How Minimalism Can Improve Your Relationship With Money & People w/Joshua Fields Millburn EP 1161

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This is episode number 1161 with the minimalist Joshua Fields Milburn.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Welcome back everyone. Today's guest is Joshua Fields Milburn and he is a New York Times bestselling author, host of the popular Netflix documentaries Minimalism and the most recent documentary, the Minimalists. Less is now with his business partner Ryan. They're known as the Minimalists, where they help inspire people to live meaningful lives with Less. He's written a new book called Love People Use Things because the Opposite Never Works and I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and I think you're going to love this as well because in this episode we discuss how Joshua was able to understand and help his depression that he was facing the benefits of minimalism and organizing your life, how to support people around us without trying to fix them, how to heal your relationship with money. And this was a big part of this interview. The best minimalist budgeting tips and so much more. Every time I think about downsizing and really upgrading quality things that I want in my life by downsizing the things that are not supporting me and making sure I let go of those things that don't support me, it always helps me have more energy. It always helps me have more clarity, more focus, and really consistent motivation in my life. But sometimes we get distracted because we're so cluttered in our life. And so that's what this is all about, optimizing through minimalism. And if you're enjoying this or you think you know someone that would enjoy this as well, then make sure to share this message with someone. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this podcast or just use the link lewishouse.com 1161 and text a few friends this episode and a big shout out to the Review and Fan of the week. This is from Dr. Childare, who shared a review over on Apple Podcast. That said, I really enjoy this podcast most of the time. I think that the Science of Success episodes are really useful and I love the guests who challenge conventional wisdom and offer fresh ideas to broaden my perspectives. Even though I am older at 64 than most of the folks who listen, I find inspiration in so many of the guests and Lewis is very real as a host and not afraid to admit when he doesn't know something. So Dr. Chill Dare, thank you so much. Yes, I'm here as a guinea pig. I'm here to live and learn and share the things that I don't know as well. So thank you for your review. And again, you guys can leave a review over on Apple Podcast right now if you want the chance to be shouted out as the fan and the.

Review of the week.

And in just a moment, I bring you the one and only Joshua Fields Milburn.

Welcome back everyone, to the School of Greatness. We've got Joshua Fields Milburn in the house. My man, my man. Excited about this. Away the minimalists in town. You got a new book called Love People Use Things because the Opposite Never Works. And the last time I had you on that was your third truth of the three truths. I don't know if you remember that, but that was one of your main truths. So it's cool that you made your Truth a book title and I'm excited about this. I want to talk about personal finance as a minimalist and minimalist budgeting Tips and some other things. But first off, I want to. I want to hear about the biggest challenge you've had to overcome in the last few years. Because you write a lot about the hardships that you've gone through in your life in this book. Shame. You've dealt with things you're not proud of. What's the biggest obstacle or challenge you've had to overcome or thing you've had to bring to light?

What a great question. I wrote about this in the book. I've never talked about this in an interview before though. So three years ago, it'd actually be three years next month. I was down in Brazil. Ryan and I, the other minimalist, were down in Brazil at a speaking gig and it was amazing.

Rio, Sao Paulo. Where were you?

Sao Paulo. Yes. Yes, it was great. And unfortunately I drank the water in the hotel and it was not filtered water and I got a parasite that just ravaged me. I mean, it was awful. And it was awful for many months after that. It destroyed my microbiome and it made me really appreciate, you know, all of the cliches, health is wealth. There's this Confucius quote that's in the book that a healthy man wants 10,000 things, a sick man wants but one.

Yes. Yeah.

And man, did I begin. I knew that intellectually, but I really understood it viscerally.

You experience it, nothing else matters.

Yes. Yeah. Because I mean, my world came crashing down. I was, I was not able to work nearly as much. I wasn't able to contribute to my family the same way, contribute beyond myself. I just didn't feel like me. And it's been a three year journey. I'm not even 100% out of it, really. I'm about 80% out of it now. But there are still days where it is rough and what you realize is like, oh, everything else is window dressing, man. If you have your health.

Yes.

All the other stuff, it's nice, you can enjoy it, but you can't enjoy it without your health.

That's true, man. Okay, so that was the biggest challenge you've had to overcome without.

That's the biggest challenge I had to overcome in my entire life in 40 years on this earth. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, so the summer of 2019, this was about a year after that happened. I went into a deep depression.

Really?

Yeah. I took some antibiotics to try to deal with some of these parasitic infections and it just, it ravaged me. It destroyed me. First time in my life I actually experienced deep depression. Not sadness, not grief.

What does deep depression feel like for you?

It feels like you're trapped in a Mason jar and you can't get out of it. You're just in this giant Mason jar and you can see freedom perfectly through the glass. Because I know it wasn't that long ago I was in perfect health and everything was just right, or so I thought.

And.

And then immediately thrust into this the. The depths of a. Of a depression so big, so overwhelming, it blankets everything in your life. And I'm. I tend to be. You've known me for a while. I'm a pretty optimistic person, and I try to bring that into every positivity and everywhere I go, but it was. I couldn't even bring it into that Mason jar that I was trapped in.

What are some things that you did to help you get out of the depression or at least open the top of the jar? I don't know what you had to do first. The first steps. What are the things you did, and what are some things people can do if someone they're close to is experiencing that?

Yeah. I experienced a healing over these last three years. I think one of the things we look at is we try to fix our problems. How do I fix this? But it doesn't work that way. Or how do I improve my situation? But of course, if you break your arm, you're not talking about how do I. How do I improve my arm? I just want to heal the arm. And so I think sometimes a lot of it has to do with what we don't do. We're so caught up in the doing. How do I do this to improve my life, to fix my life, to solve my problem? The thing I learned deeply over the last few years is that the solution is often the problem. And what I mean by that is like. Or the prescription is the problem. You can. You can say that as a metaphor, but also literally. Like, in my case, a prescription sort of ravaged my gut even more. Quite often, we're trying to fix things through how to's and prescriptions, through more doing. Doing, doing. And I found that sometimes it's about doing less.

Yeah.

Because doing less isn't about the doing. It's about the less side. That's how we heal. Ryan, he broke his back. Five vertebrae in his back skiing a couple years ago.

That's gotta be painful.

I mean, the biggest bruise I've ever seen in my life. And I think first inclination, because he's a very type A, I'm going to get this done. How do I improve this? How do I fix this? And the doctor's like, you fix it.

By healing, by doing nothing.

By doing nothing.

Sitting, resting.

That's how you heal. And quite often it was like, I can't do my way out of depression. I'm going to have to sit through this. There's an old Buddhist maxim about, before enlightenment, I was depressed. After enlightenment, I was still depressed. And yet how we react to that changes over time. If we see it for what it is, then it doesn't have the same power over us anymore.

Yeah. So how did you learn to heal?

I learned that the more action I did, the farther I got away from healing. Like, if you break your leg and you keep running on it, it's going to hurt. Right. And so, so I learned that in order for me to heal, I had to set aside the programming, the preconceived notions that I'm going to improve my way out of this.

I was already by doing something right.

Yeah. Think about a newborn baby. I've got a daughter now, she's eight. But when she was a baby, they're born, they're perfect. Right. We don't think about improving a baby. That sounds crazy. If you had a kid next year and I hey, Lewis, how are you planning on improving your child? You'd be like, what are you talking about, you weirdo? And yet we do that to ourselves all the time. What are the seven ways that I can improve my depression? Right. And I understand why we want that, because I'm a problem solver. But quite often the solution ends up being the problem. Because it's like in medicine they call it palliative care. Right. It's like just, it's putting a balm on the pain. It relieves the symptoms, but it doesn't actually cure you.

Doesn't heal the root.

Exactly. And so the solving of the problem actually has to do with identifying, understanding the root of the problem.

So what was the root for you?

