511 | Holding On

The Minimalists speak with Ryan Holiday about how the stoics dealt with sentimental items, the potential virtue of holding on, stoical insights about values, regrets, mental clutter, seven things minimalists would never put in their living room, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How would the stoics have handled their sentimental items? (2:40) When is it virtuous to hold on? (22:13) Right Here, Right Now: Books a Clutter Counseling session with T. K. (43:05) Listener Tip: A poem about the weight of the needs of others. (44:19) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:20Speaker 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.

• 0:39Joshua 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 Earthing Studios in rainy West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman. It's rainy, but it's still the holiday in my heart. Well, today we're joined by one of the world's bestselling living philosophers. His books about Stoicism have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold more than 5 million copies. He's also the author of a new book called Wisdom Takes Work. Please welcome back to the show our returning champion, Ryan Holiday is here. It's been a while, man. Yeah, when was it?

• 1:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I want to say 2019-ish. We were in our old studio space, maybe it was even 2020. No, I think it was 2019. Yeah. Yeah, it was a while ago. We were talking about stillness is the key back then. That would have been 2019. Yeah, yeah, that was a great episode, one of my favorites that we've done and we'll put a link to it in the show notes, but today we're going to bring you into our world a bit. We have a bunch of questions we've curated that are Stoicism adjacent minimalist questions from our audience. We're going to be talking about how the Stoics dealt with sentimental items or maybe how they would have dealt with them. The potential virtue of holding on to things. Also some stoical insights about values, regrets, and mental clutter, and much, much

• 2:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  more. Plus, on page three, we'll discuss seven things minimalists would never put in their living room. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219-7839 is the phone number, or you can just 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 Carlin in Seattle, Washington.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Every time I do the minimalist challenge, I come up against a huge roadblock. I am stumped at what to do with my cherished childhood items, such as my dollhouse that my father built, and my children and I redecorated, and all of the expensive dollhouse furniture, because I am ultimately holding on to them for future grandchildren. Unfortunately, when I get to this point in the challenge, I also start wondering whether this is a good idea, and how to deal with these kinds of items. If you have any insight or resources,

• 3:28Speaker 02

  I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I really appreciate your podcast. I've listened for years, and I'm hoping that you'll answer this question. Thanks.

• 3:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So Ryan, let me set some context here for you. She's talking about the 30-day minimalism game. It was featured in our last Netflix film, and it's basically how I started simplifying, because I had so much stuff. I was so overwhelmed by my things. I was like, I want to get rid of some of this. I don't even know where to start. It seems overwhelming. I just throw my hands up, and we don't do anything. Procrastinate is maybe the only thing that we do. And so, the question I ask myself is, what if I got rid of one material possession each day for 30 days? What would happen? And it turns out I got rid of way more than 30 items in 30 days. You just start getting that momentum you need. And we eventually turned it into this thing called the 30 day minimalism game. And it escalates. So day one, you get rid of one item, day two, two items, three items on the third day, so forth and so on. So it gets progressively more difficult.

• 4:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I often encourage people to never start with sentimental items. Because that's the thing that has this story behind it. It has all of this sentimentality attached to it. Although I love what TK often says. He says, there are no sentimental items, only sentimental people. And I'm wondering, how would the Stoics have handled or thought about sentimental items?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Well, that's an interesting distinction, right? Because the item isn't sentimental. The item is the item. You have just projected the feelings on it. Which of course is something the Stoics talk quite a bit about. One of the best lines from Epictetus is, it's not things that upset us. It's our opinion about things. And the same could be true about the things that we like, right? Like the item isn't special. We've just decided that it's special. But I can very much relate to this. Cause I have kids and then my parents are, so I have all their stuff, all my stuff. And then my parents are constantly sending me my stuff from when I'm a kid. And, and I think they think they're doing something nice. But they're basically just saying, they're saying two things. One, they're like, we don't want this anymore. It's yours.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  And then they're also saying to me, something that existentially terrifies me, which is that, do I have to keep all this stuff in my house for 30 years? Right? Like if they're sending me something that I had when I'm eight, and I'm 38 now, does that mean I have to keep this thing for 30 years before I voiced it back onto them? That's like the hardest, that's a terrifying thought. Because we're gonna, we're gonna die under all this stuff. It's, it's really difficult. In some ways, it's, it's easier to just accommodate the stuff than to make the hard decisions.

• 6:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In some ways?

