Living Simply with Attitude

buy_the_world.jpgIs life really all about the things we buy, the things we wear, the things we own?

We might say no but do our actions and attitudes say something quite different?

We might like to quote Matthew saying, And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” but are we just kidding ourselves? Are we still just running after the same things that everyone else is?

Life Skills Trainer, Jill Bonanno, joined me this morning on 98.5 Sonshine FM for our regular Friday morning radio segment, Simply Living. Our topic today was Simply Living with Attitude but we seemed to cover quite a range of things.

We touched on Valentine’s Day before moving onto some listener feedback. That led us to reviewing our segment on TV from a couple of weeks back. Far from being an attack on television, we simply discussed how we can be in control of television and other technologies rather than letting technology controlling us.

Have you ever thought of setting aside a day each week where you unplug? Unplug the phone, the TV, the computer and all the gadgets that can so easily soak up our time. Spend the day reading, walking, learning, buliding relationships. If you shudder at the thought, that might be an indication of how much of a hold technology has over you.

Our chat turned to the destructive way that we can try to keep up with those around us in our spending habits and lifestyles instead of deciding on a life that lets us develop into the people we were created to become.

If you’d like to hear some of the ways we can claim back our lives just use the audio player at the bottom of this post to listen to this morning’s segment.

I’d love to read your comments on how you control the ‘stuff’ in your life rather than letting it control you.



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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6 Comments

  • I like the idea of an “Unplugged” Day, and do just that every Sunday. Here, in the maddingly fast pace of life in the U.S. it is much harder to do, though, I would imagine, than in a beautiful, peaceful, passive place like Australia.

  • I remember staying with friends once and the phone rang during our meal. Nobody got up from the table to answer it. Finally the host could see we were a bit concerned, so he informed us that if anyone was rude enough to ring during a meal time it was their bad luck. The phone certainly didn’t control that family.
    I think as a result of your post I may well set some guidelines for Fay and I here in Dubbo regarding use of phone, computer, TV etc. We do have a few gadgets don’t we?

  • We had a situation a few weeks back where our family had just sat down to dinner when the phone rang. The kids looked very concerned that we weren’t answering the phone.

    I told them later that we had voice mail and that whoever it was could leave us a message and we would get back to them. I said that it would show disrespect to them if I was willing lo go and talk to someone else when it was our special family time.

  • We have 2 teenage children and decided long ago that they were not going to have TV’s in their rooms. This has been a battle over the years and one that we have had to stand our ground on. We get all the reasons why they think they should be allowed to , especially the “all our friends have tv in their rooms”. Sometimes it would be easy to give in for peace sake but I know that if we let it happen we would never see our kids , plus I think then you lose control of what they are watching. We already have 2 tv’s in the house so if we are going to watch something lets watch it together.

  • Well said, Lesley.

    We’ve started early with our kids to let them know that the rules in our house are quite probably different from those in other homes and that “all our friends … ” is not a good reason. Of course that doesn’t stop them from noticing that their friends have stuff that they don’t. I guees it’s one of those things that needs to be reinforced again and again.

    We certainly won’t be getting televisions for their rooms either. 🙂

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