Less is More: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

On September 23, 2008, Oprah‘s guest was renown financial advisor Suze Orman. Suze and Oprah went to visit Jose and Jill in their RV parked outside the studio. The following is taken from Oprah’s web site:

Suze has good news for Jose and Jill. Thanks to years of financial planning and diligent savings, she says they can continue their cross-country adventures for years to come. "This is a couple that’s done everything right," Suze says. "They have a serious sum of money in both of their retirement accounts. They just didn’t want to touch it. They have money coming in…there is so much money there that as long as they continue to live like this, they're fine."

How did Jose and Jill put away such a sizeable sum? For five years, Jill says they lived off Jose’s salary and banked her income, which Suze says is the greatest decision they made. They also spent years researching their retirement plan. "From a financial planning perspective, we kind of did the budget," Jill says. "We did the spreadsheet and we said what’s inflation going to cost us? What’s our rate of return going to be? What are we going to pay for fuel? What are we going to pay for food?"

Suze says more families should follow Jose and Jill’s lead. "Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous, you two. You are seriously on the financial road for the rest of your lives."

That’s wonderful financial news for the two of them. But what does that have to do with simple living? On the program Suze makes a profound comment. (Not found on the web site.) She looks around the RV and notices how very organized and clean it is. I must admit, it did look amazing! She then told Oprah that she bets that every cabinet, drawer, and closet has just what is needed…all in order. Oprah took her challenge and with Jill’s “okay,” Oprah began looking in every cabinet, drawer, and bathroom to see if what Suze said was correct. Sure enough it was.

Then Suze said something I will never forget. She said (and I’m paraphrasing) that those who are in debt are disorganized, in contrast to people who respect their money and their financial future. She said that the issue is all about respect. If you respect your money, then what you buy you will take care of. If you are in debt because you have maxed out on credit cards and need serious financial intervention, her research shows that the “stuff of life” is not treated with respect and those material goods end up disorganized and cluttered.

At that point I believe tears were rolling down my eyes. Suze had uncovered an incredible truth. In these uncertain economic times, how much respect to we treat our finances? Are we willing to continue to live as if nothing has changed and buy according to our emotions? Will we continue to treat our material goods with the same disrespect and will the clutter continue?

I challenge you to look deep within and see if there is room for growth and change. This is a great day to re-examine what you believe about your relationship to money. I pray God deepens your insight. As I continue to uncover these truths regarding simple living, I am seeing that it is so much more than dealing with our material world. It affects every area of our decisions. What and how we spend says a lot about what we value and respect and how we treat our possessions says a lot about our relationship and respect to the money God has entrusted to us.

~Eileen Koff, CPO

Less is More: A Challenge to Design Your own Blueprint for Simple Living

In past blogs regarding simple living, I have made many references that this new lifestyle is harder and more multifaceted than would appear on the surface. To cultivate a simpler lifestyle, we must search deep within and begin to let go of the world’s measure of success. This truly is hard, but with God’s direction you can begin. What we need now is a blueprint on what living a simpler lifestyle looks like. I would like to offer the following points to begin your blueprint:

1) Limiting material possessions to what is needed and/or cherished.
2) Meaningful work, whether paid or volunteer, ideally spending no more than 30 hours per week. (in order to make time for items 3-12 below)
3) Quality relationships with friends and family.
4) Joyful and pleasurable leisure activities.
5) A conscious and comfortable relationship with money.
6) Connection to community, but not necessarily in formal organizations.
7) Sustainable consumption practices.
8) Healthy living practices...including exercise, adequate sleep, and nutritious food.
9) Practices that foster personal growth, spirituality, and prayer...Bible groups and journal writing, for example.
10) Connection to nature—delighting in spending time in nature regularly.
11) Aesthetic beauty in personal environment.
12) Living in harmony with values and integrity.

This small list is by no means complete. You need to come up with your own concepts and I challenge you to do so. Adopting just 3 of these practices will transform your life. Can you imagine what your ideal life of simplicity would look like? I’d love to know. Please write to me at Eileen@tothenextlevel.net if you’d like to take up this challenge.

~Eileen Koff, CPO

Less is More: A Life Transformed

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2 Corinthians 4:16 -17

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself." 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

To illustrate these verses, I am reminded of the butterfly...the symbol of freedom in Christ.

Before flight comes to the butterfly, it spends a previous life as something that even its mother wouldn’t recognize. The lowly caterpillar’s only concern is to munch its way in weight, crawling belly down on the earth to find a suitable twig to form its chrysalis. The caterpillar never reasons that it is about to undergo a total transformation. It doesn’t reason with itself that the time spent in darkness will transform it into a new creature. The caterpillar can’t even dream that its former self will never again resemble the snake-like belly crawling insect it once was. Having wings and flying has never occurred to it. Sprouting wings is as unfathomable to the caterpillar as we developing human wings ourselves. The caterpillar does what God intended it to do… never reasoning, never out guessing its Creator.

Instinct overcomes the creature and willingly, in the course of its time, it locates just the right spot to spin and dangle in darkness. When the chrysalis is complete it shuts itself up and begins a transformation that culminates in a life and death struggle for freedom. For transformation to occur...struggles always ensue. The lowly caterpillar is no exception. The following story illustrates what happens to the butterfly when the struggle was cut short...when the battle for freedom was taken up by outside forces:

One day a man found a cocoon. After several days of observation a small opening appeared and he sat and watched the butterfly for what seemed like several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the cocoon are God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. In doing so, it will be ready for flight once it has achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through all our life without any obstacles, that would cripple us. Our strengths would never be perceived. Not only that...we could never fly.

Living a more simplistic life, while multifaceted, must begin with allowing God to transform us. God’s grace begins in our lives when we surrender our own desires to Him. Like the caterpillar, we cannot muster the will power on our own, nor can we gain the wisdom from outside sources. Simplicity comes into our life not by a battered and bruised struggle; simplicity comes in when we are not even aware. A new since of wonder takes over. It profoundly seeps onto our personality. A changed personality...a changed lifestyle...comes from inner promptings. One might say that even our minds are renewed with a new awareness and thoughts.

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:2

The word "transformed" is translated from the Greek word "metamorphoo." It is from this word we get our transliterated English word, "metamorphose."

Simplicity begins with prayer. There is an intrinsic relationship between simplicity and prayer...and at the center of prayer is trust. Trusting that God will hear and will bring about the outcome according to what is His perfect will for our lives. As in the themes of the previous blogs, I touched on how trust becomes the center focus of our relationship with God. Trust, in our prayer life, moves us closer to understanding the complexities of living simply. Without a spirit of trust we would find it impossible to live on the basis of “our daily bread"...and a “just in case” mentality would rear its ugly head once more.

"Go confidently in the directions of your dreams; live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler." - Henry David Thoreau

Anxiety's root is fear...and living simply is living free from anxiety. I also know that this is more easily said than done. I myself struggle with maintaining a balance of pleasing God and pleasing man. But this much I do know: everything in our culture strikes against the spirit of simple living. Our excessive materialistic training to acquire more and more keeps us in a constant battle with our spirit’s desire to live free from this burden. How then CAN we be free from the anxiety?

"Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." Philippians 4:6

Join me next time as we continue to unravel the mysteries of living simply.

GET GREEN: Decode your Carbon Footprint

When I first heard about carbon footprints I think I was listening to the radio. I was imagining little black footprints all over my floor, and you can’t imagine the horror I felt. Just when I thought eliminating my plastic water bottle consumption was enough...I learned about yet another fight against global warming.

What is your carbon footprint?

It’s the amount (in tons) of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere as a result of your day-to-day activities...from driving a car to eating a turkey sandwich. The name refers to carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 84% of human-made greenhouse-gas emissions. "The word footprint describes the amount of carbon dioxide that you contribute to climate change," says Bill McKibben, author of Fight Global Warming Now.

So by ingesting that turkey sandwich, your carbon footprint includes the amount of pollutant produced by the tractor that harvested the corn that fed the turkey and the wheat that made the bread as well as the trucks that moved the turkey and the bread to the store and the car you took to the store and then home again. Wow! That’s a lot of miles for just one turkey sandwich.

You can calculate your carbon footprint by checking how many tons your household activities add to the atmosphere at: http://epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/calculator/ind_calculator.html.
The lower your number the better!

How do you reduce your emissions? You can help (through donations or time) organizations that fund clean energy or other projects that soak-up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Did you know that the U.S. ranks second among industrialized nations in greenhouse emissions? (Australia is first). I recently heard about an ice sheet the size of Connecticut that broke away from Antarctica. While global warming is certainly upon us, it’s not too late to take measures into downsizing your own footprint.