downshifting vs downsizing

Everyone is familiar with downsizing.  Whether your company has downsized, or you've downsized to a smaller home of car.  There are countless lists about simplifying your life, decluttering, minimalism, etc.  The latest fad list is Maria Kondo's 15 minutes of fame with the concept of only keeping what you love... but there's something even more beneficial to you and the planet:  downshifting, as in slowing down. 



The biggest barrier to downsizing is peer pressure.   
Try driving 65mph on a freeway when everyone else is doing 75mph+.  And if you can do that, then try driving 50mph in a 65mph speed zone.  How do you feel?  Do you feel like everyone is passing you by?  Do you feel less fulfilled, inferior, poorer, unhappy, frustrated?  How long before you join back into the rest of the traffic flow.  That's what it's like to downshift.  It runs counter to all our societies' messages.
These messages are all around us.  We are bombarded with them everywhere, all the time.  Take your local supermarket.  The products, colors, arrangements are all designed by psych rocket scientists to subliminally get you to buy more and more.  All our media supports this:  advertisements, retail stores, billboards, fellow consumers...even your closest friends!  

How can you possibly stand apart from all this and downshift?  It's similar to trying to quit smoking when everyone in your household smokes.  It's going to take a lot of support from similar minded peers and a whole lot of self-discipline.

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 more information can be found in a powerpoint presentation i did recently at California State University at Chico:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q6LumQmQCRfzB4aQE7L7Z_UnX5E2iuxwbUzzX3BqK60/edit?usp=sharing  

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