To many people, downshifting means giving up everything that they enjoy, but that does not have to be the case. It just means getting away from a very unhealthy lifestyle of stress and pressure and moving towards a lifestyle in which you do what you enjoy doing. In my case it meant leaving a high pressure IT job that required 24/7 availablility and responsibility for the ability of the company to function. If the servers were down, work stopped. I now work at a low stress job with regular hours. Yes, it also meant a cut in pay, but by using sweat equity I was able to build my house debt free and thereby drastically reduce my living expenses. You can take a look at the process at ownerbuilder.ca. Down the road, I expect to be able to live for even less as we build up our gardens and are able to grow most of our own food. I also hope to start a business at home and further reduce my expenses, and hopefully increase my income.
The key concept is to live within your means. If you do that you will not get into the deep debt hole that a lot of people seem to be getting into. You just have to realize that you don’t have to keep up with the Jone’s and use your money to do the things that bring happiness into your life and not care what the rest of the world thinks. What is important is what you think.