This episode is dedicated to doing less and achieving more. In our culture of hyper consumerism and excessive consumption we are a society that loves to have more, acquire more, do more, be more and collect more. But is more always better? Find out the answer in this episode. So, get out of your head, into your heart and let’s talk about the art of subtraction.
INTRO:
Hey, it’s Julie and welcome to the Corporate Yogi podcast. So as you know, I am a bit of a book junkie, I do strive to read at least one book a week and I love to learn and always be filling my head with new ideas and new concepts. I recently finished the book Effortless, by Greg McKeown. It’s a great read and there are lots of gems inside. You may have heard of his earlier book Essentialism, which was quite a big hit. That book had a huge impact on me and really changed the way that I work forever. It convinced me that multi-tasking is NOT an efficient thing to do and I loved the book so much, that as soon as I finished reading it, I went straight back to the beginning and started reading it a second time. In this latest book called Effortless, he shares a very personal story at the end, a story about his daughter and their journey through her illness that really had an impact on me and inspired me to create this episode for you today. You see they discovered his daughter was ill, and as a family they decided on a collaborative approach as to how they would handle her illness and recover. As with most illnesses, we default to a “more is better” approach and we go on tangents with research and campaigning and advocating and we add in all these activities into our lives that essentially make us busier and take time away from the one thing that needs us most – the person who is in recovery. As a family, they decided they would take a more simplified approach, decide on what could be cut back in terms of obligations and they spend more quality time with their family doing the things they love together. I was really inspired by this personal story, and I decided that this is a strategy that we can ALL incorporate into all areas of our life – it’s the art of subtraction.
So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today:
1) First, I’m going to explain what subtraction is, and how it can help us
2) In the 2nd segment we’ll look at some work examples
3) In the 3rd segment we’ll reflect on how you can use subtraction
So get out of your head and into your heart and let’s dive right in
SEGMENT 1:
To truly understand Subtraction, we need to understand it’s opposite, addition. And in our current culture of hyper consumerism and excessive consumption we are as a society that loves to have more, acquire more, do more, be more and collect more. but is more always better? No it’s not, it really isn’t. However it is really engrained in our collective consciousness that more is better and if we want to evoke change in our life that we have to go on a rampage of NEW and addition. Now even though I am a minimalist and very conscious about what I buy and limit the things I own, I am still guilty of Addition with my clients. For example, when a client claims they want to start living into their core value of health, we instantly start making a list of new things they can do, new eating habits, exercise habits, meditation habits, improve sleep habits, mindset shifts. And guess what? These are all things we are adding IN to their life, they are all things that are going to take up more of their precious time. And I’ve started to question this. What are we always adding in? What about Subtraction. What are things we can do that will subtract and make their life easier, and cause them to really honor that value of health. Now I’m not taking about creating limitations or new rules, like – I won’t bring chocolate into the house, or I will stop drinking a glass of wine with dinner on Friday night, bc we both know those are just sneaky should goals and they aren’t really going to bring joy or satisfaction into life. When I’m talking about subtraction, I mean what are the big shifts you can do to make sure feel healthy without adding more items to your to do list. This could include less weekly obligations doing things you don’t want to do. It could be spending more time with the people you love, or cutting back on social media that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. It’s also ongoing and preventing yourself from saying YES every single time an opportunity presents itself to you. Stop and think about it and really be honest with yourself. Is this something that will bring me joy? Will it help me feel more balanced? Will it take me towards my value of health? If not, then it is a hard no.
So, if you really do some reflection here, you will see that by default in most instances in our life when we want to make change, we typically add in something new or pile on more activities and action items. It’s just part of the programming of our consumption culture.
SEGMENT 2:
Let’s look at a work example. I learned this brilliant lesson from a boss more than 20 years ago. Every year we would start out with an adequate marketing budget, and then after Q1 the sales team (not pointing fingers) would come to the realization that they weren’t going to hit targets that year, so what did they do? They would cut marketing spending to reduce costs and compensate for the fact that sales were light. The problem with this was, it happened EVERY single year, we joked about it being an annual sales campaign of “we’re not going to hit our numbers”. So my boss did something different one year that I think was quite brilliant. You see in most cases our natural reaction would be to jump on the bandwagon and the “all for one” mentality and say, no worries, we’ll pick up the slack and still deliver on the 15 things in our marketing plan, we’ll just modify them all so we can stay within this reduced budget. But no, this year we didn’t do that. We cut back on our deliverables and removed entire projects and campaigns from the plan, so instead of 15 things they would only get 10. Afterall why should we work extra and bring things in-house bc our budget was taken away. The narrative was simple. We’re fine with you cutting the budget (again) but you need to recognize that you’re not going to get all the bells and whistles that you go before, you give us less money, and you’re going to get fewer deliverables. That was Subtraction in it’s purest form.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be more or bigger or better or faster or stronger, sometimes what life is calling for is actually less. Doing less, committing to less, and taking less action.
SEGMENT 3:
OK so I have shared a couple examples here of how Subtraction can be used. What about you? In what way can subtraction add value to your life and make things easier? What can help you feel more balanced and valued in life? One recent example was this latest Christmas with covid we had. I know that a lot of people were sick over the holidays, and so they weren’t able to do their big family gatherings like they used to, or they had to cut back in some way. And as heartbreaking as that sounds, most people were actually really grateful for this simplified approach to the holidays, and found it more meaningful and relaxing. The holidays are definitely a time in our life where we lean towards addition and piling things on, and this isn’t always a good thing.
WRAP UP:
OK it’s time to wrap up this episode on the art of subtraction. I’m curious, what are you taking away from this episode? What did you learn about yourself, or about others? How will you be able to add subtraction into your life?
Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who really needs to hear it. Let’s face it, I guarantee there’s someone in your life who needs to hear about Subtraction, so this episode a great conversation starter. You can also share it via social media, or rate and review the podcast on whichever platform you listen! Thanks for tuning in today, and for being part of this community. I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday for another great episode and remember, that any fear or resistance you hold deep inside of you, is simply your greatness in disguise.
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