Things and Messes – minimize across the board

Embrace Simplicity - Throw out Anything you don't Need! 

William Morris once famously said: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” In other words, most of us hoard too many dust-ridden items for no good reason. I have been researching Tiny Houses and, to live in one of those, you can only keep the basics.

Michael Guerra's Compact Living: How to Design Small Interior Space, explains the importance of reducing consumption and personal clutter while designing ingenious space saving solutions for small spaces. This is a powerful guide to anyone wishing to live with less debt and more freedom.

Graham Hill, founder of TreeHugger.com, has recently set up LifeEdited, making the idea of simple, responsible living accessible to a much wider reach.

Hill explains: “Since 1950, the average American consumes six times more energy and carries 24 times more personal debt. He uses three times more living space, but still doesn’t have enough room to store his stuff, a fact made clear by a $22B personal storage industry. Despite this excess (or perhaps because of it), we find ourselves no happier than we were 60 years ago. Most of us realize it’s about relationships and experiences – not possessions – that make us happy. Why don’t we design our homes, products and lifestyles accordingly?”

More storage is not the solution

o   Sell, donate or throw away at least one item a day.

o   Think before you buy (do I really need this?)

o   Make a list of everything you nearly bought over the period of a month and work out how much you save.

o   If you have several cars in your household, consider getting rid of one or more and replace with a bicycle... it's healthy and cheap to run.

o   Get rid of your TV... if you still want to watch certain programs, use your computer. It will allow you to be more selective of the information you consume. I don’t have a TV and I don’t miss it either. Try it – you’ll like it!

o   Try apartment living... if your neighbours turn on their heating, you may not need to use yours at all as you benefit from being insulated by others.

o   Digitize your life a little. Scan all of your old pictures sitting in boxes and opt out of paper bank statements, these will open up the storage space for the things you actually need.

o   Eliminate debt. Most people work to pay off the money they never had, for things they don’t really need. Downsize, sell what you don’t need and experience some extra piece of mind.

o   Be conscious of your health. Eat local, fresh food. By supporting your community, you cut your dependence on supermarkets and the weight of carbon intensive food products.

o   Express gratitude everyday. When living simply, you have an opportunity to value the things that really matter in your life. Allow yourself the luxury of a notepad and write down everything that you are grateful for.

o   Most paperwork people file away in box files never gets looked at again. So do yourself a favor and shred paperwork straight away. If it’s important scan it first. And then shred it.

o   Get rid of picture albums. Scan the photos and ditch the pics.

o   Get rid of pinboards. Most of the things are forgotten on them anyway.

o   You can dispose of your landline telecom connection and phone. Try VOIP – a proper Internet phone. You might even  consider replacing even that with a simple redirect to your  smartphone.

o   A lot of kitchen stuff could also go. Like your large multi-functional kitchen mixer that could do all sorts of tasks short of launching a satellite. It probably seemed a good idea at the time you bought it, something to spend money on.  But in practice it is a useless overkill piece of kit which is hardly ever used other than to make the occasional milkshake or pancake.  

o   I actually have clocks in every room and I’m not ready to give them up. I don’t want to have to go to my smart phone to check the time (I rarely wear any of my 20 watches!) Still, your smartphone would do. 

    Also, stop buying gifts that will end up in somebody’s clutter. Most people give presents at Christmas, for example, because they feel like it is expected.

 

The principle behind tiny homes is fascinating. Learning to get by with less stuff  but with a higher quality of life is important.

The internet is full of terrific examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3SwqNzsNwg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0p47D-XIzs

Check out this video,too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XSJ-kI4VVg

4 Keys to Unlocking the Life of Your Dreams

Would you like to live the life of your dreams? Do you feel like you're not living up to your full potential? Do you see other people around you succeeding and you would like to be those people? 

Here are keys to unlocking the life of your dreams. If you follow them, and you apply them, you will see that you are much closer to living the life of your dreams.

People make their own luck. It is a matter of applying specific steps to your life which lead to the result -- the life that you dreamed about!

1. Purpose -- There are far too many people who don't have any idea what it is that they want to do and more importantly don't understand the purpose of what they do. Too many people talk about their occupational objective which is to be a Butcher, a Baker or Software App maker, but they fail to have the more important discussion which is what the purpose of their life is. How is purpose defined? Purpose is "the reason why you are on the planet." If you take the time and the mental energy to sit down and truly figure out what your purpose is, then you will be driven and you will be successful. Why? Every morning when you get up you know why you're doing what you're doing and why.

2. Passion -- how is passion defined? The dictionary defines passion as "pervading spirit, ruling passion, master passion, fullness of heart flow of soul." If you want to live the life of your dreams, is very important that 1) you identify what it is you have a passion for and 2) you try to make your passion the way that you make a living. When you have a passion for what you do, it comes through in how you perform, how you act, how you talk, and people want to associate and do business with you. It makes you unstoppable. As Sheila Graham once said, "you can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy created by the world." (I love this last sentence! )

3. People -- one of the ways of living the life of your dreams is to make sure that you are very careful about who you associate with. There is no question that the quality of your life is in direct correlation to the quality of the people that you spend your time with. This is your life, so be extremely careful about who you spend time with. There are two kinds of people in the world -- there are positive people and there are our negative people. Negative people are energy sucking vampires and if you want to live the life of your dreams you must stay away from their negative energy sucking life force because they will tear you down, and drag you down with them, down into the abyss. When you do the opposite by being with happy, optimistic and upbeat people, those people will encourage you, motivate you, inspire you and help you. Consciously select who you are going to spend time with and eliminate people who will not help you achieve your dreams. That sounds a little bit cold, but this is your life and there's no question that you need to be around people who are life builders and not life destroyers.