The root for me, I mean, was the. This terrible parasite infection that I had. So I had to deal with that. And so I've worked with some great infectious disease doctors to work through that. But it also made me realize that a lot of the things that were making me anxious were causing the discontent, the anxiety, the overwhelm, all of these sort of negative, I say negative and quotes, negative emotions that we try to suppress, we try to avoid. We run away from those things. We run away from misery and we seek pleasure. It's even. It's in the fiber of our country here in America. Right. The pursuit of happiness. It's your right to pursue happiness? Well, what kind of nonsense is that? The pursuit of happiness is actually the problem. You can be happy, but the pursuit is making us miserable. Happiness, it's already there. You see the baby, Just be it. Yes, it's already there. Happiness can't be pursued. It can only be uncovered. And we cover it up now with my work with the Minimalist. We talk about how we cover it up with material clutter, financial clutter, but then also all this other clutter, relationship clutter, emotional clutter, spiritual clutter. There's all this clutter in our lives. No wonder we're not happy. We've covered up the innate happiness that already exists inside us.

Yeah, what's the difference between these clutters and the essential relationships?

So in the book, we talk about what we wanted to write. A regular relationship book. Our first three books, we had this book called Minimalism, where it was about our values and, and focusing on living a meaningful life with less. And we wrote this memoir called Everything that Remains. We moved to this cabin in the middle of Montana, nowhere. And it was about leaving the corporate world, becoming these suit and tie corporate guys to being minimalists, walking away from that world, walking away from all the so called success and achievement. And then our third book was an essay collection. We had written 150 essays and published that about intentional living. 12 different areas of intentional living. We said, okay, well, we don't want to rewrite about the things we've already written about. What haven't we written about so far? We really hadn't written about a deep dive into relationships. And so we wanted to write a traditional relationship book. Hence love. People use things because the opposite never works. We're so busy using things and loving people. And so looking at it through the minimalist lens, we realize like, oh yes, it's about our relationship with other people, but what are the things that destroy our relationship with people? It's our screwed up relationships with our stuff. So it starts there. We have a relationship with our stuff. And as a minimalist, I'm not against stuff. In fact, I want to enjoy my stuff. I want you to enjoy your stuff. The problem is it's often the opposite. The stuff, the objects of our desire have become the objects of our discontent. We get that thing we thought we wanted, but the thing we want is never the thing we want. We want the feeling that we think it's going to bring out of us. Right?

It's funny, I was having a conversation with, I can't remember who it was recently, but Someone older, an older mentor of mine who was like, you know, a lot of people, you know, in their 20s to 50s, they want to acquire a bunch of things. But then when you're after 60 and 70, you want to like downgrade. You just want to have less. Yes. You've got to manage so much stuff, all your properties everywhere and manage all your expenses. You just want to have a peaceful life.

Right.

You require. But then later you're like, how do I get rid of all this?

And now people are recognizing this earlier and earlier because they're seeing the discontent in their parents or their grandparents or whomever. It's funny, when we do these tours, we're gonna go on our 10th tour in 11 years. It's called the Love People Use Things tour to talk about the book and do live podcasts and stuff. But the thing that I noticed is our older events, we had parents where they bring their kids, they drag their kids. Hey, you kids need to learn about this. And now, after our films being on Netflix and stuff, kids are bringing parents. We have 13 year olds who are bringing their 35 year old or 45 year old parents saying, hey, mom and dad, I'm learning this now. And so they're becoming the teachers of their parents. So the stuff is sort of the initial relationship because our material possessions are physical manifestation of what's going on inside us. You look around your house and you have a ton of external clutter. Nothing wrong with that, nothing evil about that, no shame in it. But it's probably a sign of a lot of internal clutter, mental clutter, psychological clutter, spiritual clutter, relationship clutter, career clutter. There's all this clutter that's going on inside us and it manifests outwardly because, well, we think we have this void. I need to fill it. In our culture, what we try to do is we fill it with stuff. So it's really about healing our relationship with stuff. We can talk a lot more about how to do that. I've got some basic tactics to help out. We have 16 rules for living with less in the book. I'm happy to go through some of those with you, but let's talk about some of the other relationships.

If before we get to the next relationship, what happens if we have stuff that's around our house?

What is that?

That's not organized, that's not intentional? What is that saying? And what happens when we start to organize every area of our living space with everything that's intentional and we declutter? What happens to us on the other.

Side, I think organizing is actually the problem.

Oh, okay. Just throw it away.

Well, not throw it away, but just because you're not getting value from something doesn't mean someone else won't get value from it. Right? Yeah. I'm sure at some point you've had different camera equipment in this studio. Right. And you upgraded your equipment at some point.

What sort of way you sell it.

Or you and someone else. Now you. Or you could do something else. You could put it in a drawer and organize it.

Right.

And it would be nice. You never use it and no one else gets the benefit of using it either. But by letting go of the excess, you're able to contribute beyond yourself. Other people are able to get value from the things that are junk to you. And so, yes, we have this relationship with our stuff and our relationship. We think the way to fix it is to organize the things. Now, in my past life, when I was. When I had a lot of stuff, you know, the average American household has 300,000 items in it.

Oh, my gosh.

And then you have storage units for the extra items.

That's right, yeah.

Because it's stored in there all year.

It won't fit in the 4,000 square foot house. And so I have to get a storage locker. Oh, and now I can't even park my car in the garage. Because you're from the Midwest, we're both from Ohio. You know what it's like, all these garages full of stuff. That'd be wonderful if all these things are making us joyous and blissful and tranquil and experiencing permanent equanimity. But the opposite is true. We're so stressed out, and so what do we try to do? We say, okay, the stuff. I thought I bought it because I thought it was going to make me happy. You know what's going to make me happy? If I just organize all of it? Well, no, then you organize all of it and it's like, that's just well planned. Hoarding.

Yeah, it's.

You know, we see the TV show Hoarders and you see people with stuff strewn all across the their living room. And we recognize that is a type of mental disorder. But Ryan and I did an episode of the Minimalist podcast recently on hoarding, and we identified there are five stages of hoarding clinically. So the ones you see on tv, the fifth stage, that's where people. Yeah, it's like they're hoarding feces from pets or they have pets in the freezer and things like that. That's not most of us, but most of us are stage one or stage two hoarders. A stage one hoarder just has a bunch of things they never use. Well, isn't that most people?

Right. A stage one hoarding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so most of us are stage one hoarders. I certainly have those tendencies. Even still, I want to buy things I'm never going to use because I see it in an ad and I'm enticed by it. A stage two hoarder will sometimes have things that get in the way of the things that are useful to them. And so when you think about that is like, oh, as a minimalist, I actually get far more value from the few items that I own because I don't have a bunch of excess that's getting in the way of that. So organizing your stuff is not the key. The best way to organize your stuff is to get rid of. Yeah. To get rid of anything that's not serving a purpose for you.

Interesting. Okay, that's stage two. What, stage three.

Yeah. So stage three, hoarding. You start to block off rooms occasionally where you can't. You can't even get into a room. Stage four is where you see, like, paths where you can just get through the stuff and then. Yeah. Stage five is where it's. It's really.

You can't sleep.

Yeah.

It's on your bed.

Yeah.

No space.

That's right. That's right. And so we have these stages of hoarding. We think, well, I'm not like that. It's like, well, do you think they got there overnight? I don't think everyone.

Right.

And by the way, if your stuff is making you happy, I'm not here to tell you to get rid of it. Quite the opposite. If you're using your things to enhance your experience of life. You have a really nice car, Louis. I've been in it before. It's great. You seem to really enjoy that car. You get value from it. That's awesome. Let's celebrate that. But I used to have three luxury cars. Well, why? Because of the narrative. I told myself, I'll buy the Lexus. It'll make me a better version of me. It'll complete me. It'll improve me. These are all lies that we tell ourselves, Alexis.

The pursuit of perfection. Or is that Mercedes?

I think it is, yes.

Pursuit of perfection.

Which. Nonsense. Right. It's a nonsense statement. You can be perfect. Perfect is already there. As we just mentioned, the baby is perfect. We've just imperfected ourselves throughout our entire lives. Nature is perfect. And yet we've gotten so far away from our nature that we are miserable. And so the first Lexus didn't do it for me. You know what will? The second Lexus. So I got a second Lexus and then I got a Land Rover and I realized like, oh, maybe it isn't the next car, the next purchase, the next thing. Happiness is not around the bin, right? And so I had a unfortunate relationship with stuff because I grew up really poor. A lot of abuse in the household, a lot of poverty, food stamps, government assistance. Thought the reason we were unhappy is because we didn't have a whole lot of stuff. And so of course getting all the right things will make me happy. That didn't work. Now the problem is we think that decluttering all the stuff will also make us happy. No, no, no, no, no. Because you can get a dumpster, throw all your stuff in it, and afterward you can be like, well, wait a minute, where's the happiness is because the pursuit of happiness also doesn't work, clearing the clutter does. What? It makes room to focus on what is actually meaningful to you.

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For details so how do we find happiness?

Yeah, it's already there. It's uncovering it, right? And so recognizing. Think about the last three times you were the the happiest. Now don't mistake pleasure with happiness. I'm not against pleasure. I'm all for pleasure.

What's the difference?

Okay, so pleasure is an ephemeral pursuit. I can have pleasure right now. I can go eat a piece of chocolate cake right now. Delicious pleasure. Yeah, I'm going to get pleasure. If I do that every day for every meal, I'm going to get sick. And I think that is true. There's nothing wrong with the piece of chocolate cake when it becomes the primary calories in your diet.

Yeah, that's bad.

And as a metaphor, I think the same thing is true. There's nothing wrong with stuff. When we get all of our joy or pleasure from the stuff, we mistake the pleasure for joy, by the way, that's not real joy. Then we get really confused. We think those things are going to make us happy, but no, they're not going to uncover the happiness that's already inside you.

Yeah. What about the relationship with truth?

Yeah. We lie to ourselves a lot, don't we? A lot. We lie to other people, but I think it's mostly because we lie to ourselves.

I'll tell you what, man. Over the last few years, I just made a decision. I'm gonna fully tell myself the truth and tell other people the truth. And I used to kind of, like, just not share certain things. I didn't think I was lying, but I was kind of, like, holding back, you know, And I would hold back on myself. But the more I do with myself, I just feel so much more at peace. I feel more at peace. Doesn't mean I'm living a perfect life every day and then, like, doing all the things I want to do. But I'm honest with, like, okay, I didn't sleep well for the last week. I didn't eat well for the last week. I'm not lying to myself that I'm in great shape. I'm being honest with myself. Okay. I did this, and I need to get back on track.

Yeah. And you don't have to react emotionally to it.

No. You don't have to beat yourself up.

No, no. In fact, you can look at it, and I assume there was some tipping point or somewhere where you were like, hey, I'm just gonna make this conscious decision because I'm discontented. I'm not at peace.

Absolutely. That's what I felt.

Yeah. And so there's a particular kind of freedom in knowing that you're always telling the truth.

Freedom.

Yeah.

Incredible freedom.

Now, the freedom doesn't mean it's easy. No.

Doesn't mean it's easy. And it takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself and other people.

We value freedom, and. And yet many of us will. Will kindly give it up in order for a temporary pleasure.

Yes.

Right. And freedom. You know, there's all kinds of platitudes about how freedom isn't free, but the most precious kind of freedom is awareness. And what you're doing by telling the truth is you're aware of the way things are. Not. It's not about how you wish they were to love someone. Here's a good example. We often talk about love. Most people have no idea what love is. Love is simply to see someone for who they are without trying to change them. That's all love is.

And most people aren't living in real love then, because they're always trying to change other people.

It's transactional. Right. I will love you. Yes. Which is an oxymoron. Conditional love doesn't exist because trying to change someone is unloving. It's saying, hey, I will like you more if you do these seven things. I've come up with this list of expectations. And if you want to be miserable, have high expectations of everyone around you. You, if you want to be at peace, have high standards for yourself and no expectations for those people.

So why is. Why is trying to change someone unloving? And what if someone in your life is, you know, not a good person to you or lying to you or hurting you? Do you just continue to love them unconditionally?

Yeah. So you can love someone from a distance. Our friend Rob Bell talks about this. And so loving someone doesn't mean that you are tolerating their behavior. And just because you don't tolerate their behavior doesn't mean that you can change it. Because temporarily, you can put up some conditions that will change their behavior. But you know this from all the people you've talked to about habit change and all this other stuff. Changing one's habit doesn't actually change your life. Meaning it doesn't change the person. When the person is changed, when they change on their own by their own volition, not a forcing of change, then a permanent change happens, and then the habits tend to change on their own. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Once you made that habit change of lying, it wasn't about, hey, I'm going to spend the next 17 days not lying. It was. You had an understanding.

Absolutely. Awareness.

Awareness of the freedom, of the peace that that brought you. And then the how takes care of itself. If you know the why, the how takes care of itself.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And so I think if you're talking about changing someone else, I get the inclination. Especially you and I, we're problem solvers. I know the four things you could do and your life would be better, but that's really me putting myself on a pedestal. And we did a podcast episode about this recently called the Advice Epidemic. And it's almost as though the helpful man can't help himself. He feels compelled to sort of drag an eagle out of the sky to prevent it from falling. And it's like, well, wait a minute. That ego doesn't want to be torn out of. Out of the sky. And that's what we're doing to a lot of the people we think we love. I'm placing myself on a pedestal, which is also unloving.

The answer is, you don't. So let me tell you what you need to do.

Yeah. Subordinate yourself to me, and I will fix you. That's creating more problems.

What can we do to empower someone close in our life, a friend, a family member, or a loved one who is struggling, and we don't want to see them suffer anymore? What can we do to empower or support or lift up without trying to fix?

You can help them understand what is their outcome? And then also, there's two questions I always ask. What is the outcome? Or what are you hoping to gain out of whatever you're doing? If it's a behavior, whatever. Now, some people, they may want to change their behaviors intellectually, but they don't understand in their heart yet. They don't have it in their viscera. Right. And so if you understand something intellectually, you might change a few things, but you're not actually making the change. The question I have here is, how do we help them understand this change in their heart that comes through awareness? A few questions. One is, what do you hope to gain? Or what is your outcome here? Then second is, what are you willing to tolerate in your life? Because whatever you're willing to tolerate, that's what you're going to get. Anything you're not willing to tolerate, you're not gonna make changes. Yeah. You're not gonna have that in your life anymore. On a long enough timeline, that's gonna be gone from your life altogether. Imagine if you have an abusive partner who's abusing you every day. At some point, Louis, you're going to walk away from that. If it's verbal abuse, you're gonna say, hey, I'm no longer willing to tolerate this behavior. I can still love you. I can still not try to change you. I can see you for who you are, but I'm gonna have to do that from a distance.

Right. It's hard to do.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But what's the alternative?

Pain.

Sticking around, Suffering pain.

Yeah. It's sticking around out of a pious sense of obligation.

And if trying to be a good person or trying to, like. Yeah. Show you care.

Yeah. Also, so caring is different from loving, but it Is often inspired by loving someone. Because if you really. If I see you for who you are without trying to change you, that I care about you.

Right.

Love inspires so many things, but it's not the same thing as conditions, as expectations. It's not even the same thing as hope. We have these words where we think about, like, well, I can be hopeful for you or whatever, but that's not. That's also not loving. Hope, in a way, is also a type of expectation.

I know. I hope they change their potential. They could change, right?

Yeah. But now all of a sudden, I've made that a condition for loving you.

You got to meet people where they're at and accept them where they're at, not accept them to where you think they could be.

Right? Right. Because you know what? They may have potential for something else, but right now they are where they.

Are at, and you got to accept them where they're at.

That's right.

Or don't be in their life or be in their life from afar or in a different relationship, you know?

Yeah. You can read. You know, in dating parlance, they call this defining the relationship, but maybe it makes sense to do that for all of our relationships. What are my expectations of you? What are your expectations of me? What am I willing to tolerate in this relationship? Because I tell you this, the moment you say, okay, I've been tolerating something for way too long. I'm no longer willing to tolerate this. It will change if you are honest about that boundary, about establishing a boundary and saying anything beyond this, I can't tolerate anymore. It's going to change, right?

How will it change? By you leaving or changing the relationship or by that person changing or. What do you mean?

Either way, it is definitely going to change. Right? No. No person has the power to upset you.

Right.

And it's weird to hear that because people upset me, but they don't. It's how I interpreted their behavior always upsets me, and I can upset myself. But even then, if you see that for what it is that I'm upset by my cultural programming, by societal programming or my peers or whatever, that can drop that upset, that anxiety, it doesn't exist in the real world. It's only a story that I'm telling myself.

Absolutely. And what about the relationship with self?

Yeah. So I think a lot of that is about our own internal relationship. The person you spend the most time with is you. And we have a tenuous relationship. Not only do we lie to ourselves, but there's this great Matt Nathanson Line, the singer, songwriter, he said in a song, he said, I would kill anyone who treats you as poorly as I do.

Oh man.

And isn't that true? Like if, if someone self talked or the way I self talk myself, Someone talked to me like that. Oh man, I wouldn't keep that person in my life. Right. And yet we tolerate that for so long. And so maybe there's something about not being willing to tolerate the way that I've been treating myself, the way I've been act me by the way, I would never treat other people the way that I treat myself. That would seem abusive. But we're abusing ourselves every day.

Yeah.

And sometimes.

When did you stop abusing yourself?

It was a gradual transition into understanding. Like oh, this is something that I'm doing to myself. Because, because before it was about blaming, it was first it was blaming other people or other circumstances. Right? Oh, this is your fault this happened. But a true sign of maturity is what is not blaming anyone, including blaming yourself and not even blaming the cultural programming, but understanding the programming you've been given since birth. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, your community had a particular way of living and they instilled that in you because they thought it was the best thing there was. They thought there were a lot of things that you should do. And we end up shoulding all over ourselves as they say, because of everyone else's expectations, you should do this, you shouldn't do that, you should eat plant based, you should. And whatever it is. Some of these things might improve your life. But there are actual, there aren't any shoulds in life. There are a whole bunch of coulds, a lot of possibilities for you and your future. And understanding the self chapter, in many ways you could even consider it a health chapter in the sense not just diet and exercise though we talk about the minimalist diet in there and so those things are important. But you've had Matthew Walker on your show recently. And so sleep, understanding how light affects us and our circadian rhythms, our entire relationship with ourselves, we have divorced ourselves from, from nature. One thing that we never do anymore now is grounding. We never walk on the actual ground. Have you heard of Clint Ober? I'd love for you to have a conversation with him.

Clint Ober?

Yeah, he wrote a book called Earthing that totally changed my life and my relationship to nature because I've always had an allergy to like people walking barefoot. Look at these hippies or whatever, you know, I just never really resonated with me. I grew up, there was a Lot of concrete and not a whole lot of nature. And, and, and I looked at it like, oh, like I don't kind of get this whole people walk around barefoot. And then I realized like, oh, in 1960 we develop rubber and now we have rubber. I mean, my shoes have rubber soles on them. Right. We inadvertently disconnected ourselves from the very thing that we live on, from the earth and the negative ions. Now there's so many studies, like scientific studies. This is what got me on board. In that book he talks about all of these studies that they've been doing that help us identify how disconnected we are. All of these inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases, a lot of them have to do because we're not grounded ever. I mean, think about it. We're many stories up in buildings all day. When are we actually touching the ground? I mean, I go to the beach all the time now. I walk barefoot through West Hollywood in people's yards just to feel the grass. Yes. Yeah. And I sleep on a grounding mat at night now on top of my bed, my normal bed. I'm not doing anything insane, but it has totally changed my life. And my wife, who is a paragon of health, she is a dietitian, a nutritionist. I mean, you know, Vex, she's amazing. Even her sleeping on a grounding mat at night and grounding more has changed her sleep and everything. And so it's probably the most important discovery I found in the last several years is reconnecting with the earth in a way that isn't. Woo woo. It's not a bunch of nonsense. It can be if you want it. Fine. I don't have judgment around it, but for me it took understanding the science behind it to really get on board.

Let's talk about money. This is a topic everyone seems to.

Want more of, a relationship with money.

Yeah, we want more money.

Yes. I listened to an interview you did with Sadhguru recently. He was asking you about money. Right. And even then, like, we don't have a. We just have this sort of nebulous idea because when you and I were both broke.

Yeah.

A million dollars was like, hey, a million dollars, Right.

Life changing.

It's the ultimate. And then, you know, a lot of broke people who are millionaires now, broke in many ways. One is they have a ton of debt. Now personally, I don't ever want debt in my life ever. So I have no car debt, no house debt, no debt, period. Now I could see circumstances where it makes sense to have a mortgage and things like that, but the Average American has four credit cards and his or her wallet. $16,000 in credit card debt. 1 in 10Americans has 10 or more active credit cards. I was one of them in my corporate days. I had 14 credit cards in my wallet.

14.

14. Because every time you go somewhere, oh, Banana Republic. Cool.

Let me get the credit card.

Let's take it. 10%. I'd be stupid not to do it. No, I'd be stupid to do it because now I'm spending stupidly. I'm buying a bunch of things with money I don't have to impress people I don't even know and buying things I don't even need.

Right?

Things I don't even want. It's, do I want this or does someone else want this for me, it was the advertiser that wants it for me. Or is it, you know, someone on the street who was wearing it and I sold on them and now. Or I saw it on a mannequin and it's an aspirational purchase. Oh, maybe I'll look as good as the guy in the Lululemon ad. Nothing wrong with Lululemon. But the thing is, aspiring to be a different person based on my purchases is a recipe for discontent. Our money is one of the things that makes us most miserable, our relationship with money. So in the book, we talk about healing that relationship with money, understanding the relationship with money.

How do we heal it?

The first thing we do is we realize that our life is out of control. So we are spending money that isn't ours. Right? And it's so much easier to part with the plastic than it is to part with hard earned cash. And so paying with things with cash was one of the first things I did immediately. Second thing I did was I got a budget together and actually stuck to the budget. Stuck to the budget. Because I realized that if I'm willing to tolerate reckless spending, the way to not tolerate it is to budget for everything. Because if every dollar has a home, in fact, our friend Dave Ramsey, they have an app called EveryDollar, and it's a great. I used to just use spreadsheets back in the day, but now the EveryDollar app is just a great way. It's a free app people can download and you can have a budget right there on your phone. Every single thing that you spend money on. And by the way, by tracking these things now, you add a little bit of friction to the process. People hear that word, friction like it's a bad word. But think about that. If we don't have Any friction, we lose traction. You're an ice rink. You're skating all over the place. And that's what we're doing with our purchases. We've removed all the friction. You hop on Amazon, same day delivery, one click purchase, it'll be here. Right now, all I have to do is think about it. It's going to show up on my doorstep. It's that easy. Removed all the friction. Well, no wonder we're broke. We're not just broke, we're broken. We're broken by our spending habits. We're buying a bunch of things that we thought we wanted, but the things that we want aren't the things that we wanted. Everything I ever wanted, or so I thought, ended up being everything I didn't want and ended up getting rid of anyway.

What's the thing you wanted?

Yeah, the thing that I wanted was the thing that I value, which is peace.

Yes.

And it doesn't mean that you should value peace. Maybe you value something else. You know, we have friends who are rock climbers and venture. They are thrill seekers. Maybe you value that. But that's probably still not the Lexus or whatever. And again, nothing wrong with a Lexus. If you enjoy it as a purchase, wonderful. If you can afford it, wonderful.

It brings you value and peace.

That's right.

Great.

Yeah. But if it's doing. If it's blocking that peace, then it's.

Causing more stress than peace, then what's the point?

Exactly. Why? And if I value peace now. If you value stress now that sounds weird, but there are some people we know who value stress, who are really. Michael Jordan was a person I think valued stress and performed really well. He didn't perform in a peaceful state. Right. And so be honest about what you perform. If you value stress, then don't get stressed out about it. Yeah, right.

Right. That's true. Enjoy the process. So how do we heal our relationship with money?

There's some questions.

Not improve or fix it.

Yeah, yeah. It has to do with a deeper understanding of our relationship with money. So some questions we ask in the book or whenever I'm getting ready to spend some money. There's several questions we ask, but I'll give you a few of them here. One of those questions is, can I afford it? Now there's two. This is actually two questions. One is, can I afford the actual price tag? So if I want to buy this Widget and it's $100 and I've got 100 bucks in my pocket, great. It means I guess I can afford it. Now if I have to put it on a credit card, I can't afford it. By definition, if you have to put something on a credit card, you have to finance it. I don't care if it is an SUV or if it is carpeting for your home, whatever it might be. If you have to finance it, you.

Can'T afford it unless you have. I mean, I have a credit card that I pay off every month because I have the cash. Yeah, I use credit card for the business.

That's right.

But I don't have to finance it because I have the money.

You don't have to. You choose to. And that's the difference. If you pay it off every month, that's, that's not.

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I and by the way, you could pay cash for it right there at the moment, of course, you're deciding to do it for points and business expense, all that other stuff. So that's a strategic decision. But you can still afford you have actual cash for it.

You've got the money. Yes.

And I think that's the thing to think about. So can I afford the price? But then we never think about the actual price of our purchases, which go way beyond the price tag.

What's that?

So let's think about it. If you buy something and it has to sit in your home now, so there's the price of the space that it takes up.

Storing it.

Yeah, there's more square footage now, buying one thing, not a big deal. But over time, having 300,000 items means I need to have a 4,000 square foot house in order to fit all of these things that are making me miserable. And so I'm paying more for the storage, or maybe literally a storage locker. These aren't storage lockers. They're mausoleums of stuff. We never go and visit those and take out the thing. We pretend they add value. We tell ourselves a story. As a minimalist, everything I own serves a purpose or it brings me joy. Everything else is out of the way. Right. And so another question I ask myself. Can I afford the true cost of the thing? That's the storage space. But what, what about the cost of worrying about the thing? Painting the thing, charging the thing, putting gas in the thing, changing the batteries in the thing, the thing getting stolen. I have to replace the thing, insuring the thing. There are all of these other costs. We're like, oh yeah, the car payment I guess I can afford. It's not a car payment, it's a debt payment. I guess I can afford 400 bucks a month or whatever. But really, is it for. No, it's the money for the insurance. All these other costs that, by the way, the thing is making you miserable. And now you're paying for your own misery. Give you another question. So what's the cost? What's the true cost of the thing. And then is this the best use of this money? So if I'm spending a hundred bucks towards something and I can afford it and I've decided, yes, I got the space for it, the psychological cost isn't too high. Great. But money is a resource. Is this the best use of this resource? Because if not, wouldn't I rather spend this hundred dollars elsewhere, this thousand dollars elsewhere, this $10,000 elsewhere? Is there a better use for this money? If not, then great. This makes sense for me to purchase this item. If this thing is going to augment my life, it's going to enhance my life. Wonderful, right?

If it serves a purpose, it brings me joy, then great. What would you say, some of the best minimalist budgeting tips that you have then once you've created a budget.

Yeah, yeah.

That people could start to implement and apply in their life where it doesn't feel so overwhelming or such like a huge. Like. Or should they just cut it all off and go into like this minimalist approach or should they gradually get there?

That's great. There's a couple ways to do this. I'll break it down for you. So one of the rules, we have the 16 rules for living with less in the book. And one of the rules is the no junk rule. And basically everything you own can fit in one of three piles. So if you say you go home, someone listening to this or watching this, they go home and they have their 300,000 items. Everything in that home can fit in one of three piles. It's either essential, it's non essential, but value adding and it's junk. Those are the three piles. Now, everyone has basically the same essentials. Like we all need clothing and shelter and food and silverware. Yeah. Transportation, vocation. Like we have the same essentials, right? Yeah. Silverware would go up there. I need plates. And essentials are all there, but the non essentials. This is the area where we get confused by. Non essentials are things that we could do without. Like I could live without a couch. Right. But it adds value to my life. Minimalism is not deprivationism. It's not about going without the things that add value to your life. It's about identifying the things that you need plus the things that will add value and then getting rid of everything that's in this third category, the junk. Now, junk are the things that masquerade as something that adds value. Oh, I saw someone else with that and I think I would like it. Oh, you've got that really nice Air purifier over there. I should get that too. Again, there are no shoulds. I could get that. Is that the best use of my money? Do I need it?

I wanted it.

Does it bring me joy? Does it serve a purpose?

Right. Right.

Maybe it does.

Maybe it does. And I have to be honest with myself because we can justify just about anything. And how do we be honest about it? We temporarily deprive ourselves. If you remove something for your life for a period of time. Three weeks is something that we talk about. In the book, Ryan did his packing party where he boxed up everything in his house. And we had 47 different families do this as well. In this case study for the book, they boxed up everything, pretended like they were moving, because what? That's the one time you have to confront all your stuff when you move, it sucks. I don't care how much stuff you own, you have to box it all up. You're dealing with everything you own. All these past indiscretions, all these decisions I wish I wouldn't have made. Now I'm dealing with all these things. And so packing up everything and then slowly unpacking only the things that add value to your life. That is a great way to identify the things that we think add value versus the things we actually get value from.

Put it all in a box.

Yes.

And then take out the things you only really need.

That's right.

Or the only really want.

Yes. And the things that will add value to our lives, we'll keep. But the things that stay boxed up, they're boxed up for a reason. In fact, sometimes when we move, we carry one box. I didn't unpack this from the last time I moved. I guess I'll move it around and I get these little mini storage lockers. All going with you. Yeah. It's all this stuff. So I bring that up because we can do the same thing with our budgeting. What is truly essential, what will add value to my life and then what is junk. Now, temporarily, if I'm in debt, when I was in debt, I was paying. I had almost half a million dollars worth of debt. So it took a long time to pay it off. A lot of very serious focus. I even cut down on my non essential value adding things for a period of time. Hey, I know I get value from these things. I can't really afford them right now because I value freedom so much. I want to get out of debt. I want zero debt. I don't even want a credit score. I don't care what my credit Score is. There's no such thing as a credit score. Dave Ramsey says it's what, it's a debt score. It's how good you are at accumulating debt. Right. So I don't care what my credit score is. I don't want a bad credit score. A credit score of 0 to me is the perfect credit score, by the way. Just means that you don't have any debt at all and you have it for a very long period of time. And so when I, when I look at the non essential things sometimes, hey, maybe I can't afford these right now, but maybe I can bring them back in when I can afford them. And then the junk, yeah, just get rid of that altogether because it's not adding value to your life and you're spending a ton of money on it. Why waste that money when you can pay off the debt that you're in?

So what's the budgeting the best budgeting strategy then? Is this you talking about central non essential junk in terms of spending or.

Yeah, I would look at it that way. So I'm looking at what is truly essential. Of course I need to spend money on that, but even then I can reduce the expenses there like housing, food. Yeah, I'll give you an example. So when I was, when I first left the corporate world, I walked away and I had this really nice house I was living in. I sold the house, I moved into an apartment. I realized, hey, I can move into a smaller apartment, pay off my debt quicker. So living in Dayton, I lived in a $500 a month apartment. And it was nice in Dayton, Ohio. And it was, it was fine for that period of time. And I used that extra money to pay off my debt. I knew it was for this period of time. And so even though it was essential, I was able to pare down even my essentials for that period of time. And then the non essentials, okay, maybe I don't need any of these non essentials right now while I pay off my debt and then the junk, I don't ever need it, ever. I don't care. If I'm a multi billionaire, why would I want a bunch of junk in my life?

Right.

We call it a junk drawer for a reason. It has a bunch of stuff that we never use, Right? Yeah. And so our houses have turned into junk drawers. Giant junk drawers.

Crazy, isn't it?

Yeah. And we don't get any value. In fact, it blocks the value we do get from our things.

Yeah. Intentional spending, intentional living. So what does your budget look like, do you have like, do you track it on a weekly basis? Do you look at your finances? Do you open up your bank account? Like, how does this work for you? On. Yeah, with your spending.

Yeah. So.

Or do you kind of just have your system in place and you just know you only spend on certain things and that's it, you let it go?

Yeah, I spend very little money now, but it's just the thing, the money, the things I do spend money on are on experiences, but also on people.

Yes.

