Do You Owe The World Anything? | Steve Pavlina

The standard economic narrative as applied to human history tells us that barter came first, then money, and then credit and debt. In actuality we know that these concepts developed in the opposite order. Debt and credit pre-date the use of money by thousands of years. Money, in the form of early coins, came into usage largely as a way of keeping track of debts. And finally, the human use of barter systems actually arose after money, not before. Barter is employed by people who’ve already learned about money, and barter systems often use an equivalent of money to manage trades, such as how cigarettes are used as a medium of exchange in prisons.

With the publication of Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith helped to popularize the notion that money was invented to be a superior replacement for barter. But anthropologists and historians found that no such barter-based cultures actually existed before money; barter came after money. Before money there were some simple forms of trade, often combined with complex social rituals, but they were extremely limited and normally used for trading between tribes on special occasions, not within existing groups and not on a daily basis.

Apparently humans didn’t have barter systems until after money came into play. One reason is that without money, a barter system would be way too complicated and unwieldy. Barter is typically used as a fallback system when formal currency isn’t available, and even then barter tends to be transacted with respect to a previously used currency. For hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell, for instance, people engaged in barter exchanges, the value of which was translated into Roman currency. This was done even in areas that weren’t originally part of the Roman Empire. It was actually the concept of money that popularized barter.

So if people didn’t have barter until money came onto the scene, what did they do if they hadn’t been exposed to money? How did they exchange goods and services? They typically just shared freely with each other, or they gave each other gifts, sometimes upon request and often using rituals to do so. The notion of debt was only loosely and informally recorded in people’s minds, such as you might do today if you felt that a friend owed you a favor. This system worked quite well, and it still works well today. If you mooch off your friends or family too much, you may start noticing some resistance in their willingness to do future favors for you, along with some mounting pressure for you to start giving back now and then. If, on the other hand, you behaved generously with others, you might find that they’re fairly generous with you as well.

In truth there were lots of different cultures with different ways of trading. Some were quite imaginative in their rituals of exchange, such as having the equivalent of an inter-tribe swingers party that involved the exchange of goods as well as bodily fluids.

Born Into Debt

You could say that we’re are all born into debt. We depend on others for our survival, especially in our early years. We also benefit from all the knowledge and skills that were taught to us by others. When we come into this world, we receive value from others. Do we have an obligation to repay that value in some fashion, perhaps later in life when we’re capable of doing so?

How much did it cost your parents to raise you? Is that a debt you must repay, either to them or to society as a whole?

Look around you at all the things you’re able to use today that someone else created. Do you owe anyone anything for these gifts?

Do you owe the world anything at all for your existence? If you live strictly for yourself and choose not to contribute to others in any meaningful way, are you shirking your responsibilities?

These are interesting questions for you to explore on your path of growth. I encourage you to seek your own answers to them. I’ll share some thoughts about how I’ve explored them thus far.

Owing God

In my earlier years, I was taught to believe in a God who seemed to feel I owed him something. I was supposed to worship him for my entire life. I was born a flawed human, and I would always be a flawed human. My very existence was a stain on God’s otherwise perfect world.

I learned from a young age that I was born into perpetual debt. I owed God my very existence, and thus I incurred a debt so great that I could never hope to repay it no matter what I did, but I still had to try. I was created in God’s image, but even though he was all powerful, he still wanted me to worship him and to glorify him for being so wonderful, and he’d be offended if I didn’t obey.

In my teenage years I began to slough off much of what I’d been taught growing up, mainly because it didn’t make much sense. I became an atheist. Without the burdensome notion of original sin on my back, I began thinking more objectively and open-mindedly about the idea of service to others.

After this shift the experience of helping people changed for me. I enjoyed it much more. It felt good to be able to choose to contribute as opposed to feeling that I had to do so in order to repay a debt or to glorify some petulant deity.

I had been taught that without God, I’d automatically become a deeply selfish person, but I found that I actually enjoyed giving a lot more when I felt free to choose it, not obligated to do so under threat.

The World Owes Me

And then, about a year later, I opted to push this exploration far to the other side. Shortly after I got to college, I tried out the philosophy of living mainly for myself. That led to lots of criminal behavior, drinking, gambling, and several arrests. I eventually straightened out and realized that wasn’t how I wanted to live. Looking back, I still appreciate that I explored that path, although I’m glad I didn’t do too much damage along the way.

My attitude during that time shifted from thinking that I owed my life to God and to society, to thinking that the world owed me and that I could take whatever I wanted to the extent that I was capable of doing so. I reveled in outsmarting systems to prevent theft. Anti-theft sensors were easy to overcome. Security cameras could be fooled via misdirection. I especially loved using social engineering tactics to steal things right under clerks’ noses. My gains were someone else’s loss. It was a competitive way of living.

