My friend visited from Portland, OR a few weeks and inspired me to take a massive step toward living a much simpler lifestyle. He has spend the past year or so as a “vagabonding,” most recently returning from a 4 month visit to Fiji, where he lived on about $10/day….and felt that he was living a fantastic life. Surfing, eating awesome fresh vegan food, and meeting great people every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention to retreat from the world or make such a radical shift to my lifestyle, but I have been adopting some of the concepts he has been using to simplify his life over the past few years.

It all started when he walked into my apartment, and threw down a modestly filled backpack on the floor. He strolled about my place and made an observation that I have a lot of “stuff.” That was the first time someone has really said that about me. Most people have the opposite reaction! My apartment is very new, and pretty sparse by most standards.

He then pointed out that his entire worldly possessions fit in the that single bag that was laying on the floor. It made me think about all the things that I had, and whether I really needed all of them. Over the past two weeks, I’ve found an incredible amount of enthusiasm, energy and happiness around the process of getting rid of things I no longer need to have in my possession.

After getting rid of this baggage, I feel an incredible “lightness” and much less encumbered. Just walking into my home feels much better. Things are better organized (since there is less stuff to clutter up) so I can find what I need and not bear the psychological burden of looking at a bunch of stuff sitting around.

So what have I down-sized in the past few weeks? Here’s a run-down:

• My ward-drobe has been cut in half. I have dropped off at least 6 large garbage bags of clothing to Goodwill. This was tough to do, since many of the clothes were in great shape and fit me, but most of it has not been worn in over a year (and probably won’t be worn anytime soon). My closet now has plenty of empty space on the hangar rack, and my shelves have just a few stacks of clothes.

• My library has ben cut in half. I love my books, but I had far too many. My bookshelf was tilting to one side from the weight, and they were stacked in piles on the floor and in laundry baskets next to my bed. Many of the books would never be ready (by me) again. They needed a better home, so I’ve given them away to friends or Goodwill. The books I keep are the ones that really matter a lot to me, or ones that I plan on giving away to friends as gifts over the next year.

• My Visa credit card has been canceled. I already have a Visa Debit Card and have decided to use that for all my “card” purchases. I have an Amex card that I will not use, but keep active in case of emergencies.

• My extra checking/savings accounts have been closed. I consolidated all my finances with a single company that is currently my brokerage firm. They have a checking feature to their brokerage, so I closed my separate checking and savings accounts. This way I only need to go to one account to manage my checking/cash balances.

• My extra brokerage account has been closed. I had an additional brokerage account that I used for Roth IRA and special investment vehicles that I have been using for the past few years. These investments have done well (better than S&P consistently), but were a headache to manage (I’ll go into the details of this in another post….maybe). The funds from this account will be consolidated into my single active brokerage account.

• My XBOX and 30 games that I haven’t played in years have been given to Goodwill.

• A box of triathlon and tri-related gear has been given to a friend who is actually racing….since I am not :)

• A whole bunch (3 large boxes worth) or miscellaneous goos have been given to goodwill.

• Two paper bags worth of non-perishable foods have been given away (non-vegan stuff I won’t eat).

• My iMac now has a new home! I have a MacBook laptop, and decided that I no longer needed two computers at home, so I posted the iMac on Craigs List. 12 hours later, someone stopped by my place and paid cash for it.

So there you have it. Hopefully this post has inspired you to think about where you can down-size. As for me, I am far from done with my own efforts, looking forward to giving away some more clothes, books and some nonsense furniture I have sitting around this week!

The Dalai Lama is visiting Seattle for a few days, as part of the Seeds of Compassion talks. Just now, they closed down several intersections outside my home (a very busy city road) to make way for his motorcade!

I was able to catch a glance of his ochre colored robe as his car sped by.

You can catch the talks on demand at the Seeds of Compassion website.

This morning I had my first official class as a teacher! I had a whopping two students participate, but I had a ton of fun…and am looking forward to growing the class as word spreads (it isn’t easy to get up for a 6:30am class!).

If you live in North Seattle, near Mountlake Terrace, stop by the Rec Center Tues/Thursday mornings (6:30-7:30) for a great hour-of-power yoga class!

Had a good conversation with my management team about our team’s focus and balance of time on things that are important (but not super urgent) vs those things that are important and urgent. Turns out we are spending a lot of time on the later.

The problem with focusing too much time on important and urgent priorities, is that you never really have a chance to think about long-term vision, direction and possibilities. If it is urgent, you’re probably looking for a good-enough answer in a short period of time. It’s hard to make a big breakthrough when you are so hyper-focused in this way.

I’ve made the same mistake in setting priorities in my personal life. Putting things off to free up time for the urgent things. I’ve stopped doing that and have felt a much greater sense of control and achievement. For example, I had to make it to my 5:30pm yoga class today. At 5pm on the nose, after over an hour of discussion, the meeting I was in was running long. Normally, I would just skip the yoga class and stay in the meeting.

Not this time….I just got up and left. The discussion wasn’t super urgent or even important. Yoga wasn’t urgent either, but it was definitely important. My absence was noticed from the meeting, but hey, I if you don’t draw the line somewhere it will draw itself for you!