495 | House on Fire

The Minimalists talk about letting go of sadness, replacing possessions after a natural disaster, swapping a smartphone for a dumb phone, understanding the downsides of home ownership, holding on to sentimental items for too long, asking loved ones for their attention, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How do I let go of my sadness after I was forced to let go of everything I own? (2:02) If you were to lose everything in a natural disaster, what's the first thing you would replace? (16:48) Right Here, Right Now: "I Shouldn't Have to Deal with This" is one of our most popular episodes of all time. (35:44) Listener Tip: The Light Phone is a great way to add intentional friction to your life. (41:20) 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.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn, and joining me here at Earthing Studios in West Hollywood, California, is my good friend TK Coleman. Coming up on this free, public minimal episode, a caller has a question about letting go of her sadness after she lost everything in a house fire. And then we've got a question about the first thing that you might replace after a natural disaster. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 495. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description.

• 1:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to episode 001. That is a full decade of archives. 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 comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Jules.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Jules. And I've been a member of yours, I'm a Patreon subscriber, for about, I don't know, six months or eight months, whatever. After a beautiful eight-month renovation of my dream home, my house caught fire three days before it was completed. I'd been living there two weeks, and it caught fire this morning. And I have no clothes. I have just a computer and my passports. I'm in Switzerland, so, you know, we're incredibly insured. So everything is good. I'm not worried too much about getting my money back. But I'm sad about the house.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I'm exhausted to think about years' work that I have to go through to get back to what it was. So in Switzerland, what they do is you pay an insurance. So the firemen come and they say, "Okay, we're gonna assess the damage, we're gonna take everything out of the house, we're gonna clean it, gonna put it back in, and we're gonna then, what we can't put back in, we'll reimburse you." It means it's incredible situation. So in one way, I'm blessed. But in the other way, I'm thinking, is this an opportunity? I had a lot of clothes. I had a lot of expensive dresses and clothes. And, I mean, I have a life. I've, you know, I'm 62 years old. It's life of stuff. I'd already had a huge purge, and it's a chance for a new beginning.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm quite excited by that too. So I leave the past behind and move forward. I'm sure, I'm sure you'd say, "Yes, that is a chance to go forward."

• 3:47Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. I don't know. Help me.

• 3:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Is this an opportunity to start over? Is this an opportunity to begin again? And of course... Jules, you already know the answer to that is yes, you're saying yes. But that also doesn't get rid of the sadness just because you know that this is an opportunity. It's always an opportunity to begin again. I get in my car in the morning, it's a new opportunity to begin again. If I go out for a walk, it's an opportunity to begin again. If I accidentally mistreat someone I love, I can learn from that and it's an opportunity to begin again. TK, I love questions like these and that's probably surprising to hear because I do feel a sense of sadness for Jules as well. Because she's sad and she's grieving through this.

• 4:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But she also said she's a little bit excited about this as well. And so she's asking about letting go of that sadness after being forced to let go of everything that she owned. This happens more than you would think. We see it at our events in our last book, Love People Use Things. There was a couple from Minnesota that I wrote about who came to one of our live events and their entire house burned down. And they said it was incredibly relieving, which made me think about, one of my favorite quotes is from Epictetus, the famous Stoic philosopher and teacher. He said, "It's not things that upset us, but our thoughts about those things."

• 5:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And Jason and Jen Kirkendall, the folks in our book, whose home burnt down, their thoughts about it at first were devastating. "Oh my God, we just lost everything." But then they realized they'd been simplifying for a few months before that. Just as I assume Jules has been doing as well. She's been simplifying because I can tell with her mindset, there's a letting go that's going on here. And so in a way, the home burning down was a relief. Not that they wanted it, it was still a huge inconvenience. And so I had to think about this in my own life. What would happen to me if a natural disaster happened similar to Jules at my home? And something did happen a couple of years ago. Our entire crawl space flooded.

• 5:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was a type of natural disaster, our whole neighborhood flooded there in Ojai. And it was tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage and I had to pay for some of it. We have a very high deductible on our insurance. So I had to take money from my emergency fund. But then insurance eventually did pay for a lot of the other damage. However, what if I lost everything in a fire? What would happen? Well, I've lost everything before. You know, when I let go of something, I realize what I'm making room for. But when you're forced to let go of something, it becomes more difficult. It feels like something has been taken from you or stolen from you. Now, if Jules were one of your clutter counseling clients, TK, what are some of the questions you would ask her to start?

