Joshua Becker's Blog, page 84

Soulful Simplicity. An Interview with Courtney Carver.

If I recall correctly, I first met Courtney Carver almost seven years. I started Becoming Minimalist back in 2008, she started Be More with Less in 2010. Our first conversation happened over Skype. Almost immediately, we became friends as both our values and passions aligned so significantly.

Since then, I have talked to Courtney countless times. We have shared the same stage multiple times. Our families have dined together. We have shared our blogs and our writing with one other. And we’ve gotten together to talk and catch up on life whenever geography permits. I couldn’t possibly be a bigger fan.

For that reason, when I heard her book, Soulful Simplicity: How Living with Less Can Lead to So Much More would be releasing this Christmas season, I couldn’t wait to share it with each of you. I’ve read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it—even learning more about Courtney’s journey to simplicity than I knew before.

I talked to Courtney last week and asked her to tell us a little more about the book. Here’s the interview:

1. I’d like to start with this question. After blogging for more than seven years, can you tell me why you decided to write a book? After writing on your blog for so long, what does the book format provide?

For starters, the book gave me space to share things I wouldn’t have shared on the blog. The way people read a book is more intimate and personal than scrolling through a blog post on a phone or other device. While I am open and personal on the blog in some posts, the book felt like a better place to share more of my story. The blog isn’t really in any order either. The book has 4 clear sections; making me, making space, making time, and making love. My hope is that this will help people see all of the different angles of simplicity and know that it’s so much more than being more organized.

2. When you wrote Soulful Simplicity, did you have a certain type of reader in mind? Or, maybe I should ask it this way, “Who do you think will benefit most from reading it?”

While I was writing it, I was thinking about people who are busy, overwhelmed, feeling distracted and the people, especially women, who are starting to consider the idea that “enough is enough.” By sharing my health journey, I hope to reach others who may be struggling with their own health crisis. At the core though, I wrote the book for myself, for the person I was when I was struggling with debt, for the person I was when I realized I was drowning in stuff, and the person I was when I was sick and completely burnt out.

3. Is there any portion of this book you are particularly proud to have written?

I don’t know if proud is the right word, but I’m very happy I wrote the section on making love. I adore that section of the book (and it’s really hard to say that about your own writing). For me, simplicity has been my way back to love, so to put that into words was very meaningful.

4. Courtney, Soulful Simplicity is a very vulnerable and authentic book. You are open and honest about your life, both the good and bad—even before the first chapter starts.  Is that the approach to this book you knew you were going to take before starting? Or did the process of writing pull out more vulnerabilities that you imagined going in?

I knew I would get a little vulnerable, but not this vulnerable. Once I started writing though, one thing connected to another and it didn’t feel complete to leave things out.

5. As you share in the book, you embraced simplicity after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis caused you to evaluate what your body needed and what your heart wanted. You write how the lifestyle changes began to impact your life in positive ways. Are there many universal benefits to simplifying life you have seen? That almost anyone who chooses to embrace a soulful-approach to simplicity can expect? Or do you find these benefits vary greatly from one person to another?

While we may each embrace the benefits differently, I think the benefits themselves are similar. Living with less, and figuring out how you want to spend your resources like time, energy, money and emotion provides an open invitation to be more mindful, less stressed, enjoy more clarity, better relationships … and the list goes on and on. It’s up to each of us, though, to accept the invitation.

6. Soulful Simplicity is not a passive-reading book. By that I mean, it actively engages the reader providing them with opportunities throughout to question and evaluate the direction of their own life. Why did you think this was important to include in the book?

We are faced with so much information, so many choices, and have gotten used to reading something and moving on. I wanted to engage people with the opportunity to take immediate action and to close the gap between inspiration and action. It’s been my experience that one small step leads to another and another and that all of those small steps can lead to life changing results.

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Soulful Simplicity: How Living with Less Can Lead to So Much More will be released on Tuesday, December 26. But it is available now for pre-order on Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere.

Here’s the endorsement I wrote for it: “With humility, honesty and authenticity, Courtney Carver invites each of us to find greater simplicity in life–and provides a practical roadmap for us to find it in our own unique way.”

I hope you’ll take a minute or two to check it out.

Inspiring Simplicity. Weekend Reads.

Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it. It requires a conscious decision because it is a countercultural lifestyle that stands against the culture of overconsumption that surrounds us.

