question I was wanting to answer, and for me, that is like, what is the actual goal for my family? What's the most important thing? It's been a long time since I've thought about that. Like, I have goals for my family. I have things that I'm doing for my children. But have I actually decided and created a criteria to run all activities and things in our home, everything through that?

And it's been a long time since I've done that. So, that's one thing that I would really invite you to do is figure out what is the question that you're looking for, like for the answer. So, the next couple, he talks about play and sleep. We're going to kind of combine those two together. I am a big person that loves to play.

I am very playful. So, for me, this was not as big of a one, but I know for many people that it can be very hard to play. And he said, when you're living like a non-essentialism, the play is very trivial. It's like an afterthought, after effect. But for me, for example, like play is very essential. And here's why.

Because when I am playing something sparks inside of me, you know, it's like when you're turning the ignition on your car, you're like, you know, and then all of a sudden it trips, and your engine turns on. That's what play does, and there's a lot of science behind it, but the thing that I wanted to spend just a moment on is being able to understand how you play.

That's very different, depending on what your gifts and talents are for me. I have a very vivid imagination. I think in pictures, I enjoy being able to sit on the floor and create worlds with my children. That is not how my husband plays by any means. And so, when he, when the kids were a little bit younger, I'd be like, oh, we'll just do this.

Like, oh, you just make up this world. And he's like, I don't do that. It's like, like, it's so beyond his brain. So, what I had to think about was like, oh, He has a very different way of playing. He is fantastic at taking the kids to do things. He will go to the amusement park all day long and be in all the crowds where I'm like, I don't want to be in the crowds.

I don't want to be hot. I don't want to be stinky. And he will like, take them all day long. And it's amazing. So, we just have a very different way of playing. I've learned to very much appreciate the way that he plays, and he appreciates the way that I play, and it works together for. The goal of our family.

So, when we're looking at, and, and I love that he talks about this, he says that lots of people treat play as a non-essential activity, when in fact play is essential in many ways. He says, and, and there's a lot of research. This is from Stewart Brown, the founder of the National Institute of Play. He said after the study, he said that play leads the brain to plasticity, adaptability, and creativity.

Nothing fires up the brain like play. And I really liked that when we're thinking about play, and he lists a couple of very specific things. It says that play broadens our options. It is the antidote to stress. And these are all research backed, it has a positive effect on the executive function of your brain.

So that is like having to think through what's priority getting your to do list on when you are playing. It's amazing how much more productive you become. Because you're fired up and your brain is getting a lot of those, that positive effect that comes from it. And then, you know, going on to sleep. I love the way he describes this.

He's like sleep if you have to protect your assets at all costs. So, if you have something that's like really valuable to you. It is so important that you, you know, create an environment like you put it in the bank, you know, you put it in a safety deposit box. You like, you take measures, you know, your home, you may have an alarm system.

You're protecting your assets, but oftentimes we're not protecting ourselves as our most important asset. So, he says it's. So important more than anything, when it comes to sleep is to protect the asset, which means to actually get the sleep that your body needs. So back in probably like the 80s, 90s, they call it the hustle culture where everybody was like grinding and getting in and.

You know, sleep was for babies and like this whole different culture, but what they have found in research was how detrimental that was to creativity and productivity. So, he talks about how our best assets are the thing that we will make the highest contribution in the world is through ourselves. And if we under invest in ourselves, we actually damage.

our most valuable thing that we can contribute to the world. And what I like about what he talks about here in sleep is that it is easier to work hard. A really strange way to think about that is because we all grew up wanting to work hard. I guarantee all of us have that internal aspect. He says it's so easy for us to push our limits.

It is much harder to start thinking strategically and to slow down long enough to protect the asset. That's very uncomfortable. However, essentialists will always think that sleep is one of your highest forms of productivity. So, when you're looking at working hard, instead you're prioritizing sleep and still working hard.

That's how you get the most out of productivity. Which is kind of cool if you think about it. Now, I have a very beautiful gift. I didn't realize this was such a gift until I became older, but my gift is to nap. I am a skilled napper. I can nap anywhere. And I, Even when I was doing like service for my church, we would go about, you know, throughout the day we'd be driving the car and sometimes I would just pull the car over and I'd be like, peace out, I'll be back in 15 minutes and then I would just like, zonk out cold in the car.

I still do that actually. And my kids know, like, we'll move a lot quicker if mom can get her now. So honestly saying like, I wish I could know, yes, this is what I'm saying. It is like an actual gift that I have. So, if that is not your gift, then it's important to make sure that you are as part of your essentialism, that you are protecting your assets by creating healthy sleep at night.

