MIND newsletter: Less is more. And freedom
Happy Saturday everyone! 😉
1. M (Challenge your mindset)
“Freedom” is perhaps one of the most chosen values when people try to define what matters to them in life and in career. The freedom to choose working or not working. The freedom to be happy, or sad. The freedom to say yes or no.
I would argue that, freedom is not an easy value that we can apply directly to our decision-making. Some people quit jobs to travel for freedom, only to find out a couple of months later they are not happy with that “freedom”.
Freedom comes only when you can swim through all distractions in life and still be mindful of what matters to you day by day. The world is, unfortunately, too noisy for us to stay focused and do that simple task.
Only, perhaps, the thought of our time getting shorter can lift the veil of illusion and make us realize that: Life can be simple.
This week, I listened to a 97 yrs old philosopher sharing his reflection when facing his own death. And so much to learn from retired seniors in their 70s, 80s talking about their biggest regret in life.
One consistent message I learned from their answers: design your life with “less is more” – worry less to be more free.
2. I (I’m my own coach)
The quote from The School of Life summarizes so well the concept of “less is more”, in other words quoted from Albert Einstein – make life more simple, not simpler.
It can take a very long time indeed to work up the courage to be simple: to read simple books, to wear simple clothes, to have simple days and to say simple things. For a long time, all the advantages and glamour seem to lie with complexity. We are pulled towards rare and hard-to-follow ideas; we entertain our friends with elaborate meals; we pursue convoluted relationships; we have careers that enmesh us in complex commitments; we fill our leisure hours with exotic hobbies.
And then at some point, we may sense and aspire to the real challenge of existence: to dare to sound - to some - like an idiot; to fix on certain basic truths we’ve always known, to edit down our calendars, to wear only what is comfortable, to put in front of others the same sort of basic foods we like when we’re alone, to have relationships solely with those who know how to be direct, to leave our days more or less free apart from one or two elementary pleasures (tending to a garden, having a bath, going for a walk), to limit our reading to books we can understand and to communicate without inhibition all those heartfelt and essential things we know to those we are close to (that they are everything to us and that we’ll miss them immensely when it is over).
We worry inordinately about sounding boring or silly were we to show ourselves without elaboration or live according to our own less adorned inclinations. We spend the major part of our lives trying - unsuccessfully - to be somebody else. It can be the thought of death that eventually loosens us from our pretensions. We realise - under its bracing influence - that there is no point burdening ourselves with habits, ideas, vocabularies, people and duties that don’t belong to us. There is no point wasting time we can ill afford on those who can’t non-defensively say ‘I love you’, with clothes that we can’t keep clean, with books we can’t understand and with crowded days heavy with panic and meaningless challenges. We finally lose our terror of coming across as a simpleton and a yokel.
We’ll be properly mature, even properly sophisticated, once we’ve learnt to appreciate the art of being direct, easy to follow, emotionally straightforward, predictable, unhurried and - in the eyes of the frantic and impressionable many - exceptionally dull.
3. N (The power of Now)
What is distracting you from things that truly matter to you?
4. D (Do)
What is one thing that you can change today to make your life less complicated?
