Willis - Simplicity: Finding Joy Through A Minimalist Lifestyle: 4 Books in 1 Minimalism Bundle

You may have picked up this book because your life feels like too much. You have too much stuff, too many concerns. There are things pressing in on your attention and making your life feel busy and cluttered. Think of how many emails you have that are waiting for you or all of the things piled up in your junk drawer. There are so many things demanding more and more from you each and every day.

Minimalism can change that. Minimalism is a lifestyle that is essentially about freedom. Freedom from the need to care about a universe of things that doesnt contribute to your life but instead, they suck energy and time away from the things that you care about.

Minimalism is not about going without. The minimalist lifestyle is not spartan or about embracing suffering. You arent going to be sleeping on a floor with only a blanket, unless that is what gives you joy. Because that is what minimalism is about: holding on to the things that give you joy while reducing the things that dont.

Our lives are cluttered with a variety of objects which do not add to value to life. Im sure if youd look, you would find at least one ugly t-shirt you got as a giveaway from a conference or a charity walk. What is that t-shirt doing for your life? Does it make it more fulfilling? Does it make you more likely to flourish? What about that CD collection, when was the last time you played a CD? Does your computer even have a CD drive anymore?

You might say that these things remind you of something you enjoyed. But the mental shift that you need to make is to let go of objects as things that you have for memorys sake. You have your mind for memories, you have photographs and journals. Objects take up space and money by their very existence. They are not a good way to store memories.

We put a lot of emotional investment into objects, but the reality is that objects are only tools. Objects should serve our needs. Sometimes we get trapped into serving the needs of objects instead. We buy organizational materials to give our objects a home. We buy accessories for our objects, giving them different outfits or mechanisms. Sometimes these things are important, but sometimes they are a waste of money and energy. The difference between useful and wasteful is how it adds to your life and if it has a purpose in making your life better.

You should focus only on things that provide value in your life and free yourself from everything else. We all have limited energy and time. Objects, even if theyve already been purchased are just taking up space in your home, sucking away your time and energy. You have to keep them clean, you have to maintain them. If you move, you have to move with them.

Clutter even drains the mind by just existing and taking up space in your field of vision.

An uncluttered, clean space gives you more space for things that matter: your mind, your relationships, and your sense of self. Sometimes we substitute important things with attachment to objects, but that never works. We may hope that a particular piece of makeup will make us feel confident and cool, but it wont. The only thing that can change your life is you and objects just get in the way.

Stop defining yourself by things you own. I used to make this mistake. I prided myself on being a writer and a book lover, so I owned thousands of books. My life was overflowing with books. I had books on every shelf two-layers deep, and books piled up on both sides of my bed. I thought having those books was important because I was the sort of person who loved books.

The reality is that the books were just getting in the way. I love books because I read books, not because I own them. Owning books is beside the point. An important shift was that I realized that the important thing about my love of books was reading them and talking about them. I could let go of the physical object because owning a lot of books did not make me a book lover.

Maybe you have objects like that in your life. Maybe you define yourself as a musician, so you have a lot of CDs. Maybe you define yourself as fashionable, so you have a lot of clothes. Let go of the idea that objects make you who you are. It is what you do that defines you.

It is my hope for you that by understanding the value and life changing benefits that a minimalist lifestyle offers, can help you find the freedom and motivation to let go of all the distractions getting in the way of you living your most authentic, passionate and purposeful life.