← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Why Decluttering Your Home Can Calm Your Mind & Improve Your Mental Wellbeing with Joshua Fields Millburn #614
01:42:44
What if the biggest source of stress in your life is not your job, inbox, or finances – but the simple fact that you have too much stuff?
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- [00:01]
A
Sale price is fool's price. And this might shock you, but I've saved many, many tens of thousands of dollars. I don't buy anything that's on sale, not because I'm allergic to sale price. And if I get to the register and they're like, oh, this is 10% off, I'm not going to be like, screw you, I'm paying full price. But my point is that I don't let the impulse of sale price determine whether or not that thing's going to add value to my life. Because here's the truth. Money has to be considered. We save 100% if you just leave it at the store.
- [00:33]
B
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast Feel Better, Live More. What if the biggest source of stress in your life is not your job, inbox or finances, but the simple fact that you have too much stuff? This week my guest is Joshua Fields Milburn, co founder of the Minimalists, whose documentaries, books and podcasts have inspired millions of people around the world to reconsider their own relationship with possessions and success. Joshua grew up with very little money, in a home marked by addiction, violence and instability, and as a young man became convinced that the solution was to be found in acquiring more more income, more status, and more material comfort. By the age of 30, Joshua had everything he thought he wanted. The big job title, the nice car, the large house, all the visible signs of having made it. And yet inside, he was anxious, overwhelmed attention, and deeply unhappy. Then, in the space of a single month, his mother died and his marriage ended. Those two events force him to pause and ask some uncomfortable but essential questions. What am I actually doing with my life? Whose values am I living by? And is this endless consumption really what life is all about? That period of questioning led Joshua towards minimalism not as a trend or an aesthetic, but as a practical framework for living with greater clarity and intention. In our conversation, we discuss how external clutter is often an outward reflection of internal clutter why products so often promise fulfilment but ultimately deliver dissatisfaction. The difference between healthy consumption and harmful consumerism Practical rules that make decluttering simpler, including the 30 Day Minimalism Game, the 1990 Approach to Clothes, and why a sale price can often become a fool's price how identity clutter keeps us stuck when we cling to things, roles or labels, not because we need them, but because we're afraid of who we'll be without them and how minimalism can improve our health and relationships by creating more time, attention, and presence. Joshua really is a wonderful human being, a brilliant communicator, and someone who thinks deeply about the human experience. He believes that minimalism is the art of addition through subtraction. It's not about having less for the sake of it, but about making space for what matters most. You are someone who I have been wanting to talk to for absolutely years, I think, ever since I saw your very first documentary, which had a massive effect on me. So I've been super excited about this.
- [04:06]
A
Oh, well, thank you. Yeah. The Minimalist turned 15 this week and we have the 10 year anniversary of that first documentary, Minimalism. It came out on Netflix a decade ago and that strangely sort of changed everything. We had no idea what it was going to do. We were just out here sort of pounding the pavement, talking about living a meaningful life with less. My best friend, Ryan, since we were fat little fifth graders, we sort of grew up really poor and in impoverished situations. You know, a lot of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, physical abuse in the household. And we thought the reason we were so unhappy when we were growing up is we didn't have any money. And so he and I both climbed the corporate ladder throughout our late teens and all throughout our 20s. And by age 30, it was like, wow, look at this. We have everything we ever wanted and we're kind of miserable as a result. It's like, oh, I got everything that was supposed to make me happy, but everything that was supposed to make me happy isn't actually doing its job. And I was ostensibly successful, but I think it's sort of like a glacier. You see a little bit of it, but what's underneath the surface was a lot of anxiety and stress and debt and overwhelm and all these identity issues and clutter issues that were internal. And of course that shows itself outwardly. Our material possessions is the easiest place to see it because our stuff, that's a physical manifestation of whatever's going on inside us. So if I have a lot of clutter out here in my home, it's most likely because there's a lot of mental clutter or emotional clutter, or spiritual clutter, or career clutter, or relationship clutter, identity clutter. There's all of this milieu of chaos that's going on within us. And so for me, it kind of started with the stuff 16 years ago after my mother died and my marriage ended. And those two events forced me to start looking around and questioning everything, all of my so called success and achievements and what am I doing with this life that I have here? Is it about endless consumption, or is it about something more than that?
- [06:14]
B
Yeah. Given how many people, how many millions of people around the world have resonated with what you have put out in that documentary and in your books and in your podcasts, it's really clear that you're not the only one who is suffering from this problem. You mentioned quite a lot there about how external clutter is a reflection of internal clutter when I was researching some of your blogs yesterday. You write in some places that clutter is a physical representation of poor decisions. So why don't we start with external clutter? Because we've never actually covered that on my podcast in eight years now. Never really covered decluttering. And I know so many people struggle with this. So, first of all, why is it that so many of us are drowning in so much stuff?
- [07:10]
A
I think there's a bunch of reasons. Quite often there's an emptiness. And it kind of starts there where we say, there's this void in my life. I need to fill it with something that presupposes that needs to be filled. And we could talk about that as well. I have some issues with that. Maybe there's a lack that is necessary as part of being a human. And yet there's this void. We can fill it with relationships, sex, drugs, food, but also we fill it with stuff. Or at least we try to. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. That void just widens, and so we end up in tremendous amounts of debt. At my nadir, I had about half a million dollars worth of debt, and I had a lot of stuff. Yeah, the average American household has about 300,000 items in it. And I don't think that's inherently wrong or evil or bad. It's just that the stuff isn't making us happy. It'd be great if all of the material possessions and the superabundance was making us joyous and brought us to a point of perpetual bliss. But I think it's a misunderstanding of consumption. Now, I'm not against consumption. We all need to consume some things. The problem I have is with consumerism. Consumerism is the ideology that acquiring more, usually more stuff, in this case is going to make you happy. It's as if externalities have the happiness embedded in them. The paradox of that, or maybe the irony of it is there's a happiness that's inside us. You look at a baby and they're just cooing and smiling. They don't need a BMW or A Rolls Royce or prod a belt to make them happy, right? It's pre existing. And the unfortunate thing is we actually tend to cover up that happiness with those externalities. And it's easiest with the stuff the Greek have. The ancient Greeks have this wonderful word pleonexia and loosely translated, it stands for the greed for the things that can be counted. Right? And our society now has more things that can be counted and measured than ever before. We have obsessions with square footage. How many square feet is your house? How many material possessions do you own? How much money is in your bank account? And now, of course, with all the digital clutter, it's what's going on with your followers, how many likes do you have? How many views are you getting? And it's this constant chase. In fact, in America, it's even in our founding documents, right? You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the pursuit of happiness is actually the problem. There's nothing wrong with pursuing, we can pursue happily, but it's almost like the equation is inverted there. And so we're trying to find some happy endpoint. And then we make a contract with ourselves that say, I'm going to be discontent until I reach whatever that thing that can be counted is. I have a million dollars in the bank, I have the promotion I've always wanted, I have the relationship I want, or I have all of the material possessions I really des that thing, whatever it is. But of course we never actually desire the thing. And I think that's the problem. We think like, okay, do you want those new chrome heart jeans? Okay, maybe, maybe they're a work of art and maybe they're wonderful. Maybe they fit you well, maybe you've budgeted for them all, that's fine, you can have a pair of jeans. I'm not against the stuff, but I also know the stuff isn't going to complete me. In fact, in many ways the stuff incompletes us because it makes us. We adorn ourselves with things. The cars, the houses, the closets, the walk in closets full of designer clothes, all of these things. We adorn ourselves with those things as if it's part of our identity. The first big book that Minimalists ever did was called Everything that Remains. It came out 12 years ago now. And the opening line to that is our identities are shaped by the costumes we wear. And I was really talking about me in the corporate world at that point. That was a story of the five year journey of me sort of walking away from the corporate world. That I was in. I was managing 150 retail stores and my life looked successful because I had all those things you could count that we talked about before, but I also had a bunch of other things that you couldn't count. The things that are hard to quantify. And a meaningful life is often shaped by those unquantifiable because I don't have square footage of joy. Right. How many yards of happiness are in your life? Or I guess you'd say meters. Right. How many meters of. Of pleasure or whatever it is, excitement, of contentment. But also like the things that make humanity humane. Right. Like grief, sadness, sorrow. These are all parts of the everyday human experience. And there isn't necessarily a measuring stick for those things. And so because that's difficult, we search for the easy things, the things that can be counted.
