Minimalism Philosophy: How To Embrace It Without Being Minimalist

Minimalism philosophy teaches valuable ideals to live by, whether one chooses to follow the minimalist lifestyle or not. It challenges us to live a life with more meaning.

I admire this aspect of the lifestyle more than other aspects such as decluttering. Here’s how to be minimalist without being minimalist.

Focus more on what brings you joy
Spend time discovering your passion
Find your purpose
Live with more freedom
Maintain your best health
Experience more
Focus on your personal growth
Simplify your life
Live in the moment
Be more connected with people
Consciously spend

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Focus more on what brings you joy

A key concept of minimalism is focusing more on finding joy. The lifestyle is a means of reminding people to go back to doing the things that really make you feel happy.

In order to do that, you have to determine what does that for you in life? If you’ve read some of my earlier minimalist posts, you know that I really enjoy writing. Whenever I don’t write a post on this blog for a while, or in general, I start to miss it and try to write something new.

So what’s a hobby or activity in life that you miss sometimes? If you haven’t done that activity in a while, make time in your schedule to get back into it again. It’ll make you happier to get back into it, and help reduce your stress with whatever is causing you any unhappiness in life.

Spend time discovering your passion

A lot of us aren’t doing the things that we really want to do with most of our time. We feel stuck in places we don’t want to be, doing jobs or classes we don’t really want to do.

I was taking classes to become an accountant when I realized I didn’t really want to study accounting anymore. It was because I knew my passion had always been to be creative in some way, whether it’s through blogging, songwriting, or video producing.

Part of what it means to be minimalist is allowing yourself you to enjoy more of your passions.

So how do we take time to discover our passion? Well, sit down and think about all the activities you’ve ever done in life. Then determine what activity made you feel most excited and alive.

Was it doing speeches in front of an audience? Was it working on figuring out the right code to put inside of a computer? Or maybe you haven’t even discovered what activities really excite you yet. In which case, think about whatever you always wanted to try, and find the time to try it.

Who knows, maybe that will turn out to be one of your passions in life. Find a way to pursue your passions more, and it’ll help you experience more joy in life.

Find your purpose

Minimalism philosophy tends to emphasize this a lot. In a way, the guys who started promoting a minimalist lifestyle found what their purpose was in doing that.

Now the idea of finding your purpose might sound a lot like discovering your passion, but this is how I view purpose to be a little different. In discovering your passion, you’re looking for what makes you really happy.

In finding your purpose, you’re looking for what you think you’re meant do to help make the world really happy. And sometimes that can go hand in hand with your passion, but other times it might be just contributing your best skills wherever you think they’re most needed.

An example of that is that you might be a really sensitive and compassionate person, and feel that your traits would make you a really good therapist.

I find my purpose to be similar to the minimalists. I feel I can share a lot of information and knowledge that can help people live better lives, and have a better understanding of the world around them.

So think about your skills and your knowledge and determine how you feel you can best use them to make the world a better place.

Live with more freedom

We all can feel trapped in our lives at times. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Minimalism philosophy encourages people to have a life of more freedom. So, what does it mean to have that?

Physically, that means allowing yourself to have more freedom to do whatever you want in life. Obviously, school and work can sometimes get in the way of that. But with the time that you do have, make sure you have some me time for yourself.

Try staying active so you can maintain your freedom of mobility as you get older.

Mentally, practice letting go of all the things that you’re worried about, because worry has a way of trapping us into an endless cycle of stress. So take more action on the things that are making you feel stressed.

It’ll help you to worry less. In addition, spend time on the activities you enjoy to distract your mind as well.

Emotionally, release whatever you’re feeling inside that’s bothering you, because you don’t have to let your emotions eat away inside of you. If you have an issue with someone, speak it to that person so it’s no longer weighing you down.

Spiritually, I find my Christian faith, prayer, and meditation to be helpful in gaining spiritual freedom. Your version of spiritual freedom might be a little different, but in general, connecting to something bigger than yourself and living by your own moral principles can be helpful to attaining that.

Maintain your best health

The minimalists described one of the benefits of minimalism is that it’s helped them to focus on their health more. This teaching of minimalism is very important, because if we’re not in our best health, we’re often unable to be our happiest.

Countless studies have shown things like lack of sleep, poor diet, and a sedentary life can be some of the main factors of anxiety and depression. So you can make a new commitment to striving to have the best health you can now.

Write down a list of things you can do every single day to improve your health. I try to walk for 15 minutes every day, drink at least 6 glasses of water, and eat as much fruits and vegetables as I can.

You might find if you follow a daily health regiment, you’ll see your mood lift up more often.

Experience more

There’s a whole world out there with a lot of different activities we could gain something valuable from. For example, I traveled with my last girlfriend to a city I’d never been and did activities I’d never done.

