Minimalism is a lifestyle where you decide what in life has purpose, practicality and functionality. Minimalism is deciding to value things that matter and completely disregard the things that don’t. Minimalism is creating clarity and simplicity in a life filled with things, objects and distractions.
The world we’ve been brought up in has always attempted to reinforce the idea or more. The more we buy, the more we have, the more we consume, the better our life. But this just isn’t the case. It isn’t objects, or consumption or endless choices that provide us purpose and happiness. So, with minimalism we start to embrace the idea of less. Instead of having more clothes, decorations, or toys, let’s focus on paring down our possessions to the one’s we actually love, need or use often. Instead of checking social media for more likes and comments every hour, let’s focus on the people who matter most (family and close friends). Instead of having a lifestyle with so many more options and choices, let’s simplify and put plans in place to help us make healthy and efficient decisions.
This idea of having and consuming less has brought a number of benefits into my life and many others. To name a few:
If you’d like to begin your journey to a more minimalistic lifestyle, here are the 3 steps I recommend.
Physical Minimalism
Reduce the things you possess and acquire to only items you love, need or use often. These items should have a purpose and be both functional and practical.
Digital Minimalism
Monitor and limit the amount of time you spend looking at a screen. Keep your combined phone and TV time below 2 hours per day.
Lifestyle Minimalism
Decrease the number of choices and decisions you make in a day. Simplify your life by creating plans and schedules.
While this 3-step guide may seem obvious and easy to implement, it’s far from it. To make changes in your life, it requires a significant portion of time to educate yourself, develop a personalized plan, implement the changes and retrain your habits. Despite the process being difficult, as with anything, it gets easier with consistent effort over an extended period of time. Try focusing on one step of this guide for a month. Monitor and manage your progress each week. And then once you’ve got a good handle on it, move on to the next step. Because…
Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.
John Maxwell – The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth