welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast we've got Joshua fields Milburn in the house good to see a man if we were if this table wasn't between us we'd be hugging right now it's right both huggers definitely huggers we're both from Ohio amen you're from Dayton I'm from Delaware yes so very similar about an hour and ten minutes away I think yeah they are in Delaware I have not been through Delaware no I spend a lot of time with columbus though yes that's about 20 miles north of Columbus okay so okay and I lived in Columbus for a little bit and you are a writer and a minimalist you know the minimalist blog with your partner your writing partner and you guys have created a movement man you guys get almost 5 million unique visitors a year yeah you've got many best-selling books whenever you travel the country of the world you get hundreds if not thousands of people to show up to hear you guys speak and talk about minimalism and why did you get into it because I read your story about your mom going through a challenging experience and your marriage going through a challenging experience sure can you tell us why you got into Manila so I'm 35 years old now and about seven years ago if we do the math there I was 28 I had achieved everything I ever wanted the six-figure salary back in Dayton is a pretty big deal Dayton they know I was really doing that I know right and so I had the six-figure salary I had the big suburban house with with more toilets than people and I had the closets full of expensive clothes the the luxury cars plural you know all the stuff that was supposed to make me happy and I didn't necessarily feel fulfilled but I just kept I knew I was always one promotion one paycheck one purchase away from achieving happiness someday and some hypothetical future that was just around the corner and if I could get this then I would be happy and that started well well before that I mean I I grew up really poor and Dayton on on welfare and food stamps and we didn't have a lot of money and there was a lot of drugs and alcohol in the house and it was you know a dysfunctional household before that word dysfunctional was cool and and so so so we we grew up really poor and I said I don't I don't want to live this life right and so by age 18 I I circumvented the whole college path and just went got a sales job and I realized they'd go to school no no yeah I just realized I've almost dropped out of high school and I realized that that I if I worked six or seven days a week 60 70 80 hours a week you can make good money even as a 19 year old right you're you're in sales and I was making $50,000 a year by age 19 in Dayton Ohio and you're like okay but then I was noticed that I was spending $65,000 a year right and I had my first experience with debt and at age 19 and I said okay well I thought $50,000 a year would make me not student loan debt a different type of debt right right yeah it was it was credit card debt it's just consumer debt right you know there's there's 12 trillion dollars in consumer debt in our country right now 12 trillion I that's not including student loans you know that that part of that is student loans so so so student loans mortgages cars credit cards the average American has four credit cards and his or her wallet the the one in 10 Americans has 10 or more active credit cards in his or her wallet one in ten Americans has 10 or more or more at 14 and and so so I continue to climb that corporate ladder because I realized that that you know what $50,000 I thought it was gonna make me have you but it's not I'm spending 65 maybe I need to adjust for inflation right sure so in in my started making 65,000 of course I am spending 80,000 not enough and it's it's never enough right and so by the time I was making six figures I was spending even better than that so I had massive amounts of debt I had six figures worth of debt not counting my mortgage if you have my mortgage in there it was about about half a million dollars in debt and and I felt overwhelmed and so I kept trying to pacify myself with the same way many Americans do with stuff the accumulation of stuff to try to fill this void that I felt inside but of course that didn't fill the void it it basically widened the void and so I felt more discontent and stress and overwhelm and so I was working more and I forsook the things that were that were most important to me right now I said the certain things were important to me I said my health was important right but I wait why did you work out right I weighed 80 pounds more than I weigh now and I said my relationships were important to me but really I was spending most of my time with those tertiary relationships the the the the networking buddies the executives the co-workers and and there's nothing wrong with those people I mean many of them were great people but they didn't share the same values that I shared and and because of that I wasn't allocating time for the people closest to me my wife or to my family or my closest friends because I figured all they'll understand right I'm off being successful by age 27 I was the youngest director and my company's 140 year history I had 150 retail stores that I was responsible for I know that's really ironic with the whole minimalism thing now the 150 retail stores but I was on this company was this it was a telecom company in the Midwest yeah and so I was I was going through I was just going through the motions of continuing to climb the ladder and I there were these guys who I really aspired to be like and I had this whole plan laid out for myself write is gonna be a vice president by age 32 a senior vice president by age 35 a c-level executive by age 40 and then you're set right but as I climb this ladder I got closer to these guys and realize that many of them were kind of miserable yeah they were on their third marriage III my boss had his second heart attack I worked with a guy who was 30 years old he was three years older than me who had his first heart attack at age 30 and and so of course what I tell myself but I'll be different right I'm not gonna be like those guys but if you follow the same recipe you're going to get the the same pie the that they've baked and so I realized you know what I need to make some changes but I don't know what and then in 2009 when I was 28 my my mother died and my marriage ended both in the same month holy cow and and these two events forced me to look around and start to question what had become my life's focus and I realized I was so focused on so-called success and achievement and especially on the accumulation of stuff the trophies of success like look at me I have two Lexuses and I have this I have that I have the bigger house and and and the golf membership whatever yeah yeah the racquet club membership and and so I had I had these these things and here's here's the thing I want to get across so there's nothing inherently wrong with stuff we all need some stuff the problem isn't consumption the problem