Right out of the gate I want to just quickly clarify that I am speaking about owning possessions when I talk about not having. I am not talking about poverty or being homeless.

What I am talking about is the stuff people spend their lifetime pursuing - the house, car, social status, career, second car, home theatre system, furniture, linen, crockery, cutlery, branded clothing, jewelry, holiday home etc. Everything you have an image of that will give you the freedom you have been told you must have in order to have a successful life.

There are so many insightful life lessons we get taught by the world around us and in the context of this topic, two of the lessons I am so grateful to have been made aware of are:

• Understanding how little you really do need in your life and
• How unfulfilled the people, who have all the possessions, truly are.

When I first come across personal development material in my early twenties, and like most people who have ever heard a motivational speaker talk about their life experiences, I was inspired by the ‘rag-to-riches’ stories. In fact over the years I heard so many that at one point I thought I would have to first lose everything before I could become a success.

The truth of that thinking at the time only became clear to me a decade later.

I have been fortunate to spend quality time with people from all walks of life. By quality I mean I have been lucky enough to have had these people share their true selves with me.

There is only a tiny fraction of people who are unmoved in the present moment and who are living awake.

For everyone else, no matter what stage they are at in their life, being unfulfilled seems to be the norm. We are either carrying around our embellished past baggage or we are dreaming of a magazine created imagined future.

So what does having all the possessions have to do with being worse off than those who don’t? Ever heard the expression ‘your possessions own you’ or something similar? Having all the stuff just keeps you on the treadmill and in the race.

If you have just started acquiring the material things you believe are going to give you the life you want, perhaps you are starting already to realize how unfulfilling the pursuit of that life actually is. If you don’t have the possessions yet you can get out of the game right now and rather spend your time on discovering a life that is free from the captivity and isolation this alternative offers.

I am certainly not suggesting you sell everything or never have nice things. What I am asking you to think about is whether what you believe you have to get your hands on in order to make you happy is actually really making the people who have those things happy?

Have you ever had a moment where you realized beyond a shadow of a doubt, if only for a split second, that there is more to life?

Did that moment occur to you while you were buying something new to entertain yourself with or was it in a moment when you felt there was nothing on this earth you needed.

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