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We all have certain material things that we believe we need to feel successful, confident, or grown up. Maybe you’ve been in the pursuit of a nice house, car, or clothing, and you most certainly aren’t alone. Like most of you, I’ve spent a great deal of my life pursuing stuff, and it’s only just recently that I’ve realized the value of space.
My family has recently moved across the country, from Washington to California. We couldn’t be more excited to make this our new home, and of course, there’s no greater reminder of how much stuff we have than relocating, right? It seems like there’s so much more stuff than I ever remember having, which got me thinking about the value of space, and I can’t wait to share my thoughts with you.
Join me on this episode as I share how my approach to space has shifted in the last few years, and why I believe space is essential for forward movement and new possibilities. I’m exploring what happens when we allow for more space in our lives, both literally and figuratively, and areas of your life where you might want to examine the space you currently have.
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What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- How my approach to space has shifted in the last few years.
- What happens when we allow for space.
- Why we need space if we want to live bigger lives.
- Areas of your life where you might want to examine the space you currently have.
Mentioned on the Show:
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- Grab the Podcast Roadmap!
- Shira Gill
- Alice Lane Home
- Huberman Lab Podcast
I have spent a great deal of my life pursuing stuff and things. Like many people, I have certain things that I value that I really believed once I have enough of those things like a nice house or nice clothing or a nice car, whatever the things are. That then I would feel grown up, successful, confident, all the things that I want to feel. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve realized that space is just as valuable, if not more valuable to me than things. I want to talk to you about why today. And we’re going to talk about space in many different forms. This is episode 469, Space.
This is Better Than Happy. I’m your coach, Jody Moore. And on this podcast, my objective, just so we’re clear, is to change what you’ve been taught and have likely believed about yourself up until now. Here’s what I believe about you. I believe that what you think is real is mostly imagined And what you imagine is actually creating what’s real. I believe that in the ways you desire to achieve, you 100% have the capacity to succeed.
And finally, I believe that joy, love, and miracles are your God given natural state of being. And any time you feel far from them, the way back is much simpler than you think, but that’s about to change. Are you ready? Let’s do this.
Hello, everybody. It feels like a very long time since I have plugged in my mic and gotten to sit and intimately talk to you this weird way that I do in a mic where I’m just picturing you. And afterwards gratefully some of you listen and take what you like from it. It’s been a while. I played some encore episodes for the last few weeks that were episodes that I knew you probably had forgotten or maybe had missed, that I hope we’re helpful to you, but I’m back recording live episodes now.
I needed a little pause as my husband and I and my kids and dogs, our whole family was moving across the country from Washington to California. And as you know, that is quite an undertaking, moving a family across the country. And thankfully we’ve had lots of help and lots of resources to make it easier. We’re so happy to be here. Everybody’s adjusting really well. The people in the San Diego area where we’ve moved couldn’t be nicer, and we’re just excited to continue to make this our home.
So that’s what’s going on with me. That is partly what prompted me to want to record this episode. But also, those of you in The Lab know that we are doing Summer of Style this year. I wanted to do something kind of lighter and more fun in the summertime. And so just a couple of weeks ago I taught a workshop on Prepping Your Closet. That’s the first part of Summer of Style is before I want you to think about your wardrobe and making over your wardrobe, which may mean purchasing a few new things, but it may not.
It may mean just working with what you already have, but either way I wanted everyone to get their closets ready first. Because if you have a cluttery, messy closet, which most of us do, and you have no space in your closet, this whole project is not going to go as well. And it’s certainly not going to last very long. And as I was preparing the material to teach for that first part of Summer of Style, which by the way, you can still join us for it, if you want, we can send you the replay of the first part that you missed.
We’re going to go on and do Define your Style in July. And then we’re going to do Shopping With Intention in August. But at any rate, the point is, when I was preparing the Prep Your Closet workshop I started thinking about this concept of space. And of course, as I’m moving, there’s no greater reminder of how we all, or at least I have way too much stuff than moving. You start taking it out of the places where it’s been hiding and crammed into drawers and closets and things. And there’s so much more of it than you ever remember having.
It seems impossible that it ever all fit into the space that it was in. And then you get to a new place and it really doesn’t fit, especially if you downsized like we have. We went from a five bedroom house to a three bedroom house and we lost some common living areas and things as well, which is fine, we’re going to be just fine. But we’ve lost a lot of storage space that I’m used to having and a lot of extra space. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about space.
And one of the things, like I said, when I was preparing that workshop, Prep Your Closet, one of the things that came up is I realized I have learned to value space in the last handful of years. Part of it is because of my friend, Shira Gill, who you should for sure look up. She has a couple of amazing books and a great social media presence and online presence. And she is a coach who helps people with decluttering and organizing and styling their spaces in their homes in beautiful ways.
And she sort of introduced this idea to me in this way years ago when I worked with her on some organization in my own home. And she talked about the value of an empty shelf or an empty drawer or just an empty spot in your closet or your kitchen cabinet or your pantry. And when she said it, she’s like, “I just love having an empty shelf.” And I remember thinking, what is she talking about? Why would you love, why would you purposely try to have an empty shelf? She said, “I just love it. I love having empty spaces.” And that was kind of the end of it. She kind of dropped it like that.
And I had this little, wait, what, thing happen in my mind, but we didn’t really discuss it and then we moved on, but it stuck with me and it lingered there and I kept noticing it and I kept thinking about it. And I started noticing in my own life how in my home I had no empty shelves, no empty drawers. In fact, if there was an empty space, my first thought was, what can I put there? Either what do I need to store there, what can I shove in there because I don’t know what else to do with it? Or should I put some decor on there and use it to decorate my house in some way?
But the thought of just leaving it empty never once occurred to me until Shira said that. Now, as I’ve experimented with it and tried it out in my own life, I’ve realized it is amazing. Now, again, we are just downsizing houses and right now I can’t say that I have, I do have actually a few empty places, but I’m not done unpacking yet. So, I don’t know if I’m going to achieve that goal. But I’m going to keep working to downsize to get to some empty shelves or spaces, because here’s why, for me anyway, and I want you to think about what would be true for you.
But space equals possibility. Space equals forward movement and change. If I take every drawer and cabinet and shelf etc. and I fill it up with all of the same stuff I’ve had, then I’m inviting my old life to just continue on with me. Now, the truth is, I like my old life. I want most of it to continue with me, so that’s all good and fine. But I bet there are places where opening up possibility might serve me well.
Now, this might seem trivial. So, for example, if I leave an empty, let’s say an empty shelf in one of my kitchen cabinets, I’m not talking about just the really, really high ones that you can’t reach or see and so, you leave them empty. I’m talking about prime real estate, just leave a whole shelf empty. If I just leave space, or at least maybe I put a few glasses on there, but I don’t have to cram it full of a million things just because there happens to be space there. I leave lots of space on that shelf. Then what it does is it opens up my mind and my life to possibility.
And I’m not just talking about possible new dishes or new things in my kitchen that I could put there, although maybe. But I’m talking about possible new, all kinds of things I feel come my way when I allow space. New ideas, new relationships, new routines, new ways of interacting with my family, new activities, new hobbies. If we don’t have space, nothing new can fit in. So, I am literally talking about this in a material sense, but I want to talk about it in a more figurative sense as well.
Let me just kind of finish off this literal material piece by saying another thing that sort of landed in my brain and hasn’t left is something that my friend, Jessica Bennett said. Jessica owns Alice Lane Home, and she’s an amazing interior designer. And we were talking about design and this might have even been when she was on my podcast years ago. But she said, “Sometimes people want to cram so much furniture and stuff into a space, forgetting that life happens in the spaces in between the furniture. That’s where the living happens.”
And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s so brilliant and so true.” We’ve got to allow space to live a bigger life. Now, kids understand this. I don’t know about you, but my kids’ most favorite thing is when we move into the house and there’s no furniture. That’s so exciting to them. They want to run around and play games and they find that kind of space so liberating and so exciting. Of course, we need some furniture and we need some things to live.