And so, you know, whether it's with the minimalists and our team, you know, we've got eight employees with the team. There's like 25 people in total who help us do the films and all this other stuff. And so it's really nice to be able to have a great team of people and pay them well. I think it's wonderful to be able to do that. I mean, there's only so many black T shirts I can buy before I'm like, I don't need another line item in my budget. Right. I have a paid off car. You know, we pay rent every month. And so my budget, it used to be I would look at it every single day when I was getting out of debt and I would catalog it on a spreadsheet. Or you could use an app like the one we talked about. And so looking every day. But now I look at it once a month and I just say, okay, am I spending money? And is this the best use of my money? Making sure I'm staying out of debt. And from this point on, I'm spending money on the same things and I don't have to worry about it at this point.

I don't think about it.

Yeah, no, I don't have to worry because I developed the understanding which led to the habits. The other way never works if you just get the budgeting habit all of a sudden. Now if you don't have a deep understanding, that car sure does look nice. And I think I can afford the payment. If you have the understanding, it doesn't matter.

Right.

Which goes to our relationship with values and understanding kind of what our values are and the understanding of values where we can make better decisions.

Yes.

So what is. How do we create a better relationship with values?

I think most of us don't even have a relationship with our values. We don't know what our values are. Or we have what I call lip service values. Like if I walk up to the average person on the street, I say, what do you value? And it's A person who's relatively articulate, they'll walk up to you and they'll say, well, you know, I value my health. But you look and they're like, oh, wait, you're 100 pounds overweight. Like I used to be, you know, I used to weigh about 100 pounds more than I weigh now. And so, like, I could say I value my health, but my actions didn't align with that. You can say you value your finances, but if you have half a million dollars worth of debt like I did, then I really value financial freedom. I could say I value peace, but do I really? And so what we did in the book is we identified four different types of values. So you have your foundational values. Kind of look at it like a house. You're building a house. You have a foundation. Everyone has similar foundations. Every house has a similar foundation. They're not designed considerably differently, right? So health, relationships, contribution, personal growth, creativity, passion, peace, tranquility. All of these things can be your foundational values, right? On top of that, we start building a house. We have structural values. These are the things that you start to develop. They're gonna be different for you and me because the shape of your house might be a little bit different from mine, right? And these are things that you value that I might not value. And that's okay. You're not right for valuing something differently from me, and vice versa. And so we have these structural values, things that sort of prop up our house. So things like freedom or autonomy. These are really strong values for me. And they build the structure of my house. And then we have surface values. These are things that make life interesting or beautiful. Our friend Irwin McManus says that beauty is essential. And so it's not that these values are simply a facade. They create the facade. And that's an important part of what we're doing, as long as we're not focusing solely on the facade. If our house is rotting with termites, or better analogy, say, your house is on fire, you're not going to improve the house by painting it one more time, right? You got to put the fire out. So you got to deal with the foundation and the structure first. And then understanding, like, what are my interests? What are my hobbies? What are my desires? These things are what make life interesting. And you and I might have radically different surface values, but that's what makes the relationship passionate, even, because. Oh, wow, fascinating. You're interested in that. Here's what I'm interested in. Tell me what you're passionate about and all of a sudden it totally changes the trajectory of our conversations. Because it used to be when you meet someone, you say, what do you do? And that's one, one thing that we can talk about. It's a conversation starter. But isn't it so much more interesting to say, what are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing? Absolutely. You see the features on their face change. There's this fourth category of values, though. It's the imaginary values.

Okay, what's this?

Now? This is a giant fence that we put up around our house and there's no door. It blocks us from all of our other values. This is how we actually spend our day. So everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. And you, your values are actually you show me your calendar and your bank statement.

Show me the values.

I will show your values. And so if you're spending all day browsing email or Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Nothing wrong with Instagram. It's not evil, it's not bad. But if I'm spending all day on Instagram, that is what I actually value. That sort of passivity. Right.

Show me your app usage time on your iPhone.

Yeah.

And you'll see your values. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. That's so good. Because when you think about how you're spending your day, the discontent comes from my short term actions are not aligned with my long term values. No wonder we feel so much discontent. We're spending our days on our imaginary values. So in the book, I made a list of some of my imaginary values and realizing like, oh, these are some. This is how I spend my day sometimes. But I say these other things are my values. If I want more contentment in my life, all I have to do is change my actions to align with those things I actually value.

What are some of your imaginary values?

So I've had quite a few in my life. Right. So social media is a big one. Twitter is my drug of choice.

Interesting.

Yeah. And so I had to remove the Twitter app from my phone. I'll tell you one for me that is big is email. And we talked about this last time I was on your show. And I haven't had email on my phone for about four, four or five years at this point.

So you just have a computer now?

Yeah, and it sometimes it creates some extra friction because. Did you get that email I sent you? Not yet. Yeah.

And overall it creates a lot of freedom.

Yes. Because here's the thing. If everyone else, if everyone else's urgency becomes my emergency, then I'm Just I don't get to focus on what's important to me. Because it's urgent to you doesn't mean it's important to me.

I feel like if I took email off my phone, I would just never check email. I feel I would just go months with not checking it.

Have you had Cal Newport on the show?

I have.

Okay. So he has a new book out recently called A World Without Email. Yeah.

What would we do?

Yeah.

How we communicate?

That's a great question. I don't know.

Documents or. This would be.

I don't know. And I don't think the solution isn't to replace email with Slack. That's the same thing.

That's even.

Yeah. Or replacing it all with text messages or whatever.

Dms. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I don't know. I saw Kendrick Lamar talk about this recently. He says, sometimes I go months at a time without a phone.

Freedom.

Yeah.

I think I told you. This was about four years ago. I went to. I had a visual, a realization that I'd been with my phone since 2000, was either 1999 or 2000 when I got. I think it was 2000 when I got my first cell phone. And I had a realization that. Wow. I think it was 17 years at the time. Every day for 17 years, I touched my cell phone, or it had been on me, or I used it every day for 17 years. I was thinking to myself, wow, what would it be like to go a week without my phone? And so I made a decision to go to Hawaii by myself, not take any electronics on the plane with me, which was, like, the scariest thing. I was like, well, I'll just take it and put it in the hotel and leave it there and not use it, put it in a drawer. I was like, no, if I really want to challenge myself, I want to take it on the plane. And I went on the plane. I felt so naked. Yeah. What do I do? I'm just sitting here, you know, there's nothing to, like, play with. No computer, nothing.

Withdrawal.

And I remember I was like, oh, crap. I forgot where I rented my car from. So I had to go, like, so many different car rental places and ask if they had my reservation. I didn't have navigation on my phone, so I had to stop and ask directions at multiple gas stations to get to the hotel. Like, it's old school, man. It was 1997 again, right?

Yeah.

And it.

The first day and a half was tough. By day two, I was laying in the ocean, and I remember thinking, oh, I'm not wondering what's on my phone on the beach right now.

Yeah.

I'm not like, do I need to go check something or scroll? I just felt freedom. I was like, wow. And I remember by day five, I was like, I don't want to go back.

Yeah.

I was like, I don't want to go back. And I had a good relationship with it after I got back for like six months. But then you kind of go fall back in the pattern.

You do. Yeah.

Unless you decide, like, I'm not going to be using this or I'm going to create structure and order in my. With my phone usage or laptop or whatever the thing is that you're struggling with. So it's. Yeah, I want to go on a month without the phone. What that'd be like.

Yeah, Well, I think, I think about like, why do we do it? Why do we fall back into the patterns? Because it's easy, right?

I know, I know. Matt did this from Matthew.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, he just had just phone calls and like.

Yeah, he went to like a dumb text.

Analog.

Yeah, analog text. Wherever. It's like you have to push three buttons to get a letter. Yeah, yeah. He was like, yeah, it was amazing.

It was interesting.

But I don't know if it's like in the modern world if you can really live that way.

Well, I think a lot of people do, obviously. And so, like, it's definitely possible. And maybe the question, instead of said of like, what is the worst thing that could happen? Is like, what is the best thing that could happen? How would my life look different now? It might mean you have to structure it a bit differently. You know, you meet with your team here, maybe you'd have to have a. Just a weekly get together or three times a week get together and say, hey, here's the things we're communicating. Because you can't do it via email, it might slow things down for you. But is that a bad thing? I don't know. Right. It could mean that by slowing it down, it makes it more meaningful. Right. The things that you're creating, all of a sudden you're doing so even more intentionally.

