Mindset
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?
