522 | Change

The Minimalists speak with Dr. Maya Shankar about letting go of insecurities, the consequences of jealousy, why you've wasted so much money on things you don't need (and what to do about it going forward), how clinging to just-in-case items negatively affects well-being, and more. Discussed in this episode: How do you let go of insecurities that create mental clutter? (2:42) When's the last time you felt jealous, and how did that change your behavior? (22:53) Right Here, Right Now: The Simple Newsletter and Simplify Everything (46:31) Listener Tip: When we finally let go, we discover the blockage those things had on our well-being. (47:49) 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, 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 at our studio in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman. It's a beautiful day. It is indeed because we have a special guest today as well. Today's guest is a cognitive scientist who has earned degrees from Stanford, Oxford, and Yale. Now, I know that's not Kalamazoo Community College TK, but it's gonna have to do for this conversation, right? She's also the host of the critically acclaimed podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, and the author of a new book, I've got it right here, The Other Side of Change.

• 1:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Please welcome to the show Dr. Maya Shankar. Yes, so good to have you.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Thank you guys so much for having me.

• 1:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, we, you know, this is a listener driven show. We've got a lot to talk about today. I'm looking forward to diving a little bit into the topics of the book. We're gonna talk about change a bit, but I want to talk to you about letting go of insecurities, the consequences of jealousy, how clinging to just in case items negatively affects our well-being. In fact, we're gonna pull you into our world of minimalism for a bit as well. Plus, coming up on page three, we'll discuss why you've wasted so much money on things you don't need, not use personally, although this is, it'd be great.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Josh, stop airing my dirty laundry.

• 2:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Actually, we had your husband brain move your dirty laundry today. We're gonna talk about that on page What you can do about all of those things that you wasted so much money on. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Our phone number, 406-219-7839, or you can 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 to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free, because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes, they do. Our first question today is from Becky.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Hi, minimalists. This is Becky, a Patreon subscriber from Nebraska. I finally was brave enough to ask this because of the mental spiral question you posted in the chat. My insecurities send me into a mental spiral. How do you let go of insecurities? I've observed over the years that you all exude self-confidence and high self-esteem. I'm wondering how you have developed self-confidence. As someone who has struggled for decades to feel like I belong in most group settings and have often questioned my self-worth due to my interactions with others and my body image as a petite, grown woman. When my insecurities are triggered by social interactions, such as my husband, who rarely

• 3:30Speaker 03

  compliments me, speaking highly of another woman, or choosing to spend large amounts of time with others rather than his family, I harbor feelings such as jealousy and resentment. I've tried to refocus my thoughts and even recite positive affirmations, which works for a time, but the feelings still creep up. And I believe if I felt better about myself, maybe those thoughts and feelings wouldn't get in the way of having a happy, satisfied relationship with myself and my loved ones. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for all you do to add value to my life and so many others.

• 4:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh Becky, there's so much here. Maya, I want to talk to you a bit about the jealousy and the resentment and the self-confidence, but fundamentally, this question's about letting go of insecurities that create mental clutter. In fact, in your new book, you have an entire chapter about mental spirals. Maybe that's a good place to start.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like I have a PhD in mental spirals because this is my Achilles heel. I can ruminate till the cows come home if left to my own devices. And so that is why I devoted an entire chapter of The Other Side of Change to this problem. I think the first piece of advice that I'd have for Becky is to try to exit herself from that mental spiral, because when we are in the throes of a spiral, it's really hard for us to see our situation objectively and to even poke holes in the narratives that we've constructed. However false they might be, we really believe them in that moment, right? They're so compelling and we just keep doubling down on those narratives.

• 5:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So some of those narratives for her might be that my husband doesn't care about me when he spends time with other people.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yes. Or I'm undesirable because my husband hasn't given me a compliment today, let's say, right? And the problem is that when you are in the mental spiral, right, when you are on that proverbial hamster wheel, thinking you're making progress on solving the problem, but actually just looping over the same negative thoughts over and over again, research shows that you actually double down on those negative emotions and you increase your convictions in the original hypothesis, even if it is based on very faulty logic.

• 5:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. TK, you have always struck me as a hyper-confident person, but never arrogant. You've never come off as arrogant once, and I don't know how you do that. And I think quite often, we confuse the two. We can see someone who... I don't want to be confident because I'm afraid that's going to come off as arrogance.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there is such a thing, right? Like, exalting yourself at the expense of others, or praising yourself, celebrating your goodness without a consideration of the other people that have contributed to that and helped you get where you are. So I see arrogance in contrast with confidence as, you know, believing more of myself than what is actually true, whereas confidence is having a right understanding of yourself. And I see confidence really as being at peace with oneself. Confidence isn't the absence of weakness or the absence of insecurity. It's when you can be present to those feelings and say, "Hey, I've got these vulnerabilities here. I don't know if I'm very good at that. I'm not sure if I'm expressing this correctly,

• 6:43Speaker 04

  but I'm gonna do the best that I can." It's being at peace with oneself in a way that allows you to be honest. And I think an important distinction as it pertains to this question is when it comes between two kinds of letting go. One is expelling something, and the other is expressing something. Expelling is when you say, "I gotta cast this thing out." It's what you do to demons, right? And that's how we treat our unpleasant emotions sometimes. Like, I feel insecure, I've gotta expel that. I feel jealous, or I feel angry, I've gotta expel that. And we sort of make our emotions the enemy, and we demonize them. And that's just another way of clinging to them. But expressing it means, "I accept that this is something that is a part of me, and I'm going to share it with another human being for the sake of creating value,

• 7:28Speaker 04

  solving a problem, or establishing a connection." And so when you have something like insecurity, letting it go doesn't have to mean expelling it. Letting it go can simply mean expressing it. "Hey, listen, sometimes I don't feel like I'm carrying my own weight. Sometimes I don't feel like I do a good job. Would you mind telling me how I can do better if you see weaknesses in my work? And would you mind just validating what you think I'm doing right?" That's vulnerability. And I'm letting it go, not in the sense of casting it out or suppressing it. I'm letting it go by sharing it and being honest about it. Or even, you know, "I know you care about me. I know you love me. I know you have my back.