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah. Like to just go like, hey, I'll get a storage unit. Or hey, I'll just feel claustrophobic in my space. Like it's, it's easier to make more money and pay for the stuff than to have the sort of hard decision of like, do I actually need it? I guess obviously there's, there are some things that are worth keeping, right? Like you don't get rid of everything. And, and I would say probably one of the reasons the, we don't have room for some of the bigger, more sentimental stuff is we're keeping a lot of stuff that isn't. Sentimental at all, like, why are you keeping this box from an iPhone you bought six years ago? You know? Um, I, I don't know.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Keeping stuff to give to a person at a later date is quite a rationalization you're making. You're, you're, you're not saying, I like this. If this is meaningful to me, we're using it now. You're just saying, hey, I would like to be the kind of person that in 30 years, I can say that I kept it. And, you know, some of the stuff like, my parents sent me a high chair, a wooden high chair, that you're not allowed to use. Like, not only do they keep, like, it's, you cannot put a kid in this one anymore. It's not, it's like, not safe. This isn't what we do anymore. So, you're holding on to stuff as, because you're telling yourself this story, then in the future, they'll use this, or they can use this. But you don't know, that's not true, necessarily.

• 7:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. When I was going through my mom's stuff when she passed, that's when I first sort of stumbled into minimalism. And I realized I was gonna keep all of it. And I was, I couldn't fit it in my house, because I already had a full house and a full basement full of stuff. I couldn't co-mingle mom's stuff with my stuff. So, I rented a storage locker back in Ohio, and I asked for the largest one they had, and I got the largest truck that I needed. And mom had about three houses worth of stuff crammed into one tiny bedroom apartment. And she wasn't a hoarder, she was super well organized, although I can make the argument that we're all hoarders at some level, you know? There's the five stages of hoarding. Most of us are stage one or stage two. A stage one hoarder just has light clutter in two or more rooms.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  It's like, well, doesn't that describe everyone?

• 8:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. It's called a house. But TK, when, when I was going through that stuff, I realized like, oh, if everything's sentimental, because I'm holding on to all of it. If everything's sentimental, then nothing is sentimental. And that was my key to, to start letting go. I realized that if I let go of some of the things that I was just gonna selfishly cling to, in a storage locker, which was really like a mausoleum for stuff. It wasn't, I wasn't gonna go there and visit it, and, and pay homage to it, and like, light a candle there once a week. No, it was just gonna sit there, and I was gonna pay the $240 every single month on auto draft, and every month it's just gonna come Out of my bank account, that's, that's the cost of not dealing with the things. That is the cost of clinging. That's not simply holding on.

• 8:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is the cost of clinging to these things that might have some value. As Ryan said, in this nonexistent hypothetical future, like, oh, maybe I'll pass this on 30 years from now. But there's no real plan behind that. But I realized if I let go of most of the stuff, not only could I contribute to other people who might need these things, but I got more value from the few sentimental items that I kept than if I were to water them down with just hundreds of thousands of extra trinkets.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, what a great burden we place on our children and grandchildren by giving them things without running it by them first, right? When it comes to money, we all love that. I inherit money because money represents my power to choose. You leave me a million dollars, that means I get to create my life and facilitate that with these resources in whatever direction I want. But you leave me a dollhouse, well, now I'm married to something that was important to you, but it may not be important to me. And on this show, we've had lots of situations from talk aboutables to call-ins to even guests who have inherited things that they just didn't like. Here's this furniture my mom loved, and I feel terrible because it's ugly, but throwing it away feels like I'm throwing my mom away.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Here's this, you know, typewriter that was so important to my grandfather because he used it to write all of his papers, but I don't want this thing and no one uses it. But if I throw it away, I feel like I'm throwing, throwing him away. And so when you leave these things to your grandchildren, who aren't even around to give you their opinion yet, what pressure is being placed on them to appreciate it? What if they break it? Are they in trouble? What if they don't value it? Do they get to be bad people now? What if they look at it and say, I don't even want this? Does that end up hurting you? Does that disappoint you and, and change your perception of them? I think the most valuable thing we can leave for the future is the power to make decisions, leave behind things that represent a sense of possibility. You have the right to hang on to those dollhouses,

• 10:46Speaker 04

  but I, I like the idea of leaving people with an enhanced power to choose because of the way that you lived your life. What's something that represents that?

