← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 633: When Your Stuff Steals Your Joy | Joshua Becker, The More of Less
00:56:21
Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:01]
A
When it comes to gifting, everyone on your list deserves something special. Luckily, Marshall's buyers travel far and wide, hustling for great deals and amazing gifts so you don't have to. That means your mom gets that cashmere sweater, your best friend that Italian leather bag. Your co workers unwrap their favorite beauty brands, and your nephews the coolest new toys. Go ahead. The price is this good. You can grab something for yourself too. Marshalls, we get the deals. You gift the good stuff. Shop now@marshalls.com or find a store near you. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And you'll never believe who's here. Actually, you probably know because you might have seen it in the title, but it's Joshua Becker. Welcome.
- [00:44]
B
You are amazing. And I am already excited.
- [00:47]
A
Okay, so I've been following for so long. Also, I'm not good at minimalism, but I am planning on being. And I threw out four shirts. So I read your book and I was like, this is a good step. I'm going to tell you what, what I have. So in my closet, I have got these shirts. Well, I'm not really good at dressing, so that's the first part. And so when I first started, I would speak at conferences mainly about homeschooling. I was like, oh, I don't know what to wear. So I got these, we call them wraps. I'm not quite sure, but it's just like a long, flowy over thing that you wear over a tank top. Anyway, then I get sweaty and I've ruined a bunch of them. They've got like armpit stains. But I. This is so dumb. So then I thought, okay, but they're comfortable. Like, they're comfortable and they're like cotton. So I was like, well, if I go camping, this would be like a great thing to bring along. You know, it gets chilly and I'll put on this wrap and it's already ruined. So if it gets messy. So I've literally kept them. And we've never gone camping. Like not a really long time. Cuz we outgrew our camper. So anyways, I threw them out. Well, I read your book and I threw them out.
- [01:49]
B
You are. You are well on your way then. You are well on your way.
- [01:54]
A
Okay, this is also a deal.
- [01:56]
B
How did it feel to get rid of them?
- [01:57]
A
It felt great because I was like, well, I. I mean, it was good. It was good. You talk about how the whole process, it just helps you to think through things a little bit more and a little bit more deeply. So we're going to talk about that. Embarrassingly, I also have all your books. I was like, wait, maybe this is kind of silly, but I do like books and we do have a good system of our books. So. And this is actually part of my job is to read books. So, uh, I have got the more of less, which is the one we're going to talk about mainly today. Living with less. The minimalist home, clutter, free with kids, which is pretty remarkable. And also things that matter. Overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life. All of this fits really well with our audience. Give us the story about cleaning out your garage and telling your son, Salem, I'm going to come play. I'm going to come play. And then never really actually getting to do that.
- [02:44]
B
Yeah, I mean you could probably do.
- [02:46]
A
It sounds like sometimes I read people's books that are like 10 years old and they're like, I don't really remember that.
- [02:52]
B
Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, no, I just had that in a different, a different conversation. Okay. So yeah, 17 years ago is when I was introduced to minimalism. I always, I get asked a lot, were you always a minimalist? And I've told my story so many times that I'm always a little shocked that people wouldn't know it. So I always love telling the story. I grew up very middle class. First 10 years of our marriage, my wife and I had three pay increases. And yet for some reason we're never able to get ahead financially. Anyway, 17 years ago, I'm living in Vermont. Salem, My son is 5, Alexa, our daughter is 2. My wife and I wake up on Memorial Day weekend. I am going to clean out the garage and she's going to do spring cleaning inside the house on Saturday. Sunday I had to work. Monday was going to be like the only day of the weekend we were going to get to enjoy. I offered to clean out the garage thinking that my 5 year old son would love the project with me. But he lasted about 30 seconds until he found all of his toys in the garage. And so he runs into the backyard, asked me to come play catch with him and I said I gotta clean out the garage. So I'm working on the garage. One thing leads to another. Hours later, I'm still cleaning out the garage, pulling everything out after the long winter in Vermont. My neighbor, she is doing all of her outdoor yard work at the same time. I'm cleaning the garage. We happen to walk past each other at one point and we both started complaining about how many hours had gone into our cleaning project for that day. And she changed my life. She says, you know, that's why my daughter is a minimalist. She keeps telling me I don't need to own all this stuff. And I remember looking at the pile of possessions, pile of things in my driveway that I pulled out of the garage all morning long, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my 5 year old son swinging alone on the swing set in the backyard. And suddenly I realized that my possessions weren't making me happy. Which we would all say, right? We're not looking for happiness in our possessions. But what I realized was not only were my things not making me happy, but all the things I owned were actually taking me away from the very thing that did bring me happiness in life and purpose and meaning and joy and fulfillment. And so that was the day. That was the light bulb moment. I think that is the moment when minimalism makes sense. When we can see that it's not just that our possessions aren't making us happy, but they're actually taking us away from the very things that do bring our life meaning.
- [05:47]
A
I think a side story to that is that sometimes you might be struggling with life and it might change with one conversation. There's a lot of hope there. That's what happened for me. A lady at MOPS was like, hey, Charlotte, Mason says kids should go outside for four to six hours a day whenever the weather is tolerable. I was like, huh? And here I am, you know, I mean, just the close to as long. It's been 14 years for us, you know, that we've been spending all this time outside and it's been truly, truly life changing for our family. Really took me in a different path that I was not expecting came out of one conversation. So then talk to us about you. You took it global. I mean, I've been seeing your stuff for so long. This message of minimalism, it worked for you. You start to share it on a small basis. And in fact, at one point you almost stopped sharing. But you talked about how you put out, you know, one last post about trying to get people's old prom dresses to help kids that didn't have any. And that someone was like, come back, Joshua. So can you tell? I mean, that's a big life shift. You're a youth pastor.
- [06:53]
B
Yeah, I was. I was a youth pastor. I was a youth pastor for 15 years. I loved, loved pastoring, loved ministry. I was thinking how you said, you know, just one conversation can change the course of our lives. And there's so much hope in that. And it's true. And, uh, like. Like that could be today, right? I mean, that. That's one of the things why you do what you do, right? Because that one conversation changed your life in so many amazing ways. You. You want to have that conversation and reach as many people with it. Um, my story of minimalism is a little bit the same. The way I describe my life now is I want to play my neighbor's role in as many people's lives as I possibly can. Like, I just want to introduce people to that you don't have to own all this stuff, that there's a better life available when we intentionally own fewer things and spend more of our life pursuing those things that actually matter in life. It was that. It was that Saturday. Of course, my blog didn't start out that way. It was Saturday I was introduced to minimalism. By Monday, I had started the website Becoming minimalist, just a free.WordPress.com or.org, whichever was the free version. I. I was just writing about two days later. Yeah, yeah. Starting the Monday. And I just. I wanted to write about what we were getting rid of and what we were keeping and what I was noticing and what I was learning. And. And so I was just writing about stuff we were getting rid of and things I was noticing. And lo and behold, more and more people started finding the website and started commenting, and it started growing. And then I got a little more intentional about how do you get people to a website and how do you connect with people online? And I always just say that it's like God brought the right people into my life at the right time to teach me the right thing about spreading this message. And after about a year, year and a half, I said I should probably stop writing about which belts I'm getting rid of today. And I've done this long enough that I've learned some things and I can help other people. And so the blog, about a year and a half in, switched from me talking about what we were getting rid of. And it came. It went to more of a, hey, here's what we did, and here's how we did it, and here's what we've learned. Here's what I wish I would have done differently. Here's what I'm noticing. Playing that neighbor role for as many people as possible. Much like you, I assume.
- [09:28]
A
Wow. Yeah. And you're still doing it. All these books. You have a New book coming out next year called Clutter Free Faith, and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about that one. One of the things I loved in the book is it's playful in a way that the, the things that you suggest, you're like, you can try it out. And I was thinking about how as adults, like, we don't really try anything, we just do all the same things all the time. So you called them trying experiments. And that was really enticing to me because I thought, well, yeah, like what? I'm gonna try throwing out these armpit stained shirts and see what happens, you know, like, oh, but, you know, you could try and put it in a bag and put it in your basement for a month and see if you use it or whatever. So you tried a lot of things and you said some things worked and some things didn't. Like, you tried being a single vehicle family. You try canceling, you know, a Netflix subscription or something like that. You try not eating out for a month. Can you talk about some of the different things that people could try that are in the minimalist vein that might enhance their life?
- [10:29]
B
Yeah. Well, number one, the whole idea of experimentation is so important and wonderful. And you're right that we do get stuck in, in a rut sometimes. And sometimes they're healthy, sometimes they're unhealthy. Well, just the, like, the, the ruts that we get in, you know, sometimes we're in smooth sailing and we got everything lined up just right. But usually I think we drift a little bit in life and pick up some, some bad habits. And so I found experimenting in life not just in minimalism, but in habits and lifestyle changes to be incredibly helpful. I actually learned it back when I first started writing blogging. A guy named Steve Pavlina, he wrote.
- [11:12]
A
About.
- [11:14]
B
Getting up early, and he did it for 29 days. For 29 days, he got up at 5am every morning. And that's how he decided if he wanted to become an early riser. And he made the case that 29 days is long enough that you can see the effects of the habit in your life, but it's not so long that you can't commit to it. If you just say, I'm going to become an early riser and wake up at 5am every morning. Then after a couple weeks and you don't do it, you're like, well, that didn't work. But if you say, I'm going to do it for one month, I'm going to do it for 29 days, it's long enough. If I like it, I can keep it. It's long enough to assess if it's going to work out in my life or not. And so in terms of minimalism, then absolutely we, we got rid of cable and that was just a trial. We went down to one television and that was a trial. We tried with just, we tried going with just one car for a while. We tried hand washing our dishes for 29 days. We tried getting rid of some of the furniture in our bedroom and just took it out for 29 days. We got rid of the George Foreman grill. And like, like I remember in the pantry, the George Foreman grill and it up all this space and I'm like, I'm just gonna put this in the basement for a month and, and see what happens. I went down to 33 articles of clothing for a three month experiment to see what that would do. And the, the helpful thing is I'm, we didn't, I didn't throw away all the clothes I wasn't using. I didn't throw all the televisions I wasn't using off the roof. Like we just put them in the basement. Let's give it a month. Let's see how this affects our family. I mean, same type of thing you're talking about. Like, like just try for one month spending four hours outside every evening. Like see what it does for your family. You can try it for a month. You've got nothing to lose is what I tell people. It's always, it's always win, win. We found out that life was way better with one television. We found out that life was way better without cable. I, to this day I still hand wash my dishes. To this day I still have 33 to 35 things in my closet. We went back to two cars because that experiment didn't work. But we wouldn't have known that unless we, unless we tried.