I could have kept going down that path and often fantasized about escalating it in various ways, some of which I implemented. But eventually the world taught me that it didn’t agree with my thinking. I realized that if I kept living like that, I’d be in a perpetual state of conflict with the world, always wondering if and when I’d get caught again. A felony grand theft arrest finally convinced me to explore alternative ways of living.

Being Debt-Free

My next phase was to progress to living with the mindset that I was debt-free. My philosophy during that time was live and let live.

I didn’t owe the world anything. The world didn’t owe me anything. You don’t mess with me, and I won’t mess with you. Let’s just keep to ourselves as best we can. That was my level of thinking during my early 20s.

This was a step up from a life of constant conflict, but I also endured a lot of hardship during this time, especially in the first few years of running my own business. My goals were largely for myself, not to substantially benefit the world. I found it very difficult to make my first business successful. It seemed like everything I did would backfire on me.

This was highly frustrating because I was better off financially when I was a criminal. During those years I had no financial debt, plenty of cash in the bank (usually around $10-20K, which was plenty for a 19-year old), and it was easy to cover my bills by selling stolen goods as needed.

When I tried to do what I felt was honest work, I sank into debt and went bankrupt. And it took six years to reach that point.

During that time I read books about making money, such as Think and Grow Rich. I may as well have read Think and Go Broke. The advice often sounded good — set clear goals, visualize having more wealth and abundance, make a plan, work the plan each day — but in practice my results at this level of thinking were dismal.

How come when I was just trying to maintain a neutral relationship with the world, did it seem like the world was constantly harshing on me and making my life a lot more difficult than it should have been? I felt there had to be an easier way to live.

Doing the Opposite

There’s a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza concludes that his default way of thinking never leads to good results, so he decides to try doing the opposite for a while. Whatever his natural instincts guide him to do, he commits to doing the exact opposite. While he tries this way of living, everything works out beautifully for him. Suddenly he starts getting terrific results across the board.

After having my fill of frustrating years, I decided to try something similar with my own version of the do the opposite philosophy. I would explore new options I hadn’t tried before, even if I couldn’t see how they would help. I could hardly do worse since my previous best thinking had led to bankruptcy. Since I was already broke, I didn’t have much to lose by experimenting.

Some of those do the opposite ideas didn’t pan out. But some absolutely did. One thing I tried during that time was to volunteer to serve in a software industry trade association. I had no idea where that would lead, but at least it would be something different than what I’d done in the past. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made. Within a month or two of getting involved, I was Vice President of the organization, then President the following year. And my income from selling my computer games went from $300 per month to $20,000 per month in a few years.

As a consequence of volunteering, I got to spend a lot of time interacting with other independent software developers, many of whom were quite successful. I also made contacts in the industry press. I learned how to improve my sales, and I learned how to get some free press coverage for my games as well. But when I volunteered, I did my best to focus on contributing to the association and its members. The benefits largely came about as side effects of volunteering.

This is also what got me started writing articles. I wrote my first article in 1999 for that trade association’s newsletter. For the next five years, I averaged about five articles per year. When I started blogging in 2004, it was a way to expand the occasional article writing I’d been doing since 1999. And it all started with a decision to try doing the opposite of what I’d previously been doing.

I don’t think it was really the do the opposite philosophy that made the difference by itself. Sometimes doing the same worked just fine. I think what mattered most was that the energy signature I brought to my work after 1999 was totally different. I gave up on trying to succeed just for myself. I became more social within my industry and spent a lot of time helping others achieve their goals. I started thinking of my own success as being part of a larger social landscape.

I began speaking at industry conferences during that time. I hosted a roundtable for indie game developers at the annual Game Developers’ Conference. I launched an online discussion forum for indie game developers, kept it free of ads, and made sure it was intelligently moderated, so as to provide a valuable service to the community. I put in hundreds of hours per year on these types of service projects for others. All of this was unpaid.

During the years prior to 1999, my attention was focused mainly on my own goals. I wanted to become successful, grow my business, create hit computer games, and make lots of money. I also wanted to get out of debt. I really thought those were decent and intelligent goals.

I also figured that once I became rich, then I could focus on doing more to give back to the world if I wanted to, and I’d be in a better position to do so. What could I give to the world while I was broke and in debt? Surely I should focus on my own goals and get something going there first, right? Shouldn’t I create my own private victory before thinking about how to contribute to the world?

This strategy of working strictly on my own goals didn’t work out for me when I applied it to business and income generation. It had worked well for me in other areas of life though, such as school, which was probably why I stubbornly stuck with it for so long afterwards.

Paying the Debt

I discovered that I really liked doing acts of service for the community around me, especially writing articles. The feedback I received was encouraging because it told me that what I shared actually made a difference in people’s lives. My early articles for the trade association, which were printed in paper newsletters and mailed to about 1000 members, included a byline with my email address, so readers could send me feedback. I usually received a few emails for each article, including suggestions for new articles and some republishing requests.

I remember when one software developer wrote to me after I’d been writing for several years, thanking me that my ideas helped him build a business with more than $1 million in annual sales. That really got me thinking. I had never built my own business to that level, yet I was somehow able to help someone achieve even better financial results.

Some people might feel jealous upon receiving that kind of feedback, but I felt inspired and uplifted by it. I thought to myself… This is really cool. If I hadn’t written those articles, that guy’s business might not have done so well. I felt proud of his accomplishments, knowing that I played a role in helping him achieve his goals. I liked the idea that my lessons might actually be more valuable to other people than they were to me.

For years I had met with frustration after frustration and setback after setback while trying to achieve my goals for myself. Yet somehow I was able to help inspire others to do things that I’d never done. I have stacks of CDs that I’ve received in the mail from musicians that told me I inspired them to create a new album or song, some of which have lyrics inspired by my articles, but I’ve never composed an album myself. This encouraged me to keep discovering new lessons I could share. Even if a lesson only helped one person, I felt it justified taking the time to share it.

As people continued to share how I helped them in various ways, I began to revisit the idea of social debt again. At some point I realized that if I ever did have a debt to pay to the world for my existence, then surely I’ve long since repaid it by now. Even accounting for the criminal stuff I did during my late teens, I must be well past any reasonable standard of restitution that may be owed to society for my carelessness and my existence combined.
Consequently, I live each day with the feeling that I am officially out of existential debt. I can see that my existence is a net positive for the world with the various ripples I’ve created, not by my own accounting but by the sum of all the accounting that’s been reported to me by others. This includes the books people have written, the music that has been composed, the relationships that have formed, and the businesses and nonprofits that have been started that people have thanked me for helping them achieve.

Moreover, since I wrote most of my articles to be timeless, and since I’ve uncopyrighted them as well, and since they’ve been translated into many languages and republished in a variety of forms, I can reasonably expect that the ideas I’ve shared will continue to create positive ripples for many years to come. This gives me the sense that I’ve not only paid my existential debt for my life thus far, but I feel I’ve also paid more than enough for all my remaining years on earth as well.

So now I’ve come full circle in a way. I’m back to feeling that I don’t owe the world anything for my existence. But this time it’s not because I don’t acknowledge the existence of the debt; it’s because I feel that if there ever was such a debt, then surely I’ve more than paid it off.

Overpaying the Debt

The feeling that I’ve overpaid the debt gives me a sense that I deserve to be supported by life. This doesn’t feel like entitlement but rather a natural reward that I’ve earned. I feel that I’ve contributed more than enough value to the world to cover the cost of my existence.

Sometimes I would think to myself, Hey, you’ve contributed so much already. Why not take it easy for a while? People can always read your older articles. Why keep writing so much? Surely you don’t have to. You have plenty of money. Go travel for a while. Take some time off. If anyone has earned some slack, surely you have.

But when I actually try to live that way, something feels off to me. I don’t feel as happy. I feel like I’ve lost the flow. The passive income keeps flowing, and my bills are still paid, but I feel out of sync with my path with a heart. Instead of enjoying more time off, I feel like my life fills up with trivialities and minor problems.

Taking some time off when I need a break feels good to me. But when I stop contributing or try to work strictly on my own personal goals for a while, I can tell that I’m not in the flow.

Simple Acts of Realignment

When I feel I’ve fallen out of sync with my path with a heart, I often remind myself to perform a simple act of realignment. This is a task I can do that I can reliably expect will bring me back in sync with the feeling of flow that I love so much.

My favorite act of realignment is to write and publish a new article. And I must write that article with the purest of intentions. I can’t be writing for selfish reasons or thinking about people’s reactions or web traffic effects or anything like that. My intention must be to write from inspiration and to help people grow.

Whenever I do that, I easily sync back up with my path with a heart.

This is a very empowering practice for me since I know that no matter how confused I get, how far off track I get, or how badly I screw up, I can always return to this simple act of realignment. I can always set a pure intention and write and publish a new article. It’s beautiful knowing that for the rest of my life, I’ll always have this simple practice that I can return to again and again to get back in tune with my flow.

Whenever I write a lot, which is my primary form of contribution, my life seems to flow with effortless ease.

Alignment vs. Debt

I think the idea of existential debt is a bit misguided. It’s a stab at understanding how to sync up with your path with a heart and to immerse yourself in that delightful feeling of flow, but the notion has been corrupted and turned into something that’s more likely to take you out of alignment.

Wrestling with the concept of whether or not I owe the world something for my existence was an important part of my path of growth. But these days I see contribution as an invitation, not an obligation.

I don’t feel obligated to pay back the world for anything, and I have good logical reasons for not feeling so obligated, if only because I feel I’ve already paid more than my fair share. But if I used this line of thinking to justify non-contribution henceforth, I’d still be missing the flow.

My path with a heart isn’t to pay off a debt from a place of duty or obligation. My path with a heart is to accept the invitation to create, to contribute, and to share. I don’t do this because I owe anyone anything. I don’t do this because I need money. I do it because I love being in the flow of inspiration. Writing, speaking, and other forms of sharing make me happy. When I write, I’m at peace.

