Simplify My Life Quotes

Here’s my point: the solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.

I’d probably long ago have gone seven kinds of crazy, one for each day of the week, if I didn’t simplify my life in every area where I do have some control.

I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.

So much depends on my actions, so I am seeing fewer people, simplifying my life, organizing it so that I am not always on the edge of irritability.

It’s never been hard for me to fall in love, a quality that has yet to simplify one single day of my life.

Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling "betrayals" of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning.

learned that life is as simple or as complicated as you make it. I had chosen to simplify my life to include only the best things: my family, friends, and the mountains.

I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.

I have rooted myself into this quiet place where I don’t need much to get by. I need my visions. I need my books. I need new thoughts and lessons, from older souls, bars, whisky, libraries; different ones in different towns. I need my music. I need my songs. I need the safety of somewhere to rest my head at night, when my eyes get heavy. And I need space. Lots of space. To run, and sing, and change around in any way I please—outer or inner—and I need to love. I need the space to love ideas and thoughts; creations and people—anywhere I can find—and I need the peace of mind to understand it.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

We are all women you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia …’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women. ‘Chloe liked Olivia,’ I read. And then it struck me how immense a change was there. Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature. Cleopatra did not like Octavia. And how completely Antony and Cleopatra would have been altered had she done so! As it is, I thought, letting my mind, I am afraid, wander a little from Life’s Adventure, the whole thing is simplified, conventionalized, if one dared say it, absurdly. Cleopatra’s only feeling about Octavia is one of jealousy. Is she taller than I am? How does she do her hair? The play, perhaps, required no more. But how interesting it would have been if the relationship between the two women had been more complicated. All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. So much has been left out, unattempted. And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. There is an attempt at it in Diana of the Crossways. They are confidantes, of course, in Racine and the Greek tragedies. They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men.

My Angel, My greatest hope is that you never have to read this. Vee knows to give you this letter only if my feather is burned and I’m chained in hell or if Blakely develops a devilcraft prototype strong enough to kill me. When war between our races ignites, I don’t know what will become of our future. When I think about you and our plans. I feel a desperate aching. Never have I wanted things to turn out right as as I do now. Before I leave this world, I need to make certain you know that all my love belongs to you. You are the same to me now as you were before you swore the Changeover Vow. You are mine. Always. I love the strength, courage, and gentleness of your soul. I love your body too. How could someone so sexy and perfect be mine? With you I have purpose-someone to love, cherish and protect. There are secrets in my past that weigh on your mind. You've trusted me enough not to ask about them, and it's your faith that has made me a better man. I don’t want to leave you with anything hidden between us. I told you I was banished from heaven for falling in love with a human girl. The I way I explained it, I risked everything to be with her. I said those words because they simplified my motivations. But they weren't the truth. The truth is I had become disenchanted with the archangels’s shifting goals and wanted to push back against them and their rules. That girl was an excuse to let go of an old way of living and accept a new journey that would eventually lead me to you. I believe in destiny, Angel. I believe every choice I've made has brought me closer to you. I looked for you for a very long time. I may have fallen from heaven but I fell for you. I will do whatever it takes to make sure you win this war. Nephilim will come out on top. You’ll fulfill your vow to the Black Hand and be safe. This is my priority even if the cost is my life. I suspect this will make you angry. It may be hard to forgive me. I promised that we would be together at the end of this and you may resent me for the breaking that vow. I want you to know I did everything to keep my word. As I write this I am going over ever possibility that will see us through this. I hope I find a way. But if this choice I have to make comes down to your or me, I choose you. I always have. All my love, Patch

One of the greatest lessons I learned during these years is that whenever you’re thinking of binging, it’s usually because some part of you or your life feels like it’s lacking—and nothing you drink, eat, or buy can fix it. I know, because I’ve tried it all and none of it worked. Instead, you have to simplify, strip things away, and figure out what’s really going on. Falling into the cycle of wanting more, consuming more, and needing even more won’t help. More was never the answer. The answer, it turned out, was always less.

At some point I realized that I wasn’t organizing my life; I was organizing my clutter.

The question isn’t, “What do I want to get done in the next thirty days?” but, “Who do I want to become in this next season of my life?

I asked myself, “Who would I be if I weren’t busy? What would be left of my life and me after I removed excess stuff from my home and allowed my day to have unscheduled open spaces?

But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.

I felt that days, weeks, months, and years of my life were wasted by the removal of stuff. There were more important things I would rather have been doing. But I continued, and eventually, I felt lighter and freer than I had ever felt in the years of big houses with each room filled to the brim.

Since my house burnt down, I now own a better view Of the rising moon.

I knew then that the fewer items I was acquiring, dusting, packing, moving, and lugging around in life would free up my energy and time to create...

I held on to stuff I didn't need or use because I wanted to hold on to that part of my identity, or my perceived identity. I am writer, a knitter, a doodler, a skier, a hiker, and more. Cool belongings, like fancy skis, seem to represent my personality. But in truth, I hardly ski anymore, so why keep skis? If I accumulate stuff just to prove who I am, or was, it prevents me from doing meaningful things with my life right now, like focusing on health, happiness, and my relationships.

We've lost sight of How simple the task Really is— Hunt. Gather. Live. It's all been overly simplified In a complicated way. Now we're left just looking at each other. What's worse Is when one's sight Is only as far as A cell phone's light— When one's reach Is only as far as A computer screen. Somedays, I could smash it all With my bare hands. This hand held devise Is trying to put my life In a rectangle &The wild Animal Doesn't. Quite. Like. It.

My choice of a lighter lifestyle has brought me a greater sense of well-being. In a world that often seems stressful and chaotic, that’s a feeling I cherish.

My new deliberate and slower pace has created a higher quality in my experiences.

When I own less, fewer things go wrong and need to be fixed. I have more space: openings in my calendar, room in my home, and calm in my heart.

..enseignements qui lui serviraient à l’avenir : Il faut toujours prendre soin de simplifier les enjeux, de faire preuve de souplesse, et de réagir vite. Il ne sert à rien de monter les problèmes en épingle ni de se remplir l’esprit de peurs infondées. En sachant déceler les signes annonciateurs de changement, on se prépare d’autant mieux à d’éventuels bouleversements.

In addition to asking myself if something was a benefit or a burden for me to keep or if it was superfluous, I also questioned if it enriched my life now. If the answer was no, I ditched it.

It was as if he'd suddenly become intimately aware of the fragility of life and how precious time really was. As a result, he made a conscious effort to simplify his life, with the goal of eliminating unnecessary stress. No longer interested in society's definition of success, he began purging his life of material things. Life, he decided, was for living, not for having, and he wanted to experience every moment that he could. At the deepest level, he'd come to understand that life could end at any moment, and it was better to be be happy than busy.

In the process of decluttering things in my life, I was peeling off the layers of my past that no longer mattered to my present life. But as I did that shedding, memories and emotions arose. I sometimes felt sadness as I removed reminders of a failed marriage or the loss of a loved one. I grieved lost dreams and deceased people and pets. If I looked for it, I also experienced gratitude for the good times and the love that once was. Eventually, I felt lighter after I worked my way through a particular emotional zone that exposed remnants of unhealed parts of my life.

Ask each item, "What are you and what do you do?" "How did you come into my life?" "Did I buy you, or were you given to me?" "How often do I use you?" "Would I replace you if you were lost or broken, or would I be relieved to be rid of you?" "Did I ever want you in the first place?" Be honest with your answers–you won't hurt your stuff's feelings

Losing the buffer zone of my parents meant I was next. I had a chance to craft a lighter finale for my future senior years. I didn’t want the final chapters of my life to be about stuff, and I didn’t want to abandon the responsibility of dealing with it myself.

This brief conversation reminded me of my old life: driving everywhere, going to a job I hated, and not spending enough time outside. I was so “busy” then,

Excerpts from Life, Simplified can be found on my website.

My grandparents taught me that living a simple life isn’t about self-deprivation. Instead, it’s about giving yourself the time, freedom, and money to pursue your dreams.

My clearing has allowed me to rediscover things I stopped seeing and put them into a place of prominence.

As I declutter and downsize, I gradually discover more of my essence and my purpose.

you have to simplify, strip things away, and figure out what’s really going on. Falling

When facing reality, we want to see the big picture. To simplify, it’s important to consider all aspects of our experience. The experience of being in the moment centers us, and being centered puts us in the moment. Recognizing perfection requires us to notice where we are at any given moment. If we are in the center, also look to the periphery. Likewise, if we are on the periphery, recognize where the other rings are and where the center is. Achieving balance is the ability to be centered wherever we are. Ideally, we want to increase the size of the center so that it encompasses as many rings as possible.

The primary asset that comes with a small house is freedom. The world gets a lot bigger when you are living small because I can afford to do a lot more things in terms of cash and time. Now the whole world is my living room.

Are you a guy or a girl? I've heard the question all my life. The answer is not so simple, since there are no pronouns in the English language as complex as I am, and I do not want to simplify myself in order to neatly fit one or the other.

I have anecdotal evidence in my business that MBAs tend to blow up in financial markets, as they are trained to simplify matters a couple of steps beyond their requirement. (I beg the MBA reader not to take offense; I am myself the unhappy holder of the degree.)

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Knowing your purpose simplifies your life. It defines what you do and what you don’t do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential and which aren’t. You simply ask, “Does this activity help me fulfill one of God’s purposes for my life?

That look—the one she gave me—was bigger and better than anything in the whole fucking galaxy. With one single look, she simplified my existence and the meaning of my life to a singular purpose: spend every day working to earn that look from her. And if I could do that, I’d die a happy man.

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery.

Dear Valentine, The solution to my odd problem is simplified to equal one person, you. You are always positive. With you, my semi-circle is complete. My feelings for you are always increasing, like the digits of Pi. It never ends. You fill the hole in the center of my heart. No distance can keep us apart. Love,

167 It’s one of those days when the monotony of everything oppresses me like being thrown into jail. The monotony of everything is merely the monotony of myself, however. Each face, even if seen just yesterday, is different today, because today isn’t yesterday. Each day is the day it is, and there was never another one like it in the world. Only our soul makes the identification – a genuinely felt but erroneous identification – by which everything becomes similar and simplified. The world is a set of distinct things with varied edges, but if we’re near-sighted, it’s a continual and indecipherable fog. I feel like fleeing. Like fleeing from what I know, fleeing from what’s mine, fleeing from what I love. I want to depart, not for impossible Indias or for the great islands south of everything, but for any place at all – village or wilderness – that isn’t this place. I want to stop seeing these unchanging faces, this routine, these days. I want to rest, far removed, from my inveterate feigning. I want to feel sleep come to me as life, not as rest. A cabin on the seashore or even a cave in a rocky mountainside could give me this, but my will, unfortunately, cannot. Slavery is the law of life, and it is the only law, for it must be observed: there is no revolt possible, no way to escape it. Some are born slaves, others become slaves, and still others are forced to accept slavery. Our faint-hearted love of freedom – which, if we had it, we would all reject, unable to get used to it – is proof of how ingrained our slavery is. I myself, having just said that I’d like a cabin or a cave where I could be free from the monotony of everything, which is the monotony of me – would I dare set out for this cabin or cave, knowing from experience that the monotony, since it stems from me, will always be with me? I myself, suffocating from where I am and because I am – where would I breathe easier, if the sickness is in my lungs rather than in the things that surround me? I myself, who long for pure sunlight and open country, for the ocean in plain view and the unbroken horizon – could I get used to my new bed, the food, not having to descend eight flights of stairs to the street, not entering the tobacco shop on the corner, not saying good-morning to the barber standing outside his shop? Everything that surrounds us becomes part of us, infiltrating our physical sensations and our feeling of life, and like spittle of the great Spider it subtly binds us to whatever is close, tucking us into a soft bed of slow death which is rocked by the wind. Everything is us, and we are everything, but what good is this, if everything is nothing? A ray of sunlight, a cloud whose shadow tells us it is passing, a breeze that rises, the silence that follows when it ceases, one or another face, a few voices, the incidental laughter of the girls who are talking, and then night with the meaningless, fractured hieroglyphs of the stars.

Simplifying your life can be more than just removing physical belongings. If minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things that I most value, it is also about deciding what is most important in my life and removing the things that distract me from it. It is about removing the urgent for the sake of the important. Plain,

I thought if I knew more my problem would be simplified, and maybe I should complete my formal education. But since I’ve been working for Robey I have reached the conclusion that I couldn’t utilize even ten percent of what I already knew. I’ll give you an example. I read about King Arthur’s Round Table when I was a kid, but what am I ever going to do about it? My heart was touched by sacrifice and pure attempts, so what should I do? Or take the Gospels. How are you supposed to put them to use? Why, they’re not utilizable! And then you go and pile on top of that more advice and information. Anything that just adds information that you can’t use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there’s too much of everything of this kind, that’s come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven’t got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn’t give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spend forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all great experience would only take place within the walls of his being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It’s better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.

This day and age, so many people over-complicate their lives to the point of ludicrousness.  I couldn’t see myself ever going back to my life of over consumption and over indulgence with the ambition to acquire “more.” When you simplify, you learn to be happier with less. It’s a happiness that trumps every other happiness I’ve ever experienced thus far in life.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours… . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

As a psychiatrist, I have learned to tell my patients who are dealing with significant life conflicts to simplify the decision-making process. We have only three options: change it, put up with it, or get out. In most cases one of those three options can be eliminated immediately. Since attraction to someone of the same sex is not going to change, a married man [or woman] is only left with suffering through it or getting out.

Yes, there are moments, particularly in the afternoon, when I go all syncretist, à la Rein-hold. What equilibrium! But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There’s the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.

I imagined that a better world would be less complicated, less involved, and with less need to mass produce doorknobs and lock sets, electric outlets, power cords, frozen chicken wings, packages of steak, rubber bands, and a million little foam earbuds that slip over the broadcasting end of an iPod. I'd stand staring at Jenna's room, the recycling porch, and imagine what my life would be like if I could squeeze all my worldly possessions into a space like that.

popular culture is where we go to talk to and agree with one another; to simplify ourselves; to find our herd. It’s like going to the Automat to buy an emotion. The thrills are cheap and the payoffs predictable and, after a while, the repetition is a bummer. Whereas books are where we go alone to complicate ourselves. Inside this solitude, we take on contours, textures, perspectives. Heightened language levitates the reader. Great art transfigures. And when we go back to it, it’s full of even more surprises. We get older; it gets smarter.

