Lighten the Load

January 23, 2025January 23, 2025FrancescaHappy

With the new year upon us, there’s often a feeling to start fresh and create a new chapter in our lives. One way to start with a clean slate is to clean the slate. When we purge the old, it makes room for the new.

Sure, I’m referring to the stuff around us that blocks our paths to peace of mind, but it can also have to do with lightening the load in our heads, what we carry every day.

Here are some ideas to lighten the load and make our lives better.

Forgive ourselves. This is a huge load to bear that we don’t have to. We pick on ourselves way too much, and it can weigh our precious lives down. Once we commit to forgiving ourselves, all of a sudden, we will feel lighter. We’re human. We are doing the best we can, and that is good enough.

Forgive others. When we harbor ill feelings toward another person the only one we are truly hurting is ourselves. It’s true. Think about it. We have no idea how the other person feels, and we can’t be inside another’s head. The only thoughts we can control are our own. Lighten the load, forgive, and move on.

Get rid of stuff you don’t use. This is a tough one, especially if you’re like me and think you might need that someday. If you haven’t used something in a year, chances are you aren’t going to use it. A good rule I learned from the Minimal Mom on YouTube is if you can replace an item for less than $20.00 in less than twenty minutes, get rid of it. I need to take this advice for the books I am not reading.

Engage in good thoughts the moment you wake up. When I get up, I put on positive affirmations on YouTube. I swear by this that it has made my days so much lighter, listening to positive words. No matter what your time frame is in the mornings, there is always time to slap on some happy music you like or a positive YouTube video you can listen to while getting dressed. Positivity is lighter than pessimism. You can feel the difference.

Not everything is an ‘all or nothing’ situation. By taking one situation at a time and seeing it for what it is instead of lumping it into yesterday’s headache or imagining how much worse something could be is a weight we don’t need. Seeing things one by one allows us to react differently and appropriately to each experience.

Be honest with yourself and others. Did you ever notice that the people you feel most connected with allow you to feel lighter being around them? When we’re honest with ourselves and others, our interactions are better. I know it’s hard sometimes to do this, but once we get past the fear of judgment, the relationships that we want to have will be better and healthier.

Put a little boogie in your step. Physical activity helps us not only lighten our bodies but can help lighten the load in our minds. Endorphins, the “happy” chemicals in our brains, are a by-product of moving our bodies. Who doesn’t want to feel happy?

Follow your own star. There are a lot of stars in the nighttime sky, and each one is different. They may look the same from a distance. Still, if you got up close to them (which technically we can’t due to radiation, but this is hypothetical), you’d see how they’re made up of different elements, are at different temperatures, and are different sizes. We are the same way. We have our own star to deal with, and it’s beckoning us to follow it. Don’t worry about what someone else is doing. Follow your heart, intuition, and desires. Comparison weighs on our minds.

Take stock of your habits and let go of the ones that are weighing you down. We do so much on autopilot. Some things aren’t healthy for us. If we pay closer attention to what we do on a daily basis, we know what’s good and what’s not. Realization is tough but once we do see it for what it is, we can make a plan and do our best to stick to it.

Throw out negative beliefs you got from somebody else. I realized that other people react to us through their lens, beliefs, and experiences and they try to push them onto us. It makes others feel better when someone believes as they do, but that only weighs us down. We have enough beliefs in our minds without having to overburden ourselves and take on the beliefs of others.