You Don’t Need A Lot

Nothing is enough, is a famous adage, it tells that no matter how much we have, we will crave more and more. May it be happiness, money, status, power.

This post explores how you don’t actually need a lot of things to make life memorable.

A lot of this post is inspired by this amazing video that I watched on YouTube: Why You DON’T Want To Be A Billionaire… by Magnates Media.

The point made in the video is pretty clear, with a lot of money, comes a lack of privacy, emotional connection, belonging and what you need to live for a fulfilling life might not be a lot of money, it might be just “enough” money.

Picture YOUR Perfect Day

As was said in the video I mentioned above, picture your perfect day. For me, currently, it would be a day with a little coding, a little travel, preferably some walking on some hills, some time with family and friends and sound sleep. That’s it, that is a great day for me, there’s no “perfect” day because in retrospect the days you might call perfect are the ones that you didn’t get to plan.

What I want to point out is that in the above mentioned day is I don’t need anything too materialistic to achieve it, sure, some money to buy a laptop to code, some money to travel and some money for food. But they are not very high costs, a normal income can afford you all of that if you are good with personal finance.

Everything that you want on your great day is a complement, to your already-great day, and is often brought up by life’s Hedonic Treadmill. One should try to achieve those as well, but it wouldn’t hurt if one fails to do so either.

Define what “Enough” Means For You

Enough means different things for different people, after all, we have varying needs, varying aspirations from life and varying ways in which we make ourselves happy.

For me, it’s being able to travel wherever I want, save enough money for emergencies and the future, spend time with friends and family wandering around and having a nice little chat with me, and most importantly stay stress free. That’s my ideal happiness scenario, I don’t have anything more that I might need in life to make it more fulfilling. To a certain extent, I already have all that I need, and most likely, you guys reading this do too.

We are all blessed to be born in a world with free-will and easy access to stuff that we need, it would be unimaginable earlier! Similarly, the definition of “Enough” has also changed over time, what took years to achieve yesterday, is available to us through the internet.

Picture your perfect day, your perfect life, you don’t need to stick to it, of course, we all change and that’s the beauty of life, if you don’t feel you were inhibiting yourself earlier, you haven’t grown, but having an idea of how you want your life to turn out is a great exercise to evaluate what you need and to be grateful for what you already have.

Realize life is finite

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.

Once you realize that your life is finite, you will realize that pursuing impractical goals or unlimited riches or spending unnecessary amount of time doing things for the future while your present is not what you want it to be, is absolutely not required!

We all know all of this already, don’t YOLO your life around and have nothing left for the future, but also make sure to make the most of today, because what the future holds, we don’t know and over-preparing for it will never help the present.

So give up on the unnecessary stress that you might have about what you’re going to do in the future (And I am talking about stress, being thoughtful about the future is actually rewarding) and make the most of today.

In no way am I advocating for aiming low in life, that would be unfair to your potential, I am just asking you to evaluate whether what you are aiming for will provide you with long-lasting happiness and satisfaction or is it just a step on Life’s hedonic treadmill?