From dust to a Star!
Grow from scratch with simple living!
When wants are more one would always have little. Once the energy of these wants is transformed into needs, everything becomes so simple. An individual becomes the most satisfied person on the planet. He/she becomes rich from within! Simple living is not associated with asceticism or religion. Simple living also doesn’t mean rejection of religious and moral principles and believing that life is meaningless — that’s nihilism, not simple living.
Simple Living is more than that. It’s an advanced state of mind. It simply means, “you’ve started perceiving the beautiful game of life through another lens”. To put it into words, it means “If you can’t solve a problem then why to worry, and if you can solve it then also what’s the need of worrying”.
When this state of mind is dominant in your life, you’ll always grow — in every aspect of life — financially, humanely, socially and internally as a person. With simple living you’re blooming in happiness in every moment of life. Nothing is lacking. Everything is complete!
Diogenes claimed that a simple life is necessary condition for virtue. He destroyed the only wooden bowl that he regarded as his possession on seeing a poor peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then said: “Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!”.
Jean Jacques Rousseau praised the simple way of life, in his own way, through his writings in two of his books: Discourse on Inequality and Discourse on the Arts and Sciences .
“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.” — Jean Jacques Rousseau
What in reality is simple living? And what are its characteristics?
In simple words — simple living — is simply living — in simplicity — with a simpler state of mind.
See, a simple term with a lot of simples can be so complex! But we do know the way to understand the complex terms — by breaking them into chunks. In this article, we’ll understand the concept of simple living through its characteristics. Simple living brings out the best version of self out. It just shreds the unwanted baggage that an individual was carrying. You do what’s important for you. Your personality transforms. You become a new version of yourself — a better individual.
What can a simple life give us? — let’s explore this dimension — the benefits of simple life — the traits of highly successful people.
Quality
It is the state in which an individual is comfortable, healthy, and is able to enjoy life events. The meaning of this state of mind is different for different people. Some people consider simple living as a portal to increase quality. Quality maybe anything, but is always the natural state — from the quality time with your family and friends, to the quality of time for self, and to the quality of life to lead— all comes under the heading “simple living” — with both ‘s’ & ‘l’ in lowercase.
As John Ruskin said: Quality is never an accident; it’s always the result of intelligent effort. Similarly, simple living is an intelligent effort where an individual hones the best out of oneself. Simple living mustn’t be considered a state of detaching from the external world. It doesn’t mean, one doesn’t like the pleasures of life. It’s simply none of them! In simple living you just do everything in moderation. But the fruits are in excess!
At one point of time, you’ve heaps of wealth, you’ll just buy a luxurious multi-million-dollar yacht. It’s no big deal. You can have what you like. You’re happy with what you have. At another point you’ve nothing; you can’t buy even a bicycle. But one thing is still with you — your satisfaction — that’s quality.
Purpose Of Life/Goal oriented attitude/satisfaction
You’re doing few things in life but they matter to you the most. Simple living can help you find your purpose in life and can also help you achieve it. You complete the tasks with perfection because you love to complete them. This state of mind is closely linked to quality — the element of purpose of life is a subtle part of quality — quality and purpose of life both give meaning to each other. Once you’ve realised your purpose, you’ll strive for it, and it will improve quality of your life.
With the attitude of simple living an individual can complete any task assigned — without even realising it was a complex one. Everything becomes so simple. You’ve plenty of time as you’ve already eliminated the distractions. You just shutted out the useless hustle-bustle. You’re no longer in thinking mode. You’ll always be in action mode. What you want it’s yours.
But you need to be motivated about your goals and not make them the end result. Success will come to you with the passage of time — slowly and steadily — committing mistakes in the process. Success is not an “end result”; it’s a process with lots of folly — the seeds of success are to be planted in the “means”.
Unbiased Soul
“We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” — Fight Club
An unbiased soul doesn’t feel clinging to the societal parameters of beauty, wealth, power, education, and intelligence. You realise your mind was creating these things earlier. You eliminate all the societal parameters of experiencing the world.
You look through the soul of the person not just perceiving the outer beauty. You start to recognise the real wealth is in the perspective not in the heaps of currency. You can change these parameters at will.
Not only this, you’ll be breaking the pattern in which people perceive intelligence. A dumb person could be transformed into a genius. Parroting certain definitions and concepts isn’t intelligence. The real intelligence lies in creation. You want an example, right? — I got it! The best example is of Thomas Elva Edisson. Despite his poor grades, he had a great interest in learning. He was considered the dumbest person in the class. But see, that dumbest child grew into an extra-ordinary innovator who held a total of 1,093 U.S. patents.
It’s in the unbiasedness that you see everything in its entire form, and in turn, you become more effective in analysing situations. An individual starts perceiving reality from a new dimension.
Staying in the moment
You’re always in the state of continuous flow. Your mind transforms into a free bird; it’s no longer circumscribed by the past or future. The main benefit in staying in the present is you do what you love. The mind of an old person is always in the past. Similarly, the mind of the young is always in the future.
But children are different and so is their mind. The mind of a child is always in present and in a creative mode. Once you’re in the present moment, your thoughts dissolve. You just forget everything and become a part of unity — with your surrounding.
Independent and self-reliant
I won’t perplex you with complex terms. Independent and self-reliant doesn’t mean to be only independent financially. It’s not that!
It’s the independence in every possible way. It means independent in thinking and its patterns. It’s the last phase of simple living. It’s the phase of struggle. You’ve limited resources and you create with those resources the best thing possible. You think different from the herd. All the big ideas are born once this state is achieved.
Notice all the successful people in the world have one thing in common — they’ve passed through an intense phase of simple living. Amazon was created in a garage with limited amount of things. Warren Buffet never spends more than $4 on breakfast, all his life he’s lived in the same house he bought for $3200 in 1958.
With simple living your mind knows what and how to utilise for the maximum gain. The real simple living doesn’t end here — but it’s just the starting point here.
Effects of simple living
Simple living is a vast sea of experiences. Due to this, there arose a term now famous among high circles — Minimalism.
Minimalism is about eliminating the unnecessary ; it’s about simplicity, utility and importance. It works on the principle of “MINIMUM IS MAXIMUM” in terms of embracing limited amount of things, the most important ones.
Minimalism can be understood by citing the example of Henry David Thoreau — the person who popularised the concept of Civil Disobedience. Henry David Thoreau wished to live a simple life. He maybe regarded as the first modern minimalist. He’d a limited number of items in his possession — a small house(a hut), a simple bed, and three chairs.
As he mentioned in his book Walden,
“one chair for solitude; two for friendship and three for society.”
He didn’t want much. He just wanted to be away from material and the materialistic greed. Nature was there around his small hut — that’s what he needed the most. Right from childhood he was inspired by the naturalist tendency. In his hut, nestled in the canopy of dense forest, he’d wake up early to watch sunrise, write in the morning, a little window he’d in the hut was the sign of his love for nature.
Summing up all the characteristics together gives: Simple living is a cyclic-chain process; the accomplishment of one step leads to the success of another and in this manner the chain continues.
- simple living cannot be achieved without quality of life ;
- quality of life is only possible when there is a purpose of life;
- Purpose of life is experienced when mind stays in the present moment;
- when the mind is not in the present moment it gives arise to a biased state of mind;
- a biased state of mind can never give birth to an independent and self-reliant individual;
- an independent and self-reliant individual is the mind behind innovations.
Life is a process of gaining with every turn, and simple living is the experience gained in the process. The weakest minds are complex ; whereas the strongest minds are the simplest of all…..
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