Overcoming Neediness

People email me every week with message like, “I need money. Just tell me how I can make a lot of money quickly.” What can I say to someone who’s struggling with the type of mindset I succumbed to in my early 20s?

I can tell them how I solved similar money problems, which was basically to stop being needy, but they don’t like that answer at all. They want me to tell them how to solve those problems from their current level of thinking. That isn’t something I can tell them because I experienced only failure using that approach. I was never able to do it.

How do you tell someone that the solution is to stop being needy when they’re so addicted to feelings of neediness, debt, and obligation?

And how does one stop being needy anyway? Neediness is what you experience when you’ve fallen out of sync with your path with a heart. So to stop being needy, start doing something that’s incompatible with feeling needy. Start giving. Start contributing. Volunteer. Set a pure intention, listen to your inspiration, and act on your inspiration immediately.

Do the opposite of what needy people do. Do what you’d be doing if you were already in a place of abundance.

Purity of Intention

If you were to design your own simple act of realignment, what would it look like? When you fall off your path with a heart, what’s the quickest way to get back onto it?

Start with a pure intention. Set an intention to perform a selfless act of contribution and giving. Invite inspiration to come to you and to flow through you, like you’re tuning in to a radio station. Decide that you’ll act on inspiration without hesitation. Do your best to release any sense of neediness or expectation. Clear a few hours for this act, during which time you commit to rising above pettiness, selfishness, neediness, and fear. Let this be a time of elevation for you. You can always go back to feeling needy later.

Let your mind wander for a while. Don’t force or push yourself into action. When you feel ready, let the flow of inspiration energize and animate you. Allow it to speak through you, write through you, move through you.

Notice how good it feels to act from such a purity of intention. There is no neediness here, no debt, no obligation, no worry. Notice that you can always come back to this pure act of realignment again and again. Whatever form it takes, it’s yours to summon whenever you desire. No matter how far you stray from your path with a heart, you can always come back to it.

Alignment Is the Solution

You don’t have an existential debt to pay, but you do have an existence to experience. You can spend that experience wallowing in neediness, fear, and worry, or you can elevate that experience to a place of flow and alignment.

I think you’ll discover as I have that this experience of alignment is also a beautiful path out of debt, obligation, and scarcity.

You do not have to pay your existential debt or your financial debt first before you can start contributing. Your path with a heart is not something to be entertained at some future date when you’re finally in a place to do so. Your path with a heart is the ideal solution to your current problems. It is the very path that will lead you out of debt and into a place of contribution to the world.

There is nothing you need to do first before you can contribute. You can make a positive difference in people’s lives right where you are. I wrote my first article when I was going bankrupt. Living with lack seems like a distant memory now, and my path out of scarcity began with a purity of intention, combined with the seemingly silly decision to do the opposite of wallowing in neediness.

Is wallowing in neediness working for you anyway? Is it giving you the results you desire? Has it blessed you with a life of joy and abundance? If not, then maybe it’s time to try doing the opposite for a while.

If that answer doesn’t sit well with you, then my second best answer is to become a criminal. But having tried both myself, I think the path with a heart is easier. 😉

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Ignoring Lack to Create Abundance | Steve Pavlina

I’ve been enjoying an abundant year because I focus much more attention on abundance, appreciation, and gratitude than I do on lack, scarcity, and poverty. Some people would say that this mindset is the result of abundance; I recognize the mindset/heartset as the cause of it.

When I did the opposite and paid more attention to what was lacking in my life, I experienced a variety of scarcity-based experiences — sinking deeper into debt each year, being kicked out of my apartment due to lack of rent money, not being able to afford what I wanted, feeling stressed whenever my car broke down, always buying the cheapest items and having them break easily, etc. That place of being was compelling enough to capture my attention for a while, but after a number of years there, I got bored with it and decided to try out the abundance mindset to see what that’s like.

I would often read books or listen to audio programs that went on and on about the abundance mindset, but I figured that was easy for them to say because they were already living it. What if you’re not living it? Usually their recommendation was to start wherever you are, and some would insist that abundance is a mindset you can create regardless of your starting position. I didn’t really buy into that notion at the time, but mainly because I was desperate to try something new, I opted to give it an earnest effort for at least a few days to see if it made any difference. It’s not like what I was doing before that was working, so I figured it couldn’t hurt, and it might help lead me into new territory where a solution could be found.

I began by focusing on feeling grateful for what I did have, like being able to enjoy running along the beach or watching a sunset. I turned my attention away from lack as much as possible. I did my best to ignore my debt, my unpaid bills, and my creditors for a while. Obviously that created some consequences, and I further dealt with those consequences by largely ignoring them as well.

