Redefining Our Quality Of Life

June 24, 2010

Interview with John Robbins, author of the book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less

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Mike Carruthers:
The change in our economy has made it necessary for many of us to reexamine our quality of life and our standard of living.

John Robbins:
Standard of living is measured in material terms, it’s about how much stuff you have, it’s about what you acquire – it’s measured monetarily. 

John Robbins, author of the book The New Good Life…

Quality of life is about your relationships with people, it’s about the respect you live with for yourself and for others – it’s about your capacity for joy. Whereas standard of living that’s he who dies with the most toys wins. The New Good Life is about living with the most joys.

No doubt we have accumulated a lot of toys, look at all the items for sale on Ebay, and all the storage lockers full of our old junk.

We have to learn a new frugality, not your grandmother’s frugality, not just darning your socks and doing without. It’s doing with the things that really help you live a life of quality and then happily giving up the things that are money leaks.

And maybe we need to shift our idea of what makes someone successful.

When we say someone is a success – don’t we usually mean that they’ve made a lot of money? What about the person who is kind and nurturing to others, who raises beautiful self-reliant children, how about the person who adds beauty to the world, how about the person that brings out the best in others? To me those people are examples of success that aren’t measurable in monetary terms. 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here