529 | Consumer Relapse

The Minimalists talk about relapsing into consumerism, purchases that make you a bad minimalist, living small in a big world, and much more. Discussed in this episode: Do no-buy challenges create lasting change in our consumption habits—or are they just temporary detoxes before we relapse into old spending patterns? (2:06) What's the last thing you bought that made you feel like a "bad" minimalist? (22:16) Right Here, Right Now: Simplehaven Retreat and Uncluttered Faith (49:50) Listener Tip: Live small, and question everything you bring into your home. (53:13) 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'd be fine without it.

• 0:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. And joining me here in beautiful, rainy, West Hollywood, California, is my good friend, TK Coleman.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Hey, man. Feel the rain on your skin.

• 0:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes. Oh, we should have played that before, before we started recording. I'm in, I'm in the mood to pod now.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  That was a lot. We just played it right there. That's what that was.

• 1:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yes. Savvy D is here. Professor Sean is here. We have a studio audience of one. Hannah is here today. Audio Ben and Tom Catter joining us remotely. We've got a lot to talk about, TK. I want to talk to you about relapsing into consumerism. Also, purchases that make you a bad minimalist. And living small in a big world and much, much more. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Join the program. It's 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.

• 1:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  By the way, thanks, patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because, well, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes, they do. Our first question today is from Vanessa.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Hi, minimalist. This is Vanessa from Vancouver. I'd like to have thoughts on the low-buy, no-buy challenge, like no-buy month, year. I love watching YouTube videos and many creators engage in this kind of challenge. And some fail and share that journey, which is always very interesting. But I was wondering, is there a long-term effect? Do people question their consumption habits? Do they go back to what their life used to be once the no-buy challenge is over? Is it sustainable to frame it in this way? I'd like to know if any of you ever tried this kind of challenge?

• 2:55Speaker 04

  And if so, what made you do it? Like paying off debt, minimalism reasons, environment, saving up money, etc. Thank you.

• 3:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So I hear two questions here, TK. One is about a no-buy challenge or a low-buy challenge, buying only what you need. But I like this idea of the temporary deprivation of a no-buy challenge for 30 days or for 90 days. Or I did it for an entire year once, and I can talk to you about that. And I failed miserably, spectacularly, and I learned a lot from that. And so there's that piece of the question. But also, she's kind of asking, like, are these just temporary detoxes? That I'll relapse into my old spending or buying habits in the not-too-distant future. And when we're addicted to something, whether that is a substance like alcohol or other drugs,

• 3:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  quite often, we can stop doing the thing, but go back even harder, right? Because it's like, oh, yeah, I didn't develop the musculature to change my habits going forward. I also find that sometimes it is much easier to fast than it is to, quote-unquote, diet, right? It's like, oh, I'm just gonna eat the appropriate amount of calories and my macronutrient and micronutrient ratios are gonna be spot-on. That's more difficult because it requires a level of deliberate action. Whereas fasting just means, I'm not gonna put anything- Thing in my mouth for a while, right? And as long as I do that, then I'm fasting. I'm not eating anything. I'm not consuming anything. Let me tell you real quick about my experience and then I'd love to hear your thoughts.

• 4:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So in 2011, I started out the year, theminimalists.com was about two weeks old at this point. And I needed something to write about. And I said, well, Nick Ademas and I, we're the minimalists and I'm going to do a challenge. 30 days, that's amateur hour. How about we make it a full year of buying nothing? And man, it was really difficult at first because I found there were habits I didn't even know that I had. Unconscious habits. And so I'd go to a store and I want to buy something. Because I now, to be clear, I still bought consumables. So I had soap and I bought food. So it wasn't buy nothing at all, but it was buy only consumables and buy nothing else. Right?

• 5:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Any, any artifacts or objects or assets for my house? Those were on pause for a year. And so I'd go to a store to like Target to buy some food. Oh, that lamp looks really nice or that vase. And my impulse was like, well, I'll just go ahead and get it. Right? Because that's what I was used to doing. I really like this thing and minimalism is not about depriving myself of things that I want necessarily. But I realized that I had this thought a lot. I'm going to buy this. I'm going to buy this. I'm going to buy this. And that's where consumerism comes into the picture. I'm trying to complete myself and complete my life through externalities. And so I found that after a month, it got a little bit easier.

• 6:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  After two months, three months, four months, and I got to the fifth month and I noticed there was this rewiring. Or right around the fifth month where I'd walk into a store where as before I would see the thing that I want and say, oh, I think I'll. Oh, wait, I can't get that. And then I'd go next time. You know, I think, oh, wait, I, I can't get that. And then eventually I get to a point about three months in where I was, I really, and I just move on. And then around month five, something crazy happened. I started appreciating the objects without needing to consume them. Oh, that's a really nice lamp. You go drive by design within reach. Oh, wow, that's a beautiful couch. What a work of art.

