Convenience is Overrated: Lessons from Intentional Living...and the ERAS TOUR.

This little mindset shift changed the way I looked at convenience. With 7 tips to make your life a little more inconvenient 😉

I finally went to the Eras Tour Friday night in Toronto! Of course the show was amazing and Taylor is next level beast mode and it was for sure an epic concert experience. Outside of the show, I didn’t make the entire experience very convenient on myself. I’ll get to that in a little bit. First, let’s dive a little bit into some thoughts on convenience…(but a quick photo, because, well it’s the Eras Tour).

If you want a hard life, do easy things. If you want an easy life, do hard things.

Our world has become obsessed with convenience. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with things to make our lives easier: apps to order food and skip the line, imitations of food to curb our hunger, people to grocery shop for us, cars that will drive for us, artificial intelligence so we don't have to even think at all. Little shortcuts to escape the things that are hard. Don't cook, don't clean, don't drive, don't shop, don't wait, don't even think.

Have we ever stopped to ask ourselves: is this really what we should be striving for? Is convenience going to give us long-lasting rest, peace, and fulfillment?

For me, I have found that making things inconvenient for myself is exactly what I should be doing. Wait....what?! Why take the long road when you can take a shortcut? Here are a few examples:

1. It's inconvenient to remember to bring and carry along a book to a doctor's appointment, either for myself or for my kids. It'd be more convenient to scroll through or hand over my phone to my kids while we sit in a waiting room instead of reading. Or...get this...sit there and be bored. *GASP* WHAT?! Be bored in a room with nothing to do for 15 minutes? The tragedy!

2. It's a hassle to pack our lunch (or our kids' lunches) in the morning before work or school and it'd be easier to grab something at the drive-through or the cafeteria or to just throw in a pre-packaged, highly-processed “food product” and call it a day.

3. As a rule, I don't make any purchases on my phone but only use my computer or make the purchase in person. (No Amazon app, Apple Pay, or any other store or restaurant app.) Sometimes that's inconvenient as I may not be near a computer when I think of something I need so that means I need to make a note to buy it later on.

Why do I create these inconveniences for myself? From the previous examples: 1. So my brain is stimulated with something in the waiting room instead of scrolling. Because my kids can get in an extra 15 minutes of reading instead of mindless screen time. 2. So I have a healthy, whole, clean lunch to keep me and my kids satiated and fueled for the rest of our day. 3. So that I spend less money. Waiting on purchases may make you realize you don't actually need or want something, you can find a cheaper price, or you just forget about it and viola, you never needed it anyway. 

I do these hard things so I can have an easy life. But not easy as I described earlier. My kind of easy life looks like my kids being able to read and pay attention to something for more than a few seconds. An easy life looks like going on adventures with my family instead of trapped inside the walls of doctor's offices to fight my chronic illnesses. An easy life looks like having the ability to spend a little too much money on a Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket because you CAN because you're debt-free and have some savings banked! 🥳

Now where does a Taylor Swift concert fit in here? Here’s the story. I’ve been a fan since 2006. A Swiftie before there was a name for us. I last saw her live at her Speak Now tour in 2011. But I had not been able to secure an Eras Tour ticket. As the tour was coming to a close, I knew it was now or never. I started looking at SINGLE person tickets (beforehand I had only been looking for pairs of seats together). I realized it would still be a big price tag but by getting 1 ticket, I could get a pretty good seat as opposed to two together.

While the show itself was a worthwhile experience, everything surrounding it was….hard. As you know I’m a super budget-conscious gal and splurging on the ticket was…a little comfortable for me. It felt selfish and was at a price range we don’t normally find ourselves hanging out in. Because of that, I wanted to make everything else about my going as cheap as possible. Hence, a few inconveniences or sacrifices:

• My best friend said: “we should go shopping and get you something fun to wear!” I ended up wearing a shirt I found at the thrift store a year ago that I wore to the movie theater premiere of her show.

• My sister went the week before and told me the water bottles were $10 inside the arena. I hydrated as much as I could before walking in to avoid that pricey plastic.

• Normally, going to a concert would mean getting dinner and a drink beforehand. I packed apples, cashews, and a salad and ate it while sitting in Tayronto traffic.

• What absurd person leaves a concert at 11:30pm and drives almost 5 hours home to avoid a hotel stay? Me.

So I showed up at the show looking like a 37 year old thrift-store mom (BY MYSELF) and by the end of the show I was hungry and thirsty. I treated myself to $10 in snacks at a pitstop on the way home to get me there just in time for a 5am bed time. Everything about it was pretty inconvenient and honestly kind of hard. But I CHOSE these inconveniences to lighten the financial burden of my treat-yo-self-experience and make healthier choices. We did not go into debt for this experience. I could have easily put the ticket on a credit card and pile on a hotel stay, a fun sparkly outfit, merch, and a meal out while I was at it. That would have made for an easier weekend, for sure. But the ticket dipped into our cushion just enough that I didn’t want to dip anymore into that. I made inconvenient choices to preserve our financial future.

Next time you want to take the shortcut -- the EASY way -- pause and decide if that's really the best choice in the long run. It might be easy now, but will it make your life harder or easier a few weeks from now? What about a few years from now?

ACTION STEPS FOR YOU 🔖

Here are a few starters to get you thinking:

1. Consider deleting one store or restaurant app from your phone. Make the purchase in person or once you get to a computer. 🖥️

2. Bring a book or small activity next time you know you're going somewhere with a wait. It could be a book of sudoku puzzles, knitting needles, brain teasers, or a coloring book. 📕

3. If you're not used to packing lunches with real food, start small. Find a very easy and healthy snack to pack. Baby carrots, an apple, grapes, cucumber slices, homemade trail mix, etc. Start with one whole, clean, real snack. Then grow from there. 🥕

4. Check out your local library before you purchase a book online. Most of them will have the book or can get it from another library for free for you. And you can rent them for free online for your kindle as well. Or listen to an audio version....for free! 🆓

5. What errand could you do by walking or riding a bike instead of driving? If you live in the middle of the country and can't do any, can you park far away from the door? Or can you park in one spot and then walk to the rest of your errands? 🚶‍♀️

6. Have a freezer meal stashed for those nights that you don’t feel like cooking or when it’s just too busy. Or always have the ingredients to your fastest, easiest, healthiest dinner on hand to help prevent the urge to go out. (I’ll have the exact recipe we use for this situation in a future email!) 🥑

7. Make your own cleaning solutions to reduce the toxins in your home. It is definitely inconvenient and I am actually annoyed every time I have to re-make our all-purpose cleaner, dust spray, or laundry detergent, but I choose that inconvenience over the fragrant toxins that come with more than one kind of price tag. (Those recipes will ALSO be coming in a future email! Tell me in the comments what future emails you’re most looking forward to! ⬇️)

Some conveniences are great and really do save us time and energy (thank you, washing machines!). But start to be aware of taking advantage of ALL modern conveniences. All those easy shortcuts could be piling up into a life that will end up pretty hard: full of debt, illnesses, mental fog, and no real human connection. Be intentional about putting to bed the conveniences that are not serving you in the long run. Choose the hard route from time to time and embrace the scenery along the way: a vibrant life filled with choices, real connection, and purpose!