Smallness is usually treated as a failure of ambition. A small audience, a small social circle, a small number of interests. Even a small inbox can suggest that nobody important is trying to contact you. We are expected to want more contacts, information, invitations and options too.
There are benefits to being small, though. Smallness gives you fewer things to maintain and fewer minor decisions to make. It can leave enough room to notice what you actually like.
A few ways of becoming smaller, in no particular order.
Unsubscribe from almost everything
Unsubscribe from most things, paid or otherwise. Newsletters, promotional emails, service updates, product announcements and the messages from organizations you vaguely remember dealing with six years ago.
Some newsletters provide enough value to keep. Most do not.
Use the unsubscribe link. Use your email provider’s unsubscribe feature. If neither works, navigate the website’s communication settings and turn everything off there. This is tedious, especially when the company requires you to log in before it will stop contacting you.
It took me a while, but I now get very little email that I do not want.
Close old accounts
Reduce your number of accounts when you think of it.
Do you really want to keep the account you signed up for ten years ago? Do you remember what information you gave them? Is the service still useful, or is it simply one more company with your email address, an old password and perhaps a credit card that expired a long time ago?
Account deletion is often made deliberately annoying. The option may be hidden under privacy settings or require an email exchange with someone whose job is apparently to ask whether you are certain (I have evidence of this!). Still, closing the account removes one more small administrative obligation.
You do not need to make a project of this. Delete accounts as you encounter them.
Use fewer news sources
I have one subscription to a well-regarded magazine. I keep it because I read it and because it provides enough reporting and analysis to justify the cost.
Following many news sources can create the feeling of being informed while mostly exposing you to the same stories several times, each with a slightly different headline/angle. The repetition produces urgency, for sure, but it does not necessarily produce understanding.
If you want to be informed, focus on local news as much as possible. Local reporting concerns the government, institutions and physical surroundings you may actually have some relationship to.
For the rest, use books. Yeah, a book will arrive late to the argument, which is often an advantage. The writer has had time to find out what happened.
Walk and read books
Go for walks. Read books.
I mean physical or electronic books here, not audiobooks. Audiobooks are lovely, and I listen to them. But keep the activities separate sometimes.
Reading long-form text involves a special kind of discomfort. You have to sit still, keep your eyes on the page and notice when your attention has wandered. There is no evocative narrator continuing while you wash the dishes. If you stop doing the work, the book stops too.
This discomfort is useful, I think.
A walk can remain a walk as well. You do not always need to learn something while moving through your neighbourhood.
Be honest about your social capacity
Reduce your social activities to those you have genuine capacity for.
I am all for social bravery. There are occasions when saying yes to something uncomfortable is worthwhile. It can help you meet people, become less avoidant or participate in a part of life you have neglected.
Still, social bravery should have some relationship to your goals and values. Going to things for the sake of proving that you can go to things is a fairly meaningless project.
People sometimes test themselves by saying yes to invitations because they claim to feel better afterward. There may be something to this. There may also be pressure to report that the experience was good because otherwise the discomfort served no purpose.
Journal about it and tell the truth. If you would have been happier walking through a museum alone instead of going to a dinner party, admit it. If you wanted to stay home because you were afraid of being awkward, admit that too.
Make your pursuit of personal growth specific to your wants and needs. Much of what gets called personal growth is an attempt to become the person you think other people would find more acceptable or interesting or lovely.
The other people may even be right. Perhaps you do need to become more patient. You still have to discover why patience matters to you and what kind of life it would make possible. Otherwise, you are trying to install someone else’s preference as a moral obligation. This tends to produce resentment, followed by another abandoned thing you were supposed to do.
You can only make a durable change by figuring out what you want. This may involve admitting that some approved version of growth does not interest you. It may also involve admitting that what you call self-acceptance is occasionally an excuse to avoid doing something difficult.
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