By Leo Babauta

Our lives naturally get filled with clutter: possessions that we ordered online pour in week by week, we take on more and more, we are constantly reading and watching and responding, messages pour in daily as well.

The modern world is one of more, more and still more.

What would it be like to declutter our lives and live with less?

The Way of Less is one of:

• Less clutter, fewer possessions, just the essentials
• No need to reach for the comfort of buying things or holding onto things, because you have learned to take care of your stress without things
• Less doing and busy-ness, because you’ve said no to more things, and have focused only on the things that make the most difference
• Less distractedness, because you’re checking on things less, more focused and less responsive
• Less on your to-read list, less on your to-watch list, less that you have planned because you’ve let go of needing to read and watch and do everything that looks interesting

By reducing down to less, you learn to become content with little. You have space in your life. You can breathe. You can give focus to what matters most to you. You can find joy in the simple things.

This is the Way of Less, and many people I know have found it to be a joyful way of living. I often get off the path myself, but returning to it is always like coming home.

Essentials for the Way of Less

The Way of Less is not really about saying no to everything or tossing everything out or doing nothing. Sometimes it involves those things, but that’s not what it’s about.

It’s about saying yes to what really matters. Paring down to the essentials that matter most to you, and making space for those.

What matters most: What are your essentials? My list might look something like this:

1. My mission (work, including writing and teaching)
2. My loved ones
3. Learning
4. An active, healthy, mindful life

The last one might seem like a cheat, but it’s flexible: it includes meditation but could include walking, hikes, sports, lifting weights, yoga, cycling, swimming, surfing or more.

What are your essentials?

Possessions: You can also make a list of essential possessions. Mine might include:

• A minimal amount of clothes for a week
• A dozen books or so (I have more than that right now, but am paring down)
• Exercise equipment & a yoga mat
• My computer & phone
• And of course things like dishes, towels, a bed, sheets, etc.

Projects & doing: How much do you have on your plate? If you could whittle it down to the essentials, what would it look like? For me, it might look like:

• My mission — one project at a time
• Cultivating the communities of my programs (including responding to messages once a day)
• Learning project
• Doing things with my loved ones

I’m not saying these are the only things I ever do, but they’ve become my “projects & doing” essentials lately.

Digital essentials: How much do you do online? What do you read and watch? How often are you responding to messages or checking social media? If you had to pare it down to your essentials, what would it be?

For me, it’s email and the online communities for my programs, along with team and client messages. I also check a few news websites but those aren’t essentials for me. I also often do my learning projects using online reading.

It’s not about cutting everything out of your life, but about contemplating what your essentials are.

Getting to the Way of Less

Once you’ve identified the essentials, getting to the Way of Less is the next part of the journey.

We won’t go into the details of it right now, but here are some key points to this journey:

1. Identify the essentials. As we talked about in the section above, it’s important to identify what’s most essential to you — in your life, digitally, with your possessions, projects, and so on. Get clear on this.
2. Start decluttering the rest, one chunk at a time. Now start to let go of the rest. Do you have big commitments, projects, activities that have been taking up your time but not on the essentials list? Start to let them go. Do you have a lot of clutter beyond your essential possessions? Start to let those go as well. Digital distractions, huge reading and watching lists, all of the aspirations that you don’t have time for — start to let them go! Just a little bit at a time — otherwise it can get overwhelming. It’s the same as how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
3. Learn to cope (and thrive) without the buying & overdoing. Now here’s the thing we need to start to shift, in the Way of Less — not needing to buy things to deal with stress, sadness, loneliness. Not needing to always be busy. To be willing to feel what we feel, and be OK with it — that’s a key skill. It starts with meditation, but cultivating the capacity to be present with your feelings is a lifetime practice. It’s what we train with in my Fearless Training Program — you can start with the Fearless Purpose training package.
4. Find joy in the things that matter to you. Now that you’ve let go of most of the non-essential things, the key is to stop looking for happiness and comfort in everything else … and start finding the joy in the things that you’ve kept. The things that matter most to you. Find joy in very little. This is another lifetime practice, but you can do it today. Find one thing on your short list of essentials (like my mission, loved ones, learning & healthy life), and see if you can find joy in it.
5. Start saying no to the rest more often. And here’s another key step that we often forget about — once you create some space for the things that matter, stop saying yes to everything else. As much as you’re able to. Don’t let things creep back in. I have to either keep this front of mind, so that I am saying no as a general rule … or come back to it when I start to forget. I know that I’ve forgotten when I don’t have enough room for what’s important.
6. Enjoy the space. It’s not just finding joy in the things that matter. It’s also finding joy in having some breathing room. Having some space. Not needing to keep doing, but to stop and just be. Just notice. Just breathe. Relax into it. Very few people actually allow themselves to do this, without needing to fill everything up with reading, watching, doing, responding, talking, moving, acting. Enjoy the empty space, as if it were just as important as all the rest.

Would you like to explore this with me? Join the Declutter Challenge in my Sea Change Program. We have articles, videos and weekly check-ins to support you moving towards less, along with a live video webinar with me.

Join Sea Change today to be a part of the Declutter Challenge.

By Leo Babauta

Each of us has a different reality. And we’re creating that reality, and can shape it in many ways.

We tend to think of reality as something external and absolute, like the sun shining down on us on a hot, lazy afternoon. That sun is really there, whether we believe it or not, right?

But as humans, our reality is shaped by what we perceive. So one person will see the sun has overwhelmingly hot and oppressive, the other sees it as an opportunity for a great tan. Another will see it as a huge cancer machine. And still another will think the sun is an angry god to be feared and served.

Those people all have very different realities, even if the sun is objectively the same for all of them.

In that light, whatever you think about and do on a regular basis shapes your reality.

And that’s mostly the Internet (and phone apps), for a lot of people.

If you’re on websites that talk about how horrible the world is, and how gays and Muslims and feminists are causing everything to go to hell … then that will be your reality.

If you’re on Facebook looking at your friends’ food pictures or vacation photos, that will shape your reality. If you’re on porn sites, that’s what your reality is. If you follow people on Twitter who complain all the time, that affects your life in a major way.

What Internet habits shape your reality? Is that the reality you want? Can you shape it?

I don’t have any answers here. Just wanted to influence your reality a tad.

When Lauren Catron was first diagnosed with a severe form cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease that makes mucous and sweat glands go haywire, her doctors were unsure that she’d live to be a teenager. That was nearly 23 years ago. Now, 26-year-old Catron is a full-time college student at Mission College in Santa Clara, Calif. with enough energy to work a job in her spare time.

Catron credits her sustained health to the more than two decades of care she’s received at the Pulmonary and Cystic Fibrosis Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Catron shares her story on the Happier, Healthier Lives Blog:

“When I was first diagnosed in 1992, the doctors told my parents that I may not make it to my teens,” said Catron, who has the genotype associated with a shorter lifespan and the most severe symptoms of cystic fibrosis, including a constant buildup of mucus in her lungs that interferes with breathing. “But a whole team of people at Stanford has dedicated themselves to keeping me healthy. They have given me absolute unconditional support, amazing treatment and care, and have become my second family.”

Carol Conrad, MD, director of the pediatric pulmonary function lab, explains that the center’s expert care stems from the many clinical trials and studies they do to advance the treatment of cystic fibrosis. “No other CF center in California is doing these kinds of clinical trials,” Conrad said.

This research, which ranges from dietary-supplement studies by Conrad to gene therapy work done by Richard Moss, MD, shows promise. Moss and his colleagues were the first to discover that gene therapy could improve pulmonary function in cystic fibrosis patients – an important finding that may lead to a treatment for the disease in the future. “As depressing as the disease can be, there’s a lot of hope. That’s what keeps us motivated,” said Conrad.

Previously: New Stanford-developed sweat test may aid in development of cystic fibrosis treatments, Film about twin sisters’ double lung transplants and battle against cystic fibrosis available online, Diverse microbes discovered in healthy lungs shed new light on cystic fibrosis and Living – and thriving – with cystic fibrosis
Photo of Conrad (left) and Catron courtesy of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital

As you may have heard about elsewhere, a new paper published today on the safety of childhood vaccines provides reassurance for parents and pediatricians that side effects from vaccination are rare and mostly transient. The paper, a meta-analysis appearing in Pediatrics, updates a 2011 Institute of Medicine report on childhood vaccine safety. It analyzed the results of 67 safety studies of vaccines used in the United States for children aged 6 and younger.

“There are no surprises here; vaccines are being shown over and over again to be quite safe,” said Cornelia Dekker, MD, medical director of the vaccine program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, who chatted with me about the study earlier today. “The safety record for our U.S.-licensed vaccines is excellent. There are a few vaccines for which they document that there are indeed adverse events, but the frequency is quite rare, and in almost all cases they are very easy to manage and self-limited.”

A Pediatrics commentary (.pdf) accompanying the new study puts the value of immunization in context:

Modeling of vaccine impact demonstrates that routine childhood immunizations in the 2009 US birth cohort would prevent ~42,000 deaths and 20 million cases of disease and save $13.5 billion in direct health care costs and $68.8 billion in societal costs.

The commentary goes on to contrast the risks of vaccines with the potential complications of vaccine-preventable diseases:

The adverse events identified by the authors were rare and in most cases would be expected to resolve completely after the adverse event. This contrasts starkly with the natural infections that vaccines are designed to prevent, which may reduce the quality of life through permanent morbidities, such as blindness, deafness, developmental delay, epilepsy, or paralysis and may also result in death.

The study found evidence against suspected links between vaccines and several acute and chronic diseases. For instance, the researchers found high-quality evidence that several different vaccines are not linked to childhood leukemia and that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is not linked to autism. The DTaP vaccine is not linked to diabetes mellitus, and the Hepatitis B vaccine is not connected to multiple sclerosis, according to moderate-quality evidence.

The evidence does connect a few vaccines to side effects. For instance, the MMR, pneumococcal conjugate 13 and influenza vaccines are linked to small risks of febrile seizures, with the risk of such seizures increasing slightly if the PCV-13 and flu vaccines are given together.

“A febrile seizure can be quite alarming, but fortunately it does not have long-lasting consequences for child,” Dekker said, noting that the risk of such seizures from vaccines is around a dozen per 100,000 doses of vaccine administered.

The rotavirus vaccine is linked to risk of intussusception, an intestinal problem that can also occur with rotavirus infection itself. But the benefits of rotavirus vaccination “clearly outweigh the small additional risk,” Dekker said.

The study confirmed earlier research showing that some vaccines, including MMR and varicella, cause problems for immunocompromised children, such as kids who have HIV or who have received organ transplants. Since they can’t safely receive vaccines, this group of children relies on the herd immunity of their community to protect them.

“It’s not as if the parents of immunocompromised kids have a choice about whether to vaccinate,” Dekker told me. “They have to depend on others to keep immunization levels high, and that starts breaking down when more people hold back from having their healthy kids fully immunized.”

Dekker hopes the new findings will encourage more parents to have their healthy kids fully vaccinated.

Previously: Measles is disappearing from the Western hemisphere, Measles are on the rise; now’s the time to vaccinate, says infectious-disease expert and Tips for parents on back-to-school vaccinations
Photo by Gates Foundation

 We don’t use the “real” Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Google, Yahoo, or LinkedIn. We are almost all part of experiments they quietly run to see if different versions with little changes make us use more, visit more, click more, or buy more. By signing up for these services, we technically give consent to be treated like guinea pigs. But this weekend, Facebook stirred up… Read More

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Jeff Clement.

I did two deployments to Afghanistan as a US Marine Corps logistics officer, and led hundreds of Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen (and dogs) on dangerous resupply convoys, facing insurgent IEDs and ambushes. This isn’t something that anybody knows how to do instinctively. Leadership, whether in the most intense combat situations or everyday business here in the States, is a learned skill. In fact, I titled my book The Lieutenant Don’t Know, making light of everything that I had to be educated about.

I was fortunate to have some fantastic teachers and mentors who taught me how to lead. I took some time and distilled everything I learned into four key points that don’t just apply to Marines, but to everyone. There’s a common thread that runs through them — it’s about people, gentlemen.

Lesson #1 — The time to prepare was yesterday: if you stop to ask how fast to run in a firefight, you’re not running fast enough.

