‘A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Lao Tzu

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Francine Jay of Miss Minimalist.

I’m often asked what inspired me to become a minimalist. The answer: I fell in love with traveling lightly.

After over-packing on a few trips—and suffering the misery of lugging around a heavy suitcase—I vowed never to check a bag again. On my first trip to Europe, I opted for a small carry-on instead (replacing my wardrobe of clothes with a packet of laundry detergent).

The experience was exhilarating! I was mobile, flexible, and fancy free. I felt like I could go anywhere, and do anything, when I wasn’t loaded down with stuff. And I thought, wow, if it feels this great to travel lightly, how wonderful would it be to live this way?

I began to edit the contents of my home with the same fervor as I had my suitcase. As I slowly ditched the extra “baggage,” I could feel the weight being lifted from my shoulders.

Lighten your load

Excess possessions are like excess luggage: they can tie us down, get in the way, and drain our sense of energy and adventure. (Have you ever passed up a job offer because of the hassle of moving, or a vacation because there was nobody to “watch the house”?)

Conversely, the less stuff we have to worry about, the more nimble we become—and the better able to embrace new opportunities and experiences.

To regain our freedom, we simply need to lighten our loads. We can accomplish that by borrowing a few packing techniques:

Start with a clean slate. Travelers start with an empty suitcase, and select each item that goes into it. Take a similar approach when decluttering: empty the entire contents of the drawer, closet, or room you’re working on. Then carefully consider each item, and decide whether to return it to the space. Choose what to keep, rather than what to toss.

Question every item. In a small carry-on, every item must pull its weight. Demand the same of your household possessions: have a conversation with your stuff, and ask what value it adds to your life. If the answer is “not much,” give it the heave-ho.

Set limits. To keep his bag light, a traveler might limit his pants to two, his shirts to three, and his socks to four. Use a similar strategy to keep your stuff under control: decide, for example, to own only five sweaters, fifty books, or the amount of craft supplies that’ll fit into one storage box.

Use modules. Take inspiration from packing cubes, and gather like items (cosmetics, office supplies, video games) into separate “modules.” Consolidating your stuff helps you see how much you have, weed out duplicates, and keep a lid on further accumulation.

Think versatility. To save space, light packers favor items that do double- or triple-duty (like clothes that can be dressed up or down, and layered for different climates). Use the same principle in your home: choose versatile or multi-functional items (like a sleeper sofa, or all-purpose saute pan) over single-task ones.

Digitize. Digital music, books, and documents are not only easier to transport—they’re also easier to store. Use technology to transform physical possessions into bits and bytes: scan paperwork, convert CDs to MP3s, and buy electronic books instead of paper ones.

Live on the edge. The light traveler addresses her needs as they arise; if she runs out of toothpaste in Tokyo, she simply buys some more. Adopt a similar philosophy at home: instead of stockpiling stuff or holding on to “just in cases,” acquire things on an as-needed basis.

Lighten your step

In addition to lightening your load, it also helps to lighten your step. Life, like travel, is no fun when you’re plodding through each day, checking off an itinerary, or worrying about what might go wrong. It’s significantly more pleasant, in the words of an old Chinese poem, to “drift like clouds and flow like water.”

Some tips for traveling well through life:

Take the slow train. Instead of speeding through your days, slow down and savor every moment—we only get to take this fabulous trip once. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly in no hurry to reach the destination.

Look out the window. Too often, we approach our lives with tunnel vision—focusing only on the road ahead, with our foot on the accelerator. Instead, give up the wheel and enjoy the ride; look around, and take in all the beautiful scenery.

Ditch the itinerary. Much fuss is made over goals, plans, and schedules. But any good traveler will tell you that the magic happens when you let go of the reins, and let things unfold of their own accord. Take each day as it comes, and be surprised and delighted by what transpires.

Be mindful of fellow passengers. You’re not on this journey alone; be considerate of your travel companions. Smile, be polite, and respect their privacy and space. Don’t be the guy that nobody wants to sit next to.

Go with the flow. Not every route will be smooth, nor every connection on schedule. Don’t despair if your plans fall to pieces; be fluid, and welcome the possibilities a detour may hold.

When we approach life like wayfarers, we realize that “more” isn’t necessarily better—and in fact, can be downright burdensome. I’ve never known any traveler to envy how much luggage his neighbor has.

“Less,” on the other hand, can be absolutely liberating—and make for an easier, more exciting, and infinitely more interesting journey!

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An interesting topic which has come up a few times lately is stillness. Some will say “me” time, others will call it quiet time, stillness, solitude, etc. For me currently, it’s a whole whack of time as I am training on my own almost 100% of the time. Not out of choice. Purely because others aren’t quite into the long stuff I am doing at the moment.

Even within these extended periods of being alone, it’s not that often that I am not thinking of something or focusing on something to do with keeping going, raising or lowering heart rate, watching for cars, glass, potholes etc. I am continuously coming back to Ellipsis and how it relates to that stillness I try and give myself each day. 5 minutes can be enough, other days I might need an hour. Really its a complete lack of thought and movement. I do it to find my quiet power, which can only come from a quiet mind.

Once I have that quiet mind I find that the people around me are calmer too, so really it has a knock-on effect, this stillness. It requires practice and a bit of dedication to master, but the effects are profound. I found a great article on it here and it went like this:

“Silence is a source of great strength.” ~Lao Tzu

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter .

It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It’s a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It’s an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.

The cure is simple: it’s stillness.

Pause

Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that’s going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.

