482 | Lights On

The Minimalists are joined by Annaka Harris to talk about the unknown corners of consciousness and the cosmos. Discussed in this episode: How does detachment relate to awareness? (2:20) What takes you out of the present moment? (20:02) Right Here, Right Now: Two exciting updates from The Minimalists! (45:14) Listener tip: How to normalize saying 'I don't know.' (47:45) 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'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Malibu. Hello, everybody. Today, we're joined in the studio by Anika Harris. Anika is the New York Times bestselling author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. She's also the author of a children's book called I Wonder, the co-author of Mindful Games Activity Cards, and she's a mindfulness teacher at the Inner Kids Organization. Her new audio documentary series is called Lights On and will be published next week by Macmillan. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about detachment and awareness, and then we've got a question about the things that take you out of the present moment. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip.

• 1:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can check out the maximal edition of episode 482. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions 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, all the way back to episode 001. 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. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Just give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your

• 2:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Tracy.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Hello, Josh, TK, Ryan, Mel Alabama and crew. This is Tracy from Albany, New York. And first, I want you to know that you are all wonderful. And I'm a very happy Patreon subscriber and find it to be worth every penny. You introduced me to Anthony de Mello and remind me in many of your podcasts to keep exploring presence and its purpose. I'm wondering, if you have a show that will focus on presence, awareness and detachment, you all seem to have experience with awareness and sharing your experiences in one show

• 3:06Speaker 03

  would be truly amazing. Thank you for all you do and for sharing your peace with the world.

• 3:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, Annika, this is the perfect question to start this episode because we hear this term awareness. She mentioned Anthony de Mello and someone asked him, what is awareness? And he said, awareness, awareness, awareness is awareness. But in your new documentary series, Lights On, it's an audio documentary, you talk about consciousness, but really what it seems to me like we talk about is awareness or maybe our experience or sentience. Maybe you could talk about a bit about that.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So when people use the word consciousness in a variety of ways, people often think more about human consciousness, so complex thoughts, self-awareness, those types of higher order processing. But what I'm interested in, and when I use the word consciousness and what I think is so mysterious and why it's so difficult for scientists to study, is the simple fact of what you were saying of felt experience, of awareness. I actually like the word felt experience better because awareness could potentially happen without consciousness. You know, you could say your computer's aware of, you know, the inputs, let's say,

• 4:23Speaker 04

  but not necessarily have an experience, a felt experience of those inputs. And so, you know, for some reason, we human beings and other living creatures. You know, when a certain light wavelength enters the retina and is processed by the brain, there's something, in addition to all the physical things that are going on that we can observe, and that is, you know, an experience of seeing yellow materializes in the universe. And that experience of seeing yellow is very distinct. And, you know, we we don't expect cameras or computers that also process light waves, even plants process light waves, and similar to humans, actually distinguish between different wavelengths

• 5:07Speaker 04

  of light, and then their subsequent behavior is determined by how they're distinguishing those things. But we don't expect there to be a felt experience in cameras or computers or even plants. But for some reason, in the human brain and in other living systems, this felt experience of seeing, of seeing yellow, or of feeling heat or pressure, these are felt experiences that is, you know, completely baffling to scientists why those exist in the universe and at what point they arise in nature.

• 5:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the people you're talking to, you're sort of, what I loved about the documentary series is you're exploring it and you're changing your mind as you go, or maybe you're sort of updating your priors in a way. I know last time we had you on the show, we were talking about panpsychism, and you talk about, in this new series, about consciousness being sort of fundamental. What does that mean?

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, I mean, it really is a question that I pose, and it's really what the whole series is devoted to, is this question, is consciousness fundamental? And really what I'm asking is, does consciousness go deeper in nature than the sciences have previously assumed? So is it possible that this assumption we've made that consciousness arises out of very complex processing in brains, you know, the human brain is the most complex thing we know of in the universe, and we're conscious, and we can only get Evidence of other conscious experiences that are similar to ours. And so we've kind of gone with this, you know, very understandable assumption in the sciences that consciousness must arise at this very high level of information processing, high

• 6:47Speaker 04

  level of complexity. But what I discovered in my work, working with neuroscientists and then later physicists, is that we actually don't have strong evidence for making this assumption. And so it's a natural question that we clearly do not yet have an answer to, but that I discovered is actually not only a legitimate scientific question, but I think a really important one. So is it possible that consciousness is actually not, or at least doesn't come out of complexity? That it's something much more basic in the universe, akin to gravity? You know, gravity is obviously something magical and special and fascinating, and we don't totally understand it, but it's a much more fundamental layer of reality.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  And is it possible that felt experiences are actually much more fundamental in that sense? That they're much more simple, that they don't require complexity? And so therefore, very simple systems might give rise to very simple felt experiences in the universe.

