Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Can Radical Decluttering Significantly Boost Your Happiness? | Bonus Conversation with The Minimalists

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Have you ever noticed that no matter how much shit you buy, it never really does it for you? There’s always that next purchase. I’m no anti-capitalist, but I don’t think it hurts to acknowledge the lie—or if you want to be generous, misunderstanding—at the core of the enterprise: that somehow acquisition will lead to lasting satisfaction. This insight about the limits of materialism is what animates my friends Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who together, are known as the Minimalists. Several years ago, they released a documentary on Netflix. It focuses on how to declutter your stuff and life and how that can lead to decluttering your mind and reduced anxiety. They actually interviewed me for it—even though I am not really a minimalist—and to this day it is the interview that generated perhaps the most attention of any I have ever done. For years, people stopped me on the street about that one. Anyway, Joshua and Ryan are now bringing their documentary – aptly entitled “Minimalism” – to YouTube, for free and without commercials. In honor of that, we are reposting an interview I did with them back in 2021.  We hope you enjoy this bonus rebroadcast, and don’t forget to check out the Minimalists podcast, Youtube, website…they’re everywhere. Oh, and just to say that when we originally posted this interview, we paired it with a supplemental conversation with the great meditation teacher Oren Sofer, so if you want to hear the original, you can check that out here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Have you ever noticed that no matter how much shit you buy, it never really does it for you. There's always another purchase to be made. I'm not an anti-capitalist, but I don't think it hurts us to acknowledge the lie, or if you want to be generous,

the misunderstanding at the core of the capitalist enterprise. That somehow acquisition is going to lead to lasting satisfaction. This insight about the limits of materialism is what animates my friends, my guys, Joshua Fields, Milburn, and Ryan Nicodemus, who together are known as the minimalists. Several years ago, they did a big documentary on Netflix, which focused on how to declutter your life

and how that can lead to reduced anxiety. And they actually interviewed me for that documentary, even though I'm not actually a technically a minimalist. And to this day, that interview is the one that generated perhaps the most attention of any I've ever done. For years, people stopped me on the street about that interview. Anyway, Joshua and Ryan are now bringing

that documentary aptly entitled minimalism to YouTube for free and without any commercials. So in honor of that, we're reposting an interview I did with the guys back in 2021. We hope you enjoy this bonus rebroadcast. And don't forget to check out the Minimalists podcast. They're documentary on YouTube, lots of videos they post on YouTube there. And also they have a website. We'll put all the links in the show notes.

These guys are everywhere. And just to say that when we originally posted this interview, we paired it with a supplemental conversation about materialism with the great meditation teacher, Orrin Sofur. So if you wanna hear the original, we put a link to that in the show notes as well. What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth?

What really matters in the pursuit of a life well-lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields, asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant, Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life project on your favorite podcast app. Hey y'all, it's your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast. Baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like,

it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. 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. 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. Yeah, 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 to why is it important to simplify one of the benefits of 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 a prequel to our last documentary. This is really about Josh and I story going from student-type 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 out on our own and then it did relatively well. So they ended up picking it up on the back end 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's 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 our lives, but tweez 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 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 inadequate 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, 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 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. In 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 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. And 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. 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, you know, the Buddha's description of suffering, you know, 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,

you know, those things, you know, 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. 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 what your podcasts 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 and 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, but what about you Josh? So you just heard Ryan say like I don't look at the podcast download numbers Have you found you know perfect equanimity of vis'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. And

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? 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 is 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. I think of mindfulness as 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,

you know, bodily sensations, it includes thoughts and motions,, 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. You know, 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 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 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 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 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. And 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 months. 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. minimalism earlier, right? He said that minimalism isn't a radical lifestyle, to practical lifestyle. Maybe the same thing can be said for mindfulness or mindlessness, whatever we're calling it. Let me get to what are the most affecting moving parts of the film. And 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 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, 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 I forgot to adjust for inflation. So, you know, I went and made 60,000, then I made 90,000, then I made six figures, and 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, moved just south of Dayton, and you actually get to see the house that I grew up in in the documentary.

It's all boarded up now, and I think there's squatters and stuff in it. And it wasn't like a dangerous or violent neighborhood, but it was just a poor neighborhood. And 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 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 piece 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 at 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, 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 get 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 lessons 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, if both people win, that's great, then they both got rid of about 500 items. But you bet a meal, 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. Yeah, 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 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? If you, 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 the thing about being busy. There's a quote I was reading today that from Socrates,

I think, be where the barrenness 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, and it might even happen in the opposite order. I discovered minimalism in the two events of my life. You know, 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, 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 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 what 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 going to 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 I don't want after dinner. I don't want to talk to you. It's seven or eight o'clock at night. I'll get back to you in the morning.

Again, 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, you know, that's when I went to him and brought him to Subway, that famous, you know, awesome fancy lunch that we had. And I asked him, like, you know, 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. Like, 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 going to make enough money to where I can save enough money to retire early, maybe a 50 years old, a 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 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 minimalists.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 going to do it with a family, all of 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 needs 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 illicit, 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 our culture stuff just happens to be one of the main priorities for the vast majority

of the populists. And so there are places where, although the American dream has permeated the borders of all hundred and ninety-three 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, they read one of your books, hear your talk, hear your podcast, and they want to do it. What are the biggest pitfalls people encounter? It's interesting. I have seen, like, I'll get an email from someone who's like, hey, I just watched your film, read your book, and, you know, I'm a very depressed person. If I become a minimalist, is it going to 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 of it. In fact, I've let go of it, but unfortunately, because of my alteration, I continue to pick that back up. And feel as though I need to convince people or I need to give advice.

But ultimately, 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.

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 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 the real intimacy we misunderstand it 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. 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 with 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's 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. And and and really like the message of that is, in fact, it's a language problem, right? I could say, oh, I love my wife, but also I love tacos. The Inuit have a dialect that has 53 different words for snow 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 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 fall also social media, you want to check out our podcast, you want to check out our films, it's our essays, our books, TheMinimalists.com. That's the place to go.

You can find everything right there in one place. TheMinimal's.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 see you. I love you brother. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having us then. 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 1-3 Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1-3.com-survey.

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