Dhru Purohit Show - #249: Detox Your Mind by Stepping Into Minimalism with The Minimalists

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Detox Your Mind by Stepping Into Minimalism | This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent—a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment—a life of passion. What you’re imagining is an intentional life, and to get there, you’ll have to let go of some clutter that’s in the way.    This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down with Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known to their audience as The Minimalists, to talk about how to live a fuller, more meaningful life with less.  In this episode, we dive into:   -Consumerism (8:48)  -The Packing Party (12:47) -The No Junk Rule (17:44)  -The Just in Case Rule (22:35)  -What is essential (34:24)  -Not getting caught up in the next big thing (47:42) -Wait for It Rule (1:08:58)  -Spontaneous Combustion Rule (1:10:45)  -The 5 things to ask ourselves before buying something (1:16:59) -Setting boundaries around social media use (1:30:31) -Why debt-free is the new American dream (1:41:55)  For more on The Minimalists, follow them on Instagram @theminimalists, on Facebook @theminimalists, on Twitter @theminimalists, on YouTube @theminimalists, and through their website https://www.theminimalists.com/. You can find their book, Love People, Use Things at https://www.theminimalists.com/lovepeopleusethings/. Listen to their podcast The Minimalists at https://www.theminimalists.com/podcast/. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 25% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU.   If you’re looking for super comfortable and stylish men’s and women’s pajamas, joggers, robes, pullovers and hoodies, basically all the stuff we’re all wearing working from home these days, Cozy Earth has got you covered! So what’s Cozy Earth’s not-so-secret fabric that powers their superior comfort? It's the miracle plant bamboo! Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use the discount code DHRUPODCAST. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And yet we're going around all the time trying to improve our lives by accumulating more, more, more, more. We never stop to consider less. And subtracting quite often uncovers that happiness, that peace, that tranquility that's already there inside us. Hi, everyone, Drew Prode here. I have a question for you. Is the clutter in your brain potentially caused by the clutter in your life?

Maybe there often can be a link. That's why we have the minimalist Joshua and Ryan on the podcast today to talk about how minimalism, which is really all just about essentialism, having the right things in your life, but not too much that it clutters your freaking world, pollutes the environment, but also most importantly for this podcast, clutters your brain. If you need a little detoxification, these guys are going to show you how to do it right by stepping into minimalism. Stay tuned.

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a logical age. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but Inside Tracker makes their results easy to understand and even provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, InsideTracker is offering my podcast community 25% off their system. Just go to insidetracker.com slash Drew. That's D-H-R-U to get your discount code and try it out for yourself. That's inside tracker. I-N-S-I-D-E. Tracker. T-R-A-C-K-E-R-D-R-K-E-R-com backslash Drew, D-H-R-U for your 25% off. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth. I know it might sound a little weird to be super excited about clothes, but after trying the loungeware from Cozy Earth, I totally am, especially with the holidays coming up, we all could use a little cozy

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I don't know anyone who wouldn't be stoked to get some crazy soft and cozy lounge room for the holidays. Your loved ones are going to love it. Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my community their biggest discount ever of 40% off. Just head over to cozyEarth.com with the discount code Drew Podcast. that's Cozy C-O-Z-Y, Earth, E-A-R-T-H-D-H-R-U podcast. Keep in mind that Cozy Earth has a 10-year warranty. You won't hear many other companies offering this, a 10-year warranty so you really can't go wrong with giving them a shot. Welcome to the Drew Perrault podcast.

Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest are Joshua Fields, Milborn, and Ryan Nicodemus. They're the stars of the Netflix documentaries that are out there and their New York Times bestselling authors. Joshua and Ryan, they're known to their audiences as the minimalist, and they help millions of people live meaningful lives with less to their websites, books, podcasts, and films. They've been featured in all sorts of publications. You know the usual, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, GQ. and they've even spoken at Harvard, Apple, Google, and many other corporations.

I've invited Joshua and Ryan on the podcast today to talk about how stepping into decluttering our lives through minimalism can help us also declutter our brain. If this is a topic you're interested in, especially in the context of the holidays and the overconsumption that we're all living in, this episode is for you. Stay tuned. Joshua, Ryan, thank you guys for coming on. As I shared earlier, I've been a huge fan of yours silently watching from a distance. So this is a great moment to have you guys on the podcast and to talk about all things minimalism. So thank you guys for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us, man.

Since the beginning, that's like over a decade, man. I can't remember who it was that first introduced me to you. I'm trying to remember, but it was at least a decade ago. Yeah, our number one answer is a friend showed me. And then the number two answer is, what yours? I don't remember. I was also like really into Buddhism and part of my family tradition comes from this background called Jane, the Jane tradition from India. And there's a big emphasis on our relationship to stuff and not identifying.

You know, one of my favorite quotes about ego is from Eckartole and he says that ego is identification with form. So ego is the belief that I am my BMW. I am my stuff. I am my things that are there. It's not the BMW or the Tesla or the car or the house or whatever. That's the issue. It's the identification. And I feel like that's the essence of the what your guys' messages that you're trying to teach people.

Yeah. Man, it's easy to do that, right? Because, you know, we're sold identifications on a daily basis. I mean, we see over 5,000 advertisements a day. And these are, they're kind of shortcuts to like having an identity. Oh, I'm this type of person who gives my wife a car. with a big bow on it during Christmas or I'm this type of person that goes to this destination.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that about the ego because it is all these things. It's a shortcut to identity. We tell ourselves a lot of stories, right? Stories about I am the type of person who would drive this type of car, right? Or it's an aspirational purchase. I'm the type of person who, if I had that suit,

if I had that dress, if I had that job, these are all identity questions, right? And quite often our beliefs are the problem because let's say you believe something. Okay, fine. Whether or not it's true is irrelevant to your belief. You know, there are people who believe the earth is flat, right? And that's funny and we can kind of point and sneer at them. But there are also people who believe the earth is round.

And it doesn't matter whether or not you believe the earth is flat or whether or not it is round. It is what it is. The truth is there regardless of your beliefs. So we tell ourselves all these stories about our stuff. You know, I'm going to make, let's talk about consumerism real quick. Consumorism is, well, it's buying things because we think it's going to make us either happy or it's going to make us more complete, which is an absurd notion, right? And in the tradition you grew up in, there is an understanding about attachment being suffering, right? And yet in our society today, we're taught that, well, there's good.

attachment and bad attachment and all of these these sort of things well consumerism sort of proves to us the the faults of our beliefs and so if we if we just i know that thing i bought was supposed to make me happy it didn't work an example for me is back in my corporate days in my 20s i i bought that first lexas and i felt some pleasure right away right nothing wrong with a lexas but when it didn't bring me the happiness that i expected what did i do i went out and bought a second lexas And it's like, well, wait a minute. The happiness never arrives. And it's in the fabric of our country, right?

We talk about the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, maybe the pursuit is actually the problem. Maybe the chasing of happiness is the problem because happiness can't be pursued. It can only be uncovered. It's already there. You don't ever look at a baby and tell them that they should be happier. Or here are the seven things they would do to, improve themselves.

And yet we're going around all the time trying to improve our lives by accumulating more, more, more, more. We never stop to consider less. And subtracting quite often uncovers that happiness, that peace, that tranquility that's already there inside us. Well, before we get into your stories, which I want to get into, I want to start with a big picture question. Because I often find in my channels in the world of health,

we talk a lot about health optimization, how to think about health, how to improve our mental health. So some people might be familiar with minimalism. Some people are not familiar. And then, of course, there's different meanings that are out there. So help our audience understand what are some of the top ways that stuff can get in the way

of us living life and loving people? man um guy that takes me back to when i first kind of came across minimalism uh i noticed um something different about josh him and i we've known each other since we were fat little fifth graders we worked at the same corporation and uh not in the fifth grade not in the fifth grade yeah and uh yeah i mean we grew up together and i remember my life was um it was just out of control man i mean like i had a lot of debt uh failed relationships um uh drugs and alcohol working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hours a week. That's why, you know, the drugs and alcohol played a part because those are, you know, they're

pacifiers. It kind of helps deal with all that stress. But, you know, as any alcoholic or drug addict would tell you like, hey, they eventually stopped working. And I was looking for something different. I was looking for a change in my life. And I noticed something different about Josh. His mom passed away and his marriage ended both in the same month.

Yeah. And it was about like six or seven months. months later and he really had changed the person that he was and he was happier and he was lighter and he was freer. And I just kind of sat him down at a certain point. I was like, dude, what is going on with you? Like, why the hell are you so happy? And that's when he told me about this thing called minimalism. And it's not like Josh was like, well, you need to get rid of your stuff. And if you get rid of your stuff, you're going to be happy. It was really about the intentional decisions that we make in our lives on a regular basis. And this is what really resonated with me.

It wasn't just getting rid of the stuff. I knew that I needed to get rid of some stuff, but I also saw a path towards living a more deliberate life because at the time it was not very deliberate. So Josh and I, we came up with this crazy idea called a packing party where we decided to pack all my belongings as if I were moving. And then I would unpack only the items I needed over the next three weeks. So Josh came over and he literally helped me pack up everything,

my clothes, my kitchenware, my towels, TVs, electronics, frame photographs and paintings, toiletries, even my furniture, like everything. we literally pretended like I was moving. So over the next three weeks, you can imagine I impact some bed and bed sheets, close for work, toothbrush, you know, a tool set, some kitchenware, like just the things that really added value to my life. And after those three weeks, I had like 80% of my stuff still sitting in those boxes.

And I had a few revelation moments. Like one was like, oh, wow, here's all this stuff I brought into my life to make me happy and it's not doing its job. And then I started to think about like, well, how do I want to live my life? And up to that point, I was telling myself things like, well, I want to be healthy. You know, if you don't have health, then what do you have? I want to have good relationships in my life. I want to cultivate some type of passion.

I want to contribute beyond myself in a meaningful way. I want to retire early. Like there's all these things that I was kind of feeding myself. But when I looked at like what I was actually. doing with my time. It had nothing to do with those so-called priorities. And that's kind of where I realized like, oh, wow, like my priorities, it's not what I say they are. It's what I actually do with my time. And all that stuff was like this physical manifestation of me not living up to those priorities. And I looked at like the relationships, for example. My mom lived about a half hour away. And I saw her

maybe two or three times a year, you know, Mother's Day, Christmas, you know, maybe five times a year. but for her being a half hour away, I wasn't spending very much time with her. And I looked at how I wanted to retire early. And, you know, how do you retire early? Well, you save money. You have to spend less money than what you make. I was not doing that.

The opposite. Yeah, I was doing the exact opposite. So, you know, pursuing the house, the car, pursuing all the stuff, it was getting in the way of my relationships. It was getting in the way of my financial goals. And, you know, after that packing party, I decided to donate and sell all of that stuff that was in those boxes.

And that's really where the Minimalists.com started. It was with that packing party story. What are some of the ways, you know, when people, I always tell people like, if you go to Times Square and you go to random people that are on the street and you say, do you eat a healthy diet? Right. Most people say, I'm pretty healthy.

That's absurd, though. It's absurd, right? But because everybody has a different reference range. Yes. For what healthy looks like, for somebody, it's like, well, I only smoke one cigarette a day. Or, hey, I only have one Coke every day or Pepsi or whatever it is. So I think when it comes to the framework of applying minimalism to all aspects of our life, and we'll get into some of those, it's not just stuff, it's our information that we consume.

It's how we think about our relationships. It's so many aspects. What are some of the hidden ways that people don't realize that they're not in the framework of essentialism, which is really what we're talking about here? Like, how do they hide behind the trappings? Or what are some disguises that are there that we could talk about that would help them understand that this is something that actually might be a challenge in their life? I like that word essentialism. And I know that minimalism is radical for some people. And so if that isom doesn't work for you, you can call it whatever.

whatever you want, enoughism or intentionalism. But I think what you're talking about is average, right? And so, like, well, the average person eats the average diet and they say they're healthy within the reference range. The same thing is true with our stuff. You know, the average American household has 300,000 items in it. And that'd be wonderful if it was making us more joyous, more content, more peaceful, more happy.

But it's not. You and I know it's doing the opposite. And we see, you know, we're in the middle of this book tour right now. And we see thousands of people who were just overwhelmed by their stuff. Ryan just talked about that packing party experiment that he did. And in our new book, we had 47 different families do the same thing because we're like, it's cool. It worked for Ryan, but can it work for anyone else?

And you see how much people are suffering, truly suffering psychologically, emotionally, and sometimes even physically because of being burdened by all of this sex. Now, that's not to say that stuff is bad. The problem is that we have too much. We have so much that it's actually getting in the way of the things that enhance or augment our life. We have this rule in the book. We have these 16 rules for living with less. And one of them is called the no junk rule.

Everything you own, whether it's 30,000 items, 300,000 items, 3 million items. Everything you own can fit in one of three piles. It's either junk, it's non-essential, or it's a solid. essential. Now, essentials, we all have the same essentials. You know, we all need food and clothing and shelter and transportation and education. And so we have similar essentials. They manifest differently. You know, your home probably looks different from mine, which looks different from Ryan's, and that's fine. But we have the same essentials. Beyond that, we have the non-essentials. Now, these are things that add value to our lives, truly add value to our lives, but we don't

necessarily need them. Like, strictly speaking, I could get by without a dining room table. but it enhances my life and I'm a minimalist not a deprivationist right so I don't want to deprive myself of these things that that are enhancing my life in some way unfortunately the problem is we have this third pile which is the junk and that's where those 300,000 items come in they masquerade as though they add value and we thought they would they were aspirational purchases or maybe they're just expired this morning I got up early and I just I'd woken up early and I was going through the fridge and checking what had expired, you know, are there any condiments that have expired or any medication that has expired? And then I realized, wow, we should almost put an expiration date on our

stuff because many of the things that once added value to our lives, they're just sitting there in our closets or basement or attic or whatever. And then we go to the, what do we try to do to fix the problem. We go to the container store and we buy a bunch of these containers. I mean, they're really just like clutter coffins, right? We're burying our stuff in a mausoleum, our basement. We have these mausoleums of clutter. I know I did. And so organizing is actually the problem. Decluttering alone is sort of the problem as well. The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it. If it's no longer serving a purpose, in your life, it's not bringing you joy, if it's not augmented your life in some way,

then you're probably going to feel freer, lighter, happier if you let go. Of course, the stuff is just sort of the initial bite at the apple. With minimalism, it starts with the stuff. But then we go beyond that. We start questioning our obligations. We start questioning the toxic relationships in our lives. Because to let go is not actually something you do. Letting go is something you stop doing. You stop clinging to the excess. You stop clinging to the toxic relationship. You stop clinging to those unnecessary obligation. You stop clinging to yes, yes, yes. So you have the ability to say yes to the things that are actually important to you. There's this incredible doctor who's been on the podcast before. His name is Dr. Gabor Mate.

There's a lot of work in the space of addiction. And he has this great quote. He says, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. All addictions are there and manifest to cover up some sort of pain, some sort of trauma that people have gone through, some sort of void that's there. I think about my mom and I think about my family's background in history and my mom gave birth to me on August 1st, 1982.

And it was a day that there was a coup attempt that was happening in Kenya, in Nairobi, Kenya. The army, there was a fraction group of rebels that were trying to take over the president. President fled the country. Rebels took over the hospital. My dad didn't know is my mom okay? Is she not okay? The entire country is on like a curfew? My dad didn't even know that anything happened until the next day and he couldn't get to the hospital and he was worried out of his mind. And between that and where my parents lived and growing up in Kenya, even though, you know, they were firmly middle class, I can see from my mom's story and we've talked about this for and she's

Probably going to be cool with me talking about this. If not, I'll edit it out. I could see how her desire to hold onto things was an opportunity to try to create unknowingly security in her life. Yeah. So we would always joke with her growing up that we had enough stuff in our basement for that the next apocalypse came,

we would be able to provide everybody in our neighborhood with stuff to be able to fill up. But those things would cause constant, anxiety. They would cause a sense of I have to finally one day address it. Do I have enough items that are there? Do we have the right items? Or even when we begin to, and this goes back to kind of one of the principles that you guys talk about what if one day I need them. Yeah. Just in case. Just in case. Right. Talk about just in case for a second. Oh, man. We have a, so on our website, If you go to the minimalists.com forward slash rule, or is it rules?

It's a plural. Rule book. Rule book. Thanks. We talk about these 18 different rules living with less. And one of them is the just in case rule or otherwise known it's a 2020 rule. So, yeah, we hang on to thousands and thousands of just in case items. Just in case we might need them one day.

I mean, just in case is kind of like the three most dangerous words in the English language when they're strung together like that. But I remember just in the English. Josh and I, we were on our first tour. And this was back in 2011 or 2011? Yeah. So, yeah, man, it's crazy time flies. And it's our very first city, St. Petersburg. We started there.

That's where Josh's mother went to retire. It's where she passed away. So we thought it was pretty symbolic to, like, start there in St. Petersburg, Florida. And we get to where we're staying. We open up the trunk. And I'm looking at like, you know, two different duffel bags, a garment bag, a suitcase, just all this stuff in our trunk.

And we're only gone for a week. And I'm like, I'm like, Josh, we are hypocrites, man. Like, look at us. Look at our trunks filled with stuff. We're supposed to be the minimalist. Right. So we started talking about, like, why did we bring all this stuff with us? And it turns out, like, every, there was all this just in case stuff.

Well, you know, we're going to be in Florida. So I might go swimming. So I'm going to bring some trunks, some swim trunks. And those might get dirty. So, you know, if I want to go swimming twice, I want to have two pairs of swim trunks. And we're going through all this and realize like, yeah, this is all just in case items. So we kind of came up with this rule 10 years ago that if we absolutely need something, if we absolutely like, you know, don't plan for something we need it, we could probably get that

just in case item for less than $20 and less than 20 minutes. So that's why we call it the 2020 rule. And I'll tell you, we lived in the middle of nowhere, Montana. And it's worked for us 100% of the time. Now, is there an exception out there? Sure. Like, every rule has an exception to it. But for Josh and I, we might have had to have using it five or six times between the both of us in the last 10 years.

Because at first it kind of sounds like, well, it's kind of a rule of privilege, right? Like, you're just going to go out and spend $20 and assuming you have the means to get somewhere in 20 minutes. But, you know, because you hardly ever have to use it, you know, those six times that we've had to spend $20, bucks called $120 over the last 10 years that has given us permission to let go of thousands of just in case items so yeah it's uh it's very easy to just hold on to well i drink coffee i remember during my packing party i'm like i drink coffee so i'm going to hold on to this coffee mug well i did that a lot i end up having like i think i had a coffee mug it said you know world's greatest grandad or something on it and uh yeah just looking at like these 12 15 18 coffee cups that i had because i drink

coffee. Well, you know, what if 12 of them break? I need backups. It's very easy to get caught up in that. Yeah, Ryan's kind of talking about the, when he says letting go, it's also letting go, the just-in-case rule, it allows you to let go of the stories you're telling yourself. Because the just-in-case is like, I'm holding on to this just-in-case, I might need it in some non-existent hypothetical future. And as soon as you say that out loud, it starts to sound a little crazy, right? But then you also realize I'm holding on to a lot of these clothes that are out of style or that I never enjoyed in the first place. You've got that oversized orange sweatshirt with tatters and tassels on it in the back of the closet. It's like, yeah, but I paid a lot

of money for it. So I better hold on to just in case. Just in case what? Well, I don't know, but just in case. We tell ourselves these stories that permit us to hold on to all of this excess. And then it bleeds into other areas as well. We have a lot of of just in case relationships. Now, obviously, you can't replace a person for less than $20 and less than 20 minutes. But the rule, the principle here, still applies that, hey, we're holding

on to this relationship transactionally. Oh, I'm just, this person's in my life just in case I might need them. Well, that's the opposite of love. To love someone is to see them for who they are without trying to change them, without using them. It's why we called the book, Love People Use Things.

It's been our catchphrase for a while, but we tried the opposite for a very long time. We tried to love things and use people. And the reason that's so unfortunate is, well, I think we don't really understand love. You know, like I'll say I love my wife, but then if I'm not careful, I'll say, I love tacos. It's like, do I actually mean the same thing? No, but I think we started to get confused. I love my new Lexus. nothing wrong with the Lexus,

but as soon as I think I love it, now I'm putting in the same area as another person. I'm personifying these things. No wonder it's so difficult to let go. One of the beautiful parts about this practice of really looking at all aspects of our life is that you start to uncover

the unconscious stories that are there. We were watching your documentary on Netflix that came out. What month was it? the it debuted. So our first one came out in no the more recent one. The new one is called less is now. It came out in January. January 1st, the New Year's Day. Yeah. I've had a bookmarked and my wife and I, we just moved into our new place together. We live in just not too far away from here in Brentwood. And anytime you move and anytime you also combine your house with

somebody else's house, there's always stuff that comes up, even if you've been practicing, you know, this aspect. So we were watching. I was like, this is the perfect opportunity. I'm interviewing these guys, you know, we just moved into our new place. This is a good opportunity. And as we were watching it, one of the uncovering of the stories that came up was my wife has used to be an investment banker. And that was one of her biggest goals was like she put that work and being there and incorporated. And she was at one of the top banks that was out there was like, this was a really big goal of hers. Now, in that job, and this was many, many years of, ago in New York, you have to have the clothes that go along with it.

Right. And she had a great, you know, great clothes that went along with it and looked the part and everything like that. As we were moving into our new place, a good chunk of her closet was filled up with these clothes. And she's left that career behind and she doesn't even dress like that anymore. We don't live in New York. People in L.A.

don't really dress like that anymore. And she's an entrepreneur. She's on this whole new path. She's doing this whole new thing. And there was this hesitancy of letting go of these clothes. Yes. And it was not just the Justin case, that was part of it, but the step deeper was I'm letting go of an identity

if I let go of these clothes. Yeah. And that's the power of this work. And I feel like your guys' message and the documentary and the new book is that where are you giving meaning to things that are not useful? Because it's like a sack of rocks that you're carrying uphill that adds additional burden into your.

life. Yeah. If everything's valuable, then nothing's valuable. And we're treating all those things we're not using as though it has some sort of value to us. And then the word you used is meaning. Well, nothing, none of our material possessions are inherently meaningful. Now, it doesn't mean it's wrong to sort of impart meaning onto them. I have certain sentimental items that I kept from when my mom died. But let's say I would have kept all of her things, 300,000 items. And now I have have 300,000 sentimental items, right? Well, that's just watering down the meaning that I, the association I have with those things, right? And it actually, here's the paradox of minimalism. I get far more value from my things now as a minimalist than I did when I was a consumer, you know, a consumerist.

And the reason I get so much more value from my things is because there's nothing that's in the way. and I use them when I need to use. I'm actually using the things, right? I'm able to enjoy those things, but I don't assign so much meaning to them that I feel compelled to cling to them. Because I think that is our response quite often. I think about my daughter, she's eight,

and when she gets on the monkey bars, she has to constantly let go. If you cling, you don't go anywhere. Well, isn't that true with us? We're there clinging to all those things. or the metaphor you used, the things weighing us down, right? Well, all this baggage that we're carrying with us, these are bags that we picked up on our own.

And we also have the ability to set them down. Yeah. You know, people will ask, what's the hardest thing you had to let go of? And, you know, I really wish I had, like, a sexy answer. Like, oh, you know, there's this, like, antique voss that was in my family. I mean, it's nothing like that.

But what I will say is the hardest thing for me like, oh, if it was my identity, because I was so wrapped up into corporate Ryan, I was, I were those, you know, I was those, those Brooks Brothers suits, those Alan Edmund Jews. Like, that's what I really identified with. I remember I'd go to a meeting, I'd be leading a meeting, and my employees, they'd be like, you always look like you're running for president. And I'm like, yeah, I certainly do, because that's who I am. I can be president. I mean, there's that ego that really, man, that really was not healthy. And yeah, letting go of those suits, letting go of those Alan Edmund shoes, I totally empathize

with your wife there. It was very difficult to let go of that identity. For sure. And I think there's beautiful moments that are in life. And I think a lot of people just went through the last two years, really getting a chance to sit with themselves and see what is most important to me. it's gone in different directions because if you look at the statistics on the pandemic

and everything that happened in between, alcohol sales way up, right? Sugar, way up. Consumer goods, you're at home all day. You had kind of a divide of people. You had one camp that went more consumption. And I often think that's a reflection of, again, filling that void, looking for,

what do I need to do to give me a sense of safety in a world that feels like I'm extremely unsafe? And yet another group of people saying, my life wasn't working for me and it hadn't been working for me for a long time. I need some inspiration to take a step and maybe have a courage to go in a different direction. Or maybe it was working for you for a period of time.

There's a difference between graduating and getting a divorce, right? If you graduate, that's a metaphor from our friend Rob Bell, if you graduate high school, you just sort of move on, right? but if you get into if you have a divorce it's like there's there's there's this uh this breakup there's this tension and so maybe it's just time to graduate from wherever you were and you can leave it amicably you can be thankful for where where you were it's almost like there's an expiration date right like high school served me well but if i stayed there for a fifth year six year seventh year eventually i'm

going to want to divorce from this place, right? And so I think the same thing is true with our circumstances. And yeah, you're right. The pandemic illuminated, well, it illuminated this question that Ryan and I have been asking for the last 12 years now, what is essential? Now, this word essential has come up a lot, essential workers, essential travel, essential businesses. But what about what is actually essential for my life? And yes, with minimalism, that starts with this stuff. But what about questioning those relationships or questioning the habits or questioning my own identity? What about questioning my time and the way I'm allocating my days? Am I creating or am I consuming? Am I spending time with the people that I want to spend time with? Or am I forsaking those people

to spend time with networking buddies and acquaintances and coworkers and all of these things? And there's a reason that nearly half, nearly half of people under 40 right now are saying they're going to quit their jobs if they can't work from home at least part of the time. It's a study that came out. And what that tells me is that people are beginning to question their priorities in a way that it will serve them because, oh, man, I said my priorities were these seven different things, but my calendar doesn't really. reflect what I'm saying. My calendar still filled up with all of these sort of faux priorities. Joshua, go into your story a little bit more. Ryan, you went into your story a bit. Talk about, you were just talking about graduation and divorce. You kind of had a little bit of a mixture of both of those when you first got into this world. Yeah, I think it was almost like

a triple car crash in a way. My mom died my marriage into both in the same month. I was sort of at the pinnacle of my corporate career. I was in my late 20s at the time. And I had sort of achieved everything I ever wanted, right? The six-figure salary, the luxury cars, the big house in the suburbs with more toilets than people. I had all the stuff to fill every corner of my consumer-driven life. And I was sort of living the American dream, but then those two things happened and it made me realize like, oh, I might be living the American dream, but maybe this isn't my dream, right? Because I saw the people I really aspired to be like. I was climbing that corporate ladder.

I was the youngest director in my company's 140 year history at the time. And man, I just saw this path. I'm going to be a vice president by 32, a senior vice president by 35, a C-O by age 40. I realize if I worked really hard for the next 10, 15, 20 years, I'd be just as miserable as the guys I aspired to be like. Because as I got closer to them, I saw that it wasn't all ponies and all. rainbows. It was more stress, more anxiety, more debt even. They started, they were making tremendous money, but spending even better money. And it's not a judgment. I was doing the same thing. And I realized, oh, if I follow the same recipe, I'm going to bake the same cake, basically.

And so it was Christmas season. And my boss came to me and he said, hey, we got after the holiday shopping season, we need to close eight of our retail stores. I was in charge of 150 retail stores. And he, I was like, okay, I've closed stores before. And he said, and we have to lay off 42 employees. Okay, I've done that plenty of times. And so you've got two weeks to put together a plan. I got home, I started putting these names on a spreadsheet.

And I realized, like, these aren't just names on a spreadsheet. These are mothers and daughters and fathers and people with families and lives. looking at them just as names and data on a spreadsheet was kind of like looking at a rainbow and black and white. It was not seeing the full picture. And so within two days, I put together all of the names because I knew I had to do it. But my name was the first name on the list. And I said, hey, I'm done here because this is no longer in line with my values or what I want to do. I had really no idea what I was going to do.

I knew I wanted to write. I wrote fiction throughout most of my 20s. And so I walked away from the corporate world. It was about a year, year and a half after my mother died. We had already started the minimalists and been writing online. It wasn't a business. It was just a blog, right? And we were just like, we were cataloging a sort of experience that we had.