- [12:09]
B
Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons I love your work so much. It really resonates with me and I think I share similar philosophies in terms of how I see the world. For many years I've been saying that the unmeasurables in life is where the gold is. I have, like you, a lot of these societal ticks of success. Right. If you look on the outside. But the things that bring me true contentment are things that the public can't see. You know, my 18 year relationship with my wife, now even saying an 18 year relationship, I'm kind of trying to give you a measurement there that doesn't even tell you the quality of my relationship with my wife. It just says that we signed a contract to be husband and wife 18 years ago and we're still in that contract. But I can tell you we have a fantastic relationship. And you know, we're talking before I spend a load of time with my two kids. So I very consciously will say no to so many things that might give me more inadvertent commas success. Because I understand having made poor decisions earlier on in my life, that every single thing in life comes at a cost. Right. If you're doing something, you're not doing something else. And I think for me, Joshua, as a doctor, I'm not sure if you've spoken to any doctors about minimalism. I'd be interested if you have. What's really interesting to me is I believe that the biggest disease in society is not cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, strokes, autoimmune disease. The biggest disease in society is the disease of more. Because it's that desire for more that drives people to do more than they can physically do. And that's what gets them sick. So I can tell someone, hey, listen, I think you need to reduce your stress levels, right? I think that's making you sick. But even that's downstream. This desire to get that better promotion, the corner office, the better job, you know, the nicer car, it's that desire that underpins it all with. Which means, of course, they're going to overwork because they think they need that in order to be happy. So I think what you guys do is absolutely related to health and wellbeing.
- [14:32]
A
Yeah, without a doubt. In fact, the irony of it, whether you're talking about just something as simple as diet, it's much more about what we remove from what we're eating in order to become healthy than what we eat. Right, agree. Because if we are consuming a bunch of processed nonsense, it's not even food. It's food like products. And it will sustain you for a while, right? And I guess if you're starving to death, those things make a whole lot of sense. But for the average person, it's empty calories. And as a metaphor, we have empty calories all throughout our lives. This sort of ephemerality of our relationships and our things. And in that first documentary you mentioned, minimalism, we put it up on YouTube a couple years ago after we got the license back from Netflix, and it opened it up to a whole other world of a different audience, which was brilliant. And there's a woman in there who's a professor. Her name is Juliet Shore, and she talks in there. The problem isn't that we're too materialist. The problem is we're not materialist enough. And I thought that was an interesting reframing. When you think about it, we don't care about the things that we create or make or buy or consume or own. It has become a bit of a throwaway culture. And I think sometimes people get confused. I think minimalism is simply about getting rid of all of your things and living like an ascetic or a monk. And I have no problem with ascetics or monks. I really admire that. But for me, the question is, how can I live in this world by being intentional with the decisions about the things that I hold on to? What are the things that add value to my life? And then also, what are the things I'm going to bring in in the future? Because the best way to sort of declutter is to let go of the thing in advance, leave it on the shelf. The most sustainable product is the product that we leave at the store. And so often we get in that mindset of like, can I buy the most sustainable thing? And it's like, well, that. Then it becomes another type of consumerism. And I would say there's even an inverted consumerism. When you first stumble into some concept like minimalism or simple living or whatever you want to call it, essentialism, enoughism. We often think like, okay, this is at least what happened to me at first. I was buying all of the things throughout my 20s, because I grew up really poor. I didn't have a whole lot. So of course happiness must be in the things, and I get all the things, and that doesn't work. I guess I need more things. What you just talked about the disease of more, more, more, more, more. I need more. And then I get more and I get more and I get more until my whole house is teeming with stuff. My attic, my basement, and then I have a storage locker, my guest bedroom, my garage I can't even park my car in because I have a lot of nice things and they're organized. There's an ordinal system of bins and boxes, but it's a lot of stuff. It's clutter. Anything that gets in the way is clutter. And so I was like, oh, crap, you know what? The stuff didn't do it. The More didn't do it. I guess I bought the wrong stuff. Maybe it's not the Lexus that'll do it for me, it's the Range Rover that will do it for me. And so it's not the stuff. It's the wrong stuff. I just need to get the right stuff that's going to make me happy. And this is all consumerism. Finally, I'm going to reach some point where I'm fulfilled, where I'm satisfied. And those are two different things. You'll get satisfied in the moment. You eat a really good meal, you can feel satisfied and buy it, but ultimately you're going to be hungry again. And consumerism sort of works the same way. I can feel that burst of satisfaction that doesn't last far past the checkout line. And so we get all the more. We get all the right things after we've bought the wrong things, and it still doesn't do it for us. And then we reach this point, like, I need to get rid of the stuff. You know what's going to make me happy? Minimalism. Getting rid of the stuff is going to make me happy. And it's like, well, no, that's also not the point. The. The point of of simplifying our lives or minimizing is making space. Going back to that thing we used to call a void. I've got this void in my life. No, it's not a void. Maybe it's just spaciousness. And maybe minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. You don't go to a beautiful museum, the Lacamore down the street here in West Hollywood. You don't go to LACMA and say, oh, wow, like, why is this place so empty? Right? Like, we need to put more paintings here. What if we stack paintings in the middle of the floor and we just brought racks of art in here? No, that would be clutter. It would get in the way of the experience. I used to live in Montana, here in America, and it's beautiful. You go to Glacier national park and it's so open and spacious. And I don't go there and say, we really need to fill this with condominiums. And it's because it doesn't need more. There's already enough. And I think we, as soon as we realize that with our own lives, like, I already have enough. In fact, enough is often buried underneath all of the accumulations of the last several years or decades.
- [19:35]
B
Yeah, it's like as you say about happiness, I agree with you that happiness is our default state. The child already is happy and mindful and present. They get conditioned out of that by society and culture. It's the same thing with being enough. Right. We're born knowing that we are enough, that we don't need to achieve in order to be worthy of our presence in the world. But society, culture, education starts to give us this idea that it's about achievement. You have to tick this box and when you do this, you will be worthy of X, Y and Z. Right. So it's kind of super interesting. And anything to do with health and well being, I, like many people, try and look at it through an evolutionary lens and go, well, how did this make sense 100,000 years ago? Or what was the purpose of this? And if you think about human existence, I don't know, 50,000 years ago, Hunter gatherer tribes, I'm guessing it would have physically been impossible to accumulate stuff. Right. You would have to live in harmony with the natural worlds. In fact, there's a tribe, I think they're called the. Is that the Johanssi tribe? I think they talk about this idea that they never over consume. It would almost be the, you know, they can't really understand the concepts of over consuming. They know that nature will always provide what they need. So they just take what they need and trust that nature will continue to provide for them. But we don't live like that. You said, what was it, three? Was it 300,000 items? You said.
- [21:17]
A
That's right. And by the way, that's not me counting. That's according to the Los Angeles Times. And I've been on tour and your neck of the woods and our American dream has permeated your borders. Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia. There's nowhere in the world now where they're not also striving for the so called American dream of excess.
- [21:37]
B
Yeah, but you physically could not have done it in the past. And I think there's a couple of layers to that for me, Joshua, if I think about it, we're talking about this idea that if there's a lack within us somewhere, a hole within us, that we will often look to things or consuming things like social media to fill that hole. But if we go back to 50,000 years ago, then I imagine, well, did human beings back then also have this sense of lack or was their life fundamentally different? You guys, you and your other fellow minimalists talk about, you know, a focus on contribution over consumption. And I imagine life 50,000 years ago had contribution at its very heart. You know, you were in these small tribes, people would see the value that you provided to the people around you. And if you weren't providing that value, I'm sure someone would have had a word. Hey, hey, guys, look. You know, these tubers aren't going to dig themselves. Come on, this is your job to do it. And maybe the fact that that sense of value, I think has gone from many of us, you know, we live these isolated lives, we've moved away from our tribes and our families often for work opportunities. So we don't get that sense of value. And I believe that one of the reasons so many of us are this busy is because we are desperately looking to show ourselves that we're important, we have value. Do you know what I mean? I feel it's all linked together. So maybe in the past they couldn't consume this much because Amazon didn't exist and all this cheap labor didn't exist. And maybe they also didn't even have a need to, to consume or overly consume in the way that we do.
