Decluttering Guide 4: Minimalist relationships

Certain relationships become so clingy, that it becomes difficult to breathe. Other relations make your problems go away and help you be free! Minimalist relationships means keeping them simple and headache free. Focusing on important is the key but it takes a lot more than that to make any relationship work.

Objective of minimalist relationship is to make sure that you should not be losing but gaining in a relationship.

How to be in a minimalist relationship

Here are steps to achieving minimalist relationships!

Understand your relationship with yourself

I am mostly a solo person – my relationship quota is very limited. I cannot carry more than restricted number of relationships. It becomes overwhelming after a certain point of time and there is a possibility of break down.

I was not aware of this facet of my personality earlier. It was a task to complete all the expectations of all the people around me. But as I started understanding myself, I decided to put my foot down and say yes to only few select commitments. Life became much easier after that!

You need to identify what your personality trait is – are you a people person or a solo person, how many relationships can you manage successfully. Then select your most important relationships and concentrate on getting more value out of them, rather than running behind a number.

Too much noise?

Sometimes too many relationships just results in too much noise, too many opinions, too many decisions, too much chaos to bear. On the other hand sometimes too little noise can keep hanging in the feeling of loneliness. Understand what you want.

If it is too much noise for you, then it’s time to cut down and start saying no to commitments, events, meet ups, etc. It is absolutely ok to cut down, because you are the most important person for yourself and if you will not listen to your gut then who will? Removing one unnecessary relationship can make you feel grateful about the other amazing people you have in your life.

On the other hand, if you feel it’s too little noise then you should not hesitate to reach to people closest to you. They will be more than willing to lend you a helping hand. Identify the genuine friendship from convenient friendships and work on these genuine friendships more.

You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you

This is a quote from the book ‘The minimalist’ and is one of my favorites. All it means is you cannot change how people behave around you, all you can do is change your reaction to their behavior.

Identify that one unwanted relationship, where all you hear is criticism. Now deliberately stop reacting to nasty comments. You will see the problem is easily solved by just ignoring or modifying your reaction to the issue.

Is there any such thing as minimalism in ‘family’?

You will obviously observe that we can do all these things for friends but you cannot choose family. There can be a core sub-circle in your bigger circle of family. You can focus on most important people in your core circle. You can still enjoy with others but you need not be burdened with what they have to say about each and everything you do. The crux is to make awesome memories with them to last lifetime.

The result you achieve are all intentional relationships and not the ones you drag. So you are ready to put all the energy you have to make them work. When is the last time you have given some deep thought to the relationships around you? Are you ready to take these tough steps? ​Let me know what you think.

I will be taking these tough steps to put important relations into limelight and push other relations into back seat. Wish me luck!!

This is the last part in the Decluttering Guide series; you can read earlier parts here – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3!

Let us know your thoughts on our detailed guide on decluttering in the comments below!

Happy organizing!