The One You Feed - The Art of Letting Go and Getting Clear on Values with The Minimalists

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Joshua Fields Millburn and TK Coleman, known as The Minimalists, discuss the concept of letting go and personal empowerment. Joshua shares his personal journey of realizing the detrimental effects of consumerism and the pursuit of material possessions. As he lived the corporate dream with excess items, he felt stressed and anxious beneath the surface. This realization sparked a transformation, leading him to question how his life could be better with less. Through this conversation, you’ll discover the importance of intentional decision-making and the value of letting go of what is not important. In this episode, you will be able to: Define minimalism in the context and spirit of letting go Streamline your life for vitality and balance Embrace discomfort to fuel your personal evolution Unleash your best self through intentional actions Challenge your beliefs to make intentional, empowered decisions To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whenever we think about minimalism in terms of like there being a mathematically correct right or wrong number of things to have, you just sort of get caught up in a legalistic game that produces nothing more than a self-righteous attitude towards others, which is the opposite of freedom. You've got to think about things in terms of what constitutes healthy living for you. And then you move in that direction and you acknowledge that other people might define that differently. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what

you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction.

How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknoworeally.com

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Our guest on this episode is the Emmy-nominated Netflix stars and New York Times bestselling authors, Joshua Fields Milburn and T.K. Coleman, who are collectively known, along with Ryan Nicodemus, as the minimalists. Good Morning America says they show their followers how to streamline their lives to find more happiness. The New Yorker called them the sincere prophets of anti-consumerism. They've been featured in Time, Architectural Digest, and GQ, and they've spoken at Harvard, Apple, and Google. Josh, TK, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having us. Hey, it's exciting. Looking forward to this.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you guys. We were sharing before we got started that we've both been in the podcast space for a long time and you guys were doing the minimalist blog before that. So we've both been kind of doing this work for a long time and yet this is our first chance to ever talk. And so I'm excited about that, but we'll start like we always do with the parable, the two wolves and the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, and they look up at their

grandparent, they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you guys in your life and in the work that you do. TK, you want to take this one? Sure. I mean, for me, it means that decision making isn't just about making a selection from existing possibilities, but it's also about actualizing future possibilities. Every choice that you make is an act of self-creation.

When you decide to do what's easy right now, you make it easier for your future self to choose what is easy. When you decide to do what is difficult right now, you make it easier for your future self to do what is difficult. And so something that we talk about in minimalism a lot is that it's not just about subtraction. It's also about constructive addition. It's not just about getting rid of things, but it's thinking intentionally about the kind of person you want to be and simplifying your life right now so that you can make it easier to make the kinds

of choices that create the sort of health that you want to experience, the sort of self that you want to be. And I think what I love about the wolf parable in particular is that it's very easy to identify the areas of life that hold us back and that weigh us down and treat it like it's sort of a matter of abstinence. I got to try not to do the unhealthy stuff. I got to try to avoid the toxic stuff, but there are those two wolves and you can't overcome one by trying to neglect it or fight it or push it away, but you've got to feed the other. And so no matter who you want to be and what you want to avoid,

the only way to get there is to identify what you want to feed and be proactive about that. You know, I think the fascinating thing here is we often pathologize everything as good or bad, right? But also recognizing that what makes the bad wolf bad isn't the fear or the greed or whatever. It's the continual feeding. It's what we talk about with respect to minimalism or on the minimalist podcast is clinging to something. Fear can actually serve us. In fact, if a wolf walked into this room right now, I think fear would really, really serve me, right?

into this room right now, I think fear would really, really serve me, right? To do something, take some sort of action. However, if I constantly ruminated, oh no, what's going to happen if a wolf walks into this room? And every day I'm here at the studio, what's going to happen to me when a wolf comes in here? Well, then it's useless rumination. It's worrying for the sake of worrying. And to worry about something perpetually is just to pray for something bad to happen. And the irony of that is that's when I'm actually feeding the bad wolf, when I continue to worry when it's no longer productive. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I want to get into minimalism in a minute, but I'm going to jump to something I heard on a recent podcast episode. And it was something that

TK said, and I want to read it and I would just love to talk about it a little bit. TK, you said that trust, hope, and love are all things that can destroy you if you channel those energies in the wrong direction, or if you have as the object something that is not worthy of it. But all of these things can be tremendously life-giving as well, depending on where you direct those energies or in whom you place that trust. And this goes back to what you were just saying, Josh, around like fear. Fear is not necessarily a bad thing, right? It's actually a very useful thing in certain circumstances. And so words like trust and hope and all those things are useful in the right circumstances and very destructive in other

circumstances. And I was wondering if you guys could just talk a little bit about that idea that you fleshed out on a recent podcast episode. Sure. You know, for me, the mother of all advice is that all advice is capable of destroying you if you don't combine it with critical and creative thinking when it comes to how you work out the details in your life. We've all experienced, or we all know someone who experienced reading a self-help book or listening to some piece of advice about success that seemed to work for someone they admire. And then they try to do it and it just doesn't work out. And the reason that's true is because there's an unhealthy version for everything. There is nothing in this world that is so safe that you can't find a way to misuse it or abuse it or just work with it in a way that's

not right for you. And so it's very important that we don't hide behind the advice of people that we respect. We don't hide behind the safety of listicles or promises that people make or what's worked for other people, that's a reason to investigate things. If people you know and respect have tried something, that's a reason to entertain it. That's a reason to look into it, to perhaps experiment with it in a way that's safe to you. But ultimately, you've got to weigh things against your own experience. You've got to weigh things against your own intelligence, your own intuition, because even if something does work for you, it may work for you in a way that is so unique that you've got to be creative even in just how you work it out. And so I think that's an

important aspect of what we talk about or just learning from others in general. Yeah. And it may only work for you for a period of time. And then you're like, oh Christ, now I need something different, right? You know, there's a quote by a Buddhist teacher I love. And he said, if I'm watching somebody walk down the road and they're on the far right of the road and they're about to fall in the ditch to the right, I yell, go left, go left. You know, but if they're on the left side of the road and they're about to fall into the ditch on the left, I yell, go right, go right. And he was saying that in response to students saying, well, I feel like you're telling each of us something different, you know, and in the coaching work that I've done with people over the years, I really realized that early on, I thought, well, I'll just, yeah, I've got this stuff. I'll just kind of give it all to

them. And after a while, I was like, oh, wait, for some people, they need to be more assertive. For other people, they need to tune it down, you know, and without knowing that person and without us knowing ourselves, you know, to your point, any advice can be really problematic. And I just love that idea. Yeah. I think that quite often what happens is we prescribe one size fits all things. And that works really well for mechanical things. If you're teaching me how to ride a bike, yeah, it makes sense. Here's how you start riding a bike. However, you can't prescribe how to become Lance Armstrong, right? He's riding a bike as well. But that level of performance is a completely different thing from a mechanical use of a bicycle. And I think that is often true throughout

the rest of our lives. We try to break down, oh, Kobe Bryant was such a great basketball player. What can I do exactly? What are the 12 things, the 27 things, the 68 things that he did? And if I just do those 68 things in the correct sequence with enough amount of time, I'll become Kobe Bryant. Well, no, it's actually the opposite. Kobe Bryant did all of those things because he was compelled to do those things. And if I were to prescribe that to someone else, they're not going to become Kobe Bryant. That's why whenever we emulate greatness in people, the real aspect of greatness to emulate is the ease with which they respected their own convictions. And so the reason that Kobe was able to find all of these

weird, interesting ways to get better at basketball, like studying the footwork of soccer players or playing in a gym by himself without a basketball so that he can learn how to move without the ball, is because his conviction compelled creativity and caused him to discover or create new ways to get better that were unique to him. And that's a gift. That's a power that we all have. When we live in accordance with conviction, it just sort of inspires this creativity and we start to find ways to get better at the things that matter to us.

But it doesn't start with trying to be like someone else. It starts with respecting your own preferences, your own passions, your own convictions, and so on. Are all you LA guys required to talk about Kobe or is this just an optional, optional decision? You know, I think we're required, Josh, I'd expect some more LeBron talk in here,

giving you where you're from and where he's there now. So there is a contentious argument here. LeBron and Michael Jordan are both off the table for any discussions here at the minimalists. Okay. All right. All right. I didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest here.

And I think that this message is really important because it ties into a lot of the work that you guys do around minimalism, right? Because there's one way of taking the minimalist message, which is that just have less stuff, always have less stuff. That's the answer. That's the rule. And that is not really what you guys say. You say fairly clearly, like consumption is not the problem. Thoughtless consumption is. And so kind of walk us into, you know, minimalism, why that is the thing you've oriented around and why it's so important to you.

That's right. Yeah. Thoughtless consumption or what we would just call consumerism is really the problem. We all need some stuff, right? I need material possessions. I'm wearing a shirt. I'm talking into a microphone. I have a couch over here and a table. But the things that I own add value to my life. What is consumerism? Consumerism is the ideology that buying things will make me

complete, a whole person, a more perfect person, right? Or they'll make me happy in some way. Our material possessions, when we're really thoughtful about what we bring into our lives, we're intentional about the things we want, we're deliberate about the things we consume, those material possessions actually enhance the quality of our lives. They amplify our lives in really special ways. It's really hard to quantify, but an object can be essential. It can also be non-essential and value-adding. In fact, we have something on our website called the Minimalist Rulebook. It's 16 rules for living with less, but they're not really rules. They're adjustable boundaries that fit different people differently,

right? And so one of those rules, we call it the no-junk rule. Everything you own can fit in one of three piles. It's either essential, and we all have similar essentials. We all need food and shelter and clothing and education and transportation, but even those things, they manifest differently in different people's lives. Professor Sean, who's in here, he's our podcast producer, he rode the bus here. That's his form of transportation. I live up in Ojai, so I drove my car down to the studio. So we both need transportation. It's essential for us, but it makes sense differently for different people. You've got the second category. It's non-essential items, but they add value to your life.

So strictly speaking, I could live without a couch. I could live without a coffee table, but I'm a minimalist. I'm not a deprivationist. Minimalism is not about depriving yourself of things that add value to your life. It's about identifying what adds value and then getting rid of everything in that third category. It's the junk category.

These are the things in our lives that masquerade as though they might add value someday in some non-existent hypothetical future. These three words often come up, just in case. I'll hold on to those extra chargers, right? Just in case. Or I'll hold on to those extra chargers, right? Just in case, or I'll hold on to this oversized shirt. I lost a bunch of weight, but why do I still need the 2X shirt? I don't know. Just in case I gain the weight back or just in case this goes back into style. And so just in case, these three words, it's almost a mantra that justifies holding on to a bunch of things that are actually getting in the way of what's going

to add value to our lives. Yeah. I moved a couple of years ago. I guess it's not a couple of years ago. It's probably about five years ago now from a home in a suburb, pretty good sized home and all that into a two bedroom apartment with very limited storage. And it has made me by nature have to be fairly ruthless in what I keep. You know, I'm always like, I need more space. Should I get a storage unit? Wait, they got a garage out there I could get, you know, like, but instead by simply preferring order, which I do, I've just had to, you know, about every three months I have to go through and just purge. And I'm like, how do I keep getting all this crap? It's just amazing how it happens. But I love that idea of, you know,

that just in case thing. Like I've got so many things that fall into that category. You know, I think the other thing that's difficult about all of this is if these materialist things didn't at least provide a very short term burst of pleasure, it'd be easy to see through the whole game. That's right. Right? It'd be really easy to be like, I bought that thing. It didn't feel any better. Like, don't do it. Right? But they work temporarily in the same way as that, like I'm a former heroin addict, right? It worked temporarily, right? If it didn't work at all, I wouldn't have become addicted to it. And I think that's part of what we struggle with is that buying into that short-term thing,

