My daily life goal is to inspire and be inspired. I attribute all personal leaps of understanding, change, growth, and perspective to inspiration: distinctive moments that fuse passion and possibility, potential and promise into clear purpose and drive the exceptional experiences of my life.

For a long time, I’ve been inspired by my brother, Logan, and my sister-in-law, Tammy.

Together they have worked at realizing a clear and consistent vision: to simplify their lives and emphasize relationships over things. In doing so, they’ve captured the attention (and occasional consternation) of tens of thousands of people around the world.

Simplify?

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
– Steve Jobs

As Americans, we revel in the concept of more. We believe that our happiness is made possible by the things we own; things that allow us to do something or to be someone more and enhance or improve ourselves. It’s a concept so deeply rooted in our culture that challenging its premises in any way provokes strong reactions.

For Tammy & Logan, this greater context is part of what makes their efforts so inspiring to me. It’s not just the act of downsizing their lives and fundamentally examining their relationship with things and living space, but their willingness to do so against the grain of at least sixty years of American consumer culture.

I am inspired by their willingness to question the deep-rooted cultural concept of more and make a conscious, cogent, and continuous effort to choose an alternate path to happiness and fulfillment.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
– Albert Einstein