Simplify Your Life’s Weblog

In revisiting my simplicity reading, I’ve been inspired to suggest a movement.  We’ve all heard the saying “keeping up with the Joneses” and we are all well aware of the trouble it has caused our society with unbelievable debt.  My suggestion is a movement about “Keeping Up With The ‘OTHER’ Joneses.” 

The Joneses I would like to compare notes with are the ones who believe in making deliberate choices and living a mindful life.  Maybe this is what they “look” like:

• Making simple life choices in order to spend their money on what really means something to them.
• Having less debt because of their desire to live a life with a focus on personal connections with their loved ones rather than having to work as much as possible to try and keep ahead of their payments.
• The ones who move through life with confidence that they know exactly what they are working for and towards because they have spent the time with their own thoughts to figure it all out. 

With our money woes playing such a large role in what our life ends up looking like, it is a basic starting point for simplifying our lives - to focus our energies on how we are spending our hard earned money.  Anyone who is familiar with the idea of simplicity knows that it doesn’t mean depriving yourself of the things that you truly enjoy in life.  Rather it means taking a very close look at what your goals are in this area of your life and making sure you are making it happen.  You can say that one of your goals is to retire at the age of 55 however if you do not take the steps to make that happen, it won’t.  Often times just wishing for something doesn’t make it happen …. there must be, at least, a little effort behind it. 

I believe that if we each sat down and wrote down some basic thoughts about where we want life to take us and what we would like to achieve with the money we make throughout our lives, it will naturally make almost every other aspect of our lives more clear.  I’m not suggesting that every person’s goal should be early retirement or even that their goal should be to live a debt-free life.  What I am suggesting is that each person becomes aware of what their goals are and deliberately chooses what their life will look like.  If nothing else, it will offer us peace of mind that what we are doing at the moment is perfectly aligned with our goals.  Who doesn’t enjoy some peace of mind?