Jessica Forrest - Living With Less: Discover The Joy of Less And Simplify Your Life

At the heart of western society there is an undercurrent of un-fulfillment. Every day we wake up, eat, wash, go to our jobs, come home, and make dinner and then go back to sleep. At some point along our lives we lost that sense of wonder and direction that we possessed when we were younger.

We go through the motions of our lives without being connected or immersed in what we are doing. As a result a myriad of different perspectives and philosophies have arisen by different thinkers in order to tell us what we are doing wrong and how we should fix it.

Some of us tell us that we should travel and that our life is lackluster unless we are climbing mountains and constantly seeking new exotic challenges. Other views talk about the importance of success and aiming higher, climbing the business world and all of the hurdles it presents.

Minimalists look at the problem in a different way. The problem with our modern lifestyle is not that something is missing, it is the opposite; that we have far too much. We have so much stuff that we lose track of the few things that are important. We hoard clutter both physically and emotionally until the things that make us happy are buried under everything else. As a result our lives lack that vitality and spark that makes life truly worth living.

On the same vein, for minimalists, the way to reignite your life and reclaim your happiness is not found on foreign shores or in achievements in the business world, it is realizing what in your life already makes you happy and changing your life to revolve around that.

Although minimalism is undoubtedly a movement and an idea with deep spiritual notions, don't make the mistake of thinking that all minimalists are hermits, monks or deeply religious. Minimalists are generally indistinguishable from anyone else in a crowd; they are people you know, people at your workplace and people with ordinary lives. All that is required to be a minimalist is a simple change in your perspective.

To be precise, minimalists wage a peaceful war against clutter of all sorts. Regardless of whether we consider ourselves especially materialistic or not, an average person in the western world will grow to own a staggering amount of possessions throughout their lives.

From books, to games, to computers, laptops, phones, clothes, cars, dishes, cutlery, Christmas decorations, cleaning equipment, furniture, novelties, and food, the amount of sheer 'stuff' a person collects is overwhelming. Yet, underneath all these items a truth remains dormant and forgotten; most of these items are not necessary and very few contribute to your happiness in any meaningful way.

Take a moment and ask yourself how many items in your life that you need and how many items actually give you genuine pleasure and contentment. Look at your bookshelves, stocked with hundreds of different books. How many have you actually read all the way through? How many do you actually require for constant use? Can you really say that any of these books change your life for the better? Would you notice if one of these books went missing?

Minimalists have asked themselves these types of questions and more regarding every possession they own. Moreover minimalists have realized that in an honest and practical sense that most of their possessions are either completely unnecessary or do not make them happier so they get rid of them.

In addition to the realization that the majority of their possessions do not actively contribute to their happiness, minimalists also recognize that keeping unnecessary items actually makes their life more difficult and unhappier.

A bookshelf full of unread books is an eyesore it's a waste of space that could be left open, making your house feeling spacious and uplifting. It's also a chore in the sense that these books must be dusted and cleaned occasionally and must be organized and carefully arranged. If you do actually require a book for a specific reason it's not a simple task of just grabbing that book from where you made room for it.

Instead you must rummage and search through your amateur library, wasting time and energy in the process. If you ever need to move or change the position of your furniture than moving that bookshelf is a huge challenge just by itself.