• 6:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And before it was, I need to consume this. I need this to be mine. I need to own it. What do you think is behind that impulse for us to need to not just appreciate the thing, but to have the thing, to possess the possession?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Well, I, I think the desire to possess is, is, is more of an expression of, uh, of, of, of living according to instinct. And, and for you, that capacity to appreciate without possession is exactly what happens when we embrace the pause, when we embrace the space between stimulus and reaction. It's, it's why meditation is so powerful, right? We live our lives reacting. Someone says something, we get angry, we lash out, we feel something, we speak it immediately. But then you begin to meditate and you start to realize there's a whole lot of space in between those two things. The thing that triggers me, the thing that upsets me and the response that I give to it.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  And if I learn how to inhabit that space, it's almost as if time slows down and you're kind of like in the Sherlock Holmes, Holmes, Holmes movies with, uh, with Robert Downey Jr., where he's in a fight or he's solving a problem and everyone else is moving in real time. But for him, the universe is moving really slowly and what looks like genius is nothing more than a man who sees his options, sees his possibilities because he's inhabiting a slower space. And I think that's what happens. And I think we all have that superpower. We all can live and think like that if we just take our time to say, okay, I hear you advertiser. I hear you, salesperson. I see you, object. And I experience within myself this impulse to just buy you and possess you.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  But why don't I just hit the pause button and place myself on a 24 hour, 48 hour, think about it, sleep on it time limit? And then when you come back, you realize, oh, wow, the pause helped me see something that I don't need to own it in order to. Appreciate it.

• 8:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's why we came up with the wait for it rule. It was an attenuated version of a no buy challenge. Because if you're going to buy something at the store, the impulse might drag you into purchasing something that you might regret a day from now, a week from now, a year from now. And so what we do is we put a little distance between the impulse, the 30, 30 rule. We also call it the wait for it rule. It's if something costs more than 30 bucks, I wait 30 hours to buy it. It's not because I can't afford it financially. It's maybe I can't afford the space that it takes up in both my mind and in my home. Or maybe I can't afford the care that is required to repaint the thing or clean the thing or wash the thing or put batteries in the thing to worry about our things.

• 9:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so waiting for it means I'm going to make a deliberate decision. I do this even on Amazon or when I'm online shopping. I'll put something on a wait list and I often go back. I just did this this weekend. I had a bunch of things on my wish list on Amazon. I was like, why did I even put these here? When did I put these here? And I just started removing them because I didn't need any of them. I'd put them on months ago and I, my life had been just fine without those things. And I think that's really the spirit of a buy now, a no buy challenge. A buy now challenge is a different sort of challenge. That's what every corporation is doing.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  That's like the minimalist version of yes, man. Buy everything for a day.

• 10:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, that's like the minimalist purge. For one day a year, you can go buy anything you want. Remember that show, Supermarket Sweep?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  No, I don't know.

• 10:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, man, it was so good. It was like this game show and maybe the early 90s. And what would happen is you'd have these three contestants. They'd walk into a grocery store and they have something like two minutes or five minutes to get as many groceries as they can. So they got their shopping cart and whoever gets the most groceries in terms of price would win the challenge.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  And they keep everything in their car.

• 10:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And they keep everything in the car. And so people, and they'd win some monetary prize as well. And so obviously you go to the most expensive stuff, meat. And things that are just more expensive, you know, per pound. But you see these people and there's no intention behind it all because you have this five minute clock. And that's all you have. So you're driving your cart down the aisle and you're just taking your arm and swooping things into your cart. And that feels like what we're doing. It feels like what I was doing, at least intellectually. No, I wasn't swooping things into my cart when I went to Target or Ikea or somewhere else, but I was mentally swooping them into my car. I need that. I want that. I want that. I want craving, yearning for things to

• 11:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  complete me, which gets us to the second part of Vanessa's question. It's about relapse, consumerism, relapsing into consumerism. And when I think about a relapse, it means that, okay, I changed my habits for a period of time. And it's easiest to see when you have a friend who is maybe an alcoholic. I have several friends who are alcoholics. Both of my parents were alcoholics and there are those sort of fasting periods where they're not drinking at all. And that seemed to be more sustainable for them, but as soon as they went back to one drink, it was a relapse. One drink turns into 10 really quickly. And that can also happen

• 12:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with consumerism, where our old habits can creep back into the picture. When you're dealing with clutter counseling clients and you're working on some sort of habit change there. It can be with with respect to consumption for this instance. What do you tell folks about when you change your habits to prevent them from going back to old habits that are unpleasant or that they dislike?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  One insight I really just continue to deepen in my appreciation for comes from the world of recovery and it's the one day at a time mantra. One day at a time is so powerful in many ways, but it's especially relevant to this question because sometimes when we feel a conviction and and we desire to make a change in our lives and and we think about something we could do that would move us in the direction of health or sobriety, we can trip our ourselves up by thinking about all the cons that could outweigh the pros. Well, like, I could do this no buy thing, or I could do this detox, but, you know, I might just relapse at the end.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Or, you know, it's, we're in November and you're thinking about making a movement towards sobriety, but then you think about July 4th and what that day usually means for you. And the temptation to overcome July 4th is so overwhelming. And from the vantage point of November 1st, July 4th looks insurmountable. And so you don't do the things you want to do on November 1st because you don't have an answer for July 4th. When the grace to deliver and show up strong on July 4th actually comes from all the little choices you make November 1st through July 3rd, right? Because you'll be, you'll be a different person by then. And so for anybody that is thinking about doing a detox, I'm very much aware of all the arguments against it.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  In fact, I encourage everyone to take a look at a video by Healthy Gamer, where he talks about his misgivings and concerns about detox. And, and he gives some insight as to why people relapse and how you can avoid that. But if the choice is to detox, take a 30 day break from something, take a, a, a two week break from that monkey that's been on your back, or to just say, yeah, it's probably not going to work. So I'm just going to keep the monkey on my back. Choose the detox, because here's where the power lies. It doesn't lie in some sign of, some kind of detox magic that says if you take a two week break, you won't ever relapse. You can relapse, but what it does give you is the space to think about how you want to reframe your relationship to that thing.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  We're in the season of Lent right now and lots of people do things like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give up chocolate for 40 days. I'm gonna give up video games. I'm gonna give up television. And many people, when they get to the end of Lent, they just go right back to binging with no change in their lifestyle. So what's the point? The point is to step back and not just give up the chocolate or the TV or the alcohol, but to use that time to evaluate the role that it plays in your life and to ask yourself from this state of uncommon sobriety.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Do I really want to introduce this back into my life in the same way? Do I really want to have the same relationship? While I'm in this place of not doing it as frequently as I used to, I have the power to set some boundaries now and to develop some strategies now that tells me how I'm going to live after this period of detox. When you combine it with that kind of mindfulness, it gives you the power to avoid the relapse because you're using the detox not as a source of magic that's going to deliver you from an addiction, but as an opportunity to reframe your relationship to whatever that substance is and to get clear with yourself.

