519 | Begin Again

In this bonus episode, The Minimalists host Sunday Symposium in Orange County. Discussed in this episode: Overplanning produces chaos. (08:00) No one on their deathbed says they regret not accumulating more stuff. (17:57) Hold on if it confers more benefits than letting go. (26:18) Anything can be clutter if it gets in the way. (29:54) Acceptance is nice, but needing acceptance is a prison. (32:39) How do you define success for yourself? (39:00) 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 Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:06Speaker 00

  This podcast has bad words.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, hello everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. In fact, Earthing Studios is closed this week. We're enjoying some time with our friends and family, but we didn't want to leave you hanging. We wanted to give you a gift at the end of the year. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. This is an audio recording of one of our live events from earlier this year in Orange County. One of my favorite events that we did. It was really magical. I want to share that magical experience with you here. So TK and I will be back here in studio next week. But in the meantime,

• 1:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Happy Holidays, Happy New Year. Enjoy this special episode live with the Minimalists.

• 1:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Orange County. Y'all showed up. How many of you came from outside of Orange County? Ooh, a lot of you. Yeah. Sometimes you gotta pop out and show them. How many of you, this is your first Sunday Symposium? Oh wow, that's like half of you. That's amazing. Well, welcome to Sunday Symposium. You're welcome back to the next one, whenever that might be. We'll talk about that in a bit. TK, I've been thinking a lot about do-overs.

• 2:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  My wife and I went to the beach yesterday and we were driving, I was listening to, we were listening to this Bon Iver's new album. And one of the lyrics on there, he's like, "Can I get a rewind just this once?" Anybody ever felt that? "Can I get, can I, can I do this again? Where's the undo button? Can I start over?" I felt that a lot in my life. A few months ago, I was driving down to the podcast, I live up in Ojai, and our podcast studio is in West Hollywood. And I was driving down and it was a good morning, I got a good amount of sleep and I'm feeling good about this episode, TK and I are about to record.

• 2:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I go to take a sip of my coffee, the lid pops off and it's just everywhere. "Can I get a rewind just this once?" About a decade ago, I was out in Minnesota at my in-law's house for Christmas. My daughter was two at the time and I don't like being around people, which I know is weird for this whole live event thing. And so everyone's sort of congregating in the kitchen and the dining room table and that means I'm in the other room somewhere. And I'm in the, the living room and I'm there by myself. I could see my daughter walk in. She walks behind the couch.

• 3:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I see her disappear behind the couch, her head sticking up, she's two years old and all of a sudden, she's gone. And I'm laying on the floor stretching at the time. And all I see is shit. Just all over the floor. I look up, I say, "Can I get a rewind just this once?"

• 4:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  About 15 years ago, I was wrapping up my time in the corporate world. I didn't know it at the time, though. I'd spent my entire adult life in the corporate world. Y'all remember the corporate world? It's where dreams go to die.

• 4:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, when they were sufficiently strangled to death. I was there, and I was ostensibly successful. I had all the stuff. I had the luxury cars, plural. The big house in the suburbs. Walk-in closets full of expensive clothes. It's like a four-bedroom house with two living rooms. Two-and-a-half-car garage. I don't even know what a half a car is, but... You lived by yourself? No, I was with my ex-wife at the time. It was just the two of us, and we had two cats. And a full basement, and an attic, and an office... A garage for each person?

• 5:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and for the cats, apparently. But I couldn't fit two cars in the garage. Does that sound familiar? Because I had a lot of stuff, right? I couldn't really fit much in the basement, because there's a lot of stuff in there. And our guest bedroom was more of a storage locker. It was neat and organized, but it just had so much stuff. I looked around at age 30, and I was like, "Man, can I get a rewind?" If I could do this over again, how would it be different? Here's the truth, though. There is no undo button, right? There is no rewind button on this.

• 6:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I can't go back and change that. But this is the chance to begin again. And that's what started with minimalism for me. When I first stumbled across this idea of minimalism, it wasn't about going back and changing the past, right? It was about cleaning up what's going on right now. Whether it's that coffee that was on my pants, or the crap that was behind the couch, or all that crap that filled every corner of my consumer-driven life. There was a chance to start clearing that out of the way. Now was a time to begin again. And that's what I invite you to do today. I want you to think of today as this time that you have a chance to begin again. For many of you, that's physical clutter.

