A Simpler Life: A guide to greater serenity, ease and clarity

The crucial step towards leading a simpler life isn’t – as we might initially suppose – to get rid of things. It’s to ask ourselves what our true longings are and what are the ends at which we are aiming. Simplicity isn’t so much a life with few things and commitments in it, as a life with the right, necessary things, attuned to our flourishing. Ou

What matters isn’t so much where you happen to be located, but how you engage with whatever – or whoever – happens to be around.

What if our real problem is not that we haven’t had time to travel enough – but that we don’t know how to make the most of what is already to hand?

Seneca built a small chamber not unlike a prison cell. Once a week or so he would sleep there, on a bare bunk, eating only old bread and olives and drinking water. This activity was part of what he called a ‘premeditation’ – a rehearsal of what it would be like actually to face his fears. ‘We suffer more often in imagination than in reality,’ he wr

Earlier epochs didn’t emphasise simplicity because there was no need to; a life with few possessions and plain food, early nights and plenty of time in the fresh air was available to everyone. But for us, simplicity plays the role that splendour once did for the aristocrats at Versailles or that rugged individualism did for the urban 20th-century a

Existence becomes overcomplicated when we submit ourselves to tasks or possessions without having a clear sense of their purpose. When we don’t properly know why we’re doing something, we don’t know how much of it we need in our life. Simplicity, therefore, can be defined as the result and precious fruit of clarifying our goals.

Harsh criticism is the utterly entrenched human tactic for getting people to change, just as self-condemnation is our instinctive strategy for self-improvement – yet it doesn’t actually work. It induces panic, shame and despair but doesn’t bring about the desired alteration.

the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

It’s not that it’s impossible to be stimulated in the great urban core – rather it is possible to be inspired anywhere. At root, inspiration is the discovery of the greater meaning of something that seems, initially, unimpressive.

Around simple, straightforward people, there is no need to second-guess, infer, decode, untangle, unscramble or translate.