“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I think it’s something that’s conditioned in us from an early age, by friends, television, and the general culture: we always seem to want more.

More money, more gadgets, better furniture, a better house, a better car, more clothes, more shoes, more success.

And what happens when we get more? We aren’t satisfied, because there are new ads for new iPods, for new laptops, for new iPhones, for new cars, for new clothes. We have to have those. It’s impossible to satisfy that hunger for more, because our culture is not satisfied with what we have, but is geared to wanting more. It’s consumerism, and it’s the official religion of the industrialized world.

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” – Hans Hofmann

The first step in simplifying, and living with less, is to identify the essential – that which you want to keep in your life. Then eliminate as much of the non- essential as possible.

I go into much more detail on this process in The Power of Less (please buy it to read more on all these topics – see ThePowerofLess.com), but basically you want to create a Short List of 4-5 things in your life that you value most – people you love or things you’re passionate about, things you want in your life. These are your essentials.

Dr. Rechtschaffen’s book Timeshifting grew out of the workshops he leads on the creative use of time. Unlike time-management courses which teach people how to work efficiently at an ever-accelerating pace, Rechtschaffen’s basic premise is that it is crucial to learn how to “timeshift,” to move smoothly from fast to medium to slow and back again. Each speed has its proper place, he believes, but the rhythms of industrialized societies, including the United States, encourage us to live in “fast forward” virtually all the time. He asserts that we pay a heavy price for doing so.

Women can lead the way from the survival of the fittest to the survival of the connected.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left the country in tatters, its future fraught with uncertainty. Of the more than 800,000 people killed, most were men and boys. Rwanda’s remaining population was 70 percent female.

Fast-forward to the present day: The economy has revived and is holding steady. Major road arteries between cities and outlying villages, which were destroyed, have been rebuilt. Today, the Rwandan lower house of Parliament is nearly half female, the highest percentage of women in any parliament worldwide. Girls are attending school in record numbers.