How to Destroy Your Past Lives (starting over)

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

“The hydrogen atoms in a human body completely refresh every seven years. As we age we are really a river of cosmically old atoms. The carbons in our bodies were produced in the dust of a star. The bulk of matter in our hands, skin, eyes, and hearts was made near the beginning of time, billions of years ago. We are much older than we look.” – Kevin Kelly, from his new book What Technology Wants.

I like the idea that every seven years we’re a totally new person. A whole new set of hydrogen atoms, a whole new reason to reinvent ourselves. Obviously this whole new person is defined somewhat by the grand design of our DNA structure, and the choices we make, but it still is a whole new body at it’s basic structural level.

For example, the me who ate bacon egg and cheeses every morning and while sitting at a desk and eventually developed a 34 inch waist line 3 years ago is very different from the me now — with a 29 inch waist line, who eats mostly fruit, veggies, coffee and the amazing food at The Summit SF, while taking double or triple yoga classes a day.

Frequently we find ourselves dwelling on the past.

We remember the night we said goodbye to the little blond girl in the rain that one night in Manhattan. We remember the time we danced all night until the sun came out in the basement of a school in Brooklyn. We remember the time that we took that first photo of the first day we got dropped off in New York. We remember the time we rode our bike to Lake Michigan at 4am and watched the sun come up over the horizon.

These were all beautiful moments, but they happened in the past. In many ways they happened a lifetime ago.

There’s a reason that so many spiritual and philosophical practices focus on bringing you into the present moment, your breath, your heartbeat. Because these two things can only happen now, not then, not in the future.

Many of the people who contact me about becoming minimalist are struggling with a past that they cannot forgive or forget. So they hold on. They hold onto the rocks they collected in 7th grade. They hold onto the memories of the loves they never really had. They hold onto the art they created five years ago, but never sold. They hold, hold, hold.

And these collections of memories, physical or emotional build up over time. These people become heavier and heavier, until they find no rest. They do this until all of their energy is dedicated towards keeping the past alive.

The reality is that the past is dead. It happened, it shaped who you are, but it’s gone now.

And it’s never coming back.

No matter how many Facebook messages you send to your high school ex-girlfriend/boyfriend when you’re drunk at night, you’re never going to be 17 again. You’re never going to share the connection you had then.

No matter how many times you look at that picture of the perfect halloween, with the displaced tribe of a dozen remarkable individuals, they’ll never be together again in the same way.

And this is okay. The world changes. We evolve into new and better individuals every single day.

The choice though is this: will you continue to build up your energy in order to focus on the person you were back then?

Or can you let it go, to concentrate on the faces around you now?

Can you look up into the eyes of the person across from you at the table at the coffee shop, or on the yoga mat next to you, or on the other side of that email and say:

“I am here with you now.”

Because, you are.

Here are a few actions that I’ve taken to clear the past, maybe they can help you.

1. Destroy your old unpublished work.

In the last few years I’ve adopted an incredibly healthy habit of burning Moleskin notebooks. When I’ve finished one, I take it somewhere like the edge of a body of water or the top of a mountain and a burn it. I like to think this releases the creative energy invested in the work into the universe, so that it can come back to me or others at a later date.

I’ve been writing a non-fiction story, a dialog between a young woman and man who survive the apocalypse and then go on to save the world, in notebooks for the last few years. Every time I finish a notebook, I burn it, then start writing the story again. Every time I write the story again it’s clearer, more focused, more important. Someday maybe I’ll actually write a version that I want to publish, or maybe it’s just an exercise to bring me closer to the creative side of my brain, who knows?

This also means I can’t grab a notebook and flip back to remind myself about how I felt about some girl I was in love with five years ago when I feel down at 3am on a Tuesday night. I can still feel down, but without the physical connection to the memory it’s that much harder to escape to the past.

I’ve been thinking about taking all of the photos/data on my hard drives collected from the dawn of time and destroying them too. I’ll let you know if/when I do how that feels. I never look at this stuff, why keep it?

2. Don’t collect souvenirs.

It might be obvious from the fact that I live with around 50 things that I don’t collect stuff from places. I don’t have any artifacts to remind me of my trip to Vietnam. I didn’t buy a I Heart NY shirt on the day I left NY. I don’t save sea shells.

If I feel like I need to be connected to an awesome experience, I go out into the world and have one.