Imagine a 30,000-pound armored gun truck getting air as it jumps off a four-foot ledge, screaming toward a firefight at 50 mph, the Marines inside laser-focused on the task at hand. The time to prepare was yesterday. Today, it’s too late.

It doesn’t matter what your job is; to be successful you have to prepare your body, your mind, and your team. Run through possible scenarios in your mind, think of everything that might happen, and make a plan. When a leader half-steps and hesitates to make a decision, it puts everyone in danger. A plan that is just “mostly right,” but implemented immediately, will be better than a perfect plan put into place three days too late.

But this stuff doesn’t work if you just think about it — going about it on your own. Even worse than a leader hesitating is when the team does not act as one — if a platoon simultaneously attacks in two different directions, the platoon will end up being split down the middle, and each half will be defeated. When confronting a problem, analyze it, make a decision or come to a consensus, and act as one. Ideally, the team will have practiced or rehearsed ahead of time; if not, communicate calmly and clearly with your guys. Act with confidence, conviction, and violence of action.

Lesson #2 — Be a part of something bigger than yourself: self-sacrifice for the greater good is the hallmark of a leader.

One of the hardest things to do as a leader is to tell one of your Marines to do something that has to be done, but that you know puts that individual in a tremendous amount of danger. The Marines never fail though, and without hesitation they will put themselves in extreme danger in order to carry another Marine to a MEDEVAC helicopter or clear a path out of an ambush.

The best part about being in the Marines is the Marine to your right and to your left. It might have been a different person on different missions and from one day to the next, but every Marine is my brother or sister. I know they would do anything for me, but it’s a two-way street. They would do it for me because they know I would do anything for them.

Back here Stateside, you aren’t asked to risk your life very often. Sometimes, giving your time for a friend or colleague is all that’s asked. Other times, it means rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work with your team.

As a leader, you are a servant first. You exist for the team, to take care of them, to ensure they have the tools to succeed. A leader who gets a reputation for being selfish or self-centered will rarely earn the loyalty or respect of his teammates. But if you take a step back, acknowledge “it’s not about me, it’s about the team,” great things are possible.

Lesson #3 — If you don’t know, ask.

There’s nothing manly about pretending to know something that you have no clue about. It will surely come back to bite you, or worse, hurt your whole team. “The Lieutenant don’t know” is something that Marines say to make fun of Lieutenants, the most junior of the officer ranks, for our lack of knowledge.

Dudes always seem to think it’s a huge sign of weakness to ask a question. On the contrary, I’ve found that people will respect your self-awareness and desire to learn. Changing a tire on an armored truck is a little more complicated than on your Toyota Corolla, and a M2 .50 cal machine gun is a little (actually a lot) more finicky than an old shotgun. I found out pretty quickly that my most junior Marines knew the inner workings of this gear better than I did. As a platoon commander, I tried to spend time with my most junior Marines, asking them what they did and how they did it. Not only did I learn from them, we built a bond of trust that would pay off later.

No matter what your job is, there’s something you don’t know. Spend some time with the guys down in the warehouse, or the lumber yard, or the mailroom, or whatever. Those little bits of information might prove crucial later on.

Everyone needs a mentor. My platoon sergeant was the most important mentor I had, and he taught me how to lead. You never know where you’ll find a mentor — it could be a superior, a peer, or even a subordinate. Listening and asking questions are not signs of weakness.

Lesson #4 — It’s about building trust and respect.

Leadership definitely isn’t about being everybody’s friend. To me, leadership cannot be summed up into pithy statements or bullet points. At the same time, leadership is straightforward. It’s about trust and respect, which are very complex when you think about it. There’s nothing that you can specifically do to ensure that your people trust and respect you.

It’s the sum of your actions over time that define who you are as a leader, and determine if your guys trust you or not. Asking questions, giving yourself for your team, doing your homework and putting in the hard work, making detailed plans and communicating them to your team, and so on, are all part of it.

______________________________

Jeff Clement is a US Marine Corps veteran of the War in Afghanistan and the author of The Lieutenant Don’t Know, available now at Amazon.com and http://clementjd.com. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Alison and is an MBA student at the Smith School of Business.