I can remember the day I lost my jacket very clearly a couple of years ago, when I was downtown.

But when I say lost, I mean stolen.

Someone stole my jacket as I set it down and was distracted by something else.

At first, I was devastated. But as the day wore on, I realized that maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

Luckily, it wasn’t my favourite jacket that day. I don’t know what compelled me NOT to wear it, but I didn’t.

Earlier that day, I had also started a pact with myself to start paring down on what I owned.

And besides, if someone stole it, they must have needed it quite badly.

More than me, anyway.

As a result, I started using (and watching very carefully), my favourite things from then on, selling off half my wardrobe in the process.

Then it dawned on me: maybe everything I lose (or anything that gets stolen) can just mean that it has made room for you to use more of what you already own, or for something new.

I know it may seem like a strange attitude to take, but being optimistic is certainly better than being pessimistic.

There was no use in crying over what was already done any longer, and seeing the silver lining in the cloud has generally been my motto.

Besides, I can only wear one jacket at a time.

That experience got me thinking about the old organizing rule of thumb:

If you bring something new in, something old has to leave.

So the next time you lose something, grieve over the loss by all means (I sure did!), but see it as an opportunity to lighten your material load in this world.

It’s just making room for your life, and for better things to come.

For those of you who know me (either online or offline), you will probably hear at one point or another how much I LOVE external hard drives.

Why I back up at all

Why not, really?

It’s like flossing. You KNOW you should do it, and do it regularly, but sometimes you slide.

In one of my favourite TV series “Sex and the City”, Carrie Bradshaw, one of the main characters of the show, didn’t back up her work regularly on her Macbook and lost ALL of her written articles saved on there.

I have also experienced the effects of NOT backing up. I only got burned once when I was in high school and I lost some important documents or photos, and I vowed to never lose my data again.

This was before the age of external hard drives being affordable, so I burned everything to a CD.

Yes. Everything burned to a CD.

When your work is backed up:

• you aren’t living on the dangerous, digital edge
• you will never face the IT department again in tears, mascara running down your face
• you will never feel rage or anger when your computer dies in the middle of a project
• you sleep better at night, knowing that if your computer conks out, you’re okay
• you will be a cool cucumber when your computer takes a dive into the river
• you are not going to lose those precious photos or home videos
• you are not going to lose your scanned, never-to-be-replaced-again documents

Billions of reasons, really.

Why I back up everything at least twice

I should note that when you move a file or document from your computer and “back it up” on a hard drive, you aren’t really backing it up.

You only have ONE copy of the file in question, when you move it from your computer to your external hard drive.

You would need to move 2 copies of the file into two separate hard drives to move it off your computer, or else it’s technically NOT a back up.

With that being said, having two backups means that just in case the one copy corrupts (happened more than once to me with video and Excel files), you have another clean copy that you can use instead.

Thrice is preferred, but that means I’d have to buy another 3 or 4 hard drives.

Why I don’t use syncing software

I am not someone who enjoys using a lot of programs for something that I feel doesn’t deliver an adequate return on my time spent using it.

If I can be organized on my own with folders and good system, without extra software bebopping around, I’m much happier.

I will also be the first to admit that I find syncing software a bit confusing. I think you have to map each computer folder to your hard drive folder.

It’s only a bit of work at the start, but I really like the flexibility of being able to move folders, rename them, delete them without having to worry about re-mapping folders again.

What brands I’d recommend:

Western Digital, Seagate, Iomega and Verbatim for the USB keys.

Those brands have never lost data for me, and always work beautifully.

My father says that LaCie works great for him, but the rest of us (excluding my mother who doesn’t even know what an external hard drive is) are in the Western Digital camp.

How to buy a hard drive:

• Always buy the biggest size you can afford (The 2TB is the biggest size you can get)
• Always buy a USB-powered hard drive (The 1TB size just came out in Passport form)
• Never cheap out on a hard drive (I bought 2 cheap hard drives once. NEVER AGAIN.)
• Remember when you are handing over your credit card, that your data is irreplaceable

You can buy a 500GB hard drive for about $130 now.

It’s quite decent, and 500GB is more than enough space for most folks.

THE USES OF EACH HARD DRIVE

Here’s a quick visual of what I use on a regular to a semi-regular basis:

Not pictured:

• My first external hard drive, bought 6 years ago still going strong – 60GB
• 2 USB work keys – 8GB secured to backup projects and 4GB open to pass around

Backing up the Macbook

I USE: A 120 GB Seagate External Hard drive

Note: I don’t back up my PC because of my double-backup strategy described below.

And I also haven’t found a good software that will properly, and reliably make Carbon Copy Clones of my hard drive the way the AWESOME Carbon Copy Cloner program for the Mac has.

When I have a snafu on my Macbook, I just restore it back to the week or the time when I had last backed it up as being “perfect and current”.

NO ISSUES AT ALL. I love it.

Unsecured Documents

I USE: A Western Digital Hard drive (160GB) and a Comstar (120GB)

Note: I highly recommend Western Digital hard drives. I have never had one die on me…yet.

This includes photographs, backing up the blogs, recipes, sheet music and personal documents.

All the things that I don’t mind if an average person gets a hold of the data.

Secured Documents

I USE: A Verbatim USB Key (16GB) and a Sandisk USB Key (16GB)

Note: I highly recommend Verbatim’s USB keys. Their password protection software trumps Sandisk’s

I keep this on a USB key with a password protection on it.

It’s all my scanned bills, my taxes, my receipts, and anything I don’t want an average person to be able to look at.

Storing Videos in the Interim

I USE: 2 Western Digital Hard Drives (500GB) and (320GB)

I watch a lot of videos. A LOT. But I hate dragging out my huge 1 TB’s to grab videos or music off it, so I just keep a current copy of what I’m into on these hard drives.

It’s also great as a travel hard drive to keep me busy and entertained.

Storing Videos in the Long-Term

I USE: 2 Western Digital Notebook Hard Drives (1TB) each

Note: I highly recommend sticking to USB-Powered hard drives.

I hate using these, because they require an external power plug.

It’s great for people who have offices or desks where these hard drives will never move, but I work on the kitchen table most of the time.

I archive all of my videos and music on here to copy over to my other hard drives when I feel like watching a season of something.

I know they’ve just released the 1TB Western Digital Hard drives in a handy passport form, powered by USB.

I am holding off on buying them because there’s no real need at the moment, as these are working fine for now.

A bit cumbersome to use daily, but fine.

If the price drops to something more reasonable, I’ll consider picking up 2 USB-powered drives to replace these.

HOW I USE THESE HARD DRIVES

The Camera Folder

When I have a new photo downloaded from my camera’s SD card for example, I first unload it from the card into a folder called “Camera”.

I do this because when you edit photos directly on the SD card, if you make a mistake and delete a photo by accident, you cannot retrieve it from the Recycling Bin. It’s gone for good.

So I like to unload the images into a Camera folder, and sort and edit through them, just in case I make a mistake.

After I’ve edited the photos and I want to actually transfer them out, I organize them into folders and put them in another folder named “Transfer”.

The Transfer Folder

This Transfer folder holds everything temporarily that has NOT been backed up on my hard drives.

I put new photos here, documents I’ve created and want to save, backups… etc.

Nothing is permanently removed from this folder unless I have backed it up twice on two separate, external hard drives.

Why this system works for me:

• Any file I access on a daily basis stays on my computer, but they’re few and far between
• No unnecessary files are stored permanently on my main computer
• Frees up a lot of hard drive space so my computer is quicker
• If I want to access my files quickly, I just plug in one of my hard drives to grab them
• It’s a forced procedure to ensure that I back up everything twice

It has taken me about 2 years to come to a comfortable procedure that:

• Isn’t too finicky that I am confused about what hard drive is for what
• Forces me to back up twice at all times
• Keeps my main computer clean and organized
• Gives me a reason to buy hard drives in the name of backing up data

What about you? What’s your backup strategy?

I’m already living the life I want

Sure, I have bumps in the road along the way, with not getting any income for months, and having to watch my expenditures, but I just take that free benched time to get other things done.

Or I’d like to be an American citizen living in Dallas right now and working, but that’ll come eventually — it’s in my life plan.

I just have to be patient.

People have told me to my face that my lifestyle is impossible

When others come over to my small studio apartment, ask me what films I’ve seen in the cinema or what restaurants I’ve been to recently, they find out pretty quickly that I don’t like going to the cinema and I don’t eat out — I cook at home most of the time.

That I’ll never keep up on it, and it’s just a phase.

That when I have kids, I am going to want a huge McMansion, private school tuition and all of the fancy trappings like them.

But I don’t think so.

I may want the best, but if I can’t afford it, I am not going to kill myself to give them something I don’t think is necessarily better.

A huge McMansion? Why? I grew up in a medium-sized home and turned out fine.

BF grew up in a small studio apartment with 2 siblings and turned out fine.

Sure, it was cramped and they occasionally had fights about space, but it just made them learn how to get along with each other, instead of having to intercom each other from their bedrooms.

It’s not even a question of money most of the time

My family thinks I’m such a hippie weirdo for sleeping on a futon on the floor, and I’ll bet it crossed their mind at least ONCE that they think I am too cheap to spring for a bed.

But they don’t understand that even if you gave me a choice between a bed and a futon, both free, no strings attached, I’d take the futon.

It’s my lifestyle.

It’s more of a question of lower expenses

With low expenses, you can live on what you earn and save, for much longer.

It’s just basic rationality.