• 8:13Speaker 04

  But sometimes I feel ugly. Sometimes I feel stupid. Sometimes I feel like I don't matter, and I don't even wanna feel this way. But sometimes I feel that way."

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Is there anything you can say to me, you know, that just might help me process this? When you can go to your significant other, not with an accusation, you don't love me. You like everybody else but me. You don't want to be around me. But you can simply tell them like, I wish we could spend more time together. I know you don't have a lot of time, but I really love the time that we spend together. And sometimes I just feel such a deep void in my life from just wanting to connect with you more. Would you be willing to talk with me about that? You're letting it go, but you're not casting it out.

• 8:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maya, I'm thinking about insecurities with respect to the ego here. And sometimes when I say ego, I'm just talking about the false self. When we talk about ego, we're often talking about someone who's egotistical and it's the arrogance thing, right? But sometimes to be insecure is also like a false self that is lower than who you actually are.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and something that was so interesting about Becky's testimonial is that it's so clear that her self-worth is contingent on this one aspect of who she is, right? She really, she notes, oh, it's about my physical appearance, right? I'm petite and whatnot. And I want to share one insecurity that I've had over the last eight or nine years is, you know, my husband and I have been on this mission to start a family together and we haven't been successful. And that's been a huge source of insecurity for me, right? This was, motherhood was an aspirational identity that I've had from the time I was a little kid. And one thing I realized that I was falling prey to was a focusing illusion.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  I was so intent on achieving this particular goal of mine that I basically developed tunnel vision. I forgot that there were so many other aspects of my identity that mattered so much. And the way that this was made clear to me, as I remember, on the night of the second miscarriage with our surrogate, when we found out that we had lost identical twin girls. This was the second pregnancy loss we were navigating. I remember my husband came into our bedroom and said, Maya, let's just do a quick gratitude exercise. Let's just name a couple of things we're really grateful for. And I remember in that moment, guys being like, oh, hell no, bro, okay? I feel like crap. I'm not doing your toxic positivity Instagram nonsense.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Like you go into the corner, you do your gratitude exercise. But you know, I looked at Jimmy's face and he was so earnest. And I was like, okay, fine, I'll just do this. If anything, just get you off my case. And I started to think through my list, right? I was like, okay, well, I'm really grateful that I get to be an aunt to my six nieces and nephews. I feel so much pride that I've worked with the same people for over 10 years. Like, those people still want to work with me. Like, I get the joy of getting to work with some of my best friends every single day. I love that I get to do Zoom workouts with my trainer, who I get to gossip about The Bachelor and Love is Blind with every week. I love that I live in California and we have these strong, beautiful rays of sunshine.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  And as this list unspooled, I swear something magical happened, which was I found myself zooming out on my life as a whole and gaining much-needed perspective on the rich, multifaceted set of identities that I find great meaning and value in. And so I would urge Becky to do what's called a self-affirmation exercise. In fact, I would urge everyone who's listening to do this exercise. Take out a notebook, spend five minutes writing down all of the identities that mean something to you, outside of the space of insecurity. Outside, in my case, I had to focus on all the things that were not being threatened by the change I was going through, right?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  That I wasn't becoming a mom in this moment in time. And what that will do is allow you to see that there is still so much of you that remains intact, there is still so much of you that is deeply beautiful and so worthy, and helps you again to get that 30,000-foot view of who you are.

• 12:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you're not staring at the one tree. You're zooming out and seeing the forest to some extent. And you're realizing, like, oh, this one sort of dead tree to extend the

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, be a chivalry seal, if you will.

• 12:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm so focused on this. And of course, it's going to kill our self-confidence if I'm focused on this thing. I also find the other thing that kills my self-confidence is focusing on a finish line that I have to acquire in order to then get the self-confidence that I need, right? And so for me, self-confidence sort of appears when the finish line disappears. If I no longer need the outcome, then my confidence isn't Tied to an outcome anymore. And it's the same thing with happiness, right? Like, we think happiness is in the material possessions. We often talk about this as the minimalist, right? Is we're looking for happiness out there and externalities. It's going to be in that new dress that I buy, the new purse. As if I open up the purse and then there are seven units of international units of happiness

• 13:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that I'm going to pull out of the purse, right? It doesn't work that way. Happiness is here and it can be uncovered and there's nothing wrong with our things. Just like there's nothing wrong with reaching the finish line. But the finish line is not what is going to complete you. There's plenty of cliches that end up being true about, you know, the journey being the satisfying part. And if you make it to the finish line, great. But if your happiness or if your self-confidence is contingent on finishing, you're always going to feel like you're inadequate.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  That's right. You know, one of the things we talk about here a lot is if the truth hurts and hurts only, the problem is not that you have too much truth, but too little truth. Because the truth does hurt, but it also helps. It also heals. And what I love about Dr. Maya's exercise is that this is not a mere act of positive thinking where we're spraying perfume over the garbage to get rid of the smell. This isn't about denying the negative things. It's about contextualizing them with what else there is to see. And so if anyone is trying to practice an exercise like this, and maybe you have a hard time pulling your attention away from the insecurities or the things you feel like you're denying,

• 14:31Speaker 04

  a soft way to start might be to add, "Sometimes I feel X, but..." And then finish it with the expression of gratitude. So, "Sometimes I feel ugly, but I sure do have a lot of people in my life who tell me I'm beautiful. Sometimes I feel stupid, but I'm proud of the efforts that I'm making to learn new things. Sometimes I feel really far behind, but I've done something every day this month to make a positive difference. Sometimes I feel inadequate, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I feel inadequate, but I'm grateful for the fact that I sometimes get it right anyway." And that can sort of be a soft way to sort of remind you that you're not denying the negative. You're contextualizing it. And why is that valuable?

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Because being intellectually honest isn't just about looking at our problems. It's also about developing a robust vocabulary for our possibilities.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Am I allowed to just?

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Always, please.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Well, you guys are generating so much in my brain because what you've referred to, Josh, is known as the happily ever after fallacy in psychology. So it's this notion that if I can just get X, then I'll be happy. If I can just feel good about my body, then I'll be happy. And it is an illusion, right? For exactly the reasons you described. And then I think TK, what you were saying is that, that is in fact your name, right?

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Sorry, I hope you edit this. You looked at me for a second, I was like, I swear to God, your name's TK.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  No, no, no. Listen, you're doing much better than everyone else because no matter how much I say TK, the world only hears TJ. People who have known me for years sometimes will say TJ. So thank you for saying TK.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry, sorry. And then as you said TK, at the end of the day, we have to be comfortable with the idea of incremental progress, right? So I think probably for someone like Becky, they're hoping, okay, what's that magic pill? What's the silver bullet? Where I can go from lacking confidence in this department to being fully confident in this department. But so much of the work of life is taking small baby steps and noting the progress we're making. And even in the statements that you made, sometimes I feel X, but I'm making this progress. You're reminding yourself of that incremental effort. And it's so interesting, one of the women that I interviewed for the book, her name's Olivia, and she really suffered with self-esteem because she placed all of her self-worth in the opinions of others.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  She didn't know the feeling of internal confidence. It was, well, I feel good about myself if my boyfriend approves of me. I feel good about myself if my boyfriend's family thinks I'm successful or pretty enough, right? And so she really struggles with this. And what happens to her in her early twenties is that she has a massive brainstem stroke and she becomes locked in. So what does it mean to be locked in? Well, it's most people's worst nightmare because you retain all your consciousness, you have all the same feelings and thoughts as before, but you have no ability to voluntarily control the muscles in your body, except for the muscles that control your eyes. That means your only portal for communicating with the outside world is through blinking.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  So people caregivers will have to slide their finger across a letter board. And when they get to the right letter, you blink. And that's how you painstakingly construct word after word after word. And so almost by brute force, Olivia is forced to confront the idea that for the first time ever, she doesn't get to curate a version of herself that she thinks is going to be palatable for other people. When her boyfriend's family comes to visit, she can't charm them. She can't make jokes. She has a ventilator strapped to her face. There's nothing she can do to convey poise of any kind in that moment. And her story is such a beautiful example of what this sort of incremental progress looks like. Because she has no, she has no buffer in place, right?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  She has to be the raw, most vulnerable form of herself. And through the love that her caregivers show her, through a team of therapists, she starts to slowly learn, hey, wait a second. This unvarnished version of me, the one that isn't Instagram friendly, my care team really loves this person. They laugh at my jokes. They think I'm cool. They come visit me at night before they head home just to say goodbye. And they text me on the weekends to share, you know, what the conversation they were having at the bar. Like, they seem to really like me. And it led to this radical idea that maybe she should like herself. And what I find amazing about Olivia's journey is she has an incredible recovery experience, but she doesn't fully recover.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  So she still faces significant constraints, like her mouth is partially paralyzed and she has a limp in her gait. And she is so far from the quote, "perfect" version of herself that she was for so long aspiring to be. And yet she told me, "I have reached a place of self-assurance that I may never have gotten to had this experience not happened and that most people never get to in their lifetime." And I just think that's a wonderful example of, one, realizing, oh, wow, I should not place my self-worth in something as precarious as the opinion of someone else, right? Becky's got to find that confidence internally. It's not, it doesn't actually rest in her husband and what he says. It doesn't rest in her friend groups or what people say about her on social media. It has to come from within.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  And she has to be patient where she just celebrates those small wins, you know? Take the win.

