Monday quote and how to simplify your life in 5 minutes

Good morning everyone,  this weekend we had great weather here in the Basque Country. Some of us we were out exploring nature, and it really reminded me how important is to be "observer" and aware of your life and what you do everyday.

I thought this picture and quote by Thoreau would be wonderful for starting our weeks.

Also while writing this post I was reading an article by Greg McKeown "How to simplify your life in 5 minutes". He gives some great little tips about priority, awareness and planning.
Give it a read if you can!
One phrase it caught my attention was "Live by design rather than by default". Simply awesome.

Would you recommend some other great readings to help simplify our lives? If so, why don't you give me a shout about it?

Thanks and have a great week!

Daniel in grateful peace. Sopelana, Basque Country

About the pic:
I took this pic in Sopelana in 2012. Me and my surfer friends living in Barcelona we attend every year a surf camp in Barrika named "Barrika Surfcamp".
We go there around easter, so it is really difficult to have nice weather. That year from a week of stay we had 2 days of great weather. One of those days we had a lay day, and waiting for the swell finally to come; so we decided to just go for a walk and relax in the meanwhile.

Monday quote for a conscious living!

When you get to travel often, you begin to realize a lot of things. One thing I'm still learning, is how to simplify my life at the best.
It all begins with simplify the amount of belongings you carry with you everytime you travel, merely because you start to see you don't use most of them, and that is more comfortable to travel with few things. Then, when you have the minimum at your travels, you start to feel good about having so few things, so you can focus in more important matters.

Next step in realization is whenever going back of your travels. You start to realize that having less is actually more practical than having more. I was a keen consumer spending every month in stuff I wore once or not even that. The amount of debt I used to have just in clothing!

My life started to simplify when I started to ask my self consciously the purpose of "having stuff". I still have to do a lot of job to live the simple life I want to live, but I think that's a good thing I'm conscious about it and I know what I want. I still have a lot of work on the "shoes" department for example.

I share this thoughts to you, to encourage you to be conscious about your everyday living. It will give you more focus on what really matters to you and you will save great amounts of money you can use for travel!

About the pic:
This pics bring so many good memories to me. I took it in Maderas beach, Nicaragua.
I could say I was living very much a simple life. This big tree was buried at the beach near the site camp, and ended up here by some recent hurricane.
A bunch of guys living at the camp founded it and decided to move it in front of the camp to have it as a bench.

Since then, we passed great afternoons there enjoying the sunset, having great conversations and just being together enjoying our presence.

I'm writing this post sitting at a cool couch, a big TV screen in front of me, and a nice carpet under my feet, craving to be in that tree bench watching the sunset with friends again…

Simplicity makes it all at Maderas