The world we live in is not friendly to the pursuit of minimalism. Its tendencies and relentless advertising campaigns call us to acquire more, better, faster, and newer. The journey of finding simplicity requires consistent inspiration.

For that reason, I hope you will make an effort this weekend to find a quiet moment with a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy some of these hand-picked articles to encourage more simplicity in your life.

If You Own One Thing in the World, Let It Be This | No Sidebar by Kerry Ogden. Minimalism is less about the quantity of items you have than it is the quality of life you create.

Being Debt-Free for the Holidays is a Feeling You Can’t Buy in a Store | The Washington Post* by Michelle Singletary. If someone close to you adores giving gifts and you know he or she may be struggling financially, let the person know you’re good this year and that you don’t want anything.

8 Simple Steps You Can Take To Make Your Lifestyle More Minimalist | This is Insider by Lindsay Mack. Owning less stuff can be daunting at first but it can help you focus on what’s important.

Too Many Toys Are Bad For Children, Study Suggests  | The Telegraph by Sarah Knapton. It’s what parents have suspected all along. Children who have too many toys are more easily distracted, and do not enjoy quality playtime, a new study suggests.

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Because of your support, Simplify appeared on last week’s Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. Thank you.

*Editor’s note: The Washington Post limits the number of free Post articles nonsubscribers can read to 10 per month.

An Introduction to Frugal Hedonism

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Annie Raser-Rowland of The Art of Frugal Hedonism.

If you are reading this blog, it is almost certain that you, like me, live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, in an age of material convenience and luxury unimaginable to 99% of the humans who have come before us.

We should be ecstatic. But most us aren’t. We are clearly doing a Very Poor Job of turning our historically-unprecedented wealth into happiness.

Where did we go wrong? And is there a way to grab the reins back and gallop into the golden meadows of contentment you’d think such a lucky society would be frolicking in?

Answering this question was the motivation behind writing The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More.

Now, before you protest that ‘Frugal Hedonism’ is surely a contradiction in terms, read on.

For most of our species’ time on this planet, we’ve suffered from being too cold, too hungry, and having to work too hard to meet basic needs. We’ve had millennia to become programmed to always consume whatever we can get our hands on—because tougher times could be lurking around the corner. But now we’ve carried that programming into an age where there is so much for us to consume that it is hurting us rather than helping us. Easy mistake to make. Let’s start un-making it.

Even those of us familiar with minimalism can struggle to shake off the mentality encouraged by a million advertising campaigns: That ‘the good life’ and ‘treating yourself’ are achieved by spending, and that consuming less is a sacrifice. Something goodie-two-shoes do for the sake of saving money, or saving the world.

And at first glance it does seem that consuming less requires more effort. Ride a bike instead of driving?! Make a thermos of coffee every morning instead of stopping at Starbucks?!! Pump up the stereo and clean the house with nothing but some old shirts cut into rags, a bucket of water, and your God-given muscles?!!!

Yet, an oversupply of consumables (read: what most of us modern first-worlders consider necessary) actually has a nasty tendency to sneak up behind us and pop out in the form of effort we need to expend. Examples? The effort of going to the gym/weight loss group/doctor because you were oversupplied with cheap foods and labour-saving devices. The effort of taking your whatsit in for repair/finding a replacement part for it/getting it steam-cleaned/syncing it with your other whatsit. Not to mention the effort of going to work to pay for all those services.

A Frugal Hedonist is not sucked in by false convenience, but opts for the more elegant efficiency of a little self-reliance here and there, and a little creativity. Chop up that whopper pumpkin that you grew with a hatchet and make it into enough soup to replace ten takeaway lunches, then hang out your laundry because you’re too thrifty to use a dryer. Walk to the shops instead of driving, and base your holidays around hiking to waterfalls rather than eating at new cafes in different places. Instead of taking your kids (or yourself) to the movies or the mall for entertainment, loll about in the nearest patch of sunny grass for an hour and count how many types of bug you can spot.

Make these kinds of choices for a while, and you’ll find that staying financially and physically healthy starts to take care of itself. And true hedonism requires both kinds of health to bloom.

