Join me on a journey towards a simple, sustainable and meaningful life. Throughout November we will be exploring each category of the A-Z guide to a simple, sustainable and meaningful life. Today we’re looking at I… Inspire.
This guide has been written from the point of view of someone living with chronic illness but the topics and concepts discussed are relevant to everyone and anyone.
I is for Inspire
We’ve been looking at ways to have the support and skills needed to live a simple, sustainable and meaningful life but as I mentioned when talking about community and giving there is another side to this. Not only should we be finding ways to help ourselves but we should be helping others…
One way to do this when you don’t have the money or the energy to give freely, is to find ways to inspire others. Sharing stories, or leading by example, showing what you do with what you actually have can help others to make changes themselves.
Being open about what you do and why, without nagging or forcing others to do the same thing, can be a great way of opening conversations that lead to others having a more simple, sustainable and meaningful life as well.
I’ve had the privilege of being able to share my journey since the chronic illness has become such a big part of my life with all of you through this blog, which has been going for over 2 years now.
I also talk about what I do with those closest to me. I try hard not to nag (although sometimes it’s difficult) and focus on making changes for myself. Some of these changes have been small, while others are larger and things that don’t make a lot of sense to those around me, but they’re all important to me so I stick to them as best I can.
Most of the changes I have made were made as a means of improving my health, which at this stage in my journey is one of the most important things to me as my health is the limiting factor in a lot of things I’d like to do.
So far on my journey to a more simple, sustainable and meaningful life I have:
- Changed my diet to remove as many of the things I react to as I can (dairy and gluten mainly)
- Make my own laundry detergent (washing liquid) – again I react badly to most store bought ones
- Moved to mainly cloth reusable items, including napkins, toilet paper (wipes), hankies, and cleaning rags
- Continually decluttered and removed items that aren’t necessary or important to make room for things that are
- Implemented daily yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices
- Strived to find balance to allow me to do meaningful work, while still pacing myself to improve my health
- Written (and about to publish) a picture book to help raise awareness about life with invisible illnesses – it’s taken me longer than I’d planned but Foggy Frog and the Pain Gang are still coming
What have you been doing to inspire others in your life?