How to Live More with Less – on Becoming a Minimalist

How to Live More with Less – on Becoming a Minimalist

I recommend this book to anyone who struggles with self-esteem, body image, anxious mind, depressed mood, toxic past memories and feeling lost in life. Minimalism can help our generations to conquer the complexity of the world outside and inside us.

Being a minimalist means living with luxury and elegance. We only choose the finest clothes (mostly in monochrome color) to wear, finest furniture for our home, organic and healthy food (less processed and less chemically treated) for our tummy, alongside with compassion and wisdom for our mind. Last but not least, being a minimalist means being a human.

We are bombarded by a lot of products -and beauty product is one of the most dangerous ones. Subconsciously we are in a constant state of feeling that we are not enough. We feel that we are not white enough (for Asian), not tanned enough (for Westerner), not tall enough, not slim enough, not fancy enough, not well-shaped enough, not clever enough, not having fun enough, and so on. The list is never ending because the idea is advertised everywhere: in the subway, on the bus, on the airplane, in the street, TV, cinema and even Youtube and Facebook.

We collect things that we don’t need. We possess 30 t-shirts and shirts while we might only need 8 of them. We buy 18 different shoes based on their color and model while we might actually only need 3 pairs based on the function. Our home soon becomes a product exhibition. The wide space is getting smaller and smaller. We feel the need to tidy up our room every day, but we never have the time.

Silently, the massive collection of stuff at our home is sucking our soul little by little. 

Unconsciously, we are governed by them. Every time we wake up, we see our bookshelf with tons of books right beside our beds and they speak to us please read me, you have abandoned me for ages. Then we see our table and paper-work on it, and they call us, hey it’s morning, you need to finish your work and tidy up the table! After that, we go to the bathroom and see all the plastic bottles and stained toilet, and they are angry with us, hey when will you throw me in the recycle bin? When will you clean me? We feel exhausted just to look around at our home. Yet we never know what makes us exhausted.

Cluttering things means we let go of our past. We let go of the unnecessary things around us, and somehow it helps us to let go of unnecessary thoughts and the overwhelming feeling inside us.

I will not explain how to be a minimalist because you can read the book yourself and you will find the astonishment of becoming a minimalist. Also, there are several websites that you can access to learn more about minimalism and how to declutter: www.becomingminimalist.com , www.theminimalists.com  

To close this writing, I am glad to share one of the few quotes I found in the books.

“Do not place material things above human values, above your own hard work and peace of mind, above beauty and freedom, or above living things in general”“Do not enrich your life with objects. Instead enrich your body with sensations, your heart with feelings, and your mind with principles”

Let’s declutter!