because it seems to work. And if we don't reflect deeply, we keep going back to that same well again, I guess would be the way to say it. And addiction and recovery, you know, people refer to it colloquially as chasing the dragon. We all obviously do that with our material possessions as well. The average American household has 300,000 items in it. And that'd be awesome if it was bringing us more joy and peace and tranquility and excitement and love and connection and passion. But of course, it's doing the opposite. It's often blocking us from those things. The weird paradox of minimalism, as a minimalist, I've been a minimalist for 14 years now, and I sort of lived the corporate dream and had all of the excess things, the big suburban house with more toilets than people and two living rooms and multiple luxury cars. I had tons of debt. So everything underneath the surface

was stress, anxiety, all of these other things that are the additional costs of our things. When we look at a material possession, we often look at the price tag and say, additional costs of our things. When we look at a material possession, we often look at the price tag and say, oh, I can afford this widget. It's $10. But we don't think about the true cost of a thing. The true cost of the thing goes well beyond the price tag. It has to do with the cost of caring for the thing and watering the thing or changing the batteries in the thing or replacing the thing and being terrified the thing's going to get stolen or repainting the thing, whatever it might be. Also, the space that all of our things take up. It's no wonder that the average American household is approaching 3,000 square feet of new homes that are being built. And many

houses are even much larger than that. There's nothing wrong with space. But as soon as we get more space, quite often, what do we do? We feel compelled to fill it with more stuff. The opposite, though, the most calm, tranquil places, you think about a Zen garden or you think about a museum that is really well curated, it's full of open space. They don't feel compelled to fill every square foot of the museum with more art, more, more, more. hell, to fill every square foot of the museum with more art, more, more, more. No, they subtract back to not nothing because that is a type of deprivation, but they subtract back to what is essential here and what is going to add value to the patrons who visit the space. And I think we

can treat our homes very much the same way. And one theme that we really cover a lot on the show, and Josh does this very well, is to not be too quick to dogmatize or moralize because so much of what we call, change begins with acknowledging that these addictions are an effort to meet a legitimate need in an unhealthy way. And so you've got to ask yourself, look, all demonization aside, what is this fast food doing for me? Maybe it's meeting a need for convenience and it offers you the opportunity to take a look at your relationship to time. Maybe the alcohol is medicating some very real pain that needs to be dealt with. And although these are unhealthy ways of doing them, it's not until you identify the legitimate need that's being met, you acknowledge that, you affirm that, that you can begin to think creatively about the constructive way out of these traps so that you can begin meeting those needs in a better way. And so whenever we think about minimalism in terms of like there

being a mathematically correct right or wrong number of things to have, you just sort of get caught up in a legalistic game that produces nothing more than a self-righteous attitude towards others, which is the opposite of freedom. You've got to think about things in terms of what constitutes healthy living for you. And then you move in that direction and you acknowledge that other people might define that differently. Yeah. I mean, that's so important, that idea that like most everything we're doing, we're doing it to meet some need or desire that is probably legitimate, although often misguided. And so, you know, what's underneath that, you know, and that's part of what I love about what you guys do is it's not about just less, less, less for the point of less, right? It's less, less, less for the point of more,

more, more of things that actually matter, that actually make us happy, that actually make our lives feel more fulfilled. Yeah. Quite often that subtraction is leading us to a space where we're making room for more. And it's not the same for everyone. People often will call into the minimalist podcast and be like, how do I get my husband to become a minimalist? How do I get him to get rid of his stuff? Or how do I get my wife to get rid of all of these cosmetics that are on our bathroom counter? And the answer to that is not to go in there and say, hey, you should declutter. Look at me. I'm becoming a minimalist. It took me 40 years to get here or 30 years or 25 years. And now overnight, you should do the same exact thing that I'm doing. No one loves to be told what to do. We always hear that people hate change. They don't. They actually hate being changed. People love change when it's joyous

and exciting. And yet what happens is when I go to TK and say, hey, man, guess what? I became a minimalist and you're going to need to start getting rid of your stuff. He's actually going to be diametrically opposed to it. Even though he knows there might be a benefit on the other side, he doesn't know what the benefit is. When minimalism became so appealing to me, I didn't go out and proselytize it in a way where it was like, hey, look at this. I've figured it out. People start coming to me and saying, hey, what's going on with you? You seem calmer lately. You seem like you're less stressed. People at work were coming to me and saying, oh, you seem a lot nicer lately. What's going on?

And that opened up the door for me to talk about the benefits of simplifying my life. And for some people, even the word minimalism is too austere. It feels like it has a bunch of rules associated with it, or it's too stark, perhaps. And so there are other words people can use, just simplifying or essentialism or intentionalism or living within your means-ism. You can pick whatever you want as a label, but the spirit of this movement is we let go of what's in the way. And a willingness to let go is really life's most mature virtue. So let's talk about that a little bit because letting go has become almost a trope at this point, right? We all know I should let go, I should let go, let go. You know, when we get to a certain point in wisdom, I think it becomes very clear that holding on is what causes us to suffer. And yet, boy, is it hard to do. There's

a quote by the author Sue Monk Kidd. She's a fiction writer, but she wrote something that basically said, you know, letting go is this meandering spiraling process, right? And now I'm going to mess up the rest of the quote, but she basically says this idea that we could just, you know, sort of grind our teeth down and make one, I'm going to let go affirmation doesn't work. It's not the process of letting go. And so, you know, I'd love to hear both of you talk about the process of letting go. Like, let's say we get to the point where we see, yeah, maybe I need to let go. Maybe I need to let go of fast food. Maybe I need to let go of this unhealthy relationship. Maybe I need to release my grip on something. And yet I don't seem to be able to either. I can't actually stop eating the fast food or I can't stop obsessing

about that thing. Like to you guys, what is the process of letting go look like? Because I think that's where the rubber meets the road, right? Is how? Yeah, I think it starts with a question, really. How might my life be better with less? We started our last Netflix film with that question because when I started simplifying, it wasn't about how do I do it as in the mechanical aspects. Do I donate this? Do I sell it? And some of those, those decluttering tips can be useful, but only after you get to the why. So how might my life be better with less? Sounds like a how-to question, but it's actually a why-to question. Why do I want to simplify my life? The thing TK talked about a moment ago was like, what is this fast food doing

