Category — Minimalism

Dear Life,

It’s hard to say these which words I really need to say. For the last almost 31 years I’ve really tried to make it work between us. It hasn’t been all bad, and our time together has given me many fond memories. But the truth is, I’m just not that into you anymore. I need to make some changes and embark on a relationship with a new Life.

In the beginning we had such a great thing going on! Our relationship was all about discovering, learning, experimenting and doing. Every moment of every day was in some way wondrous. The opportunities you gave me each day fed my very being and ignited my spirit. The future seemed a promise of excitement.

Things changed a little when you introduced me to the School phase of our relationship. You insisted that after the first five years of our relationship that this was the natural progression, that it was time to make things more formal. I loved you so much that I had such high hopes for this whole School deal.

All in all I wasn’t disappointed. I loved the variety of subjects and all the new people I could meet and share my ideas with. Most of the teachers were lovely and I trusted that they knew what was best for me.

Although you woke me up each morning to the same routine, I still enjoyed myself and I found the whole process simple. Even back then I knew I was one of the lucky ones. I saw many of my classmates start to lose the spark out of their relationship with Life as soon as play turned into homework, and exploration turned into memorising their times tables. I was lucky because I nearly enjoyed it all as much as our early years together, sometimes even more. You were right, this was a great new phase in our relationship.

Just as those seven years of School were coming to an end, you introduced me to the next phase in our relationship, more school. I was getting a bit sick of you then so I was glad of any change really. I went in with an open mind and for a while this was exactly what we needed to refresh our relationship. And plus, I trusted you when you told me that this was necessary for setting up a great future together. You said big changes were coming and I needed to get prepared.

I worked hard and was used to the routine of it all by the end. I was lucky that I was born with a good brain for learning and that my parents had trained me well in following routine. I made a success of our time together in those five years and even felt stimulated by it for some of that time.

Yet after 16 years of our relationship, a discontent started to stir up within me. I felt restless and dissatisfied. I wanted to explore and expand my mind. I wasn’t content to be fed experiences in small morsels or to have my time so regimented and restricted. You used to let me be free to discover who I was and now your demands on me and my time were starting to close in on me. When you weren’t looking I started to explore new ideas and read as much as I could about how a relationship with Life should really look. I started to see that there was more to it than what we had.

But I had hope. I still remembered how our relationship used to be, and what you could really be like. So I held on.

More study arrived with the advent of University and I began to experience tastes of the freedom that I longed for. It was all far more stimulating and nourishing for my mind and so on the whole I felt happy.

And then you introduced me to Work. As I looked around me I saw that most other people I knew had also reached this phase in their relationship with Life, and I felt ready that this was time. You let me choose what this part of our relationship would look like, and I chose teaching. It was a great choice in many ways because I have helped others with their relationship with Life. Many who seemed on the verge of breaking up with their Life experienced some joy and discovery in my classes. I know I’ve helped many. But still, it’s not enough.

It has all become so stale. Not just teaching, but all of it. I’m refusing to continue to work through all these stages that you’ve set out for me. I’m not having kids. I’m not working towards stockpiling wealth. I won’t buy endless clothes, shoes, make-up, DVDs, magazines, gizmos or gadgets to entertain and entice me. I won’t work at a job, any job, that makes me feel like I am in a factory, working for someone else’s goals. No matter how you try to dress it up, you’re not fooling me any more.

In the beginning you wooed me with new discoveries and an abundance of time. I was free to be and develop and the most you demanded of me was that I eat my veggies. Now everywhere I turn there is a new obligation and another limit on my choices.

We had it great for awhile, but now it has soured and I’m just not that into you anymore. My feelings won’t change so don’t try and stop me. I’m actively looking for a relationship with a new Life. I’m sure you’ve noticed how often I’ve turned my back on you recently.

You should know that I’ve met a few potential prospects and I’m flirting with all of them. What we had doesn’t suit me anymore and I’m moving on. I won’t be stunted any longer and it’s now my time.

With loving fond memories always,

Mirella

I’ve been craving the simple life recently and have spent time pondering what that might look like for me. I also have an intense curiosity for how others structure their lives, both here and around the world.

I watched an episode of “An Idiot Abroad” the other day, a program devised by Ricky Gervais. The show is centred around Ricky’s real life friend Carl Pilkington who is as cynical, pessimistic and unadventurous as they come. The program is all about sending Carl around the world to see the seven human made wonders. In the episode I saw, Carl went to Mexico to see the Chichen Itza, an ancient Mayan civilisation. As part of his trip he went to visit some Mexicans living in a small village and he was struck by the simplicity and the obvious happiness of the residents. Carl also observed this sort of simplicity in the rest of Mexico, where inhabitants seemed to be truly living their lives and choosing how to spend their days, rather than conforming to a standard model. Amongst his usual rants and complaints, these honest observations were very striking coming from Carl.

I’ve also been inspired by Melissa over at Peace and Projects and her transformation of her life and that of her family’s into a simple and nourishing lifestyle. You really must read what she has to say because she’s been through it all. Melissa understands what a simple life is and is not, because she’s done the experimenting already. In the desperation for a more simple existence she tried a life of convenience. This meant ready-made meals and disposable items; all those consumer products that advertising tells us will make our lives simple. But this is not simple life that most of us envisage.

So what is a simple life all about and how do you go about designing one for yourself?

To me, a simple life means having an abundance of time and the flexibility to choose what best serves my need to feel fulfilled and nourished.

A life of rushing around to achieve goals, big or small, that don’t reflect my authentic self, is certainly not a simple life. Nor is working to accumulate funds to buy things now or in the future. A simple life is not maintaining relationships that don’t excite my interests nor fulfil my needs for meaningful conversation. A life of television and mind numbing work also does not constitute a simple life for me.

Identify the areas in your life that are not the reflection of what a simple life looks like to you. This is perhaps the easiest place to begin.

Now ask yourself what it is that your body and mind are truly crying out for. What is it that you need to be more you?

Do you need more time to move your body naturally with long walks, rather than slogging it out for an hour on the contraptions at the gym.

Do you need more time to plan and create nutritious meals rather than the usual mad dash around the supermarket or your usual staple of Monday to Friday meals?

Do you need more time to discover your creative outlet and to invest in projects that are an expression of yourself?

Is it that you need more time to read and to sit and ponder without one eye constantly on the clock?

Whatever it is that you need, and you may need all of the above, the common denominator to it all is a need for more unscheduled time. If you’ve been reading anything that Leo Babauta has been writing recently, perhaps you too have felt the deep thirst for waking up each day and choosing where to focus your energies based on what calls to you at that moment.

What you will also notice with your list for a simple life is that nothing on it costs much in the way of money. The first key to establishing a more simple existence is to analyse where you are wasting your money and what can be eliminated. This isn’t about being frugal or cheap. It’s about identifying what you really need to feel fulfilled and then investing accordingly in turning this into a reality.

For this week, turn your attention to what a simple life looks like to you. How will it feel? What will a typical day look like? What is it that you need to nourish your true self?

The beginning of any design is a feeling of what the final creation will look like. Don’t worry about how it can all be made possible, just focus on creating a clear feeling and vision of what it is you need most deeply. The rest will come.

Who does your time belong to? When you wake up in the morning, and begin to think about all the tasks you aim to complete that day, how many of them are truly yours? Even when you have so called “free time”, how much of it do you dedicate to yourself and your goals?

We hear a lot on the daily news about the environment and finding sustainable ways of living. Usually there is concern about running out of non-renewable resources and finding more efficient means of energy. Time is another non-renewable resource that you should be concerned about in your life. If you are young then you may feel like you have huge deposits of time still ahead of you. But of course you don’t really know this for sure. And even if you could be guaranteed another 80 years, is that any reason to waste what you have? If the world could do it all over again, do you think we’d still choose oil?

Now that you know better you can do better. You can find ways to claim back your time. Here are some of my suggestions to get the ideas flowing.

Sleep as much as you need to

Many of us have terrible sleep habits. So many people pull themselves out of bed to drag themselves off to work, yet have sabotaged a good night’s sleep by staying up later than necessary the evening before. Admittedly, you probably did this because you felt cheated and robbed of your time by your day job. Still, sabotaging your sleep is not the answer.

