We need less, more beautiful

What is it to feel alive?

While the word living simply describes the state of an animal or human that is at life, being alive is tapping into your full potential, following your own truth. It means purposefully tapping into the beauty of life, allowing yourself to leave the mediocre behind. To be alive is an active choice driven through actions and dedication. It means to listen and understand yourself before making choices. It means to give up the parts that don't add value to your life to make space for the things that truly do. It means instead of accepting that life happens to you, moving into the proactive self - the driver seat of your life. A seat in which you dedicate every action towards making your life flourish.

Many of us have given up the idea of being able to influence the way their life unfolds. Have given up caring about every choice they make. As humans, we are able to steer our self and with it our life into any possible scenario. The only thing necessary is that we allow our self to imagine and believe in our own truth. When we choose to be alive, we allow our self the responsibility to steer our own life into any possible direction we want. When we choose to be alive, we choose to create the perfect ground for our character to unfold, our heart to love and our body to remain healthy every day. When we choose to be alive, we choose to follow our own story. Not the stories society tells us. Not the stories of advertisement or other people's believes. When we choose to be alive, we create a story of space. A space full of joy. A space in which we can truly meet the world, the people around us and our self with love. When we begin to choose to be alive, we accept our previous life will feel gray and mundane compared to what we start to live now.

Becoming alive is much richer than being at life. It means to see and live the beauty of life, every day.

Many are making their choices based on quickmotion. Reactions steered through emotions, fears, expectations. They see an opportunity. They react to take it as fast as they can. They take everything they can get. They think: the more, the better. A takers mindset.

Western values place a lot of relevance on opportunities. For many people, opportunities are almost seen as equals to freedom. They are not. In fact opportunities are the opposite of freedom. Having too many holds us back from what really matters to us.

A menu with too many choices

Did you ever sit in a restaurant, looking at a menu with too many choices? When reading the menu almost takes 5 Minutes, how should you decide if you want to take number 116. or 95. ? And which of the 11 curries are possibly the best? And are you wondering as well, how the cook of the restaurant should even maintain a good quality for those 242 dishes?

In these moments, it becomes very clear to us, that a set of more options does not guarantee us a better experience. What is broadly known as decision fatigue is what we can immediately spot in every-day-decisions. Decision fatigue takes time. It takes energy. It takes away quality of life.

In greater decisions in life, however we tend to overlook this knowledge of "too much" entirely. In the biggest decision one can make in life, even you would overlook this. Don't believe me? Let's play it through together with an example...

Choosing the right home

Let us imagine your very rich uncle Gustav in 3rd degree dies today. In his testament he wrote, that every person in his community of heirs will receive a house of their choice.

Do you have a choice in your mind? Good.

Now you continue reading through the testament. It says:

"The house of choice must not be sold, rented or monetized in any way. You may keep the house for as long as you live in it, however as soon as you move out, you will give it to charity. While you live in it, you must keep that house in an excellent shape and cover all costs and efforts related."

Think about how that addition would affect your decision. How big is it now? How many rooms does it still have? Does your choice change?

I bet, that you still envision a quite spacious home. It might be smaller than the intital one. But some extra-rooms don't harm - in case you will invite guests - maybe a hobby-room - and a second bathroom? Having a bit more space simply gives you more opportunities for living a good life. Or does it? Opportunities... Sounds familiar?

What we easily labeled as decision fatigue in a big menu of choices in a restaurant does not so easily come to mind when thinking about our home of choice. Maybe it is, because we are scared to make the wrong choice. Maybe it is because we are scared of not being prepared for all possible scenarios? Maybe it is, because we are scared to take our future into our own hands?

Opportunity vs Choice

What does it mean to live a meaningful life to you?

Describing that life in all its detail seems much harder than choosing the size and amount of rooms in your most favorite home.

Often we forget that all of the choices we make shape our life. All of the choices we make create futures of happyness - or of sorrow. It is hard to find an answer to the question above. That is why most people lean their decision more towards keeping their horizon of opportunities open, instead of thinking about their choice deliberately. They make a choice based on fear rather than understanding and choice.

Let us go back to the restaurant. What if during your next visit, instead of 242 options, you only have 12? 12 Options of a very careful selection outstanding dishes. While you read through that list, 2 of the 12 dishes make your mouth water. Excellent! No matter which one you choose, you are going to have a great experience! And you no matter which choice you take, you already have a good reason to return to the restaurant again.

What if you approached choosing the place you live with a similar mindset? If instead of creating and maintaining a menu of hundreds of options, you would narrow down your options to a few that truly matter to you?

Reducing our opportunities helps us to narrow down our choices to the essentials. Having fewer options helps us to concentrate on quality instead of quantity.

The wrong kind of pragmatism

If you are like most people, you approach acquiring real estate from a financial mindset. Many believe it is the same thing as being pragmatic. It is not. What is pragmatic, is that, as in the scenario with your uncle, choosing a home comes with choices. What is also pragmatic is that those choices will affect - in average - the way you will live over the next 25 years of your life. That is potentially more than a forth of your life - and almost half of the life in which you can make decisions without physical or mental constraints. Said in a different way: It is the phase of your life over which you have most freedom. Choosing a location and place for that phase may sound a bit scary. Making that decision based on financial pragmatism is even more. Most people follow roughly the following scheme:

1. Define a budget

2. Define some criteria like location, distance to work and leasure activities

3. Look for the options that have the best sqm price

4. Choose between the best options

Buying a home like this is like choosing the dish in a menu based on the price in ratio with the costs of its ingredients and the size of the plate. It sounds pragmatic - but will not lead to the greatest experience - and thus is not the right type of pragmatism to build your choice upon.

The same is true for your home. Maximizing the size for the budget you have is the wrong metric to measure your decision.

"But, but, but... you might say ... buying a home is also a part of my investment plan. If I sell the home in 25 years..."

Yes! It is an investment. An investment in yourself. It will contribute - or subtract from your happiness over the upcoming 25 years. If you want to become rich, is that not the most important metric to measure? Besides... How do you think will this happiness affect your career and your financial decisions for those 25 years?

A different approach

Imagine you would think small instead. Think about:

• How much can I afford to reduce the size of my home and still live a great life?

• What is the room that I am typically spending most of my time in, and how should this affect the allocation of space I give to each of the rooms in my home?

• Which of the rooms am I spending the least time in? Do I need them, and if, how much space do I truly need for them?

• Which of the activities I do at home right now do fulfill me with pure joy?

• Which of the rooms and activities that I do at home right now could also be moved to external spaces?

• How would it affect the quality of my life to externalize each of those activities?

• How much could I safe by reducing the size of my home?

• What if you could invest all this money saved and invest it into finer details and craft with high quality materials?

• What if you would focus on making your space as comfortable as possible, feeling luxurious, warm and getting access to lots of light?

• What if you would invest your money into beautiful views and surroundings instead of square meters?

• What if you would choose simplicity over size? choices over options? A feeling of connection towards your home instead of market value?

Size is not quality. It often is the opposite. The greater is better mindset in real estate is outdated and irrelevant. Choose the quality of living instead. I would like to encourage you to choose your life. To choose your happiness. Those are the only things chosen you will regret least when lying in your deathbed.

Will you choose to be alive?