3. I lose touch with (most) old friends.

There are certain people who I have a cosmic connection with, who I will continue to visit every time I wander through the city that they live in. We’ll go to each others weddings, we’ll say each others eulogies, we’ll make dinner together every time we cross paths.

My friends who are these people know who they are, and I know who they are. We just know, there’s no other way of explaining why.

But most people aren’t those people. Over the last year I’ve met thousands of people, I’ve received tens of thousands of emails. I’ve said ‘until next time’ to hundreds at the end of the night. Most of these people I’ll never actively seek out again, in essence, we’ll lose touch.

This sounds sad, but it isn’t. The fact is that most people aren’t your people. They’re just bodies passing in space and time. They might have something to teach you in the moment, but after that moment they don’t need your help anymore.

So you let them go.

Why we need to destroy our past lives.

The world is speeding up. 100 years ago, you’d probably have the same small group of friends who supported each other for your entire life. You never left the town you were born in. In order to get in touch you had to send a postcard via the, uhm, snail mail? Whatever that is.

In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to live many different lives over the course of your own. You’ll morph, change, your life will transition. You’ll move dozens or hundreds of times as the ever-growing cloud of connected information cares for your survival.

You have a choice, you can either let the pain and joys of the past build up until they’re too heavy a burden. Or, you can let everything go. Burn your notebooks, let the friends go, leave the souvenirs at the shop.

All that really matters is having a connection with the here and now. This breath, this movement, this heart beat.

What can you do to bring yourself here right now?





How to Create an A-List Minimalism Blog in Less than 6-Months

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

It’s been a little over a year since I started writing on Far Beyond The Stars in October of 2009, and my blog has seen incredible growth. Since the CBS Evening News interview aired, I passed 7,000 subscribers, which is blowing my mind.

All of this happened because I did a few things that other people didn’t, this is why I thought I’d dissect the anatomy of an A-list minimalist blog so that you can come to this place.

Now, maybe you’re not aiming to launch an A-list minimalism blog. That’s fine, I’m really only writing this for the people out there who are striving to inspire the world to follow this path.

If you’re not into this type of post, I’d love if you’d skip it. Go get a coffee and enjoy your life.

If you are writing a minimalism blog that isn’t quite getting traction yet (or if you’re thinking of starting one,) maybe you need to read on.

How many readers do you need to be successful?

When I say A-list minimalist blog, I don’t mean you need hundreds of thousands of readers. 1,000 true fans will do just fine, just ask Kevin Kelly about that.

If you’ve just started blogging about minimalism, maybe this can help your blog grow.

If you’ve been struggling with obtaining traffic to your minimalism blog, maybe this will finally give you the kick you need to get your blog off the ground.

If you’ve been thinking of starting, maybe this will help solidify your plans.

Not everyone will be successful.

Now, creating an a-list minimalism blog isn’t for everyone. Not everyone is willing to live the lifestyle necessary to be a leader in this growing niche. It takes the courage of a leader, and a willingness to push the boundaries of society on a path that few seek to tread.

Are you up for the challenge?

I’ve collected my thoughts into 9 elements necessary for a successful minimalism blog. There are undoubtedly more elements, but these are the most important.

Disclaimer: Now, before you even think about emailing me asking for help making your blog a success, make sure you’ve implemented at least 80% of these rules. I get a lot of emails from people who want help, and 9 times out of 10 I’m just going to tell you one of these things.

9 times out of 10 the first element is the only thing I tell people to do, and they don’t even listen to me — and then they wonder why no one subscribes.

So listen first, then act. Repeat, until you’ve actually done some of the things that I’ve listed. Then email me asking why your blog doesn’t work, maybe I can help you then.

1. Live the change you want to make in the world.

Over the last year, a few minimalism blogs have skyrocketed way past others in popularity. This rule distinguished them all from the rest.

If you’re going to advocate for minimalism, you better damn well actually be living a minimalist lifestyle.

Simply talking about minimalism, while living in the status-quo, is not enough. No one will believe you if you’re not actually living the life, they’ll simply click over to my blog and subscribe here instead.

How do you live a minimalist life? Well, I went over that in a book I wrote. If you’re still stumped, rent a dumpster and throw all of your stuff in it. Take your car to the center of town and light it on fire (but don’t tell them I told you to do it.) Living with less than 50 things is a good benchmark for most people these days, if you’re into counting your stuff.

I’m sorry, but you just can’t have a raging minimalist fan following if you’re living like a normal person. It just doesn’t work that way.

