Kategori: Simple Living

I have a dream …

Partly stolen from a brave man. (AKA Martin Luther King).

He had a dream, and so do I.

I really don’t believe that way we live our lives today is the best way for our happiness and well-being. We have never been more stressed than we are today.* So why do we keep on going the same path that has led us to this stress?

I have a dream of ..

.. Where Weekends are Weekdays

We have never been more stressed than we are now. I have never been sick because of it. But I have tried having to many deadlines at the same time, where I had to work 16 hours a day to reach them.

Why don’t we just swap the weekdays with weekends?

Lets have five days a week where we only do things we actually want, and two days where we work.

.. Where We Work to Thrive, Not Survive

Imagine if money wasn’t an issue? What would we then do? I think there is an insanely amount of people who pick an education because of status and how much money they can earn.

What if started to do stuff that we really had a burning desire for.

And not to just to make ends meet? Or impress others?

Imagine if we could be a “Put-in-an-activity-you-love” Instructor, but we didn’t have to worry about the food on the table. Or what about other people would think of us?

.. Where We Don’t Have Mortgages

When did it ever become normal to buy something that we need 30 years to pay off? I have never understood, and I never think I will understand it. Why we would pay that amount of money to have a place to live.

I have been working in the building industry for more than 10 years now. And I have seen both spectrums of how people can live. It is not more difficult to build a 100 m2 house that cost below 100.000 $, than it is to build a +200 m2 house that will cost you more than 1.000.000 $.

Imagine if we only spend 5 years or less to pay off a mortgage. Or not even having one? From day 1 we didn’t have any debt in the house.

So why are we building so big and unaffordable houses?

I can’t tell.

.. Where Meat Is a Luxury

Many of us in a western culture is raised with having meat in every single meal. And we can’t blame our parents for teaching us eating meat. Back in the days we was not informed on how meat-eating can affect the clima. We didn’t knew it was a problem. But we do know that now. I love the taste of meat. But there is no reason to incorporate it in every meal. Let’s start to see it as a luxury we do when we have to celebrate something big. And not something we eat everyday to survive.

There is a cheaper, easier, healthier and more environmental way to eat.

.. Where our Transportation is Awesome

I can often be stoked about how our computers and mobiles seems to have an exponential form of growth. But if we take a look at the cars, trains and bikes, there seems to be almost none growth.

The first car invented back in the 1900 had four wheels, and it run on gasoline. That is over 100 years ago, and it is not until recently that we started to drive in electrical cars.

The same goes with the bike. It still has to wheels, and a metal chain. I think the bike is one of the greatest invention. But it was not until recently that it became legal in Denmark to ride on a Speed Pedelec (a 45 km/hour e-bike). 

Riding e-bikes that goes 45 km/hour is a game changer. My dad who has 30 km for work, can now go by bike instead of the car. Save a boatload of money, being more environmental, and maybe live longer because of a better health. 

.. Where We Quit Social Status and Start Being Compassionate

I’m very open about how many money I have. 

I don’t want my money to earn respect, trust or anything else. My money has one function only, and that is buying my own time back. 

Imagine if everybody quitted the fear of “Not-being-good-enough”, and could stop spend time on impressing people we don’t know. And start to be compassionate about our friends, family and people who are in tough situation because of bad luck. 

.. Where We Have a Green Capitalistic System

Many people think of money as a greedy and en evil thing. And connects capitalism with fossil fuels, cutting down trees and the end of the world. I don’t want to disagree with that feeling. But what if we could use the power of capitalism to make a better world? I’m not talking about only surviving on this earth, what if we could leave the world as a better place for our kids and grand kids?

I believe that we can make a capitalistic system where everyone can benefit from it in their pensions, and still make the world a better place. With sustainable companies that makes this world a better place to live. 

.. Where We Have Time for our Kids

No needing to rush in the mornings because we are in hurry to our work. 

No need to work long hours on work, because you need to pay for the nanny who take care of picking up our kids.

Or paying the house cleaner, too clean up after the kids.

Or paying the restaurant for takeaway food for the family because we don’t feel like cooking after a long work day.

Just having time for the spouse you love, and for the kids you have putted into this world. No more, no less.

.. Where We Don’t Spend Money in Order to be Happy

If we live in modern western country. Most of us will have decent place to live. And a supermarket filled with healthy foods within biking distance. Which is our needs.

Anything else besides that is wants. Whenever we think that this next purchase (besides paying rent, or buying groceries) is going to make us happy. That is the exact same time that we buy a freaking lie.

The lie is that we don’t need to buy anything in order to become happy.

If we feel a little bit sad. And we think a purchase is going to put an end to that sadness. We are going to be sad our whole life.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. – Denis Waitley

I have no freaking idea who Denis Waitley is. But that is a hell of a quote.

*https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/state-nation.pdf

Still to this day I don’t understand budgets.

I have hated them back when I was young an idiot with my finances. But I still don’t like budgets.

I think they are boring, and a waste of time.

“But Loui? How can you save money if you don’t do budgets?”

There is a law called Parkinson’s law.

It states that:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

Putted in other words. If you give a project two weeks, you are likely to come up with tasks that takes about two weeks to complete. And the same goes for our finances.

If we earn 3000 $/month and we would like to save the largest amount of those money. The traditional way of figuring out how much money we can save would go something like this:

1. Do a budget in the start of the month
2. Figure out how much you can save
3. Save and invest that amount

What is wrong about that is that we focus on the budget first. Just like Parkinson’s law affects deadlines on projects. It effects the same way on our finances.

If we budget 400 $/month for groceries, that is likely the amount we are going to spend on our groceries.

If we however look at how much we want to save, and make that the first thing we put aside. Parkinson’s law is going to work its magic for us.

Lets say the we make 3000 $/month, and we would like to save 50 % of that (1500 $). That would be the first thing we do when a paycheck arrives.

From there, our job is just to live on whats left.

I have even done periods where after what I have saved and invested, my account balance would be zero. So I knew whenever I wanted to buy something, my account would go in debt. That of course was just an experiment to see if I could spend even less by doing that. And I did. But it was tough.

I would recommend people try out such an experiment. Start a month with nothing on your account.

There is two reasons why it is has some benefits:

1. You are going to love just to have SOME money on your account the next month.
2. You are likely going to save and invest more than you normal would.

Do you want to read some life changing books?

I have been asked a lot what I could recommend people to read. And because of that. I have made a “Shit I Love” site,where you can find all sort of things that I use myself, and what I think can benefit you.

As I’m writing this there is only a couple of books that I recommend. These books have been life changing for me, and that’s why I think you should read them to.

All of the links are affiliate links, so if you use on those links. You will support this site without it’s costing you a dime.

Check the books out here:

CLICK HERE

 

 

We think our full-time work is an 8 hour workday, which is a lie.

A workday for normal person would go something like this:

Sleep: 8 Hours

Work: 8 Hours

Free time: 8 Hours

Total: 24 Hours

While that is true on paper. It is far from how we really spend our precious time. To have some healthy sleep we need to sleep between 7-9 hours. The older we get the less sleep we need.

But how does our workday really look like?

How many of our daily activities is work related?

Let’s try to sum it up.

Our Job		Hours/Week
(Before adjustments)		40
Adjustments
Commuting		7.5
Costuming		2
Relaxing at home		5
Talking about job		2.5
Escape entertainment		5
Job related illness		1
Job, with Adjustments		53
Hours/Day		10,6

If we count every minute there is job related we end up on 53 hours/week, and not 40. And this has several disadvantages.  (And this calculation exclude working overtime and in weekends.)

If we think we have an hourly rate of 15 $, we are more likely to have a 11 $/hour. But because we spend 2,6 hours more than we think on something work related and we only have about 5 hours of “free” time.