• 15:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And for my own no buy challenge, it was an opportunity to also better understand what habits that I wasn't even conscious of. What triggered me to want to purchase something? Why did I have this desire? What void was I trying to fulfill or fill with these consumer purchases? Right? And so as I got further down the road, that reprogramming really helped me. And it took longer than 30 days. It took about five months till I started appreciating the objects without needing to consume them. And then I got to about the sixth month and I spilled tea all over my computer. And I was making a living from writing online. And I still stuck to the spirit of the challenge for a while.

• 16:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was going to the library and like I had yellow legal pads that I was using to write on and that were still left over from before my no buy challenge. So I'm using those to write and I'd go to like Nicodemus's house and I'd borrow his computer to type stuff up and put it up on the blog or I'd go to the library. And at some point I realized, oh, I'm depriving myself. That's not the spirit of a challenge like this. Although it's great for a while, let me test my boundaries and then also establish some new boundaries. So Vanessa, speaking of those boundaries, boundaries are just the things that are no longer acceptable. And as I moved forward, I will say this, it's been, my gosh, 15 years later and that rewiring has stuck.

• 17:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's still there. I still am able to appreciate things without needing to. Own them. However, the only way I've been able to do that is by setting up some additional boundaries with respect to what I'm bringing in. So I don't relapse into my old consumer patterns. And we wrote about some of those in the new audiobook that we did. Very, very simple. TK and I recorded this audiobook. Very, very simple. It's 12 tools for a simpler life. And you can download it for free over at very, very simple.com. Either the audiobook version, or if you want the ebook version, you can get those there as well. Or now it is very affordable on Audible and Kindle. We have several people ask, can I listen to this on Audible? Or can I, can I read it on my Kindle? And the answer is yes. And

• 17:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it's pretty inexpensive if you want to download it there. Or you can get it for free. Any of those places, you can find it. Very, very simple.com. Vanessa, I think that will help you with any sort of no buy challenge you're trying to institute. So you come back with some appropriate boundaries that keep you from relapsing into just crazy spending habits. So exactly where you were before.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Hey, I gotta give you some flowers.

• 18:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Gimme.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  It's time for this episode's edition of Give That Man His Flowers.

• 18:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Uh oh.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Okay, so I think there's this amazing virtue you have that I don't think most people get to see. You always say at the beginning of every episode, advertisements suck. And you talk about how advertisements are yucky to you. It's not a moral position, but it's like looking at feces. It's disgusting. Feces isn't bad, but it's disgusting. I don't like to look at it. And I think it's easy to infer from that, that you're kind of anti thingy in your philosophy, that you would be the main guy to walk behind a luxury goods store and go anathema, you know, and all of these expensive things. But what's interesting to me is that you are the least needy person of luxury goods, but you have the greatest

• 19:08Speaker 03

  appreciation I've seen of luxury goods. That even though you don't buy them, if I could pick anybody on earth to walk into a luxury goods store and tell me what they appreciate about any random object I point to, you're going to be the most interesting person for me to bring with me. Because you can look at the art of And you can neutralize the price and you can say there's nothing about this thing costing 50 grand. That takes away my ability to recognize that a human being made this. And there's an aesthetic dimension to it. There's a personal signature of the artist there. And even though I don't have it to buy it, or even if I had it, I wouldn't spend it on that. It doesn't change the fact that this is art.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  And sometimes we forget that if you took money away, if you took all of those things away. Human beings would still exist and they would create things. And some of those things that human beings would create would show up in our economy as luxury goods. And I just love the way you can appreciate things that you would never buy. You really do treat stores like museums where you can walk in and just show respect for the human dimension of it. You don't want to see any ads trying to make you buy this stuff, but you can appreciate the sense of artistry behind the stuff. So I gotta give you those flowers, man. I wish Professor Sean and I had prepared for this. I could have like some flowers under the desk and then hand them to you, but we'll work on that.

• 20:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tomcat could put that in in post. You're making me think of that field trip that me, you and Malabama took down on Melrose Avenue, right down the street from here. And we looked at a lot of these luxury goods stores in preparation for an episode that we did. We were talking about retail stores and yeah, I look at, think of the James Pierce store that's down there. And they do the beautiful job with, I don't own any James Pierce clothing. I'm not allergic to it. But I really appreciate the way they set it up, the artistry and the display, the sort of ephemerality. There's a Bape store down there and I would never buy anything from Bape personally, but every day they remove everything from the shelves. And so you walk past the store at night and it's just empty shelves.

• 21:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so that means every single day they have to re-merchandise the entire store before they can open. There's a level of intentionality there that I really appreciate. And so if you're into something like Bape, that's a great place to spend your money, it sounds like. Because they're super intentional about what they're doing with their products.

• 21:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's move on to the question of the week. I got a doozy for you this week, TK. We'll get some minimal maxims we'll share with you this week as well. You can find this week's maxims in the show notes over at theminimists.com in every minimal maxim ever. It's a little pithy answer we try to use to frame up these questions. You can find every minimal maxim ever at minimalexims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free. If you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimists.com, we'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, question of the week, TK. This was

• 22:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  in the Patreon community chat. A lot of great responses to this one. What's the last thing you bought that made you feel like a bad minimalist? And bad is obviously in quotes here because bad is a type of feeling. I was just talking to Savvy D before we started recording, and some of the feelings that we express, Rob Bell has this great framing. He calls them column one emotions and column two emotions. Column one are like all the emotions that we want more of, right? Like excitement and happiness. Yeah, the pleasant ones. Yes, anything that is pleasant goes in column one. Give me more of these. And column two, of course, are the bad, in quotes, emotions that aren't bad at all. And the way

• 23:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that he frames them is they're actually vital. These emotions like grief, or sadness, or sorrow, or lamenting, they're vital because they point to, they show us who we are. And I love that framing. These unpleasant emotions show us who we are. And the way I interpret that is they show us what we value. If I'm feeling some... Jealousy. Oh, okay. What's going on behind that? What's my value system that's there? Now, I can, of course, question my values too. Maybe I have some values that I don't actually value, but there's something I'm holding on to. And so that allows me to let go of false values or just these sort of imaginary values,

• 23:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we call them on the values worksheet that we did. And it allows me to understand who I am when I feel these unpleasant emotions. What do I actually desire? Who do I want to be? What's the best and healthiest version of me look like? And do my actions not align with that healthiest version of myself? And that's when we say bad here in this context. What's the last thing you bought that made you feel like a bad minimalist? I kind of think that's what we're talking about here. Let's listen to some of our listeners, see what they had to say. Lee, he says, "I bought my third motorbike last October. Shame on me."

• 24:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  DK, when might owning, let's be devil's advocate here. When might owning three motorcycles actually be a minimalist thing to do?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know what this means. I bought my third motorcycle? I mean, did something happen to the other two? And this is the third one that you've bought and you still only own the amount that you've always owned, which is one at a time? I can't see anything bad with that. Sometimes things get worn, they get old, they need to be replaced. Is that what we mean? But probably not, because maybe that's too easy. He's saying shame on me probably because he owns three, right? So what's the why here? What's the why here? You know, are we buying this because we just saw something that looks so good? We thought to ourselves, "It's so beautiful. It's better off on my shelf or in my garage than in this store." Sometimes that demon tricks us, it gets us. And then, you know, after the experience, we go, "Aw, man, I shouldn't have done that." But here's a good version of this.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Sometimes when you have abundance, it's an opportunity to get other people involved. It's an opportunity to recruit someone who might experience something like that as, "I'm not gonna do it because there's..." A barrier to entry. I can't afford a motorcycle or I don't have access to one. This is an opportunity to reach out to other friends or people that might be interested and say, hey, don't let not owning one be a barrier to enjoying something that you want to enjoy. Because I have three motorcycles, so you can come over my place, you can ride with me and we can do this thing together. Abundance is always an opportunity to share, but it becomes gluttony when we only spend it on ourselves.

• 26:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And the shame on me part, I get that. That's the, that's that column two emotion, right? Where it's saying something about me, but what do you value? Do you value being a quote unquote, good minimalist, right? And a good minimalist would own zero motorcycles or one motorcycle. What's the best number of motorcycles? Well, it depends, right? I'm struck by a comment someone made when I was talking about the house I bought in Ojai a few years ago. And someone asked like, how many square feet is it? I said, I don't know, maybe it's about 1,400 square feet. This is one of our Sunday symposium events. And she looked at me and she goes, I think you could do better. And I was like, oh, okay. Does that mean more square feet, less square feet? I don't even know what better means, right?

• 26:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Better in what context? Better for what? Do I, because it could be true that maybe I need more square feet than that. Or maybe, yes, TK lives in an apartment that's 400 square feet. Maybe I guess he's doing so much better than me on his minimalist journey, right? Well, it just turns out that you found something that was appropriate for you, giving all of the, given all the other circumstances. And I think with Lee, yeah, he bought his third motorbike. Shame on me. Okay, but why shame on me? Understanding it doesn't have to be shame associated with that. But if there is shame associated with it, what is it telling you about yourself? Maybe you have spent money that could have been better spent elsewhere. And if so, you can rectify that for sure.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  If you call me up and said, man, I bought too much food. I have so much food in this fridge. Shame on me. I would say, only if you're not inviting me over to lunch.

