Becoming a Minimalist: A Journey Inward

Last week, I talked about why minimalism is so beneficial for our wellbeing. This week, I’m tackling this topic: becoming a minimalist. Finally! I’ve been meaning to write about my journey in minimalism!

I’m sure you can find many methods out there, and different people will find that different things work for them. In fact, you don’t really need a method to adopt a minimalistic lifestyle if you’re motivated to minimize your life.

I stumbled into this way of life a long time ago – when my family moved houses 5 times in a few years and I got addicted to decluttering.

Since it started off as an “addiction”, I wasn’t able to reap its full benefits until I let minimalism spread into all the aspects of my life. I hope that by writing about my experience, your journey would be a lot more fruitful and efficient than mine had been.

This is how it worked for me.

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1. Identify your “why”
2. Teach yourself not to attach happiness to objects
3. Start minimizing
4. Become intentional with your thoughts, activities and time
5. Keep repeating the process until it becomes a habit

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1. Identify your “why”

The best way to make sure you stick to any practice is to identify your “why”. It’ll form your motivation. Pick a strong “why” so it offers sustained motivation.

We all have this inherent desire to reserve our resources for the important stuff. These resources include our energy, money, space, time, attention, potential and peace! Minimalism helps us to achieve that, which is pretty impressive in itself.

Think about why you want to be a minimalist. Is it because you want to have a less chaotic environment? Is it because you want to save money? Do you want to be able to focus better?

Instead of thinking it in terms of what minimalism limits you from doing, think about the benefits it’ll bring you. This way, you turn it into a rewarding experience.

I’ll have a clearer and more pleasant space.
I’ll be able to identify what really matters to me.
There’ll be less decision fatigue when deciding which shirt to wear.
I’ll have more money to save by being intentional with my purchases.

2. Teach yourself not to attach happiness to objects

In order to avoid feeling deprived of “the joy from things”, which may make us very resistant toward the idea of minimalism. Learn to keep this in mind – happiness and memories don’t reside in objects.

So often, we keep things because they remind us of certain happy memories, so throwing them away feels like we’re getting rid of something meaningful. That isn’t true. The memory is with us forever, just close your eyes, and think back on the memory. It’s not dependent on an object. Also, your friend/partner/family member loves you regardless of whether you keep something or not, because they love you for you.

This isn’t to say that you can’t keep anything that has meaning.

Learning to separate meaning from objects helps us to see that we don’t need to own a thing to keep the meaning or joy it’s associated with. It’s easier to view possessions objectively with this knowledge.

3. Start minimizing

Now that you have your “why” and you’re aware that memory doesn’t reside in things, start decluttering!

Then again, you don’t necessarily have to declutter to be a minimalist.

Minimalist is very much about living intentionally. If you think you have just enough, or if you’re comfortable with what you have, it can simply be a shift in your mindset.

“I’ll be more mindful of and intentional with what I purchase, what I put my attention on and who and what I allow into my life.”

It can be as simple as that.

But decluttering helps you to exercise the intentionality muscle. Every time you pick up an object and decide if you need it or if it means something to you, you’re training yourself to focus on one thing and its relevance in your life. Eventually, you’ll find that you can use this “muscle” to evaluate activities, people, thoughts and habits.

Decluttering

I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all way of decluttering. We all have different schedules and sizes of hoards. But here is a process that may help you.

For clothes, check out this post:

How to Declutter Your Clothes Effectively

Of course, please exercise judgment. Don’t sell an heirloom that has been in your family for generations because you didn’t like it. Ask the rest of your family if they want it, and consider saving it for your kids. Personally, I think it’s unfair to deny our family members of something they may find very valuable because we want to be minimalists.

Other methods of decluttering:

• Have a Packing Party (The Minimalists)
• Play the 30-Day Minimalism Game (The Minimalists)
• The Konmari Method

These are all really popular but I never tried them – I was already a minimalist when I read about these methods.

Everyone has a different threshold for their number of possessions. It depends on what is “enough” for you, and what’s enough will differ depending on which stage of the minimalism process you’re at, your personality and your situation in general. So take it easy!

Gentle reminder

You don’t have to part with everything immediately. Pack your unused stuff away. A month later, see if your spacious living room makes you feel free, or does it make you feel cold and lonely? It’s worse to get rid of things and end up buying new ones to fill up your space.

Minimalism has always been an exercise at intentional living. Don’t let it become an exercise at wastefulness. I don’t advocate discarding things that you may use just because it’s easy to buy them again. Our buy-and-throw economy is the main contributor to our need for minimalism and our climate crisis.

After throwing something, if you find that you need it, try to make do without it. You probably can. Or get it from a thrift store. If you could go without it for months, you can probably go without it.

4. Become intentional with your thoughts, activities and time

I feel that what comes after the decluttering is often more meaningful and impactful that the physical process of minimalism. If you want minimalism to stick, you’ll definitely need to work on your inner landscape. After all, if you don’t become intentional with your thoughts, your actions can’t be intentional.

Outside in

Work inwards, apply mindfulness on the most physical and tangible of the non-physical parts of your life. So think about your activities – are you happy with the way you’re spending your time? If you find yourself exhausted, or just distracted all the time, take a closer look at your life.

Is your work too demanding? Are you taking on too many social events? Watching too much TV? Are you spending too much time on your phone? Identify what you’re doing too much of that’s not working out for you, and reduce those.

One step at a time

You may not be able to change everything all at once – reduce it little by little. If you’re saying yes to too many parties, become more selective with which parties you go to. If you’re on social media too much, download apps that limit your social media use. When work is too demanding, consider how you can change that.

Alternatively, think about how you can increase those things you want in your life. Do you want more peace? Don’t switch on that TV. Do you want more focus when you work? Put your phone away, lock it up, put it in another room.

5. Keep repeating the process until it becomes a habit

We all know bad habits are a pain to kick, but what it takes is really, just taking a different habit to replace the bad one.

• Replace the desire to buy a new item with the desire to have more space or more money.
• Have regular decluttering sessions so you keep exercising that intention-muscle.
• Instead of shopping, do something else you enjoy – going to a museum, a cafe, perhaps explore a park.
• Rather than fiddling with your phone, read a book, do a crossword puzzle, scribble in your notebook about your desire to touch your phone or go for a walk without your phone. Better yet, pick up something you’ve been meaning to learn.

I’m currently trying to kick my social media addiction. So I’ve set app timers on my phone that shuts down the apps after I’ve used it for a certain duration. I started it on 1 Jan and we’ll see where that leads me!

Keep an eye on the progress too, you can do this by writing it down, or setting daily phone reminders. When you keep your mind on a subject and keep working on it, it will stick.

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In conclusion

If you give minimalism a try and don’t love it at the end, don’t feel bad. There are all sorts of people in this world and we all have different preferences. Maybe I want mindfulness, but you may want a bustling life full of things and social interactions. However, if you’ve never tried living with less, don’t jump into conclusions and decide you don’t like it!

It’s about focus and peace

At the core, minimalism is an attempt to regain focus and peace. We all want our minds to settle, to clear up, to breathe and feel that elusive feeling of “I’m fine now”. We want our attention to stop getting pulled in a hundred directions all at once.

Although minimalism can’t focus our attention for us, it helps in two ways:

• reducing the number of distractions around us
• the constant application of intention in everything we let remain in our lives trains our monkey mind to become mindful

I love how accessible minimalism is. Anyone can practice it, it doesn’t discriminate. No matter which socioeconomic group you’re in, and how busy you are, you can reap benefits from it.

I hope you can reap these benefits too, and I hope that you’ve found this post useful. Let me know what you think!