The simple life you chose wasn't settling—it was the wisest decision you ever made

Remember that moment when you told everyone about your decision to simplify? The looks you got. The subtle disappointment in your parents' voices. The friends who couldn't understand why you'd walk away from the promotion, the bigger apartment, the whole upward trajectory thing.

They probably used words like "potential" and "waste" in the same sentence.

Here's what they didn't understand: choosing simplicity isn't giving up. It's waking up. It's realizing that the game everyone's playing might not be worth winning. And sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is stop running toward a finish line you never chose in the first place.

I learned this the hard way, shifting TVs in a Melbourne warehouse despite having a psychology degree gathering dust on my shelf. Talk about a reality check. There I was, surrounded by boxes and fluorescent lights, wondering how the hell education and fulfillment had become such distant cousins.

The weight of "more" becomes unbearable

You know that feeling when your life looks perfect on paper but feels hollow inside? That was me, chasing every marker of success society had sold me. More money, more status, more stuff. The problem with "more" is that it's never enough. It's like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

The ancient Buddhists had a word for this: dukkha. It's often translated as suffering, but it really means the unsatisfactoriness of constantly wanting. In my book, Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego, I explore how this endless craving for more is literally hardwired into our survival instincts. But what kept us alive on the savannah is now making us miserable in the suburbs.

When I made the decision to leave Australia for Southeast Asia, everyone thought I'd lost it. Trading stability for uncertainty? Career progression for... what exactly? But standing in that warehouse, I realized the job I hated was actually the crucible transforming me. It was teaching me that conventional success and genuine satisfaction rarely share the same zip code.

Finding richness in reduction

Moving to Vietnam changed everything. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people who understood something fundamental that my Western upbringing had obscured: life's richness has nothing to do with accumulation.

My Vietnamese wife taught me this without even trying. Her family lived with a fraction of what I'd considered "necessary" back home, yet their days were fuller than mine had ever been. Long meals together. Afternoon naps. Evening walks without checking phones every thirty seconds. They weren't missing out on life; they were actually living it.

Think about it. When was the last time you had a conversation without mentally composing your next email? When did you last eat a meal without scrolling through someone else's highlight reel?

The simple life isn't about deprivation. It's about presence. It's about choosing depth over breadth, connection over collection, being over having.

The courage to disappoint

Here's something nobody talks about: choosing simplicity requires disappointing people you love. Your parents who sacrificed for your education. Friends who need you to validate their own choices by making similar ones. The version of yourself you thought you'd become.

But disappointment is just unmet expectations, and most of those expectations were never yours to begin with. They were inherited, absorbed, assumed. You picked them up like hitchhikers on your journey, and now they're demanding you take them places you never wanted to go.

The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, "You are perfect as you are, and you could use a little improvement." This paradox captures something essential about the simple life. It's not about becoming less ambitious; it's about being ambitious for different things. Peace. Presence. Purpose that isn't measured in square footage or salary brackets.

Wealth redefined

Living between Saigon and Singapore now, I see both extremes daily. Singapore, with its gleaming towers and relentless efficiency. Saigon, with its beautiful chaos and human-scale rhythms. Guess where I feel more alive?

The simple life you chose has made you wealthy in ways your bank statement can't capture. You're rich in time, that non-renewable resource everyone's burning through like there's a prize for finishing first. You're abundant in attention, able to actually see the world instead of just photographing it. You're prosperous in peace, no longer needing external validation to feel valuable.

Remember those studies showing that beyond meeting basic needs, additional income has diminishing returns on happiness? You're living proof. While others are working longer hours to afford things that promise to save them time, you've cut out the middleman. You just created more time by wanting less stuff.

The wisdom of walking away

That warehouse job in Melbourne? It was teaching me something crucial: sometimes the path to fulfillment requires walking away from achievement. Not because you can't achieve, but because you've realized the achievements on offer aren't worth the price of admission.

In Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego, I write about the concept of "right livelihood" - work that doesn't harm others or yourself. But I'd add another dimension: work that doesn't require you to harm your own spirit, to pretend you want things you don't, to climb ladders leaning against the wrong walls.

The simple life you chose is an act of rebellion wrapped in the appearance of retreat. While everyone else is adding, you're subtracting. While they're accelerating, you're slowing down. And in that slowness, that simplicity, you've found something they're all racing toward but will never reach at that speed: contentment.

Final words

The next time someone suggests you're settling, remember this: settling is accepting a life that doesn't fit because you're afraid to disappoint people. Settling is staying on a path that leads somewhere you don't want to go. Settling is choosing busy over meaningful, more over enough, noise over silence.

You didn't settle. You settled down. You settled in. You settled on a life that makes sense to you, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

The simple life you chose required more courage than any corporate climb, more wisdom than any degree could teach, more strength than any gym could build. You looked at what everyone said you should want and had the audacity to want something else instead.

That's not settling. That's the kind of victory that doesn't need announcing, the kind of success that doesn't require witnesses, the kind of wisdom that comes from finally understanding the difference between a life that looks good and a life that feels good.

And choosing accordingly.