How to create spaciousness in life

It has been years since I read the newspaper cover to cover or watched the 9 o’clock news.

When I was in college, my days started with reading the newspaper. I would carry it even for breakfast to the hostel mess.

The 9 o’clock news was a part of my growing up years. Of course, then it was the 8:40 news on Doordarshan.

So how did I grow out of these deeply ingrained habits?

Because as we all know, once habits are formed, it is so difficult to get rid of them.

Well, I grew out of those deeply ingrained habits because I wanted to.

Which brings us to the question, why I wanted to grow out of those habits.

Why did I need to grow out of some deeply ingrained habits?

Simply put, because I needed more spaciousness in my life.

Have you observed that as we grow older, we embrace more and more chaos in our lives?

A direct fallout of embracing busyness, we hardly have the physical and mental space to sit down and reflect upon what we are doing and why.

So we keep doing what we are doing. Without considering how it affects the changing priorities. The hamster wheel of life.

There came a time in my life — a couple of years after I started freelancing — when I felt so overwhelmed with my routine that I started finding it difficult to carry on with my everyday life. 

Starting with the very first task of the day — getting up in the morning 😞

It made me think about why some people are eternal snoozeers while others get up bang on time as their alarm goes off? Sometimes a couple of minutes before the actual thing?

I realized it’s because the alarm is a trigger reminder of the day that is to come.

If you are looking forward to the activities of the day, you are glad that the day has begun.

But if you get stressed remembering the things you have to do throughout the day, your hands automatically move to the snooze button. Just so you can savor the calm and quiet of the early morning a bit longer.

I have always been a morning person and an early riser. I never found it difficult to get up in the morning and start my day early. In fact I prefer starting my day early so that I have time for myself.

But as I said just now, there came a time when I stopped caring for the “me“ time that I had fiercely defended for so long.

I would get up later than my usual time, approach my work in a lackadaisical fashion and just wait for the day to get over.

But when my daughter complained one day that I had been packing the same thing for her lunch three days in a row, it forced me to stop, take a step back and reflect upon what my life had become.

Now, she is not the one to complain. Whatever I pack for her, she takes happily. But that put the onus on me to keep a variety in her lunch box, which I had been successfully doing till then. So what was different now?

The difference was my shrinking mindspace, due to the chaos that was filling up my life.

I needed to remove some of the chaos out of my life, so that I could reclaim some mindspace and continue functioning as before.

Where to start from?

One thing led to another and I realized I was starting my day wrong. I dreaded getting up in the morning and starting my day.

I wondered what was so repulsive and fearful?

After much reflection, exploration of my thoughts and reading numerous blogs, I concluded that the reason was chaos.

There was just too much noise within and without me.

My life had become a string of chaos that I had thrust upon myself knowingly or unknowingly.

What I needed was more spaciousness in my life. Spaciousness to live, breathe, feel and enjoy life fully.

When I started to think about it, I remembered my life in college was so much more sorted. Despite the academic workload, I had time for reading, hanging out with friends, writing, lazing around and wasting time.

Even when I started to work, I was unknowingly able to ensure spaciousness in my life. I took every measure I could, even if it meant refusing to interview at places that had a 6-day work week, to ensure I had enough time to read, write, watch movies, visit book fairs and generally relax.

It was only when I entered marriage and later had kids that things started to spiral out of control.

I know I am not the only special snowflake to experience this; almost everyone goes through this phase.

But I couldn’t handle it the right way.

There were days when I had no time to breathe. And nights when I couldn’t sleep as much as my body needed to or I wanted.

I realized I was unable to cope with the triple shift of house work, office work and taking care of the kids. But there was no way out.

I tried to make some space for myself by quitting my full-time job but before I knew it, housework and kids spread themselves out to fill the time.

I was frustrated, to say the least. I had quit my full-time job so that I could get some breathing space but that was not to be and it was in this frustration that I started freelancing.

If there was no “me” time, at least I could try to be financially independent.

But that worsened the whole feeling of chaos. Working from home is a different beast altogether and needs time and willpower to tame.

Steps I took to minimize chaos in my life

Our society has conditioned us to believe that we should always be “doing” something. Our worth is tied to how busy we look rather than the value we add to the lives of those around us.

After this realization struck me, I started to take some conscious steps to create more spaciousness in my life.

The first things to go were those that created unnecessary stress. And as you can guess, TV and newspapers were the first to go.

Spaciousness is more a feeling about how free we feel.

The next thing was to find some time in the day just for myself. For me that is the morning hour, when everybody is sleeping. It could be something else for you. I defend this time fiercely.

Next, I started delegating or altogether ignoring some low-priority household tasks. For instance, instead of cleaning the kids’ room every time they finished with their activity, I started cleaning once a day. I also started paying my househelp extra to do some chores.

And finally, I let go of my low-paying clients. I raised my effective hourly rate and took only those projects that would pay me on that rate.

Now it’s your turn

Don’t wait for things to spiral out of control before taking any steps.

Start removing chaos from your life now to bring in spaciousness.