This is really a key point that I don’t want you to just overlook. It wasn’t just that I began to focus on abundance thinking. I also did my very best to ignore anything in my life that suggested lack or scarcity. I stopped looking at my bills. I stopped answering the phone since most of the calls were from creditors. I ignored my debt and stopped making credit card payments altogether. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But when I paid attention to those things, they would just bring me down and make me start thinking about what wasn’t working.

This shift of attention soon created external shifts in my reality. I became more creative, released a new product, and started making a lot more money. A year later I was debt free, partly from going bankrupt, which was a good thing because it wiped out most of my debt, and then I paid off the rest mostly in one fell swoop with an advance I received for a game I licensed to a publisher.

I continued to expand upon this mindset of abundance over time. I imagined enjoying time abundance too. I imagined being more generous, first with my money, but then I felt even better about being generous with my time and creativity. I donated thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to non-profits. I wrote articles for free and hosted discussion forums for free. I didn’t do these things to get any particular result. I did them because I just felt motivated to do them. When I held onto that abundance vibe, I didn’t have to push myself to contribute anything. It just flowed out of me without really trying.

I’ve since created a massive body of creative work and gave it away to the public domain, and I continue to add to that collection each month. This month I started doing microloans as well and encouraged others to join our team, which has been making new loans every day.

I never would have done these things if I was focused on lack. The vibe of lack didn’t make me feel particularly generous; it merely made me project generosity as something other people should do more of, or something I should get around to “in the future” (which of course means never).

There is value in having experiences across the spectrum of scarcity to abundance. I’m glad for the experience of scarcity since it helps me understand and appreciate abundance more deeply. For example, I enjoyed my recent trip to Paris that much more because I know what it was like to not be able to afford such a trip and having it seem like an impossibility. Every day I spent in Paris, I felt grateful to be there. I didn’t take anything for granted.
Through personal testing I came to see that overall I prefer the abundance vibe to the scarcity vibe. Abundance is a better fit for who I am.

I neither require nor expect others to make the same choice I did. Lots of people find growth lessons in the scarcity vibe, and I have no doubt they’ll continue to explore it. I’ve tested that vibe and that mindset enough to know that it isn’t such a good fit for me. I’m happier and more fulfilled on the abundance side. But I wouldn’t be so sure of this if I hadn’t had those scarcity experiences first.

Many times when I write about abundance, there are people who will take issue with it. It’s interesting to see how they project a boatload of assumptions onto me and then argue with their own assumptions. Some seem to think that abundance is wrong. Others want me to pay more attention to poverty.

I pay little attention to poverty, scarcity, and lack, not just in myself but in others as well. My focus is on abundance, gratitude, generosity, appreciation, etc. If you believe that what I’m doing is not enough, it’s because you feel what you’re doing isn’t enough. If you’re in resonance with scarcity, then “not enough” is something you’ll see wherever you look.

When you view one side of the spectrum through the lens of the other, your perceptions are greatly distorted. Just as scarcity may look upon abundance as greedy, excessive, selfish, elitist, narcissistic, etc., so can abundance look upon scarcity as lazy, wimpy, foolish, childish, stupid, etc. But these perspectives aren’t helpful to us… again, because they’re distorted.

You can only understand the options available to you when you experience them from the inside. And yes, this does mean that you can’t really understand an option until you’ve experienced it to some degree. From the outside looking in, you can get curious, but you can’t really gain much insight.

You’re free to do as I’ve done and test different mindsets/vibes to learn which set of experiences you prefer. You have laid out before you a whole spectrum of possibilities to explore.

Try to avoid the mistake of judging or condemning someone else’s position on this spectrum. Don’t expect others to change their mindset just because you have issues. If you feel resistance towards what others are experiencing, look to your dissatisfaction with your own vibe. Then remember that you have the power to make the shifts you desire, if you’re willing to embrace those shifts fully and completely instead of resisting them.

I’m quite pleased with my choices thus far, even as I continue to explore new points along the spectrum of possibilities. I’m fully aware that some people object to my choices and would prefer to see me focus more attention on problems like poverty. From the perspective of scarcity, they want me to change what they’re unwilling to. They want me to join them in their feelings of being not enough. From within the lens of scarcity, this may seem like a reasonable request, but from the perspective of abundance, it’s a rather silly thing to do.

The response to such requests is predictable if you understand how both mindsets work. Scarcity criticizes abundance for being not enough. Abundance finds scarcity’s request silly and so enjoys amusement at the entertainment value of it; additionally abundance is appreciative of the reminder of the contrast between scarcity and abundance. Scarcity doesn’t get its request satisfied and hence validates its experience of not enoughness; it can continue to live in its world where abundance is greedy and unresponsive to its needs. Abundance ends the interaction feeling appreciative; scarcity leaves feeling frustrated. This is a perfectly congruent outcome from all perspectives. Each vibe creates the experience that harmonizes with it.

A few people have been amusing me lately, which I’m grateful for, and I in turn have been doing my part to frustrate them.

