Don’t Deny Yourself – Enjoy Life!
February 22, 2012 in Creating Simple Living
People sometimes question my minimalist simple living ideas. They say that ‘you only live once, you gotta enjoy it’. It is true. There is no reason go to through life denying yourself. I couldn’t agree more. Don’t deny yourself for a minimalist, simple living, vegan, home schooling, frugal spending life!
So the idea is to have what you want. To not deny yourself. Right?
Life is too short to eat health food!
Life is too short to not get all the toys I want!
Life is too short to stick to a set of religious rules!
Life is too short to spend it fighting with your kids!
Life is too short to save money!
However, you can’t have it all. I saw this tweet from Joshua Becker today:
Well actually, you can’t have it all. You’re gonna have to decide what’s most important.
— Joshua Becker (@joshua_becker) February 21, 2012
I am playing with the embedding tweets 
This guy is a good one to follow!
You need to choose what you really want in life.
- Is it the taste of a cheeseburger and gallons of pop for the few minutes they are in your mouth or feeling good all the time, being able to climbing stairs (or mountains), and living and enjoying the second half of your life? It is possible (without being hit by a bus or another catastrophe) to live until you are 100 or more. People dying in their 40′s -60′s are literally only living half a life. We can’t guarantee health, but I want to do what I can to live a double life (and not on tons of pills or with tons of machines).
- Is getting extra gadgets or house stuff that will break or go out of style in a few months what I really want or do I want a life that isn’t burdened with stuff and freedom to make lasting memories with my time and money?
- Is freedom to do ‘whatever I want’ what I want or is living a respectable, moral, life that benefits my relationships and others what I want?
- Do I want to pass my kids off to someone else every moment I can or do I want to put everything I can into helping my kids succeed?
- I sure as @#$% don’t want the ball and chain of debt. Talk about slavery. There is no car, house, or ipad worth that.
It isn’t about denying yourself or not. You will deny yourself one way or another. It is about choosing what you want in life. What is most important and will make you the most happy.
Lots of this does come down to delayed gratification. The ability to say a small/short ‘no’ to something in the present to get a much bigger ‘YES’ later. Some of these help me in the short term moments to see the bigger picture of life:
- I am one of the richest people on the planet
- I haven’t even lived a third of my possible life (and don’t remember about a third of the start of that)
- Seeing sickly middle aged people
- Thinking about death – what I want others to remember about me, and what I want to give and experience with others before one of us is gone
Dave Ramsey’s “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else” works great for money, but also other areas of intentional living.”
It comes down to perspective. Don’t deny yourself. Make sure to indulge yourself in what you truly want for your life.
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I often deal with the “I deserves” with people in my life. You know, I deserve to eat huge amounts of ice cream, I deserve to sit on the couch for hours and watch mindless tvs, I deserve to buy things I can’t afford, etc. I counter with I deserve to honor my body with good food and exercise, I deserve to feel great because of those practices, I deserve to sleep well with no fears over debt, etc.
We all must decide what we deserve in life. I prefer my perspective.
Yes, I hate the ‘I deserve’. Why do you deserve it? Just for living and breathing? I saw advertising last summer for donuts that said ‘because you deserve it’…. made me angry. You get no enjoyment out of something you think you deserve. It is so negative.
Discernment, the ability to make a choice that is best for you has never been harder. The options and availabilty of everything is greater now than it has ever been because of the Internet. That’s why it even more important now to spend time getting to know yourself and decide on your values…because the world is big.. and it just keeps getting bigger.
yes! Thanks. It does make it hard, but still so important
THIS is what flipped a switch with my money spending. When you said spending more money that you make causes stress, I finally decided I wasn’t denying myself when I chose not to buy something – I was choosing what I wanted more: to stop freaking out when i had to pay a copay that month or whatever the necessary expense was. (Typically I’d buy some extras early in the month, so if anything unexpected came up, we were over budget.) Now that I’m habitually not buying extras, I know we have money for that stuff. And while it’s “boring” stuff to spend on, the relief I feel each time is HUGE. I LOVE feeling like we have enough money!! And any extra we have, we are tucking away for a weekend getaway – just my husband and I.
Yay! Getaways sound fun
I hate money stress more than just about anything.
So true. We are so very blessed living in the US where we have all the modern conveniences and luxuries of today, that I’m not even sure why any of us complain. If you have got heat, light a full stomache and family really you are truly blessed.
Yes!
I completely agree! But then there are people like me who take it to extremes lol. I rarely, if ever, indulge myself one bit. I indulge The Hubs all the freaking time, but when it comes down to spending money on myself, I back out at the last minute. For example, I’ll buy The Hubs some schmancy craft beer, but without getting myself some cookies because, “I don’t deserve it or need it.” Even though money is tight monthly, our savings is pretty hefty (from what I hear from others)….however, I still have that scarcity mentality, like we don’t have enough cash flow, so I can’t even indulge in a $4 thing of cookies. You can imagine what a joy I am from The Hubs’ perspective lol!!
It’s all about balance
agreed. It is hard to find the balance, but I keep trying. You need cookies