- Hey my friends, Leo
Babauta from Zen Habits here.
And today I wanna talk
to you about minimalism.
So I consider myself a minimalist.
Does that mean I have zero things
and I have less than
everybody else in the world?
No.
It's not so much about getting
to a state of perfection
and having less things than
everybody else around you
and getting to that competitive mindset.
Minimalism is about living with less.
And in fact, really scrutinizing your life
not just in terms of
the stuff that you have,
although that is a big part of it,
but things that you do,
the way that you do things.
And so scrutinizing
that and then letting go
of our attachment to having more.
To shopping, to owning a lot of stuff,
to showing off with a lot of big things.
But really, even just identifying
with the things that we buy.
Identifying with all that we own.
And so, minimalism is about
kind of letting go of that
and reexamining our lives
so that we maybe do less,
own less, and shop less, have
less distractions in our life.
Simplify down to the bare essentials.
And you might ask, "Why
would you do something
"crazy like that?" (chuckling)
And yeah, it's definitely
a way of bucking the
trends of owning more.
It's a way of going against the
nature of our society today.
Of not only owning more and buying more,
but even watching so much.
Trying to read everything,
trying to do everything,
trying to have every single experience.
But instead saying that it is worthwhile
to have experiences and really
fully be there with them
rather than moving on to the next thing,
over and over and over,
rushing through everything,
and not really fully experiencing it.
It's worthwhile to have
things that are useful to you,
and to take care of
them, and to find space
for the things that really
add value to your life.
So it's okay to have
clothes and possessions,
but to not add too much just
for the sake of adding stuff.
To not give into every single impulse.
The benefits of this kind
of minimalism is that
first of all, you have less
clutter in your house, ideally.
I mean of course there's
still gonna be clutter,
so this is not about perfection.
We have less clutter, which means
less stuff to take care of.
It means less visual stress
with all the stuff all around you.
It means less maintenance.
It means that you've spent less
because you don't have too much stuff.
And so, there's financial
benefits to that as well.
If you break the shopping habit
and you don't need to go out
and buy stuff all the time,
you're gonna actually
save more or work less.
So you can work less with
a minimalist lifestyle.
You can travel lightly if
you do decide to travel.
You don't have to.
But if you wanted to travel lightly,
you can travel with just a backpack.
There's a feeling of lightness
and freedom in this kind of minimalism.
And so you can downsize your life
so that you have less stuff,
but also you might have a smaller house,
which will also save you some money.
There's less of an environmental impact
of buying so much stuff,
of having a huge house
and things like that.
And so, those are some
incredible benefits.
But there's also a benefit
to having space in your life.
Just having space to breathe.
Have some space for solitude.
Not cramming our lives every
single moment with stuff,
whether it's physical or
things to do with commitments.
Over-committing ourselves and
then stressing ourselves out.
So there's a sense of space,
of freedom from having to be
doing things all the time.
There's also a sense of focus.
If you wanna write, if you wanna read,
you wanna do anything that
requires focus at all,
maybe it's programming, maybe
it's learning and studying.
Being distracted all the time
is kind of the opposite of minimalism.
And so letting go of
those urges to distraction
is part of that.
And so letting go is a
big part of minimalism.
And then letting go so
that you can say yes
to what's really important in your life.
And making room for
what's really important
rather than cramming our
lives full of other stuff
so that you don't have
room for what's important.
If you have important
relationships in your life,
maybe making room by doing less,
having less distractions,
less commitments,
so that you can actually spend time
with the people who matter most to you.
So those are some of the
benefits of minimalism.
I talk about them in my
book, "The Power of Less"
and on my blog, zenhabits.net.
And of course, I'll do more videos
kinda talking about some of that.
Thanks my friends.
(light music)
