Fumio Sasaki Quotes

Want to know how to make yourself instantly unhappy? Compare yourself with someone else.

Why do we own so many things when we don’t need them? What is their purpose? I think the answer is quite clear: We’re desperate to convey our own worth, our own value to others. We use objects to tell people just how valuable we are.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

When given too many choices, people tend to worry that there’s something better out there than what they decided on.

If it’s not a “hell, yes!” it’s a “no.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. —RABBI HYMAN SCHACHTEL

Minimalism is just the beginning. It’s a tool. Once you’ve gone ahead and minimized, it’s time to find out what those important things are. Minimalism

Minimalism is built around the idea that there’s nothing that you’re lacking.

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. —

the accumulation of small achievements is the only way to do something incredible.

You can avoid buying more things simply by first asking yourself if it’s something that you actually need.

The things you own end up owning you.” A

If you can’t make up your mind about an item, I suggest you go right ahead and discard it.

Minimalism is not a rite of penance, nor is it a competitive sport. It is simply a means to an end.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. —STEVE JOBS

There’s another benefit to a minimalist wardrobe. Because we choose items that are timeless, we don’t need to worry about being out of style.

When you’re aware of all the things that you own, you’re not only certain of where they are, you’re also sure about whether you have them or not.

a minimalist is a person who knows what is truly essential for him- or herself,

My feeling is that minimalists are people who know what's truly necessary for them versus what they may want for the sake of appearance, and they're not afraid to cut down on everything in the second category.

There’s a favorite quote of mine from Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living that really sums up what was wrong with me: “I was trying to wash today’s dishes, yesterday’s dishes and dishes that weren’t even dirty yet.

The glory of acquisition starts to dim with use, eventually changing to boredom as the item no longer elicits even a bit of excitement. This is the pattern of everything in our lives. No matter how much we wish for something, over time it becomes a normal part of our lives, and then a tired old item that bores us, even though we did actually get our wish. And we end up being unhappy.

All of our possessions want to be cared for, and they tell us that every time we look at them.

when you have few possessions, there are fewer things that need to be done each day. You can take care of each task as it arises, so you don’t end up with a long list of things to do,

We can accumulate as much as we like, but without gratitude we’ll only end up being bored with everything we’ve obtained. Conversely, we can achieve true contentment with few possessions, just so long as we treat them with gratitude. The

It’s often said that cleaning your house is like polishing yourself. I think that this is a golden rule. It isn’t just dust and dirt that accumulate in our homes. It’s also the shadows of our past selves that let that dust and dirt continue to build. Cleaning the grime is certainly unpleasant, but more than that, it’s the need to face our own past deeds that makes it so tough. But when we have fewer material possessions and cleaning becomes an easy habit, the shadows we now face will be of our daily accomplishments.

The desire to discard and the desire to possess are flip sides of the same coin. It

I’ve heard it said that the secret to a happy marriage is to simply talk a lot with your partner. One study showed that happily married couples talked with each other five more hours per week than couples that aren’t happy. If people are busy taking care of their possessions, quarreling over them, spending time in separate rooms, or watching a lot of TV, they’re naturally going to have less time for conversations.

If you really want to change something, the only way to do it is to start changing this very moment. There’s really no tomorrow, and no next week to look forward to. Once tomorrow comes, it’s going to be today. A year from now will be today when the time comes. Everything is in the now. By

the more things you have, the more you accumulate. You’ll never be satisfied when trapped in this cycle; it will only make you want more and more. It

Seriously, minimalists have no possessions that they are scared to lose. That gives them the optimism and courage to take risks. Experiences

Getting rich doesn't mean you will receive a special bonus and your days will become 25 hours long instead of 24.

Neither the past nor the future actually exists. There’s only an eternal present, and you can only experience the now.

Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.

Ask yourself which of your items would truly be necessary if you were to start with zero belongings. What if everything you owned was stolen? What if you had to move next week? Which items would you take with you? There are probably a lot of things we have sitting around in our homes for no particular reason. Think about starting from scratch, and it will become clear which items are essential.

The qualities I look for in the things I buy are (1) the item has a minimalist type of shape, and is easy to clean; (2) its color isn’t too loud; (3) I’ll be able to use it for a long time; (4) it has a simple structure; (5) it’s lightweight and compact; and (6) it has multiple uses.

Minimalism is not a goal. Reducing the number of possessions that you have is not a goal unto itself. I think minimalism is a method for individuals to find the things that are entirely important to them. It's a prologue for crafting your own unique story.

