Minimalism & Happiness: 10 TED Talks

I was living paycheck-to-paycheck. Living for a paycheck. Living for stuff. Living for a career that I didn’t love. But I wasn’t really living at all…All those things that were supposed to make me happy — they weren’t doing their job. So I decided to donate and sell all of it. And you know what, I started to feel rich for the first time. I started to feel rich once I got everything out of the way and made room for everything that remains.

First of all, you have to edit ruthlessly. We’ve got to clear the arteries of our lives. And that shirt that I hadn’t worn in years? It’s time for me to let it go. We’ve got to cut the extraneous out of our lives, and we’ve got to learn to stem the inflow. We need to think before we buy. Ask ourselves, “Is that really going to make me happier? Truly?” By all means, we should buy and own some great stuff. But we want stuff that we’re going to love for years, not just stuff.

You need to define what freedom looks like in your life. You need to take steps starting today to realize that. Where does it start for most people? It starts right here, with your crap…What happens when this person loses their job? What happens when they’re offered a better job in a different city? What happens when they need to adapt either physically, emotionally, financially to any situation that comes up in life? The answer is—at best—that they’re restricted. They’re held back. They’re clogged. They’re congested from adapting to any sort of change because of the amount of crap they brought into their life.

One of the strange side effects of having too many clothes is we still have nothing to wear…We’re operating under the misconception that the more clothes we have the easier it is to get ready in the morning. When actually the opposite is true. The less clothes you have, the less choice you have, the more thought and organization you put behind your wardrobe, the easier it is to get ready in the morning.