• 6:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The average American household has 300,000 items in it, and I'm not against things. If the stuff made you happy and more joyous and more fulfilled and more satisfied, more blissed out, I'd say, wow, we need to get some more stuff. But that's not what happens. We all know we acquire the things that we deeply desire, and then we lose the desire for those things. And so we try to acquire more things, and it's more, more, more, more. That's the problem with consumerism. It is never enough. Consumerism is just the ideology that acquiring more will complete you. It will satisfy you. It somehow will make me happy when I get all the right things and put them in the right order.

• 7:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm going to reach this point in my life where it'll be finished. I'll get there. It'll be done. That's called death. That's not a life. I don't want it to be done. It turns out I got to that point, and when I got to the point of so-called success, I was looking for that rewind. But I didn't really want to rewind. I wanted to begin again. And that's what today should be an invitation for. It's to begin again. TK, there are a few things I want to talk to you about, and we'll open it up for questions here as well. For the last 15 years, we've been doing the minimalist, me and Ryan and TK. Ryan's at Montana right now. I was on the phone with him yesterday. He says hi, everyone.

• 8:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And for the last 15 years, one of my favorite things that we've done is we've been able to...

• 8:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Simplify the things that we're talking about. Take really complex things and try to find the essence of them. Boil them down to their essence. We do this on the podcast. We call them minimal maxims. And we'll speak for 15 or 20 minutes and then we boil it down to this pithy aphorism to take away. We've done that for so many years that eventually we built a website called minimalmaxims.com. And you go there, I went there yesterday and I just refreshed it eight times and it spit out eight new maxims of ours from over the years. And so I wanted to use this as an opportunity, as a jump off point to sort of reverse engineer these. Instead of speaking about it for a while and then wrapping it up with a pithy bow,

• 9:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  let's bring out this maxim, this aphorism first, and then we can talk about it together. So TK, I'm going to start with you. I printed eight of them out yesterday. Pick a number between one and eight.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Two.

• 9:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Number two. Yes, all right. Planning creates calm. Overplanning produces chaos.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  So right before the show, I was talking with Kelly Jean and I said, Kelly Jean, I made a mistake. Yesterday, I wore these shoes to the beach and I've gotten them a little dusty. And so I need to try to see if I can dust them off. And she was like, well, you go ahead and do that, but remember, going to the beach is never a mistake. And she said, I live by the beach. And she says, there are two things that are always present in my home, dog fur and sand. And I have learned to embrace it because that is my life. And there's something to be said about recognizing those aspects of our life that are not problems

• 10:17Speaker 02

  which need to be planned away, but they're evidence that we are living the life we have asked for. But the life that we've asked for does indeed have trade offs. And sometimes we can forget that. Which is why we so often use the language of necessity when we do things that we freely choose. I have to go to this party. I have to call my mom. I have to go to work. I have to go to bed. When the reality is we are choosing these things. But in the course of being in the rat race, being on autopilot, being in the thick of it, being in the weeds. We forget that we have agency. And so we let go of that sense of agency and we say, oh. My life is being pushed and pulled by all of these different things.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  I've got to control more. I've got to plan more. And so I see that statement as an invitation to return to that kind of peace that comes from the simple willingness to embrace the chaos. And to recognize those elements of life in which chaos is really evidence of a different kind of order.

• 11:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I didn't share this with you. I didn't share any of these with you beforehand, right? We got a little bit of feedback, Carlos, just I think it's on TK's maybe, but it's driving them crazy right here. Not me.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 11:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because I embrace the chaos.

• 11:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Another maxim that came up yesterday was have to strangles the joy out of get to. And so that's kind of what you were talking about right there is there's a as soon as like I get to do something, it's like, ah, yeah. I caught myself doing this the other day. Someone was asking me like, oh, can you do something on Sunday? I said, no, I have to. I get to go to Sunday Symposium this Sunday. Doesn't that just change the the energy in it?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yes. And if that feels like too much, because there are some people that are like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to speak of going to my job as something that I get to do because I don't feel excited about it. You can substitute. I choose to do. Because there are many things we don't feel excited about. We don't have to feel excited about. My sister in law started her, you know, started school this week. And there was a little boy who spilled something. And she says, come on, we're gonna go clean it up. And he says, ah, I don't want to. And she says, baby, that's okay. We're gonna take our time and then we'll clean it up. And he says, but I don't even care. And she says, that's okay. You ain't gotta care. We're gonna take our time, get it all out.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And he starts, ah, she says, hey, take your time. Let that out, cuz I, I, I know that feeling. I know that feeling. And there are moments like that in adult life where we feel like, ah, I don't wanna do this stupid thing. I hate this. I'm not gonna speak of this as if, as if I get to do it. Well, you can simply say, I allow myself to do it. I choose to do it. I recognize that some time ago in my past, I made a commitment to what I value, and I'm gonna show up today, even though it feels difficult.

