50 Things Your Life Doesn't Need

By Sam Davidson

Life as a series of distractions is seldom passionate and may even feel purposeless. But eliminating all the background noise, in search of that one intelligent passion that imparts to life a meaningful goal, can be difficult. For those in search of their calling, 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need offers simple ways to fine-tune the frequency so that finding your passion becomes feasible. What are some things that you could eliminate to make your passionate contribution to the world a realizable goal? How about

• long commutes to and from the workplace
• storage units for all that extra stuff
• small dreams and bucket lists
• a tyranny of T-shirts
• unbatched errands and bad wine
• this book

That’s right, this book. But you will have to read it to find out why!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781618581167

Book preview

Introduction

This isn’t a book about stuff. It’s a book about passion. It’s a book about priorities. It’s a book about you and the kind of life you want to live and the kind of person you want to be.

Very few of us have dared to think about the kinds of lives we really want to live. We claim we can’t find time for quiet reflection or deep introspection. Daily responsibilities and routines demand our attention, leaving no time for self-discovery. Modern technology, countless forms of entertainment, and many other distractions also combine to keep us from figuring out what the point of all of it is.

As a result, we fill our houses with things, buying whatever it is that’s new on the shelves or carries a promise of self-improvement or a glimmer of hope that we can be a better, happier person. Before too long, however, our homes are filled with things and our hearts are empty of meaning. In a brief moment of inspiration, we find empty boxes to fill with the things we no longer want or use, thinking the extra space will give us room to breathe and that in this way maybe tomorrow will be different.

But it isn’t. The inspiration is temporary and before long, new things replace the old things and we clean out again and then press repeat. The solution isn’t less stuff. The answer is more passion.

As for books about passion themselves, there are far too many already, promising easy plans for finding ways to land dream jobs, live a life of leisure, and be famous, all for one low price. Those books may work for lots of people, but I’ve found that they don’t work for someone like me. Their ambitious words seem to fall short in a real world full of real commitments.

Whether you’re a full-time dad trying to teach your children to be honest, loving, and caring people, or whether you’re trying your hardest to climb the ladder as fast and as far as you can, I think this book can offer you something those other books may not. That’s because if each of us were willing to pause for just a moment and ask ourselves what we’d really like to do with our one life, the answer would probably be the same. We want to do something, but not just anything. We want to do something remarkable. We want to do something meaningful, something lasting and with impact. We want to do something that fulfills us and something that makes us excited to wake up each day. We also want to be someone important. We want to be someone who’s loved and is loving. We want to be great friends and caring parents. We want to be recognized, appreciated, and memorable, even after we’re gone.

Each of us has only one life. What will you do with yours?

Everyone wants to live a life in which a passion can be pursued, whether it’s through a career or after work. But many people, including you, may claim you don’t exactly know what that passion is. It’s very difficult to follow something if you’re not sure what it looks like.

This book will help you find your passion. Many people claim that they’d love to find what they’re passionate about and then live out that passion every day, if only they had the time and convenience to discover it. You may have found yourself claiming the same thing. Maybe you even went so far as to go off the grid for a few weeks, trying to get away from it all so that you could figure out what it’s all about.

Perhaps that quick vacation helped. It probably didn’t. You went back to work, repeated your daily routine, and did things exactly as you’d always done them. You may have discovered an interest or a fleeting hobby while you were trying to find your passion, but when you returned to your regular life, all of its distractions stopped you from pursuing the interest or hobby that you discovered in that fortnight.

The problem is that we have too many things—too much stuff—distracting us, daring us to let it go and pursue our hidden passion. We all have certain responsibilities based on our place in life. You may be a parent or a spouse, a boss or a neighbor—titles that are significant to you and challenge you to be a better person. If you derive meaning from these titles, then they don’t need to be eschewed just so that you can have fun finding a passion.

Chances are, these titles don’t even stand in the way of finding and living your passion. They carry some sort of importance with them that in turn motivates you in a particular way. What stands in the way of finding and living your passion are things: Distractions. Diversions. Disposable stuff. Those are what your life doesn’t need.

What follows in these pages are 50 things you’ll need to get rid of in order to find the time, energy, money, and other resources to discover your passion and then live a life that is in line with it. By following these suggestions and the other tools for finding your passion, you will be freed to live passionately—perhaps for the very first time.

A nice round number, 50 is a manageable amount. We can count to fifty in less than a minute, there are fifty states in the U.S., and many of us can still fill our gas tanks on a fifty-dollar bill (with nostalgia for the days of fifteen. Alas). The number 50 is thus a good metaphor for just how far we can get from truly living. The world moves so fast today that it’s easy to accumulate distractions that aren’t essential to living a passionate life. Getting rid of these things is no small feat. It may take you a year, or you may be able to wrap it up in a few months, but completing the list is a worthy commitment. Will you be able to get rid of all 50 things in this book?

Things: Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, our world has been mass-producing stuff on an ever-growing scale, and the more of it that can be produced the poorer in quality it often seems to become. Factories churn out toys and gadgets made of metal and plastic, and marketers find just the right language and opportunity to sell it all to us for a price we can’t refuse. But in the end, all we’re buying are things. A thing defined as stuff is something that doesn’t have significance. Stuff is a space filler. The word itself is so vague as to be meaningless, slapped into a sentence to describe anything from a coffee cup to a poster to a car. As a result, our lives are full of things and empty of meaning. Meaning should be paramount. Things in the form of stuff can be tossed aside and we’ll barely notice a difference.

Your life: This book is about you. Many of the things on the list are things I have eliminated to free up time and resources to live a passionate life. That passionate life has been a rewarding one to live, taking me to places I never imagined, to meet people I admire deeply. Your life, however, is not my life; the passion you discover as a result of reading this book will be uniquely yours. I offer examples of what you may discover when you get rid of all of these things, but it will be up to you to discover how the exercise benefits you personally. Whether your passion is to invent a better cell phone battery or teach dance lessons to senior citizens, it will be yours and yours alone to be lived out as you see fit. I have written this book to apply to all circumstances, whether you have just graduated from college or are looking for a mid-career transition. Each thing—as well as the six questions to help you find your passion (see the Conclusion to the book)—can be applied by anyone in any station of life. It’s up to you to live the life you want, one that I hope is dedicated to your passion.

Doesn’t need: We all understand what the word need means. There are only a few needs for survival that humans have—food, water, shelter. I may add things like community and purpose to the list, but those categories are not basic to survival. None of the 50 things on the list are things you must have to survive. They may be things you want, but if you’re honest when you read them and dedicated when you rid your life of them, you’ll realize that you don’t die without them. You won’t starve, suffer, or lose your sanity after working through this list. Best of all, you’ll gain time, money, motivation, and resources to then go discover your true passion in life. And that’s what you