How to resist a world that’s trying to make us broke and lonely
Our relationship with ‘stuff’ may sit squarely at the centre of this book, but I should be clear from the outset that the purpose of it isn’t to make you obsess over material things. In fact, it’s to help you do the opposite. I want to give you the tools to understand what you need and don’t need, and how to make the objects in your life work for you in the long term.
THE BENEFITS OF MINDFUL CURATION
We only have a limited amount of money, headspace and time to spend as we frolic on this planet and we can very easily waste a huge amount of each on meaningless stuff. Mindful curation helps us to free up all three, so that we can spend them enjoying the things we find most meaningful.
Being more mindful about what we buy protects us from impulse spending and gives us more resilience to advertising and marketing manipulation. So we find that we start saving money over time. Crucially, though, it doesn’t feel as though we’re making a sacrifice. Savings come naturally out of a better understanding of what we need and what best serves us, which is usually much less than the average person buys.
When we practise mindful curation, we’re also releasing ourselves from the trivial, the bland and the shoddy, and living a life where the objects around us perfectly match our needs, pull their weight, reflect our values and put a smile on our face. This frees up our time and energy for the things that matter most, like family, friends, pursuing our passions and finally finding out who wins Game of Thrones.
THE BENEFITS OF LONGER-LASTING PRODUCTS
Not all products are made equal, and I believe we’ve left longevity out of our decision-making for far too long. The commercial world does everything it can to tempt us away from longevity, but that only serves its ever-hungry self, not us, the people who have to deal with the broken zips, rattling washing machines and rips in the crotches of our jeans.
When I started to buy for the long term, I found myself thinking far more deeply about what I wanted out of my life in the future. This meant that the possessions I ‘curated’ automatically started to reflect the deeper and more stable elements of my character, values and personal style. This has brought a lovely natural harmony to my home, creating an atmosphere in which I feel refreshed and calm because it is authentically ‘me’.
My home had previously been a stressful one. Every time I’d walked through my little kingdom and seen the toaster that wouldn’t pop, the wonky flat-pack drawers, dried-up biros and dodgy dishwasher, I’d feel anxiety rise up. Once I started surrounding myself with objects I could trust, my home became a much more relaxing and nurturing place to be.
Another delightful side effect of buying fewer things and not replacing your items so regularly is that you can afford to buy higher-quality, better-crafted products, so your quality of life can actually feel higher.
IS IT MINIMALISM?
Mindful curation definitely has its roots in the minimalist movement. However, while minimalism tends to be quite clear on what we should cut out of our lives (as much as possible), it can leave us hanging when it comes to deciding what to bring into them and how to bypass the pressures to buy more than we need.
With mindful curation, we aren’t trying to reduce our possessions down to a magic number of objects or compete to see who can live with the least. Instead, we’re finding out much more about ourselves and our values and using that knowledge as a shield against clutter and the tricks and temptations of marketers. So with mindful curation we’ll end up owning exactly the right amount for us – no more and no less – and this will be different for everyone.
MINDFUL CURATION VS MINDLESS CONSUMPTION
‘The best things in life aren’t things.’
Art Buchwald, satirist
Mindful curation is a simple idea, but it can be challenging at first because there are so many forces trying to get us to think in the opposite way – the way of ‘mindless consumption’.
Mindless consumption sounds free-spirited and potentially quite fun. It’s the unwritten hashtag for every photo uploaded by the ‘Rich Kids of Instagram’, the hidden subtitle on every ‘haul video’.
The danger of mindless consumption though is that it makes us morbidly materialistic, meaning that a huge amount of our attention is focused on our wealth, our stuff and our status. And materialistic people have been shown to be (deep breath) less generous, less agreeable, less healthy, less likely to help others, less satisfied with their lives, less satisfied with their jobs, less caring about the environment, more likely to gamble, more likely to be in debt, lonelier, worse at keeping friends and less close to the friends they do have. Oh, and materialistic kids do less well at school.1
In short – it’s really bad!
Yet advertisers, the government, our friends, and even our kids surround us with messages and put constant pressure on us to focus on materialistic things. On top of this, on average we see more than 5,000 marketing messages a day.2
Unsurprisingly, this takes its toll. Research shows that briefly subjecting someone to photos of luxury objects or even just words such as ‘status’ or ‘expensive’ can trigger a more depressed mood, feelings of wanting to outdo others and less willingness to socialise.3
Tim Kasser, who has been studying the effects of materialism for almost two decades, describes the impact as a ‘see-saw effect’. When we see ourselves as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘people’ (which is easily triggered through marketing messaging) we focus more on materialistic urges, such as our status and competitiveness. This causes an upswing of negative materialistic thoughts and a downswing of positive urges towards community, connection, generosity, trust and cooperation – all the things that have been proven to make our lives more fulfilling and happy.
So, when your grandad says that people were nicer in the ‘good old days’, in this aspect, it’s true. Our materialistic tendencies have increased so much in the last few decades that our sense of community, our trust in others and our ability to be happy have been gravely reduced.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT NOW?
I’m not going to spend too much time pressing this point, because I think we all know that mindless consumerism is pushing our poor planet to a crisis point. We need to save it, and dropping the ball isn’t really an option. We live on the ball, and we don’t have another one to move to.
But it isn’t just the planet that should concern us. The trend towards materialism is also increasingly taking its toll on our day-to-day lives because it tricks us into losing the personal connections that make us happy.
A study of 2,500 consumers over six years concluded that no matter how much money you had