“Baggage weighs us down only when we refuse to set it down.”
Inside Minimalism
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Confessions of an Ex-Hoarder
Lessons learned in my search for meaning
By Daisy U
It started with stashing extra notebooks, pens, and socks in kindergarten. Decades later, it became a collection of everything I needed to be liked and happy.: at least 90 pairs of shoes, a closet with bulging doors, hundreds of books, and shelves of camera equipment to meet me when I got home.
Instead of feeling fulfilled, my things made me feel empty.
I thought I must not have found the right things. I shopped more, spent more, and rationalized it as ‘investing in myself and the successful life I was building’. I worked more to pay for all these new things, yet they still didn’t give my life meaning.
The moment of change happened in my mid-twenties during a 7.2 magnitude earthquake when everything came tumbling down around me… literally.
The many things I’d hoarded made an already terrible tragedy even more difficult. The things I owned falling around my ears along with ceiling plaster almost led to injury. This led to cleanup and repairs: throwing out what broke and couldn’t be fixed, dealing with the closet door that caved in, sweeping and dusting and folding and washing. Rinse, wash, and repeat.
I quickly realized that my things were weighing me down. Not only because of what I spent to buy them, but the cost of storing and maintaining them. And in the middle of the earthquake, they weren’t what I valued anyways. In those scary moments, my mind turned to a short list of people I loved and three things I enjoyed using. Everything else was non-essential.
Thus, my minimalism journey began. I let go of what didn’t serve me and realized that letting go didn’t make me a lesser version of myself. Passing on these things led to the discovery of what really mattered, and how everything that mattered weren’t really things.
Why Did We Stop Reading?
How to remove the obstacles that get in the way of our reading
By Joshua Fields Millburn
We have the best of intentions every time we purchase a new book. But then we get busy and, over time, our bookshelves become mausoleums of unread tomes. Stacks and stacks of novels and biographies and self-help books, all collecting dust.
There are at least two reasons we stumble into this predicament. First, we put too much pressure on ourselves: we see someone online who claims they read a book a week, and then we beat ourselves up when we don’t live up to their expectations. Second, we let that which is easy and passive—social media, news feeds, television—pull our attention away from deeper, more meaningful pursuits like long-form reading.
But we can remove both of these obstacles with relative ease. First, we can set our own expectations—how about we each resolve to read just one enriching book per month this year? Second, we can eliminate as many distractions as possible—starting with removing the social media apps from our phones, and then replacing them with an e-reader app so that when we feel the tug of instant gratification, we reach for an e-book instead of our Instagram feeds. If we make only those two changes, we’ll read considerably more throughout the coming twelve months.
For more of my favorite books, check out my recommended books list.
A Little More of Less
A few other articles we think you might enjoy…
→ Time Management for Top Performers by Leo Babauta
→ Mood Boosters: 7 Little Shelters In The Storm by Courtney Carver
→ Words by Manu Moreale
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