2. Fight for freedom.

Humans weren’t designed to sit at desks until their lumbar spine fuses irreversibly to their inner thighs. Humans weren’t meant to eat meal worms (my codename for any product made out of processed corn) for breakfast. Humans weren’t meant to drive around in solitary stupid people pods. Humans weren’t meant to be popping pills every morning in a desperate attempt to find artificial happiness. Humans weren’t meant to wander around fluorescently lit shopping malls being told what to buy by huge corporations.

If you’re still doing any of the above things on a regular basis, no one will care about your minimalism blog. Is that hard to hear? Well, do something about changing your life first and then come back to writing about minimalism.

This means that the first order of business is for you to find freedom. In order to do that, see rule #1.

3. Challenge and be prepared to be challenged.

You can’t be safe anymore, the stakes are too high. So many of the newer or perpetually smaller minimalism blogs I read are tiptoeing around the issues in an attempt to make everyone happy. You can’t make everyone happy, the truth is that some people are living in a way that’s keeping them in perpetual wage-slavery and debt for their entire lives.

If you keep approaching your encouragement from the angle of ‘well, you could maybe make a box of stuff and get rid of it, if you want to.’ Then people will continue to not care about you. Why? Because we need leaders who are willing to stand up and fight for the truth that we believe in.

If you stand up for something you believe in, you better believe that the status-quo will fight back. For every “omg, you changed my life” email I receive, I get another one from a confused person with a $350,000 mortgage on their house wondering why I’m ripping on their over-extended lifestyle. Why am I? because you’re a slave to a system that originally bought you.

4. Be a human.

Every time I Skype with a blogger who wants to know the secrets of minimalist blogging success, the first thing out of my mouth is always. “Put a goddamn picture of your face on your blog’s front page.”

This is why I’m establishing a rule, as of today, that I will not Skype with any blogger who has not taken this advice.

One more time “PUT A PICTURE OF YOUR FACE ON THE FRONT PAGE OF YOUR BLOG.”

If you want to know what a picture of your face on the front of your blog looks like, scroll up to the top of my blog and look over there –>

Why? Because no one is subscribing to your blog because they think it was written by a robot, that’s why. There is so much junk out there on the Internet, and we don’t want to read most of it. The easiest way to figure out if I’m not reading junk is to see a picture of a human’s face that says underneath it. “Hi, my name is John Smith, I’m here to teach you about a specific thing.”

Because otherwise we think maybe we stumbled onto something we don’t want to read. If there’s a face, there’s a human connection.

So, before you ask to Skype with me about the secrets of blogging success, please put a picture of your face on the front page of your blog. Put your name under it. Make sure the picture of your face is actually of your face, and not like the top of your face, your face with your hand in front of it, your blurry face, or the back of your head.

No one cares about your creative use of photoshop, what we care about is seeing your beautiful eyes.

5. Link link link link, link one more time.

For those of you who didn’t grow up reading A List Apart every issue since they were 12, allow me to give you the other secret of Internet success. It’s such a secret that most of you have no idea what it is.

Wait for it…

You need to link to people. A link, as in <a href=”http://www.farbeyondthestars.com”>Everett Bogue’s Blog is Freakin’ Brilliant.</a>

It’s called the World Wide Web because it’s supported by an epic amount of links between resources. The pages with the most links rise to the top of the pile. Far Beyond The Stars has so much inbound traffic because there are a lot of people linking into it.

How did I get people to link to me? By linking to people of course! (that and saying things that matter, see rule #3 above.)

Check out the last post, I linked to Tammy Strobel, Chris Guillebeau, Karol GajdaColin Wright, Leo Babauta, Corbett Barr, Joshua Becker, and Adam Baker all in the same post. <– oh look, I did it again.

If you take a look back at my achieves, you’ll observe a funny phenomena. I’ve been linking to some of these people, like Tammy StrobelChris Guillebeau, Karol GajdaColin WrightLeo Babauta <– look I did it one more time– regularly since the dawn of time. I’ve of course linked to other people too, these are just a few examples.

A good rule of thumb is to include at least 5 outbound links to bloggers in every single post that you write. More is better.

When bloggers see you linking to them in every single post, they want to buy you dinner and a million beers, because they start to see traffic coming from your site. It might be a small amount of traffic at first, but small is better than nothing.

If you want Tammy Strobel to link to you in her famous traffic-driving link-out posts, try linking to her every post for the next three months. Eventually you’ll be sending her hundreds or thousands of hits per month, then she’ll look at her Google Analytics and click over to your site.

