Speaker 1: We tie a lot of emotions to our things and
Speaker 1: the outcomes and the achievements. And I think the reason
Speaker 1: we often do that is because we haven't identified how
Speaker 1: much is enough. We don't keep asking that question, and
Speaker 1: so I keep asking that question, does this add value
Speaker 1: to my life? And if not, I'm willing to let
Speaker 1: it go.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: Joshua Fields Milburn, Ryan Nicodemis, and TK Coleman to the show.
Speaker 2: They are known collectively as The Minimalists. Joshua and Ryan
Speaker 2: are Emmy nominated Netflix Stars and New York Times bestselling authors.
Speaker 2: Alongside their podcast co host TK, they helped millions of
Speaker 2: people live meaningful lives with less. The Minimalists have been
Speaker 2: featured in Time, Architectural Digest, and GQ, and they have
Speaker 2: spoken at Harvard, Apple, and Google. Their podcast is more
Speaker 2: than one hundred million downloads, making it one of the
Speaker 2: most popular podcasts in the world. In this episode, I
Speaker 2: talked to josh make Sure, Ryan, and TK about minimalism.
Speaker 2: All too often we are preoccupied with amassing wealth and
Speaker 2: possessions in an attempt to fill the void. Soon we
Speaker 2: find that accumulating stuff doesn't really make us feel whole
Speaker 2: instead of turning to objects, The Minimalists ask us to ponder,
Speaker 2: how do we live more with less? When we can
Speaker 2: get rid of quatter in our homes, digital spaces, and relationships,
Speaker 2: we make room for what's truly important. Joshua, Ryan, and
Speaker 2: TK talk about how minimalism has changed their lives, allowing
Speaker 2: them to feel more content, mindful, and generous. I love
Speaker 2: these guys and I think you will too, So without
Speaker 2: further ado, I bring you The Minimalists, The Minimalists. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the Psychology Podcast. The Minimalists Meet the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having us. Yes, so good to
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for being here. You know, I
Speaker 2: know that you all are interested in psychology. I saw
Speaker 2: you chatting recently with my friend Susan David, which was
Speaker 2: pretty cool. Can we confirm that.
Speaker 4: If you saw it, Scott, then we confirm it.
Speaker 5: What matters is that you had an experience that is
Speaker 5: best explained by that hypothesis.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, amazing. You guys are like placed over her eyes.
Speaker 2: When I said that, I was like, no, so, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad that you're into psychology, And I thought we
Speaker 2: could just start with each of you just talking a
Speaker 2: little bit about yourself as sort of condensed as can be.
Speaker 2: Why this sort of minimalistic aesthetic touches your tickles, your fancy.
Speaker 1: As condensed as we can be. So I have problems
Speaker 1: with brevity, as ironic as that might be as.
Speaker 3: One of the minimalists.
Speaker 1: Although there was this time I was at a conference
Speaker 1: and I was speaking there, and there was this book
Speaker 1: that they handed out with each of the speakers, and
Speaker 1: everyone had this really long bio in it, right like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm the chief technology officer at Microsoft whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and and these long, really impressive bios. Well, I apparently
Speaker 1: didn't take mine very seriously because when I had to
Speaker 1: fill mine out, it just said I'm a simple man.
Speaker 1: And they're passing out this booklet to everyone who's attending there.
Speaker 1: But so many people came up to me because all
Speaker 1: my bio there was a picture of my face, my name,
Speaker 1: Joshua Fields Milburn, and then all it said was I'm
Speaker 1: a simple man. And so mat of people said, yours
Speaker 1: is the only bio that I read and enjoyed. And
Speaker 1: I think fundamentally that's what as the minimalists we tried
Speaker 1: to get down to the essence, what is essential for us,
Speaker 1: what's non essential but adds value to our lives, and
Speaker 1: then get rid of anything that's superfluous, anything that's junk.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure we can go into our backstories during
Speaker 1: all of this, but ultimately, I've known Ryan since we
Speaker 1: were fat, little fifth graders over thirty years now. We
Speaker 1: grew up really poor. I thought the reason we were
Speaker 1: so unhappy when we were growing up is we didn't
Speaker 1: have any money. And so when I turned eighteen, I
Speaker 1: went out and I got an entry level corporate job,
Speaker 1: and I spent the next dozen years climbing the corporate ladder.
Speaker 1: By age thirty, i'd sort of achieved everything I ever wanted.
Speaker 1: The six figure salary, the luxury cars, the big house
Speaker 1: with more toilets than people had, all the stuff right
Speaker 1: that showed that I was successful, But of course I
Speaker 1: was discontented. I was in debt, kind of miserable. Two
Speaker 1: things happened to me. My mother died, my marriage ended,
Speaker 1: both in the same month, and those two events really
Speaker 1: forced me to look around and start to question what
Speaker 1: had become my life's focus. And I realized, man, I'm
Speaker 1: really focused on so called success and achievement in our culture,
Speaker 1: that means the accumulation of stuff to show how achieved
Speaker 1: we are, how successful we are. But it wasn't bringing
Speaker 1: me joy, meaning purpose, peace, contentment. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: just kind of driving me crazy. I was living the
Speaker 1: American dream, but it wasn't my dream.
Speaker 4: Powerful TK, what tickles your fancy.
Speaker 5: The possibility of a TV show to rival a million
Speaker 5: little things called bat little fifth graders.
Speaker 3: I think we've got something in the making. Man, that's great.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean for me, I can remember periods in
Speaker 5: my life where even though I had the things that
Speaker 5: I wanted, or sometimes didn't have the things that I wanted,
Speaker 5: it didn't matter because I walked around so heavy in
Speaker 5: my own soul, arguing with people in my imagination, calling
Speaker 5: to mind unpleasant events from my past, anticipating improbable events
Speaker 5: happening in the future, and coming up with defenses against
Speaker 5: them right now in the present. And there just came
Speaker 5: a point in my life where I realize, Man, it's
Speaker 5: not about my relationship with stuff, the stuff that I'm
Speaker 5: pursuing or the stuff that I possess. It's about my
Speaker 5: relationship with this philosophical and psychological baggage that weighs me
Speaker 5: down and just getting underneath that and unpacking that. So
Speaker 5: I like to think of myself as a philosophical minimalist,
Speaker 5: if you will, where help people deal with the beliefs
Speaker 5: and behaviors that get in the way of living the
Speaker 5: life they want to live. But I mean, that's that's
Speaker 5: pretty much my relationship to minimalism, and that's what inspires
Speaker 5: me to have these types of conversations, just really appreciating
Speaker 5: from my own life and my own grapple with darkness,
Speaker 5: just how empowering it can be to just go within
Speaker 5: and unpack your own baggage.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 2: Can I ask a TK question real quick? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: so when did you join the band?
Speaker 5: So it's been about seven months now.
Speaker 4: Almost the year now, almost a year last year.
Speaker 5: Time goes by so fast. I originally came as a
Speaker 5: guest on this show about what four or five years ago.
Speaker 5: Four or five years ago. Josh is like the lebron James,
Speaker 5: you know how he recalls all the different moments in
Speaker 5: a game. He can remember the exact episode number for
Speaker 5: everything that you might call to mind. But yeah, about
Speaker 5: five years ago I did an episode on here and
Speaker 5: we just like, really we got along really well.
Speaker 3: I had great.
Speaker 5: Camaraderie, and we did several other episodes together. And then
Speaker 5: it was kind of a point like in the movie
Speaker 5: Office Space, where there's that guy that's just always around.
Speaker 5: It's like, hey, do you even work here? And I
Speaker 5: was like, ah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: They gave me a job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, thank you, thank you?
Speaker 4: Okay, Ryan, Yeah, I mean I mean for me, man,
Speaker 4: I mean you know, I, like many people, my life
Speaker 4: started out with a very crappy childhood and a lot
Speaker 4: of that had to do with our finances and not
Speaker 4: having the things we needed. So I grew up thinking
Speaker 4: that I could, I could, I could look externally for
Speaker 4: something to complete me and make me a better person.
Speaker 4: And after trying that through my early to mid to
Speaker 4: late twenties, I realized very quickly that nothing externally was
Speaker 4: going to make me any more complete than I already was.
Speaker 4: And that's where minimalism came into the picture. From that
Speaker 4: really helped me take a look at my life and
Speaker 4: really get clear on what my priorities were, and that's
Speaker 4: what really drew me to this whole idea of simplicity
Speaker 4: and living intentionally.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks to all three of you for making an intro.
Speaker 2: I don't often have three guests on my podcast at
Speaker 2: one time, so I'm a little overwhelmed. But this is
Speaker 2: amazing to hear that from all of you.
