3 Steps to Radical Simplicity and Joy

Hi, everybody. This is Gabe. We've got such a great episode this time on a life changing thing that's changed both of our lives and that is valuing simplicity. Getting more and more and more simplicity in your life sometimes means subtracting some things and adding some things. And in this episode, we explore different ways we've created simplicity in our lives and the benefits of that.

Oh, his Rolls Royce and his fancy cars and lots of real est. And the moment he decided to spend more time with socks and shirts and a particular type of sock that make him feel fun and simple and experiencing even more love. So gay. Like you said, he's got a really good multiplier strategy. I've got a simplicity strategy. And we are giving you a recipe book for valuing simplicity and creating more simplicity in your life so you can be happier and spend more time in your zone of genius.

All right, well, I'll tell you, I'll start this off with how we began our year this year. So it was January 31st, and for the past few years, we started a process. We called it the table of eight. And the basic idea behind the table of eight is it originally began with Vivian and myself and JJ Virgin and her husband Tim and I sitting around and I don't remember if I made this up or I heard it once, but the basic idea is imagine you took care of every family member you had, and you had one week left to live, and you got to pick eight people you wanted to be with during the last week of your life. And who would you choose? And I started asking that question amongst friends, and I found they always. One of two things generally happen and the third very rarely happens. Someone would say, they'd start talking about their family. I said, no, your family, you've got a separate experience. Let's say a parallel universe is you have your family on one side of one parallel universe. This is only for the people who are closest to you. And a lot of them.

I'd say around half would say, I don't know if I can pick eight people that I feel that genuinely close to.

That was my first thought, too. You know, immediately three or four came to mind. But I could make eight, but it would be a little sketchy.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that. So it's pretty interesting, isn't it? And I've had people say, well, I can think of my, you know, six, seven, eight. But my wife wouldn't or my spouse wouldn't want the.

The same.

We don't have the same people. All right, that's A little conflict, you know, for the Last Supper. And then the second thing that would happen is people oftentimes go back and they talk about my family and my family. They just can't let it go. They feel like somehow they're abandoning them.

And. And so the way we celebrated this year, which started with us talking about that once, and then JJ is a really big party planner. She just can't help herself. And it's like, JJ doesn't do anything small. It turns into this huge thing. And pretty soon, what started out as Our table of 8 New Year's party that was very intimate and close turned into like 75 or 80 people. And the last party, we didn't attend, and she just about disowned us. It's like, how dare you not come do our party? And it's like, I never signed up for this. And this year, we went back to the four of us again for a table of four experience. It was even smaller for New Year's, which, again, she doesn't do little parties. But I've shared this story with a few people about how simpler and fewer does not mean less and simpler and fewer is actually so much deeper and more meaningful. And neither Vivian or I do shallow very well. So when I think about simplicity, it's not about a less experience. It's about deeper and more meaningful and more conscious. And as I've been growing a little bit older.

I'm really, really, really reducing the body count. And the body count is exactly. I know how you just reacted was it. It means two different things, which is fewer people, fewer bodies in the street after the impact occurs, but also spending a little more time in a space of cons. And so, to me, that's my interpretation of valuing simplicity and taking a lot more time for, you know, that inner circle. And I'll give you one more little short story, which is I go on a walk almost every Sunday with John Asaraf, and we walk Torrey Pines, which is this beautiful place, and he catches me off guard every time with this. And he goes. He'll say to me, and it'll usually be like, January 3rd or 4th, we're out for a walk on our Sunday. And he'll say, well, you made the cut. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes, well, you're in my inner circle for another year. Because every year he makes the circle smaller, and he just weeds people out. And I'm like, well, thanks, John. That's really nice. And at the first few times, it shocked the Hell out of me because he's been doing it for like 10 or 12 years now. But that feels so good to create that added intimacy and do it consciously. So those are a few of my initial salvo ideas about valuing simplicity. So how about you? What comes to mind and what came to mind because you were all in on this episode when we talked about the idea in the first place.

Well, it's really changed my life because when I, I was contrasting my life now with where I was back in the mid-90s, and so that's almost 30 years ago now. But.

