Pod Insights The Minimalists 543 | Nothing's Missing About this episode The Minimalists speak with behavior expert Dr. John Demartini about loved ones who criticize your minimalist lifestyle, ways to reconcile the tension between simplicity and luxury goods, how our consumption patterns shape our identities, whether good and evil exist, and much more.
Discussed in this episode:
What is meant by Charles Bukowski's assertion that we are reduced to ashes by our purpose and desire? (1:23)
How can I handle family members who criticize my minimalist lifestyle? (3:44)
Right Here, Right Now: Very, