Today let’s do a slower version of Step 9. Rather than noticing lots of things, let’s notice one thing and give it more value. By spending time to appreciate that one thing, it will become more valuable to us.

 

Why is that important? Because too much of our spending is because we don’t appreciate the things we already have. If we value what we already possess, we are less likely to try replacing it with something new.

 

This process can push back at the power of advertising which, if you think about it, is designed to imbue things we don’t own with value. If a celebrity owns or uses something, we are supposed to think it is better than the thing we own or use. We can do the same, deliberately adding value to things we have.

 

If you like, you can select a specific item for this. If you want to start with a small easy step, pick something you already treasure: a photo of a favourite person, for example, or something they gave you. Allow yourself to think your most positive thoughts about this thing, and all the connections you have with it.

 

There is nothing wrong with possessions. There is nothing wrong with valuing things. But if we can spend our time to appreciate the things we have more than our money to acquire the things we don’t, we can be free, in many meanings of the word, faster.

 

If you think that would be too easy, try to pick something that perhaps you don’t value as directly.

 

On my desk, I have one thing I will use as an example: a drinking bottle. It is from the same company as one I used when a teenager and staying with a French family for three months in the Alps, and every weekend we would hike the local mountains. As we left the house, I would be handed a beaten-up old bottle that had seen much better days, but hours later, when I got to the top, cold water had never tasted so sweet. As a result, I bought myself a bottle by the same company when I got the chance, and although it isn’t beaten up, and I am not up a mountain, it reminds me of those hikes.

 

Or at least it does now, while I am remembering it. Most of the time, it just sits there, ignored, all that value forgotten. I need to remind myself of its worth, its value, those connections.

Try the same process, giving thought to something you already have. It will make the things you don’t have seem much less necessary.