How to Love People & Use Things, Whether Or Not You're A "Hoarder," Minimalist Diets & Workouts & 7 Essential Relationships with Joshua Millburn.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast.

And why do we do that? It's because we think more is going to make us happy. But the pursuit of more is often what is making us miserable.

Going after the perfect fitness program or the perfect diet program, you know, like in my industry, once they find God, all of a sudden all that stuff seems to become less important because they found something that actually fulfills by getting.

Rid of the excess is you start to make room. You actually increase the void. You're making room for what's truly important. And then you start asking some deeper questions.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, folks, welcome to the show. I think this show, we should probably just make it, like five minutes long because it's about minimalism. What do you think, Joshua? Should we just say a few words and lead people to their minimalist life?

As you know, I'm full of pithy expressions and sayings, so I guess we could just speak in aphorisms for a few minutes.

Yes, exactly. Like the pithy title of your new book, which is honestly why I. Why I originally wanted to get you on, because a lot of people might be familiar with your original book, which was just called Minimalism, right?

Yeah. Our first book was over a decade ago, and it was called Minimalism. It was about finding the. Discovering what was actually important in life, how to live a meaningful life. But then this new book, Love People, Use Things, is really a relationship book.

Yes. Love People Use Things. That's definitely a pithy title. And for those of you not familiar with Joshua Milburn, my guest on today's show, and I'll link to all of his stuff if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com minimalist. He and his. I don't know if you call him your partner or your business associate or what, or just your friend Ryan Nicodemus, who's not on the call with us today. It's just Josh and I. Anyways, these guys are known as the minimalists, and they actually have overhauled a ton of people's lives in terms of allowing them to live a more minimalist life. And their work has been featured all over the place like Wall Street Journal and Time magazine and gq, and they have. You guys did, like, a whole documentary as well, didn't you?

Yeah, we've got a couple of films up on Netflix. The first one was called Minimalism, a documentary about the important things. And that really Got the message in front of a whole lot more people. And then the most recent one came out this year. It's called Less Is Now.

Less is Now. Is that on Netflix right now?

Yeah, yeah, it's out on Netflix currently. It's, it's very, it's extremely minimal. I think it's 53 minutes.

Okay. All right, well, that, that's, that. I actually don't watch enough Netflix to know if that's minimalist, but it sounds pretty good to me. So we'll, we'll try and keep this podcast at at least 52 and a half minutes and go from there. So any. Anyways, you guys may have heard me too. I've been on, on Josh and Ryan's podcast called the Minimalist Podcast. And I' of those episodes as well@BenGreenfieldFitness.com minimalist. But you know what, Josh? We, we've hung out like what, four times now in la, I think three.

Or four times, at least.

Something like that. But like, it seems I'm always getting put in the hot seat by you guys and, and, and then, you know, I, I drink some coffee with you and then leave and give you a hug or a high five or a slap on the back and then we're done. But I don't think you've ever actually told me kind of like your backstory of this whole minimalist thing. Like, did you just one day decide to get rid of all your extra and go from there?

Sort of. I mean, I think it starts even farther back from that. You know, I was born 40 years ago and in Dayton, Ohio, and I grew up really poor. You know, we were on food stamps and government assistance and there's a lot of alcohol abuse and drug abuse and physical abuse in the household. And, and I thought the reason we were so unhappy growing up is because we didn't have any money. And so when I turned 18, I went out and I got an entry level corporate job. And I spent the next dozen or so years climbing the corporate ladder. And by age 30, I had sort of achieved everything I ever wanted after working 60, 70, 80 hours, sometimes 90 hours a week. Had all the sort of trappings of success, right? The big suburban house with more toilets than people, the luxury cars, the walk in closets full of designer clothes. I sort of had all the stuff to fill every corner of my consumer driven life. And in many ways you could say I was living the American dream. But it turns out that that wasn't my dream. And in a weird way, it kind of took Getting everything I thought I wanted to realize that maybe everything I ever wanted wasn't actually what I wanted at all. And I knew I needed to simplify my life because ostensibly, I was successful. The people around me saw that I was successful, and I bought all these things to make me happy. You know, the average American household has 300,000 items in it, but, of course, most of us aren't hoarders, right? We just own a lot of stuff.

Does the 300,000 items include, like, you know, toothpicks, or are we talking just, like, toys and books and, like, 300,000 seems like a lot.

It is a lot. Yeah. And so I don't go around people's houses and count their stuff. That's a stat from the Los Angeles Times. And so what I can tell you is this. I've been in a lot of people's houses, and most people aren't what the hoarders you would see on television. Those are what we would call stage four, stage five hoarders, when we talk about the continuum of hoarding. But most people in the Western world tend to be at least stage one hoarders. And there are a bunch of different signs around that. What's going on in our lives now? The question is, why do we accumulate all of these excess things? Because it'd be Wonderful to have 300,000 items if it was increasing our joy, our happiness, our tranquility, our meaning in life. But quite often, those excess things are actually getting in the way of what's truly important to us. So as a minimalist, it's not about getting rid of everything. It's really about identifying what's essential, what's non essential, and value adding. And then also what is junk. Most of the things we own are junk, and it's getting in the way of those things that are adding value to our lives.

Okay, so I. I want to get back to. To how. How you actually proceeded to minimize your life. But you just alluded to, like, this continuum of hoarding and stages. Is that an actual thing or is that something that you guys developed as part of your. Your minimalist program?