And people started finding value on it, right? And so pretty soon it was 500 readers and then 5,000 and then several million readers at the blog. because when people find value in something, they tend to share it with their friends and family because they think they'll get value from it as well. And so this whole path was a bit of a beautiful accident. Like I knew I wanted to write, and it just didn't know it would turn out like this.

It's incredible because it's now a few books in, a few couple movies in, and also as somebody who works a lot with my friends, with my family, both my sisters are in my company as well, too. I also just, I can imagine there's a lot of inner work that goes along with, you know, you guys knew each other for such a long time to continue to grow the mission, the vision, and the journey, and also maintain a friendship. So I just want to acknowledge you guys from the distance. I'm sure there's a lot of ups and downs that go along the way, a lot of honest

conversations that are there. But yeah, I just want to recognize that. That's a really beautiful thing. Thank you, man. Yeah, it's funny. I remember, it was shortly after my mom died in my marriage And I started just looking around questioning, like, what had become my life's focus? What was my purpose? And I knew it wasn't stuff, right? I don't believe there's an inherent purpose, but I knew that I wasn't going to find. I wasn't finding any meaning in all of these things, all these so-called luxury things, right? In fact, I was finding a lot of debt, a lot of stress.

I made really good money, but I was broke. How crazy is that? I was really broke. In fact, the year that I left the corporate world, I took about a 90% pay cut. I made $23,000 that year in 2011. And I was more financially secure that year than any year I had been in my adult life. And the reason I was more financially secure that year was because I understood the consequences of overindulgent consumption. And Ryan saw something in me.

I never jumped up and said, hey, look at me. I think you need to become a minimalist Ryan. You got too much stuff. And I think that speaks to the relationship we have now. To love someone is to see them for who they are without trying to change them. I don't try to change Ryan. He doesn't try to change me because to try to change someone means you hate who they are. And it doesn't mean that I like everything about Ryan.

It's possible not to like something about someone, but to love every. bit of that person. And I think the reason we work so well together and have for so long is we have radically different beliefs, political beliefs, spiritual beliefs, religious beliefs. We have different preferences, different personality. Like exact opposite. You look at Myers-Briggs, we're the exact opposite. I-S-T-J, E-N-F-P, like literally exact opposite. But what we do have that's similar is we have the same values. And we have a similar understanding that that for me to love you means I accept you for who you are and for him to love me is the same thing. Ryan, for you, what were some of the things that, you know, there's this whole idea of like,

as we are to the other, we are to the self. So part of that is also accepting ourselves for your journey and your transformation and letting go the old life and stepping into the new. what was some parts of yourself that you had to step in and actually get a chance to love? Man, you know, I really had to get, it starts with getting clear on, it started with getting clear on my values and what I did want my priorities to actually be. So I talked about those earlier with health, good relationships, creativity, contributing, growing, all of these things. And I really had to get clear in how I was going to get there. So, yeah, there's a lot of to move past the, like, you know, the drugs and alcohol.

There's a lot of trauma I had to kind of deal with. And was there, sorry to cut you off. Was there, you know, I generally find there there's like usually a couple top insecurities that we have when we're a kid that then just continuously manifest themselves as we get older and older and older. What were some of the components there for you? Was there any kind of themes? Well, I think I always wanted to be the cool kid. Like, I always wanted to be accepted. So I never really accepted myself.

Like my acceptance was very reliant on other people accepting me. And that came from these traumas. These traumas lead to insecurities. I was talking to a trauma expert. And they were kind of explaining to me how trauma is like an onion where, you know, you've got these different layers that build on top of each other. And for me, it really helped me realize, like it wasn't just like, It wasn't just like, oh, my stepdad was physically abusive or, you know, my mom was a certain way.

It was kind of these things that built on top of each other. And one trauma leads to another trauma leads to another trauma. And being able to kind of unpack it in a way to realize, like, where those insecurities came from, man, it just helped me not be so upset, so angry, so sad. because we all want to know why things happen, right? I mean, that's like the question we all ask ourselves. Why? When something bad happens, why does it happen? And I've really come to accept that things just happen.

There doesn't have to be a reason why. Things don't have to make sense. And so that's where it started. But then really, where I was able to let go of a lot of these insecurities, see, when I was in the corporate world, I wasn't, I didn't really like the person I was. Other people liked me. and told me I was doing a great job and I get pats on the back.

Even my mom, who, again, I saw hardly ever when I was working at that corporation, oh, look at Ryan, he made it. He's our corporate success story in the family. I mean, I'm the only person of my family on my mom's side who has a four-year bachelor degree. So like, you know, there are these things that they look, that they would look up to me for. And it kind of affirmed, well, I'm doing the right, even though it doesn't feel right, I'm still doing the right thing because I'm getting all these affirmations. So that only lasts so long when you're not, when you don't like the person you are.

So the question is, is how do you love yourself? How do you like the person that you are? And for me, I have realized that it's really about my, it's my short term actions aligning with those long term values, those long term beliefs. That is how I can at least look in the mirror and say, well, like you're really doing what you feel is right. And the thing is, is like, now when I look in the mirror, I love that guy. Like, he really is doing what he can. I can go to sleep a night knowing that, like, I'm trying my absolute best.

Am I perfect? No, do I screw up? Sure, everyone does, right? But ultimately, when my actions started aligning with my values, like, that is when other people's opinions of me started to matter less and less. And let me tell you, when you call yourselves the minimalists, people really, want to share their opinions with you. Most of them good, but some of them

are very judgmental. But you know, when someone comes at me now with some type of insult or criticism, which, you know, there's a difference between criticism and feedback. Like criticism, someone comes in like a seagull. They, you know, crap all over your work and then they fly away, right?

Where feedback is like, hey, here's something I noticed you might want to consider. It has like a solution that's kind of mixed with this this observation. So when someone criticizes me now, I actually feel a bit of empathy for that person because I know that they are exactly where I was. They don't like themselves.

And what they're doing is they're looking at me and they're saying, well, if I was you, then I wouldn't like myself. And there's probably some other things going on where they don't really like themselves. So, you know, I just kind of all smile and nod or just brush it off, but it doesn't eat at me like it used to

because again, it doesn't matter what someone sees in me. It matters what I see in myself. My favorite quotes, Byron Katie, she says, what other people think of you is none of your business. I love that, yeah. Because they are also entitled to have that. Yeah. And we can see it through the lens of their suffering.

They need to make other people wrong to make themselves feel right. Yeah. It all comes back to avoid. You know, in our world of health and wellness, every week I have on different guests who well-intentioned, And I've done episodes about this before. Well-intentioned feel like they have the universal field theory to provide completion to people's lives.

Maybe that's a specific diet. Maybe that's a specific approach. Maybe that's this one thing that if people only could fix this aspect and everything else would come to completion. And all those perspectives are great. And I try to ask questions where it's like, how can we learn from this perspective, who could benefit from the most? And how can we try it on like a hat?

Does it fit? Does it work? Does it not work? but with a little bit of skepticism, generally that nothing besides ourself really is the complete answer for what we're looking for. How do you guys balance out?

Because you guys also have a podcast in the category of health. I believe your podcast is in that same category. And you've done episodes on health. You've got episodes on optimization, personalization, all these different things of looking at that. How do you balance out and use the framework of minimalism

when it comes to the approach of making our lives better, but not getting caught up in the this next thing might be the thing that fixes me. I think the problem is thinking that we need to be better, right? And better in most context means doing something more, acquiring more, getting the right, the right diet. You know, we did a podcast episode with Rich Roll and Dr. Paul Saladino together, right? And the only time they've ever done a show together because I'm friends with both of them. And I mean, Rich is one of our closest friends.

He's wonderful. And what I learned from both of them while, I mean, so for folks who don't know, who Rich is a plant-based athlete. And at the time, Paul Saladino was 100% carnivore, didn't eat any plants whatsoever. So they literally had zero overlap on what they ate. And I didn't want to turn it into a debate. I wanted to say, okay, but if there is a Venn diagram of these two guys, it's not actually there's no overlap.

The overlap is all on what they avoid. And so where does minimalism come into this? It's understanding what to avoid putting in your body. That's actually much more healthy than the things you do put into your body, right? And so these are two, we're talking about two of the top 1%. people and they have radically different diets, but they avoid seed oils, right? They avoid, like, you could, in fact, there's a list in our book of things that both of them avoid because we call it the minimalist diet, but it has nothing to do with what you eat.

It's everything about what you avoid, you know, factory farming, processed foods, packaged foods, these different things. I noticed what both of them were avoiding. And so instead of saying, we'll have a debate and this is right and this is wrong, that's where we go wrong is thinking there is a binary. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But of course, right and wrong are perspectival. They're situational. They're individual. And I have an autoimmune disease that I know Rich's diet would not work for me at all. It would make me so inflamed, right? I can't have all the oxalates and all these other things that

really, you know, they mess with my small intestine, right? But also with, with what Saladino was doing, he even recognized, like, I need to change, right? And so being willing to say there isn't a right or wrong to cling to, it's about understanding what is most appropriate for me right now. And most important, where does minimalism come in?

It's about what we avoid. Because not picking up the thing, not taking in the thing, not buying the thing, not putting the thing in my body is just letting go in advance. Yeah. You know, I think Josh and I, too,

we go way out of our way to say, hey, look, we're not offering happiness. We're not saying, well, if you get rid of your stuff, you're going to be happy. If you become a minimalist, you're going to be happy. And I think that's where a lot of these different pieces of advice, it goes wrong. Because it's like, well, if you do this, you know, then you're going to feel like you're living a good life. But what we do is we share kind of our recipe for how we got to where we're at now. And there's two completely different recipes. One of my favorite compliments is someone will come up to us at one of our events.

