Imagine retro seventies modernist furniture. Very big, very square. Upholstery? Faux fur. Equally big and square is the coffee table that sits in front of the sofa, with rounded corners made of faux wood. A creamy white monstrous family Bible sits in the middle. Bulbous green glass lamps illuminate the room, revealing the bright green shag carpet on the floor… and the wall.

This, my friends, is not just a story, it’s a description of my landlord’s apartment. She’s in her eighties , and she’s been living here and renting out these one bedroom apartments for many years. She has no interest in remodeling anything. She’s satisfied with the way things are. She’s content. (And while I was writing this post, she brought me some chocolate pecan clusters… now I’m content! ;-)

Joshua Becker at becomingminimalist wrote a great post on contentment last week, and it got me thinking: who do I know that’s content with life, and what can I learn from them? And that’s when it hit me: old people! (NOTE: That was a figure of speech, I was not actually assaulted by any elderly person!)

We live in a western culture that absolutely devalues older people, and it makes me sick. We don’t want to listen to their incredible wisdom because “things have changed.” Granted, technology has certainly changed some things, it’s also true that some things never change. There is nothing new underneath the sun.

For instance, Brian Clark from Copyblogger tweeted this brilliant statement a few weeks ago: “If you want to learn social media, learn to be social. The medium is irrelevant.” Soooo true. And guess what? Older folks can teach you a lot about how to genuinely be sociable - especially my generation, which, as a whole, is inept at real life social interaction.

Now back to this idea of contentment: I’ll bet you know, or have known, some older people in your life that are perfectly content with what they have right now. If they didn’t purchase another new thing the rest of their lives, it would not affect their happiness one bit.

I love people like that. That’s the place I want to be, where my joy and passion doesn’t emanate from what I own or don’t own, but from my relationships and the difference I’m making in people’s lives. Who better to show me how to get there than someone who has already made the journey?

If you follow simplifi.de on Twitter (and please do!), then you know that I have been tweeting quotes from a guy named Charles Wagner a lot lately. That’s because I have been reading his book called, “The Simple Life”, and it is the single best book I have read on simplicity. Every page has something to apply to my life today. (A review is forthcoming on simplifi.de)

Oh yeah, Charles Wagner was born in 1852, and The Simple Life was published in 1904.

Every generation struggles with finding simplicity in the midst of chaos. And I’ll bet if you look hard enough, you can find someone around you from the previous generation who has succeeded. Go visit them as soon as you can. Sit with them on their couch, that couch that has probably been in and out of style 3 times already. Sit down, shut up, and just listen. Ask them questions. Be humble. Learn how they found peace in the midst of turmoil, simplicity in the middle of an increasingly complicated world.

We would love it if you would share your thoughts about this post… tell us about the person that came to mind when you were reading this post, and how they live(d) a simple life!

This post is Part 4 of an series called “Lessons in Simplicity from the Olympics”. They were  posted during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, on how the themes of the Olympics can be applied to simplicity. Others in the series…. Focus, Control, Discipline.

Well, the closing ceremonies are tonight. There are two words that you will hear a lot tonight: Olympic experience. I have heard so many athletes over the last two weeks say something like, “I’m just enjoying the whole Olympic experience.” And I think it’s great; I’m always happy for the athlete who says that, regardless of their competitive results. They get the point – it’s about the journey, not the destination. Read the rest of this entry »

I often hear people quote the following when addressing the issue of how to tackle an overwhelming task; “How do you eat an elephant? The answer? One bite at a time.”

As I look around at the stacks of boxes in our garage and basement filled with items I need to sort through and for the most part, discard, the piles of papers here and there, and the cluttered closets and drawers in our home, I feel like I am facing an elephant. It’s a daunting challenge and honestly, I don’t know where to begin.

Okay, flash back to Whistler, British Columbia. It’s Day 6 of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Lindsey Vonn is facing a mountain – literally. A daunting challenge. She’ll be racing at about 70 miles per hour down a 2,500 foot icy slope-one that had already injured or caused some of her competitors to tumble out of control. As if that’s not pressure enough, her Olympic performance has been hyped by much of the news media and advertisers. As By Mike Lopresti, wrote in USA Today, “ She had been featured in nearly every magazine this side of Popular Mechanics. If she failed, every continent would know it.”

She didn’t fail. She nailed it and won the gold. Lindsey reflected on her win. “It’s everything I’ve worked my whole life for. I somehow managed to do it.” Somehow managed to do it? I think she knows exactly how she “managed” to do! Discipline. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is Part 2 of an series called “Lessons in Simplicity from the Olympics”. Be looking for more posts during the Vancouver Olympics on how the themes of the Olympics can be applied to simplicity . Read Part 1, FOCUS, here.

It’s Day 8 of the Olympics, and I have seen this scene play out multiple times in these Games already: It’s a hotly contested sport, and the best athletes are going last. There is intense rivalry, and everybody is on the edge of their seat, waiting to see what will happen. The reporter comes up to the favorite and tells them that their main challenger just made a fabulous run/skate/jump etc. And then they ask the athlete how it will to affect them. And do you know what they say most of the time? “I can’t focus on that right now – I can’t control the race they run. But I can control what I do, and right now I’m focused on doing the very best I can. I can’t change their race, but I can change mine.”

Do you know what they’ve just done in that moment? Read the rest of this entry »

This post is Part 1 of an series called “Lessons in Simplicity from the Olympics”. Be looking for more posts during the Vancouver Olympics on how the themes of the Olympics can be applied to simplicity .

Because I want to live my own life rather than watch other people live theirs, I try to limit how much I watch television. But every two years or so, something happens to me. For about six days now, the TV has been on at least 4 hours a day (a little in the morning, more in the late afternoon, all evening, and late into the night).

What has caused this temporary insanity? The 2010 Vancouver Olympics!

I absolutely love the Olympics. Why? Read the rest of this entry »