No, it's. It's. It's an actual thing. So while hoarding is, you know, it's a. It's a mental disorder. Right. But we all have pieces of that. Mental disorder. Mental disorder. Right. So there's another term called spartanism. You may have heard of it. Not like running a Spartan race, but Spartanism is the idea you can't hold on to anything. And so the other side of that of that continuum is hoarding. And so when you look at your TV and you see people who are hoarding, those, those people have a, they're at the terminus of that, that, well, that mental illness. Right. They have a whole bunch of excess stuff that's scattered all over their counters and floors and attic and basement. You can't even get into some of their rooms. Right. But a level one hoarder just has light amounts of clutter and they don't have all the noticeable odors and all the excess stuff, and they tend to just have a bunch of clutter around their house. Well, me, I was a well organized hoarder, so maybe I didn't have clutter strewn throughout my house, but I sort of had an ordinal system of bins and boxes in my basement and, and spare bedroom and in the attic and in the garage, I had a two and a half car garage. I don't even know what that means now. I couldn't even park two cars in that garage. Well, why is that? Because I had a lot of excess stuff. And then you go beyond that, you go to level 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 hoarders. That's when you start to see the odors throughout the house. You see overflowing garbage and trash cans. You'll see bugs. You'll see no clean dishes in the house because they're all stacked up in the sink. You'll see. Well, when it gets real extreme, you'll see, you know, the hoarding of dead pets in the freezer and things like that. Yeah, but it's so it's easy for us to like, sort of point and sneer at those folks. At least I'm not like that. Yeah, but think about it. You may never be like that, but it doesn't mean that the stuff isn't actually getting in the way. Just because you're not tripping over it doesn't mean it's not getting in the way of a more meaningful life.

Wow. So. So, you know, I think for me, a big part of it, and I don't know if you've really studied up much on the human psyche behind hoarding, but there, there's like this desire to be prepared. Right. You know, and, you know, not, not a prepper necessarily, like gold buried in the backyard and in Campbell's soup cans and underground tunnels under your house, but like this idea that you, you want to hold on to certain things because who knows when they might come in handy, right? Who knows when you, when you, you might actually have a need for whatever that extra space heater or, you know, or those, I don't, I don't know, the, the dozen extra dark, dark chocolate bars in the pantry or the waffle iron or I just got a, what did I just get? An air fryer in addition to my pressure cooker and my sous vide Wand and my 18 other different ways to cook. And you know, so part of it is preparation, part of it is having a little bit of fun and variety with, let's say, you know, how you want to make a steak if you get to choose between a grill and a skillet and I, you know, a sous vide wand. But, you know, when it comes to being prepared versus hoarding, like is there, is, is there somewhere where the line is drawn or. Yeah, how, how would you, how would you differentiate between the 2?

Huge distinction. 1, and it's as simple as this. It's intentionality versus being unintentional with the things we consume, right? There's this term memetic desire or mimetic belief. And that's just a fancy way to say I don't actually want as I want, it's someone else who wants them. And advertisers or marketers or demographers or statisticians are telling me that I want those things. They are telling me my life would be better with those things, even though I don't truly believe it myself. The other side of that is as a minimalist, I'm not a deprivationist. So being prepared can be a wonderful thing. Now, of course, we can't prepare for everything. We all know that intrinsically. But these three dangerous words constantly come up just in case. I think they're the three most dangerous words in the English language. And you didn't say it, but the essence of what you were saying there is we hold on to a lot of things just in case we might need them in some non existent hypothetical future, right? In the new book, we have these 16 rules for living with less. And one of them is called the just in case rule. Now here's the fascinating thing because I would often say I'm going to hold onto this just in case. I was still, even when I first embraced minimalism, I was still holding on to probably 10,000 just in case items. All these extra cables and the electric electronics drawer, the universal remote over here, or I got to have an extra pair of swimming trunks over here. Whatever it was, I had a lot of. I'm just going to hold on to, I'm not really using it. I'm not really getting value from it, but I'm going to hold on to it just in case. So the just in case rule basically says, hey, if I'm holding on to anything just in case, I can let go of it, because I can replace it for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes from wherever I am. So we also call it the 2020 rule. Now, at first, that sounds like an incredible rule of thumb privilege, right? Oh, my God. I want to go around spending $20 every single day on replacing these just in case items. Well, here's the truth about it. Over the course of the last decade, since Ryan and I have come up with that rule, we've had to use it five times between the two of us and so spend about 100 bucks over the last decade. And that hundred dollars has allowed me to let go of tens of thousands of just in case items that would have otherwise gotten in the way. Because the truth is, all of those things we're holding on to just in case, if we're not actually getting value from them now, there's a good chance we're not going to get value from it in some distant future.

Okay, so back to your story. You were successful. You had the suburban house, you had all this stuff. What was the light bulb moment for you?

Yeah. So I've known Ryan since we were fat little fifth graders. You asked, what do we call each other? Are we business partners? We've been best friends for 30 years now, and we both grew up poor in the same town, and both climbed the corporate ladder at the same corporation at the same time. We graduated high school the same year. And, you know, right around age 32, events happened to me that forced me to look around and question everything. My mom died, and my marriage ended both in the same month. And it was like getting into two car crashes at the same time. And I started just questioning everything. You know, what is. Why have I been defining success this way? Why have I given so much meaning to all these material possessions? Who's the person I want to become? How am I going to redefine success? And as I started asking these questions, I realized that my life might be better with less. We never stop to consider less in our culture. It's always more, more, more. More followers, more money, more status, more success, more achievements, more trophies, more material possessions. I need more. And why do we do that? It's because we think more is going to make us happy. But the pursuit of more is often what is making us miserable. All those things we bring into our lives to make Us happy aren't doing their job. In fact, the objects of our desire quickly become the objects of our discontent. I may have really wanted that thing, but now that I get it and I've had it for a while, it's becoming a burden, or it's becoming outdated, or it's just getting in the way. And so my journey basically started with that question, how might your life be better with less? And when I asked that question, the reason that was so important is it wasn't a prescription. It wasn't like, Here are the 67 ways to declutter your closet. None of us have a shortage of decluttering tips. That's not the problem. The problem is we don't understand what is enough in our lives. And so for me to get to enough, it wasn't about adding more. It was about subtracting all of the. All of the superfluous things that were in the way. And so, in a weird way, as a minimalist, I actually get far more value now from the fewer items I own than if I were to water them down with hundreds of thousands of trinkets.

Yeah, you alluded to something earlier, too, that this idea of human desire being mimetic, like, we imitate what other people want, and that's how we choose, you know, like, partners and friends and careers and clothes and where we're going to go on vacation. There's actually a really great book. I read it recently. I'm imagining you probably saw it, it just came out this year called Wanting the Power of Mimetic Desire. Have you seen that one?

Yeah, yeah, we had him on the podcast.

Yeah. Luke. Luke Burgess, I think is. That's correct. Yeah. I'll link to that one in the show. It's a good read. But this idea of. Of, you know, well, comparing ourselves to the Joneses, and if, you know, they've got whatever cluttering up their garage and we happen to drive past and take a peek in and see that, and it gives us a whole bunch of ideas about things we might want. And fortunately, I don't really have many neighbors, so I don't have to deal with that so much as I have to deal with the random 10 packages of biohacking equipment and supplements and functional health foods that just randomly appear on my doorstep every single day. And even for me, like, there's a little bit of angst because it's like, this is cool stuff. And I sometimes justify the fact that I'm, like, an immersive journalist, Right. Like, my job is to try this stuff and come back to the world and report on what laser lights and infrared devices and protein bars work and which don't. But yet I, I find myself in many cases spending, you know, like an extra, you know, hour to two each day just digging through all this stuff that I normally. Now don't know what you think about this, but it's a thought process that goes through my head sometimes. Whether it is a book or an article or a podcast or an audiobook or a belonging. I sometimes will get something in front of me and I'll think, geez, I never ever would have been interested in this at all on my own volition. Right. It's not something I'm passionate about or had any inkling to look into yet because it showed up on my doorstep or because somebody's texted me that I should check this out. All of a sudden there's kind of like a little bit of FOMO if you don't try it out. And it's sometimes hard to strike a balance between living a life where you're, you're kind of like curious and seeking adventure and learning new things and then also just having so many new things that you don't finish half the old things. And you know, the, the new book replaces the stack of the 10 other books that you had planned to read. And it does get difficult, doesn't it, with. And especially in the information era where we have access to be able to find out about all this stuff. Like it's hard. Yeah.

You mentioned keeping up with the Joneses and that was a particular problem a generation ago. But it's far more pernicious than that now because not only are we comparing our lives with our neighbors, we are comparing our lives with the lives of everyone we've never met on Instagram and TikTok and everywhere else and thinking, you know, what is consumerism? Consumerism is just the ideology that buying things is going to make me whole or complete. Now as a Christian, I know that you understand that there is no wholeness and consumption and you're not going to get it outside of yourself.

Right. The so called eternal hole in the soul. We try to fill all this stuff until we get satisfied, when in fact the only thing that can fill an infinite, endless, eternal hole is something infinite and endless and eternal, which would be God. And you'll find a lot of people who are just constantly going through life trying new shit and, and purchasing things and going after the perfect fitness program or the perfect diet program, you know, like in my industry, like once they find God, all of a sudden, all that stuff seems to become less important because they found something that actually fulfills.

Yeah, you. You make peace with the void in a way. Right. And so realizing you can't fill the void, in fact, we've been told the void is. Is bad. Right. It's a strange thing, because the part of the country you live in, you know, I used to live up there in Missoula, right down the street from you. And no one goes to Montana and says, look at this giant void. No, they said, look at this beautiful open space. Right? You go to northern Idaho. Oh, my gosh, look at the mountains and the valleys here. We don't say, how can I fill this void as quickly as possible? And yet we do that in our own lives and what we try to do. Here's the pattern. It happens to all of us. I'm incomplete. So I'm going to buy things. I'm going to embrace consumers. I'm going to buy things that are going to make me complete or they're going to make me happy. And then we buy the things that doesn't make us happy. You know what I need? I need more things. And then when that doesn't make us happy, you know what the problem is? I need even more things. And of course, that plays out until we have those 300,000 items and you're 30 or 40 or 50 or. We had one lady who was 94 years old who came to our San Diego event. We're doing these tour stops right now, and she said. She said, I'm 94. I'm finally simplifying my life for the first time. And so we accumulate for a long period of time. Then what do we do? We think that's going to make us happy. When it doesn't, well, then we get rid of the stuff. And one of the problems is we start chasing happiness through minimalism or through letting go. And that also doesn't make us happy. And then what do we do? And we say, well, you know what the problem was? I didn't have the right things. I need better things and more improved things or whatever. And that void remains there the whole time. So minimalism isn't simply about letting go to make you happy. In fact, you could. Anyone listening to this could go rent a giant dumpster, throw all your stuff in it, and be utterly miserable after that because you've just gotten rid of all the pacifiers, as well as all of the things that add value to your life. But what you can do by getting rid of the Excess is you start to make room. You actually increase the void. In a way, you're making room for what's truly important. And then you start asking some deeper questions about what it means to live a meaningful life.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, Well, I want to get into some of the practical nitty gritty, because obviously people could read the book until they're blue in the face to wrap their head around the philosophy of. Of the idea of loving people and, and using things, and also the general idea of minimalism. You know, I think that by watching your films or reading the books, people are going to learn a whole lot more about the whole idea behind this. But down into the, like, the practical nitty gritty. Ma', am, I've noticed that, like, you and Ryan, you wear black shirts and, like, I think it's like black shirts and jeans and seems like you have, you know, generally a relatively simple wardrobe. Like, if I walked into your closet, is it really like just the same few black shirts and jeans and shoes, like a Steve Jobs type of thing?

It is for me. You know, one of our tour stops recently, someone asked me, how many. How many black T shirts do you own? And my honest answer was one drawer full. I don't know. I don't really count my things. But minimalism is not about a particular austerity. You know, I just happen to wear what's simple for me so I don't have to make these sort of excess decisions. I have. I have some black shirts. I have some long, short sleeve and long sleeve. I even have a button up or two, you know, and. And then, yeah, I have a couple pairs of jeans. I keep it really simple, but I know other minimalists who want to wear bright purple, and that's totally fine, too. In fact, in our new podcast studio I'm in right now, you got to see a glimpse of it this morning. We've got this beautiful artwork that is behind us because I think one of the amazing things about minimalism is when you strip something down to its essence, to its bones, the bones are the beauty of the thing. So if you're in our new podcast studio, it actually looks like an art gallery or a museum. We have these beautiful paintings in here from a really talented artist, and everything is intentional because the excess is gone. You know, we go to a museum, the most beautiful spaces in the world. We also don't walk in there and say, oh, my God, look at this void. Look at all this empty space. No, we realize that I'm complete. You're complete. In an Empty room. So anything aesthetically can enhance the experience of life, but it is not the purpose of life.

