Yes, I agree that many people are stuck in stress and fear and that it is likely to impede their ability to effectively design their lives. The difference between life now and that of our grandparents is that the past was a time of scarcity, now we are in a time of abundance. People are confused now because they have too many choices and options.

My wife and I are debating about what country we should go to first. My grandmother had a different set of problems. Her family had to clear out 5 acres of trees by hand or there was a strong likelihood they wouldn’t be able to grow enough food to survive the winter.

My wife and I wonder if we should rent out or house or not when we leave Japan. My grandmother lived in a single room mud house as a child with 8 sisters.

I am bored with all the local restaurants in my neighborhood so I repeatedly ponder what I want to eat for my next meal. My grandmother only ate meat a few times a year as a child. She remembers getting only a piece of bread for lunch at school and some children had nothing. She only went to school for a few years because she had to work on the farm.

I do agree that these are stressful times, but it is a different kind of stress than previous generations faced.

I do think that we have a different set of challenges that previous generations never had before though. Our lives are much faster, much more inter-connected, and we deal with much more information and much more change in our lifetimes. And while these all bring great opportunities (if you develop the life skills for converting them into opportunities), for alot of people they’re stuck in stress and fear. And stress and fear kills the quality of your thinking and then lifestyle design can seem very difficult.

Those who’ll thrive in this era are the ones who learn the life skills (what I call Agile Living Strategies) for keeping a calm mind and preserving the quality of your thinking even when there’s chaos around you.

Thanks for sharing your father’s story – very inspiring!

Cath

We live such affluent lives that it is easy forget really how great everything is. I love listening to my grandmother’s stories about her childhood. She grew up with 8 sisters in a single room mud house that they built themselves. My grandma often says, “I never want those days to come back.”

It is easy to get angry when your computer crashes, or your plane is 30 minutes late or if traffic is slow. I think it is important to remember that we are alive and have great opportunities to do anything we want. Focus on the good and you will realize that there is not too much bad left in our lives.

I’ve been trying to stop saying “I’m starving” when I am hungry. I thought of this because I realized that I sound foolish saying it. Do I really know what hunger is? Nope. Have I ever had to go without for days on end? Nope.

Putting things like this into perspective makes life a lot more precious.

Thanks for posting this.