by Robert Leary
Now you are getting a clearer picture of the mindset behind minimalism. It’s not just about getting rid of stuff to save money, though that is a bonus. It’s about freeing your mind of the clutter that life throws at you—things that are falsely believed to offer the things that are only found in personal relationships and connections, reflection, creativity, belief systems, etc. Money truly cannot buy happiness. Happiness itself is a fluid thing that happens spontaneously out of personal life experiences that rarely have anything to do with money.
So how extreme does this minimalism stuff go? Well, if you’re interested, there is a whole new world of what are called “tiny homes” which have been growing in popularity. Now, I’m sure at this point this is probably way too extreme for you, but it’s still a fascinating thing to check out if you’re curious.
Tiny homes are just that—very, very tiny. They can be as small as your bathroom and contain only the very bare minimum of modern comforts. You have a place to sleep, a place to cook simple meals, perhaps a small area to store a very, very small number of possessions and…that’s it! But when you think about it, it isn’t all that far off from RV living, which is another very popular way to gain freedom from the pressure and financial strain of the modern world. (An RV doesn’t offer much more than a tiny home—plus, it’s mobile!)
The idea is that human beings really don’t need all this stuff marketers tell us we need. We can actually live on a very simple regimen of simple, healthy, environment-friendly food and the joy of being around people we love. Applying this principle to your own life may help you to see how frivolous and unimportant many of your past concerns and worries were. We are conditioned to feel an emptiness and to feel the need to fill that emptiness with things. When those things begin to clutter our homes and personal environments, we can see a direct parallel between this environment and the one inside our minds. Decluttering your home and making way for a fresh new start is invaluable in supporting the effort of decluttering your mind. Take the time you need to complete this important step, and soon you will be ready to build upon the new and improved you.
Once you’ve made strides toward decluttering your home, you will find you are not only able to move more freely about your space, but that your thinking becomes clearer, too! All of these steps are included together for a reason and will work together for you as you progress.
Once you’ve reached this place, look around your home and take a deep breath. This is your new canvas for creating your life the way you’ve always wanted to live it.
The next step in our journey is to start concentrating on how to form good habits that will cultivate your continued victory over information overload and overthinking. This is a place many people never get to, so give yourself a big pat on the back. This may also be a good time to think about the people in your life to whom you are closest. Do you have a loved one or a close friend who seems to be in the same boat you’ve been in terms of overthinking and information overload? Perhaps you could recruit a partner to help you as you work on forming good habits. Along the way, you just might drastically improve another life in the process!
Chapter 6: Form Good Habits
Focusing on getting rid of the bad habits isn’t enough. Now, we need to introduce good habits into our new life.
I hope you’ve continued to work on the thought interruption for all those unneeded or negative thoughts. You’ve even come up with a new activity to try or go back to from when you were a child. It’s time to focus on you as a person and what it is you want out of life. There are several things you can do regularly to prime your mind, body, and spirit for the new you. Let’s look at a few of them.
Prioritize relationships with people—not things
In today’s information-saturated society, it has become natural to pull out our phones whenever there is any amount of downtime. When you look at people waiting in lines all over the city, in stores, waiting to be seated in restaurants, they are always sitting or standing with their heads down, noses in their phones. And why not? On our phones, we can play fun games, chat with friends, read blog posts or news stories, keep up with our celebrities… Wait a second, didn’t we just talk about getting rid of information overload? That’s right. Now, it is time to prioritize your relationships and interactions with other people. Let’s set a small challenge for you to try this week.
When you go to the grocery store or to the bank, or maybe even when you take your family out to dinner next time, leave your phone in the car. What?! Yes, that’s what I said. Leave your phone in the car. When you are standing in line—and this may be a little nerve-wracking—try saying something nice to the person behind or in front of you. I know…you might get a confused look, maybe they will be too immersed in their own phones to notice you, or perhaps it will have been so long since they’ve received real human communication they won’t even know what to do. But I challenge you. Talk to someone in line, then see what happens. Odds are, you’re going to have a positive interaction that will stay with you for the rest of the day. Most people really enjoy chit-chatting with strangers at the store. A lot of people get a big boost in mood from even the littlest interactions like that. No matter how good it seems to feel when you get a new text or a like on your Facebook post, it’s never going to feel the same as genuine human interactions. So, do yourself a favor and challenge yourself to connect with someone you don’t know at least once a week.
Now let’s concentrate on the relationships in your life with your loved ones, friends, and/or family. Think of one person who you consider a good friend that you haven’t spoken to in a week or more. Why is that? Is it because you’ve been busy with work? Busy with the kids? For whatever reason, you’ve decided that other things in your life take precedence over your relationship with that friend. I would ask you to consider if you’ve really been too busy to fit in a 15-minute phone call with a friend. Perhaps you think you’ve been too tired after work and just haven’t made it a priority. This is something I would challenge you to change in terms of mindset. Human relationships and friendships are the most important aspects of our lives, and it would be a shame to sacrifice valuable time with those people for a night of Netflix and pizza every single night of the week. I know work is exhausting, and you want to come home and just watch TV and forget about the world. But we’ve talked about this, too. Why would you waste away your life like this? If your job is so taxing that you can’t concentrate on anything else and you are so desperate to get away from it that you can’t function in the evenings, maybe it’s time to reevaluate your career choices. But I’ll wait until we get to that tip in a few minutes. Right now, your challenge is to set a date this week to go out and meet up with one of your favorite people for a chat and maybe dinner. If you don’t want to spend money, invite them over to your place and plan a meal together. Maybe you want to go over there because their house is quieter…that’s fine! Whatever you decide to do, the important thing is that you set the goal of making time for a friend this week. This is a really great habit that you will get a lot out of. Much more than that pint of Moose Tracks ice cream in the fridge can offer!
Maintain that journal and track your progress
Journaling is a great way to keep your mind focused and record your progress. It’s great to have a written source to come back to any time you feel like you need a little encouragement. Try to write a little bit in your journal every single day. Write about how you feel, what challenges you’ve succeeded with recently, and your determination to keep going. This is also a great way to keep yourself accountable. Write down what you’ve challenged yourself to do this week and write it down right away when you’ve completed it. Keep going, and soon you will have pages of great work to look back on when you feel you are losing steam or need a pick-me-up. Because we all have those days and that’s okay! Like I said before, this is a big undertaking. And it’s important that your challenges not turn in to chores and sources of overthinking just like the ones you’ve worked so ha
rd to banish! Challenge yourself, but don’t over-burden yourself. Do not try to take on every single tip in this chapter at once! I’m laying out several options in the hopes that there will be a few that really stand out to you as something you think would drastically improve your daily life and your thought processes. And remember, no one changes their lives overnight!
Keep in mind that your journal doesn’t have to just be filled with words. If you’re like me and you enjoy motivational quotes or inspiring pictures, use your journal or notebook as a sort of scrapbook and include pictures, quotes, cartoons, even stuff like ticket stubs and birthday cards, stuff you might otherwise lose or throw away. These things are a lot of fun to look back on, and you will be happy you kept them later on.
Eat healthier
Eat healthier—not “eat healthy.” I put it this way because there is no surer way to derail your progress than to overload you with a challenge like completely changing the way you eat immediately. If you are already a pretty healthy eater, that’s great! But I would caution you and others alike to not get too caught up in any nutrition hype or fad that seems to be eating up your Facebook and social media feeds. This is another great example of letting something intended to improve your life become a source of obsession, overthinking, stress, and feelings of failure. Nutrition plans and supplement marketing is just as big as any other form of marketing, and you should never adopt a diet or nutrition plan as the final say of nutrition. Use some common sense, don’t overeat, and try to eat more healthy stuff than unhealthy stuff. That’s really all you need to worry about right now. Don’t go on an extremely low-carb diet right now. You’re dealing with something far more important than that.
If you’re wondering what a healthier eating habit looks like, I would suggest keeping a record of what you eat in a day for two or three days. Then review it. Is something standing out as potentially harmful? For example, if you’re eating frozen pizzas and cookies every night and notice you feel like crap, this could be a good reason why. I’m not saying eat salad and quinoa every day, but everyone can make one or two small changes to their eating routines and see a big improvement in overall energy and mood. Try to lower your sugar intake and eat a few more green things a week. That’s all you need to do to start. Small steps, like anything else, will see you go far.
Exercise
It’s time for everyone’s favorite healthy mind/body tip—exercise! Now, don’t groan. Let’s discuss it a little. No, you don’t have to start training for a marathon or buy a complete set of dumbbells for your new impromptu home gym. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it for nearly every tip on this list—one small step at a time. When you break things down and take it one step at a time, you will be far more successful with your goals than if you try to take on too much at a time. It is also so important, especially with exercise, to evaluate your personal condition and ability. Don’t compare yourself with the YouTube fitness stars doing crazy workouts every single day and chugging protein shakes. This is about you and your personal improvement, and no one else’s plan is going to match yours perfectly.