- [23:30]
A
Yes. It also wasn't disentangled from consumption or from consumption, was not disentangled from creativity and contribution. It's sort of like a three legged table. Which leg is the most important leg on that table? They're all equally important. It's what supports whatever's on top of it. And you go back to, you look at hunter gatherers now, whether it's the Hadza or tribes like the Maasai, and you look at them and there's a harmony around those three things. Every consumer act in terms of like, consumption is a creative act. And there's also contribution embedded into all of that. And so it's only in the modern sort of Western world where we've, we've separated those things and we've tried to put them in separate corners of the room. I'm sure you see this in the medical world now is like your brain is here in one corner of the room and your body's in the other corner of the room. That's how we treat it. Or we even get specialized in like, you go to the kidney doctor if you have a problem with your kidney, or you go to the, you know, the near ear, nose and throat doctor if you have a sore throat or whatever. And then you realize like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's all, it's all connected. And the problem that you're identifying there is actually what I would call identity clutter. When we've said that, well, I, I'm this separate thing, separate from the system, separate from my neighbors. And I'm going to go down a tangent here. That's going to seem very non. Dual, but like. And maybe it is to some extent, but maybe we've just separated ourselves so much we don't realize where the stuff comes from. And that's why it's so easy to. The average American throws out 88 pounds of clothing a year, even though 95% of it could be reused or recycled. And so you realize, like, oh, we already have more than enough of that. And too much is never enough. Too much is always too much. It's a tautology. I know, but it means that we're not going to find enough by acquiring more. And so what we often try to do is change our identity. I'm the type of person who drives this type of car. I'm the type of person who owns this kind of watch. I'm the type of person who wears this suit or this dress. I'm the type of person who has this type of purse. Right. In fact, the first question when you meet someone, I don't think it's intentionally pernicious or malicious, but the first question you ask them is, what?
- [26:05]
B
What's your job? What do you do?
- [26:06]
A
Yeah, what do you do? Right. Life's most Dangerous question. And I don't think it's a gotcha question. But when you step back and think about it, what am I really asking when I say that? Well, I guess it depends on the context. But quite often, especially when I was back in the corporate world, if I was at a networking event or something, I would say, what do you do? And what I really meant by that is, tell me where you work, what's your job title, so I can compare you to me on the socioeconomic ladder so I can determine how much of my attention you deserve. Now, if I were to say it that way, you would think I was insane and you'd ask me to leave immediately, right? So instead we say, what do you do? And my last year in the corporate world, I had to change that question and also my answer to the question as well. But I used to. Instead of saying, what do you do? I'd say, hey, what are you passionate about? And sometimes people tell me what their job and their job title was, right? But we get so wrapped up in that. What's printed on my business card or what's in my X bio or on Instagram. That's who I am as a person. And these things are great as labels, right? Back in the corporate days, I was the director of operations for 150 retail stores for a telecom company in the Midwest. Fine. As a label, it's great for communicating. Or if today, if I tell you I'm a minimalist, that's not part of my identity. It's just an interesting label so we can talk about things. And so instead of saying, what do you do? I'd say, what are you passionate about? And sometimes people say, I'm really passionate about snowboarding. Wow. Okay. I'm not asking you, do you make money from snowboarding? But now all of a sudden, I see your eyes light up and you're like, oh, yeah, tell me more about that. Because I can see the passion there. When someone would ask me, like, okay, Josh, what do you do? I say, I'm really passionate about writing. And they're like, oh, have you published any books? Or have you written anything that I would have read? I would hope not, unless you've read my diary or something, because I hadn't published anything at time. I wrote all throughout my 20s. I wrote fiction mostly, and it was the thing that I was most passionate about. And eventually that transitioned into Ryan and I writing about this whole minimalism thing. And it's because it was something that I enjoyed doing. It was a creative act, but also It's a consumptive act. I'm consuming other written works, but it's also an act of contribution as well. Ideally, if I write something that adds enough value, then people tend to share it with other people and it just amplifies what we're doing. And so that identity clutter has been, I think, the most difficult thing for most people. Because if I get rid of my stuff, who am I as a person? If I no longer dress this way, who am I? If I no longer have this job, who am I? If I'm no longer in this relationship, who am I as a human being? And so often we don't let go not because of the thing. We'll hold on to something that makes us miserable just because we're terrified of losing that identity.
- [28:57]
B
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- [31:09]
A
If you ask me, who are you? The only person I know who has a great answer to this question was Alan Watts. And he said you are an aperture through which the universe looks at itself. And I think ultimately every identity is a false identity. It's just a product of the ego. And I'm not saying ego as an arrogance. I'm just saying the false self. And we all get caught up in it. Right. And, well, not babies. You were just talking about that earlier. Like, they know they're enough, enough because they're not a separate self with a separate identity yet. And so anytime I pick up an identity, I kind of just scrutinize and say, oh, that's interesting. What a. What a fun little label. I think I can set that down now because it's. It's pretty heavy to like, if you're carrying. You talking about the hunter gatherers or earlier, the reason they couldn't over consume or have all the excess is like, even if you have a backpack on your back and you fill it with too much stuff, it's overwhelming. It weighs you down. I think metaphorically that is also true with our identity. And so I look at those things as labels, and they're useful as labels as long as they're useful. The problem is we hold on to an identity even when it no longer serves us. I have a friend who is a super talented musician, but he stopped playing music for about a decade, but held onto his instruments and his studio equipment and all of these things. Because I am a musician. I was like, but you're not playing any music, is what he eventually told himself. He had to look in the mirror and say, yeah, that identity isn't serving me anymore. I really used to enjoy playing music. And here's the irony of it. Once he got rid of that, he got rid of the stuff. And he eventually went out and bought another guitar and he started playing songs again because he was able to drop the identity. I teach a writing class two or three times a year. It's called how to Write Better. And I teach 100 students at a time. And one of the things I talk to them about is I'm much more interested in the verb than I am the noun. I don't care about being a writer. I care about writing. And so I find that that is much more useful for me. What am I doing with this moment is more useful than the identity I've draped over myself.
- [33:26]
B
Yeah. Going back to this idea, Josh, that external clutter is a representation of internal clutter.
- [33:44]
A
Yeah.
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B
I'm really interested as to the best way in your opinion of tackling this. And what I'm getting at is over the last few Weekends, I have probably taken on average eight full bags to the charity shop of stuff. Right. And this is not actually in preparation for our conversation today. It's not as if, oh, Joshua's coming on the podcast. Time to actually put my minimalist hat on and take that identity for a few weeks. No, it's actually really interesting. So when my wife and I bought this house in which we currently live, it was empty, right? Completely empty. I remember she was eight months pregnant. We had no beds, no furniture, no kitchen stools. And I had this old Pilates medicine ball that I put on next to the kitchen counter so she could sit on it whilst eating. And I thought, everything in this house we have literally brought in at some point since 2010. Right. But the point I'm trying to get to is that I've been on this kind of inner journey probably since my dad died in 2013. And it was the very first time I turned inwards and asked myself, wrong, in whose life are you actually living? You know, who do I want to be, who do I want to become? All these kind of things. And I believe that if I was going to try and organize or declutter my world back then, I would have struggled because I wasn't ready to do it. But I've done so much inner work over the past few years, I feel I've understood what's really important. I feel I've orientated my life intentionally around the things that are important. I've got way better at saying no. And I find now that on the weekends when I want to start clearing out the house, it's just easy. I don't feel the attachment to the things. So I guess the question I'm trying to get to, because you've spoken to so many people around the world about this and you would have answered tens of thousands of questions from people. Can you declutter your external world from the outside in, or does it have to come from the inside out?
- [36:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's almost like asking is a push up up or down, right?
- [36:18]
B
Exactly. It's a trick question, I guess.
- [36:21]
A
Well, no, I, I think it's a, it's a useful question because you're right. People call into our, our podcast all the time. Our, our show. We've been doing it for a decade now. And it's a, it's a call in show and, and people ask questions and it often starts with the stuff. And then you learn very quickly that the story behind the stuff is what's keeping them from either letting go of the thing or it's making them want to acquire the thing. It's always the story that's attached to the thing. And I do think it's useful sometimes to have certain tools or boundaries or rules, whatever you want to call them. In fact, we have this we call the minimalist rulebook. It's 16 rules for living with less. People can download it on our website for. For free. And millions of people have downloaded that at this point. And you tweeze out a few. I just call them boundaries. They're not really rules, they're boundaries that help us live more intentionally. But you. And what is a boundary? It's worth talking about because that word has been in vogue for the last few years now. But when I say boundary, all I mean is like, here's what I'm willing to accept. Anything that's inbounds is what I'm willing to accept. If something's out of bounds, I'm no longer willing to accept it. You know, if you're watching a, a football match or a basketball game, there's an out of bounds. And as soon as we step out of bounds, it's unacceptable. You can't keep playing the game. And so you get to determine what is in bounds for you. And I do find it useful sometimes to have some of those heuristics like we have some heuristics like the 9090 rule for your clothes. We call it the seasonality rule. Anything I haven't worn in the last 90 days, I pick up any piece of clothing and it could be an old shirt. Have I worn this in the last 90 days? No. Okay. Will I wear it in the next 90 days? Yeah. I gotta be honest with myself. No, I don't think I'm going to. Okay, then I give myself permission to let it go. And that. What's magical about the. That number 90? Nothing. You can adjust it. Maybe it's 60 days for you or 180 days. It doesn't matter. The question is like, how am I more intentional with the things I'm holding on to? But you hit the nail on the head here. There's usually some sort of emotional clutter that's going on behind that. There's some sort of deep grief or sadness. Or maybe it's just a low level anxiety because we're overstimulated and there's a lot of noise. And it's not just the material noise now, it's all the digital noise. And so that low level of anxiety has encouraged me to consume and, oh, by the way, all of the advertisements telling me that I have a problem I didn't realize I had, and they have a solution to a problem I didn't have six minutes ago. No wonder we feel so incomplete. And so we often are advertised to products. Instagram's especially great at that. That's another boundary I have. I don't buy anything from an Instagram ad, not because I think it's wrong or evil, because I know I am a consumerist if I fall back into that identity, right? And so I have to be careful and say, that's just not a boundary that I. That's not a thing that I want to do because I understand that my behaviors can be tricked. And so I have to set up some ground there. But ultimately it always comes back to what's going on inside me. Mental clutter, emotional clutter, psychological clutter, spiritual clutter. These are different ways that we interact with the world, and then we see it sort of metastasize into our stuff.