There is also profound pleasure in the power of acknowledging that you don’t need to get everything you want. Your children don’t need to get everything they want. Previous generations took this for granted, but our age has confused not getting what you want with deprivation. Tap in to the gutsy spirit of your forebears, and get on with enjoying life with an outdated cellphone and mismatched crockery!

Perhaps the most brilliant side-effect of restricting our consumption is that it keeps us alive to pleasure. Setting ‘lean against luscious’ is one of the key mantras of a Frugal Hedonist. Getting into a steaming hot shower feels eight times more delicious if you’ve just cycled home through a rain storm than if you drove there in a heated car. Scoring an amazing cashmere sweater from a thrift store is much more exciting if you don’t have a thicket of impulse buys looming guiltily at you from an overcrowded wardrobe. Buying a fresh mango from a street stall to eat messily on a summer’s afternoon park bench can only be as succulent to someone who doesn’t grab a chocolate bar every time they go through a supermarket checkout.

A Frugal Hedonist declares that it’s ridiculous to suffer from the living being too good, and looks for the sweet spot. She accepts that we are pleasure-seeking animals, but refuses to accept that decadence can only be achieved by spending money. He keeps himself financially free enough to do what he really loves by ongoingly questioning the ‘comfort and convenience’ spending that our society has convinced us is normal.

Let’s stop denying ourselves the full benefits of a materially-modest, sensually indulgent lifestyle. Let’s get Frugally Hedonistic.

***

Artist turned permaculturalist, forager, and writer, Annie is the co-author of The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More and The Weed Forager’s Handbook. I was introduced to her phrase, “Frugal Hedonist” a few months ago and immediately asked her to explain more. You can find more about Annie on her website.

Before You Buy Your Kids A Bunch of Toys for Christmas, Read This:

Did you know too many toys in a play environment can have adverse effects on children?

I have written previously on this topic, based on research from 1999. But a new study, being released early next year, confirms the original findings and continues to expand on its conclusions.

Researchers from the University of Toledo have just published a study in The Journal of Infant Behavior and Development called, “The Influence of the Number of Toys in the Environment on Toddler’s Play.” The research is important.

According to their study, young children who play in environments with fewer toys tend to display sustained levels of attention, increased imagination, perception, cognition, and motor coordination.

In their words, “fewer toys may allow for deeper, sophisticated play, because of the opportunity to become creative with each object in the environment.” Too many toys, on the other hand, act as a distraction to focused play.

The researchers point out why this finding is so important. Through play, children learn to interpret the world around them, enhancing their development. As cognitive, language, and motor skills develop, these skills form the foundation for more age-appropriate tasks in the future.

In their study, children were provided extended play time in environments that contained four toys, and environments that contained sixteen toys.

As you might expect, children who were placed in the environment with only four toys showed a significant difference in quality of play: sustained attention, increased imagination, and increased exploration resulting in improved coordination, pretending, problem-solving, and learning.

These are important truths for us as parents to consider—but also for us as guardians, grandparents, caretakers, teachers, and childcare professionals.

The number of toys in our homes matter. Too many toys in one environment often act as a distraction to the various stages of development we hope they encourage within our children.

In the United States, toy sales amount to $24 billion annually—$3.1 billion from infant and preschool toys alone. The U.S. represents 3.1% of the world’s children, but 40% of the toy market. The typical 10-year old in Great Britain owns 238 toys and the average child in the US receives 70 new toys annually!

Those statistics stand in sharp contrast to the study above. Remember, children placed in environments with only 16 toys displayed significant levels of distraction keeping them from quality, focused play… now, imagine the impact that hundreds of toys in our homes may be having on our kids.

I’m not in the business of making specific recommendations on how many toys is the correct number for your children. That’s not what I do—no matter how often I am asked to do so. My goal, only, is to raise the level of awareness and observation of the burden that excess possessions may be having on our lives—or in this case, the lives of our children.

You, as parents, will ultimately decide what is the right number of toys for your kids. I just want to encourage more intentionality around the conversations we are having about it.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy any gifts for your kids this holiday season. But I am saying we should work hard to create play environments for our children that encourage healthy development. And sometimes, that means less toys rather than more.

Before buying your kids a whole bunch of toys this Christmas, ask yourself if that’s really the best you can give them this year.

The White Envelope

As told by Nancy W. Gavin.

It’s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past ten years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas–oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it–overspending… the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma—the gifts given in desperation because you couldn’t think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way.

Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended; and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church. These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.

As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler’s ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford.

Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn’t acknowledge defeat.

Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, “I wish just one of them could have won,” he said. “They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.”

Mike loved kids – all kids – and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse. That’s when the idea for his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church.

On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition–one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.

The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn’t end there.

You see, we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.

Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing to take down the envelope.

Mike’s spirit, like the Christmas spirit will always be with us.

***

This story was originally published in the December 14, 1982 issue of Woman’s Day magazine by Nancy W. Gavin. It was the first place winner out of thousands of entries in the magazine’s “My Most Moving Holiday Tradition” contest in which readers were asked to share their favorite holiday tradition and the story behind it.

The story inspired a family from Atlanta, Georgia to start The White Envelope Project and Giving101, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating youth about the importance of giving.

Inspiring Simplicity. Weekend Reads.

Never underestimate the importance of removing stuff you don’t need.

Encouragement provides us with motivation to persevere. It invites us to dream dreams of significance for our lives. And it begs us to work diligently with optimism and promise.

Overcoming the pull of consumerism is a difficult challenge regardless of our stage in life. Simplicity requires encouragement. To that end, I hope you will find motivation in these articles below.

Each post was intentionality chosen to inspire simplicity in your life. For maximum effect, find a quiet moment this weekend and enjoy them with a fresh cup of coffee or tea.

Why You Shouldn’t Give Gifts To Adults | USA Today by N’dea Yancey-Bragg. Eschewing gift-giving doesn’t make you a Grinch, some say — it might make you more of a savvy Santa. Here are reasons not to buy gifts and what to do instead.

Our Family Of 4 Downsized To A 200-Square-Foot Home | Scary Mommy by Brynn Burger. Tiny living has given us permission to say yes to what matters to us and to say no to what we just no longer have space for anymore.

An alarming number of shoppers are still paying off debt from last Christmas | CNBC by Emmie Martin. Create a budget this holiday season. And then stick to it.

The White Envelope | Becoming Minimalist by Nancy W. Gavin. Holiday inspiration for your reading pleasure.

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Issue 003: Stress and Overwhelm | Simplify Magazine. The most recent issue of Simplify Magazine focuses specifically on healthy responses to stress and overwhelm in our lives. As an added bonus, for the month of December, the magazine is offering a “Buy One, Gift One” lifetime subscription for only $20. Buy one lifetime subscription for yourself, and receive one complimentary subscription you can give to a friend or family member. It’s our special way of celebrating the holiday season.

The Burdens We Already Carry

I was once told by a mentor, “Each of us are living in the midst of a trial, have just emerged from one, or are heading toward another.”

It is phrasing similar to another oft-quoted truth, “Be kind to everyone you meet. You never know what battle they are fighting.”

There is truth in this statement. But it is particularly enhanced during the holiday season when loss, of every kind, is magnified.

So be kind to one another out there.

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But I want to approach this conversation from a slightly different angle. With all the weight and burden that each of us already carry in life, why would we ever choose to intentionally carry more?

Just consider all the things that weigh down our hearts and lives: death, loss, illness, worry, politics, financial hardships, grief, guilt, marital tension, traumatic events. Each a weight that we carry on our shoulders.

Many of these burdens are inevitable and entirely outside our realm of control. Regardless of their origin, we carry them—each of us, on a daily basis.

No wonder, in a recent survey when children were asked, “If you were granted one wish about your parents, what would it be?” The kids’ number one wish was that their parents were less tired and less stressed.

Life is not easy. It never has been and was never promised to be. And in our new society defined by instantaneous social sharing, not only do we carry the weight of our own trials, we also carry the weight of others.

A friend of mine, on the other side of the country, was rushed to a hospital Thanksgiving evening. Through text and social media, I was alerted to it almost instantly. A tragedy, on the other side of the country, involving a family not my own. And yet, a sadness… a weight… was felt in our home.

Life is hard. Why would we ever choose to make it more difficult?

But it seems to me that many of us choose to do that very thing simply by carrying excess possessions in our homes and lives.

Perhaps Randy Alcorn said it best, “Every increased possession adds increased anxiety onto our lives.”

Excess possessions take up residence in our homes and in our minds. They require care, maintenance, and attention. Every item we own must be handled and at some point, discarded—whether by ourselves or by a loved one. They add obligation, responsibility, weight.

