As I have written before, I never set out to be a minimalist per se. As a professional organizer, who always thought I was living like a minimalist solely because I never had too much stuff in my physical space, it would seem that minimalism would automatically be part of the organizing gig. But when I started my work as an organizer I wasn’t thinking about minimalism in its truest sense.
Minimalism was simply a tool I used minimalism to teach my clients the benefits of decluttering before getting organized. It is, after all, important to lighten your load of clutter before you build a system. That way you are organizing what is purposeful and necessary.
Minimalism in this way is still the best tool in the kit.
Over the past two decades, my idea of minimalism has morphed. My definition has grown to include it as a tool to help you streamline your life effectively, and as a lifestyle to help you understand yourself more so you can actively create a life you love.
Isn’t that the point of it all? Don’t we all want to feel as though our lives have meaning and that we are living fulfilled – and happy?
Living like a minimalist creates that.
The most important thing I learned in living like a minimalist.
In truth, there are a few other “important” things I have learned from living as a minimalist. But there is one that rises to the top as it is born out of the life transformation that occurred for me in my early 40’s. And it serves as the foundational inspiration for my work and interest in teaching about creating a life you love using minimalism as the basis for doing so.
The lesson is simply this: I am the boss of my life.
I am the architect.
And so are you.
It sounds an easy theory to grasp. But when push comes to shove can be difficult to hang on to. For me, this lesson appeared for the first time before my husband Bob and I decided to adopt a child through foster care, and right alongside fertility drugs, needles, and a lot of negative voices telling me that the best chance of pregnancy would be with the help of outside intervention.
We married late and it didn’t take long for doctor’s voices to overshadow my own telling me I was too old to conceive on my own.
In what felt like a blink we had done two rounds of intra-uterine insemination (IUI), one round of a fertility drug called Clomid, and three rounds of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). All in one year. And all back-to-back-to-back because the messages I was getting and paying attention to were that I had no time to wait, or to think.
It wasn’t that the doctor’s were wrong. I was getting older. But I quieted the voice inside that never felt it was the path for me. It felt easier than trying to outwardly make sense of what my gut was telling me.
And I am quite sure now it is the reason none of the outside interventions worked. Not once.
But in the process of all the drugs that left me with a bruised and bloated abdomen and a dejected spirit feeling on edge and anxious, I kept seeking out other ways to find meaning in myself and in what all of this meant.
I didn’t know it then, but I was trying to figure out how to let in more from within and let go of all the other stuff cluttering my head.
And there was a lot of clutter.
There was clutter born out of limiting beliefs and negative opinions and statistical percentages about pregnancy for 39 year olds.
In every meeting with the fertility doctor, before, during, and after a procedure I shoved my inner voice down deep in the face of an authority that had all the answers to why the procedures weren’t working and why I had to keep going if I wanted a chance at being a mother.
What I know is that I was unsure right from the start. All of it gave me pause. And pause is something to pay attention to.
Before our very first procedure, when the nurse met with us to give us all the information about drugs and procedures, I could feel the clutter and overwhelm building. What made it worse was the nonchalant way she explained the procedure. It felt like she was giving me directions to the movie theater down the street.
It’s easy. You’ll give yourself a shot every morning for 4 weeks and then you’ll come in and we’ll check your eggs to see if they have been plumped up enough. When they are, we will mix sperm with egg via a turkey-baster-looking-syringe and you’ll be good to go . Okay? Okay. Enjoy the movie!”
She spoke so fast and gave so much information almost arbitrarily and it weighed more than an elephant sitting on my chest. So I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed: I cried. Right there in front of everyone in the office. I started crying and said all kinds of things about how I didn’t know if we were going to do this and what if we didn’t want to. Was that an option? And what if we didn’t do it, what then? What did she think? What did anyone think?
I was desperately looking outside for answers because all the information tossed at me was a big ball of clutter I couldn’t untangle fast enough.
Have you ever felt that way? Your back is so up against a wall, and you feel overwhelmed like someone has their hands around your neck. So, you just choose the outside voices and stifle your own because it feels easier. And it is easier. Listening to what makes you feel so cluttered, off balance, and scared is difficult. And that difficult work is what leads you to the meaning you seek, and to the creation you deserve.
The cluttered thoughts riddled with fear need to be thought about, sorted through, and decided on.
They need you to measure them up against who you want to be and how you want to feel to decide if they are necessary. And that is what I had to do.
I had to believe in my own voice.
The need to do this – to trust in myself and listen to myself became a framework for which I would make decisions in the future.
This experience was the start of my minimalism journey. I didn’t know it then but the listening up, and the quieting down to hear myself think, to decide what was best for me is the basis of minimalism.
Learning how to ask questions of myself, of how I want to feel, and of whether what I am doing and saying and keeping is serving me is powerful.
It is growth-inducing.
The idea that you are the boss of your life — you are your life architect who can choose the content is the most important tenet of living like a minimalist. It allows you to craft your life in the way that makes you the best version of yourself.
And it allows you to determine what minimalism is to you. Minimalism isn’t prescribe. It is self described.
You aren’t the boss of me, and I am not the boss of you.
I am the boss of myself.
I get a say in who I am and where I go. And so do you. Listening to yourself and giving yourself the final right of refusal isn’t easy. It can be lonely, scary, even painful. But you must listen to your insides because they have something to say.
The tangled mess of other voices is clutter and when it is present it is a clue to quiet the voices — just not your own.
It doesn’t matter if you are contemplating motherhood or finding a better job or a more loving partner. It doesn’t matter if you are buried deep in physical clutter and unsure what to keep. When you listen more to your insides, you become more aware of what you need to let go of that isn’t helping you improve your situation/problem/challenge, or reach your goal. That is how you live life light, with intention, and with purpose.
Listening is minimalism.
The digging into why we let cluttered thoughts and things into our life is hard work. It takes time and effort. And the first step is in paying attention to the feeling that something isn’t working, that you aren’t feeling your best or being your best.
Don’t push is down or out of the way. Don’t chalk it up to life or your age or your bad luck.
Listen to the sounds your body and soul are making, and heed the need to shift and change.
You have but one life to live. You aren’t here to live someone else’s life. And you aren’t here to let anyone dictate what you can or should do with your one, wild precious life.
After my year of fertility treatments I quieted the noise. I listened to my body more and changed everything from my diet to my attitude towards motherhood. At the ripe old age of 43 I did get pregnant with no outside intervention. And while it ended in a miscarriage, it was still one of the most powerful and pivotal times of my life because it confirmed for me that my body could do this thing everyone on the outside seemed to think utterly impossible.
I am the boss of me. I get a say in what I do, and how I do it. When confronted with uncertainty or fear stop long enough to quiet the noise, and pay attention to what makes you feel alive or good or sure and you become your boss, too.
You become an active participant in the creation of your life. Nothing in this world is better than that.
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Learn how to live like a minimalist – to listen to your voice, develop your mindset, let go, and be your own boss. 👇🏼