• 13:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Y'all can hear him in the back with the volume down? Yeah, yeah, okay, good, good.

• 13:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I choose to do it. Because the truth is, and a lot of times, I would rather be doing something else is the energy behind that, right? Where it's like, no, I have to go to work. I'd rather go to the event you asked me to go to, but I have to go to work. But really, it's like, yeah, yeah, I would rather get paid to do the thing that you want me to do. But of course, in order to get paid, I've made the choice. I choose to go to work. And for the longest time, that corporate world that I was in that was squishing my dreams, it, for the longest time, I felt like I have to do this. But I chose to do it.

• 14:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I also chose, all of the stuff that came along with that success was a crippling amount of debt. I had half a million dollars worth of debt. And so I felt stuck. I felt like I have to do this. And then as soon as I have to do this, I need, I might as well like, get myself a little treat, right? I gotta treat myself with this watch, or with this, these new clothes, or we gotta, we need some new granite countertops. So that will make me happy, right? Because everyone's smiling in the advertisement at least, right? So that's gonna make me happy. And so... The have to go to work resulted in all of these other choices I was making.

• 14:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was choosing to go to work because I had chosen to put myself into debt. I had chosen to live a particular lifestyle that I was now tethered to. And as I was tethered to that lifestyle, yes, I had to do that if I wanted to continue. If I don't want to sacrifice those things, which by the way, they weren't making me happy. You know, when you, at age 30, start to look around, you're like, oh, wow. All of these things that I've spent the last 12 years working really hard to acquire, like 60, 70, 80 hours a week, working that hard to acquire these things. Why did I get them? Because the things are never about the things.

• 15:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was, before this, we were talking about this, I forget, was it Ally who was talking about equipment clutter, wherever she is. She's like, you guys do an episode about equipment clutter, but of course, it's never about equipment. I'm like, oh, you get it. You get it, because like, the things are never about the things, right? The stuff, we don't buy the stuff for the stuff. We buy the stuff because we think it's going to give us some sort of feeling. Sometimes that feeling is like, oh, I think I'm going to be happy, but that's too nebulous. So what am I really saying? Oh, I, um, I hope I'm satisfied. Or maybe I hope that it makes me excited. Or maybe I just hope that it fills this void that's inside me, and I really don't want to look at that void. Because maybe it's not actually a void at all.

• 16:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maybe it's spaciousness, and I'm just covering up that spaciousness with more junk, right? And so you get into the cycle of I have to, I have to, I have to. I made the choices, but at some point, it feels like those choices are a runaway train. And now it feels like maybe I don't have agency over it. And maybe it's not possible for me to begin again.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  I think the statement "I have to" is an indirect affirmation of our own personal power. Because to say "I have to" is essentially to say, "I value Y. X is a necessary condition for Y. I refuse to live without Y. Therefore, I have to do X in order to procure Y." So, "I have to pay my rent." "Hey, man, you don't have to pay your rent. You can actually choose not to." "Yeah, but then I would lose my place to stay and my family wouldn't have a roof over their head." Ah, there we go. There's the power. That's a condition you refuse to live without. You made up your mind a long time ago what kind of person you were gonna be. And you decided, using your agency,

• 17:22Speaker 02

  that you were not gonna be the kind of person who doesn't have a place to stay, who doesn't provide for their family. And so, even when things are difficult, you've decided, "Since I refuse to live without this thing, or since I refuse to live with this alternative, it is not an option for me to avoid choosing to do this particular thing." So, when we say "I have to", it means that we so strongly refuse to do something, we are so strongly committed to do something, that it has become like a law of nature to us. And that's pretty powerful. And we get to change that if it's not leading us to where we want to be.

• 17:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right, and it doesn't mean it's not all or nothing either. Like, that "Y" isn't McMansion and luxury cars and two-and-a-half-car garage, right? It's like, "Well, I have to have that or I don't have a roof over my head." It's like, "Oh, okay." There are gradations of that "Y" that may fit an "X" that better approaches what you actually want.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 18:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Alright, so, we accidentally did two there. That was awesome. That was number five and number two. Someone throw out a number for me, anybody, come on. I heard a three and a seven. TK loves both of those numbers, so... Let's see here. Let's do number three, and we'll get to seven after that, okay? How about that? Number three. TK. No one on their deathbed says they regret not accumulating more stuff.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Kind of a reminder of how... So, there's a proverb that says, "It is better for a man to attend a funeral than it is to attend a party." Because even though the party is more fun, the funeral compels that person to consider their end. And there's something to be said about keeping the end in mind and making sure that we take inventory of our lives and the direction in which we're moving, the choices that we're making, the person that we're in the process of becoming by the things we choose to do, by the things we say, by the thoughts we harbor. And I think this is a reminder that when we get to the end, we're not going to measure our lives in terms of stuff.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  We talked about this in that video of the Museum of Things, that in the end, what gives things value is not the stuff itself, but it's what we choose to do with them. And I think museums are the greatest example of this. When you walk into a museum, you have a whole bunch of things that have been preserved. And if you take away the story about those things, none of them mean a thing. And you're immediately bored with everything in that museum. But the tiniest of things becomes immensely fascinating when there's a compelling story about a human being that used that thing to connect with other people, to express the creativity and unguignity of their spirit, or to solve a problem. "Oh, this is the spoon that she ate with.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  This is the bicycle that he rode to school. This is the diary that she wrote her thoughts in." We value those things because there are human beings who said, "I'm going to take these things and use them to create value, solve problems, and connect with other people." That's what gives our things value. It's we who give them value, not the other way around. And when we die, we're going to look back. Well, not when we die, but when we're nearing death, we're going to look back. And we're going to think about who we connected with. Those moments where we felt like we belonged. Those moments when we gave someone else a sense of belonging. Those moments when we have loved and when we have felt loved. And we'll look at our things and we'll value them only in relation to that.

• 21:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. When I'm on my deathbed, I can't imagine being like, "I really wish I would have accumulated even more things in my 30s."

• 21:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This just seems so incongruous with any sort of lesson of... Because ultimately, you know, death is the ultimate letting go. We did a really wonderful episode with a hospice doctor, Zach Bush, about simplifying death and talking about the beauty behind that. And he has seen more people die than probably everyone in this room combined. Over a thousand people, he's been at their bedside when they... When it all ended, in that moment, he saw it end, right? The life left their body. And the body was still there, but they weren't still there, right? And in that moment, it's never about even going back and correcting the past.

• 21:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's making peace with that. And that's why I talk about that invitation to restart, to begin again. It's not to go back and undo the past, it's to let go of that, right? How long do I want to make myself miserable? Yes, I spilled coffee on my pants, okay. How long am I going to be upset? Because I'm allowed to be upset about it. It's not evil, or wrong, or immoral to be upset about it. It's rather unpleasant. And who's making me upset? I'm making me upset. It's not the coffee that's making me upset, right? Even if TK would have spilled that coffee on my pants, it's not TK that's making me upset. I'm choosing to hold on to that upset. How long do I want to hold on to this misery? Maybe it serves me for a period of time, okay, be more careful next time.

• 22:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But once I've learned that lesson, if I'm holding on to it beyond the lesson, it seems like it's for naught. Someone said number seven, right? Was it seven? All right, number seven, let's see what we got here.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  By the way, this is not an anti-thing philosophy. I believe that consumerism is the most anti-thing philosophy. Minimalism is pro-thing, because it's a message that says, things are not there to be renounced, but they're there to be redeemed by being used with purpose.

• 23:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, you brought up the Museum of Things earlier, right? We did the short film series that came out last year. It was called Fragments. It's six episodes and...

• 23:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  One of my favorites was the Museum of Things. We filmed it up in Ojai and we got permission from this really great general store. And it was like, they have all these like cute widgets and things and TK is like treating it like it's a museum of things. It made me think when you were, when we were filming that up there. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and everyone in Dayton knows where Seven Hall Thorne is. Seven Hall Thorne Street. It's where the Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop was. Wright Brothers invented the airplane in Dayton and they invented it there at their bicycle shop at Seven Hall Thorne Street on West Dayton, in West Dayton. And, I mean, it'd just be a piece of junk row house if it weren't for the story. It's the story that makes Seven Hall Thorne amazing.

