Enhancing Your Everyday Elegance
“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”
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As this is the Elegant Balance podcast, I’ve defined elegance on here before. When I talk about elegance, I’m not referring to high heels or pearls (although I love both of those things).
Elegance refers to something that is beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. When I think of everyday elegance, I think about gliding through my day with ease. Now, I’m still a work in progress and not all days feel easy, but there are a few things that I’ve noticed enhance the elegance of my everyday and I wanted to share them with you.
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1. Have a plan
I’ve discussed the importance of planning in a few previous episodes, but want to emphasize it again. If you approach life without a plan, you are more likely to say yes to things you don’t truly want to do. By saying yes to these things, you’re automatically saying no to something else. You only have so much time and energy each day. Planning helps you get clear on your values, your goals, and helps you prioritize the right things each day. It also helps you live proactively, instead of just reacting to life as things come up.
I know many of you don’t like the idea of planning. Maybe it just doesn’t seem worth it, or maybe you prefer to live spontaneously and be a free spirit, or maybe you don’t feel like you have the time. To this I would say, it is worth it because if you don’t take the time to plan, whether that be a life plan, an annual plan, a weekly plan, a daily plan… if you don’t take the time to do this, you will likely find yourself living according to someone else’s plan and you might not like it. Second, planning actually allows for guilt-less spontaneity. If you have a plan for when to work and when to play, you can enjoy being spontaneous during your scheduled play time. This is often more fun than randomly being spontaneous because you’ve planned for it. You don’t have to try to have fun while also feeling guilty about not working or making progress towards your goals. Finally, you might feel like you don’t have time to plan, but I would argue that “not having enough time” is exactly why you need to sit down and make a plan. Often, we have more time in our days that we think, we just don’t always use that time effectively.
Having a plan and knowing what to prioritize each day makes it easy to move through the day with focus instead of feeling frazzled or overwhelmed, increasing your everyday elegance.
2. Establish routines
The second thing that you can do to enhance the elegance of your everyday is to establish some routines for your day. A routine provides some structure around your day and helps ensure that the most important things get taken care of. Ideally your routines would map onto the values and goals that you identify in your life plan and practicing them gets you one step closer to your goals each day. When we get these routines established, our brain starts to do them on autopilot, allowing more mental capacity for more important things throughout the day. Doesn’t the idea of taking care of things throughout the day on autopilot sound easy?
I have several routines that I incorporate into my week to help me achieve my goals. I have a morning routine where I journal, write these blog posts, read my Bible, and drink hot coffee before the kids get up. My morning routine is followed by my family’s morning routine where my kids get up at the same time each morning, we do the same things in the same order each morning, a lot of times we even eat the same thing for breakfast each morning. I have routines for work too. I often work on the more intense projects in the morning, because that is when I feel most creative and productive. I answer email around 11:00 am and then work on something less challenging in the afternoon, wrapping up the day with another round of answering emails. My afternoons consist of school pickup and a home workout. My family and I have an evening routine that we follow too – dinner, showers, playtime, devotions, and bed.
I tell you all these routines not so that you will feel like you need to do exactly what I’m doing, but so that you can see what some routines might look like. I also hope that you can see how the repetition of these things each day makes it easy to get things done. It’s predictable, so my brain doesn’t have to spend time figuring out what we’re going to do next or what I should be focusing on at any given time, making it easy to move through each day.
3. Edit, edit, edit
Finally, you can enhance your everyday by editing the contents of your life. If your life were a magazine and you were the editor, which things would you allow to make the cut? Just like a magazine that is limited to a specific number of pages, you are limited by your resources (e.g., time, energy, and money). We should be aiming to only include the best of the best and not wasting space on mediocrity. Remember, an important aspect of elegance is simplicity. Coco Chanel, one of the most elegant women I can think of, famously said “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” This same principle applies to our lives – we need to pare down and remove the unnecessary accessories of life so that we can enjoy the beauty of a simple and effective life – in other words so that we can live elegantly.
Take home décor for instance. Now I’m not suggesting that you must become a minimalist with only one chair and no decorations throughout your house – I love beautiful things and my house has several of them. The key is that each item is purposeful. I’ve bought it because it brings me joy. It has a place in my house because I love it. If we’re going to spend time dusting, vacuuming around, and picking up things in our homes we better love them! Imagine what it would feel like to have a home where everything in it was purposeful and had a place; a home where everywhere you looked you saw beautiful things that made you smile. It would be easy to keep picked up. It would be an enjoyable space to live.
Now in the example I just gave about home décor, you can replace it with the commitments you say yes to, the relationships that you invest in, the clothes that you allow in your closet. When you start eliminating the clutter and only allowing things that you love, things that you think are worthwhile, things that bring your joy into your life, life becomes so beautiful and fun. And when things are beautiful and fun, it’s easier to move through each day.
Is a better work-life balance one of your goals this year?
I’ve created a workbook just for you!
If you’re interested in creating a work-life balance characterized by simplicity, joy, and beauty, why don’t you start by checking out my Elegant Balance Workbook? In it, I help you define what work-life balance looks like for you and share some tips on creating that balance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – Balance doesn’t happen by accident.
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Let’s pursue our Elegant Balance together!
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We spend a great deal of time at work. Like Annie Dillard once said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” I encourage you to look around your office and see what steps you can take to add simple luxuries to your workday because in the grand scheme of things, they will add up and lead to a luxurious life!