When the weekend arrives, mornings are spent “sleeping in”, which often means a lazy wallowing in bed without any quality sleep happening at all. Once again you probably feel you deserve this and that you are catching up on sleep that has been stolen from you by your early starts during the week. Is this sort of semi-sleep what the real you wants and deserves though?

Each of us needs a different amount of sleep, and no matter what you might think, you cannot really catch up on sleep over the weekend. I need around 7 to 8 hours of solid sleep a night to feel refreshed and restored. You may need more or less.

If you sabotage your need for sleep then you sabotage your time. The sleepy and grumpy version of you wastes an entire day. The wallowing around in bed version of you does exactly the same thing. You need to improve your sleep to improve the quality (and likely quantity) of time available to you.

Work only as much as is necessary

You might not believe it right now, but you do have the power to determine how much you work. Whether you are self-employed or an employee, you can decide on what proportion of your time is spent creating income.

If you work for a company or in a career that demands more hours than you are willing to allocate, then you need to have the courage to find a different career or a different company.

If you feel as though your lifestyle depends on the number of hours you are working, then you need to redesign your lifestyle to make it more sustainable. Design a life and a philosophy that doesn’t require you to need so much income or work so many hours.

If you are self-employed and feel compelled to keep on top of it all while at the same time feeling as though there are not enough hours in the day, then you need to know now that there never will be. You can always find more work to do, there is no point of completion. Yet you cannot find more time.

Dedicate the necessary amount of time to income creation, all the while striving to readjust and realign what necessary means.

Turn off the TV

Turning the TV on and flipping through the channels is an urge almost as natural as scratching an itch. TV is familiar and enticing. It is soothing and it is easy. It is also leeching away your time.

When you feel that urge to turn the TV on and to aimlessly look for something to occupy yourself, resist and turn to your imagination instead. Tune in to what your authentic self would really like to be doing and learn to hear this voice.

Similarly, when you’ve begun to watch a program that you thought you wanted to watch, but instead it starts to bore you, turn it off and walk away. Don’t feel the compulsion to follow the program until the end. Walk away and search for something interesting and meaningful to do.

Completely Unplug

For many of us this one is even more difficult to implement than turning off the TV. Unplugging from our virtual existences and from our phones seems impossible and unnecessary. Yet you don’t need to be constantly plugged in to your social networks, to your email or to the internet.

Upon arriving in Barcelona earlier this year, I was upset to find out that there would be no internet available at our apartment. After all, I’d purposefully booked accommodation with internet access! At first I was annoyed, but it only took a day or two until I no longer cared and didn’t miss it. In fact, if you look at my posts for January, you’ll see that they’re virtually non-existent. I was only without the internet for a few days, but once I had unplugged I felt no compulsion to get back online. Upon returning home it took me a few days before I plugged back in and got back to my usual routine. It was a hugely refreshing break.

Teach those younger than you to unplug consciously also. They have grown up plugged in and it will be more difficult for the younger generation to claim back their time.

Create days without time

If at all possible, plan a day a month or a few days per year where the days have no time. This will be difficult to achieve at home so you might need to plan for this during your vacation. Instead of allowing the time of day to dictate what you do, follow your instincts instead. Don’t look at the time and plan an activity around that, let go of time completely.

Eat when you’re hungry, walk when the mood inspires you, read when the impulse takes you. Take your watch off and feel the time of day instead. Learn how long an hour really feels when you’re not watching the clock. See how much you can really accomplish in half a day. Take a drive without worrying how long it will take.

Hopefully reading this has been a valuable use of time for you. Each day adopt an attitude that demonstrates to yourself and others that your time is meaningfully allocated by you.

Now go, do something meaningful with your time!

If you tend to read blogs on personal development and how to live a fulfilling life, then it’s highly likely that you’ve stumbled upon a few blogs on the minimalist lifestyle. There’s all sorts of bloggers writing about how many items they own and how they live out of a carry-on case. While the practicalities of minimalism fascinate me, it’s the minimalist mindset that I find most powerful.

