Letting Go

Welcome to my first official Minimalist Monday post!

I have been thinking nonstop since my last post (which was a long time ago I realize).  How does one even begin to venture towards minimalism?  Where do I even begin?  What does it even mean to be a minimalist?  When I really started to question and ask myself what it meant to be a minimalist I initially just thought give up all the things!  Okay, so I may be a bit of an extremist at times, clearly we need some things like clothes and shoes and maybe books to read.

Maybe…(insert evil laughter here).

Thinking of having less and using less can be overwhelming at the beginning.  The way my mind works can be crazy at times, and I’m not going to lie my mind went a tad berserk when I started to think about all the paring down that would need to take place.  I started to stress, and when I feel too overwhelmed I tend to ahem do nothing.  So instead of doing nothing, I began to realize that minimalism doesn’t simply mean getting rid of things.  It is a mindset.

The first step in the process of minimalism is changing my mentality.  It is learning to let go.

Shocking, I know!

What do I mean by letting go?

For me, letting go is simply learning to not be tied down to all the things in life, both physically and mentality.  Letting go of the ideals that have ruled my life forever.  Letting go even means thinking of minimalism in a different way.  It means taking my time and not stressing out.  It is imperative to let go in order to move forward.  It doesn’t have to be overwhelming or stressful.  I am the one in charge of how I want to feel about my approach to minimalism and really my approach to life.

I created this blog as a journey to self-discovery.  I feel adopting a minimalist mentality is a part of that journey.  I sometimes always stress out about getting to the end of something.  I am a finisher.  I tend to like things in a nice and neat package complete with decorated bow.  The card attached would say, “Congratulations you finished, you reached the end.”  The thing is being a finisher is what is stressing me out.  I am in such a rush to reach the end that I do not enjoy the journey, not even a little bit.  I want it done yesterday.  Okay, I actually want it done the day before yesterday.

This is how I began my journey towards minimalism.  I wanted everything to be cleared out and perfect.  The thing is that part of the journey is accepting that striving towards a minimalist lifestyle or really any type of lifestyle is a process.  It involves a steady, dedicated amount of work.  It requires you to let go of the notions you held previously and continue forward.  I learned I can’t stress about it or I will drive myself mad.

So I started with my mindset.  I started with changing the way I viewed the entire minimalist process.  I am not going to reach it over night, and being a minimalist will become a part of who I am, not something I am simply doing to reach the end goal.

I loved to hear your thoughts about letting go.  Do you think it’s easy or difficult to change our mentality, even if it’s something we really want?  What is the hardest thing for you to do in terms of changing your mentality about something?

Stay tuned for the next Minimalist Monday post where I will be talking about what steps I am taking to actually let go and journey towards a more minimalist lifestyle.