You are awoken early by the latest iPhone, notifying you that it is time to get ready for the day. After your shower, you adorn yourself with designer clothes, slip on your designer shoes, and protect your eyes with an expensive pair of sunglasses. Off you go in this year’s model car. Throughout the day, you are probably bombarded with advertisements asking you to purchase something. Most of these advertisements are not for something you need, but most people will buy these products. They feel they are living life to the maximum. Perhaps you are also part of this demographic!

We live in a culture of consumerism. We are constantly told buying more products will improve our quality of life and bring us happiness. However, out of the madness of mass consumerism, a new trend is developing. This new trend emphasizes “less is more” and people who follow it strive to live their best life with as little as possible. This trend is called minimalism.

You may have heard of minimalism in a different context. You may think of it as an art form that depicts barren landscapes, monochromatic color schemes, and a few neatly-designed objects almost self-consciously placed in different corners of a room. You imagine that minimalist living would be exactly this: having an empty space with few possessions. You may scoff at someone who is following a minimalist lifestyle and imagine they have decided to shed their possessions to live as an ascetic. But I want you to stop worrying because the minimalist lifestyle as we know it today is none of these things!

If we stop to reflect we will soon learn that many of our complications are self-inflicted. You will notice that one of the biggest factors complicating your life is the chase and acquisition of material goods. Though you have acquired everything you once desired, things soon seem to lose their value and cause you more grief than joy. Yet you continue to believe that the only solution is to acquire more material goods. You no longer own these possessions - as a matter of fact, they now own you. You now realize that perhaps the answer is that less is more.

Minimalist living calls for discarding the unnecessary items you own and saving money by spending less. However, the point is not to lessen your quality of life and make you give up what you enjoy. Minimalist living is a way for you to enjoy life without needing to give in to the obsessive desire for pointless material things.

Some of the tricks you will learn are....

• How to embrace the minimalist lifestyle
• How to discard unnecessary clutter
• Planning a budget
• Being frugal
• Prioritizing what you desire from life
• Carrying the minimalist approach to the digital world
• Much, much more!