Are there no men present? Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over there the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these—“Chloe liked Olivia . . .” Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women. “Chloe liked Olivia,” I read. And then it struck me how immense a change was there. Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature. Cleopatra did not like Octavia. And how completely Antony and Cleopatra would have been altered had she done sol As it is, I thought, letting my mind, I am afraid, wander a little from Life’s Adventure, the whole thing is simplified, conventionalised, if one dared say it, absurdly. Cleopatra’s only feeling about Octavia is one of jealousy. Is she taller than I am? How does she do her hair? The play, perhaps, required no more. But how interesting it would have been if the relationship between the two women had been more complicated. All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. So much has been left out, unattempted. And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends.

formulas as easy as possible, I’ve simplified my recommendation to just five core probiotic species that are widely available: Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus brevis, Bifidobacterium lactis, and Bifidobacterium longum. Different strains provide different benefits, but these are the ones that will, as we’ve been discussing since the beginning of the book, best support brain health in these ways: • Fortifying the intestinal lining and reducing gut permeability • Reducing LPS, the inflammatory molecule that can be dangerous if it reaches the bloodstream • Increasing BDNF, the brain’s growth hormone • Sustaining an overall balance to crowd out any

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Slowing everything down is a big part of this. Telling my mind and body to stay put with my daughter rather than answering the phone, not reacting to inner impulses to call someone who “needs calling” right in that moment, choosing not to acquire new things on impulse, or even to automatically answer the siren call of magazines or television or movies on the first ring are all ways to simplify one’s life a little. Others are maybe just to sit for an evening and do nothing, or to read a book, or go for a walk alone or with a child or with my wife, to restack the woodpile or look at the moon, or feel the air on my face under the trees, or go to sleep early. I practice saying no to keep my life simple, and I find I never do it enough. It’s an arduous discipline all its own, and well worth the effort. Yet it is also tricky.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

HEALTHY BOUNDARIES Minimalism helps you set healthy boundaries by giving you the clarity to see all the things you’re spinning your wheels on. Resetting boundaries to align with priorities is an ongoing process in a minimalist lifestyle, but it’s not an unwelcome chore. The rewards of more being and less striving encourage me to keep going on this journey. If I don’t prioritize my life, someone or something else will. MORE TIME Keeping more than we need, whether it’s possessions or activities, brings a fog into our daily lives that makes it harder to think clearly. Under the influence of clutter, we may underestimate how much time we’re giving to the less important stuff. When we say, “If I could find the time . . .” we’re really talking about how we choose to use our time. Minimalism helps you see how you’re spending your time and to think more clearly about how you would really like to spend it.

She was listening to a voice, a much loved voice, a voice of authority, which said: simplify your life, travel light, do not become involved with family problems, possessions, or the troubles of others, do not marry, marriage ends truthfulness, live with solitude, solitude is essential if real thinking is to take place. She thought, he will never forgive, me, he will despise me and cast me out, he warned me against the ambiguous Eros, the deceiver, the magician, the sophist, the maker of drugs and poisons. Of course I am in love, yes, this is love, and I am sick with it - but what follows? Do I really believe that I shall give over my life, the whole of my life, which is only just now really beginning to another person? Shall I cease forever to be the cat that walks by herself in the wild lone? What has happened to my soldierly completeness with which I was so content, my satisfaction and my pride?

So, what is my concept of a perfect life? Doing something you love, being in the company of someone you love, while all material needs are satisfied. (Hmmm…sounds almost too simple, yet it does sound like the correct formula for me.) Let’s try to simplify: Enjoyment, Love, Satisfaction. I truly believe that each of these core elements not only apply to our relationship with others and the world around us, but more importantly to our relationship with our self. That is likely one of the keys to personal fulfillment: enjoying the person you are, loving the person you are and being satisfied with the person you are. If you are not, something must change before you start worrying about gaps or missing elements regarding your relationship to the world around you. Too often, people go chasing elusive relationships and opportunities, seeking enjoyment, love and satisfaction without first attending to their relationship with their self. Start with the core, before searching for more.

Obviously, imposing these classifications on determinism, free will, and moral responsibility is wildly simplified. A key simplification is pretending that most people have clean “yes” or “no” answers as to whether these states exist; the absence of clear dichotomies leads to frothy philosophical concepts like partial free will, situational free will, free will in only a subset of us, free will only when it matters or only when it doesn’t. This raises the question of whether the edifice of free-will belief is crumbled by one flagrant, highly consequential exception and, conversely, whether free-will skepticism collapses when the opposite occurs. Focusing on gradations between yes and no is important, since interesting things in the biology of behavior are often on continua. As such, my fairly absolutist stance on these issues puts me way out in left field. Again, my goal isn’t to convince you that there’s no free will; it will suffice if you merely conclude that there’s so much less free will than you thought that you have to change your thinking about some truly important things.