Clutter is a contributing factor to the level of stress in our lives. For example, 1) Researchers at UCLA discovered a link between high levels of stress hormones and a high density of household objects; 2) Princeton scientists discovered that a cluttered environment limits our ability to focus; and 3) Psychology Today reinforced these studies back in March 2012, citing eight specific reasons how clutter contributes to higher levels of stress in our bodies.

With all the weight and burden that each of us already carry in life, why would we ever choose to intentionally carry more?

Unburden your life in the areas you can control. In so doing, you will find more freedom and capacity to navigate the trials and burdens that are outside of it.

Simplify is Amazon’s Kindle Deal of the Day

“Practical and to the point. Half way through this book we began cleaning out our cars, then our dresser, and now our closets. Very motivating.” —Jane Mayer

Six years ago, we released Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life on the Amazon Kindle.

By the end of the day, it was the #1 Self-Help book on Amazon. The book has sold more than 200,000 copies and has changed countless lives. Even today, it continues to inspire more and more people to live a better life by owning fewer possessions.

Simplify provides the motivation and practical help to encourage others to simplify their home and declutter their possessions. It argues we find more life by owning less. We can discover more time, energy, and finances to pursue our greatest passions. And we begin to experience a greater sense of freedom.

Simplify retells our personal story of finding minimalism and the most important lessons we learned during the journey. It invites its readers to discover a new life-giving truth: There is more joy to be found in owning less than we can ever discover in pursuing more. And it will likely change the way you view possessions forever.

I am pleased to announce Amazon has selected the book as its Kindle Deal of the Day for Cyber Monday, 2017.

That means, today only, you can purchase our best-selling book, Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life for only $0.99. I think you will really enjoy it.

Reflections on Black Friday Shopping

A blank page.

Every Black Friday, I wake up early to write. It’s tradition for me now. Here are some of the articles I have written on Black Friday morning:

35 Gifts Your Children Will Never Forget
Holiday Shopping. We Can Do Better.
All the Things You Don’t Need for a Perfect Holiday

Sitting down to write on Black Friday is now one of my favorite holiday traditions.

I never begin the day with an agenda and I have no predetermined topic in mind. Yesterday was Thanksgiving in America—a day for family and gratitude. The juxtaposition of Thanksgiving on Thursday and Black Friday immediately following speaks volumes about our culture. And I try to let the morning quietly speak to me.

So here I sit, with nothing but a blank page in front of me.

My writing tradition stems from my previous ritual of getting up early on Black Friday for shopping. I used to thoroughly enjoy the hunt—thumbing through Black Friday ads on Thanksgiving morning, mapping out stores and deals later that evening. I don’t ever recall getting up early on Black Friday to purchase Christmas gifts for loved ones, only to rush out and purchase something for myself—a television, a computer, a video game system. I had a plan, something I thought I wanted, and an alarm clock to wake me up.

I discovered minimalism in May of 2008. And over the course of the last nine years, my view on Black Friday has changed significantly. Not that purchasing discounted gifts for others is wrong—I’m certainly not against the entire notion of gift giving.

But Black Friday has begun to represent something else in our society. It is now a celebration of unbridled consumerism. Only in America do we wait in line and push past others for sale items one day after giving thanks for everything we already have.

And the things we buy on Black Friday are, almost by definition, things we don’t need. To make matters worse, the cultural expectation of spending during the holiday season is negatively impacting us in significant ways—24% of holiday shoppers say they overspent their holiday budget in 2016 and 27% admit to not making a budget at all.

With that as the backdrop, quietly reflecting and taking time to write on Black Friday has become my ritual. If I can wake up early just to rush out for the purpose of buying something I don’t need, certainly I can wake up early to create something good to bring into the world.

If I can wake up early to consume, surely I can wake up early to create.

And so now, in the quiet hours of the morning while the rest of my family sleeps, I sit here with a cup of coffee staring at a blank computer screen.

An empty page.

An empty canvas on which I can write or create anything I desire.

And on this empty page, I can’t help but notice a metaphor for life.

Many, you see, will rush out this weekend to accumulate more and more physical possessions, filling their lives and their homes with more and more stuff. They will spend time and energy and money to accumulate things they don’t need. In so doing, they will write on the pages of their lives—a larger television, a new Amazon Echo, that stand-up mixer they always wanted, or the newest Barbie Dreamhouse for their child.

