Ideas: For a Successful, Less Complicated Life!

Fifteen Things More Important Than Money

Three and a half years ago, I was in a desperate debt situation. My lifestyle was tied desperately to spending far more than I was bringing in – and I was finally paying the consequences.

I had let money become the most important thing in my life. It drove all of my choices and decisions. It chose my career for me. It chose my specific job for me. It chose how I spent my free time – I did expensive things to escape from the debts and the pressure-filled work, usually with a device on my hip that chained me to that job.

I was desperate and unhappy. I was in a prison made of money – and I knew I had to escape it.

Today, I realize something much more compelling. Money is not the most important thing in life. In fact, in a healthy life, money often follows behind many other elements in your life. If you put your energy and time into other things more important than money, money will follow. It will find a way to work.

Here are fifteen things I’ve found that are more important than money.

Experiences Hug someone. Kiss someone. Write someone a letter telling them how you feel. Run (or walk) a marathon. Spend all day making an exquisite meal and eat it by candlelight. Make love to someone. Face the thing you most fear right in the face. The rush you get from experiencing something amazing is one of the best parts of being human, and most of the time the financial cost is minimal.

Wisdom If you think you know the answer, you’re far from wise. Keep learning. Wisdom comes from knowing how little you actually know. Spend some time learning something new, perhaps even becoming skilled at something. You’ll surprise yourself at what you gain, often far beyond the mere knowledge you hoped to attain.

Marriage Accepting another person wholly and intimately into your life is utterly life-changing. Opening up every part of yourself to another person is constantly challenging, but constantly powerful in how it changes you and makes you strive to be a better person.

Friendships The regular companionship and camaraderie of people you care about and share interests with is continually life-affirming. Friendships don’t revolve around the things you have or the activities you can afford – they revolve around people.and shared experiences.

Physical health Health can’t be bought, but it can be helped by the personal choices we make. Exercise. Eating better. Making choices that are less sedentary. Getting involved with activities that get us moving. Practicing proper hygiene. Money pales in comparison to the value of the physical health needed to enjoy life.

How to Make Tough Decision Making Less Confusing!

There will come a point in our lives where we have to make those tough decisions - the ones we turn over and over in our minds on whether or not to go through on. The ones we mull over for weeds and months on end. The ones that give us severe analysis paralysis.

It’s as if we can’t seem to get a firm grip of the whole situation. It all seems so jumbled up that we can’t take a clear COMPLETE analytical look at it. There seems to be too many different moving parts and gears going on.

So how to we make sense of all this and make this whole process of tough decision making way less confusing?

It’s like how we make all things less confusing:

WE SYSTEMIZE.

There’s 5 steps to this process and 3 of them, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of.

The first step is to CLEARLY state the decision so that it’s a yes/no question.

Should I do x?

It shouldn’t be something like a brainstorm question.

It can’t be something like: “What’s a great career to get into?”

It should be something like: “Should I get a career in nursing?”

Then you would assume the next step is to list the pros and cons, but we have to back up here and lay down the facts of the situation FIRST.

Get some background info on your decision. Research all you can on the pertinent information relating to your decision and once you have all that info, THEN you can go to the pros and cons because having that information will come in handy in developing your pros and cons list.

Moreover, without doing your due diligence, you risk “polluting” the pros and cons list with information that isn’t even true.

Really block out everything and try to do the best you can in EACH step of the process.

Really do your due diligence.

When it comes to writing the pro list, really do your best. Think of every pro you can. Don’t hold back.

The same thing with the cons list.

The beauty in all this is SEPARATION.

Before, you’re trying to do this all at once, and that’s why it gets really confusing.

Here, you can give yourself permission to look at the decision from just ONE ANGLE AT A TIME to the fullest of your capabilities.

Effective Affirmations!

Affirmations are great tools that can help you overcome fear, build your confidence, develop an abundance mind-set and more.  The problem is that many people aren’t sure exactly how to write effective affirmations.  Do they always have to be in present tense?  Can they contain “negative” words like can’t, won’t, not, and so on?

There are plenty of differing opinions on the right and wrong ways to write effective affirmations, but the bottom line is that an affirmation can be considered effective if it works for YOU!  The whole point of affirmations is to shift your thoughts and emotions to a more positive place so you feel more confident, happy, secure, abundant, or anything else you’re trying to accomplish.

Take a look at the sample affirmations below for starters and feel free to use them if they resonate with you.  If not, try altering them slightly until they trigger the mind-set and emotional state you’re trying to attain.

Affirmations for Healthy Weight and Body Image:

- Today I love my body fully, deeply and joyfully.
- My body has its own wisdom and I trust that wisdom completely.
- My body is simply a projection of my beliefs about myself.
- I am growing more beautiful and luminous day by day.
- I choose to see the divine perfection in every cell of my body.
- As I love myself, I allow others to love me too.
- Flaws are transformed by love and acceptance.
- Today I choose to honor my beauty, my strength and my uniqueness.
- I love the way I feel when I take good care of myself.
- Today my own well-being is my top priority.

Affirmations for Self-Confidence and Self-Belief:

- Fear is only a feeling; it cannot hold me back.
- I know that I can master anything if I do it enough times.
- Today I am willing to fail in order to succeed.
- I believe that I have the strength to make my dreams come true.
- I’m going to relax and have fun with this, no matter what the outcome may be.
- I’m proud of myself for even daring to try; many people won’t even do that!
- Today I put my full trust in my inner guidance.
- I grow in strength with every forward step I take.
- I release my hesitation and make room for victory!
- With a solid plan and a belief in myself, there’s nothing I can’t do.

On Owning Nothing?

While minimalism strives to own little -- not much more than you need -- what if we followed this to an extreme, just for fun.

What if we owned nothing at all?

I don't mean we have no clothing or shelter or tools, but rather that we abandon the idea of private property. It's a radical idea (though not a new one), but something to think about.

What if we had things we used, but didn't own? What if we used clothing when we needed it, but then when we didn't we gave it to a place that holds them (maybe a clothing library). And the same would apply to any possessions, from computers to tools to televisions to dishes and so on.

What about housing and cars? Car sharing is already being done in some places, and the same could be done with bicycles -- bike libraries all over the place. Mass transit, of course, is another shared solution.

Shared homes are also nothing new, though it's a pretty foreign idea for most of us who are used to the privacy of our own homes. There are many possibilities in this field, however, including but not limited to:

• Housing libraries, where small and medium units could be given to people as needed, and then returned to the pool when people move.
• Housing co-ops, where people share large homes and the responsibilities of managing and maintaining them.

When you abandon the idea of private ownership, a lot of possibilities arise -- limited only by our imaginations.

But why even consider this radical change? A few reasons:

• I like the idea of living very light -- using only what you need, giving back to the community what you don't, and never being burdened by ownership of material things.
• Ownership as it exists is wasteful -- often we hold on to things we don't use, that other people could use, because we bought them and own them. But if we only kept things that we use, and returned them when not in use, with the idea that we could always get them when we needed them, there would be less waste. Less throwing things in landfills as well.
• People who need things -- like clothing and shelter -- would not be denied them.
• There would be a lot less accumulation of wealth into the hands of a few, which seems to me to be a really bad social idea. This creates extreme poverty, crime, and unhappiness. In places where income inequality is relatively low, there is a greater degree of happiness and lower crime levels. (Read this, for example.)