Looking for fun ways to work on your inner wellbeing, blending such tasks with your day-to-day life too? Learning the basics of decluttered traveling might be right for you.
Indeed, a growing body of research shows that gradually streamlining all the material possessions – AKA “stuff” – we own / see / touch / use daily, can have sizeable positive effects on our mental health – and eventually on the numerous linked psychosomatic diseases as well. Obviously, this principle gets further emphasized when we consider to apply the “streamlining treatment” to what we bring along with us when traveling – namely the life mode identified as one of the most stressful within our routines.
Regardless of whether we move far or near – air traveling, biking from A to B or just wandering downtown for shopping inspiration – we know that movement can generate anxiety. A dreaded mental status that comes with assorted feelings of insecurity, instability, nervousness.
And which might develop into shades of depression, from melancholy to panic attack in the worst cases. This is happening because travel and movement, like all those circumstances somehow involving change to different extents, tend to stir and stretch some areas related to “transformation” and “connection” deep in our soul.
As we push ourselves to get in touch with “the rest of the world” and “the others”, we can notice how those often underutilized inner muscles of adaptation to change get sore. At that point, we tend to clog ourselves – our bag, our home, our calendar – with even more “stuff” to suffocate apprehension and carry on. Yet, if we accept the challenge of those uncomfy moments, we get an incredible opportunity to educate our behaviors and get out of that cluttery vicious circle. With twofold benefit on our practical daily life AND our spiritual journey.
Okay, so how to turn everyday movements into “instant therapy” sessions then?
It’s super simple! You can practice this “liquid” form of self-help anytime when packing before (or tidying up after) a trip, just by following this flow:
- While reviewing things to bring for your (big or little) trip, listen to yourself. Listen to your fears and, if necessary, respond “You are enough, you don’t need more stuff” – it kind of rhymes like a magic spell, doesn’t it?
- Drop* at least one item you reckon as the least useful within the bunch – Follow our IG channel for more tips on decluttering and minimalism!
- Listen to yourself again and enjoy the regained lightness, the won-back room. Even if almost unnoticeable.
- Repeat! Frequency as you wish – feel free to go through the flow 20 times in a row or wait a month before retrying.
Step-by-step, your traveling load will ease. You will make room for more meaningful travel gear, suiting a new you. As you will become a more solid, drawback-proof version of yourself. Until travel will no longer appear unsettling, and you will be able to see life itself, with all its movements and changes, just like a never-ending wonderful trip.
When we pare back, we breathe easier, perform better, and experience more.
*Drop means: recycle, donate or temporarily store in a separate environment to get used to the useless item absence.
That’s all Domad folks! Stay decluttered, stay foolish, and… let life flow.