If you only spend $1000 a month, and earn $4000 a month, then $3000 goes into savings, and is equivalent to 3 months of living.

But if you spend $3500 a month, and only save $500 a month, that’s less than half a month, and would take you 7 months to save for one emergency month.

For me, the biggest impact over a certain salaried threshold, is not so much earning more money, but watching your expenditures.

It isn’t worth it to me, to give up my life like a slave to work for money.

Money ends up controlling you and your life.

With lower expenses, you can also save more, and do more of the things you want with the free time you have.

Like travel (something I love to do).

There’s no need to always spend your money buying things.

Experiences are worth so much more because you can’t just buy a memory.

So, are you living the life you want?

This is how I started thinking about it.

Make a list of everything you think you want or need to make your life perfect.

It looked something like:

• Pay off debt
• Go on vacation
• Change jobs
• Buy that set of cooking pans

Those are all attainable goals.

I set up plans for each, after prioritizing the items, and started working towards the goal.

I just feel like if we made lists more often and analyzed what made us unhappy, and set a plan to go about fixing it, it would be easier to see the forest for the trees.

The basic tenet is a change in attitude and the way you see life.

In the past, whatever I wanted, I bought.

Each time I purchased something, the fast food high was getting shorter and shorter.

To keep up that continual high, I kept buying, trying to make those feelings last longer.

It was a vicious catch-22.

One day, I just stopped and analyzed my habits

I was walking home from a client site to my hotel, and my mind started wandering back to my budgeting sheet.

I had been tracking my daily expenses, and trying to figure out what I spent each month.

And the numbers and just the sheer amount of expenditures was shocking.

It was the trigger that my mind finally used to connect that I was showing signs of unhappiness by wanting to fill that empty void with stuff.

I knew that I was buying items that I didn’t need, just because I created a need in my head, and thought I was fulfilling that to create the perfect life.

There’s no such thing as a perfect life.

You know how people say:

• If I earned $10,000 more, I’d be happy and life would be perfect.
• If I bought that red coat, I’d be happy and life would be perfect.
• If I went on that vacation to Cuba, I’d be happy and life would be perfect.
• If I could just clear my debt, I’d be happy and life would be perfect.

The first thing I struggled to grasp was that there was no such thing as a perfect happy life with the perfectly decorated home, and the perfect wardrobe.

Every time I bought something I thought I wanted/needed, I had a new list of stuff cropping up to replace it.

When does it stop?

There are always going to be problems, pain and sadness.

But now, instead of covering those emotions with purchases, I found dealing with the emotion itself was more fulfilling.

It takes effort to really scrutinize yourself, and to find the triggers in your life that cause unhappiness.

It isn’t easy to be objective about yourself.

I found a lot of excuses about why I did what I did.

Why I purchased things I didn’t really want or need, and justifying my purchases.

But instead of beating myself up of my past mistakes, I cleaned the slate and started anew.

The first thing, was to figure out the unhappy areas of my life.

It didn’t have to be anything serious, but just things that made me sad or upset each time I thought about it.

I needed to look for the triggers of that sadness.

One of those areas, was family.

I was trying too hard to change them, and ONLY just recently, after 6 years, I’ve only just understood the situation.

I realized that the trigger with my family, was hearing the complaints,  and then feeling frustrated that they wouldn’t do anything about it.

My new rule was that they had a right to let out the frustrations and complaints, but if they weren’t willing to listen to what I was going to say, then I didn’t want to hear their complaints.

And I’ve been pretty blunt with that lately, having let them steamroll over me for so long, out of a sense of filial guilt.

If they aren’t ready to make changes, then I am just wasting my breath trying to help them.

It still sorts of frustrates me thinking about it, but then I just tell myself:

Hey, they chose to do that.

No one forced them into those decisions.

And while they may complain about it, they’re still doing it.

So I just have to assume that they’re actually happy, because why would you do something that makes you unhappy?

Now I use that same methodology for everything

The second area was my job.

And I came to that solution/revelation a lot sooner than with my family.

I went over all the scenarios: the boss, the manager, co-workers, the actual tasks themselves.

Then figured out a way to cope with it, or change it.

I realized it was the bosses/managers and the company itself that I detested with their sly, sneaky tricks, and I just couldn’t work with such liars.

But I really loved my job, and the tasks involved.

So I reviewed my options for what I could do without working for such a company.

And left just as soon as I had enough experience in my area to become my own boss.

And now…?

I am still working towards this new attitude in life.

It isn’t a deadline or a project, and it gets easier with practice and time, once it becomes a habit.

I’m working on not putting so much emphasis on stuff, which has started to become a natural attitude and feeling just in the past year.

When I see something I want, I think: Do I really want that? Or do I want it because I’m bored?

I am focusing on getting the best from my life, emotionally.

