Minimalism | Redefining Value & Success
In this short piece, I discuss how minimalism has allowed me to redefine what value and success mean to me.
I’ve found that by intentionally taking the time to sort out your own definition of value (after identifying and fighting the influences of your upbringing and external environment), you can align yourself more effectively with the things, people, and experiences that truly matter.
Hope this helps spark a new perspective!
The ‘natural’ definition of value and success
I’m sure a lot can relate, but since my high school years, I’ve struggled with ‘finding’ purpose and happiness.
I consider myself a fairly ambitious and motivated person, and I find myself really only diving into things that I’m truly passionate about.
But because of this, I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well in school and land in a great, impactful career. Though I absolutely love what I do now, I definitely found myself placing too much emphasis on my career to fully provide for my happiness.
From repeatedly associating academic and career success to purpose, I found myself subconsciously aligning my idea of happiness with career success, and subsequently, associating this to possessions and things.
Though I’ve never been overly-materialistic, nor a complete hoarder, I fell prey to the natural inclination toward ‘more, better stuff = more contentment’ while assuming an infinitely-linear relationship between the two.
I also think this mentality was partially influenced by my upbringing. My family immigrated from the Philippines to Canada when I was very young and inherited the notion to ‘build and acquire’ since we were literally starting from scratch.
I do think that materialism and financial wealth is a very natural thing to be inclined toward if you’re not careful or intentional about pinpointing what ‘success’ actually means to you.
It’s one of the only things we can quickly measure and compare people with. It takes a much greater deal of directed effort to weigh people instead on intangible, difficult-to-measure human traits like kindness or compassion.
Therefore, building ideas of ‘success’ oriented toward possessions and money acts as the path of least resistance if there is no catalyst to guide intentions toward other, more meaningful values.
The Catalyst: Checking the boxes, accumulating stuff
But having moved on my own right after graduation from my small town to Downtown Toronto, I started my professional career, landed my own place, and finally started to accumulate my own possessions; I started to tick more boxes off my roadmap of ‘things to accomplish’.
Over the past 2 years, I started to see the correlation (or lack thereof) between the things I let in and my happiness.
During this period, I started accumulating clothes and technology because it was just so easy to purchase and justify their ‘utility’.
Again, though I never came close to becoming a full-blown hoarder, there was a lot that I brought into my life that meant very little to me, stuff that only weighed me down and cluttered my physical and mental space.
I could have definitely been a lot more intentional with the things, people, and activities that I allowed in. Eventually, I felt spread thin across all of my belongings, most of which didn’t provide me much joy outside of the short spurts of dopamine from their initial acquisition.
Because I felt spread thin, my mind felt cluttered and the things that did matter to me most (both material and intangible) were being undervalued and shadowed by the meaningless.
I started to see the need to realign what my definition of value was because of how many things I brought into my life unintentionally and their ineffectiveness at lifting my general wellbeing.
The root problem: realigning my definition of value and success
I started to wonder why I wasn’t taking the same approach to my possessions as I did with my work and creative outlets.
Why was I so selective in only doing work that I was truly passionate in, but not in the least selective in the possessions and other miscellaneous things I allowed into my life?
I slowly realized that my definition of success was something that I had never really intentionally defined for myself. I never actually took the time to sit down and decide what ‘being successful’ actually meant. I always just took what came naturally to mind.
The issue with taking our first inclination or instinct toward something as important as ‘success’ is that it’s heavily influenced by random chance from our external environments. My upbringing, along with my social network, family, life events, and other random happenings all helped shape this ‘natural’ view toward my definition of success, but this isn’t what helps one get closer to their true internal values (though it definitely helps us get closer to the values that our environments and society want us to hold).
So I started getting rid of a lot of my things.
After working through each and every item I owned one by one over the course of a few weeks, I can now confidently say that everything that remains is something that genuinely adds value to my life, whether it be from a literal utility standpoint because they are useful things, or if they remind me of certain important cues, emotions, or mindsets to be in.
I find that this is also an ongoing exercise with both material things and the activities or work that I delve in, the people I associate with, and so on. I don’t really view it as a destination, but more as a daily practice in being intentional.
From this exercise and these realizations, I flipped my original idea of ‘success’ and ‘value’ completely upside down, and here’s where I landed:
I’m not as dependent toward physical things or specific achievements to define my value as I once thought.
Though I value and am grateful for things like the technology around me to help me be more productive, I know that I could live happily tomorrow if all of my belongings disappeared without a trace.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not grateful for the things around.
There’s a nuanced distinction between gratitude and attachment because gratitude suggests that ‘I value your presence’ while attachment signals that ‘I need your value’.
By extinguishing attachment, I’ve cleared my mind of influences and biases to enable myself the luxury of looking deep inside to what I truly strive for. What I valued was no longer dependent on external things or activities that I associated with; it came purely from my true intentions.
‘Success’ isn’t something that I see can be obtained anymore; it’s something that is practiced on a daily basis.
I see value in learning and trying, constantly persevering. I also value staying true to yourself (both in the commitments you make and when faced with external pressures), while also staying critical of yourself because everyone is learning and trying to maneuver through life the exact same way you are.
I also think that no matter how different others are or how difficult they are to deal with, there should always be room for understanding and listening to perspective because none of us really have any idea of what the ‘correct’ way of living is.
From this, I realized that my idea of being ‘successful’ only meant that I was constantly trying my best to practice embodying these things on a daily basis, staying curious and curbing my own personal biases to give way to new perspectives and understanding.
Conclusion
Success became something that was directly in my grasp and it was sitting right in front of me throughout these years of searching with the wrong intention.
Though our definitions will differ for value and success, I do think taking the time to reflect while scrutinizing natural inclinations is a powerful exercise for just about anyone looking to be more intentional.
What’s your definition of success?