• 6:45Speaker 03

  What did you love about the things you had to let go of? What were some of your hopes? What were some of your plans? I think it's so important that in the process of letting go, we don't commit the two fallacies that often make letting go extremely difficult, if not impossible. And that's letting go of too much and letting go too soon. Letting go of too much says, I've got to jettison everything in order to cope, when in reality, you don't have to let go of the wisdom and the lessons and the insights and the memories in order to be able to move on. It's possible to hold on to some aspects of it. And you don't have to let go of everything today. You don't have to stop feeling sad by midnight tonight. You've got some time.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  In fact, if you let the sadness take its own course and you tend rather to the needs of your soul and to the narratives of your mind, the sadness will often move through you on its own time, and it'll be a lot easier. And so I like to start with saying, before we try to push past this, before we try to move on, let's be truthful about the grief. Let's be truthful about the sadness. And let's talk about, what were your hopes? What were your plans? What did you want to do with those things? Because many of those hopes and those plans, at the level of their essence, may still be able to move on in a way that's bigger than the things. And now, letting go of these things is our opportunity to get more creative and rethink how we can retain some of those hopes and those plans in the absence of those things.

• 8:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Letting go of a thing is different from losing everything. You can lose everything and still not let go of it emotionally and mentally, right? Now, before we were recording this episode, we were preparing for it, and you said something really profound to me. You said, "When all is lost, only what mattered is mourned." Tell me more about that.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  I was talking with a friend this very morning, who mentioned that there was a period of time where his father lived with him. And his father ate a ton of food. And it really irritated him. He felt bad about how much it irritated him, but it did. It's like his father just ate everything in the fridge. He'd come home from a hard day's work, even though he had just bought groceries like a couple of days or prior. And the father would have eaten nearly everything. And he argued with him about it. He got upset about it. And one day, his house caught fire. And he lost his home. And as this was happening, he thought he had lost his father. And thankfully, his father was okay and he was all right.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  And one day, you know, after he gets on the other side of this, he's at his home and he's just looking at a bowl of fruit that's sitting on the counter. And he's thinking to himself, if my father were gone, I'd have all that fruit to myself and it wouldn't matter at all. I'd rather have my father and fight with him over eating too much of my fruit. Sometimes when we lose things, it makes us remember what really matters. But when we have all the important things, we take them for granted. And we bicker and we fight over the non-essentials. We get mad at each other because you took two cookies instead of one. We get mad at each other because you left the toilet seat up rather than putting it down. We get mad at each other because of this and because of that.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  And yes, it seems like we care so deeply about things. But then once we lose something bigger, we say, oh, I had it so good. And I'd give anything in the world to fight with that person about that little unimportant thing again.

• 10:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're reminding me of Sam Harris, a previous podcast guest of ours. And he talks about there are at least a billion people in the world right now who would trade their life for yours. Even amid the disaster, the natural disasters. And this happens in other ways as well. And our thoughts about the things often amplify the sadness, right? Because there is not a sadness inherent in losing one's home. It's the sadness about, well, the sadness says something about reality in a way. Right? It says that my reality doesn't map on to my expectations. Or a nice way to say that are my hopes. I hope this would be my final home. I hope this would be my dream home. And that's a type of expectation.

• 10:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when that is taken away from you and there's no way for you to meet that expectation, that's when the sadness creeps in, or sometimes for other people, it's anger. When we lose something, we're losing something we thought we had. And it can be a home, it can be material possessions, it can be a relationship. I have a friend who lost his volleyball league and was devastated by it. And it's easy for me to like sneer at that at first, like, it's just a volleyball league. Yeah, to me, but to him, it was his community. It was like his church of sorts. I have another friend who ran a church and the church went out of business. It dismantled and he felt like he had lost everything, right? He actually felt the same way as the guy who lost his volleyball league.

• 11:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so it's not up to me to determine whether or not you should or shouldn't feel sad. What is that sadness pointing to? It's pointing toward a reality that no longer exists. But as Jewel said, this is her opportunity to start over. Yes, you're 62 years old right now. What a great time to start over. It's great to start over at 42 or 22. It's great to start over whenever because there's always an opportunity to begin again.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. And when it comes to unpacking that emotional clutter that is our sadness over things that we have to let go of. I like to think of it in the following terms. Imagine if I had a box, like I walked up to you and I'm carrying a box. And I say, Josh, what is the best way for me to let go of what's inside this box? Should I burn it? Should I bury it? Should I sell it? Should I give it away to someone? Should I rent a storage facility and put it in there? Your question isn't going to be, yeah, option A or option B. Your response is going to be, well, what's in the box? We need to unpack what's in the box and take a look at it. And it's through that process that we will come to realize what is the best way to let it go. And it's a similar way when we feel sadness. If we try to suppress our emotions and say, oh, I shouldn't be feeling sad

• 12:52Speaker 03

  because that's not what a mature and enlightened person does. Then we actually cling to it through that act of renunciation. But when we say, well, let me look at this and let me unpack this and let me understand this. Then we say, okay. I feel sad because I always wanted to do this with my life. I feel sad because I've always wanted to feel this way and I've always had this plan. And once we begin to look at our sadness and understand our sadness, we can start to see the best way to let it go. Well, actually, I can meet that need this way. It may take a little longer, may take some time, but I can still meet that need. And actually, I might be able to meet that need in an easier way. And there's the opportunity that this experience has brought me.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  And, you know, I think I can live without that now that I think about it and I consider the reason why I wanted it. When you understand it, it's much easier to let go.

