Learning To Live With Less: How To Achieve It?

We are often hooked on our way of life, our things, our hobbies, friends, trips … But are they as essential and essential as they seem to us now? Would our life have meaning without them? Maybe even more …

Next, we propose an exercise for you to start simplifying your life in an orderly way, according to your true priorities.

An exercise to simplify your material life

Get a pencil and a sheet of paper. Sit comfortably in the place in your house that you most want.

It is not about doing it right or wrong, but about a practice of self – exploration. There are not correct or incorrect answers.

1. Make a list of your possessions

To begin, take a mental tour of some of your material possessions. It can be a house, a car, a record collection, a job, a sum of money in the bank …

Now write a selection of the ten most precious possessions among which you have thought. You don’t need to order them. Remember that they are the ten most valuable things for you, it does not matter if their monetary value is small or immense, it does not matter that they are not valuable for others. Focus only on you.

2. Detach yourself from the middle

Now imagine that you must give up five of these possessions.

You can cross out, one by one, those that you could give up or choose the ones that you would like to continue having, but finally you must keep five, your five most precious possessions.

You have had to give up some very attractive things, but the essentials for your life are still there, right?

3. The difficult decision

It is time to continue. Imagine a situation such that to keep three of these five things you must give up the other two. Which ones would you keep? Cross out the two that you will leave so as not to lose the three most important ones.

This resignation is difficult, but lean on the idea that to enjoy the ones you have chosen, you must say “no” to many others.

4. Keep only two things

Imagine now that, of those three things, a radical change, a kind of crisis or sudden catastrophe, makes you have to leave one of them behind. Cross out this possession as well.

You only have the two most precious, two things that have an incalculable value for you, which surely goes far beyond the economic.

5. Resignation by the other

But someone, the person you love the most in the world, needs you to give up one of these things. It is imperative. That person loves you too and would like to save you this bad drink, but they can’t.

So you should keep only one possession. Just one. The most valuable. Do you already know what it will be? Very well. Write this possession and make a box around it. It is your most prized possession.

6. Life without what you most appreciate

Once you’ve gotten here, take a breath and then begin to imagine what your life would be like if you were missing only what you’ve written in the box.

You have everything else, but the most precious thing you have already lost. How would you live if you didn’t have that last possession, the best valued?

Write a few lines describing your life without it. When you have finished writing, continue reading, the exercise is not finished yet.

7. The pride of ‘being’ and not of ‘having’

If you have been able to describe a life without that thing –even though you may have imagined yourself less happy–, it must be concluded that this possession is not essential for you, that no matter how important it is, you could live without it.

And, perhaps, you have even been able to discover some benefit in not having it …

If we understand that things can be very convenient for our life, but not essential, we will have taken a great step to leave behind the obsession of “having” and move towards the healthy pride of “being”.