- [39:41]
B
First of all, I love this idea of rules or boundaries or principles, whatever you want to call them, as just guidelines to help you navigate this world where you are being marketed to constantly. You know, last night I was watching your latest documentary. Did that come out three years ago now? I thought it was newer than. So about three years ago. And again, it's just. It's brilliant. It's absolutely fantastic. I watch it on Netflix, and there's a section in it where I think you or Ryan say, products promise us fulfillment but give us dissatisfaction. I thought, I love that. What an evocative and a provocative thought. And then you go to one of the contributors to the film, and I think it is such a common story, this. She basically says, I work hard. I feel like I deserve it. So I order stuff. Stuff will show up, but then the shame and the guilt will start. That's the cycle a lot of people, dare I say most people are stuck in. You know, they. You can't. It's like you said before, you can't separate this problem with clutter away from the way we live our lives, right? So we live these disconnected, isolated lives. Many of us are working too hard. Maybe we need to work that hard. Maybe, you know, maybe our boss doesn't have great working conditions for us or whatever it might be. And so to alleviate the discomfort from the state of our lives, we need to go somewhere. And that somewhere can be anywhere, right? It can be social media, films, shopping, you know, gambling, whatever you want, anything. You know, some sort of way to distract ourselves and actually numb the discomfort we feel about the state of our lives. And going back to what I said before, Josh, you know, as we're recording this, we've all been. What's the word? What's the. What's the polite way of putting it? We've all been. We've all been exposed to the barrage of Black Friday emails. You know, there's been a problem in my inbox recently where my junk and my normal have gone together. I don't know what's happened, right. I'm trying to fix it and I can't fix it. So I'm thinking of changing my email accounts, which I've been thinking about doing for a while anyway. And suddenly I'm like, oh, my God, I'm like getting 20 emails a day, you know, from. From brands and companies I really like. But it's like Black Friday madness has happened. So you need. You do need certain rules to navigate that, because if you leave it to your own devices, you are going to be stressed one night and maybe not feeling as good as you could do, and you are going to be susceptible to bringing more stuff into your house. But the point I was trying to make is that I think that was a very powerful section of the film because it does speak to this central idea that people don't feel whole. And the stuff is there to fill that hole, but it can't fill that hole. The hole will still be there. So instead of filling it, you still feel discontented and you just end up with 300,000 items.
- [43:16]
A
Right. And it creates a new hole in a way. And yeah, it's interesting how the objects of our desire become the objects of our discontent after they're acquired.
- [43:25]
B
Right.
- [43:26]
A
And maybe it's not immediately. Maybe you get that new car and it has a new car smell. And I drive a car, so I'm not against cars. But you get that first car payment in the mail and you realize like, oh, wait, is this actually worth it? Right. Oh, man. Now I have 83 more of these now, right? And. And we go into tremendous amounts of debt financially, but there's also this sort of emotional debt you talked about. When the Amazon package shows up at your front door, it's sor of comes prepackaged with the shame and grief that you were talking about there. Isn't that interesting? We don't think about what else. I call it the true cost of our goods because there's a price tag on a thing. But what are the other costs that are associated with our things? The cost of storing the thing and Cleaning the thing and taking care of the thing and protecting the thing and locking the thing up and repainting the thing and changing the oil on the thing or putting gas in the thing, or what if the thing needs batteries or what? I have to worry about the thing. There's some mental clutter right there, right? Or what if someone's going to take it from me? Now I'm, I have to be protective of the thing. These are all the costs that are associated with our things. It's not just the price tag. But to get back to some of those rules that you were talking about here, another precept that works well for me is you talked about the Black Friday thing and, and, and sale price. Black Friday is just a type of sale price. And I, I know because I used to work in the corporate world and we made about 40% of our revenue between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. So Thanksgiving is the middle of, to end of November here in America. And so the last six weeks of the year roughly was we had all these big Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday and all of these things that are designed to get you to buy. And it makes me think like, well, wait a minute. Were they, okay, it's 40% off now. Were they just ripping me off yesterday? And by the way, this year I got my first Black Friday email in October, and it's like, well, wait a minute. And then on January or on November 1, I got an email that said, oh, happy Black Friday month, which is literally incoherent. And then I see sale price all the time. I don't call it sale price anymore. In fact, I have a rule for that. It's called fool's price. Sale price is fool's price. And this might shock you, but I've saved many, many tens of thousands of dollars. I don't buy anything that's on sale. And now it might sound ignorant or silly to most people, but I don't buy things that are on sale, not because I'm allergic to sale price. And if I get to the register and they're like, oh, this is 10% off, I'm not going to be like, screw you, I'm paying full price. But my point is that I don't let the impulse of sale price determine whether or not that thing's going to add value to my life. Because here's the truth. Money has to be considered. If money was in a car, it's a necessary passenger, and we have to consider it. Whether it's the creative work that we're doing the job that we're working or the things that we buy, I have to consider money. It's a great passenger in the car. It's worth considering. It is a terrible driver. Money is a drunk driver. And if I'm making my purchasing decisions based primarily on whether or not this thing is on sale, you hear it all the time like, oh, yeah, I bought it because I saved $40 on it. Well, you save 100% if you just leave it at the store. And realizing that has been so freeing and it's counterintuitive. I know. It's like, aren't you spending so much more money? No, I'm spending so much less money. I didn't get into minimalism to be more sustainable, but it's been a great byproduct of producing less waste because I consume less than 90% less, I should say, of the things that I used to consume, I still consume some things and I do so with intention. But the byproduct here is I'm consuming way less because some of these precepts or guidelines or rules that I've put in place.
- [47:30]
B
I love this idea that everything has a cost, right? So let's just think about that through the lens of what you said about sale prices. It would be easy for someone to go, well, Josh, all right, for you, you might be able to afford not buying things at sale prices, but I can't. But here's the missing piece, I guess, right? If you are never buying at sale prices, but you're only buying 10% of what you used to buy at full price, you're winning, right? Whereas if you're constantly buying at sale price things that you don't need, you're actually spending more even though you think on that individual item, you got a deal. So that's the first thing that's super interesting. Something I've been chatting to my wife about over the last few weeks, maybe months, is, you know, for many years I've been obsessed with this idea that everything in life comes at a cost, but too often the cost is invisible and we don't see it. So I said to her, you know, when we buy or if we buy clothes and you buy a load of clothes because you don't know what size it's going to be, I think that's cool. That's 30 day returns. I can try on, figure out, check it out on my, in the comfort of my own home and then send back what I don't want and I'll get a refund. I said, okay, sure, I understand that. But if that box of clothes is sitting in the hallway or the corridor upstairs for four weeks at a time, and that happens six months of the year, I'm not saying my wife does this to be clear. Right. It's just more a conversation. Items like that has a cost. That daily annoyance of frustration that the hall isn't clean or, you know, oh, God, I need to move that now so I can get the things that I do want that is costing you stress and time. But you don't see it. All you think about is, oh, I've got 30 days to return this. So it does come at a cost. And actually you can apply that, I think, to something you said on a podcast recently, which is one of your best investments is YouTube Premium, which I found really interesting because if someone asked me that question, I would say the same thing. But. Well, why don't you tell me? Why would you, through your minimalist lens, why would you say that is one of your best investments?
