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If you grow up in Ireland, you’re likely to adopt a hatred of the English. That’s just how it works. You never really understand why — something about 1916 and fields of barley — but you hate them anyway, just like all your classmates and your father’s classmates and his father’s classmates before him.

I fell into the same trap as a youngster. I didn’t like English people. If someone had asked me why, I probably would have shrugged and said, “Because I’m Irish.”

There was a general consensus that all English people were bastards, never to be trusted. And I rolled with it.

And then I turned 22 and went to live in a trailer park in central New Jersey with three hundred other internationals. Bulgarians, Brazilians, Costa Ricans, Jamaicans, Spaniards, Romanians, Poles, South Africans, Ghanians… and English.

It was the first time I really got to know English people as individuals. And yes, some of them were indeed assholes.

Just like some of the South Africans were assholes.

Just like some of the Bulgarians were assholes.

Just like some of the Irish were assholes.

But I also met cool people from every country. And I realized that it doesn’t really matter where a person comes from. Nationality doesn’t have much bearing on character. You can’t paint them all with the same brush (that’s just lazy).

A convicted criminal can be a quality human being, someone who got caught doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. A priest can be one of the most evil men you’ve ever known. And English people can be among the best an Irishman has ever met, if he can only let go of an adopted, century-old grudge that has no place in the present and no basis in experience.

Your adopted beliefs

What beliefs did you adopt growing up? Do you still hold onto them, or did you question and discard a few once you started thinking for yourself?

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P.S. Hello from merry old England. I made the first stop of my round the world trip in Liverpool on Saturday, hosted by a gent named Rob. Right now I’m in Durham, hanging out with Anthony from Man Vs. Clock. Very cool people doing very cool things.

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A friend once told me how she wanted nothing more out of life than to find a great partner and settle down. I asked her to tell me what her dream guy would be like. She listed off a few things. Among them: he’d have to be adventurous, and he’d have to believe in her.

When she was done, I asked her, as delicately as possible, why such a dreamboat would be interested in her?

She was kinda stumped by that.

I noted that my friend desired an adventurous man, but she wasn’t very adventurous herself. For the longest time she’d been longing to go to Africa and do some volunteer work but was terrified of leaving the cozy confines of her home town. She wanted a partner who believed in her, but it seemed she didn’t really believe in herself.

Call me crazy, but methinks my friend would have a much better chance of finding her dream guy if she stopped waiting for him to come along and save her from a mediocre life, and instead got busy chasing some adventure and building her character.

What do you look for in a partner?

List out a few things, then ask yourself if you’re worthy of such a person. Why would a guy or girl that fantastic be interested in you?

If you struggle with that question, I suggest you get busy living a bigger and better life. Then the answers come easy.

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P.S. I wrote a lengthy article for the latest issue of Interesting Times Magazine, entitled 10 Ways to Obliterate Your Fears and Expand Your Comfort Zone. Download the mag for free and flip to page 42 to check it out.

The things you own, end up owning you.

That quote is from Fight Club, one of my all-time favorite movies. It sums up a lesson I first learned about six years ago, when I was stuck working in a department store in Ireland, having dropped out of college and dreaming of one day living and working in the United States.

Problem was, I kept making excuses as to why I couldn’t just drop everything and move to the U.S. Most of those excuses centered around material things. I owned over a hundred movies on DVD at the time. I also had a big widescreen TV, a Playstation 2, an Xbox and a nice desktop PC hooked up to a serious sound system. I knew I couldn’t bring all those possessions with me to America. What would I do with them?

For a while, I did nothing. I just stayed where I was, with all those nice things, holding me hostage.

Breaking loose

I’m not sure what triggered the change in me, but at some point I got fed up and decided to break loose from the shackles. I gave away pretty much all of those possessions and took off on my U.S. adventure. I thought I’d miss everything I’d given up, but instead I experienced an overwhelming sense of freedom. Nothing was weighing me down anymore, except the suitcase full of clothes I brought with me.