for me? Maybe it's adding some convenience. That's a great question to ask. And then you append it with another question. What is this doing to me? And I think we can do that with our material possessions as well. Like, okay, this served a purpose at some point. There's a reason I got this. This is a story I told myself as why I should accumulate this, right? But also the story I tell myself now isn't that I need to let go of everything. Clinically, that's called Spartanism. That's a mental disorder, right? Where people can't hold on to anything and it starts to not just affect their material possessions, but it affects their relationships. They can't hold on to family or friends or coworkers. They can't even hold on to their job. They often end up homeless or living in their cars. They can't even hold on to the car because if you can't hold on

to anything, well, that's just as detrimental as holding on to everything. And so the delicate balance here is like when you're rock climbing. In order to rock climb, you have to hold on for a bit. And then you have to let go if you want to get where you're going. You can't get where you're going without letting go. But you also can get where you're going with the inability to hold on at all. I'll add another question to that after you ask those first two, and that is, what does letting go look like for me? I think healthy people are

essentially people who give themselves permission to become better without being the best. Whenever you decide that there's some path that is healthy for you and you want to begin walking down it, one of the frustrating things you're going to discover very quickly is that there are a whole lot of people that have been walking that path longer than you. They're all smarter than you. They're all respected, incredible sounding to you. And they're going to tell you all the different ways that you could be doing better, even better than what you're doing. And that can be so overwhelming and so confusing. And you've got to give yourself the permission to take the small steps. For instance, we were just talking yesterday about processed

foods and how many radical changes you can create in your body just by eliminating processed foods alone and focusing on whole foods. Well, suppose you do that. You know that's not everything. And there's somebody that's going to have been walking that path a long time. They're not going to say, hey, man, just because that isn't processed doesn't mean that that's good for your body. Then it's like, oh, no. Well, and sometimes people give up. And when you listen to people argue against their possibilities, what often comes up are

statements like, well, I just can't be the kind of person who gets up at three in the morning every day. I just can't be the kind of person who goes to bed at this time. I just can't be the kind of person who goes to bed at this time. I just can't be the kind of person who never has fun in this particular way. And it's very empowering when you can say, who says you have to change in that way? And so the first step of letting go, after you define what are you letting go for, is letting go of other people's ideas about how you have to let go. What does letting go look like for you? And you can find that you can create a lot of change in your life by just giving yourself permission to find

your own way of doing it. I love all those ideas. And I think there is something about also just the patience of saying, you know what, I'm trying. I remember when I was early in recovery, I had a girlfriend at the time and she broke up with me for some other guy in AA and I was just, I was a mess. And I knew I needed to let go, right? Like there was nothing else to do. You know, they said in AA all the time, let go, let God, I mean all this stuff. And I was like, but I can't seem to. And so I started by just, you know what I'm going to let go of? I'm going to let go of some things like driving by her house at 11 at night to see if his car is there. I'm going to let go of calling her today. The mind isn't ready to unravel around this thing yet. Like

I can't turn it off in my mind right now, but there are some things I can start to let go of some outward manifestations. It's a line I use on this podcast a lot. Sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking, right? It's a, it's a variation on that of like, okay, maybe I can't let go in all the ways, but are there some ways, you know, and this is getting back to what you said, TK, are there some ways that I can start to let go and recognize that over time, I will become more able. You start wherever you are, obviously, right? I mean, that's a tautology even, but you start somewhere. There's the old Zen maxim about let go or be dragged, right? But we're being dragged in 300,000 different directions now, whether it's social

media or material possessions or careers, relationships, whatever, trying to people please everyone all the time. And busyness, you know, busy is the worst four letter word in the English language because it's a become a status symbol. Oh, what are you up to lately? Oh, I'm just so busy, right? Look how important I am. And the ego is really taken over here. Look how you should look up to me. Look at our relationship. Clearly, I'm so busy because why? I'm so important. I have status, right? Well, to me, that has become something that being busy for the sake of being busy is just like moving my hands faster, but not getting necessarily anything accomplished, wearing myself out in the process. And so often letting go has to do with starting somewhere. Practically, when it comes to material possessions,

years ago, we invented something we call the 30-day minimalism game. Because if your average person does have hundreds of thousands of items in their home, usually it's the paralysis of walking in and saying, you know what? I know I need to simplify. I know I want to let go of the stuff, but I don't even know where to start. And so the way that the 30 day minimalism game was because decluttering is kind of boring. I mean, I don't think anyone really enjoys decluttering that much or about a hundred different things I'd rather be doing personally, but I'd also like to let go. And so it's about starting somewhere. You partner up with a friend or a family member or a coworker and the beginning of the month you decide, Hey, we're each going to let go of one thing on the first day. And on the second day,

it's two things. Third day, three things. So it starts off really easy. Gets you that momentum you need. Just like what you're talking about with the ex-girlfriend is like, I need to start somewhere. I need to let go of one thing. Not everything, but I need to let go of one thing right now. Anyone can find one item to let go of in their bathroom or their attic or in their basement or garage or storage unit. What's one thing you can let go of? But by the middle of the month, it starts to get more difficult. Uh-oh, today's day 15. I have to get rid of 15 items. And then tomorrow, I have to get rid of 16 items. And then by day 25, uh-oh, today I have to get rid of 25 items. Now, whoever goes the longest in that little game

wins some friendly competition. There you can bet a nice meal or make a monetary bet if you'd like. And if you both make it to the end of the month, then you've both won because you've gotten rid of about 500 items. And we've had tens of thousands of people play this game. And a lot of them just keep going day 37, day 38, or they'll often start over right beginning of the new month. I'm just going to keep letting go because you've built up that letting go muscle and now it actually feels good let me get this out of the house whereas before you didn't even know where to start and now you're like ah get rid of anything that's no longer serving a purpose in my life it's not amplifying

my joy i gotta let it go yeah you, one last quick thing to let go of is there's a very popular self-defeating myth that manifests in the form of the following inner monologue. If I really cared about X, I wouldn't struggle so hard with making X happen. Sometimes. Sometimes the struggle is a sign that you don't really want it, but often the struggle is a sign that you're a human being and that it's hard. It's incredibly difficult. And sometimes you don't learn the things you need to know. You don't let go of the things you need to let go until you're willing to show up for yourself and the future that you want to have time and time again, even though you often fail, even though you sometimes relapse, even though you sometimes

