Welcome back. Thank you, we have just kind of talked about what are the definitions for minimalism? What's the definition for the opposite of minimalism, which might be clutter. And again, what's important is that it's different for every person. So it's kind of like a law and you're taking on an interpretation of that. So it's going to be very different for you than it is for me than it is for Emilio.

But we want to talk about how, how do you embrace the idea of minimalism in your life? How would you even start to evaluate what's the top priority? How would you, you know, decide for yourself what's important, what's valuable, what is happiness for you. So, we have talked about the excess we have talked about clutter, having too much too much of something that is on the way of your goals. And then we have talked about how important it is to set priorities. Meaning, to feel joy to have value happiness, fulfillment and freedom.

So it looks like it's like a fight. It's a fight between the excess and the important things. And we are all surrounded by excess by distractions by like, breeziness. Everything is busy, we have families, we have friends, we have a lot of things that we need to get done. And if we don't set the intention to find what's important for us, we kind of get sucked into that black hole that is called excess clutter, whatever you want to call it. So minimalism will allow you to try to cut through that noise and to try to find what it's important.

But how do we get started to apply all these into every area of our lives? So let's see. Yeah, so basically, we're going to ask you a bunch of questions, because at the end of the day, maybe you've heard this before, but unfortunately, the answers are all within you already. So maybe they're having hard to find or hard to dig out. And that's where the questions come in. And questions are really hard, because we don't always know the answers to them.

We ourselves question ourselves all the time with, what is it that we want to actually change? Or what is the consistent frustration that we're having on a recurring basis that, you know, we could potentially be changing it. And we're going to share a couple examples of our own personal frustrations that we're like, why did we not change this a long time ago? Because it was something that we just weren't reflecting on? What are the things that make you overwhelmed? What are the things that gives you stress that causes you anxiety?

And when you can name those things, and maybe we need to get really specific. So we want to try a visualization exercise. But first, Emilio is going to share a little bit more. Yeah, I just want to add like so there are basically two ways that you can get to two that one is to try to think what do you want to change is exciting you. And the other one is what are my frustrations every single day? When am I feeling overwhelmed stress?

So try to recognize when you are feeling that way. And that's one way for you to know, okay, I need to do something about this. And the other one is to change. But when you want to change that, we need to make sure that we are defining success. Everybody has a different perspective and a different definition of what success means. And you have to make sure that you are defining very clearly what is it that you want?

What does success mean to you? What is your goal, your objective? Because for some people look so different than to others. And once you have a very clear answer, as Amanda was saying, you have to be very specific, that's when you will be able to start moving forward towards that. But if you don't know where you are going, it's very difficult to start making change because you don't have direction. You don't have any intention of where you are going.

Acknowledging that what might have worked for you in the Past is now not working for you in your future present self as well. So sometimes we have thrust upon us incidents in life like death of a family member or job loss or new child, new promotion, all of these things, whether they're negative or positive, they are a change. And therefore, if we don't recognize that potentially our needs and our wants might change with those new experiences, then we're going to start to potentially feel some of these things. So even when it's a positive, and you were so excited to have this new baby, but what does that new baby mean about how you operate on a daily basis about what the level of expectation, expectation is for sleep? All those kinds of things need to change. So throughout your life, you can always come back to this practice, and you will probably always get a different answer, which is why we really encourage you to kind of have this as something that you can fall back on too, every couple of months, when you're not feeling exactly right in some area of your life, you can go back to this and be like, hey, well, what is it that I want to change?

Or what is that frustration? Or what is that new passion that I want to follow that I never had before? Yep. So in the visualization exercise, we just think it's important to share this one example that we had, when we we lived when we came to Canada, we lived in a one bedroom apartment, we loved it. We had great landlords, it was very comfortable. It was warm.

There was a beautiful balcony. It was a big bathroom. But you know, there there were some things about it that we didn't love. You know, some people in the building smoked. The heat was something that was great, but it was actually sometimes too hot in our place and we couldn't control that you wanted a garden I wanted a garden and Amelie wanted a place to have a little bit of storage for tools and things because, you know, we were kind of bursting out The seams of our two small closets. What do you do home office and we needed a home office because we had started our business.

We really tried really hard to pack everything in the apartment, but we just couldn't make it work. So what did we do? We said, Okay, if we were to get exactly what we wanted, what is exactly what we wanted, and we got a piece of paper and we kind of thought about it. We said, Okay, let's let's like list off some of the things we want. We want to have a garden we want to be we want to be moving closer to the Uptown area. We don't want to be moving further away because we don't love driving.

We love walking. We need to have a parking spot. We want to have storage, an extra room and extra rooms. So two bedroom, we wanted to have laundry on site. And we also said how much more Yeah, we're willing to pay the price like we were when a budget. So we define everything really, really, really well.

And then what happened I was walking down the street one day with a friend of mine, not thinking about apartments. And there was This beautiful home with a sign in front of it. That's a two bedroom apartment for rent. And I thought, well, we have to go in and have a look like, you know, we're not in a rush. So my friend and I went in, and the landlord was there, he was there on site. And he said, Oh, I just put that sign out just now.

Sure, you can have a look, but I'm still cleaning up and I was like, no problem. He showed us the space. And it was everything that we wanted on our list. And I asked him, you know, are we going to be allowed to garden in the backyard that we have here? Like, what's your take on that? He's like, yep, no problem.

I asked him how much it was. It was right in our price range. Like literally it was a it was an increase for sure. Because we were taking a bigger space, but it was right below where we set our max price was going to be and so I went home. I got a deposit ready. I had it in my pants pocket.

And when Emilio came home from work, I was like, Listen, we you need to see this. Like we have to go somewhere. Yes. Like what are we going you have to come with me? So I went with her and then We went into this home that I didn't know is that what are we doing here? And then this year, my mom was here, the landlord, and then she showed me the apartment and then she asked me, What do you think?

And then I was thinking to myself, extra room tech, garden space check. Home Office Space check. He said, How much is it? And then she told me the price check. So basically, it had everything that we wanted. But then there was one thing that we never asked anything for.

And it was the washroom. So we we asked the landlord, what is the washroom? And then he said, Oh, it's the door there. So we opened the door on, we have a bathroom that you can imagine, while you're sitting on the toilet, you can operate the bathtub and you can wash your hands. So that was actually something we said about the bathroom. I said I needed to have a full tub because I like to I like having hot right now.

But you kind of have to hold your breath to shut the door. Basically what happened? So with these what what happened is that when we were being specific Honestly, the bathroom wasn't a priority for us. And that's why we never asked for anything. We had a beautiful bathroom and the other one bedroom apartment. So the conclusion of this is that we defined what we wanted.

And then when he was in front of us, we could recognize this is what I wanted, so I can move forward. And that's what you can do with everything in your life. If you can define what you want. It's kind of like your eyes. Everything is kind of focusing on what you have to find. And that's so powerful because all the sudden you're going to be able to see the opportunities when they come your way.

So take some time, train clearly clear yourself of distractions, make sure your phone is on silent. And give yourself five to 10 minutes to sit and think about what it is that you would like to change what it is you would like to visualize for yourself and have some fun with it, enjoy it. And if you can, maybe document it on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope with the date and and put a date to look back on it alert and your calendar. Because it, it really is powerful and be ready for it to happen because if you put it in paper if you ask for it, most likely it's going to happen. So you have to be ready for that too. And we'll see you in the next video.