This stillness might seem like inaction, which we’re taught is a bad thing. It’s lazy, it’s passive, it’s against our Puritan work ethic. And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.

Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush we feel daily.

“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat.” ~Lao Tzu

The Strength of Stillness

Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work and otherwise interact with us.

When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It slows the world down, allows us to focus, gives us time for contemplation, for what matters most.

It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us weird at first, that’s OK. Sometimes it’s the weird ones that make the most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find stillness of their own, we won’t be the weird ones — we’ll be the ones with wisdom.

It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a chaos of activity, but it’s a strength that’s in us, and we need only to find it. Paradoxically, it’s stillness that will allow us to find that strength. Be still, look within, and it’ll be there.

Finding Stillness

It’s pretty simple, really, and you don’t need me to tell you to do this: to find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still, every day that you can.

Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet, to sit still. Don’t do anything, don’t plan your day, don’t check email, don’t eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.

In practice, we’ll gradually find that comfort, and we’ll become good at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or after work, or just before you go to bed.

Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.

From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of your day, radiating like a soothing force. You’ll be calmer throughout the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere: when you first start your workday, when you are ready to sit down and create, when you’re about to eat, when you are ready to exercise, during a meeting, even.

Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jeffrey Tang of The Art of Great Things. I found the article on zenhabits

When we think about simplifying, we usually think about subtraction. Getting rid of excess stuff. Clearing away obligations. Deleting old emails.

We simplify by paring away the layers of something until we find the core. Too many books on the shelf? Give them away, one by one, until you’re left with a manageable number of the volumes you really enjoy.

But decluttering this way is hard. For example:

Do you really want to pull dozens of books off the shelf one by one, trying to decide whether to keep or sell each one?

Do you have the time to go through hundreds of backlogged emails, choosing which to save and which to delete?

And there’s another obstacle. When you’re forced to choose to keep or discard something, uncertainty rears its ugly head. “Can you really afford to throw this away?” it whispers. “Are you sure you won’t need it eventually? Sure, you’re on a simplification kick now – but will you regret it later?” Playing the willpower game with uncertainty gets exhausting.

Simplifying Backwards is Easier

If you’re having trouble deciding when to hold on to something and when to let it go, try doing things backward. Learn to add responsibly instead of subtracting.

I call it the clean-slate approach to simplifying. Here’s how it works, in three steps. (more…)

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Today has been a wonderful day, with a fantastic realization in the morning, somewhere on a farm out in Botrivier. I have to share something with you.

I posted up this link today, as I was walking around Wildekrans Wine Estate, sourcing picture ideas and story concepts for them.

The picture caused a furor on my Twitter account as the replies flooded in. Yes, another tough day in Africa. Indeed, lately, there have been some tough moments and decisions.

You see, a while back I made the decision to go on my ace, to do three things which I was passionate about;

1. Write
2. Coach
3. Grow

So I took the option to coach more athletes, in a better way. All the time I am doing more technical things with my athletes, and indeed, over the next year, the service is set to grow almost exponentially for them, at the same cost. I have time to organize camps, create decent affiliate structures for them, etc.

I took the option to start a small media based business which focused on telling the stories of brands online, through a platform much like Urban Ninja. So far its been great and after a few months of struggling to make payments, I can happily say that I am indeed, above the breadline again.

And lastly, I took the option to stop working so hard, and in a way, live the holiday. I am doing less, traveling less, phoning less, emailing less, and getting alot more done. I don’t fill my day with crap and pretending to be busy, the missus calls that presenteeism, and you can read all about it on her site.

If you have a look at the picture, that was my life this morning. At one point, I sat down in a field of yellow flowers and there were about 200 swallows around me, in a frenzy, chomping away on little creatures in the air. It was so quiet that I could hear the wind in their wings. They got closer and closer and I could have reached out at one point to grab one if I wanted, but the moment was pure and I just let it be.

That was my work, and I know have a sticky story to tell about the farm, about the wildlife there, that indeed, if you wanted the same experience, they would more than likely not care if you went to lie down in the field, preferably with a bottle of their amazing wine of course, and listened to nature doing its thing.

I am taking on new challenges in the next year, learning to ride a mountain bike, paddle in the ocean, and I have a list of things I want to achieve or master as well. Simple things I would never had the time for in my “previous” life, where I spent 8am to 6pm doing very little, actually.

I am fortunate enough to be a simple guy. I love my car, which isn’t fancy. I never want a huge house, and I have amazing people who make my life easier, better. You see their brands on the sidebar, there on the right hand side. They make my life MUCH easier. They help me live the holiday.

Do I want more? Obviously. I had to slow down now, and get the basics right, and from here, I can grow my life with the same focus, the same essentials, even though these businesses are growing, I am going to keep the core the same.

More than anything, I have time again, and time gives me a freedom I had forgotten about. My own time, which I share willingly, but selectively.

2Oceansvibe talks about living the holiday. He does live that brand. I applaud him for the choices he makes (not always easy) to make his dream a reality. At times, you have to take the leap, and go with it. For a few months, you might have to forgo luxuries like movies or dinners in fancy restaurants. Who cares, really? Your ego might tell you that you are cutting yourself short.

If I look back now, I would rather have been breadline based with this freedom, than doing what I did previously.

My hope is that more people will live the dream, the holiday, and get what they want. If you are living the dream, please, let me know, so I can buy you a coffee, and share some of the secrets which can make it so much easier to live a simple life of meaning. I am NOT an expert, I merely have some experience.

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