• 7:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  PK, I'd love to talk to you a bit about this idea of detachment that she brought up, or maybe non-attachment, whatever verbiage you want to put around it, and how it applies to this sense of awareness, or felt experience, or consciousness.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  I mean, first of all, my mind is blown. I'm just so intrigued by this avenue of research. I just want to get one bit of clarification here. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding. Are you entertaining, or not entertaining the possibility, but are you investigating the possibility that consciousness is not merely an emergent property, but that it might be foundational to such an extent that maybe what we say of atoms and molecules or subatomic particles, that consciousness itself might be maybe the essence of reality, the ground of being, so to speak?

• 8:30Speaker 04

  No, that's a great way of framing it, and you just gave away chapter 10 of my 10-chapter series.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  I'm sure I didn't give away chapter 10.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  No, that is where I land. So, you know, again, this is all, we don't yet know. But the scientific process is all about finding places where we may have been mistaken and kind of updating our information. And so, you know, the place that, where I land is...

• 8:58Speaker 04

  Yes, it's a legitimate scientific question to ask. Is consciousness fundamental? And then where, you know, where you follow my journey in this, this series. It takes me three to four years to have this whole experience of talking to all these scientists and philosophers. And I published papers in the process and give talks on the subject. And my, my thinking evolves. And where I land is if consciousness is fundamental, it most likely goes all the way down in the way that you're describing. So that what all of the physical things that we perceive outside of our own experience are actually at bottom representations of other conscious experiences arising in the universe. And every time, every time I say something like that, it sounds crazy to me.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  I mean, I can't quite believe these words are coming out of my mouth. And I take 10 chapters, very serious chapters, 11 hours of a documentary to convince, you know, science minded people like myself that this actually is not as crazy as it sounds. But yeah, no, you, you expressed it perfectly. That is what, that's the way I would describe it.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I suspect that it's, it's not really possible to do really good philosophical and scientific inquiry without taking the risk of sounding at least a little crazy. Right?

• 10:10Speaker 04

  I think that's right.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. How can we push ourselves to the edge of our understanding without kind of going against the grain of what's familiar?

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I think all of science, I talk about this a little bit in my documentary. And you know, part of what I love about science and what's so exciting about it is each new discovery really does completely rattle our intuitions and completely reshape the way we see the universe that we live in. And there are, you know, every example of a paradigm shift or a scientific breakthrough involves something that human beings couldn't even imagine before. And I think that's really powerful and beautiful and

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  fascinating. Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Something that I want to talk about with you later is this paradox that arises out of Consciousness studying itself? Hmm. I think that that older mechanical view is a little easier because it allows me to separate myself from nature. Right. And say, consciousness is studying something other than that which it is. But when we kind of look at it through that lens, it raises this question of, well, well, how do we know? How, how, how can we find results or even truth if consciousness is studying itself? I want to hear how you kind of wrap your mind around that, but we'll, we'll come back to it. Okay.

• 11:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's get back to this idea that Tracy's asking about specifically about the relationship between detachment or non-attachment and awareness. For me, there's something about clinging to the past or clinging to an ideal future that often removes us from the present moment. And we're going to be talking a lot about that today. What takes us out of the present moment? But TK, maybe you can highlight specifically this idea of detachment or non-attachment that can help us get back into the, that moment of awareness.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, one of the interesting things there is sometimes we become more attached to the present moment by becoming too obsessed with a concept of detachment. Right? And so dealing with attachment is sort of like dealing with bias. There has to be a recognition of the fact that there is no such thing as some neutral space I can occupy, that there is no such thing as some completely unbiased position I can have. What allows me to see through and clearly as possible is to be as honest as I can about my biases and say, hey, here's the vantage point from which I'm looking out at the world, and I will factor that into the conclusions I draw. In a similar way, when it comes to attachment, we have to be honest about the degree to

• 12:35Speaker 05

  which we are rooted in our circumstances and conditions, the degree to which we really are thinking and feeling beings. And so we become sort of like the non-judgmental observers or watchers of these conditions and thoughts. And instead of trying to disentangle ourselves from them, instead of trying to be the sort of like disembodied, you know, brains and a vat, we can say, well, The way to achieve non-attachment is to be fully present to that which I consider myself to be attached to, to those things that I can't separate from, so that I can watch those thoughts while at the same time recognizing I am not the thought. I can feel these sensations while recognizing I am not the sensation. I can be present in these circumstances and conditions and say, I am more than that, but I am not less than that.

• 13:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Anika, as a meditation teacher, do you have anything to add to that?

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, that's really well said. Yeah, I think in line with what you're saying, there's a kind of letting go in which we can be just purely aware, right? Where it almost doesn't matter what the content is. The content is like a river flowing by. And as long as you are committed to just being with the river, being the river, watching the river, whatever it is, things come and go. And it's just, it's the way things are. And so there's a surrendering to what you're getting at with identification with those

• 14:06Speaker 04

  things, or an idea of how they should go, or how you want them to go, or trying to control it. But I think there's something beautiful about the honesty of awareness, because if you're just being aware, everything just is as it is, and you just see what you see.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a kind of descandalizing process that goes on, right?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  That's a great way to say it.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  We learn to descandalize the contents of consciousness.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Anika, what do you say to someone that says, but that's not practical. I can't live my life going around in this sort of perpetual state of bliss?

