In an age of endless information and overwhelming choices, the concept of a “Curated Life” has emerged as a powerful antidote to the chaos. It’s about consciously selecting and organizing the elements of your life – from your possessions and relationships to your thoughts and experiences – to create a more meaningful, fulfilling, and authentic existence. It’s a life designed with intention, carefully chosen like a museum exhibit.4. This isn’t about striving for perfection or adhering to rigid standards; it’s about cultivating a life that reflects your unique values, passions, and aspirations8.This blog post explores the art of curating your life, offering inspiration, practical tips, and transformative strategies for creating a more intentional and vibrant everyday living experience. It’s about shifting from passively reacting to life’s demands to actively shaping your environment, habits, and relationships in a way that supports your well-being and brings you joy.
I. Understanding the Essence of a Curated Life
At its core, a curated life is about intentionality and mindful selection4. It’s about consciously choosing the elements that you allow into your life and deliberately organizing them to create a cohesive and harmonious whole3.
- Selecting and Organizing: Curating isn’t a one and done deal2. The definition of curate is to “select and organize”2.
- Moving Beyond the Material: Curating your life is about more than just decluttering your home or streamlining your wardrobe. It encompasses all aspects of your being, including your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and experiences2.
- Authenticity as the Guiding Principle: Authenticity is at the heart of a curated life. It’s about aligning your choices with your true self, rather than trying to conform to external expectations or societal norms2.
- Continuous Process of Refinement: Curating your life is an ongoing process, not a destination2. It requires continuous self-reflection, experimentation, and a willingness to adapt and refine your choices as you evolve2.
II. Practical Steps to Curate Your Life
Curating a life of intention can involve small changes and planning to create an environment around you that brings out the best in you3.
- Take Stock of Your Life Consider that you organize and arrange your life every day3. Start curating life with a journal5. You’re the expert on you3. A Curated Life Journal is an atlas or a journey log of clues about yourself5.
- Declutter Your Physical Space: Begin by decluttering your physical environment, removing items that no longer serve a purpose or bring you joy. Curate your home with quality pieces over time4.
- Curate Your Belongings: What function does this room serve? How do I want this room to “feel?”4. Then, buy quality pieces one at a time4.
- Simplify Your Digital World: Reduce digital distractions by unfollowing accounts that don’t align with your values3. Clean out contact lists to ensure you don’t get distracted with unwanted calls.
- Nurture Meaningful Relationships: Cultivate relationships with people who inspire, support, and uplift you. Filter your friends1. Limit your time to people who support you.
- Be Careful About What You Tweet and Eat: Make sure you are engaging with material, both digitally and physically, that will bring you closer to your goals1.
- Curate Your Closet: so that your wardrobe consists only of those pieces you would want in your fashion story4. Ask yourself questions like: What colors do I most love to wear? Which styles suit me best? If I could only own 40 pieces of clothing what would they be?4. Imagine opening your closet in the morning to get ready for work, and finding it contains only high quality pieces that you love, that look good on you, and that mix and match well4. Keep your closet neat and organized and filled only with those things that make you feel great4. By curating your closet you’ll be wearing your favorite clothes every day4.
III. Intentionality in Action: Transforming Daily Habits
The best part of the curated closet is that all of this bleeds into other domains of your life2. Building an intentional life includes everything from what’s in your kitchen drawers, the vacations you go on, what you wear, the people you hang around, how you spend your time, and when you say yes or no2.
- Mindful Consumption: What we buy matters2. Shop with intention, and purchase things you truly need.
- Time Management: Knowing what you want and Identifying action steps. Putting it in the calendar2.
- Emotional Awareness: Living a curated life means I get to choose what stays and what doesn’t2.
IV. The Power of Saying “No”: Protecting Your Boundaries
Saying no is something I am going to work on in 2019. Guarding my boundaries and honoring my authentic self. This may be the #1 secret to a well-curated life: saying no to that which does not serve us2.
- Time: Prioritize some habits over others3.
- Energy: Make an effort to ensure you spend your energy where it matters. Remove energy vampires from your life.
- Emotions: You edit. You toss out what doesn’t fit3. There isn’t room for everything, and what you select needs to fit within the vision you have for your life and your work3. It has to feel right3.
V. Paying Attention to Your Environment:
Pay attention to the environment you’re creating and the one that is surrounding you3. You take steps to develop an environment around you that brings out the best in you, in your work3. Reflexively, you’re asking yourself what that environment looks like and what has to be in it3. You delete what is not working3. You find ways to add what you need3.
- Cultivate Your Surroundings You are what you Tweet and Eat1. Consider what your surroundings look like to ensure they are helping you reach your goals.
- Your Home: For each and every room in your house, ask yourself these two questions: What function does this room serve? How do I want this room to “feel?”4.
- Your Relationships: Your relationships can have a drastic impact on your life. Ensure you are cultivating positive relationships with others.
VI. The Risks of a Curated Life:
- Sacrificing your exclusive appeal?6.
- Losing an audience by gaining one?6.
- Creating more opportunities for mistakes?6.
- Losing Your Allure: Too many touchpoints6.
VII. Curating Your Life: A Tool for Reinvention:
Curating your life can be a powerful metaphor for intentional life mapping, reinvention and developing meaningful work3.
- Practical Reinvention From The Ground Up: Curating is practical reinvention, from the ground up3.
- Lean Into A Focus: Instead of being scattered all over the place or comparing yourself with everyone else, you lean into a focus and choose more mindfully3.
- Develop Meaningful Work: Like every practical tool, you use it when you need it3. You’re creating a meaningful path where you might not have seen one before3.
VIII. Overcoming Obstacles and Criticisms
The decision to live a curated life isn’t a decision to be made lightly1. In fact, the tradeoffs have the potential to make you anti-social, out of touch, and operating outside the day to day norms that are make you a social creature1.
- Losing touch: The decision to be tuned-out, digitally quiet, or simply off the grid won’t come without some complicated tradeoffs1.
- Letting Go of Comparison: You can’t always win7. We’re living in a curated world where there’s always going to be someone who is better at something than you7. We have to let that go7.
IX. Inspiration for Real-World Curated Living
Here’s a 5 Point Plan to embrace your Curated Life, and shift from being controlled by the speed of social connectedness to being in control1.
- Take a Personal ‘Rhythm’ Inventory: Ask yourself the following questions1.
- Right Size Your Tools To Your Life: Take steps to remove unnecessary distractions.
- Filter Your Friends: Focus on only those relationships that bring you closer to your goals.
- Get Offline and Explore Real-World Experiences: Don’t watch it online, buy a ticket and go be in the audience1. Find a meetup. Attend. Rinse, repeat1. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t like your first one – meet-ups aren’t always a perfect fit1. But if it’s an hour of your life, exploring your world – how can you go wrong1?
- What are your new traditions?: Plan. Pick. Choose. What do I want on my Christmas tree? What do I want to eat? Who do I want to see? What new traditions can I create?2. All of this is me curating my life2.
X. The Curated Lifestyle as a Sustainable Practice
Curating isn’t a one and done deal2. I use the same approach with my habits2. I need to be able to identify the things that I do that make me successful, and the ways that I sabotage myself2. Then, I need to be intentional about getting rid of the bad habits and cultivating the good ones2. It is a process that requires constant recalibration2.
Conclusion: The Art of Intentional Living
The Curated Life isn’t just about possessions or aesthetics; it is a mindful choice of what you want out of life and what aligns with your values. Curating allows you to take control, plan, and discover how you want each aspect of your life to be2. It is an ongoing act that lets you create a meaningful path and vision to bring out the most authentic, resourceful, and sustainable parts of yourself3.