A Soul Minimalist's Guide for Election Day
5 Simple Postures for This Week and Beyond
Last February I flew to Los Angeles for an interview with Emma Chamberlain, a Gen Z YouTuber, entrepreneur, and host of Anything Goes. Toward the end of our interview at Spotify Studios, she smiled and asked:
“So what is a soul minimalist and how can I become one?” —Emma Chamberlain
I was so glad she asked. We spent the final 10 minutes of the interview talking about soul minimalism: what it is, why we need it, and simple practices to declutter on the inside.
By way of review: In the same way a minimalist pays attention to what they are holding on to in their physical lives, a soul mimimalist pays attention to what we are holding onto in our inner lives, including those things that may have a hold on us.
Things like resentment, anxiety, shame, low-grade regret: all of this lingering clutter impacts our daily life, our decisions, and our physical and spiritual health. In the same way a minimalist may engage in habits or practices for the health of their physical spaces, a soul minimalist engages habits or practices for our inner health. These actions are ways we actively declutter the inner build-up.
Decluttering is to our home as silence, solitude, and stillness are to our soul.
Our input impacts our output - physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually.
Soul minimalists know that we are always becoming someone and the decisions we make on a daily basis play a part.
We can participate in our own becoming and so we engage in simple habits, rhythms, and even unconventional spiritual practices as a way to exercise our own agency and live our lives in such a way that they reflect our core values, our personality, our love for people and our life with God.
For years I’ve been creating quick guides for Soul Minimalists, for example:
With five days left until Election Day in the US, I’ve created a simple Soul Minimalist’s Guide for Election Day—five ways a soul minimalist posture can inform our next week and beyond.