Recently I’ve found a tiny but great minimalistic writing app called “ZenEdit” for windows on the minimal tumblr blog. I’ve used it to write this article. It covers up your desktop completely, giving you the benefit of concentrating on your writing only. Colors are changeable, there is no User Interface, but you can reach anything via right click. It’s very refreshing, simple and clean. There is nothing more than the .exe file.

You can download the file here.
There is nothing to add. Do you like it? Leave comments.

This week I disconnected from my IM and cell phone. No texting, no chatting.

It transformed my life in crazy ways which I hadn’t expected. I wake up before 9am, sometimes already at 6am. I am living more in the present moment. I get things done with joy and cleaned my room. I exercise to play the piano. I feel good! Let’s focus a bit more on why this small change affected me so much.

Less Distraction.

There is silence in my head. No unnecessary smalltalk with friends, no texting out of boredom. I become bored and choose an activity which excites me most. There’s no need to distract myself from boredom, I just stop being bored. Distracting yourself from boredom is distracting yourself from life itself.
I don’t want to talk down chatting or texting with your friends. But I consider that I would rather want someone to talk to me out of his own interest in talking with me instead of out of boredom. I think I may devaluate my conversations if talking out of boredom, with no reasonable intent?

More satisfaction.

I experience much more satisfaction. I tend to eat out of boredom to experience some kind of emotions right away, but that’s really lazy. Now I rather try to find something of real emotional value to me. This approach works really well. While the positive emotional reaction to food descents relatively fast, other activities give me much more satisfaction. Plus, there is the satisfaction after the activity itself. After eating a donut I feel guilty of eating it with no hunger and out of boredom. Instead, after doing something enjoyable (and maybe challenging?) I rather feel proud of me. There is longer lasting happiness, which I would not experience directly picking up my cell phone when noticing boredom.

What’s boredom anyway?

When I was a child my mother used to tell me only stupid people get bored. The intelligent man becomes creative in finding an activity. Boredom itself is nothing evil, although I tended to judge it that way. But if you think about it, all it does is indicating your activities current level of excitement. If you are bored, there’s no life force flowing through you. All your soul wants from you now is to choose another activity. But many people tend to suffer from boredom instead of appreciating it. Imagine your car’s gas tank being empty, so your car is bored and has no life force flowing through it (no fuel). What do you do? Fill it up with fuel! You don’t cry that it’s life has come to an end. It’s not over. There is nothing incredible happening. Compare your boredom to the gas tank. It’s only an indicator. How you react is your own choice.

Suprisingly, Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist wrote also about “Less Texting. More Living.” a while ago. Check out his blogpost, it really resonates with me. Although he encourages us to use our phones less often instead of shutting it down, he’s also saying that texting distracts us from our present lives.

I love the changes in my life. Maybe you want to go completely offline for a week, too? It will change your way of living. And remember, boredom is only an indicator and nothing lasting. Choose something that excites you.

This is the most important and best personal development advice ever. I don’t care what you want to achieve, change, or fight for. Anything you need to succeed are only two things, I’m serious. let’s start – you need:

• the ability to be aware of the present, your actions and your thoughts.
• the ability to stop immediately anything you are doing.

Just in case you do not understand what I mean, I will provide you with some real life examples.

Health & Weight Loss:
To lose weight you need to control your eating habits and body exercise. Be aware of the amount and the quality of the food you are eating. Be aware of the amount of exercises and movements you do. If you’re aware and catch yourself doing something wrong, use your ability to stop it immediately. Then refocus and try some other way.

Money, Work & To-Do Lists:
Be aware of what tasks you are doing right now. You could do the most important tasks or you could use unimportant tasks as an excuse. Also be aware of the results you get. If you catch yourself procastinating, immediately stop what you are doing and choose another task.

Relationships:
Be aware of your way of interacting with other people. Be aware of what they say, listen to them carefully and speak consciously. Be able to stop any wrong behaviour immediately to change your way of interaction positively.

Exercise:
Be aware of your body movements and do them conciously, listen to your body and push yourself, but be aware of the limit. Stop immediately if you are doing it wrong, focusing on losing time or recognizing negative thoughts. Your body deserves your full attention when exercising.

Creativity:
Emerge yourself fully into your creative process and lose sight of anything around you. Become your creative output, leaving your position as the creator behind and blending with the creation.  Be aware of the beauty, but stop immediately and focus again if you recognize doing it only half-assed.

