So little is needed to make a happy life
You don’t have to be a flower-child to find peace, love and happy vibes man. Happiness is a state of mind, and once you tune into the naked truth of what brings you joy, you’ll have more of what you need, be able to enjoy everything you have and won’t be worried about what you don’t have. Life becomes a lot less stressful and a lot more groovy baby.
The typical life: work hard, make money, spend it on mortgage payments, new clothes, nicer cars, trendy technology and more crap to fill the extra rooms in your home. Most of us understand that happiness isn’t directly correlated to the number of things we own. Yet almost all of us live like that—the more we earn, the more we spend.
This act of accumulating stuff reduces your quality of life; through identity investment and increased loss aversion. Meaning, we get attached to things we believe build up our identity and we’re terrified of losing those things because it means we lose part of ourselves. This often happens because we haven’t defined our values and what truly feeds our soul.
Simplify your life, amplify yourself
If I were to ask you to give up everything and only get by with a small handful of things in your life, you’d probably ask why and wonder how on earth you could do it.
For everything you get rid of, you will gain something much more valuable. When you practice minimalism you create more with less—more space, more time, even more love. If you start questioning the motives behind your purchases you’ll begin to realize the things you own, actually own you.
Your purpose
To feel meaning in your life, you must distill who you are and what you bring to the table. If you don’t know what your purpose is, don‘t panic. Go towards what brings you joy and what captivates you—that’s what will give you energy and magnetize your purpose.
Your values
Live by your values and everything else will fall into place. Until you make peace with who you are and what you value, you’ll never be satisfied with your life. Values are the lantern on our life journey, so until you really define them, you’re going to feel lost and will be more prone to taking wrong turns. Be ruthless with your ingrained logic and consider if each decision is adding value to your life. If it’s not, then you need to ask yourself, why do it.
Your diet
Eat food as close to its natural state as possible. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes. So much of the modern diet consists of convenience food, filled with complicates ingredients, preservatives and modified to be unlike anything from nature.
Your activity
It’s not about a complicated weight-loss program or body-crushing regimen at the gym, it’s about simplifying exercise to activities you can enjoy long-term and those that make you feel alive.
Your living space
Close your eyes and envision yourself sitting in a space flooded with natural light. There’s minimal furniture and only your favourite things that feed your soul such as; your dog, your guitar, your yoga mat, a piece of art. Can you feel your heart rate slow down?
Clutter is distracting, it’s more to manage and clean and all of those things pull at our attention—constantly. As such, the less clutter, the less stress we have. Simplifying your home is calming.
Your home
Own your life, not necessarily your home.
Buying a home is a right of passage for young people. It’s just what you do and it’s a smart investment. But let’s turn this notion on its head. Many neglect to understand that a home’s ROI is more than just sale price minus purchase price: it includes years of interest on the mortgage, taxes, maintenance, reno’s, insurance, utilities, transaction costs on both ends plus all those precious weekends you’ll spend fixing things and maintaining your yard.
Did I forget to mention, the potential trap you’ll be in if you leverage yourself to create a lifestyle that needs your full tippy top income? Having a huge mortgage can leave you grinding your life away at work for fear of collapsing your house of cards.
Renters on the other hand, pay for little other than their rent and can kick back without commitment—which means they free up more time and money to spend on experiences. If you decide to rent you’re not throwing money away, as long as you implement a different forced savings program and make thoughtful investments elsewhere. In his recent book, The Wealthy Renter, Alex Avery, former CIBC real estate equity analyst, draws on formulas for calculating the full costs of home-ownership over a lifetime and shows that if a Canadian today rents a home or apartment and prudently invests the difference between the monthly tenant expenses and the monthly average all-in carrying cost of a home or condo, they will come out ahead.
How to become a zesty hippie
Be groovy or leave man
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself. Let shit go that doesn’t matter, pursue things that feed your soul and spread positive vibes.
Why be rude when you can be nude
Everyone is on their own path. Walk yours with integrity and wish others peace on their journey. No matter what people have done to you or how you expect them to act, they are who they are. So just focus on being who YOU are! And be naked, cause it’s fun.
Stay wild moon child
Never let fear or other people tame your spirit or stop you from living your life. You’re never too old or too stuck to set a new goal, pursue another dream or follow your heart.
Make love not war
Love is not something that we can fabricate. It’s what comes through us naturally when we fully open up—to another person, to ourselves and to life. Love nourishes the soul and it helps us connect with who we really are. That’s why it is indispensable.
Harvard’s famous Grant Study on human happiness has determined that all you need is love. Full stop. The study revealed that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.
Save the planet man
By living a more simple life with fewer things, you improve your day-to-day life while also improving the health of the Earth. Many of our food systems are extremely environmentally damaging, so to the extent that you can eat lower on the food chain, buy local, shop at your farmers market, and avoid animal products, absolutely do it man.
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