#3 clarity
#3 clarity
Table of contents 2 | Starting with you 4 | Stop trying 6 | Of not giving a f**** 8 | Porcrastination 12 | FOMO 14 | On social media 16 | Manifesto 18 | Bibliography 20
pause is a publication about living consciously through minimalism
Starting With You
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Some says I couldn’t be a minimalist because… I am too old/young I don’t travel all over the world I have a spouse/child/large family I live in a house/ an apartment I own a car/television/furniture etc. When some people first hear about minimalism, they don’t understand it. To them it sounds vaguely occult, unreasonable, outside the status quo, and far away from the comfort zone of the average consumer. In other words, they don’t see why it is a necessary tool to live a more meaningful life. So, how do you become a minimalist even though your friends or family might not be ready to take the plunge?
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The answer is easier than you might think: start with yourself. You must first set the example for the people around you. Start with your stuff Declutter your closet/drawers Donate your time to help others Donate your stuff to charity Change your habits Change your exercise routine Reclaim your time Pursue your passions Before we knew it, many of the same people who thought we were crazy at first started asking us how they could declutter and donate and live a more meaningful life.
Do or not do, there is no try Yoda
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Stop Trying You are standing at the center of a warehouse in an abandoned building somewhere at the edge of the city, empty except for a single wooden chair that sits on the dusty concrete floor underneath your feet. You look around. It’s just you and the chair. Your mission: try to pick up the chair. But this presents a unique problem, doesn’t it? You see, you can’t try to pick it up, either you pick it up or you don’t, you can or you can’t, you succeed or you fail, but you don’t try. So instead of try, you lift the chair and smile a triumphant smile. Success. There was no try; you just did it. Stop trying; start doing.
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Are you trying to live a simpler, more meaningful life? Stop trying; start living it. Are you trying to declutter your life and sell a bunch of your stuff ? Stop trying; get rid of it. Are you trying to start a profitable business or write a book or lose weight or be a more positive person or travel more often or donate more time to charity? Stop trying; start taking action.
Of Not Giving a **** 1
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Yes, it’s really happening right at this moment. Some people don’t like you, and guess what? There’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, the more you stand for something, the more they respect you, whether it’s grudgingly or not. What people truly respect is when you draw the line and say “you will go no further.” They may not like this behaviour, but so what? These are people don’t like you anyway, why should you attempt to please people who don’t care for you in the first place?
When people don’t like you, nothing actually happens. The world does not end. You don’t feel them breathing down your neck. In fact, the more you ignore them and just go about your business, the better off you are.
People are judging you right now
You don’t need everyone to like you
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The people who do care about you are those you need to focus on. Relationships are weird. Once we’re in one (with family, a spouse, whatever), we promptly begin to take the other person for granted and move on to impressing strangers instead– say, our boss. Then, once we’ve impressed our boss, we start taking him for granted too, and so on, in an endless cycle.
If you remove things that does not matter from your mind and focus on what must be done; if you understand that your time is limited and decide to work now; only then will you be able to get to the finish line. Otherwise, you will be dissuaded into living a life you aren’t interested in. What you do actually has nothing to do with anyone else. It has everything to do with you.
It’s your people that matter
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Those who don’t give a **** change the world
People might be judging me right now.
But it really doesn’t matter.
Procrastination
At its root, procrastination is almost always based on some kind of fear. And figuring out how to beat that fear is the key to unprocrastination, in the long run. So how do you beat fear? One reason that fear can be so powerful is because it lurks in the dark — unnoticed, in the recesses of our minds, it acts without us knowing it. So the first step is to shine some light on it — fear hates light. Some of the reasons of fear: • Fear that you’ll fail or do badly • Fear of the unknown — the task is not familiar to you, so you don’t know what to do or where to start. • Fear of the uncomfortable. • Fear of starting in the wrong place. You don’t start because what if you’re not starting the right way?
Run a tiny test at first: do a little of the task, and see what happens. Was it horrible? By doing small tests, you aren’t risking anything really bad, and you can quickly get results. So how do you run small tests? Some examples might include doing just 5-10 minutes of a scary task, practicing just the most absolute basic skill of a group of skills you don’t know. It takes a bit of time to beat fear,
running small tests, and using information and rationality to finally banish it … but it’s worth the effort. We allow fear to control us too much, allow it to cause us to procrastinate. Let’s take back that control. 12
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The Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO, in the acronym) has been recognised as a genuine psychological disorder brought on by the advance of technology, and the amount of choice available to individuals these days. It’s as if you’ve got the best tickets at Wimbledon, you’re watching a match, and you hear a thunderous burst of applause from other court: you’re immediately paralysed with anxiety, unable to enjoy what’s in front of you because you feel something better, more exciting, more important is happening elsewhere.
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In the world of Facebook and Twitter, this equates to seeing someone post pictures from a party you weren’t at, or share holiday snaps from a glamorous location, or to eavesdropping on an exchange of tweets about a film that has passed you by, or a trend of which you are simply not aware. It is great that we can connect with friends and family through Facebook
and follow interesting people on twitter, but it is important to remember to do it on purpose. We have to seriously consider how social networking websites affect our lives and act accordingly.
Simplifying Social Media There used to be a time where no one knew what we were doing every second of the day.
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Choose wisely who you want to follow/ be friends with
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Un-friending and Un-following is not personal.
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Only share something that add value to others
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Know when to turn off the mobile phone
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Manage time. You can’t be everywhere anytime
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Online presence does not determine the real person itself
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Bibliography mnmlist.com www.becomingminimalist.com www.theminimalists.com www.minimalstudent.com bemorewithless.com inoveryourhead.net/
www.sparefoot.com/storage-tips
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.� Confucius
ŠKeshia Anindita 2014