The Magic of Simplicity

Recently I read the book Insanely Simple: The Obsession that drives Apple’s success by Ken Segall. He talks about how the mantra for Apple was always simplicity and gives brilliant examples of the stories that created Apple products. It made me think that its true for how we live today as well. Human lives have become more and more complicated. Social media has taken over lives of people as we see majority of us staring at our smart phone screens on some social media app or reading something interesting on social media. Pre Covid, I used to take the bus and train everyday to work and sometime I used to look up and look around, almost everyone is staring at their screens. During rush hour, some trains and buses are super crowded and people are almost in each other faces with their smartphones, its both sad and funny to me, reminds me of the movie Matrix. Most people seem to be controlled by technology and material nature of the world. The human mind is constantly engaged in some sort of activity, there is hardly any peace of mind.

Living a simple life is a choice. One decision is all it takes. I took all my extra clothing items few weeks ago and donated them at Salvation Army. I keep 3 pants, 1 jeans, 5 shirts and 7 t shirts and they give me plenty of options for my clothing ( still working on shoes). The only thing that increased here is my laundry activity which is still a better deal. I deleted the Facebook app on my phone because my fingers would naturally move towards clicking the button and I now save at least 2 – 3 hours per day ( yes, those minutes accumulate, if you use a software like rescuetime to track your activity, you will be unpleasantly surprised!

Being simple gives you a chance to be grateful for what you have. Even though you may have less, but you will feel more satisfied than the other person who has a lot more than you. And when you are grateful, you experience joy and bliss. Even scientifically there is evidence that people who are more grateful are more happier in life.

While reading a post on the Pyschology of money recently, I thought of the idea HOW versus WHAT. I feel there are 2 important questions to ask in order to simplify our lives, How do I want to live OR what do I want to do?

I think we can safely say most of us are taught to focus on what we want to do in life. What do we want to study, what do we want to do for a living, what kind of house do we want to have and so forth. Based on that, we fit everything else in life.

Over the years I have felt that instead focusing on How I want to live is a better question to ask myself. And for that we need to have a clear understanding of our priorities. The 4F formula is the one I personally subscribe to.

Faith.Family.Finances. Fitness.

Asking myself questions about my priorities has really challenged me and helped me grow. For a long time I told myself excuses to not take up basic meditation and chanting. Its amazing how many smart answers my mind came up with. But I have always reminded myself of this quote by Richard Feynman. “Don’t try to fool anyone and remember the easiest person to fool is us ourselves.” Was Faith really my priority is I couldn’t even take out 10-15 mins in a day? Is family important to me if I can’t take out quality time for them? Am I being sincere about my finances and saving/investing? Is fitness really important to me if I keep eating junk food and can’t take out a few mins daily to exercise?

Every time I do this, it gives me a reality check. Then my mind is unable to trick me with excuses. Like last week when I decided to check my weight after about a month and the scale said I gained 10 pounds when all this time I had been telling myself that I’ve been eating healthy and exercising enough. To be real honest with you, my first reaction was, what’s wrong with this weighing scale!

Getting back to the 4F formula, writing down my priorities gives me that reality check in life. It has helped me to change my perspective on life and led me to focus on how I want to live. I am definitely a more content, happy, joyful and peaceful person now. I think if we can do this for ourselves and set this example for our children because they follow what we do and not what we say, we can help build a better society.

Sharing this inspirational quote from Henry David Thoreau. ” You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. “

I want to live a simple, joyful, peaceful, mindful life. I want to live a life where my existence is of benefit to others, to nature. Everything else can fit within this. Simplicity is happiness, joy, contentment. This is the closest you will get to perfection, as the famous saying goes, “perfection is not how much you can add to something, but when you cannot take out anything from something.”