Contents
Lucía Terol: «Minimalism is identifying what does not add value to let it go»
Interview
The mentor gives in her book «Minimalist Essence» the keys to be able to live under this philosophy and find inner peace
Lucía Terol found her new life in Brazil. He was studying his second career when he decided to go to the Latin American country for a 21-day retreat in which solitude and silence would reign. And when she returned, she was never the same, because she realized that there were many things in her life that she wanted to get rid of. Thus was born his idea of minimalism, the one that applies to his life and that he tries to teach in “Minimalist essence” (Kitsune Books), a book in which he travels with twenty-one routes -the same days he was in retirement- the way to get to get rid of everything that does nothing more than occupy space in our life and hinder us, be it objects, clothes or relationships without any purpose.
Lucia has learned to let go of things little by little. Started by cut down your closet, then his friends on Facebook, and he even ended up leaving behind his hair, that long and curly that had always been a hallmark. But thanks to minimalism he has learned to let go, to appreciate more what you have already, in short, to be happier. Talk to ABC Bienestar about minimalism, the ideas in his book and how we can apply this philosophy to our day to day.
What exactly is the minimalism you are talking about?
From my perspective, it is identifying what gives us value to let it go or not. The minimalism that I apply, both at the level of having, for example, objects; at the level of doing, for example, my schedule and activities; or even the level of being, of thoughts, is to prioritize what is really important, identify what is not and let it go.
Is it a bit like Marie Kondo says, letting go of what doesn’t make us happy?
More or less, but I make a distinction. I believe that things do not make us happy, but that they can inspire us happiness. Not because you have that latest model of car and mobile or you will be more or less happy. Studies have shown that within five years, regardless of whether you win the lottery or buy a new car, your personal satisfaction index returns to the original one. Many times we believe that we will be happier to have more things and it has been proven that this is not the case.
So do we mistake pleasure for happiness?
We confuse it and a very concrete example is that momentary pleasure we feel when we buy something, it gives us a dopamine rush. You buy a consumer item and you have that high that works a bit like sugar, it gives us a rise but then there is a drop. That is a kind of fleeting pleasure. I insist on distinguishing these types of acts, which are momentary, from happiness, which has a much deeper perspective, more long-term, which is perhaps more difficult to build but is also more difficult to lose.
As you say in the book, it is not what things we buy, but where we buy them from …
Exactly. If I have had a bad day at work, I leave stressed and buy something from that feeling of dissatisfaction, possibly I am not having any kind of benefit beyond that momentary pleasure. In the long term, I’m going to feel bad because I’m going to have something in the closet that I don’t wear, that is there taking up space, that perhaps is not even my style, and ends up generating a circle of dissatisfaction that is permanent and constant. One way out of this is the minimalist.
That is, do we somehow use material objects to alleviate our problems?
And not only material objects, we also fill our schedule and overload it: we have a lot of activities, everything we are supposed to do, everything we are supposed to be, both professionally and socially, all sites that we have to visit, the list is endless. The 21-day process of fasting and solitude and silence was very important to me and I realized, before the process, that I had filled it out. I made a list of everything I was going to do: yoga, meditate, write … and when I got there I went through a very deep crisis in the middle of the process and I was aware that the same thing that I had done or tried to do with this process I had done everything My life, I filled my schedule to try not to be with myself, and this is when I realized that there is something that is not working well.
Does minimalism also teach us to be comfortable with ourselves?
You have to see it not so much from avoiding being with yourself, if not, when you have an uncomfortable emotion that you don’t know how to manage; if you buy something because you have a bad day, or you don’t feel well; if you go out to do things so you are not alone at home … the idea is to stop moving from there and do it from another space.
You say that normally we are overwhelmed by the number of decisions we make … Does making so many affect the quality of these?
This is decision fatigue. We have a capacity to make decisions, as if, for example, we had a limit of 100 decisions a day: what to wear today, what for breakfast … and when the end of the day arrives we usually make worse decisions because that capacity is spent. The idea of minimalism from this perspective advocates avoiding those decisions that you can automate, as with clothing. There are people who dress “uniformly”, always the same, so they have to make fewer decisions.
But clothing is an element that helps us to identify ourselves as people, how can the idea of giving less importance to how we dress and still being us come together?
I give three solutions. I understand that this “uniform fashion” is not for everyone. First of all we can go through the closet and identify what it is that we really need. When you clean your wardrobe, when you do a review at a certain time, you identify your style and you get to have fewer clothes and know exactly what you need. In this way you will have less volume and it will not cost you so much to choose what to wear in the morning. The second solution is to have a «capsule wardrobe», which does have a reduced number of garments. This option is for people who are clear about their style and who know that they want to occupy that creativity or expression through other channels, not necessarily clothing. And the third is the already mentioned “uniform fashion.” I don’t think there is a recipe for everyone, but rather that many times during the process we find it.
You also dedicate a chapter of the book to hair and hairstyles. It may seem banal, but we attach great importance to it, how can we learn to care less about it?
Minimalism is the recipe. At one point I shaved my head, I, who have always had long curly hair, which has been a very identifying characteristic of my personality. Giving up on that is a big step, but then I realized that “I was still here”, that “Lucia had not disappeared because her hair had disappeared.” For example, I was very impressed, being a volunteer in a study of women with cancer, that many were ashamed to admit it, but one of the most difficult parts for them was losing their hair. They felt bad because theoretically they should value other things. We live in a society in which what we pretend we believe is very important. I think that when you start to identify what is a priority, you can see that maybe it is not that important.