00049: 30-day Minimalism Game/Challenge Completed!!!

30 days, thirty items

Wow! I cannot believe it! I’m starting to write this post just ten minutes before 9 AM on Sunday, February 28, 2021, and I’m feeling incredibly accomplished because I was able to achieve one of my goals! I was able to complete the 30-day Minimalism Game/Challenge.

My good neighbor asked how I was going to celebrate this achievement. My answer: “What’s to celebrate? I was just decluttering.” According to my neighbor, though, it isn’t just the decluttering, it is the fact that I set up a goal, an intention, a clear objective that was going to take 30 days and it was not going to be easy. Accomplishing such task is reason for celebration.

At first I didn’t comprehend what my neighbor was trying to say but today, on the 30 day of the challenge, knowing that I have actually gone through 30 days of looking at items, putting then on “go away boxes,” reflecting on the reason why I had them, how they were able to add value to my life, and how, at the end, these items served their purpose but now they were just taking space, is in fact, an incredible feast to accomplish.

It tins’t just “decluttering!” It’s also rewiring the brain, setting up a new mentality, defining what is valuable and what is no longer serving a purpose. It’s a psychological journey, an emotional purging, a better way to see your environment, to analyze what you have in your living space, your mind, your heart, and your life. It is an opportunity to reshaped the way you’ve been living (with so much stuff), an opportunity to realize that stuff is just that, stuff and that all the stuff isn’t really necessary.

It’s not just decluttering! It is also becoming aware that living life, appreciating the moment, carpe diem, and existing in an environment without stuff is far more valuable than spending energy on accumulating things that may be useful for a while but then they’re simply abandoned to be replaced by new stuff. It has taken me 30 days of reflection, of physically, psychologically, and emotionally negotiating a process of disengaging from stuff I thought was necessary to be happy, 30 days of negotiating and realizing that the value those items carried is a value I give them based on the memories they evoke. Now, I understand I can still have the memories of past experiences without having the items to remind me of them. The value is in the lived experiences, the memories, not in the items themselves. It hasn’t been easy but I’ve done it! I sure have done it! And I thank my good neighbor for the unconditional support and of course both Josh and Ryan, The Minimalists, for inspiring me to start this journey thanks to their Netflix documentary “Less is Now.”

Today is a day is a day to be thankful and celebrate. #carlosmanuelspeaksthetruth.