Marching Towards Minimalism

As  January folded into February I collected my thoughts in a calm corner of a cute cafe. There is something about the start of a new month that ignites something exciting in me. A wave of realization rumbles within, a lightning spark of enlightenment, it is a phenomenon I like to call thunder and enlightening.

The main reason I love a new month is because it is an opportunity to overwrite anything that didn’t go to plan in the four weeks preceding it. My February goals focused on practicing BodyBalance for my upcoming instructor training course, drinking 2 liters of water daily, gratitude posts, blogging, getting my greens and varying my exercise activities. I incorporated more running, football training and cycling into my routine but this then took from my strength training. I became frustrated that I was letting some goals go in my persistent pursuit of others. It was time for a two pronged approach: downsize and minamalise.

While I had heard the term minamalism mentioned many times before, it has started to trend a little more in my life over the past month. My sister has been on a minimalist mission lately and when my friend mentioned it in work too, my ears perked up and I listened. There is a distinct difference between these sound processing verbs (Ask any teacher who has to act the parrot every day in class, what do we have to do again Miss?🙉) Hearing is simply perceiving sound, listening is something you consciously choose to do. It was as if I was being drawn towards this cleansing, clutter-free concept, almost magnetized by the mantra of minimalism. 

We were shooting the breeze in work when my friend randomly mentioned this challenge she had undertaken. It involved getting rid of the innumerable items that insidiously invade our homes. The stuff that is amassed in disorderly drawers, stacked on shelves and in chaotic closets, the very enemy of serenity. The idea intrigued me and it set me thinking about how I need to apply this to more than  one aspect of my life. Letting go of things we don’t need to make space for the things we do. In short, less volume, more value.

So as we march into the third month of the year, my main objective is to exclude the excess. I will chronicle this daily decrease and hopefully see my intrinsic satisfaction increase. I am on a mission to clean up my cocoon🐛, to break free from the shackles of stuff. Instead of having multiple goals I need to simplify, specify. It’s time to be less clutter-fly and more butterfly. 🦋