You won’t tire as quickly of objects that are easier on the eyes and less stimulating, and they can generally be used for longer periods of time.

only look at souvenirs, no matter how tempting they are. This has allowed me to focus more on the journey itself.

But that judgment of “Ugh, you still own so much. How lame!” is exactly the same mind-set as “Ugh, you still don’t have this. How lame!” There

Minimalism naturally narrows down your choices so you can arrive at quick decisions. Less

Most of those “nicer things,” and the money we need for them, are just for show. We’re driven by pride rather than need. Have

Things don’t just sit there. They send us silent messages. And the more the item has been neglected, the stronger its message will be. Maybe

Minimalism had to be born, not out of a mere spur-of-the-moment idea or yearning for a new lifestyle, but from an earnest desire and fervent need to rethink our lives.

In the film Into the Wild, the protagonist Chris McCandless leaves us with words I think are worth living by: “Happiness [is] only real when shared.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. —RABBI HYMAN SCHACHTEL

Things don’t just sit there. They send us silent messages.

Happiness isn’t a state that we win by accomplishing certain criteria. Happiness is something that can only be felt in this moment. You

It’s the things you’d be willing to buy again that give you true satisfaction.

When you think about it, it’s experience that builds our unique characteristics, not material objects.

We think we can't become a minimalist until our lives have settled down. But it's actually the other way around; we won't be able to settle down until we're having a minimalist life.

one thing that I can honestly say now is that there isn’t really a need to accomplish something or build an ambitious future. We can begin to be content with ourselves and feel plenty of happiness by simply going about our daily lives, appreciating the present moment. When

Take a minute to really focus on each item you can’t part with and ask yourself why. Is it because it was expensive? Is it because you feel guilty about throwing it away? Are you ashamed that you were never able to make good use of it? Do you feel bad for the person who gave it to you? Does it feel like you’re throwing away a fond memory that is attached to it? Is your vanity preventing you from parting with something? Or is it just easier to leave it where it is?

Discard anything that creates visual noise. The objects I have at home are white, beige, gray, and the colors of wood, pleasing to the eye and in harmony among themselves. The balance is disrupted when I have something in a flashy neon color or a primary color that’s too bold; they stand out too much and disturb the peaceful atmosphere.

I think our lives are better when our belongings stir our passions. As long as we stick to owning things that we really love, we aren’t likely to want more.

All these things eventually turn on us; we become slaves to our belongings, forced to spend time and energy caring for them.

I don’t think it’s possible to prove what others may be thinking.

My life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Discard any possessions that you can’t discuss with passion.

Discarding memorabilia is not the same as discarding memories.

Don’t buy it because it’s cheap. Don’t take it because it’s free.

Minimalists are slim

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. —TYLER DURDEN, FIGHT CLUB

The objective of a diet is to find a lifestyle that is sustainable without suffering.

What’s important in my life? It’s the person who’s sitting or standing in front of me right now.

If it's not a "hell, yes!", it's a "no".

Don't buy it because it's cheap, don't take it because it's free.

It isn't healthy to spend any more time with an item that signals "failure" to you. Instead, let's try to recognize and learn from our mistakes as soon as we can, so we can make a smarter choice the next time around.

I’ve heard it said that the secret to a happy marriage is to simply talk a lot with your partner. One study showed that happily married couples talked with each other five more hours per week than couples that aren’t happy.

The Japanese painter Ryuzaburo Umehara left a will saying that there was no need for a funeral and that condolence offerings were not to be accepted. He wrote that the living should not be troubled for the sake of the deceased.

Our possessions are supposed to be our tools. They were used for such purposes during the Stone Age. As time went by, our world became plentiful and objects began to be used for another purpose: to enable us to affirm our own worth.

A key way to gauge your passion for something you own is to ask yourself, “If I were to somehow lose this, would I want to buy it again at full price?” If the answer is yes, that item is something that you truly love. It’s a necessity for you.

Things that you aren’t in love with but cost you a lot of money, things that you have not been able to use well that have become more of a burden, things that you’ve worn down from overuse—these tend not to spark joy. This test can be quite reliable.

When we have fewer possessions, these silent messages will, quite naturally, become fewer as well. Without the pile, there’s less effort required to prioritize these messages, and if we do receive a message or two, we have the capacity to respond right away.

