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I remember my first boss at J. Walter Thompson and advertising agency gave me a big piece of advice with my first race.

He said, Congratulations, Mike, what I have to warn you, the richer you get, the more you worry about being poor. He spoke the truth. The more money I had, the more I spent, and the more I lived in an anxious mood of always trying to make more. I have known billionaires who wake up each morning with a kind of deep rooted anxiety.

They are afraid their good fortune cannot last. There is no security in money, only greater fear that somehow it could all disappear something. The more money you have, the more you have to lose. And so the sick fear grows.

Money is the easiest drug in a material culture to get addicted to. A big house is also irresistible. Yet once you have a huge house, you have to make sure you have a big job to pay the loan. Once you have a huge house and a big job, you not only fear losing them, you lie awake at night wondering whether you can survive without all the possessions you have gained.

Make a list of the things you have sacrificed so much of your time and energy to acquire. Then list the things you actually need to survive the bare necessities.

You will discover that you don't need most of the things you have. And you can live easily and often are even better off without them.

As humans, we need food on the table and a roof over our heads. But equally we need family and love. We need to appreciate the world we live in and respect those around us.

We don't need fancy clothes or the fastest car or the most up to date anything. There is a natural and sadly inevitable tendency to become possessed by our possessions.

I have discovered the only short way to avoid that fate. Don't buy more stuff, and get rid of all this stuff you can as we eagerly fill our lives full to overflowing.

I have come to understand a basic fact. Any fool can complicate their lives. It takes a genius to simplify. The best way to simplify free yourself from stuff while many of our possessions may bring us temporary comfort, they inevitably bring burdens as well.

The burden of pain for them, of maintaining them, of them getting in the way of our thoughts and our time. Today, as I climbed the stairs to my little apartment, I look forward to what we used to call in advertising whitespace when I opened the door to my apartment, I see white walls and white plastic furniture.

There's a lot of welcome whitespace a reporter came to interview me and see the way I lived. First we went to see the home where I had grown up a 25 room mansion built in a grand style that seems fit for a king then we came back to my little apartment so lacking in expensive furniture or any other stuff.

I have to say something the reporter told me with a frown, but not as a reporter. This is not about my newspaper story. This is about the way you live. Okay, I said ready for some profound observation.

About my wife. You have to get a sofa she announced. No, I don't know sofa. My life is a lesson that the loss of stuff can bring a new sense of liberty. I feel a whole new sense of freedom from the fear of losing stuff.

I also feel free of the literal and figurative weight of carrying all that stuff. I have found how much fun it can be to travel through life without carrying a lot of luggage. somehow in recent years, we have let the American dream become defined as an aspiration for possessions, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

do not mean the greedy desire for more stuff. Tonight, my sleep is not weighed down by my fear of losing my positions. When I wake, I know I'll be free of the burden of all that stuff.