Step 8
Step 8: Minimalism & Upcycling
Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.
- Naval Ravikant
Buy less and more slowly
Is shopping really the best way to reduce stress? Spending money on things we don’t need becomes a trap that we can easily fall into. Spending money has had an influence on the natural environment, our health and well-being. Time spent in malls is becoming a substitute for a Sunday family walk or going cycling. Some of us still spend time driving, then looking for a parking spot and then we just aimlessly walk around the mall. A lot of women know one thing after such a walk: “I wanted to get a book, but I came back with a new bag.”
There are thousands of stimuli in shopping centers - huge sales banners, hostesses giving something away, different types of music in basically every shop, shop assistants trying to persuade us to buy something and crowds of people fighting their way through. We go back home happy we got more stuff that we don’t even have space for. We throw away older things to make some room for the new ones. The old ones are not necessarily worn out or broken, but because of too many things, we just throw them away, contributing to enlarging dumps and escalating the ocean pollution.
Thus, we face the paradox: on the one hand, we try to earn money to send our children to better schools, but on the other hand, we give them a bad example of how to manage that money. We show them that a wish should be immediately fulfilled. Where can we find benefits in all this?
Copyrights: Zaneta Geltz
Shopping is a mindset
Recently the minimalists movement is becoming more and more successful. In highly developed countries, those who speak of a minimalist lifestyle are the ones who used to look for happiness on the Porsche seats not so long ago. As they admit, the feeling of emptiness in a house full of luxury stuff makes you redefine your life map. There are also people who, despite having a lot of money, decide to live a modest life instead of buying expensive cars or bigger TVs. They buy little houses, they ride a bike, instead of driving a car and they wear the same jacket for years. Minimalism is not about throwing away half of your house to a rubbish bin. If we have plenty of household items and clothes, we can give them to those in need. We can check if there is some charity nearby and we can donate our stuff there. So when you feel like getting some new clothes and the old ones are still fine, there will surely be someone who will take your old clothes and still use them with joy. When we think of shopping in this way, we reach a different level of life - helping others.
Charity actions can contribute to our self-development:
- we become more sensitive to other people
- we become more self-confident and brave
- we meet new people and we learn how to build relationships
- we get rid of the tendency to feel sorry for ourselves or to fall into depressive states
- even if we are unemployed, we still have the sense of fulfillment and we feel that someone needs us
- we build our self-esteem
Ecology
When we buy something, we not only get the product, we also get the package, foil and polystyrene foam. It is also worth noticing that the furniture that was produced in the 70s, is still fine nowadays, but the furniture that was produced after the year 2010, breaks down within less than a decade. The situation looks the same with electronics. Producers don’t care about the quality anymore. Non-breakable goods are not in the interest of producers. We can refuse to buy them.
Colourful plate
We do grocery shopping every day. Thus, we easily fall into a routine. We buy things that we know, we don’t read the list of ingredients and we happen to trust TV commercials. At least once a week, it is good to visit a vegetable market and break your routine. There are usually a lot of local sellers that offer organic food. You can really explore new flavours, smells and even play with colours. Do you know that organic carrots have more intense colours than the perfect-shaped ones you buy in supermarkets? Ecological eggs have more delicate eggshell than the eggs you buy in supermarkets.
Thoughtful shopping - investment in your health
The first rule of thoughtful shopping is getting the things that will serve for many years to come. Shopping mostly means investing in a material. But when we make good choices, we can invest in something more - in our health. The fewer goods we have on our shopping list, the less time we will need to spend at work. Thus, we will gain more time for physical activities, relaxation and art.
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
- Mark Twain