Speaker 1: Whenever we think about minimalism in terms of like there
Speaker 1: being a mathematically correct right or wrong number of things
Speaker 1: to have, you just sort of get caught up in
Speaker 1: a legalistic game that produces nothing more than a self
Speaker 1: righteous attitude towards others, which is the opposite of freedom.
Speaker 1: You've got to think about things in terms of what
Speaker 1: constitutes healthy living for you, and then you move in
Speaker 1: that direction, and you acknowledge that other people might define
Speaker 1: that differently.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 2: our guest on this episode is the Emmy nominated Netflix
Speaker 2: stars and New York Times best selling authors Joshua Fields,
Speaker 2: Milburn and T. K. Coleman, who are collectively known, along
Speaker 2: with Ryan Nicodemus, as the Minimalists. Good Morning America says
Speaker 2: they show their followers how to streamline their lives to
Speaker 2: find more happiness. The New Yorker called them the sincere
Speaker 2: profits of anti consumerism. They've been featured in Time, Architectural Digest,
Speaker 2: and GQ, and they've spoken at Harvard, Apple, and Google.
Speaker 3: Josh TK, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having us. Hey, it's exciting looking
Speaker 1: forward to this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you guys. We were
Speaker 3: sharing before we got started that we've both been in
Speaker 3: the podcast space for a long time, and you guys
Speaker 3: were doing the Minimalist blog before that. So we've both
Speaker 3: been kind of doing this work for a long time,
Speaker 3: and yet this is our first chance to ever talk
Speaker 3: and so I'm excited about that. But we'll start like
Speaker 3: we always do, with the parable, the two wolves and
Speaker 3: the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 3: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 3: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 3: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 3: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops.
Speaker 3: They think about it for a second and they look
Speaker 3: at their grandparents. They say, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you. Guys, in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 4: Seek you want to take this one, sure?
Speaker 1: I mean for me, it means that decision making isn't
Speaker 1: just about making a selection from existing possibilities, but it's
Speaker 1: also about actualizing future possibilities. Every choice that you make
Speaker 1: is an act of self creation. When you decide to
Speaker 1: do what's easy right now, you make it easier for
Speaker 1: your future self to choose what is easy. When you
Speaker 1: decide to do what is difficult right now, you make
Speaker 1: it easier for your future self to do what is difficult.
Speaker 1: And so, something that we talk about in minimalism a
Speaker 1: lot is that it's not just about subtraction. It's also
Speaker 1: about constructive addition. It's not just about getting rid of
Speaker 1: things but it's thinking intentionally about the kind of person
Speaker 1: you want to be and simplifying your life right now
Speaker 1: so that you can make it easier to make the
Speaker 1: kinds of choices that create the sort of health that
Speaker 1: you want to experience, the sort of self that you
Speaker 1: want to be. And I think what I love about
Speaker 1: the wolf parable in particular is that it's very easy
Speaker 1: to identify the areas of life that hold us back
Speaker 1: and that weigh us down and treat it like it's
Speaker 1: sort of a matter of abstinence. I got to try
Speaker 1: not to do the unhealthy stuff. I got to try
Speaker 1: to avoid the toxic stuff. But there are those two wolves,
Speaker 1: and you can't overcome one by trying to neglect it
Speaker 1: or fight it or push it away. But you've got
Speaker 1: to feed the other. And so no matter who you
Speaker 1: want to be and what you want to avoid, the
Speaker 1: only way to get there is to identify what you
Speaker 1: want to feed and be proactive about that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think the fascinating thing here is we often pathologize
Speaker 5: everything as good or bad, right, but also recognizing that
Speaker 5: what makes the bad wolf bad isn't the fear or
Speaker 5: the greed or whatever. It's the continual feeding. It's what
Speaker 5: we talk about with respect to minimalism or on the
Speaker 5: Minimalist podcast, is clinging to something fear can actually serve us.
Speaker 5: In fact, if a wolf walked into this room right now,
Speaker 5: I think fear would really really serve me right to
Speaker 5: do something, take some sort of action. However, if I
Speaker 5: constantly ruminated, oh no, what's going to happen if a
Speaker 5: wolf walks into this room, and every day I'm here
Speaker 5: at the studio, what's going to happen to me when
Speaker 5: a wolf comes in here, Well then it's useless rumination.
Speaker 5: It's worrying for the sake of worrying, and to worry
Speaker 5: about something perpetually is just to pray for something bad
Speaker 5: to happen. And the irony of that is that's when
Speaker 5: I'm actually feeding the bad wolf, when I continue to
Speaker 5: worry when it's no longer productive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I want
Speaker 3: to get into minimalism in a minute. But I'm going
Speaker 3: to jump to something I heard on a recent podcast episode,
Speaker 3: and it was something that TK said, and I want
Speaker 3: to read it and I would just love to talk
Speaker 3: about it a little bit. TK. You said that trust, hope,
Speaker 3: and love are all things that can destroy you if
Speaker 3: you channel those energies in the wrong direction, or if
Speaker 3: you have as the object something that is not worthy
Speaker 3: of it. But all of these things can be tremendously
Speaker 3: life giving as well, depending on where you direct those
Speaker 3: energies or in whom you place that trust. And this
Speaker 3: goes back to what you were just saying, Josh around,
Speaker 3: like fear. Fear is not necessarily a bad thing, right,
Speaker 3: It's actually a very useful thing in certain circumstances. And
Speaker 3: so words like trust and hope and all those things
Speaker 3: are useful in the right circumstances and very destructive in
Speaker 3: other circumstances. And I was wondering if you guys could
Speaker 3: just talk a little bit about that idea that you
Speaker 3: fleshed out on a recent podcast episode.
Speaker 1: Sure you know, for me, the mother of all advice
Speaker 1: is that all advice is capable of destroying you if
Speaker 1: you don't combine it with critical and creative thinking when
Speaker 1: it comes to how you work out the details in
Speaker 1: your life. We've all experienced, or we all know someone
Speaker 1: who experienced or reading a self help book or listening
Speaker 1: to some piece of advice about success that seemed to
Speaker 1: work for someone they admire, and then they try to
Speaker 1: do it and it just doesn't work out. And the
Speaker 1: reason that's true is because there's an unhealthy version for everything.
Speaker 1: There is nothing in this world that is so safe
Speaker 1: that you can't find a way to misuse it, or
Speaker 1: use it, or just work with it in a way
Speaker 1: that's not right for you. And so it's very important
Speaker 1: that we don't hide behind the advice of people that
Speaker 1: we respect. We don't hide behind the safety of listicals
Speaker 1: or promises that people make, or what's worked for other people.
Speaker 1: That's a reason to investigate things. If people you know
Speaker 1: and respect have tried something, that's a reason to entertain it.
Speaker 1: That's a reason to look into it, to perhaps experiment
Speaker 1: with it in a way that's safe to you. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: you've got to weigh things against your own experience. You've
Speaker 1: got to weigh things against your own intelligence, your own intuition,
Speaker 1: because even if something does work for you, it may
Speaker 1: work for you in a way that is so unique
Speaker 1: that you've got to be creative even in just how
Speaker 1: you work it out. And so I think that's an
Speaker 1: important aspect of what we talk about or just learning
Speaker 1: from others in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it may only work for you for a
Speaker 3: period of time and then you're like, oh Christ, no,
Speaker 3: I need something different, right.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's a quote by a Buddhist teacher I love, and
Speaker 3: he said, if I'm watching somebody walk down the road
Speaker 3: and they're on the far right of the road, they're
Speaker 3: about to fall in the ditch to the right, iell
Speaker 3: go left, go left, you know. But if they're on
Speaker 3: the left side of the road and they're about to
Speaker 3: fall into the ditch on the left, I yell go right,
Speaker 3: go right. And he was saying that in response to
Speaker 3: students saying, well, I feel like you're telling each of
Speaker 3: us something different, you know. And in the coaching work
Speaker 3: that I've done with people over the years, I really
Speaker 3: realized that. Early on, I thought, well, I'll just I've
Speaker 3: got this stuff. I'll just kind of give it all
Speaker 3: to them. And after a while I was like, oh, wait,
Speaker 3: for some people they need to be more assertive. For
Speaker 3: other people, they need to tune it down, you know.
Speaker 3: And without knowing that person, and without us knowing ourselves,
Speaker 3: you know, to your point, any advice can be really problematic.
Speaker 3: And I just love that idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that quite often what happens is we
Speaker 5: prescribe one size fits all things, and that works really
Speaker 5: well for mechanical things. If you're teaching me how to
Speaker 5: ride a bike, yeah, makes sense, here's how you start
Speaker 5: riding a bike. However, you can't prescribe how to become
Speaker 5: Lance Armstrong. Right, he's riding a bike as well well,
Speaker 5: But that level of performance is a completely different thing
Speaker 5: from a mechanical use of a bicycle. And I think
Speaker 5: that is often true throughout the rest of our lives.
Speaker 5: We try to break down, Oh, Kobe Bryant was set
Speaker 5: you great basketball player?
Speaker 4: What can I do exactly?
Speaker 5: What are the twelve things, the twenty seven things, the
Speaker 5: sixty eight things that he did, And if I just
Speaker 5: do those sixty eight things and the correct sequence with
Speaker 5: the enough amount of time, I'll become Kobe Bryant. Well, no,
Speaker 5: it's actually the opposite. Kobe Bryant did all of those
Speaker 5: things because he was compelled to do those things, and
Speaker 5: if I were to prescribe that to someone else, they're
Speaker 5: not going to become Kobe Bryant.
Speaker 1: That's why, whenever we emulate greatness in people, the real
Speaker 1: aspect of greatness to emulate is the ease with which
Speaker 1: they respected their own convictions. And so the reason that
Speaker 1: Kobe was able to find all of these weird, interesting
Speaker 1: ways to get better at basketball, like studying the footwork
Speaker 1: of soccer players or playing in a gym by himself
Speaker 1: without a basketball that he can learn how to move
Speaker 1: about the ball is because his conviction compelled creativity and
Speaker 1: caused him to discover or create new ways to get
Speaker 1: better that were unique to him. And that's a gift,
Speaker 1: that's a power that we all have when we live
Speaker 1: in accordance with conviction. It just sort of inspires this
Speaker 1: creativity and we start to find ways to get better
Speaker 1: at the things that matter to us. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: start with trying to be like someone else. It starts
Speaker 1: with respecting your own preferences, your own passions, your own convictions,
Speaker 1: and so on.
Speaker 3: Are all U LA guys required to talk about Kobe
Speaker 3: or is this just an optional, optional decision? You know,
Speaker 3: I think we're required, Josh. I'd expect some more Lebron
Speaker 3: talking here, giving you where you're from. Well, and he's
Speaker 3: there now, So there.
Speaker 5: Is a contentious argument here. Lebron and Michael Jordan are
Speaker 5: both off the table for any discussions here.
Speaker 4: At the minimalists.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, all right, I didn't mean to stir
Speaker 3: up a hornet's nest here. And I think that this
Speaker 3: message is really important because it ties into a lot
Speaker 3: of the work that you guys do around minimalism, right,
Speaker 3: because there's one way of taking the minimalist message, which
Speaker 3: is that just have less stuff, always have less stuff.
Speaker 3: That's the answer, that's the rule, and that is not
Speaker 3: really what you guys say. You say fairly clearly like
Speaker 3: consumption is not the problem. Thoughtless consumption is, and so
Speaker 3: kind of walk us into you know, minimalism. Why that
Speaker 3: is the thing you've oriented around and why it's so
Speaker 3: important to you.
Speaker 5: That's right, Yeah, thoughtless consumption, or what we would just
Speaker 5: call consumerism, is really the problem. We all need some stuff, right,
Speaker 5: I need material possessions. Were in a shirt, I'm talking
Speaker 5: into a microphone. I have a couch over here and
Speaker 5: a table. But the things that I own add value
Speaker 5: to my life. What is consumerism? Consumerism is the ideology
Speaker 5: that buying things will make me complete a whole person,
Speaker 5: a more perfect person, right, or they'll make me happy
Speaker 5: in some way. Our material possessions. When we're really thoughtful
Speaker 5: about what we bring into our lives. We're intentional about
Speaker 5: the things we want, We're deliberate about the things we can.
Speaker 5: Those material possessions actually enhance the quality of our lives.
Speaker 5: They amplify our lives in really special ways. It's really
Speaker 5: hard to quantify, but an object can be essential. It
Speaker 5: can also be non essential and value adding. In fact,
Speaker 5: we have something on our website called the Minimalist rule Book.
Speaker 5: It's sixteen rules for living with less. But they're not
Speaker 5: really rules. They're adjustable boundaries that fit different people differently. Right,
Speaker 5: and so one of those rules we call it the
Speaker 5: no junk rule. Everything you own can fit in one
Speaker 5: of three piles. It's either essential. We all have similar essentials.
Speaker 5: We all need food and shelter and clothing and education
Speaker 5: and transportation. But even those things they manifest differently in
Speaker 5: different people's lives. Professor Sean, who's in here is our
Speaker 5: podcast producer. He rode the bus here. That's his form
Speaker 5: of transportation. I live up in Ohai, so I drove
Speaker 5: my car down to the studio. So we both need transportation.
Speaker 5: It's essential for us, but it makes sense differently for
Speaker 5: different people. You've got the second category on essential items,
Speaker 5: but they add.
Speaker 4: Value to your life.
Speaker 5: So strictly speaking, I could live without a counch, I
Speaker 5: could live without a coffee table. But I'm a minimalist.
Speaker 5: I'm not a deprivationist. Minimalism is not about depriving yourself
Speaker 5: of things that add value to your life. It's about
Speaker 5: identifying what adds value and then getting rid of everything
Speaker 5: in that third category. It's the junk category. These are
Speaker 5: the things in our lives that masquerade as though they
Speaker 5: might add value someday in some non existent hypothetical future.
Speaker 5: These three words often come up just in case, I'll
Speaker 5: hold onto those extra chargers right, just in case, Or
Speaker 5: I'll hold onto this oversized shirt. I lost a bunch
Speaker 5: of weight, but why do I still need the two
Speaker 5: extra I don't know, Just in case I gain the
Speaker 5: weight back, or just in case this goes back into style, and.
Speaker 4: So just in case, these three words.
Speaker 5: It's almost a mantra that justifies holding onto a bunch
Speaker 5: of things that are actually getting in the way of
Speaker 5: what's going to add value to our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I moved a couple of years ago. I guess
Speaker 3: it's not a couple years ago. It's probably abou five
Speaker 3: years ago. Now from a home in a suburb, pretty
Speaker 3: good sized home and all that into a two bedroom
Speaker 3: apartment with very limited storage. And it has made me,
Speaker 3: by nature, have to be fairly ruthless in what I keep,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm always like, I need more space. Should
Speaker 3: I get a storage unit?
Speaker 4: Wait?
Speaker 3: They got a garage out there. I could get, you know, like,
Speaker 3: but instead by simply preferring order, which I do, I've
Speaker 3: just had to, you know about every three months, I
Speaker 3: have to go through and just purge, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: how do I keep getting all this crap? It's just
Speaker 3: amazing how it happens. But I love that idea of
Speaker 3: you know, that just in case thing, Like, I've got
Speaker 3: so many things that fall into that category, you know.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing that's difficult about all of
Speaker 3: this is if these materialist things didn't at least provide
Speaker 3: a very short term burst of pleasure, it'd be easy
Speaker 3: to see through the whole game. That's right, right, It'd
Speaker 3: be really easy to be like, I bought that thing,
Speaker 3: it didn't feel any better, Like, don't do it right,
Speaker 3: But they work temporarily in the same ways that like,
Speaker 3: I'm a former heroin addict, right, it worked temporarily, right.
Speaker 3: If it didn't work at all, I wouldn't have become
Speaker 3: addicted to it. And I think that's part of what
Speaker 3: we struggle with, is that buying into that short term
Speaker 3: thing because it seems to work, and if we don't
Speaker 3: reflect deeply, we keep going back to that same well again,
Speaker 3: I guess would be the way to say it.
Speaker 5: And addiction and recovery people refer to a colloquially as
Speaker 5: chasing the dragon. We all obviously do that with our
Speaker 5: material possessions as well. The average American household has three
Speaker 5: hundred thousand items in it, and that'd be awesome if
Speaker 5: it was bringing us more joy and peace and tranquility
Speaker 5: and excitement and love and connection and passion. But of
Speaker 5: course it's doing the opposite. It's often blocking us from
Speaker 5: those things. The weird paradox of minimalism. As a minimalist,
Speaker 5: I've been a minimist for fourteen years now, and I
Speaker 5: sort of lived the corporate dream and had all of
Speaker 5: the excess things, the big suburban house with more toilets
Speaker 5: than people and living rooms and multiple luxury cars. I
Speaker 5: had tons of debt, so everything undereath the surface was
Speaker 5: stress anxiety, all of these other things that are the
Speaker 5: additional costs of our things. When we look at a
Speaker 5: material possession, we often look at the price tag and say, oh,
Speaker 5: I can afford this widget. It's ten dollars, But we
Speaker 5: don't think about the true cost of a thing. The
Speaker 5: true cost of thing goes well beyond the price tag.
