Voluntary Simplicity and Intentional Conscious Living

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles, PhD, LISW-CP

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Interview with Dr. Anthony Spina, founder and president of Knowledge Resources

Anthony C. Spina, Ph.D. has over 25 years business, industry, and education experience in both internal and external consulting. He has broad professional experience in multiple disciplines, such as organizational effectiveness, research, market analysis, training, change management, information technology, and marketing.

He is the founder and president of Knowledge Resources, an organization focused on facilitating transitioning processes for both individuals and organizations attempting to meet the challenges and demands of constantly changing, complex environments. Dr. Spina considers himself a social critic and management philosopher passionately concerned about the societal impact of technology on the way we live and work.

Tammie: What attracted you personally to the voluntary simplicity movement?

Dr. Spina: Approximately fifteen years ago, I started to become very much aware of my lifestyle and of those oround me (friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, etc). I continually heard and witnessed how hectic everyone's lives were and how they wanted to get out of the rat race. Compared to living conditions 30-40 years ago, there appeared to be a paradox. We have the most labor saving devices now in society than ever before in history. In the 1980's, all the business journals reported that the problem of the 90's was going to be how to fill up all our leisure time. They predicted a 35-hour work week and that the fastest growing industry would be the leisure marketplace. Needless to say something quite different is in place.

More recently, I stumbled upon the simplicity movement while performing the literature review for my dissertation. Actually, I discovered it during the concept stage and delved deeper into the phenomenon in the initial stages of my research. I was looking into the literature associated with quality of life issues and happiness. The volume of information was sufficient for several lifetimes of research. The topic of simplicity stirred up great curiosity in me and I decided to seek out the potential relationship between this trend and what I was observing in my everyday life. That's when I began reading more of the publications associated with simplicity and my interest grew exponentially into the meaning and processes behind this trend.

Tammie: You indicated in your wonderful article, "Research Shows New Aspects of Voluntary Simplicity" that in all the cases that you studied of individuals who "downshifted" or made significant moves to simplify their lives, there existed a "wake up" call or a triggering event. Were there common themes related to the kinds of events or realizations that served as an impetus for change in the people that you studied? And if so, what were they?

Dr. Spina: Bare in mind that my research was qualitative. If perhaps, I had performed a quantitative study and surveyed thousands of people, then maybe I would have seen a pattern. However, in my research, there were no common, easily identified "triggers." Each was very unique and common to the individual's situation and circumstances. These included events such as divorce, witnessing a tragic event, a vacation in the wilderness, or job loss, to name a few. But we all experience these events in our lives and yet the majority of us do not make major transitions. The "trigger" alone is not enough. The stage has to be set to allow the individual to hear the "signal" when the trigger is fired and take us above the "noise" level.

Tammie: What, specifically, are you referring to when you talk about the "noise" level?

Dr. Spina: The word "noise" was inspired and borrowed from the field of Communication and Information Theory. In layman's terms, recall the time before cable when you had to adjust the rabbit ears on top of your TV to tune in the station, thus resulting in a clear picture and sound. The snow and static, where the "noise" and the picture & sound represented the message which contained information. The greater the noise, the weaker the signal. When the message is unintelligible, information is not transmitted and all meaning is lost.

Using this metaphor to amplify (no pun intended) my research findings, the meaning(s) in our daily living is often drowned out by the noise we experience. This "noise," enabled by many of our modern technologies, takes the form of over-work, the glut of information, consumerism/materialism, mass advertising, and the TV & personal computers. Included in this last category are the cell phones, beepers, laptops, pagers, FAX machines, etc. which blur the line between our work space and personal lives. The signal must emerge from all this noise and can only occur if one is ready and pre-disposed to begin adjusting the "rabbit ears" (I couldn't resist) of our lives to make it happen.

Tammie: Thanks. That's a terrific analogy. You also reported that each participant in your study appeared to experience a process that involved three stages: (1) Pre-transition, (2) Trigger or motivation, and (3) Post-Transition. Would you mind elaborating on these stages just a bit?

Dr. Spina: The pre-transition state is what I observed as a set of conditions or circumstances which had significantly deteriorated the quality of living. It's an awareness state. "I know something is wrong. I am not finding my present life situation to be meaningful, enjoyable, or worthy of being sustained. I am not sure what it is I am searching for, but this isn't it anymore." This is typically the state of mind of one in this pre-transition state. Once again, many of us feel this way from time to time, but when it becomes sustained and there is this mental affirmation that it just won't do anymore. the stage is set. The "noise" level in our lives has become saturated. All that is needed is something to tip the scales, which leads to the next stage.

The trigger or motivation stage is what caused these individuals to reclaim meaning in their lives. It can be what we typically refer to as the "last straw," but more likely, it's something totally more remote. For example, one of my research participants recalled being on a vacation trip which involved a day long kayak trip in which they were only able to take along the bare essentials for life. This event raised their awareness of the excesses in their normal lives. Now this doesn't appear on the surface to be such a mind-blowing event, but coupled with their existing quality of life, this is all it took to send them into the next stage.

Once the participant recognized what is truly important in their lives, the source of noise is easily identified and minimized as necessary. This is what I referred to as the post-transition stage. Here is where the signal or meaning levels are turned up high and the person is now pursuing the lifestyle that was absent from his or her daily living previously. It may involve a geographic move, a divorce, a change of jobs, or all of the above. The most revealing observation I made was that this new direction was really not new at all. It was what these people were all about since their youth, but over the years, the noise, often assisted by our high-tech society, dimmed out.