Another great way to link to people very quickly is to simply retweet their posts on Twitter and ‘Like’ them on Facebook. In fact, scroll down to the bottom or the top of my post right now and do both of those things so you can get some practice in. Thanks!

6. Establish an all star inner circle.

Did you notice the other thing about the people I linked to, again, above? Well, they’re also my all star inner circle of bloggers. Some of them, like Tammy, I’ve been working with since the beginning of this blog. Others I’ve come to connect with more recently.

I don’t ask people if they want to be part of my all star inner circle, I simply start promoting the crap out of their stuff every single time they post until they visit my site, email me, and then try their best to buy me a beer when they’re in town next.

This is where a lot of you get it wrong. When you email me saying ‘can you promote my stuff?’

First off, that’s just rude to email someone and ask them to promote your stuff.

Second off, why would I want to link to you? Have you done anything for me? Why would I want to pimp out my audience for your blog if you’ve never done anything for me?

This is a similar conversation that goes on in the heads of every single blogger who you’ve emailed saying ‘can you please promote my dumb blog post.’ So, stop approaching it from that angle before it’s too late.

Instead link to their posts until they can’t help but notice you.

7. Make this inner circle out of similarly sized blogs.

The other element of my all star inner circle is that all of the bloggers have a relatively similar-sized following. Leo’s Mnmlist blog has 10,000 subscribers, Tammy‘s blog has 8,000, Adam Baker‘s has 8,000. They’re all just around the same size, or a little bigger, as my own blog.

We didn’t just automatically get birthed into the world with a subscriber count this large. 6 months ago many of the blogs you’re reading now had anywhere from 1,000-3,000 followers. A year ago many of us had 23 followers.

If you have 23 followers, create an all star inner circle out of blogs with 100 followers. Help each other grow by pointing your readers to another similarly sized blog. Believe me, it works.

If you want to know how to send traffic to people, which is the most powerful strategy you can ever employ to make a larger blogger pay attention to you, rewind up to rule #5, read it again and then put links to Karol Gajda‘s blog in every single one of your posts from now until March 2011. Trust me, eventually he’ll notice.

8. Don’t apologize for being awesome.

You’re writing a blog, that’s an amazing thing. You’re doing way better than the other billions of people who aren’t writing a blog. Don’t apologize for being awesome, instead keep creating awesome stuff.

If you write on your blog about how much you’re a failure at life, eventually your readers are going to believe that you’re a failure. Now, I’m not a failure at life, but occasionally I mess up. I don’t write posts about how I messed up when I mess up.

Some people do write posts about how they fail at life regularly, and this really makes people stop believing in them. I’m not going to mention who does this, because I don’t read their blogs anymore.

Never show fear, never show weakness. You know what you’re talking about, so trust yourself. Fake it until you make it.

9. Support yourself by supporting others.

If you’re writing a C-List minimalism blog, there’s no reason why you can’t be paying at least your electric bill selling e-books. If you’re running a B-List minimalism blog, there’s no reason you can’t be paying your rent selling e-books.

There are so many amazing e-books that teach the fundamentals, all the way up to the hard-hitting strategies that you need to apply in order to enter the big leagues.

We’re living in the golden age of e-books, let’s take advantage of that.

How to pay your rent selling e-books: you need to recommend them in order to make money from them. One review is not enough. One interview is not enough. Your audience, which is interested in minimalism, (this is why they read you!!!!) is interested in also buying products that teach them about minimalism.

You’re doing your audience, and yourself, a disservice by not telling them about the amazing resources that are available for them to purchase at every opportunity possible.

The easiest way to do this is simple:

(Feel free to copy and paste these, but remember to put in your own affiliate links so the commission goes to you instead of me.)

“Hey, if you’re interested in delving deeper into living a minimalist lifestyle, Joshua Becker has this amazing e-book called Inside-Out Simplicity.”

or

“One of the best personal finance e-books I ever read was Adam Baker’s Unautomate Your Finances — it really got me thinking about my spending.”

or

“When you’re establishing your all star inner circle, it’s important not to come off as a douche-bag who wants to suck away all of your time and attention without contributing value. When I read Colin Wright’s Networking Awesomely, I learned how to contribute value to networking opportunities. Maybe you can too?”

or

“I’m currently building my business one day at a time by doing one simple action every day. It’s super easy, but I wouldn’t be anywhere without direction from Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Builder Kit. Yes, I know, it’s kind of pricey, but if you think about the value you’re getting every single day, it’s way less than a cup of coffee. Wow!”

