You want to relieve stress, are you happy?
Do you want to live a meaningful life?
This may seem to be brainwashing remarks of a mysterious organization, or chicken soup and successful propaganda language, but in fact, it comes from a minimalist life.
Out of a preliminary understanding of minimalist design, when I saw this term, I had this understanding of minimalism in life: he (she) may be single or married without children, and his/her life circle is very simple, with no car, no house, no TV ... nothing, so they can achieve minimalism.
Out of curiosity, Zhihu looked up "What is minimalist life" and found the answer: the concept of minimalist lifestyle may be completely unheard of by most people. However, in the United States, books, blogs and articles about minimalist lifestyle have almost reached the point of "flooding". This should be related to the relatively developed economy and commercial market of the US imperialists for a long time. Every day, Americans are exposed to overwhelming advertisements and hear people tell you to buy this and that. After a long time, they will rebel (make mistakes) ... In other words, they really need this, because there is not so much junk in ordinary American families ... and it should be noted that minimalism refers to lifestyle, and there is no minimalism in design, art and philosophy. (from Kent Zeng, Ph.D. in Engineering)
Then the book Minimalism clearly tells me that minimalism is not deprivation, and people don't want to live a life with nothing in the name of minimalism.
Since the author has said so, it is better to find some information about minimalists and see who they are, and then discuss minimalism.
Colin Wright (/), a 32-year-old writer and international speaker, hosted a podcast called "Let's Know Things" and founded a publishing house called "Asymmetric Publishing House" with friends (Ryan, one of the authors of minimalism, is one of them).
Colin Wright's parents live in central Missouri, and his three brothers and sisters are scattered all over America. Colin Wright has been traveling all over the world since 2009 and will move to a new country about every four months. New Zealand, Thailand, Iceland, India, Romania, Czech Republic and Philippines ... He has visited about 60 countries. He loves making friends and dating when traveling, and he often meets people who are really amazing and exciting in life.
By the way, every journey of his is decided by readers' votes.
Colin Wright is currently in Memphis, Tennessee, studying cooking and playing the piano. He has recently finished a new book and is drafting another.
Leo Barbetta lives in Guam and has six children. He is also a writer and a vegetarian. He set up a blog named "Zen Habits", which faithfully recorded how he used his little strength to achieve his self-goal, a healthy, simple and happy life. In less than half a year, "Zen Habit" has become one of the top 50 blogs in the world, with more than 20,000 subscribers and an average monthly click rate of over 1 360,000. His book has also been published, and the Chinese version is called Less Power.
Joshua. Becker is the founder and editor of Become a Minimalist website. After missing the time to play with his youngest son because of cleaning up the messy garage, he gradually turned to minimalism.
From this perspective, minimalists don't live a life of nothing. On the contrary, their lives are interesting and enviable.
The authors of minimalism, Joshua (not Joshua above) and Ryan, just want people to live meaningful lives, so they wrote suggestions for this book. They believe that minimalism is an effective way to find a meaningful life.
The mainstream lifestyle tells us that having more fashionable clothes, living in a bigger house, buying a bigger TV and using more beautiful things will make us live a happy life. However, after a short period of excitement, we still get high debt and crowded space. Have we become happier? This is a problem.
Ms. Eiko Yamashita of Japan once published a book that was popular in Asia, called Breaking Up. She warned people that buying more storage boxes would not make your space tidy. The so-called separation is to cut off the chance of unwanted things entering life, abandon things that you have put away for a long time but don't use, stay away from the obsession with things and enjoy the free space. Breaking up was later applied to interpersonal relationships.
To some extent, Ms. Yamashita advocates a minimalist life-cleaning up the sediment in life and finding what she cherishes.
Joshua and Ryan used to be six-figure executives. They own a lot, like luxury houses, holidays and luxury cars ... Similarly, they are deeply in debt. By chance, they saw Colin's story. They find that what they want won't make them happy, so they want to know what hinders happiness.
Within a week, the two of them recorded something that might be the "anchor" (the first step to solve the problem is to recognize the problem). Over time, there will be many anchors on the list. The next step is to clarify the key points and divide the "anchors" into two categories, the first-level anchors and the second-level anchors. The main anchor is something that obviously hinders freedom, including houses and loans, certain interpersonal relationships, large bills and debts. The auxiliary anchor occupies our daily life, such as clothes we don't wear, internet phone bills, small debts, daily driving time and so on. They tried to get rid of the anchor above for a while, and finally got back a lot of their time.
Or you can try to pack a party, which is very suitable for couples who have just moved to a new home and can help you pack things around you. Pretend to move, ask friends to help you pack things, cover large pieces of unused furniture with cloth, and take out the materials you need next week and put them in the box. After a week, you will find that most of the things are still in the box. Those things that are not used can be donated.
Through continuous practice, Joshua and Ryan come to the conclusion that minimalism is a tool that can get rid of redundant food and focus on the most basic aspects of life, thus achieving happiness, satisfaction and freedom.
Once many unimportant things are cleared away, people will turn to the five most important aspects of life: health, interpersonal relationship, enthusiasm, growth and dedication.
Health is the most important of the five values. Imagine that you won the lottery and have an ideal partner and house, but the doctor told you that you only have one month to live. Without health, even the simplest happiness in life cannot be enjoyed.
What needs to be explained here is that health is a relative definition, not criticizing patients, but even patients or people with physical disabilities want to achieve their best physical condition. We want to have the best health.
Health itself is not a destination, but a means of transportation to take you there.
Two parts of a healthy life: diet and exercise. That is, what we eat into our bodies and what we do to them. Please be sure to know what your body is taking in.
For daily exercise, exercise is better than no exercise, and there is no problem just doing what you like.
The second value is interpersonal relationship.
We all want to be loved and share our lives with others. Therefore, interpersonal relationship plays an important role in our life.
The author suggests that we should pay attention to the minimalism of interpersonal relationships from three aspects: finding excellent interpersonal relationships, transforming existing interpersonal relationships and changing ourselves.
Take the existing interpersonal relationship seriously. Do they make you happy? Do they support you? Do they help you grow? Come on, try to make a list: the first column is names, such as people you often go to, your family, relatives, teachers, classmates, colleagues and so on. The second column is the identification item. Choose one of the three contents: primary, secondary and peripheral, and fill it at the back of everyone. The third column is influence, positive, negative, neutral, choose one from three.
When you have finished listing and checked the form, please answer: How many interpersonal relationships do you have, why are there so many (so few), what is the ratio of primary and secondary to peripheral, and what is the ratio of positive, negative and neutral?
Once you answer this question, you will understand where your time is spent. Take some time to think about these relationships and make a choice: who will be phased out and who will be promoted to the first or second level.
What people can do in interpersonal relationships is to change themselves, not others. When you are looking for a new relationship or improving an existing one, think about what you want. Don't underestimate this problem, it is very important.
Write what you want. What are their beliefs, values, wishes and interests? What is absolutely forbidden in communication? What kind of person do you have to be in order to attract such people?
Once you have determined what you want and what you absolutely don't want, you must figure out what changes you must make to attract such a person to become your friend, lover or the relationship you want most.
Write these answers and remember to take them out every day.
Joshua and Ryan first embarked on the road of minimalism through Colin, and now they are very friendly friends.
Enthusiasm is a very important part of the five values. Without enthusiasm in life, there will be no sense of fulfillment, which is the root of many people's emptiness. Can enthusiasm be cultivated? The answer is yes. After all, this is also one of the important purposes for us to choose a minimalist lifestyle.
Back to the real world, let's take a look at a person's day. No matter what you do, how much you like your job, what do you call it. Most people will call their occupation by one of their occupation, career or mission. Which one are you?
If all you do every day is work, it is difficult for you to feel satisfied and fulfilled in your work. So, we should find our own business, right?
In fact, if you want to find the meaning of life, owning a career is actually a very dangerous thing. That's because people spend too much time on their careers and restore their identity and social status on the basis of their careers.
Imagine that someone you just met will ask you a question that you have never thought of-"What do you do?" On the surface, the problem of doing things is simple, but the implication is not so.