And they're like, I really agree with about half of what you say. And I'm like, that's awesome because that means you're formulating your own opinions. And what you're doing is that that person is taking some ingredients from Josh or taking some ingredients from me. And they're creating their own recipe for their life. So, yeah, I think that we tend to avoid prescribing. I mean, you know, certainly I think, you know, me, I don't know if Josh should say the same thing. But like, I have this innate desire to like just help people as much as I can.

So I think sometimes that might get in the way because you think you're helping when you're prescribing something. But what we do is really try to, I guess, give some observations and some perspective. And that's really where I think people, yeah, that's where they can kind of make their own path. So is minimalism the path? No. I wish I could sit here and say, read our books, watch your documentaries, listen to our podcast, and like you'll never have problems with consumerism again.

That's just not the case. Like those desires are always going to be there. What Josh and I do is talk about how we deal with those desires and we offer an observation. And, you know, someone can take that or not. And sometimes they take it. Sometimes they don't. That's okay. I think of minimalism as a framework.

It's similar to like fasting. It creates space for us to be able to enjoy the things that are there. And it's also too, evolutionarily, it's our body's natural state that we evolved into. There wasn't always food around. There wasn't always components. And as society grew, we understood that when we started to have more abundance, that actually taking time away from input made our body function better. So when you get a chance to reset a little bit, when you get a chance to create some space

in your life, you can enjoy all those things better, like loving people and using things. Talk to me about some of the stories that you guys have had since your book tour has been out there. And the book came out in July. We have a link to it in the show notes. Love people, use things because the opposite never works. That's right. What were some of your favorite stories that you guys have come across at any point in time?

And I'd love to have maybe a couple stories about families because I know that's something that people always bring up. Yeah. Is like, how does this look like when I have kids and families and other stuff? So whoever wants to jump in. I'll tell you one story in Denver. So we'll do, we give a talk at our live events. and then we will do a live version of the minimalist podcast where we answer people's questions.

And we also do a book reading too in between that. But it was during the Q&A part where this gal had come up there and she was like, you know, my husband, you know, he's got his, you know, our house is great except but he's got his garage. And it's just, you know, packed full of stuff. And, you know, he's let me help help him organize it. And we've brought professional organizers in. but there's still just too much stuff. And I'm just asking you guys, how do I get my husband to get rid of his stuff?

And I look over and I see this guy filming. And I'm like, is this your husband right here? She's like, yeah, that's my husband. And he's like filming this question that she's asking. And I think we probably gave her an answer she didn't expect. But the answer was, hey, look, like, again, to love someone is to see them for who they are. And it seems like there's a lot of love in that relationship. but getting your husband to change something,

that's actually to unlove him, trying to get him to get rid of his stuff. That is a way to unlove him. And the fact that he's even brought an organizer in it and tried to like do what he can, like that's a huge step forward. And I think, you know, she was expecting us to be on her side,

but it was more about being on the husband's side. But that's a question we get asked a lot is, is how do I change someone? And we don't have any advice in how to change someone. Yeah. I mean, people, first of all, people rarely ever change.

And what I mean by that is that they're on their own journey. Yeah. So when they change, it's when it's right for them. And if it's lasting change, it's got to come from them. And when we force them into change, that's when we create resentment. And why would we want to create resentment with somebody that we loved? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, what's the old saying?

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. And, in fact, the word that she used at that Denver event was, how do I convince him to get rid of the stuff? And my response was, well, to convince him is unloving. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't help with the transformation when he's ready, right? It's like when Ryan came to me and said, hey, man, why are you so happy lately? Well, you seem so much calmer over the last few months. And this isn't supposed to be. Like, we're still in the corporate world and your mom died, your marriage ended.

Like, things are kind of in shambles. Why are you so calm right now? And so that opened the door for me to talk to him about minimalism, not to convince him or try to change him, but by exhibiting outcomes, by exhibiting particular behaviors. It was never about decluttering. That's why you don't see me and Ryan write about the 67 ways to declutter your closet.

There's plenty of that out there if you want to find it, right? Every magazine on the shelf at your grocery checkout line has those tips for you. Those tips are the problem. They help us organize the chaos in a way that retains the chaos still. You asked about stories. One of my favorites is from Jason and Jennifer Kirkendahl. They're a couple in Minneapolis. Well, they were sort of living the American dream.

They had a couple kids, a dog, a cat, house in the suburbs, a corporate job and a stay-at-home mom. And then they were kind of miserable. And they realized, like, oh, we're hiding purchases from each other, which is so common. so, so common. We're in debt, we're stressed out. We don't have enough space. We have to buy a bigger house in a farther suburb from Jason's job.

And eventually they got to this point when they were 35, and they were just miserable. And on Christmas morning, they switched on the TV, and they saw our first documentary, minimalism, on Netflix. And Jen, the wife, she looked around at all the stuff

that they had unwraged. on Christmas and they realized their kids had already forgotten about half the toys they unwrapped. Her gift, which Jason had purchased with their credit card, was already in a box in a drawer somewhere. And she realized like, oh, this path were going down. We're trying to buy happiness. And it is not working. And so they started simplifying, radically simplifying.

They rented a dumpster, a giant dumpster put on the side of their house. house. I don't recommend this, by the way. We didn't tell them to do this. They put this giant dumpster on the side of their house and this started chucking everything. And they said, we're going to give ourselves a month to get rid of anything that's excess. And they went overboard, just just piling all the stuff in there. And the day before the dumpster was going to be removed, it was overflowing with stuff. The dumpster caught fire and was on the side of their house. It burnt their whole house down. Including everything they wanted to keep, like all these things. things that the gosh but that month of letting go had put things into perspective like oh my god this is a

giant inconvenience but our kids are okay we're okay in fact our marriage is actually better than what it was a month ago because we're able to finally figure out what our priorities are and put them at the forefront as opposed to putting consumerism and status at the forefront and so yeah it was a huge inconvenience, right? Everything sort of spontaneously combusted, literally for them. But they came out of that, you know, you could use any sort of cliche you want here, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, but that was kind of true for them. Their relationship is so much better now because they were willing to let go. And if, let's say that that fire would have happened two months earlier, it would have ended their marriage. They both, they both told us that. And so it's recognizing

the stories we tell ourselves, the attachments we've created that we don't even know that we've created. And it also seems like for them and for so many people, it's the recognition of what expectations have I inherited that I actually don't want. There's so many groups of people that are like, well, I have to do this because that's what we do. We have to get gifts. And listen, there's nothing wrong with getting gifts, just like you guys have shared. Right now, if you turn on the media, the narrative is, All the ports are clogged. You got to start buying early.

Gear up. So there's this madness on top of the normal madness that's there. Yeah. And with Black Friday around the corner and all that other stuff and everything. And I think there's a lot of people that are asking themselves, like, do we want to do this as a group of friends? Do we want to do this as a group of family or actually what is more meaningful to us? Expectations. I'm sorry, letting go these expectations and more creating experiences.

having dinner together, spending more time together. What were some of the top expectations that you think, or in the book that you guys get a chance to address that maybe it doesn't have to be this way, right? Can you think about any that are in the category of expectations that we've held onto that we don't necessarily need to? We just never questioned it in the first place. Your happiness is moderated by your expectations, right? And so, and that's true for everyone.

So if we, the more expectations we have, the more we expect, the more miserable we are as a result. And yeah, Ryan and I had a ton of expectations, right? We grew up really poor on food stamps, government assistance, and we thought the reason we were so unhappy was because we didn't have any money. And so my expectation was I have to go out and have a corporate job. In fact, there are a lot of societal shoulds that we. We're shitting all over ourselves. There's, you should get a college degree, right? Again, nothing wrong with that.

You should give people gifts obligatorily on holidays and birthdays, right? You should eat this. You shouldn't eat that. You should own this type of car in order to be in this type of position. We have a lot of shoulds. That's just another way to say expectation. But should doesn't exist. There are no shoulds.

There are only coulds. There are a lot of things you could do. You could buy that Lexus. You could eat that banana. Whatever it is, you can do those things. But it's not that you should do it. As soon as you realize that there are no shoulds, there are no innate expectations here,

it frees you up to create your own set of expectations. Or maybe, just maybe, be free of those expectations altogether. I'll give you one specific example. here, the thing that drove me the most crazy, I was the goal guy. I was so goal oriented in the corporate world. Ryan can attest this. I used to have spreadsheets of goals with subgoals and how far we had gone. And at any given time, I'd have a dozen to two dozen life goals on there, right? Whether it was retirement or climbing the corporate ladder or sales goals, consumer goals, all of these goals that I wanted to meet. And the funny thing is, let's say I had a dozen goals on there. And, I had a dozen goals on there.

and I would meet seven, eight, nine, ten of them. Let's say I meet ten of those goals. It sounds awesome. Well, I had two reasons to now be upset because I didn't meet those two expectations that I had. My goals were driving me crazy. They were really unnecessary. So I haven't had goals for the last decade.

And I just realized, because we're told you should have goals. Goals are a good thing. Well, they weren't for me. That's powerful. and I think that is representative of these are all just things to try on. Try it on. See how it works. If you are super goal-oriented and that's been your identity, try a little challenge.

Try a little challenge of the opposite. See how that feels. To be clear, I'm not prescribing anything. I don't think this is a one-size-fits-all solution. I'm not telling anyone to get rid of a single item. I'm not telling you to get rid of your goals. I have some observations about my own life. and what wasn't serving me.

And I think that's what's important to understand is identifying, hey, that thing I thought was serving me was actually doing the opposite. Absolutely. And I think that anybody hears that. It's like if there feels like there's truth in that for you, it's fun to experiment. Bingo.

