{"id":18767,"date":"2017-01-03T20:57:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T20:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=18767"},"modified":"2017-01-03T20:57:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T20:57:51","slug":"less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/less-is-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Less is MORE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Too often we focus on what we lack instead of what we have. According to researcher Bren\u00e9 Brown, we live in a culture of perceived scarcity, what she calls in Daring Greatly<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em> \u201cour culture of \u2018never enough.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The Christmas holiday is unfortunately plagued by this perception of scarcity, and the remedy is seen grossly on Black Friday.\u00a0 A day set aside to cure the lack in our houses, closets, and the lack in our loved ones\u2019 closets.\u00a0 We even justify our over-zealous shopping by said \u201cit\u2019s better to give than receive\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0We exceeded the expected $655 Billion, after last minute shoppers like me, it was close to $1 trillion spent on holiday shopping.\u00a0 This is alarming, especially when you look at the homelessness in the US, where over 650,000 individuals are unable to maintain affordable housing, living below poverty lines, and unable to work due to disability or mental illness.\u00a0 I was convicted when I was trying to find places to put my daughter\u2019s new Christmas toys, and hang up new clothes in an overly crowded closets.\u00a0 We are consumed with wanting more, because we feel we don\u2019t have enough.\u00a0 When we post a picture on social media, we will watch how many likes the picture receives, but no matter how many likes it gets there is always another post that received more likes to compare it to.\u00a0 It\u2019s a game of how to achieve more friends, followers, views, likes, and shares.\u00a0 Because in the end the goal is MORE.\u00a0 I see celebrities who have over 1,000,000 followers who are still creating challenges and hashtags to increase their numbers.\u00a0 The sad reality is when we focus on the lack, or not having enough, we miss the moments to celebrate what we have, or appreciating the precious times with our family.\u00a0 I decided to take a media fast, shutting down my time spent on Facebook, Instagram, or twitter, because I have family who deserves MORE of my time.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want them to always want stuff but learn to value family time.\u00a0 Even when the culture promotes the total opposite, I\u2019m learning to resist the urge to follow the crowd, especially when there are children being influenced by my actions.\u00a0 I\u2019m learning that less is MORE.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too often we focus on what we lack instead of what we have. According to researcher Bren\u00e9 Brown, we live in a culture of perceived scarcity, what she calls in Daring Greatly \u201cour culture of \u2018never enough.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The Christmas holiday is unfortunately plagued by this perception of scarcity, and the remedy is seen grossly on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":18772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,24,370,27,154],"tags":[524,525],"class_list":["post-18767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-givedetroit","category-leaddetroit","category-shopdetroit","category-be-better","category-education","category-homelessness","tag-givetime","tag-scarcity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}