is this compulsory consumption buying things because that's what we think we're supposed to do we we've been sold this meme of the American Dream if you get this then you will be happy as if there is a template for happiness and in fact I think that's one of the the bigger problems is is we are chasing happiness and for the longest time that's what I did I chased happiness when and that forced me to really forsake what was important in fact I was at a point in my life when I was very narrowly successful right like I had the job title right but I wasn't I wasn't broadly successful and it's because I there wasn't a lot of meaning in what I was doing we all have to earn a living I understand that but but I was so focused on on just accumulating more money and status and identity my whole life was wrapped up in that identity I mean when you meet someone what's one of the first questions they ask you well they asked you what do you do yes exactly write it well and so when I was yeah and I had the bigger problem for me is I had this impressive job title right because when you think about that question like well what does it mean it's it's such a broad quest what do you do I drink water I walk down the street I go to concerts I read books oh you're asking me where do you work how much money do you earn what's your job title so I can compare you to me on the socio-economic ladder yes now we don't posit the question that way because if we did we'd sound like a real jerk if I if I if I said well how much money do you make and where do you work you'd be like oh wait a minute like that's that's a weird question why are you asking me so instead we should say what do you do and then we're supposed to recite our job title and then spend 15 minutes talking about something we may or may not be passionate about yeah and so I didn't experiment when I was back in the corporate world and when I said okay people keep asking me what do you do and I need to untether from this identity and the only way for me to untether from this identity is to let go of that answer and so when I did this for a year and when people said what do you do I'd say I'm really passionate about writing C for the past decade I had written fiction and that was really the thing I was passionate about I really enjoyed doing now notice I didn't say I'm a writer because then you start getting the accusatory questions right you get the oh really um you're a writer who's your publisher who's your agent have you written anything I would have read or or you also you're saying John have a job right right and and so I would just instead of talking about the the now and I'm a writer I would talk about the verb what I'm actually passion about doing the creating and for me that was writing and I flipped the question around instead of saying what do you do I'd say what are you passionate about and that would change the whole trajectory of our of our conversation someone say oh I'm passionate about snowboarding they might be an accountant it's what they're passionate about snowboarding or they're passionate about playing basketball or whatever it may be the conversation is much richer at that point yes yes can connect and relate in different areas yeah I always ask what are you excited about yes right now in your life what are you most excited about in your life yeah and that brings up the same thing usually about what they're passionate about yes excited about this passion project of mine uh-huh something like something I'm working on or yeah something that my family is going through my kids are doing whatever it's something that I'm excited about and sometimes it can be your vocation that's okay I just talked about an accountant earlier our accountant back in Missoula Tanna he is passionate about accounting now I don't know how someone could personally be Pat I couldn't love numbers they love like figuring out the solutions you know solving the problems now my guess is knowing you you it'd be very difficult for you to be passionate about accounting right I would not love it yeah yeah and same for me I'd be hard for me to be passionate about accounting now there are other people who are passionate about horseback riding right I couldn't see myself being passionate about horseback riding either and that's okay the the the key is that like there isn't one thing that we were born to do with our lives right yeah you you weren't born to be an astronaut or a yoga teacher or an accountant the the truth for me was that what I was doing as a vocation didn't necessarily align with my values with my beliefs with my interests with my desires and and as I started to figure out what my values were I realized that what I was doing with my time didn't align with the person I wanted to become the person I aspired to be and so after those two events happen with me my mother died and my marriage ended I stumbled across this thing called minimalism and it started with with a guy named Colin right we were talking before he's a guy who who moves to a new country every four months and everything he owns fits in his backpack and I admired that but that's not something I want to do I don't want to be the Peripatetic rider who travels everywhere and that was really cool but what I admired about it is he said this thing called minimalism allowed him to focus on what he was passionate about for him that was travel and so he writes about his travel experiences and and that was really cool but I didn't want to just be this traveling guy yeah and so maybe that's what minimalism was I thought at first but then I stumbled across guys like like Leo bob alta and his wife Eva and there are six kids and so all there's minimalist families wait a minute there live in society that are just like writing around yeah yeah and that you know they're not off the grid or anything they'll actually live in in the city right I have a laptop they have a cell phone yes yeah and although they don't have to the question is like what actually adds value to your life and I realized that that I own a lot of stuff did you know the average American household has 300,000 items in it no way 300,000 but I think most of us aren't hoarders we we just we hold on to a lot of stuff we hold on to all these supposed memories right and that's what I was doing so my mom did when I went to deal with her stuff and I realized that you know what some of this stuff actually adds value to my life I don't know what and so I I started small because I had attachment to so many things in my life I've given so much meaning to my stuff and I said I need to try to get rid of some of this like some of its in the way I don't know why what's actually adding value and so over the course of 30 days I just started like I said I'm gonna let go of one thing a day one item a day each day for 30 days and what would happen if that if I did that well of course you're not gonna put a big dent in $300,000 yeah no I uh yeah I I probably still had I had 300,000 items but I was a very well-organized hoarder so like it wasn't I wasn't a candidate for the TV show necessarily detailed in boxing yeah labeled yeah there was an ordinal system of bins and and and so yes there was a lot of stuff that was very well hidden basically it was organized hoarding and so I said I'm gonna get rid of an item a day for 30 days well of course once you get momentum I I got rid of way more than 30 out of 30 days I don't know if I'd do that because I would I just want to get rid of all of it once let's just purge it all yeah so through this room you know right now well that that's actually great because so I spent about eight months getting rid of so from that beginning it took about eight months to radically simplify my life and I over those eight months I got rid of about ninety percent of my possessions still fifty thousand or whatever yeah right it's like I don't I don't know what's left it's certainly not like Colin who owns you know fifty two items and they all fit in his backpack or whatever for me it was like you come to my house today and you're gonna be like oh this guy's really tidy you're not gonna say oh my god this guy's a minimalist right and what adds value to my life today may may be different five years from now or whatever like when I first embraced minimalism I was 28 years old seven years later I have a three-year-old I have a partner our needs are appreciably different from when I was a single guy sort of outlook on my own although it's not my values aren't different and I think that's what's important is identifying what is important in my life and what is going to what items what material possessions are going to augment that experience and not get in the way yes and and so letting go allow me to figure out the paradox of of minimalism is like it's far more value from the material items I own now then by watering them down with hundreds of thousands of items it's kind of like you were the original magic guide of tidying up right like that book came out like a year ago yeah yeah well we when Ryan and I were we were on a book tour for our second book everything that remains and I think it came out right around that same time and I think blue man it really did and I think a lot of the professional organizers really get it that that scene of I always say the easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it yes I think professional organizers understand that I think the problem we run into with us amateur than me being an amateur organizer what I've realized is that most people just try to cover up the problem by organizing the and this is what I did I I'd go to the Container Store and buy all these containers and have this whole system for hiding stuff in my base didn't need the stuff in the first place exactly right and so so uh when I when I simplify my life people at work started come over to me and saying you know what you you seem less stressed you you seem so much calmer and I didn't tell I didn't jump up and say look at me I'm becoming a minimalist and all of you need to - I wasn't out proselytizing like I'm I wasn't out trying to convert anyone to minimalism right in fact I I'm still not trying to convert anyone the minimalism I just want to share a recipe that's worked really well for me in hopes that some people could tweeze out a few ingredients and apply it to their own life and in some way and so so after I let go my best friend of twenty-something years a guy named Ryan Nicodemus we worked together we climbed the corporate ladder together we knew each other since we were fat little fifth graders and he can lean one day and he said what the hell are you so happy and and I said let me talk to you about this thing called minimalism and I explained how I'd let go and and sort of purge 90% of my sessions over the last eight months and he's like he was like you he's like you spent eight months getting rid of your stuff like that sounds really awesome I want to do it now yeah right and I'm like okay he's like how can I become a minimalist like a week yeah pretty much and so he killed this idea called a packing party where the easiest way to sort of start to deal with your stuff and you notice whenever you move you you you realize like I've got a lot of stuff to move right so he boxed up everything in his 2,000 square foot condo in Dayton Ohio and and I mean literally every three he had three bedrooms two bathrooms two living rooms a single guy with a cat in two living rooms and he's like I have all this stuff so he box up everything as if you were moving put it all in his second second living room stacked halfway to his 12 foot ceiling and and said okay over the next three weeks I'm going to unpack only the items I truly need and I don't know what's in all these boxes for sure but you know so the first night he's unpacking a toothbrush and some toothpaste and then clothes for work the next day a bed in bed sheets he even packed up his furniture like everything as if he were moving and over the course of about three weeks he had unpacked about 20% of his stuff but 80% of his stuff was still in boxes he looked at this mountain of stuff I'm going over to his condo and he's like Josh I don't even remember what's in most of these boxes all of these things that I worked so hard for over the last decade it's supposed to make me happy but it's not doing its job and so he donated or sold all of it and about a month later he came in he said I think some other people would find value and in this message you know in Josh you've you've written for a while do you think you could write some nonfiction stuff and so we started a website we didn't even know it was called a blog at the time you know it's your partner yeah yeah so so Ryan Ryan said yeah I think we could share this and so we started the minimalists calm and that was was about six years ago and and I think the cool thing is people start to find value in that message we were still working in the corporate world at the time and and still letting go and realize that you could stuff you could live a a regular life without without being a hermit or a nomad or an ascetic or among our spectacular yeah why do you think humans are so wired to be dissatisfied I think so so they did an experiment with some some chimpanzees a few years ago and and it's interesting because if you look at give if you give a chimpanzee a banana it's going to eat a banana right I mean it's just it's wired to do that we're all wired to eat right and if you give it enough bananas to eat and share it we'll eat and share the bananas if you give it a horde of bananas it will try to kill other chant chimpanzees that try to take it and I think we're like a chest of them like a ton of them yeah yeah like if you fill this room here with bananas it will try to fight off and kill other chimpanzees I want to take one yeah yeah I we don't know why exactly but but we but we know that that there's something about this overabundance of stuff that the scarcity this idea of scarcity comes