• 14:41Speaker 04

  That's absolutely right. It is not practical at all. And it's not always blissful to be in that state. You know, there's, part of the river is pain and suffering and struggle. And what's interesting is that being with those uncomfortable emotions and physical circumstances even, at least in my experience, is slightly less difficult than when you're getting caught up in them, or trying to fight them, or trying to control them. But, sorry, I want to go back to your specific question.

• 15:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, I think you were getting to the essence of what Tracy was saying here is quite often we try to, in order to force ourselves to be aware, we're fighting off, we're almost renouncing the so-called negative emotions, the unpleasant feelings of the present moment, renounce that so I can feel pleasure. But that's not what you're talking about when you're talking about awareness.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Well, now, I remember also you were talking about, you know, how can you do this all the time? And one thing that I kind of discovered throughout my years of practicing meditation, actually, it came up in one of the conversations I had for my documentary series with a meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, we were saying, it's actually, you have to go against evolution to med- like, the practice of meditation is going against evolution. And there are a lot of things that serve us extraordinarily well as living beings. And as long as we want to remain living beings, do our best job of being the living beings we are, we have to let those drives move us. You know, we have to eat, and we have to plan for the future, and we have to learn from our experiences and do

• 16:22Speaker 04

  better next time. None of that is happening when you're in the space of practicing meditation in a serious way, because what you're doing when you're actually practicing meditation is not letting all of those evolutionary drives move you in every moment. But if you behaved that way all the time, you wouldn't survive very long.

• 16:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Because you wouldn't eat, you know, you'd be observing hunger, and that's a fascinating thing to do. But if you do that forever...

• 16:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We all know the end product of that. I was talking to Arthur Brooks yesterday. We were interviewing him for our next film that you happened to be in as well. And he was talking about the research on happiness and the science behind happiness. And one of the things he said, there are no bad emotions. Every emotion is a good emotion, especially the unpleasant ones, because those are the very emotions that keep you alive.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  I will say, though, I'll add a little piece to that, though, which is that when you've trained your mind in a certain way, and when you've learned to meditate, and you notice how much space there can be between an impulse or a feeling and your behavior, or even your next thought, it does... Trickle into your daily life, I think, in very positive ways because a lot of the ways we suffer are when we're not aware how a thought has moved us, or we're not aware that we maybe have another choice in that split second between the time we have an impulse and make a decision. And so, you know, sitting on the cushion, or however one

• 17:59Speaker 04

  meditates, and practicing in that very extreme way gives you a little more flexibility when you're living your life.

• 18:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you become more agile emotionally. And that's one of the things TK-

• 18:11Speaker 04

  And more aware, I think.

• 18:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Not as aware as when you're sitting in meditation, but more aware.

• 18:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But it's possible to bring that awareness off of the cushion and into everyday life, you're saying.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I think it's important. And I think meditation practices, once you've had some experience on the cushion, meditation practices that bring that type of awareness into your life are really important to practice, too.

• 18:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. TK wrote a book called Emotional Clutter, and it's really about minimizing those emotions that we make real big. Not eliminating emotions, but maybe not making them so big that they're now on the driver's seat and we're careening from one emotion to another.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 18:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tracey, I'd love to give that to you. You can download it for free over on our website, theminimists.com. Just click Resources there at the top. We have a bunch of free resources, including Emotional Clutter, which you can download for free. There's also an audiobook version that TK, in his sultry voice, read. We did some little mini podcasts on the audiobook version of that as well. And so you can check that out at theminimists.com there on the resources page. Before we get back to our callers, Malibu, what time is it?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round, where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 19:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, Annika, during the lightning round-

• 19:22Speaker 01

  I don't like the sound of this.

• 19:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Don't worry. We make it really easy. Now, TK and I have had time to put together some pithy answers. We call them minimal maxims. They're little short maxims that people can share. And by the way, you can find the show's maxims in the show notes at theminimists.com/podcast. And every minimal maxim ever, these little pithy aphorisms that we have, you can find every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your end. Box for free, including seven new maxims every Monday. If you sign up for our email newsletter, the minimalist email will never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What is the question of the week this week, Bama?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  What takes you out of the present moment?

• 20:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What takes you out of the present moment? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, I want to hear from some of our simpletons. Malibu, what did our listeners have to say?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Susanna said, burnout yanks me out of the present. I'm constantly fixating on the next time I'll have the opportunity to rest.

• 20:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, TK, what do you say about burnout's relationship to rest?

