Minimalism
8 September 2020
Over the past few years, I've developed an interest in minimalism. At first, the term 'minimalism' can be a scary thing if you're not quite familiar with it. It has undertones of extremism. It conjures up reactions like "Minimalism? Why would you want to inflict that kind of suffering on yourself?" or "Thank you, but I happen to like owning more than one shirt!" And before I delved into it, admittedly I had some skepticism and a slight preconceived aversion to the idea. But the more I learned about it, the more I realized that it's so much more than striving to possess as few physical items as possible. In fact, that's quite a narrow view of minimalism.
While reducing your possessions, downsizing, and decluttering can undoubtedly have positive effects, it's what comes from these practices that has a more transformative effect on the way you live your life. "Reducing" and "downsizing" may even be misleading terms. Getting rid of your things just for the sake of it misses the point of minimalism entirely. Instead, let's call it essentialism: holding onto what actually matters (to you), and what is essential (to your life). Reframing it this way helps to paint the picture that minimalism's true purpose is to help you focus on things that matter, and to free you from distractions.
Of course, if you have thousands of things, but you feel fulfilled in your life, it may not even make sense for you to make the assessment that you're too distracted or that you're focusing on material objects more than you'd like to be. Maybe you get value out of every single thing you own. Maybe there's a story behind every item you have, and looking at each one of them fills you with joy. Regardless, it's painfully apparent that too many of us are focused on the wrong things — a sad truth and a weakness capitalized on by corporations through marketing and advertising. I won't go so deep into my thoughts on the causes for this, but it's an important topic for a future blog entry.
Going back to the idea of 'essentialism' as an alternate term, we can also see positive effects of minimalism in areas other than "owning stuff." Essentialism is the idea of holding onto what matters to you. We should also be able to apply this idea to the less tangible aspects of life: the things we spend our time doing, and the things we spend our time thinking about. It would be nice if there were no barriers to this ideal of "doing only things that matter to you, with no time wasted." But the reality is that it's a challenge to identify the things that aren't truly adding value to your life. A classic (but helpful) example to illustrate this is the widespread addiction to social media.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with leisure time, and if you enjoy using social media then that's OK. But after a certain time threshold, scrolling mindlessly through your news feed isn't adding value to your life. There's such a thing as "too much," and if we're able to identify the difference between activities that are moving us toward our goals vs. activities that are — after a certain point — wasting our time, we'd all lead lives that are generally more fulfilling.
After we successfully narrow down our choices of activities we engage in, it opens up the doors to overall mental clarity. When we aren't spending our time doing things that don't contribute to our self-growth, we have more energy to devote to thinking about more important things. I think this is what helps contribute to a general feeling of motivation — when we have more time to think about the things we care about, our purpose becomes less fogged by extraneous thoughts.
Again, this is easier said than done. This is why it's easier to start with identifying the physical clutter in your life. Getting rid of things that don't add value to your life can lead to a decluttering spark that spreads to other areas of your life. Then, importantly, you're free to focus on the things that do matter to you.
— Derek Andersen