• 27:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sharon says, I recently bought a pirate compass because it looks cool.

• 27:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, when might owning something like a pirate compass make you a bad minimalist?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  If you haven't made peace with your true priorities and preferences. I've heard it said before that you can go to the beach and resent yourself for not being at the office. But then you can pack up your things, go to the office and resent yourself for not being at the beach. In either scenario, it doesn't matter if you're at the office or the beach. What matters is that you are resenting yourself. You are failing to line up your energy with your true preferences and priorities. And so we can literally incriminate ourselves for anything by refusing to embrace who we truly are and who we, what we really want. There is nothing wrong with bringing something into your home because you believe it looks cool, sounds cool, or makes you feel cool.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  I mean, what's the point of bringing art into our homes? We might not use the word cool, but it boils down to the same essence. I brought that into my home because it looks cool. What's the point of the music that you listen to, the clothes that you wear? Because it looks good to you, it feels good to you, that's what you like. And we have the permission to like what we like. But when we antagonize ourselves and say, well, everyone else has that permission, but I don't have that permission. Because minimalism is a standard that exists outside of myself that I must conform to with a sense of religiosity. Well, now it becomes a bad thing, not because of the thing, but because of your failure to line up your energy with who you truly are and what you really want.

• 29:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you remember, we were doing the audiobook recording of Very Very Simple. One of the rules is the wouldn't repurchase rule. Which is like a spiritual cousin of the spontaneous combustion rule in a way. But it's more thought provoking, it's more intellectual. Spontaneous combustion is about the feeling. If that pirate compass were to spontaneously combust, how would you feel? And it's like, ah, if you would have a, aww, then that's a sign that you get some sort of value from it, most likely, right? But the wouldn't repurchase rule says, okay, if I lost this thing today, or it broke, or someone stole it, would I repurchase it?

• 30:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And if the answer is yes, I'm going to hold on to it. Now, I can interrogate that as well. I can say, okay, why would I repurchase it? For what? But if the answer is no, I don't think I would repurchase it. Well, that's a sign that I'm going to let it go. Demeter says, I purchased a new blender last July. It was an aspirational buy that's still unopened. Okay, so we are more than half a year later. We've all bought something where we have this thing and we keep it in a box. And it was an aspirational purchase. When do those aspirational purchases become a problem?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  I think about the proverb that says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Any aspiration becomes a problem when we become alienated from the action that it takes to fulfill it. When does a dream become a problem? Not at the point of having it, but at the point of sitting on it so long that your soul is no longer inspired by the dream, but it's deadened by the inactivity in relation to the dream. So if we've got a blender and we bought that and it's still unopened and sitting there for six months, let's move past the self condemnation as quickly as possible. Let's move past what an idiot I am as quickly as possible, because that's not serving anybody. But let's look at that blender and say, okay, I bought it for this reason.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Does that reason still apply to my life? If so, let's open this thing up today and use it. And if that doesn't apply to my life anymore, I'm not going to yield to the sunk cost fallacy. I'm going to let this thing go and put it in the hands of someone who actually needs it and would enjoy it. It's that simple.

• 31:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's so many people who would use a new, really nice blender that was just aspirational for you, but for them, it's inspirational. It's like, I want to use this every single day. And so if I were in his shoes, I would, I'd ask myself some questions. But before I did that, I would just try to use it every day for 30 days. So every day this month, and if it feels like, oh, this is great. I'm so, why didn't I start doing this sooner? It may feel like that, or it might feel like, this is Such a burden. I don't want to keep making these smoothies every single day. I'd rather go to the store down the street and spend the money that way. Either answer is fine, but at least you'll know after you spend that period of time forcing yourself to use that thing that was aspirational. Are you actually going to use it?

• 32:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it makes me also think of the future clutter rule, also from very, very simple, which asks those six questions to prevent any future clutter that we bring into our lives. Who am I buying this for? Is it for myself or am I buying it to impress someone? Will this add value to my life? Clearly, a blender can add value to your life. It's not adding any value now, just in a box in a closet somewhere. Can I afford it? Now, you could afford it monetarily, it sounds like, as long as you didn't have to put it on a credit card, you could afford it. But then you bought it and now it's just taking up space. Can you afford the space it's taking up in your home? Or can you afford the space that it's taking up in the back of your mind? Also, is this the best use of this money?

• 33:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  At this point, maybe you could even sell the blender at half cost because it's still brand new and at least make some of the money back and you do something else with that money. We know right now, a blender that is never used is not the best use of that money. What's the actual cost of this blender? And so, man, it's not just the price tag that you spent for it, but you're worrying about it. You're writing into a minimalist podcast about this thing. And I know you're not asking whether or not you should let it go, but what you're saying here is I had this aspirational purchase and it made me feel like a bad minimalist. That's that column two emotion. And maybe you're starting to resent it. Another column two emotion here. You're resenting the very thing that you purchased because you had an aspiration to perhaps live more healthfully.

• 33:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And finally, the sixth question is, would the healthiest version of me buy this? I assume the answer to that is yes, but the healthiest version of you would also use it.

• 34:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's not just about buying it. It's about the use of that thing. If it's a purchase that you can't use, then it is a piece of art, and that's certainly not the case here.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  By the way, I think a little hack to get around some of the psychological aspects of sunk cost fallacy is to really leverage the power of generosity here. If I buy something, let's say for $200, in my mind, that's what it's worth because that's what I spent it on. But when I take it out to the marketplace, the fact that it's no longer in a retail store, the fact that it's not on the shelf anymore, no one's paying me full price because they can go do that online, just like I did. And so they're going to offer me $80 or $160. And if I settle at that, there is that sense that I'm losing the difference, right? Because I paid this much and in my mind, it's always worth that much. But here's what's beautiful when you give it away. When you give it away, you give it away at full price. You paid $200 for

• 34:58Speaker 03

  it, and you did that because you wanted to buy it for someone else. You know, you don't have a difference to make up when you give it away. You don't lose anything when you give it away. That's the paradox of generosity. When you settle at half price, you lose the difference between the price you sold it for and the price you paid for it. But when you give it away entirely, you gain the whole world because you just bought something for someone else, and you used your power to make a difference in someone else's life. That's priceless.

• 35:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you're in this consumerism purgatory right now where you can either use the thing, or you can give away the thing. But what you're doing right now, it's not, you're not reaping the benefits of either. You're not contributing beyond yourself. You're not using something that is adding value to your life. It's just sitting there in a closet, and it's kind of stressing you out. How about you, listeners? What's the last thing that you bought that made you feel like a bad minimalist? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What's the last thing you bought that made you feel like a bad minimalist?

• 35:59Speaker 03

  All right. My pithy maxim is the only bad minimalist is a sad minimalist.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  So I don't mean the only bad minimalist is a minimalist person who happens to be sad. The only bad minimalist is a sad minimalist in the sense that you are doing this minimalism stuff for any reason other than the way you do it brings you joy. Imagine you've got a friend, man, who has a day off and you ask him, how are you gonna spend your time? And he says, oh, I just love video games and I'm just gonna still away for a few hours and play video games. And you pay that friend a visit and they're playing a video game and you say, oh, what game is this? And they tell you the name of it. You say, is it good? Do you like it? And they go, no, it's stupid. And they just keep on playing it. You say, well, why are you playing it? Well, I don't know, but it's just such a stupid game. You would say, hold on, man. I can understand why you would want to go to a wedding that you don't really enjoy being at because life requires sacrifice like that.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  I would understand why you would go to your kid's baseball game when you'd rather be playing video games because life requires sacrifice like that. There are some things that are about something other than your joy. It's about meaning. It's about demonstrating love or whatever it may be. But there's no good reason to do this other than for the fact that it brings you joy. This is about you. And if you're doing it in a way that doesn't bring you joy, it's worth rethinking the whole enterprise. For me, minimalism is not a religion. It's not a duty that I have to anyone else. Minimalism is about leveraging the power and the beauty of simplicity for the sake of implementing my own conception of the good life to the best that I can.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  And if I'm not doing that, what am I doing? And if I am doing that, doesn't matter if you think I'm a bad minimalist or not, I got the joy. You can have the judgment.

• 37:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If I do make it a religion, can I get you to tithe 10% of your income, though?

• 37:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think you're spot on with what you're saying here. Ultimately, I wish that there was a counting way to quantify our happiness. I wrote an essay about this. I want to read it to you real quick. The summation of it is my minimal maxim for this week, which is not a line from the essay, but I think it fits perfectly for this episode. "The things that count cannot be counted." And I think we're so focused on the things that can be measured, we lose sight of what is actually important. This essay, which just came out in our email newsletter over at theminimalists.com, make sure you subscribe so you can get some stuff like this for free. This is called "Pleonexia."

• 38:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  My 12-year-old asked me to tune into the Super Bowl this year, not for the football, but for the halftime show during the most statistically analyzed broadcast of the year, an event defined by ratings, yardage, revenue, and view counts. A commercial stopped me cold. TK, a commercial stopped me. Now, I don't tune into the Super Bowl for the commercials like some people do, but there was one commercial. I talked to you about it briefly in a previous episode, but then I wrote this essay here. I paused the screen as soon as I saw the commercial and returned to text. "There's more to life than more."

• 39:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  On the surface, it's a remix of the old bromide, "There's more to life than work," but it points to something deeper. "There's more to life than acquiring more. More square footage, more money, more followers." The ancient Greeks had a word for this hunger: pleionexia, greed for the things that can be counted. Today, we live inside a culture optimized for pleionexia. Schools rank, corporations quantify, social media tallies. We measure our steps, we measure our sleep, we measure our relevance. Measurement was created to

• 39:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  serve us, but now we serve what we measure. The measurable is seductive because it's clear. It gives us numbers to chase and progress to celebrate. But numbers are only the surface layer. We don't chase money. We chase what money represents. We don't chase followers. We chase belonging. We don't chase square footage. We chase security. Somewhere along the way, we begin pursuing the proxy instead of the thing itself. More followers, less intimacy. More content, less contentment, more speed, less presence.

• 40:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If it can be counted, it can be compared. And if it can be compared, it will be competed for. But love is not a competition. Peace cannot be found on a leaderboard. And joy shrinks under comparison. The problem isn't measurement itself. It's the subconscious assumption that whatever cannot be measured must not matter. And so we begin to overlook the very things that give life its texture. Go ahead, try measuring them. How many ounces of forgiveness will you extend today? How many international units of delight will you experience? What's the market value of sitting quietly with someone you love?

• 41:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The most important things cannot be measured. That's not to say the measurable is unimportant. Wages matter, budgeting matters, health markers matter. Metrics are tools, but metrics are poor masters. When we mistake the countable for the valuable, we sacrifice what matters most for what merely registers. A life spent chasing numbers may add up. It just might not amount to much. It was called pleionexia. Love to get your thoughts on that TK. What's your perspective?

• 41:58Speaker 03

  I love that word, pleionexia. I never heard that before. That's a beautiful one. You always come up with these great words. Man, I love hearing this and I agree with everything that you said. One of the things that made me think of is how we can leverage this proclivity we have to focus on what can be counted. To cultivate a greater mindfulness of things that cannot be counted. So for instance, I could say, hey, today I'm gonna make sure that before I get to the end of the day, I know three people's names that I didn't know before.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Now, I'm using the countable to prioritize that which cannot be measured. The number three is completely arbitrary and made up. It doesn't really mean anything, but it helps me to focus my thinking about something that's intangible, which is see other people, meet other people, acknowledge other people, pay attention to their name, try to remember it, try to call them by name. It makes a difference in how you relate to them and how they feel. Or if I say, you know, I'm gonna spend five minutes today, and during that five minutes, I'm gonna review three things that I'm genuinely grateful for, even if it's something that is as simple as the fact that my heart is beating fine today, the fact that the sun

• 43:22Speaker 03

  rose today, the fact that I like the weather, or that even though I don't like the weather, I have the means of transportation or the shelter to insulate me from the harshest expressions of it. Or if I say something like, you know, I'm just gonna make a list of five areas where I have made a positive difference in other people's life, or five things about my spouse that I really love, that really make me smile. Or I'm gonna think about one time today where something made me laugh. We're using the countable to help us think more clearly about the uncountable, and we're

• 44:03Speaker 03

  essentially taking something that we're already good at, even to the point of our own hurt. And instead of saying, suppress that instinct, get rid of that instinct, stop doing that, why don't we apply that to something that we benefit from doing more of?

• 44:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, the things that count cannot be counted. Right. And so that's the philosophical discussion we can have around this question about being a bad minimalist. Can I give you a practical answer about the last thing that I purchased that made me feel like a bad minimalist? Yeah. So I started floor sleeping last year, just as an experiment. It's totally changed the way my back, I did a, we did a whole segment about this on the podcast a few months ago. And played a video from Mike Chang and I'd love to do a whole podcast episode about it. I've learned a lot, but one of the things that I did is I just bought a mattress topper, like a little three inch mattress topper. Can I tell you about a company with really terrible customer service?

• 44:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They're called Avocado Mattress. Now you've probably heard about them from a bunch of, you know, different podcasts. And I don't know how I heard about the original. I did a bunch of research and it looked like a good organic brand. I just wanted to get a mattress topper that I could put on the floor and I could roll up when I needed to. They fooled you with that plant based advertising, huh?

• 45:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I, I started seeing the advertisements for it after I purchased it. And I was like, in a weird way, it made me feel good about like, oh yeah, a lot of people must be supporting this. And so I needed to wash the cover that was on this mattress topper. And so I took it off, I unzipped it, I took it off, I washed it in the washing machine. And, and then it wouldn't fit back on the mattress foam. And I was like, oh, that's weird. And, and so I reached out to them and I said, hey, this doesn't fit on anymore. Can you replace it? And they're like, oh, you're not supposed to wash the removable mattress topper cover.

• 45:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I simply asked, well, why else would I remove the cover if I didn't plan on washing it? And then, and they just started giving me, it felt like I was interacting with artificial intelligence. And at some point I might have been just interacting and arguing with AI. Because they kept reciting their company policy. And I said, hey, I'm a really good customer. I own several of these mattress toppers now and I'd love to give you my business in the future. Also, by the way, I'd love to talk about your company really glowingly publicly, because I don't do any advertisements. But I'd love to give you a pat on the back and say, wow, what a great customer experience I had with you. And it was the opposite. It was pretending to see me.

• 46:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But reciting a script.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  What would it say?

• 46:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It said something like, "We understand how this can be frustrating."

• 46:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Unfortunately, due to the policies and the warranty guidelines, washing, damage, they said, "damaged caused by washing," like it wasn't damaged, it was washed. "Damaged caused by washing is not covered under the warranty." And I said, "Okay, but would you be willing to make this a good customer experience? I understand now that I'm not supposed to wash the removable mattress cover that everyone would wash, I would assume, but would you be willing to make this a good customer experience for me?" And the utter refusal of, "It's not that we don't want to help you, it's that the policy says this." I said, "Okay, well, let me talk to your supervisor, and let me talk to you," and eventually

• 47:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the same thing, it was the same rhetoric, an unwillingness to see people for where they are and also to create a great customer experience. I wasn't even looking for an outstanding customer's experience at this point, I was looking for a average customer experience. And they were unwilling to do that. So what made me feel like a bad minimalist? Man, maybe I didn't research that enough. And at this point, I was like, "Oh, like this thing is a piece of trash now." And they're like, "Well, you can, of course, buy a new cover from us for $150." And I said, "Well, no, you've lost a customer now. And not only have you lost a customer, you've got a customer who is unsatisfied, who is

• 48:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  willing to talk to hundreds of thousands of people about his dissatisfied experience that he had. I wish I could come on here and say, 'You know, it was great avocado mattress and their customer care. They're amazing,' but they're not. They're, they were awful. It was just a bad customer experience." And so it made me feel like a bad minimalist because, well, I treated this brand as though they were a, because it seemed to be a trusted brand, I trusted them. And as we've talked about in the past, but one of the problems with brand loyalty is a shortcut to quality, but it can also really harm us when we're loyal to a brand blindly.

• 49:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And they don't have my loyalty anymore, that's for sure.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  Man, I'm sorry about the frustration you feel over damaging your own mattress cover.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  What if they wrote that comment?

• 49:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's basically what they said. That was the essence of what they said. Josh, it really sucks that you are a terrible customer. We value you as a terrible customer.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  We truly do wish that you had taken better care of the product you purchased from us.

• 49:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I washed it with like the nicest, non harsh ingredients and like it was. Avocado, thanks for nothing. Thanks for less than nothing. All right, that's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. TK, real quick, for right here, right now, I got two things going on in the life of the minimalist. First off, we have a few upcoming events. We have a retreat in Ojai, California. It's May 2nd through the 4th. It's been three days with me and Ryan Nicodemus and TK, a small group of 30 people. It's the sunshine and the oak trees at the Ojai Art Center. And it is just a beautiful place to let go. We're going to have a whole weekend of letting go together.

• 50:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This is our invitation to you to let go. Also, Ryan Nicodemus and I are celebrating 10 years of minimalism. That's right, our first documentary was released into the world 10 years ago this year. Came out on Netflix, one of the things that started this whole movement. I had no idea that millions of people were going to see that at the time. And it's one of those gifts that keeps on giving because 10 years later, we're going to go out on tour and celebrate once again. If you want to join us, we're going to four states. We'll be in Ohio, California, Tennessee, and Montana, four states that are really close to our hearts and some of them played a significant role in this film as well.

• 51:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So if you'd like to come see us at Simple Haven, or if you want to go to any of our minimalist screenings or minimalism screenings, we're going to do a live talk at those events, audience Q and A, meet and greet at all of those tour stops as well. We'll be in Dayton and Ojai and Franklin, Tennessee, and Missoula, Montana, and then Simple Haven. Be in Ojai as well. You can find all of those dates over at theminimalists.com. Just click events at the top. We would love to see you there. Also TK, you just did this really great conversation. I thought it was going to be a debate, but it wasn't that at all. Our good friend Joshua Becker had a new book come out. It's called Uncluttered

• 51:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Faith. And so I moderated briefly a conversation between the two of you and I just got out of the way and let you two talk for an hour or so. We're going to put that up on Joshua Becker's YouTube channel and our YouTube channel as a collaboration, the podcast channel. So if you want to, if you want to watch that, we'll put a link to it in the show notes, or you can just head on over to youtube.com/theminimalistpodcast. What did you enjoy most about that conversation?

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Man, I love Joshua's spirit. I love the, just the pure sincerity that bleeds through everything he says. You know that he's speaking from his heart and that he cares about people. He cares very deeply about his faith and the way he connects the two. There's nothing shoehorned about it. There's nothing pretentious about it. There's nothing fake or forced about it. He sees those connections very naturally and he cares very deeply about being a good Christian and using the principles of minimalism to bring healing and wholeness to people's lives. And so I just, I just love the energy of that conversation with him and I hope we get to have many more in the future.

• 52:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  At the beginning of that conversation, I said, hey, I don't share the same beliefs as these guys, but I'm really interested in hearing the conversation. And it didn't disappoint. I was captivated by it the whole time I was here. So if you all want to check this out, I think it's called Why Every Christian Needs Minimalism. And you can also check out Joshua Becker's new book, Uncluttered Faith. If you are a person of faith and you're looking how to incorporate more minimalism into your life, give that a shot. Much more coming up TK. But first, here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 53:20Speaker 05

  Hello, the minimalists. So my name is Valerie and I am from Quebec in Canada. So I've been living in a very small apartment for 20 years now. And I really love it. I could afford a bigger apartment, but that's not the point. I really love living in small because I don't have clutter, as you say. Each object I possess, I question it regularly. Do I still need it? Or how can I make more space in this apartment? What should I let go of?

• 54:03Speaker 05

  So it's really hard to admit because around me, my family, my friends, they have houses, they have cars, they have big apartments. And this is not the way we are encouraged to live in a capitalist world. So I wanted to share that with you and thank you for everything that you do.

• 54:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Valerie, what a lovely perspective. Live small, question everything you bring into your home. And I would just add, you're questioning everything that you hold on to as well. Because the things that add value today may not add value tomorrow. And so it's okay to let go. If anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, we'd love to hear from you or any other episodes. Send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three, TK. A lot more to cover, but first let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 55:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition of episode 529, which includes answers to a bunch more questions like, "How do you handle all the necessary stuff that creeps back in after you've decluttered?" And "What do you do when overwhelm makes even simple tasks feel impossible?" "What are some inexpensive minimalist hobbies that can replace doom scrolling and mindless screen time?" And "If our economy depends on constant growth and consumption, is minimalism unrealistic?" Or maybe it's even harmful. Plus, we have 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

• 56:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Apple Podcasts, 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 episode. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire Jeff, and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, it's about to be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.