Spirituality:
When meditating, be aware of your thoughts and the stillness between them. Just be aware of all that is, be the observer of it. But if you start to identifying yourself with your thoughts again, stop immediately the second you recognize it and grow your awareness again.

That’s all you need. Go get it!

It’s weird, isn’t it? We are seeking happiness everywhere and through anything. We tend to eat to be happy. We buy more stuff to be happy. We exercise to see ourselves in the mirror and feel happy. We work hard to watch our seeds grow and feel happy. We contribute to the whole to be a part of it – and feel happy. We are doing so much stuff to feel happy, but happiness is right here waiting for us.

We only need to choose a though that feels a little bit better than the last one. By lifting our emotional vibration on step at a time, we feel better on step at a time. From pain to hate, from hate to frustration, from frustration to sadness, from sadness to pity, from pity to hope and from hope all the way up to joy. One step at a time.

It’s so weird. But all we need to do is to choose to feel good now. Mh..

It sounds like a joke, but my to do list for becoming a minimalist is very minimalistic. In fact it contains just one task I focus upon until it’s finished. Then I search for the next thing I can do to become, feel, behave and live like a minimalist.

One Step at a Time

it’s easy and much more fun to do anything one step at a time, having a glimpse on the endgoal from time to time when motivation starts to fade. But the true strengh of this method is that I avoid feeling overwhelmed and stressed by reducing clutter. As I began to declutter my room, I faced a great amount of paper, notes and old bills I needed to read through first. It was really overwhelming seeing that stuff and knowing, that there is plenty more of that waiting for me right after that. But through focusing on that task only, I could create momentum, be productive and stay joyful. The task itself wasn’t even that hard but more like a passive meditation hour. “Sit down my Padawan and read through all of this stuff to exercise your focus on the present moment.”

Your Joker is Your Goal

But most of the time your task won’t make any fun. Your motivation shrinks, you get distracted easily and loose focus. This is the time to tap into your vision of your endgoal, in my example the clean and stuff-free room. You need to know why you want that goal and intensely feel it. Create a good feeling, providing you with positive energy and excitement about all the things you could do after through completing that task. This should push your motivation to a higher level again. That’s my Joker, my way of breaking my own whining.

This post ist short. There is nothing more to say about that.

Go and create room. Create freedom. Create clarity.
One Step at a time.

Author’s Note: This is the start of a series about Minimalism and my pursuit of it. Feel free to share it via twitter & co.

Author’s Note: This is the start of a series about Minimalism and my pursuit of it. Feel free to share it via twitter & co.

The first time I heard about Minimalism was reading Zen Habits. I really like the idea of it being an extension of the known “Simplicity lifestyle”. Minimalism leads to freedom, clarity, true abundance and focus. Somehow, you gain more through having less.

I get clarity.

“The things you own end up owning you.” ~ Tyler Durden

Who am I? I’m defining myself like many others by the possesions I have. But who am I under all this stuff? I get clarity in my mind by creating clarity in my life. I want to relate only on truly important things, saying proudly: “That’s a part of me, of my life.” With Minimalism I can see easyly what I own and why I own it. If it doesn’t bring me joy, comfort or freedom, it needs to go. I declutter my mind by decluttering my space.

I get freedom.

I see myself traveling through foreign countries, only with one backpack with all my stuff. If you do not own much, you are able to move with nearly all of it from space to space. But I also sense another form of freedom. I’m free of attachment. I can not only know but experience that I do not need all of these fancy things to be happy.

I get focus.

No distractions on your desk. Sharp focus. Intense clarity. Deep calmness. Flowing creativity leads to impressive productivity.

I get true abundance.

I feel abudant independently of any circumstances around me. I don’t need to spend much money on stuff, so I safe more. I don’t need to spend much time on stuff, so I have more. I don’t need to spend much space on stuff, so I see more. Minimalism is creating pure abundance in my life.

Clarity, Freedom, Focus, Abundance and Joy. That’s why I love Minimalism.

it’s really simple:

1. define what you would like to experience and how it would feel.
2. focus on the pure feeling and believe you will experience it.
3. be happy in anticipation of what is coming to you.

the anticipation should make you feel great right where you are.