It was a valuable experience to travel together for the first time and create those memories we’ll never forget for the rest of our lives.

Minimalism philosophy encourages people to just spice things up every now and then. When we take ourselves out of our daily routines every once and awhile and just do something new, it makes our life more fun and interesting.

Focus on your personal growth

In this day and age, public image seems to matter more than personal growth. The photoshopped Instagram photos, the number of followers one has on Twitter, the amount of likes on a Facebook post, and so on.

We tend to spend more time growing our popularity than growing ourselves personally.

There’s more meaning in life in trying to make yourself a better person that you can be more proud of, and that those closest to you can be more proud of.

I’m always constantly trying to find ways to improve in my daily habits and my daily mindset. I re-evaluate what I’ve been trying to work on and determine if I’m making improvements or if I can do more.

So think about if you’ve personally grown over this year of your life. Are you making less of the same mistakes you’ve always made in your life? Have you made progress in changing some of your biggest faults?

Popularity may feel good for a moment, but personal growth can feel good for a lifetime and be more meaningful for you, which makes this a great philosophy of minimalism to live by.

Simplify your life

We can make life very complicated often. Additionally, the more complicated life is, the more we tend to be stressed and anxious about things.

In order to help simplify my life, I make schedules and check lists to organize my days better. And you’d be surprised how much of a relief it is not to constantly think about what I need to do in my day.

In addition, it can even be helpful to prepare what you’re going to wear and what you’re going to eat for the day to make your life simpler.

There’s enough complication in this world to deal with without adding any extra complications on ourselves. So try a schedule or a routine to simplify your life and see if it helps you to be less stressed and more calm.

Live in the moment

A lot of our time can be consumed with regrets of the past and worries of the future. As a result, these things end up robbing us of the joys we can have in the present.

One of the basics of minimalism philosophy is taking more deliberate action with our choices and with our time.

So one way you can do this is through mindfulness. You can take time to stop, focus on your breath, and everything you’re feeling around you. You can also practice gratitude and consciously think about all the things around you and in you that you’re thankful for.

I do these things to help me live in the moment, as well as just actively making different choices with my time to feel more in the moment, and less like I’m living on autopilot.

Be more connected with people

The concept of minimalism is generally centered around having more meaningful experiences in life, and a part of having more of them is being connected with people.

In our modern times, our version of connected tends to be text messages and heart emojis. Consequently, this causes us to miss out on the deeper connections that we can really enjoy from face to face interaction.

So you can make it a habit to have more phone conversations with your friends and family. Perhaps you could go out of your way to drop by and sit down to have a chat with them. Additionally, take some time to have one of those heart to heart deep conversations to feel more connected.

Consciously spend

You don’t necessarily have to buy less things, but instead, just buy less things you don’t actually really enjoy. It’s a good philosophy of minimalism to choose to spend your money wisely. Because it can help to reduce any stress that could come from being in debt.

I tend to be very conscious of what I spend my money on. I don’t buy something without thinking about it first. Usually when I spend time thinking about my purchase, it ends up being worth the money I spent on it.

So when you think of buying something, practice giving yourself a certain amount of time to think before you buy. It could be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or maybe even an hour.

As a result, that will help you increase your chances of spending wisely, and being happier with what you purchased.

Minimalism philosophy without being minimalist

It’s possible to live by minimalism philosophy without actually practicing a minimalist lifestyle. But it is fair to say that choosing to become one can be helpful to doing so.

Whether you choose to be a minimalist or not, most of us can agree these ideals are worthy to strive for. Perhaps you can try some of them and see if they impact your life in a positive way.

Minimalist Resources

If you are interested in practicing minimalism philosophy and actually being a minimalist, here are some good beginner articles to help you become one.

Best Way to Start a Minimalist Lifestyle in 6 Easy Steps: It can be overwhelming making a transition in your life from having a lot of stuff to having less stuff. So I presented easy steps for you to be able to make the transition as seamlessly as possible.

Decluttering Tips from a Messy Minimalist: I’m not a fan of decluttering at all. But I figured out a way to do it without feeling like I was doing it. If you’re messy like me, this is the decluttering guide for you.

Digital Minimalism: Cutting Down on News and Social Media: Technology has us more addicted than ever. We need to reconnect with ourselves by disconnecting from our machines. You’ll read some great tips on how to do that.

Free Minimalism Audio Book I Recommend To You

Essentialism is a great book for embracing the ideals of minimalism without being minimalist. There are powerful lessons in it like, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” Greg fills this book with many good quotes and examples of essential living throughout the book. You can click the image and select free with audible trial to listen to this audio book. Because you’ll be inspired to live a more intentional life that makes you happy.