Vicki Robin Quotes

If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.

We no longer live life. We consume it.

Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers.

Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.

He who knows he has enough is rich.

Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.

Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of.

How you spend your money is how you vote on what exists in the world

Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.

put your life in service to your values rather than putting your time in service to money.

Once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.

It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances.

We shift from comparing ourselves to others to considering our real needs and desires. We shift from “more” to “enough” and ultimately get more of what money can’t buy. Priceless.

The key is remembering that anything you buy and don’t use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don’t enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet. Any waste of your life energy means more hours lost to the rat race, making a dying. Frugality is the user-friendly and earth-friendly lifestyle.

The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.

training away the money-wasting habits

What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry?

four rules for getting off the diet-go-round: Eat when you’re hungry. Eat exactly what your body wants. Eat each bite consciously. Stop when your body has had enough.1 Very simple. All you have to do is be conscious

We have devalued the price of the things we need most to survive on a daily basis yet overvalued many of the things we can live without.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian

Would've been useful when I was about eight," I said. "I used to have wicked nightmares." I did, too: stupid dreams about being chased by Elmo. A psycho Elmo with eyes like that Chucky doll. I'd wake up screaming and Vicky would come running in and ask what the nightmare was about. I never told her. I was too embarrassed.

1. Start 2. Keep going

The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition.

happiness increases heart health, strengthens the immune system, combats stress, reduces aches and pains, reduces chronic illness, and lengthens our lives.

Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse.

You’ll flatten your debt and develop a natural resistance to spending more than you have for things you don’t want to impress people you don’t like (to paraphrase Robert Quillen).

Passion, pain, what’s at hand—these are doorways to finding a purpose beyond material acquisition.

Instead of leisure being simply “relaxed activity,” it was transformed into an opportunity for increased consumption—even consumption of leisure itself (as in travel and vacations).

Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors’ bedside manner with the ill and dying?

As you take your eyes off the false prize (of more, better, and different stuff), you put them on the real prizes: friends, family, sharing, caring, learning, meeting challenges, intimacy, rest, and being present, connected, and respected. In other words, those best things in life that are free. Like all things natural, building this wealth takes time, attention, patience, and reciprocity (that volleying of giving and receiving that builds relationships).

Did you ever think about that?” Joe would ask. “That you have a relationship with money?” He’d get on his knees, begging money to love him. He’d exhibit mock terror, shrinking from the evil hundred-dollar bill. He’d hold it out like a carrot and run around after it, reaching but never grasping it. “This is what your relationship with money looks like! Think about it. If you were money, would you hang out with you?

It was a quiet revolution. Most downshifters dressed quite a bit like everyone else and lived in ordinary neighborhoods rather than communes or cabins in the woods. Seattle emerged as the nexus of voluntary simplicity as the growing tech industry-Microsoft's headquarters were there-made the city synonymous with the overworked, conspicuously consuming yuppie, while many other residents were still mixed in a lingering recession. The result was perhaps the most deliberate experiment in stopping shopping in modern times: a whole city in which the rejection of consumerism entered the mainstream. For nearly a decade, few aspects of daily life in Seattle were left unchanged by its shadow culture....For a few rare years, the consumer lifestyle was uncooled. 'We were sure in the '90s that we were the up-and-coming lifestyle choice,' Vicki Robin, coauthor of the downshifting classic 'Your Money or Your Life' told me....Then the global economy came roaring back to life, Seattle became better known for billionaires than plain living, and downshifting faded.

One day a young girl watched her mother prepare a ham for baking. At one point the daughter asked, “Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?” “Well, because my mother always did,” said the mother. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Grandma.” So they went to Grandma’s and asked her, “Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “My mother always did it,” said Grandma. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Great-grandma.” So off they went to Great-grandma’s. “Great-grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “Well,” Great-grandma said, “the pan was too small.” Just as we can get caught in outmoded habit-patterns passed down through generations, we can also get trapped by our habitual thinking just as much as—and just as erroneously as—people who maintained until recently that the earth was visibly and verifiably flat. We also get stuck in unconscious and invisible boxes that limit our ability to think in new ways.

is a way to approach life so that when asked, “Your money or your life?” you say, “I’ll take both, thank you.

Consider the average worker in almost any urban industrialized city. The alarm rings at six forty-five and our workingman or -woman is up and at it. Check the phone. Shower. Dress in the professional uniform—suits for some, coveralls for others, scrubs for the medical professionals, jeans and T-shirts for construction workers. Breakfast, if there’s time. Grab commuter mug and briefcase (or lunch box). Hop in the car for the daily punishment called rush hour or get on a bus or train packed crushingly tight. On the job from nine to five (or longer). Deal with the boss. Deal with the coworker sent by the devil to rub you the wrong way. Deal with suppliers. Deal with clients/customers/patients. E-mails pile up. Act busy. Scroll through social media feeds. Hide mistakes. Smile when handed impossible deadlines. Give a sigh of relief when the ax known as “restructuring” or “downsizing”—or just plain getting laid off—falls on other heads. Shoulder the added workload. Watch the clock. Argue with your conscience but agree with the boss. Smile again. Five o’clock. Back in the car or on the bus or train for the evening commute. Home. Act human with your partner, kids, or roommates. Cook. Post a picture of your dinner online. Eat. Watch an episode of your favorite show. Answer one last e-mail. Bed. Eight hours of blessed oblivion—if we’re lucky.

As civilized and advanced as we may have become, we still depend on breathable air, potable water, and fertile soil for our daily existence.

If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough. In an environment of more is better, “enough” is like the horizon—always receding. You lose the ability to identify that point of sufficiency at which you can choose to stop. This is a psychological cul-de-sac, an invisible catch-22 of the consumer myth of more. If more is better, then what I have is not enough.

But while the online education business has a very low bar entry—anyone can piece together a few web services and, voilà, have paying students—success is not a guarantee.

You want more money so that you can have more freedom to be yourself without worrying about the money. Likewise, you don’t want more money to boost your self-esteem. You want more money as an expression of your self-esteem, of valuing your life energy.

To be successful, cultivate positive attitudes of self-respect, pride in your contribution to your workplace, dedication to your job, cooperation with your employers and coworkers, desire to do the job right, personal integrity, responsibility, and accountability—and do it just because you value your life energy.

karoshi (death by overwork).

National Opinion Research Center surveys reveal that the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as “very happy” has been steadily declining since the late 1950s.

So what if you’ve been blowing every paycheck on “rewarding” yourself for surviving another week?

Values are the chosen limits that allow our lives to deepen rather than dissipate.

Everything in the community of life gives back 100 percent - except the humans.

Learn to choose quality of life over standard of living.

The bottom line is that we think we work to pay the bills—but we spend more than we make on more than we need, which sends us back to work to get the money to spend to get more stuff—that sends us back to work again!

Along with racism and sexism, our society has a hidden hierarchy based on what you do for money.

CHECKLIST Statement of earnings from Social Security Income tax returns Checkbook records Old and current statements Gifts Winnings Loans Capital gains Illegal sources Contract labor not reported to the IRS (tips, babysitting, errands)

More is better" turns out to be a formula for dissatisfaction. If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.

Who Is This Book For? This program works for anyone who earns or spends money—not because anyone can be rich, but because everyone can discover for themselves how much is enough . . . and have that. It helps you transform your relationship with money—and we all have one. In fact, “enough” is the radical promise of Your Money or Your Life.

To be frugal means to have a high joy-to-stuff ratio. If you get one unit of joy for each material possession, that’s frugal. But if you need ten possessions to even begin registering on the joy meter, you’re missing the point of being alive.

Endless desire is one of the pitfalls of human nature, and one of the first things you need to cure if you want to get ahead more quickly.

In fact, we now meet most of our needs, wants, and desires through money. We buy everything from hope to happiness. We no longer live life. We consume it.

Create a large Wall (or Online) Chart plotting the total monthly income and total monthly expenses from your Monthly Tabulation. Put it where you will see it every day.

No matter how much you have, that voice of “more would be better” drives you to make acquisition the name of your game. Greed is one of the many strings in the human heart, and it can be pro-survival, but unchecked by a sense of fairness, balance, and love, it can gut our capacity for joy.

human happiness buttons that can be pressed—the same basic factors such as friendship, health, community, overcoming challenges with your own ingenuity, and feeling in control of your life. These work for everyone. At the same time, most of us are tempted by the ideas of convenience, status, and luxury, and buying ourselves treats to satisfy these temptations. And we’re really good at justifying some of these trinkets as our true passions.

People in industrialized nations used to be called “citizens.” Now we are “consumers”—which means (according to the dictionary definition of “consume”) people who “use up,” “waste,” “destroy,” and “squander.

For so many people, the stronger the evidence of failed strategies, the deeper they cling to their ways.

the Social Security Administration has also kept a record.

Vicki Robin, in Your Money or Your Life, writes about people who, instead of making a living at their work, more accurately “make a dying,” or, in some cases, make a killing. The work they’re doing is unfulfilling, perhaps even detrimental to their own or others’ well-being. Or perhaps they’re embarrassed about their work. They hate it. They wish they didn’t have to do it. They pretend that it doesn’t matter, but in truth, their spirit—or someone else’s—is being killed off. Caught up in the chase, they say they are making a living when they are really making a dying or a killing, but they don’t see it, or can’t admit it.

sustainably produced. A less obvious suggestion includes creating a “price book.” Kept by thrifty housewives for decades and made famous by Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette,10 a price book enables you to recognize quickly the cheapest

Getting Away As your handling of money gets clearer and your life becomes more satisfying, you will have less of a need to “vacate.” Consider

Marketing theory says that people are driven by fear, by the promise of exclusivity, by guilt and greed, and by the need for approval. Advertising technology, armed with market research and sophisticated psychology, aims to throw us off balance emotionally—and then promises to resolve our discomfort with a product.

So much dissatisfaction comes from focusing on what we don’t have that the simple exercise of acknowledging and valuing what we do have can transform our outlook.

Once you catch on to what clutter is, you’ll find it everywhere. Isn’t meaningless activity a form of clutter? How many of the power lunches, cocktail parties, social events, and long evenings glued to your screens have been clutter—activities that add nothing positive to your life? What about disorganized days full of busyness with no sense of accomplishment?

What's needed isn't change; it is transformation. Change seeks different solutions to intractable problems. Transformation asks different questions so that we can see the problems in a new light.

The push for full employment, along with the growth of advertising, has created a populace increasingly oriented toward work and toward earning more money in order to consume more resources.

Work Takes On New Meaning In addition, according to Hunnicutt, during the last half century we’ve begun to lose the fabric of family, culture, and community that give meaning to life outside the workplace. The traditional rituals, the socializing, and the simple pleasure of one another’s company all provided structure for nonwork time, affording people a sense of purpose and belonging. Without this experience of being part of a people and a place, leisure leads more often to loneliness and boredom. Because life outside the workplace has lost vitality and meaning, work has ceased being a means to an end and become an end in itself. Hunnicutt notes: Meaning, justification, purpose, and even salvation were now sought in work, without a necessary reference to any traditional philosophic or theological structure. Men and women were answering the old religious questions in new ways, and the answers were more and more in terms of work, career, occupation, and professions.8 Arlie Hochschild, in her 2001 book, The Time Bind, says that families now have three jobs—work, home, and repair of relationships damaged by ever more time at the office. Even corporations with “family-friendly” policies subtly reward people who spend more time at work (whether they are more productive or not). Some offices are even getting more comfortable, while homes are more hectic, inducing a guilty desire to spend more time working because it’s more restful!9 The final piece of the puzzle snaps into place when we look at the shift in the religious attitude toward work that came with the rise of the Protestant ethic. Before that time, work was profane and religion was sacred. Afterward, work was seen as the arena where you worked out your salvation—and the evidence of a successful religious life was a successful financial life. So here we are in the twenty-first century. Our paid employment has taken on myriad roles. Our jobs now serve the function that traditionally belonged to religion: They are the place where we seek answers to the perennial questions “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” and “What’s it all for?” They also serve the function of families, giving answers to the questions “Who are my people?” and “Where do I belong?

