The best piece of advice I've ever received in my life so far has been "Just start." Every new beginning requires a first step and all we need to do is take the initiative to begin. Like most people I often get bogged down by the need to have all the stars aligned looking for that perfect moment before I take the leap. Of course, there is never going to be a perfect moment and often times the need for perfection ends up overwhelming us and we give up before we even start. Thankfully, over the years I've learned that the most important thing is to just do it. I may fail or I may succeed and then fail again but I always learn something every time.
In 2016, I set out to be more of a minimalist, and I say more because total minimalism really didn't appeal to me, and in the beginning I was doing pretty well. I had decluttered most of my home and was hopeful that this mindset would last. However, somehow along the way I derailed from my track and found myself back to where I was before. Actually, I was worse than before. I remember specifically thinking in multiple occasions "I deserve this thing or that thing" and found myself comparing my life to other people again. When I look back on this now, it's amazing how easy it was to go back to the old habits of over-consumption and keeping up with the Joneses.
After my massive failure, I admit that I sort of gave up. I made excuses telling myself things like "This isn't the right time," or that "It's just too much right now" and "Someday I'll get back to it again." In the meantime, more stuff accumulated in my house and we were drowning in it. Now not all of my excuses were irrational. I was and still am very busy. I have a full time job, I also work as an instructor, and I am currently halfway through my doctorate program. Life is busy but I do love every minute of it. I don't do these things for the money because I truly enjoy doing them (yes, even school). However, because I do have so much on my plate, the unnecessary chores in my home increasingly became more of a burden over time. One day, I was looking through old photos and saw a photo that I had taken just after I had cleared my closet completely of clutter. It was beautiful, calm, peaceful. I realized then that most of the stress in my life were coming from my home and that this was something that I could change. Instead of ruminating over it for a time, I immediately just started to go through my living room and minimized our things. If I had thought about it longer, I don't think I would be back on this journey again.
I know that I will continue to have struggles in this journey of simplifying my life and part of the reason why I started this blog is because I believe there is value in documenting your process. It helps to remind where you are and where you want to go so that when times get tough and failures happen it can serve as an earmark of how far you've gone and a point for starting again.
After my massive failure, I admit that I sort of gave up. I made excuses telling myself things like "This isn't the right time," or that "It's just too much right now" and "Someday I'll get back to it again." In the meantime, more stuff accumulated in my house and we were drowning in it. Now not all of my excuses were irrational. I was and still am very busy. I have a full time job, I also work as an instructor, and I am currently halfway through my doctorate program. Life is busy but I do love every minute of it. I don't do these things for the money because I truly enjoy doing them (yes, even school). However, because I do have so much on my plate, the unnecessary chores in my home increasingly became more of a burden over time. One day, I was looking through old photos and saw a photo that I had taken just after I had cleared my closet completely of clutter. It was beautiful, calm, peaceful. I realized then that most of the stress in my life were coming from my home and that this was something that I could change. Instead of ruminating over it for a time, I immediately just started to go through my living room and minimized our things. If I had thought about it longer, I don't think I would be back on this journey again.
I know that I will continue to have struggles in this journey of simplifying my life and part of the reason why I started this blog is because I believe there is value in documenting your process. It helps to remind where you are and where you want to go so that when times get tough and failures happen it can serve as an earmark of how far you've gone and a point for starting again.
