Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff

248 Pages·2011·2.304 MB·English

by  Dinah Sanders

Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Three Core Principles
Part One
March Discardia: Getting Started
Symptom #1: Clutter: A Houseguest Who Won’t Leave
Symptom #2: It’s Hard to Start
Symptom #3: It’s All Too Much
Symptom #4: Oh, No! I’m Not Perfect
Symptom #5: Uh-oh. Did I Remember to Worry about
Forgetting That?
Symptom #6: Procrastination
Symptom #7: I Don’t Wanna!
Symptom #8: The Giant Plan for the Rest of My Life
Symptom #9: Worrying about Your Bottom
Part Two
June Discardia: Core Principle #1 – Decide and Do
Symptom #10: Hello, Same Old Bad Habit
Symptom #11: Argh! Email!
Symptom #12: The Museum of Me
Symptom #13: But I Should Want This
Symptom #14: Hounded By Worry and Fear
Symptom #15: Anger, Resentment, Intolerance
Symptom #16: Haunted by the Black Dog
Part Three
September Discardia: Core Principle #2 – Quality over
Quantity
Symptom #17: Carrying an Albatross
Symptom #18: But I Might Need It Someday
Symptom #19: Clutter Everywhere
Symptom #20: Too Many Clothes
Symptom #21: Stuff as a Way to Show You Care
Symptom #22: Needless Obligation
Symptom #23: Life Out of Balance
Symptom #24: Rushing
Symptom #25: Distraction
Symptom #26: Plugged into the Wrong Connections
Symptom #27: Making Nice
Part Four
December Discardia: Core Principle #3 – Perpetual
Upgrade
Symptom #28: Holiday Stress
Symptom #29: No Home Position
Symptom #30: Balancing on the Edge of a Cliff
Symptom #31: The Short Leash
Symptom #32: Emotional Baggage
Symptom #33: *SIGH*
Symptom #34: Bad Scene, Man
Symptom #35: Overspending, Underenjoying
Symptom #36: Boredom, Lethargy, Apathy
Symptom #37: The Edison Museum
Symptom #38: But I Spent a Lot on It!
Symptom #39: Killing Time
Symptom #40: Dream Duty
Symptom #41: Dreamblindnes
Onward!
Gratitude
Glossary
Resources
Discardia
More Life, Less Stuff
Dinah Sanders
Copyright 2011 Dinah Sanders
All rights reserved.
Edited by Joanne Shwed, Backspace Ink
Cover design by B.J. West and Dinah Sanders
Book design by Joseph Gratz
Cover model Modesty B. Catt
Cover photograph by Reverend Dan Catt
Cataloging in publication by Rice Majors
Sanders, Dinah.
Discardia : |b more life, less stuff / |c by Dinah Sanders ;
edited by Joanne Shwed ; cover design by B.J. West and
Dinah Sanders ; cover photograph by Reverend Dan Catt.
p. digital, PDF file
ISBN 978-0-9839980-2-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9839980-1-3 (Kindle)
ISBN 978-0-9839980-0-6 (EPUB)
"Let go of everything that doesn’t make your life
awesome! With three key principles and numerous
practical tips, Discardia—a new holiday—helps you solve
specific issues, carve away the nonsense of physical
objects, habits, or emotional baggage, and uncover what
brings you joy." - online description
Contents: Three core principles -- March Discardia:
Getting started -- June Discardia: Core principle #1:
Decide and do -- September Discardia: Core principle #2:
Quality over quantity -- December Discardia: Core principle
#3: Perpetual upgrade -- Onward! -- Glossary -- Resources.
1. Success. 2. Motivation (Psychology) 3. Conduct of
life. I. Title.
BF637.S4 S253 2011
158/.1--dc20
To parents, partners, friends, and teachers
Thank you for loving me and helping me be a better
person.
Introduction
There is no need to hold on to what's obsolete: One
never loses what one tosses away deliberately.
—Veronique Vienne, writer
Living better through letting go
We are all busy people—busy with work and projects,
busy with play and dreams, busy with our communities and
friends and families. We look at our homes and think,
“What a mess! There is no way I can get this clutter under
control without spending weeks working on it full time!” We
look at ourselves and think, “I’m a mess! What am I doing
with my life? What do I even want to be doing with my life?”
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the seemingly vast distance
between the way things are now in our lives and the calm,
clear lives we’d like to be enjoying.
We know we don’t have everything we want. We know
we have things in our homes and minds that don’t match
the ideal we want for ourselves, but the idea of adding
anything or taking on more to-do’s to change things is
overwhelming. We view that dreamed-of excellent life as a
thing we need to squeeze into the overcrowded chaos of
the one we live now. The good news is that it’s already in
there, just buried and hidden under a bunch of stuff we don’t
need or want.
The quarterly celebration of Discardia—a new holiday—
is the time to carve away all the nonsense that isn’t making
us happy, and uncover what does. We don’t have too little;
we’ve piled too much on top of ourselves. When we steadily
scrape away the junk with one good decision at a time, our
true selves begin to shine through. Discardia doesn’t
require us to change course radically; rather, it is the simple
practice of leaning the boat in the direction in which we
want to sail. Little adjustments lead us to wonderful new
places.
Letting go and lightening our loads create positive
motion; when combined with a light touch on the rudder—a
little leaning of the boat—we have the ability to turn our lives
in better directions.
The tips in this book, plus the supportive community of
Discardia fans (whom, for convenience, I’ll refer to as
Discardians) found in multiple online locations, will help you
put your energy where it counts: in making your dreams real
and in living a less stressful life full of awesomeness.
So what, exactly, is Discardia?
It’s a new holiday—invented by the author in 2002—with
deep roots touching unconsumption, the slow movement,
downshifting, and voluntary simplicity. Unlike many
holidays, it doesn't involve obligations or expense or
overblown expectations of specialness. It does not require
us to interact with people with whom we do not wish to
interact. In fact, it doesn't require us to do anything.
Discardia is celebrated by letting go of what doesn’t add