• 19:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's a part in the book where you're talking about Olivia and I think we've all been there, not exactly where she was, but she has to blink out, I wish I wasn't here or like, I don't want to be here, here in the hospital setting and all of this, but like, haven't we all experienced that? Like, something has happened, some change has been thrust upon us, because we all love change, it's when we make the change. If I put a million dollars in TK's bank account, he loves that change, right? But like, if someone takes a million dollars out of his bank account, now all of a sudden, he hates that change, right? But regardless, when one of those changes are thrust upon us, I don't want to be here. I often think about Sam Harris, who's been on the show a few times, one of the things he talked about was, there are at least a billion people in the world who

• 20:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  would trade all of their resources to swap places with you right now. And how fascinating is that? Because many of the insecurities that we have, like Becky's being a petite woman, my wife is super fit and beautiful, but she's 5'11 and a half, and like, she's like, she wants to be petite, right? And so like, we always want the thing that we don't have, right? And it's like, the basketball player wants to be a musician, the musician wants to be an athlete, and it's like, we have our version of success, we can't see the success because it's always out there, it's always somewhere else. Becky, I'd love to send you or give you a clutter counseling session with TK. I know we spent 20 minutes talking about it here, but he can really help you unpack much of the emotional clutter

• 21:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that's going on behind the scenes with this relationship and the self-confidence. I'd love to give you a clutter counseling session with him. Also, you can download his ebook for free, it's called Emotional Clutter, over at theminimists.com. Anyone else who wants a clutter counseling session, head on over to theminimists.com and click Counseling at the top. Now, before we get back to our callers, Maya, we do something called The Lightning Round. It's, we dive into our Patreon community chats, question of the week, and we answer a short, shareable, minimal maxim. Don't worry about that, you don't need a pithy answer. We brought our own pithy answers today. We monder on quite a bit as well. Now, you can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimists.com. Podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimal maxims.com will also deliver our

• 22:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free. If you sign up for our email newsletter at the minimalists.com will never send you spam or junk or advertisements. And we just updated the format of the simple newsletter recently. I've gotten back into sending out a weekly essay with that as well. So last week I, I, we're at the Sunday symposium. We do these monthly events sometimes here in, in Southern California. We're currently taking a break from them. But at our last one, a woman came up to us and she was like, I'm great with my own clutter, but how I, how do I deal with other people's clutter? What do I, what happens when I go into other people's cluttered spaces? And so I wrote a whole essay about that. And so if you sign up for our email newsletter, you'll get those no spam, no junk, no ads, just starting

• 22:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right. The question of the week this week, Maya is when's the last time you felt jealous? And how did that change your behavior? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, and I want to hear from you on this as well, let's, let's check in with what some of our audience had to say. Rocky said, I've been feeling jealous of everyone with full use of their arms since I broke my wrist last week. Losing use of a limb temporarily is teaching me not to take it for granted. I mean, I think sometimes we have to take things for granted, otherwise it's going to drive us crazy. But I also understand the appreciation side of it, like stepping back and saying,

• 23:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  wow, look, I have use of both of my limbs, or I'm able to speak right now. How wonderful is that? I have a mouth, so I can taste soup whenever I eat soup. Isn't that amazing? Stepping back instead of like, I wish I had X. It's like, I'm glad I have Y. Now, there is an interesting sort of dichotomy here. The question's about jealousy. We often use these two words interchangeably jealousy and envy. And I thought it'd be worth having a quick discussion about that because we use them interchangeably, but do mean two different things. Jealousy usually involves a fear that something you have like a relationship or a possession is being threatened by a third party. There's a little voice in your head saying, hey, someone might take what's mine.

• 24:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Envy, on the other hand, is more about wanting something that someone else has. I really like TK's Lamborghini. I want his Lamborghini and I envy it, right? You see a new car, you see an awesome vacation that they have and you think like, "Man, I really wish I had that too." So in short, jealousy sort of involves loss, a fear of loss. And then envy, it involves some sort of acquisition. Like, "I'd really like to get that thing from you." Now Maya, I think Rocky is sort of the perfect illustration here. And it's an easy illustration too, because he's gonna get, it sounds like he'll have the full use back of that wrist, right?

• 25:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But the subtitle of your book, "Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans", his story reminds me a bit of Olivia's, but a much more subtle version. There's a change that has been thrust upon him and he doesn't like it. Do you have any insights while he's healing?

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I resonate with that because actually I'm feeling, I think what I would call envy in this moment, actually. You said, "When was the last time?", this morning? And it's because a close family member is navigating an unexpected health diagnosis right now. And it is totally thrown me off my normal course. And I found myself actually walking down the street, looking at everyone and very naively thinking, "Well, no one else is having to battle this problem. Their lives are perfect." Right? And it's a very common thing to do, right? We focus in on the challenge that we're confronting and we just assume, it's a failure of empathy really, to assume that everyone else has the perfect, pristine life.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  And you're looking essentially their highlights reel when they walk down the street, right? They're not airing everything that they're going through. They're not giving you access into their brains and the challenges they're navigating. And so I really empathize with this feeling of, you know, he's envying everyone who has a well-functioning arm. And I'm envying everyone who doesn't have this particular health diagnosis, right? And, but one thing, and I think you already alluded to this a bit, Josh, is these moments can actually... Reorient us with our fundamental sense of gratitude. Because what I did in this moment this morning is I said, okay, I am confronting this.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  But to Sam Harris's prompt, what are all the things that are so wonderful and joyful in my life that other people would envy, that other people would aspire to have in their lives? And I think this actually hearkens back to your comment TK, which is you're not just putting on rose colored glasses, you're just seeing your life with greater context. Right? You're trying to remember that for each thing that you feel you are lacking, for each thing that you feel has been taken away, for each thing that you feel has been threatened, it is also an opportunity to not take for granted.

• 27:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  All the things that remained stable.

• 27:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Right? All the things that you didn't lose through an experience you went through that are still fully intact. And those moments of gratitude can puncture through the negative bubble that you're in. Right? Where all of your hours are spent focusing on that one negative thing. And you forget, oh, there's actually so much to appreciate. And so in many ways, I try to, you know, I want to urge Rocky to say, okay, yeah, my arm isn't going to be functional for a long time. Guess what is functional for him? His legs are functional, presumably. He was able to record a voice memo or type this message to you guys. Right? So his cognition is intact. Right? There's so many things that he can be grateful for right now.

• 27:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, sometimes it's hard to see that. This happened to me this morning. It was a total boomer moment. I slipped in the shower. I don't think I've ever slipped in the shower until this morning. And I could see that like, uh-oh, this could have gone really bad.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right? And so I saw this alternate path forward. In a split second, my life bifurcated and everything could have changed. Now, it's fine, I caught myself, I didn't even get hurt. Like, I didn't fall over, I caught myself, but what if I didn't? What if I had banged my head and died? Or what if I would have become paralyzed? What if I would have just injured myself? It would have ruined this podcast. Right? And so like, I could be grateful for the fact that I didn't injure myself in the shower this morning, because that could have happened and it could have changed everything.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  At the same time, I also want to give people more courage if they do face changes like that. So we know from decades and decades of research that, Josh, had you slipped in the shower, had something really bad happen to you, you would be far more resilient than you think right now. Yes. Right? So we know that, in general, our psychology is wired such that we overestimate, well, we overestimate how good the good things will be. Right. But we definitely overestimate how bad the bad things will be. And one of the biggest discoveries, I mean, one of the reasons I named my book, The Other Side of Change, is it's an ode to the fact that we become different people on the other side of the hardest moments of our lives. Right. And we sometimes forget that.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  So at the outset of a change, I've often thought, oh, my God, I feel so overwhelmed. I feel so daunted by this. There is no way that I will be able to endure this experience. But I forget that we are constantly changing. A big change in our lives can accelerate those internal transformations, those internal shifts. When a big change happens to us, it can also lead to profound change within us. And so the person navigating the full experience of tripping in the shower, or not being able to start a family, or breaking their elbow, or getting locked in, that person will be different. They will have new capabilities, they will have new perspectives, they will have new values that are now accessible to them, that will actually help them as they go through this process.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  And what's been so fascinating is, you guys know from reading this book, I've interviewed people who have gone through harrowing changes. Are they thrilled they had to navigate that experience? No. Who would ever will illness or loss, for example, into their lives? No. But are each of them grateful for the person they became as a result of navigating their change? Yes, they are. And there is something so hopeful in that message.

• 30:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and I think that change is going to show up regardless. And in the book, you talk about the loss of control, which actually brings me into Nicole and also Lou's question. Let's go into Nicole here. So I felt jealous today. In fact, I feel jealous a few times a day, every day. For me, jealousy leads to two things, action or anger. And so there's a bifurcation there as well. The feeling of jealousy is also feeling like I've lost control of something. And of course, that makes me anger angry, or it can make me take some sort of action. Now, TK and I often have a debate about the utility of anger. One of us thinks that anger can be useful, and the other one has a correct worldview.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  TK, he's about to say your worldview, right?

• 31:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I mean, I think that anger is always toxic, unless it's performative anger. Like if Daniel Day Lewis is on the screen performing anger, that's a different thing. It's not real anger.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  I'm with you, TK, by the way. You and I are on the same team here.

• 31:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're breaking the tie. Well, that makes me angry. I got the doctor on my side.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  There's no utility of anger. You're not allowed to feel it.

• 31:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Exactly. It's a very unpleasant emotion. Can you hide it under the desk for me? Talk to me about the utility of anger, then.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think anger reaffirms our value systems. So we rarely get a chance to deeply reflect on our beliefs and our values. In fact, most of the beliefs that we generate over the course of our lives are not the result of conscious deliberate thought. They're the result of these implicit subconscious messaging. Sorry, let me retake that. They're the result of these implicit messages that we receive when we're young, from popular culture, from teachers, from our parents, from caregivers, from our communities, from our friends, from newspaper headlines that we read. And so we rarely have a chance to sit down and think, well, what do I believe? And is this belief grounded in reality, in truth, in something that aligns with my deepest values?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  And I think anger is assigned to us. That's something that's happened in the world. Conflicts with our fundamental sense of right and wrong.

• 32:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And I think it's really healthy for us to have a discussion, an internal dialogue, because sometimes you realize on the other side of anger that your anger was unfounded.

• 32:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Maybe you misunderstood someone. That's one way in which your anger can be unfounded. But also, maybe you were actually laboring under a set of beliefs that is outdated in some way, that you heard from an aunt growing up that really should be interrogated. Because like, wait, why do I think that?

• 33:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Like, oh, wait, I just, I just heard that once in my little child brain, because it was, because that message was bound up and her sense of love and belonging just anchored to that, latched on to it. And now I still carry that belief all these years later. And so I think it's a wonderful signal to our brains to have that internal conversation.

• 33:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  See?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  And so that is why, and so that is why I'm right. No, I'm just kidding. But I also think, of course, prolonged anger might not be helpful, right?

• 33:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or, or action.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Resentment might not be helpful.

• 33:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, maybe the, the détente for all of us here is the, the fact that like, we can recognize that acting out of anger is often going to lead to regret. When we take actions that are in a highly charged emotional state, that could be anger, resentment, it could be deep sadness, depression, we do things that we often look back and say, oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, in some ways I see it as kind of like a fire. When you look at a fire, I mean, that's very easy to associate with danger. You can burn down a house, you can burn a city, you can hurt yourself. At the same time, you can cook a meal, you can warm a family, you can do a lot of good with that fire.

• 34:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But how do you cook a meal with anger? So extend that metaphor to anger?

• 34:25Speaker 04

  So I'm glad Rosa Parks wasn't like, oh, baby, I'm just being too sensitive. She said she was angry.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  She did not like what she was being told. Now, she didn't suppress it, she didn't zen her way out of it, but she allowed that anger to connect her with her values. I'm angry because I believe that all human beings should be treated equally in terms of where they get to sit on a bus. That's why I'm angry. And so what am I going to do about that? Well, I'm not going to suppress this feeling or pretend like I'm not bothered. I'm going to take a stand here. And I'm gonna remain in my seat and I'm gonna pay a huge cost for the opportunity to send a message to the world. And I'm sure many people had done things like that before and suffered and the world perhaps didn't hear that message, but the aligning of the

• 35:13Speaker 04

  timing, everything came together in such a powerful way that there was a ripple effect and her actions changed the world. And so I think that the question is, do we cling to that anger and say, I'm gonna use that anger to put people in a position where they have to appease me, where they have to dance for me to make me happy, or I'm gonna use that anger to make myself feel righteous and superior? Or do I make myself a student of the anger and say, what are you teaching me about myself? And what's the most healthy response to that?

• 35:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You see how he tried to paint me into a corner there? Well, actually, Rosa Parks was-

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, try to respond to that one, Josh.

• 35:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I have nothing to say, no comment.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  I did want to say also, sometimes the anger is directed at ourselves, right?

• 35:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, yeah, almost always.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  And when we're angry, well, depending on your personality type, right?

• 35:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, okay.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  So some people, I mean, I am in the camp of, I always blame myself first, before looking at anyone else to blame. So I want to say two things about anger directed at the self. One, it is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. So you get angry at yourself when you feel that you acted in ways that did not align with your better self, with your values, right? With the future that you aspire to have. And so that is one way that you can improve as a human being. I'm really angry that I approached that difficult conversation the way that I did. I came off as petty. I came off as immature. I'm gonna be better next time, right? So this is another reason why anger has utility. It gives you moments of reflection to figure out how you can be better. Now, the flip side of that

• 36:40Speaker 02

  is if you believe in these moments when you've messed up, that you messed up not because your actions were bad, but because you are bad, then there's no redemption. And then there's truly nothing to learn from your anger. So you have to believe going into it from a more, from a place of self-compassion, that you are observing behaviors and actions, but that you yourself are in fact redeemable. So- I acted this way in a meeting with my coworkers. It was not me at my best, but I believe that I can change. Because I believe that I am redeemable in this way. I believe that I can improve. I have a growth mindset when it comes to myself. We fall into traps when we have a more essentialist view of ourselves.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Like, I'm a bad person fundamentally, right? There's no hope for me. And so it's just a reminder to people that self compassion can sound a little woo woo. But actually, all the research shows that when you have more self compassion, you actually see more growth within yourself. Because if you think that you're not going to be able to change, you're just going to stick with your old habits. Because you're a lost cause, right? But if you think you can improve, it actually does drive much more initiative and far more self improvement. It just leads to better outcomes.

• 37:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the thing about your book is it's, there are several different templates of there. People who go through change, or change is thrust upon them. And it's like, oh, I'll never be able to recover from this. Or, or I need to get out of this situation. I need to hide my bad feelings. I need to get back to where I was. And, and the thing that was, I thought, provoking my own, it stirred up some emotions in me when I thought about Olivia. She's like, she had to let go of the outcome of I'm going to have a full recovery.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 38:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's where the freedom was, letting go of the outcome. I want to get back to jealousy, TK. Give me something pithy for the question of the week. When's the last time you felt jealous? And how did that change your behavior?

• 38:38Speaker 04

  My pithy statement would be is to be filled with jealousy is to be drained of self respect. I think that jealousy is an insult to your potential. I believe that every single one of us is unrepeatable, indispensable, that we are a unique individualization of infinite intelligence, infinite beauty. And anytime we find ourselves in a place of jealousy, it's because we are failing to see that at some level. Now, this doesn't mean that life is always working for you in the way that you want it to work, or that life always feels amazing or feels good. But I think it does mean That there are certain experiences that other people are meant to have, certain truths that other people are meant to see,

• 39:23Speaker 04

  and they're only going to receive them from you. And we've experienced this at various times in life where maybe you try to recommend a book or a movie or a resource to someone and they don't want to hear it. But if you give it to them, they'll take it from you. And the reverse is true, right? We all know what it's like to say something to someone that they need to hear, but it's you who's saying it, and so they're just not going to receive it. But then another person says it and they receive it. We all are here to impact the world in a way that is uniquely biased in the direction of our experience and what we bring to it. And when we develop a rich appreciation of that, we start focusing less on what other people have that we don't have, and we start focusing on what's enviable about our lives.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  I've heard it said that in the treasury, when they try, when they train people to detect counterfeit money, they don't study all the different ways that you can create counterfeit money. They just study what real money looks like. And they master that, and so they can see the millions of different ways you counterfeit it. There may be ways you're going to counterfeit money that haven't been invented yet, but we'll recognize it when we see it because we know what the real thing looks like. And it's the same with yourself. When you know who you really are, when you know the real thing in terms of your potential and your possibilities, then you reject the illusions, the counterfeit lives that you have that you see in other people. And that's what produces jealousy.