It's fun to experiment. I remember reading an old, I feel like it was a blog post that either you guys wrote jointly or one of you wrote where you were talking about how you weren't as intentional with your, your work so you would turn off your Wi-Fi or you canceled your Wi-Fi at home and you only use it during certain times. So to me, the beauty in that, and I'm sure I got some facts wrong in that situation is that anything in life where freedom has gotten out of control and is causing you

not to honor something, there's an opportunity to bring boundaries to it and test it out. And will that bring in some aspect of you valuing that thing at a deeper level. We're having all these internet challenges where I live in Brentwood right now. It's kind of like the whole community is kind of going through it right now. And it's been now about three, four weeks. And I used to record some podcasts at home, the ones that were done remotely, even though in person is my preference. And because I couldn't record, because my internet is so not there, the time, the time I needed that little reminder from the universe, from spirit, from God, whatever it came from of like, hey, are you using this time intentionally when you have the internet or are you fucking around

on things that actually don't matter? And you just need sometimes a little bit of contrast to kick your butt and to get you to try something else. Yeah. I got rid of, it was an accident. I got rid of home internet at first because it was a long time ago, but I was moving, because I was trying to pay off debt. So I moved into this small apartment in Dayton, Ohio. It was, 500 bucks a month and I called up AT&T the phone company said hey can you install internet and they're like actually we we can't schedule an appointment until Monday there was something going on with their system call back on Monday and so I let the weekend go by without any internet and I realized it was like the most productive weekend I had had in a really long time because oh I can't pacify myself with all

of the ways that I, I, I pacify myself with videos and social media, et cetera. And so, and I didn't have, I didn't have an iPhone at the time. I had a Blackberry of corporate world, right? And, and so, I found that like, I was reading more, writing more, exercising more, just that weekend. And I'm like, huh, let me see if I can go a month without this. Let me see if I can go a month without home internet. What turned into five years? and so what I realized is that's an expectation, that's a narrative. You should, I mean, people, as soon as I tell people I don't have internet at home, it's like, oh, wait a minute.

How do you get on the internet? Well, there are other ways to get on the internet. And after that, I got rid of my smartphone for two months. You learned some really special, actually, I just got rid of the phone altogether, but you learn a special kind of loneliness when you do that, right? because now if I don't have internet home and I don't have my phone at all. Well, first off, you learn there are no pay phones anymore.

But you also learn about like your friends and if you want to have a commitment with them, like, hey, we're going to have dinner six o'clock tonight. Well, you just show up. And if they don't show up or they're late, you have no way of knowing, right? You just have to sort of wait there and stare at a wall for a while.

And it's almost like we're terrified of being, with ourselves and all of these distractions are, you know, they're getting in the way of our, of our relationship with the person we spend the most time with, which is ourselves. For a lot of people approaching this worldview, trying it on, questioning aspects of their life can feel like they don't know where to start. So a really cool thing you guys are done in the new book is like there's these 16 rules that are there. Let's dig into a few of them and just whoever wants to riff on on different ones and share your thoughts and ideas and how it could be useful.

And we could deliver some value on top of what we've already shared with the audience. So we've already talked about a couple. A few have already come in, the just-in-case rule, the emergency items rule that you guys shared about your story in Florida and that sort of situation. Let's talk about the wait-for-it rule. Tell us what that is. We also call it the 30-30 rule because I think. that we've removed all the friction from our buying purchases. It's one click, same day delivery, you know, and that adds a lot of convenience, right?

And it sounds nice to remove the friction. Like, who wants this much friction? But when you remove all the friction, you've also lost traction, right? And so, like, it's like if you're driving on ice, you're going to slide all over the place. Well, we're kind of doing that with our consumer purchases. It's so easy to buy something. And so the wait for a rule, it's also known as the 30-30 rule. if anything costs more than 30 bucks,

I wait 30 hours to buy it. And that's just a little buffer, a little bit of friction that I need to say, hey, is this something that will actually add value to my life or is this a bit of an impulse? And if it's more than 100 bucks, I try to wait 30 days. And that way, it's,

I'm making a deliberate decision. I'm not depriving myself of a thing long term, but temporarily depriving ourselves, helps us identify whether or not. not it's actually going to add value. Beautiful. All right. We chatted about that couple.

Joshua, you share the story that their stuff went up in flames and you used the term spontaneous combustion. This wasn't exactly the rule that was related to that, but what is the spontaneous combustion rule? Oh, man, we came up with this. We were in Pittsburgh and a woman had come up to ask a question about a quilt that her mom had made her in high school. So she was, I don't know, mid to late 20s.

She had this quilt from when she was sick. 16 years old. And she's like, my mom did this wonderful thing. She took all these pictures of, you know, me and my friends growing up and junior high. She printed them out on fabric and made a quilt out of it. She's like, but, you know, now I have this. It's sitting in my closet. I don't display it because it looks really silly. But, you know, I don't want to get rid of it because it has so much sentimental value. And I just remember, you know, just kind of coming up with this question where I was like, hey, what would you do? If you went home right now and you found out that that quilt had spontaneously combusted, how would you feel? And man, like her shoulders dropped and she was like, I would feel relieved. And I'm like, that is a very, that's a surefire sign that you could probably get rid of that thing. And you actually would live a more meaningful life without it. So you can apply that rule to anything in your home.

You know, I could look at this coffee mug that I have right here and say, oh, this spontaneously combusted, would I replace this? How would I feel? And the answer is, yeah, this is my only, you know, to go coffee mug. I would absolutely replace this thing if it's spontaneously combusted. But we can do that with anything in our house.

And if the answer is, I probably wouldn't replace that or I probably wouldn't miss that. Then you can use that to kind of give yourself permission to let go. I love that rule because it also applies to, there's a lot of people that identify as people pleasers. And so their way of getting love

that they've been recognized in their life is to say yes to people, even when it crosses their own boundary and might put them in a place where they aren't honoring something that they've already said yes to. And the thing about that spontaneous combustion is that I think about it in terms of,

as somebody who identifies as a big giver and has had some past history of insecurities of feeling like, I didn't have people that had my back, I moved around. I moved to a lot of different schools. I was always making new friends. I found out from a young age that when I can provide for people and what that means is just like, show up, get things done, make things happen, get the exclusive access to this, that, whatever

it might be, the cool experience, people love me. So that became ingrained and I would continuously. And even, again, just like you were saying, you were the first person in your family to get that four-year degree. From the outside, somebody would look at that and say, wow, that's great. you're being applauded for something that's like a beautiful thing. I would be involved with so many nonprofits and I'd give so much of my time that I would run myself into the ground.

I would be burnt out and I wasn't honoring myself. So I think about this rule, spontaneous combustion also when it comes to obligations and expectations. And it doesn't mean that you forever say no or you completely divorce yourself. It might mean that you just rebalance that expectation, rebalance that obligation. You know what? I told you that I could do this. I said that I could help out with this.

It's a little bit too much for me right now. Would it be, not even would it be better, I needed to look like this or could it look like this or how could we figure out how to look like this? You guys did an episode recently where you also talked about spontaneous combustion when it came to work.

I think the episode title was, how do you make your boss spontaneously combust? Yeah, someone asked a question about that. They either called in or wrote and tweeted in something. And they asked about, you know, someone is unhappy with their work situation.

And I totally get it. I had a boss who was a total jerk at one point. And the reason, though, that he was a jerk is because, it was a jerk to me at least, was because I tolerated it. And so our discontent,

well, our discontent is sort of created by the things we're willing to tolerate. Now, when I say that people hear it and say, well, he's saying tolerance is bad. No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying tolerance is a great first step toward awareness, toward acceptance or respect or appreciation of someone. But when we stay in the stagnant waters of tolerance

and we just tolerate poor behavior or people treating us poorly, then we get more of that. We attract whatever we tolerate. And so my boss is treating me crappy and I keep tolerating it. I'm going to get more of that, right? And I think that's true with any relationship or in with people, but also our relationship with stuff or our relationship with our creativity, our relationship with our time.

If I'm spending my time this way, I'm tolerating people taking up my time or I'm tolerating this from work. I'm going to get more of it. And so the question is, what am I willing to tolerate and why? am I willing to tolerate that? Does it actually get me what I want or does it get me what society thinks I want? You know, there's this term memetic beliefs, right, or memetic desires. And it basically just means that we don't actually want what we think we want. We want what other people want. And I think that is often true. We're doing a lot of things because we've been instructed by society that

these are the virtuous or the right things to do. These are the things you're supposed to do in order to be a better person or to be more fulfilled or to be, well, to be the, the quote, best version of you. But the best version of you is already there beneath all of the clutter, the psychological clutter, the internal clutter, the mental clutter, the spiritual clutter. It's already in there. I mentioned the holidays. People associate that with gift giving, buying, consumerism.

One of my favorite magazines back. in the second day was ad busters. Did you guys? Oh, yeah. They had this whole movement of buy nothing day. Yes. And I would,

I would be like super into that. And still to this day, you know, I try to spread the message a little bit. And obviously it's not about one day. It's about sort of thinking about how we think about purchases just in general. Like, do I need this? Can I wait? Is it useful?

Is that adding cluttered to my life. You guys have put together a few questions. And I think it's worthwhile for people to think about, especially this time of year. and it's the five questions we should ask ourselves before buying something. And I don't know if you guys remember those questions offhand. I have them in front of me here too,

but maybe you can mention a couple of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one of the first ones is like, can I afford it, right? And so affording it is actually really two different questions. So can I afford the actual price tag, right? Because the thing goes way, the price of the thing, if I have to go into debt to buy a thing, I can't afford it, right? If I have to put it on a credit card, I can't afford it.

