Simple Sophisication

By: Bradley Binversie

I shared an earlier wisdom entry titled, “A Complicated Business is a Bad Business”. I strongly believe this, and shortly after sharing that idea, I realized the concept applies to life as well as business. The more that I’ve learned in my life, the more I recognize that finding simple principles and sticking to them can make for a happier, more successful, and fulfilling life.

From a neuroscience perspective our brains are attracted to complexity and difficulty. Logically this makes very little sense to me, but it’s true. Life is complex and hard enough, so why seek out more complications? Yet if we are not careful we will find ourselves busy, overwhelmed, and missing what matters most.

Look at the core of every major religion, they are incredibly simple and many of the teachings are very similar. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Be grateful. Don’t steal, Don’t lie… ect. If every person in society followed these simple principles. There would be no need for additional rules. Life would be more simple and more fulfilling.

The natural tendency in our lives is to accumulate possessions. More possessions however mean more responsibility and headaches we have in maintaining these possessions. Do we own our property or does it own us? How many people if they had unlimited wealth would move out of the city to a beautiful, peaceful location? Perhaps a farm, or the mountains, or the beach? Some place where life is simple.

What about our time? Do we control the time in our lives or do we fall victim to busyness, with time slipping away to tasks that are probably not very important? Missing family events for work? Answering email and texts while ignoring the people we are with even when they are the people who mean the most to us.

There are countless other examples, but my overall point is that we need to continuously guard our life from complexity. Complexity will quietly rob us everything if we’re not careful.