how to make your life more efficient

Monarda didyma in bloom in the LL garden.

Last week, I sent you an email about my biggest secret: that I don't work too hard. I also told you the reason that I'm able to strive for my dreams while taking plenty of naps along the way: my life is oriented around my purpose.

Being tapped into my purpose allows me to work toward my dreams without overworking. But it's not just my purpose I'm tapped into, it's my honesty.

Here's one of those truths that's so simple yet so challenging:

Honesty makes your life more efficient.

Honesty preserves your time & energy, plain and simple.

Here's a big-picture example:

A few years ago, I got into a relationship that wasn't quite right for me. I won't get into the whole story, but it involved loneliness, lack of sleep, and a young rooster who didn't know how to crow yet (I'm not embellishing -- the rooster played a major role). I knew the relationship wasn't quite right, but there was a whole basket of reasons that it seemed like a logical idea, a rational fit, so I went ahead. We were together for just under 2 years, and in that time I managed to sink myself into a mire that took about another year to climb out of.

If I had just been honest with myself at the start (and ignored the rooster) I could have saved myself a lot of heartaches and hassles, and would have given myself less healing to do.

We've all been in that relationship, job, or living situation that we know isn't quite right, but there are oh-so-many logical/valid/rational reasons to stay.

But the more firmly rooted you are in your truth, the more practiced you are at being honest with yourself, the quicker you can make the tough decisions and get on with your life.

The faster you can tap into your truth and be honest with yourself (often the hardest part), the faster you can create a situation that genuinely supports you.

The longer you linger in a not-quite-right situation, ignoring your intuition and not being honest with yourself, the more work you give yourself in the long run. You then need to spend energy disentangling, healing, and recovering -- energy you could have spent working toward your dreams.

Here's a small-picture example:

A few weeks ago, I had to cancel the Chamomile Medicine class due to stormy weather. I'll admit, I was so relieved. I wanted to be excited about having on-farm classes again, but something about it felt overwhelming to me. In the past, the on-farm classes energized me, but for some reason the anticipation of them was sapping my energy. I felt like I was supposed to be excited to teach in-person again, but at the moment, it all felt like too much.

I could have waited for the next class to come around, and cancelled if enrollment was low or the weather was poor. If I waited to make the call, I would have spent a week drained from waffling back and forth, drained from imagining getting the tent all set up, etc. I would have wasted my own energy.

Thankfully, I mustered my courage, was honest with myself about what I wanted, and cancelled the rest of the classes.

It was hard for me to make a decision that I knew would disappoint people, but in exchange for the decision, I got my energy back, and I've had more mental space to work on the writing projects I'm excited about right now (and finalize wedding details!).

Have you ever been invited to something, and you don't want to go, but you feel bad saying no, so you wait until the last minute and make an excuse? In the days that you were waffling, putting off making the hard choice, putting off disappointing your friend, you lost energy thinking about it, worrying, anticipating having to send the text.

If you make the decision as soon as you realize what your truth is, you keep your energy, which you can then direct toward pursuits that matter to you, pursuits that are aligned with your Purpose.

And -- to be clear -- when I say "Purpose" I mean anything from manifesting your dream cottage to lolling on the couch for an entire afternoon reading your favorite cozy mystery and eating scones.

This type of honesty -- first with yourself, then with others -- can be challenging. But it is soooo freeing. And once you get a taste of that freedom, it becomes easier each time.

I feel so strongly that honesty -- on both the big and small issues -- can free you to live your authentic life, that I've woven it into the curriculum of Ritual & Potion, a course that's all about making magical herbal extractions.

On the surface, potion-making has little to do with personal development. But when you make potions, you are learning an alchemical process of transformation. In Ritual & Potion, you apply that alchemical process of transformation to yourself.

As you go through this transformation, you become someone who not only knows how to make badass magical (and medicinal) potions, but also someone whose every decision, from the major to the minor, is oriented around their Purpose. You become someone who is honest with yourself. You become someone who is freed by honesty, and with that freedom, you can do whatever it is you want to do in this world.

Ritual & Potion opens for registration tomorrow!

In the meantime, if you want to experience magical potion-making firsthand, if you want to learn how to infuse your will into an herbal preparation, join me for the free potion-making class I'm teaching tomorrow night.

yours in Monarda-filled meadows,

Amanda

Monarda fistulosa in bloom in the LL garden