Minimalism: the less you buy, the happier you are

The less you buy, the happier you are: could you believe it?

Minimalism is a process: it seems to be all about items such as clothes, shoes, beauty staff, housethings, but there is obviously more and that is why decluttering is just the beginning.

There is a great need to label ourselves: I am vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, buddhist, feminist etc. On reflection, it has emerged that we all need to identify ourselves in these kinds of things that the western world is reluctant to accept. There is no person who goes to the restaurant and says:

“I am omnivore” and all of his friends are ready for judgments and questions. But being omnivore is not new and most of the time newness scares people: they feel threatened because their actions and behavior are questioned, especially in a world like that.

We have lost the focus: the Earth is suffering and we keep closing our eyes, even if we know that, sooner or later, the problem will hit us.

Is there any hope? I hope so. So, from where should we begin?

The way we communicate a problem changes the perspective of the problem itself: if people are told “you must stop eating meat because we have to save the Planet” , in all likelihood, people would not stop eating meat.

What if the sentence would be “it will be really helpful if we all reduce the consumption of meat in order to ensure us a better quality life, in terms of health and environment” maybe the response could be different.

Reduce, recycle and reuse are the three R that have the power to save our life on the Earth and let me simplify it with the word minimalism.

If you google “minimalism”, you will discover that, post World War II, it was born as an art movement which went against abstract expressionism and modernism, by embracing also music and other media too.

In the 1970 it started to be used in the architectural and design field, with the purpose to eliminate the superfluous and give importance to simplicity.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, modernism and consumerism took over it and so we have started to purchase as much as we could. More than what we actually need.

Recently, a significant part of the population started to understand that Planet urges actions and maybe the key for solving the problem could be minimalism.

Stop shopping as we are always missing something, in terms of fashion, food, electronic devices, or whatever comes to your mind that you buy often.

Challenge yourself to ask these simple questions and see the result:

“ Is it really necessary ?”

“Is this item worth all the hours that I spend at work, every single day?”

“Do I have something similar at home?”

“Could I buy it in a thrift shop?”

“Will I still want it tomorrow?”

The way we communicate to ourselves could change our perspective and so our existence.

Let’s start with a full decluttering, by eliminating those things that we did not use for a while. We will see a clear environment, maybe some spaces will be blank, maybe our closet will be half empty, maybe we will be left with just two pairs of shoes. The ones that we certainly use.

But what comes afterwards?

The first instinct would be to go shopping to replace those items with something else, maybe with something more eco-friendly.

We will feel satisfied because we will replace a harmful object with something that truly improves the quality of our life and it helps the environment.

That blank space will be filled again: but what if that space doesn’t need any item anymore and we just leave it empty?

When we start to create blank spaces in our environment (home, office, cars, gardens, phones, laptops etc.), consequently our minds will start to think more clearly.

We have this constant need to be distracted by everything, because in this era it has become very difficult to stay in the present and appreciate what we own.

This abuse of distraction leads us to buy more and more items for, basically, two reasons: instant gratification and to impress others.

If you pay attention to yourself, when you buy, for example, a pair of shoes or a bag or a new phone, the discharge of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that, among its several functions, produces the sensation of instant pleasure) occurs when you are using your credit card to make that item yours.

As soon as you get home, that happiness is completely gone.

When you focus yourself on what you have instead of what you can have, instantly, the attitude of your mind changes and minimalism rises to the next level: the less I have, the more I can concentrate my focus on things and activities that really matter to me and that really benefit my daily life. So, I’ll be happier.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to buy stuff anymore; it means that, maybe, next time, when you go shopping, you make yourself those questions mentioned above and you can start seeing the change.

You could experience a different kind of happiness and you can start being more financially independent, which brings freedom and, surely, for the future, we won’t need a Planet B.