Speaker 5: It has to do with the cost of caring for
Speaker 5: the thing and watering the thing, or changing the batteries
Speaker 5: in the thing, or replacing the thing, and being terrified
Speaker 5: the things are going to get stolen, or repainting the thing,
Speaker 5: whatever it might be. Also the space that all of
Speaker 5: our things take up. It's no wonder that the average
Speaker 5: American household is approaching three thousand square feet of new
Speaker 5: homes that are being built, and many houses are even
Speaker 5: much larger than that. There's nothing wrong with space, But
Speaker 5: as soon as we get more space, quite often, what
Speaker 5: do we do. We feel compelled to fill it with
Speaker 5: more stuff. The opposite, though, the most calm, tranquil places
Speaker 5: you think about a zen garden, or you think about
Speaker 5: a museum that is really well curated, it's full of
Speaker 5: open space. They don't feel compelled to fill every square
Speaker 5: foot of.
Speaker 4: The museum with more art, more and more and more.
Speaker 5: No, they subtract back to not nothing, because that is
Speaker 5: a type of deprivation, but they subtract back to what
Speaker 5: is essential here and what is going to add value
Speaker 5: to the patron to visit the space. And I think
Speaker 5: we can treat our homes very much the same way.
Speaker 1: And one theme that we really cover a lot on
Speaker 1: the show, and Josh does this very well, is to
Speaker 1: not be too quick to dogmatize or moralize, because so
Speaker 1: much of what we call healthy living begins with acknowledging
Speaker 1: what is beautiful and what is good and what is
Speaker 1: true in the very things that are destroying our lives.
Speaker 1: And so if you're addicted to fast food, or you're
Speaker 1: addicted to cocaine, or you're addicted to alcohol, change begins
Speaker 1: with acknowledging that these addictions are an effort to meet
Speaker 1: a legitimate need in an unhealthy way. And so you've
Speaker 1: got to ask yourself, look all demonization aside, what is
Speaker 1: this fast food doing for me? Maybe it's meeting a
Speaker 1: need for convenience and it offers you the opportunity to
Speaker 1: take a look at your relationship to time. Maybe the
Speaker 1: alcohol is medicating some very real pain that needs to
Speaker 1: be dealt with. And although these are unhealthy ways of
Speaker 1: doing them, it's not until you identify the legitimate need
Speaker 1: that's being met, you acknowledge that, you affirm that, that
Speaker 1: you can begin to think creatively about the constructive way
Speaker 1: out of these traps so that you can begin meeting
Speaker 1: those needs in a better way. And so whenever we
Speaker 1: think about minimalism in terms of like there being a
Speaker 1: mathematically correct right or wrong number of things to have,
Speaker 1: you just sort of get caught up in a legalistic
Speaker 1: game that produces nothing more than a self righteous attitude
Speaker 1: towards others, which is the opposite of freedom. You've got
Speaker 1: to think about things in terms of what constitutes healthy
Speaker 1: living for you, and then you move in that direction
Speaker 1: and you acknowledge that other people might define that differently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's so important, that idea that like
Speaker 3: most everything we're doing, we're doing it to meet some
Speaker 3: need or desire that is probably legitimate, although often misguided.
Speaker 3: And so you know what's underneath that, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's part of what I love about what you guys
Speaker 3: do is it's not about just less less less. For
Speaker 3: the point of less right it's less less less for
Speaker 3: the point of more and more and more of things
Speaker 3: that actually matter, that actually make us happy, that actually
Speaker 3: make our lives feel more fulfilled.
Speaker 5: They're quite often that subtraction is leading us to a
Speaker 5: space where we're making room for more, and it's not
Speaker 5: the same for everyone. People often will call into the
Speaker 5: Minimalist podcast or like, how do I get my husband
Speaker 5: to become a minimalist?
Speaker 4: How do I get him to get rid of his stuff?
Speaker 5: Or how do I get my wife to get rid
Speaker 5: of all of these cosmetics that are on our bathroom counter?
Speaker 4: And the answer to that is not to go in
Speaker 4: there and say, hey, you should declutter. Look at me.
Speaker 5: I'm becoming a minimalist. That took me forty years to
Speaker 5: get here, thirty years or twenty five years, and now
Speaker 5: overnight you should do the same exact thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 5: No one loves to be told what to do. We
Speaker 5: always hear that people hate change. They don't they actually
Speaker 5: hate being change. People love change when it's joyous and exciting.
Speaker 5: And yet what happens is when I go to TK
Speaker 5: and say, hey, man, guess what, I became a minimalist,
Speaker 5: and you're gonna need to stuck, get rid of your stuff.
Speaker 5: He's actually going to be diametrically opposa. Even though he
Speaker 5: knows there might be a benefit on the other side,
Speaker 5: he doesn't know what the benefit is. When minimalism became
Speaker 5: so appealing to me, I didn't go out and proselytize
Speaker 5: it in a way where it was like, Hey, look
Speaker 5: at this, I've figured it out. People start coming to
Speaker 5: me and saying, Hey, what's going on with you? Seem
Speaker 5: calmer lately, you seem like you're less stressed. People at
Speaker 5: work were coming up to me.
Speaker 4: And saying, Oh, you seem a lot nicer lately. What's
Speaker 4: going on?
Speaker 5: And that opened up the door for me to talk
Speaker 5: about the benefits of simplifying my life. And for some people,
Speaker 5: even the word minimalism is too austere. It feels like
Speaker 5: it has a bunch of rules of osociated with it,
Speaker 5: or it's too stark, perhaps, And so there are other
Speaker 5: words people can use, just simplifying, or essentialism or intentionalism
Speaker 5: or living within your meansism.
Speaker 4: You could pick whatever you want as a label. But
Speaker 4: the spirit of.
Speaker 5: This movement is we let go of what's in the way,
Speaker 5: and a willingness to let go is really life's most
Speaker 5: mature virtue.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about that a little bit, because letting
Speaker 3: go is become almost a trope at this point. Right,
Speaker 3: we all know I should let go, I should let go,
Speaker 3: let go. You know, when we get to a certain
Speaker 3: point in wisdom, I think it becomes very clear that
Speaker 3: holding on is what causes us to suffer. And yet,
Speaker 3: boy is it hard to do. There's a quote by
Speaker 3: the author sumonk Kids. She's a fiction writer, but she
Speaker 3: wrote something that basically said, you know, letting go is
Speaker 3: this meandering, spiraling process. Right, And now I'm going to
Speaker 3: mess up the rest of the quote, but she basically says,
Speaker 3: this idea that we could just you know, sort of
Speaker 3: grind our teeth down and make one and I'm going
Speaker 3: to let go affirmation doesn't work. It's not the process
Speaker 3: of letting go. And so you know, i'd love to
Speaker 3: hear both of you talk about the process of letting go. Like,
Speaker 3: let's say we get to the point where we see, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe I need to let go. Maybe I need to
Speaker 3: let go of fast food, Maybe I need to let
Speaker 3: go of this unhealthy relationship. Maybe I need to release
Speaker 3: my grip on something and yet I don't seem to
Speaker 3: be able to either I can't actually stop eating the
Speaker 3: fast food or I can't stop obsessing about that thing.
Speaker 3: Like to you, guys, what is the process of letting
Speaker 3: go look like? Because I think that's where the rubber
Speaker 3: meets the road, right is how?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think it starts with a question, really, how might
Speaker 5: my life be better with less? We started our last
Speaker 5: Netflix film with that question, because when I started simplifying,
Speaker 5: it wasn't about how do I do it? As in
Speaker 5: the mechanical aspects, do I donate this?
Speaker 4: Do I sell it?
Speaker 5: And some of those those decluttering tips can be useful,
Speaker 5: but only after you get to the why. So how
Speaker 5: might my life be better with less? Sounds like a
Speaker 5: how to question, but it's actually a why to question?
Speaker 5: Why do I want to simplify my life? The thing
Speaker 5: TK talked about a moment ago is like, what is
Speaker 5: this fast food doing for me? Maybe it's adding some convenience.
Speaker 5: That's a great question to ask, and then you append
Speaker 5: it with another question what is this doing to me?
Speaker 5: And I think we can do that with our material
Speaker 5: possessions as well, like, okay, this served a purpose at
Speaker 5: some point, there's a reason I got. This is a
Speaker 5: story I told myself as why I should accumulate this right.
Speaker 5: But also the story I tell myself now isn't that
Speaker 5: I need to let go of everything. Clinically, that's called spartanism.
Speaker 5: That's a mental disorder right where people can't hold on
Speaker 5: to anything, and it starts to not just affect their
Speaker 5: material possessions, but it affects their relationships. They can't hold
Speaker 5: onto family or friends or coworkers. They can't even hold
Speaker 5: on to their job. They often end up homeless, they're
Speaker 5: living in their cars. They can't even hold onto the car.