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Well, one of the great myths about rest is that it's best defined as the cessation of activity and awareness. And I think a more helpful understanding is that rest is more about the alignment of attention and awareness to that which replenishes us and revitalizes us. And so in this understanding, rest can be going for a hike, taking a walk, riding a bicycle, and in many cases, sitting on the couch or lying in bed isn't so restful, especially if you're resenting yourself for not being more quote unquote productive. But the liberating aspect of that is that we then can see rest as not something that we're entitled to, but something that is a process that must be practiced. I think about the line of in Death of a Salesman by Willy Loman's wife, attention must

• 21:12Speaker 05

  be paid, you know, kind of like tasting wine, kind of like learning how to listen to jazz. Rest is a quality that we cultivate, a disposition that we learn. And so if you're having a struggle learning how to rest, it could be the result of a limited understanding of what rest is, but also a feeling like this is something I should get right the first time I try to do it. And there could be room for more grace. This is a practice that you may not do well at the first time, but you can learn it the more you lean into it.

• 21:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What else we got?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Blythe said, I don't carry my phone with me all the time, but I find that if I do have it with me, it can easily be a distraction from the present moment. If my phone is nearby when I'm having a conversation, I get the urge to search for something that was just said or asked or questioned, so I can immediately find the answer. I've caught myself looking things up in the middle of conversations, which keeps me from listening. Now I just try to ensure that my phone is face down or put away.

• 22:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you know, it's fascinating. I think it was Rob Bell who told me this, that like when you are seated across from someone, they're the most important person there and we're having this conversation. But if I have my phone between us, it becomes a sort of smokescreen. Now you're the most important person unless anyone else interrupts us.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  Unless it beeps, yeah.

• 22:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. Now, Annika, you seem to have a relatively healthy relationship with your phone, but does it ever get in the way for you?

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, I think, I don't know anyone who doesn't struggle somewhat. I think that, yeah, the remedy you just described, actually just getting it out, out of the room, being aware of the circumstances when it's important to not have it there. In our family, we just have certain places, like the dinner table, where it's not allowed. And there are certain times where that seems absurd, or someone, we're talking about something interesting and someone wants to look up, you know, some historical event. And I just get very strict about it because I know that it's not, it's not just going to the encyclopedia and looking up the historical event. I know other things are going to end up at our dinner table.

• 23:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm very mindful when I'm on my phone. I try to pay attention to the reason I went to my phone and actually try to stick to the activity I had planned. But I'm aware of how often it just doesn't go that way. And so I think it's very helpful to have no phone zones in your life, whether they're places or times of day, just to ensure that that won't, you won't get caught.

• 23:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, those boundaries are interesting and we're struggling with it because this is a relatively new thing. It's a tool that is really useful, just like we have papers printed out here. Peter hates when I do that. Sorry, post-production Peter. Actually, maybe he loves it, I don't know. But we do that because I don't want to have a glowing screen here in front of me because I know the tug, the pull, the vortex. It's so easy for me to pick up my phone to respond to a text message from Annika Harris and all of a sudden, before I know it, I'm in the Bermuda Triangle of Instagram and Facebook and TikTok or whatever. Anything you have on your phone, by the way, any of it can be a distraction. Even the so-called noble things or virtuous things, the things we pretend are are good for us.

• 24:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's a tool, it's a really helpful tool, but the difference between the tools of the of yesteryear is, yeah, I have a hammer, but it doesn't follow me around the house. I don't bring the hammer to the dinner table with me. And the hammer doesn't start interrupting our conversation either.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Well, I would say that a large percentage of the time I pick up my phone for a purpose, I end up forgetting why I picked up my phone in the first place because something else grabs my attention before I can even do the thing I was intending to do. And it's it's good to be aware of that, to recognize those habits. Because, you know, the best we can do is then live as healthy a life as we can, understanding that that that is how that tool works for us.

• 25:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, it sucks us in. The boundary I use, we just call it the entryway rule in our home. So as soon as I get home, we have this little entryway. If you have a bigger house, you might call it a foyer, but we're just a little cove in our hallway where we plug our phones in and that's where they are. It's kind of like a home phone.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so if I want to use it, if the phone rings, I can go answer it. If I want to go send a text message, I get off the couch or get out of bed and I walk over to that area and it makes it more intentional. But even then I pick it up and I'm like, oh, there's seven messages or, oh, wait, maybe I should go here. And before I know it, if I'm unaware, if I step out of awareness, then all of a sudden it's got me. And then I look at it, I'm like, you know, good on you, Zuckerberg. You got me again. You brought me into that Bermuda Triangle.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Interesting, because often there are things that we do need to pay attention to, too. I mean, we sometimes act as if it's this technology that has a mind of its own, but it's also just a way for people to get in touch with us. You know, I'm in a unique situation right now where I'm on a book tour, but also we had to evacuate our home because of the fires. We have to do a bunch of repairs on the rental that we're about to move into. So I often, you know, go to see what the weather is going to be tomorrow and I realize there's an emergency text from the plumber that there's something I need to attend to right now. And it actually, you know, so it's the plumber is coming into my world in that way. And it's just, I think, being aware of all of these different ways.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  We relate to the phone and actually that the phone is is a vehicle for so many different things to come into our lives. Yeah.