The PEOPLE, SCHOOL, EVERYONE, and EVERYTHING is so FAKE AND GAY.' 'I shrieked, at the top of my voice fingers outspread and frozen in fear, unlike ever before in my young life; being the gentle, sweet, and shy girl that I am.' 'Besides always too timid to have a voice, to stand up for me, and forced not to, by masters.' Amidst my thoughts racing ridiculously, 'I feel that it is all just another way for the 'SOCIETY' to make me feel inferior, they think, they are so 'SUPERIOR' to me, and who I am to them.' 'Nonetheless, every day of my life, I have felt like I have been drowning in a pool, with weights attached to my ankles.' 'Like, of course, there is no way for me to escape the chains that are holding me down.' 'The one and only person, that holds the key to my freedom: WILL NEVER LET ME GO! It's like there is within me, and has been deep inside me!' 'I now live in this small dull town for too damn long. It is an UNSYMPATHETIC, obscure, lonely, totally depressed, and depressing place, for any teenage girl to be, most definitely if you're a girl like me.' 'All these streets surrounding me are covered with filth, and born in the hills of middle western Pennsylvania mentalities of slow-talking and deep heritages, and beliefs, that don't operate me as a soul lost and lingering within the streets and halls.' 'My old town was ultimately left behind when the municipality neighboring made the alterations to the main roads; just to save five minutes of commuting, through this countryside village. Now my town sits on one side of that highway.' 'Just like a dead carcass to the rest of the world, which rushes by. What is sullen about this is that it is a historic town, with some immeasurable old monuments, and landmarks.' 'However, the others I see downright neglect what is here, just like me, it seems. Other than me, no one cares. Yet I care about all the little things.' 'I am so attached to all these trivial things as if they are a part of me. It disheartens me to see anything go away from me.' 'It's a community where the litter blows and bisects the road, like the tumble-wheats of the yore of times past.' 'Furthermore, if you do not look where you are going, you will fall in our trip, in one of the many potholes or heaved up bumps in the pavement, or have an evacuated structure masonry descending on your head.' 'Merely one foolproof way of simplifying the appearance of this ghost town.' 'There are still some reminders of the glory days when you glance around.' 'Like the town clock, that is evaporated black that has chipped enamel; it seems that it is always missing a few light bulbs.' 'The timepiece only has time pointing hands on the one side, and it nevermore shows the right time of day.' 'The same can be assumed for the neon signs on the mom-and-pop shops, which flicker at night as if they're in agonizing PAIN.' 'Why? To me is a question that is asked frequently.' 'It is all over negligence!' 'I get the sense and feeling most of the time, as they must prepare when looking around here at night.' 'The streetlamps do not all work, as they should. The glass in them is cracked.' 'The parking meters are always jammed, or just completely broken off their posts altogether.' 'The same can be said, for the town sign that titles this area. It is not even here anymore, as it should be now moved to the town square or shortage of a park.

As a result of my experience on that summer day as well as similar experiences I’ve seen repeated many times, I have some advice for you: If you’re getting rid of things to simplify your lifestyle, don’t try selling them. It’s not worth the trouble. Selling everything brings extra burden and stress to the minimizing process.

Where we spend the fruit of our hard labor should more than meet our basic need of filling a pantry shelf; it should also reflect our values. Because ultimately, giving someone your business implicitly articulates this message: “Your store satisfies all my needs and I want you to flourish.” We can vote with our pocketbooks by avoiding wasteful packaging and privileging local and organic products.

Felt it: A wool sweater can be felted down to fit a smaller size or to make another useful item. My girlfriend Rachelle taught me that the forearm can be cut to make an extra-small dog sweater (the cuff serves as the sweater collar; simply cut two holes underneath for the legs). It keeps our Chihuahua cozy in the winter.

But the experiment made me ask questions and learn a lot about the process. When we broke a couple of drinking glasses, I had to figure out how best to dispose of them: landfill or recycling? My searches on the Internet did not unanimously answer my questions and leaned toward sending them to the landfill, but I wanted to know for sure. It took visiting two different recycling centers, contacting twenty-one people, and shipping pieces of broken glassware to my glass recycler (tracking him down was not easy) to find out that my drinking glasses were recyclable after all (crystal ones are not, because they melt at a different temperature than most glass). I am not suggesting that you too put your glass in the bin (please first check with your local jurisdiction), but that you realize how complicated the system is, and reflect on the fact that for recycling to be successful, finding answers should be easy.

I have found rotting to be a revelation. The whole process has opened my eyes and helped me understand the simple workings of the natural world. I cannot get over the fact that I can grow an herb on my deck (with compost), feed its stalk to my worms, use their castings to grow more herbs, and use their “compost tea” to boost the growth of my houseplants, which in turn improve our home’s air quality by absorbing pollutants such as formaldehyde and benzene. Their trimmings, along with the dust bunnies that I sweep, will also get composted and benefit the environment. Rotting represents the kind of big closed-loop waste cycle upon which our manufacturing model should have been based from the beginning.

The ammas taught me that the way out of the frenzied pace of our culture involves both external and internal journeys. I simplified possessions and needs. I am committed to owning less, not accumulating more. I let go of all commitments and activities that did not support or fit in with my life goals. Friendships are fewer but deeper and richer. Do we give ourselves permission to say “No”—to self and others? Do we live intentionally, making choices by our values and goals? Do we give away everything we haven’t used in the last six months? I began literally to slow down. I am learning to be more mindful of what I am doing while I am doing it. I am not so scattered, with my mind drifting in so many directions. I am deepening the awareness of God’s presence throughout my day. I stop to breathe, take note of where I am and what I am doing, and notice the Spirit in the midst of my do-

You can't lose me," I whispered. "I'll always be your girl. Even if you're the only one to see me that way." As much as I hoped breaking with the fantasy of humanness would simplify my life, I couldn't help the way they stayed on my mind, these parents who had chosen me, the Professor and Camille, and Ettie, my last and closest friend. And Harvey.

have a small container to collect cork corks, for taking to my grocery store, which upcycles them.