• 13:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When you're understanding something, you're starting to set down the unnecessary expectations. I expected this to be my dream home. But of course, one of my favorite lines in hip hop is from a hip hop artist named Belly. He said, "I bought my dream home and now I've been having nightmares in it." And there are other people who are actually elated when their house burns down. Or maybe they burn their house down themselves because it's become so overwhelming. I can't afford the bills or the insurance or the things are overwhelming. And the best thing I could do is just have a clean slate. And they become an arsonist, which is not something I recommend at all. But it's amazing to think that there's someone who wants to get rid of everything and they see a house fire as their opportunity. And thankfully, that's where Jules is right now.

• 14:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She sees the opportunity. She may not see the path forward yet. So I'd love to give her a clutter counseling session with TK Coleman. Jules, I think you'll benefit from unpacking some of the sadness with him here, some of the emotional clutter you experienced. But also, what are you making room for? What is that clean slate and what are you going to do with it? For anyone else who wants a clutter counseling session, you can go to theminimalists.com and just click counseling there at the top to book a session with TK via Zoom. Or if you're in Southern California, here at our office in Los Angeles, California. While we're at it, I'd also love to give you a copy of The Minimalist's second book. It's my favorite thing that we've ever written. It is called Everything That Remains. And it was really this period of time where Nicodemus and I started questioning

• 15:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  everything so we could move. Move on. In my own life, there were a few disasters that happened, and that allowed me to start asking these really difficult questions that I had been suppressing, or hiding, or not thinking about. I didn't want to think about these questions for the longest time, because things were so ostensibly good that I didn't want to ruin the goodness by beginning to question those things, because what if everything wasn't as it seems? Now, before we get back to our callers, it is time for the lightning round, where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. This is where we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's

• 15:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com, and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every week for free, if you sign up for our email newsletter at either one of those sites. Now, we'll never send you spam, or junk, or advertisements, obviously, although on page three, we're finally gonna do it, TK. We are going to argue about ads. You had this great question for me on page three. You said, "Are there any advertisements you'd be willing to do if you had to?" And I've had to think long and hard for the last two weeks about that question, and I have a nuanced answer for you that I think is going to surprise you. I'm gonna save that for page three, because I think we'll have a long discussion

• 16:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  around that. But if you sign up for our email newsletter, we'll never send you spam, or junk, or ads. I'm definitely never gonna send you an advertisement, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, the question of the week this week. "If you were to lose everything in a natural disaster, what's the first thing you would replace?" Let me repeat that for you. "If you were to lose everything you own in a natural disaster, what's the first thing you would replace?" Now, TK, before we get to our pithy, philosophical, tweetable answers, let's see what some of our listeners had to say. The most common response, Rachel, and Susanna, and Sarah, and a bunch of other

• 17:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  people said, "A toothbrush and toothpaste." And bravo to our listeners who have the the best breath in podcasting. And the most, second most common response, Sevvy D told me was Susan and Rocky and Tina and several others said they would replace their pets and pet food. Now, I'm a little confused by that. If your pets were lost in the fire, I don't know, I don't think that's what they mean by that. Maybe it's like pet supplies, pet items, pet toys, although maybe, who knows? Let me know in the comments or in the community chat. Are you saying that you'd actually replace your pet if you lost the pet in a fire?

• 17:54Speaker 03

  I, I think when I read the question, I presuppose that I, I, by default, I get to keep me and the people that I love.

• 18:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  So that our stuff burned down. I didn't read it like, hey, my family and my pets burned out. Cause obviously that's the first thing we all replacing, right?

• 18:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, and the thing is you can't replace the irreplaceable things.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Right. That's exactly it.

• 18:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think that's what I love about this thought experiment is we're recognizing that virtually everything is replaceable. Of course, your pets aren't replaceable, your loved ones aren't replaceable, but your toaster is replaceable, your toothbrush is replaceable. And so I was thinking about this. What would happen if, if a fire just devastated my home like what happened to Jules? I have a go bag. We talked about this on the emergency items episode. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Nick Ademas and I talked about, what, what does minimalist prepping look like? What is a minimal version of prepping? And my boundary is I have a go bag and it's ready to go. So if I had a disaster, a fire, or if there was some sort of national emergency, I have a bag I can grab in 30 seconds and

• 18:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  leave my house. And if everything else burns down, then it'd be a huge inconvenience. I think for some people, I mentioned earlier, like if your house burns down, there's some people who'd be elated like, oh, what a, what a relief. And then there's someone else who's like devastated and they can't ever let go and it's awful. I'm somewhere in between that where it'd feel like a giant inconvenience to me.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I dislike inconveniences. It'd be like the biggest inconvenience because now I have to replace furniture and there are other, and of course there are some sentimental items that are irreplaceable. We'll talk about sentimental items here in a moment. But I thought about what would I replace? And well, I have my go bag. So anything that is in there, and if you want to know what's in my go bag, go back and listen to the emergency items episode. We spent a lot of time on that. But then I also thought about traveling. Whenever I travel, I realize what I really need. As opposed to what is non-essential that adds value. But what do I need when I travel? Especially if I travel for a month or more and I'm living out of one bag for that entire month. It's like, oh yeah, I've got a handful of shirts and maybe a pair or two of pants.

• 20:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I've got some shoes and some shorts to exercise in. And what else do I need? I have an earthing mat that I travel with and I have a dob kit with shampoo and some toothpaste and nail clippers. And yeah, so I think I just go and replace everything that I travel with normally. That's what I would need right now. Those would be the essentials for me. And then over time, very slowly, I'd start to question the non-essentials, the things that add value to my life, but I don't need them immediately necessarily. Now TK, we were here in the studio, Professor Sean's here on the couch, Savvy D is here. And everyone's answer is really practical to this. Professor Sean was like, you know, I would, I just, I need a computer because I'm a writer and also I need it for work.

• 20:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It'd be the first thing that I would replace. I'd just go out and buy a relatively basic computer because it's a utilitarian thing that I need. And Savvy D is like, I've had this water bottle for seven years. I drink from it every day. I would go replace this water bottle. And I don't think that either one of those are wrong answers, but I'm wondering with you, I talked about the things I travel with in my go-bag. What's something that you would replace right away?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Most practical thing in the world, books. I just go get my books because if you have books, you have a place to sleep and stuff to eat.

• 21:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We've unlocked his digestive issues.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  By the way, I think you have two go-bags. You have one in case there's a fire, but the other in case you get that call from Nicodemus where he's like, I need you to bust me out of prison. Let me grab the other go-bag.

• 21:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, their passports and firearms. Yeah, it's like a Jason Bourne film, right? Shout out to a few episodes ago, it was part of our added value segment. We played a clip from Jason Bourne on page three. And there was this beautiful thing about the ego there, right? And I think that applies to this conversation as well because when the woman in the car says to Jason Bourne, nobody does the right thing. Cause I'm just trying to do. The right thing. And she goes, nobody does the right thing. And I took that one way, like, hey, no one ever does the right thing. But maybe once you've lost your ego altogether and the the identity that's tied up into all these things, now you're finally able to do the right thing by letting go of that identity and the

• 22:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  false self that is tied up in these items or that career or that relationships. And now I'm finally able to do the right thing. Here's what Tara had to say to this question. Having done this after losing everything in a 2018 campfire toiletries, weather appropriate clothing and animal items were the first things we replaced. As far as non essentials, my first replacement was to have some nice makeup and jewelry to help me feel a little more put together. You know, this makes me think of two different rules, TK. We have the no junk rule and we have the wouldn't replace rule. The no junk rule says everything you own can fit in one of three piles. You can find this in the minimalist rule book. It's 16 rules for living with less and you can download it for free over on our website,

• 22:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  theminimalists.com/ rulebook. There's also a great audiobook version of that as well. But one of the rules is the no junk rule. Everything you own fits in one of three piles. It's either essential, it is non essential, but it adds value to your life. So it's a value adding, non essential, or it is junk. Unfortunately, most of the things we own are junk because we've held on to them well into their obsolescence. Maybe they added value for some period of time, but then we kept holding on, kept clinging. And now it becomes junk, something that was value adding ceases to add value. That's when it turns into junk. But the truth is, eventually I would replace a lot of those non essential items. As a minimalist, I'm not against non essentials. I get value from those things.

• 23:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's just I wouldn't need to replace my coffee table immediately. If my house is on fire, I'm not going to design within reach.com and looking for the new coffee table for my next place. Eventually I'll come around to that if I decide it continues to add value. Same with my couch or yeah, I'd probably replace my bed pretty soon, you know, because I'm not going to sleep on a pile of books, unlike TK, the true stoic here. Here's what Andy had to say. Andy said, "Having done this already, it was strangely the dishes. Eating off real plates and with real flatware makes you feel a little more normal, even when sitting in a camp chair or in the car." So for him, it's like, "What is the thing that makes me feel like home?"