Speaker 1: Everything we do is blanketed in irony. By the way,
Speaker 1: well he come.
Speaker 3: To the middle, but you own underwear.
Speaker 4: But there's three of you.
Speaker 3: Which one of these were the underwear that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's so that is funny. Like people
Speaker 2: probably all the time are like scanning to see if
Speaker 2: they're hypocrisy, you know, like, oh, you're really a minimalist,
Speaker 2: but you say this, It's like, that's why I would
Speaker 2: rather just say like I'm and I don't do this.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think I'd rather just say I'm an asshole
Speaker 2: than than a nice guy, because if you say I'm
Speaker 2: a nice guy, people always like, oh, well you say
Speaker 2: you're a nice guy, Well why do you do that?
Speaker 2: But if you're an asshole, then you can always be like,
Speaker 2: you know, like surprise people when you're nice. But anyway, yeah.
Speaker 4: You know. My theory though, is that we are all hypocrites,
Speaker 4: every single one of us. The question is is like
Speaker 4: how much of a hypocrite you know? Am I being
Speaker 4: on a day to day basis. I try to not
Speaker 4: be one as much, but I could give you a
Speaker 4: million different reasons why. Yeah, I think we're all probably
Speaker 4: a little bit of a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: I hope that I'm a hypocrite, right, because it means
Speaker 1: I'm willing to change my mind about something if I'm
Speaker 1: given new evidence, right. Otherwise I'm clinging to a dogma.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, of course people look for hypocrisy. People
Speaker 1: will catch me in the airport sometimes I have my
Speaker 1: one carry on bag with me and they're like, I
Speaker 1: figured you'd be traveling like Jack Reacher. I can't believe
Speaker 1: you have a bag when you're traveling you call yourself
Speaker 1: a like. I guess they're trying to be cute or
Speaker 1: endear themselves to me, but they just kind of come
Speaker 1: off as a jerk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, I think this brings up an interesting point
Speaker 5: about integrity. I think the fastest way to cease being
Speaker 5: a saint is becoming preoccupied with the phenomenon of being
Speaker 5: seen as a saint. It's good to strive to be good,
Speaker 5: but the moment you're obsessed with the whether or not
Speaker 5: other people give you that label, you're a slave to
Speaker 5: the fickle perceptions, the ever changing, fluctuating ideas and opinions
Speaker 5: that people have about you. We've talked about on our
Speaker 5: show before. You know, this contemporary concern with being on
Speaker 5: the right side of history, and how you know, one
Speaker 5: hundred years from now, the next generation can come along
Speaker 5: and say, everybody who lived during that time period, you're
Speaker 5: all a bunch of antiles. So all you can do
Speaker 5: is ground yourself in authenticity and truthfulness and honesty. And
Speaker 5: so I think it's good to be a non hypocrite,
Speaker 5: But I think the moment you get obsessed with convincing
Speaker 5: people that you're not a hypocrite, they can still control
Speaker 5: you just as easily. You're a hypocrite. Oh I know
Speaker 5: I'm not. I can prove to you that I'm consistent.
Speaker 5: You've already lost. You know, if someone sees you as
Speaker 5: a hypocrite, it's not your job to try to change that.
Speaker 5: It's your job to put yourself out there as honestly
Speaker 5: and authentically as you can and to just respect the
Speaker 5: fact that it's not going to resonate with everyone anyway.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: That's where the piece comes from for me.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, what you were describing there for
Speaker 2: a second, is something we call in the psychological literature
Speaker 2: communal narcissism, where some people say that they're the best
Speaker 2: at helping others. You know, I am better than anyone
Speaker 2: who's ever lived at helping others. Now, you guys are
Speaker 2: not minimalist minimalist narcissists as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: It's not like you're saying we're the best at minimalism.
Speaker 2: You're saying just simply minimalism matters and it's helpful. Is
Speaker 2: that right? You're not minimalist narcissists.
Speaker 4: No, not at all. I mean, we would never prescribe
Speaker 4: minimalism to anyone. It's more it's more about, like, are
Speaker 4: you someone who feels way down by your stuff? Does
Speaker 4: your life feel out of control? If so, then let
Speaker 4: Josh and I and TK talk about how our life
Speaker 4: was out of control and how we approached it with
Speaker 4: this thing called minimalism to help create a more simple life.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we try to come at it from that
Speaker 4: angle rather than a prescriptive angle.
Speaker 5: I think the most consistent position would be to say
Speaker 5: we're the least of all minimalists.
Speaker 4: I will say that that I am very humbles.
Speaker 2: You guys are so funny. Well, I liked you guys instantly.
Speaker 2: I met you at a party. I liked you guys instantly.
Speaker 2: I felt like your being was exactly what TK was
Speaker 2: just saying. Your being was authentic, your being was it
Speaker 2: seemed to be about being like you're just like your energy.
Speaker 2: I like your energy, so obviously that's why I'm excited
Speaker 2: to have you on the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Likewise, I felt the same way about you, and
Speaker 4: I mention.
Speaker 2: Wow, thank you, thank you. I wasn't, but go on, No,
Speaker 2: I like this idea of psychological richness, you know, and
Speaker 2: how it doesn't depend on the amount of things you
Speaker 2: have or how rich your money is. Can you kind
Speaker 2: of unpack for me a little more what you see
Speaker 2: the main elements of psychological Richnesskay?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I see psychological richness as a recognition of
Speaker 5: the fact that abundance begins from within. I think the
Speaker 5: greatest tragedy around most people's conception of abundance is that
Speaker 5: our concept of abundance itself is rooted in scarcity. Because
Speaker 5: we only see abundance in terms of money, we limit
Speaker 5: our concept of abundance to physical things. But to have
Speaker 5: an abundant concept of abundance means that you see abundance
Speaker 5: in a way that is creative, in a way that
Speaker 5: is multifaceted. And so one of the things that is
Speaker 5: at the heart of the minimalist understanding of psychological richness
Speaker 5: for us is that a life well lived, a life
Speaker 5: that is most fully human, is a life that is
Speaker 5: grounded in creative expression. And that is the opposite of consumerism.
Speaker 5: Not the opposite of consumption, which is a part of life,
Speaker 5: but it's the ism behind it that changes things. Consumerism
Speaker 5: is about orienting your life around things that are outside
Speaker 5: the self and seeking completion by going out there obtaining
Speaker 5: something that you don't already have, becoming something that you
Speaker 5: are not yet, and you're always chasing right. But the
Speaker 5: abundance mindset is when you say, I am already complete,
Speaker 5: there is nothing fundamentally wrong with me, and I live
Speaker 5: my life in a way that expresses my already existing
Speaker 5: state of abundance, my already existing state of self love,
Speaker 5: self respect, self care, and so on. And so when
Speaker 5: you live from that state, it doesn't cause you to
Speaker 5: antagonize or resist material things, but it establishes you in
Speaker 5: right relationship to material things so that you can use
Speaker 5: them to bring joy to other people's lives and to
Speaker 5: enhance your own fellas.
Speaker 1: I think that that's the paradox of minimalism, is I
Speaker 1: actually get far more value from my material things now.
Speaker 1: Why because the clutter is out of the way, like
Speaker 1: the literal clutter, the physical clutter. Right, we often talk
Speaker 1: about that minimalism from most people starts with the stuff.
Speaker 1: But we'd be remiss if we said, well, that's it.
Speaker 1: You just go home, you rent a dumpster, you throw
Speaker 1: all your stuff in it, and now you will experience
Speaker 1: perpetual bliss. But of course simplifying your life doesn't really
Speaker 1: work like that. You go home today and throw everything
Speaker 1: away and be utterly miserable because you got rid of
Speaker 1: all of your pacifiers. It's about that relationship to stuff.
Speaker 1: And part of our relationship now is not abundance. It's
Speaker 1: excess masquerading as abundant or pretending if I heat more
Speaker 1: things on then I am abundant, and of course I
Speaker 1: get more I'm even more abundant. But clutter is just
Speaker 1: anything that gets in the way. So one thing that
Speaker 1: is clutter for you might be essential or value adding
Speaker 1: for me, and vice versa. But that is true also
Speaker 1: outside of the material possession. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: we've learned over the last twelve thirteen years that we've
Speaker 1: been the minimalists is that the clutter extends way beyond
Speaker 1: the physical clutter. There's, of course, now digital clututter, which
Speaker 1: might be one of the biggest problem areas, especially for
Speaker 1: young folks. You know, my daughter is nine, and I'm
Speaker 1: terrified of the potential digital clutter that can enter her
Speaker 1: life at any moment. But then we have relationship clutter,
Speaker 1: we have calendar clutter. We're also busy busy busy busy
Speaker 1: is the worst four letter word in the English language.