If you remember that there is no single act of greatness, just a series of small acts done with great passion or great love p125

Your dreams, values, memories, and stories make for endlessly interesting conversations. If you hear a dream or goal you like from someone else, steal it! p135

Instead of a dark box billionaire, you are probably hoping to become a lighthearted, productive, free person who just happens to never have to worry about money again.

Just as we can get caught in outmoded habit-patterns passed down through generations, we can also get trapped by our habitual thinking just as much as—and just as erroneously as—people who maintained until recently that the earth was visibly and verifiably flat. We also get stuck in unconscious and invisible boxes that limit our ability to think in new ways.

Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for. We

Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.

the new consumerism promoted all the deadly sins (lust, covetousness, gluttony, pride, envy) except perhaps anger and sloth.

To let go of clutter, then, is not dearth (lack); it’s lightening up and opening up space for something new to happen

But hey, what’s another $20,000 when I have a full-time job?

A 2015 US Federal Reserve Board report found that 47 percent of Americans would have to borrow money or sell something to cover a $400 emergency expense.

Having more is an endless horizon, no matter how much you have.

DID WE WIN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

Post–Industrial Revolution, especially post–information and tech revolutions, we learn to spend most of our time selling one small slice of our talents to pay for everything else we need.

What ideas—practical to wild—do you have about how you’d pay off all your debt?

Find out how much money you have earned in your lifetime—the sum total of your gross income, from the first penny you ever earned to your most

Statement of earnings from Social Security

If you were money, would you hang out with you?

By late 2017, consumer debt had topped $3.7 trillion, more than double the total at the end of 2000. That’s more than $11,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The world needs you to show up and follow your dreams.

Not satisfied to just learn the ropes, he analyzed the game,

What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry? I

Government institutions such as the progressive income tax and the GI Bill fostered a growing middle class and a sense of social cohesion.

meaning, creativity, flexibility, and a sort of rapid prototyping not just of jobs but of entire careers.

how much would it take to make you happy,” almost everyone, in every income bracket, said: 50 percent more than I have now. When asked to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 5, there was no significant difference between the top and bottom earners. You could hear a pin drop as people realized that the person in the row ahead of them probably had the “more” they thought would make them happy—and it made no difference.

Where people work less they buy more . . . business is the exchange of goods. Goods are bought only as they meet needs. Needs are filled only as they are felt. They make themselves felt largely in the leisure hours.

The Hoover Commission agreed. Leisure was not, in fact, an excuse to relax. It was a hole to fill up with more wants (which, in turn, required more work to pay for them). Somehow the consumer solution satisfied both the industrial hedonists hell-bent on achieving a material paradise and the puritans who feared that unoccupied leisure would lead to sin. In fact, the new consumerism promoted all the deadly sins (lust, covetousness, gluttony, pride, envy) except perhaps anger and sloth.

We hit a fulfillment ceiling and never recognized that the formula of money = fulfillment not only had stopped working but had started to work against us. No matter how much we bought, the fulfillment curve kept heading down.

As people and as a planet we suffer from upward mobility and downward nobility.

Truly maximizing their potential, some students do two years of college in high school through the Running Start program.

Some of us just accept debt as a part of adult life and trod on, shackled by consequences we don’t fully understand.

We take our identity and our self-worth from our jobs.