• 24:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If it wasn't, it'd just be, you know, no one's talking about 13 Hall Thorne, right? It's right down, it's two houses over. What makes Seven Hall Thorne so special, why it's a museum now, is because of that story. That's an empowering story, but the opposite tends to happen. Most of the stories we tell ourselves about the things are disempowering stories. I could never let go of this. We have an episode coming out in a few weeks. I just recorded it. TK was out of town, so I did a solo episode of the podcast. First one I've done in about a decade. You had so much fun. It was a lot of fun, yeah. And it was a coincidence, my friend, who's maybe one of the brightest guys I know, he

• 24:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  went to an Ivy League school, we went to high school together, he's like really bright. He calls me the weekend before I record that and he's like, "Hey man, I've got these six really nice pairs of dress shoes." And I'm like, "How often do you have to wear them?" And he's like, "Only when I go to divorce court." I'm like, "Okay, wow." I'm like, "When you wear all six?" He's like, "No, there's only one pair of them that I wear and I only wear them when I'm going to that." I said, "So you could let the other ones go, right?" Not telling him about them, I said, "You could let it go." Ask him the question, genuinely. He said, "I could, but you know, this particular brand, Allen Edmonds, you know, ever since they were purchased, they just don't make the same quality shoes anymore." He says to me, "These shoes are irreplaceable."

• 25:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now that's a story. That is a story that says, "I can't get rid of these because I could never replace these." The very next week, he sends me a photo of the shoes he's wearing going to divorce court. And it's none of the Alan Edmonds shoes. It's a different pair. And I said, "Oh, maybe that's a sign that it's time to let go." And what he did to let go in that moment was realizing, "Oh, yeah, I'm not holding on to shoes. I'm holding on to a story about those shoes."

• 26:10Speaker 02

  That's powerful, you know, and it brings up a distinction for me, and that is, being irreplaceable is not the same thing as being indispensable. Being irreplaceable means this particular thing at this locus of space and time, with this particular story attached to it, I can't replicate it. Once it's gone, it's gone. Once I let it go, it's over. But indispensable means I can't live without it. I can't be who I am without it. And it may very well be the case that those shoes are irreplaceable, but they're not indispensable. You can still let them go and be you, the same you that gave value to the things in the first place.

• 26:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And also, part of that story, and the reason it's so disempowering, just think about the energy behind, "These are irreplaceable." It almost sounds as though he's going to now go without. Because in the moment, it feels like, "Yeah, if I get rid of all of my shoes, I'm not gonna have any shoes." And so that story says something about like, "What if I don't have shoes, right?" Now, I could argue, "Well, you just go grounding, then you'll be totally fine." Right? Without those shoes. But no, I'm not against owning shoes, but in the moment, that's what it feels like. These stories get tangled up. And we conflate that, yes, you couldn't replace that particular pair of shoes, although then I went on eBay and showed him, well, the hundreds of the same pair of shoes.

• 27:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And he's like, "Oh, yeah, they are literally replaceable." "And oh, I could sell these and even make some money, which I'm gonna need for divorce court anyway." Number seven, TK. Hold on. If it confers more benefits than letting go.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I like that. So I've often said that minimalism isn't scarcity. It's abundance healthfully expressed. And so if you take a look at anything, the amount of shoes you have, the amount of cars you have, the amount of books you have. How much is too much? The number five. The number seven. The number eight. How much is too much? Well, it depends. What are you living for? What makes you come alive? Who's a part of your life? How are you using these things? An artist who paints every day, makes their living doing this way, or does this for their soul's freedom, might have need of 20 to 30 paintbrushes. That would be excess for me, but it's not excess for them.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  So clutter is that which gets in the way. But I can't know if something's in the way unless I have a subject to talk about. Whose way? Is this stool in the way? It's not in my way. It's serving me because I'm sitting on it. Right? And so we have to look at things and contextualize them in terms of our lives and the role they play. Which is why minimalism is less about saying, I'm just going to arbitrarily subtract things. And it's more about saying, I'm going to inject intentionality into my relationship to everything.

