How to be a Minimalist and be Happy at the same time?
Interesting question you may say… The only answer i have from my personal experience is to know what kind of life. You would like to live…
- To have a Big House
- Travel the World
- Have Kids
- Drive a Porsche
- Be a public Speaker
- And more…
Why am i saying that? Is it more, how your life will fufill you SO you feel happy. At that point , you don’t need to have all of the material possessions around you to be happy. It is not a easy task because you will need to work on yourself a lot to make it happen.I had to take drastic mesures to have a small chance to succeed on having a decent life and less stress!
Minimalist.
Let’s start with the real Definition.
Source Wikipedia Copyright:
“Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one’s lifestyle. These may include, for example, reducing one’s possessions, generally referred to as minimalism, or increasing self-sufficiency. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they have rather than want.”
It is not going to be a long article but needed to address the principle of the minimalist versus happiness. It is important to understand the difference and not to mix, be happy and spending money on credit cards.
My point is:
- Spend less than you should
- Save more
- Pay your debt
- and… Stanley it is easy to say but how to do it?
The answer is: You are the one who know ,what you really want and how it should be done. If you are in debt up to your ears, why not sell the house to generate some cash.
There is nothing wrong to take a step back to go forward after, before i was always thinking about what peoples will say or see us doing. Today, it is a different story… I do what is right for me and my family. Once you start doing the necessary steps ,your life will never be the same.
Don’t have a house, try to move to a different location to save on rent or change the type of car your driving. Most of the time we are in debt because of the bad decision we took in the past or even present.
Why most peoples want to put their kids in private school?
- To have a better education
- Give them more chances to succeed
- It is a family thing
- Status
- and more…
All of the above make sense and i have nothing against the fact to send your kids to private schools. My problem is: Most don’t have enough money to send their kids to private schools but they do it anyway and at the end.They end up sick, not happy, no time for their kids (overtime), multiple jobs. Be careful on your choices!
Happiness.
To be a minimalist require a lot of work, you will need to clean your finances and i’m not sugar coated this point, it is difficult. But well worthed, i encourage you to take the necessary actions to make it happen.
Happiness is related to your finances, if they are bad ,it will affect your emotion. A question that i do ask a lot is: Are you happy in your current situation and most of the time peoples will say yes with a hesitation.
We all know we are up to “here” with everything that we have to manage in our lives but take a moment today.
- Reflect on your life
- Are you happy?
- Any new projects?
- Travel more?
- Husband and wife, need a adjustment? (Communication is key)
- School or don’t like school (Talk to someone)
- Not enough money ( Adjust our finances)
- and more…
Also, what you could do to change your situation.
Change your major
Ask for a raise (do more things)
- Open a store
- Change country
- Learn a new language
- Take a class
- Search online for student program exchange
- Government grant to start a business
- and more…
Source Wikipedia Copyright:
Happiness: Current experience, including (a) the feeling of an emotion (affect) such as pleasure or joy,[1] or (b) a more general sense of ’emotional condition as a whole’.For instance Daniel Kahneman has defined happiness as “what I experience here and now“
Everybody have their own explanation on how to be happy or define happiness… Again my point is…
You are the one who will decide on how to be happy and how to have less in your life. To have more to focus on the things you love. If you look around, you will see successful peoples having everything for themselve but this is just the surface.
We all have our personal situation and most of us don’t like to share our painful experiences. This is how we grow by sharing our values, our bad experiences and good hits.
MinHap.
[Minimalist-Happiness]
The new word of the day, “MinHap”! If you choose to be a minimalist and have less in your life, perfect. This option will help you have more control in your life, time to focsu on the right thing.
See the exercise of Minimalist versus happiness of being stock in a elevator and having the choice to get out or to wait for the emergency team.
Each choices will give you almost the same result, to be out of the elevator but the first is the one you should choose (my personal opinion). By taking the hard decision to take action in the moment, you have more chances to succeed compare…. To wait for something to happen or depending on someone else, it may never happen!
Do what you feel is right for you, just be happy.
Stanley
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