This free time includes all of the household chores as laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, picking up kids and so on.

If  we on average spend two hours a day on all of the household chores, we end up with only 3 hours of free time. These can be used for family/friends/spouse, training, reading/writing or whatever that brings us joy.

But is that how we want to spend all of our 50 years of working?

I know how those 3 hours feel. I’m often super exhausted, and I don’t feel like doing anything.

And is that what we want?

Three hours of not feeling like doing anything?

Just looking forward to the weekends and the holidays three months from now?

That my friend is just sad.

Fortunately there is a solution to all of this nonsense we call “normal”!

Not Spending All of Our Income

It can be done in extreme ways, saving +50% of our income (Which is what I prefer). But saving “just” 10-20 % of our income can make a huge difference for a start.

Doing this has a lot of different advantages.

• We can work for six months, and then take the next six months off.
• We can work part-time. So we only have three workdays instead of five
• We can save and invest for 10-15 years and quit our job for good

And this is something we can do this very day. It is just a decision not to spend all of our money, and maybe quitting some monthly subscriptions.

Living A More Minimalistic Life

Less is more.

And let me show you how.

Whenever we do/have less, we make space for the more important things.

And there is several ways we can do this: 

Skipping breakfast. Yes you got that right. Breakfast is not the most healthy meal of the day. There is several studies on if we decrease the time we eat everyday from 16 hours to 8 hours we will have several health benefits. One of them is longevity. In other words. Only eat lunch and dinner. This is called Intermittent Fasting or Time Restricted Eating.  This does not only free up the time we need to prepare extra meal, but we will also save some money since we do not need to shop for breakfast.

Having less stuff can benefit in SO many ways.

• Less stuff in our homes makes it easier to clean and tidy up.
• Having fewer parts of clothes makes it easier to laundry.
• Having fewer parts of clothes makes it easier to decide what to wear.

Commute on our bike to work. By doing this we can skip the membership of our gym, and we exercise five times a week instead of a couple of times. Time and money well saved!

Let’s imagine that you listen to what I say. And you will start to:

1. Skip breakfast.
2. Wear the same dress shirt for a week.
3. Cleaning and tidying less.

I think you are going to at least save 30 minutes everyday which you can spend on your free time instead of your workday!

Let me help you!

If you feel overwhelmed in your daily life. And you would like to have a more simple life, where you are in charge of your day and finances.

Then let me help you!

I walk the talk. Trying to live my own life to the fullest. By ditching the shit that doesn’t matter to me. And making room for the awesome stuff.

Click on the link below, and let me know your story, and I will let you know how I can coach you.

If you are based in Copenhagen we can meet up, but I can coach you online aswell.

CLICK HERE

For many years I saw myself as a perfectionist.

I wanted to do stuff better than the average joe. So I did my very best to do so.

While this can be good to some extend. It can one of the biggest procrastination issues. We all the know the feeling of how we would like to do something when the time is just right. It could be something like:

“Whenever I have achieved (Insert achievement), I will start a blog about it”

Or.

“When I have just gained a little more information about (insert a craft), then I will open my business of my dreams”

Or.

“When the (Insert investment) will hit that low. Then I will invest”

Or.

“When I have just saved (insert amount) $, I will go on that trip”

Or.

“I will say hi to that girl/boy when I have the perfect outfit on”

The truth is there will never be a perfect time to do anything. The most “perfect” time to execute on something, is this very day. Being a perfectionist is just an apology to postpone our dreams because of insecurity.

I deal with this myself. Writing on this blog is often terrifying. English is not my first language, and my vocabulary is far from perfect. But that doesn’t have to stop me, or you.

Trying to strive for imperfection can be a relieving feeling. The feeling of not have to do something perfect is awesome. It removes the inner voice in the head that says what we are doing is not good enough. Because that is what we are striving for. Things that aren’t perfect, but they are there. And they will do the job way better than something that doesn’t exist.