It’s hard to explain, but for instance, I am making peace with my family’s unusual behaviour and actions (BF has confirmed my feelings and validated that I am not weird or wrong for believing what I do about my family.)

I can’t control everything, and letting go of that control is helpful.

Sometimes it’s best just to let them go and remember that they are HAPPY doing what they’re doing, not unhappy — because if they weren’t happy, they’d stop.

I want to live in the moment, not in the future.

I am focusing on what I want first, and then figuring out what I need to do to get it.

For example, I may want to retire early, and I am not planning on living it up with champagne and strawberries in retirement, so I may not need as much as I originally thought.

Yes, I want to be safe and conservative, but now I can tell myself: Who cares? Go on that vacation to Europe for a month — seriously, it’s what you’ve wanted for a while, and FORGET about the money you could be earning and saving for that month.

Money isn’t everything! And living in the moment now, rather than excessively worrying about the future is what I am focusing on.

Other points made in the discussion were:

• You cannot buy or earn happiness
• Happiness is love
• Poorer people are happier
• Being Unhappy is not a bad thing

You cannot buy happiness

Research, not funny comics has proven that.

When people win lotteries, for example, Layard said, “initially there is a big increase in happiness, but then it reverts to its original level.

So why do people want to win lotteries? . . .

They have a rather short-term focus, and they don’t seem to grasp long-term ways their own feelings work.”

“People grossly exaggerate the impact that higher incomes would have on their subjective well-being,”

The problem is that once people get past the level of poverty, money does not play a significant role in day-to-day happiness.

It certainly can buy things, but things do not usually address most of the troubles people experience in daily life — concerns about their children, problems in intimate relationships and stressful aspects of their jobs.

When people daydream about winning big, Krueger said, “they focus on all the things they would buy, without recognizing that does not contribute all that much to their well-being.”

Source: Washington Post – London School of Economics Study

You cannot earn happiness either

If you think that earning twice as much money will make you twice as much happy, you are wrong.

There are diminishing returns at play here.

I read a survey somewhere that if you earned $60,000 or less, you were generally happier than those who earned more.

Those who earned up to $100,000 (I think), were only marginally happier, and it didn’t seem that it would be worth the extra stress, lack of time and pressure just to earn more money.

And the return on money = happiness, came to a definite 0 after $100,000.

It’s all relative to those around you.

When a group of MBAs were asked whether they’d rather make $100,000 when everyone around them made $120,000, or make $90,000 when everyone around them made $70,000, a majority opted for the lesser salary if everyone at the company knew about the discrepancy, Schwarz said.

But if the salary discrepancies were kept confidential, about half said they’d opt for the $100,000 job.

Source: CNN Money

And this is perhaps where we run into problems, seeing all of these fabulous lives on TV, with people who are supposed to earn peanuts (Umm.. Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City?) but running around on high octane lifestyles.

We compare ourselves to what we think is reality, but is in fact, manufactured TV reality.

Happiness is love

And by love, they mean strong family bonds, a sense of a support system, spending time with each other (getting hugs, smiles, kisses), and having a great partner in life also helped.

People who are in love are happy people.

I find that when you aren’t with or around people you love, who care and support you, you feel unhappy.

And you project that dissatisfaction onto others.

Every time I see someone really grumpy at work, I just wonder if they’re happy at home.

When they are being forced to work long hours, and give up time with their family, I find that people get grumpier.

It may be because they need to earn more money to pay down their debt from their high-octane lifestyle, or just don’t want to be at home and use work as a substitute.

Poorer People are Happier

If anyone has ever traveled or known people who have traveled to very poor countries — they’re generally happy.

They don’t stress out about anything except the basics: Food, Clothing, Shelter and Warmth.

Other than that, the rest doesn’t even exist in their word — there’s no TV set or advertising Mad Men to tell them otherwise.

They have no manufactured dissatisfaction, or others in their village sporting iPods to make them feeling jealous at not having what others have.

Envy is what I believe to be the core of retail therapy.

We are so envious of what others have, that we try to level the playing field in our minds, by buying our way up to their “status”.

Being unhappy is also not a bad thing

Being unhappy or depressed once in a while is a good thing.

Trying to be happy all the time is a surefire way to fail at something.

It’s where permanent unhappiness begins — because no one can be happy ALL THE TIME.

I don’t think that anyone can be totally happy and politically correct all the damn time.

Some people may seem like that all the time, but once in a while, even they put on a mask to cover what they really feel inside.

Without unhappiness, we wouldn’t have a concept of the emotion of happiness.

Bad things are going to happen, and it’s just how you bounce back from them that makes the difference.

Plus, I read that tears (even ones you get from watching sad movies or reading sad stories), help cleanse your emotional blockages, and afterwards, you generally ALWAYS feel happier.

(At least, it my case I do).

Next: How I am attaining bellyful happiness