I picked up the most unusual book over the weekend. It is called Put Your Life On a Diet: Lessons Learned from Living in Square Feetby Gregory Johnson. I love reading books that stretch our paradigms and have us look at our lives from whole new perspectives.

So what does living in such tiny quarters have to do with joy you might ask?

Gregory Johnson went through a divorce and moved from 2000 square feet into 140 square feet. He learned that as his living space grew smaller his experience expanded in terms of more time and money to live his life in line with his real priorities. As a result, he now lives more consciously and joyfully. Having less to take care of gave him more time to focus on his health (losing 100 pounds) and concentrating on his consulting career, family and friends.

Now, my husband and I are not likely to move from our small 2 bedroom townhouse into 140 square feet. Yet, as a life coach, I am always fascinated by new ways to pare life down to what is most important. Let’s utilize what Gregory’s learned without having to take such drastic measures. Below, you will find a combination of Gregory’s and my concepts.

Let’s get started!

Do a little prioritizing

Gregory includes a deceptively simple exercise to see whether we are living by our priorities. Take a few minutes and rank the following areas of your life (I changed the categories slightly) in terms of their importance to you:

Now look at the rankings and record your insights:

Yikes, I did this exercise and found one major imbalance. Fun and recreation ranked in the top three in what is most important to me and ranked dead last in how I am currently spending my time and money. Time for a change!

What did you learn?

Start small but start today

Take your insights from the priority exercise and commit to one action, to do today, that will start to bring your life in alignment with what is most important to you.

This morning, the action I chose was to do a treasure map/vision board to get new approaches on my highly neglected life priority- fun and recreation. Tearing pictures from magazines and pasting them on poster board can be a really simple and creative way to come up with new ideas on any topic.

What will you do to get started?

Make a Joy Pact

Do the above exercises with a friend. It’s always more fun to share our plans, create together and hold each other accountable rather than toughing it out alone. Sharing may even increase our production of oxytocin: the joyful nurturing, sharing, caring, “feeling connected” hormone which can be in short supply both when we are under stress and our hormones are changing during menopause.

Who will you make your joy pact with?