Speaker 1: Or we have community clutter. We feel like I need
Speaker 1: to be surrounded by more and more and more people
Speaker 1: in my community, and that actually gets in the way
Speaker 1: of the meaningful interactions. We have information clutter, education clutter,
Speaker 1: career or work clutter. There's a lot of clutter.
Speaker 3: In our lives. And it's not just about the stuff.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: You know when we're add on, sorry, when we're add
Speaker 5: on to psychological richness is I think there's this fundamental,
Speaker 5: universal human need to be generous. We all know that
Speaker 5: there are limits to how happy we can be by
Speaker 5: getting things. But there's no debate about the fact that
Speaker 5: we can never attain anything that even remotely resembles happiness
Speaker 5: if we are not in a state of helping, serving
Speaker 5: and giving, which is why we dream of the day
Speaker 5: of retiring. But then the moment we get there, after
Speaker 5: a little vacation time, a little relaxation time, what's the
Speaker 5: first thing we do. We go get a job, we
Speaker 5: go start a project, because we need to contribute some
Speaker 5: aspect of who we are to the world. And psychological
Speaker 5: richness is about empowering people to be generous in a
Speaker 5: way that is not limited to the stuff. But that's
Speaker 5: something that you can't see if the stuff is in
Speaker 5: the way, distracting you from the inner space, the inner
Speaker 5: richness that gives meaning and value to the stuff. So
Speaker 5: for us, it's about empowering people to be generous in
Speaker 5: the way that our nature demands of us.
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is, you are enough as you
Speaker 2: are as long as you give to others.
Speaker 5: You are enough as you are even if you don't
Speaker 5: give to others. But the recognition of your enoughness is
Speaker 5: what causes that organic response of generosity. If you don't
Speaker 5: give to others in order to become enough, you recognize
Speaker 5: that you are enough, and in that recognition you find
Speaker 5: yourself naturally being generous in ways that are unique to
Speaker 5: your own creativity.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 4: I mean, just just to add to that, I think
Speaker 4: like when when people in general, when they feel like
Speaker 4: they have enough, like when they can they can look
Speaker 4: at their situation and be like, oh, like I have
Speaker 4: plenty for what I need in my life, that is
Speaker 4: when people will start to look externally on what they
Speaker 4: can give. Now, I don't think you have to be
Speaker 4: in that spot to look externally, but certainly when your
Speaker 4: mind is quieter and you feel like you're not you know,
Speaker 4: stressing out to figure out where the next meal is
Speaker 4: coming from or how are you going to pay the
Speaker 4: utility bill? I mean, once you get past that, I
Speaker 4: think it is easier for people to start looking externally.
Speaker 4: Although again not saying you necessarily need that, but but
Speaker 4: certainly it certainly helps.
Speaker 2: That's cool, And thanks for rolling with my cheekiness there,
Speaker 2: tk because one of my pet peeves. One of my
Speaker 2: pet peeves is this constant like pressure we put on
Speaker 2: people to give, give, give, give, and we don't. And
Speaker 2: I created a concept called healthy selfishness which I think
Speaker 2: people need more of, which as you're allowed to just
Speaker 2: approve of yourself and not always seek external approval. So
Speaker 2: I get triggered sometimes when I when people say things
Speaker 2: like you know, like they give the message you are enough,
Speaker 2: but then they like promote giving. They're like promoting it,
Speaker 2: like as though that's like the way to be a
Speaker 2: worthy human. But you can be Can you be a
Speaker 2: worthy human? By Let's say you your life as minimalistic
Speaker 2: as can be. So let's say what it mean. What
Speaker 2: does it mean for a minim minimalistic being? So let's
Speaker 2: say you meditate every day. You you don't really have
Speaker 2: many things around you in terms of things that you buy.
Speaker 2: Let's say you have a small studio apartment, you make
Speaker 2: enough working you know, at a store, to meet your
Speaker 2: minimum basic needs, and you're happy and you don't feel
Speaker 2: compulsion to do anything else with your life. Is that
Speaker 2: enough of an existence? Is that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that sounds awesome to me. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: finding out what is enough for you because the thing
Speaker 1: you just said and you're happy, and I don't really
Speaker 1: know what that means. I think a happiness is a
Speaker 1: relatively nebulous word. And if you were to pull one
Speaker 1: hundred people on the street ask them what happiness is,
Speaker 1: I think you'll get probably ninety seven different answers.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It could be anything from abiding perpetual bliss. Or it
Speaker 1: could be that spike of dopamine when my Instagram post
Speaker 1: got one hundred likes. Right, that could be happiness for
Speaker 1: two different people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about some sort of abiding contentment, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that comes only from identifying what is enough.
Speaker 1: We never stopped to say what is enough for me?
Speaker 1: How much is enough money? How much is enough time
Speaker 1: spent at work? How many square feet are enough? What
Speaker 1: is enough in terms of my car, my transportation, or
Speaker 1: my vocation or my education. I have a friend who's
Speaker 1: working on they're fourth PhD. There's nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: but I asked him, like, how much is enough? And
Speaker 1: he's like, I don't know. I just know I want
Speaker 1: another one.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And that's not a judgment, because judgment is just a
Speaker 1: mirror reflecting my own insecurities. But it's understanding that I
Speaker 1: found what is enough for me with respect to that,
Speaker 1: and if I decide that it's no longer enough for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, it's a compelling reason to pursue something else.
Speaker 1: That enough point can change over time as well. When
Speaker 1: I first discovered minimalism, I was in my late twenty
Speaker 1: to twenty nine or thirty, and you know, I'm forty
Speaker 1: two now, and what is enough for me now has
Speaker 1: changed because I have a daughter, and I have a wife,
Speaker 1: and we own a house together, and I have a car.
Speaker 1: Like the things will change over time. So it's not
Speaker 1: about I really wish it was, Scott. I could get down,
Speaker 1: here's the list of the one hundred items I own,
Speaker 1: and now I'm happy. And if I give this list
Speaker 1: to you, you will also experience the same popetual happiness
Speaker 1: that I experienced, Because that would be wonderful if I
Speaker 1: could just make a prescriptive like that. But it's not mechanical.
Speaker 1: This is this is psychological, right, and and it's emotional.
Speaker 1: And we tie a lot of emotions to our things
Speaker 1: and the outcomes and the achievements. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason we often do that is because we haven't identified
Speaker 1: how much is enough. We don't keep asking that question,
Speaker 1: And so I keep asking that question, does this add
Speaker 1: value to my life? And if not, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: let it go. Whether that is a thing or it
Speaker 1: is a career, it is a project, it is a relationship, business,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. My willingness to let go means
Speaker 1: I'm no longer obligated to be there. If I want
Speaker 1: to be there, I'm actually there, not out of obligation,
Speaker 1: but out out of a true devotion or a compulsion
Speaker 1: to participate in that. And if I don't want to participate,
Speaker 1: that's totally fine too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, and I love that that. Every
Speaker 2: every person should find out what is the minimalistic existence
Speaker 2: that works for them? Is how I would put it,
Speaker 2: and I love that. But you know, it's it's tough
Speaker 2: because things are constantly coming at you in life. You know,
Speaker 2: you can, for instance, I can decide today like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I have enough friends, I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 2: You know what? I have enough? You know I don't
Speaker 2: know that. I can go down the list, and then
Speaker 2: you can kind of come across as an asshole. It's
Speaker 2: like things are constantly coming at you, like, Hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to be my friend? No, I'm good, I've
Speaker 2: reached I'm good. Hey do you want to do this?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I have my I have enough. It's hard to realistically
Speaker 2: live in a world where you can kind of just
Speaker 2: protect what your your your being. You know, your existential
Speaker 2: Minimalism can be difficult to protect in a world where
Speaker 2: things are constantly coming at you. Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: It does. Our preferences, our bandwidth, our resources, that they're
Speaker 4: all constantly changing and evolving. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: for me, minimalism helps me to not cling so tightly
Speaker 4: to these these these things that I have in my
Speaker 4: life because when they do become obsolete or when my
Speaker 4: preferences change, because my grip is loose and I can
Speaker 4: let those things go a lot easier and I can
Speaker 4: kind of go with the flow. Because yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: you're absolutely right, life changes. Things come at you so fast.
Speaker 4: And I think that again, for me, minimalism helps me
Speaker 4: evolve with that that changing life that happens to all
Speaker 4: of us.
Speaker 1: I think if you're unwilling to say no, I get there,
Speaker 1: because it's really easy to say yes.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 1: You're committing your future self to some future obligation, right
Speaker 1: without thinking about It's like going into debt, right it
Speaker 1: sounds great. I think I can afford the car payment.
Speaker 1: I know, at least I can next month. But it's
Speaker 1: an eighty three month loan and it's teven hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a month. I'm committing my future self six and a
Speaker 1: half years from now to continue to pay for this
Speaker 1: damn car that is now frustrating me and the repairs.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'd like to move in a different direction,
Speaker 1: but I can't because some version of me in the
Speaker 1: past said yes, and so saying yes just haphazardly is
Speaker 1: actually inconsiderate. It's inconsiderate to me and my future self,
Speaker 1: but it's also inconsidered to other people because now you're
Speaker 1: creating these obligatory relationships. I once heard the great philosopher
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck say that you never want to if someone
Speaker 1: I asks you to commit to something, don't say yes
Speaker 1: to it unless you would say yes to it today,
Speaker 1: because it's easy to put some on my calendar six
Speaker 1: and a half months from now. But if it's not
Speaker 1: a yes today, if it's not a hell yeah today,
Speaker 1: then it's a no for me, And that's okay.
Speaker 3: No is a complete sinse yeah.
Speaker 5: In economics, you have this concept called creative destruction, which
Speaker 5: the core of the idea is that anytime you introduce innovation,
Speaker 5: you disrupt existing industries and create a lot of discomfort,
Speaker 5: and I think that's true at the micro level in
Speaker 5: our own individual lives. Anytime we take a step towards progress,
Speaker 5: anytime we say yes to what's healthy, yes to what's
Speaker 5: good for us, then that's no to someone else's expectations
Speaker 5: of you. You might be the hero of your own story,
Speaker 5: but you might be a role player in someone else's story.
Speaker 5: And the moment you say I am going to take
Speaker 5: ownership of my story by writing this particular subplot or
Speaker 5: whatever it may be, then you're changing who you are
Speaker 5: in someone else's story, and that makes them uncomfortable. And so,
Speaker 5: whether you describe yourself as a minimalist or anything else,
Speaker 5: anytime you start saying yes to yourself, you're going to
Speaker 5: experience that reality shit test where the universe gives you
Speaker 5: a chance to confirm that yes, you sure you want this,
Speaker 5: kind of like when you try to delete a file
Speaker 5: your computer's like, hey, you sure you want to do this?
Speaker 5: The universe is going to say, hey, you sure you
Speaker 5: want to do this? Because I'm going to like you
Speaker 5: a little bit less. There are a few areas of
Speaker 5: your life that are going to get a little bit
Speaker 5: harder in the short term. You sure you want to
Speaker 5: do this, and when you say yes, you confirm that yes,
Speaker 5: and you make that a habit. The people in your
Speaker 5: life begin to respect you and it becomes a little
Speaker 5: bit easier to deal with that, but it does take practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that TK, and I just know as
Speaker 2: a common thread among a lot of what you all
Speaker 2: are saying, which is there's a very mindful vibe I'm
Speaker 2: getting from all of you. Like there's a sort of
Speaker 2: like take that extra pause and like like are you
Speaker 2: sure you want to do this? You know? And so
Speaker 2: how much does mindfulness play a role in your lives?
Speaker 1: I was just talking to a friend downstairs here. He
Speaker 1: is an architect and in the same building we're in.
Speaker 1: We're not actually in outer space. I was just kidding
Speaker 1: about that earlier.
Speaker 2: Oh, I believe you.
Speaker 4: Centerview's over.
Speaker 2: I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 1: But I was talking to this friend downstairs and he
Speaker 1: was working on a creative project and the person got
Speaker 1: really upset with him, and then he escalated it immediately,
Speaker 1: and then you know they're essentially getting into a fight together, right,
Speaker 1: And the question I always ask myself is like, well,
Speaker 1: i'd be happy about my response a day from now.
Speaker 1: A week from now, a month from now, a year
Speaker 1: from now. If the answer is no, well what is it?
Speaker 1: Then it's that it's because I'm reacting out of emotion.
Speaker 1: But our emotions, as real as they feel, they aren't real.
Speaker 1: They are some sort of respect to some past trauma
Speaker 1: that I have, some past indiscretion, that I had, some
Speaker 1: expectation that I.
Speaker 3: Had that was not met.
Speaker 1: And now I'm reacting to the past by escalating my present,
Speaker 1: which is actually going to harm this relationship in the future.
Speaker 1: And so quite often I will just pause and say,
Speaker 1: would I be happy with this a day from now?
Speaker 1: And if the answer is no, or I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: if it's anything but a hell yeah, then it's a hey,
Speaker 1: it's probably better to be be quiet. Here a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, Nate Green, he said he's a real quiet,
Speaker 1: contemplative guy, and he said, I speak only when it
Speaker 1: adds more value than silent. Wow, And that is a
Speaker 1: hard truth try to live up to. But man, it's
Speaker 1: I think it's probably something worth striving for.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 5: I think it was Bertrand and Russell who said most
Speaker 5: of humanity's problems boiled down to people's inability to sit
Speaker 5: in a room alone with themselves. For me, the way
Speaker 5: I look at mindfulness is kind of like, imagine going
Speaker 5: to the ocean on a really windy day and you
Speaker 5: look at the water and the wind is beating against
Speaker 5: the waves, and you just see the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 5: But then you come back on a different day where
Speaker 5: it's really calm and really quiet, and you look at
Speaker 5: that same ocean and you can see through the ocean
Speaker 5: and you can see that it's teeming with life, all
Speaker 5: sorts of things underneath. And I think that's a great
Speaker 5: metaphor for the soul. You know, when the mind is
Speaker 5: clouded with thoughts and anxieties and distractions and we're so
Speaker 5: focused on that to do list and we're just in
Speaker 5: hustle mode, there is a richness, an interior depth that
Speaker 5: you don't really get to pierce. But when you can
Speaker 5: quiet down, you can calm down, and you can still yourself,
Speaker 5: you can see into your soul and there's so much
Speaker 5: substance there. And most of the answers to the questions
Speaker 5: that we wrestle with, a lot of the solutions that
Speaker 5: we feel like they elude us, a lot of that
Speaker 5: is right there within. And so it's it's a cliche
Speaker 5: that you have to slow down to go faster, but
Speaker 5: it's true. It's only a cliche because we have Instagram
Speaker 5: and everybody puts the quotes out there every day. But
Speaker 5: are you doing it?
Speaker 3: That's the key if you take the time to do it.
Speaker 5: Man, there's so much peace and power to be found
Speaker 5: and just taking that time to go within And that's
Speaker 5: what myfulness is to me. And I try to make
Speaker 5: a habit of taking a walk or having some quiet
Speaker 5: time every day for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's really insightful. I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of people are scared to see into their soul and
Speaker 2: so they distract themselves with things. Do you guys feel
Speaker 2: that a lot of people buy stuff to fill a
Speaker 2: hole in their soul? Because I know I do. I
Speaker 2: need your help. I have not actually owned a bed
Speaker 2: in ten years. I do all the trial periods and
Speaker 2: then I return it this day before the trial period's over,
Speaker 2: because I'm like, I bet I can find a better
Speaker 2: bed now. My friend Dan said the other day, sometimes
Speaker 2: a bed is not just a bed, Scott, maybe there's
Speaker 2: something deeper going on there. So anyway, I need your help.
Speaker 2: Do you think that is true though, that sometimes people
Speaker 2: buy things because they're avoiding maybe singing into their soul
Speaker 2: in some way might be too dramatic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I can only speak for my
Speaker 4: own experience, but I mean there was a point in
Speaker 4: my life where I didn't know what was important, but
Speaker 4: one thing was clear. I had this gaping void in
Speaker 4: my life. So back in my corporate days, I tried
Speaker 4: to fill that void the same way many people do
Speaker 4: with stuff, lots of stuff. I was filling the void
Speaker 4: with as many consumer purchases as possible. You know, I
Speaker 4: bought TVs Electronics, a new car every couple of years.
Speaker 4: I had a you know, a big two thousand square
Speaker 4: foot condo with two living rooms, which I have no
Speaker 4: idea why a single guy would ever need two living rooms.
Speaker 4: I had two of them, and it was never enough.
Speaker 4: I thought at the time that eventually that void would
Speaker 4: get smaller and smaller, and I thought happiness just had
Speaker 4: to be somewhere around the corner. But the stuff didn't
Speaker 4: fill the void, it just widened it. And uh yeah,
Speaker 4: it got to a point where I really had to
Speaker 4: start questioning what that void was. I'll tell you the
Speaker 4: one thing that I've really come to appreciate about the
Speaker 4: void is that I don't. For me, it never goes away,
Speaker 4: and that's okay because it does become a little bit
Speaker 4: smaller in the sense of the less that I desire,
Speaker 4: the smaller the void will get. But there's there's a
Speaker 4: beauty in like making friends with that void because you
Speaker 4: do get an opportunity to really, I get an opportunity
Speaker 4: to look at who I am as a person and
Speaker 4: why do I have that void? And it goes back
Speaker 4: to so many things. I mean, it's it goes back
Speaker 4: to different traumas in my life. It goes back to
Speaker 4: being raised in a very religious household. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of reasons why I think I have that void.
