Minimalism: An alternative narrative about enough | Marlous van der Veen | TEDxFryslân

good afternoon everyone, thank you for being here about a year ago. I did something that all of you did before he arrived. I woke up and woke up and my first thought was oh, I'm sleepy. I didn't get

enough

sleep today and then. My second thought was that I don't have

enough

time to get ready and my morning started, it was a rushed ritual and I ran from appointment to appointment and my life was busy, but it was necessary because there was a lot to accomplish, I mean, I need a lot of fun things in my life, but there is more, so I called it growth growth in my work growth in skills growth in life growth in mindset in my social network more friends more meetings more everything and it allows you to believe that I am busy so I exist and that The day I just told you about was a very different day because I came home at night and had a huge emotional breakdown and didn't really understand wydo because I felt like I had it all.

I had a brilliant career and people said I had high potential and I had a ton of diplomas and the newest iPhone in a really amazing department with cool things. I thought I was just checking the whole box to be a well-rounded person, a successful, happy person. person but I walled off because I felt unfulfilled emptiness there was a huge void in my life and I didn't really understand why I couldn't just be happy with what I had at that moment why there was always something better, newer and cooler to pursue? Why were there simply never enough link spins?

She is quite a famous doctor in the field of life fulfillment. She shows that many people wake up like me before their feet even touch the ground. We already feel that we are losing or that we are lacking. something we don't exercise enough we don't have enough work we don't get paid enough we don't make enough profits our lack of power not enough nature too relaxing not enough time not even close we don't have enough money at all we're not smart enough we're not the smart enough we are not fit enough we are not cultured enough nor successful enough and this results in the feeling that we are never finished, we go to bed with that thought and I wake up with the illusion of scarcity and, according to Lynn, This is the basis of a hurried life, it is also the basis of a very dissatisfied and shitty life, it was my life and I was very frustrated, I was just really frustrated.

I walked. I think people call it a quarter life crisis for weeks maybe months and then someone gave me advice and the person told me to cut back when you do what you always did you get what you always got and I always did more, so I thought what If I do less and well, then I did I guess what any millennial would do. I googled it and found out that if you google less you get over 3 billion views, it wasn't very encouraging I can tell you that and after that I guess I did it. what Eddie would do in any other millennium: I got really distracted and started watching Netflix and Netflix has this new feature where movies and documentaries start playing without you asking and well, normally it's very annoying, but this time it started to play a documentary. and it started with a quote that said that much of your life happens in this fog of automatic habitual behavior.

We spend so much time hunting but nothing helps us and we get so involved in that hunting that it just makes us feel miserable, it got me, it was a story about two American guys they called minimalists and I didn't really understand it because I had heard about it before, but I found the minimalist people quite sad because yeah, well, I felt like I know they were living I don't know with ten things in a suitcase and they weren't allowed to have a car or a house they don't allow you to like necklaces I don't really know I was thinking that it was a very restrictive lifestyle and well, as you can tell me here today about

minimalism

, I was very wrong,

minimalism

is not about quantity, it is about quality and that is something very different in our world today because our world is about growth, it's about numbers, look at the news for example we are talking about having more profits having more purchasing power having more of everything for companies but also for us think about it we all know that those things don't make us happy right but there are people sleeping in front of Apple stores to get a new iPhone, we all know that relationships are very important to us, but we hang out more with our friends online, the word goes offline once we cancel dinner plans with our parents because we have to work late to earn more money, that's what we all know but we do it anyway I knew it I did it anyway and that made me think because how is it possible we are living in the western world we have the best level of life of all time why we always want more and I found three There are three triggers that actually make us believe in that world of more and the first is that a little is missing, but it doesn't matter.

The first is a biological trigger, we all have it in our hat, you may recognize it from animals for example, hunting for food in summer to have enough in winter is a survival strategy. Animals have it and early humans had it and we still have it, but it's creating a disconnect because we don't need it anymore. Mother Nature is playing with us and it gives us a feeling of uneasiness and what we want to do we want to act accordingly and act well, that makes it very easy today because our most trigger is stimulated all the time.

