Do Less by Rachel Jonat

stress involved with a wedding often brings unhappiness. The real contentment from a marriage doesn’t come from a lavish wedding dress or an open bar, but from small moments and work that you put in daily over many years. If you’re not happy with your life before you spend a lot of money on your dream kitchen with the subway tiles and granite countertops, you probably won’t be happy after.
    It sounds cliché, but spending money and buying things doesn’t bring happiness. But having what you want—what you truly need for wellness and the time and focus to do things that really matter to you—that is a recipe for a contented life. Dismiss the idea that the conventional benchmarks of success—big house, new car, lavish vacations—are markers of happiness. In the minimalist life, you can make your own benchmarks for success, and they can be anything from sleeping in until noon every Saturday because you no longer have a lawn to mow to taking a month of unpaid leave from your job so that you can volunteer overseas. The possibilities for finding what truly brings contentment to your life are unlimited.
    In the minimalist life, you can make your own benchmarks for success.
    When you let go of keeping up with the Joneses, you’ll find the resources to actually have the things
you
really want. The minimalist life means charting your own path to happiness. It’s a path that dismisses the frequent affordable luxuries so many of us think are necessities for bigger luxuries like time and financial freedom. As you pare down possessions and commitments to achieve these big luxuries, you’ll start to see that the Joneses don’t have it all. The Joneses have trapped themselves in a cycle of wanting more and spending more and none of it will ever be enough. More monthly payments will eat up the raise, and the bonus will go to keeping creditors at bay. In comparison, your raise or bonus or small windfall will be found money that you can spend or not spend as you please. That is the kind of flexible and easy freedom that comes from a minimalist life.
    An easy way to forget about the Joneses? Stop comparing. Accept that all of us have different needs and wants. Yours won’t be the same as your friends’ and that’s okay. The goal is not to live like everyone else but to know what brings value and joy to your life. Have the courage to fill your life with those people, hobbies, and activities, instead of the things those around you choose.
The Benefits of Delayed Gratification
    It’s all too easy to buy things today. Cheap clothing, everyday luxuries bought at the cosmetics counter, and inexpensive housewares at dollar stores make it easy to fritter away your money. All this cheap and easy stuff has made delayed gratification obsolete. Why bother waiting patiently and saving to buy that well-made wool coat that will last a decade when today you can buy the cheap synthetic knockoff that will last one season? We’ve lost the art of delayed gratification and our lives and homes are the worse for it.
    Delayed gratification makes you value what you have more. Those impulse purchases are more likely to be lost or carelessly broken because you didn’t work hard for them in the first place. But that new laptop that you saved for a year before buying? That laptop is treated with kid gloves and routinely cleaned and serviced so that it will last a long, long time. Not only do we treat the things we work hard for better, but we also enjoy them more. Dessert on a day when you played tennis for two hours is more satisfying than stuffing your face with chocolate at the movies when you haven’t worked out all week. You value and enjoy what you work hard for, more than what you carelessly buy and consume.
    Waiting for something makes you savor it more. When you wait all week to finally watch the season finale of your favorite television show, you enjoy it more than watching it while