Don’t Confuse a Simple Life with a Small Life
By: Charlie Brown
Tags: Minimalism, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Beyourself, Personal Development

A small life is sitting at home every night watching Netflix in an attempt to forget the mind-numbingness of the day spent commuting, of working in a boring job, of small talk with Brenda in the lunchroom.

A small life is sitting in a house full of items bought on credit on a whim on Saturday shopping excursion because there’s not much else to do on the weekend.

A small life is keeping up with the Joneses. It’s spending precious spare time re-decorating the house for the second time in 2 years. It’s twitching the curtains to find out what deliveries are being made to the house two doors down. Wait, is that a new 60 inch TV? An expensive food subscription box? How many wine bottles are in their recycling this week?

A small life is wishing the days away until the once-a-year holiday I allow myself— even though I love to travel, but the aforementioned house re-decoration has to come first — comes rolling around and I can forget the monotony of my everyday life for a week or two.

A small life is thinking about going to the gym or for a run — after all, it’s been a while since I exercised — but being too tired, too unmotivated to even get up off the sofa.

A small life is letting other people decide the direction of life for me. Friendship groups that pressure me into having children when it’s never been my thing. Parents who want me to get on the property ladder — and keep on climbing — because it’s ‘just what you do in life.’ Insidious workplace cultures that skew my way of thinking, of living, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t get sucked into that world.

A small life is filled with time-sucking devices that pretend to give nourishment but actually feed off me. It’s about preferring to scroll social media than talking to the real-life person in front of me.

A small life filling the time between when birth and death with anything to distract, anything to make life a bit easier in the short term, anything to just get through the day without flushing my head down the toilet just to feel something other than monotony and boredom.

A Simple Life Is Not a Small Life

A simple life is spending my evenings with the people and activities that give me energy, rather than expend it. To drink wine at a bar with friends. To cook dinner for my partner. Reading, writing, relaxing in whichever way gives me joy.

A simple life is filled with items I care about, however many or few there may be. It’s about intentional spending on things and experiences I enjoy. It’s getting finances into shape, paying off consumer debt and saving and investing with the future firmly in mind.

A simple life is learning that the opinion of people I don’t know should not even register on my radar. It’s about caring what and who is inside the house, not what it looks like on the outside or what can be delivered to it in brown cardboard boxes.

A simple life is about self-reflection. It’s about taking the time to discover how I want to spend my free time and getting on with doing it. It’s about finding morsels of happiness in everyday life which slowly compound over time until one day I wake up and realise that it’s not just expensive holidays or free-time activities that make me happy.

A simple life is about moving my body every day because I know that a life without health isn’t a life at all.

A simple life is caring about the people that surround me but not enough to live life for them. A simple life is well-informed because if I make major life decisions like house buying, baby-making or career-building without intention, I’m only doing it because someone has told me to, not because I’ve decided for myself.

A simple life is understanding the value that a smartphone can give but knowing when to put it away. A simple life is about connecting with those in the room, giving them my full attention. Sometimes it’s even about leaving that phone at home.

A simple life dials back the noise in my head. It sees the future and builds towards it, whilst not neglecting the present. It is a financially secure, lifestyle-inflation-rejecting person-centric life that filters out the noise and distractions. It clarifies and liberates.

A small life is easy, but not simple. A simple life is not always easy but it is certainly not small.

Think big. Embrace the simplicity of life.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Confucius

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