Making Your Point

I recently read a book about minimizing your life. In fact I stayed up late last night in order to finish it. It touts the benefits of simplifying and removes many narrow definitions of what it means to live a simplified life. The chapters are broken down in a progression of how the idea was brought to the author's attention to things he did to start his transition. It moves on to give practical advice on ways to remove clutter from your home then makes even more radical suggestion for downsizing house, vehicles, and everything right down to the applications on your smart phone. The last few chapters talk about removing intangible things like hours of television watching or frivolous items from your daily schedule. Finally it turns the tables and suggests ways to take your new found time and money you have saved to put it to good use.

I agree with the overall premise of the book. I have already put into motion a number of the suggestions into practice. My biggest problem with the book is the way the author presented his ideas. Because he is a man of strong faith and spending more time at the church was part of his motivator, the book comes across very preachy. At the end of the book he discusses using your newly acquired savings of money and time to devote to volunteering. Again I agree, to a point. He spends more than half the book talking about how minimizing will allow your dreams to come true, that you will have resources you never knew you had before, and how they can be used to fulfill your dreams of travel, spending time with your family, or whatever other passions you may have.

At the end however he proclaims loud and long that doing anything for yourself is basically a waste of these new found resources. Over and over he drills in his belief that time, money, and anything else gained by your newly minimized life should be spent solely in the pursuit of bettering others. I am not against volunteering. I spent two days following the tragedy that happened in my beautiful Las Vegas building a park for the victims and survivors in order to give people a chance to grieve. I work with a number of animal organizations and donate time and items to a local domestic abuse shelter. All of these things are passions of mine and I wouldn't dream of giving them up. I also have my toys such as skis and a kayak. I also go out with my friends and spend entire days in coffeeshops working on my own pursuits. I don't feel guilty about any of it.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that giving advice is one thing but preaching your ideas and trying to force people to see things from your perspective is entirely different. Strangely enough I think many of the suggestions presented in the book are wonderful and I am thrilled to be making changes to move forward in my goals. I will struggle to recommend the book however, because I honestly feel put off by the forcefulness of his methods. You can make your point without holding people hostage to it. Present the ideas and let people use them as they see fit instead.