If you desire to shift from scarcity to abundance, how do you do that? There are many techniques that I’ve shared in the past, so I won’t rehash that same content here. A good place to start is to watch the Creating Abundance videos. I actually apply this to an even greater extent today than I did when I created those videos in 2009. Now I’m spending much more time each day doing this kind of vibrational work because I find it extremely powerful.

This morning I woke up at 3:30 and then spent a good 2 hours imagining different aspects of my life as I want them to be and getting a clear lock onto the vibes that are consistent with my desires — the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes I believe I’d be experiencing if all my desires were physically real right now.

Then throughout each day, I do my best to hold onto these new vibes as much as possible. When I catch myself slipping into a vibe I wouldn’t likely experience on the side of my new desires, such as frustration or worry, I stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath, and reload the vibe I desire. Or if I’m tired and can’t do this very well, I just take a break to distract myself.

I continue to practice this because I find it very effective. Not only do I attract and enjoy more of what I want, but my new vibes also become increasingly repulsive to those whose vibes are incompatible, while becoming more attractive to those with compatible vibes and desires — people with whom I can enjoy co-creating abundantly.

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The Meaning | Jim Carrey

Inspirational words from Jim Carrey.  Enjoy!

"How will you serve the world?  What do they need, that your talent can provide?  That's all you have to figure out."
"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."
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How to love and be loved | Billy Ward | TEDxFoggyBottom

Through a story of one of his students, Billy shows the importance of loving others and of being loved. 

Let me know what you think below.
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How Living With Less Can Give You More | Melissa Balmain

Discover how people improved their lives by paring possessions, forgoing certain conveniences and downsizing their homes.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...”

–William Wordsworth

Who owns just five pairs of underwear? Three chairs? Two forks, one necklace, zero televisions?

Who refuses to go shopping? Spurns social media or Starbucks? Lives with a fellow human and two cats in a home the size of a tool shed?

If your answer involves the words Amish or monk, think again. Over the past few years, thousands of men and women—non-Amish, non-monastic—have embraced such Spartan ways. Unlike people forced by layoffs or other misfortunes to scale back, they’ve done so by choice.

Their belief: For every object, square foot or convenience they give up, they’re gaining something far better.

Joshua Becker started thinking this way as he cleaned up a cluttered garage in 2008 and realized he’d much rather be spending time with his 5-year-old son, who was playing alone in the yard. “What I noticed that morning was not only are possessions not making me happy, but they also distract us from the very things that do bring happiness, fulfillment, meaning,” says Becker, who lives in Peoria, Ariz., and has written books such as Living with Less: An Unexpected Key to Happiness. “Nobody says, ‘My goal in life is to own a lot of stuff,’ and yet most of us live life that way. We try to find jobs that pay a lot of money, and buy bigger houses and faster cars, and that’s not really what we most want out of life. We want to make a difference. We want significance. We want to be good fathers and husbands.” 

They’re purging not just possessions, but, in Becker’s words, “anything that distracts me from the things I most value.”

 With such epiphanies in mind, Becker and his frugal peers have launched a movement that many call the New Minimalism. They’re purging not just possessions, but, in Becker’s words, “anything that distracts me from the things I most value.” For some, this means not Facebooking after dinner or binge-watching House of Cards. For others, it’s resisting the siren call of eBay.

Though the particulars are modern, the ideas are hardly new. “Almost every respected religious leader from the beginning of time has been talking about this, calling on us to stop focusing on physical possessions and focus on spiritual things, love and hope and peace,” Becker says. Minimalist groups have sprung up throughout history—the Epicureans of ancient Greece, for instance, and admirers of Henry David Thoreau at the turn of the 20th century. Today minimalists name a host of reasons for simplicity’s resurgence, including climate change, economic anxiety, a search for spirituality, and inventions like the Kindle that make it easier to own fewer objects.

The new minimalists are drawing millions of readers to blogs about lean living. They’re joining online groups like “Use everything and waste nothing!” (nearly 7,000 members) and “Freecycle New York City” (more than 56,000 members). They’re quoting Wordsworth and Thoreau. They’re bringing back the Murphy bed.

And they’re discovering that, all in all, streamlining your life is easier than you might expect. “You don’t have to downsize dramatically like we did to live more simply,” says Tammy Strobel, who moved with her husband from a 1,200-square-foot apartment to a 128-square-foot house in Northern California. “Just be thoughtful. If you can look at the big picture, the simple lifestyle will emerge from that.”

That picture and lifestyle will vary from person to person, Becker notes: “You talk to different minimalists, you discover that people are free to pursue whatever it is they want to pursue.”

Family and Flexibility

Back in 2007, Strobel’s job in investment management made her feel like a drone. “I was working like 10 hours a day and commuting two hours a day,” she says. “I wasn’t getting enough exercise, and to cope with stress I was shopping more, drinking more. So my husband and I started talking about ways we could downsize our lives—not only for me to shift careers, but also to pay down debt, get healthier, and be there for friends and family members.”

