Some Ideas:
Live close to work and save time, fuel, stress.
Eat simple food including salads and fruit - prevent illness, save packaging, dieting, cooking. Reduce waste, power and other resources.
Give up collecting things and save space, time, energy, insurance, and worry.
Simplifying your life pays huge dividends, but requires clear thinking. Taking one step at a time we have simplified what seemed to be a mammoth task and have made progress at all groves.
Consider your activities, responsibilities, collections, etc, to identify the patterns in your life, note how much time you spend and what priority you give each. WE streamlined some areas of our lives to enable us to give time and resource to others.
Analyse what you do and why; could you do it more simply or not at all? Publishing plans for the Trigono groves, has helped us to stay focussed on our goals. "To DO" lists are more important than lists of what you've spent but use the past to inform the future.
Recognise Change and welcome the freshness and experience it brings. This is not always easy but stress saps our energy, while being positive brings excitement and energy to discover new possibilities
Money, time or effort? - Which matters most right now and how can you achieve a balance?
Adjust priorites as things change.
Look beyond the many small concerns and see the big ones!
The best ideas or solutions often come when we relax or do another activity.
Simplify life gradually - it may seem strange but luxury and simplicity go together!
Lifestyle choices
Regardless of world economic conditions it is important to choose the way you live and consider it's impact on others. Booms and Recessions are not new and hard times, whenever and for whatever reason they come, provide an opportunity for rethinking priorities. This is not just an activity of government! At both national and personal levels, the hierarchy of need begins with the basic requirements of food, shelter and safety to sustain life, continues through increasing comforts and education and finally, once basic needs are met, to self determination and the desire to give to others - philanthropy.
Greece has been badly hit but the pages of this website show how much work has been done in Athens and on the Peloponnese alone, throughout the first decade of the 21st Century.
Trigono-Lamda was a dream that did not work out as planned! This was due to a combination of naivity, failure to undertake in-depth research, too much reliance on advice that turned out to be inaccurate and some bad luck with health and weather. Yet Trigono-Lamda has survived in a different way, not by selling up and accepting failure, but by rethinking what could be realistically achieved and accepting compromise and change.
Greek Design often incorporates stylish ideas taken from nature. Greek food is often home grown and simple to prepare. Good conversation in a family or community setting is one of the best exepriences in Greece. We can all learn or re-learn to appreciate life without the mass consumerism many of us have got used to in recent years.
Interestingly, in the UK recession, some businesses, including coffee bars, shoe repairers and cut-price stores are doing well! There is an increase in part-time working. If we can strike the right balance between work, social life and community, we'll all benefit.