Memories are wonderful, but you won't have room to develop if your attachment to the past is too strong. It's better to cut some of those ties so you can focus on what's important today... Leave only the items that you need moving forward from this very moment.

We know that as we acquire things, we’ll eventually end up growing tired of them. So shouldn’t there come a point when we realize that there is no point to acquiring something new? Why do we never get tired of this cycle? Why do we continue building our stockpile?

Holding on to things from the past is the same as clinging to an image of yourself in the past. If you’re the least bit interested in changing anything about yourself, I suggest you be brave and start letting things go. Leave only the items that you need moving forward from this very moment.

A new car becomes a used car the day after you’ve bought it. In the same way, your possessions continue to lose value with the passage of time. Though we tend to put high price tags on our belongings, we should try to think objectively about their true value when they’re turned over to other people.

A friend of mine says he grins every time he fails at something. To him, failing is discovering a method that won't work, and it brings you one step closer to succeeding. find many methods that don't work and one day, you'll find a method that does. Seen this way, failure is almost the same as success.

When you treat the clothes that you buy like they’re rented, you handle them with more care. Then you can recycle them in better condition, and you won’t be letting anything go to waste. If we think of our purchases as only temporary possessions, it keeps us humble and allows us to better appreciate them.

The textbooks you used in school, the books that opened up your eyes to the world when you were a child, that favorite outfit that once made you shine—memories are wonderful, but you won’t have room to develop if your attachment to the past is too strong. It’s better to cut some of those ties so you can focus on what’s important today.

The Buddhist monk Ryunosuke Koike says he puts his hand against his chest when he's not sure about an item, and it will feel uncomfortable if the item is merely something that he wants. This discomfort is a symptom of dissatisfaction, of the mistaken belief that there is something missing from his life even though he already has everything he needs.

If a $500 ring really could bring us five times the joy of a $100 ring, money and possessions would ensure lasting happiness. But no matter how rich you become, no matter how many things you own, the joy from all your things won’t be much different from how you feel now. There are emotional limitations to the feelings of happiness that we’re able to experience when we obtain something for the first time.

The Great East Japan Earthquake was said to be so large that it should only happen once every thousand years. I recall hearing someone say that our history from the year 0 through 2000 is the equivalent of twenty old ladies living to the age of one hundred. If that earthquake really was a once-in-a-thousand-years event, it would mean that two of those twenty old ladies would have been affected. Is that a high ratio or is it low?

Although it may seem like you're losing your individuality when you part with your belongings, the reality seems to be the other way around. Take the people you see in old European photographs as an example. All the men are generally wearing the same types of suits and hats, and they're all smoking cigarettes with the same sort of possessions around them. Yet the art and literature that those people created was incredibly original, to say the least.

Near my old apartment, there was a gingko tree that loomed over the sidewalk. Each morning, I would see my middle-aged neighbor busy sweeping away the fallen leaves and wonder how she could stand doing that day after day. The leaves were falling all the time anyway, so why didn’t she just take care of the sweeping once a week or even every other day? That had been the old me. Now I can understand how the woman must have felt. It wasn’t the fallen leaves that she had been tidying up; it was her own laziness that she had been sweeping away.

The Five Reflections chant There’s a Buddhist chant recited before meals called Gokan no Ge, or the Five Reflections. 1.  Reflect upon how the food has come before you—how the food might have been grown, how it was prepared, and how it was brought to you as your meal. 2.  Reflect upon your virtues and conduct. Are you worthy of the meal? 3.  Focus only on the meal in front of you without rushing through it and without thinking any other thoughts. 4.  Eat not from a gourmet perspective, weighing whether the meal is tasty, but simply to support your life. 5.  Eat so you are able to pursue the objectives that you would like to achieve.

About sixty thousand different thoughts are said to go through a person’s mind over the course of a day. Ninety-five percent of that is made up of the same things we’d been thinking about the day before, and 80 percent of those thoughts are believed to be negative. In my days as a maximalist, I lived in fear of my future, constantly worrying about my career and how others saw me. Forget about that 80 percent I mentioned a moment earlier—practically all my thoughts were negative. So, how do you make a slow computer like that work properly? Since our fifty-thousand-year-old hardware isn’t going to change, we need to get rid of the extra load that isn’t needed. Rather than trying to add more and more, running out of disk space and exhausting ourselves in the process, I think it’s time we started thinking about subtracting and refining to enhance the truly important things that might be buried deep down underneath all that excess.