Over the next five years, Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, thinned out their belongings. They moved to smaller and smaller spaces in Oregon and then wound up near Yreka, Calif., in the 128-square-footer they call the Tiny House. Designed for them, it has a sleeping loft, kitchen, half-bathroom with a composting toilet, and an outdoor shower—all for $33,000, what many people spend on a car.

The more Strobel downsized, she found, the more her life improved. On the relatively minor end, there’s been much less cleaning to do. “I don’t miss having to vacuum all the time,” she says. “And even when everything in our closet is dirty, we can get it done in two to three loads.”

On the major end, Strobel’s expenses shrank enough for her to switch to lower-paying jobs in social services and then finally to writing, teaching and photography. After her father had a stroke, she had the flexibility to shuttle between Oregon and California to care for him. “I would not have been able to do that if I were still in the investment management industry,” she says. “Just to have that opportunity to help care for my dad and to be with him as he died. It was really hard, but it was also a gift.”

Other gifts of simpler living: having time for gardening, hiking and traveling; playing with cats Christie and Elaina; and feeling a lot healthier and happier overall.

“I’ve tried to make a shift to just paying attention to what my body needs in terms of rest and exercise,” she says. “I’m eating better. I’m not drinking a bottle of wine like I was when I was really stressed-out. I also think that living simply has helped me bounce back from really tough circumstances, particularly my dad’s illness and the grief I experienced after his death. If I were still working in investment management, I would have had the tendency to want to numb all the negative feelings” with alcohol or shopping, she says. “I’m just really aware of how I’m conducting myself in the world.”

Change and Confidence

On the surface, Mary Carlomagno’s life 10 years ago was peachy. She had money. She had a good job as a marketing executive. She had plenty of friends. Even so, she knew something was missing. “I was living a very privileged life, but I wasn’t happy,” Carlomagno says. How come? As Carlomagno recalls in her memoir Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less, she was “literally hit over the head” by a clue: an “avalanche of designer shoeboxes” that fell from her closet one  morning.

Within hours, she realized her problem was mindless consumption. “I wasn’t changing anything in my life, just going on day after day—Oh, I’ll have another double latte and another martini and buy another pair of shoes,” she says now. “I was just adding all these things on that didn’t necessarily have a lot of meaning. I decided to start giving more thought to what I was doing.”

Each month for a year, Carlomagno curbed or cut something she saw as a personal weakness or vice—from recreational shopping, restaurant meals and taxis, to coffee, chocolate and booze. In almost every case, she discovered new talents and strengths (making risotto, resisting peer pressure to drink) and ways of enjoying life (reading poetry, navigating Manhattan on foot).

"Not only could I live without a lot of things and be happier and more fulfilled, but also I could make a change instead of just accepting things.”

“What I learned was not only could I live without a lot of things and be happier and more fulfilled, but also I could make a change instead of just accepting things,” she says. “And change kind of begets changes. So for me, just giving up chocolate or questioning that third cup of coffee led to revolutionary change in my life—changing careers, starting to write, moving apartments, realizing this man I was with was the one I should marry.”

Now a home-organizing expert in New Providence, N.J., with a husband and two kids, Carlomagno is “more moderate” in all respects. “I learned that many of the things I thought were making me happy didn’t make me happy. I learned a lot of people I was surrounding myself with weren’t doing the things I wanted to be doing, and I also learned the difference between what my wants are and what my needs are. Before, I thought everything was a need, like, I need those shoes; I need that bag, and now I can very easily let go of things.” Her year’s experiment taught her to “put less emotion onto material things and put it more on experiences and relationships and things that really feed your life.”

Location and Luxury

Only 675 square feet for two adults, a toddler, and a baby on the way? If you had told Jacqueline Schmidt five years ago that such numbers would make her happier than ever, she’d have thought you were nuts. She was, after all, the illustrator and designer whose beautifully furnished, 1,200-square-foot loft had been featured in magazines; the world traveler who owned thousands of dollars’ worth of art books and adored decorating with just the right piece of coral or taxidermied bird. That Brooklyn, N.Y., loft was bound up with her identity, she recalls; it stood for her thriving career.

Then she married small-space design expert David Friedlander, and the couple agreed to downsize. In the beginning, Schmidt felt anxious.

She had the idea that a pared-back lifestyle “meant less success, less opportunity, less validation.”

She had the idea that a pared-back lifestyle “meant less success, less opportunity, less validation,” she says, and then laughs. “What a joke! I have so much more now than I ever did.”

First, there’s the vibrant slice of Brooklyn outside the family’s new apartment. By choosing a smaller home, Friedlander says, they could afford “a neighborhood that’s generally reserved nowadays for rich people”—complete with Prospect Park, countless family-friendly businesses and good schools for their 2-year-old son, Finn, and baby-on-the-way.