- [49:56]
A
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I don't think advertisements are immoral or unethical. I just think there are interruptions, and I don't like interruptions. It's a type of clutter. You know, if you have that box in your corridor, you might triple over it. Right. I always feel like I'm tripping over advertisements. And so when I would get on YouTube and forced to watch some sort of advertisement from Walmart or a mattress company or something, I don't think those ads are bad. But if I have an opportunity to opt out, that is what I would prefer. And so it's just really a preference to opt out of any interruptions, opt out of the chaos whenever possible. It doesn't mean I'm going to get rid of all of them. But according to Forbes, the average American sees about 5,000 advertisements a day. And I would suspect it's even more if you're in a city like New York or LA or, or London, any of these big metro areas. They're just. We're bombarded with, with these. So much so that we're steeped in it. We. It's the old, you know, the fish in water doesn't realize it's in water sort of thing. The human in a city doesn't realize they're steeped in advertisements. And a lot of these, the messages of these advertisements are useful. It's like, oh, here's a thing that I might actually get value from. Right. In fact, I struggle with this almost internally. Is like, I think some of the most dangerous ads are the ones that are really useful. Right? I love listening to, like, a sports podcast or something, and they have like a Arby's or McDonald's commercial and a Michelob beer commercial. And I'm like, Like, I'm never going to consume any of this crap. So, like, you might as well be advertising, you know, moon rocks. If I just fly to the moon, because I'm not going to, it doesn't get me at all. Maybe sometimes the more dangerous ones are like, oh, yeah, I think that one, that's the one that will complete me. That's the thing that will make me happy. I will find joy in that product if I just consume it. And it gets back to. The thing is never about the thing. It's about what I think the thing can do for me. And so do I think that new iPhone, camera, that attachment will help me that I see an Instagram ad? Yeah, I might think that in the moment. But that makes it dangerous because then I go buy the thing on impulse. And that's why I put rules in place for even that. So they call the Wait for it rule. We also know it's known as the 3030 rule. Anything that costs more than $30, I wait at least 30 hours to buy it. Now, why is that? It's not that I don't have $30 to spend on the thing. It's. I don't have all the additional costs that you just talked about. The stress and the anxiety. I have the money that I can count. Or you were talking about earlier, like, okay, it's going to take up space in the hallway for four weeks. I can count that. There's three shirts that I want to return. I can count that. Okay, there's one box. I can count that. And I'll get $73 back. I can count that. But I can't count how many metric tons of stress this is creating in my life.
- [53:00]
B
Exactly.
- [53:00]
A
Throughout the whole process.
- [53:02]
B
Yeah. Do you still find that you want much stuff?
- [53:10]
A
Hmm. Well, you brought up that term a couple times now. Lacking. Right. I think I don't want as much now that I realize that. That the desire is actually one of the things that we do want in a way. So I'll give you an example. Let's say I really wanted a BMW. I don't have a BMW. But if I wanted a BMW and I started putting it up on my vision board and I'm getting the brochures sent to me, and I look at the website and I'm typing all the Custom want this color in this interior. There's something kind of exciting about that. There's a desire to that, right? What did I say earlier? The objects of our desire become the objects of our discontent after they're acquired. And so, in a weird way, we don't actually want the BMW. We want the desire. And that desire can be for another human being. It could be for interaction. It could be desire to contribute beyond ourselves in a meaningful way. It could be desire for a new mattress. It could be desire for good sleep. But we don't just want the things that we think we want. We don't just desire those things. We desire the desire. And often one of the worst things that we can do is acquire the object of our desire, because then it extinguishes the desire. The French philosopher Lacan, he talked about object A. And I find this concept really fascinating because everyone has an object A. It's the thing that you'd be willing to set your life on fire in order to obtain, basically, whether it's that BMW or it's the promotion or it's a million followers on Instagram, or maybe it's the dream home, or maybe it is the job, the dream job, whatever it is, it's your object day. And sometimes it can be healthfully expressed, sometimes it's unhealthfully expressed. But it's the thing we desire more than anything else. And the problem is, when we get it, we often get it. And this happened to me. By age 30, I had gotten everything I ever wanted. And it took getting everything I ever wanted to realize that maybe everything I ever wanted wasn't actually what I wanted at all. Maybe there was something about that lack, and maybe there's even something about a shared lack. That's what communion is, if you. I'm not talking about in a church setting, but like a community, same root there. We commune around something, but a communion is often around a shared lack. You'll see this at a. A meeting, for example. Different people from all different backgrounds, really wildly successful businessmen and housewives and homeless people and drug addicts and nurses and doctors and unemployed people and construction workers all in the same room. What do they have in common? Well, nothing, except for their shared lack. And that's what our humanity is ultimately is. We're congregating around some sort of shared lack. Even those hunter gatherer tribes, they're hunting and gathering because they lack the food that they need. Otherwise they wouldn't need to hunt or gather if it was just served up to them, like McDonald's. Drive thru sort of thing. And so I think ultimately part of the human experience is about embracing that lack. And so do I still desire things? Sure, but I'm less compelled by impulse than I've ever been.
- [56:37]
B
Yeah. The reason I asked that question is I found on my inner journey, for want of a better term, I just find these days, and maybe for the last few years now, that I don't really want much stuff. And I can't tell you that, oh, I did A, and that led to B. I can't give you that. Right. There's no easy prescription that gets you there. I just know that for a sustained period of time. And this is why I asked you the question, because you've been a minimalist, I think, as you say, for 15 years. Right. And you must have started somewhere and it must be a constantly evolving journey as you get to know yourself better and you things that you thought you still needed maybe five years ago, you're like, well, actually, you know what? I don't really need that. But what I found, Josh, is that I just don't find. I feel I'm very content with what I have. You know, as all these great philosophers talk about, you know, what does Socrates say? The secret to happiness is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. Now I can say that, but I also have to recognize, and this must be a question that comes at you sometimes because I've got the societal ticks of success and I realize that that doesn't actually make you happy. Right. So with that realization, I have lived my life a lot more intentionally, I guess. Can you get there? I think you can, but perhaps it's easier to get there. But once you've kind of filled that bucket and realized that that bucket wasn't what you were after. Ah, yeah, I played that game. That game ain't the game I want to play. Right. So if you have never had that kind of validation, perhaps you still believe the myth that actually when I get it, when I get that promotion, when I get that job, things will be good. I'm sure you must have been asked this before.
- [58:50]
A
Yeah, you bring up a good point. And now there are more ways than ever to count success. Right? The so called success, which I don't even think success exists. I think all success is failure on some level in the sense that like we often point to trophies thinking that that is success. And sometimes the trophies of success are the material objects. I got the big deal, so I bought this car or I got the promotion, so I Bought this house, or I. I got the new jobs, and I have to wear these types of expensive suits or dresses. And those things make it so that we get wrapped up in that identity that we talked about earlier. Right? And we just keep playing a new game, and we up the stakes of the game because you realize, like, oh, yeah, I remember when I was 18 years old and I got that first corporate job, and I was like, okay, what do I need to make in order to be happy? And it was like, okay, $50,000 a year. If I can make $50,000 a year in Dayton, Ohio, in 1999, then I can be happy. And I made 50,000. And by the next year, when I was 19, I was like, nope, that didn't do it. I need to adjust for inflation. So maybe it's $65,000 a year that'll make me happy. And maybe it's 90,000, and the number keeps going up six figures. And. And of course, that race never ends. That's a pleasure, Chase. And in a way, it's a type of hedonism. And hedonism is not a sustainable lifestyle. It's called the hedonic treadmill. Right. We just stay on it, and it keeps going faster and faster. We need more and more. It becomes the disease of more again. It metastasizes to every area of our lives. And so we all do play this game, and we think that if I just have what he has or I have what she has, they appear to be happy, but we're not seeing what's going on underneath the surface. There are very few people who are contented with their relationships. There are very few people who are contented with their financial situations. It's not because they couldn't be. It's because they think they need to be other somewhere other than where they are right now.
- [61:01]
B
Yeah. Might there be someone who has stumbled across this conversation who perhaps lives in poverty and struggles to pay the rent, feed the family, put the heating on? And might that person think that some elements of this conversation are insensitive to their reality?
- [61:30]
A
Sure. Yeah. That's a great question. I grew up really poor. We were on food stamps and government assistance and in Dayton, Ohio. I mean, the duplex that I grew up in was full of roaches, and we had mice, and it was just like. It was an unfortunate upbringing, and we had a lot of discontent. And I thought it's because we didn't have any money at the time. And that's part of it. I'm not against money. I'm not Allergic to money. I want to be clear about that. I don't think that money is the root of all evil. I do think that the love of money is a gigantic problem in our lives. The deification of money has become a problem. But I think growing up poor, I would have really benefited from a minimalist mindset in the sense that, that you don't need to wait to experience joy. Because there are moments all the time where we did experience joy, even though we didn't have much. The discontent often came through the comparison. You know, they say that comparison is the thief of joy. I would say the opposite of that. Joy is also the extinguisher of comparison. When I feel real joy here in the moment when you're with your son or daughter and it's just like some goofy movie or song is on and you just, you see the smiles and you see the joy. You're not saying, oh, how can I get 17% more smiles in the next 24 hour period? Like, you would never even. It doesn't cross your mind because joy extinguishes that need for comparison. Comparison is a type of mental illness in a way, because it tells us, it takes this moment, that is enough. And it says it's not, but it's out there. And that's what happened when I was in poverty. Like for the longest time, I didn't even know we were poor until I would go to literally the other side of town, the other side of the railroad tracks, as a cliche, but it was literal. You go there and it's like, oh, yeah, look how much they have. Wouldn't it be nice if I had that as well? And you realize, like, oh, okay, I'm now comparing myself. I'm making myself miserable. I'm signing a contract with myself to be unhappy until I can live like that person.