If I have to lease it or finance it, I can't afford the thing. But I'll make one exception in my life and that's a mortgage. But besides, and even that, like, it's not good debt. I'd prefer not to have it, right? And yet, we finance a whole lot of things. The average American household has $16,000 worth of credit card debt. And then we're doing these, you know, we're doing car loans now that are 83 months. And even though, you know, the car loses most of its.

value in the first two years. And so, yes, maybe I can afford the thing. I can pay the $100 for the widget, right? But then the other question is, can I afford the true cost? So what is the true cost of the thing? I have to store the thing, clean the thing, repaint the thing, change the oil in the thing, put batteries in the thing, worry about the thing, replace the thing, all of these additional costs. I need more storage space for my things because I'm, and so can I actually afford the true cost. Another one of those questions is who am I buying this for? Am I buying it for me or am I buying it to impress someone else?

And if I'm buying it to impress someone else, maybe I need to question the purchase altogether. Yeah, I'm trying to think of some of the other questions. Yeah, well, I have another one right here is that what are the alternatives, which I think is a beautiful question. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, often we get presented with something and we think we have to get that thing.

But often there is a substitute that will work just as well. I think about, I don't know, a vacuum. Like, we needed a vacuum for our new studio.

And so, you know, you got like the nice Dyson that, you know, slices and dices and does all the million different things that you don't need a vacuum to do that costs you a five or six hundred bucks.

The question that we ask is like, well, you know, just because this is something we know is a good product, it's something that, you know, I have like a little handheld Dyson

but it's an expensive little vacuum so the question is like is there something that would substitute that that would do just as good of a job or maybe the question is can I borrow it can I is just someone in the building I can borrow a vacuum from what turns out there is no one that we can borrow a vacuum from on a regular basis so but we had to go with the substitute which is which is which is just fine but often we don't even stop to consider that you know can can we uh can we uh Can we find a substitute? I think one of the other questions, too, isn't it, can it be fixed? Is that one of them? I didn't have it in my list, but I'm sure that goes right into alternatives. I think it's a no upgrade rule. Yeah, yeah. So we have a rule called the no upgrade rule, and it's basically like we often think that we must buy the new thing.

You see the advertisement for the iPhone 13 or whatever, right? Nothing wrong with that. But let's say my phone breaks today. The question I'm going to ask, like, what is the alternative, right? Can I get my phone fixed? can I go without for a period of time? And I think sometimes we learn a whole lot when we, for a period of time,

we actually went without a vacuum when you were talking about that. Like, that doesn't work for us, right? We needed the thing, and so we're not going to deprive ourselves. But sometimes when you go without, you realize that, oh, I was telling myself a story that I needed that or that I deeply desired it. But the truth is that it was kind of one of of those things where it's like, yeah, nice to have, I kind of like it, not a big deal.

There's a difference between someone who says, like, yeah, it'd be nice to have, you know, whatever it is, a million dollars or six-pack abs. And the person who actually has the deep desire to do whatever, they have the understanding that whatever it takes, they're willing to get there, to do what it takes to get there. What I love about all these questions is that in the case of the Dyson, at home, my wife and I we're thinking about, you know, we're building our home together. We just got married. What do we need?

And in our instance, it was like, actually, you know, this is a really great product. It lasts a really long time. And in the greater context of everything, it's like when you make a nice purchase that you're proud about, there's that genuine sense of, great, I'm going to maintain this thing. I'm going to take care of this thing. I appreciate the value that it can bring into my life. and it actually serves a purpose. And I can use it.

I can exactly do that. I can keep the love and attention on the people, the things that matter most to me, my purpose, my service. And I can just use this thing for what it's worth, like a nice article of clothing that lasts and doesn't end up in the landfill and contribute to all these challenges that we're having that comes from fast fashion.

So this is also a beautiful thing to do because it makes you appreciate the few things that you decide to invest in at a much deeper level. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we don't ever encourage people to forsake quality, you know, or yeah, to forsake quality over quantity. Because the thing is, is like if you want to, you know, spend money like a minimalist, you'd actually get something that is a higher quality that lasts a little bit longer. Going back to that Dyson, so my wife and I, we bought a Dyson seven years ago. we still have it. It's kind of on its last leg right now. But we use that thing every day. At the office,

we're using that thing maybe once or twice a week. So like, do we need that higher quality item at the office? No, not necessarily. This is such a small, you know, thing, the Dyson. But when you start approaching your, you're buying decisions with this kind of habit, it does help you make more informed decisions for sure. So you guys share this earlier that usually the entryway into minimalism for a lot of people. And the easiest thing to kind of start talking about is stuff, physical things. But there's a lot of other things that take up energy and weight. And one of those things is just information as a whole. We are not only in a consumption society when it comes to consuming products and ordering and buy now and all that other stuff, we're also in a consumption

economy when it comes to information. How do you to, whoever wants to start off, think about the classic sort of thing that people talk about of staying informed, having opinions, knowing what's going on in the world, and the need for protecting yourself from kind of like malicious news sources that are out there from any side of the political party that are trying to hijack your attention. Yeah. I have an allergy to it now. And I think the reason I do is because I have a lot of compassion for people who are suffering because of the news cycle.

It's divisive. And as soon as we realize the whole point of the quote unquote news is to aggregate your eyeballs onto a bunch of corporate products and services, well, how do they aggregate your eyeballs by making you upset, by making you angry, by making you outrage, by making you. by making you tune in for more. It's about having you watch their coverage so that other corporations can sell you things. And as soon as you realize that, you begin to realize the folly of the news in general. And you realize there's a lot of information out there,

but there's not a whole lot of truth out there. It's like Wikipedia. You've got a lot of facts, not a whole lot of truth, right? It's just information. And we've been sold this lie or this meme of information as power. That's not really true, right? You have access to all the information in the world, and so does virtually everyone you have ever met

has access to all the information. Do we all have power as a result of that? No, I mean, it's a nice little bromide that we can say, but what does it actually mean? And by the way, who even wants power in the traditional sense, but power dominion over other people? Like, that's a weird thing to want. There's a great New York Times op-ed piece that calls years ago called

Power, no thanks, I'm good. And because to have power over people means that you want to control them, right? Well, isn't that what the news wants to do is to control us? So I've opted out altogether. I just don't. I mean, sometimes things make their way to me. It's inevitable, right? But I don't seek it out, and I certainly don't enjoy being interrupted by more information.

In fact, information is the problem. You talked about being able to form your own opinion, and I think even that's a problem for me. Wanting to have an opinion, quite often my opinion just obscures the truth. because whatever my opinion is is irrelevant if the truth is something different. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the 5,000 advertisements we see a day and it has to do with the entertainment we take in. In news, it's entertainment.

I mean, on its best day, if I look at the news, I'm entertained. On the worst day, it's ruined my day or perhaps my week. But never have I checked a news source and thought to myself, man, I'm so glad I read that article on whatever. I mean, I think there is some things that we, you know, that we need to be informed on, but kind of as Josh was saying, those things will surface in another way besides having to go to the front page of whatever news network. Like, I remember when I started kind of looking at these impulses and why I wanted to buy the things I wanted to buy, a lot of it had to do.

with, it was the entertainment that I was taking in. Like I think about like this Lexus I really wanted to get years and years ago. And I'm like, where did I first see that Lexus? I was like, oh yeah, I was in that GQ magazine. And, you know, I got that magazine because I thought I was being informed with what's in style. And, you know, there's some current events stuff going on in there. And really what it was doing. It was just controlling my impulses on what to buy.

When I look at Facebook, I got rid of Facebook back in like 2017. because again, on its best day, it pacified me. On its worst day, it ruined my day. And I started to recognize this with Facebook. And I'm like, oh, like, I have to step away from this because it's not serving me. And that goes for any other news network. It's, it's, I would much rather listen to an independent podcast than go to a big, like, corporate news network. Because as Josh said, like, their whole goal is to aggregate your eyeballs.

The news doesn't care about me. The news doesn't care about anything except me giving them my time and attention. Which by the way, those are the two most valuable resources we have, our time and our attention. We look at finances, which is a very important resource. I don't want to undermine that.

But, you know, it's in the vehicle that we're driving, but it's certainly not in the driver seat. If it is in the driver's seat, which it was for me for a long time, it becomes just a bit pernicious. But now I realize, like, my time and intention, those are the most two important resources I have. So I've got to be really deliberate with who I give that or what I give that to. You mentioned finances and what's fascinating about that,

Ryan, is if I buy something and I regret it, like I can go return it, right? Or if it wasn't what was promised, I can return the thing. But if I misspend my time and my attention, there is no refund ever. I've just spent it and it's gone. And so, So, yeah, I've just decided that it's not that I'm saying no to news. I'm saying yes to things that are more important to me. You guys are entrepreneurs. You have a whole ecosystem of stuff you've created between the books and the movies and other stuff. Where does social media and posting fit into the equation for you?

Does a team member handle that? Will you guys go on but not consume? Or is that not part of it when it comes to your world? We do have someone who handles our social media. and she's amazing. She's been with us for a long time. And it's not that I avoid, well, I don't avoid all social media, but I have some boundaries in my life.