Source: Abraham Hicks

Again, my mind starts to talk to me:

“You need to find a solution. You need something great for your life purpose, some sort of career you can focus on daily. You need to achieve something. Search for the answers, you are nearly in trouble. Soon it could be to late.”

My mind often starts telling me what I should do and why I can not focus now on the present moment. Because I have things to get done. My life needs a shift and I can not relax now, how dare I?

But in reality there is no problem. My mind is the one who creates the problem just to push me to solve it. My mind cannot survive in the present moment very long. It isn’t needed that much at all as it is used to when I stay in the present. It is far more efficient when I choose to deliberately use it, instead of when it takes me over and creates concerns about my future.

My minds problem is: there is no problem.
And that’s how I can quite my mind. By telling myself that there is no problem now, no need to worry. If something needs to get done for the future, there still is no need to worry, I can solve everything with calmness.

Even no need to live only for the present moment to avoid a worried mind. Be wise, stay calm and you are able to plan everything without worry.

by suvodeb

Today I want to talk about simplicity in your own kitchen. While I don’t have my own kitchen, but I’m sure a lot of you have, I tried to accomplish this simplicity just for myself in a maybe unique way. I want to share with you what idea came to be.

2 of a pair

I chose to only own every thing in the kitchen 2 times. 2 plates, 2 forks, to knives, to spoons, 2 glasses and so on. While my Mother still got many many dishes, I chose 2 of every kind for myself to “own” for a while. She had no problems with my decision, even less when I said that I will clean them by myself.

How does such a minimalistic kitchen life look like?

Today is my first day of this experiment and I ate already some toast. I’ve taken one plate and one knife, used it to make my toast and cleaned my plate directly after, my knife even before eating my toast. This really was not hard for me to accomplish. I mean, to clean one knife and plate it takes maybe 30 seconds. And there is no dishwasher needed anymore for myself. I’ll save some water by the way, that’s nice too.

I think I’ll enjoy this new little lifestyle change. We’ll see how long it will last. Maybe ’till forever?
And yes, Greenpeace is going to be proud of me.

by riccardopanello

Some of you may have noticed the wordpress theme I use. It is simple. I want to try out new themes from time to time but this one is one of my favorites. While I’m a big fan of the Zen Habits blog I really like the Idea of simplicity. I’ve started to clean out my own room from unnessecary stuff from my childhood but its still quite messy in here. As I said in my first post I’m more the passive guy who likes many ideas but has a hard time in taking action and implement them. But as same as in my room I try to upgrade my blog theme, too.

Simplicity in my possessions

I am considering give some multimedia equipment away to my parents. I really dont need a big tv (I wouldn’t watch it often anyway) or my hi-fi system to be happy. Also I try to sell some of my old games and CDs at ebay to create some space. Right now it stagnates a bit but with time I’ll get ahead. It’s not easy to break the unconscious pattern learned within 18 years for simplicity’s sake, not at all. But I see the advantage in creating more space for new things and focusing on the really important stuff that affects me the most.

Creating space

I really like the idea of creating space for something new because if my room – or my life – is crowded with unnessecary stuff I even not know well, how in God’s sake could I attract new valueable things into my life? As same as money needs to be in a steady flow your life needs to align with the flow and not stagnate. If you want to get more things you cannot attract more without giving something away. As same as in the Law of Attraction you need to create within your life circumstances a flow that provides you with fresh and updated possessions or events that align with your current level of development. If you are a teenager you would’n play with playmobil anymore unless it provides you with more fulfillment then the opposite sex, music or sports. We are changing and growing all the time even when our bodys are outgrown. Try to keep your surroundings up to date with yourself.

how the external influences your inner being

There are times where I feel a need to clean up my room. I don’t often like to clean it up and feel no fulfillment while doing it but when this specific need appears I really feel like pushed from within myself to clean my room. I believe that this is the way my unconscious mind wants to tell me that I have to much stuff going on in my conscious mind and need to clean up a little bit. But why cleaning up my room and not meditating?
I believe that while cleaning up your room you get rid of many distractions you don’t even notice conscious in your everyday life but which are really stressfull for your uncounsciousness.  At the same time you calm your mind through focusing on your external task. A clean room or desk can really influence you, your work and your level of hapiness and rest. But if you don’t clean up actively your uncounscious mind will remind you through your feelings ’cause they are your signals for your inner state. Every feeling has got a reason for appearing so don’t shut yourself.

Be aware. Be conscious.