The Road Less Travelled
A few more thoughts on the unexpected consequences of decluttering your life
Decluttering is not just about you getting rid off your material things. Once you begin cleaning out your life, you will, with most certainty, also go through a personal transformation. And that’s why most people hold onto their stuff, even hoard, for the fear of change because it’s hard, bloody hard.
The decluttering process implicitly forces you to face yourself and question who you really are under all the layers of hurt and pain, and nothing could be scarier. It’s like ripping off a bandaid where not just the skin but also part of your flesh and soul comes off. It’s fight club for mortals.
I’d argue that nothing is harder and I’d also argue that it’s your most important mission in life to confront yourself in the deepest corners of your being. Because if you don’t, how are you going to connect deeply with another human being, how are you going to raise healthy kids, and how are you going to thrive?
You just cannot.
My decluttering project started when I took a sabbatical from work over 20 years ago. I was tired and burnt out from a high stress job that demanded long hours. I requested some time off and due to my longevity and success at the company I was granted three months in the wilderness.
I went from 200 miles to zero overnight with nothing to do. I actually didn’t know what to do as I hadn’t had time for hobbies or a personal life (except for a broken relationship). The first few weeks I just existed, trying to find some footing, and then I began cleaning out my material things.
I had already been exposed to minimalism through the books I had read about Steve Jobs, and really liked the idea of living a simpler life. Digital tech, which was my work, helped me to dematerialize faster: CDs became MP3s, DVDs became MP4s, paper became Google Docs files et cetera.
I found so much stuff that I had bought for no good reason. Just cause I could and cause I was filled with the idea that success needed to be communicated through material wealth, yet underneath, deep inside, I felt anything but successful, just a feeling of emptiness and an eerily rattling vacuum.
I made the math in my mind and on paper: less wants equals less need to work equals more free time. The productivity gains I had created working, rewarded by more money and more work, could become mine and exchanged for time, attention, and creative energy, I thought, and that idea fueled my decluttering.
Remember, this was before the iPhone, so I was really early in adapting my life to the digital nomadic lifestyle. My timing was perfect: I had the right tech skills and lifestyle vision to change right when the sharing economy started. I became an alpha and beta tester for all the new apps and services.
But it didn’t help me a lot with the personal transformation – that must come from within. The process forced me to reflect on and think about who I am and why I’m here as I divested the things I owned. Did I really need the sports car in my new life or was it just an old childhood dream that I now could retire?
The divesting process went on for years as I lacked mentoring or guidance. Coaches was for sports teams and therapy hadn’t yet gone mainstream. Add that I divorced during this period as well, so you can imagine the mental and emotional shit show. I also avoided facing the music which is never ever a good idea.
It’s like the storm the Japanese author Haruki Murakami so eloquently writes about in one of his breakthrough novels, Kafka on The Shore. You are the bloody storm and it doesn’t matter how much you duck and dive, it will chase you down until you realize that you must crawl through it not matter how much it hurts.
And it’s not just one storm; it’s several storms, as many as it takes for you to look into your own soul and start rebuilding. It’s like being a kid with a pile of Legos and asked to build the most beautiful building in the world: it takes time, it takes energy, it takes everything you got to just make a small cabin without windows.
But the small steps lead to bigger leaps; you shed and add, shed and add, shed and add, until you have reformatted yourself into someone that you really like; someone that now has realigned mind, body, soul, and purpose; someone that you feel at home with without all the trappings of modern life.
There is a reason that this spiritual path is called the road less travelled; most people will do anything but face their own life and mortality. So they consume to numb the pain and sufferings that goes along with being a human being with food, alcohol, drugs, social media, and any other addiction know to mankind.
Because it’s easier and we don’t know what the hell to do. We learned to read and write and tons of other commercially viable skills but we were never taught how to deal with who we are and why we’re here. No one wants to be the bearer of that kind of challenging news – neither family nor friends. You’re simply alone.
And from one perspective it’s true that it’s your own path to walk but please, a little guidance would have been appreciated. But I’ve learned that openly talking about your personal life challenges and vulnerabilities is something rather new, and have throughout history been seen as a weakness, not a strength.
Today I can fit everything I own into my car without looking homeless as it’s per design and not unfortunate circumstances. I’ve figured out a new way of living, leveraging the circular economy with my deepest desires and passions, that’s both very inexpensive and very rich – an oxymoron for many people today.
It’s not a recipe you should blindly copy as we are all different human beings with different needs but feel free to be inspired by which lightness I now live my life. There are of course harder days and easier days but it’s on a whole different level than before. It’s truly a no heavy baggage lifestyle, both literary and figuratively.
To help people also wanting to make this journey, I’m putting together a masterclass about simple and sustainable living, covering mindset, relationships, living, work, health, technology, traveling et cetera. It will be a 10-week remote masterclass and I’ll share the design in a few weeks.
I believe that you have found your authentic why in life when you recognize what a gift it is to share it with other people. There are many forces in life and the strongest is leading from the heart, and wanting to see other people survive and thrive on their own terms.
That’s how we can successfully coexist in peace.
Per
Good news. Please count me in for your masterclass, Per. Although, as I look forward with delight, I also ponder the fact that taking online classes is one of the areas of overflow in my life. Hmmm, one more class to help me to streamline / refrain from others?
“I believe you have found your authentic why in life when you recognize what a gift it is to share it with other people.” Profound. This speaks to the core of me. As a teacher and someone who has often reached a hand out to others, offering to listen, to cry with them, and to reflect back the often messy beauty I see as they contemplate their lives, your statement gives voice to the deep rumblings of my soul that have recently stopped me in my tracks.