Enough: A reflection on simplicity and why I'm choosing less, on purpose.
- katelynnmonson
- 20 hours ago
- 6 min read
While contemplating the Gene Keys by Richard Rudd, I learned that everyone has a key that is their "Radiance" key. This is the key that, when practiced and contemplated, can support health, wellness, and radiant lifeforce. The key that falls into my radiance space is Gene Key 23: The shadow of complexity, the gift of simplicity, and ultimately the path to being able to see the essence of things, the quintessence.
Over time, I began to realize that I valued simplicity as a compass pointing me towards the wide open spaces I need to thrive. My body sings when I have plenty of space around me.
This is my attempt to articulate what that means and, more practically, how I'm trying to live it.
Home & Possessions
My home is where I notice clutter viscerally, or block it out entirely. Every object I own carries a small energy: it needs to be stored, maintained, moved around, and decided about. I'm pondering if I'm actually using what I have and how often, as well as, if the memories associated are serving my growth in any way.
That shift feels small, and it is, and it changes almost everything about what I bring home. The goal isn't an empty room. It's a room that feels like me, where everything present is there on purpose. It turns out I use far less than I could potentially use.
Work & Productivity
I used to measure good days by how much I got done. Lately, I measure them by how clearly I knew what mattered and can remember mindfully how I spent my time.
I'm learning to protect deep work, which takes more time and seems, on the surface, less productive. Doing less, and doing it fully is the productivity I'm trying to practice. My life is now, and I want to experience it and be here for it.
Relationships & Social Life
Simplicity in my relationships means less performance. I show up less out of obligation and more because I genuinely want to be there. I want my close relationships to have real depth, not just frequency and proximity. I've been saying no to the loud, crowded version of a social life in favor of the quieter version where I know I matter to the people in proximity to me, and I'm not performing or pretending to earn my belonging. I've realized that close friends I thought knew me because they were so physically close to me for years, don't actually know the changing me and don't have the capacity to.
These close friendships have become more casual acquaintance-style bonds naturally, and I've just allowed things to shift without trying to change them back to something they don't want to be. Mindfulness of my own needs has helped me let go of relationships where I am periferal, an option, or a resource. With that loosening, I have more social energy and space to entertain folks who are truly interested in the present me right now. I've been meeting new people who treat me well, respond to me with consistency, and miss me when I'm not around. I've been aligning myself with what Relational Cultural Theory calls, "The Five Good Things:" zest, clarity, mutual mattering, increased creativity/productivity, and a desire for more relationship. It's really as simple as asking myself if I feel those five good things because, if I do, that means I'm in a growth-fostering relationship, and that's all I want and need.
Digital Life & Technology
This is the area where I feel the most tension. The tools I use every day are designed, at every level, to hold my attention. I spend many hours a week offering telehealth and virtual therapy. Simplifying my digital life isn't about rejecting technology; it's about being intentional about what I let in and when. I want my phone to feel like a tool I pick up, not a current I drift way out to sea in. This is an ongoing practice, not a solved problem, as I continually try to be digitally minimal, informed on world events and trends, and transition my ecotherapy practice to the wilderness, rather than the screen. It is a challenge in my life to be in the world. Even now, as I write this, the sun is shining on this early March day, and I want to go outside instead of making content.
Health & Routines
I have definitely been tested by the optimization spiral for health and wellness. The need to take supplements, eat well, exercise, track, and do the same thing every day. The guilt-ridden, confusing, and mixed advice from various sources.
What I've found underneath that noise is something simpler (think the bare necessities): sleep, movement, food that feels and tastes good, and enough stillness to actually notice how I feel. Consistency in small, simple things beats intensity in complex ones, almost every time for me. I've been savoring my food, marveling at the fact that I'm eating a potato I dug from the garden, making my own sourdough bread when the oven works, and practicing movements that feel good to my body and spirit outside as much as possible. Here, I think of Wendell Berry's thoughts and writing, which emphasize meaningful connections and community, suggesting that prioritizing face-to-face relationships and nurturing our environment is more fulfilling than superficial activities like going to the gym. The way he points out that we used to do meaningful work together and move our bodies through it, but now we go to the gym to maintain our bodies, is an irony I ponder often.
Finances
Money feels like a touchy spot for me, and simplicity with it means I'm less interested in optimizing every dollar and more interested in understanding what I actually want from it: security, freedom, the ability to be generous with the people I love. I'd like to have a child someday and have the resources to steward and care for land.
I don't think simplicity is a destination. It's more like a direction, a north star, a compass, a way of orienting toward what matters to me and away from what doesn't matter.
I'll get it wrong regularly. I'm still struggling to minimize my things, especially the art supplies I haven't had time to use lately, but I hope to soon, like my soul depends on it.
I'm sure I'll acquire things I don't need, say yes when I mean no, and check my phone too many times before sleeping. However, in harm reduction, the intention is there now, and that feels like enough to keep going and taking one little step and then another into a life I want...
Relational-Cultural Theory has something important to say here about "wanting" and autonomy. One of the core concerns is the difference between connection that diminishes and connection that grows us, and a key part of what makes connection growth-fostering is that both people retain their agency within it. You can only truly meet someone if you're genuinely present as yourself, not as a performance of what you think is expected.
I realized while contemplating that the same logic applies inward. I can only simplify in a way that nourishes me if I'm choosing it freely, from my own values, rather than to meet some external standard of what a simple life is supposed to look like.
This is why the practice has to stay voluntary*, not just at the start, but continuously as a practice of being myself and tracking my own experience of feeling well.
Every time I revisit a habit, a space, a relationship, or a commitment, I'm asking myself what would be simple for me and what would contribute to those 5 good things and my feelings of well-being. The moment simplicity becomes a rigid obligation, it stops being a path toward my own zesty aliveness and becomes another form of dulling constraint. I already have enough challenges of dulling constraint due to the way our world is structured through capitalism, and what I'm learning is that rigid constraints often make my life less simple.
Less noise. More signal from the mysteries. Just enough, just right. Taking only what I need, and what I will use, honor, and cherish is what I'm after.
I'm seeking the space, practice, and the opportunities for the trying. After all, Wendell Berry also said... "To be quiet in heart and in eye clear, all we need is here."
And when I practice simplicity, it puts me right here into this moment, right now.
What a gift.
Okay, now I gtg donate some more stuff and ponder my next post on how the bushcraft saying, "know more, carry less" applies to the practice of simplifying my life.
Rewild your time and steward your soul,
Nomi
*Watkins, L., Aitken, R., & Li, L. P. (2025). Consume Less, Live Well: Examining the Dimensions and Moderators of the Relationship Between Voluntary Simplicity and Wellbeing. Journal of Macromarketing, 45(3), 370-386.