How to live a more minimalistic life
For a long time I thought more is the way to go, I would accumulate stuff & spend a lot on myself but it was really all about filling a certain void perhaps & also partly due to habit. Spending is just a habit that needs to be broken.
Now I find that because I’ve become more soul-aligned I feel I need less in my life in terms of things. I really hate clutter & accumulation now, so I realized that I just have to be very careful with what I bring into my energetic space because it has effects on your emotional well-being. For me accumulation or buying too much now feels suffocating & uncomfortable, I prefer to just stick with the things I need & not get extra things like before.
The way to break spending habits or just buying too much of something without justification is to stop the habit for at least 30 days. This is what I advise my clients when they want to break this habit of spending. A habit takes about 30 days to break, to rewire the neurons in the brain. This is why in order to break the habit you have to stop it for that long or do some deprogramming work for that long to see effects.
Ways to declutter:
declutter your wardrobe by organizing what you no longer wear, sell the rest on poshmark
declutter your kitchen from everything that is taking up space that you don’t use, invest in good quality or a few nice dishes
remove anything in your home that doesn’t bring you joy, this could be any piece of furniture, carpet, table etc anything!
make sure each room has enough free space to move freely, without extra furniture
throw out anything old, from the past & things that remind you of people that are no longer in your life, create space for new
My favourite H&M home dishes, I just get a few at a time
In order to live a minimalistic life, you have to declutter the things in your home that no longer serve you then bring in new items.
Now the bare minimal things make me happy!
Being a decorator & designer with a natural eye for decor I find that its easy for me to make things look pretty even with a few items.
Minimalism as a mindset
I feel that we were programmed to think that more is the way to go but its actually not! Living a minimalistic life is all about reprogramming your mindset to stop spending on things that you actually don’t need. It can be difficult because we live in a society where consumerism is the way to go, but that is the problem.
We must realize that less is actually more! Not just in our physical appearance but also as a lifestyle!
I feel that once you start doing a lot of internal work & healing you realize that things are unhealthy attachments. These attachments have to be let go of & we learn to detach from things slowly as soon as we realize the harm in over consuming. Anything external that we need for validation becomes toxic when we base our happiness around it, this goes for clothes, things & material possessions in general.
It does not mean we don’t consume anything, we find BALANCE. We start to consciously consume instead of unconsciously consuming to feed an attachment. Start to put your energy into activities that actually bring you long lasting joy & not just a quick fix!
Ego loves materialism
For me I noticed that my loud ego was always trying to control my spending in order to be validated by others!
This is also a major issue, because your ego is all about validation from the external world & material items are how your ego gets that fix!
This is again very toxic. When I realized this behaviour & realized my attachment to material things but also did some ego work I fully surrendered & let go of this toxic addiction. I felt so much freer & was able to put my money into things that mattered or save for something important or that I am manifesting instead!
WAYS TO BREAK A HABIT
STOP DOING IT FOR 30 DAYS AT LEAST!
Like I mentioned above it takes at least 30 days, I would recommend at least 3 months without spending in your usual way to break the habit. Try it & see. You will feel a difference!
SUMMARY
Minimalism is a lifestyle & it means simplifying your life & having less but quality things. Investing in what really brings you joy & stopping bad habits that only feeds your ego not your soul!
Your soul loves freedom from attachments which includes material items, so detach from material items & only spend on things that you feel will fill your soul!
Save for luxury vacations instead which feeds the soul more than accumulation of random objects!