The Binary Mindset

Not that I’m a computer engineer, but what I do know is that computers operates in 0 and 1. Which mean either it does something, or it don’t.

This can be a healthy way to look at taking action.

To either do it. Or not.

Let’s imagine that you meet that cute person you have been thinking about the last month. And boom. Right next to you in the supermarket guess who is there? The cute person.

Now we want to take that binary mindset, and tell ourself to go from a 0 mode to a 1 mode. The trick is to forget the inner monkey mind who tells you all sort of weird things like you don’t have the right clothes on.

In this situation we could walk over to the person, and just say:

“Hi (Insert the person’s name)”

Now we have just went from the 0 to the 1, and our mission is accomplished.

The next time we hear this voice of doubt in our head. Acknowledge it. And then move on, and do something imperfect. Just do it. No matter how bad it is.

In fact. Try to do it bad. What our internal voice might think is bad, can probably do the job. And maybe even do a good job.

Perfection doesn’t exist.

Things can always be better.

Spending 60 minutes “perfecting” a 1 minute action doesn’t mean it will be 60 times better. 

Far from it.

Quantity Perfectionist

“This year I’m going to lose XX amount of kg, and I’m going to do it by eating well and run four times a week!”

Does that sentence sound familiar?

Way too often. We think that in order to do something, we need to take major action. Yes, taking huge steps toward our dreams will help us faster than small steps. But taking huge steps for a couple of months won’t take us anywhere.

That is where the perfectionist mindset about quantity comes in.

Let’s use me as an example. I could tell myself that in order for this blog to “succeed” I have to write at least 1000 words a day.

There is two reasons why this is bad for my progress on this blog:

1. I’m setting myself a limit of 1000 words. Everyday I will sweat about those 1000 words. But whenever I hit that number. I will stop. “Man! Those 1000 words were hard to write. I better stop now”.
2. When I don’t hit those 1000 words I’m going to feel bad. There is nothing wrong by setting ambitious daily goal. But going from 0 km/h to 200 km/h in no time. Is a bulletproof way of failing. And no one likes to “fail”.

What can we do instead?

Start being imperfect about what it takes. 

Instead of telling myself I need to write a 1000 words, I can say:

“Just write 50 words everyday, if you feel like more, do it. If not, don’t”.

If we imagine taking action as floor and a ceiling. If we make big ambitious daily goals. We are more likely to create a ceiling for ourself. But if we make small daily goals we create a floor.

By focusing on the floor (small daily goals) the ceiling becomes infinite. 

If I feel like writing 2000 words one day, good for me. But if I don’t feel like it the next day. I can just write my 50 words, clap myself on the shoulder and move on with a good gut feeling.

This can be applied to every area of our life.

If we want to eat healthier, we can just eat 1 piece of vegetable everyday. Forget about spending 30+ minutes everyday on shopping and cooking those salads. Maybe some days we will. And maybe it will be so life changing, that it doesn’t feel like a burden anymore. It is just a habit.

Or if we want to exercise more. Just run for 1 minute or take the stairs. Don’t even think about that you have to change to the sporty outfit. Just do a tiny thing. Maybe when we start to do so. It feels kind of nice, so that one day we feel like changing for to the sporty outfit and run for 30 minutes.

It can also be applied to investing and early retirement. Yes we would like to have +50 % savings rate. But just start with 5 %. That is what I did.

The beauty about taking small steps everyday is that we adapt. Running for 1 minute everyday ends up being super easy to do. Suddenly we will find ourselves running for 10 minutes, and that might end up being easy to.

Plus it is very rewarding to make progress everyday. Even small ones.

It will make us feel like doing more, instead of beating ourself up not accomplishing the big glamorous goals.

Almost 10 years down the road as an elite athlete I have seen a very clear pattern of the athletes who is world-class, and the ones who are not. And what the world-class athletes has is consistency.

We will do way better in any area of our lives by showing up at 95 % each day, rather than going 105 % when we kind of feel like it.