This is what practising minimalism has taught us from the beginning, that life is not about impressing others with your fancy clothes. Your net worth isn’t your life worth. Sure, it’s easy enough to agree in principle, but many of us dedicate our lives to doing exactly this—getting into debt or working long hours at jobs we hate to earn money to pay off the credit cards for things that don’t actually add value to our lives.

You don’t have to live like a monk, or go backpacking around the world, everyone has their own happy medium. Most people live on autopilot, going about their cycles of hedonic adaptation without stopping to question what kinds of things are most worthwhile. Unfortunately they don’t realise they’ve wasted their life until the very end, by then it’s too late to do anything about it.

If we’re lucky and open minded enough to discover minimalism before we’re near death, then we can count ourselves in the fortunate minority. Starting today, we can make wiser decisions on how we will spend our limited lives so that when we reach the end, if there is one thing we will have, it’ll be fewer regrets.