Then the airline went and lost that suitcase full of clothes, but I wasn’t bothered much. I’d already separated myself from my material belongings. They no longer defined me.

Beauty in decay

I got another lesson in materialism when I moved to New Orleans in 2007. Even though I had already come to realize that material things were overrated, I still leaned towards the new and the shiny whenever I needed to acquire something. But a few months living in the Crescent City changed that.

If you ever visit New Orleans, you’ll quickly find that most of the establishments here look a little shady and run down, the bars in particular. If I saw bars like that in Ireland, I’d steer well clear. But I came to learn that in New Orleans, you really can’t judge a book by its cover. A bar might look like a hell hole from the outside, but then you reluctantly follow a wise friend inside to find the place full of high-character people having the best of times.

After a while I found myself seeking out the dive bars and repeatedly shunning style in favor of substance.

When it came time to buy myself a wagon, I got a good deal on a well-used Jeep that oozed character. I called him Doug. The air conditioning didn’t always work and there were a hundred pins holding the upholstery together. A few months after buying, a taxi slammed into the side of Doug; nothing but superficial damage. I was delighted. Battle scars = more character.

A buddy of mine summed up that attitude quite well, noting that I’d come to appreciate “the beauty in decay,” as most New Orleanians do.

Irish recession

The recession in Ireland is real: Lots of job losses, cut-backs, broken dreams. But I see it being great for the country in the long run. Ireland had become much too materialistic for my liking. People had become overly concerned with big houses, fancy cars, the newest mobile phones and the like. You had to have two mortgages and go out on the town at least twice a week. Every child was getting fourteen different presents for Christmas, without truly appreciating any of them. People were admired more for what they had instead of who they were. TG4 was probably one step away from launching My Super Sweet Sé Déag.

A lot of that hasn’t really changed, but it’s starting to. People have no other choice now but to cut the fluff and get back to what’s really important.

Owning nice things

This post isn’t meant as a rant against owning nice things. Materialism is defined as “preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values.” So owning nice things isn’t the problem. Identifying with them is. I’m reminded of Fight Club again:

You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.

By all means, buy nice things, but buy them for their practicality more than anything. Art and decoration is fine, but let it be an expression of you; not an attempt to impress someone or make people jealous. Buy yourself that $3000 couch, but not when you can get a $500 couch that looks just as good, is just as comfortable and will last just as long.

How to be less materialistic

You start by making a firm decision. Be sure you actually want to be less materialistic first, then try a few things from this list:

• Separate needs from wants. It’s perfectly fine to want stuff and to get what you want, but you should never confuse your wants with your needs.
• Spend stretches of time without your material goods. See if you can give up TV for a week, or see how you’d cope without your car for a couple of days.
• Never buy when you can borrow, and help other people out by sharing your own stuff. You’ll save money, reduce clutter and build trusting relationships.
• Acknowledge the emotions that certain possessions stir up in you, and ask yourself why. Try to identify what parts of your character are lacking and how you might be using possessions to compensate.
• Similarly, try to identify what possessions your friends might have that make you jealous. Ask why, explore that part of you, and try to improve on it.
• Consider how you’d feel if you lost certain possessions. Would you be able to handle it? Could you do without that computer, that TV, those new clothes? What would you do without those things? If your answers scare or depress you, you know where you need to grow.
• Be grateful for the things you already have, and express that gratitude regularly. A good way to do this is to write out three things you’re grateful for each day.
• Go on cleaning/clearing binges to declutter your house. Zen Habits has a great article on how to do this effectively.
• Request that people forgo giving you regular birthday/Christmas gifts and instead make donations to trusted charities.
• Expand your social circle and try new things – learn to value experiences, relationships and memories over possessions.

Find your comfort zone

The most important thing is to find your own comfort zone with your possessions and your relationship to them. It should be a personal journey, different for everyone. Just be careful not to use material goods to compensate for character defects. Remember the words of
Evan Esar:

Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.

Some day you might wake to find you have lost everything. Hopefully you’ll still know who
you are.