Instead, imagine that you’ve decided to prioritize quality over quantity and that you want to start doing less with more. Instead of yearning after every item you see in magazines or on TV, you have decided what matters to you, and you know how much money you need to get it.
For many people, this will mean moving into a smaller home or to an even more affordable area. Perhaps, near friends and family to cut the costs of travel.

Right away, you can reduce your living costs by $400 to $1K a month between you and a partner. This makes a massive difference to how wealthy you feel, and it means you can afford to do a job that doesn’t include huge amounts of stress and one that doesn’t involve working incredibly long hours.

It means you won’t struggle with debt or with missed mortgage repayments. And it means that you can go traveling more! A lot of people will find the thought of doing less at work hard. This is where they get their sense of fulfillment and progress, after all!

Why is it that you feel the need to work for someone else to feel like you’re doing well? Sure, being a manager is exciting and all (is it?) but if the company is just supplying packaging for a cereal company, is this something that you take such pride in that you’re willing to sacrifice time with your family?

Imagine an alternative scenario where your sense of reward and progress comes from painting or raising your child, or exploring the world! Suddenly, you begin to feel much more fulfilled because you have the time and the energy to enjoy life. And this is when you need to learn the most important part of the entire process: learning to appreciate what you have.

Too many people feel constantly antsy because they need to move on to the next thing to be happy. But what if you could be just as happy with the things you already have? Once you accomplish that, life becomes truly amazing.

The reality is that this is much harder than it looks. We have become so used to being stressed, jealous, and wanting more that is hard to let go when we decide to try. Here are five mistakes that people often make and how you can avoid making the very same errors.

Using Technology too Much

Technology is, in many ways, the antithesis of a minimalist lifestyle. While no one is asking you to turn off your phone permanently, what you should avoid is the kind of ‘mindless browsing’ that leads many of us to end up making purchases of things we don’t need. Take some time off your tech!

Not Finding Fulfilment Elsewhere

If you just remove things from your life, then you’ll find that it can quickly seem quite empty. Instead, you need to find new things to fill your life just as you take things away.

The best way to do this is to think about what makes you happy and how you can get more from what you already own. Keep yourself busy with things that don’t require ‘more.’

Not Keeping it Up

A big mistake is to go all-out creating a minimalist lifestyle and then to give up only a few weeks later. The key here is consistency, and introducing a few simple rules can help a great deal. For example, make a rule that you have to get rid of something in your home each time you buy something new!

Being too Strict

A lot of people act as though being minimal is a binary choice. You’re either minimal or you aren’t. Thus, the only way to go minimal is to throw everything out and live entirely off the land. Not so! You can become a ‘little more minimal’ and reap many of the benefits without making it too hard on yourself.

Missing the Point

Many of the issues people have with minimalism come from missing the point. The point isn’t to be mightier than thou, and it’s not to shun society. The point is just to scale back a little so that life becomes more manageable again! And, it is to read a few of the rewards that just so happen to come as a by-product of that.

Well, not necessarily! Few things could be simpler than adopting a minimalist lifestyle. In this post, we’re going to look at exactly how you can go about doing just that and start enjoying a more minimal life today!

The Mindshift

The first thing you need is a mind shift. You need to change your mindset and learn that you don’t always have to push harder and further to be happy. What you need to be happy is right there in front of you, and if you don’t agree, that’s because you’ve been misled by clever marketing. You don’t need beautiful clothes, a sports car or a huge mansion to be happy. You just need your family and friends and some spare time. And that doesn’t cost anything. The more you chase after promotions so you can have more shiny things, the less time you’ll have to enjoy said shiny things.

Simpler is Easier

This, of course, extends to your décor, and this is a very tangible expression of a minimalist outlook. A good thing you can do today to start being more minimal is to take your belongings and reduce what’s on display by 60%. Sounds extreme? It may well be, but once you do that, you’ll find that what’s left is only the most beautiful and most important to you – meaning your entire home will look much better.

Better yet, it will now be very easy to clean and tidy. See how simpler is easier?

Scale Back

From there, you can begin to scale back. Cancel subscriptions to services you don’t need, address whether you need the latest phone. Learn to appreciate the things you already ha

But for too many of us, our homes are just yet another thing that causes stress. And clutter is to blame. Clutter makes a space busy, disorganized, dusty, and hard to clean. Conversely, if your space is emptier, you’ll be able to keep it looking pristine with minimal work.

So how do you go about reducing that clutter?

Learn to Detach

To declutter, first, you must detach. How many items do you have that you never use but that you feel you can’t get rid of because they were a gift? Or because they have some kind of sentimental value?

Of course, sentimental objects are important, and we should all have a few keepsakes. But this can go too far if it means you feel the urge to hold on to every last item that you’ve ever owned!

If you are keeping items in memory of someone, then how about keeping just one gift? And if you’re worried about hurting feelings, you can always lie and say the item broke!

Break Collections

When it comes to hoarding clutter, one of the very worst things you can do is to view something as a collection. You probably think of your DVDs as a collection, and there’s a good chance you made sure to include every DVD in a particular category, or that you feel says something about you. Now you can’t throw any away without ruining your massive collection! This is a big cognitive shift, but as soon as you realize that collections don’t mean anything, decluttering will become much easier!

Take a Pause

When you’re thinking of buying anything new, always take a pause. There are a lot of factors that contribute to a purchase and many of these have been purposefully designed by marketing and sales teams to prey on our emotions. When we purchase because we have gone away to think about something and then come back to it, that means that we genuinely need or want the item.

Why do we insist on keeping ourselves so busy? We have trained ourselves to believe that being busy improves our chances of success in this world. As such, the “no pain, no gain” mentality. Also, our minds love to be active. For many high achieving types, taking “mental time-out” is tantamount to laziness!

Being busy is not necessarily a bad thing – often, we accomplish a lot in our busy lives. But when we get to a point where the level of activity is running our lives, it’s time to take some action!

Ask yourself:
Why do I choose to take on all the things I do?
Do I understand what is driving these choices?
What are the things I can’t do that I would like to do because I am too busy?

Enter the simplification process. It sounds deceptively easy, but the reality is usually different. It’s hard to let go of things that you have invested time, money, and emotions into.

I suggest people look at 3 areas:
Firstly, stop doing things – just stop. Pick 2 or 3 activities (like projects, committee memberships, or DIY home activities) and decide not to do them. That’s the first big step.

Second, examine all the great ideas you have in your head – the things you keep thinking about that take up mental space (financial goals that have yet to come true, becoming a size ten, pipe dreams). You’ve done OK in your life without those things so far, and you’ll continue to survive. Give them up.

Third, reduce or eliminate your errands. These sneaky timewasters chew up a lot of physical and mental energy. If you haven’t’ done them, you are thinking about doing them, and once they are done, you often need to repeat them from month to month! With the technology around today, there are very few errands that need to take up time. Bill paying, shopping, buying presents – all these things can be done in a fraction of your time on the internet or can be outsourced.

The reality is if we have nothing better to do, we’ll keep doing all those things we normally do – the things that keep us busy. Simplify your life and make time to find those better things to do. Guaranteed, you’ll enjoy it.