Going Minimal

I feel like I'm going through a bit of an evolution at the moment. The concept of minimalism has attached itself to my consciousness and seems to slowly be worming its way into my life.

I have to admit, I didn't know much about minimalism before, but as I mentioned last autumn, I launched a mass declutter of my life as a way of organising myself for my ski season, and as a result of googling tips for decluttering, I started coming across a lot of information about the wider topic of minimalism.

I have always lead a chaotic, cluttered and thoroughly dis-organised life, which is something which I now realise is completely inherent to my personality type (more on that some other time, as that's a whole other topic I've been reading about) and, more often than not, it stresses me out.

A lot of the advice about decluttering touched on the idea of living minimally in a physical sense - the concept of having few possessions, but of good quality and used often - something which I found appealed to me increasingly, and I soon started to realise how minimalist concepts apply to other parts of your life too: to your finances, your social life and social media, and goal-setting for career and long term life goals.

I like the fact that minimalism actually comes in degrees from moderate to extreme (I would be aiming for moderate) and involves divorcing yourself to an extent from the acquisitive and advertising-driven modern day world. This is turn means being able to turn away from the constant comparisons and feelings of inadequacy of the keeping-up-with-the-Jones mentality we're so often afflicted with.

I like that minimalism (to me, at least) encourages you to not feel guilty in acquiring something you really need, but also teaches you to look at whether you do really need it in the first place.

I have even applied this to my eating a little recently - that it's better to have one really good thing to eat and really appreciate it (and eat it mindfully!) than a bunch of diet, fake things you didn't really want.

I'm only a little way down the road so far, but my living space feels more peaceful and my mind feels calmer (and whilst the scales haven't momentously moved downwards they are down a little). I still have a huge amount of belongings to sort through, food habits to break and I'm very interested in the way these habits can be applied to your money (and yes, I still shop when I want to!), but it feels good.

A little transformational almost! :-)

- Posted from my iPhone