Highly sensitive people often feel overwhelmed in the face of everything. Minimalism can be a powerful tool to help them manage the barrage of stimuli that comes their way. Minimalism isn’t just about decluttering your physical space, it’s also a mindset and lifestyle that can bring more balance and contentment into our lives. Minimalism encourages us to focus on the essentials and get rid of the non-essential.

When it comes to managing sensory overload, minimalism can be especially helpful for highly sensitive people. Minimalism offers a way to simplify environments, reduce distractions, and create more space in life to reflect and process experiences. Minimalism helps us cultivate awareness around what we need versus what is simply passing through our lives.

By recognizing that clutter is not only physical but also mental or emotional clutter, highly sensitive people can practice minimizing unnecessary stress by filtering out unhelpful thoughts and prioritizing meaningful activities. Minimizing digital noise can help too – creating boundaries with technology can go a long way toward being mindful of the information we consume.

How Highly Sensitive People Suffer When They Scale Up

Having high ambitions means you need to work long hours, and highly sensitive people often benefit from working part-time. Wanting too many material possessions, constantly thinking about travel, the latest computer or TV, and the most expensive apartment, leads you to feel like you need to stress more, work harder, and live in a way that can be uncomfortable and taxing on your health and well-being.

Highly Sensitive People are often too zoomed out. They are trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once. This invites a heavy feeling of often being overwhelmed, drained, and always lacking in energy. Learning to focus on small, practical essentials, like taking care of your plants, making your bed, and keeping away clutter, go a long way to instill you with a sense of control and comfort.

Instead of trying to land that promotion, or working overtime for that raise, why not focus your mind on learning to take that daily walk, and focusing on having more fun with your friends? Learning to be happy with less is easier than you think. Most people who go for more minimalism, don’t regret the sacrifices and feel happy about the decreased pressure on their shoulders.

Tips for scaling down

The technology industry has been introducing features to help us disconnect from the digital world and stay focused. As an iPhone or Android user, you can now trigger Focus Mode to activate after 18.00, until you wake up so that you don’t have to bother yourself with unnecessary notifications on your phone all the time.

Learning to tune out ads, also leads us to want less stuff. We don’t recognize how much ads influence our behavior and leave us wanting more. It can often be worth investing in adblocking software and de-noising your Spotify and YouTube.

Finding free, or cheap forms of enjoyment also helps. Going out in nature costs us nothing, and gives us everything we need. Libraries offer unlimited information. If you can swing it in your budget, sitting at a cafe and watching people can give you all the enjoyment you need. There are plenty of meetups on meetup.com, which invite you to engage in hobbies like writing, painting, or philosophical discussions. Most of these events are free, or almost free.

Why Highly Sensitive People Should Embrace Minimalism

Ultimately, minimalism can help us create more space to tune in to our needs and feelings on a deeper level. Minimalism can help us focus on the present and foster a sense of peace and contentment. It’s not about deprivation, but rather about prioritizing the essentials and letting go of the rest.

A Minimalist who let go of the material,

Found solace and joy in each passing day.

Living with less, but somehow more pleased,

Finding a newfound sense of space to explore his needs.

So what are you going to let go of?

• Overtime?
• The idea of an expensive house or apartment?
• The idea of the most expensive, last-generation TV or computer?
• Notifications on your phone?
• The desire for fancy expensive fashion?
• The urge for a promotion or a new high-paying job?

I completely understand that not all options are viable for you, so it’s very important for you to consider what forms of minimalism might work for you.