As I write this, there are only a couple weeks to go before the release of my new book, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, and I can feel both the excitement and anticipation as I prepare to bring this new volume into the marketplace.  Whereas my previous books have described how we can more successfully inhabit our homes, this new book kicks it up a dimension--from space to time--and to how we might more successfully inhabit our lives.  For some this will come as a surprise.  For others, who know I've only been able to write the books about architecture because of the way I now live, this will seem a natural progression. 

 

Whether I'm writing about the designs of our homes or the designs of our lives, the message is the same:  there are better and more sustainable ways to live, and in order to find those better ways, we have to get personal.  We have to understand ourselves better, we have to focus on the qualities of life rather than the quantities, and most importantly of all we have to remember that we are human beings, not human doings!

 

There are so many things I want to tell you about The Not So Big Life, so much that I feel passionate about, but where to start?  Start anywhere, my intuition tells me.  So let's begin with a couple of questions: 

 

How do you live the life you really want? 

And how do you find the time for the things you are passionate about?

 

The answers to these questions may surprise you.  It's not in fact something you do with your schedule.  It is, rather, something you do with yourself.  You have to learn to listen to your inner longings and to observe yourself carefully -- much as you would a child in your care -- to find the patterns of behavior that might have been useful once, but are now impeding the flow of your life.  A Not So Big life is one in which you make friends with your inner self and learn to see through the outer appearance of things to the true meaningfulness that lies beneath the surface.

 

I've come to see that almost everyone is dissatisfied with their life and wishing it were different in some way.  We assume that there is little we can do about the situation unless we leave everything behind and move to a mountain top somewhere where no one will bother us.  But that isn't in fact how real change happens.  In order to change the way you experience your life, you must change yourself.  It is your perception of how things are that is the problem, and not the things themselves.

 

After years of self-exploration, working along the way with a number of teachers in the art of living more consciously and practicing new ways of engaging everyday life, I decided a couple of years ago that it was time to write down what I had learned.  Life doesn't have to be so unmanageable, so frustrating, or so painful.  It doesn't have to be filled with unlived longings either.  There is a way to live a life that is deeply fulfilling, vital, and meaningful without having to throw the baby out with the bath water.  By making small and often apparently insignificant changes in the way you engage the activities of each day, you'll discover that the life you are longing for is right in front of you, patiently waiting to be lived. 

 

The Not So Big Life is a book that's full of suggestions and exercises that will help you to look at things differently by simply getting to know yourself better.  Because it is such an interactive book, I've put together a website, www.notsobiglife.com, that is filled with tools and support materials to help readers and listeners (there's an audio book too!).

 

I hope this brief introduction has piqued your interest.  I believe that, in just the same way that a decade ago I asserted there was a better way to design our houses, there is a better way to design our lives.  It's not difficult to accomplish.  It simply requires that we start getting to know ourselves better, and in so doing to make room for what really matters.  I hope you'll join me in trying out the Not So Big approach to life for yourself.

Warm regards,

  

Sarah Susanka