But me? I kinda like having a blank page in front of me.

Because a blank page represents possibility. A blank page allows me to write anything I want on it.

For this one day, it means I can cook pancakes for my kids when they wake up, or I can enjoy a cup of coffee with my wife. Because I am not rushing out to buy whatever product my local retailer has decided to discount today, I have time to write, create, and do work that I love. This afternoon, I may read a book or go hiking with my family after warm turkey sandwiches for lunch.

And those are just the opportunities that come to my mind. Who knows what my kids will decide would be fun for us to do today?

But no matter what they choose, I’ll be ready.

Because my Black Friday is an empty page and I can write anything I want on it.

This is what happens when we reject the empty notion of excessive consumerism: Our lives fall back under our own control. We get to write our own story.

We are freed to pursue fulfillment and meaning and happiness wherever we choose.

Choose Holiday Traditions That Serve You

Holidays are holidays and traditions are traditions.

But traditions are not the holiday. And this is an important distinction.

Traditions help us celebrate and honor recurring events in our lives. Whether we are setting aside a day for gratitude or setting aside an entire season to celebrate faith, family, or both. Traditions should draw our attention to the underlying reason for the season.

Traditions should not detract from the season, they should elevate it.

Maybe Rachel Jonat said it best, “We don’t have to continue holiday traditions that leave us broke, overwhelmed, and tired.”

This is an important truth and paradigm-shifting realization. If a tradition is not serving us and enhancing our family’s enjoyment of a holiday, there is no reason to continue it. Traditions that leave us tired, broke, or stressed should be ended.

This may be only a minor point, except it seems many of our most culturally-accepted traditions have become more of a burden than a blessing.

For example:

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans (69%) said they would skip exchanging gifts this holiday season if their friends and family agreed to it.

A majority of those who spend time buying or making gifts (60%) said they would spend more time with friends and family if they didn’t have to worry about gifts.

43% of those who spend money on anything related to the holidays said they feel pressured to spend more than they can afford.

As the holiday season approaches, the pressure to spend spikes. As a result, 24% of holiday shoppers say they overspent their holiday budget in 2016 and 27% admit to not making a budget at all.

During 2016, 63% of Baby Boomers took on debt to finance the holiday season. Other generations took on debt as well, including 58% of Gen-Xers and 40% of Millennials.

But it gets even worse, an alarming number of shoppers are still paying off debt from last Christmas. 24% of Millennials still haven’t paid off credit card debt incurred during the 2016 shopping season, while 16% of Gen-Xers haven’t.

When asked what they enjoy and/or dislike the most about the holidays, Americans’ top three answers about what they like least involve purchases: commercialism/materialism, financial worry, shopping and crowds.

Also, fascinatingly, during the holiday season, people spend less time eating and socializing with friends. The things we enjoy the most are being pushed aside by the things we enjoy the least.

To top it off, 70% of Americans will rush out shopping on days immediately following an entire holiday dedicated to being thankful for all the things we already have.

When I speak of minimalism, I define it as the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it.

This principle should wisely be applied to the holiday traditions and expectations we choose to participate in.

Just because everyone is rushing out to shop on Black Friday, doesn’t mean you need to. You can choose to spend that day differently and create prouder memories with your family.

Just because a percentage of your friends are going into debt to finance their holiday, doesn’t mean you need to. You can choose to celebrate within your means and enter the new year with peace.

Just because your neighbors are stockpiling Christmas presents for their children, doesn’t mean you need to. You can choose a simpler approach to spend more time and money with your kids, rather than on them.

Just because your family has always celebrated Christmas one way, doesn’t mean the expectations can never change. You can be the first to boldly propose something new. And given the fact that 70% of us would gladly skip exchanging gifts if everyone agreed… your family may thank you for bringing up the idea.

I am not anti-holiday. I am pro-holiday.

And I am not anti-tradition. I am pro-tradition.

But traditions should add to our holiday experience, not subtract from it.

Perhaps stately more clearly, I am pro-every tradition that reminds me again of the reason for the season.

We would each be wise to reevaluate the cultural, family, and personal traditions that have become part of our holiday celebration. And choose only those that serve us and add value.