I prefer French canning jars, not because I am French, but because the parts are integral and therefore easy to handle and wash (my favorite brand also uses an all-natural rubber gasket).

The grocery list is dedicated to items available at the grocery store that I visit on a weekly basis and that I have carefully chosen based on its bulk selection, location, and on-premise bakery. When we want to get something from another store, we write it on the errands list. By the time I leave for my weekly shopping, I have typically found alternatives, or simply eliminated the need to buy many items on the list. I also use the errands list to jot down such things as donation drop-offs or “specialty bulk” items.

Give out your contact information only when absolutely necessary. Product warranty cards, for example, are not required but are used to collect data about your consumption habits and target direct mail. When you must provide personal information, write or say: “Do not rent, sell, share, or trade my name or address.

Become a junk mail detective. • Commercial catalogs: Go to CatalogChoice.org (they cancel catalogs for you) or call the catalogs directly. I opted out and I have never been happier with my personal sense of decorating and celebrating. • First-class mail: Do not open the unwanted letter. Its postage includes return service; you can write “Refused—Return to sender” and “Take me off your mailing list” on the front of the unopened envelope. I keep a pen in my mailbox for that specific purpose. • Mail addressed to the previous resident: Fill out a U.S. Postal Service change-of-address card for each previous resident. In lieu of a new address, write: “Moved, no forwarding address.” In the signature area, sign your name and write “Form filled by current resident of home [your name], agent for the above.” Hand the form to your carrier or postal clerk. • For standard/ third-class presorted mail: Do not open those that mention “return service requested,” “forwarding service requested,” “change service requested,” or “address service requested.” These postages also include return service, so here, too, you can write “Refused—Return to sender” and “Take me off your mailing list” on the front of an unopened envelope. Otherwise, open the letter, look for contact info, then call/ email/ write to be taken off the mailing list. These items typically include promotional flyers, brochures, and coupon packs. Make sure to also request that your name or address not be sold, rented, shared, or traded. • Bulk mail: Inexpensive bulk mailing, used for items such as community education catalogs, allows advertisers to mail to all homes in a carrier route. It is not directly addressed to a specific name or address but to “local” or “postal customer,” and is therefore most difficult to stop. A postal supervisor told me that my carrier had to deliver them and that he could take them back when refused, but since the postage does not include return service, the mailman would simply throw the mail away with no further action. The best way to reduce the production of such mailings is to contact the senders directly and convince them to either choose a different type of postage or adopt Internet communication instead. In the case of community-born mailing, one could also persuade his/ her city council to boycott the postage preference. But ideally, the U.S. Postal Service would not even provide this wasteful option.

To pack a healthy lunch, my children follow simple packing guidelines. They combine, and not duplicate, ingredients from each of the following categories. All are available in either loose or unpackaged form, and when possible, we buy organic. In order of importance (i.e. amount), they pick: 1. Grain (favor whole wheat when possible): Baguette, focaccia, buns, bagels, pasta, rice, couscous 2. Vegetable: Lettuce, tomato, pickles, avocado, cucumber, broccoli, carrots, bell pepper, celery, snap peas 3. Protein: Deli cuts, leftover meat or fish, shrimp, eggs, tofu, nuts, nut butters, beans, peas 4. Calcium: Yogurt, cheese, dark leafy greens 5. Fruit: Preferably raw fruit or berries, homemade apple sauce, or dried fruit 6. Optional Snacks: Whole or dried fruit, yogurt, homemade popcorn or cookie, nuts, granola, or any interesting snack from the bulk aisle

Host one or multiple simple “holiday cheer” gatherings. I found that just one afternoon of baking can go a long way. I make large batches of several types of cookies for Scott to share at work and the kids to offer as teachers’ gifts and to host small get-togethers, such as afternoon cocktails with my girlfriends, a coffee hour with my walking group, a mulled-wine evening with the neighbors, and spiced-cider playdates with the kids’ playmates. A minimal effort for maximum impact. No wasted flour there!

Although I do not consider myself a religious person, I recently found that Lent satisfies my spiritual needs and presents an opportunity. It sets aside a forty-day period to test a sustainable idea, or to evaluate a personal attachment to a habit.

In reality, all those lovely boxes, bins, and drawers served no higher purpose than to hide my junk. At some point I realized that I wasn’t organizing my life; I was organizing my clutter.