Okay, so I get the idea of decision making fatigue with the wardrobe. I think that's a pretty simple one for people to wrap their head around. And I think you can still strike a balance between fashion and minimalism. Meaning, like, for me, for example, I discovered this new clothing gear, it's called Spiritual Narcissist. Last year, actually, one of my buddies started the company and I never would personally purchase a $600 coat, at least of my own volition. But he sent me one and I tried it and I loved it. And I wound up with a whole like couple of giant boxes of their, their gear, so to speak. And that's like what I wear down 90% of the time is just this flowy, hempy, organic, like kind of hippie, dippy, spiritual narcissist stuff. Because I like it, it feels good and gives me an excuse to be able to wear my pajamas out to dinner. And yet when people ask, I'll tell them it's men's luxury clothing and therefore it's justified. And so I think you can be fashionable and still be minimalist. I kind of like the idea of going with a specific brand of clothing like Vori or Spiritual Narcissist or, I don't know, Levi's or whatever, and then just kind of like having that brand be your shtick. And for me, that's something I've been increasingly doing, just giving myself permission just to wear like a certain brand of clothing. And my wife loves it because T shirts get constantly thrown out. But minimalism with the wardrobe is something that I think is a pretty simple place to start. What about diet? There's this concept of, in the nutrition industry that the more consistent your meals, like same thing for lunch, same thing for breakfast. If you're a breakfast eater, maybe the same thing for dinner, same beverages, same snacks, actually allows you to maintain better metabolic health because you're guessing a lot less about calories and nutrient density and content. You just become more accustomed to what makes you full and what doesn't. And it also allows you to make meals more quickly and reduces a lot of the decision making fatigue of diet. I'm curious about you though. I know, and I'm fine if you get into this, if you want to, that you have some specifics that you adhere to for the diet for specific health reasons. But I'm just curious, like what your diet actually looks like and how you comprise or recommend a minimalist diet.

Yeah, I'd be happy to talk about that real quick. Just to circle back on the clothing bit, I'll tell you this. The most fashionable people I know are all minimalists. And because a minimalist wears their favorite clothes, because they only own their favorite clothes and everything else is excess and it's been repurposed somewhere else, either recycled or donated to someone else who can get value from it. We all have that oversized orange sweatshirt with tassels that's sitting in the back of the closet that we haven't worn since 98. And it's just there collecting dust. And not only is it there in our closet taking up space, but it's taking up space in our psyche, in our mind. It's creating mental clutter, emotional clutter, this internal clutter that's going on inside us. So, yes, minimalism is a way to actually be more stylish in a way. Moving on to diets, we did an episode of the Minimalist podcast with, well, two unlikely guests. We had Rich Roll, he's a vegan athlete, you know, Rich. And, and we had Dr. Paul Saladino on there. And so you would think Paul Saladino is the carnivore M.D. right. And so you would think between the two of them, they would have no commonalities whatsoever. The Venn diagram of what they eat at the time was literally 100% plants versus a hundred percent animals. And yet there were so many commonalities between the two of them. And what I learned is a minimalist diet is ultimately about what you remove from the diet. Just like with the stuff, it's about what you remove with the stuff. But a minimalist diet is also about what we remove from our lives in terms of what we consume, what we eat. Right. And so it's much more about eating real food. That's something that both Rich and Paul agreed on. Eat real food. Don't over or under eat. Avoid inflammatory foods. Keep away from refined oils. Right. Steer clear of processed foods. Don't eat foods that make you feel crappy. And so eating organic plants or grass fed meats and then eating or buying local whenever possible. I think these are sort of the fundaments of a minimalist diet. And yet that could be applicable to a vegan, to a carnivore, or like 99.9% of US omnivores as well.

So I make usually a smoothie for breakfast every morning. It's a variant, but. But typically it's bone broth or kefir or coconut milk or yogurt as the base and then typically, ice for just bulk and volume and to give it that nice icy ice cream esque texture. Some kind of sweetener like stevia or monk fruit. And then typically some superfoods. Like, I freeze raw liver and keep that in the freezer. I put a couple chunks of that in my morning smoothie. Usually a scoop of like, like a clean whey protein isolate, a little bit of creatine, blend it up and top it with a few superfoods that I keep in the top shelf of the refrigerator, like spirulina or cacao nibs or coconut flakes or what have you. Lunch is always like a. Like a low calorie but high nutrient density type of meal. Like, you know, pumpkin puree or sea moss gel, or like, I use these things called miracle noodles, which are amazing because it's like having pasta without actually eating pasta. And then I'll put like some kind of like a really nice little oil on that, like Andrea's seed oil or an extra virgin olive oil side of vegetables. And typically some kind of meat that's left over from last night's dinner. And then dinner tends to be more widely varied because we cook as a family. And typically I'll make a meat dish and my sons will make some kind of a starch ditch, like sweet potato fries or sushi rice or something like that, and my wife will make a lovely salad. And then we all come together and eat. And so for me, it takes a ton of decision making fatigue out of my day to be able to have kind of like that stuff, same routine, and then it's just sparkling water and gum or zevia and gum in between those meals for you? What would be an example of what kind of like a simple minimalist diet would look like, based on the fact that I know you've been through a little bit health wise as far as your diet goes?

Yeah. A few years ago, I was down in Brazil and I got a parasite from the. I drank some water down there and it was. Yeah, it was just, I mean, some of the worst. It was the worst experience of my life. Not only did I have a food poisoning event, but I started developing, like, a crazy amount of ulcers in my small bowel. Like over a hundred ulcers in my small bowel. It was. I mean, so I couldn't eat anything for a while. Literally the only thing I could digest was meat and some white rice. And even then, like, it was constant inflammation. Right. And so reducing the inflammation was something that was really important to me. It sounds to me, like, what you're describing with your diet is it adheres to all the stuff we just talked about with eating real foods, not overeating or under eating, avoiding inflammatory foods. It sounds like none of those are inflammatory to you. The refined oil bit and not eating foods that make you feel bad. Right. And so.

That last bit there about eating foods that make you feel bad, that is highly perspectival, Right? Because if you have someone who has 100 ulcers in their small bowel, certain your kale might knock them out for a day. Right. But for your average person, my wife is a dietitian and a nutritionist, and you know her, Becks, and she's, you know, she can eat a much wider variety of foods than I can. Now, thankfully, I've gone through three years of healing, and I've been able to expand. And so my diet looks very similar to, like an autoimmune paleo diet, right? So there's basic meat and starches, like sweet potatoes. I eat Japanese sweet potatoes every day and some white rice. And I tend to fast for about 18 hours a day. And what's been really helpful for me is I was obese at one point back in my teens, I lost the weight, and I gained it all back in my early 20s. And so I weigh. I'm a pretty thin guy now, 6 to 165, but I weighed 80 or 90 pounds more than I weigh right now. And it was all chin and gut, and I was very unhealthy. And I think the reason I set my gut up for dis ease was I was always looking for the quick fix. I was always looking for a solution. And so when I started getting this weird acne on my scalp in my early 20s, I went to a doctor who said, oh, yeah, we just will give you this benign antibiotic that you'll take daily. And so I took this antibiotic every day, Bactrim, for 12 years, and it totally carpet bombed my gut. Now it turns out my scalp acne was just a soy allergy. And even now, if I have a little bit of soy, my scalp will break out. As soon as I eliminated soy, I was fine. But the problem is, after 12 years of doing that, I set my gut up to be just a factory of dysbiosis. And so it has been a time for healing. The problem is, and that's why this latest book that we wrote, it really is about healing relationships in our life. Our relationship with money, our relationship with stuff, our relationship with ourselves, which is another way to say our health, mental health, physical health, et cetera. And healing is rarely about the doing. It's often about what you don't do. Ben, if you go break your leg skiing, there's not a whole lot you can do to heal the leg. It's much more about what you don't do. It's not, well, you need to go out and run four miles a day. That'll heal it quicker. No, no, no. That will often make it worse. And what I've realized is quite often we try to do a lot of things that actually prevent us from healing. And sometimes healing, whether it's your relationship with stuff or your relationship with your family, has to do with stepping back and considering less in different aspects of life.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that a lot of people who are struggling with weight or metabolic health like that whole idea of simplicity of diet and giving yourself permission to eat the same thing day in and day out is good advice, comma, needs to be balanced with the whole concept of seasonal eating. It's like, if there are certain things that grow in your area that you tend to be accustomed to in the spring or the summer, I think it's actually better to when those things are out of season, rather than ordering them from Amazon or whatever other source that you're getting your. Your crazy superfoods from, to instead try to just choose what's local or, you know, for example, for us, in the fall or winter, I am doing with that lunchtime salad a lot more like bone broth, fermented and canned foods that we've prepared in the spring and the summer, and a lot less of, like, the fresh veg or the fresh fruit or the fresh produce and the citrusy foods or the avocados and the coconuts, et cetera. And in the spring and summer, it varies a little bit. And when I travel, like, if I'm at a, let's say a place that's like a destination hot spot that's warm and tropical, it'll be more fruit and more starchy carbs, just because the body, when it gets exposed to sunlight and vitamin D, can handle more carbohydrates and fruits. And that's just an example of local seasonal eating and how the body responds very well to that type of approach. I interviewed Dr. Dan Pompa on my show about this whole idea of feast famine cycles and seasonal eating. And I think that you have to make sure that if you're eating the same thing day in and day out, that you also take into account seasonality and so it could be the same general structure of the meal, but different components based on what's growing in season near you. But what about exercise and workouts? You know, I, I personally have like, well, I have like a Word document that I keep on my computer. It's got like 30 key workouts in it. Just like my favorite workouts that I found over the years, just. And 30 sounds like a lot, but that's just, you know, I'm also in the, in the fitness world. So for me that's, that's not a whole lot compared to the apps that have hundreds and hundreds of different workouts on them, et cetera. I have like my 1 blood flow restriction band workout and my 3 airdyne combined with kettlebell workouts and then my vasper workout and my sauna routine, et cetera. And so when I'm every Sunday night I sit down and I put together my calendar for the week. And I do this for all the clients who I work with as well. I write down all their workouts for that whole week, typically on a Saturday or Sunday. And then there's just no decision making Fatigue when you wake up in the morning, aside from the fact that if you've had a crappy night of sleep or you're feeling more sore than usual, you may have to call an audible and kind of adjust the workout to be a yoga session or an easy walk or whatever. But for me it's very freeing to be able to say, okay, well, there's all these amazing sexy workouts in Men's Health magazine that I could try on for size and all these new workout tools and biohacks and fitness gear. But I like to keep things somewhat simple because the best workout is the one that you're going to do and often simplicity and, and even having those workouts memorized and already in your brain so you aren't having to dick around with your phone at the gym and you know, or have some magazine or book open trying to figure out which exercises to do that. That can be a, a very freeing way to kind of have a more minimalist fitness routine. But for you personally, have, do you have any keys that you adhere to when it comes to fitness? From a minimalist standpoint?

Yeah, I have a daily foundation and then we can build upon that foundation. But the daily foundation does not require a gym. It doesn't require any equipment, it doesn't require anything except me really. And ideally a pull up bar, although I can get around that if I go to a local park as well. And so every day I call it my 18 minute minimalist workout. And it is literally push ups, pull ups and squats until I'm exhausted. And so I'll do that every day. I tend to do it in the mornings and then I walk on top of that. So thankfully I live in Southern California, so I can walk pretty much anytime. And I tend to walk eight plus miles a day. And those two things keep me really fit, but also those are the things that I enjoy doing. And then I can supplement with some weight training once or twice a week on top of that. And I find that it's, well, as you said, incredibly simple. And the easier part here is that I tend to do it every day because everyone has 18 minutes a day. I can never have an excuse say, well, I just don't have the time to do this. It's 18 minutes and I can do it in my bedroom while I'm listening to a podcast. And if I want to build on top of that, if I want to Keep going beyond 18 minutes, great. But if not, I've set myself up with that foundation for the day. And at age 40, I'm more physically fit now than I was when I was 20.

