Taking your Simple Life to the Extreme

Many of us choose a word for the year and use it to help direct our goals for the foreseeable future. These are often words such as faith, empowerment, success, and gratitude, which are some of the most popular choices. 

But instead of choosing a favorite, this year I decided to step out in faith and adopt the word ‘Extreme’. Listen in as I explain why I chose it and how I’m already applying it to achieve my ultimate goal of living a simple life!

Transcript

Episode 146 – Taking Your Simple Life to the Extreme

One of my simple pleasures is just sitting and watching my dogs at play. Ozzie, the Australian Shepherd is still young, just a bit over a year old. Wilson, our German Shepherd is well up in years at 9. His muzzle is gray, and occasionally, he has a ‘hitch in his get along’, due to aching joints. Bonnie’s about the same age, but rather than sore joints, she’s just slowing down a bit, preferring to sit outside in the sun like a turtle rather than interact with Wilson and Ozzie. 

As a puppy, Ozzie still wants to play, and he loves to roughhouse with the big dogs. As puppies do, he often goes to the extreme – running and jumping like a gazelle and tackling Wilson and Bonnie with full body slams. 

 That word – extreme – has been pestering me for the past several months. I had no idea why, what it meant, or what I was supposed to do or learn from it. I mean, after all, I live a pretty sedate and quiet life, and I like it that way. I’m not one for extreme sports, extreme attitudes, or extremes of any kind. But I do admit to finding myself in a rut from time to time. 

Most of my days are ordinary, and from time to time I have to run errands. For me, that often means I travel an hour or so. Because it’s so far, I have a tendency to save everything up and do it all at once, which makes for a long day. One particular day an errand in Bossier took me down a street that recently underwent renovations, and it’s now a trendy place to go with restaurants, shops, and more.

While driving down that street, I had to stop in the middle of the road to allow a group of people to cross over from one side to the next. While stopped, I happened to look over to my right. And things began to click. I knew what extreme meant. It meant stepping out of my comfort zone and going overboard. It meant stretching my wings wider. It meant combining skill with focus and physical effort. It meant…learning how to throw axes. 

I’m willing to bet you didn’t see that one coming. Trust me, I didn’t either. But I knew deep down it fit with what has now become my word for the year – Extreme. I no longer want to sit in the muck at the bottom of my rut. I want to step out in faith and live my life to the extremes. I don’t mean signing up to be on the next rocket into outer space or swim the English Channel (although I do know a woman who trained and tried!) Instead, I want to be more ‘extreme’ in my actions. I want to be extremely kind; I want to dig deeper to see the small gratitudes; and I want to up my game with my simple life. Which may very well take some extreme measures. 

Having a Word of the Year originated in the 1990s with Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurry College in Illinois, and a one-time executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. In his way of thinking, if Time Magazine had a Person of the Year, why couldn’t there be a Word of the Year?

Since that time, the Word of the Year idea has evolved, until it became a word we would choose to help us focus on our year ahead. These are words that would fit with our goals, actions, and behaviors, and are designed to help us create purpose for our days. Words like, faith, empowerment, success, and gratitude are some of the most popular ones. 

I’ve rarely chosen a single word to focus on. Instead, I’ve created a few small goals that would help me enrich my simple life and give me opportunities to grow as a person. But this year, I felt strongly this was the thing to do. So, I chose the word Extreme. 

Choosing a word of the year is a very personal action. We want a word that reflects our goals. We want it to be something that helps us grow. And we have to like everything it represents, because if we do it right, that one word will help dictate our every action, reaction, thought, and intention. In other words, once we’ve chosen it, we have to live with it every day in order for it to work the way it should. 

Extreme does sound a bit… well... extreme… to have as a word for the year. But let me explain what I mean by it.

Extreme can be used in many different ways. It means going to the extreme when you need the courage to do something difficult, such as stepping out in faith by changing jobs – or quitting your job altogether to follow an even better, more meaningful dream or goal. It may mean shaking up your routine by eliminating the clutter from your calendar in order to slow down and live a simple life. 