I’ve spent many hours over the past week reading the thoughts and ideas of people like Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus from The Minimalists. Nina Yau from Castles in the Air has kept we awake at night thinking about how far I have left to go before really living the best life I can. Everett Bogue is expanding my mind and astounding me with his visions of current humanity and the future of human evolution.

While the above mentioned people are living minimalist lifestyles, it’s their mindsets and philosophies on life that are most breathtaking and most able to teach me what I yearn to be taught.

So what is a minimalist mindset and how can you adopt this way of thinking into your life?

Intimately know your essence

Our lives are so full of distractions that we barely know who we are and what we want anymore. We are getting on the conveyer belt of life at a younger age and it is moving ever faster. We forget to stop and reflect on where we are going and what we are doing because we are too busy keeping up. All this busyness is so far from being fulfilling that it actually equates to a life of stagnation. We’re not really achieving anything, we’re just passing the time until we die.

Minimalism encourages you to make the space and time in your life to know who you are and what is meaningful to you. It is the act of pausing before every decision and thoughtfully contemplating how this next choice will resonate with your essential self.

Who you are, your uniqueness, is the essence of what your life is all about.

Adjust your consumerist beliefs

The most common choices we must make daily is what, where and when to consume. If you’re deep on that conveyer belt then chances are you are consuming mindlessly, often and everywhere.

The minimalist mindset requires you to examine why you are buying certain products and services and to assess whether they contribute at all to enhancing your essence. Do you really need another house? How about another TV? How many pairs of jeans are necessary? Do you need more gadgets and equipment to enhance your performance and your experience of life?

Chances are that the more you consume, the more you are burying your essence. You are probably doing this out of fear of never finding out who you are and what you want, or perhaps because if you knew who you were and what you really needed the effort to make it happen would be too overwhelming.

You don’t need to change your approach to consumerism radically and overnight. Begin simply by asking yourself honestly every time you go to purchase something whether it will extend and enrich you or whether it is meant to fill a void.

Pare your life down to what is essential and meaningful

It is not only products that distract us from the meaningful aspects of our lives, it is the activities we engage in also.

If you are spending a lot of your time trying to find things in your house, then you have a huge problem with clutter and you would benefit from a rigorous cleaning out of all those unnecessary piles of stuff. These piles distract you by stealing your time and your focus.

If you spend hours trawling through the status updates of your hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, then this is time and energy not spent on creating a life that is meaningful. Many people have been paring down their Facebook friend list to the more important people that they wish to connect with. This is the minimalist mindset in action.

How many TV shows can you really watch? I know I find this one difficult as there are so many brilliant programs to watch. To pare them down I suggest the following: record these shows and keep them for later. At first you will set a regular time aside to watch these saved programs, but after awhile you’ll find yourself filling this time with other more interesting pursuits and you’ll have a pile of programs saved that you may or may not get around to watching one rainy day.

Work on your focus

How many tabs do you have open in your browser at any one time? I love tabs! As I’m reading something I’m opening links in a new tab, ever expanding the interesting articles I want to learn from. Often, in my excitement to read this new work, I’ll skim the rest of the article I’m reading in favour of the next article. I am teaching myself to stay focused on my current task. As I write this I have the browser open behind this window, and I am training myself not to check that new tweet or do a search for that topic that has sprung to mind. I’m staying here with you.

Focus on your children, or your partner, or your friends. Not on all three at once. The people that are important to you want to spend time with you and deserve your attention. Build deep and wonderful relationships through focused interactions. Next time you’re at a party and the person talking to you looks away as though they’re looking for a better conversation, don’t try to win their affection, find someone else to talk to. Do others the courtesy of engaging with them.

Focus on your legacy

Why the need to train your focus then? Because once you know how to focus you can move and concentrate your focus on what you want your life to be about. How you live your life and what you create in this lifetime is your legacy. If you live a scattered life and consume more than you create, then your legacy will be unmemorable.

Once you are familiar and in love with who you are, once you have pared your life down to what is meaningful and essential, then you can focus your energies towards creating the life you were meant to live. You can devote your to life to your message, to your expression of yourself. Is there really anything you’d rather be doing?

