i love greg mckeown’s ‘essentialism’. it has impacted my life for the better to the point that i called it ‘the bible of minimalism’ in my review.
i was therefore very excited about his follow-up ‘effortless’. and a little anxious. could he do it again? put my world upside down?
minimalism vs perfectionism
you see, in ‘essentialism’, mckeown addressed a minimalist in the making, what he said might have been new to me, but with his message ‘do only what matters’ he was preaching to the choir. less is better.
this time, with ‘effortless’ he would be taking on the perfectionist. teaching her how to make what matters most easy. and that is a whole different story.
but less can still be perfect and the perfectionist in me has a lifelong experience of making things hard. she excels at that. after all, everything’s that easy can’t be worth much, now can it? right?
what if it were easy?
but what if hard is only in our minds? what if these impossible expectations and pressure were also partly only on us? what if we had a choice? would we choose easy if it were an option? what if we could do less, be less, want less and still be ok? still be good enough?
and so with ‘effortless’, it’s less what mckeown says that’s really new – a lot of it was actually already said or should be common sense – this time around it’s the message that’s new: how could what i’m trying to do right now be easy?
and so with just one question, he did it again. put my world upside down…
