What you own ends up owning you.

Think back to your childhood. I bet you had an item that you loved.

For me, it was my laptop. My little brother and I played Minecraft for hours every day. It was the best time ever, but after some time, the laptop broke, and I had to buy a new one.

I decided to buy a PlayStation 4 instead, as it was better and cheaper. I still remember the day I got my PlayStation 4, crying in tears as I unwrapped it under the Christmas tree. It was the best gift I had ever received. I immediately went upstairs to set it up in my room.

I connected it to my TV, plugged in all the cables, and I was ready to go. After some time, I secretly figured out how to connect the Wi-Fi to my PlayStation and discovered a whole new world of games. The first thing I downloaded was Fortnite, and I played around 8 hours a day for years.

But why am I telling you this?

What you own ends up owning you. Maybe you're reading this on your phone right now. You bought your phone, set everything up, and I bet you were happy to finally own it, right?

Well, look at your screen time. 1 hour? 3 hours? Or maybe even 8 hours? Who owns what in this world? Your phone is consuming you, your time, your energy, and your potential. And this goes for everything. The more you own, the more you have to take care of, the more opportunities you have to get distracted, and the more overwhelming your life will be. Imagine you have a huge mansion, a big garden with a swimming pool, and a home gym. And because that's not enough, you also own two cars and a dog. All of that might sound like a dream to many of us, but think about it.

You have to take care of so much stuff. You have to clean a huge mansion, take care of your swimming pool and your dog, repair two cars, and so on. In my opinion, that would stress me out. These things are consuming all of your energy and time to the point where nothing is left to you. These things own you, not the other way around.

So what should we do about this?

Maybe remove everything from our lives? Become a monk? Become homeless? Well, maybe, but I think we should just take a step back and consume with intention. You might think you want to have three cars, a million in the bank, two houses, and four cats.

But why? Is it because of status? Attention? Or are you trying to fill a void inside of you with random stuff? Materialism does not make us happy. You have experienced that before, so why bother?

See it like this.

We all have 100 energy points a day, and these points are very precious.

That's why I choose to live a simple life. I have my business equipment, a bed, a phone, a couple of clothes, and a shelf, that's it. I got rid of everything else that could distract me from achieving my goals. I used to buy a bunch of crap, and I owned like seven different jackets and nine different pants. Every single morning, I had to decide what to wear today, basically wasting energy points on meaningless things, so I decided to change. I rotate between the same three to four clothing items during the week, and boom, I've just found myself some extra time and energy that I can put into meaningful things to me like my business.

What I want you to do now is to make a list of everything you own and then ask yourself: Is this contributing to my goal? If it isn't, remove it immediately, or at least cut it down. If it is, keep it but still be aware of distractions that might arise along the way. If you take this seriously, you will find yourself a lot less distracted, and you can put a lot more energy and time towards your goals and your dream life. Just imagine your dream life for a second.

The only way you can get there is by hard work, consistency, and time. Sadly, most people overlook this very important step to remove distractions to have more energy and time to work on meaningful stuff.

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