Speaker 4: And instead of me trying to ignore it, trying to
Speaker 4: come up with some magical formula to just get rid
Speaker 4: of it, it's about recognizing it and being able to
Speaker 4: sit with it and make space for it without letting
Speaker 4: it ruin my life.
Speaker 1: I would just open that by saying that we often
Speaker 1: are told that there's a void, mostly by marketers or
Speaker 1: advertisers that want to sell us stuff, and so in
Speaker 1: order to sell us stuff, they have to create a
Speaker 1: solution to a problem that might not actually exist In fact,
Speaker 1: we use pejorative words like void. Right, But when Ryan
Speaker 1: and I lived in Montana, you don't go to Montana,
Speaker 1: the Glacier National Park and say, wow.
Speaker 3: Look at this void.
Speaker 1: We really need to fill this with some skyscraper, some condos,
Speaker 1: some chain restaurants.
Speaker 3: Let's fill the void, right.
Speaker 1: I mean someone might say that, some sort of developer
Speaker 1: might say that, look at this void. But no, you say, wow,
Speaker 1: look at the open space here. Isn't this peaceful? Isn't
Speaker 1: this calm? Isn't this complete? It's not incomplete because of
Speaker 1: the lack of condos, just like you aren't incomplete because
Speaker 1: of a lack of the perfect mattress.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: By the way, the word complete is a fascinating one.
Speaker 1: We had what was her name, Katherine Schaffler on the
Speaker 1: podcast on the Minimalist podcast, and she wrote a book
Speaker 1: about perfectionism. And I used to have a different view
Speaker 1: of perfect. I used to think that it was impossibly
Speaker 1: perfect because perfect flawless. Well, no, that's not what perfect means.
Speaker 1: If you look at the Latin root, it's just perfect.
Speaker 1: Sayre so per and for Sarah's completely done. And so
Speaker 1: you go to Montana and you see Glacier National Park.
Speaker 1: It's already completely done. In fact, adding condos to Glacier
Speaker 1: National Park would incomplete it. And the same is true
Speaker 1: with us, right if I heap more things onto me.
Speaker 1: I'm not against material possessions. We all need some stuff.
Speaker 1: But if I just need more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more, that's not how you complete yourself.
Speaker 3: That's how you incomplete your Wow.
Speaker 2: You guys, you guys. Oh my gosh, I'm so impressed
Speaker 2: with you guys. So you're saying a lot of things
Speaker 2: that really cut to the core of the truth of
Speaker 2: human existence. There's you know, the givens of existence that
Speaker 2: existential psychologists talk about, and I always love starting from
Speaker 2: that point of view, you know, and this whole idea
Speaker 2: that the void never goes away. That's a bold thing
Speaker 2: to say, Ryan, That is a I just want to
Speaker 2: like double click for a second. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2: First of all, it has some rawness, because you often
Speaker 2: get a lot of like bs in the spiritual slash
Speaker 2: self help world where it's like, you know, like sort
Speaker 2: of like you are enough and you will feel complete
Speaker 2: if all you do is this ten minute meditation And
Speaker 2: I don't know, I feel like you guys are doing
Speaker 2: some real talk here. You know, there's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: like part of the human condition is never feeling complete
Speaker 2: in a way, you know, but there are so many
Speaker 2: things we can do to feel less broken.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it is unfortunate in the sense
Speaker 4: of we are offering all these fixes in these solutions
Speaker 4: for these every day I want to say problems, but
Speaker 4: they're not even problems. It's these everyday discomforts. And you know,
Speaker 4: just speaking to the void specifically, it's like, instead of
Speaker 4: offering this magic solution to make it go away and
Speaker 4: to make you feel complete, to me, it's empowering to
Speaker 4: see it as something that I can use to understand
Speaker 4: myself better. And as Josh said, it doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be a negative thing. I mean that that void and
Speaker 4: you kind of alluded to it as well, it keeps
Speaker 4: us driven, It keeps us inspired in a certain way.
Speaker 4: Like you know, after we did our first documentary, we
Speaker 4: didn't say, oh, well that's it. We did it. We
Speaker 4: finally we got on Netflix and life is complete now. No,
Speaker 4: it was like, wow, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: We could probably create some other things that could be
Speaker 4: just as meaningful or just as impactful. What else can
Speaker 4: we do. And it is that incompleteness, so to speak,
Speaker 4: that inspired us to continue to you know, to go
Speaker 4: on and make our second documentary. It's why, you know.
Speaker 4: So that's why Josh's friend is getting multiple PhDs is
Speaker 4: because they want to learn, They want to grow and
Speaker 4: that void. Instead of looking at it as a how
Speaker 4: can I get to the end, it's more about how
Speaker 4: can you know? I look at it as how can
Speaker 4: I leverage it to become a better version of myself?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I love that.
Speaker 5: Trying to avoid the void is kind of like trying
Speaker 5: to make music without silence. Music is a combination of
Speaker 5: silence and sound.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Sound is easier to notice because you can hear it,
Speaker 5: but the silence is what makes the sound possible. And
Speaker 5: there's an analogous relationship between space and matter. It's like,
Speaker 5: we tend to treat space as like this invisible container
Speaker 5: that houses things and spaces in the background and matter
Speaker 5: stuff things that's the real star of the show, and
Speaker 5: so anything that is space like it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 5: just secondary, that doesn't really matter. The stuff of life
Speaker 5: is the stuff. But if we see space as the
Speaker 5: source of vitality, the source of play, the source of creativity.
Speaker 5: We stop running from it, and we are willing to
Speaker 5: confront it. We're willing to engage it, even if there's
Speaker 5: something scary there, because even the scary stuff offers us
Speaker 5: wisdom that would not be otherwise possible. C. S. Lewis
Speaker 5: in the Space Trilogy describes his character, for instance, who
Speaker 5: has this leechlike creature that's attached to him and it
Speaker 5: creates a lot of pain and he complains about it
Speaker 5: all the time. Then he encounters this being who says,
Speaker 5: I can destroy that for you, and he's like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 5: no no, it'll hurt me and it'll hurt the being,
Speaker 5: and so he just settles for a life of medicating
Speaker 5: the pain. And then at one point this being finally
Speaker 5: talks him into just letting him destroy it for him,
Speaker 5: and he does, and then that leech like creature turns
Speaker 5: into this great, beautiful, dragon like creature upon which he
Speaker 5: rides to his own freedom. And so the void is
Speaker 5: like that. We run from it, we treat it like
Speaker 5: it's scary when we look at it as the background,
Speaker 5: but when we recognize it to be the source of
Speaker 5: life itself, we confront it, We engage it. And even
Speaker 5: if there are monsters, there by acknowledging those monsters and
Speaker 5: asking them, what are you here to teach me, we
Speaker 5: transform them into the angels and allies that show us
Speaker 5: the way to be uniquely us show us the way
Speaker 5: to be free. And we recognize that we are enough,
Speaker 5: not because we know everything and can do everything, but
Speaker 5: we are enough even in our own flaws, even in
Speaker 5: our own failings, because that's part of what it means
Speaker 5: to be enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just want to say too, like, we're not
Speaker 4: advocating for people to live empty lives, right, Like, we're
Speaker 4: not advocating for people to to take that feeling of
Speaker 4: the void and amplify this. It's more about just what
Speaker 4: TK was saying about not running from it. I mean
Speaker 4: any type of emptiness or void or negative feeling that
Speaker 4: we have. I mean, this is a symptom of something
Speaker 4: that we probably should look at rather than try and
Speaker 4: cover up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't want to moralize the void either.
Speaker 1: I think that's what we often do. Void must be bad,
Speaker 1: thereforelfilling the void must be good. Discomfort bad, comfort good.
Speaker 1: But of course we can all think of a dozen
Speaker 1: scenarios in which comfort is stifling, and comfort is causing
Speaker 1: disease and disfunction in our lives. And of course discomfort
Speaker 1: is causing growth, or causing pleasure or causing ecstasy.
Speaker 3: Right, And there are.
Speaker 1: These things that we well, we're in a society that
Speaker 1: tends to moralize essentially everything.
Speaker 3: Right, this is good, therefore that is bad.
Speaker 1: And there's this binary there. You're talking about something being scary.
