When we are unclear about our real purpose in life — in other words, when we don’t have a clear sense of our goals, our aspirations, and our values — we make up our own social games. We waste time and energies on trying to look good in comparison to other people. We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.

When we are unclear about our real purpose in life – in other words, when we don’t have a clear sense of our goals, our aspirations, and our values – we make up our own social games. We waste time and energies on trying to look good in comparison to other people. We overvalue non-essentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.

When we are buried in nonessentials, we lose track of what is truly significant.

We tend to underestimate the small things about ourselves that are often our most valuable attributes.

It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

The other issue with overvaluing material success is the danger of prioritizing it over other values, such as honesty, nonviolence, and compassion. When people measure themselves not by their behavior, but by the status symbols they’re able to collect, then not only are they shallow, but they’re probably assholes as well.

To eliminate non-essentials means saying no to someone. Often. It means pushing against social expectations. To do it well takes courage and compassion. So eliminating the non-essentials isn’t just about mental discipline. It’s about the emotional discipline necessary to say no to social pressure.

Why would we simply endure essential activities when we can enjoy them instead?

What do we consider disvaluable and valuable in our own lives? Some people say negative and positive experiences, others say thwarted and satisfied preferences, others say a list of things such as ignorance and knowledge, meaningless or meaningful relations, pain and pleasure, etc. All these different things require that we're sentient. We don't consider that what is valuable in our lives is just being the members of a certain species or living in some ecosystem as such. Abstract entities such as species and ecosystems cannot feel pain and other affections, and therefore don't have interests, while sentient beings do. This is why we should be concerned with what happens to sentient individuals, rather than abstract groups.

Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?

So often we fail to acknowledge what we have because we’re so concerned about what we want.

Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.

eliminating the nonessentials isn’t just about mental discipline. It’s about the emotional discipline necessary to say no to social pressure.

The More we value things, the less we value ourselves