“If you want to make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desire.”
- Epicurus You might have heard the phrase less is more
before.
It pretty much means that if you have less of something, it can give you more happiness.
It’s a core idea of minimalism which is a tool that can help you get rid of the excess
so you can focus on what’s important to you.
In this video, we will explore 5 ways having less of something can lead you to be happier.
1.
If you have less desires, you will be happier.
This is pretty much what the opening quote of this video was saying.
As long as your needs and desires are not met, you will experience a nagging sense of
dissatisfaction.
You will feel as if you don’t have enough.
Imagine someone with a long list of desires that have to be filled just for them to be
happy.
If 1 of those desires are not fulfilled, they most likely won’t be too happy.
If you need a lot of things to be satisfied with life, it’s going to be hard for you
to find satisfaction.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be ambitious though.
You can still lead a minimalist lifestyle and be happy as long as those ambitions are
important to you.
Even though it’s easier to have less desires and be more happy if you aren’t very ambitious,
you can still be happy even if you want something more ambitious like a high salary or nice
house.
The trick here is to shift your desires from the result to the journey.
Instead of requiring the end result like the house to be happy, you can be happy knowing
that you are working hard towards your goal everyday.
Like mentioned before, if your happiness depends on achieving that end result, you will feel
dissatisfaction everyday you don’t have that end result.
By basing your happiness on the journey, you will be able to still be ambitious and happier.
2.
If you have less things you want to spend on, you will have more money which will make
you happier.
Having more money allows you to have the freedom to do what you want with the time you have.
When you live beyond your means and go into debt, it makes it hard for you to reach your
financial goals.
Instead of constantly buying things in order to feel secure about yourself, ask yourself
if that purchase is important to you.
This can stop you from buying that item and save you money.
You will learn that you don’t need to keep buying material possessions because material
possessions don’t always make you happier.
There’s something called the hedonic treadmill that makes it so material possessions don’t
bring you that much joy.
The hedonic treadmill is basically when you get used to something.
For example, when you get new clothes, you enjoy wearing them but after a while, you
don’t feel anything when it comes to wearing them.
If you believe that less is more, you won’t buy any new clothes unless the item you want
is important to you because you understand that having more clothes won’t make you
happier and you can appreciate what you currently have.
3.
If you have less clutter in your house, you will have more space and a clear mind.
When you declutter your space and let go of things that don’t bring you any value, you
will have more space and it will improve your mood.
When you are surrounded by clutter, your mind will also be full of clutter.
All that clutter makes it harder to focus on what is important to you.
You have to spend more time on housework in a cluttered space and it will be hard to keep
track of where everything is.
It’s also a lot harder to relax when everything is a mess around you.
In order to declutter, ask yourself if the item needs to be put away, thrown out, or
donated.
Declutter one room at a time and start by going through items out in the open and then
items in a desk, drawer, or closet.
There’s a lot of information out there on decluttering if you want to learn more about
the subject.
4.
If you spend less time on social media, you will have more time to enjoy other hobbies.
People spend a lot of time on social media and most people can agree it’s not even
that enjoyable.
All that time used scrolling through social media can be used doing something else.
If you don’t have other hobbies and you don’t know what else to do, you should try
out new hobbies to see if you enjoy them.
Having a hobby can help you relax and unwind while the same can’t always be said for
social media.
5.
If you have less expectations or lower expectations, you will be more grateful.
How many times have you felt disappointed or upset that things didn’t go the way you
expected?
We all want things to go the way we want but life almost never happens that way.
It’s simply not practical to have high expectations because they usually never come true and you
just end up with disappointment.
If you have low expectations or better yet - no expectations, if things don’t go well,
you won’t feel as bad and if things go better than expected, you will be grateful.
Having less expectations doesn’t mean you aren’t ambitious.
You can still be ambitious and want things but just don’t rely on your imagination
to create the timeline for how you will achieve that goal.
Also, this extends to expectations for other people as well.
You never know everything about a person and you can’t control other people.
People won’t act according to your expectations so don’t expect too much from other people.
When you can live a life free from expectations, you will be able to see things for what they
are.
It might seem weird that having less of something will make you happier but that is just how
life works.
A lot of things in life don’t exactly make sense.
Try implementing some of these ways to have less of something in life and you will find
life to be more enjoyable.
Are you a minimalist?
Leave a comment below and check out the playlist shown on the endscreen below for more videos
on minimalism if you want to learn more about the subject.