Yeah, walking is underrated, by the way. That's that for me, if I can do like a 30 to 40 minute exercise routine on any given day, that kind of pushes me to the edge. And you know, whether it's high intensity interval workout or a strength training routine, I fill in the gaps and just walk everywhere and like that, that's when I feel at my healthiest. You know, you throw in a little sauna, a little cold plunge here and there, but basically hot and cold, tons of walking, and then 30 to 45 minutes of actual structured workout on any given day. And that's just perfect for me. And compared to the more gosh, totally non minimalist Ironman triathlon, Spartan race type of workouts I used to have to do with tons of decision making, fatigue and the need for three different pre workout blends to even get you going for your second workout of the day because you already did one in the morning and it's time for the afternoon routine. It just gets, it's dizzying and exhausting versus waking up. 30 to 40 minutes, get the thing done and then the rest of the day it's just walking. If you have time, getting the sauna, get in the cold pool. It's super simple. But it's another perfect example of where I think people listening in can free themselves. I think what happens is people Assume that because there's so much complexity and options out there when it comes to diet or workouts, they just assume everybody's switching things up all the time and has this amazing complexity, and they're getting magical results from all that. But ultimately, like, the. The fittest, healthiest people I know, like, it's. It's pretty dang simple. And even when it comes to lifestyle, I think it was James Altucher who I was talking to, and he. He said something on the show to the extent of, like, he likes to podcast, he likes to write, he likes to read books, and he likes to, like, play Monopoly or something like that. And he's like, and that's all I like to do. And I think that that can also be really freeing, just not having to have a ton of hobbies, maybe going deep in just a few, keeping yourself open to options in case there's something you want to dive into, like, you know, trying out frisbee golf or something like that. But, you know, I think that idea of too many hobbies or too many interests is another example where minimalism can start to suck the enjoyment out of life because you're just doing. Juggling all these things that you kind of sort of want to do, but none are true passion projects.

Yeah, we can call it experience consumerism in a way, or experiential consumerism. Right.

Somebody has a name for it.

Well, really what we're talking about here is all the stuff didn't make me complete. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to fill up my calendar with all kinds of calendar clutter. And in fact, in our culture, what do we say? It's a badge of honor. Oh, what are you up to lately? Oh, I'm just so busy. As though that were a good thing or a status symbol. Right. And it's fine if you want to be busy, but whenever I say I'm busy, what I'm really saying is my life is out of control. Everyone else is dictating my time, my calendar, what I get to do with my hours and minutes and days. And so much like James Altucher, who you described there, my calendar doesn't have a whole lot of stuff on it. And the reason it doesn't is because I say no unless I really, really want to say yes. I get to say yes to doing something like having this conversation with you. Yeah, this is a hell, yeah, I want to have this conversation with you. So great. Yeah, well, let's schedule an hour for it. But that way, I know for sure. Like, everything I'm doing is a. Hell, yeah. And if I start to feel that pang of, oh, why am I doing this, man? I can't believe I have to do this. Or. Well, that's an indicator. That's an indicator that I have committed to something. And I have to ask myself, why did I commit to it? Is it because I wanted someone else's respect or validation? I needed them to venerate me, so I said yes to their project or whatever it was. It doesn't mean that person's wrong. It just might mean that that obligation is wrong for me, because I have only 24 hours today, and I'd rather spend those hours also as an extreme introvert. I'd rather spend those hours with just me than being drained by being around a whole lot of other people. And so, yeah, you talked about simplicity versus complexity. You know, the word complex comes from the Latin root complect, which means to interweave two or more things together. And that's the problem in our lives. We have. We've complected our lives. We've interwoven a bunch of obligations and toxic relationships and debt and material possessions and houses and all of these things. Things. Mental clutter, emotional clutter. We've interwoven all of that into our lives. No wonder we're so stressed out. No wonder we're so miserable. No wonder we're so discontent. Simple, on the other hand, shares the Latin root simplex, which just means of one, one thing. And so it's funny, right, because we talk about all of our priorities. A few years ago, the United nations released their list of 163 priorities. Well, if you have 163 priorities, that just tells me you have no priority at all. In fact, that word priority didn't have a plural until the 20th century, because literally, priority means the first thing. So if you have 163the first things. That's nonsense.

Yeah. You know, with this whole minimalism idea, you know, would you say that there are other things in your life that you would classify in, in addition, like wardrobe, diet, exercise, decluttering, the home that you think is pretty dang minimalist relative to the average person. Like, big wins for you in the minimalism department that may have even surprised you when you incorporated them?

Yeah, I think so. So in the book, we talk about these seven essential relationships in our lives, because originally we want to write a relationship book, but then Ryan and I realized, like, oh, wait a minute, we screwed up all of our relationships in our 20s. Well, why is that? Is because we were so focused on the things that weren't actually important. There were all these other relationships we had to heal first before we could heal our relationships with people. And so because we're the minimalist, it sort of starts with our relationship with stuff and getting that under control. But then there's the relationship with the truth. We often lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves these disempowering stories about who we are or who we can be or the world that we need to live in. Or I'm supposed to be like, this person, or I should do that. I shouldn't do that. These are disempowering stories, and they're not rooted in the truth. And then, of course, the relationship with the self. So the person you spend the most time with is you. And yet the irony of that is.

If I were to meet someone who treated me the way that I treat myself, I would stop hanging out with that person immediately. We beat ourselves up. We treat ourselves poorly. The negative self talk, the self doubt, all of these things ruin our relationship with the most important person in our lives, ourselves. Going beyond that relationship with values, most people aren't clear with what their values are. Ryan and I identified these four different types of values. Kind of like if you're building a house, you have foundational values. So everyone has a very similar foundation. It's like health, relationships, creativity, contribution, et cetera, et cetera. We have the same five, six, seven foundational values. All foundations pretty much look the same. But beyond that, you have structural values, Right? And these are things that make life, well, your life, unique. Right? And so your structural values will determine how your life looks, how your house would look. Right. And then we have surface values. Those are sort of aesthetic things, the things that. That make life more interesting. Hobbies and interests and activities you like to do. And then beyond that, unfortunately, most of us are so focused on this fourth type of value. I call them imaginary values. You know, we. We say that, oh, yeah, my health is a value of mine, or my relationships are a value, but your real values are however you spend your 24 hours in a day. So if it's incessantly scrolling through TikTok, Nothing wrong with TikTok, but if I'm spending an hour or two a day, that just means that is the most valuable thing that is my priority in the moment. That is what I value the most. Scrolling TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or watching TV or whatever it might be. Nothing wrong with those things, but that is the thing I value the most. I may be forsaking the things I actually value. In fact, in the book we have this values worksheet where people can sort of work through and better understand those values not just for themselves, but so they can better interact with, with the partner in their life, their husband, their spouse, their significant other, whatever. Beyond. Go ahead.