And so, so you use, you have email on your phone.

I don't, I don't have any email on my phone.

Social media on your phone?

No, no. I will download Instagram occasionally for a few days. Yeah. Like if we're getting ready to promote this tour, for example. And so like I'll, I'll send some stuff and then I'll remove it from my phone.

But it's on your computer so you can go on there certain times and tweet.

That's right. Yeah. I can do what I need to do. I can set aside time for it and then it doesn't feel like a junk activity if I set aside. Okay, I'm gonna spend the next half hour on social media. I've set up this time. This is what I want to be doing right now as opposed to, oh, I'm in line at Chipotle. I'm going to be. Next time you go into Chipotle, you look down, everyone is like zombie lost in the glowing screen. These six inch glowing screens that heads tilted downward and we're all just sort of. You see it walking down the street now and people almost getting hit by buses and all of these things because we're so lost in. I mean, I get it, our technology is so, so tantalizing. But I think we're going to look back 50 years from now and we're going to see it like smoking. Like there's still going to be people who smoke, but they're not going to be scrolling the same way. Yeah, I just, I don't think we're going to. I don't think it's going to last the test of time.

With all the mental health challenges that are coming out now more and more, it seems like I feel like it's tied a lot of it's tied to just getting lost in some addiction, you know, and so on the phone is a lot of that. I think.

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I do. I feel like I do a really good job of when I'm with people, I'm present with people. I'm not on my phone. If I'm like out for dinner or something, I'm not on my phone. And I don't think I was always that way. But in the last few years, I really made this conscious decision to do that, and it feels just like, wow, really notice what's happening around you more.

That's right.

You can really be present with the person in front of you or the group of people. And it's a powerful practice, so I recommend it for sure. Okay, so this is values. Yeah, we've got creativity. What's the relationship with creativity? What is this all about?

This is a weird one to put in the book because really, I was thinking about three different things when I wrote that chapter. So we've been told for a long time that we are consumers. In fact, I remember being in the business world, we identified our customers as consumers. And that's fine. It's partially true. You and I, we need to consume some stuff, but we've gotten so conditioned to consuming, we forgot that fundamentally, as human beings, we are creators. We also have this entire creative side that we've shut off.

Yes.

Another source of our discontent is the fact we're not creating anymore. It doesn't have to be creating something for a business to make money. It's just that my daughter loves to paint things or to play with clay, to mold it to fit. And it's an act of creation. We are all creators, and it stimulates that part of the brain. But the reason we're not creating has partially to do with our distractions. And the sort of biggest weapon of mass distraction is our technology. And we talked about that. In fact, the chief evangelist at Google referred to our smartphones as the 79th organ. And because, as you said, every day for 17. I mean, what else do you have on you every day for 17 years? Only just your organs, basically. That's it. So it's become part of your body.

Crazy.

We're already cybernetic, beans. We're thinking about getting things installed we don't have. It's already installed in our hands. It's installed in our pockets. And so we've already been upgraded, so to speak. But every upgrade is a type of downgrade. Think about that for a second. So when we upgrade, one thing, if I say I'm buying the newest technology, I'm downgrading my bank account, and so we don't think about that. Right. But I'm also upgrading the. My ability to distract myself. We've gotten really good at distracting ourselves with all the scrolling and the pings and the notifications. And as you said, you found some ways that you can be present with people. And it might mean that, hey, you don't put the phone on the table. That's the place to start. Because if you put your phone on the table, all that says is, hey, you're the most important person unless anyone else interrupts this. And so there are ways you leave it in the car. That's what I do all the time. My wife and I, we do screenless Saturdays.

That's cool.

And so we just take our phones, lock them in a drawer on Saturday, and I tell you, we moved to LA four or five years ago, and I learned about, I didn't need gps. I just need to go get lost a little bit.

You'll find your way.

I know my way around Los Angeles now because of my screenless Saturdays. Because remember back in the day where you didn't have GPS everywhere you went? You just had to kind of figure it out. And now if we stop by a gas station, ask for directions, they kind of look at us like, oh, you're crazy. Yeah, what's the wrong with these people? Right? And yet we have some of the best days I've ever had. And so there's no correlation between smartphone usage and happiness. Or if anything, there might be an inverse correlation between the two. Now we get pleasure from the smartphone and we mistake that dopamine hit for happiness. That's not that at all. You know that. I think all of us know that intellectually. But if we can understand that in our hearts that. How do we understand that? By setting aside. It doesn't have to be for a month or a year or whatever, but if you can set it aside for one day a week on Saturdays now, like an addict, you're going to feel some withdrawals. I feel withdrawals every Saturday. Really? Every Saturday. But it's made my usage a lot more intentional and meaningful. Yeah. At home I have something Cal Newport came up with called the four year rule. So, like, we don't have a real four year. So I just like have a junk drawer. Well, I call it a junk drawer. I think if you saw it, you wouldn't say, I have a pair of keys in there. A set of keys.

A pad.

Yeah, yeah, literally. And I throw the phone in there when I go home so that it doesn't follow me around the house. Because what I found is that if I do get the desire to go check it, to send a text or whatever, I have to physically get up from wherever I am in the house, walk over to the drawer, send the text, put it back in the drawer, and I create a little bit of extra friction so I'm not distracted all day while I'm at home.

I like that. What about the relationship with people?

I mean, that's ultimately where we wanted to start, right? I forsook people for the longest time. I did the opposite of the book's title. I used people and I loved things, really. And I used people to get things because I thought what, it was going to make me happy or I thought it was going to make me more complete. Consumerism. Consumerism is just the ideology that purchasing things will make me more whole, more complete or happier. That's all consumer is. Of course it doesn't work. And so we try these other sort of things that we think are going to make us happy. It's like, okay, maybe I'll trade the purchases for more clout on social media or whatever. It's all the same sort of pleasure chase. And so using people to get those things makes us miserable. To love someone, as we talked about already, is to see them for who they are without trying to change them. So loving people, seeing them for who they are, respecting them, appreciating them, accepting them for who they are, that's a beautiful thing. And then we can get something out of our things. I'm not anti thing. Yeah. I don't live like a monk. I live like a minimalist. And a minimalist really enjoys his or her things. My wife and I and our daughter, we don't own a whole lot of stuff. You come to our house, though, and it's not like, oh, I just walked into a monastery, right? No, you walked. You walk in like, it looks like they have organized their stuff. Well, no, we didn't organize it. We just got rid of the stuff that was in the way, and then it just stays organized as a result.

Yeah. Just intentional living.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm much more intentional about my relationships now. How can I add value to other people's lives? How can I contribute to the greater good? How can I love people? How can I not change them? I know one of the three truths I shared with you last time was, you can't change the people around you, but you can change the people around you. And we start the last chapter off with that sentence, actually. So the people chapter is really about not trying to change other people, but also you can surround yourself with people who have similar values to you, people who will empower you, and you can identify what a meaningful relationship looks like for you. You can restructure your relationships in a way that will serve you and will allow you to serve others and relationships that don't drain you. But they. But they empower you. They actually aid your freedom in some way.

What if you're in a relationship with someone that doesn't want to be a minimalist?

Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

But you love this person, you want to be with them, but they don't share the same value as. As you wanted to transition this to your life. How. How do you make the relationship work?

Yeah. So I look at it as a continuum. Like, my wife values different things from me, especially on the surface values. Right. And so. So in our home, we would own far fewer things if it was just me by myself. Right. And however, I also have recognized that she gets value from certain things. And it's not up to me to say, hey, you shouldn't value that. Same with my daughter. Right. Like, oh, what? I don't get value from toys, so you shouldn't either? Well, that's being a dictator and so recognizing. So here's a stat for you. The average kid has about 300 toys, plays with only 12 of them.

You just have 12 or 20.

