Graham Hill - entrepreneur, quite wealthy man, lived a very luxurious, surround yourself with a bunch of all, he seemed to be necessary, but in fact only absorb His Life and Times.
Read excerpts from his reasoning.
I live in the studio 39 square meters. I sleep on a pull-out bed built into the wall. I have 6 shirts. 10 cheplashek for salads and other foods. When guests come to me for dinner, I take a folding table. I have no DVD, and the current collection of books is 10% of the original.
I've come a long way since the late '90s, when a successful Internet startup turned to me the enormous flow of money. Then I bought a huge house and beat him things, electronics, appliances, gadgets, he organized a fleet of vehicles.
But somehow all this stuff took a life of my own, well, or most of it. Things, I have consumed, devoured, Eventually swallowed me. Yes, I have not the most common life scenario, because few people greatly enriched by 30 years, but my script to interact with things - the most common.
We live in an excess of goods, hypermarkets in the world, huge shopping centers and convenience stores. People of almost any social stratum can surround yourself with things.
There is no any sign indicating that these things make us happy. In fact, I see the opposite picture.
It took me 15 years to get rid of all the non-essential, that I so painstakingly accumulated, and start living a wider, freer, better, having less.
We have already talked about the interesting and perhaps one of the most crazy brain of a typical consumer's experiment - tested hundreds of things. You just takes and throws off the shackles of materialism, leaving only what you really need.
It all started in 1998. Me and my partner have sold our consulting company for the money, which, as it seemed to me, I did not earn in my entire life.
After receiving such a sum, I bought a 4-storey house. Seized opened the possibility to consume, I bought a brand new sectional sofa, a pair of glasses for $ 300 a ton of gadgets and audiophile 5-disc CD-player. And, of course, charged black Volvo with remote engine start.
I began work on a new company, and time at home does not remain. Then I hired a guy named Seven, which, according to him, worked as an assistant very Courtney Love. He became my assistant for shopping. His role was to go shopping consumer electronics and accessories with the camera. He photographed the things that, in his opinion, would have liked me, and then I was looking through a photo and choose the things I liked to buy.
However, consumer drugs, soon ceased to produce euphoria. I lost interest in everything. Brand new Nokia is not excited and do not satisfy me. I began to think about why the improvement in life which in theory We should have made me happierIt does not help, but only create anxiety in the head.
Life became more difficult. So many things, for what must follow. Lawn, cleaning, car, insurance, maintenance. Sevena have been a lot of work, and... in the end, I have a personal assistant for shopping? Who do I turn!!! My house and my things have become my new employers, with I do not want to hire them.
Everything got worse. I moved to work in New York and rented a large house, which served as a good reflection of me as of IT-entrepreneur. The house had to fill in things, and it is expensive to afford and time. And yet I have my house in Seattle. Now I have to think of the two houses. When I decided that I would stay in New York, it took tremendous effort and flights of a bunch of back and forth to close the issue with an old house and get rid of all the things that were in it.
Clearly, I was lucky with money, but these problems are common to many.
The study "Life at home in the 21st Century", published last year, shows the life of 32 families from the middle class. The need to take care of his property guaranteed to cause the production of stress hormones. 75% of households could not park the car in the garage because the garage full of other things.
Our love of things affects almost every aspect of our lives. Grow the size of houses, reduced the average number of residents in the house. Over 60 years of space under one person increased by 3 times. I wonder why? To keep it in even more stuff?
What we store in the boxes which drag when moving? We do not know until they open.
An interesting trend, although it relates to the United States. You know that according to The Natural Resources Defense Council turns out that 40% of the food you buy American, is in the bin?
This insatiable entails consequences on a global scale. Wild consumption is possible due to excessive production, and it destroys our entire ecosystem. Those iPhone, which manufactures Foxconn - they, too, are the cause of the terrible changes in the ecology of the industrial regions of China. Cheap production, spitting on the consequences. Does all this you happier?
There is another point - the social and the psychological. Observations Galen Bodenhausen, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, uniquely linked abnormal consumption and anti-social behavior. The consumer mindset is equally negative for the person, regardless of their income level.
My attitude to life has changed after meeting with Olga. Along with her, I moved to Barcelona. Its term expired visa, and we lived in a small modest apartment, and were happy. Then we realized that we did not hold in Spain. We packed some clothes, took Toiletries, their laptops and hit the road in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and still many places along the way. I continued to work, but my office is now fit in my backpack. I felt free and did not miss on his car and gadgets left behind.
Relationship with Olga ended, but my life changed forever. It is less than the things I travel light. I have more time and more money to spend.
Intuitively, we understand that the best things in life - it's not the same "stuff", and relationships, experience and achievement of objectives. They are the products of a happy life.
I like physical objects. I studied design, I love gadgets, and clothing, and similar things. But my experience is that from a certain moment the material objects are displaced emotional needs that these objects are, in theory, should be maintained.
I'm still employed, and now I am developing a compact-designed houses. These homes are created so that they supported our life, and not vice versa. Like those 39 square meters, in which I live, these houses do not require a large amount of materials for the construction, do not require long-term maintenance costs, allowing the owner live frugally.
I sleep well, because I know that I do not use more resources than I really need. I have fewer things, but more enjoyment.
Little place - a lot of life.