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Our lives are constantly bombarded with distractions, especially from digital screens that hijack our focus, often at the expense of human connection. This has sparked a growing trend of seeking a slower-paced, more intentional lifestyle.
I'm not sure that we need a change of lifestyle perse, but it's clear we need to reclaim something we never intended to forfeit to apps and smart phones: our personal peace. Here are some suggestions for adding margins and grace to our lives, so we can give peace a chance.
1. Incorporate Margins in Your Home
Creating margins in our homes amounts to giving your eyes a place to rest from constant input, even beyond putting away digital devices.
If minimalism is not your thing, no worries. Visual rest can be subjective. Sparse surroundings can be jarring to those who prefer a more cozy space. Here are some tips for increasing visual space without losing a relaxed atmosphere or abandoning your personal style.
Rest for your eye can be achieved by using solids in a room that is filled with pattern. This could be in large areas like drapery or something as small as a vase. The idea is to break momentarily from complicated visuals.
Visual rest could also be created by leaving strategic areas blank, so that things like natural light or wall color have a solo moment in the symphony of design influences.
Rest could also come from the reduction of clutter, as we mentioned in our last post. However, too much texture could also make for complex views. In a space filled with natural fibers try intermingling smooth or flat finishes to create pause for your senses.
For me, resting the eye comes in the form of art that transports me to a relaxing atmosphere like a beautiful landscape or line art. Sometimes, its an original piece that captures a memory of a special time or place that triggers hope and joy by letting my mind linger there.
2. Intentionally Add Margins to Your Schedule: Grace and Peace will Follow
Creating margins in your schedule means being intentional about leaving room for adjustments. Keeping your time constrained so tightly that any deviation from the plan leads to let down, or frustration is depleting.
Adding margins could be as simple as allowing more time than necessary to accomplish part of your to do list. Padding the day with room to adjust is not indulgence, it's self respect.
As it pertains to scheduled events, try committing to saying "no" when your day has more that three substantial objectives already occupying your mental energies. Keep the open loops of your mind to a minimum. Setting commitments up with competition is a peace defeatist's game.
3. Make Grace a Default Mode
Grace is expanding expectations to incorporate compassion, forgiveness and acceptance. It's about extending compassion to yourself when something doesn't go according to plan.
It is also a necessity while we are all learning to cope with the unforeseen consequences of constant digital connection, like anxiety.
Extending grace to yourself promotes forgiveness by avoiding the trap of self incrimination. Judging yourself or others has only two paths, indignation or resentment and both are destined to arrive at self loathing. There is no peace in personal prisons.
Grace cultivates compassion toward others. In a society that prides itself on striving to be number one, compassion is often ignored in the name of not making excuses for falling short. Grace leaves room for growth beyond the let down.
Grace recognizes it's own limitations. Honor your efforts by humbly recognizing that it isn't all about you. Everything we do, relies on someone else to also "do". We are all beneficiaries of a habitat, resource or atmosphere that we had no part in constructing.
Creating intentional margins and regularly extending grace can help us slow down and be mindful of where we invest our energy, ultimately preserving our peace of mind.
Taking time to note what is being sacrificed in the pursuit of efficiency helps us consciously evaluate what we are giving up. Applying grace to that pause sets the stage for making change with sincerity. Pause creates mental band width for grace to reveal the better value. When this nurtures genuine connection, especially with ourselves, the results are priceless.