Think about what needs you might have: the need to check your email every 15 minutes, or empty your inbox, or read all your blogs, or keep something perfectly neat, or dress to work in the latest fashions. The need to constantly badger your kids about things, or control your co-workers, or meet with everyone who wants a meeting, or be wealthier and wealthier, or own a nice car.

Where do these types of needs come from? They’re completely made up.

Sometimes the needs are created by society: the industry you’re in requires you to work until 9 p.m. or dress in impeccable suits. Your neighborhood has certain standards and if you don’t have an impeccable lawn and two BMWs in the driveway, you’ll be judged. If you don’t have the latest iPhone, you won’t have your geek cred or status symbol, and you’ll be jealous of those who do.

Sometimes the needs are made up by ourselves: we feel the urge to check our emails or RSS feeds or news websites or text messages or Twitter accounts constantly, even though there is no negative societal or work consequences if we don’t keep up with them. We want a perfectly made up bed even if no one else cares. We want to create a list of goals in life or for the year and achieve every one of them, even if nothing bad will happen if we don’t achieve most of them.

Either of these types of made-up needs can be eliminated. All it takes is the willingness to let go.

Examine one of your made-up needs, and ask yourself why it’s such an important need. Ask what would happen if you dropped them. What good would it do? Would you have more free time and more space to concentrate and create, or less stress and fewer things to check off each day? What bad things would happen — or might happen? And how likely is it that these things would happen? And how could you counter-act them?

These needs are created by fears, and the more honest we are about these fears, the better. Face the fears, and give yourself a little trial period — allow yourself to let go of the need, but just for an hour, or a day. Just for a week. If nothing bad happens, extend the trial, and slowly in this manner you’ll find that the need wasn’t a need at all.

It can feel good to let go, and by letting go, you are freeing yourself.

That gave me pause to think: is it a valid criticism? And I think, at some levels, it is — the minimalism I propose (along with many others) is something we might adopt on a person-to-person basis, and possibly won’t be adopted by everyone in society. And if it isn’t, has it made a difference?

Sure it has — to the individual people who have adopted minimalism. It can change your life, for the better, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. But will it change the world? Will it solve poverty and global warming? Obviously not, if it’s only adopted by a small number of people. For it to work, it would have to be widespread.

So yes, I hear that. But must we only pursue solutions that will be adopted by everyone all at once? If we believe a course of action is better for us as individual people and for society as a whole, but we doubt whether society as a whole will adopt it, should we shun that course of action?

I don’t believe so. I think that if a way of living is right, you should live that way. If it makes your life better, then good. If it’s adopted by the world, even better. We can’t let the problem of getting widespread adoption stop us from starting.

That’s what minimalism as practiced by individual people is, at its heart: just a start. Socrates said, “Let he that would move the world, first move himself.” Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I say, let’s start with ourselves. If we cannot walk the path, how can we ask the world to walk it?

Once we have shown that a minimalist life is not only possible, but a good thing, it will become a shining example to others. We can move others with our very lives. As Gandhi also said, “My life is my message.” Let your life be your message to the world, your example for a better life, and let that be the start.

From such small beginnings, great things can be born.

When I talk about giving up unnecessary shopping or clothes or shoes, many people balk. When I talk about giving up a car, or getting a smaller home, or not drinking sugary coffee drinks, or giving up junk food … I always hear a lot of people who say, “I’d love to be a minimalist, but I could never give up my ____.” (You can fill in the blank.)

I thought the same thing, many times, when I’d hear about other people making changes. “I could never give that up,” I thought to myself.

I was wrong.

I said I could never give up my hamburgers or fried chicken, but now I’m a vegetarian.

I said I could never give up my cable TV, but I’ve been without it for 6 or 7 years now.

I said I could never give up my cigarettes, but I’ve been tobacco-free for nearly 5 years.

I said I could never give up my sweets, and now I only have a few bites now and then.

I said I could never give up my car, but I barely drive now and am going car-free next month.

I said I could never give up packaged foods, but now I almost only eat real food, unpackaged.

I said I could never give up my coffee, but I recently have.

I said I could never give up my running shoes, but now I run barefoot.

I said I could never get down to a handful of clothes, but I have.

I said I could never give up TV altogether, but I am.

If you think you could never do something … stop saying it. You just might surprise yourself.

I disagree: anyone can do it.

Minimalism is simply eliminating the unnecessary. And while the poor (anyone who’s not in the middle class or above) might not have the ridiculously unnecessary things that the affluent have, there are usually things that can be eliminated.

The photos of minimalist houses, desks, and Macs that you see on many minimalist sites are obviously for the affluent — they have expensive furniture, computers, gadgets, homes that aren’t affordable for many people. But that’s not a requirement of minimalism.

In fact, there isn’t a requirement for minimalism. You can invent your own version, and if you’re more worried about how to survive until the next paycheck (I’ve been there), then cutting back on the unnecessary will help you get there. Look for unnecessary expenses (like eating out, going to the movies, buying junk food snacks, or renting DVDs) and eliminate them, finding ways to have fun that are free.

Eliminating unnecessary possessions also means you’ll need a smaller home, which will save on rent and heating/cooling. Buying fewer things means less debt. Spending time with loved ones or doing things you love means you spend less. All of these things are good whether you’re wealthy or not.

It’s true that the poor are often thought of as not having the luxury of even thinking about simplifying, or minimalism. They’re too worried about putting food on the table, or where the rent is coming from, or how to avoid creditors until the next paycheck. And there’s a lot of truth in that. But it doesn’t have to be true: anyone can pause, breathe, and decide to live differently.

Anyone can make the decision to do without the unnecessary, to cut off cable TV, to consider doing without a car, to only buy what’s absolutely necessary and to rethink what’s necessary. I’ve been deep in debt, and I know the feeling of drowning with no way to get out. I got out, mostly because I cut expenses to the bone while looking for ways to increase income. Minimalism helped me to get out of debt, and to get out of poverty. It’s not just for the affluent anymore.

Someone then asked: ‘How is an omission the purest form of beauty?’

This is the essence of minimalism. The ellipsis is the punctuation mark (…) that indicates an intentional omission. From Wikipedia: “An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought, or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence.”

If that description doesn’t inspire thoughts of beauty in you, you might not be a minimalist.

A pause in speech is silence. Silence is one of the most profound ways to connect with your inner voice, with nature. Silence is the best part of speech.

An unfinished thought is any thought, really — if a thought is “finished” it’s dead. We are all of us in transition, all the time, and our thoughts can be no exception.

Trailing off into silence implies that there is much left unsaid … that what is said is only the start.

Intentional omission is the foundation of minimalism: we leave things out because they are unnecessary, and retain only what we need or use or love. Omitting the unnecessary is a thing of pure beauty.

…

Say less, and hear more.

Do less, and have a greater impact.

Make less noise, and appreciate the silence.

Send out fewer emails, and make each one count.

Tweet less, and each one becomes more meaningful.

Have fewer possessions, and enjoy the space.

Have fewer “friends”, but make each relationship stronger.

Appreciate the spaces between everything.

…

Let’s stop that. We are not consumers.

We’re people.

When we allow ourselves to be branded with these types of corporate terms, we’ve given in to the consumerist mindset. We’ve allowed the debate to be framed around buying: should we buy organic or local? How can we protect consumers? Do consumers have rights? What’s the best way to spend our money on products? How can we be savvy consumers? How can we affect change in society by making ethical or conscious buying choices?

What about the question of whether we should be buying or not? That gets thrown out the window, because it’s already assumed in the term: we’re consumers. Of course we buy. It’s just a matter of how, how much, where, from whom, how often.

But if we stop thinking of ourselves as consumers, and start calling ourselves “people”, then we open up the question. Should we even buy in the first place? Is it possible to live a life without buying?

We talked a bit about that in society, reimagined … that we can grow our own food, make and trade and share everything we need. It’s possible — of course it’s possible! Human beings (not consumers) did it for hundreds of thousands of years, and at least 10,000 years in civilized society: we lived and worked and played and loved, without buying. We did it in tribes, of course, but also in larger societies that weren’t based around the basic unit of corporation -> consumer.

I’m not advocating a return to tribalism. I’m saying we need to change the debate. We need to stop calling ourselves consumers. We need to open up our minds, so that a different way is possible.

Here’s the thing: you can already have it, right now.

So often we forget that the things that constrain us … they’re in our heads. They don’t exist in the real world, except where we believe they exist. Money, for example … we already live in a moneyless world, as money only exists in our heads. Sure, there’s the physical paper money or gold coins, but those have no value except the value we believe they have, and our ability to buy things with money, our need to do work for money, our stress over not having money or owing money … it only exists in our heads. The world around us, if we suddenly stopped believing in money, would be moneyless.

Governments are the same. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” … but actually, they exist only in the minds of the governed, and only have power so long as the governed allow them to have power. The same applies to any system: schools, work, banks, and so on — they exist in our minds.

And so, to live in a world reimagined, we only need to use our imaginations. We have that power already.

Want to live in a car-free world? Stop using a car. Now the world you live in becomes one in which you walk, bike, and use mass transit. Others might not follow, but that’s their choice. If you want to live where there aren’t any cars, there exist such places and you can move to one of those places, if that’s important to you. But already, you can live in a car-free world.