When I talk about being extreme, I’m referring to my actions, self-discipline, and determination. Too many times I’ve caught myself being half-hearted in what I’m doing. In other words, I really don’t make much of an effort. 

Many years ago, my Aunt Dot cross-stitched a sampler. It simply said, “Lord, grant me the determination and tenacity of a weed.” If you grow any kind of garden, you know weeds are some of the most determined and tenacious things God ever made. Can you imagine what our lives would be like if we had that same attitude about our lifestyle, our jobs, fulfilling our dreams or reaching our goals? If you really stopped to think about it in those terms, we would be borderline unstoppable. 

I want to be that extreme. 

I’ve already mentioned that one of my goals is to take kindness to an extreme. In order for me to be extremely kind, I know it’s going to involve little actions as well as big gestures. However, one of the beautiful things about kindness is it doesn’t take a lot of money. The flip side is that it takes a lot of work. I’m going to have to learn how to focus better, watch more closely, and make a stronger effort to be kind. 

The Country Boy and I did take up axe throwing. On my first day, I figured out very quickly just how hard it’s going to be to learn. I’m having to practice my aim. There is a technique to throwing axes, part of which is training my wrist to stay firm and not flex. I was also using muscles in my elbow and forearm that aren’t used as much as I thought. I could feel the soreness as we packed up to go back inside on the first day.

It didn’t take me long to figure out how throwing axes is very much like learning how to go to the extremes in my simple life. I have to start out with baby steps, before I’m ready for the big league. If it helps, you can look at it as the foundation for the bigger skyscraper you are building. 

I mentioned earlier that part of the reason I want to use extreme as my word for the year was because I often only give a half-hearted attempt at some things. One of those things is doing more of the heavy lifting around the farm. Since the Country Boy works long hours off the farm, many things go undone. 

While I was outside walking around with the dogs, I spotted some big limbs that had fallen during a recent storm, and a realized this just may be one of those baby steps toward my new extreme attitude.  I have to admit, this bright idea of mine did cost us a bit of money. But we purchased a battery-powered chain saw. We already have gas-powered ones, but I don’t have the strength or the comfort level to use them with that sharp blade spinning a million miles an hour. And I kinda like having my legs, arms, and fingers. I didn’t want to go quite that far with getting more extreme. But I could still push that envelope.

So far, I’ve cleaned up two separate areas in the pasture. One was easy, with only a few branches. The other was quite large, and also required hauling the small twigs off to a burn pile. But you should have seen the grin on the Country Boy’s face when he was able to mark that item off of his Things to Do list with only having to lift the pen to do so. Now? I’m a girl with a chainsaw, and I’m looking for other things to do with it. By applying my new skill, I can start working on cleaning up fence rows. And with about a million miles of fences on this place, I can stay busy for years in the future. 

There are so many ways we can take our simple life to the extreme. You can apply it to finding extreme courage when it comes to learning something new. You can take your determination and tenacity and become an extreme ‘weed’ when there is a dream you want to fulfill or a goal you want to reach. And sometimes it takes extreme actions to live a more focused and undistracted life. 

You get to decide where going to the extreme in your own life will take you. Is it by taking a leap of faith and going back to school? Will it be changing jobs, or finally fulfilling the dream of staying home and becoming a homemaker? Your extreme can be as simple as stepping away from the expectations of others and living the life you’ve always dreamed of having. Even better, you may go to the extreme of letting go of the discontentment of a busy life and slowing down to focus on what really matters – your faith, family, home, and community. 

Or it can just be learning how to throw axes. If you consider that extreme and you learn the trick of getting your ax to stick in the target, will you please call me? I can use all the tips, tricks, and help I can get!

Are you ready to go to the extreme, but aren’t sure where to start? I’m happy to be your sounding board. Just email me at thevirtualporch@gmail.com, and we can become extreme together!

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Thanks again for stopping in. I will see you next week on Living a Simple Life with a Back Porch View. And while you are waiting for the next episode, grab that glass of refreshment, pull up a rocker, and sit back for a while. It’s time to relax and enjoy.