Speaker 5: Because if you can't hold on to anything, well, that's
Speaker 5: just as detrimental as holding on to everything. And so
Speaker 5: the delicate balance here is like when you're rock climbing.
Speaker 5: In order to rock climb, you have to hold on
Speaker 5: for a bit and then you have to let go
Speaker 5: if you want to get where you're going. You can't
Speaker 5: get where you're going without letting go. But you also
Speaker 5: can get where you're going with the inability to hold
Speaker 5: on at all.
Speaker 1: I'll add another question to that after you ask those
Speaker 1: first two, and that is what does letting go look
Speaker 1: like for me? I think healthy people are essentially people
Speaker 1: who give themselves permission to become better without being the best.
Speaker 1: Whenever you decide that there's some path that is healthy
Speaker 1: for you and you want to begin walking down it,
Speaker 1: one of the frustrating things you're going to discover very
Speaker 1: quickly is that there are a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: that have been walking that path longer than you. They're
Speaker 1: all smarter than you, they're all respected and credible sounding
Speaker 1: to you, and they're going to tell you all the
Speaker 1: different ways that you could be doing better, even better
Speaker 1: than what you're doing. And that can be so overwhelming
Speaker 1: and so confusing, and you've got to give yourself to
Speaker 1: permission to take the small steps. For instance, we're just
Speaker 1: talking yesterday about processed foods and how many radical changes
Speaker 1: you can create in your body just by eliminating processed
Speaker 1: foods alone and focusing on whole foods.
Speaker 4: Well, suppose you do that.
Speaker 1: You know that's not everything, and there's somebody that's going
Speaker 1: to have been walking that path a long time and
Speaker 1: they're going to say, hey, man, just because that isn't
Speaker 1: processed doesn't mean that that's good for your body. And
Speaker 1: it's like, oh no, Well, and sometimes people give up
Speaker 1: and when you listen to people argue against their possibilities,
Speaker 1: what often comes up are statements like why I just
Speaker 1: can't be the kind of person who gets up at
Speaker 1: three in the morning every day. I just can't be
Speaker 1: the kind of person who goes a bed at this time.
Speaker 1: I just can't be the kind of person who never
Speaker 1: has fun in this particular way. And it's very empowering
Speaker 1: when you can say who says you have to change
Speaker 1: in that way? And so the first step of letting go,
Speaker 1: after you define what are you letting go for, is
Speaker 1: letting go of other people's ideas about how you have
Speaker 1: to let go what does letting go look like for you?
Speaker 1: And you can find that you can create a lot
Speaker 1: of change in your life by just giving yourself prim
Speaker 1: to find your own way of doing it.
Speaker 3: I love all those ideas, and I think there is
Speaker 3: something about also, just the patience of saying you know
Speaker 3: what I'm trying. I remember when I was early in recovery.
Speaker 3: I had a girlfriend at the time and she broke
Speaker 3: up with me for some other guy in AA and
Speaker 3: I was just I was a mess, and I knew
Speaker 3: I needed to let go right like there was nothing
Speaker 3: else to do. You know, they said in AA all
Speaker 3: the time, let go, let God, I mean, all this stuff,
Speaker 3: and I was like, but I can't seem to, And
Speaker 3: so I started by just you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: let go of. I'm gonna let go of some things
Speaker 3: like driving by her house at eleven at night to
Speaker 3: see if his car is there. I'm gonna let go
Speaker 3: of calling her today. The mind isn't ready to unravel
Speaker 3: around this thing yet, Like I can't turn it off
Speaker 3: in my mind right now, but there are some things
Speaker 3: I can start to let go of, some outward manifestations.
Speaker 3: It's a line I use on this podcast a lot.
Speaker 3: Sometimes can't think your way into right action, you have
Speaker 3: to act your way into right thinking right. It's a
Speaker 3: variation on that of like, Okay, maybe I can't let
Speaker 3: go in all the ways, but are there some ways,
Speaker 3: you know, and this is getting back to what you said, TK,
Speaker 3: are there some ways that I can start to let
Speaker 3: go and recognize that over time I will become more able.
Speaker 5: You start wherever you are, obviously right, I mean that's
Speaker 5: a tautology, even but you start somewhere. There's the old
Speaker 5: Zen maxim about let go or be dragged, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: but we're being dragged in three hundred thousand different directions now,
Speaker 5: whether it's social media, or material possessions or careers, relationships, whatever,
Speaker 5: trying to people please everyone all the time in busyness,
Speaker 5: you know, busy is the worst four letter word in
Speaker 5: the English language because it's a become a status symbol
Speaker 5: of what are you up to lately?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: I'm just so busy? Right?
Speaker 5: Look how important I am? And the ego is really
Speaker 5: taking over here. Look how you should look up to me,
Speaker 5: look at our relationship. Clearly I'm so busy because why
Speaker 5: I'm so so important? I have status right well? To
Speaker 5: me that has become something that being busy for the
Speaker 5: sake of being busy is just like moving my hands
Speaker 5: faster but not getting necessarily anything accomplished, wearing myself out
Speaker 5: in the process, and so often letting go has to
Speaker 5: do is starting somewhere practically, when it comes to material possessions,
Speaker 5: years ago, we invented something we called a thirty day
Speaker 5: minimalism game, because if your average person does have hundreds
Speaker 5: of thousands of items in their home, usually it's the
Speaker 5: paralysis of walking in and saying, you know what, I know,
Speaker 5: I need to simplify. I know I want to let
Speaker 5: go of the stuff, but I don't even know where
Speaker 5: to start. And so the way that the thirty day
Speaker 5: minialism game was because decluttering is kind of boring. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't think anyone really enjoys decluttering that much, or
Speaker 5: about one hundred different things I'd rather be doing personally,
Speaker 5: but I'd also like to let go. And so it's
Speaker 5: about starting somewhere. You partner up with a friend or
Speaker 5: a family member or a co worker, and at the
Speaker 5: beginning of the month, you decide, hey, we're each going
Speaker 5: to let go of one thing on the first day,
Speaker 5: and on the second day it's two things, third day,
Speaker 5: three things. So it starts off really easy, get you
Speaker 5: that momentum you need, just like what you're talking about
Speaker 5: with the ex girlfriend is like, I need to start somewhere.
Speaker 5: I need to let go of one thing, not everything,
Speaker 5: but I need to let go of one thing right now,
Speaker 5: anyone can find one item to let go of in
Speaker 5: their bathroom or their attic, or in their basement or
Speaker 5: garage or storage unit. What's one thing you can let
Speaker 5: go of. But by the middle of the month it
Speaker 5: starts to get more difficult. Oh, today's day fifteen, I
Speaker 5: have to get rid of fifteen items, and then tomorrow
Speaker 5: I have to get rid of sixteen items, and then
Speaker 5: by day twenty five, Oh, today I have to get
Speaker 5: rid of twenty five items. And whoever goes the longest
Speaker 5: in that little game wins some friendly competition there. You see,
Speaker 5: bet a nice meal, or make a monetary bet if
Speaker 5: you'd like, and if you both make it to the
Speaker 5: end of the month, then you've both won because you've
Speaker 5: gotten rid of about five hundred items. And we've had
Speaker 5: tens of thousands of people play this game, and a
Speaker 5: lot of them just keep going day thirty seven, day
Speaker 5: thirty eight, or they'll often start over right beginning of
Speaker 5: the new month. I'm just going to keep letting go
Speaker 5: because you've built up that letting go muscle, and now
Speaker 5: it actually feels good.
Speaker 4: Let me get this out of the house.
Speaker 5: Whereas before you didn't even know where to start, and
Speaker 5: now you're like, ah, get rid of anything. It's no
Speaker 5: longer serving a purpose in my life. It's not amplifying
Speaker 5: my joy. I gotta let it go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: One last quick thing to let go of is there's
Speaker 1: a very popular self defeating myth that manifests in the
Speaker 1: form of the following inner monologue. If I really cared
Speaker 1: about X, I wouldn't struggle so hard with making X happen.
Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes the struggle is a sign that you don't
Speaker 1: really want it. But often the struggle is a sign
Speaker 1: that you're a human being.
Speaker 4: And that it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly difficult, and sometimes you don't learn the things
Speaker 1: you need to know. You don't let go of the
Speaker 1: things you need to let go until you're willing to
Speaker 1: show up for yourself and the future that you want
Speaker 1: to have time and time again, even though you often fail,
Speaker 1: even though you sometime relapse, even though you sometimes disappoint yourself.