• 24:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And everything that remains, there is this motif of the red phone that I used to keep at home. And so I had this phone that I would keep in, it was like a piece of art. And I kept it at home, and even when I would move to a new place, it was the one thing I'd bring with me. Or if I was gonna stay in Airbnb somewhere for a week, I'd bring that red phone with me. And it was a reminder that I can feel at home anywhere. And it sounds to me like Andy's like, "The thing that makes me feel like I'm at home is..." Well, not for him, it's not a red phone for him. It's just having flatware and having real plates instead of eating from, you know, paper plates and dishes that, you know, are recyclable or trash, basically.

• 25:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Lisa said, "I would immediately replace my coffee maker and coffee beans. Then I would tackle the rest."

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Let's go, Lisa.

• 25:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. I'll tell you what, I'm definitely swiping right on my coffee setup. We're gonna talk about that in a moment. One other rule here that I was mentioning earlier is the wouldn't replace rule. We just put a video about this up on our Instagram, and it went viral on Facebook. A lot of people found value in the wouldn't replace rule. And it's pretty simple. I went around my house and I looked at the things, I asked that question. "If I were to lose this in a fire, would I replace it?" And if the answer is yes, then of course I wanna hold on to it. But there was one thing that I had in my home, and you have to see the video to check it out. But there was one thing I had in my home where I'm like, "No, if I lost this right now, I definitely wouldn't replace it." Well, that is a sign that I want to let it go. Why am I still holding on to it? I'm definitely replacing my coffee setup.

• 26:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, so a quick thought experiment for you, TK. We talked about swiping right a few weeks ago during our Family Matters episode. I said, "Do you have any friends that you would swipe right on?" In the sense that like, you know what? Yes, I want this person to be a friend in my life. So comparing it to sort of... Sort of the the dating app. But what if there was a sort of swipe right swipe left for your possessions? What possessions would you swipe left on? And that is sort of like the the wouldn't replace it rule in a way. But like if I look at, if I go to my home and I pull out any item, would I swipe right on it? Like, yes, that is a match for me where I am right now. Or would I be like, nah, not interested? If I didn't own it, would I still swipe right on it? Or would I swipe left on it?

• 26:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And if I would swipe left on it, why am I still holding on to it? Do you have any possessions that you might swipe left on?

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Not personally, but I think a lot of questions that we've gotten over the years indicate that gifts from other people might be a great candidate for a lot of folks out there. Because there are some people that say, I want to get rid of this. But it's a T-shirt that my best friend gave me for my birthday. Or it's something that someone, it really meant a lot to them to give it to me. I don't really like it, but I don't want them to ever come over and see that it's gone and, you know, feel bad. These are the types of people that might feel really good if something came along and took it away and gave them that excuse.

• 27:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'd love to hear from our listeners about items they might swipe left on. So send a voice memo to [email protected]. We'll feature your voice on a future episode. Now, TK, I was surprised as I was going through the community chat. Not a lot of people talked about their sentimental items. And I think there's probably two reasons for that. One is we tend to think practically and in the moment. I don't need to replace the old framed photographs or my grandma's jacket or old doilies from my mom. Those are things I might think about later and I might feel a kind of sadness for letting those go or having to let those things go, being forced to let go of the things maybe I didn't want to let go of. So there's a practical side of it, whereas like sentimental items generally aren't very practical.

• 28:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's some exceptions to that, obviously, but usually a sentimental item isn't practical. But also, a sentimental, if it's truly a sentimental item, the worth is in the person. I love what you say, there are no sentimental items, only sentimental people. If an item is truly sentimental. Sentimental, I couldn't replace it. If I have my mom's old hat box, which has some old photographs in it, it's like the one sentimental item I still have from her. In a word, to spontaneously combust, which we talk about all the time, spontaneous combustion rule is my favorite minimalist rule for living well. It's constantly asking, how would I feel if this thing spontaneously combusted? And with my mom's hat box, I would feel a twinge of sadness, but I'd also recognize I couldn't replace it.

• 28:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I couldn't just go out and buy another hat box and I'll call it my mom's hat box. It just, it wouldn't work that way. So any other insights about the sentimental items, why not many people really talked about trying to replace those sentimental items? Or, or losing those sentimental items?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Now, there's a third reason too, and it doesn't apply to everybody, but sentimental items are harder to sell as part of our story than practical items. If you said, TK, what's the first thing you replace? Can anyone feel anything other than like, yeah, I get that if I say my bed? You know, or if I, if I say, you know, something that I really need, it's practical and it's also safe. But then if I say something like my Rolex or my, my trophy from when we won the high school basketball championship or, or something like that. It, it sounds so superficial that even if I feel that way, it may be something that I don't tell because I feel like it's a story that won't sell.