- [63:54]
B
Yeah, I know that your childhood had a lot of challenges. I've heard you talk about that. Your father had mental illness. Your mother, I believe, struggle with alcoholism. And I can't imagine what, what that would have been like for you. We've talked a lot in this conversation about that. Everything has a cost. But we can also flip that and go, everything also has an upside.
- [64:29]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [64:30]
B
So I guess my question to you is, what were the upsides of your childhoods and your upbringing? Today's episode is sponsored, by the way meditation app. Now, you probably heard me talk about this app over the past few months, and that is because I absolutely love it. Meditation has so many benefits for our physical health and mental well being. But only if we do it. And that's one of the reasons I love the Way so much. It makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks. One of the most unique things about the Way is that it is a meditation app with no choice. They understand that too much choice is stressful and can lead to procrastination and indecision. And so with the Way, you only ever have one choice, which makes things really easy. Just open the app, follow the path, and your transformation will unfold. Now, there's no question that for me, using the Way has helped me feel calmer, more relaxed, and I would say it's also broadened my perspective on life and what is truly important. The creator of the app is Henry Schuchman, a Zen master with the most wonderful, relaxing voice, who actually was a guest on this podcast a few months ago on episode 590. So if you think 2026 is finally going to be the year when you start and stick to a meditation practice, I'd highly encourage you to check out the Way. And to give you a little extra motivation, the Way is offering my podcast listeners 30 free sessions to get you started with your practice. That is a fantastic offer. What have you got to lose to take advantage? All you have to do is go to thewayapp.com livemore to get started and begin your journey towards peace, calm, and purpose.
- [66:56]
A
I remember we did an episode with Kelly Starratt once. He had this great quote. He said, pain is a request for change. And he was talking about that in your body, right? You know, pain is a request for healing. Something needs to change in your body so that it can heal. And I thought that was. That was interesting. But also, pain is from where we grow. It can destroy us as well, at too high of a volume. But, like, we all know that about the comfort crisis that we've lived in, and we're pacifying ourselves to death. And you don't grow from a place of comfort. The discomfort zone is the place from which we grow the most. And sometimes that discomfort feels painful. I lived in a world for a long time where I thought that that quick shortcuts to pleasure were the best route. But of course, there are no shortcuts. There are only direct routes. And many of those routes that I took, the easy pleasure almost always leads to an unnecessary pain, right? But if you are willing to accept the pain of the moment, whether it's, you know, the going to the gym and that sort of pain, or, you know, the ice bath craze that's going on now, it's painful if you get into an ice bath for a few minutes. Right. Like, you feel the pain immediately, but it's earned reward at the end of that. Right. And so quite often, we're not earning the pleasure that we seek now. And I would say also that much of the growth that we have is earned in a way. Like, I didn't seek out any of the pain of my childhood, obviously. I don't think you need to seek out suffering. It's going to show up in your life whether you want it to or not. Don't worry about seeking it out. It's going to show up at your doorstep, especially when you don't want it to. And it's going to change a lot of things in your life. But it's also, wow, what have I learned from this? I've learned that I can bear the unbearable. Whether that's an autoimmune condition or some sort of health scare or a death in the family, or it's your father abusing your mother when you're three years old on Green street in Dayton, Ohio. It's, we had to escape that whole situation. We had to run away from him, basically. And I don't even blame him. I don't blame a tornado for coming through Dayton a few years ago either. Right. Like, it's just. You don't point the finger and say, how dare you, Tornado. He was mentally ill. He was schizophrenic, and. And. And we had to get away from him, from that. Right. So suffering shows up and the question is, like, what am I going to do with that pain that I've experienced? Am I going to learn from it, or am I going to keep repeating that cycle? Because that often happens. Someone who is abused as a kid often becomes an abuser. Victims become victimizers. Right. And so we have to be intentional about that. Otherwise it's easy to just adopt that pattern, wrap ourselves in that pattern, and then begin to victimize others.
- [70:03]
B
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. As I've been thinking about the whole concept of minimalism over the past few days, I really landed on the thought that the entry point for people of having too much stuff is almost like a Trojan horse. Yes, it's a symptom. You have a load of stuff. You think the stuff is the problem, but it isn't the stuff. It's your relationship to the stuff. And as you embark upon this journey of trying to declutter your external worlds, you will, through that process, start to learn really profound things about yourself. If you're paying attention now, Joshua, how old were you when you started being a minimalist?
- [71:05]
A
I was 28 when my mom died and my marriage ended both in the same month. And those two things, they, they made me realize like, oh, the way I've been living right now is not it. I don't know what it is. Thankfully, I stumbled across this idea of minimalism and it wasn't something dangerous like a cult or something like that. Minimalism is sort of the anti cult. But Yeah, I was 28 years old.
- [71:31]
B
28.
- [71:32]
A
And yeah, it took almost a year for me to start simplifying.
- [71:35]
B
Yeah, the reason I ask that question is because everyone these days wants the hack. They want the one hit, they want the solution. And it's like, hey guys, listen, you gotta start somewhere. And this is a constant journey of growth and evolution. Once you start on that path, and if you keep paying attention and want to stay on that path, you will continue to learn things about yourself that you didn't previously know. So if you start in your late 20s, I think I heard in one of your podcasts you say when you were 39, you realized that a lot of your suffering came from your desire to impress other people.
- [72:17]
A
Ah, yeah.
- [72:18]
B
Now that was really, it was really powerful to hear that. And I want to talk about that through the lens of constant evolution. You were already 10 years into your journey as a minimalist. You must have been learning and uncovering so much about yourself. And still 10 years on there was a core realization, which is a core realization for many people if they are self aware enough to realize that that's where a lot of our suffering does come from. But can you speak to that a little bit? Because that's interesting to me that it didn't come straight away. It came as you were embarking upon this journey.
- [72:59]
A
Yeah, it was sort of an unraveling of sorts. And maybe I realized glimpses of that, but that was through the material things like I want to impress people through the car that I drive or the job title that I have or the house, the neighborhood that I live in. That's impressive. Right? And so that was one. But, but you can also trade that for other, other means and can be impressive. Getting rid of everything to impress other people, that's another type of. It's another trap. Right. Or getting more followers is a trap. Getting people to like me. And, and the Internet is especially dangerous for this because we're working really hard to impress people we'll never meet or people that don't even bots or whatever. And so it's like I'm working really hard. I'm forsaking the people closest to me. When I was in the corporate world, I forsook my closest relationships in order to look impressive, to appear impressive. And yeah, at 39, I had several sort of epiphanies as I really got into the, the whole identity side of it. And I realized that, like, it, the people I was trying to impress were actually far more impressed when I wasn't trying to impress them. It's a weird paradox, right? Like the person, the coolest person you can think of. I mean, if you, anyone listening to this conjures an image of the three coolest people, they're not trying to impress you, and yet they're the most impressive people to you. But it's precisely because they don't care about whether or not you're impressed by them. Them.
- [74:44]
B
How is your relationship to other people's opinions these days?
- [74:51]
A
Well, we accidentally became famous in 2016. That was not the intention. When that first documentary went up on Netflix, it was before there were any other streaming platforms. And it was like on the first page for several months and the first page of Netflix. Yeah.
- [75:08]
B
Wow.
- [75:08]
A
Yeah, because there was, I mean, 93 million people saw that thing. And so I would start to go to like the grocery store and 12 people would say something to me. And at first it was like, oh, it's kind of nice. Like it's nice to be recognized and I'm not against it. And even today if someone stops me, I'm not against it. But I also realized, like, if you're not careful, then you, it's going to be another form of consumerism. You're going to need more, more, more. And so I found there was a moment where I'm like, okay, how do I get more of this? How do I get more of this affirmation? And it's like, oh, no. Not only does that feel kind of gross, but like that's just another kind of consumerism that's completing me through their validation. It's people pleasing in a way. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I saw this meme recently. I said, oh, you're a people pleaser? Really? How many people have you pleased? And it's like, yeah, like the people pleaser. As anytime I'm a people pleaser, it ends up making everyone unhappy. At least that's what I end up seeing. Right. Because we, we fixate on the people who are displeased with us as, as people pleasers. And So I. I had to set that down and every time I would pick it back up, I noticed that pattern of I need you to validate me in order to feel validated. And I just didn't like the pattern. And so every time I would pick it up, the need for that, I would just set it back down. And it was a beautiful accident. The whole minimalism thing was great, but I didn't need it for any sort of satisfaction.