Want to live in a world where your food isn’t shipped thousands of miles and grown unsustainably by agribusiness? Start a garden. You can just start with one plant, and then another, until you have enough to eat eventually. Or start a community garden, or use farmer’s markets, or join (or start) a CSA.

Want to live in an unschooled world? Unschool your kids. It’s not hard, and takes zero resources — although the Internet and the library are great if you can get them, and the world around us is an unlimited resource for education.

Want to live in a non-consumerist world? Stop buying things. Make things last, reuse things and move to reusable things (such as cloth napkins and glass containers), fix things when they break, trade, join Freecycle. Stop watching ads (which might mean you stop watching TV or reading ad-supported magazines and newspapers).

Want to live in a paperless world? Stop buying and using paper. Want to work from home or near your home? Start a business where you can do that now (it costs almost nothing), or work with your boss to telecommute.

Want happiness? Everything you need is already here, in the world around you: beautiful people, gorgeous nature, the legs you need to walk among these things, and the eyes, ears and mouth you need to appreciate them.

I acknowledge that we won’t stop global warming with just our own actions, but at the least, we’ve stopped participating in the destruction of our planet … and at best, we inspire others by showing them it’s possible.

I realize these things would be better with larger numbers, so find a friend or family member willing to join you, and you have a partner. Then a third, and a fourth, and now you have a club. Get a fifth, and you have a movement. And then you have some real magic.

But the magic, my friends, can start today.

Look around your home right now (or when you get home). What do you see that’s really a necessity? What could you do without?

You already know that most of the world lives with much less than what you see around you. They’d be happy with clean water, shelter, some food. Forget about Macs or big-screen TVs or plush couches or iPhones or closets overflowing with shoes and clothes.

But we also forget that only a few generations ago, our grandparents and great-grandparents also lived with much less, and were perfectly comfortable and happy. Most people had very little other than the necessities and perhaps a radio. Not that long ago, people lived without TVs, cars, microwaves, electric stoves, computers, video game consoles, air-conditioning, washers, dish washers and more. Not that long ago, shopping malls didn’t exist, and ordering from the Sears catalog was a luxury.

What we need is very little: a few changes of clothing at most, a pair of shoes, perhaps a few toiletries (toothpaste, deodorant, soap), some food, a roof over our heads.

Consider:

• The television: if you got rid of this, not only would you free up hours of your time, you’d spend less (on cable or DVDs). You’d have room for reading, exercise, spending time with others.
• All your clothes: could you wear just a few items? I do, and nobody seems to care.
• Food: instead of eating out or buying convenience food, could you pick a dozen whole foods and make a weekly menu based on it? Think: beans & rice & veggies, or whole oats with nuts & berries, or salads with nuts & beans, or fruit & nuts.
• Furniture: what is the absolute minimum you could get by with, and still live a happy life? What are your core activities (sleeping, reading, eating?), and what do you need for each?
• Gadgets: Once upon a time, you lived without them. What would life be like if you went back to that lifestyle? Would you have more distraction-free time?
• The computer: OK, sure, this seems to be a necessity these days. But is it? Sometimes I wonder if I could get by with 1-2 hours of computer time a day at my local library. I really think I could, but I haven’t taken that brave leap yet.
• The car: Many people live happily without it. It is a resource hog, uses tons of your money (and the work that goes to earn that money), contributes to global warming, is dangerous. Could you give it up someday?
• The washer/dryer: Could you hand-wash your clothes each day? It takes about 10-15 minutes.

There are other things in your home, I’m sure, that you could reconsider. Let’s keep our minds open.

You can only change your next action.

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You can’t change a relationship with a loved one.

You can only change your next interaction.

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You can’t change your entire job.

You can only change your next task.

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You can’t change your body composition.

You can only change your next meal.

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You can’t change your fitness level.

You can only start moving.

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You can’t declutter your entire life.

You can only choose to get rid of one thing, right now.

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You can’t eliminate your entire debt.

You can only make one payment, or buy one less unnecessary item.

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You can’t change the past, or control the future.

You can only change what you’re doing right now.

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You can’t change everything.

You can only change one, small thing.

And that’s all it takes.

What if we could break free from that?

What if we could become creators, participants, sharers, empowerers?

An awesome article about three guys who not only build bamboo bicycles, but show people how to make them themselves, really highlights how this can be done.

These guys are transforming people from passive consumers to creators, builders, knowledgeable users. That’s amazing.

How can you empower people? How can you turn people from consumers into makers? How can you help people from being passive users to knowledgeable ones?

Change the world — it’s waiting for you.