I was much more into stuff at that time. And, you know, we had a beautiful home we lived in, and then we had a. Another one out in the mountains. And then we had a business building, and then later we got a place on the beach. And so I kept making my life more complicated all the time. And that just seemed the thing to do. You know, we, thanks to Oprah primarily, you know, we were making plenty of money back in the 90s. And so.

I think both of us just thought, okay, the way to do things is just keep getting more and more stuff. And then one day, I remember this particularly Katie and I looked at each other, we, we got. Something happened. You know, if you own a lot of real estate, you get into this mantra of there's always something going to go wrong. And so.

Something. Oh, I remember what it was. Freak hail storm at our mountain house wiped out our solar.

Installation. And at that time, solar was much more complicated and costly and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, it was like, oh, no, you know, and Katie and I looked at each other and said, wait a minute.

We didn't sign up to be in the real estate business here. We're always having to handle real estate. We got where we are by having ideas and working with people. And now we spend half our time jockeying around material things. And.

At the time, I also used to.

Had a small collection of British cars. I, I liked British sports cars of the 50s and 60s and Jaguars primarily, but also had a Rolls Royce. And so I, I was, you know.

Trading things around there. And so we just looked at ourselves and said, wait a minute, we need to get out of the real estate business. And so we gradually we sold off our mountain house and we then got rid of the business building and got down to having basically one house that we really, really, really love. Later on we had the beach place, but that lasted about a year and a half. My beach fantasy wore off very quickly and often romanticized living right on the beach, you know, I could walk out my front door onto the sand. And I forgot that two elements of the fantasy didn't. You know, like, one was I had to wear a sweater all the time if I lived right on the beach. You know, it was because it was often cold there. It was never a real, you know, direct sun day. And the second thing I didn't factor in was people's car burglar alarms at the beach go off about every hour and somebody backs into somebody or slams a door. And so I was always having to deal with car burglar alarm. So anyway, you know, they always say about Rolls Royces, the two best days of your life are the day you get it and the day you unload it to the next poor sucker. And so I gradually did that, but more and more stuff. And the thing is that every time we made a movement toward greater simplicity, we got happier. You know, we. We got a bigger flow of that love and positive energy feeling that we both just thrive on in ourselves. And so we've gradually, you know, we. We've moved over here. We moved 25 years ago over here to Ojai, and we found this particular house that we just love that's perfect for us because.

It started out with having three bedrooms. And we took the master bedroom, and then we turned the second bedroom into a kind of a studio library for when we're doing this kind of thing. And then we hit upon the idea of here's a great way to not have people drop in on us overnight. We. We filled up our third bedroom with exercise equipment. So now when people call and say, hey, I'm coming through town, can I love to spend the night with you guys? You. Oh, you know, we'd love to have you do it, but here's a good bnb.

Love that.

So let's think about.

I want to create a formula for this. So I'm looking at, you know, again, part of what you were just talking about is the stuff, the simplicity of stuff, and how the.

You know, very frequently what your formula was or what you are escaping from is the accumulation of things and attachments and the feelings that you thought you got from them before, Right?

Yeah.

And the fact that one day you realized, and for. In your case, with you and Katie, you had, like, an unconscious or a conscious decision you made that you didn't want to have anything to do with this any longer. Right?

Yeah.

And so if you. If we were going to compose right now, a formula for decoupling from and a formula for simplicity, what Would your ingredients be. And again, I'm, I'm looking at the words you were saying, and that's part of what I was paying attention to when you were going through these stories is like the place on the beach, the cars, the Rolls Royce.

And the real estate.

And to me, what I'm, Vivian and I are working on right now is. And this may might not be the right formula, but it's where we are right now is we just recently committed to. We've been working on our place in Mexico. And for us, that's a freedom too. It's a place to feel even more free. Now the ownership isn't as important. And the more I'm alive, the more I realize, you know, you can rent a place for the rest of your life for not that much and you don't have to think about it. Right. And we're also doing this thing in, in Spain. We committed to buying a, a penthouse in Spain in Malaga. Now, on the illusion that I'm.

Or the hallucination I currently have about it is that it will most likely increase in value and, and it will probably increase to 30% by the time we even get it, by the time it's built. Just historically, that's the way the, the numbers work. And you know, you never know. Real estate is one of those things. So it's like, okay, it's a place to, you know, put your money and create a scalable asset. But it's just one more thing to think about that's the hallucination.

But.

You know, we're, we're at slightly different age.

Places in our life, so you have a different perspective and a different point of view. And I'm coming to you both as a student and as an advisor. And I'm saying, oh, wise one, give me the recipe for simplicity, mindedness, simplicity, thinking and, and knowing what you know. Now, how would you design a simple life, whether you were 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70, knowing what you know right now? I don't know if I'm asking the question the right way, but that's a great question, actually.

Well, I. Let me give you a simple example of something my wife and I do every year. And it's a template for what I think everybody ought to do in their bigger life. Let's just.

Start with something small. And here's what we do every year. Katie and I go through our closet and take out anything we don't love to wear. That's the key ingredient. So do I love to wear this? Yes or no, no, put it aside, possibly donate it or at least put it on a different, put it in a different place so you don't have to regard it every day. So get your, you know, like right now. I've taken this to the extreme. I found one brand of T shirt that I just love. Their softest brand of T shirt. I'm going to give them a unpaid for plug right now. It's called Cotton Citizen. And, and they're expensive and worth it because they don't wear out, they're good looking, they soft, they get softer and softer and softer. So putting on my T shirt every day is an erotic experience. Start there, you know, get something that you put on your body. You say, ah. Also. So I have like at least 10 and maybe even 15 different T shirts in different colors that are made by the same company. I, I found a pair of pants called Public Rec Pants. The all day everyday pants that I love to wear. I, I was one of their first customers seven or eight years ago. I probably have bought 10 or 15 pairs over the years. They don't wear out. They, they stay good. They're like a kind of a fancy sweat pad. They don't look like sweat pads, but they are sweatpants and running pants. And so I, every day when I go in to get dressed, I know I'm going to slip into something that I absolutely love to wear. And same thing. My wife is so beautiful, Katie, she knows I love socks. So every year at Christmas time she gives me like this year she gave me two new pairs of cashmere socks to wear on chilly evenings. And I can't tell you the amount of pleasure I've had putting on those socks. Oh yeah, they're just so soft and delicious. So, so there's. The first thing is to start someplace where you can hone down the ability to discern what you love versus what you just like or put up with. Because I want you to elevate your life to the love level. You know, you've probably been to a symphony orchestra where the oboe player sounds this note at the beginning and then everybody in the orchestra tunes to it. Well, let your note be do I love this? And then tune your life to it because see if you can learn to put on a T shirt that you love or whatever it is, a pair of pants or a bra or a whatever. If you can distinguish that you're putting on something you love, you can also distinguish whether you're eating something you love.

Which I highly recommend that people focus their attention on eating the things that they really like, that are good for you, that are. That provide organic good feeling in your body. My wife and I just had lunch, and Katie is a fabulous chef. She made us fresh basil pesto to put over a baked potato. Oh, no king ever ate better, you know, Fresh pesto over a baked potato. And so, you know, although it was so simple, she made it in about 15 minutes. You know, it was just drop in a bunch of basil, drop in this, that, and turn on the buzzer. And.

Yeah. And so.

Oftentimes.

Simplicity is also time economical.

I sometimes like to sit down and play one of my musical instruments. And if my consciousness is really into it, I might only play for 10 minutes. And I get the connection that I wanted to have with that musical instrument.

Yeah, yeah.

So focus on love. First love, love, love. It's the thing. It's the best show human beings put on. So let's use it.

Well, when you were talking about this. So I'm going to tell you a little joke, because what I got out of that right now was how, you know, tuning yourself into what you love, tuning your life to what you love. And for you, it starts out with putting something on that makes you feel good. And I'm with you on socks and also shirts. So I'm actually wearing a shirt today. I've been buying these wool T shirts. Now, one nice thing about wool T shirts are they're super thin. They don't stink. They just never stink. You can put them out in the sun to wash them effectively. They're super thin and they don't wrinkle. So Vivian and I have a rule, and this is to our. One of our simplicity rules. I never check luggage. I can go for six or eight weeks with one bag.

