In Later Life, Simplicity Is Not About Having Less — It's About Hearing More
I thought it was time to clarify what my main message here at Freedom in Later Life is, because I don't want to give the impression that it is wrong to slow down and take it easy, or at least take it easier than we have before. I have, for many years, totally let go of any career aspirations. In fact I've probably never been one for being at the top of any institution — I've always felt that to do that would require a huge conflict with my values, which has always been to maintain my personal freedom. To take on positions of power requires, in my view, an element of following rules, which in turn can limit personal freedom.
So I'm not here to tell people who reach their later years to carry on the race to the top, or to keep working towards more and more. To me, later life is about aligning more and more with our personal core values, to step into the person we were always meant to be before life took over. It is our final chance to reach our personal self-actualisation. For some that might very well be to finally reach for that career goal. For others it might be to write that book, paint that painting, or simply have the time to figure it all out. Simplicity and slower living is not about giving up on dreams so that we do not do very much. To me simplicity is making room for what matters more, both physically and mentally, because my view has always been that clutter outside means clutter inside. If our external world is busy, messy and disorganised, how can we have space inside to think clearly?
So in this piece I want to write about how to begin simplifying your life, both inside and out, to make space for more freedom in your later life.
I first started focusing on simplicity when I was in my thirties. Having had three children by then and moved countries several times, life had started to feel quite overwhelming. I was never one for things or fashion — it always felt like a pointless pursuit — but there was a time when I fell into that trap too. You know the one: it makes you think that to be successful and happy you must have a nice car, a big house, and the most up-to-date phone, not to mention that one designer laptop bag. And every time I felt I had achieved it, a new phone came out, a new car was needed, and the house just didn't seem to fit anymore.
But I was lucky, and I really do mean that. When I lost my job and my thirty-year marriage ended, something big shifted in me. Packing up all that was left into two boxes, or maybe three, I don't remember, felt like a whole weight had been lifted. I was free to start over without much to carry forward, except all my broken pieces, which now had space to breathe and space to be healed.
And it was in that simple, clutter-free time that I was able to explore the deeper parts of myself. What I found surprised me. Stripped of the noise and the striving, what was calling me was not another ambition or another role to fill. It was a need for deeper meaning that I hadn't known was there. That search began a spiritual inquiry that is still very much unfolding, one I am still in the middle of, and still learning from. And it led me to writing: the need to express what I was discovering, and the hope that in doing so I might be useful to others navigating the same terrain. None of that would have been audible inside the life I had been living. It took the clearing to hear it.
Where to Begin: Simplifying the Outside
The practical question, when we decide we want to live more simply, is always the same: where do I start?
My answer is also always the same: start with a question.
Before anything goes, before you open a wardrobe, clear a shelf, or begin the slow audit of your diary, ask yourself one thing about whatever you are considering. Does this add anything to my life?
Not: is it useful. Not: did it cost a lot. Not: will I feel guilty getting rid of it. Simply: does it add anything.
That question works for objects. It works equally well for commitments, for habits, and, I say this carefully because it needs to be said, for people. I have become, over the years, genuinely precious about my space and about who I give my time to. That is not coldness. It is honesty about what I have learned: that the people who drain us, who leave us feeling smaller or more anxious after we have spent time with them, are a form of clutter too. They take up space that might otherwise be available for someone, or something, that genuinely nourishes.
Start small if you need to. A single drawer. One afternoon's worth of commitments reconsidered. The point is not to transform your life in a weekend. The point is to begin developing the habit of asking the question, and then trusting the answer you get.
You will find, once you start, that the question becomes easier to apply. And the relief that follows each honest answer, yes, this stays, no, this goes, begins to add up. What accumulates is space.
The Harder Work: Simplifying the Inside
The external declutter is, in many ways, the easier half. Objects can be put in bags. Commitments can be declined. What is harder to clear is the internal noise: the mental accumulation of worries, comparisons, self-criticisms, and stories about how our lives are supposed to look, that many of us have been carrying for decades without quite realising how heavy it has become.
This is where I want to talk about silence. Not as an absence, but as a choice.
Some years ago I made a deliberate decision to choose silence over noise, and I mean that in both the literal and the larger sense. I reduced the background noise of my days: less scrolling, less television running in the background, fewer conversations that left me feeling unsettled rather than fed. But I also began to notice the internal noise: the circling thoughts, the low-level anxiety, the habit of filling every pause before it had the chance to become genuinely still.
That internal noise is worth paying attention to, because it has a function: it keeps us from hearing something we might otherwise have to listen to.
Here is what I have come to understand, through my own experience and through years of teaching mindfulness: it is in the silence that we are able to hear the voice of authenticity. The voice that tells us what we actually need, as opposed to what we have been told to want. The voice that knows, often before we are ready to admit it, that something is not working, or that something long neglected is asking for attention.
That voice is almost always present. It is simply very often drowned out.
How to Begin Choosing Silence
You do not have to meditate for an hour a day. You do not need a retreat or a particular practice or a special kind of morning routine. What you need is to create, intentionally, some space in your day where the noise drops and you are simply present with yourself.
This might be a walk without headphones. A cup of tea before anyone else is awake. Ten minutes with a journal and no particular agenda. The form matters less than the commitment: the decision that this time belongs to you, that you will not fill it, and that whatever arises in it is worth paying attention to.
It takes practice. The mind, accustomed to noise and busyness, does not always settle easily. At first the silence can feel uncomfortable, even unsettling. There may be thoughts you have been avoiding that use the stillness as an opportunity to surface. That is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that the process is working.
The commitment to silence is, in my experience, one of the most countercultural choices available to us. We live in a world that profits from our distraction, that fills every available moment with content, opinion, and stimulation. To choose stillness, regularly, deliberately, as a practice rather than an accident, is to push back against all of that. And what you gain in return is access to yourself.
What Simplicity Actually Makes Room For
I want to end with this, because I think it matters.
Simplicity is not an end in itself. A cleared shelf is not the point. A less crowded diary is not the point. The point is what becomes possible when the clutter, outer and inner, is no longer taking up the available space.
For me it was meaning, writing, and a journey I am still on. For you it will be something only the silence can reveal. But it is there. And you are, in all likelihood, more ready to hear it than you think.
If you are at the point of wanting to start over but are not quite sure where to begin, my guide It's Not Too Late: A Practical Guide to Starting Over After 50 was written exactly for that moment. It draws on everything I have learned, from my own experience and from the many people I have worked with, about what it actually takes to begin again. You can find it here.
The voice of authenticity is there. It has always been there.
Simplicity is simply how we learn to hear it.