disappoint yourself. Sometimes letting go is about letting go of the belief that I need to progress in a perfect way that never involves any backtracking, any mishaps, any moments of disappointing myself or the other people in my life. Yeah, I think that's so important. You're right. There is that idea. And another version of it that I often hear from people is like, what you're doing shows what you value. Meaning if I watch TV every night, it shows that I value TV over my child. Well, on one hand, yes. But I think that's a very limiting view, right? Because I think more what it might say is that I don't yet have the skills to forego the comfort, and we're going to talk about comfort in a minute, to forego the comfort, to forego the ease, to know

how to relate to my child. It's a reductionist view to just say, just because I'm not doing it means I don't value it. We do need to know what we value and then we need to get our way towards it. And I think, you know, TK, to your point is that can be really difficult. It doesn't mean I don't value it. It's just that I haven't figured out how to bring that value actually into life. Yeah. You know what? I think on top of that, like I think it's, you value something else other than the television and you just touched on comfort. I quite often, we default to comfort. Kapil Gupta says we default to our defaults, which I love. Now, of course you can change what your default settings are. Yeah. We,

maybe we arrived with some factory settings, but really our culture and society developed our so-called personalities. Not that a personality actually exists. It's just the series of stories that I tell myself about where I am and how I got here. And it's an amalgamation of my preferences and my likes and dislikes and my opinions and beliefs and all of this clutter that it's psychological clutter, it's emotional clutter as well. And so diving beyond the material possessions, one type of clutter is this sort of comfort clutter in a way where I feel as though comfort is a virtue. And sometimes I do want to be comfortable. There's nothing wrong with being comfortable, but beware of easy payoffs. Because if everything I do brings me a burst of momentary

pleasure, when am I paying for it? I'm not paying for it right now because this is easy. It's comfortable. Oh man, more of that. But by the seventh piece of cake, I'm totally sick, right? I'm paying for it tomorrow or next week or next year or with an early death or diabetes or whatever it ends up being. If I'm not paying for it now, I'm going to end up paying for it in the future. It's like I'm going into debt. I'm punishing my future self. And we do that through our finances. Oh, I'm going to buy this thing because I really want it now. But what types of debt do we get into when comfort becomes our number one virtue?

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You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. You guys say somewhere that, you know, comfort is a liar.

Say more about that. Yeah, you know, I think the devil's go-to phrase is, buy now, pay later, you know? Comfort is the promise of immediate joy in exchange for tomorrow sorrow. Tomorrow sorrow is just so much more difficult to see that we say yes to that illusion of joy that leaves us high and dry. But, you know, comfort, as Josh said, it's truly a valuable thing in context. And the problem is when comfort becomes an end unto itself and it's no longer contextualized by something broader that gives us meaning, that gives our lives some deeper reason for being.

When comfort becomes the end all be all, we end up on a path of apathy, a path of boredom. This is why you have so many people that are bored by luxury, bored by abundance. They have all of the comforts of life, but they discounted one very important thing about our human nature, and that is we are simply incapable of being truly fulfilled unless we have challenges. I mean, even our brain refuses to reward us with more pleasure if we don't go out there and create novelty. We've got to give our brain a supply of novelty. And when you give it the easy dopamine hits of all the comforts of life,

it just keeps you running high and dry. It's only when you do those sorts of things that push you to develop new skills, to solve complex problems, to interact with human beings in a way that isn't easy to manipulate, that you begin to experience that true kind of aliveness. So breaking the addiction to comfort is about realizing that the true pursuit of pleasure is only met when I acknowledge those aspects of my humanity that actually crave challenges. Right. Yeah. And comfort has a real tendency, obviously, to shrink our lives, right? Because the more you value comfort, the harder it is to do anything that's not comfortable, which in my experience means just less and less and less and less that I can do. Less and less

of the world becomes available to me via that. And then I think the other thing is interesting is, you know, the term flow has become something that is, you know, talked about all via that. And then I think the other thing is interesting is, you know, the term flow has become something that is, you know, talked about all the time. And I feel like if it's not mentioned on every third podcast, it's every fourth podcast, right? It's everywhere. But what I think is interesting about that research is it points to something that I think is really important. And it says flow is achieved essentially when you are in a, this isn't what it says, but a comfortable level of discomfort, right? You're engaged in something that isn't too hard, but it isn't too easy, right?

If you're too far out of your comfort zone, you don't function. You can't, right? And if you're all the way in your comfort zone, you don't grow. And so it's finding where is that place? And again, you guys talked about this a little bit, like these small steps that we take, what's this little thing that I can do? How can I change in, in these small ways? I think comfort is a similar one, right? Like we're not made to live out of our comfort zone all the time. And we're not made to live in it all the time either. So where is the

place where I can sort of be pushing that to be getting not the sense of flow exactly, but you guys get the agonizing zone. It's not the horrific pain zone. That's when we take discomfort so far that like we're becoming masochistic. The traumatized zone. Right, right. And so we don't want to traumatize ourselves by going so far out of our comfort zone that we're in the traumatized zone. But being in that place of discomfort, the discomfort zone, that's where all of the rewards are, the flow state, the joy. And by the way, when you find that joyous state, it actually makes room for these other emotions that pleasure doesn't really make room for. Nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is especially great as a byproduct of doing something that aligns with your long-term values. It's like the difference between feeling

good and an abiding feeling, a sense of underlying good in your life. Like, yeah, eating a piece of cake right now might make me feel good in terms of pleasure, but I know it's not going to be an abiding sense. that temporary satisfaction doesn't bring me a long-term fulfillment. And we see that in our material possessions as well. When I buy the car, it feels great. And then that first car payment shows up and like, oh no, why did I go into debt for this? And it's 83 months and it's $579 a month. What what about the gut and i'm bored of it already yes yeah exactly and we start to regret what we always regret the comfortable decisions that gave us a momentary burst of dopamine but then charged us back for it with interest later we rarely regret

