Minimalism: What We Can Gain From Owning Less
by Sueños on 01/25/17
When I turned 16-years-old my dad gave me a copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. I was immediately absorbed by the premise. To disappear into the woods with minimal possessions, and emerge some time later having discovered what I truly find most valuable. However, when I started looking around, I found myself owning a great many things that brought me joy. I have been an avid gamer since I was a kid, and even now there is nothing I enjoy more than playing games until 2:00 in the morning with my friends. However, when I look at the clothes in my closet, I realize there's a great many of them I don't wear. That being the case, I've been toting them with me everywhere I go. How does that make sense? It was this epiphany that helped me better understand one of my favorite quotes of Thoreau's “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
It's not about how many things we own, it's about only owning things that bring you great joy. To "live deliberately" by cutting out the unessential. This is a concept that can be projected onto many things. The size of houses that we own, the type of food we buy (whether it's in season or out of season), and most obviously how many things we buy. It may be your interest to grow a business, to be a doctor, or to be a CEO of a fortune 500 company, but what minimalism prescribes is doing these things for their own sake, rather than the salary that accompanies them.
Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, touched on this in a great video discussing how he built the Zappos brand. He said when people ask what they should do to make a lot of money, he responds, "What is something you can imagine yourself doing everyday for the next 10 years, and never getting bored?" That, to me, is what we can gain from minimalism. A life that emphasizes our passions, by taking exactly what we need and no more.
This is a guest blog from one of our coached Diego-Andreas. If you like this post, and want to see more like it, check out his blog at www.wonderingintomyself.com
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