starts to come into play and and we literally will hoard and I think it's the same psychology with with material possessions and people do that with money too and yeah and there's nothing wrong with money I mean I'm certainly not allergic to money and but but it's no longer the primary driver for doing what I do and and I no longer worry about money the same way I used to because I'm much more intentional with the decisions that I make with my money and and I mean I think we all have to pay the bills and so sometimes that requires a nine-to-five or starting a business or doing something that may not be your ultimate passion project but for me anything I do to earn money it has to align with my values if it doesn't then I have to be willing to walk away from that and find functions why do you think we keep buying stuff even though we know it's not gonna fill the hole I think advertising does a very good job of making us desire things making us feel not good enough unless we have it or not hungry for a food we didn't know existed and and and so we the average person sees 5,000 advertisements a day so that's what a million or so a year and and we are indoctrinated by these things and and so I don't think advertisements are inherently bad but I think seeing that many messages that many discrete bits of input every single day is inherently problematic and so the the the question is how can I turn the volume down on that so that I can make more deliberate decisions with my attention because it's not just money we're spending its time its attention these are other resources that are even more important than money right what about the internet how do you think the Internet's increased consumerism III think well technology it's weird because it seems a bit quixotic to think that we can fix our our problem of of consumption with a different type of consumption right and so a friend of mine named Cal Newport are you familiar with with cows familiar he wrote a book called so good they can't ignore you I've heard of it and he wrote a book recently called deep work he just had a TEDx talk come out this past month called quit social media and he advocates for just quitting getting off social media together now I full disclosure I'm on social media but but he talks about how they've aggregated our attention social media is is engineered to aggregate our attention to give us these these ephemeral bursts of pleasure these likes and retweets and shares and whatever else to keep coming back for more it's tantamount to having a a slot machine it because you're constantly pulling to see if you've won the problem is though it's now we're carrying around the slot machine in our pocket all day and constantly pulling that lover to see if I've I've won more attention and so I don't think that's inherently bad either but I think it can be problematic if that is the purpose that we use it for I'm not as strict as someone like Cal would be I find value in social media I use it as a as a platform to disseminate information and to communicate with others but I I can see how it would be problematic for many people including myself I've done some pretty interesting experiments over the last six years done you've gone without a phone for a few months right I did so when I first I first became a minimalist I said okay I'm gonna work hard I'm paying down my debt so I moved to this tiny $500 a month apartment and date and I just started going crazy I'm paying off on my debt right I said I don't want to be tied to this lifestyle anymore in order to be to not be tied to this career I need to be able to pay off this debt and so I went on the the ramen noodle diet not not literally but but but thousand dollar a month yeah I've stopped yes yeah I spent as as little as I could so that I could get out of debt and no longer be tied to the same obligations right and so when I moved into that apartment I didn't hook up internet for the first few days it was like a weekend or whatever and I'm like huh I wonder if I could go 30 days without internet at home 30 days without internet I said I'm gonna try it it'll give me something to write about right sure that was that was five years ago and I have not had internet at home since and I run an online business holy cow and so so I can tell you the reason I don't have internet without your phone he's got a sort of sort of but but I found a way around that too because I wanted to be I wanted to be able to write about that so so it was the most productive month of my life when those thirty days and I'm like okay I'm not gonna get it back next month II and so just sort of continued from there and it's not to say that I won't ever have it again someday I office in Missoula Montana so I Drive to the office and it's a place where I can work actually yeah I can work there and and I have an office at home too and but there's no internet there but that's a place for me to create you probably so focused when you're home writing it's deep work it's full concentration or low yeah that's distracted by social media likes and yes that's a comment here and exactly and so yes I do have a phone at home but I keep it as soon as I get home first thing I do is put on this charging stand and in fact III do I go out of my way to like keep it away from my person you're asking we've had a picture of something earlier I had to like go into my bag and take my phone out because I try to be as present as I can and I'm constantly failing at that and that's okay like I I'm not anyone's Yoda III I fail at all time but I learned so much from it so when I got rid of Internet it was maybe six months earlier I'd got rid of TV at home and and and realized that you know that wasn't adding as much value as I thought it was disconnect you from your partner or your children or whatever yeah and and so I was so Auto TV I had no TV and then I did no internet and then for two months I got rid of my cell phone and you learned about a special kind of loneliness because I mean think about this you've removed all your pacifiers right because it was my first you have to be with your thoughts yeah it to be with your thoughts but but then and you have to be with you know people and you have to make plans in a different way and also here's the interesting thing you learn a lot about your friends too because because if you're gonna meet someone for lunch and I'm running few miles behind that's a really quick right I can do it you're just there on time you're waiting oh yeah and you learn how what's happening there aren't payphones anymore I mean there was one in Dayton where I lived I had to you know walk in the rain four or five blocks then you don't have quarters anymore how do I yeah and so you're not remembering the numbers anymore no I'll plugged in our phone every number yeah five friends home phone you know yeah there's a great John Mayer lyric he talks about the shape of calling like I no longer remember the shape of calling home and shape of calling home yeah cuz you've