Okay. So, our last one select when we are diving into this. He says, when you are living in non-essential, you're saying yes to everything. This is one that I feel like I pretty much worked through quite a bit over the last, you know, couple years. And this is, you know, saying yes. Yes, to maybe 10%. Where I really was able to take and evaluate this right now for myself is it's really coming down to the items in my home and the ideas in my brain.

I have lots of ideas. They're always spinning and going and there are great ideas. And I, at times, think that I need to follow through on every one of those ideas. And over the last couple of years, I've had to learn how to only say yes to 10 percent of those ideas to allow my energy to focus on one thing.

The first time I really learned this was when I launched my podcast. Actually, I told myself that I would not take on anything else except my podcast this year, or, you know, this was a couple of years ago. And it was one of the strangest things for me because I typically have many things in the air at once.

And it was like a breath of fresh air. So, anytime I had an idea come up, I would run it through those criteria of, does this help with moving my podcast forward, does this help with me launching a podcast? If the answer was no, then it was not happening that year. And I had to teach my brain that it's not, no, not ever, but it's no, not right now, for sure, because I'm not going to say yes to everything.

When I think about this in terms of my home. This can be very challenging because of the money that we've spent on things when he talks about it. I can't remember if it's in this part or I think it's eliminate. And so that might be, you know, good to kind of walk into there. But what he talks about in there is that we over value things that we already own and undervalue things that we have yet to purchase. 

So, for example, when I say yes to everything, I have a way of keeping things that were given to me that I think I might need to use someday. Like this goes back to like the way I was raised and not being wasteful. And so, I'll keep a lot of these things.

I'll say yes. And I'll bring them into my home. And I've improved on this a lot. This is something that, you know, I'm very aware of. But now it's so funny because now I'm saying yes to very odd things that I didn't think I would where it's like You know, this was an outfit that my daughter wore saying yes, because I want her to put it on one of her dolls.

It's very odd how my brain has like still trying to hold on and keeping that yes to everything. So being able to go and just think about like, letting so much of it go being able to eliminate so many things. Is very free. So, let's move on to that section where he talks about how do we really get clear on what we want to, you know, how do we clarify the things that we want to get things that we want to eliminate.

One of the things he says is that this is one question that he invites us to ask ourselves is if we could be truly excellent at one thing, what would it be? When I sat with that, I'm like, I'm going to read it again. If we could be truly excellent at one thing, what would it be? I was like, oh, that's actually really hard to answer because there are lots of things that I want to be excellent at.

But when I really stopped with that and I started thinking like, what is it that I would like to be excellent at? It would really be able to have the courage to go all in on my family and the things that are important to me there. Now, how does that work with work and business and all of that? And I truly do believe that the coaching that I do directly benefits my family because of the things I'm learning and the things I'm developing and the joy that I feel here.

Does it benefit my family? So that's one of those ways that when I'm thinking about being an essentialist and I'm really working on eliminating things, I'm going all in on my family. What does that look like? That's my criteria. He says it's very hard to do this. He says it takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution.

And that's true. I will say that. Okay, so I just want you to think about that as we go on to the next section, because when we get here, it's really figuring out what our highest contribution is and really having the courage or like being able to dare to say the word no. So, this is an example he used from Rosa Parks says no spoken at the right time can change the course of history.

I'm going to read that one more time because I think it's important for all of us to hear the right no spoken at the right time can change the course of history. So, he uses the example where Rosa Parks said no, she was not going to give her seat up in Montgomery, Alabama on the bus. And that's when she was arrested and that started the entire movement to take down segregated buses in the South.

So that right there, her being like having the courage to say no in that moment changed everything. And I think sometimes when we say no to something, we don't think it has that big of an impact, or we think it will have a negative impact on a relationship, on an opportunity. So, it's important for us to step and think like, does this align with everything that I've written out for my life, the things that I feel are very essential in my life?

Does this know align with that? And if so, then, you know, it's a right now and it will change the course of your history. The other thing that I kind of developed many years ago is if it's. Not a sure. Yes. It's a hell no. So, and I've thought about that, you know, many years and he doesn't quite use that language, you know, as he's, as he's talking about it in the book, but for me, it was like, I needed to see and feel like the power behind that.

No, because I'm very much a people pleaser at heart. And it's something that I've had to work through. So, when we come to our non-essentialists. This is like they avoid saying no because it feels awkward, or you're worried about the pressure and then you dare to say no. The first time I really noticed this was a few years ago, I was asked by a church leader to ask somebody else to help on this committee that we were doing.

And I had called her up and she's one that, you know, is very active. Active in our congregation, you know, this was many years ago and I said, you know, I would like you to help, you know, on this committee with this activity. And she's like, you know, I'm really grateful that you called me. The answer is no, and it kind of took my breath away because I've never had anybody say no to me.