the thing that was a little uncomfortable or maybe significantly uncomfortable but had some sort of payoff in the moment you might feel like oh why am i doing this but at the end of it it's like wow i'm so glad i did it by the way i think uh the humanity's relationship to play which stretches all the way back to the dawn of civilization. And we see it in our primitive form, even as children, that whenever we are given free time, our way out of boredom, our primary way of finding enjoyment is to play. We create games and so on. And if you think about the essence of a game, what we do when we play games is we deliberately conceal some aspect of our power from ourselves just to enjoy the experience of negotiating

limitations in order to fulfill an arbitrary goal. So if you take a word game like Scrabble or Bananagrams, we all know that given enough time, we probably can form as many words as we want, but we put an arbitrary time limit that the universe didn't impose on us. We also place these other constraints. You have to arrange things only in this or that direction. Or you play a game like basketball or whatever. We create something called out of bounds and we say, well, once you pick up the ball, you can't dribble it again. We literally make up constraints because we can't have fun if we're just allowed to do whatever we want without any obstacles. We say, basketball is no fun unless someone's trying to block my shot. Baseball is no fun unless someone is deliberately trying to obstruct my efforts to hit the ball in a way that's really hard for me to overcome. And so we can learn a lot about human nature by

observing the way that we constantly gravitate towards play whenever labor or hard work is taken away from us and what we need in order to have fun when we do play. That's a great point. I want to spend a fair amount of time on values in a minute, but before we go there, I thought we could talk about some questions that you guys have. You say the issue is that we don't question the things we bring into our lives. And if we're not willing to question everything, we'll fall for anything. You've got a list of questions. You may not know exactly what I'm referring to, or maybe you do, but there's six of them I have in front of me. Do you remember them? Are these the questions to ask before buying? I think so, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, maybe give me a few of them and then we can riff on it. I mean, the first is, who am I buying this for? Yeah, and that's an important question because what happens is I'm buying a thing because I think I want it, right? But then there's all these mimetic beliefs, and that's just a fancy word to say, I want what people around me want quite often. And I didn't know why I was buying the Lexus the first time I bought a Lexus, and then I bought the second one.

Who am I buying this for? Well, it's to impress other people. Okay. How many people do I need to impress? Never stopped to ask that question, right? Why am I trying to impress them? Why do I need to be so liked by other people? Venerated, right? How many people do I need to be liked by before I'm allowed to like myself? Yep. Now, and by the way, these questions are truly sincere. They're not lead questions. So when we say, how many people am I trying to impress?

That's not a rhetorical device to get you to see that you shouldn't try to impress anyone. It's an invitation to be honest, because your answer might be, oh, I only need to impress one person rather than the 10 I'm stressing out for. And if that's your answer, that's your answer. I know someone who literally bought a Porsche because they wanted to fit in with their clientele and they believe that it helped them do business and they weren't stressed out about it. It was something that kept up images in their industry. And it's like, all right, that's one thing that you've got now. That's all they needed. They didn't need five Porsches. They didn't need to buy a mansion. That was the thing they decided that they needed to do. Whatever it is, it's who are you buying it

for? Who are you doing this for? It's just an opportunity to be honest with yourself because the number of people that we need to impress, whether it's the ideal zero or not, it's usually less than we think. Yeah. And I agree with you. I think questions like this are so important and, but they're completely useless if we're not completely honest about them. You know, we are motivated by what we are motivated by. Now we can question that. We can question why am I motivated by that? But when we answer the way we think we should answer to any of these things, they don't have the opportunity to do any work on us, right? Nothing changes when I answer the way I think I should answer. I need to

answer the way it really is. Yeah. Yeah. And what's behind that answer as well? We've been talking about this on the minimalist podcast recently, this idea of belief autolysis. Autolysis is just a fancy word that means when a cell eats itself, basically. So it uses its own enzymes to eat itself. And so one great exercise when you go through questions like this, who am I buying this for? Quite often we get stuck right there, right? But then even if you identify, oh yeah, I'm buying this to impress these 10 people. Okay. Why do I need to impress these 10 people? Okay. Because I think that if they like me, then I will make more money from them. Or if they like me, I can finally give myself permission to like myself,

whatever it might be. Okay. Why do I have that belief? And continuing to question the beliefs, we have a lot of belief clutter in our lives, the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories we've been handed down from our religions, from our culture, from our society, from our peer groups, from our schools, we've been handed a bunch of different beliefs and we don't question any of them. And when you start questioning some of these beliefs, guess what happens? They begin dissolving right in front of you. As soon as you say something out loud or even better, write it down. We have a really difficult time letting go of this old shirt I haven't worn in a year. Well, why? I'd be less complete as a person if I get rid of this shirt. Write that down and see how absurd it feels. But in the moment before I write that down, it feels so real. Let get rid of this shirt. Write that down and see how absurd it feels. But

in the moment before I write that down, it feels so real. Letting go of this is going to be tremendously difficult because it's going to mean I'm lesser of a person. I'm not as complete. But as soon as I write it down and see it for what it is, the illusion begins to dissolve. Yep. I love that idea of belief clutter. It's amazing how true that is and how multi-layered it is and how difficult it even is to start to unpack that, I find, right? Because you were talking about this earlier, right? We're in essence, the person we are is based on countless causes and conditions. It's an infinite web stretching backwards, right? So even when I go, what do I really want besides what my parents want, even then it starts to become very difficult because

I'm like, well, why do I want that? That's why I love the idea that you used of mimetic belief, right? I'm wanting what I want is because of what people around me want, you know, and why? And I don't think there's a pure answer that like, that there's this self inside of us that is like, if we could just get to that self, it would tell us all the truest and realest answers, right? Because even that self has been conditioned by, by countless things. I think we can only do the best we can, but the questioning is what moves us closer to who we really are. Yeah. And it's untangling from all of those beliefs. The word complex shares a Latin root, uh, complex. It just means to interweave two or more things together.

