Downgrade Your Lifestyle to Upgrade Your Life

If you’re not willing to downgrade your lifestyle for a year to have a lifestyle you want forever, you care too much about what other people think.” 

– Jim Carrey

We are way too attached to things, stuff, and material wealth.

Way too concerned about how others will judge us should we not be driving the right car, or living in the right neighborhood.

There’s even a colloquial expression for it. “Keeping up with the Jones’.”

It’s only becoming worse with the invention of social media and the so-called smartphone (which should be called a dumbing down machine), because now, more than ever, we can see what everyone else is doing, and they can see what we’re doing.

What we don’t always recognize is how this judge-and-compare universe is defining our assumptions of what happiness should be. We are always looking upward to define our growth and success, not laterally, or even downward.

The next rung in the ladder must be climbed.

But what if we’re on the wrong ladder?!  Surely it’s better to climb down the ladder and step up to the next one, beginning anew to explore our possibilities?

Jim Carrey’s quote is poignant because it causes one to pause for a second and understand how attached we have become.  

If we are so defined by our station in life, are we not also trapped within it?

That sense of being trapped, controlled, or defined is self-driven.  We decide the interpretation of society at large.  Most of society at large is way too busy to give a shit about what we are doing, driving, or dating. But we still worry about it.

Contemplating Jim’s question, if we can simply consider downgrading our life, and being comfortable with less, we free ourselves to so much more possibilities.

I actually did this very thing.  

Eight years ago now, I decided to take less money, dropped a number of consultancy projects, and revised the way I was living my life.  I did this with my partner, and we made an intentional decision to reduce our financial footprint so we could begin to craft the life we wanted to live.

Smaller house, outside the city, less amenities, a simpler life.  It allowed us to create changes that in turn gave us space to take better care of ourselves,  enjoy each other, and to be better parents.

It wasn’t always easy, but life isn’t easy.  But it’s the hard we want to do.  It’s the life we choose to do.

I get to do this.

How about you?

Recognize Your Value

“Try not to be a person of success, rather become a person of value.” 

– Albert Einstein

A large manufacturing plant has come to a halt, with thousands of dollars of production being lost each day. 

No one seems to be able to fix the broken machine that is responsible for producing the company’s valuable products.

Customers clamoring daily for the product are frustrated and take their business elsewhere.

Ownership growing angrier with each passing day, and a real sense of despair has fallen upon the company.

Their wits end, and General Manager reaches out to a highly recommended consultant who comes to the plant, assesses the machine, takes out his hammer, and pounds three times on a small part.

Suddenly the machine begins to run again, and the product starts rolling off the assembly line.

The consultant hands the general manager an invoice for $30,000.

The General Manager squints and looks again, then turns to the consultant and says, “$30,000 for 10 minutes of work and three strikes of a hammer?!”

The consultant sighs, and then says, “No sir, you were losing thousands of dollars an hour because this machine was down.  The $30,000 is for the years of knowledge and accumulated experience that told me exactly what I needed to do to fix your machine in the shortest possible time.”

Your value should not be mistaken for your self-worth.  These are two different things.  Self-worth is how you see yourself from within and requires deep personal reflection and a great mindset.

I’ve talked about some of this work in previous posts.

But your value is something defined by external interpretation.  What do you bring to the table that serves to improve or benefit those who seek your services or knowledge?

The Rapper 50 Cent began his foray into selling Vitamin Water after observing the difference between a gallon of water sold in one container for $2.89 and another down the aisle sold for .59 cents.  

He speculated that no one would know the difference between the two waters if they were poured in a glass side by side.  He realized that the “Brand” of Poland Spring, had figured out how to make people think there was a difference.

He later observed the difference between a bottle in a hotel room for free, in the local corner store for $4.00, and on an airplane for $9.00.  Real or perceived scarcity, convenience, and brand image all play into the decision-making of the customer.

Your ability to make a living from what you do, the service you provide, or the products you sell is determined by your ability to solve problems others can’t solve, or your ability to be there when they need solving.

But it is also dependent on your ability to recognize your growth, and your unique abilities as they become enriched.

It’s also dependent on your confidence in what you offer or provide. Your ability to walk away from those who don’t value what you have to offer.  But also your ability to be there when it’s needed.

Your value is complex, but it starts with knowing it doesn’t always have anything to do with the market price.  The herd mentality creates market prices and expectations, but those should not define your value.

Your value is always changing and often revised depending on circumstances, environments, and needs.  It’s important to keep a pulse on all of these things as your life and career progress. 

Mohamad Ali once said, “A man who sees himself at 50 the same as he did at 30 has wasted 20 years.”

On second thought, your value and your self-worth are intimately aligned.  The work inside is just as important as the work outside.

When you know your value, live it.

Mastering the Art of Living

“A Master in the Art of Living draws no distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind, and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. 

He hardly knows which is which. 

He simply pursues his version of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves it up to others to decide whether he is working or playing, to himself he’s always doing both.” 

– L.P. Jacks

I heard this poem the other day, shared by the author’s son at a Ted-Talk. 

Profound!

It’s the real concept of living a balanced life.  Creating this life takes time and intention, but the essence is listening to your heart as you work your way through life. Recognizing what aligns with your energy and what does not.

Too many of us ignore the signs, ignore the feelings, and plod on with life expecting at some point along the way that fulfillment will rear its wonderful head.

It doesn’t work that way. You need to listen as you work your way through each experience, each stage, each moment.  Evaluate how it made you feel, and recognize its worth.

As you do, and as you find your work of choice, you’ll begin to realize that work doesn’t feel like a job anymore, it is just what you do.  Play isn’t contrived but simply explored regularly.  Both become blurred by their synergy.

You aren’t working, you are being in the effort.  It might not be easy, likely isn’t easy. But you are doing the hard you love.

Further education is simply an extension of this internal compass, not burdened by having to do it, but immersed in the opportunity to play with it like a new medium of artwork.  

That’s it really, you do the next thing, not because you need to accomplish the next thing, but because it just feels right.  It’s a part of your expression, just like singing or dancing.  You don’t sing because you have to, you sing because you want to.

As the poem says, others may perceive you are at work because you are at work, but that doesn’t mean you are working.  Only you define the feeling.

I think this is the journey we are on, to slowly fabricate our lives, listening more acutely to our internal dialogue and owning the dissonance.  Not allow ourselves to accept the job, the relationship, or the situation because that’s what is expected by society, our community, or ultimately ourselves.

Stop, evaluate, revise, and set a new course.  Life is a series of experiments, each one helping to refine a better outcome. Slowly taking us to a place of mastery.

But we have to begin by listening and then doing something about it.

Don’t accept what doesn’t feel right.

Master the Art of Living.