Minimalism has many benefits to your life. In this post, we will see that leading a minimalist life is not only good for your pocket but also for your happiness. If you still do not know what minimalism is, I invite you to read what is minimalism?
1 – Economic peace of mind
The immediate consequence of buying fewer things is that we will spend less and therefore save more. One may wonder why a minimalist person wants money, well, very simple, to have financial peace of mind. Since having savings will allow us to face any unforeseen more easily. A minimalist lifestyle does not require a lot of money, but we do not want our financial stability to be affected by a setback.
2 – More experiences
By not having wasted money with products that we do not need, we will have more money to spend on other types of experiences. Travel, meals, social events, music classes, theater, parachute jumping, and to maintenance of your home which includes decoration cleaning and stove repair whatever contributes to our happiness.
However, it is important to understand that all this is a bonus and that it is not about creating new needs for ourselves. Through minimalism, we have wanted to avoid living material desires as needs. Let’s not make the same mistake with experiences. Remember that we need very little to be happy and that having great experiences should never be a necessity. Having a cup of coffee or a walk after work can also contribute to our happiness.
3 – More time
Another immediate consequence of buying fewer things is that we will have more time to do what makes us happier. It is important to understand that for every item we buy there is a lot of time wasted directly in the trash.
Think of all the time that:
- We spend wanting the object.
- We invest in finding information about it.
- We spent to go buy it.
- We allocate to the use of the object.
- We use to maintain and order it.
- We lose thinking we shouldn’t have bought it.
Isn’t it better to invest that time in the things that really make us happy?
4 – Longer Happiness
Material desire only gives us spikes of happiness in exchange for frustration, stress, and anxiety. What a business right? We get frustrated every time we think we need something and can’t afford it. The same irrational desire causes our anxiety to increase just because we want things at the moment. Stress invades our body when we think about everything that we should not have bought. And to top it all, we are afraid of losing, being robbed, or having our most precious assets broken.
With minimalism, all these negative feelings caused by consumerism disappear. In a minimalist life, we already have everything we need and therefore we don’t need anything else. Goodbye to the frustration, stress, and anxiety produced by consumer desire.
Do you mean that a minimalist cannot buy things? Not at all. It means that with minimalism we learn to separate needs and objects that simply contribute to our happiness, from what does not contribute anything and also makes us unhappy. When we believe that distinction we stop having negative feelings associated with consumption (see what is minimalism?).
But the minimalism doesn’t end here. In the end, we ended up extrapolating the minimalist lifestyle outside of the material realm. And it is the understanding and internalization that we need very little to be happy that in the end allows us to live a full life.