4. Productivity -- If you want to live the life of your dreams you have to invest the hard work. You have to get stuff done to make sure that it's going to happen. People who are successful are also extremely diligent about how they spend their time and what they need to do in order to be productive. Follow some sort of time management system, and you learn how to make your personal and professional life as productive as possible. If you want to live the life of your dreams, it is going to take a lot of hard work, but you need to make sure that the work you're doing is the most productive work which is going to lead you to the result that you're looking for. Make a list of goals for the year, and you make a list each day of what you need to get done, and prioritize which things are most important and which things are least important.

People that live the life of their dreams focus on these four keys.

Your life is in your hands, and because we are the only species that has the ability to change our life through conscious thought, you have an incredible ability, brainpower, and you live in an era where resources are available at the tip of your fingertips; easy to get, easy to find, and inexpensive. Decide that you going to live the life dreams, and starting right now make a list of how you're going to go about taking your first step.

It's all up to you, at the end of your days, when you're sitting on the porch in the sun, Be able to say that yes -- you have no regrets, you truly lived the life of your dreams.

Source: Shawn Doyle  (Huffington Post)

Dabbling at Life's Offerings

Upsize Your Life by Dabbling at Life’s Offerings

Some adults, in support of forcing their children to stick with an activity, argue that they wish their parents had pushed them to learn an instrument, for instance, and others will say that they are grateful that their parents forced them.

Sometimes, you don’t know if you’ll like something until you give it a try. If it doesn’t “turn out”, at least you know what it was like. I teach piano and cello and about a quarter of my students over the years didn’t really enjoy playing these instruments. Some never touched them outside of the lessons.

Am I for letting them quit? Yes. If they’ve given it a good try and have practiced enough to get past the rudimentary skills and still don’t enjoy doing it, then STOP for heaven’s sake! But they wouldn’t have known about the instruments and the necessary work at all if they hadn’t tried.

Some people dabble at acting while working at a daytime job. Others take writing courses and develop blogs. I teach adults who really enjoy time at the instruments and with me during the lessons. Recently, a lady stopped lessons, feeling very guilty about doing so. She had taken piano for four years and had gotten far enough to play some pieces and, more importantly, try out new pieces on her own. She doesn’t need lessons forever.

It used to be that having a lot of varied interests meant that you are flighty.

Not anymore, according to the founders of Dabble, a Chicago-based startup that offers one-time courses allowing participants to try something new. "In the past, those who dabbled were thought of as scatterbrained, [they] can’t focus," says Erin Hopmann, co-founder and CEO of Dabble, a Chicago-based company that offers one-time courses in everything from pasta making to calligraphy and glassblowing, says dabbling in different interests can stimulate the creative juices, expand your network, and aid in the pursuit of better balance. "Today, it’s seen as beneficial to be knowledgeable in a number of areas." The idea came after Hopmann and fellow co-founder Jessica Lybeck, both lifelong learners, wanted to tap into their interests without a huge time or monetary commitment. "People get caught in the rut of the 9 to 5," Hopmann says. "They don’t want to wait until retirement to enjoy life."

Dabbling is a willingness to be a student, a non-expert, we are observant and develop more understanding for other viewpoints. We re-experience pushing through a challenge, honing and polishing until a slight luster glows through.

Here are some ways dabbling, even for a few hours, can benefit your work:

1) Dabbling can get your creative juices flowing. By getting new information and experience something different, you are more able to think outside the box when you generate ideas. You can experiment with new ways of doing something, which jars unused portions of the brain into use.

2) It makes life even more interesting. When you’re trying something new, you often dive into an area that makes you uncomfortable, which is also a bit hard on your old ego. Dabbling is a willingness to be a student, a non-expert again. Being unsure is unsettling, that’s true. Certainty is nice but ‘same old, same old’ is also boring. Expose yourself to new ideas for a creative stretch. If you are someone who’s spent their entire career in business, you may benefit from taking an art class, where you may connect with other artists and expand your thinking and visual skills through interaction with them. A seemingly narrow topic can open the door to a broad and deep array of interests and explorations.

3) We become observant and develop more understanding for other viewpoints. We could become more tolerant with and attuned to ‘beginners’ in our workplaces. Potential dabblers should take a one-day course in an area outside their comfort zone to get the most out of their experience.

4) Dabbling is cross-training for the brain. Pursuing interests in a variety of subjects stretches the mind and pushes the imagination, causing us to be more creative. Dabbling is simply a way of gathering new information and experimenting with new ways of doing something. It causes you to think differently about everything else that you do, a process which can lead to incredible innovation. The best way to discover something is to take an existing concept in one discipline and apply it to another.

5) We build a stronger brain. Dabbling in diverse interests strengthens neural connections in the brain. Your brain is a muscle, so just as your abdominals get stronger with the more crunches you do, the more you exercise your brain, the better it will perform.

 What have you "always wanted to try"? Just Do It!