Simple Frugality

making your home work

The Season of Restarting Habits

· Resiliency & Change

Amazingly, we’re headed into autumn, with summer just winding down now … the changing of seasons is always a great time for reflection. For me, I find that summer often throws of my carefully laid out routines and habits. Travel, visitors, doing more things outdoors … all of this can throw off the regularly scheduled …

Read the full post

A Short Guide to Dealing with Discouragement

· Purpose-Filled Work & Life

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of our personal progress is discouragement. Whether you’re trying to form a new habit (reading, meditation, exercise, waking early) or taking on a meaningful project, or just getting your life in order … discouragement is one of the biggest reasons you’ll get stopped. …

Read the full post

The Surprising Value of Rest

· Resiliency & Change

Today I’m feeling sore and tired from hard strength workouts, playing lots of basketball, and doing a hill sprint session yesterday with my son. I’ve been working out hard, and I’m really feeling it! So I’m going to take some rest and recovery time. Anyone who is into fitness knows the hidden value of recovery: this …

Read the full post

How to Autoregulate Your Habits

· Resiliency & Change

When most people try to start a new habit — like exercise, meditation, waking early, journaling — they tend to try to go as hard as they can. And in doing so, they set themselves up for failure. I have a friend who wanted to start running, for example. Every time they ran, they would do it as fast as they could, so …

Read the full post

Forcing Yourself to Do a Task vs. Letting Yourself Off the Hook

· Purpose-Filled Work & Life

People often think, when they’re tired or don’t feel like doing a task (or a habit), that there are really only two choices: And while there isn’t anything wrong with either of these choices, I’m here to remind you that they are choices. And they’re not the only choices. What else can you do in that situation? Well, …

Read the full post

The Magic Daily Practice of Facing Your Fears

· Mindfulness & Mastery

Every day, there are things we’re resisting, avoiding, feeling some fear about. We don’t often recognize that, but what we most often do is turn away from these things. This turning away leads to a couple of impactful things: This isn’t wrong — it’s just how things tend to go. It’s all very human. There’s something …

Read the full post

The Powerful Effect of Bringing Play Into Your Life

· Purpose-Filled Work & Life

How much of your day is spent either 1) trying to make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, or 2) avoiding doing that thing you don’t want to force yourself to do (and feeling guilty about it)? In truth, this is most of the day for many people. Trying to coerce ourselves to do stuff. So a few things to …

Read the full post

Get Good at Finishing Things

· Productivity & Organization

Recently I had a reader write in to me about not being good at finishing things. A few examples of things they haven’t finished: I can relate! It can be hard to finish things — we get excited about something at the start, but when we get busy or things get hard or boring, our commitment wavers. So how do we get better …

Read the full post