Speaker 1: Earlier scary must be bad, and therefore what not scary
Speaker 1: is good? Well, then why do any of us go
Speaker 1: watch a horror film?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Because we want to be scared within certain limits. Right,
Speaker 1: And so I think as soon as we start moralizing
Speaker 1: any one thing, and it's same with with clutter even, right,
Speaker 1: we're not moralizing clutter or we don't do advertisements on
Speaker 1: our podcast. One of our slogans is advertisements suck. We
Speaker 1: just don't like that. But it's not a moralizing stance.
Speaker 1: The same way that if I, like, step in a
Speaker 1: puke outside of our studio here, I'm not gonna think
Speaker 1: it's immoral. I'm just gonna be kind of grossed out
Speaker 1: by it, the same way I'm grossed out by advertisements. Right,
Speaker 1: And so it's not a moralizing stance. It's just understanding
Speaker 1: our preferences and being okay with those preferences without having
Speaker 1: to justify them to anyone else.
Speaker 5: You don't need anybody else to be wrong in order
Speaker 5: to do us best for you, That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just listen to you guys all day. I
Speaker 2: could just listen to you guys. Pa Josha, you just
Speaker 2: talked about something there that I saw a video of
Speaker 2: yours talking about Instagram ads. You said you don't like ads,
Speaker 2: but I saw something you said about Instagram ads. Can
Speaker 2: you help me with that too? Because I'm a sucker. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm a saucy They're like, oh new cooling blanket.
Speaker 4: Click, hey, just to make me feel better. We're all
Speaker 4: suckers to a certain degree.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for making me feel a little better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no worries. I'm kingsucker.
Speaker 2: I have like fifty things, you know, from Instagram ads
Speaker 2: that I like regret. Two weeks later, I look around
Speaker 2: my room, I'm like, what the hell have I done?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that videos on YouTube says never buy anything from
Speaker 1: an Instagram ad. But it was as I said in
Speaker 1: the video, It's not a message to anyone else. I'm
Speaker 1: not prescribing that it was a reminder for me. If
Speaker 1: I ever am suckered into wanting to buy anything again,
Speaker 1: I need to go back and watch that video to
Speaker 1: remind myself. Don't buy anything from an Instagram ad. And
Speaker 1: the reason that I say that is there are statisticians
Speaker 1: and demographers who are some of the brightest minds in
Speaker 1: the world who are paid six seven figures a year
Speaker 1: to aggregate your eyeballs onto their products in a way
Speaker 1: that is pleasing and dopamine enhancing in the moment, and
Speaker 1: they well, it's manipulative, right, And if you want to
Speaker 1: unlove someone, what do you do? You manipulate them to
Speaker 1: your point of view, or if you're a marketer, you
Speaker 1: manipulate them to buy your product or service. And that's
Speaker 1: the biggest problem I have. I have several problems with advertising.
Speaker 1: That's one of the biggest ones is they're so manipulative. Also,
Speaker 1: I think the entire infrastructure of the Internet happens to
Speaker 1: now be set up. We've come to expect everything for free,
Speaker 1: and therefore we're not willing to pay for things. Well,
Speaker 1: if I'm not paying for I am now the product
Speaker 1: that they are now selling to Instagram. I'm part of
Speaker 1: the demographics. If you want to market to this particular
Speaker 1: group of people, I'm now included that they're going to
Speaker 1: market to me.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And of course, anytime I see another black shirt, like,
Speaker 1: I need another black T shirt, right, anytime I see
Speaker 1: another black T shirt on Instagram, Oh maybe this one's
Speaker 1: better than all of the ones that I like.
Speaker 3: Just fine? Yeah, well, what is that?
Speaker 1: It's about feeling incomplete, and I didn't feel incomplete before
Speaker 1: I saw the ads, So what happens? The market does
Speaker 1: a really slick job. I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: read Infinite Jests, but one of my favorite things about
Speaker 1: the book is every year in Infinite Jest, they've replaced
Speaker 1: the chronological years, like twenty eighteen is no longer twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's the year of the depend adult undergarment. And so
Speaker 1: it's this dystopian future in which every year is sponsored,
Speaker 1: and so we're no longer and by the way, we're
Speaker 1: already doing that now.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We don't say at the Lakers Arena, we say Thecrypto
Speaker 1: dot com Arena, right, And we do that because it
Speaker 1: is sponsored. And I don't think it's morally wrong for
Speaker 1: people to advertise, but I do think it's manipult relative
Speaker 1: and yeah, I just have a problem with manipulation, with coercion,
Speaker 1: even with convincing.
Speaker 5: And we have different views on that, by the way,
Speaker 5: which is what makes a lot of our discussions fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's not me saying I love manipulation, but that's
Speaker 5: what I sound like.
Speaker 3: Can we go on?
Speaker 2: Go on? Wait, tell me more of your view, Tell
Speaker 2: me more of your view.
Speaker 5: So I'm not grossed out by advertisements in the way
Speaker 5: that Josh is. I love commercials. I think ads are
Speaker 5: in so many ways a beautiful, wonderful, creative expression of
Speaker 5: how we market things and so on. And I often
Speaker 5: play Angel's advocate when we do our advertising Sucks segment
Speaker 5: on the show. Where we agree is when he talks
Speaker 5: about ads on this show, he's talking about it from
Speaker 5: the vantage point of maintaining control over your own narrative,
Speaker 5: over your own voice. And one of the reasons so
Speaker 5: many people today are scared to laugh at what they
Speaker 5: genuinely think is funny. They're afraid to say what they
Speaker 5: really believe. And why people are neutralizing their personalities in
Speaker 5: order to be as presidential aka boring as possible is
Speaker 5: because they're afraid that Tropicana or a Nike is going
Speaker 5: to say, oh, no, we can't stand by that joke,
Speaker 5: or sorry you said the word poop, and we just
Speaker 5: don't want poop and tropic canna next to each other.
Speaker 5: And so people are losing their authenticity in this quest
Speaker 5: to add chase, and so advertise or capture is controlling
Speaker 5: content and that's really at the heart of what people
Speaker 5: call cancel culture. I believe, and Josh articulates is better
Speaker 5: than me, and so I'm down with the fact that
Speaker 5: we don't do advertising on our show because that means
Speaker 5: we truly get to say what we think, what we feel,
Speaker 5: and what we believe, and that's freedom. I don't think
Speaker 5: people dream of having ads for the most part. They
Speaker 5: dream of having the freedom to say what they really
Speaker 5: want to say, and they try to negotiate having that
Speaker 5: as much as possible. So that's what we agree. But
Speaker 5: we talk all the time on the show about how
Speaker 5: how we have like nuanced differences with advertising and so on.
Speaker 2: Well, I love my Bombbass socks. By the way, Have
Speaker 2: I mentioned that I'm sponsored by bombass socks? I just
Speaker 2: I love them, I really do.
Speaker 4: I was disagreeing with you the comfort my wife I
Speaker 4: have some that I steal all the time and wear.
Speaker 2: It's not like the things I advertise like I actually
Speaker 2: don't like I actually passed the other day on something.
Speaker 2: But no, I hear you, I hear you, And I
Speaker 2: can have joy for things right, like You're not like,
Speaker 2: I don't have to feel guilty that I have this
Speaker 2: eighty five inch TV that I've been saving up years
Speaker 2: to buy and I love it, like and it gives
Speaker 2: me joy, Like I don't need to feel like guilty
Speaker 2: for having joy for some things right.
Speaker 3: Actually have a meaning to talk to you about that.
Speaker 4: Oh darn it, I really feel guilty.
Speaker 2: I already feel guilty.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, we would never make anyone feel guilty for
Speaker 4: the things that they owned. I mean minimalism Again, it's
Speaker 4: just something that might help you out, or might might
Speaker 4: be a tool that you could use in your life
Speaker 4: if you are experiencing a lot of discontent, if you're
Speaker 4: experiencing chaos in the home and your life with your
Speaker 4: physical possessions, or maybe it is mentally. But yeah, certainly,
Speaker 4: if someone came to me and was like, I love
Speaker 4: my life, I'm doing great, and then I see an
Speaker 4: eighty five inch TV, I wouldn't be like, well, you
Speaker 4: shouldn't be doing that great. I mean, that's something that
Speaker 4: that's something we would never do to anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not deprivationists, right, and we're certainly not asthetics.
Speaker 1: I do think there is some benefit in temporary deprivation. Ryan,
Speaker 1: early on we first started, before we started the Minimalist.
Speaker 1: In fact, he came to me one day he said,
Speaker 1: why the hell are you so happy? And I explained
Speaker 1: that I've spent the last eight months simplify my life
Speaker 1: getting rid of the excess flutter pairing that over the
Speaker 1: course of about eight months, I got rid of ninety
Speaker 1: percent of my material possessions, which sounds really radical at first.