Yeah, basically, yeah. And it's like, and what she has learned, my daughter Ella, she has learned that, oh, if I'm not playing with this anymore, some other kid might want to play with it. And so instead of holding on to it, wouldn't it be cool if I gave this to some other kid? That's an understanding about it. It's not just about me. And little kids are even able to understand that for some reason, as adults, we've said, oh, yeah, but I'm different. I can love my things. And, okay, we have a language problem, Right? Like, we say, I tell you that I love you, Louis, but I also love my toaster. Oh, yeah, it's a great toaster. I love it. Well, up in Canada and the Nunavut region, they have the. The Inuit dialect up there. They. They have 53 words to describe snow. We have one word for love. And so we apply it to, I love my wife, but I also love burritos. And it's like, well, wait a minute. What do I mean? One means extreme. Like, I really like this thing. Now, the other, quite often, we mean attachment. That's not love either. Being attached to someone is really. That's a nice word to say clinging. By the way we talk about our attachments, we're really talking about the things we cling to. But clinging isn't loving someone, because what if my wife tomorrow wants to say, hey, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. I can still love her even if she doesn't want to be in the relationship. Because loving someone isn't trying to change them, to hold on to them, to trap them. That's a prison.

It is a prison. Yeah, I've been there before. Yeah, it's no fun, man. That is no fun. So there sounds like you would have a lot less things in your place if it was just you, for sure. But you value and appreciate and love your relationships, and so you're willing to be intentional but also be flexible.

Yes.

It doesn't have to be this extreme way.

I'm not dogmatic.

Yeah, yeah.

Now I'll tell you this. Intentionality is contagious. And so when my wife and I started spending time together, she realized the way that I question my things might benefit her as well. And so instead of telling her the things she should have or shouldn't have, a question that we start the book out with is, how might your life be better with less? Now, it sounds like a how question, like a how to question, but it's really a why question. Why would your life be better with fewer Things. What are the benefits of simplifying? Because the benefits are different for everyone. If you simplify, this might be, oh, I have a tie to your house. Someone else, it's like, oh, you know what? I have a ton of debt. I need to pay off my debt. And for someone else, it's just like, you know what? I'm sick and tired of the burden of my things. Whatever the benefits are for you, it's going to. You have to identify that because that why helps you identify the how. You don't need a video from me about the 67 Ways to Declutter your closet. Everyone knows how to declutter your closet. The problem is not a shortage of decluttering tips. Everyone knows how to declutter their home. The problem is we don't understand the benefits of simplifying. If you understand that, as my wife did when we first got together, then this happens on its own. It's a natural progression. And she'll still value things differently from me. Whether or not she's a minimalist, it doesn't really matter. I call myself a minimalist because it's a thing that helps people understand. But there's no. It's the only ism I know, minimalism without any dogma behind it. I wish there was a list of, here are the hundred things that you could own to make you happy, but it just doesn't work that way. Right.

Excited for this man. Love people use things because the opposite never works. This is a powerful guide to help you really deepen your relationship with all the things in your life, the people in your life, and yourself. So I hope people get a few copies of the book. And love people use things, because the opposite never works. Make sure to pick up a few copies. You're going on tour. They can go to theminimalist.com your website, and see the tour.

Yeah.

All the dates where you're gonna be at all over the country, right?

20 cities.

Yeah, all over cities, all up till, what, January? February.

Yeah. Yeah.

Should be on tour for many months.

Right.

Which is exciting. You're on Twitter occasionally.

Yes. You're heminimalists everywhere on social media.

The minimalists everywhere. But your personal Twitter is jfm, correct?

Yeah.

So is that where you spend the most time if you're spending time on social media, Twitter?

If I spend any time at all, it tends to be on Twitter. Yeah.

Okay. So if you want to connect with Josh, make sure to go over to Twitter and connect with him over there. He'll probably get back to you once Once a week when he's checking in. That's right. You shared your previous truths in the last time we interviewed you. But I'm curious if they're the same things. So if this was your last day and all your work had to go with you to the next place or wasn't here anymore and you had three lessons to share with the world or three truths, what would be those three truths?

Yeah. So last time I wasn't prepared for this, and I gave you three that I really, really like, and I think they're great. So the first one was let it go. It's just stopping.

Yep.

Then there was, you can't change the people around you, but you can change the people around you. And third was love. People use things. I'll give you three more just for fun. So the first one is letting go is not something you do. Letting go is something you stop doing. You stop clinging to the excess stuff. You stop clinging to the toxic relationships. You stop clinging to busyness, thinking that busyness makes me who I am. You stop clinging to the achievements and the status and the status symbols. If you stop clinging, the letting go sort of happens on its own. Because you could get rid of the stuff but still hold on to the attachment and be utterly miserable, but you can let go of the attachment to the stuff and still have things that improve your life.

Right. Okay.

Yeah.

So that's.

That's number one.

That's number one.

Yeah. Number two. I think we kind of talked about this a bit. With technology, I'll say. This scrolling is the new smoking.

Oh, man, you're gonna get me now.

Our addictions are showing, so every time you go somewhere, you'll start to notice it, man. Because here's the thing. 50 years ago, you lit up a cigarette in the middle of a restaurant. No one said anything, Right? Imagine going to Whole Foods right now and lighting up a cigarette. They would look at you like you're insane.

Like you're an alien.

Yeah.

What's wrong with you? And yet all of us are interrupting each other with our devices. You know, you see a family of six, and they're all just. They're not with each other over dinner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're not with each other. They're with their phone. They're with this glowing screen. And so what I've learned is that we are treating our technology the same way we're treating cigarettes. And I think 50 years from now, we're going to use it completely differently because we're going to realize the sort of you Know, cigarettes gave us lung cancer. There's a different kind of cancer we're getting. Not literal, but a metaphorical, cultural cancer that we're getting from constantly scrolling on these devices. Scrolling is the new smoking would be my second one. And then third. Your happiness is moderated by your expectations. So if you want to be unhappy, have more expectations, expect more from people around you. Expect people to meet all of your demands, and you'll walk around miserable all the time. But the happiness that's already inside you, it can be uncovered by having fewer expectations.

That's true. That's a good one. I just interviewed Mo Gadot, who had a book called Solve for Happy. I believe that was the name of the book. And he has an equation that's event minus expectations equals happiness. Yeah, it's just if you can let it go, both of those, I guess there's an event that's going to happen, your expectation around it. You let go of that expectation, you'll be a lot happier. That's beautiful, powerful stuff, man. Before I ask the final question, Josh, I want to acknowledge you for constantly showing up. Constantly showing up and living your values, living your truth. You reveal a lot of new things in here that you haven't talked about in the past that you're afraid of talking about. A lot of shame, a lot of insecurities that you're opening up about now. So I acknowledge you for really sharing more of these things that for whatever reason, now is the time to share them. And I hope people get to learn more about them in here and for continuing to be a guide when the world gets sicker and sicker around devices, addictions, consumption. You continue to be a healing guide for doing less, buying less, consuming less, so we can be our full selves, so we can be happy without having to do things to be happy. So I appreciate you being the healing guide in the world, man. We need more people like you. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

I think true greatness is loving. And so, because greatness without love seems like a type of failure to me in a way, because we can see someone who has achieved what is ostensible greatness. But if there's no love there, I'm not talking about romantic love, like, that's fine, but I'm talking about just the love of people.

Yeah.

The love of the world. The love that is in me. You know, there's this. This great saying, it's old platitude, but it's, I'm not in love. Love is in me. And so I think greatness is loving.

There you go Joshua. Thanks brother.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you found some value from the minimalist approach to life, then make sure to share this with a few friends. You can. You can text a few friends by copying and pasting the link wherever you're listening to this episode and text a few friends or post it over on a Facebook group or WhatsApp chat or post it on social media and you can tag me, Lewis Howes and Joshua Fields Milburn as well and let us know that you're listening to this specific episode. Please leave a review. Would love to see your thoughts on what you enjoyed most from this episode as when you do that, that helps us spread the message to more people over on Apple podcast. So if you're enjoying this and you got value, please leave a review and text a few friends this episode right now so we continue to inspire more people to live greater lives together. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. I have so much love for you, so much gratitude, my heart. And I'm so glad that you are taking responsibility by constantly learning to improve the quality of your life so you can make a big your impact on the people you care about around you. You have no idea how much of an impact that makes on the world. So thank you for showing up for yourself. Thank you for playing big today by learning, by listening and applying from this episode. I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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