A few years a go I wrote a blog called How To Be Happy With Less. It was the start of a long process of simplifying my life. Although massive strides have been made I still have a way to go. My life was incredibly cluttered physically, emotionally mentally and spiritually; there’s a lot of letting go to be done.

Here is a post I wrote back then about what was happening as I simplified my relationship with emails. It still feels relevant today as I often hear people talking about how stressed they are by all the pinging in their in-boxes.

“I do want to be happy with less, and whilst I wouldn’t say I am unhappy it can be a challenge at ?times to find the contentment in the giving up of things; first I often have to face grief, frustration, and the THE VOID!

The trick is to move through these to a place where a sense of peace is reached regardless of what others are doing, what the societal norms are or what is considered “good” or “successful”.

One of my wrestles at the moment concerns the amount of email I receive in a day, which is hardly any now. That should be good right?

My discomfort lies with the? withdrawal I have had as my emails reduced and declined in number. It is all of my own making and what I truly desire but nonetheless I have had to run the gambit of my emotions to get to the place where a handful a day is plenty.

What happened?

Well, although I, along with so many others, complained about the amount of email I had to deal with, I was also very attached to them.  It was a sort of status thing, telling me I’m important because I’ve got X emails dropping in my inbox a day or whatever, I must be SO IMPORTANT, SO INTERESTING, SO NEEDED, SO UP-TO-DATE and so on. Look at how BUSY I am!

The other thing is the fear of it le?tting go, the “what if” dis-ease. What if I miss out on something because I’m not connected all over the planet, not receiving all this information most of which I don’t even read. 

What if……………………………….fill in the blank, there are many.

Thankfully my desire is to move to a place where I value myself for who I am not what I have, what I do, who I know and what I know.  A place where I have the time and space to be with what really matters to me.

Giving a posi?ve meaning or value to things that make my life difficult is crazy, and yet I understand this is something we humans do because there will be some positive intent muddled up in there, an attachment to something. The pay-offs With email flooding in, even things I didn’t read or really care about, I could delude myself into thinking I was connected, important, up-to-date, current or whatever it is.

I could also avoid the void.

But…….

I don’t want to be there anymore, the pay-off has stopped working and I have to pass through the email withdrawal hell, the void.

I’m afraid of the VOID, the place that is left, the place to be filled. I fear I might fill it with the “wrong” things and find myself back at square one. Am I up to the job of filling it?

Wrong question.

Am I up to the job of allowing and trusting that it will be filled, and to allowing what will be, to arrive?

So, my cry is unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe! “