Three New Leaves

I am grateful for this book.

And not because I was graciously provided with an advance copy (full disclosure: check!), but because I appreciate and admire the style of living championed by Joshua Becker in both this work and on his website, becoming minimalist.

I’m a bit new to the game, minimalism-wise, but even now I can see how the principles have altered my life in dramatic, wonderful ways. I enjoy Becker’s writing for much the same reason – the man definitely walks the walk, and his works tend to hammer on the practical side of minimalism: what you can do, how to do it, and the great benefits that result from there.

Inside-Out Simplicity, his second book, reads like a how-to manual on simple living, a practical guide avoiding or overcoming many of the problems that plague modern society. Downsizing your possessions is one way to do it, sure, but Inside-Out Simplicity focuses more on the changes we can make within – the steps we can all take to reshape our perspective on life, money, relationships, etc. for the better.

It covers a lot of ground, but the book deserves a nod for how practical it reads in its approach. Each section holds a list of ways you can implement its respective change, creating a life manual that feels surprisingly applicable – I can make these changes. A lot of self-improvement texts read well on the page, but don’t always recognize that any change, big or small, requires a patient, incremental approach. Becker knows that, and Inside-Out Simplicity thus becomes pretty useful for anyone looking to improve.

Being unmarried and childless, those two parts of the book didn’t exactly apply to me, but I enjoyed the messages they contained regardless. Becker has a clear affection for his children and the lessons they’ve taught him, the combination of which is pretty solid advice for any modern parent. The chapter on spirituality, on the other hand, didn’t strike me as useful. Religion is ever a touchy subject, of course, and while I don’t think the book really needed any ties into God and Jesus, I do give Becker props for showing how a lot of simple-living principles can be fully integrated into one’s faith.

All in all, Inside-Out Simplicity is a pretty useful how-to guide on how to incorporate simplicity into your life. It covers a wide variety of topics, and while some were more personally useful to me than others – the section on gratitude, admittedly – they’re all worth reading for how cleanly Becker has managed to distill them.

Worth a purchase? A dedicated blog reader could uncover most of this information on becoming minimalist, but Inside-Out Simplicity stands well as a simple, practical guide on several ways to change your life for the better. A lot of Becker’s ideas are philosophies I’m trying to incorporate into my own life, and this book will no doubt come in handy as I figure out just how I should go about that.

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