Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
This is the first part in a series of articles focusing on the key elements of being minimalist. At the end of the series I’ll be packaging the whole deal and releasing it as a free e-book.
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The world has changed, we no longer need most of our stuff anymore. In fact, those who forsake their stuff entirely open themselves up to a world or opportunity.
A minimalist realizes that stuff only holds you down. When you decide to give it all up, to free yourself from the endless cycle of meaningless consumerism, you can be free to make your dreams reality.
Technology is the enabler.
Technology has given us the power to take our businesses online. We can automate and facilitate transactions that revolve around ideas. A new generation of minimalist practitioners are applying this philosophy to free themselves from the constraints of the physical world. Their businesses are thriving online, while the brick and mortar world is constrained by permanent location.
Permanent location under florescent lights.
Instead of harnessing this dream, many of us are still spending so much money on stuff we don’t use. We spend so much time and effort maintaining stuff we haven’t looked at in years, and might use someday.
It’s all understandable though. The industrial age taught us with billions of advertising dollars that we need to buy buy buy, but another piece of plastic stacked in a corner never made anyone happier.
You’re forgiven.
Now we’ll show you how to change.
It’s time to give it all up. Minimalism can free you, if you let it.
Consumerists are dodging around the truth, and meanwhile you’re the one filling up someone else’s pockets with money they didn’t need to have.
By being minimalist:
- You can quit your day job.
- You can travel the world.
- You can move anywhere you want.
- You can work from anywhere.
There are many examples of people doing this, but Colin Wright is one of the best.
He decided to ditch all of his stuff and took his sustainable design studio online. Now he moves to a new continent every four months, and since leaving has visited Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, he stopped over in New York and LA, and now he’s headed to New Zealand via Melbourne, Australia. He lives with less than 70 things, and they all fit in a backpack. His business is thriving, and he’s even found the time to write two brilliant free e-books.
I bet you wish you could be like Colin, but any number of excuses are popping up in your head.
Here’s the thing: none of those excuses matter, the only difference between you and the life he leads is the decision to not be afraid.
You are the director of your own destiny.
So why are you filling your house with junk instead of living your life? Make the choice now to rent a dumpster and destroy your attachment to the piles of useless physical things forever.
We’re living in a post-geographical society, and this has changed everything.
You can attain freedom. You just have to make the decision to free yourself. It starts with the stuff, next comes your time, eventually you’ll find that you had the power all along to thrive with only the essentials.
We all have the ability to be free, to live anywhere and work from anywhere. Being minimalist is the key.