Speaker 1: And so you realize that according to the La Times,
Speaker 1: the average American home three hundred thousand items in it,
Speaker 1: and so get rid of ninety percent of stuff still
Speaker 1: means you have thousands of items that you own, right,
Speaker 1: And so I did get rid of a lot of things,
Speaker 1: a lot of excess, a lot of junk, a lot
Speaker 1: of things that were in the way. I was questioning
Speaker 1: what adds value to my life? And it started with
Speaker 1: that question, how might your life be better with less?
Speaker 1: And that question led to another question, was does this
Speaker 1: add value to my life, and I started doing that
Speaker 1: until it became habitual, like literally going to all of
Speaker 1: my possessions. Does this add value to my life? Does
Speaker 1: this add value to my life? Does this add value
Speaker 1: to my life? And then I started letting go one
Speaker 1: thing at a time, and it became this snowball effect,
Speaker 1: And eventually I was just letting go of things habitually
Speaker 1: because I realized most of the things I brought into
Speaker 1: my life to bring me happy weren't adding any value
Speaker 1: to my life at all. In fact, they were extracting value.
Speaker 1: Because we don't think about the true cost of a thing.
Speaker 1: The cost of the thing goes well beyond the price tag.
Speaker 1: If you buy a thing, you still have to store
Speaker 1: the thing, and clean the thing, and worry about the thing,
Speaker 1: and paint the thing and change the bad reason the thing,
Speaker 1: or replace the oil in the thing, and then of
Speaker 1: course protect the thing. And if you break it, you
Speaker 1: repair the thing. And if you lose it, you have
Speaker 1: to replace the thing. And if you don't have enough
Speaker 1: room for it, you have to get a storage locker
Speaker 1: to store the thing. There are six times a number
Speaker 1: of storage lockers compared to the number of Starbucks in
Speaker 1: the United States, and there are a lot of Starbucks here, right.
Speaker 1: That's a relatively unique problem to America specifically, But consumerism
Speaker 1: is worldwide now, and so when we are embracing minimalism,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the things that get in the way.
Speaker 1: We're often talking about value ultimately. So if you get
Speaker 1: value from your eighty five inch TV, awesome, But it's
Speaker 1: not about that thing is.
Speaker 3: Bringing you joy. The joy is already in you.
Speaker 1: It enhances your experience of life, and that is wonderful.
Speaker 1: And if it ceases to enhance your experience of life,
Speaker 1: then it's also wonderful to let it go. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you this though, if you went and bought thirty of
Speaker 1: those eighty five inch TVs, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: thirty times joy from it. In fact, you might end
Speaker 1: up getting much less joy because those damn things are
Speaker 1: just gonna get in the way.
Speaker 2: I love that. No, I've been followed. Look, I've been
Speaker 2: following your your whole protocol. Day one one thing, day two,
Speaker 2: two things, Day thirty you throw out thirty things. I've
Speaker 2: been doing it. I'm on day like ten of this,
Speaker 2: and in fact, it has enabled me to get this
Speaker 2: TV because I've been selling lots of things in my
Speaker 2: apartment that I don't need, and I've been using that
Speaker 2: money to actually get the one thing I do want.
Speaker 2: So maybe maybe you are proud of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, of course we're proud of you. But no, I
Speaker 4: mean it's not amazing like you, when you let go
Speaker 4: of the excess, you make room for the things that
Speaker 4: truly add value. We were doing a live stream, this
Speaker 4: was years ago when we were living in Montana, and
Speaker 4: someone had mentioned something in the comments. They're like, you, guys,
Speaker 4: don't seem like you've gotten rid of anything that's in important,
Speaker 4: like trying to call us out on not being minimalists
Speaker 4: because we hadn't, you know, deprived ourselves. But when we
Speaker 4: read that comment, it was like, well, of course we
Speaker 4: didn't get rid of anything that was important. In fact,
Speaker 4: the things that we have in our lives are the
Speaker 4: most important things, and we were able to discover those
Speaker 4: from letting go of the excess.
Speaker 5: And that's the power of keeping that word game in
Speaker 5: the game.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I love how you said you're playing the minimalist game
Speaker 5: because it's not the minimalist rule, it's not the minimalist religion,
Speaker 5: it's not the minimalist doctrine or the minimalist law. It's
Speaker 5: a game, and I like what James P. Carr says
Speaker 5: here that the first rule of play is he who
Speaker 5: must play cannot play. The moment you take it upon
Speaker 5: yourself as an external obligation, as a moral duty to fulfill,
Speaker 5: you lose that sense of freedom that comes from playing
Speaker 5: the game. So, you know, some people ask, well, what
Speaker 5: if I don't want to play the game, or what
Speaker 5: if I don't have that? What if I don't enjoy
Speaker 5: the game? What if it gets really stressful? Like what
Speaker 5: if you don't like baseball? What if you don't like
Speaker 5: basst gooball?
Speaker 2: Same as a lot of this perspective seems to align
Speaker 2: with Marie Kondo's I'm sure to get this a lot right,
Speaker 2: Like what do you think of Mariecondo? What do you
Speaker 2: what do you think of? You know, the similarities differences
Speaker 2: between your approach and her approach. And also I read
Speaker 2: an article the other day with the headline Mariecondo gives
Speaker 2: up tidying up. She's like, you know what's Maricondo is
Speaker 2: focusing on what's important and that means letting the tidying slide.
Speaker 2: So have you been following that news.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, We actually did a segment on our podcast
Speaker 1: about that because we read the article. And here's what
Speaker 1: I'll say. I think professional organizers understand this better than anyone.
Speaker 1: We just had a professional organizer on a podcast, Kristin
Speaker 1: Ziegler from Minimum.
Speaker 3: She is awesome. Professional organizers get this.
Speaker 1: Ryan and I to give a keynote at the NAPO conference,
Speaker 1: the National Association of Professional Organizers. Professional organizers get this
Speaker 1: one concept, and it's this, if you want to organize
Speaker 1: your stuff, the best way to organize it is to
Speaker 1: get rid of most of it, because otherwise if you're
Speaker 1: just tidying up all the time. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Marie Condo gets this as well. You can check out
Speaker 1: her first book. It's called The Life Changing Magic of
Speaker 1: Tidying Up. But then if you get rid of the excess,
Speaker 1: what happens. You can tidy the stuff up without needing
Speaker 1: to have one hundred different bins and boxes and an
Speaker 1: ordinal system of alphabetized cases.
Speaker 3: Well, why is that?
Speaker 1: Because you got rid of the excess, and then it's
Speaker 1: much easier to organize. And so the problem is we
Speaker 1: often conflate organizing with letting go but it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: Organizing is just well planned hoarding. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't mean hoarding pejoratively. We are all what the
Speaker 1: vast majority of us our orders on some level. If
Speaker 1: you go through the five stages of hoarding, Ryan and
Speaker 1: I when we first started, we stage two or stage
Speaker 1: three hoarders, the stage five or what you should see
Speaker 1: on like the TV show Hoarders, where you can barely
Speaker 1: walk through the house, or exits are blocked, or there
Speaker 1: are dead cats and the freezer, and it's easy for
Speaker 1: us to just sort of point and sneer and say, ah,
Speaker 1: at least I'm not living like that, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think that happened? Clearly, that didn't happen overnight.
Speaker 1: That's a lifetime of accumulation, and nothing wrong with accumulation,
Speaker 1: but we don't do so intentionally. We keep accumulating, we
Speaker 1: reach some level of hoarding. You know what level one
Speaker 1: hoarding is light clutter in two or more rooms. That
Speaker 1: seems to describe most places. And so that's not a judgment.
Speaker 1: It's just understanding that we all have things that no
Speaker 1: longer serve us, and our willingness to let go or
Speaker 1: unwillingness to let go will dictate where we're going from
Speaker 1: here and how are way down we are on that journey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I look at Marie Condo, first off, it's
Speaker 4: good to know that she is a human being and
Speaker 4: that she's not perfect. And the fact that she's like
Speaker 4: owning up to falling back on this whole idea of
Speaker 4: tidying up. I mean, to me, that's that's an empowering
Speaker 4: story because really, when it comes to minimalism and any
Speaker 4: technique that different minimalists will give, it's not a destination.