• 29:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And by the way, the trophy points toward a championship. If I go out and buy a giant trophy that's eight feet tall and has a basketball guy at the top of it and say, look, I'm buying this for myself to represent how good I used to be at basketball, you're going to look at me like I'm crazy. Why would you do that? Right? I think the same thing is true here. If you lose your trophies in a fire, going out and replacing them doesn't really change the fact that you won that trophy. The trophy was a byproduct, it wasn't the cause of your so-called greatness.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Right. And, and, and even though that's true, there are some people who would replace those kinds of things. And I don't think, I don't think our listeners necessarily suppressed that, but I do think that's one of the reasons, one of, one of the possible reasons for sometimes why we don't talk about that because we sort of give ourselves more permission to talk about the. Answers.

• 30:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, right. It seems more acceptable to be practical. And it almost feels a little silly as soon as I start saying it out loud like, oh, I loved that old doily. It's like, really, what'd you love about it? I don't know. It just kind of gave me a feeling and, and I was holding on to it. Did you ever use it? No, I didn't even like the way it looked, really, but I was holding. And we hold on to these things because of what? That story that we've assigned to it.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  And that's why I'm going full sentimental.

• 31:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're just gonna hold on to all the sentimental. All right, one more. This one is from Angel. She said, "Without the responsibility of my mortgage and household, I would not replace my current career." Hmm, that's something interesting, too. Like, if my house were to burn down, what are the things that I know I would not replace? That is the wouldn't replace rule, right? Now, TK, I'm wondering, what is it about tragedies like a house burning down? Or for me, it was my mother dying and my marriage ending and eventually my career breaking down in ways that... What is it about these, these big events, these tragic events, that make us question seemingly unrelated areas of our life?

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Well, tragedies are powerful permission slips for things we may have always wanted to consider, but may have felt like we didn't have the right to consider. Think about the person who knows they're in a toxic relationship, complains about it all the time, wonders if they should be there, maybe feels like they should break up and they don't do it. And then one day their significant other comes to them and says, "I'm not in love anymore." And they are bawling and they're crying and they're so sad, right? Oh, no, because it always hurts more when someone else is the one that breaks up with you and you feel like you didn't really have agency in that situation. And then you have to remind the person, hey, this is what you wanted, right? This is what you wanted. But there's something about the thing that we can't control, that we didn't see coming,

• 32:32Speaker 03

  that makes it a little more permissible seeming to have that thing that we've always wanted. And so tragedy is one of those things that nobody can blame you for. And it's like, hey, you might as well do what you really want to do, given that this has happened.

• 32:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How about you listeners? If you were to lose everything in a natural disaster, what's the first thing you would replace? And let us know what you wouldn't replace as well. You can let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to the minimalist private podcast, although we'd love for you to subscribe to the private podcast over there as well to get much more show. Okay, give me something pithy TK, give me something philosophical. If you were to lose everything in a natural disaster, what's the first thing that you would replace? And by the way, you had, I think you had two different answers here. Let's start with the first one and we can unpack that, then we'll unpack the second one together.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I said, it's not the extras we miss, it's the essentials. And the essentials are the things that we feel make us who we are, and they hold our lives together in some way, where they provide structure, kind of like what a house is for the furniture. What good is your furniture if you don't have a place for it? But when you have your house, that's what organizes and makes sense of and contextualizes everything else. And so when things like this happen and we lose everything, it makes us think, what are the things that hold the other things together for me?

• 33:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what was your second maxim that you had?

• 33:53Speaker 03

  The soul aches for roots, not ornaments. Ornaments are embellishments and decorations, but without something to embellish or decorate, they don't really mean anything. It's the Christmas tree that gives the ornaments a place. You take away the Christmas tree, I just got some stuff I'm putting in the box and storing in the garage, or trying to figure out what to do with. And so once again, loss makes us consider, what are, what's the Christmas tree in my life versus what are the ornaments that embellish it?

• 34:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because in that scenario, ornaments are just clutter. If you don't have something to hang them on, they're simply going to get in the way. You might step on them, they're going to take up space that you'd rather allocate to something else. So I had a couple pithy answers for you as well. My first maxim is clinging is an unnatural disaster, which leads to my second maxim. I'll just back it up with this. Clinging occurs whenever you hold on to a useful thing beyond its usefulness. Holding on is fine, right? But clinging means this thing's really useful, it's useful, it's useful. I'm holding on to it so tight. I don't even know if it's useful anymore. I'm just holding on. I've been holding on for so long, it doesn't even feel like holding on. I can't let go.

• 35:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is what clinging is, and that becomes its own natural disaster. So for anyone who's lost everything, I have a few friends in Los Angeles who lost their home, or lost the neighborhood, and their kids lost their school. And some people, it's been really difficult, right? They've lost everything. But they've also learned to let go of the things they were holding on to. They can't keep holding on, because if they keep holding on now, it's a type of clinging. It exacerbates or magnifies that natural disaster and continues to make it worse. That's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick, for right

• 35:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. This was amazing. My grounding essay that I put out toward the end of last year, it's called "I Shouldn't Have to Deal with This." It's now one of our 10 most popular essays of all time. You can check it out at theminimalists.com/earthing. And I thought about this, because a few months ago, TK, you sent me a really beautiful voice memo. Don't worry, I'm not going to play it here. But I'd love to recreate that right now, because you said, hey, I was going to show this to, I think it was your wife or someone else, I wanted to show them this essay about your chronic illness, and minimizing the chronic pain, and the sleep issues, and the inflammation that you had.

• 36:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I just Googled it, Joshua Fields Milburn, chronic illness, grounding, or whatever, and it came across the "I shouldn't have to deal with this" essay. And you said, "I just want to thank you for putting this out in the world." And it was such a kind note to get from you, as someone I really respect. What prompted you to send that message?

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Michelle was asking me a bunch of questions about what you've been through. And I answered them to the degree that I thought was satisfactory. But she kept asking me for clarifications and details. And I was like, oh, I don't know that. I didn't ask that question. I'm not sure about that detail. And I thought, oh, I love to know. And but I don't, I don't want to call Josh and be like, hey, my wife has these five questions. Or, hey, can you answer this out of nowhere? And then I thought, well, wait a minute. This just sounds like the kind of thing that he's been asked so much about that he would just write something about. And so I Googled and I found that article. And I was able to read it to her and answer every single one of her questions and give her all the context she needed.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  And then I just thought, wow, how great is it that he has taken the time to write this sort of thing down so that if someone is curious about it or wants to know, there is a resource that they can easily find. And it doesn't require that they know him, that they get a hold of him, that he's available, that they be able to schedule an appointment with him. And it just made me sort of realize how much telling our story and committing our thoughts to writing really is an act of generosity, not presumptuousness, because maybe it is the case that no one will care, but generosity, because if someone does come along and they do care, we don't have to still be alive, still be around or available or even fricking like them for them to get everything they need to get out of our story.

• 38:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that's quite often why I write something is I get a question repeatedly. I remember when we first started Simplify, Nick Ademas and I, when we first started theminimalists.com, it was just the 21 day journey of Ryan's packing party and the sort of philosophical implications of that, but also the practical nuts and bolts, the mechanics of simplifying, of letting go, of doing this giant packing party. And it was writing about it because people were asking questions and I could start pointing them to that. The most popular thing I've ever written at the Minimalists and even about minimalism, it's how to start a blog, because so many people are like, oh, I love the way your blog looks. Why is it so simple? How'd you do? And so after I got so many questions, I just started. Writing out answers to those questions. Here is the step by step on how we started our blog and what does it mean to even have

• 39:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a successful blog? And it may not conform to your idea of success, but I've, I've sort of repurposed that idea of success. What does it mean to have a successful blog now? And a lot of the things that I've written over the years, especially with How to Write Better, my writing class and, and just different essays. It's an exploration on understanding what I understand, but it's also showing other people what I understand. So I can point toward it. I'm not having to answer the same question all the time. And anyone who suffers with chronic pain or, or chronic illness or sleep problems, chronic inflammation, they know that feeling of, oh, I shouldn't have to deal with this. And that's where I was. That's how it felt. That's why I wrote that essay. It's like, I shouldn't have to deal with this. And I found a few things that worked really well for me.

• 39:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I talk about those few things in that essay. Obviously grounding is one of those things, but there's some, a diet component. There are other things that are there for sure. And then I found a bunch of things that didn't work for me as well. It doesn't mean they don't work for some people, but like acupuncture is a good example. Acupuncture, for whatever reason, did not work well for me, although I know some people get tremendous results for it. I just didn't. And so I talked about my whole experience there, pointing people toward this essay so that if they have some sort of chronic illness or inflammation or sleep issues, they might get value from it as well. You can find it over at theminimalists.com/earthing. I have one other quick update for you. We launched for the first time this year, our five week decluttering course. It's called Simplify Everything, where we help you declutter all these different areas

• 40:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of life. And we only opened up for 72 hours. I was only going to do it one time this year, but we had some issues on the backend with our domain. There was a website crash right at the time that we, I don't know all the, the technical details. We were on the phone with Jeff and Professor Sean and I were trying to work out all the details and he did a great job getting it to work. But there were a lot of people, for whatever reason, who weren't able to access it at the time. So later this year, we'll open it back up because we still had, you know, well over a hundred people sign up for the course this time around. And so, but we'll, we'll offer it one more time this year for 72 hours. Just make sure you're on our email list if you want to know when that course is getting ready to open again. It'll probably be sometime this fall. You can get our email list over at theminimalists.com as well.

• 41:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Here is a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Hey Minimalists, CJ Schering here from Rainy Portland, Oregon. I'm a longtime listener, first time caller, but when Josh asked for feedback on the Lightphone, I figured I had to call in. I want to start by establishing that the Lightphone is the perfect phone if you want as much friction as possible between yourself and any task on a phone. It's also the perfect phone if you want to be distracted away from using your smartphone. The first thing that's going to happen anytime you pull out a Lightphone in public is that somebody's going to ask you about it, and you're going to have a social interaction and totally forget about whatever you were going to do originally. As for use friction, the Lightphone is much slower to respond than a smartphone because it does have an e-ink display, and this is ultimately what sent me back to a smartphone.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  I was spending more time to do less on my phone. Simple five-second text saying I'd be there would suddenly take 30 seconds. I was constantly looking at my Lightphone to try and send a text rather than being in the moment, so I ended up moving back to a smartphone to be able to do things more efficiently, but with a very different relationship because of my time with the Lightphone. Hope that helps.

• 42:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  CJ, thank you so much for that insightful comment. Yeah, I've thought a lot about getting a Lightphone, which is just, we can call it a dumb phone at this point, right? Or iPhones, or we don't even call them smartphones anymore, that's what the phone is. If we see an old rotary phone on the wall, we look at that like it's a dinosaur, right? And so with the Lightphone, it felt to me, like I had contemplated going back to a less smart phone, a dumber phone, one that isn't just full of the distractions. And I'm all for increasing the friction in one's life if it's done intentionally. I don't want a bunch of friction in my life unnecessarily. I think about when I used to live in Montana, Professor Sean was out there, Nick Ademus

• 43:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and I, and there are a lot of roads that are dirt roads that you have to have a four-wheel drive vehicle to just drive on. There's too much friction, and if you don't have the right car, you're going to get stuck in the middle of nowhere, and you better hope it's not snowing at that point because then you're going to be in a world of trouble. And so... I don't want too much friction, but I also don't want no friction because if it is snowing out there and I'm on regular blacktop, now with no friction, I just slide into the guardrails. I crash. Too much friction, you get stuck. Not enough friction, you crash. And so there was this idea, the reason that I haven't gone to a light phone or a dumb

• 43:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  phone, there are a few reasons. One is I'm sort of in that Apple ecosystem now, but the other is I've turned my phone into a relatively dumb phone, you know, it's like an average IQ phone at this point. It does the things I need it to do and it does those things well, but I've, I've removed the things that are distracting to me because I know that they're distracting and, and I want to put a little extra friction in my life. Any thoughts about that, that, that light phone or the smartphone dumb phone and friction?

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Absolutely. It, it takes a lot of self-honesty to truthfully look at the amount of friction that you need. So you mentioned the four-wheel drive and how there are places you can't get through without that. On the other side, it could be easy to say, as you're looking at a non-four-wheel drive and you go, I don't know if, if that's good for me because you know, if I go through those places that require a four-wheel drive, I might get stuck. But then the question is, but do you go through those places? Is that your need? Certainly it's someone else's need, but is that your need? And sometimes we can get stuck in analysis paralysis by worrying about questions that don't belong

• 45:04Speaker 03

  to us, trying to solve for problems that we don't have, trying to meet needs that aren't our own. And so there's plenty of room to say, hey, someone else has different needs and they need different solutions, but I know the rhythms and patterns of my life and they are such that I don't need that. And so I'm not going to use it for an excuse and I'm going to introduce the friction in my life that helps make, that helps make me better, even if there are other people who'll be inconvenienced too much by it.

• 45:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What you're talking about there is a resolution through boundaries. One video that we did for Instagram, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well, was about my entryway rule. Originally Cal Newport called this the four-year rule or the foyer rule, if you have a Enough house, I guess. I'm not fancy enough to have a four year. So we just have a little small entryway in our hallway there. And I put my phone on the charger as soon as I get home and it acts as a home phone while I'm home. It adds that friction into my life so that the distractions don't follow me around. That is my type of resolution through that boundary. But if I'm not careful, if I don't have that boundary, then it's easier to get distracted. If I don't have boundaries on my phone with the apps I use,

• 46:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it's even easier to get distracted. It turns out that our phone is the biggest weapon of mass distraction. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can send a voice memo to podcast at the minimalist dot com. So we can feature your voice on the show coming up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back. All right, that's the first 34% of episode 495. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions, questions like, is a home an investment if I'm worried about the long term expenses? How long should I

• 46:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  hold on to sentimental items from loved ones who have passed away? How can I convince my friends to pay more attention to me? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. 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, Inspire Dave, Professor Sean on the couch, Savvy D on the board, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, love to be this. Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time.