But how do we open ourselves up to be hacked? Not our products, or data. But ourselves.

One of the most noticeable elements of promoting ourselves, telling the world what we’re good at and interested in doing, is that other people have other ideas. And from time to time we need to balance this perspective. We need to see our usefulness and purpose as something defined by others as much as ourselves.

So, in the real sense that the word is used, we’re continually getting hacked. People are taking our raw capability and using it for their own needs; as much as we let them. And, if we really want to explore our true potential, perhaps we should let them a little more often.

Girl: “Can I put the ticket in the machine?”
Mother: “No, I’ll do it. I want it done properly.”

And that was basically it. The little girl had seen our youngest daughter doing the ticket herself and wanted to do the same. A small ambition defeated.

Because it was a defeat. Okay, on its own it may not be much but together with all the other little defeats it starts to mean something. Every “no” and every put down, whatever the intention, adds up.

And it was only one incident but it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that there are other, similar exchanges in the little girl’s life. Not because the girl’s mother was bad person but because those incidents can become as much a habit for the parent as they do a reality for the child.

Like so many habits and patterns, the little behaviours that affect other people need to be constantly watched for; they creep up on us. It’s not malice, sometimes it’s just what happens when we don’t think about our behaviour towards others, when we don’t regularly step outside ourselves.

The drips of interaction between parent and child are small things. It would have taken ten seconds for a child to use the ticket barrier on her own. But it’s an important ten seconds. Instead of those little drips wearing away at something they’d be filling it up.

This was the promise in the supermarket. It’s an age-old tradition to follow the excesses of Christmas with a quick fix, a renewal of some sort.

But what is the “New You”?

According to the posters, television adverts and in-store promotions it’s joining the gym, eating low-fat chocolate and detoxing, whatever that actually means.

Perhaps we’ll give up drinking, some of us will give up smoking, we may go running. But how does this make us new people? Surely we’ll be exactly the same people, perhaps a bit less happy because we’re doing things we don’t really want to do.

Most of these renewal tactics seem to be rather shallow. And of course, the marketing isn’t supposed to actually make us better people, it’s just designed to sell stuff. Sure enough, ten months from now the same companies will be telling us to indulge.

And yet the idea of being a New Person is an interesting one. After all, the more you think about it the more it’s obvious that almost everything can be renewed. Our jobs, where we live, how we live, even our bodies can be changed for ever, or at least enough. Diet alone can almost literally make us anew. New cells, new blood, new emotions.

So, let’s take the marketers at their word, but without buying what they’re selling. As we take down our Christmas decorations let’s think about how much we can renew ourselves, what attitude and intentions we will take into 2013. We can be as new as we want to be.

We buy food as if the shops will never open again or nuclear war may break out. People are spending hundreds of pounds on food and drink for just one day, and sometimes hundreds of pounds they don’t even have. And I guess our economy has come to depend on it. Without our excessive spending at Christmas, the ringing of the tills, all is doom and gloom for the year ahead. But can we really eat all that food? Trolleys piled high like something from a modern day medieval banquet. I wonder how much will be thrown away.

I’m no Scrooge, honestly! I don’t count myself amongst the Christmas crazy but I love the excitement, especially now we have children. We buy gifts, mainly for the children, but also for a few adults in our family who just wouldn’t feel like Christmas was Christmas without them. Opening a raft of presents wouldn’t make Christmas day any better for me. It’s the other things about it I love. Waking up and listening to my girls shouting that Santa has come and left an ashy footprint on the hearth, cooking a roast lunch, watching a Christmas film, having the fire lit all day, playing games, doing a treasure hunt, wearing a paper hat.

I love this definition of excess, “the state of exceeding what is normal or sufficient”. Normal? Obviously December 25th is never going to be a normal day (in most Western homes at least!). But there must be a point at which we reach sufficient (sufficient gifts, sufficient food, sufficient spending) and maybe we just need to try and stop when we get there.

Our own journey to a simpler life has at times felt a little obsessive. We’ve had phases where our possessions have been dramatically reduced. These have served to focus our attention on what is actually important. It turns out that most of the stuff we owned we didn’t really want or need. But over the years the focus has shifted away from stuff and on to experience. Perhaps the stuff bit has to come first. Stripping yourself bare of possessions leaves you nowhere to hide from what’s actually going on in your life.

The de-cluttering obsession is pretty inward looking. Having less stuff is nice, it frees up time and space. But for us it’s not the main purpose of minimalism. The point isn’t just to have a clutter-free house, the point is to make it easier to focus on how we want to experience life. Focusing on experience feels less obsessive, more outward looking, more liberating in fact than any amount of de-cluttering could ever be.

These days I have to stop myself obsessing over parts of our house which feel too cluttered, our office in particular. But it’s fine, we’ll never be amongst the minimalists who have 30 things or less (or whatever the goal these day is!). But whatever place you’re at, whatever phase of simplifying, be sure it will shift and change. If stuff is all consuming right now, I imagine you’ll find a point at which you’ll achieve a balance, make decisions about what matters to you. And maybe then minimalism will feel less like an obsession and more just a way of life.

In fairness, our initial motivation wasn’t minimalism, it was the particular car we happened to own. We bought it nearly three years ago and in the time it has cost us as much in repairs as it did to purchase it in the first place. Maybe everyone experiences a money pit car at some point in their lives, and this was certainly ours. The last straw came on the return journey from our trip to France this summer. The car broke down on our way home and after a temporary fix and an exhausting, non stop, ten hour drive it finally gave up in Calais. We were towed on and off the ferry and abandoned the car at Dover!

The final bill was the biggest yet and as soon as it was fixed we sold it. Doing the maths revealed that with depreciation, repairs, MOTs, road tax and insurance (and not including fuel), the car had cost us not far off £300 a month. Wow.

Two months later and so far we have no intention of buying another car. We live in a small town which means most things are within walking distance and those that aren’t are a short bus trip away. We have always loved the train and these days do any out of town trips by rail. With children this has been great. We plan journeys across lunchtime and pack a picnic, take lots of stuff to do and can all sit together and talk and play.

You do have to think a little differently. Life isn’t so immediately convenient. Food is now delivered and needs ordering in advance of when we need it. Journeys out of town need to be booked ahead as far as possible to get the cheaper tickets. We can hire a car for the bargain price of £27 for a weekend but of course we need to organise that ahead of time. And we’re very lucky to have a great friend with a big car who gives us a lift sometimes if she’s going somewhere we want to go too. Now the car has gone though, all this seems very simple in comparison to break downs and repair costs.

So excuse the terribly practical post this week but I felt it was something worth sharing. Living without a car can seem like an impossibility these days but we’ve found it surprisingly easy. I wish we’d done it years ago.

I overheard a conversation a few days ago which made me think about how easily the bribery escalates. A mother was telling her friend that she had taken her son to McDonalds for lunch because she had promised him a treat if he went to the doctor. She said she knew it was the wrong thing to do but she’d done it anyway. I imagine that all the small bribes had led up to this moment and nothing short of a McDonalds lunch would have worked. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t going to the doctor something in life you just might have to do? (and possibly more often if you eat at McDonalds!). At what point does every little task in life require a treat to be fulfilled?

Starting off by bribing your children, even for the small sense of relief it brings when you’re just about ready to tear your hair out, teaches them that complying with you requires a reward. And not just a “well done” or a “thank you” but something tangible. A thing. An outing. A lunch at McDonalds. I wonder if this is where our need to reward ourselves comes from. That treat of a new handbag or gadget because we deserve it, we worked hard, we went to the dentist.

Whether or not the treat mentality stays with us into adulthood, one thing I know for sure is that the little boy who had lunch at McDonalds that day will most certainly expect at least that the next time he has to see the doctor. Telling your kids no can be hard and I for one am going to try not to fear it, even in the supermarket! In the long run life would surely be simpler if treats weren’t handed out to make difficult moments easier but were reserved for those occasions when they were unexpected and truly deserved.

Maybe we do feel as if we’ve earned a treat. Maybe we’ve been working hard, giving ourselves little in return (and don’t forget those dark evenings drawing in, making us feel all melancholy). It’s certainly possible that many of us take on too much, work long hours, leave little time for ourselves. But is the solution to indulge in yet more unnecessary spending? Add some extra stuff to our already overstuffed lives? Or is there a better way to treat our deserving selves?

Is it possible that what we really deserve is less time shopping and more time doing something we’ve wanted to do forever but never seem to get around to? Get that project started, play with our kids, get together with our friends, go on a long walk, see that exhibition. The list could go on and on. Ultimately the stuff you’ve bought will just be more stuff and I guarantee it won’t make you feel indulged. It’s the quick fix, that’s for sure, but in the end it might have quite the opposite effect and I’m pretty sure you don’t deserve that.

So next time you’re feeling unappreciated, next time you’ve worked a bit longer than you’d like or you haven’t had a break or a treat in a while and that voice calls to you “go on, indulge yourself, you deserve it” at least stop and think about just how you want to be rewarded.

When I look back at my 16 year old self I feel admiration and a tinge of sadness. I admire her conviction. She had just become a very strict vegetarian in a world where an omelette on a menu would have been a treat for those looking for a meat free option. She had marched to save the whales and truly believed that not eating oranges from South Africa would end Apartheid.

But she was also naive. Several decades of life later and it’s clear the world isn’t so simple. In fact it’s downright complicated. There’s still plenty of right and wrong, it’s just these days there are lots of grey areas making the boundaries a little murky. I prefer the world through her eyes. It was simple, straightforward. In fact, I did get to witness the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison. And though these days I’m not so sure my fruit embargo achieved much beyond my own satisfaction, at the time I did feel a small sense that I helped.

So despite my cynical age, turning my back on everything that was important to my 16 year old self would feel like I was letting her down. It was her, after all, that set us on this road to a simpler life when she arrived home that year and announced that Christmas in our home should no longer involve gift giving. We still stick to that tradition all these years later. And though I’m no longer a strict vegetarian, I know she makes me think hard about what I’m eating. She’s still inside me somewhere, keeping things simple.

So I decided to stop for a minute and remind myself that everything is alright. Really, it is. So I haven’t quite uncluttered the bathroom cabinet yet, my wardrobe still has clothes in it I never wear, that book I started months ago is still unfinished and (gasp) I watch tv. So? Give me a break! It’s alright. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It probably never will be. But enough is changing and happening and everyone is healthy and happy (well, most of the time).

I, for one, am going to stop feeling like I’m failing because nothing has reached completion. In fact, there’s a nagging impatience that comes with those feelings and it can interfere with getting on with life. The perfection we’re seeking sometimes feels so overwhelming we’re defeated before we even begin. It’s how I feel when I’m presented with an enormous plate of dinner. So if you’re not in that perfect place either then maybe just relax and enjoy the journey, you’re doing alright.