Minimalism is not just a trend to follow,
it's something that can be truly
life-changing for some people. In this
video I'm going to share ten ways in
which minimalism has changed my life.
Hello hello, welcome back to the Whole
Happy Life. My name is Ria, for today's
video we're gonna talk about the
benefits of minimalism that I've personally
experienced. Before we dive in I wanted
to say one thing - when it comes to
minimalism I think we can all practice
it very differently so we're all going
to have different benefits and we're
going to have different ways in which it
changes our life. This is just a video to
talk about my personal experience - I'm
not saying that you're going to
experience all of these benefits but I
do hope that you experience some of them. Number one - I save more money. I think
that was the first thing that attracted
me to minimalism
was the money-saving aspect. By buying
less and by being more conscious about
my spending I could save a lot of money,
and I have saved thousands of dollars
over the last few years if you're
interested in learning a bit more about
the things I don't buy anymore and how
minimalism helped me save money, I do
have two videos on it which I will link
in the description box below. Number two -
my home feels more like a sanctuary now. So I've always had a neat and tidy home
but clutter no matter how neat and tidy
it is used to make me anxious. I used to
have a lot of stuff, it was everywhere,
and although it looked okay, it bothered
me on some level I didn't feel relaxed in
my home. Now I have fewer items my decor
is very simple and I can say truly that
my home feels like a nice relaxing
sanctuary. Whenever I step in the house
and I'm just like ah it feels good, and it's so
nice to be able to relax in your own
home. I'm more efficient in the kitchen
and this is because of two things so 1 -
my kitchen has less clutter. There are
fewer gadgets, they're fewer appliances
so I can find things easily, and that
makes it much easier to cook. The other
thing - I've actually started to simplify the way
I cook. I think just by being more of a
minimalist it's trickled down into
different parts of my life and I've
become more of a minimalist when it
comes to cooking styles. I used to have
very complicated cooking styles before -
nothing wrong with that if that's your
thing, but I realized that I don't
actually enjoy doing that everyday. I
think when it's a special occasion and I
really feel like doing something fancy,
I'll do it, but not on a daily basis so
I've really simplified the way I cook and
that has saved me quite a bit of time.
I finally know my clothing style. So when
I was not a minimalist I was buying
clothes that looked good on me but they
were not necessarily me. Do you know
sometimes when you wear something and it looks great, but it just doesn't feel
right there's something off about it. I
think that's when you're wearing clothes
that aren't really you and I didn't know
what my clothing style was because I was
just buying everything. By becoming more
of a minimalist I'm actually buying
things that suit me, that serve a purpose,
and that I'm going to wear long term.
If you're interested in minimalism and
buying clothes, I actually have a
video on this which I'll link in the
description box below. I'm starting to
enjoy the simpler things in life. When I
was more of a maximalist, I think I
derived a lot of pleasure from buying
things. I would go to the mall buy a new
dress or a new shirt or whatever it may
be and it gave me momentary happiness
and I thought that was happiness. But
I've since realized that that's not
really happiness, it's not long-term
happiness, it's something short-term, so I've
started to enjoy simpler things in life, and it could be things like going
for a walk out in nature, spending time
with my cats, reading a book, spending
time with friends - it could be anything.
It's really simple and I do truly enjoy
it as much as I used to enjoy shopping.
So I have changed my perspective quite a
bit. After embracing minimalism
I also become more of a digital
minimalist - it's about email, it's about
social media, it's about the time that I spend
on my phone, and I used to spend quite a
bit of time on my phone every morning,
reading the news, reading emails and I've
since minimized
that in some ways. So I have started to
reduce the amount of time I spend on
devices. It's not that I don't spend time
on devices, I do, but I started to
really think about the value and purpose
of the time that I spend on my phone.
When it comes to social media I've
really thought long and hard about the
value and purpose of social media in my
life. Now I do recognize I have a YouTube
channel so it does make sense for me to
be on social media, but I personally did
not enjoy it, and it took time away from
creating content. I would honestly rather
create content than be on social media
promoting it all the time.
That's just my take, and I felt that social media was messing
with my head a little bit too. I actually
talk more about this in my video about
social media detox. If you're interested
you can find it in the link description
below. Minimalism has changed my
perspective on keeping up with the
Joneses and doing things just because
everyone else is doing it. So if English
is not your native language I just
wanted to explain what keeping up with
the Joneses means. It's basically a
phrase that means buying expensive
things or doing things that your friends
and neighbors are doing just so you
could keep up with them. So as an example, let's say your neighbors buy a nice
fancy car, and then you start to feel
like you need to buy a fancy car just to
keep up with them. That is what keeping up with the Joneses is,
and I think the way I was raised it
was very much part of life
keeping up with everybody else and
maintaining that social status by buying
new things, and I have since realized
that it's not something that I want to
do. I don't want to buy things just
because other people are buying it. I
don't want to go on certain vacations
just because other people are doing it. I
want to be very conscious about what I
do, and everything that I do needs to
provide value and purpose for me. I'm
becoming more environmentally conscious
underline the word "becoming". I'm not
quite there yet, but I am becoming more
conscious about where I spend my money
and how it impacts the environment. So
I've talked about this quite a bit - my
use of plastic - I have reduced that. I don't
buy plastic water bottles anymore. I take
a water bottle with me wherever I go, and
I'm just more conscious about the type of
packaging that I purchase. The other
thing I wanted to say was I recognized
after becoming more minimalistic in my
approach to life that air travel was
something that was contributing quite a
bit to my environmental impact. So I have
a calculator that I'm going to put in
the description box below - it's by the
World Wildlife Fund, and it tells you your
environmental impact based on the things
that you do, and it was eye-opening to
see that my travel to other countries
was playing a big role in my environment
impact. Now I'm not saying that I'm
going to completely eliminate long
distance travel forever, and I'm not
going to do it. I am, but in a much more
conscious way, and I'm going
to do it in a way where it's not every
year and think twice about it. Maintaining a clean and tidy home is so
much easier. So for me maintaining a
clean and tidy home was very very
important. I tend to get very anxious
when things are not in their place, and
when I was not as minimalistic as I am
now, things were all over the place,
There's a lot of stuff and dusting took
time and vacuuming took time, as I had to
move a lot of stuff. Now I have less
furniture, I have less decor, it's so much
easier to dust and it's so much easier
to clean, so that definitely is a bonus.
You can live life more intentionally. So
because of adopting minimalism, I
actually have more time to do the things
that really matter, and because I have
more time I can spend time on the things
that I truly value. Things like reading.
Last year I had hardly any time to read
and this year I've already read 21 books.
So things like reading. Things like
spending time with loved ones. Things like
exercise. All those things that truly
matter to me, I can spend time on them
I can spend more time on the YouTube
channel, things like that. So because of
all this added time I'm able to live
life the way I want and I'm able to live
more intentionally. If you're interested
in learning more about living
intentionally there are two great
YouTube channels, Muchelle B and Lavendaire.
I will put them in the description
box below. I hope you enjoyed this video
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How has minimalism changed your life?
Anyway I will see you in the next video!
