If in the past, if a merchant wanted to sell their goods, they had to rely on our trips to the market or roadside shops, then today they can easily sell their goods to us, just by hoping. We are stuck with our phones for as long as possible.

If in the past, advertisers could only make you see their ads at a certain time on TV, a single page in a magazine, or a billboard on a tall building where street corner…. Today, we voluntarily watch their ads via Youtube, Facebook livestream…

We are living very closely with consumerism. This is good for economic development, but for that reason, no one talks much about the insecurities that are spreading in modern society.

We want more and more, advertisers and social networks constantly create strange desires for us. We want what our neighbors have, and we want the experiences seen through the frames of someone we meet on Facebook every day. Our jealousy and endless desire are nourished more strongly than ever. And happiness is becoming more and more difficult for each person, because we ourselves do not aim at having enough, we aim at what we do not have. We will be happy with our salary when we are unaware of other people’s income. Once we know someone easily makes more money than us, we feel that what once made us happy becomes strangely lacking.

Happiness is becoming more and more expensive in a world filled with luxury, while worries are gradually spreading strongly in the air we breathe every day. Many of us no longer have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter, we worry because someone owns things we don’t have. We fear missing out on society’s trendiest trends. We constantly worry about missing opportunities and good choices. Many times because of someone’s very good choice, we hardly have any pride in what we have in our hands.

We live in an era of too many career options, too many options for things we need to buy, too many needs that arise for no reason and no one understands why we possess those needs. We are confused and insecure. We are not happy not because we are not enough, we are not happy because of the things others possess that we do not. We are becoming slaves to our own desires.

Faced with such a context, a minimalist lifestyle is like a tool to regain freedom. Get rid of fears. Get rid of insecurities. Free ourselves from the cozy cradle of over-promoted consumerism.

However, we need to understand it correctly to avoid falling into another trap. There are still many people embracing minimalist living as a movement, while there is also a wave of criticism emerging. Those people don’t really understand the meaning of a minimalist lifestyle. Critics especially, what they criticize mostly reflect faulty versions of minimalism. They don’t even distinguish between minimalism and anything that looks like minimalism.

When it comes to minimalism, most people think of throwing away as many things as possible, and living as restrictively as possible. But these are just incomplete understandings that people draw feelings from its name or see others doing it.

First we need to understand what minimalism is before we can apply it to build a minimalist lifestyle. If you learn about the definition of minimalism, you will see that it originates from art. And its meaning is minimalist to bring back the most essential things of nature. Simply understanding this when applied to life is eliminating all that is redundant to revolve around the core functions and values ​​of life. 

So when you get rid of the excess, if done right, it’s not about suffering or being restrictive. That’s freedom. From there, the core values ​​in your life have room to prosper. So if done right, it leads to prosperity, not poverty as people think.

But many of us are not good at knowing what is truly superfluous and what just looks necessary. What is redundant to others is not always redundant to us. That is if we follow the trend, we will fail. Each of us functions and revolves around values ​​that are different to some degree. That’s why, the minimalist lifestyle has a degree of flexibility when applied.

To be truly successful in using minimalism to pursue freedom and happiness, we must pursue two things that I find we often don’t discuss:

– Ask yourself serious questions & look for serious answers (often we are impulsive and superficial)

– Prioritize building order and discipline first instead of thinking about the amount of furniture.

The first is that we must take time for ourselves. You need to understand yourself: position, responsibilities, direction. If you don’t have a compass for yourself, you will rush in any direction when someone knows how to stimulate your own impulses.

House size

Electronic device

Wardrobe, type of clothing

Vehicles

…

You cannot design your life effectively without knowing your most essential needs. We often make decisions on the above issues very superficially, emotionally… That’s why even though we have different lives, even very different, but have very similar messes. .

Asking questions and taking the time seriously will help you design your life effectively, eliminating excess while still retaining what best serves you to develop your own life in a prosperous direction.

A business person needs their own means of delivery. When they feel it is really necessary and gives them a competitive advantage, instead of assigning it to a third party, they can spend money on a motorbike. with expensive engines. However, if you see them owning that car and longing to have it when you hardly need it. Maybe you should think seriously again.

Your best friend’s personality and circumstances are suitable for becoming a businessman and he can really make a lot of money with his current business. This doesn’t mean we’re a good fit, and wanting to own the same business when we’re not really a good fit is redundant.

However, we need to be careful about making excuses for our own choices. We are really good at creating our own reasons. That’s why adopting Minimalism is not nearly as easy as we think it is. The ultimate goal is still to help each person meet what is truly necessary, while gradually eliminating what does not contribute to the true value of our lives.

Second, we should focus on our habits instead of cutting back or cleaning up. It’s almost a fantasy that you aggressively clean on a nice day and have a strong expectation that the house will stay in this state after a while.

When I was in Japan, there was one thing I was very impressed with in their way of living and working. They are very disciplined in maintaining order. Everything has process and order. The order of objects is your responsibility to return them exactly to their original state. That’s why everything is always maintained in a neat order. This means:

Your coat should always be hung up in the same place after use. When storing in the cupboard after washing, keep it in the correct compartment and position.

When you finish charging, you must roll it up and put it in the box and put it back in its correct position on the shelf.

When you finish watching TV, the TV remote must be neatly placed in the correct position where it belongs.

…

Perhaps you feel that the smallest details are not worth meticulous scrutiny like the Japanese, but connecting all the small details can create a neat and orderly overall picture that we wish.

This is not the same as restraint. You cannot find true freedom outside of certain discipline. Being easy on ourselves in many situations creates constant trouble for us, and our true freedom is lost by spending time wallowing in the trouble we unintentionally create. go out.

The goal of pursuing minimalism is to create space for your true values ​​to develop. That’s why you also need to understand which of your own values ​​are worth pursuing. Otherwise, boredom will tempt you to indulge in unnecessary desires.