I once read a quote meant to address the entitled youth of America that read simply “The world doesn’t owe you anything.”

I believe this is true, however I also believe that the opposite is also true. That being “You don’t owe the world anything.”

That’s right, there is a clean slate between us and the world in which we were born. In fact, the only debt we have in this life are in the commitments we make along the way, and our own personal debt (accomplishing the goals we set for ourselves), and whatever debt our faith lays upon us.

Along the way we WILL make commitments too. It’s unavoidable. If we take out a loan, we have committed to paying it back. If we get married, we have committed to join our lives to another.  If we have a child, we have committed to raising that child. Commitment requires choice.

Personal Debt is simply the things we promised ourselves, our goals. Our passionate pursuits.

For those of us who have faith, there may be debts we have there.

Unfortunately they (society, parents, public at large, etc) would have us believe that we also carry with us debts that we did NOT choose:

• We owe our parents for our lives.
• We owe our country our loyalty.
• We owe capitalism our unwavering consumption.
• We owe society our conformity.

Every single one of the above bullet points is false. Completely fictitious. Obligations instilled starting at birth to exercise control. And these can stay with us our entire lives, often times holding us back from experiencing the full joy life truly has to offer.

For starters, when we decide to have children, we do so of our own choice with no expectation of return from our offspring (after all, it’s not slavery). We hope we raise our children to be grateful, and grow to be successful (in whatever makes them happy) for their own sake. If we do a good job, this is certain anyway. 

We pay taxes ….. that’s how we support our country. Any additional “loyalty” (whatever that is supposed to mean) is a choice, whether we live here or not.

We are under no obligation to live the lifestyle media suggests we do. I’m not gonna elaborate on this, because I’ve done so too may times before.

If we free our minds of these fictitious debts, we allow for more possibilities in our lives, and therefore more joy, more success.

I have spent lots of time and many posts outlining various types of mental clutter. Thoughts and emotions we can do without, as they are unproductive and just drag us down.

But now I wan’t to discuss the one emotion that is the key ingredient in our minds for long sustainable happiness. This emotion is gratitude.

For starters, being grateful is being joyous, just as is. It is a mild state of euphoria. When one is grateful, neither anger, no sadness can creep in. One cannot feel gratitude in combination with any emotion other than joy.

Gratitude brings perspective (And vice versa…. actually). There is always something to be grateful for; I don’t care who we are. Whether it’s for the sunshine on our faces, or the grass under our toes, we are all enjoying God’s gifts (or natures gifts). Because this is true: When we are grateful for these things we are able to see life from a much broader perspective, as opposed to just simply seeing it from the goings on in the events of our lives right now.

Gratitude brings clarity. Being grateful for the riches we have opens our perception to be constantly aware of the elements in life that are truly important, and not just the elements that seem important this moment. This is invaluable in better decision making.

So smile and be grateful. All the time. There is no such thing as too much gratitude (just don’t be annoyingly thankful).

Be grateful for:

1. the sunshine
2. the cool breeze
3. family
4. friends
5. a full belly
6. a home
7. fresh water

And remember that not everyone has these things. We should consider ourselves fortunate.

Also, gratitude is at the very foundation of facilitating a Minimalist lifestyle. The desire for abundance fades when we appreciate the riches we have.

So my iPhone alerts me that there is an update that needs to be done for one of my apps. Upon attempting to run the update, my mobile spits out an error message stating that there is not enough storage available to update. TIME TO MINIMIZE. So I go to settings -> iPhone Storage to see exactly whats taking up all the storage. This is what I find:

 

<1GB Audio

2GB Video

117MB Photos

1GB Apps

1.36GB Documents and Data

9GB Other

(……… My phone is only has 16 GB in the first place.)

What is “Other”?

Well the short answer, and the only one that matters, is CLUTTER. That is, most of it is clutter. I learned that a portion of it is the iOS operating system itself. But most of it is caches and temp files, ……… clutter. And what an appropriate word that is too. When there is so much of it, and none of it is important enough to separate into it’s own category it’s called “OTHER”.  Hehehehe. Upon further research I learned that the best and only sure way to reduce the “other” down to the operating system, is to backup the device (on computer or cloud), and do a full system reset (full board wipe down to factory default); then restore from that backup.

So that’s what I did. While I was at it, I also minimized all the other excess on my mobile that didn’t qualify as “other.” This is something we should all do. It’s just as important as cleaning out our physical clutter.