or

“One of the biggest inspirations for my continued business growth has been the amazing work that Tammy Strobel did on her e-book Smalltopia. It really got me thinking about how simple it is to start a small business, if you start small and work your way up from there.”

or

“If you’re a complete newbie affiliate marketing, IE, you’ve never made a single dime online and want to know how to go from zero to paying your electric bill online, you might want to check out Corbett Barr’s Affiliate Marketing for Beginners. Yes, it’s not for everyone — if you’re already an affiliate marketing rockstar, you need not apply. I learned so much from it though, now I’m making rent money from e-book sales!! Thanks Corbett!”

or

“Oh, and one more thing. Every single one of these e-books (with the exception of Empire Builder Kit actually) has a 100% money back guarantee if it’s not right for you. So, if you’re not happy just email the authors and you’ll get your money right back! Isn’t the internet age wonderful?”

These are just a few examples that will lead you to a place where you’re paying your rent from your minimalism blog while you’re working towards A-list blogging standards.

Yes, this means you’ll have to learn how to sell things.

But you know what, if you can’t sell someone else’s e-book, how do you think you’ll sell your own? Yeah, I thought that’d hit a nerve. Well, it’s true. Before I launched The Art of Being Minimalist, I was making a small income every month selling Leo Babauta’s A Simple Guide to A Minimalist Life. This is why I knew writing my own minimalist ebook would be a success, because I was already making a killing selling Leo’s.

How do you join an affiliate program? Sign up for a free account with e-junkie, and then follow links from the sales pages of bloggers to their affiliate programs. My affiliate program is here.

Bonus rule #10: Keep working towards your destination.

Writing a blog doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t need to stress yourself out about becoming an overnight success overnight. Simply keep working towards your goal for a few hours every week.

I didn’t build an A-list minimalism blog overnight, I simply kept plodding in the right direction day after day, week after week, month after month. Eventually I got there!

Focus on the important elements of blog design that I listed above, because chances are most of you aren’t doing the things that I listed above — and they’re simple. You shouldn’t be ignoring them.

If you’re looking for a few newcomers to the minimalist blogging scene to add to your all star mastermind group, these three are doing a lot of things right.

Nina Yau writes at Castles in the Air.

Mike Donghia writes at Art of Minimalism.

Robyn Divine writes at Minimalist Knitter.





How to Get Started with Your Minimalist Freedom Lifestyle

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This message is for all of the new readers out there. Over the last few weeks the number of people reading the work that I’m doing has expanded at an incredible rate, peaking recently with an interview that I did with Jeff Glor for the CBS Evening News.

If you’re here because you saw the feature on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, welcome! If you’re here because you saw me in any number of thousands of other places, on Twitter, or on Facebook, welcome!

[UPDATE! You can watch the CBS video interview with me about minimalism here.]

I hope there’s something I can teach you about how to pursue freedom in your own life.

(If you’re an long-time reader, a lot of this might bore you, so feel free to skip this blog post if you have better things to do with your life.)

Who is this Everett Bogue guy?

Oh, that’s me! I’m the author of two best-selling e-books. Right now I’m moving to San Francisco on November 1st 2010. I live with around 50 personal possessions and 88 total possessions. But I’m moving, so I’ll probably toss or sell some stuff before that.

Currently I’m enrolled yoga teacher training program at Yoga to the People in San Francisco.

Personal possessions are things I’d take with me anywhere I went in the world if I left tomorrow — mostly clothes, laptop, shoes, bag, etc.

Total possessions includes a couple of kitchen things and my bed — I’d ditch this stuff on craigslist if I moved somewhere else and buy a frying pan for cooking.

If you’d like to get an idea of what my possessions look like: here’s what I had when I had 57 things in July of 2010, what I had when I had 75 things in January of 2010, and what I had when I had 97 things in November of 2009.

Here are my e-books:

The Art of Being Minimalist — which teaches you how to stop consuming and start living. Published in February of 2010.

Minimalist Business — which teaches you start a zero-overhead online business so that you can live and work from anywhere. Published in May of 2010.

[*SIDENOTE*] The price of Minimalist Business is going up soon because I’m adding additional valuable content to the e-book on it’s sixth-month anniversary. If you’re interested in purchasing it now you’ll receive the additional content at no additional charge.

Alternatively sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL and I’ll be sure to notify you with the same offer before the price goes up.

