Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Hyggelig Concept EP2: Minimalism || 3 Favourite Minimalism Books

Hi everyone, welcome back to our Hyggelig Concept

Today we are going to share about minimalism

and books that have helped me in this journey

The first book that I have on my list is Goodbye Things from Fumio Sasaki

Fumio Sasaki is a very young male writer

who is bringing out the new Japanese minimalism.

He started out his book by talking about how are bombarded with information

how are we getting all these overloaded information

from the moment we wake up from sleep

All these things that are accumulated will affect us

And in his book, he mentioned a very special concept that I love,

which is silent messages

So what is “silent messages”?

Silent messages is actually messages that brought out by the things

the material things that we possess

When you look at your things they actually telling you some of the messages

e.g. when you look at your clothes it reminds you that you need to do your laundry

when you saw a Facebook notification popup, it's then telling you to click in

and to reply on the message.

When you're looking at your guitar, it might be telling you that

“hey, you need to practice”

So all these stuff, even though there is no written to-do list

but it kind of creates a silent to-do list in your mind

As we might have known, our brain has its own limitation

our brain has its own capacity

so whenever you're creating long to-do list in your mind, it's actually using up the capacity in your brain.

It makes you feel overwhelmed by things that you need to do

In that case, it's very hard for you to focus on what you really need to do

and you will easily get distracted

I believe a lot of people are like me

where sometimes we got caught up with this kind of situations

We know that we have a lot of things to do

but you just don't know which one to start with or you don't feel like doing it at all

So, how minimalism can help us in this instance is

by getting rid of the possessions

Because by getting rid of the possessions, you actually have less to worry about

eventually you will have less things on your silent to do list

As a starter in this minimalism journey

I know it might be hard to get rid of all your possession

but becoming aware of the silent messages that you are getting

I personally think that it's very helpful

At least you know that there is something that is distracting you

and if that is not your priority maybe you can consider get rid of that.

The next book I have on the list is Soulful simplicity living with less

written by Courtney Carver

One of the reasons I love this book is that

Courtney shares her story of moving from a stressful, cluttered, busy life

to a life with better health, more space and time

Also, each section of this book is packed with practical suggestions

For instance, she mentioned about a busy boycott, which is a 21 day challenge

to help you to slow down.

If you go on Youtube and search for 21 day challenge

you should be able to see people who accepted the challenge and

tracked down their journey

For me myself, I actually accepted the challenge

It's a challenge that breaks into three simple steps for seven days each

The first step is to stop talking about the word busy

Have you ever thought that that when you tell someone that you're busy

you're actually conveying the message that you are too busy for them?

So for the first seven days try to ban the word busy from your Vocab.

this is actually more challenging than what i have thought

But Courtney actually gives us very practical tips on how to tackle with this

if you caught yourself in the mid sentence using the word busy

you can try to change your response or try to change the conversation

You can try to change it by asking some better questions

For example, what made you smile today?

Is there anything interesting that happen today?

By changing the way of asking, you're actually open up the space for connections

The second step is to do less

Think about what you can delegate and release completely

After all, what we want is to work with people who want our best, not our busiest

So try to eliminate one thing from your calendar or to-do list

Don't postpone it, just let it go

You might be worried about missing out something

but Courtney has given us some guidance in her book

So check out her book, and it will definitely help you in this second step

And third steps, is to linger longer

This is my favourite part of the challenge

In this part, what you need to do is just slow down

You can stop to say a prayer in the warmth of the sunshine

There's no guilt. There is no guilt in self care,

there's no shame in waking up slowly

You can support your commitment to create and protect your new found time and space

You can do a lot of things that you love, slowly

Usually, we think about the opposite of busyness as laziness

But I guess what Courtney is trying to convey in her book is that

we can consider the opposite of a busy life as an intentional life

So I will definitely recommend this book

It is a very good read, very relaxing

I like the tone of this book

It feels like with all of the hassle in our daily lives

or after a long day at work, it's really good to just sit down with this book

telling us that we can go slowly with our life

finding more time for ourselves

Life is not just about work

So have a read on soulful simplicity and

I hope you find the answer to why you want to go for minimalism life

The third book on my list is Digital minimalism by Cal Newport

This is an interesting book

and it is different from the first two books that I mentioned

It basically talks about this idea of how costly it is

to spend our lives on all of these digital platforms, on social media and all kinds of media

I believe a lot of us have heard of Cal Newport

He is a professor, a superstar blogger, productivity guru

and also the best-selling author of the book 'deep work'

In his book, other than describing how the digital usage changes our lives

and some remedies to tackle this, he also talks about a very good idea of go deep

And how you can do this, is by digital detox, or you can call it digital declutter

It's just like the Marie Kondo approach, but to a digital life

Like what Marie Kondo said if it's not useful or doesn't bring you any joy

it needs to be gone

I really like the focus of this book on replacing the online media

with high-quality real-life activities

It’s not saying that you cannot use the social media at all

but you need to know that technology is just a tool

It’s a tool that serves something that you deeply value

It’s about rediscovering the non-technology-powered activities

and behaviors you enjoy doing and supplementing them into your life

It worth a read if you’d like to find out more about how to do a digital detox

and how digital detox can helped you in reconnecting with the world

Done with all the recommendations for today

If you’re interested in any of the books we mentioned today

I’ll link it down in the description box

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