Soulful Simplicity

Soulful Simplicity: How Living With Less Can Lead to So Much More by Courtney Carver        Hardback Book:  234 pages               

Good book.   When Courtney Carver discovered she had Multiple Sclerosis on top of her busy, stressful,  mountain sized financial debt  after recovering from the shock she knew she had to make some drastic changes to her overburdened  life  if she wanted to survive and spend all the time she possibly could with the dearest love of her life, her daughter.    She began to log her emotions finding that any time she let her worries  take over it kicked her into a stress induced deep depression which would then in turn affect her health and drop her to her knees for days at a time.    Life was not working out well for her so she started sorting her life into categories and strategicially finding solutions that would work for her to lighten her load of troubles both physically and mentally.   She began to see all the hours she was putting in at work weren’t serving her.   She thought she was working so many hours to be able to get more money so that she could buy more and do more for and with her daughter, but, when that AHA moment came, it became glaringly clear that she was working more and being so tired she was snapping at her daughter and husband, she was feeling put upon because she worked then came home and worked and wasn’t getting any help = more stress = debilitating pain and suffereing = no time to be with her family.    Her daughter told her she liked the stuff but what she wanted was time with her Mom, going for walks, visiting musuems, etc. together and enjoying chatting and telling each other what was going on in their lives.   All of it together was Courtney’s wake-up call.   What she thought she was doing for all the right reasons turned out she was wrong.   She was killing herself to make her family happy and they weren’t happy because she was killing herself.   It all had to give.   She realized she needed a little soulful simplicity.  Instead of taking everything so seriously and being a workaholic, she needed to call down, breath and stop making things so hard on herself and in turn others.    First, she started gettiog more help around the house, then she began to see all the stuff she had been carrying around from house to house, boxes she never opened, clothes in her closets that didn’t fit, needed repair or she just plain didn’t like anymore so she had to sort through the no way stuff to get to the clothes she actually liked and pretty much wore most of the time.   She came up with an idea for her wardrobe.   In any season, all total there were about 33 things she wore including handbags, shoes and jewelry.    So from that idea she pared down her wardrobe, keeping only 33 things total per season out in her closet so that every outfit was something she liked, and everything could be inter-changed to create different outfits.   Everything unwanted, unloved and still in boxes from previous moves was donated.   Some boxes  she didn’t even open, just taped up and donated to Goodwill.   To get her finances in order, she read Dave Ramsey’s books on financial planning that she heard about at church.   First she saved until she had a $1,000 emergency fund per Dave’s instruction, although it was hard, she felt like she should be paying what she was saving on bills first then save but after it was done and something came up that was an emergency fix and she had that fund to fall back on –she saw the wisdom in Dave’s plan.     One by one she paid off her bills from the lowest balance to the highest and prior to that she cut up every single charge card that their family had together or separately along with her husband, even though it was a big step out of faith to do so.  Finally within a few years, they were debt free, clutter free and happier than they had ever been.    A good book with a lot of thought and heart (literally) put into it.     The on-going theme throughout the book is when you don’t know which way to go or what decision to make – Cortney says to stop take some quiet time for yourself and literally put your hands over your heart until you can feel your heartbeat.   Then ask your heart the questions that are hounding you.   She says your heart knows the right answer and will tell you just take some meditative time to hold your heart and ask your questions.   The answers will come from God, from your subconscious, from whatever higher power you believe in and you can trust that the answers will be what you need to do.     Good book.   I would recommend this book to anyone who is going through an overwhelming time in their life – there are many good options to be found here, Courtney is a good mentor.