Although the question "What do you do" involves a wide range and can include thousands of things, the question implied in this sentence is "What do you do" or "Where do you work", which is very different from the question "What do you do" itself. This "simple" question just says that I will judge you according to the way you earn money and assign you a specific social status according to your occupation.
People are often asked to answer this question, so they are rooted in their own profession: they regard their profession as their core identity, thus giving it social value far beyond reality. Once someone regards his career as his own position, it is hard for him to get rid of it, even if he hates it.
There are some doubts here. I think the author may mean work.
However, there are actually other ways to answer "What do you do?" For example, let the questioner realize that his question has never been used, and answer with another question: "That's a very broad question. What do you want to ask? " "Maybe we can talk over coffee." Or answer what you love, "I love writing (or climbing mountains), which turns the topic into something you love."
Such an answer will immediately make the other person rethink the question and help you remember that your identity is far more than your occupation. You are a mother/father, an interesting person, a grown-up person and an enthusiastic person. Your occupation does not represent your status.
As we said at the beginning, we are not satisfied with our own career, but turn to the mainstream life concept of this society. We buy a lot of things, spend too much money, become moonlight people, and want to buy happiness in every big shopping mall and every luxurious holiday that our society can find. We comfort ourselves with a temporary indulgence, but this happiness can't last long after paying the bill.
At this time, it should be noted that it does not mean that "working for an enterprise is an unfortunate bad thing", nor does it mean that people "should" be enthusiastic about something or obey some "call".
You can be interested in anything and any industry can be your mission. Some things are worthless to some people, but others are extremely eager.
In fact, in most cases, people who love their work and people who are not enthusiastic about their work are the same kind of people. They also don't want to leave the bed to deal with new projects. But at some point, they will jump out of bed and feel excited and encouraged by their mission.
However, there are two significant differences between them.
First of all, it is obvious that enthusiastic people know what they love. No one is interested in only one thing. Enthusiastic people know what they love most and what they still love. They know what makes them excited and energetic, and what makes them reach the peak.
Secondly, enthusiasm will bring more enthusiasm. Enthusiastic people turn to what they love when they are listless and add more enthusiasm to themselves. This is very important, find your mission and find what you love.
It is difficult to find enthusiasm, and we are easily trapped in our daily work. In our life, there are four main constraints that prevent us from finding enthusiasm. They are status, status, certainty and money.
Who are you? Have you thought about this question? This question looks simple on the surface, but it is actually a difficult question to answer.
Once you define your occupation as "Who are you?" The answer to this question makes it difficult for you to do anything else. This is one of the reasons why many people always stay in the same industry when they change jobs. People are limited by the concept that occupation is equal to identity, and it is difficult to realize that they are far more than that, and it is difficult to realize what kind of person they are-in fact, they are excellent in many aspects.
What qualities can you use to establish your identity? Once you get rid of the shackles of identity, you can clear the way and get rid of other shackles.
With the rise of people's position, the extension of their term of office, and their familiarity and peace of mind about their work and career, it is easy to produce a strange phenomenon: "They link their position and career more closely than anything else."
If you fall into this kind of control, it will be difficult for you to find that there are other aspects in your life that are far more important than your career.
The best way to avoid the negative influence of status and the prejudice that comes with it is to "turn down the volume". This means not taking our work seriously like others and showing them why we should trust our new identity more, which is determined by everything we do, not just our careers.
Certainty is a strange thing. We need some certainty to ensure our survival, such as ensuring the safety of residential areas. However, after satisfying the basic needs of certainty, the certainty that people need varies from person to person. Some people only need a little, while others need a lot. The former can easily cross the comfort zone of life and overcome inertia.
If you want to get out of uncertainty and bring about change. Two suggestions: the first is to connect more pain with not changing, and consider the loss in your life. Secondly, connect more happiness with the long-term sense of accomplishment of pursuing enthusiasm and completing the mission.
In a word, money is another level of uncertainty. To get rid of money, don't take it so seriously. Second, we must achieve financial freedom.
Here, Joshua and Ryan introduced an effective way to achieve financial freedom.