Right. And so simple or simplex just means having one strand instead of multiple strands. So when we're simplifying, we're literally removing the tangled things that we've interwoven into our lives. And at first it was really simple, but then all of a sudden I got a car payment or I went into debt for this, or I needed to start dressing this way to impress these people. Or I started believing all of the shoulds that were handed to me. Oh, I should go to college. I should work a corporate career. I should take a yoga class. I should go to the gym every day. Nothing wrong with any of these things, by the way. But when it becomes a mimetic belief, everyone else was handing me my shoulds. And then I start

beating myself up because, well, I'm not flawless and I don't actually enjoy doing these things. Other people think I should do. That's just a form of belief clutter. There are no shoulds, there are only coulds, right? You can go to the gym every day. You can go into debt if you want. You can have a car payment. You can start a Facebook group, whatever it is. It's not that you should do any of these things. These are all possibilities that are in front of you. If you're compelled enough to do it, wonderful. Earlier, you were talking about, you know, if I'm watching TV at night, instead of paying attention to my son, does that mean I'm a bad parent? Does it mean I value TV more than my son? Well, maybe, but it depends on what you mean by value, right? But ultimately, what we're looking at there is

this is how I'm choosing to spend my time right now. This is technically my priority. Yeah, word priority is even an interesting one because that word didn't have a plural until the 20th century because priority means the first thing. And so if you tell me your list of 15 priorities, it's literally nonsensical. Here are 15 the first things in my life. I don't even know

what that means. In the moment, the priority is TV because really the priority is comfort or unwinding or de-stressing or whatever it might be, right? And so getting behind the belief really helps us understand what we're doing with our most precious resource, our time and our attention. Yep. Well, I think the other thing about what you were just saying there is really interesting is, you know, we react to the shoulds, right? But a whole lot of my life has been an opposite reaction to the shoulds. You should go to college. Nope, I'm not going to, you know, you should value this thing. Nope, I'm not like, and so even when we're, when we're not doing the sort of things, it's almost a, uh, reverse mimetic desire, perhaps in a sense. It's just, it is a

tangle. Right. And so with the should thing, shouldn't do it is just another should I should not go to college. Right. And so in a weird way, we're defining ourselves as contrary to what society has handed us. And therefore, we're in the same prison. We're just on the other side of the bars and we're still locked up. to do what other people want you to do. But in both ways, you're defining who you are and what you do as a sheer reaction to what other people want from you. You know, this sort of like paranoid approach to a mimetic desire is sort of like, it reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld where the character Kramer, he's afraid that a friend is trying to manipulate him into doing what he wants him to do. And so Kramer likes this girl and he gets ready to talk to the girl, but he's like, wait a minute, that's the girl that you want me to like. And he refuses to talk to a girl that he likes. He gets ready to sit in a chair and it's the chair that he chose, but he's like, ah, wait a minute, I bet you want me to sit in this chair. And so he literally becomes this indecisive man because everything that he wants to do, he's afraid that someone else is planting these desires in his mind. And so sometimes it's important to step back and say, hey, where this idea came from is a little less important than the impact it's having on my life

and whether or not I want that to continue. Is this working for me is an important balancing question to combine with, like, who am I doing this for? That's a great one. So a couple of the others, I mean, there's some kind of obvious ones here, like, can I afford it? Will I add value in my life? But one of my favorites, and maybe we'll have this be the last one, is would the best version of me buy this? I mean, that is, that's super. Like, I mean, that is a really clarifying question. I had a friend, she lives up in Canada and. Like, I mean, that is a really clarifying question. I had a friend, she lives up in Canada and she texted me one day, she was at the store. She wanted to buy something on an impulse. And she said, I need to get one of those bracelets

that says WWJD. What would Joshua do? Right. And what she was really asking is like, as a, she was an aspiring minimalist. And she she was like with really the best version of me by this and i think it's a question it's all worth asking not what would josh do because right it doesn't matter what i would do but like what would the best version of me do in this scenario now that doesn't mean that you're not going to make mistakes along the way there's a big difference between a mistake and a bad decision you see politicians will do this sometimes where like oh yeah they got caught for cheating on their wife or whatever. Oh, I just made a mistake. And it's like, well, no, like getting the wrong answer on a test is a mistake. The best version of me is

still going to get the wrong answer on a test from time to time, right? But the best version of me is going to make decisions that account for my current self, right? My own safety and comfort right now within reason, but also it's going to make uncomfortable decisions because there is some sort of future reward or I'm going to avoid some sort of future punishment by doing the thing that the worst version of me would do. So yes, the worst version of me in this moment might act on impulse. The worst version of me might eat the piece of chocolate impulse. The worst version of me might eat the piece of chocolate cake. The worst version of me could do a bunch of things that give me a reward right now,

but I'm going to end up paying for it in the future. The best version of me is going to be deliberate. The best version of me is going to pause when necessary. I'm going to be intentional about the thoughts that I have and deliberate about the things that I bring into my life. What would the best version of me do right now? And sometimes, here's the paradox of that, sometimes the best version of me would not act, would do nothing. And so the gift of inaction, right? We often try to do, do, do. Busy, busy, busy.

Act now, supplies are limited, right? But maybe the best version of myself would simply abstain. Maybe that is also an option. Yeah, yeah. I think that is such a great question. Like, what would the best version of me do in all these situations? Or who is the person I want to be? You know, you sort of put things into the mistake and the bad decision category, right? There's another, I'm not quite sure what I would, I guess it's falls under bad decision, but we all know what this is like when we're like, well, the best version of me would do this. And I just did that, you know, the best version of me would do this. And yet I don't seem to

quite be able to actualize that best version of me at the current moment. Yeah. And quite often that's because we're not compelled. We don't actually see the benefits that are on the other side of that action or inaction. What are the benefits of abstaining from this thing that's going to harm me? Or what are the benefits of doing this thing that's going to help me? We don't see it clearly enough. And if you don't see it clearly enough, then you just feel like, oh, I guess I should work out or I should eat healthfully or whatever it is. Right. And it's

like, well, okay, but I don't really understand the outcome from that. And so I don't feel compelled enough to devote myself to actually taking those actions that will get me to the other side of it. Another value add to this question too, is it gives us a friendly self reminder. The funny thing about being human is sometimes the reason we don't do things that are very important to us is because we forget. Wow. How undramatic, right? Because it's much easier to demonize ourselves and others. But how many people have forgotten birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and other things that are truly important to them? And when they had that moment, they go, oh, no. And they're devastated.