• 26:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And if we're not careful with it, if we allow it to control us, that's when we it tugs us out of the awareness. But also, it's this really amazing tool. The the cost of of convenience is inconvenience in a way.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Do you have any thoughts on that, TK?

• 27:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, sometimes the arguments we use to justify the things we need to do have this capacity to spill over into areas that are categorically different.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Ah, that's a good point.

• 27:19Speaker 05

  You know, so, yeah, you know, there are good arguments for why I should open the door to my home, but those arguments don't apply to letting in a raccoon that wants to just destroy everything, right? Likewise, there are good arguments for me keeping the phone around. But then those arguments don't apply to all of the rabbit holes that I get lost in once I do pick it up. And so what I love about what you had to say is the radical self honesty, remembering why you picked it up, and then just holding yourself accountable to that, and not letting that good argument for why you picked it up spill over into something that is categorically different.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 27:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's do a couple more.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  This one's from Whitney. Fear of the unknown takes me out of the present. I have a child with a rare disability, and we are constantly getting bad news or needing new testing that could lead to more bad news. It is an active fight to stay present with my family and my current emotions while actively researching, preparing, or working on the paperwork to get into the next doctor or office.

• 28:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, when I think about fear, it's often an amalgamation of a bunch of different things. We might talk about like imminent danger. That's a type of fear. A grizzly bear walks in the door right now. We're gonna fear that grizzly bear. We're evolutionarily programmed. That that fear is a really great thing.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  For good reason.

• 28:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, turning anxiety into fear is a great life hack, because we walk around with this low level of anxiety all the time. But it doesn't, it just makes us feel like awful, like, and that's another kind of fear. That's not imminent danger. That's something else that I would call anxiety about the future, which I think breaks down into two There's like concern. We had Dan Harris in our first documentary and he was talking about the sort of useful worry, which is concern, like, and I need to leave now in order to get to the airport on time. So I don't miss my flight. So I could see my mother, whatever it is, right? And so there's a useful area of of future anxiety and I would call that concern.

• 29:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The the one that Dan Harris talked about being unuseful is like just the the perpetual worry, the the constant rumination. And it almost feels like that type of worry is paralyzing. What do you think about the distinction?

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Um, I think it's an important distinction and I think this caller, I'm forgetting her name.

• 29:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Whitney.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Whitney is, um, I mean, my heart goes out to her because that's a very difficult situation to navigate where

• 29:41Speaker 04

  you actually do need to act on that anxiety a lot of the time. Um, and so it's a tougher job for someone in a situation like that to be aware of when actions need to be taken. And when it might be a moment that the anxiety is spiraling out of control and there's not much that can be done in that moment and it's an opportunity to be present.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  So I would say a couple of things to her specifically and people who are in these types of situations. One, I think she should be kinder to herself.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  And realize it, this is not an easy situation to be mindful in and it has many more challenges than just, you know, that someone, someone's everyday life where they're not having to worry about their child's health.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  I think there can be an exercise in asking yourself when you're in a situation like this, what can I do right now? What has to be done right now? I, for me, when I'm in, um, you know, emergency type situations, I will often just take out a paper and pen to help myself with this. What can be done now? The things that can't be done now, but need to be done soon, sometimes writing them down is a way to let them go. And you can, you know, realize this has to be dealt with tomorrow, but thinking about it all day today is just going to make me miserable and there's not anything I can actually do. And then maybe it's just a simple thing, you know, there probably aren't that many

• 31:21Speaker 04

  moments when she doesn't have to worry. And so everyone can find for themselves what works for them, but there can be simple mindfulness practices, like feeling the bottom of your feet, or counting five breaths, or seeing, you know, if you're dealing with a child who's sick, seeing your child and noticing in that moment, they might be doing fine, or drawing a picture, you know, there, there are often many beautiful and peaceful and happy moments in the midst of an emergency. And if you've decided in that moment that you've done everything you can do, you did all the research, and it's actually, you know, you have 10 minutes or the rest of the day before you actually have to act again,

• 32:06Speaker 04

  to just take a moment and look at your child and say, oh, you know, he's, he's having a good time right now, and let that in. And I think, you know, also just at the level of the brain, you know, understanding how the brain works in the neuroscience, giving ourselves little breaks from that worry is actually really beneficial for the brain. When we, when we keep ourselves in a certain state, it's, it's like practicing that state. And so you get better and better and better at being anxious. And so even little breaks, you know, five seconds, two minutes of feeling your feet, feeling your breath, noticing your child is okay in this moment, even though you might be worried about the next moment. Those give you resilience for helping you to deal with the long term.