got you know you remember these numbers like on the iPad there or the little dial ring I remember those yes yeah the rotary phone yes that was me like yeah we totally I grew up with one of those so so you I realized that that once I remove all these pacifiers the I had the I had to fill the void with something else that was more maybe more meaningful and so I'd rediscover these things called books they're amazing let me tell you but you're so minimalist [Laughter] yeah no I wrote them and then I read no I mean so I rediscovered time to to create more I rediscovered time and then the cool thing is minimalism isn't about deprivation for me like I'm not trying to deprive myself these things I'm not an ascetic I don't want to go live in a cave somewhere I do want to live in our society I just want to do so deliberately and so I decided to bring a phone back into my life and when I did I used it more deliberately no longer do I have facebook on my phone no longer do I have email on my phone I I used a phone yeah I used to make phone calls I didn't send text messages GPS that's how I got here today was yes uber I took an uber to get here and so so the technology is there and I allow it to to add value to my life but when it starts getting in the way I try to check myself because the phone isn't the problem I'm the problem and once I realized that I knew I could change that by just being more deliberate with with how I use it mmm yeah powerful man Wow so when did you move then so you moved to Montana a few years ago yeah so so Ryan and I started the minimalists calm December of 2010 I left the corporate world in 2011 and at the end of that year so a year after we saw the website we published our first book which is called minimalism live a meaningful life and it was sort of about the five higher order values health relationships passion growth and contribution you know the the the ability to to focus on I mean not just our basic needs food and shelter and all these other things which is important but going beyond that minimalism wasn't just about the stuff for me right it that was the initial bite at the Apple that changed everything but I think we get so caught up in just the stuff we think the cluttering is just a point I think anyone watching or listening to this could go run a dumpster throw all their crap in it and be utterly miserable because you've just removed the pacifiers the point isn't just getting rid of the stuff and coming home to an empty house and sulking that no one wants that I don't want to tell anyone they get rid of your book collection or whatever like whatever adds value to your life I encourage you to hold on to but question what adds value to your life well what is adding value and so so when I let go of the stuff and started writing about it people found value in it and people started asking about about writing a book and so we did and wrote that book minimalism and we went out on the small book tour over the course of about a year we did 33 cities so we'd go out for a week and then we come back and we were in our tour bus which is Ryan's 2004 Toyota Corolla nice and we we'd hit the road and we'd go out - yeah yeah it was just us - and we'd go to these bookstores and and yeah we'd had these little events and that was back in the day when we were lucky if eight people showed up it was a big event right and and that was so great I mean it was almost it was more like a listening tour I remember our fourth tour stop we were in Knoxville Tennessee and there was no one there there was literally no one there we're sitting there at this at this bookstore and we're like okay I guess this is like a little coffee shop there and like alright I'm gonna get a coffee to go or drive him back to Dayton tonight no way yeah and as we're leaving there's this guy who and his girlfriend hey you're the minimalists and I'm like yes we are he's like hey we drove like three hours to come see you and it ended up being this awesome one-on-one session this guy who had a lot of sort of issues in his life and it was a perfect opportunity to have this this almost like one-on-one coaching with this guy that we wouldn't have been able to have other otherwise if you know if dozens of people are showing up for hundreds or thousands of people are showing up and we learned a lot from that that tour and just going out on the road and listening to people and hearing their stories and and telling our stories to figure out what stories resonated which ones didn't and that's actually how we wrote our second book so at the end of of that that tour we finished in in Vancouver BC we were driving back to Dayton Ohio and we had to drive through Missoula Montana and and driving through the state of Montana it's like a 10-hour Drive I mean it's this massive state we woke up in Coeur d'Alene Idaho it was gorgeous and it just got more gorgeous throughout the day and Ryan looked over at me and he goes eh man we've got to come back out here to write the next book so we we rented a cabin in the middle of nowhere Montana near Butte and and on side of a mountain for you know it was like eight hundred bucks a month to be in the middle of this gorgeous wilderness and we wrote that second book or the first draft of it and we wake up every day is a negative 28 degrees outside and it's a conducive environment for writing oh yeah you can do push ups and write and that's not it yeah and so so we moved out to Montana I found we found ourselves sort of gravitating toward Missoula Montana which is the city there and when you were writing that book it was really came from all the the stories that resonated with the people from the last tour like okay this story really resonated and we're talking about the packing party or we would talk about you know my mom's death and me going through her her material possessions and trying to let go of sentimental items and and so we learned what resonated what didn't the things I thought were very profound they landed on deaf ears and the other things in the packing party was sort of an afterthought and people that really resonated with people and so what we learned was that the here are the things that people find value in let's let's share more of that and so yeah we ended up in Montana about four years ago and we've been there ever since what do you think brings you the most fulfillment today I always look back to those five values and and so if my health is is lacking then I need to repair that that's the first thing yeah yeah and I think they're all they're all tied though if my relationships are lacking it means if I'm not giving to them or if I'm not getting what I need from those relationships then I have to question why right and so if I'm not creating if I'm not passionate about this this creativity or this craft then then I'm lacking if I feel like I'm not growing or if I'm not you're giving to the world and in a meaningful way the than any of those areas if any of those areas are empty right that's the weak link and