About a year ago, I was introduced to minimalism. I see YouTube videos of people who have no furniture at home and could essentially pack their entire belongings into a backpack. I have no desire to live such an extreme minimalist life. However the concept of minimalism has certainly helped me reduce my accumulation of materials. It has helped me with my stress and anxiety. And as much as my husband had wished, I had not stopped shopping entirely, but I made it a point to shop only to replace something I was throwing away. Either that, or I see an extreme need (not want) for an object. For example, when I started my summer internship, I shopped for 5 item of business casual clothing since I never owned business casual attire. I never liked them anyway. Well, is it too much to ask to wear gym leggings and sports bra to your work place? Anyway, I rotated my 5 business casuals throughout my entire internship. This also immensely reduced my wardrobe decision time in the morning. I eventually fell into the practice of reduced accumulation of materials.
Before going further, allow me to indulge in some narcissism. I promise this is relevant to this post; I am naturally curious, and it is a blessing and a curse. I love to explore different fields. I have this unrealistic dream to excel in all the fields that I am interested it, and this included music, neuroscience, data analysis, healthcare and medicine, business and writing. Oh, the list goes on. When I read about stocks, I want to be Leo in Wolf of Wall Street. When I watch Devil Wears Prada, I want to be the next Meryl Streep. When I see a YouTube music artist, I think of why I hadn’t pursued music. When I read a neuroscience article, I wished I had pursued a PhD in Neuroscience. Told ya, it is a blessing and a curse!
It is now the Fall of 2019 and orange, yellow and reds started peaking through the green foliage. My third semester of grad school started. During one of my train rides to grad school, as I was introspecting my life, which I often do during my train rides, I had a train of thought (see what I did there, train of thoughts) that led me to think about minimalism. An epiphany struck! I realized I needed to bring minimalism to my life goals. The concept of minimalism need not apply just to materialistic wealth but also to lifestyle choices. This does not just mean cutting down TV time or social media time or anything that is generally considered a waste of time. It could also mean certain other “good” habits of yours.
Reading and learning about things that interest you is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is often encouraged. Unfortunately though, our time in this world is finite. A quarter of our life is spent on figuring out what we want to do in life, and if you are like me, it is everything. And for people like me who wish to learn about everything in the world, the mental desire outruns the mental capacity.
And so at the end of my epiphanic train ride, I understood the bitter truth: In order to succeed, we need to let go of other things — no matter how passionate we are about these other things. Letting go and focusing on a few things that you see a purpose in pursuing, will most certainly ensure success.
As for me, I never liked the corporate structure of society. And because of this, corporate jobs in cubicles and offices never appealed to me. Ever since a kid, I wanted to create something. I wanted to build something from bottom up. What I wanted to build is something I am still searching. There are a few properties of this so called “product” that I want to build:
- Improve humanity’s quality of life
- Well, I guess that is what I have so far
I am very passionate about this goal of mine, but passion alone will not bring me success.
As much as I love singing and as much as I love to study the brain, I had to let them go because what I wanted more than all of that is to create a product that improves humanity’s quality of life. Letting go and focusing on the one thing that we really want to do in life is what I like to call life goal minimalism. I believe this minimalism is as equally if not more important than materialistic minimalism.
Life goal minimalism just makes focus and intentional hard work a little less difficult to do. Just like materialistic minimalism, it frees up the mind and your precious time so you can focus on the more important things at hand.
Hard work bears fruit, yes but focused and intentional hard work bear the sweetest of fruits. It bears rich organic strawberry preserves with a hint of lemon and basil in it. Oh and if you haven’t still guessed yet from my previous statement, when I watch MasterChef, I want to be the next Gary Mehigan!