Minimalism 30 Day Challenge

     I've really begun embracing a minimalist lifestyle. No it's not about owning only a certain number of items, or living without, or tiny house living. It's about simplifying your life until everything that remains brings or adds value to your life (and you in turn should also be seeking to add value to the lives of others). To get started, you can watch the Minimalism documentary on Netflix, or go to www.theminimalists.com and read their essays, listen to their podcasts, or even read their 3 books. The Minimalists are Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus. Although I follow their recommendations and often their schools of thought, I also include people like Joshua Becker who is a married guy with kids, as well as a few others. It's different for everyone, but the added value principle and removing excess is the common thread. This will be my journey into a 30 day challenge even though I'm not "a beginner".

See the challenge here:
30 Day Minimalist Challenge

Day 1:  I switched Day 1 & Day 2 on purpose to fit my life better. MY Day 1 was adding an intentional 15 minutes of relaxation/meditation to my day. I'm not into eastern mysticism type of stuff, so for me it just meant a quiet time to clear my head, doing absolutely nothing during those 15 minutes. I recently found a youtube video called Weightless by Marconi Union that neuroscience says listening to it will reduce your anxiety by 65%. Not sure if I believe it but it couldn't hurt to try. Read the article through the link below:

Neuroscience report on Weightless reducing anxiety by 65%

I listened to it before bed. I did feel pretty relaxed, and I don't think I was full of anxiety at the time, but I'm not sure I felt overwhelmingly relaxed. Still it was a good thing to focus on clearing my mind for more than 30 seconds. I tried to concentrate on listening for a particular instrument in the song, then move on to another, then another, until I finally had my mind blank. I didn't sleep any better than normal because of it, but if it had been one of my stressful days, or if you live in a constant state of stress, this is a healthy exercise for you anyway.  Dr. Daniel Amen, a leading psychologist on the brain, strongly recommends time every day to relax your mind. We all need better mind health, right?

Day 2:  Stay offline for the day

Obviously this doesn't work if your job requires you to be online for the day or something, but in my case I took the day 1 and put it on day 2 because it fell on a Sunday. That's an easy day for me to stay offline since it usually involves church, watching baseball in the afternoon, and having a quiet Sunday night as I either read, watch TV I recorded on the DVR (I almost never just channel surf out of boredom - I'm much more intentional with what I allow into my head.), or else I work Sudoku puzzles, or plan out my week, etc.

Day 3:  Reduce digital clutter

This one is easy for me. I went through Facebook a few weeks ago and unfollowed or un-liked pages I'd randomly collected over the years - mostly ones I agreed to like for some coupon or freebie. Then I took a serious look at my friends list. If I have someone on there that I never will see again in my lifetime, or someone I know posts nothing but total negativity and horror stories (abused animals, abused children, murders, political rants and nothing else, etc) I didn't unfriend them - they're still people I may want to pray for, or get in touch with for some reason in the future - but I did unfollow them so they don't show up in my newsfeed every day. I can choose to see what's going on in their lives when I want to but I don't need to see hatred, anger, darkness, or companies trying to sell me products over and over.

The next thing I did was go through my Twitter account. That one was easy too because aside from a few friends & family, I use it mainly to follow baseball - trades, injuries, stats, important plays, etc. I simply went down my list of those I follow and deleted all but those on the 2 teams I follow the most (Dbacks & Red Sox) and a handful of other players I like (Ender Inciarte, Anthony Rizzo, Chase Anderson). I was able to drop about half of those I follow, Many turned out to be temporary follows of authors, or famous people, as something was going on at the time but now I don't care.

I did the same thing with Instagram.

THEN I HAD TO GO THROUGH PHOTOS ON MY COMPUTER.

Anyone that knows me knows I was a scrapbooker for 20 years. I've come to that place in my life though that although I want to pass down those books to my kids and their kids, I don't need to continue scrapbooking them all to keep the memories. The memories are inside me, not just on a piece of paper. Important events I still photograph, maybe journal about it, but not in a formal way. I do an occasional Shutterfly book when it's free or almost free, but just a little 8 x 8, like after a cruise or vacation or something.

I went through my photos on my computer as well as those on my memory stick where they now live if they're older than the current year. After going through ones from 2011 - 2016, I realized I was hanging onto a lot of pictures I'll never need again, no one's in them, how many pictures of sunsets do I REALLY need? So I deleted literally hundreds of them. Now what I have is the best of the best, or ones with people I love in them, and not much else. It feels good to know I'm not carrying around (figuratively) all those extra things I don't need. They add no value to my life whatsoever.

The nice part about today's challenge is that now when I go to social media or look through my photos on my computer, I'm only seeing what's important, only that which adds value to my life, with no wasted time on uninteresting, unimportant things or even better, no more things that take the joy from my day.

Looking forward to tomorrow's challenge - it's the 4th of July, we have no plans, the kids will all be somewhere else doing something so I may actually get the house to myself. That almost never happens for more than 10 minutes, once a month or more. Tomorrow the challenge is No Complaining.  Oddly enough, as I simplify my life, I find less and less to complain about anyway - but being home alone should make it easy too.

Enjoy your own journey.