Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 362: Rethinking Your Relationship to 'Stuff' | The Minimalists + Oren Jay Sofer

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

We’ve been meaning to tackle our relationship to 'stuff' for a while now. This subject can go deep. It’s not just about decluttering (although that can actually be pretty substantial work); it’s about rethinking your whole life.  Recently we spoke to a pair of gentlemen known as The Minimalists -- whose names are Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus. They’re perhaps best known for their documentaries on Netflix: “Minimalism” and “Less is Now”. They also have a very popular podcast and have written a series of books. Their latest book, “Love People, Use Things”, comes out this month. In this episode, we talk about their powerful and painful personal path to Minimalism; the freedom that they say comes from living with less; how to actually do Minimalism; and the pitfalls of the path.  And as a bonus pairing, we’ve brought back a Ten Percent Happier favorite, Oren Jay Sofer. Oren is a renowned Buddhist teacher who has been meditating for nearly a quarter of a century. As part of his training he spent over two years living with less as a Buddhist renunciate, and he makes a compelling case for bringing minimalism into the mindfulness practice, and for letting go. For more from Oren and other great meditation teachers, download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/the-minimalists-oren-sofer-362 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, this is an episode about rethinking your relationship to stuff. This subject can go pretty deep. It's not just about decluttering, although actually decluttering can be pretty substantial work. It's about reconsidering your whole life really. My guests today are a pair of gentlemen known as the minimalists, and they're not anti-stuff or anti-capitalist, but they do believe there's a kind of societal rot that has set in. As our community ties have gotten weaker, a sort of secular religion has

emerged around consumerism, the core message of which is you are not enough until you make this next purchase. This can create a perpetual background noise of insufficiency, which really is put on steroids by the rise of social media, where we're constantly comparing ourselves to people who, you know, look more or have more or whatever. The minimalists, whose names are Joshua Fields, Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, are perhaps best known for their documentaries on Netflix, the first one which was called minimalism, came out several years ago, was a huge hit, full disclosure, I made a little cameo in it. The second one, which is called Less Is Now, came out earlier this year. The guys also have a very popular podcast called

the Minimalists, and they've written a series of books, and their latest book called Love People Use Things, comes out this month in July of 2021. In this episode, we talk about their powerful and painful personal path to minimalism, the freedom that they say comes from living with less, how to actually do minimalism and the pitfalls of the path. And as a bonus, we've brought back a 10% happier fan favorite, orange Asofer. Orange is a renowned Buddhist teacher. He's been meditating for nearly a quarter centuries, one of the most popular teachers on the 10% happier app.

And as part of his training, he actually spent more than two years living with less as a Buddhist renunciate. And he makes a compelling case for bringing minimalism into your mindfulness practice as well as the benefits generally of letting go. So we're doing a kind of a cool pairing on the show this week. As I mentioned, Orin is a teacher on our companion meditation app.

He has contributed to our meditation challenges and created popular courses on relationships and emotions. So if you want to hear more from Orin and maybe even put into practice some of the insights he's going to share with you in this podcast, go download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps. Okay, done with my quick plug there. Here we go now. First with the minimalists and then we'll take a break and come back with Orrin J. Sofer. Josh and Ryan, great to see you guys. Good to be seen. That's right. Well, guys, I've been enjoying the film. I'm really happy for you. Let me just start there. So you had this blockbuster success on Netflix

years ago. And it's been a while. So what's the deal with this new film? What are you trying to say? What's the difference between this one and the last one? Yeah, you know, I think this film is fundamentally about starting over. We could say starting over with less. I mean, because that's Ryan's and my story with the whole minimalism thing. But that was this recurring theme that came up over and over again. We interviewed like 30 different people for this film, a few different experts in different areas,

but also just some everyday minimalists were calling them. People who were affected by that first film in some way and they started letting go, but it went beyond the sort of how-to thing. It was understanding the why too. Why but it went beyond the sort of how-to thing. It was understanding the why-to. Why is it important to simplify what are the benefits of living with less? And those people, a lot of them just really talked about how this was the impetus for them to sort of begin again, which I know with meditation is something that comes up quite often.

I kind of look at this as like a prequel to our last documentary. This is really about Josh and I story going from suit and tie corporate guys to minimalists because really we found ourselves in a spot where we felt like the right person heading in the wrong direction. We had to make a change and we had to start over and this is our story of starting over. You know, Netflix actually originally turned us down for that first film, and so we put it out on our own, and then it did relatively well, so they ended up picking it up on the backend, and it just sort of exploded from there. I mean, that film was about minimalism and the different facets of intentional living.

This one really examines a lot of the burdens that we have. We have the burden of stuff that has become more apparent than ever, but also the burden of distractions, right, especially for the last decade, whether it's social media or the half a billion discreet bits of input we see every month. And we're burdened by obligations and debt and toxic relationships and stress. We try to identify some of those burdens with this film. And one thing all I did that too is like, the everyday minimalists that we have in this film, we've got about 30 of them, I believe. It's really shows how minimalism

isn't this radical lifestyle. It's a practical lifestyle. So it's, you know, it's a very palatable approach for someone who is dissatisfied with the status quo. Yeah, just to pick up on that, I mean, I encourage everybody listening to go check this out on Netflix. But the structure of the film is it tells Josh and Ryan's quite moving backstories, which

we'll dive into shortly. And then it's interspersed with at least two other sort of strains. One is a series of experts who are interviewed talking about our consumer culture and all the sort of pernicious impacts of it. And then these, I believe, use the term Ryan everyday minimalists who are telling their stories. So you got a very diverse crew, both racially and sort of in terms of age brackets, which is very interesting to see these people who've made these changes to their lives.

