Enjoying your Downsize Life is all about getting to the place where you are self-sufficient. I don't mean that you need to be living off the land, growing your own vegetables and distilling rain water for your shower and teaching your kids at home rather than using a state school system! Not at all. What I am keen on is the idea that you can live in a house that meets all your needs for space and utility, that your work or paid employment is fulfilling, and that you have satisfaction and happiness in the physical environment you occupy.
Having enough to satisfy and meet these needs truly is all that you require. Having enough means you having sufficient resources. You can be a creative indie providing skills and services or products to your various clients. You could be a portfolio worker holding two or three separate roles which, when taken together, provide the finance that is enough to cover your bills for accommodation and food, for clothing, leisure time and future savings plans.
You may work in a secure job that you love or one in which you are uncomfortable and looking for a new role that provides greater fulfilment to your own values and sense of what you consider important and nurturing.
Possibly you are out of work and between jobs or in long term unemployment with little expectation of finding work again. In any one of these situations you are able to give thought and attention to how you live right now and whether there are aspects of it that you seek to adjust or adapt.
Enough is about being self-sufficient in whatever way works for you and your household. It is about being happy with how your life looks and works. Accepting the Enough is Enough mindset requires you to separate from what the adverts and the celebrity gossip columns suggest are important and to be admired, and to instead just consider what you want. Having enough for your needs is all you need. Ever.
In a modern, developed economy you are doing well if you have a financial surplus being saved each month. Apparently, more than 70% of working households would struggle to deal with something as simple as finding $750 - $1,000 for a surprise domestic bill, like the failure of the central heating boiler. If you can pay your bills and still have enough set aside for the inevitable surprise bill or incident where an extra $500 or $2,000 is needed, then you are in a good place. If you can do this and still have an enjoyable holiday a couple of times each year, you are way ahead of many people.
To get into an even more positive position, think about taking away completely or significantly reducing any of the workplace stress or political troubles that come with employment in a larger work place where there is always someone above you, telling you what to do and by when, or giving you tasks to do which seem ever more difficult to achieve. To remove yourself from that requires an extra financial move requiring a radical reassessment of your own cost of living and survival each month. Where you can make significant downward adjustments to your regular outgoings, you are creating more flexibility in what work you choose to do to earn money.
This lifestyle requires you to listen to your heart and hear what your feelings are telling you. Where you feel anguish, worry, upset or simple unease, there is a message for you and an idea to explore. If you open your post and constantly see bills that are just beyond your ability to settle in full, this is a wake-up call to think about your monthly cost of living and start to look at cutting those costs so that you can live within your means to pay those same bills next month.
If you have possessions you never use and where you have low emotional attachment to them, then they should be up for sale and gone. If you have a three bedroom house and have no need for regularly hosting visitors can you be better off in a home with just one less bedroom, but which still accommodates your needs for personal space and storage? Would such a move either save you money in significantly reduced rent or allow you some greater flexibility over your choice of work? If you own your home and sold it to move into a different space that you buy for less, can the surplus you create by moving house then be used to boost your savings and reduce any debts for good? If you work in a place where conflict between employees is difficult, the quality of management is low, or where the rate of pay is poor, you can use these factors as motivation to find employment that better suits you.
Think about the areas of your life where you feel unhappy, stressed, worried or dissatisfied and consider how you could make things different. The easiest way to determine if there is a need for change, is to ask yourself: "How am I coping?"
Listen to your mind and hear the honest answers that come out of this. So, how are you coping? What can you change today?