I need to go back and fix that and you know it's constant every day I'm trying to look at how do I serve these values in my life and if I'm not serving them that I need to be honest with myself and find a way to fix that how does someone is there like a minimalist assessment test that people can take where you can ask a number of questions to yourself you know where your stuff is owning you as opposed to you are owning your stuff that's your control of your life is there like a few questions you could ask people listening like there's one question in particular I would ask how might your life be better with less it's a counterintuitive question at first right because we're always thinking about more how do I get this how do I bring this into my life how do I achieve that how do I take on this new responsibility this new project how do I get this promotion but how am i my life be better with less that's a different question for me at first it was less commitment less financial obligation you know for me I've had that all that debt and so the first benefit for me was regaining control of my finances and and developing a plan to deal with that and and to do that I had to be less focused on on the stuff I had to sell a lot of stuff I had to stop accumulating buying things because the price tag is one cost but there's all these other costs as well you have to have the space to store it or to clean it or take care of it or to charge it or to whatever put gas in it all of these things and so so by asking that question how am I your life be better with less you identify what the benefits are for you and they're different for everyone I had a 93 year old come to our last event in San Diego and she counted the hug line afterward and she goes I just want you to know that she brought three generations of daughter so her her her daughter her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter with her and she goes I just want you to know that I'm 93 years old and I am finally simplifying my life for the first time we had a thirteen year old show up in Omaha Nebraska and I'm lay a buddy did your mom dragged you out here I see her MA you're with your mom here he's like are you kidding me I dragged her out here because I thought maybe my parents could find some value some benefits in this minimalist message and what I learned is the benefits are gonna be different for everyone but we're all asking the same question it's how do I live a more meaningful life and part of that has to do with just changing our focus to figure out what's important yeah I would say I mean I bet if you came into my place right now and you looked around you wouldn't think I'm a minimalist but I really don't accumulate a lot I think you're intentional yeah I'm very intentional like it's all you know I don't have a blank room in here so I have some stuff on though you know it's intentional things yes but this is like pretty much it when I moved to LA I had two bags uh-huh laptop on a guitar minimalist I'd have anything else I in Ohio I got rid all my stuff moved in New York City and I had two bags and I came here to LA and I really don't need much you know I've got an older car it's a $4,000 car that I bought sure I'm not looking to buy new things yeah I would say I'm looking to have impactful things and and updated equipment that I could use to produce better quality they're tools and I think I think in my office yes yeah this was like I'm maximizing my space for sure and I you talk to my assistant I purged probably every few months because I get a bunch of like just packages and bags like constantly like gear from people always sending me stuff right I'm just trying to purge it as often as I can make my closet simple and clean and organized just is minimal but not to the extreme you know what I mean yeah and for me minimalism isn't a radical lifestyle it's a practical lifestyle and in my version of minimalism is going to look different from your version it's gonna look different from Leo's version who has six kids his will necessarily look different I'll tell you this Leo is the ultimate minimalist he washes his shirts in the sinks though he doesn't make his family do that but he does it as a ritual and to show that he can't he doesn't have to have this attachment to the to these things and I find I like the washer/dryer no I like simplicity I have a washer and dryer I do too but he finds value in that and so that that's different for him and what I've realized is that as a minimalist everything I own serves a purpose or brings me joy so so whether it's serving a purpose like the equipment you have here that all those are all tools or they bring you enjoy like aesthetic joy like you have these photos and artwork and things on on on the walls and and hangers and things like that that that serves an aesthetic purpose as well and so it brings you joy in some way and so I think that's great I don't want people to deprive themselves or think that's necessary now you can temporarily deprive yourself I think sometimes that's that's helpful if you remove something from your life for a temporary period of time like I did with the cell phone to figure out when I bring it back in does this actually add value and if so how can I add the most value to my life yeah what do you think somewhere can what do you think people listening could do to get started whether they want to say I want to get rid of some things I want to be more minimalist or more intentional sure is there are one poster that we could refer them to is there a set of three things I can start with what's something again so start with start with that question and that one's so important because you need to identify what the benefits are for you we all know instinctually how to declutter your closet right so you're never gonna see me and Ryan right about here are the 67 waves Beauty clutter your closet go get the magic guide of Tidy yeah right yeah I'm not opposed to that but it's just not it's just not my thing we don't write the hell - so if we write the why - stuff and and so it's important for me to understand the why - but from some tips for how to I mean I'll give you three things really quickly number one is 30-day minimalism game you can find that at the minimalists comm slash game here's all worked up - for you guys yeah great if you want to throw it in the show notes that'd be awesome um but basically I think decluttering personally just for me is kind of boring and so we found a way to make it a little more fun with some friendly competition so the beginning of a month you partner up with someone a friend a family member co-worker your arch nemesis whoever it may be and you decide to let go of stuff over the course of the month now on the first day of the month it's really easy you each get rid of one item second day of the month two items third day of the month three items so you get that momentum you need it starts off really easy but mid month it's much more difficult 15th day of the month I have