Recently, I shared my story of dramatic essentialism (by choice) during my vacation to the Turks and Caicos Islands. While this may not be something that you could see yourself doing, a simple choice can make a significant step toward more Perfect Days.
Daje Morris offers, “By choosing a mindset of thankfulness, the essentialist chooses to try and find fullness and meaning in the day-to-day rather than letting his/her joy be extrapolated by the critical voices of dissatisfaction and discontentment.”
I love the reference to day-to-day—in the spirit of that, here is a practical example of essentialism that may resonate with you.
I shared this story of Essentialism with my Facebook 411 Live participants recently; I dumped my cable service. Yes I did. Not an easy thing to do, and while some who may truly be in a place of choosing (a commonly used word of essentialists…) to cut back on some bills or expenses, I saw it as going big. Not a cut back, but a win against family frustration, a win for my problem of time-sucks in the home and yes, a win in my checkbook each month. Not, what the hell am I going to do when college football rolls around.
I went BIG. And similar to my homelessness on Grand Turk, ditching cable it was liberating and transformational.
Liberating. Transformational. Big words, right? Go Big, Essentialists, Go Big.
About The Author: Cokie Berenyi
Cokie Berenyi has been in financial services and serving the needs of individual and institutional clients and entrepreneurs since 1996. Mother, author, business owner, financial “samurai” and Perfect Day engineer, Cokie loves food, wine, travel, stray dogs, goat cheese, tennis, and alpine mountaineering.
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