- [13:34]
A
Well, and that's all thing, how fun is that? Then you got a lot of things to talk about. You know, in a day and age when everyone's lonely, it's like, hey, we're trying this, we're trying that. Let's talk about it. Did it work? Did it not work? Someone talked to me about when they got a dishwasher. It might have been Andy Crouch. He wrote a book called the Tech Wise Family and it could be the wrong author, but the, the conversation was about how they got the dishwasher. That technology always has promise and peril. And all we talk about is the promise. And we never talk about the peril and so I think if it were him, if it was him, but it might have been somebody else was talking about how they didn't have a dishwasher. And so the nightly routine was that they would stand husband and wife together at the sink and they would wash and dry dishes. And there's something about having your hands in soapy sudsy water and the conversation. And then they got the dishwasher. You like think that the best thing ever. But what did they lose? They lost that time standing together and they lost the physical sensation of, you know, that God gave us that when we use our hands, you know, it makes our, our brains and our bodies feel better. So I love the idea of trying experiment, of trying experiments.
- [14:36]
B
Cal Newport calls it, I think calls it the any benefit fallacy. And he, he's talking about technology and how we get into this thinking that if it brings any benefit into my life, then it's worth it. Like if the has any benefit for my 10 year old kid to have it, then it makes sense for him to have it or upgrading the whatever. And we don't count the downsides. Like there might be more negative consequences than the one positive benefit that it would, it would good, it would be good for our kids to reach us the one time soccer practice gets canceled or something. But we don't even think of all the downsides that we're bringing into it. So. Yeah, same type of thing that you're saying with the dishwasher.
- [15:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of different ideas in here of experiments. And also you give other people's ideas so you've got some of your own ideas of things that you've done, but then other people's ideas like, like a person who only lives with a hundred things or a lady who has a husband and a cat and their home is 128 square feet. Or someone who lives out of a backpack and travels the world. Or someone who's got six kids and minimalism helps them get out of debt and lose weight and stop smoking and leave their job that they don't like. So all these different ideas. When I think back on my own childhood, I remember the freedom of the neighborhood. Hours spent riding bikes with friends until the street lights came on. That's what childhood should feel like. Movement, laughter and connection. And that's exactly what our friends at Woombikes are helping families rediscover. Womb makes the lightest, smartest and safest bikes on the market. Perfectly designed for kids, not just shrunken down adult bikes. Every detail matters the balance, the brakes, the handlebars, the way the frame fits their growing bodies. You don't just learn to ride with boom. You learn to love the ride. In our own family, we've seen that magic firsthand. Our daughter received a Womb Explore six in that stunning magnetic blue, and from the moment we opened the box, we could feel the difference. The packaging was intuitive, the setup was simple, and within a short period of time, she was riding down the driveway with the biggest smile on her face. When kids have a Womb bike, they want to be outside and that's the heartbeat of what we do. Helping families reclaim time, connection and joy through real world play. So this holiday season, don't just give a gift. Give them adventure, give them confidence, giving. Give them outside. Check out all the holiday deals now@womb.com that's W.com you guys. The holidays are almost here and you know what that means. People to feed, guests to host and a whole lot of cozy moments ahead. I've been getting our home ready with Wayfair and it's amazing how just a few updates make everything feel warm and welcoming again. I grabbed a beautiful new dining bench so everyone has a seat at the table, swapped in flannel sheets for the guest room and found the cutest Christmas wreath. All from Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Everything shipped fast, the prices were unreal, and it made me actually excited to host this year. Wayfair really is the place to shop for all things home, from sofas to spatulas, rugs to refrigerators. And during their Black Friday event you can save up to 70% off. Plus they have styles you won't see anywhere else so your space actually feels like you. And if you haven't heard, Wayfair now has a loyalty program where you earn 5% back, get free shipping and have access to member only sales. It's totally worth joining. So don't wait. These early deals are already happening. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70 off. That's w a Y-F-A-I r.com sale ends December 7th. One of them was to stop buying clothes for a year and these different kinds of self imposed shopping bans. Which was interesting because you gave a statistic from one family that they weren't able to go on a trip and it came to light that they had spent something like $10,000 but all of the purchases were $40 or less. Look at me frantically flipping through my notes to see if I Can find the story.
- [18:28]
B
I know it.
- [18:28]
A
Okay, you go. You're smart. You know, it's even. This book's from 2006.