I’ve also written two completely free e-books, which you can download now and read whenever.

How to Create a Movement

Minimalist Workweek: 50 Strategies for Working Less

A brief history of being minimalist.

I got started living a minimalist lifestyle in July of 2009. At the time I was unhappy working a day job that everyone told me was supposed to be super awesome (I was photo editing at New York Magazine.) I couldn’t figure out why I was unhappy sitting at such an awesome desk, so I started practicing a lot of yoga in order to attempt to discover the root of the problem. Slowly the answer came to me as I wandered around the Internet looking for better ways to live my life.

Around that time I discovered a blog by a brilliant fellow named Leo Babauta who was living with less than 50 things. After reading his blog from start to finish, I decided that being happy was more important than sitting at a desk, so I quit my job with $3,000 in the bank. I tossed 97 things into one backpacking bag, one laptop bag, and one camera bag and hopped on a plane to Portland, Oregon.

While I was in Portland I started blogging about how I was living with less than 100 things, and surprisingly a lot of people started to come and read my blog (which you’re reading now.)

My favorite blogs on living a minimalist lifestyle:

I’m not alone in blogging about minimalism, here are a few other blogs which offer you different perspectives on the movement.

If you can’t figure out why you can’t afford to pay your car payment, read Tammy Strobel’s Rowdy Kittens. Tammy and her husband Logan sold their cars and downsized to a small house in Portland in order to find freedom. Tammy has written a great e-book Smalltopia.

If you have two kids and live in a house in the suburbs, Joshua Becker’s Becoming Minimalist is for you. Then you won’t have to email me saying you can’t live this way because you have kids, Joshua does it so you can. Joshua has an incredible e-book Inside-Out Simplicity.

If you’re a steaming-hot 20-something year old lad or lady who likes adventure anywhere in the world, read Colin Wright’s Exile Lifestyle, and watch as he moves to a new continent every four months. Colin is the author of Networking Awesomely.

If you want to live and work from anywhere while supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries by raising tens of thousands of dollars for Kiva, read Karol Gajda’s Ridiculously Extraordinary. Karol is the author of How to Live Anywhere.

If you’ve got tons of crap sitting around your house, and you want to sell it all in order to live and work from anywhere and pay off your debt, Adam Baker of Man Vs Debt is your man. He wrote an e-book too, Sell Your Crap.

There are of course hundreds of minimalist blogs popping up all over the world, these are just some of my favorites.

Where I’ve lived because of my minimalist lifestyle.

In the last year I’ve moved all over the United States in search of a cool place to live.

  • I left New York after living there for 7 years in August of 2009
  • August-November 2009 I lived in Portland, Oregon.
  • December-January 2010 I lived in Chicago, Illinois
  • January-May 2010 I lived in Brooklyn, New York
  • May-October 2010 I lived in Oakland, California

Next week (November 1st 2010) I’m moving to San Francisco’s mission district.

Why have I been able to move so much?

Minimalism is a remarkable tool for anyone who wants to figure out where they want to live in the world. Basically, I can move anywhere I want for the price of a plane ticket. In May 2010 I moved from New York to Oakland for only $125 + a few basic set-up costs of getting a new apartment and finding a bed to sleep on.

If I felt like leaving to live in South America at the end of December, I totally could, if I wanted to. The minute I’m bored of San Francisco (it hasn’t happened yet!) I could totally skip town and go wherever my heart leads me.

This freedom is the beauty of minimalism.

How to automate your income by building a zero-overhead business.

The other decisive element to my success has been the pursuit of automated income. Basically, the Internet has given us the ability to produce valuable content that teaches people how to live better lives. When we do this, it gives us the freedom to work on producing more value. This is a continuous feedback loop that leads to financial freedom.

When I released The Art of Being Minimalist, I found that I suddenly could support my minimalist life simply with book sales. I had no idea this was possible until I did it, but once I did an entire new world opened up for me. Then I started receiving dozens of emails a week from people wanting to learn how to employ this business model themselves.

I wrote Minimalist Business to help people achieve what I achieved.

It is so much easier to create an automated business when you’re living a minimalist lifestyle with less than 100 things. Why?

I’m not the only person on the Internet who teaches you how to automate your income in order to live and work from anywhere.

The technology just keeps getting better and better, automation is so much easier than it used to be, anyone can work toward creating a business that runs itself using the tools I’ve put forth in Minimalist Business.

Want to learn how to live and work from anywhere from someone else?

Chris Guillebeau is a remarkable country-hopping individual who’s authored a slew of products that teach you how to achieve freedom by creating an online business that works. I’d recommend starting with his An Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself. If you’re feeling incredibly ambitious, he has an epic (and expensive) e-course called The Empire Builder Kit which teaches you to build an online business by simply doing one thing every day for a year.

Corbett Barr, aside from being one of my chief online business advisors, runs a blog called Think Traffic which teaches you how to build an audience for your blog the right way. If you’re a complete beginner at selling products online, his Affiliate Marketing for Beginners is an amazing resource.

There are of course others teaching you these skills, these are just my two favorites at the moment. I’ve learned so much from reading their blogs and digesting their products.

How to get started reading Far Beyond The Stars.

I’ve written a number of articles over the last year. A lot of them are pretty good, but some are more awesome than others. If you have the time and want to get more acquainted with my work, check out these articles below.

Here are my top 5 favorite articles to get you started on journey towards a minimalist lifestyle:

1. The True Purpose of Simplicity

2. How to Imagine Your Ideal Reality (because it matters)

3. 24 Hours in the Life of Everett Bogue

4. How to Live Like a Prince on Less Than Six-Figures a Year

5. The Minimalist Guide to Leaving Your Soul-Crushing Day Job

Thanks for reading all of this! If you’re interested in being notified every time I post something new (about once a week), feel free to sign up here to receive updates in your email or RSS.





The Future of Human Evolution: The Digital-Tribal Generation

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Over the last two months I’ve met a lot of incredibly amazing people who are living with mostly nothing.

These are brilliant and beautiful people who are living out of bags, with Macbook Airs plugged into coffee shop outlets wherever they find their home to be next.

When I first started living with less than 100 personal possessions, I thought it was a fringe lifestyle. I even thought that maybe minimalism was simply rebranding poverty, for a moment or two. This idea is obviously wrong, because when you make way more than you spend and never have to worry about money anymore, you’re obviously NOT living in poverty.

The reality of the situation is these minimalist digital vagabonds are positioned at the forefront of our society’s future evolution.

We’re creating a new level of freedom that hadn’t existed before. A legendary group of worldly explorers that are exempt from certain burdens of society. This is freedom at the highest level.

Imagine if Kerouac, Thoreau, or Goethe had the ability to separate their location from their income. Wouldn’t that have changed everything? Well, this digital-tribal generation really has fundamentally rocked the idea of how to qualify for a fully-lived life.

Last week I met up with a remarkable girl who I’ve been following on Twitter for a long time, Crystal Silver — Crystal’s been living nearly out of a bag for years. She’s been formulating a way to save the world, and the plans are solidifying. Now she only needs to act. She will do this by acknowledging that her plans will never be perfect, that the world doesn’t need perfection, it needs leaders. People who see the future, people who can see how all of the pieces fit together. Crystal is one of those people who actually has attained this freedom lifestyle.

Why? Because she knows the secrets of how to live a life where you don’t have to report to anyone –bureaucracy is crap of the past.– She doesn’t have to worry about a steady $5,000 paycheck from doing busy work all freaking day long. She doesn’t have to mindlessly conform to the idea of what society wants you to be, because she strategically decided to embrace the future evolution of humanity.

Here’s the real deal about the future of the humans on this planet — a very real future that you can have if you don’t make the decision to join us.

  • What if you lived in a world where man-kind lived in harmony with nature?
  • What if you lived in a world where you didn’t have to work 40-60 hours a week in a job you didn’t care about?
  • What if all of your income was automated, so you could spend your time practicing yoga or raising the money necessary to loan $11,000 to entrepreneurs in the 3rd world via Kiva?

These things are possible, but it all starts with a choice.

Do you choose artificial consumption, are do you choose true freedom?

The truth is that we don’t need anything. I know this because I don’t have anything, I haven’t had anything for way more than a year now.

Not having anything is actually having everything. When you’re not caring about junk, you’re opening a world of experience that previously was completely unreachable. You blocked that world out with your unconscious consumption of crap you did not need.

The reality of everyone’s situation is that artificial desires are crowding out our ability to see the true purpose of our lives. You’re lost at the shopping mall, searching for happiness in plastic pieces of crap and mass-produced “designer” clothing lines from China.

When really, all you needed to do was stop and drop everything. Look up at the stars and realize that you’re just a small little piece of the puzzle, and the smaller you can be the more the ultimate truth of why you’re here will speak to you.