I love where I live and I love living with my husband. Our home is certainly not minimalist, and I know my wardrobe is crying out for a good purge, and yet we are not hoarders. When I look around at our stuff I know much of it is unnecessary, and yet much of it is aesthetically pleasing and I like it that way. I love the books on my shelves as extensions of my brain and I love my many places to repose as a little slice of indulgence.

I am not interested in the challenge of simplifying our lives by simplifying the number of items we own. I’m far more fascinated by creating a life that is centred around meaning and fulfillment. For me this means minimising distractions arising from unfocused and undefined thoughts and also from distracting and unfulfilling pursuits.

There is no need to dismiss minimalism as a radical way of life. Instead focus on the essence of its philosophy and use it to transform your life for the better.

Do you have a minimalist mindset? I’d love you to share your philosophies with us

When you think about the standard model of life for people living in the Western world, it goes a little something like this:

• Finish secondary schooling

• Pursue tertiary education (whether that be university or technical training)

• Find your dream job and/or complete further tertiary education

• Meet your soul mate and marry them

• Buy a house

• Have children

• Pursue promotions in your career for prestige and money

• Use money to buy holidays, a bigger house, a better house, a nicer car, expensive education for your children

• Keep working to finance these “goals” and retire in your mid to late sixties

• In your sixties plan to pursue other goals and dreams and then give up to wallow in a life of leisure

Of course these dot points represent if everything goes smoothly. If any of this is interrupted by illness or financial setbacks, the meaning and purpose of life rapidly comes into view and an opportunity for serious re-evaluation presents itself.

For others, the first stirrings of discontent begin early, and while often they can be assuaged by planning another holiday, upgrading the entertainment system or buying a new car, these thoughts, once planted, will not go away, and demand to be addressed.

If you take the time in the earlier part of your life to really consider what sort of person you are and want to be, how you would like your life to look and how you can design your life differently from the average mould, you have a far better chance of not getting trapped on the treadmill of a life you don’t want.

One of the key traps of the standard model is the pursuit of the perfect home. The main trap is of course that we equate the perfect home with the perfect house, although when you stop to think about it, a house and a home are different entities.

If you think about you and the people you know, I’m sure you can find at least 20 people who live in houses that are much larger than they require. Real estate agents buy into this mindset by advertising “great starter homes”, the implication being that this home won’t suit you for life, but it’s good enough for now.

The house I live in is plenty large enough for my husband and I, and always will be since we won’t be having children. I love this house for its serenity, its energy and warmth and the milestone it represents in my life. Yet still I dream of a home closer to the city or an inner city suburb. Sometimes I think I’d love to live in a refurbished character home and sometimes a trendy apartment. Yet when I stop and really think about it, why do I want this and how does it really fit in with my vision for my life?

The desire to improve on what we have and where we live is a crafty form of distraction. Upgrading your life feels like a legitimate and worthwhile goal, yet in reality these projects distract you from pursuing meaningful goals. When you buy into the notion that to measure your success in life you need a nicer car and a better house, you set up the next few years of your life to being devoted to creating enough financial wealth to do so. This usually means that you while you accumulate money, you are very time poor. When that is the case you become too exhausted to pursue those things you are truly passionate about. In the worst cases, you don’t even know what your passions are!

So when I stop and think, I realise that my desire to find the perfect next house is my way of distracting myself from those goals that would really make a difference in my life. Why would I sabotage myself like that?

Because buying a new house, or in other words following the standard model of life, is far easier to achieve than creating my own existence. Buying another house is straight forward. I’d need to work a full time job and seek a promotion and do this for at least 15 years to pay off the mortgage. There, life settled and sorted.

The alternative is far less easy, far more scary and yet would mean a life of so far unknown fascination, interest, passion, energy and thrilling excitement. The alternative is that I work on my passions and discover new ones. I design a life that is remarkably different from the standard model. I create a life that allows for financial abundance in non-standard ways. But in the beginning this means choosing the unknown, it means taking a risk, it means walking away from the pack.

To achieve this alternative I need to cut back on material pursuits, I need to pare down my life to the everyday essentials, I need to downsize and I need to change my focus.

Ultimately, in purposefully pursuing a life of physical minimalism you are creating a life of inner, and eventually outer, abundance.

How content are you to be following the standard model?

What choices are you willing to make to have the life you desire?