Simple Living Is a Constant Battle Against Everything You Previously Thought Was Normal
No one said this simple living lark was going to be easy
It’s always tickled me that living a simple life is so damn complicated.
I mean, it should be the easy route but modern life has other ideas. Modern life likes to pull you towards the path of least resistance, the one lined with time-sucking, money pilfering activities nicely branded up as “What You Do.”
Pushing against that crap takes some serious mental resilience and with that comes continual re-evaluation of everything. Your decisions, the way you choose to spend your money, who you choose to spend your time with.
Because even the most belligerent of us can be tempted away from simple living in exchange for something more…normal.
Welcome to your complicated simple life (I promise it’s worth it).
Resist, don’t relent
Every day I wake up and I’m greeted with the tiny little wardrobe that travels with me around the world.
There are 50 items in there and every day I’m tempted to sack off that limit — even though that number is imposed by what I can fit into my suitcase.
I see all these beautiful clothes people around me have draped over their bodies and covet them. I walk down a high street and my eye is turned by something in a store window.
Every day I have to resist the urge to buy. It’s not just clothes, it’s everything, from toiletries to apps to stationery to foodstuffs.
It’s not even stuff, it’s experiences too. I can’t afford — nor do I have the inclination — to do it all and yet I feel the pull of it all kinds of exciting experiences every single day.
Thus, every day is a re-evaluation. If you’re bombarded with up to 10,000 advertisements a day, that’s 10,000 times you have to ask yourself — do I need this? Should I part with my cash for this?
That’s a lot of resisting and frankly, it’s exhausting.
The alternative, however, is even more so. To relent means filling life and home with stuff and experiences you don’t need or possibly even want, paid for by money you probably don’t have. It’s mental clutter, phsyical clutter, debt, exhaustion, and burnout.
Resist, don’t relent. It’s a drag, but the alternative is worse.
Keeping in your simple living lane is easier with the right people around you
My cousin and his family surprised me with a visit this week. These are not your run-of-the-mill family. They homeschool, they work outdoors, they spend most of their free time in their allotment. They’re also outgoing, gregarious people whose positivity is infectious.
They live simple lives and they’re the first people I’ve met who do so since returning to the UK nearly 6 weeks ago. I’ve spent much of those 6 weeks resisting the urge to sink back into the comforting fold of a consumer-driven life. I watch the parcels arrive at my brother’s house day in day out and my primitive brain finds it hard to resist the little dopamine rush I know I’ll feel if I buy my own parcels.
Hanging out with my cousins for a few hours broke that cycle. I had such a good time hanging out on our local beach with them that I forgot all about the siren call of online shopping and consumerism in general. Even better, other members of my family were also infected by their way of life, so much so, my brother is considering #vanlife for his vacations and even homeschooling his own kids.
Finding people like this — ones that not only support your decision to live a simple life but are bossing it themselves — is crucial if you want to resist the worst of modern life. They do exist — they may even be closer than you think.
As they say, you can’t change the people around you but you can change the people around you.
Reducing your anti-simple-living triggers
What are the big guns that stop you from living a simple life? Is it spending an ungodly amount of time on social media? How about a propensity for online shopping? Or filling up that diary out of sheer fear of boredom (my personal issue)?
These are your anti-simple-life triggers, the ones that can derail your well-meaning simple living plans.
We all only have 24 hours in a day and you can’t spend all of them dealing with every anti-simple-living niggle that comes our way — we have to prioritize.
It could be as simple as setting goals. For someone like me who loves a full diary, I might limit myself to two or three social engagements a week (a tall order for an extrovert like me, but very much required to prevent burnout). If buying online is your kryptonite then you could set a weekly or monthly monetary limit.
Whatever your anti-simple-living triggers are, focus on them. Don’t sweat the small stuff, stick to the big wins.
TLDR: Simple living is difficult because the whole world is set up against it. To successfully adopt a simple living mindset, you’ve got to resist what you were previously told was normal, hang out with the right people and focus on the big wins.
It’s annoying and sometimes it’s enough to make you throw in the towel and return to “normal” life.
It’s more than irritating, frankly.
But the results — more time, more headspace, more money, less stress, more peace — are worth the constant battle.
Promise.
Sign up to my Substack Simple and Straightforward for essays, 8-week courses, reading recommendations, and waste-reducing recipes to help you live more simply, slowly, and sustainably (paid and free options available)