Speaker 1: Sometimes letting go is about letting go of the belief
Speaker 1: that I need to progress in a perfect way that
Speaker 1: never involves any backtracking, any mishaps, any moments of disappointing
Speaker 1: myself or the other people in my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's so important. You're right, there is
Speaker 3: that idea, And another version of it that I often
Speaker 3: hear from people is like, what you're doing shows what
Speaker 3: you value, Meaning if I watch TV every night, it
Speaker 3: shows that I value TV over my child. Well, on
Speaker 3: one hand, yes, but I think that's a very limiting view,
Speaker 3: right because I think more what it might say is
Speaker 3: that I don't yet have the skills to forego the comfort.
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about comfort in a minute.
Speaker 3: To forego the comfort, to forego the ease, to know
Speaker 3: how to relate to my child. It's a reductionist view
Speaker 3: to just say just because I'm not doing it means
Speaker 3: I don't value it. We do need to know what
Speaker 3: we value and then we need to get our way
Speaker 3: towards it. And I think, you know, TK to your
Speaker 3: point is that that can be really difficult. Doesn't mean
Speaker 3: I don't value it. It's just that I haven't figured
Speaker 3: out how to bring that value actually into life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I think.
Speaker 5: On top of that, I think it's you value something
Speaker 5: else other than the television, and you just touched on comfort.
Speaker 5: Quite often we default to comfort. Kapill Goopa says, we
Speaker 5: default to our defaults, which I love. Now, of course,
Speaker 5: you can change what your default settings are. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 5: we arrived with some factory settings. But really our culture
Speaker 5: and society developed our so called personalities, not that a
Speaker 5: personality actually exists. It's just the series of stories that
Speaker 5: I tell myself about where I am and how I
Speaker 5: got here, and it's an amalgamation of my preferences and
Speaker 5: my likes and dislikes, and my opinions and beliefs, and
Speaker 5: all of this clutter that it's psychological clutter. It's emotional
Speaker 5: clutter as well, and so diving beyond the material possessions.
Speaker 5: One type of clutter is this sort of comfort clutter
Speaker 5: in a way where I feel as though comfort is
Speaker 5: a virtue, and sometimes I do want to be comfortable.
Speaker 5: There's nothing wrong with being comfortable. But beware of easy
Speaker 5: payoffs because if everything I do brings me a burst
Speaker 5: of momentary pleasure, when am I paying for it? I'm
Speaker 5: not paying for it right now because this is easy.
Speaker 5: It's comfortable. Oh man, more of that. But by the
Speaker 5: seventh piece of cake, I'm totally sick. Right I'm paying
Speaker 5: for it tomorrow or next week or next year or
Speaker 5: with an early death or diabetes or whatever it ends
Speaker 5: up being. If I'm not paying for it now, I'm
Speaker 5: going to end up paying for it in the future.
Speaker 5: It's like I'm going into debt. I'm punishing my future self.
Speaker 5: And we do that through our finances. Oh, I'm going
Speaker 5: to buy this thing because I really want it now.
Speaker 5: But what types of debt do we get into when
Speaker 5: comfort becomes our number one virtue?
Speaker 2: We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake
Speaker 2: up from the autopilot we fall into in our day
Speaker 2: to day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders
Speaker 2: to listeners of the show for free. The texts help
Speaker 2: you stay on track with what you're learning from the
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Speaker 2: We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take
Speaker 2: a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the busyness
Speaker 2: of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little
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Speaker 2: thought was cool. So if you'd like to hear from
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Speaker 3: You guys say somewhere that comfort is a liar.
Speaker 1: Say more about that, Yeah, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: devil's go to phrases by now pay later. You know,
Speaker 1: comfort is the promise of immediate joy in exchange for
Speaker 1: tomorrow sorrow. Tomorrow sorrow is just so much more difficult
Speaker 1: to see that we say yes to that illusion of
Speaker 1: joy that leaves us high and dry. But you know, comfort,
Speaker 1: as Josh said, it's truly a valuable thing in context.
Speaker 1: And the problem is when comfort becomes an end unto itself,
Speaker 1: and it's no longer contextualized by something broader that gives
Speaker 1: us meaning, that gives our lives some deeper reason for being.
Speaker 1: When comfort becomes the end all be all, we end
Speaker 1: up on a path of apathy, a path of boredom.
Speaker 1: This is why you have so many people that are
Speaker 1: bored by luxury, bored by abundance. They have all of
Speaker 1: the comforts of life, but they discount it. One very
Speaker 1: important thing about our human nature, and that is we
Speaker 1: are simply incapable of being truly fulfilled unless we have challenges.
Speaker 1: I mean, even our brain refuses to reward us with
Speaker 1: more pleasure if we don't go out there and create novelty.
Speaker 1: We've got to give our brain a supply of novelty,
Speaker 1: and when you give it the easy dopamine hits of
Speaker 1: all the comforts of life, it just keeps you running
Speaker 1: high and dry. It's only when you do those sorts
Speaker 1: of things that push you to develop new skills, to
Speaker 1: solve complex problems, to interact with human beings in a
Speaker 1: way that isn't easy to manipulate, that you begin to
Speaker 1: experience that true kind of aliveness. So breaking the addiction
Speaker 1: to comfort is about realizing that the true pursuit of
Speaker 1: pleasure is only met when I acknowledge those aspects of
Speaker 1: my humanity that actually crave challenges.
Speaker 3: Right Yeah, And comfort has a real tendency obviously to
Speaker 3: shrink our lives, right because the more you value comfort,
Speaker 3: the harder it is to do anything that's not comfortable,
Speaker 3: which in my experience means just less and less and
Speaker 3: less and less that I can do less and less
Speaker 3: of the world becomes available to me via that. And
Speaker 3: then I think the other thing is interesting is you know,
Speaker 3: the term flow has become something that is, you know,
Speaker 3: talked about all the time, and I feel like, if
Speaker 3: it's not mentioned on every third podcast, it's every fourth
Speaker 3: podcast right everywhere. But what I think is interesting about
Speaker 3: that research is it points to something that I think
Speaker 3: is really important, and it says flow is achieved essentially
Speaker 3: when you are in a this isn't what it says,
Speaker 3: but a comfortable level of discomfort. Right, You're engaged in
Speaker 3: something that isn't too hard, but it isn't too easy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If you're too far out of your comfort zone, you
Speaker 3: don't function, you can't, right, And if you're all away
Speaker 3: in your comfort zone, you don't grow. And so it's
Speaker 3: finding where is that place? And again, you guys talked
Speaker 3: about this a little bit, like these small steps that
Speaker 3: we take, what's this little thing that I can do?
Speaker 3: How can I change in these small ways? I think
Speaker 3: comfort is a similar one, right, Like we're not made
Speaker 3: to live out of our comfort zone all the time,
Speaker 3: and we're not made to live in it all the
Speaker 3: time either, So where is the place where I can
Speaker 3: sort of be pushing that to be getting not the
Speaker 3: sense of flow exactly, But you guys get the point
Speaker 3: I'm making.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we pathologize discomfort. Jonathan Franzen has a
Speaker 5: great memoir titled the Discomfort Zone, and I love that
Speaker 5: phrase because it's not the terror zone, it's not the
Speaker 5: agonizing zone. It's not the horrific pain zone. That's when
Speaker 5: we take discomfort so far that like we're becoming masochistics,
Speaker 5: the traumatized zone, right right, And so we don't want
Speaker 5: to traumatize ourselves by going so far out of our
Speaker 5: comfort zone that we're in the traumatized zone. But being
Speaker 5: in that place of discomfort, the discomfort zone, that's.
Speaker 4: Where all of the rewards are.
Speaker 5: The flow state, the joy And by the way, when
Speaker 5: you find that joyous state, it actually makes room for
Speaker 5: these other emotions that pleasure doesn't really make room for.
Speaker 5: Nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is especially great as a
Speaker 5: byproduct of doing something that aligns with your long term values.
Speaker 5: It's like the difference between feeling good and an abiding feeling,
Speaker 5: a sense of underlying good in your life. Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: eating a piece of cake right now might make me
Speaker 5: feel good in terms of pleasure, but I know it's
Speaker 5: not going to be an abiding sense that temporary satisfaction
Speaker 5: doesn't bring me a long term fulfillment. And we see
Speaker 5: that in our material possessions as well. When I buy
Speaker 5: the car, it feels great, and then that first car
Speaker 5: payment shows up and like, oh no, why do not
Speaker 5: go into debt for this, and it's eighty three months,
Speaker 5: and it's five hundred and seventy nine dollars a month.
Speaker 4: What am I doing?
Speaker 3: What about the gut and a board of it already?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, exactly. We start to regret what we always regret,
Speaker 5: the comfortable decisions that gave us a momentary burst of
Speaker 5: dopamine but then charged us back for it with interest later.
Speaker 5: We rarely regret the thing that was a little uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: or maybe significantly uncomfortable, but had some sort of payoff.
Speaker 5: In the moment, you might feel like, oh, why am
Speaker 5: I doing this, But at the end of it, it's like, Wow,
Speaker 5: I'm so.
Speaker 4: Glad I did it.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think the humanity's relationship to play,
Speaker 1: which stretches all the way back to the dawn of civilization,
Speaker 1: and we see it in our primitive form, even as children,
Speaker 1: that whenever we are given free time, our way out
Speaker 1: of boredom, our primary way of finding enjoyment is to play.
Speaker 1: We create games and so on. And if you think
Speaker 1: about the essence of a game, what we do when
Speaker 1: we play games is we deliberately conceal some aspect of
Speaker 1: our power from ourselves, just to enjoy the experience of
Speaker 1: negotiating limitations in order to fulfill an arbitrary goal. So
Speaker 1: if you take a word game like scrabble or bananagrams,
Speaker 1: we all know that given enough time, we probably can
Speaker 1: form as many words as we want, but we put
Speaker 1: an arbitrary time limit that the universe didn't impose on us.
Speaker 1: We also place these other constraints. You have to arrange
Speaker 1: things only in this or that direction, or you play
Speaker 1: a game like basketball or whatever, we create something called
Speaker 1: out of bounds and we say, well, once you pick
Speaker 1: up the ball, you can't dribble it again. We literally
Speaker 1: make up constraints because we can't have fun if we're
Speaker 1: just allowed to do whatever we want without any obstacles.
Speaker 1: We say, basketball is no fun unless someone's trying to
Speaker 1: block my shot. Baseball is no fun unless someone is
Speaker 1: deliberately trying to obstruct my efforts to hit the ball
Speaker 1: in a way that's really hard for me to overcome.
Speaker 1: And so we can learn a lot about human nature
Speaker 1: by observing the way that we constantly gravitate towards play
Speaker 1: whenever labor or hard work is taken away from us,
Speaker 1: and what we need in order to have fun when
Speaker 1: we do play.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. I want to spend a fair
Speaker 3: amount of time on values in a minute. But before
Speaker 3: we go there, I thought we could talk about some
Speaker 3: questions that you guys have. You say, the issue is
Speaker 3: that we don't question the things we bring into our lives,
Speaker 3: and if we're not willing to question, everything will fall
Speaker 3: for anything. You've got a list of questions. You may
Speaker 3: not know exactly what I'm referring to, or maybe you do,
Speaker 3: but there's six of them I have in front of me.
Speaker 3: Do you remember them?
Speaker 4: Are these questions to ask before buying?
Speaker 3: Or I think so, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 4: Maybe give me a few of them and then we
Speaker 4: can refer.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first is, who am I buying this for?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an important question, because what happens is I'm
Speaker 5: buying a thing because I think I want it right,
Speaker 5: But then there's all these mimetic beliefs, and that's just
Speaker 5: a fancy word to say. I want what people around
Speaker 5: me want quite often. And I didn't know why I
Speaker 5: was buying the a Lexus the first time I bought Alexis,
Speaker 5: and then I bought the second one. Who am I
Speaker 5: buying this for? Well, it's to impress other people. Okay,
Speaker 5: how many people do I need to impress? Never stop
Speaker 5: to ask that question, right, Why am I trying to
Speaker 5: impress them? Why do I need to be so liked
Speaker 5: by other people? Venerated?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: How many people do I need to be liked by
Speaker 5: before I'm allowed to like myself?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: Now, And by the way, these questions are truly sincere.
Speaker 1: They're not lead questions. So when we say how many
Speaker 1: people am I trying to impress? That's not a rhetorical
Speaker 1: device to get you to see that you shouldn't try
Speaker 1: to impress anyone. It's an invitation to be honest, because
Speaker 1: your answer might be, oh, I only need to impress
Speaker 1: one person rather than the ten I'm stressing out for.
Speaker 1: And if that's your answer, that's your answer. You know.
Speaker 1: I know someone who literally bought a Porsche because they
Speaker 1: wanted to fit in with their clientele and they believe
Speaker 1: that it helped them do business, and they weren't stressed
Speaker 1: out about it. It was something that kept up images
Speaker 1: in their industry, and it's like, all right, that's one
Speaker 1: thing that you've got. Now, that's all they needed. They
Speaker 1: didn't need five Porsches. They didn't need to buy a mansion.
Speaker 1: That was the thing they decided that they needed to do.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, it's who are you buying it for?
Speaker 1: Who are you doing this for? It's just an opportunity
Speaker 1: to be honest with yourself because the number of people
Speaker 1: that we need to impress, whether it's the ideal zero
Speaker 1: or not, it's usually less than we think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I agree with you. I think questions like
Speaker 3: this are so important, but they're completely useless if we're
Speaker 3: not completely honest about them. You know, we are motivated
Speaker 3: by what we are motivated by. Now we can question that,
Speaker 3: we can question why am I motivated by that? But
Speaker 3: when we answer the way we think we should answer
Speaker 3: to any of these things, they don't have the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do any work on us. Right, nothing changes when
Speaker 3: I answer the way I think I should answer. I
Speaker 3: need to answer the way it really is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and what's behind that answer as well? We've
Speaker 5: been talking about this all on the Minimalist podcast recently.
Speaker 5: This idea of belief autolesis. Autolsis is just a fancy
Speaker 5: word that means when it sell eats itself basically, so
Speaker 5: it use its own enzymes to eat itself, and so
Speaker 5: one great exercise. When you go through questions like this,
Speaker 5: who am I buying this for? Quite often we get
Speaker 5: stuck right there, right, But then even if you identify,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, I'm in buying this to impress these ten people, okay,
Speaker 5: Why do I need to impress these ten people?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 5: Because I think that if they like me, then I
Speaker 5: will make more money from them, or if they like me,
Speaker 5: I can finally give myself permission to like myself whatever
Speaker 5: it might be. Okay, why do I have that belief?
Speaker 5: And continuing to question the beliefs We have a lot
Speaker 5: of belief clutter in our lives, the stories that we
Speaker 5: tell ourselves and the stories we've been handed down from
Speaker 5: our religions, from our culture, from our society, from our
Speaker 5: pure groups, from our schools. We've been handed a bunch
Speaker 5: of different beliefs and we don't question any of them.
Speaker 5: And when you start questioning some of these beliefs, guess
Speaker 5: what happens? They begin dissolving right in front of you.
Speaker 5: As soon as you say something out loud, or even better,
Speaker 5: write it down.
Speaker 4: We have a really difficult time letting go of this
Speaker 4: old shirt.
Speaker 5: I haven't worn in a year. Well, why I'd be
Speaker 5: less complete as a person if I get rid of
Speaker 5: this shirt. Write that down and see how absurd it feels.
Speaker 5: But in the moment when I write that down, it
Speaker 5: feels so real. Letting go of this is going to
Speaker 5: be tremendously difficult, because it's going to mean I'm lesser
Speaker 5: of a person, I'm not as complete. But as soon
Speaker 5: as I write it down and see it for what
Speaker 5: it is, the illusion begins to dissolve.
Speaker 3: Yep, I love that idea of belief clutter. It's amazing
Speaker 3: how true that is and how multi layered it is,
Speaker 3: and how difficult it even is to start to unpack that.
Speaker 3: I find right, because you were talking about this earlier, Right,
Speaker 3: we're in essence, the person we are is based on
Speaker 3: countless causes and conditions. It's an infinite web stretching backwards.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So even when I go, what do I really want
Speaker 3: besides what my parents want? Even then it starts to
Speaker 3: become very difficult because I'm like, well, why do I want?
Speaker 3: That's why I love the idea that you used of
Speaker 3: mimetic belief, Right, I'm wanting what I want is because
Speaker 3: of what people around me want you know and why?
Speaker 3: And I don't think there's a pure answer like that.
Speaker 3: There's this self inside of us that is like, if
Speaker 3: we could just get to that self, it would tell
Speaker 3: us all the truest and realist answers, right, because even
Speaker 3: that self has been conditioned by countless things. I think
Speaker 3: we can only do the best we can, But the
Speaker 3: questioning is what moves us closer to who we really are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's untangling from all of those beliefs. The word
Speaker 5: complex shares a Latin root complex. It just means to
Speaker 5: interweave two or more things together, yep, right, and so
Speaker 5: simple or simplex just means having one strand instead of
Speaker 5: multiple strands. And we're simplifying. We're literally removing the tangled
Speaker 5: things that we've interwoven into our lives.
Speaker 4: And at first it was really simple.