Me too.

Yep. Thin, small. And I always tell people, if you're a bag checker, you're on your own. Tough crap. I'm leaving as soon as we land and I'm going to the hotel, and you can deal with that stuff. And if your stuff's lost, tough. I told you not to do it. Right. I'm pretty cold and hard. I don't. And everyone who knows me knows I don't travel with checkers.

Tough crap. And it just sucks. Especially if you get caught overseas or you lose your bags.

I've done that very same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's just so. That's one of. One of my other things, of the hard rules. I got another rule. I hate Atlanta. I hate the place, hate the airport, don't like the town. And I'VE gotten screwed there. A month ago. Not even a month ago, I got screwed there. So now I have a rule. If I have to go through Atlanta, the answer is no. My goal in life is to never be in that airport ever, as long as I live. So I created nice, hard little boxes that I don't violate another one of them if.

I won't travel coach again as long as I live. I'm all done. I'd rather not go than be stuck next to an obese person. It's one of my rules, because I've been pinched before and it's crookedy, and it'll be like, I'll compromise myself. I've given up a seat, and then I wind up next to someone, you know, and I'm just not going to do it. All right? But here was. I was going to get to a funny thing. So feeling good all the time and picking clothes that way, I love that.

But Steve Martin has a really funny joke. It's like, I just. I like to make people laugh. And I found a joke about what makes people laugh. Okay. I discovered that when I put a slice of baloney in each of my shoes, I feel funny.

And I've told you before that, like, my first impression the first time I met you, whatever, it was at an angle. I'm like, holy crap, it's Steve Martin. You know, it was like, you have that distinctive look. And this year, we're at the Emmys, and I walked right by Martin Short and Steve Martin, and they were walking in, and once again, they got passed by. But.

I.

Okay, so back to the formula. So we have tuning in, and you also talked about going through your closet. So I have another thing. We literally just did this two days ago. We threw away, probably. I think it's more. It's more than half of the stuff that was in our garage. And a little formula that I started years ago. Now, I'll have to admit I haven't been sticking to it until this past weekend. But.

When I got divorced, I moved into and I lived on a boat. And there's a rule of living on a boat, which is if it doesn't fit on the boat, you get rid of it. And I was really proud of myself because aside from my vehicles, every single position, that possession I had fit on my boat. And I can't tell you how unbelievably freeing that felt to not be owned by my stuff. And then invariably, you know, when you've got a kid and a family in a house, and in my case, Like a business and you know, you just start having things and then there's a distinction. Like tools to me are just necessary to get a project done. But my life has been very blurry because my tools are my hobbies, which are my life and my lifestyle. And I've got, you know, a lot of gadgets.

So doing a gadget release.

Is. And, and I can't help but feel a little nostalgia sometimes because I do have some really cool things. And there was a period of time when I had a massive, massive collection of books. And they followed me around from office to office and studio to studio. And one day when I sold the last business, I let it all go. I let 20 some years of really rare, unusual, beautiful books. I just gave them all away because I was like, I just am not going to travel with them one more time. And now I have a Kindle. Now do I have a nostalgic pain thinking about it? I do. Yannick Silver was over last night and we were talking about books and he said that's the one thing I can't let go of is I've got my books. But even that I let it go. So tell me.

I got rid of 33 boxes of books when I moved over here and okay, I could probably get rid of another 10. Just stuff that people have sent me and things like that over the years.

No attachment books in other words?

Yeah, yeah, no attachment. There are some sacred books that I would never part with in a million years. But.

Yeah, if I can get it on a Kindle these days, that's what I do, you know, because that has made life so much easier because I used to go off to Europe with half my bag filled with books, you know, and I'm a non bag checker either. We, I've gone all over the world. I, I've gone for months at a time traveling with no bag check. And so I like your T shirt idea though. I'm going to look into wool T shirts. They're not too warm on a warm day?

No, not at all. They're merino, merino wool. They're super thin and really comfy. And I promise you'll put them on because it's. And they, you can wash them. And again, what I found is like I'm not a particularly stinky guy. I found a particular deodorant that I never smell. I just am not a stinky sweater. But.

