So many people were taught to feel safe by stockpiling. Their cabinets are crammed with excess. Their lives are over scheduled with commitments that may or may not align with their values.

In an honest attempt to ensure their every need is reliably met, this way of living creates a prevailing sense of anxiety. To live just-at or beyond capacity ironically produces the discomfort of lacking room to grow.

When every bit of your bandwidth, physical and emotional, is occupied, you severely limit yourself,

When your home is already filled, adding new pieces is an unpleasant struggle or even an outright impossibility.

When your mental and emotional plates are overtaxed, you can easily overlook the person who might make a great new friend, for example, or decline invitations that would otherwise excite you.

Living without breathing room means you are perpetually on the brink of suffocation. That isn’t an abundant way of life, it’s merely scarcity posing as abundance. It’s letting the fear of being without in the future cause chaos and discomfort in the present.

By leaving yourself room to grow, you remain open to life. You move through the world in a way that reflects the ease you’re apt to experience daily. You naturally ebb and flow from completionism and letting go, to finding and aligning with new endeavors, practices and products.

As with everything, there is a balance to strike between enough and too much, and what a fine line that can be. But if you feel as though one more thing would set you over the edge, your life is telling you to lighten your load.

This month, leave room to grow.

Luxuriate in the breathing room.

See open space not as scarily vacant, but as the promise of treasures yet to be discovered and opportunities waiting to bloom into view.