• 10:55Speaker 03

  I'm going through this because your kids, they just produce endless amounts of art. What do you do with it? They bring it home, they're very proud of it. And then you, okay, you can only hang so much of it up, but you don't want to throw it away. It feels weird to just wad it up. So I did one of those things, we stacked up a whole year of it. We did one of those things where you mail it in and they turn it into a book, right? And awesome, okay. But then they mailed me the art back. Like, first off, it was stressful just to be like, hey, I got all this, I currently possess it. Right? But now I'm putting it in the mail, what if it gets lost in the mail, whatever. So you take the leap, you make the decision, like, I'm getting rid of the art and I'm gonna swap it for this book that's like my possession, you know? And then they mailed me the art back. So now I have the book and the art. And now I gotta make this decision again, whether I'm gonna throw it away.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  And it's like, I used up all my willpower to like, get rid of it the first time. And now it came back like a boomerang, also a book. So, but I do think what I liked about that idea, though, was like, hey, I'm gonna... It as the art is not worth anything to me because I can't use it, right? Like, it's just a stack of things. It's not frameable, but like, hey, it pictures of it, whether it's on my phone or in Google Drive, or it's in a book. Now it at least exists as some physical manifestation, but it's a lot more storable. I can put it on a shelf. And I even can see that with my kids, like, you're shopping, like, I want this. And you go, well, we're not gonna get it. And then they're upset. And you go, okay, let's take a picture of it.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  And then there's something about the, well, I'm capturing it. It is recorded. It didn't disappear forever like a dream or a memory. But it, but it, but we, it doesn't have to take up space in our house. And most of the time, that's enough, right? Like, how many thousands of pictures do I have on my phone that I've never looked at? But if I had to keep the physical reminder of each one of those things, I mean, there'd be no room.

• 12:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, the digital clutter in some ways is less problematic because it's not taking up all the space. In some ways, it's more pernicious because it's easier to sort of clutter that up as well. And to, you get to a point where the camera log is just not functional. We have 300 pictures of the same piece of art. It just doesn't do anything. But TK, you brought up something, there was an implicit message, what you were saying there about, here, I'm giving this to you, you should like this as much as I want you to like it. Because part of it is like, I'm not valuing this sentimental item anymore. But I think Ryan Holiday will. So, and by the way, I don't really like it that much, but he should like it. So now I'm going to hand that down to him. I'm not just handing

• 13:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  him the item. I was holding on to how he should feel about this thing.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I'm wondering, we're looking at like Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. If everything just went up in smoke, whether it's your camera roll or all the sentimental items, what insights would they have?

• 13:48Speaker 03

  You know, there's actually, there's a funny story about Epictetus. So he has this shrine in his house and it's got a silver lamp in it. And he comes home one day and it's been stolen. And someone, it may have even, one of the versions of the story is he, he hears something rattling around in his house. He comes out, he sees the thief leaving with his, his lamp. And so it's a lamp that's supposed to honor the gods. And so the first part of him is upset. And then the second part of him is like, this is why you don't have fancy things. You know, this is the cost of having fancy things is that people try to steal it. So he says, you know, tomorrow I'm going to go back and get an earthenware lamp, a cheaper lamp. So I don't have to be so stressed about it. Right? It's less sentimentality attached to it.

• 14:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's like from Ikea, basically, the equivalent, right?

• 14:29Speaker 03

  So he goes in, he gets a clay lamp and burns it his house for the rest of his life. He dies. And we're, we're told that one of his students buys the earthenware lamp for like a lot of money because it's, it's now Epictetus's lamp.

• 14:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  And so the irony of the philosophical teacher getting the cheaper item as a reminder of impermanence and of not having physical possessions, by then nature of him doing that, him touching it, it becomes an extra valuable thing. And I'm guilty, in my podcast, the Daily Stoic podcast, we do it at a table like this, but it's a table that I bought from auction when, when Joan Didion died. And so it's like, it's a table that the, one of my favorite writers used to sit at. Like there's pictures of her, you can look at her just sitting in the chairs. But it's like, why, it's a table.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  The same table someone else didn't sit at, or someone else sat at, is garbage. But here, it's like I'm furiously bidding on my phone, hoping to get it. And now it means something to me. And now, you know, when people come and clean, I have to go like, "Don't touch the table." You know, you can't, you know. And so you're not just enhance, you're not just giving them the sentimentality and the responsibility, but also the burden of like, as you said, "Hey, what if I break this? Can I actually, is it actually a dollhouse you can play with? Or is it a dollhouse that takes up space, but can't be played with precisely because it's special?" And so in many cases, what you're foisting on them is worse than just an item. It's a wholly unfunctional item.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  And then the existential attachment to it that burdens you in more ways than one.

• 16:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, it's fascinating that like, if you found out all of a sudden that, "Oh, this is Joan Didion's table." It's not going to make you write like Joan Didion. Although we're kind of buying that sometimes. If you buy Stephen King's pen or Jimi Hendrix's guitar, yes, it's a beautiful artifact, I'm sure. And it was special to them, and now it's special to you. But then, let's say you've had that table for several years now? Yeah, okay. What if you found out today it was a knockoff?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And all of a sudden, the story you would tell yourself would be considerably different. Why is that, TK?

• 16:43Speaker 04

  I think that's a beautiful aspect of our humanity. You know, the existence of bad stories doesn't negate the power and the beauty of storytelling, right? It's just that we're capable of telling stories that disempower us. But I love that fact that we're willing to bid a lot of money on that table being used by a particular person because that points back to something that we can do really well. And that is, we can imbue an object with meaning by narrating around it in a particular way. And so that gives us a lot of options. Because now I have this dollhouse, and I say, "Well, this means something to me because of the story." And so if I get rid of it, I'm not getting rid of the value. The value is in me, right? I'm the goose that lays the golden egg. There you go. This is a golden egg, and that has its value. But I'm the goose that lays them.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  And I can recreate that value by telling a different story with something new. And I just love the idea of creating with our children and saying, "Hey, here's what meant something to me. And that was really awesome." But that was my time. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna create our own thing together. And we're gonna tell our own story, and that'll mean something to us. Rather than me forcing you to fit into your narrative, a story I told myself that you yourself might not even value.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  And it also, the story is not only in the item itself, right? So we live in this little town in Texas and the this bakery down the street from where we live. It was going out of business. My kids were really upset. You know, like their favorite place, they loved going here. And like, they were like, can we go today? It was like closing for a month, and they wanted to go every single day. They were just, and you could tell they were just working themselves up into being like extra devastated when it closed. And like, as it was closing, they started selling like the stuff in the store. Like, you know, like, the chairs are for sale, and the tables are for sale, and this is for sale. And my kids just wanted all the stuff. And it was like, we can't fit a bakery inside our house. And the lady that ran it, she was awesome.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  They had this giant, it's like outside, their big thing was like this, this giant cupcake, you know, that you would pass on the way in, just this giant cupcake, almost as big as this table. And my kids were like, can we get the cupcake? And I was like, no, we don't have room for a giant cupcake in our house. But on the day it closed, the lady that ran it, she took them over to it, and she broke off, you know, like one of the sprinkles from the top of the cupcake. And she was like, you can have this, you know? And they took it home, and it's like, you know, now one of their prized possessions in their room, and they love it. I'm sure at some point they'll throw it at each other, forget it, and lose it. But the point is, like, the dollhouse has the story, but so does one of the chairs in the dollhouse. And so does one of the dolls, or a roof shingle, or hey, you can you can take a piece of it

• 19:22Speaker 03

  and make a little paperweight. Like, I think one of the things that I try to do is I go, this stuff, this meant something to my grandfather, it meant something to me. Okay, but what is the smallest version of it that I can have? It doesn't have to be the whole thing, right? It's like, the house you grew up in, your parents are finally selling it. Well, maybe you're gonna take the numbers off, the address, and you're gonna use that for something, or, you know, the little wind chime in the backyard. You don't have to keep the whole thing. If there is this sort of narrative significance in the object, it's also in the smallest part of the object. And we can just sort of be practical, like, what's the minimal effective dose of the memory in the object?

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Holographic minimalism.

• 20:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, sometimes the minimal effective dose is also zero. And we don't think about that quite often. It's like, what's the appropriate number for me? It could be nothing. Like, obviously, if my daughter started bringing home dead raccoons, the appropriate number is zero. Even, I don't care how good the story behind the dead raccoon is, and how sentimental it is, and how she's going to use it. The answer is no, and I'm going to set a boundary. Now, that one's pretty easy. That's a parodic exaggeration of someone bringing clutter home. But don't we do that with other things that are just more acceptable? Of course, the raccoon is unsafe in a health sense. But how many of our things are unsafe in like a sort of mental health sense that are causing all this chaos and turmoil inside us?

• 20:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Carlin, I'd love for you to download, if you haven't already, if you're playing the 30-day minimalism game, maybe you already have, but theminimalists.com/game. You can download our free calendar. You can play the 30-day minimalism game. You can follow along there. Anyone else who's listening to this who wants to play the 30-day minimalism game, a new month is in a few days. So, theminimalists.com/game. You can download that calendar for free, and you can see exactly how to play the 30-day minimalism game. Partner up with a friend, a family member, a coworker, someone else in your house, and you let go together. But also, you hold on together. You can start telling stories about the things that we are holding on to. Here's why I chose to keep this, and here's how it's going to add value to my life. Before we get back to our callers, let's do a lightning round here.

• 21:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This is where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. And we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, less than 140-character response. We call them minimal maxims, although we can monder on as much as we want, Ryan, so don't worry about the keeping it too pithy here. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast, and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including a bunch of new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam, or junk, or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, Ryan, the question of the week this week is,

• 22:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "When is it virtuous to hold on?" Now, before we get to our pithy answers here, let's check in with some of our listeners. Jenny said, "For me, holding on is virtuous when I'm holding on to my core values." How do the Stoics think about values?

