If you want to begin living a minimalist lifestyle, all you have to do is chose a simpler path today than they one you’ve chosen in the past.
It’s really that simple.
When I began to feel my life was going out of control and flying out from under me, I knew I had to do something. I started looking for websites and blogs about simple living and I discovered that the terminology has evolved in recent years. The voluntary simplicity and simple living trends I had explored years ago were becoming the minimalist living movement.
Minimalism, I soon learned, was exactly what I needed to get my life back on track.
I found that I didn’t have to do anything radical at first. I didn’t have to move into a residence hotel and start living out of suitcase. And I didn’t have to get rid of all my possessions and sleep on a mat instead of a mattress.
All I had to do to start benefiting from minimalist living was to choose simpler alternatives for some of my life’s most complicated issues and processes.
How To Begin Living A Minimalist Lifestyle
Radical simplicity is a great idea. Getting rid of all your possessions can free you from your attachment issues and eliminate many of the things you worry about every day. But you can start living more simply by uncomplicating only one or two aspects of your life. For example:
- If you have too many possessions and you feel like things are closing in on you, start you minimalist lifestyle by decluttering. Simply throw away or give away a few boxes of things. You may start feeling better immediately.
- If you feel an emotional spiral of bad feelings, depression and guilt is holding you down, eliminate the negativity by choosing one issue per day or a week to clear up. That means if your relationship with your parents or your oppressive work situation is causing your anxiety, take decisive action to close off the damaged situation or repair it so it’s no longer unpleasant.
- If you find you don’t understand people or the world, seek a spiritual path toward greater enlightenment.
- If you think you’re living in the wrong place or have the wrong friends, start taking steps to better your situation by making the physical adjustments that bring you closer to the simplicity you desire.
No matter what’s wrong in your life, you can begin living a minimalist lifestyle by shedding unpleasant circumstances and replacing them with better situations.
Reducing your dependence on machines, corporate systems and the media can help you find the simplicity you desire also.
Start Today
The best part about minimalist living is that you don’t have to buy any books or take any courses to get started.
As you explore minimalism and simple living more, you’ll find lots of bloggers who want you to buy something from them, but they’re often sellouts with needlessly complicated lives. You don’t have to be like them or buy anything from them.
All you have to do is make the decision to do things a better, simpler way today than you did yesterday.
In other words, the way to begin living a minimalist lifestyle is to decide what’s wrong with your life and fix it.
Just be sure you solve your problems by choosing a simpler way, not a more complicated one that could make things worse. Those little dramas in which you participated yesterday have no place in today’s simple, minimalist lifestyle.