We receive many messages about how we should live our lives. it's on our phones it's on TV it's here books it's in a newspaper it's out on buses along the roads as you may have guessed it's advertisements here in the Netherlands the average person sees between five hundred and three thousand when they think about it It means you get messages from people trying to convince you that your life is about to be complete but you just needed one product, that one product that fits your collection and then you're fine with 3000 a day and that makes it easier for us . act on the impulse of the single feeling of restlessness and that creates the third thing.

I would like to point out the threads. I really thought for a long time about how to explain this and then it made me think about fashion because when I was little I went. going shopping with my mom and we only had two seasons, summer and winter, well, pretty easy, and then I grew up and fast fashion did too and this means we have 52 seasons a year, now some stores even have 365, which That means you really have to do it. Think about what it means that you buy something today and tomorrow it goes out of style, tomorrow it's not broken, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just out of style and think about it, we have this trigger that goes off thousands of times and then when you finally buy something , the whole red race starts again because you no longer have tendencies, then you activate again and we end up with a house full of junk things that we don't need and the worst thing is that they really pollute. our planet we are using materials that the earth is not even capable of providing, let's stop this madness.

I thought about the

narrative

we live in and I think we need another one, we need a new

narrative

, enough is enough and for me minimalism is a way to change that narrative. I did a lot of experiments with it and it showed me a surprise, a surprise enough because I can tell them that it is not a number, it is not quantitative, it is a context, it is a context that we ourselves create, it is the knowledge that we know that there is enough and that we are enough, so minimalism thinks about that uncomfortable silence, nothing there is minimalism today I am here to tell you what I have learned doing this new narrative enough and that is that it is very difficult to find getting to that point and that is why today I want to share with you my dance moves because today's topic shut up and dance well and I am here to dance the two minimalist steps.

I like to show you the first step of minimalism is to identify what is important to you, the second step is to eliminate everything else, and that is a lot, discover what is most important to you, which for some people is very easy, for Others it is very difficult, but you cannot read it in a book because it is really yours. Some people feel the greatest happiness by having a stamp collection in a book, others travel around the world and others simply enjoy a good cup of tea in their home. backyard and everything is fine because the most important thing is yours is truly yours what is But the important thing for you in my crisis was that I really had no idea what that was for me, so I didn't start at one, I started both, I started deleting things later, small things like books, clothes, office supplies, random things.

I bought on the channels to make my house look more like mine, yes, and this may seem very easy, eh, but it really isn't. It really confronted me with myself and with my thoughts very often I thought no, I can't throw this away. I spent so much money on it, did I ever plan to use it, no, or did I think I was really going to use this and then I really thought about it in I don't know five years and then I realized that letting these things go makes room for the things I found important and so it was.

I got rid of many. I got rid of over 1,500 items and didn't miss a single item, literally none. It's crazy, and it made me feel like I was back to step one. I started that step of eliminating things that made room for the things I found important, step two, step one, and these important things really made me happy. I am a happy minimalist dancer and that is why I am here today. I'm here to tell you that there is an

alternative

to enough but you have to dare to dance you have to dare to put aside your dance moves and try to experiment with something else and it's hard you need courage but you can do it so I just like it To take this moment we have now and think about it, take a deep breath and ask yourself: are you ready for a long enough life?

A life with less stress but more life. A life with fewer others but more you. A life with less things but. more happiness if you are. I like to challenge you. Let go of one thing today. One thing might be that ugly towel that's been lying around in your locker for a while. It may be that business card from a guy you don't plan on calling anyway. It can be intangible It can be a pending task that doesn't really help you It can be a product that doesn't add value to your life I just want to encourage you to take a look at your dance routine and find your way to a world of less and while you do that I just want to give you the best advice I was given during this journey and that is when you do what you always did you will get what you always got thank you so much for listening