Second, there are the splendors inside the apartment: Organic waffle-weave towels. Carrara marble tiles and countertops. Oiled European oak floors with a special, rough-sawn finish that hides scratches and dirt. In a larger place, Schmidt says, such touches would cost a fortune—and indeed, in her more sprawling days, she was forced to use cheaper materials. 

Now she has everything the way she likes it, partly thanks to the cash she got from selling dozens of possessions on Craigslist, eBay and Etsy.

Recently, Schmidt says, her mother confessed that when she first heard about her daughter’s downsized digs, she felt sorry for her. Then she visited. “She said, ‘I want your apartment!’” says Schmidt, sighing happily at the memory. “She kept using the word luxury.”

Giving It a Go

Feeling inspired but unsure what to trim from your life or how to do it? Minimalists are full of ideas:

1. If you want to stop doing things that don’t make you happy…

• Answer some key questions. For instance: Do you look forward to your day at work, or dread it? Is there something you want to do instead? What hobbies do you want more time for? How do you actually spend your free time? What would your ideal family life look like? This should help you figure out your goals and what’s been stopping you from achieving them.

• Watch your bank and credit card statements. That’s partly how Carlomagno realized she was spending too much money (and time) shopping for shoes and sushi.

• Keep a daily log. After Strobel started one, she was shocked to find she’d been watching TV three hours a day. “Not that watching TV is bad in moderation,” she explains, “but that was time I could have been spending downsizing or just going for a walk.”

2. If you want a smaller place but aren’t sure how small to go…

• Consider how much of your current home you actually use and find one closer to that size. Studies suggest that for many families, some rooms see little if any traffic.
   
• Choose a home that meets your daily needs. “People tend to design their homes around worst-case scenarios,” Friedlander says. “What if my in-laws and my parents come and the neighbors stop by at the same time? People will spend an extra hundred grand on their home to prepare for a contingency that will come up maybe once a year rather than actually design their homes around how they’re used 95 percent of the time.”
   
• Don’t let your furniture limit your housing choices. “When we were on a hunt for a rental after the sale of my 1,200-square-foot space, we turned down a lot of amazing and reasonable apartments because we couldn’t see how our stuff would fit into the apartment,” Schmidt says. Only later did the couple realize that if, say, they ditched their 9-foot dining table for a shorter one, it would increase their options dramatically.

3. If you want to kill clutter…

• Be honest. Will you ever use that olive pitter? Do you notice that vase anymore, or is it just something to dust? If an item isn’t useful, beautiful or meaningful to you, give it away or sell it.
   
• Unclutter one room or closet at a time. “If you look at the whole [home], it’s just so overwhelming and easy to get defeated,” Strobel says. “When you focus on one area at a time, you can really see progress.”

4. If you want to buy less…

• Share more. Maybe you and a neighbor, instead of each buying a chain saw, can buy one together and take turns with it.
   
• Make a pact. In 2005, Sarah Pelmas and several friends formed the “Compact”—a vow not to buy anything new for a year, aside from necessities such as food and medicine. If they absolutely needed anything else, they borrowed it or purchased it secondhand. “There was a lot of pride about finding something for someone else. It took two Compact members and a couple of connected friends to find me a [used] shower curtain, for instance,” says Pelmas, of Washington, D.C. “But I think also there was a little friendly competition, which made us less likely to give in or give up if it was hard to make something work.” The Compact now has more than 10,000 members worldwide.

Finally Free

Peeling down to the necessities has its challenges, minimalists admit. If you own just one pair of socks, for instance, you’ll be washing those socks daily. If your home lacks an indoor shower, you might find yourself driving to the gym in the dead of winter to shower there.

“It was definitely challenging being in the Tiny House when Logan was on his sabbatical,” Strobel recalls. “I work at home, and he was working at home, so we had to have some conversations about quiet time and having our own little areas.”

Perhaps hardest of all is the introspection that minimalism tends to bring. “By about the fourth vanload of things to Goodwill, I became very self-reflective,” Becker says. “Why did I have four vanloads of things that I didn’t actually need? Was advertising really having that much of an effect on me? Was I trying to impress people with the things I owned?” On and on, the questions rolled. “Having to search through that was difficult, painful.”

Even so, minimalists say, such moments are a small price to pay for the new lightness they feel.

“After my stuff was gone, it was like, Oh my God, I’m free,” Schmidt says. “I don’t have to do this anymore. I don’t have to acquire any more stuff. I can go to a library or a museum and be around these things in other ways, but I don’t have to own them.”

As for Becker, minimalism has fostered more time with his two children and the chance to explore his love of writing. “Those are such a greater fulfillment for me than just spending my time watching television or shopping for clothes, or taking care of things,” he says. And now and then, there’s the joy of doing nothing at all.

“As you remove yourself from this consumer-driven rat race of always needing more and wanting more and trying to earn more to buy more, you find you don’t have to be busy all the time. You can find some calm inlife.”

So what do you think? Have you got any similar experiences to share? Please let me know below!

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