Pursuing Minimalism Philosophy
As a way of living, minimalism doesn’t mean you have to give up everything and give up on everything material. It instead exhorts you to be less connected to things, pay attention to the ones that truly matter, and cherish the people and experiences in your life.
Recently there have been many weeks of consistent learning from various kinds of people on Youtube. Learning from the greatest scholars, professors, content creators, and people who have good advice for the current generation.
And with such adventure, I came across the concept of Minimalism, and delved myself decently deep with the concept. Just like the definition above, Minimalism is trying to limit yourself with things that truly matter and disregarding the junk. This notion can be applied to almost anything and it truly does work as I have tried it in my fitness hobby.
Making thoughtful choices, disposing distractful things, and being intentional are other parts of Minimalism. It stresses the importance of life experiences over material belongings, giving more weight to things that have purpose than things that are only decorative.
In short, I want to write this weeks or today’s Medium Piece on Minimalism and my reasons for pursuing or adopting this idea into a lifestyle. Mainly I am going to mention three things that with this concept will make life 10x better than before adopting Minimalism.
1. Becoming Richer
This is a no brainer, because I feel like most people might get the point already with the title and the following sentences above. But, essentially by reducing the things that you buy, or any junk for that matter, people tend to save money. Personally to me, there are two ways to be financially wealthier than you were before. Spending Less, or Making More.
With Minimalism, spending less is the number one way to become richer. Of course there are things that we need to buy such as food, shelter, and medicine. But, the decorative materialistic products that people buy, tends to be overbroad than its original usage. Personally, clothing comes to mind. When I look at my closet, I see a lot of clothes that I tend to not wear, and I repeatedly wear similar styles of clothing.
As I grow older, my taste seems to change and I adopt a new fashion sense, and go with it for a while. But recently, I feel like there are a bunch of clothes that I wish I did not buy because I could have saved so much money. Personally, I want to quit my consumerism lifestyle, as it brings a lot of bad financial choices. Not just with clothes, but with other matters as well.
To be richer, people can spend less than they make, and spend on what’s necessary. People would be surprised at the amount of things they have and how it’s all they need. When trying to spend less, there is no need to remind yourself to save your money. In fact many people will free up some of their time for other things, because they realize that they’re spending is low, hence they don’t need to work that much for a higher level of spending.
Now the amount of spending compared to the amount of money made can look differently for different kind of people, but the inevitable truth is that (and this is especially true in western countries) many people tend to spend more on things they don’t need, which makes them struggle financially (of course with inflation it’s a different story).
But, there are people that will even admit to themselves that buying something they will not use over at least a 100 (this number is way too low, I am being too nice here) times in their life is pretty useless and they regret buying it.
2. Becoming Healthier
Having more means, more work, which means more stress. Imagine having a lot of goods, and having to take care of them to maintain their usage. The amount of stress one accumulates from simply taking care of something that is valuable and not being able to enjoy it. When you reduce your numbers of objects and focus on things that you truly care about, it will greatly improve your mental health and reduce the amount of stress you will accumulate.
Stress is not a bad thing, but it should be rationalized on what you want to stress about. Having less things to stress about and only stressing about the things that truly matters to your life will actually motivate you, hence make you more productive. In short, converting the stress factor to motivation is a great skill that will help someone to become strong and disciplined.
Also, in terms of becoming healthier, it will also improve relationships as one is not carried away with materialistic junk, that only brings hindrance to self growth and a burden to building beautiful bonds. Time is precious and humans prefer to use it for the best. Imagine spending 5 hours every week to maintain five cars and only one out of those five cars you use for 95% of your life.
Now imagine only spending one hour per week for your car, you have the remaining four hours to enjoy life, enjoy time with family or focus on experiencing new things that bring you happiness. All we did was dispose of four of those cars, which depending on your location, one could argue that they don’t even need a car in the first place.
PS: I do not have five cars, if I do, guys I would sell them to pay off my school tuition;)
3. Becoming Wiser
Becoming wise in terms of realizing that most things we buy are not that important and that many people buy those things to seek validations from external sources. Less is more and it holds true in many cases in our life. I started to realize the excess material junk in my life, and figured out that all those things are not really needed.
After I got a cool bag from UNIQLO I realized that deep down, I have a school bag and a gym bag, that I don’t really need this bag to begin with. It hit me like a brick that almost 70% of the time, I tend to impulse buy things without fully releasing if it will be used a lot or if I already have a different alternative of this item.
Even if I do use the item for a long amount of time, eventually the item will not be in use. This realization is the beginning to start becoming more wise or the start of my wisdom journey.
Of course there are things that I do buy, but those things are personal investments. Buying books, gym gear, or investing in courses for educational purposes. Personally, there is nothing wrong with investing in yourselves. The issue is having this consumerism mentality that we tend to buy or invest on things that bring us no benefits in the long run or even now.
Yes, looking nice, and finding your fashion is good in terms of clothing, but there is a limit to how many shirts and pants we need to have to fully express ourselves. In fact a reason like that is mostly done to seek validation from external sources.
To conclude, Minimalism is a good ideology to live by, people will come to realize the financial freedom it can bring, while contributing to a good healthy mindset. But also having a moment of self reflection which allows someone to truly understand what they are doing from a consumer standpoint, hence making them wiser than they were before.
Again, Minimalism as a lifestyle doesn’t require you to give up anything, even tangible possessions. Rather, it urges you to enjoy the people and events in your life, pay attention to the things that really count, and be less tied to stuff. And to extend it even further, when you do give up on some of the possessions that you don’t need, you will become more focused on what you have become more grateful for.
