In the recent months I’ve detected a growing interest for downshifting in the Finnish media. Simply put, an increasing number of people are being fed up with what they do and want an easy way out.
People think shifting down is a solution.
I will argue that downshifting is actually a symptom, not a solution. Here are five reasons commonly heard against downshifting:
- Having to give up on the small pleasures of life.
- Ending up bankrupt.
- Losing one’s market value as an employee.
- Being a bad role model.
- Becoming an outcast of society.
All of these are possible scenarios but utter rubbish if you ask me. These objections are relevant only if you analyze your life top-down. Instead, you should start looking at things from the very fundamentals with a bottom-up method.
Assume for a second that you’d own absolutely nothing.
Pretty difficult to start downshifting from there. If you start from the bottom, you can only start upshifting.
- Instead of giving up something, you can enjoy anything.
- Instead of risks, all you see is possibilities.
- Suddenly the small things in life make a difference.
Instead of downshifting, start from zero and upshift a bit to the level you’re comfortable with.
How to Make a Million Before 30 
Five reasons to start downshifting:
1) You can start to enjoy small everyday simple things.
2) You can reach economical balance by reducing consumption.
3) You can start to find the value of yourself as a self-organizing creative beeing and not just as an objectified resource of organization.
4) You can be a good role model for the persons living in megaillusion of endless materialistic resources.
5) You can be lonely, but as a individualized person, your lonliness can be positive an a source of your creativity. It is always different kind of lonelyness, when it has been Your own choiche.
Actually in my experience, after downshifting I have never felt myself lonely allthough I live in the middle of nowhere. I have a huge number of frends … authors, philosophers, scientists… in the books.