• 32:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  PK, what do you have to say about this idea of, of the worry that is useful? We can recognize when the, the concern for something that may or may not happen in the future is useful. But a lot of times we worry about things, and this may not apply directly to Whitney, but for the broader audience here, a lot of the times, we're worried about things, and that worry isn't very useful at all.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you know, I think you're always better off when you move in the direction of reality. Sometimes the truth does hurt, but knowledge of that truth always helps because it positions you to do something about the real world. I'd much rather be informed about an unpleasant reality than to be an expert on fantasy that has nothing to do with my life. And so, we have to acknowledge the truth as our friend, even when it feels like a foe. And this is also true of some of our physical friends. You have people in your life who love you, and sometimes they have to tell you things that aren't convenient, but you know they're our friends, right? The second thing I would say is, I would really build on this theme that Anika just stated, which is the power of timing.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  There's an old proverb that says, "A loud blessing spoken early in the morning will be taken as a curse." So even if the truth is good, if you talk about it in a way that is untimely, it might be heard as something that is bad. And sometimes when we have something really important to focus on, we might use other people as a kind of memory board because it just feels like the responsible thing to do. "Hey honey, I know this isn't a good time to talk about this because you're getting ready to go to bed right now, but I just want to make sure that at some point this week, we discuss, we figure out our electricity bill, which has been really high this month, and like, it's gonna put us in a tight spot, and we gotta kind of figure out how to get that down." Oh, well, that's great. She's getting ready for bed, and it felt responsible to do that, but now she's stressed

• 34:38Speaker 05

  out, and she's probably not gonna fall asleep too well. Might as well talk about it now, right? And so, when something comes up, you know, it's Friday night, movie night, and you get a ping on your phone, maybe the phone shouldn't be on your person anyway, but you look at it, and you get that email, "Oh, we're gonna need you to come back in in three days for a test." "Hey, everybody, before we start the movie, just wanna let you know." It's like, hey, maybe there's an opportunity to not only think about what the best course of action is in response to the truth that's flowing into my life, but also, what is the best timing for revealing this information to the people who need to know? It may not be now, like Anika said, it may be useful to write it down that allows you

• 35:20Speaker 05

  to process it, so that when you communicate it, you can do it with composure that helps people feel better about it, and you can do it at the right time, so that they have a fair chance to process it.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I agree with all that. And I was also just thinking about something she said early on is just being with not knowing, which is something I've written a lot about. And it's difficult for everyone. I mean, even if we're not worried about, you know, the health of a loved one. And I actually think it's a, it's an interesting exercise to pay more attention to that feeling. And, you know, I think for this caller and maybe for someone else who's, who's dealing with, you know, waiting for a diagnosis or something, that's, that's much more serious or impactful. But just noticing that being in a state of

• 36:12Speaker 04

  not knowing, we, especially in our culture, tend to find very uncomfortable. And so we don't have a lot of experience being able to sit with it. And there's actually an exercise that we do. There's a mindful games card that I love doing because it sets children up for approaching the experience of not knowing in a different way. And so it's a very simple exercise. We have a, it can be anything. We usually use an oatmeal container. But instead of oats in there, we put something else. And there are lots of different ways you can play the game. But the point is to put something else in there. It's sealed up and we're not going to know, we don't know what's in there. And we're going to try to guess what's in there. And we pass it around the circle. It could

• 36:56Speaker 04

  be balloons, or rocks, or Legos, or something. And you shake it and you listen and it's right there. And you could know if you just opened it, but you don't get to know. And we give a timeframe to it. It's usually at the end of the class, or maybe even the next day. And we just let it sit. And we touch it and we hold it and we share what we think it might be. And then we have a conversation about, how does this feel to you? And it's really interesting to hear children talk about this, because of course, this not knowing and anxiety is also like a cousin of excitement. And so there are also ways, I think, sometimes, depending on the circumstance, and I wouldn't, you know, say this to someone who's waiting for a diagnosis or something like that. But

• 37:37Speaker 04

  often, anxiety can be reframed slightly so that it feels more like excitement. And when you just look at how these things feel in the body, they're very similar. And so it's interesting to hear kids, they're, they're sometimes our best teachers, that they will say things like, I feel like there's something in my tummy, and, or I really, really want to know. And They get comfortable just paying attention to that feeling. And that becomes the focus, rather than I have to see what's in there to end this feeling. The exercise can be, let's explore, this is a, this is a thing in and of itself. Let's, let's explore this, let's be with this. There's a lot here to investigate.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  And I think there's something about that curiosity that can be helpful with a lot of different emotions, but especially not knowing.

• 38:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You reminded me of my daughter. She, she was really nervous before this singing recital that she had to do. And she was like, I'm just nervous. So what's it feel like to be? She's like, well, I feel like I have butterflies in my stomach and, and my, my, my, my hands are kind of sweaty and like, I'm almost like jittery. I said, what do you feel like when you're about to ride a roller coaster? And she's like, I got butterflies in my stomach and my hands are sweaty. I get a little jittery. I said, do you call that nervous? She goes, no, it's so exciting. I said, well, maybe you're excited right now. She goes, I am excited right now. And she goes out there and she just did a great job. And it was just that reframing. It was the same physiology, right? But she was letting go of that story she was telling herself about her nervousness.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Basically telling her it's okay to feel the way you feel. You don't have to stop it.

