Emotional Minimalism: Letting Go of What Drains You

Your emotional life is like a beautiful room.  The room may have windows looking out onto a lake, the woods or a majestic mountain.  And the room has your favorite furniture.  Perhaps a lovely reading chair, bookshelves and a fireplace.  And people stop by to see you in your room.  Some folks come by with a vase of flowers.  Others may bring you a muffin and a cup of tea. 

But unfortunately, there are other people who stop by to see you in your room.  And those folks drop off garbage into your beautiful room.  They leave empty bottles, bags of chips and cigarette butts on your floor.  They put their dirty laundry in a corner of your lovely room.

That room is an analogy for our emotional life.  So, in your emotional life, there are going to be people and ideas that make your emotional life beautiful.  And there are going to be people and ideas who leave garbage in your beautiful room. 

Emotional minimalism is about getting rid of all that garbage.  It’s about clearing out the junk that other folks and society bring into our lives that drain our energy and steal our peace of mind. 

So, what is the garbage that comes into our emotional lives?

Emotional garbage is all the stuff that drains us emotionally in life.  I realize that sounds vague.  So here are some examples of all the junk that clutters up our emotional lives:

1. Toxic relationships.   – Friends, partners, or family members who take more than they give, who criticize, create drama, or leave you feeling small.

2. Feelings of inadequacy or self-comparison. – Believing that you’re inadequate, or measuring yourself against others or unrealistic ideals.

3. Unresolved guilt, shame, or regret. – Reliving mistakes from the past, replaying bad conversations, or wishing that you’d done things differently.

4. Mental overthinking and worst-case-scenario thinking. – Constantly planning for disaster, or trying to control things that you simply can’t control.

5. Digital information overload. – Notifications, news cycles, social media outrage, all of which creates emotional fatigue.

6. Unhealthy Attachments. – Failing to be properly detached from others.  Allowing others’ moods, opinions, and expectations dictate our emotional state.

So, how do we embrace emotional minimalism?

We embrace emotional minimalism by getting rid of all the emotional junk that fills our brains.  It’s about keeping all that’s good – self-confidence, peace, joie de vivre, personal growth – and getting rid of the junk. 

Now, that may sound like a tall order.  After all, it seems difficult to get rid of all the clutter that we’ve mentally been living with for years.  Maybe even decades.  But the good news is that it can be done!  Below are five steps to practice emotional minimalism.  Follow them, get rid of what emotionally drains you, and get on the path to leading a happy and peaceful life.

1. Name What’s Draining You

You can’t clean out your emotional clutter if you don’t know what the clutter is.  The problem is that we sometimes we don’t even realize what’s cluttering our lives.  For instance, you may have emotional clutter because you constantly compare yourself to others.  As a result, you don’t feel good about yourself. 

The problem is that you may not even realize that “constant comparison” is clutter!  Realize that it’s not healthy competition.  It’s unhealthy.  We should never compare ourselves to others.  That’s unhealthy, draining thinking.

So, we first have to identify what the clutter is.  Ask yourself: What’s draining me? 

As another example, you may have emotional clutter caused by difficult relationships.  You may have people in your life who are draining.  For instance, your family member may be exhausting you.  He or she may be critical or irrationally depressed.  The challenge is that society tells us that we’re supposed to adore our family members.  But who can adore someone who is chronically difficult?  No one.  So, you have to identify your family member’s behavior as draining, even if it’s uncomfortable.

When clearing out your emotional clutter, start by asking yourself the hard question: “What am I carrying that no longer serves me?”  You may be carrying wrong-headed ideas about yourself.  Or, you may be bearing the burden of having a problematic family member or friend in your life. 

The bottom line is that you can’t clear out the clutter until you identify what that clutter is.  So, figure out what’s cluttering your emotional life.  Write it down. Say it out loud.  Awareness is the first step on the path to getting rid of the junk.

2. Set Kind but Firm Boundaries

If there was one skill that every child should learn, it’s knowing how to set boundaries.  But we don’t teach our children that.  Instead, parents send the message to their children that they should be pleasant.  All the time.  And in doing so, we convey to our children that they don’t have the right to have boundaries.  They just have to politely put up with however other people around them behave. 

The challenge is that it’s hard to shake that kind of training.  But over the years, I’ve learned that boundaries are critical to a happy life.  And if your parents didn’t teach you about boundary setting, then you must teach yourself that skill as an adult. 

When we set boundaries, we determine what we will allow into our emotional life.  And what we won’t allow in.  So, when doing your emotional life “house cleaning,” you need to set up firm boundaries.  That may mean saying to difficult family members or friends, “I’m happy to chat with you if you have something pleasant to say.  But if you want to be aggressive or negative, I won’t deal with you.”

