If you are thinking about how to start living a minimalist life you are overthinking.
Minimalism is all about removing from life all the stuff that does not bring you joy and value to become a better person.
I was listening to the spiral dynamics videos from actualized.org last week and damn, those are so interesting.
There are like 5 stages explained in there:
- stage blue,
- stage orange,
- stage green,
- stage yellow,
- stage turquoise,
After studying this super interesting model, I was surprised when I have found out that as a person I am probably at these stages on the spiral:
- 70% Yellow,
- 25% Orange,
- and a 5% Blue.
These colors probably don’t mean a lot to you right now!
But if you are going to study the spirals or at least watching Leo Gura’s videos you will learn a lot about how the human brain think and react to the world.
I think that a real minimalist probably would easily fit into a green/yellow stage.
The spiral dynamics are complex models that will help you understand human psychology. I will try to be short and explain each of them here in this article. Click To Tweet
All of this is related on how to start living a minimalist life with no efforts so you will be able to enjoy life more.
The Spiral Dynamics Stages Explained Very Quickly
There are many books and websites you can read about spiral dynamics. But to be short here I will tell you what each stage means.
Of course, you will need to dive deeper if you want to understand how these few words associated with each color mean.
Beige is the most rudimental stage meanwhile turquoise is the last one according to the spiral dynamics scale.
But here is how the stages work in a few lines:
Stage Beige: a beige person doesn’t have any purpose or caring about how the world around him looks like, he just lives to survive and to stay alive meaningless. (0.8% of the population is here at this stage!)
Stage Purple: A purple person likes the stability and living a mundane life. His purpose is to don’t change anything because he’s scared of whatever any change could bring. (10% of the population is here!)
Stage Red: a red person is an impulsive person, he starts to understand that to count in this world he needs to get attention. But he’s not mentally strong enough to get the attention needed with his own personality so it starts to conquer attention and fame with violence, aggressivity, and power. (20% of the population is here!)
Stage Blue: the vast majority of the people on this planet is at stage blue (40%). Stage blue understands that having a purpose and attention and security are all valuable things and being aggressive is not the way to achieve them. But still, he can not achieve them without the help of someone more powerful than him as guidance. They seek inner peace obeying to a boss or an imaginary god or spiritual faith.
Blue is valuing spirituality and security succumbing to someone more powerful that will lead their lives somehow.
Stage Orange: another big chunk of people (30%) is orange. These kind of people are probably your boss, business owners, affirmed people that usually get a suffix before their name. Lawyers, Doctors, and people who build companies in order to make more money and success day after day.
Orange usually have one single view of life and rarely is open-minded to other options and new paths.
Stage Green: stage green people is about the (10%) of the population. These people go beyond success and material things. They realize that success, fame, and money will not make them reminded after death. A good example of moving from stage orange to stage green is Bill Gates. He started making millions of dollars with Microsoft (stage orange) and now he’s building hospitals and finding cures to diseases.
A green person finds happiness giving to others and people will compensate and value him for that.
Stage Yellow: probably around (1%) of the population is stage yellow. Yellow is a long-term thinker. He values sacrifice and helping others so that he can achieve freedom and peace with the world. Yellow is open-minded and he would never judge or create scales to grade someone else opinions. Any opinion is deeply analyzed from yellow. Curiosity is what drives him during the day. Yellow could be extremely intelligent and know so much about one field and then the next day he could completely erase all the stuff he learned to make room to more interesting stuff without completely forgetting the other notions learned. Yellow has a cultural background that usually scares the people around him and only his presence can change someone else lives from the way he moves, replies and act.
Yellow is responsible and wise.
Stage Turquoise: almost no one is stage Turquoise (0.1%). A stage Turquoise is what blue people call god. A stage Turquoise is very spiritually oriented, it creates multi-dimensions of the universe where is living and he’s not even trying to find peace but he’s the peace. He’s aware that no one can control life but at the same time his huge wisdom is able to change people around him without asking. His mental powers are close to unnatural.
Turquoise is a surrender to reality and accepts it with natural joy.
There are probably more stages after turquoise and this is how a yellow thinker thinks.
A yellow thinker doesn’t believe that this model is something accurate and that he needs to stick with it.
He thinks that is a good model to classify people but he uses this to grow and then create his own models.
A yellow thinker thinks that up to turquoise there are more stages and that all the stages listed here are interesting.
Note that the sum of the percentages don’t match 100% because 80% of the people would not fit only in one stage but they would usually have different shades of colors in them.
Learn How To Have A Minimalist Life From Animals
Animals are probably a mix of stage turquoise and beige. Which probably doesn’t make any sense for the creators of this model.
If you look at your cat you will soon notice that everyone in the house pet him or appreciate him a lot even though he doesn’t talk.
A cat can love you one day and the next day can scratch your eyes off your face.
Cats are unpredictable and one of the animals we are familiar with, but overall animals all follow the same lines.
Animals live their life sleeping, eating, having sex and they are not worried about having to travel the world or spending money, having a credit card and achieve success.
Animals could probably evolve and start building houses and pay their bills, but they choose not too because it’s not worth it.
Man is the worst creation of a god created by men.
If you want to begin living a minimalist lifestyle you need to learn from animals how to get by life and aim to be at least a yellow stage on the spiral.
A minimalist spends less time thinking of stuff that doesn’t add any value. A journey towards minimalism is all about being wise about finances, thoughts and spiritual balance.
A minimalist journey is as simple as the life of a cat, but with the wisdom of a human able not to waste an entire day sleeping.
A minimalist understands that traveling and having friends and helping others could bring an immense level of joy for free.
He understands that money is absolutely useless. He applies all the principles of a yellow stage to his life passing from the beige stage when he was born to eventually turquoise and beyond.
If you want to know how to practice minimalism you don’t have to look anywhere!
Don’t buy books, don’t stick to a group of people that calls themselves minimalists, myself included, but just learn from them to create your own minimalist style.
You don’t need to pay money to become a minimalist, you don’t need to listen to someone else teaching you how to become a minimalist.
All you have to do is to pass from your blue or orange stage to a higher level.
Stage green and yellow are 99% of the times minimalist not by choice, their way of living makes them so. They don’t overwhelm their lives with useless stuff and dogmas.
They are curious and analytics and long terms visionaries.
These 3 characteristics don’t work with capitalists and consumerist people.
Stage beige, purple, red, blue and orange people appreciate life only from instant gratification. That’s why they are not minimalists.
Conclusions
To make your life easier try to reduce the amount of stuff around you!
Slowly progress from the blue stage that you are probably at to a higher stage.
Living simply is a quality we can learn from animals but with the wisdom of men.
How is a minimalist different from miser then?
Minimalism is all about valuing things to reach a turquoise stage or even higher stage where wisdom, death, happiness, discomfort, fries, trees have the same exact value and weight. (They all add experience and improve us in life).
Your minimalist life is closer than you think, expand your mind to new opportunities and point of views.
Don’t get stuck with anchors and dogmas, create your own way of thinking and influence people in an asynchronous way.
Be smart but without having to pass a test to prove it! Eat curiosity for breakfast and go to sleep even more curious. Click To Tweet
Sources
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Further Readings:
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