• 39:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yeah, this feeling is not wrong. Let's do one more.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  This one's from Jess. I am most often taken out of the present moment by the judgmental voice inside my head that frequently reminds me that I could and should be spending my time more efficiently, productively, or bettering my health or mind in some way.

• 39:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Monica, talk to us about that judgmental voice in our heads.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  You know, it's a tricky one because sometimes that voice is there for a reason and sometimes it's helpful. And I, and I think, you know, my answer is probably similar to my last answer, which is.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  You know what? I'm going to actually say something different. I mean, I think they, they can both be useful, but I think.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Sometimes it's useful to get curious about what we think the right thing is to do. And it's possible that the right thing is not on paper what you would say the right thing is. And maybe, I think it's important to get curious about why you're telling yourself that you should be doing A, B, and C. And if those are even the things you should be doing. And I think if you can come to a place that you realize those are the things you should be doing, there's a way to get motivated to do them. But I think in this case, it sounds like the type of experience where someone is telling themselves

• 40:41Speaker 04

  they should be doing something when really they want to feel okay about the thing they are doing.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  And so.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  I love that. How about you, listeners? What kicks you out of the present moment? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which, by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't support the private podcast on Patreon. You can still check out the community over there, interact with like-minded simpletons on Patreon. Give me something pithy, TK. What takes you out of the present moment?

• 41:09Speaker 04

  Can I say one more thing?

• 41:10Speaker 05

  Please do.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Just realize something that helps me, because I can get into that kind of thinking. I relate to it. The beautiful thing about having a meditation practice is that it's always a good idea to meditate. And so if you're stuck and you're not sure what you should be doing, you can basically always feel good about meditating. And often, some sort of insight will come when your mind is quiet. And so I rely on that sometimes.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  That's so.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Being pulled in many directions, there's one direction I know I can't go wrong.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  That's so key, because usually when we suffer burnout, it's because we have this preoccupation with productivity. And so we demonize productivity and we say, well, that's the opposite of what I'm seeking, right? And I think burnout is more the result of having a one-dimensional understanding of productivity. And when you begin to meditate, you understand that there is so much more to productivity than keeping my body busy, than analyzing. Using spreadsheets or doing things that are conventionally understood as work. What the world needs more than ever, even in the world of productivity, is people who are connected to themselves, people that can engage in interdisciplinary thinking, people that are familiar with the process of cross pollinating ideas. And how do you do that? By having curiosities and interests outside of your profession,

• 42:30Speaker 05

  outside of things that are easily justifiable in an economic sense. That's what allows you to bring a sense of interestingness and aliveness to your work. You got anything pithy for me now? Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  The bigger the ego, the smaller the now.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Parable of a brilliant sculptor, who had the ability to make these statues that were almost indistinguishable from a real person. He gets up in age, and one day God summons the angel of death and says, "You know that brilliant artist that I created?" The angel of death says, "Yes." He says, "Well, it's his time to go, but I wanted to warn you, he's gonna be very difficult for you to get." The angel says, "I've seen it all." And so he goes to visit the sculptor. He knocks on the door, the sculptor says, "Who is it?" The angel of death says, "It's me, angel of death, no funny business." He walks in and he sees that the sculptor is prepared for him. He created seven lifelike statues, all resembling himself, and he stands in the middle. After spending several minutes trying to figure out the real from the fake, the angel of death gives up and says, "I concede,

• 43:32Speaker 05

  you are as brilliant as God said you were." In fact, I've seen so many artists over the years, I was close to saying, "You're the greatest of all time, but your work just has one minor flaw." And at that moment, the artist says, "What? What? What was it?" And then realizing his mistake, he says, "Ah, I fell for your stupid bluff." And the angel says, "No, I wasn't bluffing, I really meant it." And the artist says, "Well, grant me this grace. What was my flaw?" And the angel says, "You failed to forget about yourself. Come now to your death." Sometimes our inability to understand and see what's before us is the fact that our eye is getting in the way, the egoic eye of me, myself, the egoic eye of self-centeredness.