With our desire to have more, we find ourselves spending more and more time and energy to manage and maintain everything we have. We try so hard to do this that the things that were supposed to help us end up ruling us. We eventually get used to the new state where our wishes have been fulfilled. We start taking those things for granted and there comes a time when we start getting tired of what we have. We're desperate to convey our own worth, our own value to others. We use objects to tell people just how valuable we are. The objects that are supposed to represent our qualities become our qualities themselves. There are more things to gain from eliminating excess than you might imagine: time, space, freedom and energy. When people say something is impossible, they have already decided that they don't want to do it. Differentiate between things you want and things you need. Leave your unused space empty. These open areas are incredibly useful. They bring us a sense of freedom and keep our minds open to the more important things in life. Memories are wonderful but you won't have room to develop if your attachment to the past is too strong. It's better to cut some of those ties so you can focus on what's important today. Don't get creative when you are trying to discard things. There's no need to stock up. An item chosen with passion represents perfection to us. Things we just happen to pick up, however, are easy candidates for disposal or replacement. As long as we stick to owning things that we really love, we aren't likely to want more. Our homes aren't museum, they don't need collections. When you aren't sure that you really want to part with something, try stowing it away for a while. Larger furniture items with bold colors will in time trigger visual fatigue and then boredom. Discarding things can be wasteful. But the guilt that keeps you from minimizing is the true waste. The real waste is the psychological damage that you accrue from hanging on to things you don't use or need. We find our originality when we own less. When you think about it, it's experience that builds our unique characteristics, not material objects. I've lowered my bar for happiness simply by switching to a tenugui. When even a regular bath towel can make you happy, you'll be able to find happiness almost everywhere. For the minimalist, the objective isn't to reduce, it's to eliminate distractions so they can focus on the things that are truly important. Minimalism is just the beginning. It's a tool. Once you've gone ahead and minimized, it's time to find out what those important things are. Minimalism is built around the idea that there's nothing that you're lacking. You'll spend less time being pushed around by something that you think may be missing. The qualities I look for in the things that I buy are: - the item has a minimalistic kind of shape and is easy to clean - it's color isn't too loud - I'll be able to use it for a long time - it has a simple structure - it's lightweight and compact - it has multiple uses A relaxed moment is not without meaning, it's an important time for reflection. It wasn't the fallen leaves that the lady had been tidying up, it was her own laziness that she had been sweeping away. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. With daily cleaning, the reward may be the sense of accomplishment and calmness we feel afterward. Cleaning your house is like polishing yourself. Simply by living an organized life, you'll be more invigorated, more confident and like yourself better. Having parted with the bulk of my belongings, I feel true contentment with my day-to-day life. The very act of living brings me joy. When you become a minimalist, you free yourself from all the materialist messages that surround us. All the creative marketing and annoying ads no longer have an effect on you.

The desire to hold on to things can also be seen as a desire to avoid troubling someone else for anything. But all this does is shut you off from the world.

One in, one out. This is one of the golden rules of minimizing: If you want to buy something, first get rid of something else.

You’re bound to be aware of something once you own it, and that alone requires space in our brains. Time and effort will also be needed to manage and care for whatever the item might be. So as it turns out, that “free” item will cost you.

There’s a phrase I like that goes, “If it’s not a ‘hell, yes!’ it’s a ‘no.’ ” When we ask ourselves, “Should I get rid of this?” we can turn that around: “If it’s not a ‘hell, no!’ it’s a ‘yes.’ ” It’ll help us discard everything except the things we absolutely can’t part with. And we’ll be able to manage just fine.

it’s experience that builds our unique characteristics, not material objects. So maybe it’s natural that we find our own originality when we strip away all the things that distract us.

An item chosen with passion represents perfection to us. Things we just happen to pick up, however, are easy candidates for disposal or replacement. We’re bound to be less satisfied with all those other things we’ve unconsciously accumulated. I think our lives are better when our belongings stir our passions. As long as we stick to owning things that we really love, we aren’t likely to want more.

The more you like your possessions, the more knowledgeable you’ll become on the brands and their backgrounds. There is a sense of wonder to things that we truly value.

But no matter how rich you become, no matter how many things you own, the joy from all your things wont be much different from how you feel now.

An item that you haven’t used this past year probably won’t suddenly become necessary next year or the year after that. And if there is something you happen to use once every three years, why not rent it when you need it? Let’s free up all that time and energy we spend maintaining things that we never use.