RIGhSIZING isn’t only about purging or editing or throwing stuff away. it's a movement to get our human voices heard and to rethink the math so any kind of compromise or inappropriate misuse of power (driven by financial destitution) is eliminated for good. Now it's about quality of life which puts human dignity front and center.
RightSIZING is also a sequential process to rediscover where we are now. It should be nothing more than a quick and factual review we do periodically. It’s simply an exercise in clarity where we step back and take a truly objective look at weather or not we’re physically and mentally living in sync with our souls. Are the lifestyle choices we once decided on, still working? Do they still apply?
While it’s a process that should be as rudimentary as taking the car in for its 5,000 mile tune up, we make it impossibly hard because we judge and therefore tend to recriminate ourselves as though changing our minds or redirecting our life course is somehow something to be ashamed of. Is the fact that the car needs a tune up its fault? No, because it’s supposed to have them at specific intervals. It is expected, smart and preventative because of continual ware and tear as it covers more and more ground.
We too are designed to be continually reinventing as we cover more of the road on our personal journey. We too need time to brush off the emotional shrapnel or residue always left from experimenting and exploring various life choices and concepts.
Despite popular social opinion, no single plan we’ve ever made is supposed to take us all the way through our lives. Yet changing it is often viewed by a mostly fear-based society as inconsistent or even failure. It’s as though reinvention is only necessary because something we’d planned went south—like we made a mistake or something.
Truth is, reinvention is built into our spiritual DNA we just never explore it through our God-given creativity—mostly because our natural default position is take all our cues from those around us rather than listening to our own hearts. We forget that we are designed (in our short time here) to experience life first hand. We’re given the free will to react to it on a dime and the inherent creativity to cope with anything that comes up.
Yet its our culture that continues to reinforce this idea that there are pre-set benchmarks that delineate our existence by age-based or fiscal phases. When we do deviate it’s viewed as flakey or as though we’re having some kind if a mid life crises. It’s probably because those around us want company—someone along on THEIR journey and for the whole trip! They want the safety of our predictability, not the sense of adventure that comes when we reinvigorate our personal creativity.
RightSIZING is like all profound things; simple-hard. It’s about the courage to tell our selves the truth about our own evolution AS it unfolds rather then seeking the approval or permission from those around us first.
Does that mean that we risk being more alone? Yes. But let’s not confuse being alone with being ‘lonely’. To grow and re-hear our quite, but constant hearts, we must have the necessary “alone time” to feel and re-connect with our own eternal spirit and power—to understand that we’re far more self-contained and protected than we ever give ourselves credit for. How can we know if the car can stop if we never test the breaks? How do we know the power of faith if we never exercise it?
It is often our fellow man that sees no value in this extraordinary gift of personal power, if it’s not connected directly to some kind of financial earning trajectory. To them, without the means to gain the obvious trappings that help clearly draw the dividing line between them “the haves” and the others “the have-nots” then what’s the point?
I will tell you, when I first started out many years ago, I had clients who, rather than redirecting their resources to finding their humanity and sense of self, they simply super-sized their unexamined life. It broke my heart to have to create massive spaces, beautiful grounds and stunning interiors that only they, alone would see on a daily basis. The bigger the spaces, the lonelier they became…like living in a five-star hotel and being the only guest.
When my own profile got bigger during the TV years, I too found myself living in a style befitting a “famous designer” not because I wanted it at all, but because it was expected…when in truth I was perfectly happy living the way I always had…simply and portably. It was a mistake I only made once and would never make again.
So we all often default into seeing our lives through other people’s eyes and making those choices rather than viewing it through our own hearts. There, quiet simplicity is a virtue with its own aesthetic, and not something to apologize for. In our souls, there are no approving throngs, no social ladders that need to be climbed and no thrills that can be achieved by other’s envy. But we can change that at any moment if the desire is truly there. We can RightSIZE simply through thought and by reconnecting our heart-lines to hear the wise whispers of our own souls.
Deep down, if we’re really honest, we just want peace, more downtime to chill, less maintenance and less stress (trying to manage mounting debt and pear pressure). We want to know what joy feels like before it’s too late.
The Beetles had it right—“can’t buy me love.” We earn a rich and soulful life by walking the path that suits our truth and being okay that some, we grow close to, will say goodbye as they chart a new course in search of their next new truth.
Some will step onto our path for the first time. They will take our hand as we compare and exchange. Some, long forgotten will circle back, transformed and joyously thanking us for an unconditional love they hadn’t understood at the time. And then there will be some who step on our path and just stand there silently, smiling and pointing ahead with a wise wink and a child-like wave.
RightSIZE? #metoo