Speaker 4: It is a constant process. And I think Marie Condo
Speaker 4: like totally shows that. It's like, hey, she has this
Speaker 4: version of tidying up that that works for her. But
Speaker 4: as soon as you slack off a little bit and
Speaker 4: don't keep up with that process, and things become quickly cluttered,
Speaker 4: and I bet you have five years from now, she
Speaker 4: will be decluttered then. But to me, it's it's something
Speaker 4: that I think it's a good example for all to
Speaker 4: show that, like, hey, even Marie Kondo, the the you know,
Speaker 4: the most famous best selling minimalist, when it comes to
Speaker 4: getting rid of your stuff, even she has has her
Speaker 4: obstacles and uh, yeah again, I think that that's I
Speaker 4: think it's an empowering story.
Speaker 1: I think Ryan and I differ a little bit on this.
Speaker 1: I just frankly think tighty and it basically doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is techniques generally don't
Speaker 1: work because we don't understand the why behind what we're doing.
Speaker 1: You'll never see us talk about the sixty seven ways
Speaker 1: to declutter your closet.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I can give it to you, or I can help you.
Speaker 1: I can actually come to your house and tidy up
Speaker 1: your closet, and a month from now it'll be recluttered,
Speaker 1: right or a year from now, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say that tidying up or maybe
Speaker 1: just organizing is probably a better way to put that
Speaker 1: organizing doesn't work very well is because as soon as
Speaker 1: something changes, we become disorganized. I think it's a difference
Speaker 1: with minimalism. Minimalism is about subtracting and figuring out how
Speaker 1: your life would be better with less, how it might
Speaker 1: be more with less, more room, more freedom, more creativity,
Speaker 1: improved relationships, freed up finances, et cetera, more piece, more contentment,
Speaker 1: as opposed to yeah, it's nice, to have a declutter closet.
Speaker 1: But if you don't know why you're decluttering that calls it,
Speaker 1: then well you're just not going to You're not going
Speaker 1: to keep it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're so right.
Speaker 4: Can agree with Josh Moore because people always ask like,
Speaker 4: where do we start with minimalism, And the place to
Speaker 4: start is to ask the question, how might my life
Speaker 4: be better with less? And that's really what Josh is
Speaker 4: talking about. It's about getting clear on the why, because
Speaker 4: the how to kind of will present itself and there
Speaker 4: are a million different how to's. But yeah, just as
Speaker 4: Josh said, if you don't know why you're doing it,
Speaker 4: it's very easy for it's all come crashing back down.
Speaker 4: I mean, Josh and I literally wrote wrote a rule book.
Speaker 4: It's called sixteen Rules for Living with Less. You can
Speaker 4: go over to the minimalists dot com and it'swer right there.
Speaker 4: It's a free ebook. And really, you know, those rules
Speaker 4: are boundaries. It's not something that Josh and I are saying, Hey,
Speaker 4: if you want to be a minimalist, here's the sixteen
Speaker 4: things you have to do. It's really about these different
Speaker 4: boundaries that we set up in our life and when
Speaker 4: people look at those. It makes sense for a lot
Speaker 4: of people, but some people look at those are like,
Speaker 4: you know what, these are a little too straight for me,
Speaker 4: which is okay. You can take any of our rules,
Speaker 4: any of our boundaries, and you can adjust them for taste.
Speaker 4: But certainly, to Josh's point, if you don't know why
Speaker 4: you're putting these boundaries in place, then it's it's probably
Speaker 4: not going to have a long term lasting effect on
Speaker 4: your life.
Speaker 2: You guys are so right. It's aligns with a cognitive
Speaker 2: science perspective as well, because you know, like I have
Speaker 2: fifty of every kind of tie, and I still only
Speaker 2: use one tie out of all of them regularly. I
Speaker 2: still don't use the other forty nine even with them tidied.
Speaker 2: And it would be so much better from a cognitive
Speaker 2: science perspective for me to just like the path of
Speaker 2: least resistance, if there's just one there, I'd be like,
Speaker 2: that's the one I use, you know, like, as opposed
Speaker 2: to cluttering my way to find it out of the
Speaker 2: others you know I have. I get tempted by the others,
Speaker 2: but I don't really like them.
Speaker 1: So anyway, one of the rules that in that rule
Speaker 1: book is called the spontaneous combustion rule. And it's really
Speaker 1: just a thought experiment if it's anything, and it's basical.
Speaker 1: If you take any item, like one of those ties
Speaker 1: in your clauset and you pull it out, or say
Speaker 1: you take all forty nine of the ones you don't wear,
Speaker 1: and you ask this question, if this spontaneously combusted, or
Speaker 1: if all forty nine of these spontaneously combusted, what I
Speaker 1: feel A relieved or B when I replace them? And
Speaker 1: if the answer is A, it's probably a sign that
Speaker 1: I want to let go. But if I replace them,
Speaker 1: then by all means, why would I Why would I
Speaker 1: get rid of them?
Speaker 2: I get it. I get exactly what you guys are doing.
Speaker 2: So let's just recap here and then this beautiful discussion.
Speaker 2: This is some things I got out of today. Get
Speaker 2: rid of everything that is sucking your soul, not not
Speaker 2: if I'm if this is right, that's something like that.
Speaker 5: Give yourself permission to get rid of everything that's sucking
Speaker 5: your soul, because get rid of everything sounds like a
Speaker 5: commandm it's something that you ought to do, and that
Speaker 5: takes the playfulness out of it. But give yourself permission
Speaker 5: to love that.
Speaker 2: Only keep things that bring you value, asking yourself question
Speaker 2: does add value in my life? And asking the question
Speaker 2: most importantly, what is truly important in my life? And
Speaker 2: your minimalist approach can actually help you discover that more.
Speaker 2: Would you say that's great? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely. The one thing I'll say is when it comes
Speaker 4: to adding value, that is looking at something and really
Speaker 4: asking does this serve a purpose or does it bring
Speaker 4: me joy? That's to us what adding value means. Would
Speaker 4: you add anything else to that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, when you're talking about what those important
Speaker 1: things are, they're rarely the thing are sound biteish answer
Speaker 1: for what is minimalism is minimalism is the thing that
Speaker 1: gets us past the thing which often aren't things at all. Right,
Speaker 1: and we don't realize that. We often think that the
Speaker 1: things that we buy are not just going to complete us,
Speaker 1: but they're going to make us happy. And we confuse
Speaker 1: that cocaine like high that we get at the checkout line,
Speaker 1: or we bring it home or we unboxed it, right,
Speaker 1: the whole genre of videos now unboxing videos, and we
Speaker 1: conflate that with contentment, with happiness, with peace of mind,
Speaker 1: and uh, of course we don't get any of those
Speaker 1: things from those things.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and and I want to double I want to
Speaker 2: circle back to something TK was talking about earlier to
Speaker 2: add another principle, and that's that I think we underestimate
Speaker 2: the value of giving to others. We see this in
Speaker 2: the clinical psychology world, people who are severely you know,
Speaker 2: depressed and are constantly talking about themselves. As a therapist,
Speaker 2: you know, I would say, well, have you tried not
Speaker 2: thinking about yourself so much? Have you tried maybe actually,
Speaker 2: like stop ruminating so much about your own woes and
Speaker 2: giving to others. And you often find when people do
Speaker 2: give to others, they feel more lightness of being. So
Speaker 2: I really think we underestimate that value of giving to others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a beautiful thing about joy. Joy makes room
Speaker 1: for all the other emotions as well. You can experience
Speaker 1: joy and still have some sort of grief, you know,
Speaker 1: the grief of moving on. Right, you're graduating. You have
Speaker 1: a kid who's graduating. My daughter's getting ready to graduate
Speaker 1: fourth grade right now, right, and so she's going to
Speaker 1: move on from the fourth grade, and there's a little
Speaker 1: grief in that, but there's also a great joy in
Speaker 1: moving on. There'd be far more grief if she had
Speaker 1: to stay there perpetually, right, But grief makes room for
Speaker 1: all of these other emotions. But the other thing about
Speaker 1: joy that's really fascinating is it doesn't even have to
Speaker 1: be your joy. You can experience joy when other people
Speaker 1: experience joy as well. And that's one of the side benefits,
Speaker 1: the byproducts of contributing beyond yourself in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2: Well, Joshua, Ryan and TK, unless did anyone want to
Speaker 2: add anything last minute? That's good.
Speaker 3: Just thank you for this time.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, thank you guys. I just was a
Speaker 2: Joshua Ryan, TK you bring me cholly you guys.
Speaker 5: I'm working on an R and B album right now,
Speaker 5: so whenever you're ready, I got the studio for us.
Speaker 2: I'm ready. Seriously, you I can just fill your joyful
Speaker 2: energy and it really is contagious. So thank you so
Speaker 2: much for being on the Psychology Podcast. I know this
Speaker 2: will be a really valuable episode for people.
Speaker 3: Love you, Scott. Thanks, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Take care, Thanks for listening to this episode of the
Speaker 2: Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 2: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
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Speaker 2: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.