Acquire less, live more.

Photo by Miguel Orós on Unsplash

 

We have been trained to acquire more, more, more. As in more money, more customers, more “friends”, more everything. This is the metric we have been indoctrinated to believe is the one to judge our life by.

 

On Facebook, we tell ourself the story that we are worthy when we see we have a big number of “friends”. And our job is to get “more”. On LinkedIn, we are happy that we have 2000+ connections. In our bank account, we want more.  Same as our business and professional objectives, most of us consider our aim is to get “more” customers.

 

We do the same with our wardrobe and shoe cabinets. We need more. We crave for “more”.

 

Hey, is this “more” making us happier? Fulfilled? And do we ever stop, and think clearly, why do we need more?

 

The paradox is that running after “more” actually makes us less happy and fulfilled. When our aim is to get more customers, more friends, more money, more this and more that,  and when that’s our metric we measure as an indication of our success and our self-worth, we become shallow in what we do and we put all our values to the side and run after the numbers. We are too busy going for more that we lose sight of our “why”? Why are we doing anything, informs why we are doing everything.

 

Stopping to think “why”, gives us clarity as to what we really need to do. And very often what we really need to do is to get rid of stuff, people, actions…….etc, which are not aligned with our “why”? Our values and our main objectives.

 

I am curious, how many of us stop and ask the question: “why do I need more?”.   Can I work on “less”?

 

Fewer customers, fewer “friends”, less money, fewer shirts………….How would the quality of our relationships, our interactions, our engagements and the “depth” we go into in each relationship change and become, if we go for “less”.

 

And I am curious, how many of us stop and ask, “how can I get rid of the useless stuff”?  The useless “friends”, useless thoughts, useless attachments, useless money in the bank (by directing some to more useful uses and causes), ……………………………..

 

I am curious, would many people agree that in life, the skill to get rid of stuff is as important as the skill to acquire stuff?