I realize this is hard to hear, but someone has to say it. Wake up, you’ve been duped. Reality is broken, we need to fix it. The way to fix it is simple, and you already know the answer.

The only action left is to act — the only person left to act is you.

Why should you eliminate artificial desires?

Because our evolutionary path begs of us to find a way to make life easier for everyone. We didn’t always sit at desks, we didn’t always build massive fortresses of solitude far away from each other in the suburbs. We didn’t always eat melted down corn (which is basically a hugely deformed grass that took over the human race) formed into corn patties, flakes, and fed intravenously to animals which were intended to eat only grass.

So, we had no choice but to change. No pill regiment will cure the aching feeling that you feel deep inside you that’s telling you that you need to wake up to this idea of a new world that’s forming in the collective subconsciousness.

A new world where we share with each other freely. Where we treat every fellow human as they ought to be, instead of who we think they have been. A new world where we live in green cities, and allow the countryside and forests to regain the energy we’ve relentlessly mined from them.

The remarkable element to all of this we actually want this digital-tribal dream of our generation. I’ve spoken to thousands of people directly over the last year about the pursuit of this world, and our minds are in alignment.

We all want an easier world, where artificial desire has been vanquished, where the health of our human body and mind are paramount and in alignment with the continued health of the planet.

Yes we can do this.

One by one we’re starting to demonstrate that it can actually work, by beginning to live this new idea of a world-wide dream.

As the only way to demonstrate a better way of living is to actually pursue a life worth living.

Will you stay behind in a dying world of fake-plastic-desires or join us as we create a new, easier, better future?

I know this goes without saying, but the only way my blog reaches more people is if you share it, tweet it, Like it on Facebook, link to me from your blog, and email it to your friends. Thank you! You’re awesome!

Oh, FYI! The notorious Leo Babauta, owner of less than 50 things and resident leader of the exploding San Francisco blogging scene has a new book out — Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction. (Not an affiliate link, Focus doesn’t have an affiliate program.)

Leo generously allowed me to contribute a chapter on creating distraction free workspaces anywhere in the world — I think you’ll find that article surprising. One of my personal heroes, Gwen Bell also contributed an incredible chapter on taking digital sabbaticals — a skill that all of us need to master if we’re going to successfully avoid insanity in the digital world.





How to Be Present, Here and Now

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

When I walk into the world, I walk. I look around, I see the faces. Most of the faces are somewhere else.

They’re on their iPhones, checking to see if someone ‘Likes’ what they said on Facebook. They’re planning drinks for next weekend with people who will probably bail. They’re sitting at the bar or over a coffee, reacting to the noise instead of enjoying their beer and noticing the faces around them.

This is the attention epidemic of our age. Everything is calling us to be somewhere other than in the moment, present with ourselves.

The deepest problem with this is that the people are basing their happiness on some far off moment in the future, perhaps with people they haven’t actually connected with in a long time.

Memories are a powerful thing. Hope is a powerful thing. But the best of planning now will still deny you the moment that you’re in right now. You’re walking down the street, you’re looking at the sky, you’re smiling at the faces. Occasionally someone looks up, smiles back, and there’s connection. Sometimes you’re sitting right across from someone at dinner and they’re checking their Twitter when they could be telling you a story.

I suppose this is one of the fundamental messages of Minimalist Business. Building a business that runs itself, so you can be present in your own life. So you can be focused on what needs to happen with the action that is happening right now.

The message is simple: if you make the space to have insights worth sharing, you can be paid for them. This frees up more time, and the cycle continues, until you no longer have to work so hard.

None of this happens unless you disconnect for a moment, to be in the moment.

Yes, a lot is going on. The messages in the ether keep flying, and they will forever, speeding up ad-infinitum. I’m especially conscious of this, because there are so many people competing for my attention.

Sometimes you just have to say no, I can’t do this right now. I need to turn everything off and focus on this moment, right now, because it’s beautiful.

So, take a moment and turn it all off. Maybe just for 15 minutes. Go get a coffee, and just drink a coffee. Appreciate the flavor of the soft, delicious texture. Appreciate the farmer who grew these fair-trade beans from Nicaragua. Appreciate the roaster, who managed the temperature perfectly at Blue Bottle Coffee. Appreciate the cute little Barista at The Summit SF who made the coffee just for you — single-made drip coffee is a gift.

Because this moment will never come again.

You’re here now, and now you’re seeing it.