Over the last 12 years of building a network I have found that I have increased my awareness, increased by connections, increased my learning, increased my global listening, increased my happiness, but I have decreased my possessions, my material property and my dependence on physical assets for security. I am now a Digital Thinker and a Digital Business with Digital Assets.
It is not easy being part of a shift, some of us can move with it and follow leaders that we trust, some of us fight it, and some of us are part of it, choosing to embed the change in our lives, embracing it and seeing its merits.
I have been reading more and more conversations around the subject of a ‘cult of less‘. The concept and reality of the new world where we can hold our possessions in the digital world and not seek the same material comforts that bind us to physical places and possessions.
As a business person I have very little paperwork around me. I hold my knowledge in the form of Blogs, Video’s and my network and I can move around the world with all my contacts held inside Ecademy, Twitter and Google.
From a leisure point of view, what do I value? My photo’s are now held electronically, so are my memories in my online diary. Do I really need a TV? I certainly don’t need a record player or library of LP’s! When we see our children go to University now, they can take their possessions in a single bag. Complete with their ipod and BlackBerry/iphone they are ‘complete’, apart from some clothes, but even those have become mineralized, clothes are not critical for self esteem in the same way that fashion has dictated someone’s belonging in the past.
Houses, are they an asset now? Do they really offer the security that they did in the past. Of course they do, if you own them, but not if they are tied to mortgages and give a monthly stress to the ‘owner’. The growth in renting is unprecedented. A liberating way to live if you have been controlled by a mortgage in the past and the fear of ‘losing’ your ‘home’, renting provides the opportunity to ‘outsource’ your property management and stress!
In 2007 Thomas and I chose to sell our family home and rent. We decided that our money would be best utilized in a different way. To adjust the family to this we went to California for 5 weeks and rented an RV (Recreation Vehicle). This was a stunning experience. As we traveled around, visiting over 20 locations, living in RV parks, we met ‘Nomadic Internet Business’ people who had decided to move around America and visit clients, run event and even educate their children on the move. They appeared to have such a sense of adventure and freedom. As a family we learned great things living like this for 5 weeks. In fact, I remember on the day we were coming home, I woke up at 4.30am, went down to the grass square in the middle of the park, sat on a long swing that was tethered to a high branch of a tree and wept. I had missed my parents, siblings and friends, but I was terrified of returning to the world of feeling trapped in a struggle to ‘survive’ rather than live. When we returned home we took with us our learning and to this day we remain more free in our minds and lives.
I guess I am writing this to give hope, I sense small businesses everywhere trying to live a life that they held dear for so many years but fighting to achieve that life in a world that is in a massive shift. This shift is not one that we can fight. We need to evolve, listen, adapt, understand our own values and think about the world we want not the world we have necessarily created. Home is always important. Your ‘spiritual home’. a place where you can relax and be yourself with people you love. Home, Sunday lunches, relaxing with family, these are my most treasured moments, but perhaps the expectation of owning and controlling your home is not realistic and not always the route to happiness.
Letting go is tough, but in letting go of some of the things that trap you can actually liberate you. I suggest you think about this ‘cult of less’. Perhaps it is just the return of the 1960′s and ‘free love’, VW Vans and the desire to escape, or maybe we are in a more fundamental change. The Digital Age and the birth of the Digital Nomad.
I write this as part of my series of Blogs about having a Digital Mindset. A Digital Mindset is ‘Open, Random and Supportive’ and shifts thinking from transactional to supportive behaviour, giving us all a new perspective on living and business.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this chage on the life that you feel is changing around you.
Warm regards
Penny Power
+447771 543478
Founder-Ecademy
Supporting Business People