value to your life—whether physical object, habit, or
emotional baggage—and replacing it with what makes your
world truer to your essential self. The core concept is this: If
we continually discard what doesn’t help us, we’ll be left
with more of what does—more space, energy, and time to
make our lives even better.
Such a positive shift doesn’t require taking a vow of
poverty or scarcity but instead simply increasing the
frequency with which we make choices that improve the
quality of our lives. This transformation isn’t a magical
change that will happen when the stars align or some
hundredth monkey does the right thing. It’s practical and, for
the majority of folks, it’s not even that hard. (Note: If you’re
wrestling with a very serious challenge that moves you from
the realm of clutter into hoarding, I recommend that you
consider Discardia one of the other tools in your toolbox as
you work with an experienced professional in that area. The
International OCD Foundation and Children of Hoarders
are good places to find more information and assistance.)
Discardia reminds us to think about what could we be
doing or feeling if all this stuff wasn’t in the way. It also
reminds us to spend some time shifting our lives toward
more of what makes us thrive. Each of us has a different
definition of what that exciting, fulfilling, less-stressed life
consists of, but the path we take to make it real is one we
can travel together. Our first step is to remind each other to
think about what we want and compare that to what fills our
lives now.
Whatever enters our lives might clutter it up. We have a
choice about letting it enter and about letting it stay. Our
choices make us who we are. If we are aware of who we
want to be, we can make the decisions that steer us toward
our better selves and away from things that bog us down.
A guide to this guide
This book provides a practical introduction to the
celebration of Discardia. We’ll take a tour through the
Discardian seasons with straightforward tips reflecting
three key principles for building a happier life. Along the
way, we’ll hear how Discardians around the world have
changed their lives for the better.
Though the book is arranged around a Discardian year, I
recommend reading it straight through the first time no
matter what season it is when you first celebrate Discardia.
Most of the tips aren’t bound tightly to the calendar and
build upon one another. With the underlying principles
under your belt, you can then dive into the appropriate
section as reminders for future Discardia holidays.
You will also find an extensive list of resources at the end
of the book, which you can use to dig deeper into some of
the tools and techniques shared here.
This is not just another “throw out your crap” book.
Discardia is a reminder and a framework for personal
change. I want to give you the tools you can use to achieve
a life that is ideal for you. Try them. Take the ones that work
for you. Incorporate into this framework other good advice
and techniques you’ve learned for simplifying your days,
uncluttering your head and home, upgrading your life, and
being true to your real self. Build the system that works for
you from the good tools and techniques you find.
On any given day, work from the side for which you have
the most energy by adding more access to what you love or
carving down to less of what you hate to have in your way.
You will find that a particular technique may be valuable to
different people for different reasons. For example, you
may be chatting with a friend and saying that you’re going
to spend the next 45 minutes working hard through your to-
do lists—ready, set, go! This may work for one of you
because of the synergy that comes from being connected
and supported; for the other, it may work because you’re
less likely to procrastinate if you know that someone is
paying attention.
Discardia is fun and flexible. Because the length of the
holiday varies slightly on each of its appearances, it
remains new and energizing, able to reflect the different
rhythms of our lives. Enjoy yourself! It shouldn’t just feel like
you’re flossing your apartment. Moving on from who you’ve
been to who you’re being deserves celebration.
When is it?
Discardia takes place four times a year. Sometimes it's
short and sometimes it's long, since, in an effort to
uncouple the holiday from any cultural bias, it is scientifically
timed by our world’s natural motions through the solstices,
equinoxes, and their following new moons. The precise
dates can vary depending where on Earth you’re located,
but I encourage you to discard being too fussy about that.
Use the indicators in your own calendar or the dates I list on
the Discardia website or just celebrate it sometime during
March, June, September, and December each year. For
convenience, the dates for the next few years (with thanks
to the calculations of Discardian engineer Seth Golub) are:
December 21–24, 2011
March 19–22, 2012
June 20—July 18, 2012
September 22—October 15, 2012
December 21, 2012—January 11, 2013
March 20—April 10, 2013
June 20—July 8, 2013
September 22—October 4, 2013
December 21, 2013—January 1, 2014
There is also a public Discardia iCal calendar available
at Discardia.com.
The daily art of living a Discardian life year-round
Celebrating Discardia once will make your life better
than it was the day before. Celebrating it four times a year,
every year, will begin to have positive, long-term impacts on
your happiness. That’s plenty of benefit for very little effort! If
you really want to start feeling the wind in your sails, though,
try being a Discardian every week or, better yet, every day.
Throughout the book, you’ll find text displayed like this,
which will highlight timely directions you’ll use on a daily or
weekly basis, such as best practices for starting your day at
work.
Open your eyes to the blockades you’ve put between you in
this moment and where—and who—you really want to be.