But fascinating to me how kids get so excited about space. And my guess is that there’s a little bit of that within us too that we sometimes forget to acknowledge. That is where life happens, in the space in between the stuff. Now let’s talk about some other areas where you might want to examine, have I left enough space? Do you have space in your schedule? Some of you need to examine this. I do not think human beings were meant to be on the go from sunup to sundown, to be scheduled non-stop.
Even if your schedule is driving people around and making meals and maybe you go to work, or maybe you volunteer somewhere or whatever it is that you do. I don’t think it’s healthy for us to not have any space in our plans and that might be your day-to-day routine and schedule or that might be your life plan. I know some of you are planners. You’re like, “We’re going to do this and then in five years, we’re going to do this. And then in this timeframe, this kid is going to graduate and then we’re going to do this.”
Okay, planning is a good thing, I’m all for it. But do you have some space in there that allows for the unknown, that allows for possibilities that you haven’t considered yet, that allows for ideas that can’t fit in if there’s no space into your brain, which is the next place I want you to think about space. Do you allow for space in your mind? I’ll tell you what, most people are actually scared to death of just having space in their minds because we’ve lost the practice of it.
We constantly have earbuds in our ears or a TV on in the room or some kind of feed happening feeding our brains. Do you ever just sit down and think? Maybe you call this meditation. Meditation is space. It’s just opening up space and practicing having space in your mind and in your heart and in your body. And if we don’t allow for it, if we have constant stimulus coming at us, we are missing out on possibilities.
Just like if I don’t have any room in my house to put anything new, if I don’t have any room in my brain to put new things, I’m limiting myself. I’m just going to keep recreating what I’ve done in the past. Interesting to think about.
I don’t know the exact data on this, but recently I was listening to the Huberman Lab and he was talking about the actual learning that takes place. Whether you’ve taken a class or you’re reading a book or you’re practicing a musical instrument or a sport or something, the real learning happens after the class or the book or the practice or the routine. It happens afterwards as your brain rewires itself to accommodate the new information.
But if you don’t have enough space, if you don’t have enough time in between learnings as well as recovery, we might call it, then the brain isn’t able to rewire itself as effectively. So, there is literal scientific data that proves that space is necessary in your brain and with your body in order to cement what you learned. And again, I like the idea that it allows for other possibilities.
What about space in your routines or your relationships? I don’t know if relationships is the right word. But again, as my family and I have moved to a new area, I do have a sister and her family that live here. And then people have been so nice at reaching out to us, and so we’ve kind of made some friends and we know a couple of people, but we don’t know very many people. Back where we came from I had a lot more family and I had lots of friends and lots of people that we’d gotten to know over the years. We don’t really know people.
And I’m noticing myself be uncomfortable with the space of that both for me and my kids. Normally if one of my kids is kind of bored, one of my younger kids, I can suggest a couple of friends that we could have over for a play date or a place that we could go and something we could do. And there’s plenty to do here, but I’m still figuring out what a lot of it is. So just having space in our routine, space in our relationships, opening up space for new friendships, new opportunities to serve, new lifestyle routines, if you will.
And we have to allow for the space before we can fill some of it in. And I’ll tell you what, it feels uncomfortable to us. We’re like, “Let’s get back to what we’re used to.” And I’m trying to remind myself and my kids that this kind of space is actually really healthy and exciting for us. So, I don’t know, that’s the concept I was thinking about that I wanted to share with you today and I would invite you to consider it in your own life.
And I’m sure there are other areas where we could allow for space that I haven’t considered. Please feel free to come and hang out with me on Instagram. And I keep a close eye on my DMs or the comments on my posts and we can continue to talk about it. But I love the idea that space is so valuable, it’s so freeing. Space is where there’s peace if we can allow for it and get comfortable with it. And it opens up possibilities, forward movement and a new future. Let’s start valuing space.
Thanks for joining me today everybody. I’ll be back next week with another new episode and I’ll see you then.
If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.
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