No, no, go ahead and finish that thought. I had one, but I wanted you to finish that thought.

Well, beyond that. I think one of the biggest areas here is our relationship with money. So unfortunately, we have a ton of debt, a ton of discontent in our country. Why is that and all throughout the western world? Well, we're one of two countries in the world that has this 30 year mortgage, right? And now, in fact, in the United states there's a 40 year mortgage and we're advertised to more than ever. And so we're made to feel inadequate by corporations so they can sell us a solution to the problem they've created. I'm not against material possessions. I own plenty of things. I get a lot of value from those material possessions. The problem is when we think they're going to make us more complete. And the problem beyond that is when we go into debt, which is actually giving up a piece of our freedom in order to acquire things we don't need. You know, we're spending money we don't have to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. And so our relationship with money is totally dysfunctional. The average credit card debt in the United states is approaching $16,000 for indebted households. We spend $1.2 trillion a year on non essential goods. Most people don't even know what that means. A trillion dollars. Right. So to put that in perspective, if you went out and spent a dollar every single second, it would take you like 31,000 years to go spend a trillion dollars. And if you spend a million dollars every single day since the birth of Jesus, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion dollars by now. And yet we are spending a trillion, over a trillion dollars every year on non essential goods. We're spending more on watches and jewelry than we are on higher education. So not only are we overspending, we're misprioritizing our spending. And then we're also spending our time in weird ways. And we can never get a refund for misspent time.

You know, I feel like one of the things that's really been helpful for me when it comes to minimalism is simply stopping and slowing down and not only just planning out My day, like I talked about how I'll do on like a Sunday night, planning out the workouts for the week. But I sit at the beginning of the day and I don't have a super duper intense, like transcendental two by 20 minutes a day type of meditation practice. But in addition to sitting with my family for about 10 minutes in the morning for morning meditation and 5 to 10 minutes in the evening for our evening self examination and meditation, I typically have at the beginning of the day, after I've woken up and doing my stretching and everything, I will simply sit in silence for just like three to four minutes, just kind of thinking about what I'm about to do, like what I'm about to go accomplish for the day and how my day is structured and what activities I'll be engaged in. And what I find is that when I don't do that, I get in a checklist mode and, and I start just basically hoarding information and engaging in a very non minimalist type of day, but having a few moments of silence at the beginning of the day. And I think the reason that it seems to work for me is I really think it allows me to get connected to what the most important thing is for the day. And by focusing on those things that are most impactful and meaningful and important, I'm able to say no to and kind of ignore some of the clutter a little bit more efficiently. Do you personally do any type of like mindfulness or meditation practice to get yourself into the minimalism groove, so to speak?

I don't know that I would call it a practice per se, but yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of silence that interweaves my days. A friend of mine once say I speak only. He's a real sort of stoic person. He said I speak only when it adds more value than silence. And the irony of that is he doesn't speak very much. I think quite often we, we like to talk because we want to feel validated. We, we yearn for others respect, right? And that becomes a type of prison, right? Whenever we, we need someone else's validation, we need their appreciation, we need their love or their care, or we need them to think a particular way about us and it's a prison. But the irony of that is if they think a certain way about us, or feel a certain way about us, or have a certain expectation about us, those might be prison bars, but those are bars lining their cage, not mine. And so I get to walk away from someone else's. Expectations as soon as we realize the sort of facade of it. And, and one of the best ways to do that is to, yeah, to speak only when it adds more value than if I weren't to speak at all.

Do you, when it comes to like social events and things like that, especially living in la, I've run into this a lot. You inevitably get invited to a ton of meetups and parties and functions and coffee meetups and brain picking sessions. And I think that one of the reasons people ask me how I'm so hyper productive, I think one reason for that is I live in Spokane, Washington. There's not like a huge collective of fellow like minded entrepreneurs or podcasters or people who would constantly be kicking down my door to meet up. And also a lot less FOMO because there's just fewer social events going on in general that I feel like I need to be a part of or that I'd be missing out if I didn't join in on. And I think that's kind of a saving grace for me from a productivity and minimalism standpoint. Just living in a kind of a town where there's not a whole lot going on relative to a place like let's say LA or New York City or Austin or any of these other places where I visit, I'm like, how do people even do this? When you arrive in a town, your phone just blows up with all these people who just want to meet, meet, meet. Do you have any tips, especially as somebody who lives in la, for people who, who just need to need to say no to social functions more so they can do more of what, you know, Cal Newport would refer to as deep work. Yeah.

I'll give you two perspectives. And this is where the other half of the minimalist Ryan really comes in. He and I are radically different people, as you know. In fact, if you look at us like on a Myers Briggs personality test, we're literally exact opposites. I'm an istj, he's an enfp. But he's also an extreme extrovert. I'm an extreme introvert. And so when we lived in Missoula, Montana for five or six years, even there he constantly found ways to be engaged with the community. He stumbled his way into the lead role of a play and he had never even been in a play before. And so he will do all these things. In fact, he really thrives and gets his energy from interacting with other people. So every night he has something scheduled for himself because he truly enjoys that. He gets benefit from it. He finds value in those activities. The problem is, if I were to assign those same priorities to me, if I were to assign that same need to me, it would make me miserable. And I know this from firsthand experience because I thought I was supposed to be an extrovert. And so throughout my 20s, I did a lot of extroverted things with my career and networking events and co workers and buddies and going out to these events and constantly on the go. And it's not there was anything wrong with those things. I think Ryan thrives in an environment like that. But now I simply say no, unless I feel so compelled to say yes that it's a no brainer for me. And so I say no to 99.9% of the. The things are out there. And I really experienced the joy of missing out in the process.

