Photo Credit: The Raggedy-man on Flickr

"Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest."— Leo Babauta

Not too long ago, when riding in the car with a friend, we came to a stoplight and I noticed a young woman crossing the street. Dressed nicely and seemingly on her way to somewhere relatively important, this young woman was a bit of a spectacle to those of us in cars as the stoplight was situated directly off of the freeway, leaving no crosswalk or obvious sidewalks for pedestrians. Making the scene stranger still, I noticed the girl was lugging three large, heavy bags on her shoulders as she weaved her way between the idle cars and on to the other side of the street.Half chuckling to myself as I watched the woman awkwardly readjust her large bags while walking along, I turned to my friend and mused, "I bet that's how I look when you aren't driving me around, right?"While my quip was meant as a joke since I don't own a car and often rely on public transportation and walking when moving about the city, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that no truer words were spoken. In a literal sense, I can definitely be a "bag lady"; I am known to strap on 2-3 heavy bags at a time in order to carry my school books, laptop, camera, and a slew of other items that more often that not, I really don't need to take with me. In fact, I now force myself to reevaluate each item that I place in my bag for the sake of my shoulders (and mental sanity).In a figurative sense however; I have a similarly ongoing, internal commitment of "reducing my luggage" in order to simplify my life. I've never thought much about simplification previously, but the harder I've worked to find the keys to success in everything from starting a business, to getting my finances in order, to eating healthier, to even growing my hair, the more I've realized that all the success to be had in this world is rooted in one fundamental concept.......Simplicity.In fact, this concept—simplicity—is so simple itself that it's often overlooked, especially by young people in this current generation. Like all the various items I repeatedly add to my bags because I'm convinced that I'll need them to accomplish some objective on my journey, I find that we all add unnecessary complications to our lives because we think we need them in order to achieve success.Want to lose weight? Well TV says that you need to take special pills, wear a corset contraption 18 hours a day, have pre-portioned food packets delivered to you every other Tuesday, and work out with ridiculous weights that automatically shake up and down in your fist if you even have the hopes of becoming slimmer.Want to become rich? Well late night infomercials say the you need to buy a specific, 3 easy payments of $49.99 DVD, transfer all of your debt onto a platinum credit card, read a "life changing" book that will teach you how to invest in only the highest returning stocks, and sell these products so that you too can make $5,000 per day in your own home-based business.Want to have longer, stronger hair? Well all of the internet ads say that you'll need to take magic hair pills (separate from the above weight loss pills), wash your hair every 3.5 days with Amazon Rainforest shampoo, let a Brazilian nut cream sit in your hair non-stop for two weeks, and massage the left side of your scalp for 30 minutes every day before going to bed.I don't know about you, but all the highly marketed (and sometimes self-created) schemes designed to *quickly* make you bigger, faster, stronger are not only exhausting, but completely unrealistic. Maybe you aren't the type to stay up late most nights, salivating at various infomercials but whether we like to admit it or not, we've all bought into the ridiculousness on some level. Whether over-packing items in my bag for a trip across town or over-packing false beliefs in my head for a journey in improving my life, I've come to realize that more often than not, I already have everything I need.In the words of the Erykah Badu, it is my hope to convince everyone to: "Pack light."