What matters most to you?
Is it having the best, the shiniest, the most expensive new-fangled thing? Having it before everybody else?
Or is it…
To awaken each day relaxed and happy and not dreading the day to come, to have the time to enjoy your children, to watch your garden grow, to be free to follow the path that leads you through today?
These things are not possible if you are still tied to the treadmill-and letting the world run your life instead of the other way around.
Focusing on the important things in life can keep you from getting caught up in the consumerist work-spend-debt-work tangle. Cutting expenses can make it possible for you to fulfill your dreams: staying at home with your children, going back to school, starting a business, or just having more time to relax and de-stress.
Whatever your goals, reducing expenses can free up the life energy you need to get there.
Each day provides an opportunity to have a simpler, more focused life. Take a look at where your money has gone over the past few months.
What did you buy that you could have lived without? Look around you to see what is in your life that could be simplified.
- Can you trade in your car on a more gas-efficient model?
- Can you cut back on the cable television, so you get just 20 channels of nothing instead of 120 channels?
- Can you take a camping trip with your kids rather than an expensive Disneyland outing?
- Would you rather spend money on that new blouse, or take an afternoon without pay and spend time relaxing?
Once you begin focusing on simplifying rather than accumulating, you will find yourself enjoying life far more than you ever did. You can spend more time with your family and friends.
It’s likely you’ll still have to work for a living, of course, but with fewer expenses you only have to ensure the basics are covered. Beyond that, you can cherish each moment, as it happens. So enjoy your new, improved, simpler life!