Yeah, I think one of the toughest parts for me, you know, still, and this is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around and deal with, is a lot of people have my phone number, right? Like clients and friends, of course, and acquaintances and people are, you know, they'll ask me, hey, you know, they'll like text me a PDF of some blood test that they, they did and be like, hey, could you take a quick look at this and let me know what you think? And I, it's one of those things that would take me just two minutes, right, to open it up and look at and be like, oh, hey, you know, just, just keep your eye on this. And this is concerning whatever. But I get like literally over a dozen such texts a day and I kind of feel like an asshole when I reply. And I'm like, yeah, please just like go to my website and get a console and that'll, you know, allow me to free up time and be able to justify going through all of this. But I think a lot of people just, I guess what I'm trying to say is when my phone blows up like that, I think a lot of people don't realize that, yeah, this might seem like a tiny little one to two minute thing for me, but it's actually coming from, you know, 100 different people a day. And thus it adds up to the point where I could literally just be texting their friends all day, helping them out, or replying to Facebook messages from people who have these quick one off questions. So I really try and operate the way that I would want to be treated in situations like that. Like if I have a friend who's, let's say a plumber, and my toilet is acting funny. I don't text them and be like, hey, just a quick thing. My toilet is doing this funny thing. Could you just like, what would you do if you were me? I will literally tell that person, hey, where. Where can I go to. To hire you to pay you to actually come and do this thing for me? And I think that that's another thing that. That especially for professionals or people who help other people, like, you know, I would imagine doctors run into the same thing, right? Their friends asking them about health issues. And it's like, you could spend your entire day just helping people out for free because it. Because it feels like there's a little bit of angst, right? There's a little bit of hesitation when you're just like, no, I'm sorry, I can't do this because it's to your friend, right? Or to your acquaintance. And that's still a pain point for me.

Yeah. I think that part of that has to do with what one might call boundaries. Right. But I think the other thing is we really care about other people's opinions of us, and it's getting back to that thing. And so you might think, oh, I don't want to upset that person. Right. And I get it, because I feel the same way. Oh, if someone asked me for something, I say no. Why am I really saying no? Is because I want to be able to say yes to something I find to be more important. But if I say yes to them, it may be simply because I don't want to upset that person. But of course, we know what the truth is. You don't actually have the true power to change their mood from chipper to insecure, from happy to upset.

Because the problem is we've outsourced our happiness in a way. Right. Without realizing it, we sort of cling to the admiration of others. And what's the equation on that? If they like me, I'll be happy, and if they don't like me, I'll be unhappy. Well, that's not what love is. That's just relationship consumerism. And so the question I have to ask myself is, like, who told you that you need their approval? Even the people closest to me. You know, if it's my family or my spouse or my child, who told me that I'd be a lesser human being without their respect, right? No one.

That.

That's a. That's just a story that I tell myself. And sadly, I'm correct. If I need someone's acceptance, they will forever wield a rubber stamp over my Internal state. Right. But when I no longer need their validation, then I sort of recover that power that I relinquished in the first place. And in a weird way, if I don't need that validation, I reclaim my freedom. Now you might be asking, well, how is that possible? It's only possible. This is where minimalism comes in. It's only possible by letting go. And the next question is, well, how do you let go of the need for approval? Well, you don't need to do anything. The letting go is not about the doing, it's about. So maybe a better way to put that is letting go is not something you do, it's something you stop doing. You cease clinging to the toxic relationship or you cease clinging to the obligation. You cease clinging to the material possessions. You cease clinging to the need for approval. We stop clinging to that thing we think is going to make us better or more complete. Because in truth, whatever other people think about us, I don't have a whole lot of control over that. And if it's going to make me miserable, I mean, think about it. If you have the person listening to this has 500 Facebook friends and you try to appease just your Facebook friends, you're going to drive yourself crazy.

Yeah. And I guess.

If you're concerned about a relationship going south or you offending someone because you're unable to accommodate the quick requests that they're sending you throughout the day, then that's kind of on them. Like if they're going to forsake your friendship or be offended because you aren't able to step out and, and do a coffee brain picking session for, for the 18th time that week. It's, it's one of those things where it's really not your problem, it's their problem if they're offended by something like that. And I think you're right that a big part of it, especially for me, is like I'm a people pleaser and I don't like the idea that I turned somebody down or maybe potentially offended someone. But really, ultimately, if that person gets offended by me not having the time to address this quick little thing, that's again, it's more on them than it is on me. And I guess it's just that permission that you give yourself to not have to feel that stress and pressure to please people all the time. Which is why I think probably your next book should, should be something like how to be a Minimalist Asshole, something along those lines. Yeah, but, but in the meantime, Love People, Use Things is, I think an even better title and that this, this new book, I really liked it. You know, you guys sent me up a copy and we, I, I didn't delve into everything in the book, honestly, especially the seven areas that you get into in terms of, of decluttering and minimalizing. But I really recommend it to people. I think it'd be a refreshing read and especially needed in this era where we're just, gosh, bombarded all the time with so much stuff. So if you want less stuff and less clutter and less stress and less debt and discontent than a life with fewer distractions, I'd recommend that you check out Joshua and Ryan's book and I'll link to it if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Minimalist also links to to you guys just have a fantastic podcast and I've been on it a few times. So I'll link to the episodes that I did with you guys and also all of your books over there at the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Minimalist Josh, I can't wait to come down and check out the new studios as well. Sounds like you got some good minimalist feng shui going on down there, Ben.

I can't wait to send you some PDFs via text message.

Yes, send me lots of PDFs, lots of little requests and if possible, please ask me for few times this week if you can pick my brain or have a quick coffee. That'd be amazing.

That's gonna have to be the inside joke. I'm just gonna randomly just text you.

That's great.

Thank you brother. I appreciate it.

Grab coffee. All right, man. Well folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Joshua Fields Milburn signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be. And just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.

Sa.