How living with less can lead to a better life
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A few months ago, I wrote a short article about the material and mental unclutter I went through after returning from my travels.
It helped me a lot with building healthier shopping habits, pragmatic attitude towards ownership. Most of all, it helped me to get my life back on track.
Society Pressure vs. Your Will & Determination
I always thought that building a habit is the most challenging part of the whole process. As it turns out, it’s not. It’s barely the tip of the iceberg because keeping good habits is more complicated.
Think about it. The moment we step outside of our homes, it’s almost impossible to avoid being targeted by all kinds of promotional activities. Actually, I’m saying a stupid thing. You don’t need to step outside of your apartment at all.
On average, we spend six hours browsing the internet and approximately two hours of our lives browsing through social media. That’s quite some time we expose ourselves to influencers, pop-up ads, campaigns, etc.
And all of them will tell you the same. You should buy this ‘ABC product’ because:
- It’s just trendy to have it now or be the FIRST to have it;
- You probably won’t be able to live without it again;
- You can get it now at a reasonable price, and you’ll never have the same opportunity again or something along those lines;
- If anyone famous recommends it, it must be the right choice, no?
How many times do you ask yourself ‘Do I really need it?’ or do you just badly want it?
In our society, mostly driven by over-consumption, keeping your newly-built habits and not slipping back to your old ways can be quite challenging. And yes, one thing is your own will and determination to stick to your rules, the other is social pressure.
At the very beginning, I struggled a lot. But who wouldn’t when people ask you why you wore the same dress to work two days in a row? (Oh, no! How could I do such a thing?) Or where you are not considered cool because you don’t have the latest tech gadget, whether this is a…
