The Joy of Simplicity: Insights to Unclutter and Uncomplicate Your Life

By Allen Klein and David Kundtz

A guide to finding your path to peace of mind in the midst of a hectic life, for fans of You Can’t Ruin My Day, Beautifully Said, and Badass Affirmations.

Allen Klein, bestselling author with over half a million happy readers, offers a cogent reminder that joy is simply a matter of choice. And it’s yours to make. Relax, release, refocus, and renew. Keep what you need in your life and let go of everything else including “stuff.”

The calming quotes, tranquil wisdom, and power thoughts in this book come from notable authors, celebrities, philosophers, and others who recognize the virtues of a simple, stress-free life. Grouped around basic themes like “Go with the Flow,” “Focus on What’s Important,” and “Slow Down,” these sayings are reminders that it is still possible to achieve peace and harmony in today’s fast-paced world. Bliss is just around the corner.

The Joy of Simplicity is...

• A reminder that it is possible to achieve a state of peace and harmony in today’s fast-paced world
• A collection of quotes to make you smile, laugh, and reflect on what you really need in your life
• A wonderful gift for those looking for serenity and focus in the midst of a fast-paced world

Praise for The Joy of Simplicity

“A wonderfully straightforward and effective take on simplifying one’s life. Reading it gave me the perfect combination of motivation and relaxation at the same time.” —Cassandra Aarssen, author of Real Life Organizing</DESC>

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SEL024000 SELF-HELP / Self-Management / Stress Management

SEL004000 SELF-HELP / Affirmations

SEL021000 SELF-HELP / Motivational & Inspirational

REF019000 REFERENCE / Quotations

9781642501650

Green Fig and Lionfish: Sustainable Caribbean Cooking

Allen Susser

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781642501469

Allen Klein

Allen Klein is an award-winning professional speaker and author. His books Quotations to Cheer You Up When the World is Getting You Down and The Lift Your Spirits Quote Book have sold over 500,000 copies. He lives in San Francisco.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Allen Klein

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover, Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni

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The Joy of Simplicity: Insights to Unclutter and Uncomplicate Your Life

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2019948829

ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-145-2, (ebook) 978-1-64250-146-9

BISAC category code REF019000, REFERENCE / Quotations

Printed in the United States of America

For my friends Kevin and Will,

whose lives were simple, yet rich.

Our life is frittered away by detail…

simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Be Present

Do Less

Focus on What’s Important

Forgive and Forget

Go with the Flow

Grow Down

Have Less

Keep It Simple

Savor Silence

Seek Solitude

Shun Perfection

Slow Down

Take a Break

Closing Thought

Dear Reader

About the Author

Foreword

I was particularly pleased when Allen asked me to write the foreword for The Joy of Simplicity because the subject matter is closely related to the books I have written. While we each take a different approach to writing, we are both on a path to help readers live a simpler, more mindful, and joyful life. What is so wonderful about this book is that Allen does so in an easy-to-read, readily digestible format.

I think you would agree with me that there is truly an enormous amount of wisdom available to people today. For the first time in human experience we can, with relative ease, access practically all the accumulated knowledge in the history of humankind. That’s the good news. The bad? Who has the time—or even the inclination and skills—to go in search of it?

That’s where Allen Klein comes in; he’s done so much of the work for us.

Allen’s considerable talents and training in the arts and communications make him the perfect researcher of wisdom—especially the practical kind that gives you help and insight into the ins and outs of today’s challenges of living, as the subtitle says, an uncluttered and uncomplicated life. This is so because he recognizes the salient and the noble and can distinguish those categories from the ephemeral and misleading. He has the rare talent that clearly separates the wheat from the chaff.

In addition, he has organized this wisdom into convenient categories that will help you in your own search for living a simpler more satisfying life.

So, whether you decide to read it from beginning to end, enjoy one gem per day, or simply open at random and see what you get, you’ll always come away saying, Thanks, Allen!

—David Kundtz, S.Th.D.,

author of the bestseller Quiet Mind: One Minute Mindfulness

Introduction

While writing this book, I was extremely busy. My speaking schedule was full, I was working on several other projects, and I was about to become the president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. Here I was, compiling information about how to make your life simpler and mine was getting more complicated every day.

Then I started to take the advice of the quotations I was gathering. What I found was that their words helped me slow down, prioritize what was most important, and actually get more done in a calmer, more relaxed frame of mind.

It has been said that we teach what we need to learn. Obviously, I needed to hear about the wisdom of simplicity. I learned a lot from this book. I hope you do too.

Allen Klein

San Francisco, CA

www.allenklein.com

Be Present

The only thing we really have is the present. It has been said that yesterday is gone and tomorrow isn’t here yet. Many of us don’t acknowledge that. We obsess over things that happened a long time ago. Or we fantasize about what might happen in the future.

Part of the problem of being present is that our world is overcrowded with things that distract us from being in the moment. We are inundated with emails, phone calls, and text messages, along with social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

At work or at home, we are often multitasking. No wonder many of us stress out. We are asking our minds and bodies to do several things at once. And it just doesn’t work well. It not only is inefficient, but it also robs us of fully enjoying what is before us.

The quotation in this