No one needs to make them feel guilty because they know they overlooked something that's important. So when you ask yourself that question, you know, what would the best version of me do? It's also like inserting a little pause in your day and asking yourself, is this the way I really want to use my time? Reminds me of a meeting that I had with someone and we only had 20 minutes schedule and we popped on and we were so glad to see each other. And then they started to ask these other questions and we're like five minutes in and I say, hey, we got 15 minutes left. I'm cool with answering these questions, but is this the best way? Is this how you want to use the 15 minutes? And they go, oh, you know what? I better dive in and make sure I get this covered because this is the reason for my call.

It's not that they didn't care. It's just that they forgot and that little question was a friendly reminder. And we need that to give that to ourselves. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, yeah, really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column. Very few companies who go

viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. We're nearing the end of our time here, but I would love to discuss something. Josh, I think maybe you're the one who came up with it, but I don't know. It's hard to know in the minimalist, right? Because it's sort of a collaborative thing. But it's the idea of the platinum rule. Can you share what that is?

Yeah, actually, you know, TK has a better riff on this than I do. Although he doesn't love the platinum rule. He thinks it's a misunderstanding of the golden rule. But for the sake of this conversation, maybe we can, we could debate it out here. Yeah. Well, I'm not against the platinum rule and I'm working very hard at learning to just let it be. It's a personal little thing. But I think the platinum rule is just the golden rule rightly understood. And so the platinum rule, as stated, is do unto others as they would like it to be done. As opposed to the golden rule, which is? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But what the golden rule means here, and this is also the platinum rule,

it's like if I like chocolate ice cream and Josh is allergic to ice cream and absolutely hates it, the golden rule doesn't mean buy chocolate ice cream for Josh because that's what I would want. The golden rule means that I love him and I respect him in the same way that I desire those things. And how do I desire love and respect?

Well, I desire it in a way that considers my interest and my taste. I want people to buy me chocolate ice cream because chocolate ice cream is something that I like. So to do unto Josh as I would do unto me would mean I take the time to figure out what he likes and I offer him something that he would appreciate, not something that I would appreciate. But anyway, if the platinum rule helps people rightly understand the golden rule, I'm totally happy to say,

all right, let's throw out that language and let's just think about loving people in a way that they are ready and willing to receive. The whole idea of speaking people's love languages, I think that really does matter. Josh, you gonna come back here? Yeah, yeah. I'm in a coffin right Yeah. I'm just signed off right

now. I'm dead. Yeah. No, you know, I think what's fascinating about, about this is what you're really talking about is meeting people where they are and helping them get to where they want to be. Even if that, where they want to be is different from where you want to be. And the misunderstanding of the golden rule, I think you're right. Quite often what happens is like, treat others how I want to be treated. And so therefore, what's going to happen? We've developed this whole advice epidemic, right? Where it's like, oh, you know what? I figured out five things that work really well for me. Now I should apply this to every human being in existence and they're actually wrong if they don't do it. And what it accidentally

does is it places me on a weird pedestal where I have all of the guidance and the advice and I will bestow that wisdom onto you as long as you look up to it because I'm on the pedestal, right? But the weird thing about that, putting myself on a pedestal actually forces me to look down on other people. And where the platinum rule as understood here, and what TK outlined is like, nope, we're on the same level here. I'm going to treat you how you want to be treated. You're going to treat me how I want to be treated. I'm going to see you for who you are without trying to change you, manipulate you, harm you, coerce you into anything. And that's what it ultimately means to love someone, to see them for

who they are without trying to drag them to where I am. And that's how we all want to be loved and respected. We want to be treated with nuance and with charity. Yeah. And this kind of, Josh, you hit it there a little bit, right? This circles us all the way kind of back to where we started, right? This circles us all the way kind of back to where we started, which was to say, you know, you can't just tell people this is the right thing for you. If you're off to the side and you're about to fall in the ditch to the right, you know, we want to go left and the opposite. And the same thing is here. We can't assume that what we want is what other people want, you know? And so by finding out what they want is the true way of applying the golden rule so i don't know whether we need two rules one rule with a little bit of a sub caveat maybe we need

golden rule a and b i don't know i'll let you guys sort that out but i think the idea is nonetheless an important one yeah i agree i think what happens here is we get really bogged down in legalism or whatever we want to call it and And then there's this type of self-righteousness. Oh, I've got it figured out. And you too can figure it out if you just follow my prescription. But usually that doesn't work. In fact, what's the old saying? A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. I think it's Dale Carnegie who said that. And so I can drag you kicking and screaming to my worldview, right? But then of course, as soon as you have an opportunity, you're going to run away from it because in fact, you're going to be turned off by it. As you

noted earlier, like I'm going to be counter-cultural to everything because everyone's dragging me in this direction, but guess what happens? Now you're just participating in the culture of counterculture, which is in and of itself its own series of tenets and ideologies. And when we become defined by what we're saying no to, it's very similar to being defined by what we say yes to. And by the way, my quibbling over the term is even an invitation for me to evolve because there's something good in it. I like to think that I value ideas so much that I want things to be understood in their

proper context. But at the same time, there's something to be said about valuing human flourishing so much that you don't make too big of a deal over how a person needs to say something to themselves in order to tap into the value that lies therein. And so, you know, even just in the name of practicing what we preach, part of living a healthy life is just giving other people permission to describe things differently than you,

to analyze things differently than you. And that's hard, no matter where you are in the journey, but you gotta keep challenging yourself to grow in that way. So platinum rule, golden rule, you do you. All right. I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. We are going to go into the post-show conversation where we are going to have a really good discussion on values. We talk a lot about living by values. We talk about it on this show. It's kind of everywhere, but you guys have some really interesting ways of breaking that down that I'm really excited to talk about. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversations,

ad-free episodes, and all the other benefits of being a member, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join. Josh, TK, thank you guys so much. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do

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