• 29:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Holding on is often dangerous. The reason I think I wrote this a year or two ago, we were doing an episode about holding on and letting go, the pain of clinging. I think it was the episode 395, if I'm not mistaken.

• 29:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm totally guessing, but it just comes to mind.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  He's probably right, though.

• 29:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about my daughter when she was a little bit younger. When we first moved to Ojai, there is this great park downtown called Libby Park. And they have these tons of monkey bars there, right? And they're like, she's super athletic. So she's like just going across. And there are other kids that are just kind of staying stuck. There's like one kid, and she walks up to him, and he's on the first bar just like this.

• 29:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And Ella looks up to him, she goes, "Hey, you want some help?" And he's like, "Yeah."

• 30:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He said, "I don't know how to let go."

• 30:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I said, "That's most people I know."

• 30:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The problem with holding on in most contexts is we can't move forward if we don't know how to let go. The problem, however, if you can't hold on, you can't move forward either. When Ella's going across those monkey bars, it's about holding on, then letting go, and holding on as it confers more benefit. If she doesn't hold on, you know, if I put butter on her hands, I'd be a bad father.

• 30:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also, she would fall, right? She has to hold on so she can't fall. But if she can't let go, she'd be like that kid, she can't get anywhere, right? And I think quite often the reason we stay stuck, we can't move forward, is because we can't let go. Let go of the stuff, sure, right?

• 30:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But letting go of the stories behind the stuff. Letting go of the emotional clutter, the relationship clutter, the identity clutter, which is probably the biggest one. Every identity is a false identity. Maybe we'll talk about that at some point. But if I can't let go, I'm going to stay stuck. I gotta read number one for you, though, TK, since you already alluded to it. Number one is, anything can be clutter if it gets in the way. And you touched on the sort of subjective experience of clutter. I wish I could give you the list of, here are the 1,000 items. If you have them in your home, get rid of them, because these items are clutter. It doesn't work that way, right? I might be telling you to get rid of something you truly get value from.

• 31:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so, it's not dogmatic in that sense. It's not an ideology, and it's not prescriptive like that. Anything can be clutter if it gets in the way. And the hard part about that is there are many things we bring into our lives. Material things, but also relationships, careers, cities, that serve us really, really well for a period of time. And sometimes for a protracted period of time. And it really adds value, but then it ceases to add value. And the value wanes and wanes, and then it falls off with the abruptness of a coastal shelf. And then there's no value at all. And then we look at the thing and say, "Yeah, but I got so much value from it."

• 32:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But now it gets in the way. That thing wasn't clutter, but it is clutter now.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, clutter is a lot like color. So the blackness of that shirt is not a property inherent in the shirt, but it does have something to do with the properties of the shirt, but it's more a matter of the interaction between light and the properties of the shirt and the way in which we perceive it. In a similar way, clutter is not a property of objects. It's a property of our relationship to objects and the function that these objects have in our lives. When you understand this, you arrive at what I call the mother of all advice. There is no such thing as a single possession, no matter how good it is, that isn't capable of making your life worse if you don't think critically and creatively about how you use it in your life.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Give me a Bible and I can whack him upside the head with it. Give me anything and I can find a way to harm myself and harm others with it. And so it becomes clutter by function, even if it's a beautiful thing. All things are good. There's no such thing as an evil piano note or an evil atom or an evil molecule. Creation is beautiful. It's amazing. It's wonderful. But it's how we use things. Do we use these things to harm others, to exploit others, to hurt ourselves? Or do we use them to serve others, to connect with one another, to show our love, to be present in ways that are meaningful?

• 33:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm gonna save number four here, because I want to read number six.

• 34:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What kind of psychopath wears tennis shoes to the beach?

• 34:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's really specific. Did you know?

• 34:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Alright, no, it says this.

