One simple exercise that will make you think.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
Here’s a simple meditation:
Imagine or actually do this.
Take everything that you owned away from you. You can do this by going to a park for a day and sitting under a tree, go to the beach and lie on a towel, or perhaps by hopping on a plane with a backpack for a month or two.
Now take a look at what’s left. Contemplate the remainder, without the stuff. The essence of what you really are without all of the junk.
Whatever is left when you get rid of the stuff is you.
When you take away all that you’ve bought, what have you accomplished?
Write this down.
Now write down what you want to accomplish.
Perhaps you still have a small creative empire working without you or within you. Good!
Or perhaps you’ve just been surrounding yourself with distractions in order to forget that nothing you’ve ever done means anything.
Perhaps you’re somewhere in-between those extremes.
Everyone reaches a point of no-return with their stuff.
We humans reach a tipping point, when we’ve accumulated so much meaninglessness in our lives that there’s no going back. The form that this meaninglessness comes in is different for anyone. For some it’s buying the entertainment center, for others it’s their first house, for some it’s drinking every night to make the pain go away.
From that moment forward, every dream is just a dream — they can never become reality.
The dreams become so hard to make reality when you have to pay someone to move the entertainment system.
So you sit around dreaming about visiting Bali for the rest of your life. But you never actually go — except maybe for an extended weekend.
How can you replace your junk with real, meaningful, challenges and experiences?