Like I don't have the apps on my phone or if I need to post something, I'll download it and then delete it after the fact. And if I want to get on to Twitter, I'll just wait until on my desktop and I'll make sure I've planned that accordingly so I don't get sort of stuck. And the problem is if I have these things on my phone,

including email, which to me is similar to a social media network. If I have these things on my phone, I'll just get stuck in that Bermuda triangle of email and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok. And now you're just careening back and forth from these sort of vessels of pleasure, these dopamine hits that I'm seeking. And yeah, we use social media. but in a way that we don't want to add to the noise. David Foster Wallace had this great example of, if you go to a Metallica concert and whistle Mozart, not a lot of people are going to hear it,

but the people right around you who are like seeking it out will hear it. I feel the same way about social media. We have a few followers on social media, but what I've noticed is that we're not shouting to them. We're not shouting into the noise. We are speaking softly into it, anyone who wants to show up and get something from it. But the question I'm always asking is the same question

I ask about my stuff, strangely. If I pick up an item that I own, does this add value to my life? Does this add value is an important question. But we don't stop to think about that with respect to the way that we're interacting with social media. If I tweet this, is it going to add value

to someone else's life, or is it sort of mental masturbation? and if the latter, then I know to sort of put the phone down. I mean, social media is a tool, and you know, just like any other tool. A tool is as useful as the user. So the question isn't, you know, what tools do I have and not have in my life? It's how can these tools augment my life? How can they help me live a more meaningful life? So, yeah, with social media, if you set up these boundaries, you can, you know, I can use a saw to, like, cut a piece of wood,

or I could, you know, chop Josh's arm off with it, right? It's the same tool being used two different ways. And that's kind of how I look at things, yeah, like social media. You know, there's a, I forget what writer it was, but there was this whole conversation about, does our biggest risk of our future look like 1984, or does it look like Brave New World, right? Is it the big brother?

Yeah. overlooking us and pushing us in a place where we are reducing our languaging, reducing our information, not exposing ourselves to new ideas, and we're only watching sort of a central source and narrative and component. Or is it the component of the we are the ones who are overabundancing ourselves and keeping ourselves into submission by being stuck on the constant rat race, which actually is driven by our own internal addictions that are there.

And we'd love to get your guys' opinion in our current state of the world that we're in, and there's a lot of layers to it, and there's a lot of people that are living different paths. How do those two fit into what we're dealing with right now? The rat race thing's funny, because if you win the rat race, and I found this out because I won it,

you're still a rat, right? And so it's an, it's an, odd thing like we success doesn't actually exist at least societal success the way we define it at our events sometimes i'll just ask the audience like tell me what what do you see as a successful person like if i were to show you a picture of a successful person what do they look like well first off it's almost always a man in a suit with an expensive watch a nice car occasionally they have a yacht right a big house and all of these things that are sort of the idea or ideal of success. And yet all of those things often cause misery in our lives because the chase almost always

causes some sort of discontent that we have. Now your question is a fascinating question because I think quite often we get very concerned, whether it's with the news or with society in general about how do we how are we going to be set up or what are other people going to do or how are we going to get in through this together but i think quite often we worry about other people's problems because we're so terrified of our own and i don't have control over those things i don't have control over what news is broadcasting to me or or you know the orwellian future that you're that you're speaking of right i can't stop the CCTV from being on every corner, a street corner, or whatever, but I can control what's in my own sort of ecosphere. And while I can't, I don't have an illusion of putting a dent in the universe sort of thing, I do know that, um, that I have much more control over the things that are right here and far less of those things that I would, you know, hypothetically like to control.

I mean, we're impulsive beings and, you know, corporations take full advantage of that. And, you know, I don't think we've seen anything yet when it comes to the technology that's around, like I think about a VR, for example. I don't own a VR headset. Do you own a VR headset? I don't know. Yeah. So like none of us in this room probably own a VR headset.

Fast forward 30 years, I bet you it's a little bit of a different story because it's going to make things more convenient. I like rue the day that they figure out, you know, how to do sex on a virtual reality headset, uh, because that it's going to do something to society. So, you know, I don't think it has to be either or either this, you know, Brave New World or 1984. I think that it's a little bit of both. And we are presented with all of these different tools. And again, we get to decide how we use it. Um, but we are impulsive beings. And if we don't, if we're not aware of those impulses, if we don't consider what we're acting on, then it does look a little bit more 1984-ish. But, you know, that's why you're doing your podcast.

It's why you do what you do. That's why we do what we do. We're really trying to help people see what we've done with our impulses. And maybe that they could, you know, learn a lesson from us rather than having to figure it out the hard way like we have. when you stop loving things and using people, which is the opposite of the title of the book, you can step into success in your life. You were just talking about what does success look like?

You often ask people. So now for you, what does success look like with where you guys are in your life right now? What deserves love and attention? What are the priorities? And, yeah, we love you guys both to answer. Yeah, I don't look at life as though I want to be. be successful anymore because that was a trap for me, right? Because it was those things that we were just describing. There's usually a bank account number two. It's a million dollars or 10 million dollars

or 100 million dollars for some people, right? And whatever it is. And then you get there and then what? You give yourself permission to be happy all of a sudden, right? And that was the thing for me. It was like, well, if I get these things, these objects of success, then I will be successful. Well, turns out I was a success fool, F-O-O-L, right? Because I achieved all those things and more than what I anticipated, but I didn't get any of those feelings of peace or tranquility or whatever word you want to use. You know, they're all synonymous, right? Yeah, equanimity, eutemonia.

Like there are these, it's a state of being, right? Now, I'm not, when I say that, I want people to hear, well, Yeah, just be in the moment, right? Like, good luck with that, right? Like, good luck just being. It's not advice, but it's an understanding that, man, I'm already complete. You put me in an empty room and I'm complete. I'm by myself, I'm complete.

Therefore, the things, the people, the actions, the activities, the contribution, whatever it is, it's there to enhance my life, but also for me to enhance the lives of others. Not in a way that forces change on them, but in a way that understands them. So if there is any sort of success

of redefining it so loosely, I mean, if I can render it to have a completely different meaning and it has something to do with peace, and contentment. Yeah. Well being. Yeah.

I mean, I agree with all of that, Josh. Just living a meaningful life, and for me, that's, again, it's my actions aligned with my values. But, you know, not only that, like I want to create. I want to contribute beyond myself in a meaningful way. And, you know, when I was taking on the debt and chasing out of that, after all the things. Like I wasn't able to contribute hardly at all. So now I'm able to contribute in ways

that I think is meaningful. And that's, I guess, maybe how I would define success. But if you asked me if I was a successful person, I don't know if I would be like, oh yeah, I'm successful. I mean, I guess through the eyes of other people, because people will tell me, oh, you're really successful. But that, I don't know if I would consider myself a successful person, mainly because I just don't look at it

in that way. but yeah, to redefine success, I guess it would have something to do with contributing beyond myself in a meaningful way through creations. I tell you what, the fascinating thing about that is that it's almost as you have to ask a question when someone says, are you successful? According to whom, right?

Right, yeah. Because, like, it doesn't matter to you that you have, well, you know what, now that I have X number of Instagram followers, I'm 10 times happier than when I had one tenth of followers. Of course, that's absurd. And as soon as you say it out loud, the illusion sort of dissolves. I'll give you a sexier answer here, though. Debt free is the new American dream.

Yeah. We've been sold this meme of success and all those things, but it usually requires a substantial amount of debt, which does what? It tethered us to a lifestyle we don't even enjoy. For the longest time, I was going to work to pay for the car payment, for the car that took me to work to pay for the car payment.

that it was like this weird circular Kafkaesque misery, a low-grade misery that permeated every day of my life because of the expectations of success, the sort of memetic success of everyone else. That's an important answer, and we can apply that to so many aspects of our life, not just financially. There's the time debt that we're in because we are. trading overworking, if that's a challenge for people, or over prioritizing things that don't matter to us, but we think matter to other people and then sacrificing all the things that actually genuinely matter us. Like, I would want to volunteer more.

Okay, why haven't I done that? Right? What's gotten in the way of all those components? Oh, I want to build more deeper and meaningful friendships that are out there. Okay, what's gotten in the way of that? Oh, I finally want to take some time off and travel, you know. All right. What are the blockages?

What are the stories? What are the things that have gotten in the way? What's the life debt you've accumulated that is preventing you from stepping into the peace? Yeah. That could actually add more joy and love into your life. Yeah. No, I love, I just love what you're saying there because for what Josh and I do, and for what you do, for that matter, it's for anyone who is finding themselves giving their priorities only lip service.

like maybe our observations can help. It's so true. Health, minimalism, anything that's out there at the end of the day, the question is,

does this thing support you so that you can give love and attention to what matters to you? It's all a vehicle and where it's useful, we ride it. Where it's not useful,

we can get off and we can get on the next bus. Yeah. And if it ceases to be useful, then we can let it go, right? Just because something serves us right now doesn't mean it's going to serve us tomorrow. It's a powerful reminder to end on, gentlemen, this was fantastic. I would love to just, you guys have so much stuff in your ecosystem.

We have all the links in the show notes and everything like that. People can find it, but just would love to hit it on a few beats. So Netflix, everyone has it. The movie's out, the documentary's out. Yeah, yeah. Less is now is the most recent one. we've got a podcast, social media, all that. You can just go to, and our podcast is all available on our website.

Theminimalists.com. You can find our books, our blog, our newsletter. And in fact, you don't have to buy anything from us. We're not encouraging you. You can even get the book from your local library. And occasionally there's a wait list, but sometimes it's okay to wait for it. Yeah, it's okay to wait for it. And really, these are all just things that can be tried on.

And it's a different lens. We all have lenses that we look at the world with. And sometimes it's useful. This is why books are such an incredible way to learn because somebody's handing you a different lens to look at the world. Doesn't mean that you're going to wear that lens forever. It doesn't mean that you agree with all things that you see through that lens. But it's just a different perspective.

And sometimes those perspectives can radically change your life. Thank you both over the last 10 years that I've known about your work for adding to my life and helping me see the world in a different way. I appreciate you and appreciate you coming on the podcast. This is great, man. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Drew. Appreciate you, brother.