• 34:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Acceptance is nice, but needing acceptance is a prison.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  That's good, man.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can appreciate without being attached, right? There's something about the quality of neediness that it has a repulsive, it has a repulsive frequency. You know, so imagine that you're shopping and you're walking past the store and you see something in there that catches your eye and you're like, oh, let me go into this store. It looks like a pretty cool place. There's a jacket or a pair of shoes that caught my eye. And you go in and then maybe someone approaches you and they're like, oh, you know, this is on sale. And you can just kind of feel the neediness, they really want you to buy something. And all of a sudden, your interest shifts. You can't get out of that store fast enough,

• 35:17Speaker 02

  even though you voluntarily walked in because that neediness has a repulsive quality about it. Or imagine, you know, a few guys or a few girls going out to the bar and it's like, hey, we're gonna go have fun tonight. We're going to be successful no matter what because we're going together and we're gonna have fun, right? Like you have a good time and everything is smooth and good. But when you go and you say, success is, by the end of this night, I must have someone's phone number and they must be a qualified dating partner. Oh, my gosh, the pressure is on. But even the way you act, if no one knows about that narrative, there's something about the way you act that will exude a quality of neediness

• 35:59Speaker 02

  and attachment and desperation that throws off all of the qualities that make you appealing, that make you attractive, that make you authentic. And it's the same way with appreciation of others. It's the same way with our things. We can't truly love something until we've arrived at a place where we say, hey, if I had to live without it, that's not something I would want, but I'd be okay. And then you can love that thing, not from a place of fear, but from a place of being available to it and present to it. Not because of who you think you won't be if it isn't there, but because of how well it complements how you're choosing to be. One of the nicest things you ever said to me, and I don't think anyone else is gonna think it's nice, but I promise you I took it as a compliment.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  He said, Josh, you know how I know you're gonna be in my life for a long time? Do you remember this?

• 36:47Speaker 03

  I don't remember this.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  He said, he said, because you don't need me.

• 36:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's the, I really, really enjoy being here on stage with TK. I enjoy the shows we do together and even the conversations we have off mic are just amazing. They're like some of the best podcasts I've never recorded. Just getting on the phone with TK for an hour. One of the few people I could speak on the phone to for an hour and enjoy it. But I don't need it. Cause can you imagine if I showed up and said, TK, today I need you to accept me. Even if you say yes, it's gonna feel like placation. You're gonna feel the obligation. Okay, how can I demonstrate my acceptance now? And now I've put you in a prison as well. We're sharing the same jail cell.

• 37:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And at the same time, I'm asking you, please like me, please like me. And please like me energy, we've all had it, right? Oh, just, if I could get you to like me. There's something that is, it's like when you take two magnets and you, the one you flip the one around and they just, they can't connect with each other. That's what please like me energy is. The irony of that is if you don't need to be liked, a lot of people tend to like you. But at the same time, you can't get everyone to like you. I mean, you can't get, you know, you can't get all your Facebook friends to agree about something, right? Good luck getting the whole world to agree with your point of view. Good luck getting everyone to agree with your opinion.

• 38:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There are some people who disagree with your opinion just because they want to disagree with your opinion. Their value is in disagreeing with you.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Or just because it's you who said it.

• 38:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that's right, right. If, oh, you know, that person really likes eggs for breakfast, there must be something wrong with eggs for breakfast. It's like, no, it doesn't, doesn't work that way, right? And so, setting down the need for acceptance is strangely a shortcut to getting accepted.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  It's sort of like stand-up comedy, which I have absolutely zero experience in. If you are giving a stand-up routine and, and you, you make a joke and, and, you know, there are 20 people laughing, but then you kind of look over and you can see somebody in the corner like, it's not really funny to me. And if you need to be liked, if you need everyone to think you're funny, you take your attention off of the people that are laughing, and you direct it towards the person that's not connecting. And you go, "Hey, what are you doing over there?" And you sort of start focusing on that person. And what happens when you do that? You lose two things. You lose all the people that enjoyed your gift. Because they're gone now. You're focusing on the one person that doesn't like you.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  But you also lose what makes you funny. Because we've all seen comedians have that moment where they get entangled with someone in the audience. And they stop being funny. They're just so serious. It's so cringey, and you feel so bad. That's what we look like as people, whether we're onstage or offstage, whether it's about people laughing at our jokes, or saying hi, or making eye contact, or loving us, or liking the way we dress. The moment we need it, and we zoom in on the people that aren't giving us what we need, and we contend with them, we lose all the people who loved us for who we are, and we lose ourselves in the process.

• 40:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all. That is the first 50% of episode 519. We'll see you on Patreon for the full, maximal edition of that episode, which includes answers to a bunch more audience questions. I really loved their participation. You can join us on Patreon for that private podcast episode. 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 of our podcast archives. That is more than a decade of podcasts at this point. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D,

• 40:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  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 and use things. Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. Happy holidays.