Speaker 5: But then all of a sudden, I got a car payment,
Speaker 5: or I went into debt for this, or I needed
Speaker 5: to start dressing this way to impress these people, or
Speaker 5: I started believing all of the shoulds that were handed
Speaker 5: to me. Oh, I should go to college, I should
Speaker 5: work a corporate career, I should take a yoga class,
Speaker 5: I should go to the gym every day. Nothing wrong
Speaker 5: with any of these things, by the way, But when
Speaker 5: it becomes a mimetic belief, everyone else was handing me
Speaker 5: my shoulds, and then I start beating myself up because
Speaker 5: while I'm not flawless and I don't actually enjoy doing
Speaker 5: these things other people think I should do, that's just
Speaker 5: a form of belief clutter. No shoulds are only coulds.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: You can go to the gym every day, you can
Speaker 5: go into debt if you want, you can have a
Speaker 5: car payment, you can start a Facebook group, whatever it
Speaker 5: is you say that you should do any of these things.
Speaker 5: These are all possibilities that are in front of you
Speaker 5: if you're compelled enough to do it. Wonderful Earlier you
Speaker 5: were talking about you know, if I'm watching TV at
Speaker 5: night instead of paying attention to my son, does that
Speaker 5: mean I'm a bad parent. Doesn't mean I value TV
Speaker 5: more than my son? Well maybe, but it depends on
Speaker 5: what you mean by value, right. But ultimately what we're
Speaker 5: looking at there is this is how I'm choosing to
Speaker 5: spend my time right now. This is technically my private
Speaker 5: or a t Yeah, word priority is even an interesting
Speaker 5: one because that word didn't have a plural into the
Speaker 5: twentieth century because priority means the first thing. And so
Speaker 5: if you tell me your list of fifteen priorities, it's
Speaker 5: literally nonsensical right here, fifteen the first things.
Speaker 4: In my life. Yep, I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 5: So in the moment, the priority is TV because really
Speaker 5: the priority is comfort or unwinding or destressing or whatever
Speaker 5: it might be. Right, And so getting behind the belief
Speaker 5: really helps us understand what we're doing with our most
Speaker 5: precious resource, our time and our attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the other thing about what you were
Speaker 3: just saying that is really interesting is, you know, we
Speaker 3: react to the shoulds, right, but a whole lot of
Speaker 3: my life has been an opposite reaction to the shoulds.
Speaker 3: You should go to college, Nope, I'm not going to.
Speaker 3: You know, you should value this thing, Nope, I'm not like.
Speaker 3: And so even when we're when we're not doing the
Speaker 3: sort of thing, it's almost a reverse mimetic desire. Perhaps
Speaker 3: in a sense. It's just yeah, it is a tangle.
Speaker 5: Right, and so what the should thing shouldn't do? It
Speaker 5: is just another should I should not go to college, right,
Speaker 5: that's right. And so in a weird way, we're defining
Speaker 5: ourselves as contrary to what society has handed us, and
Speaker 5: therefore we're in the same prison. We're just on the
Speaker 5: other side of the bars, and we're still locked up.
Speaker 1: That's right. There are two ways to be a conformist.
Speaker 1: One is you do what everyone else wants you to do,
Speaker 1: or the other way is to reflexively refuse to do
Speaker 1: what other people want you to do. But in both ways,
Speaker 1: you're defining who you are and what you do as
Speaker 1: a sheer reaction to what other people want from you.
Speaker 1: You know, This sort of like paranoid approach to a
Speaker 1: medic desire is sort of like it reminds me of
Speaker 1: an episode of Sein Phil where the character Kramer, he's
Speaker 1: afraid that a friend is trying to manipulate him into
Speaker 1: doing what he wants him to do. And so Kramer
Speaker 1: likes this girl and he gets ready to talk to
Speaker 1: the girl, but he's like, wait a minute, that's the
Speaker 1: girl that you want me to like. And he refuses
Speaker 1: to talk to a girl that he likes. He gets
Speaker 1: ready to sit in a chair and it's the chair
Speaker 1: that he chose, but he's like, ah, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I bet you want me to sit in this chair,
Speaker 1: and so he literally becomes this indecisive man because everything
Speaker 1: that he wants to do, he's afraid that someone else
Speaker 1: is planting these desires in his mind. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's important to step back and say, hey, where this
Speaker 1: idea came from is a little less important than the
Speaker 1: impact it's having on my life and whether or not
Speaker 1: I want that to continue. Is this working for me?
Speaker 1: Is an important balancing question to combine with, Like who
Speaker 1: am I doing this for?
Speaker 3: That's a great one. So a couple of the others.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some kind of obvious ones here, like
Speaker 3: can I afford it? Will I add value in my life?
Speaker 3: But one of my favorites and maybe we'll have this
Speaker 3: be The last one? Is would the best version of
Speaker 3: me by this? I mean that is that's super like?
Speaker 3: I mean, that is a really clarifying question.
Speaker 5: I had a friend, she lives up in Canada, and
Speaker 5: she texts me one day she was at the store.
Speaker 5: She wanted to buy something on an impulse, she said,
Speaker 5: I need to get one of those bracelets that says, WWJD,
Speaker 5: what would Joshua wad do?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: And what she was really asking is like, as a
Speaker 5: she was an aspiring minimalist, and she was like, what
Speaker 5: really the best version of me by this? And I
Speaker 5: think it's a question it's all worth asking, not what
Speaker 5: would Josh do, because it doesn't matter what I would do,
Speaker 5: but like, what would the best version of me do
Speaker 5: in this scenario. Now, that doesn't mean that you're not
Speaker 5: going to make mistakes along the way. There's a big
Speaker 5: difference between a mistake and a bad decision.
Speaker 4: You See.
Speaker 5: Politicians will do this sometimes where we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: they got caught for cheating on their wife or whatever.
Speaker 5: I just made a mistake, and it's like, well, no,
Speaker 5: like getting the wrong answer on a test is a mistake.
Speaker 5: The best version of me is still going to get
Speaker 5: the wrong answer on a test from time to time, right,
Speaker 5: But the best version of me is going to make
Speaker 5: decisions that account for my current self right, my own
Speaker 5: safety and comfort right now, within reason. But also it's
Speaker 5: going to make uncomfortable decisions because there is some sort
Speaker 5: of future reward or I'm going to avoid some sort
Speaker 5: of future punishment by doing the thing that the worst
Speaker 5: version of me would do. So, yes, the worst version
Speaker 5: of me in this moment might act on impulse the
Speaker 5: worst version of me might eat the piece of chocolate cake.
Speaker 5: The worst version of me could do a bunch of
Speaker 5: things that give me a reward right now, but I'm
Speaker 5: going to end up paying for it in the future.
Speaker 5: The best version of me is going to be deliberate.
Speaker 5: The best version of me is going to pause when necessary.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be intentional about the thoughts that I
Speaker 5: have and deliberate about the things that I bring into
Speaker 5: my life. What would the best version of me do
Speaker 5: right now? And sometimes here's the paradox of that. Sometimes
Speaker 5: the best version of me would not act, would do nothing,
Speaker 5: and so the gift of inaction, Right, we often try
Speaker 5: to do do do busy, busy, busy act now. Supplies
Speaker 5: are limited, right, Maybe the best version of myself would
Speaker 5: simply abstain.
Speaker 4: Maybe that is also an option.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that is such a great question,
Speaker 3: Like what would the best version of me do in
Speaker 3: all these situations? Or who is the person I want
Speaker 3: to be? You know, you sort of put things into
Speaker 3: the mistake and the bad decision category, Right, there's another
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure what I would I guess it's
Speaker 3: falls under bad decision. But we all know what this
Speaker 3: is like when we're like, well, the best version of
Speaker 3: me would do this, and I just did that. You know,
Speaker 3: the best version of me would do this, and yet
Speaker 3: I don't seem to quite be able to actualize that
Speaker 3: best version of me at the current moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And quite often that's because we're not compelled. We
Speaker 5: don't actually see the benefits that are on the other
Speaker 5: side of that action or in action. What are the
Speaker 5: benefits of abstaining from this thing that's going to harm me,
Speaker 5: or what are the benefits of doing this thing that's
Speaker 5: going to help me? We don't see it clearly enough.
Speaker 5: And if you don't see it clearly enough, then you
Speaker 5: just feel like, oh, I guess I should work out,
Speaker 5: or I should healthfully or whatever it is, right, And
Speaker 5: it's like, well, okay, but I don't really understand the
Speaker 5: outcome from that, and so I don't feel compelled enough
Speaker 5: to devote myself to actually taking those actions that will
Speaker 5: get me to the.
Speaker 4: Other side of it.