to get rid of 15 items the month twenty items and whoever goes the longest wins so you can wager whatever you want you bet a dollar but you know a lunch or whatever you want to bet if you both make at the end of the month you both won though because you've both gotten rid of 500 items and it's a really good start and I find that we've had tens of thousands of listeners share stuff on on social media now so if you go to that post you can find a link and see a bunch of pictures of people sharing online as well so having the other person there to help keep you accountable and you keep them accountable makes it more enjoyable but it also sustains the process a lot longer how does someone go through this and say you get rid of a hundred thousand things or whatever because you think it's a cool idea but how do you do it so you don't react Yuma late those things sure so there's a deeper Y that keeps you maintaining it yes how does someone so so do that well I did a few things so the question that was really important to me early on was does this add value to my life when I was letting go of stuff but then as an experiment at the beginning of 2011 so this is about a month after we had started our website I needed something to write about and so I decided well we're the minimalist so I'm going to be the authority on this so I need something to write about I'm not gonna buy anything this year as a New Year's resolution except for food and hygiene products right and so I'm not gonna buy any new material possessions for a year those you know clothes no electronics I'm gonna gear no new tools yeah is this nothing nothing but if your business yeah and not even for the business right I'm just gonna do this for a year to see what happens food and toiletries yes yeah okay man was that way more difficult than I thought oh my goodness especially with it you know Amazon at your fingertips and everything else it becomes nearly impossible but what I did it took about four months to really retrain myself could I be at a store and I'd see you know I really want to buy this glass I think it's beautiful I'm gonna buy this I'll wait I can't buy the I'm doing this experiment and then you know I'd be at the store week later getting some deodorant or whatever and I I'm I really want to that's right I can't and about about the four month mark I started this gift for someone yeah I can't I can't yeah write them a letter instead yeah yeah a comma gift or by an experienced concert tickets or or spend time with someone so so I still spent money on experiences but not on material possessions and so but by the end of four months I would walk by this glass and say oh that's a really nice glass I really like that and that was it I didn't feel the urge to continue to consume and so when I that that feeling has stuck around for the last five years I would encourage anyone who is eager to try to limit the things they're bringing into their life to set up some sort of rule like that and you don't have to be as Extreme as that but even now for me with any big purchase it's over $250 I have to wait at least a month and in order to to make that perfect about it and then a month later then yeah versus if you still want it yeah if I still want if I still need it if I still think it's going to add value to my life and that forced me to continue to contemplate that and so I'm asking that question I've asked that question so much does this add value to my life that is no longer an intellectual exercise it's an emotional one is this gonna add value I'm going to know how in a moment yeah you have to be honest with yourself but also holding on to the thing just because I get value from this today doesn't mean I'll get value from it six months from the tattoo maybe it's a nice idea right now why in a year - you'll be glad you had it who is Ginny oh my gosh yeah no it's but I think it's a it's the same thing like it is this going to continue to add value and if not I have to be willing to let go what um you have a new documentary that you guys put together over the last couple years right and just came out can you share a little bit about it yeah it came out in theaters at the end of May and basically you know for the last six years it's been the Josh and Ryan show and that's been great we've been able to share a recipe and millions of people have found value in that and and people have liked their books and and our blog posts and now the podcast and and and so that's been great and so what I've learned over the last five six years is I start off just wanted to be an author initially it was a literary fiction author and then I started writing nonfiction and really enjoyed writing the memoir and and went through that whole process I've become much more vehicle agnostic over the last six years and I don't know if you know the stab but but 55 percent of adults the United States read less than one book a year so if you write if you just write books it doesn't matter how awesome your book is half of the adult audiences wouldn't read one populate yeah and your book doesn't have any any chance so the the people who read him ten or more books is a very slim percentage but many people will use other mediums to consume different bits of content and so whether that's the that we've moved on to TEDx talks we've done you know the blog or the books we want to find ways to communicate and reach people and show people that it wasn't the this this radical lifestyle so we went out we interviewed minimalist from all walks of life minimalist entrepreneurs and minimalist families tiny house enthusiasts do you know Graham Hill he's from New York he said he does this he runs a website called life editor but he has this this 420 square foot apartment that we have in the documentary and it sleeps seven you can have dinner for 12 what it has an office in it and it's because it's all modular so like this table comes to the floor these beds why me and it's unbelievable and he utilizes there's 400 every square inch I mean it's unbelievable and so so and that that may not be appealing to everyone in fact the we have one lady Tammy Strobel who's one bathroom and so we had Tammy in there she had her 183 square foot tiny house I don't want to live in a tiny house personally but I admire people who want to live in that and then find a way to execute it and so we interviewed those people I interviewed a minimalist architect to sign Arizona who had this really cool plot of land with three houses on it but they were all there weren't tiny houses but they were appropriate and he kept using this word appropriate in fact and I felt like that was the perfect word for minimalism because he said when he builds a house for someone he doesn't just go go to to their yeah he doesn't just show them a blueprint of your typical house yet he doesn't ask do you want a living room and do you want a dining room because people say yes he asked how are you going to live your life and he tries to build a house around that life