Less Stuff

I know someone who recently lost everything in a fire.  Most people react funny when I say, “Isn’t that great”.  She understood perfectly, she understood the liberation and the opportunity.What would it be like for you if you lost every possession?  Let’s make it a little easier and say that you have insurance, you don’t lose your livelihood, and you don’t become homeless.  In that context, what would your experience be like if you lost every possession?I suspect that you have some possessions right now that take more energy than they give back.  Try this, make a list of your 25 largest, most significant possessions, rate them all as to whether they “net” give or take energy, give them a number from -5 to 5, do they drain energy or fill you up?  Find the biggest drain and get rid of it any way that you can in the next 2 weeks.  See how you feel after getting rid of it.One of my measures for every possession I own is:  “Does it add meaning to my life?”  I often give that test to everything I own.  You can give things MTL (meaning to life) ratings; I use a 1-10 scale.  Since I put money at an 8 on a MTL scale I don’t buy or keep anything that rates under an 8.  For me they also have to rate at least an 8 on the aesthetic scale too, they have to be beautiful.I just got rid of a juicer that I bought recently not because I don’t like juice anymore but because I didn’t like using the machine.In the high value I give to getting rid of things that don’t add meaning, I sometimes get rid of something that later I wish I had kept.  I am not sure of the ratio of those times that carry regret but I will guess that it’s about 1 in 40, a price I am more than happy to pay for having a simple, uncluttered, non-life-sucking relationship to things.Everything you own, buy, receive, collect, acquire, exchange, adopt, store, rent, borrow… take energy.  For each thing you purge, gift, sell, abandon, recycle, lend (permanently), re-gift, donate, expel, burn… you recover a little energy.  You can test this, purge one closet or one drawer ruthlessly and see how you feel. Let me know on Facebook what your experience is.Don’t forget that the same thing happens when you clean out your inner closet (or garage) of all the pain, beliefs, fears, ideas, judgments, regrets, resentments, duties, responsibilities… only keep the ones that add meaning and give you more energy than they take.There is great power in simplicity.