More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 24 - July 2, 2018
Don’t let Facebook fool you. There is one, and only one, accurate relationship status: It’s Complicated. Such is the case for my six-year marriage. Whether someone has been married for decades, is recently single and dating, or is involved in some sort of abstruse polyamorous love triangle, all relationships—friendships, intimate, or otherwise—are inherently complicated. We are human beings, mixed bags of thoughts and emotions and actions, righteous liars and honest cheats, sinners and saints, walking contradictions, both the darkness and the light.
“Maybe. Can I call you tomorrow?” I asked. “Sure, if you’d like, but I’d prefer if you’d just call me Ryan,”
“It turns out that the old cliche is true,” Colin continues. “Our possessions possess us. All the things I owned kept the back of my mind activated. I used to sit around and feel weighed down by all the stuff in my life. I’d worry about everything I had, thinking ‘I’ve got this much, so now I need more—I need to level it out: I have the TV, so I need the DVD player; I have the garage, so I need a nice car to fill it; I have this, so I need that.’ It’s a never-ending cycle, a cold war with yourself.”
Minimalism has allowed me to eliminate the other distractions from my life, things that, when you step back and look at the big picture, just don’t matter as much as we think they do.” “For example?” “Relationships that I clung to without a good reason. Bad habits. Silly activities that took my time and money and energy. Minimalism has helped me identify those things so I can remove them from my life and focus on things I’m passionate about, things I truly care about. Which means I’m able to learn constantly, which is really nice because I never feel stagnant; I never feel bored or like I’m
...more
“I think I have a pretty simple message,” he says. “There is more joy and fulfillment in pursuing less than can be found in pursuing more.”
Progress requires practice and dedication and, to a certain extent, a healthy obsession. Hence, passion is a mixture of love and obsession.
I’ve confused passion with excitement. An issue people rarely talk about these days is what true passion actually feels like. Instead we assume that passion feels like excitement—that passion is inherently exciting—but that assumption is usually wrong. You see, it’s easy to get briefly excited about something—an idea, a project, a potential promotion—and think that means we’re passionate about it too. But this sensation of excitement is different from the type of deep passion that drives and fulfills people long term. Excitement comes and goes; it wanes when times get hard, when the work gets
...more
The reality of my daily grind is that life’s mundane tasks eat up most of my time: Checking email. Monkeying around on the Internet. Watching television. Filling out reports. These activities are my true priorities. I’ve always claimed that my priorities are grandly important activities like spending time with family or exercising or carving out enough alone time to write. But they’re not. Until I actually put these pursuits first, until I make these undertakings part of my everyday routine, they are not my actual priorities.
This is going to change. Starting today. My priorities are what I do each day, the small tasks that move forward the second and minute hands on the clock. These circadian endeavors are my musts. Everything else is simply a should.
So far I’ve just waited for things to change, to mysteriously get better, waiting on some kind of luck to enter my atmosphere. But waiting without action feels wrong now. It seems like bad luck to simply put my faith in good luck. I know I might fail, but we all must fail from time to time—we have to figure out what doesn’t work so we can find out what does.
When I got rid of the majority of my possessions, I was forced to confront my darker side, compelled to ask questions I wasn’t prepared for: When did I give so much meaning to material possessions? What is truly important in life? Why am I discontented? Who is the person I want to become? How will I define my own success?
Over time, situations’ll change. They always do. So I’m forced to ask the same important question over and over again: Does this thing add value to my life? But it’s not just material possessions at which I posit this question. Stuff was just the start. I ask it too in regard to relationships, Internet consumption, food, and any other potentially superfluous matters. I constantly ask because circumstances constantly change. Just because something adds value today, that doesn't mean it'll necessarily add value tomorrow. So I keep asking, and I adjust accordingly.
‘It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.’
Anchored might mean well-adjusted to some people, but think about it—what is an anchor? Like in the real-life, physical sense.” “The thing that keeps a ship at bay.” “Yes. Planted in the harbor. Stuck in one place. Unable to explore the freedom of the sea.”
Careers are dangerous because people invest so much of themselves into their careers that they establish an identity and a social status based upon where they work and what they do for a living.
“Now, before I spend money I ask myself one question: Is this worth my freedom? Like: Is this coffee worth two dollars of my freedom? Is this shirt worth thirty dollars of my freedom? Is this car worth thirty thousand dollars of my freedom? In other words, am I going to get more value from the thing I’m about to purchase, or am I going to get more value from my freedom?
The best way to give yourself a raise is to spend less money. These days I know that every dollar I spend adds immense value to my life. There is a roof over my head at night, the books or the music I purchase add unspeakable value to my life, the few clothes I own keep me warm, the experiences I share with others at a movie or a concert add value to my life and theirs, and a meal from China Garden with my best friend becomes far more meaningful than a trip to the mall ever could.”
“What if? has become disempowering,” Ryan realizes. “Yes it has, but it doesn’t have to be. We get to choose. So: What if I succeed?”
we tend to hang on to things—jobs, relationships, material possessions—in an effort to feel secure. But many of the things we cling to in search of security actually drain the satisfaction from our lives, leaving us discontented and overwhelmed. We hold on to jobs we dislike because we believe there’s security in a paycheck. We stay in shitty relationships because we think there’s security in not being alone. We hold on to stuff we don’t need, just in case we might need it down the road in some nonexistent, more secure future.
Real security, however, is found inside us, in consistent personal growth, not in a reliance on growing external factors.