- [76:51]
B
It's really interesting, Joshua, hearing you talk about that. I would say, as someone who sits outside your world but has consumed some of your content over the years at various times, I would say that you're probably one of my favorite online creators. And I tell you why I think that is. You strike me as someone who is staying true to your values, even if that comes at a lack of so called commercial success or followers or views or whatever that might be. And I really love that because I think that's getting rarer and rarer.
- [77:32]
A
Thank you. It's a struggle because the algorithm is corrupting when it incentivizes to be divisive. And a bunch of things I just don't want to be. Not because I think they're immoral, but it's just. It doesn't delight me. And I enjoy doing the podcast because it delights me to do. I enjoy writing because it delights me to do. I enjoy having an occasional conversation like this. I told you before we started recording, I don't do many interviews. I think I've done one other interview this year just because it delights me to have the conversation with someone who I think gets it. I don't just want to go out there to do interviews. I'd rather be delighted. But there are other ways I can be delighted. I live in Ojai, California, and I just go out to the meadows and hike and that's pretty delightful too. Or I'll spend some time with my daughter, and that's really delightful and it's free and. Or spend some time with my wife. Every other Friday, we just take the Friday off. We have a screenless day and we kind of get lost together. And I love it. That's. That's one of the best things. It's so delightful and I can't measure any of it. If you ask me why I love my wife or love my daughter, I. I could give you a list, but it's not even going to approximate what's going on there. Language fails us for all of the most important things. Things.
- [78:48]
B
Well, I hope this conversation has Delighted you somewhat so far, but I wanted to move on to some practical things. You've mentioned this PDF that I downloaded yesterday, 16 Rules for Living With Less. It's brilliant. Right? Everyone should go on to the minimalist website and download it. A. It's a work of art. It's beautiful minimalist design, which I think is in keeping, but it's super, super practical. Now, I don't want to go through all 16 rules, but you've mentioned a few of them already.
- [79:21]
A
Yeah.
- [79:21]
B
Just in case people have been, you know, they've been excited by the thought of, well, maybe I'm going to start seeing if I could enjoy life more if I have less. And I want to start, for want of a better term, decluttering. I think some of these things are fantastic. So can you tell me about the 30 Day Minimalism game, which is right at the top of that PDF?
- [79:46]
A
Yeah. You know, it's a great entry point into simplifying because if you are one of those people who has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of things in your home, if you're anything like me, you're just overwhelmed and you throw your hands up and you're like, I don't even know. I don't know where to start. I'll just start tomorrow. And so we procrastinate because you're overwhelmed by the stuff. And so we came up with something called the 30 Day Minimalism Game. I don't know about. For you, you said you've gotten rid of eight bags of stuff recently. For me, decline. Cluttering can be kind of boring and maybe I will dread it a little bit. So we found a way to make it a bit more fun. We call it the 30 day minimalism game and it derives from how I started simplifying my life. I asked myself, what if I got rid of one possession every day for a month? What would happen? I knew it wouldn't change my life, but maybe it would start a new habit. And it turns out I got rid of way more than 30 items in the first 30 days because you start to get this sort of compound interest of letting go. That happens. And so the minimalism game was birthed out of that. And the way it works is you partner up with someone in your house, a friend, a family member, or maybe it's someone at work, a co worker, anyone else who wants to simplify with you together. And you start off usually at the beginning of a month, first day you get rid of one item. It doesn't matter where. The only rule is you have to get it out of your house by the end of the day. And second day, two items. Third day, three items. You see where it's going here? It gets so far, so good.
- [81:08]
B
This sounds very achievable. It's in the latter half of this challenge where it sounds.
- [81:13]
A
That's right. Day 15. You get there and you're like, I gotta get rid of 15 Ives a day. But wait a minute. I have to get rid of 16 things tomorrow. And whoever goes the longest wins. So you can bet whatever you want at the beginning of the month. Maybe it's a nice meal or concert tickets, or I'm going to bet you $10 or whatever it is just for fun. And whoever comes along, 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. And they are posting their pictures online of these huge piles of stuff that they're letting go of together. And it's no longer boring because it's that contribution. You feel like you're letting go, but you're also contributing to someone else. You're being someone else's accountability partner, and they're your accountability partner as you let go together. It's so much more fun than just doing it by yourself.
- [82:05]
B
Yeah. Okay. So that's a challenge for people if they want to sort of get stuck in after this conversation. I also like the no junk rule. And in that you say every single thing you earn can be placed into three piles. Essential, non essential, and junk. Can you explain about this rule a little bit?
- [82:24]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. We own a lot of things, and we all have the same, similar essentials. Right? It's like shelter and transportation and vocation. I need clothing. Now, those essentials look differently, look different for each person. Right. Your house looks different from mine, your clothes, or might be a different size for mine, et cetera. But we all have the same essentials. And then we have the non essentials. I'm not against non essentials. These are the things that add value to our lives. Value adding things. So, like, strictly speaking, I can live without a couch or a coffee table. Right? But those things add value to my life. I'm a minimalist. I'm not a deprivationist. I don't want to deprive myself of things that add value. Unfortunately, most of the things we own fit into that third category. It's junk. These are the things we like, or more accurately, the things that we think we like we've told ourselves a story, that I should like this because someone else likes it, or an advertiser told me to like it, or I was influenced in some way, or maybe it's something I got value from once upon a time and it has ceased to add value to me, but because I got value from it back then, I'm going to hold on to it just in case. Which is another rule we can cover as well, the just in case rule. But the junk stuff that we're holding on to, anything that's junk, I can give myself permission to let it go. And so everything you own, Whether you own 10 items or 10 million items, it all fits into one of those three piles. It's either essential, it's non essential, but value adding, or unfortunately for most of us, most of the things we own are junk. Our life is so much simpler when we have the appropriate amount of essentials and we have the non essentials that add tremendous value to our lives. Because. Because I don't want to go without things. I don't think the things can complete me or make me happy, but they can augment or enhance or magnify or amplify my experience of life. Those are the things that I want in my life.
- [84:19]
B
Yeah, that's the key message in your work, isn't it? That it's not about deprivation. It's about intentionally choosing what you bring into your life, whether that be things or relationships or passions or hobbies. It's basically about living an intentional life. And I think the other big thought that comes to me when I think about what it is you and your fellow minimalists offer people. I think what you offer us is clarity. Because ultimately it's clarity that you need to be a good minimalist. You need the clarity to look at your things and go, is this essential? Is it non essential? Is it junk? And the clarity you. The clarity you glean from understanding which things you can throw out will absolutely cross over to clarity in other areas of your life, won't it? So it's about clarity as well as intention, isn't it?
- [85:23]
A
Yeah, we have to be willing to ask questions. And we don't ask those questions because sometimes we're afraid of the answer. Why have I given so much meaning to my material possessions? Like, that's a difficult question to ask, right? But also like, does this add value to my life? That's a difficult question to ask because I have to stop and think and I have to get clear. I have to be honest with myself. I mean, I could Lie to other people and say, yes, I get a lot of value from this watch or whatever, but I don't wear a watch, and I'm not against watches. It just doesn't add value to my life. Life. If you want to wear two watches on each wrist and you get value from that, so be it. I have no judgment around that. I just know for me it's inappropriate. Doesn't mean it's inappropriate for you, but for me, it's inappropriate. And that's why minimalism, to a great extent is perspectival. I wish I could come on here and say, actually download the list of the hundred things you should own to make you happy. If that list existed, I'd be the first one to propagate. But it doesn't, because the hundred things that add value to my life might be total clutter for you and vice versa. Maybe a bunch of them are going to get in your way. And so it's about being intentional with things we have, being intentional with the things we acquire, and equally being intentional about the things we don't acquire and the things we continue to hold on to. Because the excess is what is keeping us from having enough, at least for most of us. That's the other question we don't ask. How much is enough, how much is enough money, how much is enough relationships, how much is enough status, how many followers is enough, whatever. And the truth is, quite often for many of these things, it's zero. Enough is zero. Or it's a much smaller number than we think because we've never stopped to even consider it.
- [87:13]
B
Yeah, it's not the thing. It's our relationship to it that ultimately determines its effect on us.
- [87:21]
A
It's.
- [87:22]
B
It's a metaphor for everything. Isn't.