Step 1: Budget. Know where all our money has gone. Make a classification first, and confirm where your money has been spent in the past six months, which ones are really needed, and the atmosphere is "need, want and like". Then check with your lover's family. The stricter you are, the sooner you will be free. Then, set the boundaries. At the beginning of each month, determine where the money will be spent and draw boundaries, so you don't have to worry about what you can buy and what you can't buy. If a sum of money is not included in the consumption plan at the beginning of the month, you will wonder if it can't be spent this month. Remember, let your family comment on this. First, you may need to check once a week to make adjustments. It will be difficult at first, but in the third month, you may beat yourself up for spending a lot of money. By the way, remember to set up a safe account, just in case.
The second step is to invest in yourself. Don't think of it as investment money, but pay for you in the future.
The third step is to avoid debt. There is no benign debt in the world. It is important to say again that there is no benign debt!
The fourth step is extremely simplified. Financial freedom can also be achieved by simplifying life (for example, the author sold his mansion and moved to a small house). However, simplifying life doesn't mean having nothing, but sometimes it makes sense to deprive us of temporary satisfaction when we want to live a better life.
The fifth step is dedication. If there is an opportunity, you might as well be a volunteer. You just need to contribute to other people's lives. After a few weeks, you will find that your economic problems are nothing compared with those of the world around you.
You know, it is not easy to achieve financial freedom. You can start with small changes. For example, it takes time to make money for every purchase, and time is freedom. When you buy something, ask yourself if it is worth your freedom.
Once you get rid of the shackles on yourself, the future will become very clear.
If money is not a problem, what do you want to do with your life? Think of those exciting moments. Where are they?
If you want to effectively turn your passion into a mission, you can learn from the successful people in this field, absorb their knowledge and experience, and then make great strides. Joshua and Ryan absorbed Colin's experience and became good friends.
It is not easy to take action to get rid of the shackles. You need to have the courage to refuse what some people in society think is necessary, so that we can live a meaningful life.
The latter two are growth and dedication, and the two values together constitute the meaning of our life: to achieve personal growth and make contributions to others.
Growth can be a huge leap or a baby-like cumulative change.
Any change about growth, big or small, the first step is to make up your mind. Making up your mind is both simple and difficult, depending on one factor: the lever of influence-connecting enough satisfaction with the changes you have no choice but to make in your life. The stronger the leverage, the easier it is to make changes. If a change can't last for a long time, it's because the person can't see the long-term benefits of this change.
Once you make up your mind to make a change, once you have enough motivation, the most important thing is to act immediately. But that doesn't mean you have to leave your job immediately and change jobs, or run dozens of kilometers to improve your health. Instead, take steps in the right direction. You must establish some habits first, otherwise, you will have a lot of dissatisfaction and your change will not last long.
The first few steps are crucial. Over time, you will be surprised at the accumulation behind it.
It is very important to set a higher standard every day when taking daily actions, especially to make yourself feel uncomfortable. You don't need to improve too much, as long as you improve enough to make your daily changes a little more difficult, then your progress will be unimaginable.
While raising standards, it is also important to continue to act. The key to real growth is perseverance. Once you have enough motivation, you don't want to stop growing. It is growth that makes you feel energetic and energetic.
As you grow up, amazing things will happen and you will pay more. The more you grow, the more you can help others grow, and the more you can grow.
You are willing to do more for the people you love, because people have an innate need to contribute to others, and dedication is human instinct.
Try asking yourself "What value have you added today" to motivate yourself, or "How can I add value to the status quo" and "How can I add value to the status quo better?"
When you think from the perspective of adding value, over time, you will start to eliminate things that will not add value to you or others. You can participate by joining community organizations, public welfare organizations, teams, etc.
When you understand these five values, isn't it strange that each one is important? So, is there the most important thing? Personally, I think the most important thing is the basic health value, and the five values complement each other, so it is very important to keep a balance.
So, where do you start to realize a minimalist life? You may be an extreme realist, or you may start with a packed party, or you may start with a small drawer and be conservative. Anyway, remember, after making up your mind to change your life and make what should be a necessity, you must put it into action.
Freedom awaits you.