Carmen Shenk

Welcome to this video series on simplicity and life purpose. I believe you’ll find some mindset shifts here that will help you embrace a simple life style more fully. Grab your journal and let’s get started.

Conformity

Today we are talking about conformity – one of my favorite topics.  It’s really challenging to live an authentic life if you’re too committed to fitting in to culture.  Leaving behind our conformity is a process, but a very important one. 

Money Positive Mindset

There are all sorts of toxic ways to view money, wealth, and poverty.  So today’s mindset challenge is to take some private time to define specifically what wealth and poverty look like to you. 

Wealth to me means never wanting to help but being unable to… no more feeling helpless and wishing I could do more or had done more.  Or… put another way – Wealth is the ability to help an individual when I see a need, however small or large that need may be.  I can increase my wealth by living frugally and being generous.

I think it’s also very helpful to reimagine what “poverty” is – because culture tells us that not having a lot of stuff is poverty.*  And that is a mindset that will directly conflict with your desire to be a minimalist at some point, creating a fear of owning too little – a fear which can keep us from being truly free.

*The truth is, people experiencing deprivation often have a lot of things – they’re just very low quality things and those things don’t really meet their needs.  So the assumption that poverty looks like owning very few things is based in perception rather than reality.  

Determining within yourself that you are not poor, rather… you’ve chosen to live in purposeful simplicity… that’s a mindset shift that can really help us in crisis times when toxic money mindsets tempt us to hold everything tightly, rather than the truly powerful way of living which allows all of God’s resources to flow through our open hands to the needs around us.  Living generously is true wealth, because our own needs are always met in that process. 

That’s the paradox of simplicity.  It’s at once so little and yet everything.

Letting Go & Holding On

Letting go is one of those skills that is universal across all aspects of life: spirit, soul, and body.  As we learn to let go of physical things that no longer serve our purpose… in the same way, we gain important skills of letting go of soul things – like mindsets that no longer serve us.  And that also applies to letting go of spiritual things that no longer serve us – like bitterness, criticism, etc.  Letting go is an important life skill when we’re in a close relationship with an abusive partner.  Letting go is important when a loved one is dying.  

No conversation about letting go is complete without mentioning the ability to hold on.  Sometimes what we hold on to is every bit as important as what we release.  I hold on to the connection between myself and the love of my life.  I hold on to family and I hold on to the core values that define my way of living and interacting in the world.  

This session allows us the opportunity to consider what we’re holding on to and what we are releasing.  There are important life lessons in these simple skills.

Contentment

Contentment lives in the space between gratitude with what and who I am now… and what I want in my life.  

Contentment isn’t something to put off after achievement, wealth, and personal goals have been met… contentment is a mindset to live from – not toward.  Have you heard someone say “I’ll be happy when…”?  No, never put off what you can have right now.

Function Fluidity

It’s important to set up your life and space based on the function you need it to perform for you, rather than to use a “bedroom” as a bedroom simply because that’s what it says on the realtor’s sheet.  We use our living room as a bedroom and music room – as in – there is a Steinway concert grand and a bed in what a realtor would call our living room.  We have a 2 bedroom home and each bedroom is a home office.  It’s important to use your space creativity or you’ll feel the need to purchase more space (when you may already have space that hasn’t been optimized).  Start with the purpose you need your home to perform – then suit your spaces to fit that purpose. 

Friction is a helpful idea to help you consider how to set up your life to make challenging things easier and too-easy things more challenging.  It’s a way of managing the friction to live the life you intend to live.

All of this is based in the mindset that you are creative, and you can live the life you intend if you are intentional about crafting and designing that life.  We have the power to craft our lives and design the life we want.  

If you’ve found this content helpful or if you’ve got questions, contact me.

Sending love your way,

~Carmen