Speaker 1: Another value add to this question, too, is it gives
Speaker 1: us a friendly self reminder. The funny thing about being
Speaker 1: human is sometimes the reason we don't do things that
Speaker 1: are very important to us is because we forget, Wow,
Speaker 1: how undramatic, right, because it's much easier to demonize ourselves
Speaker 1: and others. But how many people have forgotten birthdays, anniversaries, graduations,
Speaker 1: and other things that are truly important to them And
Speaker 1: when they have that moment, they go, oh no, and
Speaker 1: they're devastated. No one needs to make them feel guilty
Speaker 1: because they know they overlook something that's important. So when
Speaker 1: you ask yourself that question, you know, what would the
Speaker 1: best version of me do? It's also like inserting a
Speaker 1: little pause in your day and asking yourself, is this
Speaker 1: the way I really want to use my time? Reminds
Speaker 1: me of a meeting that I have out with someone
Speaker 1: and we only had twenty minutes schedule and we popped
Speaker 1: on and we were so glad to see each other,
Speaker 1: and then they started to ask these other questions and
Speaker 1: we're like five minutes in and I say, hey, we
Speaker 1: got fifteen minutes left. I'm cool with answering these questions,
Speaker 1: but is this the best way? Is this how you
Speaker 1: want to use the fifteen minutes? And they go, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I better dive in and make sure
Speaker 1: I get this covered because this is the reason for
Speaker 1: my call. It's not that they didn't care it's just
Speaker 1: that they forgot and that little question was a friendly
Speaker 1: reminder and we need that to give that to ourselves.
Speaker 3: We're nearing the end of our time here, but I
Speaker 3: would love to discuss something, Josh. I think maybe you're
Speaker 3: the one who came up with it, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's hard to know in the minimalist right because it's
Speaker 3: sort of a collaborative thing. But it's the idea of
Speaker 3: the Platinum rule to share what that is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Actually, you know, TK has a better riff on
Speaker 5: this than I do, although he doesn't love the Platinum Rule.
Speaker 5: He thinks it's a misunderstanding of the Golden Rule. But
Speaker 5: for the sake of this conversation, maybe we can we
Speaker 5: could debate it out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not against the Platinum Rule, and I'm working
Speaker 1: very hard at learning to just.
Speaker 4: Let it be.
Speaker 1: It's a personal little thing. But I think the Platinum
Speaker 1: Rule is just the Golden Rule rightly understood. And so
Speaker 1: the Platinum rule, as stated, is do unto others as
Speaker 1: they would like it to.
Speaker 4: Be done, as opposed to the Golden rule, which is.
Speaker 1: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Speaker 1: But what the Golden rule means here, and this is
Speaker 1: also the Platinum rule. It's like, if I like chocolate
Speaker 1: ice cream and Josh is allergic to ice cream and
Speaker 1: absolutely hates it, the Golden rule doesn't mean by chocolate
Speaker 1: ice cream for Josh because that's what I would want.
Speaker 1: The Golden rule means that I love him and I
Speaker 1: respect him in the same way that I do those things.
Speaker 1: And how do I desire love and respect well, I
Speaker 1: desire it in a way that considers my interest and
Speaker 1: my taste. I want people to buy me chocolate ice
Speaker 1: cream because chocolate ice cream is something that I like.
Speaker 1: So to do unto Josh as I would do unto
Speaker 1: me would mean I take the time to figure out
Speaker 1: what he likes, and I offer him something that he
Speaker 1: would appreciate, not something that I would appreciate. But anyway,
Speaker 1: if the Platinum rule helps people rightly understand the Golden rule,
Speaker 1: I'm totally happy to say, all right, let's throw out
Speaker 1: that language and let's just think about loving people in
Speaker 1: a way that they are ready and willing to receive
Speaker 1: the whole idea of speaking people's love languages. I think
Speaker 1: that really does matter.
Speaker 3: Josh, you gotta come back here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I just signed right now I'm dead. Yeah, now,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: I think what's fascinating about this is what you're really
Speaker 5: talking about is meeting people where they are and helping
Speaker 5: them get to where they want to be, even if
Speaker 5: that where they want to be is different from where
Speaker 5: you want to be, and the misunderstanding.
Speaker 4: Of the goal.
Speaker 5: And I think you're right quite often what happens is like,
Speaker 5: treat others how I want to be treated, and so
Speaker 5: I'm therefore what's going to happen. We've developed this whole
Speaker 5: advice epidemic right where it's like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 5: I've figured out five things that work really well for me.
Speaker 5: Now I should apply this to every human being in existence,
Speaker 5: and they're actually wrong if they don't do it. And
Speaker 5: what it accidentally does it places me on a weird
Speaker 5: pedestal where I have all of the guidance and the advice,
Speaker 5: and I will bestow that wisdom onto you as long
Speaker 5: as you look up to it, because I'm on the pedestal, right.
Speaker 5: But the weird thing about that putting myself on a
Speaker 5: pedestal actually forces me to look down on other people.
Speaker 5: And where the platinum rule as understood here, And what
Speaker 5: TK outlined is like, Nope, we're on the same level here.
Speaker 5: I'm going to treat you how you want to be treated.
Speaker 5: You're going to treat me how I want to be treated.
Speaker 5: I'm going to see you for who you are without
Speaker 5: trying to change you, manipulate you, harm you, coerci you
Speaker 5: into anything. And that's what it ultimately means to love someone,
Speaker 5: to see them for who they are without trying to
Speaker 5: drag them to where I am.
Speaker 1: And that's how we all want to be loved and
Speaker 1: respect that we want to be treated with nuance and
Speaker 1: with charity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this kind of Josh, you hit it there
Speaker 3: a little bit right, This circles us all the way
Speaker 3: kind of back to where we started, which was to say,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't just tell people this is the
Speaker 3: right thing for you. If you're off to the side
Speaker 3: and you're about to fall in the ditch to the right,
Speaker 3: you know, we want to go left and the opposite
Speaker 3: and the same thing is is here, we can't assume
Speaker 3: that what we want is what other people want, you know,
Speaker 3: And so by finding out what they want is the
Speaker 3: true way of applying the Golden rule. So I don't
Speaker 3: know whether we need two rules, one rule with a
Speaker 3: little bit of a subcaveat, maybe we need golden rule
Speaker 3: A and B. I don't know. I'll let you guys
Speaker 3: sort that out, but I think the idea is nonetheless
Speaker 3: an important one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 5: I think what happens here is we get really bogged
Speaker 5: down in legalism or whatever we want to call it,
Speaker 5: and then there's this type of self righteousness. Oh, I've
Speaker 5: got it figured out, and you two can figure it
Speaker 5: out if you just follow my prescription. But usually that
Speaker 5: it doesn't work. In fact, what's the old saying a
Speaker 5: man convinced against his will is of the same opinion. Still,
Speaker 5: I think it's Dale Carnegie who said that, And so
Speaker 5: I can drag you kicking and screaming to my worldview, right,
Speaker 5: But then, of course, as soon as you have an opportunity,
Speaker 5: you're going to run away from it because in fact,
Speaker 5: you're going to be turned off by it, as you
Speaker 5: noted earlier, like I'm going to be countercultural to everything
Speaker 5: because everyone's dragging me in this direction. But guess what
Speaker 5: happens now, You're just participating in the culture of counterculture,
Speaker 5: which is in and of itself its own series of
Speaker 5: tenets and ideologies, and when we become defined by what
Speaker 5: we're saying no to, it's very similar to being defined
Speaker 5: by what we say yes to.
Speaker 1: And by the way, my quibbling over the term is
Speaker 1: even an invitation for me to evolve because there's something
Speaker 1: good in it. I like to think that I value
Speaker 1: ideas so much that I want things to be understood
Speaker 1: in their proper context. But at the same time, there's
Speaker 1: something to be said about valuing human flourishing so much
Speaker 1: that you don't make too big of a deal over
Speaker 1: how a person needs to say something to themselves in
Speaker 1: order to tap into the value that lies therein And so,
Speaker 1: you know, even just in the name of practicing what
Speaker 1: we preach, part of living a healthy life is just
Speaker 1: giving other people permission to describe things differently than you,
Speaker 1: to analyze things differently than you. And that's hard no
Speaker 1: matter where you are on the journey. But you've got
Speaker 1: to keep challenging yourself to grow in that way. So
Speaker 1: Platinum Rule, Golden Rule, you do.
Speaker 3: You all right? I think that's a great place for
Speaker 3: us to wrap up. We are going to go into
Speaker 3: the post show conversation where we are going to have
Speaker 3: a really good discussion on values. We talk a lot
Speaker 3: about living by values. We talk about it on this show.
Speaker 3: It's kind of everywhere, but you guys have some really
Speaker 3: interesting ways of breaking that down that I'm really excited
Speaker 3: to talk about. Listeners, If you'd like access to the
Speaker 3: post show conversations, AD free episodes, and all the other
Speaker 3: benefits of being a member, you can go to oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash join Josh TK. Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 3: I've really really enjoyed this.
Speaker 4: Thank you, BROB. Appreciate you.
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