- [18:33]
B
Anthony and Amy Ongaro, who I as a matter of fact, that book's 10 years old. I just texted him this week they're having their first child right around the corner. But yeah, I said, congratulations. I will, I will. Yeah. There was Anthony and Amy's introduction towards minimalism, or at least what got them interested and started googling it and starting searching for it. Their story is they had a friend who was getting married, had a destination wedding and they weren't able to go because it was going to be $1,000 or something to travel and stay. And they were really pretty bummed and kind of talking about how they wish they had had the money to go to their friend's wedding. As they're kind of lamenting the fact that they can't go to the wedding. Amazon shows up at their door and they, the wife as like the husband goes to pick out the phone case or the phone charger, like whatever it was that he had bought that was like $20 or something. The wife literally logs into Amazon, has this like moment of I wonder where all our money's going. She logs into Amazon, she pulls up their five year purchase history or four year purchase history and it was like 10 or $12,000 that they had spent at Amazon over the last four months. And she said for both of them it was this moment of hey, we've wasted all this money at Amazon buying twenty, thirty dollar things. We don't even remember what most of the things are. Most of them we don't have in our house any. And because all of our money has been going there, we couldn't be with our friends to celebrate like the most important day of their life. And for them it. That was their moment of introduction to intentionally owning less, intentionally overcoming consumerism. Minimalism, which is just, you know, the, those stories you're going through. Like minimalism is just, it's very different for very different people. It's going to look different for someone in their 20s than someone who has two kids or four kids or homeschools with six kids. It's going to look different for someone who lives in the city or the country or I would say a writer is going to own something different than a dentist or a mechanic or an architect. Like it, it looks very different from one person to another. It's just a group of people who have decided that we're just going to try to own the things that we need to own. And what a crazy novel idea that we would just own the things that we actually need to own. I always think, what a. What a crazy way to live, huh?
- [21:16]
A
Well, it's very different. It's very different than culture. And in this book in particular, the more of less you go through the history. How did consumerism become confused with happiness? You talk about how, you know, going back to the 1920s, I mean, people used to have things and they would. I just read a book by a friend of mine. It's called, I think it's called the Heart of the Homestead by Ruthanne Zimmerman. That's the author. So people are interested, they can find the book. But she was talking about how her, you know, her grandma would patch up everything, you know, you kind of patched up things. And my grandma would wash the Ziploc bags and hang them over the faucet, you know, until they dried. She turned them inside out. You know, so there are generational changes here, and that's explained really well in the book. What's interesting is the book came out in 2016. It's 2025, really heading into 2026. So this is 10 years old. 10 years ago you wrote it for sure. Now we're in a spot where there's all this algorithmic. I mean, this is new, right? Algorithmic, serving up the. First of all, there's influencers. So that's new. My like 9 year old was like, I would like to buy this candy. It's called Joyride. I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, ryan Trahan sells it at Target. I was like, oh no, it's happening. I can see the generational shifts between my own kids, between my own teenagers who are Gen Z and my younger two who are Gen Alpha. I'm already seeing it, like with the YouTube influencer culture and then the algorithmic, like if you buy something on Amazon, it will be like, and do you also need these 50 things? So can you talk about the changes that you've seen? It's actually if it was necessary in 2016, it's almost more necessary now. Yeah.
- [23:04]
B
You know, when I was a kid, advertising was what would be the right word? Saturday morning cartoons? It was boundaries.
- [23:16]
A
That's what I think. It had boundaries.
- [23:19]
B
Well, yeah, but it was, it was like, like advertisers were just shooting everything out to everybody. Like, you know, they're focus grouping their commercials and stuff. But, like everyone's seen the same GI Joe and Barbie and Trix cereal, Sugar Cereal, Right? Whatever it might be.
- [23:35]
A
Yeah.
- [23:35]
B
But now, like because of data collection online, because of how much time we spend online, even streaming services, I think play into this as well. Knowing what we watch and who we are and when we watch. And they're able to like legitimately tailor the ads to who we are and what our weaknesses are and what we're thinking about and what videos we're watching and are interested in. And it has gotten, it's not just a B tested in like a focus group somewhere is like tailored to you. I just saw there's an airline that is experimenting with AI pricing on their airline tickets based on how much you will pay for an airline ticket is how much they will charge you for the seat. I think they're getting some pushback. So I don't know if they're going to keep doing it or not. But the more information they have about us, the more they're able to tailor their advertisements to us. I think the important thing is that this isn't something that advertisers wouldn't have done when, when I was a kid. Like if they could have done this, they would have done this. The message is the same. They're just able to deliver it in such a personalized way, tailored just for us, that we have got to become even more vigilant about it. And I think one of the things that's so important about the work that you do is we've got to remove ourselves from it as much as we possibly can. Everywhere we go, everything we do online or on television or driving or listening is going to have, you know, that advertisement tailored to us. And so time away from that, when we can just be with ourselves and remind ourselves of what's so important is so valuable.
- [25:39]
A
You have this quote in here by a man named Ernest Ditcher, something like that, that says to some extent he was a Freudian psychoanalyst who assisted advertisers. Because you talk about like in the 1920s there's a wave of affluence. And so advertisers deliberately begin to link ownership with happiness in the public mind. So the advertisers get help from psychologists, which there's a woman named Dr. Susan Lynn who wrote a book called who's Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Business and the Lives of Children. Oh, it's a pretty eye opening book because she talks about. And this other man named Kim John Payne, who wrote a book called Simplicity, Simplicity Parenting talks about how in these conferences that retailers will have, they refer to parents as purchasing friction. Like you're the, you're the purchasing friction. How can we get around the purchasing friction? How can we get kids to nag and, and all these things? And they're using psychologists. You know, they're having these bright minds come in and figure out how to basically manipulate people to buy things. So this quote says to some extent, the needs and wants of people have to be continuously stirred up. And that's what we're seeing. That's what's happening is. And now this target marketing is making it even more effective. So can you talk then about the different generational changes? So you talk about the silent generation, how these were the ones that grew up in the Depression, so they may have a tendency toward hoarding and that. Actually there is a national association of Senior move managers because downsizing can be difficult. Often you have to move into, you know, we've talked about that with like parents, you know, is moving into different smaller home situations or places where they provide care. And that can be really hard. So you go through these generations. I. Okay, I have some questions, but I, I don't know which one to focus on. Baby boomers is when the discretionary. This is the one I want to get to. Discretionary income reaches a high for baby boomers. Gen X is when the term latchkey kid comes out. So latchkey kid is a term that was not coined until Gen X. You wrote this. Latchkey kids have become helicopter parents, which is so interesting. I've never considered that. Why do you think that is?
- [27:55]
B
Well, I think so for my generation, Gen X, I think it was the. Like to take it even a step back. So baby boomers. So my. So I'm 50, so my parents. Baby boomer generation. Like, one of the things I think we need to understand is that the idea of two working parents was brand new to basically my parents. Like, wasn't the case before that. I'm sure there were some, you know, but generally speaking, the idea that there wasn't someone at home raising the kids, it became brand new to the baby boomer generation after World War II and suburbs start popping up and bigger homes and more stuff and I suppose cost of living increase.
- [28:47]
A
So do you think that that stems back to this is what I've heard and I've read it a couple places, but I couldn't pinpoint where. And I've also maybe heard it. I'm not totally sure what I think about it, but I've heard that and I've. And I've seen advertisements from like Swanson that are like, you can Microwave your dinner and sit, everyone can sit around and watch TV and love it, you know, and it's sort of diminishing the home based skills. It's sort of diminishing the role maybe that the mother typically would have played. And so one of the things I've heard about is that, well, when two people enter the workforce then the government gets more tax money. I don't know if there's anything nefarious behind it, but I've heard things like that. And it's just kind of an interesting, it's such an interesting shift when something doesn't exist. Something that is a really a fundamental shift which is should there be an adult home with the children to being like oh no, doesn't really matter, right?
- [29:46]
B
Yeah, well that's a whole, a whole long conversation. We, I started a nonprofit 10 years ago called the Hope Effect. And the whole idea is getting children out of institutional orphanages and into families because we grow best and we develop best when we have parents, both parents investing into, into our lives. The, the whole baby boomer thing. And I get, I guess I haven't even thought of it until you laid it out that way. Like I think a lot of the way a generation grows up and parents, their children is in a lot of ways a reaction to the way that they grew up. And so if you picture my parents, parents grew up through the, the Great Depression and had nothing and like legitimately my grandpa got an orange every Christmas for I don't know how long. They lost the family farm and, and all of that. And then the baby boomer generation grows up and I can see some sort of natural reaction to hey, we don't want that to happen to us. How about we both go work and make as much money as we possibly can so that we don't have to go through the exact same thing that my parents had to go through. Of course the, the result of that is latchkey kids and Gen X grows up. And that's the phrase, right? Like we came home, we had our own key and you know, came to, came home after school, the empty homes until the parents got home at, at 5:00. And we didn't like that. And so we raise our kids and we're like I sure wish I had parents around when I got home from school and not so tired every evening. And so our, so our generation reacts to that by becoming helicopter parents and super involved in, in our kids lives. And like they're almost too much not letting them grow up and not letting them make mistakes. And trying to. Trying to keep them from all the, I don't know, poor decisions or mistakes that. That we made along the way.
- [31:56]
A
What an interesting thing. It reminds me of our entrepreneurial journey, which is like, that didn't work. That didn't work. Let's try something else. So, like, every generation comes along and they're like, that didn't work, so we're gonna do something else. It's interesting to, I guess, try and walk that out. Like, what will that look like for the kids to come? But good to know the. Some of the history there because it helps us to understand where we're at at this point in time.
- [32:24]
B
I think the. I think this is off minimalism topic, but I think I'm seeing the re. The revolt now is. So my kids got cell phones at a pretty early age at 13, I think is when I. When we gave our kids cell phones. But I think the. The news seems to be that a lot of parents are holding off longer than my generation in giving their kids technology and cell phones. And they knew it wasn't beneficial them, and they're trying to keep their kids from some of those influences and some of that social media.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I just actually talked to this man earlier today. He's 23. His name's Sean Killingsworth, and he has created this movement, it's called the Reconnect movement, where he started at college campuses. But you get together and you. You have a phone valet. You know, you check your phone in, and that's your ticket to get into the event. And the events are like, I don't know, we're gonna play Frisbee football or whatever that's called, or we're gonna sit around and talk or play cards. It's nothing that's extravagant. But he says, we're gonna raise our kids a lot different. We lost our childhoods. And so that's the revolt.
- [33:34]
B
Yep, I think so.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah. That's the Gen Z revolt on. And the sort of mistakes that were made on them. Oh, goodness. All right. So this is, you know, this is like one to the next to the next. But you can see how your generation would affect you in terms of your consumption and possibly your hoarding and that type of thing. So you explain that extremely well in the book, and then you talk a lot about the fears. So there's a lot of fears associated here. One of the fears would be that baby. Baby boomer fear of going through the Great Depression and wanting to hold onto things that they have. But you Talk about security. And you make a really good point that security cannot be found in temporal possessions. And our world is really unpredictable. I think it's become even more unpredictable since you wrote the book. But the contingencies of life are too many. But we're never going to even still. I mean. But sometimes though, if I were to be quite honest, Joshua, sometimes I would be like, there seems that there would be a point where you would feel really secure. And. Well, here's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the people that have underground bunkers. Have you seen those?
- [34:46]
B
Not in person.
- [34:47]
A
Look, look, if I could just get to the level of life where I have an underground bunker, that's like, I haven't seen them in person either. But you know, you got a bunker and it's like self sustaining, it's got water, it's got murphy beds. And so, you know, that feels like the ultimate level of security. But I know it's dumb, but also I do kind of lean in a little bit to that. So one of the things that you brought up was we look for a lot of security in our possessions, but really the, you know, if you wanted true security, you can't have it. And also relationships would be really helpful.
- [35:23]
B
Okay, so I, I've never had an underground bunker. I've never talked to someone with an underground bunker and maybe, maybe they legitimately feel very secure. Although I think if someone's building an underground bunker, that's almost, almost argument in itself that they don't feel all that secure about what they have and what they have accumulated. I, I'm not into prepping. Some people do it very well, but I get a lot of questions about how does prepping apply to minimalism and how do I do this and, and how do I do that? And I, I always encourage people like, hey, what are you preparing? What are you preparing for? Right. Like, I grew up in North Dakota. A blizzard coming in, we prepare for that. Maybe an earthquake if you're in California. But most people, I think are like, they're just grabbing things, they're just holding on to things and they don't even really know what they're like, what they're trying to hold out over or, or prepare for. And I'll say this goes back to your underground bunker, although it's a long ways of getting there. I think to myself, at some point, if you have enough supplies in your garage or in your basement and really something goes down in the external world, like, you're gonna have to protect what you have in your garage and in your basement. If you're the, if you're the house on the block that has all this stuff, like, are you really prepared to protect what you spend? Exactly, because that's what you're going to have to do. I assume the same might be for an underground bunker. Like, I don't know, maybe you really feel safe about the idea of you having it there. But if you're the only underground bunker.
- [37:12]
A
People are going to try and get.
- [37:13]
B
In city, I. I hope you got a large defense force.
- [37:17]
A
They come with a blast door. So you're. Maybe. But anyway, that's a long.
- [37:21]
B
That's a long way to get to. Yeah. You know, I think the. A lot of our accumulation of not just possessions, but money is that we think money is going to bring us happiness and we think it's going to bring security or we think our possessions are going to bring us happiness or even security to some extent. And my argument in the book, I think my argument in life is that money and possessions never bring us as much happiness or security as we think. And so anyone who has ever had a certain level of income or an amount in their bank and they were nervous about it and they thought, well, you know, if I just had, you know, this much money saved or if I made this much money, then we would be okay. And what happens is they work really hard, they make all these sacrifices, they start making that much more money or they get to that level of net worth and they discover that they're not actually that much happier. They don't actually feel secure. And so rather than saying, okay, money and possessions aren't going to bring that happiness and security into my life, we think to ourselves, I just, I just had the wrong number. And actually, I need to be making this much. I need to have this much saved. I have a good friend of ours. I won't say the name, so it'll be fine. And probably won't be listening anyway, but for. For the longest time I've known him, they said that they needed $2 million in their retirement account before they retired. And they just passed $2 million. Because I asked them, I'm like, how, you know, you getting there? They're getting older. And they said, yeah, we've decided that 4 million is what we need. And I think that that is what happens. We just keep moving the goal posts because we keep thinking more money will make us happier, it'll make us more secure, and then it doesn't. And so rather than thinking, I got to look elsewhere we just start thinking I just need more money, I just need more possessions. When in reality, certainly my, my faith, like that's where I'm going to find my security. But even for someone who, who doesn't have a like a religious faith, I think relationships and knowing people and being in a community of people always will help us find more security and more happiness than buying a lot of things that we don't need or sacrificing our life to accumulate wealth. That it's pretty. Not nearly as fulfilling as we think it is.
- [40:13]
A
Interesting that what we would sacrifice, right? So the sacrifice in the pursuit of money and more possessions is often relationships. And relationships also provide a good level of security and protection. I mean if not just for your mental health and well being, also for your physical health and well being, but then also how you know how well you're going to do when the grid goes down. You need some friends, you know, someone who can come up on horseback when you can't ride your car. The interesting part too about the defend and we lived in this house where the previous owner, the best type of house to buy is when the previous owner has gotten really wealthy and. And then like they put in all this work and then they move. So we have had the opportunity of moving into a couple homes like that where they're just like, that person just moved to like some mansion in North Carolina. You know, they're just trying to get out of their home. So he moved in this house and the, the guy before us, he was like a restaurant owner, ended up moving to this massive house on a lake. He had put in a whole house generator, which was incredible. Joshua. I mean it was like on this concrete slab and it was every Wednesday. It would like kick up, you know, to like make sure it worked. And we're in Michigan, so, you know, it snows and lose power sometimes. And so every once in a while you lose power and then, I mean within nanoseconds your thing is up and running. And that guy was also a landscape landscaper. I don't know, we had like lights all over the place. So like the whole neighborhood has no power in. Our house is like within seconds is like lit up like a Christmas tree. Like those people have power. So to your point, it does kind of put you in a maybe a precarious situation, you know, because people will be like, well, we're gonna go there. So yeah, the who question of security is, is a really tricky one. But I had read this book by Sahil Bloom. It's called the Five Types of wealth. And he said that all the way up the income ladder, all the way up, people say, if I just had two to three times more, I. I call it the.