instead of trying to cram a life into a home and I really admired that because he said everything I bring into my home everything that I bring into my life is appropriate for my life and that's what we wanted to show people so we got that side of it but then we also wanted to be more data-driven and and we wanted to to show the the other side of men we didn't want to just be like this oh look at these people in this template for living that was interesting so we went out and we got neuroscientists and neuropsychologists and and a bunch of different people economists a former Wall Street broker and all of these people who were using this idea of simplifying and living more intentionally but able to quantify it in a way that really highlighted the stories of of these other people who were living this more meaningful more deliberate life with less stuff sure it's pretty cool so where can people watch it right now you can go to minimalism film calm and you can find it there Vimeo and iTunes Amazon and several other places as well what's the main blog the main site the minimalist balanced gotcha and you can get all your books there you there's also information there for the documentary I'm assuming absolutely and you next tours and all those things yeah every doing couple fun of questions for you what are you most proud of that most people don't know about I'm proud of my short term actions aligned with my long term values and that wasn't always the case for me I was always living for some day I'll get to that some day and some non-existent hypothetical future I'll do this passion passion project I'll focus on my health I'll focus on my relationships yeah I'll give to charity someday but of course some days is never that never comes and so you know I turned some day and to today and and I'm much more deliberate with the decisions I make today because I realize it impacts not just myself and others but in axé the future self and others as well hmm that's cool man if you have any tattoos no if you had to get a tattoo on your forehead in Reverse that only you could see in a mirror yeah you're looking at yourself right here what would that be mmm when a word or a symbol or something just a minus sign a minus sign yeah that's cool I like that all right what he was grateful for your life recently my partner Becca she's amazing I mean I I'm truly in love and isn't that what it's all about absolutely man yeah how long you guys been together about a year and a half well she's a three year old so I've become a parent in the last in the last couple years and that has been the biggest challenge of my life probably turning into a parent we learned you know learning that you know it wasn't something I anticipated but it's been well worth it that's cool man yeah Congrats thank you that's awesome this is a question I ask everyone at the end of the podcast it's called the three truths yeah so this is your last day many many years from now and you've achieved everything you wanted to live the minimalist lifestyle you have the relationships you want and you got to write down three things you know to be true about everything you've learned that you would pass on to the world hmm and this would be all the day would be able to remember you by are these three truths yeah what would you say yours number one let it go it's just stuff number two you can't change the people around you but you can change the people around you and number three love people and use things because the opposite never works mm-hmm that might be one of the best three truths I've heard in a long time so those are good nice man thank ya before I ask the final question I want to make sure where can we connect with you on social media even though you're never on there no actually it's the best place to interact with us although we still get snail mail so if you ever want to like write us we generally don't do email but you can you can you know send us a nice postcard email you email me yeah I mean oh we just we don't have a private ear right we have a private email addresses but yeah like I just found that that barrier of entry and so I get far more meaningful things from people now and these these your beautiful packages and handwritten letters and in the mail then then via yeah but if you want to find a social media it's pretty simple at the minimalists on Instagram Facebook and Twitter very cool we'll have that all linked up before I ask the final question I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for transforming your life and teaching all of us how to do the same I mean to see that you go from such a challenging twenties where you thought you're on the right track and then became awakened to what actually was and wasn't serving you and committing to make a shift even though it was really challenging hard and you constantly do challenges for yourself it's really Marable to see that you've transformed your health and relationships your lifestyle and the impact it's made in your life and the impact you're able to make on other people's lives and I think that's what for me is meaningful is when we can set up our life so that it impacts others positively as opposed to negatively so one acknowledge you for all that you do man I appreciate that and I'd like to say the same for you man you're doing great work here thank you yeah of course yeah final question is what's your definition of greatness so I just spent the last few days at a Rob Bell event so we have a mutual friend Rob Bell and he he said something interesting while I was there was one of the big takeaway I've been writing this down he said greatness isn't self-conscious and I just there was something that I loved about that that that when you are when you're doing something that is great when you feel the best the most excited the most engaged the most focused you're not self-conscious about it what I'm gonna flow stay generally it's it's when I'm when I'm writing when I feel like something is truly great it doesn't matter what other people think about it it doesn't even really matter what I think about it it's just I feel that it's great and so maybe maybe it's just that greatness isn't self-conscious there you go yeah Josh thanks come on thanks for other appreciate it appreciate you thanks so much for watching this video I really appreciate it and if you enjoyed this video then make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel you can do that by clicking right here to subscribe because each week we come out with awesome epic and inspiring interviews and messages and videos just for you so click subscribe right here to get notified of new videos every week also if you enjoyed this specific interview we've got a lot of great interviews like this that are uplifting and inspiring so click right here to watch the previous interviews because the people I've had on are pretty cool and epic as well so click here to watch previous interviews click here to subscribe I love you guys and I'll see you very soon