These are year round super comfy. You can get all different colors. And I am going to do a couple things. One is when we're done. What size do you wear and what color would you prefer? And I'm going to order you some.

Oh, well, I'm. I'm usually a large.

I.

I love blues. I love anything blue. That's kind of a favorite. I like purples and lavenders. Okay. Not so much dark. This is about as dark as I go here. This kind of color.

Yeah. Great. So that's easy. And I took a snapshot of you while we are making this. So I'm going to send you a little gift and then you can decide which one you like the most.

And, and the other thing that I'm doing, I made a commitment to myself while we're here is I'm buying cashmere socks. So I bought wool socks. I don't have cashmere socks. I think that is a great idea.

Let me give you a brand.

Okay.

Yes.

Oh, my goodness. This is the moment where I wish Katie was here. They come from Wales.

Okay. They're made in Wales by a company that's been making them for the last umpteen years, you know, like hundreds of years. Okay. They, they make the socks for the Royal Family and that kind of thing. It's. They've got a particular.

Can't be that hard to find.

No. Best Welch cashmere socks.

Yes.

That is great. Broku Walker or.

Turnbull and Asser. No, I'll try to find them.

I'll get Katie to, to remind me of what the. They've got a particular name. Okay.

Not Corgi Socks or Pantherella. I'll find them. I'll find them. It might be. Yeah, Corgis. I found them. Corgi socks. And now everyone knows. So official shop. So I'm definitely.

I have, I have a pair of blue and black horizontal striped ones that I love. I have a pair of kind of tartan plaid ones that I love. But they have all sorts of different styles.

But.

Love it.

Be very careful, though, about. Don't run them through the dryer. You know, they need to be hand washed and kind of.

I know that's typically with cashmere and wool. And that's one thing about these is I. My, my wool T shirts haven't been damaged, even though I know that they've been mistakenly put into the dryer. So.

So, well, the principal, the principle here is.

I promise everybody, we're not selling T shirts here.

No, not at all. We're valuing simplicity.

We're valuing simplicity things.

Yeah.

And. And we're selling love. The idea that you could use love as a reference guide in in your life and, you know, doing what you love to do, wearing what you love to wear, living with somebody that you absolutely love to live with. You know, just before I came in here to record this, the last thing I said to Katie was, hey, by the way, you make me feel like the luckiest man on earth that I get to be married to you.

Yeah.

You know, because I actually do. Every day, I feel like I've been given the winning lottery ticket, and that's the way I want everybody to feel. And it's got to start someplace, you know, so just start. Start with opening up a little more. Simplicity. Opening up. Yeah. Think of simplicity as growing the room for your genius. It's, you know, that's the function of kind of clearing stuff out of your life is so you have more room for the. For your genius. And.

I'm always on the lookout. People that know me or especially people have been in business with me. One of my central questions always is, can we do this with fewer moving parts?

Yeah.

You know, that's a principle I live by, is the. The fewest moving parts in any situation, less people to rely on. Great. You know, you. It. To me, it's a way of. Of creating a space around myself, a space of ease and elegance around myself. Elegance of experience. Not just a fancy shirt, but the. The elegance of the moment that you feel. You feel the actual quality of the vibrational element of the moment in your body as you're there. You know, that's what allows you to sit with JJ and Tim as you feel a vibrational kinship, a vibrational connection with them. And. And that's a beautiful thing.

I'm still tussling with who my 8 might be. I'm gonna have to do some homework.

Yeah, that'll be a good assignment. We could do a table of eight episode And. And why. And we don't have to necessarily mention names. I'm not afraid to mention names, because the truth is, sometimes you'll be like, well, someone just fell off the table of 8. There may be a reason why, or you have to give yourself permission to evolve. And sometimes people aren't evolving at the same pace. You know, it's. It's. And. And letting go. The attachment of loyalty due to a lack of commitment to growth and evolution.

Which, to me is another way to value simplicity, is like simpler relationships. If there's a drudgery and a burden and. And a sense of. Of yuck. And this is, again, back to. To me, one of what of, you know, a fundamental gay Hendrick Principle is tuning into what your body says. And that helps me tune into simplicity.

