Logan J. Davisson - The Colors Of A Optimistic World

All minimalists have one thing in common regardless of their individual stage of development and focus: they focus on consciously renouncing material abundance in order to create more space for a fulfilled life. It is clear to all of them that possessions do not guarantee happiness and contentment, that material goods do not build friendships and love, and that changing one's own consumerist habits (spiritual and practical) opens entirely new doors. Suddenly there is more time again for an intensive examination of oneself and one's own happiness in life. Most people feel happy after an extensive shopping tour, but this is not a lasting, real and deep happiness. Instead of shopping indiscriminately, conscious consumption and above all renunciation are lived. The decision to minimalism has nothing to do with poverty, but with attentiveness!

Necessity of minimalism

Why is it necessary to consciously limit oneself? Because it gives us back full control over our habits and thought processes. Constantly present advertising, seemingly endless unused possibilities thanks to apps and Co., one special offer after another and how do we react to it? We just walk along, we give ourselves up to the whole thing and feel quite comfortable in our consumption-controlled skin for a short time. However, it quickly becomes clear that the new Smart TV doesn't really make you happy if you sit alone in front of it evening after evening. Today's society already teaches children at a young age that one is more respected if one is equipped with the most up- to-date material goods. Only then is one properly accepted by society and part of it. How much money do you spend on your apartment every month? How many hours did you go to work for it? And how many hours were you actually at home to enjoy this beautiful apartment and the new Smart TV? Our days have every 24 hours of which we spend on average 8 at work and 8 at bed. We still have 8 more hours left, which can be quickly filled with the way to work, a little television and shopping. How many of these 24 hours do we really consciously experience, how many of our decisions do we consciously make and how consciously do we really shape our lifetime?

This is exactly where the necessity of minimalism begins: Through a minimalist lifestyle, we carefully and consciously choose what we fill our time with, what goods are allowed to play a role in our lives, and what facets of our lives are really important to us. Through minimalism we pedal ourselves free, we free ourselves not only from material goods, but also let unhealthy behaviour and ways of thinking go, perceive ourselves better and can let true feelings of happiness enter our lives.

Advantages of minimalism

The advantages of minimalism are obvious: Those who don't spend every Saturday on extensive shopping tours suddenly have time for completely different activities and also save a lot of money. Let's say you spend an hour watching TV or sitting at your smartphone (or both at the same time?) in the evening. The conscious renunciation of media and social media can also be an aspect of minimalism. As you can see, part of your minimalism could be the deliberately limited use of media. In this way, you prevent yourself from being "sprinkled" with less valuable content on TV and other media and create space for yourself to deal with things that really get you ahead and have a real benefit for you. You could use this saved time for example to read books with useful knowledge, to become creative yourself or to learn the art of meditation.

What is the advantage of merciless clearing out of one's own four walls? The old, unused coffee machine finally finds a new owner and you have less ballast. The material ballast in your home inevitably has an influence on your mental situation. The separation from unnecessary material objects helps you to let go, to separate yourself, to create space for yourself and to focus again on yourself and your happiness in life.

The advantages of minimalism are therefore clearly defined:

- You save a lot of money by more conscious consumption.

- Material goods receive an ideal value that has nothing to do with the material value itself.

- Your handling of your belongings is becoming more conscious.

- You save a lot of time by avoiding shopping tours and dealing with the latest market trends.

- You let go of superfluous material possessions and create more space for yourself.

- You have the opportunity to consciously deal with what makes you really happy.

- You will develop more conscious and mindful thought processes and patterns of behaviour and thus have more opportunities to take care of yourself, become creative and develop yourself personally.

- You learn which facets of your life actually contribute to your long-term happiness and give your life a deeper meaning.

These are just a few of the advantages of minimalism to bring you closer to its strong effects. On your way to a minimalist lifestyle you will discover many more individual advantages that minimalism offers you personally.

Now that you know what is meant by a minimalist lifestyle, why it makes sense and what its benefits are, it's time to take a closer look at your habits. In this chapter you will learn more about the connections between our (still) consumption-driven habits and minimalism. So you're one step closer to the practice again. It's likely that as you read through this chapter, you'll realize how minimalism could enrich your life - don't worry, in the next chapter we'll get down to work on the practical implementation.

The connection between thoughts and habits

Our thoughts control our habits. Our thoughts naturally also control our shopping habits, our media habits and similar habits. So we should take a closer look at how the thought patterns that shaped our consumer behaviour came about. The constant hype about the latest car model, the latest smartphone, the biggest TV and the most expensive shoes - does that make us happy? No, not really, because we are constantly under stress to meet these strange expectations. From experience, we can say that many of these consumption-driven habits arise out of fear. For example, there would be the fear of not fitting into society, of losing one's social status and thus of becoming an outsider. So it can't hurt if you take a little time to investigate whether there may be similar fears behind your consumption habits. These fears are human, because who wants to be alone? The hoarding and collecting lulls us into a deceptive security. Most habits are already so firmly anchored in our behavioural habits that we no longer perceive them. This is a good thing, because it makes our everyday life a lot easier. Otherwise, we would stand in front of the refrigerated shelf every time we shop and philosophize about which butter should be put in the shopping basket and why. Habits therefore make our everyday lives easier. Around 80% of our behavioural repertoire consists of habitual actions. Well, at some point in life every person comes to a point where he wants to change something. And this works best through changes in our habits. You want to make your life more minimalistic? Then you should become aware of habits that do not fit your new attitude towards life and change them in a targeted way. That sounds easy at first, but have you ever tried running backwards all day? No way! It would be incredibly exhausting because we're not used to it. Changing habits means being very reflective, motivated and mindful over a longer period of time in order to uncover old patterns of behaviour and replace them with new, better ones.

Setting new habits as goals

In order to achieve our goals, i.e. the establishment of our new minimalist lifestyle, we need one thing above all else: motivation. Motivation arises as soon as we have set ourselves a goal that is realistic, challenging and not overstraining at the same time. This goal can best be subdivided into several subgoals - this works wonderfully with minimalism. After all, minimalism has incredibly many different facets and is more a development than a fixed concept. In the next chapter you will get to know many subgoals of minimalism. Maybe some of them suit you or you can think of other inspiring partial goals. Set one minimalist goal per week and divide it into seven steps. Let us take the example of the "minimalist bathroom project" as an illustration. This project could be a weekly project and can be divided into seven different steps: