Minimalist Newbie? A different perspective can help to shift your gears.

It is easy to dwell on all of the things we do not like about ourselves. In fact, that seems to be the way the way most of us interact with the world. We greet our friends and co-workers with "Hello" followed by, "I should have done...", "I wish I had..." or some other form of narrating the negative self-image. It is easy to see why we fall into such a routine. This is by no means the only reason, but one striking influence is the information we absorb on the daily. When many of the images we see displayed in books, magazines, and electronic media impress that to be happy, we need the things or lifestyle that they possess.

In media, when we see a smiling lady with 15 shopping bags, that image sticks with us for a few seconds. We feel her happiness and joy is infectious. However, it does not last long and that drop in the effect of her charm can bring about feelings and thoughts of being ‘without’ or depression. We are without her shopping experience, her things, her possessions, her money and the list goes on. After repeated exposure to such forms of information, we teach ourselves that happiness, joy and love is associated with ‘things’. When in reality, happiness, joy and love are a direct result of our state of being.

I want to pose a question. What position would you be in if all of the things you hold dear were gone? Victims of natural disasters and other crimes have lived this reality. In placing yourselves in their shoes, what would you do? Would you allow the depression to take hold? Why did your thoughts immediately flow to the quickest way to replace what you lost?

I am now going to push you to jump into another form of thinking by posing another question. Where is your power? Where is the power you once felt while possessing your possessions?

Your belongings are gone and you see the destruction of your prior existence. Now, in order to regain some form of stability, you must construct a new life. It is not possible to rebuild the prior life for the things you had in it are no more. Recreating them is not possible for one reason or another, mainly because merchandise tends to change with the trends. These thoughts flow through the mind in seconds after the loss of all prior possessions. The fact is soon realized that moves in a certain direction must be carried out and you make a decision. There, right there. Did you see, or did you miss it? Let me repeat, you make a decision. That is your power.

Before you possessed those material items, you made a decision. You either made a decision to purchase the material items on your own or you made the decision to accept the material items from another. In any case, you made the moves necessary to build that life and you can make the decision to construct a new one. Your identity is not in your stuff, for to purchase and accept the stuff, you first have to formulate the thought. Your stuff does not define you, it is merely a way to express how you define yourself, and therefore, stuff is not needed to show people who you are and what you are about. Your true identity lies within yourself. That love you seek in the form of stuff only exists in those items because you placed it there. Understanding that love is always a part of your identity, you can wield it at any time for any reason. For too long, many have been taught to assign love to possessions without understanding that the possessions would have never come into our lives if at first there was no love within.

To lose our stuff can be heart breaking if we fail to see that love is not materialistic. Love is a state of being, a state of existence, which flows from us, through us and out into the world. We have the ability to control that flow, just as we have the ability to assign different meanings to it. We must remember that it first flowed from our beings into the material world, and not the other way around. You no longer need feel overwhelmed by the stuff you see in the lives of others because you recognize the true love you have flows from within. You acknowledge your power and now understand that your love fuels your decisions, it fuels that power.

You may not be an individual who has lost everything, but your actions, your feelings and the way you express yourself can reflect the state of mind of an individual who has assigned the wrong meaning to love. I encourage you to take a step back and review your state of being. I challenge you to reconstruct your relationship you have with your possessions. You may surprise yourself when you investigate the true reason you purchased or accepted certain material items. It is not necessary to give up your possessions to understand where your true self love resides. However, it is essential to understanding your connection to those items in order for you to release those negative self-degrading thoughts which arise from the feelings and thoughts of being ‘without’.

Let us be Present. Let us be of Light. Let us be of Love.