• 44:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I think that's that's spot on. There's there's something about about the ego or the false self, whatever you want to call it, the the delusional self, the solipsist that the world revolves around. And that is the very thing that often does us. And my fifth answer comes from, we just finished this short film series called Fragments, and the last episode is about how success does not exist. And it's really about, it's an episode about sort of craving the the future. And one of the lines from that is craving an outcome anchors you to a future that does not exist and drags you from the peace of the present moment. And that's through all the striving, through all the chasing,

• 44:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  you know, we, we often chase happiness, we wonder why it's running away from us. And it happens to be because we are chasing the thing. The things that we chase tend to run away from us. We've got so much more to talk to. That is the end of page one here. We've got a lot of people here, a whole switchboard of callers, people wrote in, we have several segments as well. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's a segment where we talk about one or maybe two things going on in the life of the minimalist. Real quick, number one, Patreon, just, we were part of this sort of alpha test, they, they rolling out with like 30 or 40 different creators, where they completely upgraded the look and design of our site to our specifications. They brought it into 2025. The website was

• 45:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  feeling very 2019. And so it looks amazing. Patreon.com/theminimalist, you can interact with our community over there. Obviously, you can subscribe to our private podcast there. You can check out all of the other, we have over 1,000 posts over there on Patreon. If you want to dive deep into living a meaningful life with less, that is the place, including all of our podcast archives, 10 years of podcast archives are available over there at Patreon.com/theminimalist. And also, you can find our live events there. We just did our 13th Sunday Symposium. We do this monthly event in Southern California. We do one in Orange County. In fact, the one we just did was in Orange County. It might have been my favorite one.

• 46:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, I gotta tell you, our live events are definitively my favorite thing that we do now. And we do a lot of things I really enjoy doing, but there's something magical about these Sunday symposiums. We intentionally keep it small, less than 200 people, so it feels more like a community gathering. Different from our book tours where it's a larger crowd of people. But there's something special about that space. What did you enjoy about this most recent event?

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Oh, man, it's the magic of uncertainty, right? When people call in and they send us these recorded questions, we must necessarily know what they're going to ask. And you know, there's just a certain magic that can't come from that. But when you're there in a live audience, you have no idea what that person's gonna ask. And it may be the most far-out left-field question, but there it is, and it must be dealt with. And there's something exciting about that. And being able to interact with our audience as well, and being able to create a context where they can interact with each other just lends it a personal element that's truly beautiful.

• 47:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Last Sunday of every month here in Southern California, we do Santa Barbara, we do Los Angeles, and we do Orange County. LA is our next one this month in March, and we have Santa Barbara in April, Orange County in May. You can find your tickets and get them for free, by the way, over at SundaySymposium.com. If they're sold out, they always sell out, but if you're listening to this and they've already sold out, put your name on the waitlist and we'll let you know when we release more tickets. SundaySymposium.com if you want to see us here in Southern California. In Alabama, what else you got for us?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 47:49Speaker 06

  This is Joe from Brooklyn, New York. I was recently listening to the Minimalist Tools Podcast, and when TK spoke about the importance of getting comfortable with saying "I don't know," I was absolutely thrilled. As a professor of mathematics, I often teach multi-variable calculus. And in my lectures, I make it a point to normalize saying "I don't know" in front of others. In fact, I encourage students to say it out loud in class and even go around giving high fives to those brave enough to do so. I explain to them that acknowledging what they don't know is a crucial step toward learning and growth.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that professor.

• 48:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I do, too. Joe, nice work. Annika, talk to me about the benefits of those beautiful three words, "I don't know."

• 48:36Speaker 04

  You know, it was the original title of my children's book.

• 48:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Was it really?

• 48:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, my children's book is called "I Wonder," but when I first wrote the draft, it was called "I Don't Know" for that reason. I mean, "I Wonder" is a much better title.

• 48:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I love "I Don't Know" as maybe a podcast episode title, though.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, but no, but that's the point of that book is, and the truth is, I wrote it for children, but the intention was, you know, I knew I had a small child when I wrote it, and I knew that parents are the ones reading these books to their children. And so it was as much for the parents as it was for the children. But I think, yes, that's something that, you know, all human beings need work. I think admitting, accepting, feeling just the state, as we were talking about of not knowing, but especially in our culture. It is not celebrated. I love that this professor celebrates it in that way in the classroom.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  And I think practices like that will really help our culture.

• 49:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's a particular freedom in it. In saying "I don't know," you've, you've broken out of the prison of "I must know everything."

• 49:47Speaker 04

  I think it actually shows tremendous strength. It's, it's kind of this misconception we have about it that, that will lose confidence, that people will lose confidence in us. But the opposite is almost always true. If someone who's willing to admit they don't know, there's an immediate sense of trust, because you know they're not going to tell you a lie, they're not going to make something up, they're willing to be honest in that moment.

• 50:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, they're willing to admit their so-called shortcomings, which actually is not a shortcoming.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  No, I mean, of course, what learning takes place if we know.

• 50:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Exactly. Yeah. Well, 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] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 50:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first 39% of episode 482. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Annika Harris, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how do I know whether I'm spending too much time fantasizing about the future? Why do we find it so hard to listen to and learn from the political views that we disagree with? What can I do to let go of all of my parenting guilt? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on The Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. Big thanks to Annika Harris for joining us today. Check out her new audio documentary series. It's called Lights On. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing

• 51:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malibu, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Savvy D. on the board. We have an audience of one today. Professor Sean is here. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this. Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  We'll see you next time.

• 51:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.