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Watch salmon. Swimming upstream just makes you bait for a bear

Written by: Jennifer Jefferies

Article Overview: Statistics show that the most common time for people to have heart attacks is Monday morning – that’s how stressed we are about the work that we do, is it really worth that much?

Watch salmon. Swimming upstream just makes you bait for a bear

I was speaking with one man, a senior executive, at a breakfast seminar and he was telling me how he had this ‘balance thing’ all sorted out. He’d bought a unit on the NSW Central Coast where he could get away for a bit of r&r every few weeks. The thing is, it turned out that he’d had the unit for a year, and he’d only been there twice because he was now working harder than ever to pay for it. So often when I speak with people and ask them what they do to achieve balance in their lives, they’ll tell me about something they’ve bought, whether it’s a holiday unit that they never use, to a car that they worry about whenever they leave it parked somewhere, or some other gadget that is going to bring them pleasure or make their lives simpler. But more often than not these purchases don’t do anything other than drain the bank balance or collect dust.

Life is actually really simple, we have just become far too clever and crammed out lives full of systems and gadgets designed to make life easier and the result is that our energy is sapped to the point where life is a struggle. It’s time we got back to what the basics are all about, to the point where we work to live, not live to work.


Life really is simple and sometimes less can be more

Australian homes today are 30% larger than they were ten years ago, yet our families are smaller. Why are we filling our lives up with stuff to try and make us happier? In his book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’, Thorstein Veblen says that ‘wealth has become the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession has become necessary in order to have any reputable standing in the community’. Philosopher Alain De Botton has called this ‘status anxiety’, it’s that ever-growing need to feel accepted that drives people to keep filling their lives up with ‘stuff’ in order to seen to be seen as successful. De Botton writes ‘Status anxiety is the price we pay for acknowledging a public difference between a successful and an unsuccessful life’. The other price we are paying is our health as we work harder to own more things that don’t end up bringing us the happiness that they promised and that we long for. Think about the things that you have bought recently, believing that they will bring you pleasure or make your life simpler. Have they changed your life in the way you hoped they would?

Australian families today collectively owe about $714 billion. In June 2001, household debt represented 105% of disposable income and by June 2003 it had grown to 135%. As a nation we now spend far more than we earn. Next time you’re about to buy something to ‘cheer yourself up’ stop and think about how maybe less could be more, call someone you care about and get what you really need, some care and attention and not just another thing to clutter your life with.

Going without another gadget and reducing your living expenses, so that you can lessen the stress of having to work harder to maintain it all, might be just what the doctor ordered.

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Article Tags: alain de botton, amp, bank balance, breakfast seminar, central coast, gadget, gadgets, holiday unit, leisure class, life is a struggle, nsw central coast, philosopher, pleasure, possession, rsquo, status anxiety, style font, thorstein veblen



Related Forum Posts
Re: What I'm reading this weekend - Jan 21, 2011 - Just going off topic for a second... I read the 'farmed salmon' article. Nothing that I didn't know already, but I thought I would post a warning to people who want to protect their brain cells. If you eat fish, when you buy it, ask if it is farmed. If it is then don't buy it. Buy wild fish, yes it is more expensive, but your body will thank you for it! If you want salmon, buy a can of wild alaskan salmon instead. Back to the topic...
Re: Top 50 Lists - Hi Evan, How about "Top 50": -Inventor Blogs To Watch -Franchising Blogs To Watch -Business Book Review Blogs -Women Entrepreneur Blogs -Young Entrepreneur Blogs
CPM Network - Russell, 200 opt-in among the three of us all come from combination of listjoe.com listdotcom.com and there is a less effective one called listcube.com So they're all business opportunity/marketing related leads. But yes, you need to funnel your lead capture page THEN funnel into Aweber. Arcamax -- I haven't personally used it yet. Only because their target ranges from gardening to daily cartoons etc. You literally buy the rights to send either solo ads or banner ads by thousands. It's just their size is bigger than anything I know. So from then you'd have to do the same thing. You have to give them a bait and have them take a look at your offer then hopefully they'll opt-in. Depending on the nature of your mailing, you might want to check out Listjoe route because they're only $197 one time upgrade and you can mail out every three days to 3000 random members. They then really click your offer links in order to gain their credit since they're free members, trying not to pay for email rights. I'd offer report on how to use such services as the bait and from their if you can offer advice and suggestions related the recipient's interest, they should stay subscribed.
Business plans and start ups - [quote:2zl1vsyz]I'm always amazed by how little people know about running a business - yet they feel qualified to start a business. [/quote:2zl1vsyz] Has he even worked for a surplus store to get experience? If not he should go talk to a few owners. Also does he have hiring/firing experience. That's another thing for business owners of this type to bear in mind - it's hard to get good help...most inventory losses are due to employee theft, not shoplifting... Of course that's a "running the business" issue, not a business plan issue, but still, something to bear in mind.
Re: Internet Marketing is the best business in the world - Watch out for the video of this post in the next two weeks


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