Minimalism and Mental Minimalism

More often than not sitting by myself away from people I would feel my head cluttered with thoughts, random, hazy and unorganized. Many times, I would not even realize from where did it all began, which was the sparking thought and where I landed. It is sometimes a loop and sometimes a trail of thoughts which if I jot down on paper would make no sense how I jumped from one to another.

Well ironically and amazingly this exercise led me to wondering about the minimalistic lifestyle that is gaining popularity today. And from there I coined a word in my head ‘Mental Minimalism’ which I later realized in-fact exists as a theory, and then my contemplation on it begins..

I started thinking how can Mental Minimalism be achieved, and realized:

It cannot begin until and unless we are accepting and practicing the idea of Minimal lifestyle outside. The realization of how beautiful minimalism can be would begin when fruits of it is seen in material realizable form, because as humans we tend to have a habit of measuring the output, and what is a better way of assessing it then decluttering the space around you and evaluating the benefits. When you do not have excess and extra things/products/services but just what you need you will see how much time and energy you save in organizing and re-organizing those unwanted appealing to eyes possessions and how light it feels.

Of course the key to reaching that space is accepting yourself for who you are, being able to define your needs and wants, but they should be yours, not how you feel the society sees and perceives you.. We are mostly living the perception of others, how we see ourselves in their eyes should look good and materialistically satisfying and accomplishing to us.

Understand it is not necessarily how they see us, but how we see them seeing us. Complex but true ! We do not even know what most people see in us, and are still worried about people’s perception.

Now once the space around you is decluttered, the space within you can have the required attention it always needed, but was being run away from, because it is scary…

Imagine a well organised, brightly lit, ventilated room with only the things that you need no garbage… now imagine your mind is that.. where you stay 24*7, how great would that be… so in order to be minimalistic mentally, you need to choose what enters the door..and you practice a certain way of living, benefitting from the points below:

 

1.       Start looking at and eventually observing your thoughts. Witnessing is the foremost key to filtering eventually.

2.       We are mostly in the loop of thoughts which make us experience strong emotions of happiness/love/hate/anger etc. These strong feelings makes us want to revisit the thoughts again and again. But playing a recording of what has already happened and a gone moment on repeat, what are you going to achieve, except for an adrenaline rush, which most of the times in above cases does not lead to any action. Either move towards acting on your thoughts or know mere contemplation leads nowhere.

3.        Choose what kind of decisions you spend most of your time on, how significant is the outcome. Eg. Spending an hour on deciding what dress to wear at an event or Spending an hour learning about something new and interesting. What do you choose?

4.       It is a good habit to be honest and clear about thing and expectations. Try and drop ambiguity as much as possible, ambiguity/indecisiveness/assumptions drain your mental energy. Wherever possible seek clarity from yourself and others.

5.       It is okay to not remember things – make list, notes, checklist. It is not essentially to remember redundant things, your actions on tasks is more important than remembering the task. Work on implementation. Free up space in your mind for creative and analytical ideas.

When we practice the simple habits of decluttering our mind, we will start becoming aware of our needs, wants and desires and will be able to differentiate ourselves from people’s perception. Things will become beautiful and amazingly peaceful when you start knowing and accepting yourself and working towards your desires. It will be contenting.

- Pragya Jain