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about holding on to stuff, that's probably not what we're talking about when we're talking about virtue. It's funny, someone wants to still, talking about maxim, someone once tried to distill all of Epictetus's teachings down to basically two words. And he said, those two words are persist and resist. So sometimes it's holding on to the thing, to continuing to do it in the face of adversity, difficult, difficulty, etc. And then sometimes it is resisting, not holding on to the thing, letting it go, not doing it, you know, not indulging in the impulse. So when we're talking about values, that's where it comes in, right? So Stoicism, I have them here, and these are the four virtues of Stoicism.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  So, you know, of courage and discipline, that might be the sort of the holding on part of things, right? But to what and why, right? What cause? What for? This is where we get the virtues of justice and wisdom. So they kind of balance each other out. So, you know, courage in the abstract, persistence, holding on, you know, clinging to things in the abstract, may be admirable, but really, it all depends on the context.

• 23:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. To what extent will this continue to add value to your life? And that's why I think we posited the question that way. At first, we often think about things, but for us, minimalism is the things of the Trojan Horse for us to talk about the philosophy behind what's going on with our stuff, with all of these things that adorn our walls and our halls and our homes. Yes, we often own too much stuff, but what else am I holding on to? And what is holding on virtuous? Gary says, seeing virtue as a quality of usefulness. I ask myself, is it useful to hold on? If yes, then I hold on. If no, then I joyfully let go. In reality, it depends on the day, which I ask myself, and what story I'm holding on

• 24:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to. There's those stories again, what stories we're holding on to. That brings me to my pithy answer here. My minimal maxim is, letting go of a thing always involves letting go of the story behind the thing. The material possessions that are difficult to let go of, they often create, yeah, they create the physical clutter, but they create a lot of mental clutter. There are lots going on here in our head because it's difficult to let go. And what does the, what does this say about the person I am? If I own the right things, will I impress the right people? And is that part of my identity? It was almost like this identity clutter that's stuck up in that.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Uh, and, and again, I think when we're talking about holding on, you know, sometimes you're holding on too much to stuff, but sometimes you're holding on too much to an identity or a position or a level of activity or a, a vision you have of what success is or isn't, what other people are doing. And so, yeah, sometimes the, the holding on is the, hey, I'm going to do this even though I'm taking criticism for it, even though, uh, everyone else has given up, you know, and, and, and the sort of the virtue is in the hanging on. And then other times the, the virtue is in the letting go. Oh, this doesn't actually matter. Oh, this actually isn't important. Oh, actually I have enough. It's actually selfish to want more and more.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  And so it's, it all comes down to, to knowing what's what, which is sort of my definition of wisdom, right? I think, uh, you know, what's the right amount? What's the right thing? What's the right way? You know, the who, what, when, where, why of it all? That's, that's what wisdom is.

• 26:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Fascinating because when we talk about wisdom, we often get it conflated with like information, TK. Sometimes we'll talk about on the show. We think that, you know, we're in the information age. The more information we get, the more wise we'll become. But it seems to me that the opposite is often true.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the words that's used sometimes interchangeably with wisdom is insight. I know that it's also a practical application of knowledge, but you know, insight is about seeing deeply into a thing. And we all know what it means to think we have read a book, think we've engaged with the concept. And then you talk to somebody else and you go, oh, I really haven't engaged that idea very deeply at all. You're not seeing deeply. You, you have access to the information. You know, you've kind of run some circles around it, but you haven't truly penetrated it.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Well, we certainly think about this, like, how many people think their job as a citizen is to be informed? So they take that to mean I watch a lot of news, right? Or I scroll on Twitter a lot. So, but, but is that, is that really understanding what's happening? You know, is that really what an informed person would do? Or do the people that you admire tend to go much deeper than that and have a wider, more historical, sort of psychological, human understanding of what things mean and why they matter and how they fit together? So oftentimes, you could be much more informed by consuming less real-time information and studying things more historically.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  Like, you'd be better off booking a trip to a foreign country and like, seeing where things began than, than, you know, watching the evening news shows.

• 27:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, and there's an effemerality to it. It feels so urgent in the moment and our brain tricks us into thinking that's almost like an emergency because it is urgent, but then a week from now, I don't even remember the thing I was scrolling through that seemed so urgent in that moment. Eileen said, "Holding on to your sense of self and ethics when overwhelmed by others' expectations, demands, or needs. As a mother, I didn't hold on to my sense of self, but I have let, but I have let go of the regret that followed." Right? How do Stoics think about regret and maybe the expectations of others?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Well, I think the, the problem with regret is that it is focusing in the area that, you know, the Stoics say is the sort of, the, the most futile place, which is that it's not something we control. Like, it already happened. So you feeling bad about it, you wishing that you hadn't done it, you wishing that you'd done it differently. In some ways, obviously, look, you did something wrong, you shouldn't be like, "Well, it's in the past, you know, I'm a flawed person." That, that's not what we're talking about. But we are talking about this tendency we can have to ruminate and to whip ourselves and to feel, you know, guilty and thus paralyzed. In, in a way, that's, that is a way to let yourself off the hook because now You don't have to be thinking about what you're doing right now. Like, what are you gonna do?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Like, what you control is, are you making that mistake again? Are you making a different decision now? How are you gonna do it better now? And so, this kind of obsession we have with the past is probably not a virtue. And the ability to let go what's happened, whether that's something that was cringe-worthy, or something shameful, or something stupid, or whatever it was, the ability to be in the present moment and to try to make the right decision now in the present moment, that's philosophically what it's supposed to be about.