That's setting like that. I've remembered it years later. And I was so proud of her for having the courage to say no. She went on to explain that, you know, she had gone back to school. She was still working full time. There were some things she was taking care of in her home, and it was not something that fit for what was going on right now.

May have not changed the course of her history, but it definitely changed the course of mine and allowed me to see someone living essentialism at their core, and that really was very beneficial for me. And the other thing that I wanted to point out here is, as we're thinking about this, it really takes time to think about how easy it is for you to say no to your kids versus how.

How hard or easy is it to say no to other people? When I think about my kids, it's very easy for me to say no to them at times. You know, they come and bring me a candy bar before dinner. The answer for sure is no. No, you can't. I'm literally making dinner for you right now. But when I think about that is because I know the purpose and the purposes, I want them to eat a healthy meal.

So, there is already a criteria that I have behind that. No, yet we don't have those same criteria. We don't have that clarity around our purpose and other things in our life. And so that's one way that you can kind of step back and reevaluate for yourself on when you want to say no to other things.

So, he goes on to talk about uncommit, edit, and limit. So, this is where he spends a lot of time thinking about when do we step away from things? So going back to the hustle culture, he references it in there where it's like you, you have to work hard, you have to keep pushing, you have to make it through.

And he talks about the French government and how the British and French government, how they had put, they were, you know, creating this airplane the Concorde. And even though they knew they weren't going to get their money back, they never stopped. They kept pushing and pushing and pushing until it was done.

And they ended up spending over 1 billion on this airplane, even though they knew they were never going to recuperate that. And so, as I was thinking about that example, I was thinking about how often it is we push our kids to follow through on things, but how we have never taught them. When to give up and I think sometimes giving up or quitting has such a negative connotation to it.

But there comes a point where you just keep sinking money in or time or energy when it's not producing anything that comes back to what's essential to you in your life. So, that's just a question that I would invite you to think about is how can you teach your children when to quit? When is a good time to quit?

When can you cut your losses? When is it something that doesn't fit, you know, within everything else that you're working on. It then goes on, you know, that's like the uncommit, edit, and to limit. That's where he really talks about it. So, when he talks about this, also when you're talking about limiting, he talks about being able to set boundaries.

He says, if you don't set boundaries, there won't be any. It's that simple. He said, essentialists, on the other hand, see boundaries as empowering. They recognize that boundaries protect their time from being hijacked and often free them from the burden of having to say no to things that furthers others objectives instead of their own.

Setting clear boundaries allows them to proactively encumbrances. So, I just had this opportunity, somebody had reached out to me, they were wanting me to come and speak at this event and I've already decided like I hurt my knee skiing a couple of weeks ago, I have to go on for surgery on Tuesday.

I've already decided I'm taking, you know, four weeks off work in order to recover. And I also don't go just for, you know, marketing purposes, usually there's some kind of compensation. As you know, being a speaker now because I've been doing it for so long, that's kind of the standard that I have.

And so, they had reached out saying, we would love for you to apply, you know, to be a speaker. And I said, you know, I really appreciate that. This is my criteria. I don't speak for free. I don't speak for marketing purposes and I'm taking the next four weeks off. So, if this seems like a fit for you, great, I would love to apply.

And she came back and said, yeah, you're right. That is not a fit for us. And I was like, perfect. I don't even have to say no because I was able to limit based on the criteria that I have. All right. So, then the last thing that we get down to is the execute and being able to execute. He talks about some very specific things.

These are a lot of words and I do apologize for that. He says buffer and subtract and then to progress and to create flow and focus. But one of the things that I was thinking about it, I actually had another coach, you know, tell me this, imagine you have a sheet of paper and you've got the margins on the side, and maybe you've done this before, you're like, I don't want to print two pages.

I'm going to make the margins all the way to the edges. So, the words fill the entire page. And then you print it and you're so overwhelmed by looking at it. Like that is horrible. I never want to read anything like that again. But on the opposite, when you look at like white space and buffer, all of a sudden it feels doable to read.

Your brain immediately starts to relax. So, when he's talking about, you know, coming to actually execute essentialism, he says, it's important for you to start creating buffers in your life. And essentialists will do less, but they have more buffers with their time and with their energy. So, one of the examples, as far as this goes.

He says that nonessentialists will always assume the best-case scenario, and then when something happens, they're frustrated that something happens. So, I think about this, you know, in terms of like when we're leaving the house with our children, how often do we think about the best-case scenario where everybody's going to get their shoes on and they're going to get in the car?

And we're going to be able to do that in 10 minutes. We're like, perfect. When in reality, we know it's going to take 20 to 30 without fail. Okay, somebody is going to forget something. Somebody is going to have a dirty diaper. Somebody is going to have something, even me, you know, like I can't find my keys.

But when we build buffers in our life, it actually allows us to keep what is essential. And we said, the most important thing is not that you're trying to create buffers with all the stuff you have to be able to uncommit and to edit and to cut down so that you have space in your day for those buffers.

One of the things I realized was that, you know, with my work, I used to go all the way up to the very second, I'd get off my column and I'd go pick up my kids. And then I felt like I never had a chance to like transition. I didn't have that buffer that margin. And then I wasn't showing up as well for my kids.

And I realized I wanted that a little different. So, I started moving my clients. I actually end about 30 minutes before I go and get my kids. It's just enough of a buffer that if there's little things I need to finish, I can wrap up, but it also allows my mind to shift gears within that buffer time. But I have to be very intentional.

Otherwise, I'm just going to scroll my phone. So, the other thing he talks about is he calls it addition by subtraction. The first time I had ever heard this, it took me a while for my brain to like wrap around it, but he said, what's getting in the way of what is essential. And when you really start to see what that obstacle is and you remove it, you subtract it, you actually produce more.

So, he shares a story. This is a story from a book that he was reading, Herbie, who was the slowest kid on the hike with the scouting group. And they constantly were getting separated. So, when he asked something like, what's getting in the way of achieving what's essential. And that was to keep the group together and to move them along.

It was Herbie. So, they put Herbie in the front of the group, but then they took out some of the, the extra weight he had in his pack and distributed it among the other kids. Because of that, Herbie was able to move quicker. They kept the group together. And I think about that in terms of like our home management, what is getting in the way of what's essential.

And as I started to think about this for myself, one of the things was, I, again, really like to play. That's one of my core values. What is getting in the way of that? Well, the amount of toys that we actually have in our home that aren't being played with, because then they get dumped out and then I feel like I have to clean them up.

And so, one of the things that I was thinking about, how can I actually subtract some things in my life? It's, hey, let's really start moving some of these things out. So, mom has the ability to come and play more. That's something I feel like we can all get on board with. The last thing that I'll talk about, where he talks about celebrating small wins, that's our progress.

And then really focusing on the flow and focus. He said that when you're moving towards becoming an essentialist, it's important to look at our routines. I like that he pointed it out. He's like, I know routine, he says routine can sound like where creativity and innovation go to die, the ultimate exercise of boredom, but the right routines can actually enhance innovation.

And anytime I say the word routine, I admit it feels that's where creativity goes to die in my brain. So for me, I realized that I have a lot of thoughts about routine because I'm not a routine type person, but what I do think about are like the systems within my home and that's where a lot of the coaching that I, you know, and things I talk about on the podcast come in.

I'm like, let's create systems within our home that can really help our home function for what is most essential. The biggest thing here is that when you're creating a system that is effective for you. You are making sure that you are spending time looking at the triggers of those systems, but you have to actually know what's happening.

So, for example, I was just working through this on meal prepping and grocery shopping with a client yesterday. And when we really got down to what the pattern was, there was a lot of things she didn't like. There was, you know, times where it was like, okay, there's food that's moldy in the fridge, but I don't want to go through the fridge.

So, then I'm never going to go grocery shopping. So, then I never have groceries to eat. And that was her system. But then when we really get down to it, where are you wanting to switch things in your system? So, for her, it was thinking about when am I going to grocery shop and how does that fit with cleaning out the fridge?

So, I've gone through this many, many times in my life, many, many systems. All of which have been so beneficial, but it always comes by changing one trigger first. So, for me right now, it's Sunday afternoon triggers. What am I going to make for the week? Instead of Monday at 5 PM, that was the previous trigger.

So, then it becomes like, as soon as we get home from church, which is like the most quiet moment in our house where everybody just wants to go and play. And suddenly that's the trigger of. What do we want to do for dinner this week? And I can think about it that way. That's my new trigger. And that's how, again, I'm supporting the overall like essential things within my life.

It goes on to say that essential living is really living a life that matters. He says, when we are so busy with our surroundings that we forget to take time to really think about what is essential for us. He says an essential life is a life lived without regret. And that's something that I would really ask you to sit down and ask yourself, what is essential in my life?

And when I get to the end of my days, what will I look back on and possibly regret? That's where you start applying all of these principles today, so that doesn't happen. All right, there you go. There is essentialism in an hour. I hope you enjoyed it and that you're able to go and get a lot out of it. Next month, we are doing the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell, so be on the lookout for that email and we will dive into that.

It will be wonderful. Have a wonderful, wonderful month. See you next month.

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