“If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness.”
This quote from the Dalai Lama struck me hard as soon as I read it. It stuck and wouldn’t go away.
I felt sure that he was right about this. It’s backed up by so many anecdotal stories of people with complicated lives that seemed to be filled with all they could ever desire. But they’re somehow unsatisfied… Until they strip all those luxuries away and discover happiness on the other side.
But I couldn’t explain or prove it. So I want to understand more about why simplicity and happiness go together. Here’s where I’ve got to so far:
First up, having too much stuff is a distraction. Even if all the complex stuff in your life is ‘good’ — it’s diverting you from giving your full focus to the ‘best’ things.
Simplicity is what you need to double down on the vital few things that matter way more than everything else.
More than this, though, simplicity is inherently positive in and of itself.
Simplicity forces you into certainty and direction — to get much clearer on exactly what outcomes really matter to you and how you propose to achieve them. You can’t hide from yourself. You can’t keep yourself busy on irrelevant things.
And when you simplify your worldview and habits down to a few core principles this sharpens and clarifies your thinking. Not in the sense of becoming a human calculator. Rather, chucking out all the crap that’s been cluttering up your brain leaves you the space for slow insights that shed luminous clarity on life.
Life shouldn’t be an inherently complex thing. Look at the joy we find in appreciating the natural ability of animals to live simply in the moment. The additional brain power of humans isn’t a tool to allow us to get more and more complexity — rather it allows the true masters of life to pass through the apparent complexity and arrive at the elegant simplicity that lives on the other side.
if you don’t have a way to make life simple then you haven’t developed wisdom and insight. Do not pass go… Do not collect $200… Etc etc.
As Socrates observed, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. And a complex life defies true examination.
When you have a million different things that could be improving or damaging your happiness then you can’t tease them apart. But simplicity allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t. The simpler your life, the easier it is to examine what belongs there and what doesn’t.
Simplicity also grants you the time to do this.
Complexity keeps you rushing. Simplicity allows you to slow down and see life as it truly is.
The tricky thing is that it’s hard to get to a point of simplicity.
We hate to cut things from our life. The fear of losing something important is strongly baked into the human psyche — so we’ll tend to make all sorts of rationalisations as to why each part of our lives needs to be there and shouldn’t be ditched.
End result: we cut a few small things for show, and leave the majority of the complex mess untouched… Then pat ourselves on the back nevertheless, and declare a comprehensive victory.
So if we just start from where we are now then we’re simply going to fool ourselves.
The answer is to start from somewhere you’re not.
Resolve to cut everything, then start again from zero! Accept back into your life only the things that truly earn their place.
This is strong medicine for sure — but it puts us in a position where we’re able to make better judgements about what we really need. It’s almost impossible to arrive at a simple and elegant system by starting from a complex mess and cutting pieces away. Much easier to build simplicity from the ground up.
Now chances are you’re not willing to actually do this. Few are, sadly. But you can still go through it as a thought experiment…
Take a blank sheet of paper and imagine that you’ve now reduced your life to this. Then add things back in one by one until you reach the bare minimum for what’s viable.
I’m betting it will be much less than you thought. And now, every time your brain tries to rationalise that you really need something, you can simply point to the sheet and note that it isn’t there.