How To Live The Good Life In Hard Times

Well fellow cheapskaters, the news has been so grim lately about the economy. I read that Americans had negative savings this year and the cost of things just keeps going up, up, up. But the great thing about being a cheapskater is we know how deal with this. I frequently read from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book Simple Abundance and I want to pass on an entry in her book that is particularly relevant and helpful at times when the news seems all bad.

In her meditation about “The Good Life” she talks about the days of the Great Depression and couple named Scott and Helen Nearing. The Nearings abandoned life in New York City to become twentieth-century pioneers in the Green Mountains of Vermont. The Nearings went in search of the good life: “simplicity, freedom from anxiety….. an opportunity to be useful and live harmoniously.” The part that I really like is where she lists Helen Nearing’s suggestions for living less stressfully. So here they are and I hope you find them as comforting as I do.

Do the best you can, whatever arises.

Be at peace with yourself.



Find a job you enjoy.

Live in simple conditions; housing, food, clothing, get rid of clutter.

Contact nature every day, feel the earth under your feet.

Take physical exercise through hard work; through gardening or walking.

Don’t worry; live one day at a time (also Richard Carlson of Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff favorite piece of advice)

Share something every day with someone else; if you live alone, write someone; give something away; help someone else somehow.

Take time to wonder at life and the world; see some humor in life where you can.

Observe the one life in all things.

Be kind to creatures.

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