- [42:14]
B
I call it the prosperity paradox. The more money we have, the more money we think we need. There are three studies that, that I point to. Number one, they were asked, how much money do you need to retire? And the average amount was 1.2 million. Unless you had a million dollars. Then you said 4 million. They asked people how much of a pay increase you needed to be happier. And the average amount was 30,000. 30,000 more would make me happy. Unless you made over 100,000 and then you needed, like, 80,000 more to be happy. And then the Other one is 8.8% of Americans are millionaires, and yet 80% of millionaires say that they're not wealthy. And so it's just like your definition of, are you wealthy as a millionaire if you're under a million dollars, you think it sounds wealthy. Once you have it, you say it isn't. The more money we have, the more money we think we need. Over and over again.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah. I mean, you're just chasing it. It was interesting that the retirement story is an interesting one, because I talked to this man named Dan Buettner, who talks about the blue Z, people that live to be into their hundreds, the centenarians. And in several of those cultures, maybe not several, maybe only one. They don't even have a word for retirement. It's not part of the lexicon. And biblically speaking, I don't see it. So it's an interesting concept. I talked to this man, David Green. He's the founder of Hobby Lobby. He says the same thing. Like, he's like, I don't. I'm not going out sitting on some beach property picking up seashells. He's like, that's not a good way to go out. I'm gonna go out serving the Lord and, you know, and. And if I have to be a greeter at Hobby Lobby and. And, you know, brighten people's day with my smile, he's like, that's what I'm gonna do. So how interesting to say, okay, I go from 2 million, now I need 4 million. That's a lot of stress. You're trying to double it, you know, and to hit it, to hit a milestone that really was actually created by somebody to try and, like, make a lot of money. Off to the 6 off the 65 plus crowd.
- [44:22]
B
My. My grandpa always. My grandpa always used to say, you won't find retirement in the Bible. It was invented by the politicians.
- [44:32]
A
Yeah.
- [44:33]
B
And I tell, I even go to the history of retirement in, in my book Things that Matter. How the pursuit of leisure can keep us from meaning. And I'm, I'm with you. You don't find retirement in the Bible. You do find transition. Specifically in the Old Testament, the priests used to carry the tabernacle until they reach the age of 40. And then the younger priests carry the tabernacle and the older ones became the mentors. And I think you can see that in life, the older you get, you can't do every job anymore. But that doesn't mean we stop contributing. That doesn't mean we go, that's right, sit on a beach every day for the rest of our life.
- [45:14]
A
Dr. Arthur Brooks talks about that. He talks about the change in intelligence crystallized. And the other one is like flexible. It's not the right word. But when you're younger, your intelligence, it's fluid, I think fluid intelligence to crystallized.
- [45:27]
B
From Strength to Strength is the name of his book.
- [45:30]
A
Yes. So good. His books are so good. Okay, so there's a fear then about security, but then there's also a fear and concern, I would say, about some other things. People are afraid they're going to be embarrassed. And I like, I really like this topic of comparison because you brought up, you know, if you've got one, if you're already a millionaire, you feel like you need to have 4 million to retire. But I heard someone say one time, like, if you have change in your pocket, you're wealthier than a large percent percentage of the rest of the world. So one of the things that you talked about was how when you're in your sort of day to day environment, you might feel fine, but then you go to a party or something and you feel embarrassed because you're not wearing the same type of clothes. Actually I had that happen to when I was in my early twenties. I dated for like two weeks this guy who worked for Jaguar, but he was from South Africa, so he would say Jaguar, which was kind of pretty cool. And he was a little bit older. So I ended up going to like a work function with him. And I was like, I am so out of place. Like, I have never in my life been to anything like this. And so I, I kind of like the idea of not putting yourself into those environments. But also you say it really makes you realize how arbitrary your definition of normal is.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah, there's a study done about, I don't have the stats in front of me, I always just generalize them. Something about people who had a net worth of $2 million and then got under 1 million. And they asked him how it happened, and something like 40% of them said they started hanging out with people who were worth 10 million. And like, just the way they vacation and the way they spend their money was different than what they grew up with. That got them to 2 million. And then they started hanging out with people. 10 million. So you're right, like, like our normal, normal changes based on the, the people that we spend time with. Which is a, a pretty strong advertisement and endorsement for making sure that we're surrounding ourselves with the right people. But the point I try to make in the book, and boy, it sounds like a great book the way you're describing it is. My contention in the book is that we often are comparing the wrong things to people. We tend to compare the car that they drive, the house that they live in, the clothes that they wear, the watch, the purse. Like, the vacations that they go on. Like, that's our first inkling, our first thought of comparing myself to that person. And man, how much better would we be as a people and as a society as, as Christians if, like, I wasn't comparing what they owned, but I was comparing my, like, my, my generosity. Like, who's, who's kinder, who's more compassionate, who's more generous? Not like it's a competition, but if I was looking up to people who were more generous than me, and I thought to myself, man, how, how can I be as generous as them? How do I become as compassionate as them? How do I become as kind as them? I, you know, we get embarrassed that our car is worth less than the other person. And we don't even get embarrassed at how much money we wasted on a car. You know, when there's people in our neighborhood that can't eat and we're worried about. I don't know, I think I say in the book at one point, like, we get embarrassed over the brand of our clothing far more often than we get embarrassed over how many clothes go unworn in our closet. And I feel like the second should be far more embarrassing to us.
