It is such a pleasure to hear back from you my friend. Happy 2016! I would love to read your review on Amazon. I certainly want to get back in the grove and start writing more on personal growth.

I read your comment and, as usual, it is filled with wisdom. I just talked to another friend of mine and mentioned to him that I have deep respect for you. And, I am a fan of George Carlin as well.

Thank you for visiting. Your comment succinctly conveys gist of my article.

And I fully agree – happiness comes from within. If we look for it outside, we will only find transitory happiness and will be washed by the seas of change.

I’ve made similar choices for various reasons.
I avoid debt as it takes your budget out of the present and reduces choice. Your present becomes tied to past choices rather than what is here now. Debt is also often tied to a false sense of entitlement that advertising cultures. We feel we deserve things we can’t afford and ruin our financial affairs over a few poor choices.

I don’t own a TV because it’s mostly about culturing that sense of entitlement and serves the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t serve our best interests. But I do enjoy a good epic film or documentary. I have a screen without a TV tuner.

And yes, I’ve also downsized considerably over time. Partly because my kids grew up. But also my life was cluttered with stuff that required my time and attention but served little purpose. What joy is there in stuff that obliges us? Who wants to clean 3 bathrooms? There’s a great George Carlin skit on how houses are just places to keep our stuff. I’ve also noticed that stuff can be a way to distract us from how we’re feeling. Outer clutter is a sign of emotional clutter within. We see the proliferation of storage lockers, some full of stuff worth less than the lockers rent.

Some stuff I realized was associated with fond memories. Most of that I replaced with digital pictures of them. Much easier to store. Similarly, many old papers were discarded or scanned. The boxes of archives now fit on a couple of discs. The family albums copied to DVDs so everyone has a copy and the degrading old photos can rest in peace. And so forth. Have written articles about some of this process.

I was surprised by the process of doing what you love. There were some things I thought I loved that turned out to be shoulds. I have a skill so I should love to do this. Some of that required a bunch of stuff to do them, so that stuff too was passed on.

(laughs) but I do have a backlog of books I’m somewhere in the process of reading.
Thanks for sharing!

Price of Freedom | Success Soul…