- [87:25]
A
Is I. I often think about another rule that's in that rule book you mentioned, the spontaneous combustion rule. It's my favorite rule of all time because I just think it works so, so well for any of the stuff that we have in our lives, whether that's mail or books or material items. I think it works for careers and. And relationships as well, but specifically with your material possessions. They cause so much stress. And so as you get more and more burdened by these things, I feel like the discontent sort of heats up. But you don't need to wait until, like, it's your. Your inbox is overflowing or you have a mountain of books on your desk. And the spontaneous combustion rule just starts with one question. If this item were to spontaneously combust right now, would I feel relief received. What's the emotional response to this? And it's a lot of the times it's like, yeah, if those books just disappeared right now. Oh, full body sigh. Yes. Well, then that's a sign that I want to let it go. There's another one that runs adjacent to that. It's called the wouldn't repurchase rule. It's more about the intellectual exercise of this, not what's going on emotionally. But like, if those books were to disappear right now, would you buy them again or would you request them again? And if the answer is no on that, then why the hell am I still holding on to them? And the same thing is true with the oversized orange sweatshirt in your closet. You know, the one that has tassels from the 1990s. Like, what am I doing with this? Like, why do I still have this? Or the whole garage full of things. What happens if these things spontaneously combust when I feel a sense of relief? Belief.
- [89:09]
B
Yeah.
- [89:09]
A
If so, then, then I want to let it go.
- [89:12]
B
It's interesting. One of the realizations I've had recently, I mean, I love reading. I read several books a week and I really enjoy it. And I would say sometimes I think, ah, yeah, this is great, you know, I'm going to come back to it at some point. There's some really great lessons in there. But then some of them, I'm thinking, I've been saying that for four years and I still haven't, I still haven't come back to it. Now there are a few that I do come back to regularly. You know, like maybe my. To top five books that I just freaking love. They have a special place. But the other ones I just took to the charity shop a couple of weekends ago, I thought wrong. And here's the thing, the book, I don't know what your take is on this. I've come to the realization that the book changes you as you read it. It's the experience of engaging with it in real time that changes you. It sitting on a shelf doesn't do anything for me, especially if I don't go back to it. And even if I go back to it in three years time, I'm a different person, right? So I have changed since the first time I read it. So my relationship with that book will also be different because I'm different. And to me that's really helped me get rid of a lot of these books and go, well, actually, I want someone else to read that book now at a really discounted price in the Charity shop. It really had an impact on me. The impact isn't from it being on my shelf. The impact was from how I felt and how I changed through the reading of it.
- [90:52]
A
You bring up a really good point. In a strange way, we don't think about this. It's selfish to hold on to things we don't use. Right, right. Because by holding on to something that could add value to someone else's life, I'm depriving them of that, potentially. But also, you're illustrating another point there. The charity shop can kind of be your storage locker of sorts. This happened to me. We were on a tour stop in Albuquerque years ago, a book tour out in Albuquerque. And at the end, this guy came up, and he was. He was doing the Q and A bid. He goes, hey, I just want you to know that, like, you've helped me realize that anytime I need a chainsaw, I just go to my storage locker. It's called Craigslist. And I guess today it'd be Facebook Marketplace. And I was like, oh, yeah. He's like, whenever I need a chainsaw, it's usually about once a year, I just go to Craigslist. I buy it for however much it is. 40, 50, $100. And then I put it right back in my storage locker. Craigslist. And sometimes I even make more money by putting it back there. And if I need another chainsaw a year from now, I go onto Craigslist, I get another chainsaw because he wasn't using it with enough regularity to make sense for him. Now there's a lumberjack who's using a chainsaw every day. It wouldn't make sense to do that. But some of these things, it's like, yeah, I can let it go. And if I really feel compelled to pick it up again in the future, then I can do that. I don't have that scarcity mindset anymore that I need to cling to. This clinging is. It prevents us from moving forward. And there's a level of scarcity there. It says, I'll never be able to get this again. And as soon as I recognize that as a false story, it's so much easier to let go.
- [92:32]
B
How do the principles of minimalism help us with things like our relationships or our health?
- [92:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, It's. It's making room. Minimalism is the. The art of addition through subtraction. Right. And so I'm making more space. It's more time. More attention is available. Right. More energy, more focus, more freedom. There's a lot of More. You know, it's Mies van der Rohe, the famous architect who said less is more. And our less, our last documentary, we called it Less is Now, it was about, about living with less so we could be more present. How do we be in the present moment? Not a prescriptive how to, but like what does that look like? And it looks like shedding the distractions, right? And usually you'll see this as a doctor, we're unhealthy because of what we have done to our bodies. All the things we've added, whether that's cigarettes or it is processed foods, or it's the built environment that we're living in, or maybe it's EMFs and all of these other things that we're, we're concerned about now. But it's about removing the things that are harmful to us. And, and the same thing is true with our relationships. There's relationship consumerism is at an all time high. Look at you, the dating apps. We have more options than ever. And it seems like we have less romantic love than, than ever, right? And you even talked about it earlier. You're in this, a 18 year marriage, right? That's one way to count it. But that doesn't tell me anything about the quality of a relationship. And the same thing is true. The quality of your sex life isn't because you have a hundred sexual partners. The quality of your sex life is because you're able to be present with someone. The quality of your relationships involve being present. The tagline for the minimalist has been for, you know, well over a decade now. Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. I'm not against things, I want to use them. I don't want to use people though. I want to love them. And to love someone is to see them for who they are without trying to change them. To see them means to witness them, to be there with them. We might call it compassion, right? To be with someone while they're suffering. And we're all suffering in some way, right? And so, so seeing someone for who they are is to love them. To use them is to unlove them in a way. And we use people in a bunch of interesting ways. We coerce them, we manipulate them, we persuade them, we try to force them into our point of view. We have conditional love, which isn't love at all. I will love you as long as you do these seven things in this sequence. That's not love. That's a recipe, right? And with our things, we've ended up loving Our things. Right. Even said it earlier. And it's because we don't have more words for it, unfortunately. So I love these books. And it's like, okay, I know what you mean by that. You mean, I really, really like and totally get that. But if you look at the Inuit in Canada, they have 53 words for snow because they're steeped in different types of snow. So they have to be able to tell you what kind of snow is present. Right? For us, we say love. I love my wife, but I also love pickup trucks. Or I love my. My daughter, but I also love tacos on Tuesdays. Wait a minute. What does that even mean? Right? My favorite definition of love is from the Oxford Dictionary. It's the fourth definition in there, and it says, love is a score of zero. Now it's a tennis term, right? Love means you have a score of zero. But when you apply that to your relationships, it's like, I'm not keeping score here. Here. There's no ledger for love. There's no ledger in our relationships. I'll love you 17 times more if you do these 17 things. That's not love. Right? And so I think we get really confused about our relationships because we're trying to use people in our lives. We're trying to manipulate them, and then, paradoxically, we're trying to love our things. I love my house. I love my couch. I. That's not love either. It's like, I just really, really like those things. There's nothing wrong with liking those things, but I think we get real tangled up when we think we love them.
- [97:06]
B
That was just so beautiful. Honestly, there was so much gold in that. Joshua, I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking to you today. As I said at the start, I've been wanting to speak to you for years. I love what you put out in the world. I love what you stand for. This has been a really uplifting and energizing conversation for me. And just to finish off, if there was someone who has connected with this conversation and has recognized that actually their world is full of external clutter, they've got too many things in their house. They know it's causing them stress and anxiety, but they've never managed to do anything about it, what would you say to them?
- [97:56]
A
How might your life be better with less? It's the most important question I ever asked myself. How might your life be better with less? Because I can't give you 67 tips to declutter your closet. It wouldn't help you out anyway. I can't come to your house and remove all your things for you. Not only because that's theft, but it would rob you of the dignity of letting go on your own. And some of those rules and precepts are useful. That's the how to stuff. But it's only useful when you understand the why. Because if I give you 67 ways to declutter your closet, it will be re cluttered a month from now or a year from now if you don't know why you're doing it. So it always starts with that one question. How might your life be better with less.
- [98:42]
B
Beautiful question to finish on if people want to connect with you, Joshua, sort of get into your world. You've got books, you've got documentaries on Netflix. You've got your podcast, you've got the beautiful essays on your websites. Where would you direct them?
- [99:00]
A
Yeah, all of it. That that website is the hub for all of it. The minimalists.com everything you want to find from the podcast to the films, essays, et cetera. It's all there.
- [99:10]
B
Theminimalists.com well Joshua, I appreciate that you don't do many conversations anymore on podcasts. I'm very glad you made an exception for mine, and I hope the conversation delighted you as much as it delighted me. Thank you.
- [99:23]
A
Oh how delightful. Thank you so much.
- [99:29]
B
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if they that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjee.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics. Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more, so please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the Episode notes in your podcast app and always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more SA.