• 29:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What about expectations from other people? Because that could be crippling, especially if we have a dozen people who expect 12 different things from us. And they're all like, the things don't overlap. In fact, the thing you recommend for me or expect from me could be completely the opposite of what TK's expectation is of me.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, and anyone that's making work in public, right? Chances are, if you are lucky enough to be successful at it, you're gonna have a large audience, and a percentage of that audience is not gonna like what you do. Or not gonna like every choice that you make. So it's a statistical certainty that you're not gonna meet some people's expectations. And the more successful you are,

• 30:13Speaker 03

  even if that percentage stays the same, the quantity of people goes ever bigger, right? So if you make something that sells a million copies, are 1 million people gonna be satisfied with it? Of course not, right? So even 10% or even 1% is a large amount of people. 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people very much don't like what you just did. And can you deal with that? And one of my favorite lines in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, he says, "We all love ourselves more than other people, but for some reason, we care about their opinions more than our own." You're doing the thing. You made it, right? You know what you like. You have the taste.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  That's the reason you're in this position. And then you're like, well, some random guy says it sucks. So I gotta take that seriously. And you don't. And so the ability to sort of decide who you're gonna Take feedback from and who you're gonna let in is one of the hardest things to do. As a person, yes, cuz you liked this shirt, you picked it out and then, you know, you show up at school and someone says dumb shirt and now you're like, I hate this shirt. Right, but you don't, you liked it and now you're letting this random person say that it's not good. It's true there and then it's also true if you're doing any kind of work in the world that is received by other people, which is, by the way, basically everyone.

• 31:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, TK, I think it could be, it's not just someone who sells millions of books, but it's like someone who works at the the local school district and they have a dozen coworkers. Those dozen coworkers are likely gonna have different expectations of them throughout the day.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Whereas if you if you teach thirty kids, you think every parent is gonna think you're the best teacher. Like, your your style is not going to be universally. So that's enough, he has this great exercise in meditations. I've extended it out to other things, but he goes, look, he goes, is a world without, is a world without shameless people possible? Right, like, so is a world without jerks or people who don't like you? You plug in anything, right? Is a world without those people possible? No, right? So he goes, okay, so you just met one of those people. Why are you surprised?

• 32:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Right, so it's like statistically, one out of ten people doesn't like your face, you know, or whatever it is. You just met the the person that said they don't like it. Why you're surprised? It was literally a foregone conclusion that this would happen. And and the more you can kind of run those numbers in your head, you can start to get a sense of, cuz cuz that's really the problem is you do have to take feedback and criticism in this life. So how do you separate the signal from the noise? Right? Some people like this, some people like that. Your chances are you're hearing most of the time from the people that. Are unhappy. I have to, I have to, like, um, we have someone who does customer service at Daily Stoic, and her job is to, you know, be the canary in the coal mine.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  But, you know, when she comes to you, a lot of people are upset, you know, a lot of people are mad about this. And I, my first question is always, how many is a lot of people? Because, uh, you know, 20 people on something you sold 20 of is a very large number and something went wrong. 20 people of something you sold 20,000 of, it's probably about right. Now, that doesn't mean those people don't matter, and they, you shouldn't do your best to make them happy, or refund their money because they are unhappy, or whatever it is. But you have to go, hey, uh, it worked for 19,980 other people who didn't say anything. And actually, by the way, they did say something. They just don't say it to your customer service line. They, they, they said it when they recommended it to other people. They said

• 33:54Speaker 03

  it, you know, and they said it somewhere else. And so how do you separate the signal from the noise is what it's all about.

• 34:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I never call Verizon and say, oh, my coverage was great today. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. And I think that's true, but also TK, it's still like, it hurts still, right? And it's almost like that's, that's part of the human condition, where it's like, yeah, I know that mathematically that people aren't going to like me, but, ah, but they don't like me.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, you know, there's something to be said about having the humility or self-honesty to acknowledge what hurts and to minimize your exposure to it so that you're not subjecting yourself to something that hurts, uh, in an undue quantity. I mean, hey, being punched in the arm hurts. If I want to be a boxer, I'm gonna have to put up with a certain amount of that and accept that it comes with the territory. At the same time, I still have to have a game plan for how I'm gonna minimize the number of hits I expose myself to in practice, as I prepare for a fight, and I've got to have really good defense so that when I get in that ring, I'm minimizing my exposure to the hits. And so, one of the things I talk about a lot, you know, is, you know, attention is like money. And if you, if you

• 35:06Speaker 04

  are willing to spend it on, um, you know, anything, you'll eventually be duped out of everything. And so you have to have a standard. What am I free to ignore? Like, what do I choose to not pay attention to? What are the standards for how I receive feedback and who I receive it from? And you get to set that up in any way you want. You don't have to be some snob who says, "Oh, I would never listen to a homeless man." You can learn something from anyone, but you have to decide what those standards are gonna be, because we're all finite, we all have a scarce amount of attention and time, and you just can't take in all the world's feedback. And you're never gonna, you know, get to this place, like Ryan says, where everyone loves you, because even if you got there, and you finally became the first human being to get

• 35:48Speaker 04

  everyone to love you, there would be plenty of people who would hate you just for becoming that. So, we have to stop telling ourselves these, you know, airbrushed stories of these great people in the past who found a way to tell stories or communicate a message that everyone loved. Be like Jesus, he spoke to everyone and everyone... Did you actually read the story? You know, there is no one who communicated in such a way that all of humanity gathered together and said, "Oh, this is the one that we should all listen to."

• 36:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think this is the curiosity that Ryan is talking about in his new book, which is called Wisdom Takes Work. I mean, curiosity is a big part of this, and the reason I love TK is he's the most curious person I know, but it's genuine. It's not an affectation of curiosity, but he's also curious about the quote-unquote "right things." His curiosity doesn't lead him down a path of pain and suffering typically, but it is a path of wisdom. And so, maybe you could talk, shed a little bit of light on curiosity and its role in wisdom.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, have you ever heard that expression, "Their mind's so open, their brain fell out"? You do have to have a... You're curious, and then there's some doors you leave closed, or there's some questions you leave unanswered. Yeah, I mean, curiosity is wanting to know what's on the other side of the hill, which is what drives, I think, most accomplishment, most creativity, certainly, most discoveries. And you have to cultivate that. And I think... Some people don't, right? And then so what's on the underside of the hill? Not only do they not know, but they don't know whether they themselves are capable of being the kind of person that does that, right? So then it becomes scary and then it becomes intimidating.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  And then, then they become secure and maybe irrationally possessive of where they are and what they know. And so, yeah, the, the ability to kind of go into areas that you're not familiar with, literally and figuratively, it's what it's, it's what it's about, right? Asking questions, picking things up, seeing how things work, that, that's what, that's what drives it. And, and what you could say, like, the opposite of curiosity is, is like certainty. You can't learn what you think you already know, is something the Stoics would say. And so if, if you, the, the problem with like being a know-it-all is that you can't know anything else, right? Because the-

• 38:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Come on, tweet that, Sean.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  You know, you know, the Zen story, this, this master has a student sit down for tea and he starts to pour in the glass until it eventually overflows. And he says, you know, your mind is like this cup, you know, you have to empty the cup if you want to sit down for tea with the master. And so, so the, the more your mind is focused on what you don't know, or what there remains to be known, you know, the more you're going to learn, the more you're going to discover. And the more you go through the world with the sort of a strong identity, a strong sense of how things work and why they work and why they're this way and what your place is in them, you know, the, the more closed off you're going to be to, to all the things you can learn and know.

• 38:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. How about you, listeners? What is, when is it virtuous to hold on? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat or down in the comments. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. When is it virtuous to hold on?

• 39:12Speaker 04

  You haven't let go if you're still holding on to your ego. For every legitimate endeavor, there's a performative approach to it, you know? So there's a performative friendship of someone who would never visit you at the hospital, but they cry loudest at your funeral. There's a performative sense of religiosity in my private life. I don't meditate, I don't pray, I don't do any of that stuff. But you put me inside of a church or a temple and, oh Lord, I lift my hands to you. I pray to be seen, not to connect, right? And so the same is true for minimalism. There is a performative minimalism where I declutter and I simplify so that I can self-righteously look down upon all of those who do not minimize as well as I do. And I think performative minimalism is pseudo-minimalism.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  It's a form or a varied manifestation of martyr syndrome, where you make sacrifices, not because those sacrifices are life-giving or beneficial to other people around you. You make sacrifices because you're trying to contribute to your own sense of self-importance. Oh, yeah, I had to take him to the airport and I had to do this for them and I'm gonna let everybody know about all my sacrifices because I want you to see me as a saint. And I think we're still holding on, no matter how many possessions we've gotten rid of, if we're treating our status as minimalist, as if it's something that makes us saints and is worthy of praise. No, you do this for you because your life looks better and feels better and functions better when it's running on simplicity.