Just like with the healthy eating habit, the first step is to take a look at what you are already doing and move up a rung on the activity level. That’s all. If you’re someone who enjoys working out but doesn’t seem to find the time to do it, then I’m calling you out! Exercise is not about the length of time, it’s about how hard you work, and I’m only talking a few minutes each day to start. If you are starting at zero activity, then your goal is simply to think of opportunities to walk or stand instead of sit. If you can, fit in a walk around the block or go to a park and walk a little bit. If you’re at home, get up from your desk and do something physical every hour or two to get your blood pumping a little more. It’s about making small changes. Turn those small changes into habits then concentrate on moving up another rung.
A lot of people think they need a pricey gym membership to get in better shape. This is just not true. There are tons of exercises you can do at home with zero equipment and little space that are very adequate for improving overall health. Maybe you’re a unique case if you’re actually training to compete in body-building competitions. But most of us are going to see a huge improvement in mood, energy, and overall health from simply turning some of that sitting time into a little exercise. Search the internet or go on YouTube if you are unsure of what to do. Things like squats, push-ups, sit-ups, plank holds, jogging, walking, running, and dancing require zero equipment and can be done almost anywhere you feel like it. If you think it would motivate you if you had a partner alongside you, go for it! Go to a group fitness class every week if you think that would be more fun. The main goal is simply to add some physical activity to your schedule that amounts to more than you were doing before. Again, don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to start a 30-day challenge or extreme 5-day workout schedule. Your focus right now is your mind—don’t clutter it back up where you’ve worked so hard to find clarity.
Make time for you regularly
This is another one that can mean lots of different things to different people. Making time for you simply mean setting aside time every day to engage in an activity that makes you feel good and calm you. The exception I’m going to suggest here is that you don’t make this chocolate or junk food time. Yes, chocolate makes you feel good…for a few minutes…but overall, it would be a terrible idea to form the habit of eating badly in the name of “you” time. I’m sure there are other, more healthy alternatives!
Do you enjoy massages? Of course, most people aren’t going to get a massage every single day, but maybe once a month you treat yourself to a professional massage. On a daily basis, find something that relaxes you and set aside half an hour or more just for that. Even if it’s just taking a nap! Read a book, light a candle, do something that clears and relaxes your mind and doesn’t work you up. This is about unwinding, but instead of replacing the stress of your day with something loud and distracting for the rest of the night, the goal is to calm and quiet your mind and body. Stretching is a great way to do this, especially if you’ve been stuck in an office chair all day. Maybe you just want to have a conversation with your partner or a friend over a cup of coffee. If you need to, brainstorm on a piece of paper before choosing something that speaks to you.
To-do lists
Many of us like to have every day organized and that’s great. The problem of overthinking creeps in when we start to obsess about getting every single thing on the list done, even those things that are not essential. Part of forming good habits is learning when to say no to something that you just don’t have the mental energy to do if it is non-essential. If you feel stressed but you’re making strides toward changing your life and habits, then it’s ok if you want to pass on that work outing or that birthday party for a friend of a friend you don’t even know very well. If you think your time would be better spent at home relaxing or doing something you enjoy, then choose yourself. You don’t always have to choose to give your valuable time and energy to others just because they ask for it. Obligation is a powerful force in a lot of people’s lives, and many people end up feeling guilty if they don’t always say yes to invitations or requests. But this is just another pile of clutter building up in your mind leading to overthinking. Feelings and thoughts of guilt are just as powerful as any other emotion, and you should protect yourself from them.
Organize your to-do list by priority. Obviously, grocery shopping to feed your kids comes before trimming the hedges in the front yard and this chore should be further down on the list. Maybe make a separate list for things you need to accomplish today and things that need to be completed this week. This will give your mind a little more space and comfort. Instead of seeing a list of 20 things to do today, you may get to 5 or 6 things today and the rest can be planned throughout the week as you have time and energy.
Ask for help when you need it
This can be a big one for those overthinkers who are also overachievers and perfe
ctionists! Sometimes, we commit to too much, then feel obligated to push ourselves too hard to fulfill what we’ve committed to. Don’t try to be superman or superwoman. There are going to be times when you need help, especially if you are juggling responsibilities with work and also a family. Have a conversation about it with your loved ones and friends, and you will find that most of the time they are willing to help you out. It is important that you not feel like a failure for asking for help. No one gets through life alone. Let this be an opportunity to bond and form fresh connections while learning to work together. You will feel much better and your relationships will become stronger.
Be grateful
Clearing your mind of clutter is also about cleansing your emotions. When you begin to get rid of clutter and negative thoughts in your mind, as well as clutter in your environment that is connected to harmful emotions, it is important that you start replacing those negative feelings with positive ones. At first, it may take effort and a written reminder to get yourself going, but eventually, the goal is to make these thoughts automatic.