“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.” — Oscar Wilde

We live in a world where simplicity is scarce. Think for just a moment about how busy our everyday lives are now, and compare it to our great-great grandparents’ lives. We have the benefit of a LOT of technology (love it!), but wow, there’s a price to pay for complexity, right?

From the minute we open our eyes (and look at our phone/computer/TV to see what happened while we were sleeping) until we shut them again to sleep, we are barraged with information. And most of it is advertising, intended to convince us to buy things we don’t even know we need (and probably don’t!)

Add to that all the responsibilities we have, from billing to banking to health care to home ownership to driving, insurance, family, friends, church…(add your additional roles). It can all be too much! I say we fight back! We can be overwhelmed by complexity or we can take control of our lives.

First step: Decide just what do we really want to focus our lives on? What have we been told we are “supposed” to be, have, do? Does that picture ring true for us? Is it worth the price we’re paying? Simplifying our focus on the key values we hold dear can help reduce the “noise” we hear daily.

Second step: Once we know what is super-important to us (we don’t want to live without it), we can look at some specific strategies that simplify and balance the significant areas of our lives.

There is joy in living simply, and I believe we should. Simplicity is genius.