• 40:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Is there a performative element to Stoicism in some? Is there a stoical way? Or is there a way to perform Stoicism that is maybe disingenuous?

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think people tend to, when they hear the word stoic, they think it sort of has no emotion, invulnerable, unfeeling. That's not my understanding historically of who the Stoics actually were as people. I don't, I don't think it's about the, in the same way that minimalism is not the removing of attachment from things, it's the discipline to go, yeah, I like this, I want it, but I understand at some level I don't need it and it's the hard work to go, okay, I'm gonna make this decision. And so I think the Stoics weren't these unfeeling, disconnected people. It's, it's how can you maintain a certain equanimity and poise in a world where you have attachments, in a world where...

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Stuff happens in a world where you don't like some of the stuff that's happening. You know, can you, can you be able to go, hey, I wish that hadn't happened. I think it's unjust that that happened. And my initial reaction was anger or frustration or fear, but I'm not going to let that necessarily dictate or determine my behavior. So I like, I think sometimes people think, cause I write about this, that I'm this sort of perfect embodiment of it and I'm not at all. It's like, no, I'm writing and talking about it because I'm naturally the opposite of this.

• 42:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  And, and I'm, I'm working on getting better at it.

• 42:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's fascinating. The, the performing stoicism or performing minimalism kind of gets in the way. It's another kind of, of clutter of sorts. Because yeah, you're right. When I think of a stoic person, the, a person who's behaving stoically, it's like they have a stone face and they, they're unaffected. And the, the truth is that we often hold on, even though we don't show what we're holding on to, we don't show the suffering or the frustration or the anger. But, and maybe in many cases, it's better to, to not lash out in anger.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But it's, it can still be there. And I think the stoics, they would have noticed that. They would have said, hey, that, that the anger that I'm experiencing doesn't need to turn into rage. Yeah. So we got a lot more to talk about, but it's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. TK, your clutter counseling calendar, say that five times fast, is now open for next month. Tell us more about clutter counseling.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  Yes, indeed. Clutter counseling is when you can book a one-on-one session with me to go deeper on whatever it is that's getting in the way of how you want to create your experiences in life. So we've got questions about career, career transitioning, getting that first job, progressing in the workplace, relationship clutter. I've got people in my life that I need to get along with and we're having. Some serious difficulty on that front. Emotional clutter. I've got some internal stuff. I've got a lot of baggage I'm carrying and I just need a new perspective on that. It's a great opportunity for you to kind of open up and share where you are with me and for me to do some unpacking with a lot of questions and helping you sort of reframe things in a way where you can declutter not only the physical stuff.

• 44:02Speaker 04

  There's a lot of that too, but the intangible stuff behind the physical stuff that makes life unnecessarily complicated.

• 44:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And TK is going to start doing some clutter counseling videos on our YouTube channel as well. If you want to check those out, we'll put a link to it in the show notes, youtube.com/the Minimalists. Much more coming up, but first here is a quick minimalist tip for one of our listeners.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Hey guys, it's Amy from South Carolina again. I'm coming with a poem today by Celeste Davis. It actually doesn't have a title, but she has a subtitle called Matriarchal Blessing, and I really like it. This poem is about the weight of being buried by the needs of others when you give too much of yourself away. I think this would be a fabulous topic, and I think a lot of women/moms can relate to this poem. And here it is. "Be like Jesus," they said. "Okay," I said. "Be kind, be humble, be forgiving, be generous." "Okay," I said.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  "And when an avalanche of the needs of others came pouring down, covering my ankles, now knees, now stomach, now neck, when all but my eyes were buried in all the things I was giving, my breast milk, my morning walks, a stack of books I wanted to read, an hour of my rest, my attention, my problem-solving skills, my home-cooked chili, I looked up for guidance, desperation in my eyes. 'Smile,' they said. 'Be grateful.'" "Okay," I said. Guilt for not being thankful enough shoveled onto the pile as I disappeared under the weight of all my giving."

• 45:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow. Amy, thank you so much for that beautiful comment. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to [email protected]. We'll feature your voice on a future episode. Up next, page two and page three, but first, let's take a quick pandyglation break. We'll be right back.

• 46:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that's the first 38% of episode 511. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition with Ryan Holiday, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "How might living out of a suitcase help one's mental health?" "What did the Stoics think about ego and identity clutter?" "How can I live with someone who betrayed 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, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives,

• 46:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  all the way back to the very first episode. It's over a decade of podcast archives. Big thanks to Ryan Holiday for joining us today. You can check out his daily Stoic newsletter and his podcast. We'll put links to both of those in the show notes, and his new book is called Wisdom Takes Work. That'll be in the show notes as well. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan, Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan O'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,

• 47:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.