And I've got one. One comment with what you said about being committed to can we do this with fewer moving parts? When I wrote.

The book, your next act, the framing that I got used to saying and it became my fundamental pitch, which I, I did it for me, was I wanted to have a business I'd love for the rest of my life that was high net, low overhead with the fewest moving parts and the fewest and dependence on fixed monthly overhead. So an absolute source of misery in my life is when I wake up and I've woken up in the past and I said, I feel like a mule.

That is the absolute opposite. So. And it'd be. And if I ask myself, why do I feel like a mule? It's because I have a whole bunch of have to's and not enough want to's in my life. And if there's been a. A real source of pain and misery, it's when I feel like I don't have freedom and I feel like an animal, you know, and, you know, and that. And it comes from that. It's like dependence I didn't agree to have.

Yeah. Yep. Well, I tell the story in the big leap of the day. I had an epiphany back in the 90s where I came in from doing 19 workshops in 21 days or something, and I made a lot of money, but then I came in and I found I was going to have to borrow money from myself to pay my taxes. You know, that just was a day where I said, I'm doing something very wrong here, you know, And. Yeah.

So.

You wake up, you go, it's time to self amylate. I'm going to start myself on fire. That's this crap.

Yeah.

Where's the kerosene?

Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, let's wrap this up by. Yeah, I, I think it starts inside by making a deal with yourself that you want to create more room for your genius by eliminating things that are in the way of that. So to keep it kind of. It's not just simplifying, it's making more room for your true being, who you are.

Yeah.

It's a big commitment though, because the world wants you to have more stuff. I just went through a process of cleaning out my stuff. I thought someday I might use drawer which was this huge. I threw away probably 2/3 of the stuff and it was a big box, a big heavy box, you know, but there was stuff I thought I'd use Someday and I never used it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So beware of that way of thinking.

I have. I have one tiny box story that'll take 30 seconds. So here's what I used to do. I haven't done it in a long time because I haven't really had to, but when I accumulated some stuff, I'd put it in a box and I put tape on it. And I made a deal with myself that if I didn't look inside it for six months or more, I just pick it up and throw it away.

That's great. That's a. That's a good discipline.

Yeah, no, I. I admit that I throw away like my senior year class ring and all sorts of keepsakes that I probably might regret someday. And then at the same time, it's like, you know, take a picture of it.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. Well, no, yeah. Love attachment is a great formula, but yeah, we'll wrap this one up. So if you had one last big takeaway for your recipe for simplicity, what would it be?

Be on the lookout for what you love. And put it on your body, put it in your mouth, surround yourself with it. The way I say is.

Get your social life. So there's three to five people whose faces light up when you walk in the room. If you want to have eight of those, that's great. But I'm happy with four or five of those people that I know my face is going to light up when they walk in the room. Their face is going to light up when I walk in the room. That's what I want.

And a couple cats too. I'm with you on yes, couple of kitties. So interestingly, yours was an additive, which is add something you love, which I do love. And that gets back into tuning yourself and the socks and the shirts. Mine was subtractive, which was.

It'S elimination. It's so interesting where your brain went and I think there's great room for both. So we can, I think, officially end this. But what I'd ask you is in the comments, if you're watching this on YouTube, tell gay and I what you are going to add, eliminate, or what you're going to do to increase your simplicity in your life or leave it in the comments and feedback and Apple podcasts as well. That's a great way to leave a few stars. And if you know someone who needs to simplify their life or make it better by multiplying it like Gay talked about adding some more love, share this episode with them, please. So, gate, final words. Yours.

Yes. One of our great car designers who designed the Lotus. Colin Chapman created winning race cars by what he called adding lightness.

He wasn't about taking things away, he was adding things that made it lighter. And that's what I think about. Adding more ease, adding more freedom, adding more love to your life. Always welcoming. More, more, more organic love.

I love that. And as a driver of a Lotus for now, going on six years, I understand that it is an absolute pleasure to get into that little lightweight race car. So this has been a great episode. Gay. I had of a lot, lot of fun. I always do. But this one was super fun. So see you in the next one.

Stay simple.