Have you ever thought how would it be to live a minimalist lifestyle? Can you imagine how your life would be if you wouldn’t have the necessity to have more in order to be happier? Wouldn’t that be the key to a more fulfilled and balanced life? Wouldn’t that be freedom? Absolutely. Our life and our own minds would benefit from a minimalist lifestyle. Let’s analyze together the benefits of living a minimalist lifestyle.

Nowadays we live in a world where we strive to have more. The problem is that we have accepted the idea that more equals more happiness, but the truth is, the more you want, the less happy you are, but how can this be true? Because in that way, we exchange our freedom for possessions, why? Because material possessions are not really paid with money, but with time, time that we spend from our life in order to get those possessions, and if we have less time to enjoy our life, how can we be really happy?

We have fallen into the trap of believing that the more we have, the more successful and happy our life will be, and if we look at it from a particular perspective, we can say that’s true. The problem is, that moment of satisfaction lasts as the blink of an eye. We feel happy, successful and fulfilled, but quickly that sensation starts to vanish, and we begin to feel the same feeling of emptiness, becoming addicts to the idea of having more and more, so we can feel one more time, fulfilled and happy

 “We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy.” – Richard Foster

The ultimate problem is that the more we want, the more dependent we become, and what we own, begins to own us, and that way, the less free we become. Therefore, our happiness is compromised by the things we possess and do not possess. That way we always see the glass half-empty, giving us the feeling of dissatisfaction and emptiness, and so, desperately we go after more things in order to get back our happiness, which we recover momentarily.

As we can see, the idea that having more is the key to happiness is mistaken. What I mean is, that is okay to want to acquire more possessions in your life, but the idea that those things will make us have a fulfilled and happy life is wrong. If this were true, people who can have everything would be happy, and people with nothing would be miserable, and that is not exactly what happens in this world, just because possessions doesn’t determine our happiness. Therefore, possessions are not the key factor for a happy life.

“The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” – Tyler Durden (Fight Club)

The truth is that is okay to aim for a life where we can get everything we want, but we should never depend on material possessions, or any other superficial thing in our life, in order to be happy. That is exactly what I mean with living a minimalist lifestyle. It is to live in a way where our happiness, freedom and peace of mind does not depend on material things. It is being happy with what we already have, without having the necessity to obtain more things in order to be happy.

Living a minimalist lifestyle means to set away from our mind and daily life, everything that distract us from being happy and at peace. It is being free to feel good at any moment, without depending on external things. When we live in a minimalist way, we focus our mind in what it is really important, what gives us the power to control our feelings, and not letting other things to control us.

“The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.” – Elise Boulding

When we live a minimalist lifestyle we focus on the things that really matter. It is the best way to become our true self, because we are no longer distracted with other less important things, what can help us develop our true potential. The truth is, we do not need much to live a happy and fulfilled life, but what we need is less things that can distract our mind from the small and more essential things that really make a difference in our lives, those things fill our emptiness, complete our soul, without those things we are lost, and we will always fall in the game of having more things in order to complete it, and this is something that will never happen, because our soul is completed with those things that can’t be bought.

Let’s focus our mind on the important aspects of our lives, keeping the things that are really essential, feeling content with less, leaving behind all the unnecessary things that only forbid us from enjoying our lives.