UK couple abandon money

Damian Smyth is giving up everything.

He and his wife Victoria Groom are giving up their rented six-bedroom house in the British countryside, their tennis court, their swimming pool, even their Audi convertible.

In fact, they are almost finished giving away all their possessions as the prepare to promote Damian’s new book, DO NOTHING!
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“We’ve had enough of living from the ‘outside-in’,” said Damian, a graphic designer who is reinventing himself as a life trainer.

“It’s not the way it works. Humanity has been living this way for too long, grabbing whatever they can to ‘make themselves happy’. It doesn’t work like that — it never has, never will.
“All of our happiness and sadness is created internally.

“The Cure, The Cocteau Twins, Pink Floyd and Marillion were always on the Walkman. Sometimes, I even used a bit of Motorhead to get me going in the morning.
“For all of the prophetic and wonderful music and lyrics I digested, I always knew there was something more to this enigma that is life — something bigger than all of us, something that no-one could really know or describe.
“My parents called it ‘God’ but I wasn’t going to be drawn into calling it anything.
“As far as I was concerned whatever created the universe (as we know it) couldn’t be described using words. “I remember holding my mum’s hand in church one day, turning towards her and asking: “Do you really believe in this nonsense?” I was about nine at the time.
“What I didn’t know then was that it would take me another 33 years before I had even the slightest glimpse of what was really going on.”
“Something resonated and touched me at a deeper level right into my core,” he said.
“Something made sense out of all of the seeking that I had been doing and had eluded me for all those years.
“It was something so simple and yet so profound that it literally stopped me dead in my tracks.
“This pointed to an understanding of life that was way bigger than I could possibly imagine, yet was really so very gentle and true.
“This was the something that explained, for want of better words, what I had been looking for — the missing piece in the jigsaw that made up who I was, who I am and who I will always be.”
He has penned a book called Do Nothing which advocates that people stop looking for happiness and enjoy the here and now.
With a lot of techniques and more about their amazing journey, the book suggests that the real value of money is subjective.
“The true value in things lies within your own thinking about them. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Give money to an Amazon tribesman and he’ll use it for kindling. Money is as real as you want to make it.
“The value of money is as real as you want to make it. And how you make it, is up to you.
“I know very talented people who are out of work and very stupid people who are highly paid. There’s no hard and fast rule to any of it, only that which you make up yourself
“We have no idea where we are going to live yet. We were working from home. What we have been finding is when you get rid of everything, it is so much easier to live without objects.
“People have been fantastic and offering for us to stay with them. We are looking at how people live for practically nothing. Things like utilities, they are tools you can use for living very well ‘off-grid’.
“And once you find out about it, the more you look at the things we use, the more you think the system has been designed to keep up in this cycle of consumerism.
“It’s difficult to think otherwise when there are such great alternatives available that have been disregarded by most.”
He added: “We found, through some of our courses, we were telling people essentially how to make money but then both of us know that money really doesn’t make you happy.
“So I started writing this book and bringing all those thoughts together.
“It really has grown to be a massive thing and we’ve had so many offers of support.”
The Do Nothing tours heads to Torquay’s Healing Festival August 14 and 15 where it will be filmed for the new series of Channel 4 documentary The Hotel.