What we notice is, you know, in the film, there's a 17-year-old and a 70-year-old and sort of everyone in between, young, old, rich, poor, black, white, it sort of transcended all of these different boundaries. And while we don't think that minimalism applies to everyone, we think it applies to anyone who is sort of dissatisfied as Ryan said with the status quo. It seems like you are diagnosing in this film

a rot at the core of our culture. Does that sound like an accurate restatement of one of the central ideas of the movie? Yeah, I mean, I think society is often the problem in general, right? We've been acculturated to believe certain things. And we even moralize a lot of the things that we believe as though my way of thinking is right and thus your way is wrong. And that's certainly not what Ryan and I are saying with this, where minimalism is the correct way to live,

and if you're not living this way, you are incorrect. And by the way, we're also not saying that you should live with less. We're not trying to moralize in that way. We're simply trying to do a share of recipe in hopes that maybe some people will find value in that, sort of take that recipe and not apply it directly to their lives, but squeeze out some ingredients that may be applicable to their lives. The thesis that you enunciate, especially early in the film,

is upstream of the solution that you're offering gently without the sheds. What I heard was, there's the aforementioned rot is that in a culture where we've downplayed social connection, we are instead replacing community with stuff, a consumer culture, and therefore very vulnerable to advertisers who are telling us in order to sell their stuff to us that we are insufficient as we are and the only thing that will make us whole is this next purchase. But that never ends. Anyway, am I close to what the beginning thesis is even before you get to the potential solution? Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think, you know, and this is a quote from Annie

Leonard, but like she talks about how one of the tricks of Corporations what they use it's called deficit advertising. So what they do is they send advertising that makes us feel subconsciously That we're an adequate if we don't have a product. So I mean, certainly we are speaking to that how we are steeped in those tricks of advertising And really, you know, this isn't about a documentary about stopping buying things or cutting out all entertainment because that's really where the ads come from, right? It's all the entertainment market. It's really about doing so in a deliberate way

so you can make decisions that are best for your life. And it's interesting, the best comments I get about our first film, minimalism as people will say to me, I watched your film, it was interesting, the best comments I get about like our first film, minimalism, as people will say to me, I watched your film, it was a really lovely film, but I'm kind of already living my life that way. And I love to hear that, because it's like great, like you got it way before I got it,

and I'm really happy to do that. But, you know, there are people out there who they do feel like they're in that tailspin, they do feel like they're just constantly being bombarded. And this, I think helps people pause and really question how they're living their lives. You know, I wish there was a simple way to explain it. I think you explained it well with the with the consumer rot thing. There's a void, right? And we try to fill that void. We fill the void with

stuff. And when that doesn't work, then we try to fill the void with sort of prescriptions. In a way, I mean, sometimes literally, but figurative prescriptions, right? Instead of focusing on the problem, we then begin to focus on the potential solutions. And I think what we're trying to do with the film is really understand the problem. And by understanding the problem, only if we understand the problem, can we begin to identify what the solution is? If you understand the why the howl sort of takes care of itself, there's a reason you never see me and Ryan talk about the 67 ways to declutter your closet. People do not have a shortage of decluttering tips. That's not the problem.

The problem is actually the attachment to stuff. Attachment is the problem. The problem is actually the attachment to stuff. Attachment is the problem. Yeah, I mean, I hear a lot of Buddhist overtones. I mean, I guess it's probably not a coincidence that you interviewed people like me in the first film that the idea of attachment, of letting go, of the Buddha's description of suffering, his first pronouncement after getting enlightened,

was life is suffering, which is a bit of a mis-translation. But what he meant was life is going to be unsatisfying if you're constantly latching onto things that will not last in a universe that is characterized by impermanence. And so in the consumer culture, we are told by this thing and your thirst will finally be slaked. But instead we get the thing, we're excited for a minute and then we need something else. And that is exhibit A in suffering. Right.

And there isn't anything wrong with the things. I just want to be clear. Again, that we're not moralizing, like live without things. It's just that we've recognized that those things, Ryan and I had to go through that in our 20s. We had these wildly successful corporate careers after growing up really poor.

And we figured out the key to happiness, of course, was to earn six figure incomes, et cetera. But that really just increased, you know, here's another Buddhist word for either craving, right? I feel that that craving, that always needing more, more cash, more clout, more cars, whatever it is, if we always need more, then we'll never have enough. And I think that's really part of the message here. And we'll continue to yearn if we don't have enough. And as you know, yearning leads only to misery. We conflated pleasure with contentment or peace.

And pleasure is often the enemy of peace. What would you say, Ryan, that you find yourself chasing these days? I mean, I assume you want this film to be a success. I assume you look at how which your podcast download numbers are, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I certainly don't, I honestly, honestly, I don't know the numbers of downloads.

I have access to that, but like I don't look at those on a regular basis. You know, the things I chase in Josh might have a different perspective on this, but living a meaningful life, you know, I really, I really do want to be the best version of myself so I can give beyond myself in a meaningful way. Well, what about you, Josh? You just heard Ryan say, like, I don't look at the podcast down low numbers.

Have you found, you know, perfect equanimity of vis-a-vis material success worldly success, or do you still find yourself chasing? I don't find myself chasing, but I certainly haven't found equanimity because of sort of material success. It feels to me like anytime we're running after a result that can't be success. That's always chasing. It's either chasing the past, trying to replicate something from the past, or it's chasing a hypothetical non-existent future. And I think success in that way is always bound to chasing. And chasing is attachment. As you said, attachment is suffering. So in that respect, suffering is failure. If we're always craving or chasing, then maybe we're always, that's just transit of math, right? Yeah, I've had to find peace outside of all of those things. I think it's about sort of uncovering peace,

not finding it, really. It's interesting. I have this analogy in my head of like an Olympic athlete who they all they have in their mind is like the gold medals. And how many gold medals can I get? And how many records can I break? And then there has been athletes who have done all of that,

but really that sprint, that marathon, whatever it is that they're training for, that's the test of all the work that they've done. And unfortunately, we look at this test as an end result where I think there's an opportunity for us to live more in the moment, go through these tests, but not rely on those tests. Dan, can I ask you something about that though?

Because I really appreciate your perspective on all of these things because of your history with meditation, you probably think more clearly about these things than we do. When I think about, you know, Ryan's talking about these Olympic athletes, they're living in the moment. Some people would even call it a flow state.

But then we also, outside of athletes, we tend to call it mindfulness, right? But to me, that almost feels like the wrong term. Like, it seems to me that a full mind, mindfulness, is the problem. Isn't the opposite of mindfulness, a flow state, of no mind, as these... And maybe this is just a semantics problem, but I'm just trying to better understand what are your thoughts on the mindfulness versus no mind versus flow state thing?

I think they're all the same thing and it is probably a semantics thing. just the capacity we all have to be non-judgmentally and hopefully a little bit warmly aware of whatever is happening in our mind, which includes bodily sensations, it includes thoughts and motions. Everything, the whole world is in your mind. And can you be aware of whatever is happening with some non-judgmental awareness? So that awareness is like a mirror. There's nothing in it per se. It's just reflecting all of the stuff that's coming up.

So... Yeah, that feels to me like that's the freedom that we're talking about. That's the freedom that we're trying to buy, by the way, right? Whether it's through the next purchase or the new habit change or whatever. But it sounds to me like what you're talking about. And these are other synonyms, like we use the word peace or tranquility or equanimity, whatever we want to call it. But that's not found in the rear view. That's not found on the horizon.

We know that's found in the awareness of the present moment. And yet it is elusive. Well, I mean, if you think about it, we, you can think about the mind like a stage, right? The actors and props and all that stuff. That's everything that floats through the mind, but the mind is the stage and The problem I think and I think this is a core Buddhist diagnosis of why we're unhappy is we're

Totally fixated on what's happening on the stage the impermanent Flittings and Cummings and goings on the stage, the impermanent flittings and comings and goings on the stage, in this case, could be getting stuff, wanting stuff, beating other people, keeping up with your local Instagram influencer, and you never drop back into the freedom of being in the stage. You're totally consumed by the movie. You don't see that it's 24 frames per second. And it's actually there's a screen on to which it's being projected. You're in the matrix. And I think the dropping

out of the matrix is what no mind or mindfulness or all of these. And there are like lots of little important differences between these words. But I think generally speaking, that's what people in the contemplative traditions are pointing towards. Does that make sense? It does. I found your approach to meditation, you know, when you first wrote 10% happier, and I remember reading that book and realizing like, oh, this isn't only for monks. What I absolutely loved about your approach is it didn't over-promise anything. In fact, you slightly under-promised and there was something

just very appealing about the approach that made it, I don't know, as Ryan said about minimalism earlier, he said that minimalism isn't a radical lifestyle, it's a practical lifestyle. Maybe the same thing can be said for mind fullness or mindlessness, whatever we're calling it. Let me get to one of the most affecting moving parts of the film. This was mentioned in your first film, but you really go deep and you've got these great home movies and old pictures that you use to talk about your backgrounds and how much your maximalism in your 20s seems to have been born out of pain and deprivation in your early years. Ryan, do you want to start maybe tell that

story? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I grew up poor. As I shown the documentary, our furniture, a lot of it was homemade and every house we ever lived in was like a fixer upper and you couldn't really stay in the entire house. There's always like a room or somewhere that was being renovated.

I had some happy moments, but for all intents and purposes, money was always a problem. And I saw that. And when I finally realized, like, oh, we're unhappy because we're constantly broke, that's when I kind of had that urge kind of seed of, oh, when I grow up, I don't want to be unhappy. So I need to go and make as much money as possible. And I just remember, you know remember coming up with that number,

that magic number that I told Josh, our senior year during high school, we were sitting at the Lonely Lunchroom table together. And we were talking about what we were gonna do with our lives after we graduated. And I told Josh, I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. But if I can just figure out a way to make $50,000 a year, I know I'll be happy.

And the reason why I had that $50,000 in mind was because I was working for my dad who painted in Hunga Wallpaper. We were in this pretty nice house middle class, you know, nothing too fancy. And I just remember seeing how happy the people were who live there. I remember seeing all the pictures on the wall, all the stuff in their home.

And I was like, yeah, this is, they look like they're not having money problems. So I asked my dad like, hey, what do I have to make in order to own a house like this? And he was like, son, if you can make $50,000 a year, you could probably own a house like this. Now, this was back in the 90s, so, you know, that number's probably gone up a little bit for that particular house. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, that was the magic number, and that's what Josh and I did. And we continued to chase a paycheck. What I found out was, We continued to chase a paycheck.

What I found out was I forgot to adjust for inflation. I went and made 60,000. Then I made 90,000. Then I made six figures. It wasn't until, yeah, I kind of created this tornado of a mess that I really felt like I needed to make a change. But yeah, certainly being a kid and growing up with constant money problems, it makes you think that if you had money, you wouldn't have any problems.

Josh, can you tell your part of the story here? We actually weren't poor when I first was born. My father though, he had a lot of mental illness. And so things unraveled very quickly. By the time I was about three years old, it was chaos as well. And so we sort of had to escape from my father who was abusive and mean.

And he just wasn't all there. He had elaborate schizophrenic relationships with people who did not exist in the physical world. And so we sort of escaped from that move just south of Dayton. And you actually get to see the house that I grew up in in the documentary. It's all ported up now.

And I think there's like squatters and stuff in it. And it wasn't like a dangerous or violent neighborhood, but it was just a poor neighborhood. And you know, we were on food stamps and government assistance. And the electricity would get turned off. And we'd run like the extension cord through our neighbor's window in order to like keep the TV glowing and

That was the sort of chaos that I grew up around and of course being Discontented for that long. I thought well the only way that I can break the cycle and find the happiness that mom lacked Find the peace that she lacked was to make a lot of money when I grew up. And so I pursued that and was successful, but as we just talked about earlier, like I sort of failed miserably because I was successful. Then you had a famous meal at Subway shared with Ryan this idea of minimalism. Can you define what is minimalism? In the film, this is sort of pithy line that we say,

is minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can make room for life's most important things, which actually aren't things at all. And I think ultimately what we're looking at is as a minimalist everything I own serves a purpose or it sort of increases my tranquility in some way, it augments my experience of life, it enhances my life in a way. Ryan and I are not anti-stuff. We're not anti-consumption either. We think that

consumerism is a problem, sort of compulsory consumption is another way that you could define consumerism. There's a special irony that the average American household has 300,000 items in it, and we are more discontent and angst-ridden than ever. Those things would be fine if they didn't do the opposite of what we thought they would do, right? All the things that are supposed to bring us joy, actually get in the way of that joy. And so I found that, yeah, when I first stumbled across minimalism, it was just over a decade ago now.

I got rid of about 90% of my possessions within eight months. And the thing that I say in the film is like, and you can even see my house now, it's like not like you come over and you say, oh my God, this guy and his family, they don't own anything. Where's their couch? Were they sleep on the floor? No, it's just like we don't own any excess stuff. And we're still constantly questioning

the things we hold on to and the things we bring into our life. So when we're talking about minimalism, that's ultimately what we're talking about. I know you put a lot of emphasis on putting the why before the how when it comes to minimalism and that's why I wanted to spend the beginning of this interview talking about sort of your diagnosis of the culture, which is sort of in the why category before I asked you a bunch of practical questions about how to do minimalism. People are going to wonder, how do I get started, what do I do, what does this look like? So can you just hold forth with some ideas

for how to actually do this thing? I think the first question that someone has to ask when they're thinking about going on a journey like this is they have to ask themselves, how might their life be better with less? Because that is what will really help someone get to the why. If you're talking about practical actions, we have something we call the 30 day less is now challenge.

And basically, you find a friend or a family member or a foe and just someone who wants to get rid of stuff. And you challenge them to get rid of things over 30 days. And the way the game works is on the first day of the month, you get rid of one thing. And then on the second day of the month, two things. And then on the third day of the month, three things, so on and so forth, whoever lasts the longest wins, that both people win, that's great.

And then they both got rid of about 500 items. But you know, you bet a meal, you know, you bet something real small to make it a little interesting, make it a little entertaining. But really, that game, what that does is it helps someone get a little bit of momentum. You know, I think letting go doesn't require a trip to the Goodwill or a purchase from the container store. I know for me, it was like, I had to stop acting like busy. It was a good thing.

As soon as I say I'm busy, I'm really saying my life is out of control. And so I think quite often we're talking about simplifying our life. In a way, it's addition through subtraction. It's letting go in a way, right? Because if you hold on, you get dragged. I think when we start dealing with that outside stuff, we start to look inside and deal with that internal clutter. You said that thing about being busy.

There's a quote I was reading today that from Socrates, I think, be where the barren-ness of a busy life. Yeah, that lands as an indictment often for me. So but that actually, Josh, you just took me someplace and I want to get back to some more of the basic blocking and tackling of minimalism in a second, but you took me to a place I kind of wanted to go, which is it sounds like your view of minimalism goes well beyond our relationship to stuff and it can call into question sort of what are the driving factors in our lives?

And so you may get interested in minimalism and might impact not only What your living room looks like but it might impact what your career and your relationships look like Yeah, it might even happen in the opposite order I discovered minimalism and there were two events in my life. My mother died, my marriage ended both in the same month. And also, by the way, my corporate career was like, I felt entirely dissatisfied by that career. I was managing 150 retail stores, which I know is really ironic with the whole minimalism thing. But as I started really drilling down to the problem, yeah, the living room decluttering, the living room looking nicer was somewhat of a byproduct of that. It wasn't about,

it wasn't just, well, if I have the right furniture in my house, then I will be complete. It was sort of like, once I'm complete, I'll have the right things in my life. My right, I actually mean I'll have the appropriate things. So you talked about this, Less is Now Challenge. Another thing you talk about in the film and Ryan, maybe I'll send this one to you, is a packing party. This is something you've actually done. Oh yeah. You know, okay, so I'm an extreme person, so I just got to like throw that out there and preface this story with that. When I make major changes in my life, I am just a type of person who has to jump in head first

to change my state, because that's really what it comes down to. If you can change your state in a very sharp way, you're gonna do something different. So when I saw Josh behaving differently and I saw him being a little bit happier, I'll tell you the thing that I noticed, what really made me want to question what the heck is going on with Josh and why is he so happy is he set up boundaries with our boss, which

was like sacrilegious in the corporate world. He set up boundaries by basically saying, Hey, I usually dinner at six. Don't call me after six o'clock, because after dinner, I don't wanna talk to you. It's seven or eight o'clock at night. I'll get back to you in the morning. And again, like this was a very sacrilegious thing. Now, Josh was adding so much value to that company

that he had a little bit of leverage where he could kind of set up these boundaries. But that peaked my interest. So that's what I went to him and brought him to Subway, that famous, awesome, fancy lunch that we had. And I asked him, what is going on with you, man? Why the hell are you so happy? And that's when he told me about minimalism.

Now, Josh had spent months pairing down, simplifying, and that was great for him, but because of me being a little extreme, I needed faster results. So after him telling me about his journey, I'm like, okay, sweet man, I want to be a minimalist. What do you think I should do? And he's like, I don't know, man. You know, here's a few things to read.

But after some conversation, we came up with this idea of the 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 and I, we literally packed up everything I had, my clothes, my kitchenware, my towels, my TVs, my electronics, my frame photographs and paintings, my toiletries, I mean, even my furniture. The furniture I wasn't using, we covered up.

And I began to unpack things day by day as I needed it. And the first day you could imagine I'm unpacking some clothes for work, a toothbrush, bed and bed sheets. Over that first week I was unpacking a lot of stuff. And then as the second week went on, it was less, and the third week was even less. But at the end of that, I was confronted with a huge pile of stuff. It was like 85% of everything I owned was sitting there in my living room,

just stacked halfway to my 12 foot ceiling. And I really had to ask myself, like what am I doing with all of these things in my life? And one of the things that really stood out to me that really helped me make that change, that really helped me change my state, was I had this thought in my head, Dan of retiring early.

And I'm like, one day, I'm gonna make enough money to where I can save enough money to retire early, maybe a 50 years old, 55 years old. But when I was looking at that stuff, all I saw was tens of thousands of dollars worth of things sitting in front of me that could have went into a savings account. And when I thought about my retirement, it was okay, but there I wasn't on my way to retiring early. And I just realized that my priorities, it's not what I say they are, it's what I actually do. And so that was really what kicked off

the minimelists.com and my entire journey with minimalism, it was that packing party story. Like I said, I know that's a little extreme. So maybe if someone is listening to this and that sounds crazy extreme, because maybe they have a family. And well, if you're gonna do it with a family, all of them them have to be on board just don't start packing up other people's things. But I will say you could start with your closet start with your garage you know if you're someone who need to take a little bit of a slower approach you can do a packing party with one room you don't have to do the whole thing.

It is interesting to see and you hear this from the testimony of the loser the everyday minimalist and in your stories you hear that somehow Examining your relationship to stuff leads you to re-examining your relationship to pretty much every aspect of your life What can we talk about why that is? I think it's really the examination of what we might call priorities and actually the examination of what we might call priorities. And our culture stuff just happens to be one of the main priorities for the vast majority of the populace. And so there are places where although the American dream has permeated the borders of all 193 countries at this point probably, for much of the Western world, we think that stuff is a priority. Now, we might say what Ryan and I

call lip service priorities, right? We might say like, oh, yeah, of course, my health is a priority or my relationship. So my marriage is a priority or creating something beautiful or meaningful for the world as a priority. But our real priorities are like, however, we're spending those 24 hours. We've been given, and a lot of us, including Ryan and I, we spend a lot of that time trying to fill the void with stuff. You've made a few references to sort of derogatory references to six ways to declutter and six tips for what to buy at the container store. But what is the difference between minimalism and decluttering? I mean, Marie Kondo also has a show on Netflix. When I watch Marie Kondo or I interview my friend, Gretchen Rubin, who's written about decluttering, you know, there's a way

which you can kind of look down on it. But actually, I do think there's a lot there. And I seem to have a lot of overlap with minimalism. So where do you draw the line? Yeah, I think that if decluttering is the focus, it becomes the problem and it actually takes our eyes away from whatever the actual problem is, right? I had 300,000 items like everyone else, right? I probably had more than that. I was a hoarder, but a well organized hoarder. And I think one of the problems with decluttering alone, not that I'm against removing the clutter, but the easiest way to declutter is to get rid of most of your stuff.

Most of the stuff is not just not adding value to your life, it's actually getting in the way of your life. And if we look for a solution, then we might stop looking at the root of the problem. What if instead of numbing the pain, we just sort of scrutinize the problem itself. Dan, you're sitting down right now. What if your desk chair was on fire? Would reading the fire safety manual save you? The problem is not a lack of instructions.

Just to see if I can restate that. It's almost like you're saying decluttering what you're not against is by its nature tactical, whereas minimalism is more holistic and strategic. It looks at the whole picture. You know people who meditate, who chase through meditation, right? I think we've probably all done it, right? I mean, you're talking about it. Yeah, okay. I think it's the same thing, right? And I'm not immune to this either. I've certainly chased through decluttering, thought that that was the solution, and it was, but that was the problem.

It was a solution. It wasn't actually addressing the fundamental nature of the problem. I think solutions are really seductive, right? People want the three tips or whatever. I get it, but I think they rarely solve anything. What are the biggest pitfalls you see from wannabe minimalists?

People who get excited, they see one of your films, or read one of your books, hear your talk, hear your podcast, and they wanna do it. What are the biggest pitfalls people encounter? It's interesting. I have seen, like I'm getting email from someone who's like, hey, I just watched your film, read your book, and I'm a very depressed person.

If I become a minimalist, is it gonna make me happy? Like, is this my path? And it's not the act of minimalism or living this philosophy, it's not decluttering that makes people happy. It's a way really to help them kind of etch a sketch of their life and look at this blank slate. And that can be really scary to people.

And I think people don't fully understand that when they create this blank slate, it creates a different type of path or makes you confront certain things that you haven't really had to confront. So for me, that's what I would say would probably be the biggest misconception is, you know, throwing away your stuff isn't gonna make you happy. That's not the point of minimalism. You guys have been on this path of minimalism for a while now. I'm curious, where are your edges? What are the things you struggle with the most as you both practice and proselytize on behalf of minimalism?

Well, one thing that I struggle with the most is, I don't have advice for anyone, right? But I have that impulse to really give people advice or to convince someone as though I'm not wrong. And I've worked this year to let go. In fact, I've let go of it, but unfortunately, because of my acculturation, I continue to pick that back up. And and feel as though I need to convince people or I need to give advice, but but ultimately that's, that's just the ego.

And I can, instead of giving advice or having the desire to quote, help people, which was also ego related, I've realized I can speak the truth. And that might help some people. And if so, that's fine. But I no longer need to be attached to convincing anyone of anything. It's almost like it's a superpower, like to have the power to let go of anything. It's almost like it's a superpower, like to have the power to let go of anything. I really enjoy the things, you know, whatever it is.

My car, like I use a lot, I love my wife, but I will say that I've never felt this much peace in my life, but that said, Dan, I struggle with peace still. What I'll say is that through minimalism, through mindfulness, I have gotten to a point where I have never felt more peaceful, but I still struggle with it.

I think a lot of that has to do with attachment still. And maybe Dan, we could talk just a little bit about attachment because I love to get your insights on this because I think often when we lose our attachment to stuff that feels freeing, as long as we don't pick up other attachments along the way, right? Attachments to success or achievements or,

and even attachments to people, you know, I've been playing around with this idea recently, to be attached to someone, even in a so-called healthy way, I think prohibits us from loving them absolutely. My meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, talks about something along the lines of the difference between intimacy and attachment. They're real intimacy.

We misunderstand. It is kind of like the difference between holding somebody with your fist closed and holding somebody with your palm open. You're still attached, connected. You love them. You want the best for them, but you're not holding onto them. You're not, it's not conditioned upon them looking a certain way and acting a certain way and saying the right things

in front of your friends. That is different than the kind of attachment. You could say even that our consumer culture where we're getting attached to things has infected our relationships other people because we get a positive even there. Right. I mean, that's the whole point of, you know, the title of our next book, Love People Use Things. It actually comes from two different sources. There is a bishop from the 1920s who talks about how you need to remember to love people and use things rather than to love things and use people.

And then the great philosopher Drake echoed that line in 2013 with the... Drissy. Yeah. He, and really like the message of that is like, in fact, it's a language problem, right? Like I could say, oh, I love my wife, but also I love tacos. And you know, the Inuit have a dialect that has like 53 different words for snow and it feels like we need that same, maybe not 53, but we need a few different layers to describe the tacos and the pickup

truck and the favorite t-shirt versus I love Ryan or I love you Dan but it's a different thing but the language is almost a barrier there in a way. I think the language around love is deeply problematic. That's my next book. Oh, really? Yep. Oh man. That's great.

So as we close here, can you tell everybody, you know, how they can learn more about you, where they can find you on the interwebs, and where they can find the movies and the books, and just plug everything, please? Yeah, it's real simple. It's just, obviously, as the minimalist, we try to keep it as simple as possible.

So if you want to follow us on social media, you want to check out our podcast, you want to check out our films, it's our essays, our books, theminimists.com. That's the place to go. You can find everything right there in one place, theminimists.com.

Always so fun to connect with you guys. Congratulations on the new film. I really enjoyed watching it. And just happy for you and happy to stuck out. Always so fun to connect with you guys. Congratulations on the new film. I really enjoyed watching it and just happy for you and happy to see you. I love you brother. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having us then. All right, thanks again to the Minimalists.

We're not done though. We're gonna be right back with a second half of the show featuring a further exploration of minimalism from the Buddhist perspective with the great teacher, Orange A Sofer. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday,

parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownauer, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wonder e app.

Okay, we're back with part two. My next guest here is Orrin J. Sofer. A lot of listeners will know Orrin, not only from the show, but also from the 10% happier app. You also wrote a book that's worth mentioning called, Say What You Mean, a Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. As you're about to hear, he's great at connecting the dots between the concept of minimalism and the practice of mindfulness meditation.

He's going to get you to ponder a big and open-ended question, which is what is enough? Here we go now with orange A's over. So, Warren, thank you for doing this. And I just want to start by asking, having listened to that interview, what did it bring up for you? What response did you have? Yeah, I just glad that the conversation is happening. It's kind of like an antidote to one of the greatest diseases of our time, you know, disease of consumerism and consumption and trying to fill this hole that can't be filled. So I'm really glad that the message is out there. I know you've had quite a bit of experience beyond minimalism.

You've straight up renunciation in the Buddhist sense. Can you describe that a little bit? So for a little over two years, about two and a half years, I was living as a Buddhist renunciate. I don't want to romanticize this. It was quite boring and challenging at times. And as far as the Buddhist world goes, I was a peon. I was not, I was like the lowest of the low on the totem pole, but I was what's called an anagaraka, which literally means homeless one. It's the term that the Buddha uses in the early texts for any renunciator monastic. But within the Tifaurus tradition, it's a term used for what gets referred to in Christian monasticism as an acolyte or a postulant.

And it's the role that you are in before you are dain as a monk. It's kind of this liminal space between being an ordinary lay person, just like you and me now, who has, you know, a job or a relationship and bills to pay and so forth. And a monastic, a renunciate who is living a religious and spiritual life who is supported by the church or monastery or whatever kind of religion you're part of as a monastic. So it's this kind of transitional zone. So I did that for two and a half years training in Buddhist understanding of not only the Buddhist path, but also the tradition

and the lineage that has kept these teachings alive for millennia. One of the things that was interesting to me about the experience was that it wasn't like I woke up one morning, it was like, I think I'll go live at the monastery and get rid of all my belongings. You know, like, be celibate for over two years. It was a much more gradual process of developing a taste for letting go, where first I just kind of went to the monastery to visit and then I spent, you know, three months there, just as a guest living and supporting, but, you know but I still was a layperson, essentially, and just sort of slowly, gradually realizing some of the potential benefits and in growing

naturally more interested in a process of simplifying things, simplifying things until it was just kind of the natural next step. I'll just be honest, I sometimes talk to like the guys in the minimalist or talk to, you know, in a conversation like we're having now, I sometimes find, and it's not that you guys are encouraging this, but this is just where my mind goes, that I feel a little guilty for enjoying the appartinances and monuments, blandishments of modern capitalistic life. I mean, we just bought a house, for example, and

I like having this new house. It's pretty cool. So, you know, I don't know, is that make me a bad Buddhist? Hmm, I don't think so. I don't think there's such a thing. But I hear what you're saying, yeah. The Buddha was really clear about this. He talked about three levels of understanding in relation to worldly pleasures, called at the five chords of sense pleasure, that we do experience pleasure and gratification in this life through the physical senses. So he talked about the need for acknowledging first the gratification and that's what you're

referring to, which is like, yeah, it feels nice to have a place to live, to have warm room or beautiful visual stimuli. You have already the art on the wall or the room is clean or you look outside, you see something pretty, that's nice. It's nice to eat food that's hot or pleasant and experience pleasant sensations and touches whether it's putting on your favorite article of clothing

or holding someone's hand, those things feel really good. That there's no denying it. So the first stage of renunciation of freedom through letting go, and I know that you've talked some about this in the episode is like how do we relate to that word? What happens if you replace it with simplicity

or with non-addiction contentment? These are all flavors of that relatively scary word renunciation. The first stage is the recognition of the pleasure we experience in relation to life and the sensory realm. Without that, if we don't do that, we end up getting into this kind of somewhat convoluted psychological terrain of self-mortification and denial and repression, right? A hair shirts and bed of nails, this kind of thing, which is not useful. So we acknowledge that the gratification, the pleasure that's present, but then also to investigate, what are its limits? And we see there is a limit. There is a real limit to the amount of fulfillment and the sustainability of that pleasure. The Buddha referred to it as the danger.

I think he used that word very deliberately, right? Because his ultimate goal is the deepest well-being and freedom for all of us. So he's gonna use language that tries to wake us up and some of the analogies in the early texts are quite graphic, quite vivid. He talked about being in a burning house or you're up in a tree

gorging yourself on fruit because it tastes so good. You don't realize that someone is cutting the tree down as you are in it, right? Or he talked about a leper scratching their wounds and it feels so good, or taking a wound and quarterizing it with heat, right? He feels good, but you're also burning yourself. So he was, you know, tried to use really graphic imagery to say like, Hey, it feels good, but there's something else going on here. So we need to investigate what are the limits?

What are the dangers of not sense pleasure in and of itself, but an unexamined relationship to pleasure. And this is where Buddhism really gets a bad rap and where people misunderstand it. It's not saying don't experience pleasure. It's saying be wakeful. Be present. Yeah, enjoy life. Like feel the things that are there, but also investigate it. Look closely at it,

come to understand it so that you are aware of your relationship with pleasure, because if we're not doing that, what happens? And we see all around, you know, just look at modern capitalist society, it's like we end up chasing our well-being and happiness through consumption, which is I think what the mental minister are trying to wake people up to. It's like that doesn't work. It's not going to get you there. So they're doing it on one level.

The Buddha was doing it on a much deeper level, saying that fundamentally sensory pleasure is limited. At the very most basic level, we can see it passes. That the nature of sense pleasure is that we experience a rush. There's this anticipation, like, oh, it's going to be so good. I can't wait. And then we get it, and there's this kind of like flood of endorphins. It's like, oh, yeah, that's good.

I like it off, you know. Mm, and then what happens is starts to fade. And that arc, that arc, sometimes it's super short, you know, you have a lick of ice cream. It's like boom, other times it's longer, you know, you buy a house, that's gonna feel good for six months a year. And you know, after it's just like, it's just a house, right? It wears off. So we can all see that very clearly,

but what the Buddha was also pointing to that's not as apparent immediately, is that essentially, if we don't examine our relationship with pleasure, we are reinforcing a certain quality of addiction at the most basic level in the heart and mind, that we are all addicted to satisfying our desires. We are addicted to that cycle of anticipation, fulfillment, and then coming down, a kind of dissipation, and then we down, the kind of dissipation. And then we need another one. And then we need another one.

And so the danger is not just that the pleasure doesn't last. The danger is that with every experience we are digging ourselves deeper into, a pattern of addiction to something that ultimately can't fill that whole. So, it's not saying don't experience pleasure, don't enjoy the beauty that's here in life. It's saying understand it for what it is. Investigate the limits and the dangers of trying to organize your life around only experiencing pleasure, which is if we're not paying attention to what the default is. It's what the default is biologically and it's what the default is societally in terms of the values and the structure of our economy.

So the more we question that, then we start to see the danger. So you start with the gratification, okay, this feels good. There's pleasure here. Right, got it. What's the danger? What's the limit? there's pleasure here, right? Got it. What's the danger? What's the limit? Uh-huh. Oh, okay. It doesn't actually do it for me. You know, I see the pattern here. And then the third stage, the Buddha refers to as the escape. There is freedom. And this is where the value of letting go of renunciation starts to become really clear. I haven't studied the early texts as much as I would like. It's one of those places for me where I see they're sitting right there on the shelf,

take it out and read it, Orrin. But to the degree that I have read the texts, some of it is so relatable and humorous. It's like the Buddha says, he was talking about, you know, before he was enlightened and the way it's translated says, you know, my heart did not leap up at the thought of renunciation. As, you know, I can just feel that. It's like, wait a minute, like letting everything go and like not experiencing that, like that sounds like a drag. I wasn't really psyched about that. And he says before I understood the gratification, the danger, and the escape relative to sense pleasure. So what renunciation letting go offers is a release from that cycle and a deeper kind of well-being and satisfaction that's not dependent on fulfilling our desires. And the beauty and the gift of it is that

it's not that you stop experiencing pleasure. It's just that we free ourselves from the prison of chasing after it and thinking that that is the source of our well-being. So those sense pleasures, the beauty of art and music and food and love and all that's still available. We can still enjoy it. It still comes through us, but it doesn't hold us. Do you believe that that's an attainable state where for regular people that were no longer

tempted by what the Buddha called the terrible date of the world that we don't get caught up in chasing? You know, I can tell you in the house buying stage, world that we don't get caught up in chasing. You know, I can tell you in the house buying stage, you're, man, I got caught up. And I've done a little bit of meditation. So it seems like it's not like we arrive at some sort of imperviousness. It's it's continuous practice. Yeah, it's a practice and change is possible. Transformation is possible. So I don't know, look back on that experience of searching for a house. Okay, so you got caught up, but were there also moments where you recognized how nuts you were making yourself and put it down or shifted your perspective?

Mostly, it was my wife who noticed that I was getting nuts. But you see what I'm saying. It's like, yeah, so it is a process, absolutely. And I definitely believe that we can radically alter our relationship with life and with our own compulsion, our own compulsivity around acquisition our own compulsivity around acquisition and sense pleasure. On the practice level, what are the practices that you would recommend that would go at this issue most directly, either on the cushion or free range? So I think in terms of the meditation, there are two tax here, and then we'll talk about the kind of daily life practice practical side.

So starting with the meditation, attacks here, and then we'll talk about the kind of daily life practice, practical side. So starting with the meditation, one side of it is cultivating contentment. So approaching this process of investigating whatever you want to call it, attachment to sense pleasure is the Buddhist phrase, but you talk about consumerism or consumption, addiction to accumulation, however you want to look at it, but learn to touch into a sense of contentment. Another word that I really like for this is enough. Beautiful word, beautiful phrase, it's just enough. Like I have enough. Imagine that. What would it be like? I have enough. I have enough to just reflect on that and notice what comes up. Notice the places that are caught that say no and see like, well, where can

you feel that sense of in this moment right here and now now I have enough, like could this breath be enough? What would it be like to relate the experience of breathing from a place of contentment to just receive air, to receive a sip of water and appreciate enough contentment? So that's huge, as it is, there's just a huge and radical shift and way of cultivating one of the foundations of renunciation and letting go. And I want to say, like, this is like no small attainment,

like simply just to just be able to sit still, and I don't even mean meditate, but to just be able to be with one's own mind and feel a sense of being okay contentment is, I think, a huge accomplishment. That's one side of it. The other side is investigating the experience of desire. In smaller, large ways, even just sitting and noticing, you know, an itch, and noticing the longing to relieve it and that very, very kind of insidious, like, oh, if I just scratch it, it would just feel so much better. I would scratch it, I just want to scratch it. Why can't I scratch it? It's still stupid.

I was just examining that experience on a very like micro level. One of the things that the practice offers is the possibility, this is something one of my teachers, one of the Abbas, one of the monasteries I lived at Ajahn Viradamo said that really stuck with me. He said the contemplative path offers the opportunity to study desire rather than to follow it. To observe the arising of craving and desire, not because desire is bad, but because we often don't understand it, and it drives us. So develop an understanding of it, a relationship with it,

where we can start to have more choice and agency over which impulses and desires we follow and which ones we don't. So in terms of meditation practice, those would be the two key directions to explore and cultivate that I'm thinking of in the moment. Maybe there are other ones. Cultivate contentment, investigate desire, give yourself time and space to explore the nuances and various dimensions of that experience. How does it feel to want something that you don't have? How does it feel to follow the desire and get the thing?

So scratch the itch, go ahead, but do it mindfully. Notice the moment when you decide I'm going to scratch it. You haven't scratched it yet. All of a sudden in just giving into the desire, something shifts in the nervous system. There starts to be pleasure relief. Oh, that's interesting. Scratch it. Notice the pleasure. Notice the relief. Notice the enjoyment. Notice that kind of flood of tingling in the body. Just, ah, so good. And then notice what happens afterwards. Notice how that fades. Notice the next thing that comes up in your mind, or it's like, okay, now what?

Notice the arising of the next desire, make the whole process part of the investigation without making any part of it bad or wrong or should or shouldn't. So that's from the contemplative side, from the meditation practice side. And then start to carry that template out into the world, into your life. So look for the moments where you feel content. Pause, be present, appreciating the small moments in life and kind of

letting yourself take in the good, right? Notice those little moments throughout a day where there is some sensory pleasure and you're not chasing it. You know, or it's just like you hear your favorite song or you notice, I don't know, some flowers and it's just like, oh, they're so pretty. We're appreciating it, but we're not caught up in it. We're not like, I better cut those flowers and bring them home. It's just like, no, they're just flowers. You just enjoy them. And then you go about your day.

We're experiencing the pleasure from a place of non-attachment. It's natural. We can do that. We have that capacity. So start to notice those experiences and then notice what it's like when we are caught in chasing after something, begin to examine that. And then, and this is I think what the minimalist are really good at and have kind of developed a whole program around is experiment program around is experiment with letting go. Experiment with voluntary simplicity is another term for it. You know, where you say like, I'm going to stop X for a week or

a month. You know, I'm not going to not listen to music for a week or some people like, I'm going to, I'm not going to have a drink for a week for two weeks just to see just to explore not because you know I should or it's bad or it's wrong but just to investigate what is my relationship with this substance or experience and how would it be to make a firm commitment and say, I'm going to refrain from engaging in this for a period of time and then really study what happens. Notice all the stuff that comes up. There's all kinds of great qualities that get strengthened in that process and things that we can learn. Take a bunch of stuff and put it in a box and put it in a closet or, you know, if you have an attic or garage, put it away for a month. And then a month later, go open it up and see like, oh, do I really, do I really need this? Like I haven't used it in a month, you know? My family, we moved around a couple of times when I was a kid, not too much, but okay, so my

mom lives in Northern New Jersey in Tineck. I kid you not. She has boxes in her house that she has not unpacked since the 1970s. That she moved from Israel to, it might have been Bergenfield or Hackensack or somewhere in Bergen County when they first moved back then to TNEC, then to South Orange where I grew up, then back to TNEC, that's, you know, what's in those boxes? Right? So it's kind of a random detour, but I think you get the idea. No, I love that detour. This has all been extremely helpful. Both the on the cushion and the daily life, experimentations that you and the minimalist suggest.

I'm not giving anybody my house, but I think letting go in small ways and even big ways makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I really appreciate you coming on and given some supplementaryary supportive wisdom. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. I'll just add one more thing just to throw it in or kind of recap because I think it's really important and I think it has the potential to radically transform our world, which is the question what's enough, particularly for those of us in the west and the global north who are really driving the climate crisis with our out of control consumption, to really

ask ourselves, what do we need and what's enough. And I think if we follow that question with a sincere heart, it will lead to changes in how we live. Very well said. Thank you again. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Big thanks to Orn. Thanks again as well to the minimalists. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir, Kim Baikama, Maria Wertel, Jen Plant. And we get audio engineering from ultraviolet audio as always. A hearty salute to my ABC news comrades Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan.

We'll see you all on Wednesday with an episode on the Science of Happiness. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

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