Minimalism is a kind of lifestyle that is gaining traction in the last years after several well known personal development bloggers started to talk about it. In short, minimalism is the art of living with less, and a way to escape the consumerism world.
In this article I want to give you a full overview of what minimalism is, why it’s important for our society, and what its implications are. I’m also going to talk about how to apply minimalism in your business.
What minimalism is, and why it’s important
The word minimalism derives by a subcategory of art where the work is stripped down to the essential. In life, minimalist people are those who have decided to escape from the consumerism world by getting rid of all the physical and emotional stuff that they don’t need.
Even though minimalist people have existed for a very long time, several bloggers have recently started to evangelize minimalism as a new, alternative lifestyle, getting birth to a movement that is getting more and more traction every day.
The reason for this choice is that minimalism provides a cure to many problems of the modern society, including stress, happiness and environment protection.
Where does happiness come from?
Modern society has trained us to believe that happiness comes from the things we own. Million of dollars of corporate money are spent every single day just to maintain this belief. But does happiness really comes from the number of things we own? I hardly think so.
If you try to associate happiness with the number of things you own, then happiness becomes an addiction that is outside of your control. Initially, you may experience a good feeling after buying something new, but eventually this feeling will start to fade until you reach a point where buying new stuff becomes an addiction, like alcohol or cigarettes.
Like with drugs, the more you buy, the more you’ll want to buy. That’s why most of us will spend bonuses or income raises as soon as we get them. It’s a trap that’s too easy to fall into.
Minimalism provides a cure for this. First, by getting rid of all the stuff that you don’t need, you’re left with a void that you must deal with. This feeling is similar to the one that we experience when we give up any other addiction, like cigarettes or alcohol. That feeling of void represents your chance to fulfill your life with emotions like happiness, love and calm, which is impossible to obtain if we’re living a consumerist life.
Being busy all day is a form of laziness which prevents us from experiencing the feelings of love and happiness that we think will come after we’ll have done something else. Here’s the truth: happiness and love are not an achievement, they’re always within us, every time. It’s up to us to unveil the layers of clutter that separate us from experiencing them.
Living a minimalism life
Many people associate a minimalism life exclusively with having less stuff. While this is true to some extents, it’s only a shallow definition, which leaves many questions unanswered. As I discussed before, minimalism happens both in your physical world as well as in your mind.
In the physical world, it is natural for a minimalist person to avoid owning a lot of stuff. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that everything we own is taking out precious space in our mind, as well as in our closet. The second reason is that more stuff equals more maintenance and more waste of money. Given that more money equals more working hours and less time available for doing the things that you want, it just doesn’t make sense to own more than you need.
In our mind, minimalism is associated with a sense of calm. By freeing mental resources we get more ideas and more peace of mind, plus I suspect that we also become more healthy and live more.
Minimalism productivity
So what do you do all day long after you give away all the stuff that you don’t need? The simple answer would be that you do whatever you want, including traveling, studying, or lying down in the grass at the park. Apart from this, most people also choose to do something of high impact, which is usually related to their passions.
I’m not a strict minimalist yet, but I try to provide impact through my blogs and through my programming business. I really, really love writing and creating stuff with computers, so this is what I naturally want to do. Everyone will have a different vision of what they want to do, and the beauty of minimalism is that it allows most people to work toward their vision.
It all comes down to figuring out what you want to do and doing it as best as you can.
Note that most of us, perhaps including you, are already doing this. There’s no need for labels here, if you’re already doing what you love and you’re living a simple life, you’re already there. Minimalism is a movement that doesn’t need subscriptions, and you can be a minimalist without even knowing it.