Crabtree's Parable of the Cards: “We divide the deck into numbered and face cards, and so we divide the types of men. The numbered cards are the underlings, the parasites of the world. When you play a man who is a numbered card, he looks out only for himself with no consciousness that others are in the game with him. If you wish to be kind, you can say these men are the subordinates of the world, but they are parasites all the same. They attach themselves to someone greater, learning if they are young or inexperienced enough, leeching if they are strong or experienced enough to know better but would rather remain weak. They don’t contribute to the world. They only take from it, and if a man remains in this state, he is no better than a sheep. Numbered men are as disposable and interchangeable as the animals they mimic. The face cards are men who have seen the way the world works, who know the only way to survive is to kill or be killed. These men are the cannibals. They drive and lead the parasites, bluffing them into traps and bleeding them when necessary for their own survival or for that of the parasites they have chosen to protect. Depending on what level of face card they are, they bleed them to serve those they owe allegiance to. This is the way of the world. You may find it harsh or overly simplified. But in the end you will find these are your choices. You may be a face card, or you may be a number. The power to choose is yours. Aces are unique because they can be both a face card and a numbered card. But no matter what they are, they will always be the lowest of the low or the highest of the high—and because of this, they will always be alone. An ace does not evolve, but rather he constantly explores his dual nature. When he leads, he is acutely aware of his underlings, unable to use them with the casualness that his fellow face cards will do. When he is brought low, he is equally aware of the thin veil separating him from where he is supposed to be, and he can’t forget how he and his fellows in servitude should be treated. An ace is seldom at home unless he is with his own kind, and many fall into despair and find themselves wedged quite firmly in the low side of their nature. There are few aces in the world, and so most aces, no matter who they are with, feel alone. And that, my children, is the Parable of the Cards. Take it to heart, because the secret to life lies within it.

Focusing on being kind and helpful is more than just a tiny pleasure; it adds a tremendous amount of joy and meaning to my life.

The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, “How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?” Surprisingly, when you focus on taking action, the vast amount of information out there gets radically streamlined and simplified. There are relatively few things that are actionable and relevant at any given time, which means you have a clear filter for ignoring everything else. Organizing for action gives you a sense of tremendous clarity, because you know that everything you’re keeping actually has a purpose. You know that it aligns with your goals and priorities. Instead of organizing being an obstacle to your productivity, it becomes a contributor to it.

Explaining to the person behind the counter "I don't have a trash can" became my standby tactic.

I carried the list in my head, happy that I had everything written down and could try to think about life in such a simplified way. Maybe life didn’t have to be so complicated after all.

So I lived in their midst, always on the fringes, insignificant, and they spoke freely in my presence. I saw how little regard they had for us, how much they held us in low esteem. They did not know us, and were not really interested in knowing us either. By virtue of their faith, their mission, and their biases, they did not have to: they knew better than us, both what we needed and how we should live. I cannot discount the unparalleled work they did in education and healthcare. I would not have had a formal education had it not been part of their plan. The free dispensary was always full, rolling back childhood diseases in the region. I saw them clean the most putrid wounds with a straight face. Yet, their mission required locals to forfeit ancestral practices, including our indigenous languages, which we were forbidden from using in their presence. The essence of our being in the world, its core tenet, ingrained in us across generations, was being violently questioned. Their work demanded allegiance, utter surrender, from us. I did not realise this then, but these demands threw us off balance, divided us, made us doubt ourselves and weakened us. They birthed a cruel conflict in us, putting our loyalty to the test. We were inhabited by this childish and conflicting desire to please and resist them all at the same time. Our people claimed neither detachment from the world nor dominion over it. We did not have the universe and its mysteries, meant to be conquered, subjugated on one side, and humankind, the mighty owner of it all, on the other. We were the world and the world was us: water, wind, sand, the past, the future, the living, the dead... we were all woven into the fabric of the world. They, however, had appropriated it, simplified it to make it intelligible and malleable. They had invented words and concepts that dismissed our more complex and comprehensive intuitive understanding of reality. There is no denying that, seen through their eyes, conceptualised in their terms, the world was unmistakeably coherent, logical. For those of us who embraced the mysteries of the world, the encounter was a matter of course, and a tragedy. I doubt we will ever fully grasp the exact extent of our distress. Today, I believe Western knowledge is both simple and despotic. There is only one God and he is present in church. Education is found only in textbooks. Art is separate from spirituality, confined to specific spaces. The law applies equally to everyone and all values have a price. The sole measure of success is material. Our paths in life are already charted, marked out, and you can choose to follow... the path assigned to you. A promise of comfort, a ready-made life so enticing it warrants universalisation; a dream no human should be denied. Masters, gurus travel the world to guide lost peoples towards this path of salvation, readily resorting to violence to crush every resistance, driven by the firm conviction that their philosophy is the philosophy and their religion the religion. Perhaps it spread so far and wide due to the active proselytism inherent to the Western vision of the world, or maybe it was so easy to replicate because it was the most simplistic doctrine ever developed by humans—it did a better job of dismissing our diversity and disregarding the complexity of our being. Our material realities would become more bearable, that was the promise. It mattered not that this would devastate nature and leave our inner beings shuddering with anxiety.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

When I say “Christianese,” I am referring to informal, homogenous, and often vacant lingo intended to sound theologically profound. “God just laid it on my heart.” “Our pastor really brings the Word.” “The Bible helps us ‘do life’ together”—that kind of thing. Christianese simplifies the complex, complicates the simple, leans heavily into bumper-stickerisms, and often has the effect of making the speaker sound like they learned English from church marquees. In Christianese, you don’t merely read the Bible, you “spend time in the Word.” You aren’t disconnecting from God, you are “backsliding.” You aren’t sharing time and food with friends, you are “fellowshipping.” Your donation isn’t a gift or tithe, it is a “love offering.” You don’t have a devotional, you have “quiet time.

All things were ready for us at our birth; it is we that have made everything difficult for ourselves, through our disdain for what is easy.” –Seneca, c. 4 BC–65 AD “Philosophy consists in avoiding excess in everything.” –Pythagoras, c. 570 BC–c. 495 BC “It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a bed of straw, than to have a golden couch and a lavish table and be full of trouble.” –Epicurus, c. 341 BC–c. 270 BC “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” –Marcus Aurelius, 121–180 AD “I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.” –Diogenes, c. 412 BC–323 BC “Money, which ever since it began to be regarded with respect, has caused the ruin

Here are fifteen types of questions you should ask: 1. Is this item useful? Can it save me time, energy or money? Does it fulfill a need or purpose? If not, let it go. 2. Do I like it? If not, let it go. 3. Does it make my life easier in some way? If not, let it go. 4. Have I worn it, used it, found pleasure in it or looked at it in the last year? If not, let it go. 5. Does it energize me or drain me? If it drains you, let it go. 6. Is it broken beyond repair or damaged in some way? If so, let it go. 7. Is the information it provides outdated (e.g., old books, magazines, videos, etc.)? If so, let it go. 8. Am I holding on to it out of guilt? If so, let it go. 9. Have I finished using it and see no reason to use it again? If so, let it go. 10. Does it reflect the person I am today or a past version of me? If it reflects the past, let it go. 11. Do I already own something similar? If so, let it go. 12. Will I complete this (e.g., a knitting project, an unfinished book)? If not, let it go. 13. Am I spending too much time weighing the pros and cons? If so, let it go. 14. If I had to downsize to a much smaller house, would this go with me? If not, let it go. 15. Does this have any historical or potential financial value (e.g., an item passed down for several generations)? If not, let it go.

The surrender of all our powers to God greatly simplifies the problem of life. It weakens and cuts short a thousand struggles with the passions of the natural heart.

#11—What if I could only subtract to solve problems? From 2008 to 2009, I began to ask myself, “What if I could only subtract to solve problems?” when advising startups. Instead of answering, “What should we do?” I tried first to hone in on answering, “What should we simplify?” For instance, I always wanted to tighten the conversion fishing net (the percentage of visitors who sign up or buy) before driving a ton of traffic to one of my portfolio companies. One of the first dozen startups I worked with was named Gyminee. It was rebranded Daily Burn, and at the time, they didn’t have enough manpower to do a complete redesign of the site. Adding new elements would’ve been time-consuming, but removing them wasn’t. As a test, we eliminated roughly 70% of the “above the fold” clickable elements on their homepage, focusing on the single most valuable click. Conversions immediately improved 21.1%. That quick-and-dirty test informed later decisions for much more expensive development. The founders, Andy Smith and Stephen Blankenship, made a lot of great decisions, and the company was acquired by IAC in 2010. I’ve since applied this “What if I could only subtract . . . ?” to my life in many areas, and I sometimes rephrase it as “What should I put on my not-to-do list?

Instead of using forceful words like spend, sell, and make money, I’ve switched to more flowing words like invest, offer, and attract. The energy of these words makes me feel like I’m inviting money and success into my life instead of chasing after it.

Here’s what you can ask to put something through the Life Test: Do you love it? Do you need it? Do you want it? Do you have room to store it? Has this item been used in the last year? Does this belong to your fantasy self? Can someone else make better use of it? If you were out shopping today, would you purchase this item? Does this item have sentimental value? Is this a stand-in for a memory? Do you have/need more than one of this item? Will something similar that you have get the job done? Is it broken? Are you actually going to fix it? If so, when? Does this item fit you, your home, and your current lifestyle? Do you have a realistic plan to use this in the near future? Is this the best room for it? How long do you need to keep it? When can you get rid of it? Can you borrow or purchase another one if needed? Can you return it? Can it be digitized? Would you rather have the space that this takes up? If you want to simplify this process, you can ask yourself, “Does this item add value to my life?

The question isn’t, “What do I want to get done in the next thirty days?” but, “Who do I want to become in this next season of my life?” Once we answer that key question, calendars and schedules are terrific tools for helping us accomplish our life goals, both interpersonal and practical. Many

I could not figure out why I wasn’t able to enjoy much of anything in life until God revealed to me I was killing my joy with complication. For years, I prayed God would change the people and circumstances around me when, in reality, He wanted to change me and my approach to life. He wanted me to simplify so, ultimately, He could be glorified.

Fitzgerald to Zelda's DR. Oct. 1932 "Why can't I sell my short stories?" she says. "Because you're not putting yourself in them. Do you think the Post pays me for nothing?" (She wants to make money but she wants to save her good stuff for books so her stories are simply casually observed, unfelt phenomena, while mine are sectiobs, debased, over- simplified, if you like, of my own soul. That is our bread and butter and her health and Scotty's education.) p. 221