Someone asked me this question recently:

If your house caught fire, your family, pets are safe, what would you save first?

My answer 3 years ago would have been: My whole house! Everything in it. I love it so much

 My answer two years ago would have been:  My important documents, some diamonds, some expensive clothes.

 My answer a year ago: Some important documents and laptop

 My answer 6 months ago:  Wallet

 My answer now:  I don’t know. There’s nothing I can think of.

So what has changed?

I saw a documentary couple of years ago on minimalism. A lot of my living has been inspired from that.

We tell ourselves we need stuff in our life which over time begins to feel like carrying around excessive weight. After watching the documentary, I realized I had not been honest with myself. But it is the one and the only thing that you can truly be with yourself. When it comes to honesty with the other, it all goes wonky.

Minimalism isn’t about throwing stuff out of your life. It is a stark and honest look at what you truly need vs what you have been told you need. All advertisements pander to false needs.

We bought the lies others sold us about creating wants as needs. That without something, we would be somehow less than. We didn’t even know something lacked in our life until this company was born, needed to make money off you, created stuff that creates a “fear of missing out”, you joined the bandwagon and lo and behold, you now need this product.

I did that like everyone else, with everything. Including spiritual Gyan (knowledge) and other people’s wisdom as greater than my own. Why? Because they were selling it. I had lost myself so completely that I was willing to buy anything anyone sold me to get a sense of where I belonged.

What changed? Blunt honesty. To myself. DID I REALLY NEED IT? No. But that itself took so long to see because living in denial can get super comfortable. Things are rosy, colorful, picturesque.

Honesty requires waking up. Shaking yourself from a drug like a stupor and with eyes wide open, looking around to see what is happening while you were comatose. And then come making honest choices which can rock you’re and maybe your family’s world. No one likes a pot-stirrer or boat rocker. Especially families. You get blamed and thrown out and who’d want that?

If people start to leave you because you choose to get honest and simpler, then they just dumped themselves for you. Be grateful and move on.

 So now it’s a transition time.

What are your true needs?

What do you want?

What would you like YOUR life to be like vs. what others tell you you will miss out on.

Love

Aditi Nirvaan