Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: StephenPSmith.com

This is the third installment of my “Living with Less” series in which we examine the benefits of of making our lives smaller in order to have a greater impact on our community (virtual & otherwise!). Today we explore “What is worth the effort?”

“Most of us want to influence future generations in a positive way. Deep down we know this is the something more we’ve been looking for. We know it because we’ve felt the gentle touch of others on our own lives. No ever achieved anything of consequence on his or her own. Our lives are the products of those who cared enough about us to invest their lives in ours.” ~ Mark Tabb, Living with Less, p.18

Who are some of the people that have influenced your life, for good or ill? What did they do? What didn’t they do? This is a part of our lives that rarely gets examined because it can hurt.

It can also heal.

We can learn a great deal about ourselves and become inspired to do better. To do more with less. Sacrifice something in the cycle of work-TV-shopping-more work. Is shopping really worth all of the effort that you put forth to afford it? How much effort, really, is involved in volunteering for a youth-group’s fund-raiser or community project? What kind of expertise do you have that gets wasted on the weekends when it could be shared? Isn’t it worth the effort to make yourself smaller in order to make something or someone else bigger?

Leave a comment.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5oplp6. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen