531 | Maximalist Households

The Minimalists talk about being a minimalist in a maximalist household, butting heads with people you live with, overcoming body-image insecurities, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How do I stay sane as the only minimalist in a household of loving but devoted maximalists? (1:50) How do you butt heads with the people you live with? (21:16) Right Here, Right Now: Emotional Clutter on Kindle and Audible, and new episodes of the How to Write Better Podcast. (42:10) Listener Tip: A resource for overcoming body-image insecurity and remembering that your worth is not your appearance. (43:55) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, hello everybody. Welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman. Hey, hey, hey. It's a beautiful day. Let's do this TK. We've got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about being a minimalist in a maximalist household. Butting heads with people you live with, overcoming body image insecurities and much, much more today. Plus on page three, I gotta show this to you TK. I unlocked a new level of advertisement clutter from one of my favorite podcasts. Let's start with our callers.

• 1:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. You can join the program by calling 406-219-7839 or email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks patrons for your support. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes, indeed. Our first question today is from Pam.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Pam from Singapore. I'm a preschool teacher. I'm a mother of two foster kids. I live with my mother-in-law and my husband. I really just transpired your podcast recently and I really love it. I really love what you're talking about using things and loving people. And I really agree with how physical clutter affects our emotional state and how it's linked as well. But the question I have is that how, for myself, I do feel that I'm a minimalist. But how do minimalists then live among maximalists? Because in my family, I think I'm the only minimalist. And don't get me wrong, I love them.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  You know, I love my children, I love my husband, I love my mother-in-law. But the thing is that we are just very, very different. And when it comes to like cleaning the house and stuff like that, then it gets very, it gets very difficult because I'm someone that will feel that there are things to be thrown away or give away. But to them, it could be the, I will need this later, I will use this later. You know, it's always, there's always a use for it later. So I felt it the most recently because of Christmas. I got a little depressed also because I cleared the house mid-December. And then I realized that Christmas is here and we're gonna receive more things from people,

• 3:21Speaker 02

  which my family would not want to throw or give away. And that got me a little depressed. And that was why I even sent a message to you guys. So I do love to hear what you have to say or what is your recommendation. Thank you.

• 3:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, it feels to me like Bloods and Crips are living in the same household here. Minimalists and maximalists. So, or maybe it's like Boston Celtics fans and L.A. Lakers fans sort of trying to coexist. And it's like, how could I ever live with this person with these different preferences? And so what do you tell Pam? How can Pam stay sane as the only minimalist in a loving but maximalist household?

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, I think it begins with appealing to your subjective needs rather than debating scientific facts. I remember we had a symposium once and someone expressed how they desire for everyone in the home to close the toilet seat. And they brought it up a couple of times, like, hey, you should close the toilet seat. And they gave their arguments why. And then they did some research and found like a nice scientific argument for why it's healthier to do that. And one of the things we talked about is, hey, look, you're right. You are indeed right. And you can be right all day long, but that's not going to move people as much as can you do me a favor?

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Would you be willing to help me out? I think about my father when I was little. He never says, hey, get your butt over here and take out the garbage. He'd say, son, could you take out the garbage? And him and I both knew that he had the power and the authority to say it the other way. But he enrolled me. He enlisted me voluntarily because when you give people a sense of agency and opportunity to cooperate with you, they tend to be more amenable to what you're requesting. And so I would, I would take a step back and ask myself, what do, what do I need my family to do to honor my boundaries and limitations? And what am I willing to compromise? What am I willing to let go of? Because I gotta live with them and they gotta live with me. So it can't be they get their way on everything and I get my way on everything. But what do I, what are my non-negotiables?

• 5:34Speaker 03

  What am I willing to compromise on? And then I would go to them and say, hey, would you be willing to pick up after yourself in this way? Would you be willing to let me find a place for these things that is easy for you to retrieve, but also easier for me to look at? And the power of that question you always talk about, would you be willing to, combined by, and here's what compromise I'm willing to make in order to make it easier for you, holds a lot more power than just kind of telling people what to do or being silently frustrated because they won't live according to your sensitivities.

• 6:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I would like to make a semantic suggestion here, or at least an observation, that you probably don't live with maximalists. Maximalism is intentional the way that minimalism is intentional. It's a deliberate curating of physical goods. And maximalists are intentional. I would say it's pretty difficult to be a maximalist. My mom was a maximalist. She wasn't a hoarder in a traditional sense. Everything was curated and organized and beautiful. She just had a lot of objects she really enjoyed. And so I want to be careful here to not talk about maximalists as though they are the problem. The other people aren't the problem. It's the lack of intention there, right?

• 6:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It doesn't map on to your level of intention with minimalism. I think it'd be relatively easy for a minimalist to live with a maximalist. I know, because I grew up with one, right? And I could live in a house very similar to hers. It's just adorned with a bunch of trinkets. In the simple newsletter recently, I wrote about the distinction between curation and decoration. Sometimes you're curating, sometimes you're decorating. Both of those things require a level of intention. I would say often what happens is we go on autopilot. We fall asleep at the wheel, so to speak. And hopefully, the vehicle drives itself.

• 7:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But most of the time, what happens is we end up at a point where we've overconsumed. We have all this excess stuff, and then we crash. We run into a wall of clutter. And I think that's where Pam's frustration comes from. It isn't from living with maximalists who are being intentional about the objects. You just don't like those objects. It's that the people don't even think about it. They haven't woken up to the fact that some things add value to our lives, other things don't. And TK, I'm curious. You use this line that you hear quite often. "I will need this later." Not...

• 8:06Speaker 03

  I might need this later or just in case. But there is a story, a priming, a conditioning that says, I'm going to hold on to this, not because it's useful right now, not because it was useful before, but because I will need this later. You can apply that to anything and it feels true in the moment. It feels factual, but it may not actually be the truth a year from now, a decade from now, et cetera. Yeah, you know, one of the, the tools in my philosophy kit is, is falsifiability. What kind of evidence would force me to concede that I was wrong? It's okay for me to think that I'm right about something. We all need to do that to be able to survive. Hey, I think I'm right about something.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  I could be wrong, but I think I'm right. But it's important for me to be able to precisely define the conditions. What could I observe? What could you show me that would help me to see I am wrong if I am indeed wrong? In a similar way, when it comes to, hey, I will need this later. Okay, you think you're right? Maybe I think you're wrong. It doesn't matter. You have the right to see it that way. But here's the question. What is the standard that would let you know you are wrong if you are wrong? I think when it comes to just in case items or just for win items or, oh, I can't let this go because I'm going to need it item. I think that the great way to handle that is to say, that is totally permissible. We can all do that, but let's put some boundaries around it so that we say,

• 9:33Speaker 03

  if I don't use this in 90 days, then that's probably good evidence that I was wrong when I said I will need it. How much do I need something that I can go without thinking about in 90 days?

• 9:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I do this all the time, by the way, in our, in our home. It's the just in case rule or the seasonality rule. Have I used it in the last 90 days? If the answer is yes, then okay. Am I going to use it in the next 90 or was it something that was seasonal and I'm never going to use it again? If so, then I give myself permission to let go. But if the answer is, yeah, I didn't use it in the last 90 days because that was winter. But now I have got these beach trunks that I know I'm going to use in the next 90 days. Okay, I'm going to write it down on my list.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 10:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And 90 days from now. You're gonna see it on my calendar, donate beach trunks if unworn. And now I know like, okay, there is a ticking clock right now. It doesn't have to be 90 days for you. It could be 120. It could be 30 days if you want to get aggressive with it. But that also gives a peace of mind to the other people in my house where, where they're not like, oh, wait, I'm gonna hold on to this. We don't have to get rid of it right now. Let's just put a boundary. Let's put a deadline on it. If we've decided we haven't used it in the last, in the next 90 days, then we'll, then we'll give ourselves, we don't have to give ourselves permission to let it go right now. Let's give ourselves permission to let it go in 90 days.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and the thing about needs and so on is it's kind of tricky because we aren't always as good at measuring things as we think we are. So it may be the case that I don't think of myself as someone that spends a lot of money. But if someone were to say, let's document your spending for the next 90 days and see what that looks like. I might go, oh, my gosh, $3 here, $5 here, $8 there. And I have like a dozen of microtransactions every day that adds up to maybe $800 a month on things like Uber. You know, snacks at the gas station. And it's like, whoa, you actually spent a lot of money, but you didn't recognize it until you measured it. When we measure things, sometimes that gives us a little bit of accountability.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  So if I got a bunch of books and maybe my wife were to say, would you be willing to get rid of this book? And I say to her, well, I'm gonna read it. I've got the right to say that. But what if she says back to me, can you commit to reading it this year? Now, if I can't commit to that, that's an opportunity for me to hold up that, that hesitancy as a mirror to say, what does that tell me? About what I really want, what I really am intending to do. Maybe I was telling myself a story that I was willing, that I needed it, but if I'm not willing to commit to it, then I probably don't.

• 12:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This is the hardest thing about living with other people is it's trying to change them. I wrote this little maxim down. I'm gonna hand it to you as a gift and I'd like to see you unwrap it for me. When you stop trying to change others, you finally make space for change. How does this apply to Pam and her situation?

• 12:22Speaker 03

  There's that old saying, what you resist persists. Trying to change others, two things are gonna happen. Number one, you're gonna become really preoccupied with those aspects of them that you want to change. And those are the things that you don't like. And it becomes a little bit more difficult to like people when you're actively trying to change them. The second thing that happens with that is, well, that's a bad internal experience for you. But other people can feel that. People respond to your vibration more than they do to your verbalization, right? We're always communicating verbally, but we're communicating at this vibrational level. And it's that vibrational level that takes over. It's like what Zig Ziglar said about sales, that sales is a transference of feeling.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  How you feel on the inside about the product you're selling is so much more powerful than all the factual information you have about the product. So when you're talking to people from a state of like being really annoyed with them, not liking them, you're not thinking very creatively, you're acting desperately, and it comes off to the other person as selfish. Because it's about me, me, me, me, me, what I need, what I need, what I need, how irritating I find you to be.

• 13:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But you need to change for my benefit.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  That's right. And you know what? It's okay to feel that way, but it's sort of like, you know, my big brother taught me back in the day. Hey, man, it's okay to like that girl, but you gotta have some dignity in how you pursue her. Don't be desperate, right? In a similar way, it's okay to look at what people are doing and say, I don't like that. That's inconvenient for me. I want that to change. But when you talk about it, you want to factor in the other person's incentives. So that you can get what you want by appealing to their self-interest.

• 13:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that is the key. Right now, you're thinking about it from your perspective, and we're all solipsists in that sense, right? And not in a literal sense, but in this figurative sense, like where everything feels like I'm the center of the universe. I see your clutter through my eyes.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 14:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I see your stuff clouding up my space. I see your things getting in my way. Me, me, me, me, I'm the good guy here, you're the bad guy here. And I know Pam doesn't, would never verbalize it that way. And she doesn't actually think about, if she were to say that out loud, she'd say, well, that's absurd. But sometimes it helps. To say these things out loud. So we realize the absurdity of our conditioning. That said, I think one of the reasons that people in your house are being unintentional with the objects they're bringing into the home or the objects they're holding on to is not because they want to disrespect you or they dislike you. They haven't found a compelling reason,

• 14:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a compelling benefit. There's not a why behind letting go. And I found the best way to help other people let go isn't to give them the facts, as TK points out. It's like the salesperson who goes up to you, yeah, the car's got 168 horsepower. You're like, okay, that's a fact. I don't feel any truth in that. Right. You don't want to sell me the car. I don't want to buy it. Right. But you've got someone else who doesn't even know the facts. They're like, man, you're not going to believe TK. This car is so fast. Let me get you in the seat. You're, you're gonna love the ride, the smoothness. Now, all of a sudden, there's a truth there that is, that is separated from the fact, facts that you might find in a brochure or a specs sheet, right? And so, other people need to understand the benefits for them. And I say

• 15:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  for them, because they might be different for you. For you, Pam, the benefits might be, I just want a house that's a bit tidier. I don't want to spend so much time cleaning up or constantly moving things around or organizing, or maybe I don't want to trip over the clutter. I just don't want the visual eyesore of the clutter in my house. But for them, I might be, oh yeah, we are spending too much money. We're spending like 800 bucks a month on a bunch of stuff from Amazon. And I noticed even for me, a week or so ago, my wife and daughter were gone for a week. They were in Montana at her sister's house. And you know what happened, TK? Not a single box arrived from Amazon or any other website on our front porch. And it was so freeing

• 16:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  for a week. And I was like, ah, see, look how responsible I am. When they're not home, none of this excess stuff shows up. And then the day she arrived back, there were two boxes on the porch. I'm like, ha. And then she opened them up and it was all stuff she had bought for me that I needed, like coffee filters.

• 16:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, it's easy to think someone else is part of the problem, but what is my role in all of this as well? We're not really butting heads here, which will bring us into our question of the week here in a moment. I am seeing my ideal, the ideal perfection of a household and saying, well, that is my ideal, without recognizing what their ideal might be and also recognize what the benefits of simplifying are for them, whether that's financial or time wise, or it's a relationship enhancer, or it's just a cleaner house.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. You know, and, and sometimes I'm a big proponent of appealing to other people's self-interest as a way to incentivize them to do things. But sometimes when you can't do that, I do think it's okay to make it about yourself. But you want to make it about yourself in a way that's as easy as possible for the other person to agree with, in a way that actually depends on the legitimacy of the relationship. So I'm going to give you two versions of me asking you for a break and you tell me which one makes you feel like helping me. Version number one is this, hey, Josh, can we take a break right now? I just, I just need a minute. Can we take a break?

• 17:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, sure.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Okay. Second version, hey, Josh, I need a break and I know last time you weren't feeling well and you wanted a break. We all agreed to give you one. Can I have one?

• 18:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, that's fine, I guess.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  The reason you hesitate is because you could feel yourself having to submit to me in some intangible way.

• 18:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or also defend myself.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I held something over your head and, and my request was based on you conceding how right I am to make this demand of you, right? And that's a little bit harder and we don't really have to do that. And there's a great temptation to do it because sometimes we feel like, well, just in case this person doesn't love me, like me, or empathize with me enough to give me what I want. Let me add a moral rule in there so that they can feel guilty and that'll give them the extra motivation. And that often has the opposite effect. It's okay to say, hey, I know you guys don't need this. This is all about me. I just, I just need it so I can be able to focus and have a clear head. I know you guys are cool, but when I see stuff laying all over the place, it just stresses me out. I don't want to be stressed out.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Would you be willing to do X, Y, Z? And give them something specific because they don't think like you. So even if they say, yeah, if it's vague, they're just going to go back to living how they lived. Because they don't have a vocabulary for the kind of intentionality that you find to be natural. And so say things like, hey, you know, Christmas is coming up. We got all this stuff that we said we need to keep because we need it. How about we do this from now on? If we, if we say we need something, nobody challenges you. Nobody questions you on it. We trust you. But you gotta use it in three months, or you gotta use it in six months. And if you don't, then we get rid of it and do this thing with it.

• 19:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, those boundaries are important. They just highlight what is unacceptable. And we have to agree, if we're living together, there are going to be things that are unacceptable to me that are perfectly acceptable to you. And so we have to agree. What are those boundaries or those unacceptables in our lives? What do they look like? And so the last thing I'll say to you, Pam, is minimalism begins with your stuff. Peace begins with your boundaries. And so we're, we're looking at the things right now, but what are the boundaries? What are the unacceptables that we want to put up and, and highlight? And so if you want to find some more boundaries that help you and your family, your so-called maximalist family, I would just say that they're, they're unawake at this point to the clutter that's in the home.

• 20:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's okay. It's not a judgment of them. It's not that they should be awake. You've woken up to something. And by the way, Pam, how many years did it take you to wake up to this? And if you were to walk into my house right now, I wouldn't say, your house needs to look like mine because it will be so calm. That's a fact. But if you walk into my house now, you might walk in, you say, wow, this place is so calm. You are seeing the benefit. How can you show them the benefit of those boundaries? If you'd like some help, we just put out a brand new audiobook. It's called Very Very Simple. You can download it for free as an audiobook or an ebook at veryversimplesimple.com. TK and I did the audiobook together. It's short. It's only like 90 or 100 minutes. So you can listen to it in a single setting, or you can break it up and read one of these

• 20:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  12 tools for a simpler life. You can read them one day at a time. You can read them together and you can figure out where do these adjustable rules, these adjustable boundaries fit into my life. So check that out, veryversimple.com. It's also available on Audible or Kindle, if you'd like it on one of those formats. Before we get back to our callers, TK, let's scrutinize the question of the week. How do you butt heads with the people you live with? How do you butt heads with the people you live with? I thought this was the perfect pairing for Pam's question. Before we get pithy, let's hear how some of our patrons answered this question. Ryan says, "I live with someone who likes to

• 21:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  control gaslight and minimize others." I hope this isn't Nicodemus that wrote this in. This wasn't Nicodemus, was it?

• 21:43Speaker 03

  That's totally Ryan.

• 21:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's the opposite of Mariah. "I live with someone who likes to control gaslight and minimize others. I do my best to not engage and to create solid boundaries which have already been communicated but not respected. I feel like I have to actively avoid conflict, not to shrink, but to protect my own energy." TK, what do you do when someone doesn't respect the boundaries that you've communicated?

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Get out! Get out! Get out. Look, I have to say that. I do acknowledge that there are situations where, for whatever reason, we're stuck in a particular location and maybe because of financial reasons or family reasons, we can't get out right away. But I would encourage everybody to start thinking about that. Is there a way for me to get out of this situation, even if I can't get out of it overnight? Is there a way I can develop a plan so that I'm not here in a year? Because-- Expecting boundaries is pretty basic. I don't look at this as high level. I look at this as foundational. We simply cannot have a relationship that is healthy, that is constructive. If we don't respect basic boundaries, right? It's like, if we're gonna be friends, I need you

• 22:59Speaker 03

  to not be disrespectful to me. I want you to challenge me. I want you to disagree with me, but I, but I need you to be respectful. And if you can't do that, then why don't we just both go be happy with other people instead of talking to each other like that?

• 23:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, or you go be miserable disrespecting other people. I'm going to have to love you from a distance.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right. Okay, now, when you're in a situation though, where that's not an option, and you communicate boundaries and people respect them, first I, I encourage everyone to go read. Wayne Dyer had a book many years ago called Pulling Your Own Strings, where he talked a lot about this.

• 23:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's put a link to that in the show notes, Savvy D.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he has a very interesting tone in that book because Wayne Dyer is a very kind of like, I don't know, like, like he comes off for a lot of people as like a very new agey type dude, but when he writes that book, man, there's like a tone where you're like, Wayne Dyer, were you a bodyguard? Were you a bouncer? You know what I mean? Like, it's a different type of tone. But one of the things he talks about in that book with boundaries is that boundaries are not a matter of talking. It's a matter of teaching. It's a matter of what you do when they're violated, not what you say before and after they're violated. So you can say, I don't like it when you do that, or I need you to do this. That's not the boundary. The boundary is what happens when they cross it. And if you're a parent, for instance, you know that there is a guarantee when you establish boundaries for your child,

• 24:19Speaker 03

  the first thing to happen is they'll walk up to that line because they, they want to see what happens, right? Because they understand even intuitively that the words are not the boundary. The, the words, the, the boundary is what happens when I come across that line? Do I get yelled at? Do I get punished? Do you take away the video game? What's going on with that?

• 24:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What's the consequence or lack thereof?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Exactly. And sometimes when, when we state a boundary and people, you know, violate it, we experience frustration. We might say, I don't like that, but in terms of their ability to get The same benefits, rewards and positive aspects of interacting with us, then there really is no consequence other than just a little bit of frustration. And so the question I would ask myself is, what's the practical consequence for this boundary being violated? If we're sitting down and we're having dinner and you disrespect me, do I just sit there hurt about the fact that you can't respect me?

• 25:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is a consequence, by the way, but you're punishing yourself for them disrespecting your boundary.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Right, but for me, if we're having dinner and you're disrespectful and I've communicated well about this, well, we won't be having dinner together this time, right? I'm getting up from that table and I'm walking away. And it's not even a matter of punishing you. It's a matter of you just don't get to experience me when you cross my boundaries in the same way that you do when you honor my boundaries. There has to be a felt, viscerally sensed difference between those two things for you. So what does that look like for you? What do you do differently when people cross your boundaries?

• 25:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Lisa said, "I've done a lot of work on myself and I know I'm half the issue." Bravo, that's, uh, man. Even if I'm not half the issue, recognizing my role, even if it's 3% or if it's 95%, understanding that I am part of this issue, that's how I also become part of the solution. I'll return to text here. Lisa says, "I've done a lot of work on myself and I know I'm half the issue. My husband and I speak very directly, such as, 'I am feeling really prickly today,' or, 'It's not you, but I am processing a lot right now.' A lot of butting heads comes from miscommunication or allowing resentment to build.

• 26:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I mean, neither of us can read each other's minds." TK, where does resentment come from?

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Makes me think of one of my favorite quotes, I believe, Audre Lorde, who says, "If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it." To me, that's resentment. When you're dying on the inside because you're silent about your pain and the world just marches on treating you like you're living your dream.

• 27:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, the the opposite of that doesn't mean I have to rage on you or yell at you and scream at you. That is often like the terminus of years, or maybe sometimes just months of resentment building up.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  That's right. And the paradoxical thing is the earlier and more often you communicate your dislikes and distastes, the less likely it is that you'll react with rage. When you're firm up front, I don't like that. Or we can't do that. It might be a little awkward. It might be a little uncomfortable because you're being very serious. You're being very firm and people just enjoy it more when you're smiley and pleasant. But you kill it right then and there. But if you hold on to it and you have to let it happen six times. Well, now you're going to show enough anger for the previous five times. But you're also going to show the anger of a person who feels like I've already been very merciful with you. I've already shown you a whole lot of grace. So now I'm going to give you something that's even stronger, right?

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Because I'm reacting like a person who's really righteous because I could have called you out on this five times and I took it easy. That's a very angry, rage-filled person. So if you communicate often, the resentment comes from being silent about our pain and and not making an early effort to do something about it.

• 28:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tell me what you think of this. One thing that I've had to do in recent years is when I feel resentment, I will apologize for it in a way that, because I didn't communicate it. Like, I really apologize if you're holding on to something and not doing a good enough job communicating how I was feeling. And so, yeah, I've had five indiscretions and every time I just sort of sat on it. But I didn't really just sit on it and let it go. I was holding on to the resentment. That's a type of clinging. And then it gets to a level where it starts to boil over and instead of raging at someone, I apologize. Hey, look, I gotta be frank with you. I've been holding on to a lot of resentment right now and. And I should have done a better job communicating this earlier.

• 28:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There was a boundary that I had in my mind that maybe I didn't set with you. And maybe I didn't even articulate it in a way that I would have even called it an expectation of mine. But that's what it was. I had created an expectation that I did not communicate with you. And so I'm sorry for holding on to that. I'm sorry for holding on to the resentment. Now that you know, it's going to be easier for me to not be taken advantage of in a way that I don't think you're trying to take advantage of me at all. It just felt that way. And so I'm not going to hold on to it anymore. And my God, the way that opens up the airwaves for communication. It's remarkable.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  It is. You know, one very common theme that gets in the way of doing that kind of communication is the assumption that if you were respectful, if you were considerate, if you were a good person, if you were loving, if you cared about the truth, I wouldn't need to communicate this to you.

• 29:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  You would just notice what I need, or you would just do the right thing. And I think when you fall into that trap, you're in great danger and you're a good candidate for resentment. The most important thing to remember is when someone does something that bothers you or they cross a boundary, you're the one that has to live with that inconvenience. Other people are going to fight for what they want. They're going to live according to what makes sense to them. You don't know what's going on inside of another person's head. Some people are really powerful askers. They never feel guilty about asking for anything. They just place their demands on you and expect you to say no and let your no be no and your yes BS. And there are other people that, you know, they'll try to protect you and say, well, I want this from Josh, but I don't want to trouble him.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  And when we expect people to be to us how we are to them, we get ourselves in trouble. People are how they are. Focus on what you need, because what you need is the one thing you can be certain about and communicate in a way that moves you towards that.

• 30:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We had so many people respond to this question. How do you butt heads with the people you live with? You got to check them out in the Patreon community chat. Let's do one more, though. This one is from Emma. My husband and I butt heads over food and cleaning products. I like natural products. He likes bargains. TK, do you have a good heuristic for what to do when two people butt heads over their preferences?

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think in every relationship, however we talk about it, we have to have the answer to two questions. In what ways am I accountable to you? And in what ways are you accountable to me? If we both are not accountable to each other in some kind of way, then we don't have a relationship, no matter what we say. And chances are, we're governing our accountabilities by way of assumption and expectation, than by way of intentionality, and that's going to lead to danger. And so, one conversation I would have is like, hey, we both want different things. So it's inevitable that sometimes you're gonna get your way, sometimes I'm gonna get my way, and it's going to clash. Or, one person's gonna always get their way, and the other person's gonna feel dominated and bitter, and that won't be good for either one of us. So, since we differ, why don't we just make a decision ahead of time?

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Under what conditions do you get your way? Under what conditions do I get my way? And under what conditions do we both settle for a mixture of those two things? It's like picking a movie, but on a grander scale. Sometimes, we're just gonna watch what you wanna watch, even if I don't care about it. But sometimes, we're gonna wanna watch what I wanna watch, even if you don't care about it. And sometimes, we'll try to pick the best things in the middle. When do we do that?

• 32:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, you and my wife are very similar in this respect, that you have preferences, and you have opinions, but you tend to hold most of them really loosely. I find that Bex is probably the happiest person that I know. But it's because she doesn't really have a whole lot of preferences she doesn't need to have preferences for. And I find that the heuristic for her that I really admire is that, yeah, it's okay, whatever. Like, it's kinda, it's like that. There's this, it's not apathy. It's like, yeah, I trust you enough that you'll make the best decision for us, right?

• 32:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And because of that, she doesn't have a whole bunch of other expectations. And, and so... My heuristic that I have for Emma here is that, you know what? Whoever this is most important to, that's probably the person you want to be making the decision about that. Because it could be that like, do I want the nacho cheese Doritos or the Cool Ranch Doritos? And it's like, well, I don't care. I'm not going to eat either one of them. So I'm not going to really have an opinion about it. Now, I can have an opinion and say, well, the Cool Ranch are obviously the more delicious Doritos and da, da, da, da. And now all of a sudden, it's, well, it's an opinion about something that doesn't really matter to me. It's really easy to start having opinions about things that don't matter.

• 33:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And we can make the people that we live with miserable in the meantime. If you want the key to happiness, I found it in Bex. It's having as few preferences as possible. And then when she does have a preference that seems pretty solid, man, do I listen? Because she's now expressing something. It's sort of like the boy who cried wolf. She's the woman who doesn't cry preference most of the time. And if she comes to me and say, there's a wolf in the backyard, I'm going to listen to her first. She's built up that level of trust with me. How about you, listeners? How do you butt heads with the people you live with? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. All right, I've got my minimal maxim ready for you, TK.

• 34:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever over at minimimaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, no noise in your inbox, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. I was texting with Matt D'Avella yesterday. He directed both of our Netflix films and... He had sent me a text about the most recent newsletter that went out. And this isn't me patting myself on the back. It's just if you don't subscribe to the email newsletter.

• 35:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The thing he said is in a world where it feels like everything is written by AI. Now, this really stands out because I could tell that there is, there's not an artificial intelligence component to this. It's not written like AI. He said, I said, oh yeah, I guess my PIN's still working. He said, oh man, it's more than that. This is like poetry in motion. And so if you haven't subscribed to the email newsletter, the simple newsletter, you can do so for free over at theminimalists.com. Every week I write a new essay about intentional living, simple living, often share some personal stories and failures of my own. You can find those over there at the website. Okay, give me something pithy TK. How do you butt heads with Michelle?

• 35:46Speaker 03

  All right. Everybody's waiting for this one. Most conflicts are just confrontations with myself. There are like two levels of conflict. One is the moral level, and I think this is the one that we love because it lets us off the hook. That's the level of conflict where I'm the right type of person and you're the wrong type of person, therefore you irritate me. Or I'm doing things the right way and you're doing things in a way that is characterized by character deficiencies and defects. And so I'm annoyed with you.

• 36:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And wouldn't you say that virtually all conflicts feel that way, even if they aren't?

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there are some conflicts that are that way, but if that's your main go to, then I think there's a deeper type of conflict to be dealt with. For me, my philosophy of conflicts, what it really feels like to me is that conflict is just the result of contrast. You have different sensitivities than I do, different needs, different wants, different preferences. And when we live together, I've got to accommodate sensitivities and preferences that are not my own, and I've got to get you to do the same for me. And that's just a creative challenge. Now for Michelle and I, where we butt heads is like literally in terms of physical space. We literally, you know, butt heads because when we're both in the same room at the same

• 36:57Speaker 03

  time, we, we have to always be accommodating each other. So if, if one of us is making a coffee and the other is in the fridge, one has to yield. If one person wants to open either the oven or the dishwasher and another person wants to use the sink, they've got to yield. And so we have this little dance where we're like constantly yielding. But then sometimes it's just like, well, you know what, it's easier if you get the spoon for me and I get the glass for you because I'm here, you're there. And so that means when we're both home, any one simple activity that either of us does, like if I'm making a coffee, for instance, it involves doing five other things because of that navigation, right? So Michelle's making something, but can you hand me that

• 37:39Speaker 03

  coffee mug? Or I'm making something that's like, can you hand me the orange juice or whatever it may be? That's how we butt heads. And for me, it's about learning to step back when I feel irritated and say, this is what it feels like when I'm learning to share. This is what it feels like when I'm learning to be considerate. Of course, it would be so much easier if I didn't have to think about anybody but myself, but it sure wouldn't be better. So I want my life to be better. And that means I've got to get better, get better at sharing, sharing the space and so on.

• 38:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're making me think about this. Butting heads often has a negative connotation for obvious reasons, right? But the way you talked about it as the dance there.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I've stepped on someone's foot while trying to dance. I've stepped on my wife's foot all the time while I try to dance with her, literally, right? That's not disrespectful. Now, I could come up to you and intentionally step on your foot and try to disrespect you. And so there are ways to, yeah, stepping on your foot is disrespectful. Butting heads is disrespectful. But sometimes it's just a byproduct of the dance. Sometimes you're going to butt heads and that's part of the process. That's how you learn. It doesn't have to be negative. I wrote down two minimal maxims. One is definitely in my voice and I conjured a maxim. I said, how would TK answer this question? And so my maxim is it's easier to butt heads in a crowded room. Sometimes the room's crowded because the

• 39:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  room is small, like you're talking about your apartment is 400 square feet. So it's easier for that to be crowded. The other way that a room becomes crowded is when you have excess stuff. You can have the biggest room, you can have an airplane hangar filled to the brim with stuff and it's easier to butt heads because it is filled with things. And so one of the ways to stop butting heads is to let go of that which is no longer important to you. The second maxim I wrote down, this was me conjuring TK Coleman, you don't have to own their clutter. But you also don't have to carry it. If I were to hand that to you as a gif and you unwrapped it, what would you tell me about that, TK?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  That you can allow people the room they need to live how they need to live without forcing yourself to take on the burden of living in the same way.

• 39:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  And, and sometimes life is just about stepping back, saying, okay, how can I allow space for you to do that thing? And, and, and maybe there's something else I could do with this time or with this thing that also works for me. That's just really the art of compromise. It's, it's literally the art of coexisting.

• 40:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And so that's the cost of admission. There's going to be some compromises if we want to live in the same space together, work in the same space together, drive on the same roads together. You're coexisting with those people and you have to give way. Literally, you have to yield to other people when you're on the road. And you're home from time to time, you're going to have to yield your preferences to theirs. The key there is if you want to be happy with it, having fewer preferences, being willing to yield more often is a much more calm experience than just slamming on the gas and trying to merge into traffic too quickly.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  It's funny because we don't have these same types of conflicts with things. And, and, and I think the difference is about expectation. So whenever I get in my car, I never say to the car, I don't feel like sitting today. I want to stand. I've been sitting all day. It doesn't matter if I've been sitting all day. If I've been sitting all day, my car says to me, well, you better go take a walk and spend some time standing up because when you come to me, you're going to sit your butt down.

• 41:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Right? And so maybe I just say, oh, well, and I get in the car or I take some time and go for a walk before I get in the car.

• 41:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You don't resent the car?

• 41:20Speaker 03

  No, but the car requires me every single time that I use it to sit down, whether I like sitting down or not. And I think if we could somehow think that way about our relationships that like, just as using a car requires me to adopt a posture that's conducive for that car ride.

• 41:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A literal posture.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  A literal posture. It's also the case that interacting with another human being will require a different posture than what I can get away with when I'm interacting with no human beings. What is the posture necessary for us to flourish in our interactions together?

• 41:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're coming to the end of page one here, TK. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. Also, man, that advertisement, one of my favorite podcasts, has the most ridiculous ad. I cannot wait to share that with you, plus so much more. But first, real quick, for right here, right now, here's two things going on in the life of The Minimalist. TK's book, an audiobook, Emotional Clutter, is now available on Audible and Kindle. You can download the ebook for free right now over at theminimalists.com. But if you want to read it on your Kindle, or if you want to listen to it on Audible, you can do that. And he and I recorded the audiobook for Emotional Clutter. You can find that over on our website, theminimalists.com. Just click

• 42:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the Books tab at the top. You can find it there on Audible and Kindle. And there's a free download on our website if you just want the PDF version of that. Also, season two of my How to Write Better podcast just started. I think we're one episode into it now. We're publishing them on Thursdays. Each 20-minute episode, I interview my favorite writers to get their best insights and tips for becoming a better writer. So, season one was lessons, me teaching things straight to camera, whether it's sentence structure, and adverbs, and transitive verbs, and polysyndeton. And we went into deep into some grammar lessons. And I also reviewed some

• 43:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  bad writing in books, and what would make that writing better. That was season one. Season two, we're coming back. I'm interviewing different writers that I admire, and talking about their writing process, how they edit, how they compose, what do they think of artificial intelligence now. You can check that out wherever you listen to podcasts. It's up on the How to Write Better YouTube channel, as well as on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for How to Write Better. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, or just head on over to howtowritebetter.org. Coming up, well, we got a minimalist tip from our listeners. Let's check this out.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  Hi Minimalists, this is Courtney from Ontario and I have a resource for Becky, who called in for episode 522 called "Change." This is for her and for anyone else who might be questioning their self-worth due to body image and who is wondering like, "Becky, how you let go of insecurities?" So the resource is a book called "More Than a Body." The subtitle is "Your Body is an Instrument, Not an Ornament." And it's by Dr. Lindsay Kite and Dr. Lexi Kite. And I thought I would share one of my absolute favorite parts of the book that captures its essence, just in case there's anyone who thinks this might be of interest to them. So they say, quote, "What we really want people to know is regardless of how you look

• 44:44Speaker 04

  or how you think you look, you can feel good about yourself because you are not your appearance. Your beauty is not your life's work. You don't have to be beautiful." As blogger Erin McKean wrote at her site, "Address a Day," "Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.' As you begin to see the way your identity has been split in two, the viewer and the viewed, you can start to see yourself and experience your life in a new way. Once you see what self-objectification is and how it has impacted your life, you can't unsee it. Seeing it allows you to see more in yourself.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  It allows you to see the ideals and pressures causing you to look at yourself at the expense of being yourself." End quote. So I hope that helps and I highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in this topic.

• 45:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, "You are not your appearance." Courtney, thank you so much for that kind, thoughtful, and loving suggestion. TK, body image insecurities, what's going on behind the curtain here?

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I mean, so many things. We could do an entire episode of them. But, you know, one thing is there's a whole lot of interjection. You know, I don't believe that we're born hating our bodies. I believe that we learn how to hate our bodies. You know, a baby isn't coming into this world crying because it's like, oh, my gosh, I look terrible. You know, somebody's got to introduce that baby to a mirror and say, look at yourself. Now, look at that person over there. They look so much better than you. And, and, and by the time we even have a shot at life, man, we've already inherited so many ideas about how we ought to look, how we ought to dress, how we ought to act, how we ought to gesture, you know, what good eyes look like, what good hair looks like.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  And we've just got so much going on that it can almost take a lifetime to undo, unless you're really lucky enough to grow up around people that affirm the, the beauty that is inherent to our humanity. But I think these ideas are learned.

• 46:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Did you hear about Moby, the music artist? He removed all the mirrors from his home at one point. And it's amazing how conditioned we've become. I know I am because I'm always checking my hair. I get super paranoid. And so this is a good reminder from Courtney, just for me. I appreciate the reminder there because what Moby recognizes is how often he was going to just check himself in the mirror, but there was really nothing to check. He has a shaved head. He's like Savvy D. And so like Savvy's not checking his hair at any time. And it just makes sense like why we, until very recently in human history, we never had access to mirrors. We had no idea what we looked like. I'm thinking about a few months ago, I talked about Train Dreams,

• 47:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the Dennis Johnson novel that was turned into a Netflix film, which was really beautiful. And toward the end of it, you realize the main character, he sees a reflection of himself in like a river or a lake. I think it's in a lake. Somewhere, he just sees a reflection of himself and he hasn't seen himself probably in 30 years. And he's like, oh, wow, that's what I'd look like now. Huh, how remarkable. And he wasn't judging it because he never learned how to hate himself, as you brought up there. But not only do we learn how to hate ourselves, but advertisers and marketers and now social media companies do a great job of making us feel inferior. If you are

• 48:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  looking for a way to feel inferior, man, just open up that glowing screen in your pocket. I guarantee you'll find a dozen within a dozen seconds. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, send a voice memo to [email protected] or any other episode. We'll feature your voice on a future show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pendiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 48:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, we'll see you on Patreon for the full two and a half hour maximal edition of episode 531, which includes answers to a bunch more questions like, why do I cling to possessions that reflect the person I wish I were instead of the person I am? And how can I declutter my resume so it reflects where I'm going, not just where I've been? And is it possible to sell things without selling out? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all

• 49:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Akademas, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire Jeff and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this. Love people, even if they're maximalists. And use things because, well, the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.