- [49:24]
A
We're looking at the wrong things. There's so much in this book, we only covered some of it. You talk a lot about generosity. You talk about when you threw out the sports shaped jello mold and your wife was looking for it. So sometimes it does backfire. But for the most part, this is taking you down a path that has been really fulfilling. You talk about watching less tv. Woohoo. Television is a self propagating habit. That's so interesting. I've never heard anybody phrase it that way, but we hardly watch tv. But I, I remember other times in life when we watch more and you're oh well, the next episode is coming. The next episode. It just sucks you in. Watching less television just may be your quickest shortcut to better living. Right away you talk about being addicted to busyness, how to become unbusy. And you wrap this one up by talking about going for it. Going for it. Sign up for the art lesson, go volunteer, try out the triathlon, learn how to do French cooking, write your novel, finish your degree, take in foster children, ride a horse in a competition like go do it. Because you're going to be opening up resources for yourself. Before we wrap it up, I would love to hear about two things. The first one is your non profit, the hope effect celebrating 10 years. Huge congrats to you. And I'd love to hear about the new book Uncluttered Faith.
- [50:33]
B
Yeah, wonderful. So we, so I wrote the more of less finding the life you want under everything you own. That was 10 years ago. So taking a step back, even before that I would have signed the contract to write the book I had been running Becoming Minimalist. I was doing it full time, I wasn't buying stuff and so we didn't need much to live on. The story goes that we pitched this book idea to 10 publishers and nine of them wrote back and making an offer on the book. And I asked my agent, I said, well, what do we do now? He said, well now you just have them bid against one another and see who offers the most that aligns with your vision. And, and it was interesting to learn pretty early on that I was going to get paid a lot of money to write a book about how buying things won't make you happy. And I remember sitting on the couch with my wife, with Kim and just saying like, what are we going to do? Like are we going to like we really believe everything we're writing, right? Like we're not going to go buy a bigger house and get a bigger screen television and upgrade all the furniture, right? What are we going to do with this unneeded income coming into our lives? And we decided that we wanted to solve a problem in the world and we wanted to do something important for other people. So we started a non profit called the Hope Effect. We help get children out of institutional orphanages and into families. Shockingly we have had the research for a hundred years that orphanages are really harmful for children. The children who grow up in an orphanage are 20 times more likely to end up homeless, 40 times more likely to end up in the sex trade, 500 times more likely to commit suicide.
- [52:23]
A
Wow.
- [52:24]
B
In most developed nations like America, we've moved away from orphanages because of this study. So we have a foster care system. But in a lot of developing nations, they still use orphanages. So that's where we work. We're in Mexico, Cambodia, Thailand, Honduras. And we help transition their governments towards an environment where children get to grow up inside of a family rather than inside of an orphanage. So that's the work that we do with, with the more of less. And so that was the first book ten years ago. My first faith based Christian book comes out in February 2026 called Uncluttered Faith. And I was a pastor for 15 years and I was writing about minimalism for 15 years. And I'm like, I think it's time for me to write the book about how Jesus calls us to minimalism, how Jesus calls us to give away what we don't need, not because it's some sacrificial, boring life, but because it's a better way to live. And so the book goes through 12 benefits that come, 12 spiritual promises from the Bible that come into our lives when we actually live out what Jesus called us to do in terms of money and possessions. And it's good.
- [53:44]
A
It is interesting that, true, truly, that faith is uncluttered. You know, what must you do to be saved? All who call upon the name of the Lord. And, and these verses that are so simplistic. What is the first and greatest commandment? You know, that, that it is a simple gospel. What a, what a cool premise. Uncluttered Faith. I think I might have said 2027. So if I did just everybody delete that. Comes out in 2026, just in a couple months. People can probably pre order it now. I got emotional when you said you're working in Mexico, Cambodia, Thailand, and you said it so fast I didn't even catch the last place.
- [54:17]
B
Honduras.
- [54:19]
A
In Honduras. And that all stemmed from June, the neighbor. And truly from June's daughter, whoever she is. She's not even getting the credit here, you know, in this podcast, June's daughter decided to, to become more minimalist.
- [54:36]
B
Yeah.
- [54:37]
A
And here, because of that, that ripple. What a ripple. There are now children in Honduras who are living in families that would have been living in an institutional orphanage.
- [54:49]
B
Should be encouragement to all of us to be careful how we live and make the most of every opportunity and be intentional because people are watching and people are noticing, and we're gonna have. We're gonna have an effect one way or the other on other people. So.
- [55:07]
A
That's right. Joshua, I've been a fan for such a long time. It's really an honor to meet you. Not in person, but through zoom. Kind of the same thing. In this day and age, we always end our show with the same question. The question is, what's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.
- [55:20]
B
Favorite memory from my childhood that is outside. I. I hope I can do two gardening with my dad. But me, I have a twin brother. Me, my twin brother and our neighbor Corey. We used to play two on one baseball wiffle ball in the backyard in South Dakota. And it is my greatest childhood memory is playing playing baseball with Corey and Jaren in the back backyard.
- [55:46]
A
I was, I. That was what I was going to ask. Do you have good twin names? And I think those are good twin names. Joshua and Jared.
- [55:52]
B
Yep. You got it.
- [55:53]
A
Well done to your mother. That's fantastic. All right, well, it's an honor to meet you. Huge congrats about your new book coming out. Uncluttered Faith. I can't wait to read it. Thank you for being here.
- [56:02]
B
Your pleasure. Thank you.