• 40:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maya, I think about jealousy as a wasted emotion of sorts. When we think about jealousy with respect to loss, it's often like, you talk about this in the book, but with losing a child before having a child, it's also a loss of a story of the way things are supposed to be in the future.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so like, I'm afraid I'm going to lose something. Sometimes it's even losing it in advance. I didn't get the promotion. And so now I'm jealous because I feel like I lost something, right? And to me, loss is a fundamental misunderstanding of the cosmos, we could call it. Because ultimately, on a long enough timeline, you're going to lose everything, right? And sometimes we really want to lose things. And when we're decluttering our house. Houses, you know, the average American household has 300,000 items in it. And most of us would benefit from losing most of it. And yet, if someone comes into our house and takes those things, even if it's the things that we don't want, we know, but if they take it from us, we're going to feel that sense of of loss, that jealousy, I've lost this thing, even though I don't use it, I feel this sense of loss.

• 41:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's a story going on behind the thing and behind the loss.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love what you're saying because one of the big insights that I've had from my years of hosting my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, and now in writing The Other Side of Change, is that one of the biggest reasons why change can feel so scary when it happens is that it does threaten our fundamental sense of self-identity. It threatens the narrative identity that we've constructed for ourselves, which is the story we tell ourselves about who we are in this world. I felt an acute version of this when I was a little kid. So as a, as a, um, starting from the age of six, I started to play the violin and I got really serious about it. So by the age of nine, I was studying at Juilliard. A few years later, the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman took me on as his private student.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  I mean, I was really hoping that I could one day become a professional. And a hand injury derailed my career in a moment. That was my slight change of plans. And doctors told me, okay, sorry, kid, but your dreams are over.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  I remember that there was something so curious about my grief, about my sense of loss. I wasn't just grieving the loss of the instrument, I was also grieving the loss of myself in this more fundamental way. Sometimes it's only when we lose something that we realize how much significance it carried, how formative a role it had played in our lives. And for me personally, I realized, oh, my God, I was a violinist before I was even Maya, right? Like, to this day, my right shoulder is slightly elevated compared to my left because of all the hours I spent doing this in a practice room. And so my body had grown around the instrument, right? It's hard to understate just how significant the violin was for me in my life. And it's taken me decades to learn this valuable lesson, but I'm hoping it resonates with listeners.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  So one way to protect ourselves, to protect our sense of security in the face of so much uncertainty that comes with the change is to Anchor our identity, not simply to what we do, to the roles or labels that we carry, but to why we do that thing. So we want to ask ourselves, what is it that makes me love the things that I love to do? I asked myself this question about the violin. And it turns out that emotional connection was at the core of my love. Right? I'm the type of person, I'm Maya, and the type of person who thrives when she is emotionally connecting with other humans. Like, this is my happy spot right now. This is my happy place, just talking to you guys, right? About deep questions about life.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  And so, when you realize what your why is, you then realize, oh, just because I lost the violin doesn't mean I lost what led me to love it in the first place. That part of me is still very much intact. And so the exercise becomes, well, where else can I find ways to express this part of myself? Through what other outlets can I express this why? Turns out, subconsciously, I was drawn to pursuits that feed this obsession, right? On the podcast, I just dig into people, the hardest moments of people's lives within seconds. We cut through all the platitudes, right? In the interviews that I conducted for The Other Side of Change, years and years spent probing people's lives. You build deep friendships with the people that you interview. And so, I would challenge everyone who's listening to ask themselves, what is my why?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Is it giving back to your community? Is it learning something new and witnessing progress within yourself? Is it having an outlet for creative expression? Don't judge your why, just ask yourself what it is. And anchor part of your identity to that. Because in the throes of a big change, if someone were to come in your home and take away something that meant something to you, like your violin, you would then have a softer landing and your why can serve as a compass that helps guide you towards your next steps.

• 45:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're talking about recontextualizing your identity here. But the way that you're doing it, the identity isn't tied in a specific action. It's always tied to the why behind that, right?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  The underlying motivation, the underlying passion. The thing that gets you up in the morning. Life can't actually take your passions away from you. That's the beautiful thing. They can't take your why away from you. Like, nothing that happens in my life could threaten the joy I feel in connecting with other people. Now, I might have to find new ways to do that, right? Let's say I lose my voice one day. I have to find a new way of connecting, but that fundamental drive is still there.

• 46:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and by that recontextualizing, you're letting go of that false identity of the past. And by letting go of that identity, you're also letting go of a loss that actually never happened, the future loss, right? And by letting go of that loss, now all of a sudden, you've let go of the jealousy because there's nothing to lose in the first place. All right, that's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of colors to talk to, Maya. But first, real quick for our Right Here, Right Now segment, let's talk about one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Coming up on February 2nd, our Simplify Everything course. The enrollment opens for the course. So what would you do if I told you you could remove all of the clutter from your life? Not just the physical clutter, but also the emotional clutter,

• 46:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the mental clutter, financial clutter, digital clutter, career clutter, calendar clutter, and even relationship clutter? Well, we've helped millions of people do that. And a few years ago, we recorded this. It's the most comprehensive thing we've ever done. It's called Simplify Everything. We did this really long course. It's four weeks long. It's, I'm sorry, five weeks, five distinct weeks. It's 17 video lessons, 45 clutter problem areas, 135 decluttering solutions, 50 minimalism resources, and a 30-page workbook plus forum, so you can join all the other 100-plus students that are simplifying with you. You're going to simplify everything over the course of five weeks. Enrollment opens on February 2nd, 2026.

