What can I eliminate from my life to enlarge my life? I’m more aware of the clutter around me at the end of all the holiday excess than at any other time of year, and I need to use this season to propel me to hone in on the essentials.

I’ve already stopped some monthly services that were automatically billing my credit card but that just were not so useful any longer. I am going to take stock of the physical things that take up space around me but offer little value in return. If I don’t need it or love it, let it go.

What about my routines, most of which are unexamined? What is sapping energy from me or diverting me from more important priorities?

What about my work? What do I do that doesn’t add value? What can I cut that will free up resources for what’s truly essential?

What can I say “No” to that will make space for a more meaningful “Yes”?

Little by little obligations and habits and things accrue and impede or completely divert us from what we really want to do or be. Like how a controlled burn in a forest clears out the brush and makes room for new life, a regular, conscious purge of the inessential in my life can spark new possibilities or simply a return to first things.