Realize there’s nothing wrong with setting those kinds of boundaries.  Why?  Because you aren’t obliged to deal with people just because they want to interact with you.  For instance, these days, I only deal with people who are pleasant.  If folks aren’t pleasant, I won’t deal with them.  That’s my boundary.  I feel zero obligation to deal with anyone who isn’t polite and pleasant.

So, set your boundaries and clear the garbage out of your emotional life.  Refuse to deal with draining, difficult people.  That includes your spouse, parents, child, siblings and friends.  And if people in your orbit won’t stop being draining, then stop dealing with them.  If they actually want to be in a relationship with you, they’ll figure out how to be pleasant and not violate your boundaries.

3. Detach from the Need to Be Liked

Let me give you a liberating piece of advice.  This is the kind of advice that I wish I’d received when I was a young person.  In fact, if I’d received this very wise advice, my life would have been dramatically different.

Don’t worry about being liked.

Now, I know that flies in the face of everything society tells us.  After all, Facebook says that we should strive to be well-liked and have lots of “friends.”  And every movie and television show ever made equates success with being popular (Ironically, one of the most popular shows of all time was called “Friends.”).

But here’s the problem.  Even if you are a lovely human being, without a doubt, there will be at least one person (likely more) on this earth who will not like you.

So, what should you do?  Focus on your own behavior.  Be kind.  Be generous.  Encourage others when you can.  Do your very best to never say a mean or critical word.  But don’t concern yourself with the opinions of others.

And if other people like you, that’s great.  And if they think you’re terrible, that’s fine too.  Don’t worry about it.  Because the opinions of others are just garbage that clutters up your emotional life. 

So, clean up the emotional clutter by clearing out what everyone else thinks of you.  Other people’s opinions of you or reactions to you should not take up space in your brain.  Your only job is to focus on being kind, generous and decent at all times.  Period.  Nothing more.

4. Clear Your Mental Clutter Using Meditation

The most effective way to clear the clutter out of your brain is by practicing meditation.  If you regularly meditate, you’ll find that three things will happen to your brain over time: (1) You’ll feel less irritated and sad about your past.  (2) You’ll be calmer in the present.  And (3) you’ll be less worried about the future.

Why?  Well, when we meditate, we do one thing: We focus on the present moment.   Typically, meditation involves focusing on our breath by paying close attention to every inhale and exhale.  In some types of meditation, you may focus on a positive mantra, such as in a “loving kindness” meditation.  In either approach, when we meditate, we train our brains to make the present moment the most important thing that’s happening in life.

The good news is that when the present moment is most important, the past becomes irrelevant.  Past conflicts, slights, failed relationships, etc. lose their emotional charge.  They just become distant, unimportant memories.  And soon, those memories don’t inhabit our brains.  They’re swept out of our brains like the dust that we would sweep out of a room.

Likewise, through meditation, the future becomes less worrisome.  We stop fretting about what may or may not happen because our focus is on the here and now.

Lifelong medication practitioners often say that meditation is life-changing. I agree.  It is.  What I can tell you is that if you commit to even a 10-minute a day meditation practice, you’ll find that you are able to let go of the draining emotions, memories and frustrations with ease, like never before.  Just give it time.  It works.

5. Choose What to Keep Instead

Emotional minimalism is not just about removing the garbage from your mind.  It’s also about keeping the things in your emotional life that are very good.  In short, it’s about curating your emotional life.

So, what are the things that we should hang onto?  Well, certainly we should hang onto those relationships that are peaceful.  There’s no greater gift that you can have in life than a family member or friend who is kind, encouraging and peaceful. 

Likewise, we should keep those habits that make us mentally stronger.  So, if you have a meditation practice, keep that going!  If you have intellectual pursuits, like studying history or a foreign language, stick with those pursuits.  They will make you intellectually stronger. 

And most importantly, keep thoughts that are worthwhile.  For example, “I’m happy with where I am in life right now.”  Or, “I like the person I am right now, and I’m excited about the journey that I’m on.”  Or, “I have the power to keep the things in my life that are good, and to change the things in my life that aren’t working for me.” Those are all great thoughts to keep at the forefront of your mind, throughout the day

If you want to let go of all the things in life that are draining you, adopt the practice of emotional minimalism.  Let go of all the relationships, thoughts and beliefs that are exhausting you.  And keep those few positive relationships and beliefs that give you peace. (To read about the importance of setting boundaries, click here.)