• 47:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  For just 72 hours, you can watch the official trailer, read the graduate testimonials, so many great testimonials over there. And you can also enroll over at simplifycourse.com. If you just put your email in there, we'll notify you when it opens up. SimplifyCourse.com. All right, much more coming up, but here is a minimalist tip from one of our listeners.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  Hello Minimalists and everybody. My name's Victoria. I'm calling from Australia and I wanted to talk about those silly little things. So I know that the theme song literally says every little thing that you think that you need. I wondered if anybody else has the problem that I had. I got rid of a few things the other day and these were some things I'd been keeping for way too long, even a couple of years, not in the drawer but out in the open for some reason. These included a three milliliter sachet of soy sauce, a little cheap glass holder for a votive candle, a piece of mirror that had lost its case or backing,

• 48:36Speaker 05

  and a sachet of instant coffee. I'd been keeping these for ridiculous potential situations like somebody might come over to visit one day and they don't have time to wait for me to make them a filtered coffee. Or I might run out of soy sauce and I need a tiny little bit. And so this will be better than me going to the shop, which is five minutes away. Or there might be a power outage and I will need this cheap glass holder to put a votive candle in, even though I already have some full-sized candles. And this is seriously what my thinking was. It was almost as if I had analyzed the situation and judged,

• 49:20Speaker 05

  yes, these are definitely essential items that I need to hang on to and keep in full view.

• 49:29Speaker 05

  Now that I look at it, that seems really, really crazy. But they're gone now. Thank you.

• 49:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's so good, Victoria. Thank you for that insightful and thoughtful comment. TK, isn't it interesting that when we finally let go of something like the soy sauce packets or the candle holder, the things that we know we're not going to use, we're holding on to just in case, we kind of discover like Victoria, that we discover the blockage these things have on our wellbeing.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  That's right. I mean, a reasonable question to ask would be, hey, why does that even matter? What's the difference in a packet of soy sauce? Well, there isn't much of a difference, but if you feel it's clutter and it's bothering you, then there is a world of a difference because it's the little foxes that destroy the vine. It's the little things that chew away at our self-respect and our self-compassion. And so when we get rid of those things that we've convinced ourselves we need for some kind of emergency that rarely happens, we develop a certain amount of trust in our ability to improvise and our ability to show up powerfully when things happen in an unplanned manner. And so you know what? Maybe I do find myself in a situation where I'm out of soy sauce.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  I guess I have to rely on my ability to enjoy this meal without the soy sauce. I guess I have to rely on my ability to find something else that I can flavor this with.

• 50:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Talk about change being thrust upon you.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  I know.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  And when we have little moments like that where the universe does say, hey, I need you to step up and find a way to enjoy that without any soy sauce in the house. We've all been there. We find that we're able to do it and just bit by bit, we become more confident in our creative power. And over time, man, that accumulates, that accumulates in a massive way.

• 51:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Am I of any insights on these just in case items?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting. I actually worked with an organizer to try to declutter my home. And I'd had a similar set of habits around, well, I might need this someday, right? Or I might need, you know, five versions of this because if I don't have that, you know, then I'm going to have to go to the store. And I remember Valerie told me, you are actually cluttering your brain by having so many items in your home, such that whatever time you were to save not going to the store, you're going to be spending trying to find items that you need in everyday life, but you can't find them because your space is not optimally organized and you have way too many things. And she turned out to be totally right. So I did take a minimalist approach where, you know, things were first of all, organized in the right places. You know, she'd always say, shop at home first.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Here's the backstop cabinet. I'm like, okay, good to know. But it was so true because there was such an ease and some In finding all the things that I needed that actually I had a far more efficient life. I spent so much less time in that frustrated period where I'm about to go to the airport and I'm like, oh my gosh, where is, you know, my passport or where is this one travel item that I need? Because it's also alongside the soy sauce and the broken mirror and the whatnot, right? And so it was just, it was a really pragmatic justification for why it's actually worth going five minutes to the shop to get the soy sauce because you have saved yourself hours of your life not searching for stuff or feeling overwhelmed by your environment.

• 52:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We call this the just in case rule. It's in the minimalist rule book. We have these 16 rules for living with less. People can download it for free on our website. But the just in case rule, we also call it the 2020 rule. Anything I'm holding on to just in case, I can let it go because I can replace it for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes from wherever I am. And this even worked when I lived in the middle of nowhere, Montana. It worked, right? Because what you're illustrating here is the easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it. If there's a bunch of excess, it's harder to organize. We got to the Walmart or the Container Store and we buy all these clutter coffins for our things and we put our dead things in these boxes and we bury them in a mausoleum called our basement or attic or storage locker or guest bedroom. And we wonder why we're so

• 53:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  disorganized even amid our organization. We're going to talk to you a bit more about some of the organizing around the house. I want to hear some more about that. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode like Victoria did, you can send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick panticulation break. We'll be right back.

• 54:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all. That is the first 39% of episode 522. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two hour maximal edition with Dr. Maya, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how do I become a content creator if I'm paralyzed by fear? Why do I feel melancholy after I share an Experience with my friends. How do I let go of the past hurts that haunt me? 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 or Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to the very first

• 54:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  episode. Big thanks to Dr. Maya today. Her book is called The Other Side of Change. We'll put a link to this in the show notes, as well as a link to her podcast and her Instagram. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, audio Ben, Spire Jeff, Inspire Dave, Jordan No More, 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 and use things. Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 55:28Speaker 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'd be fine without it.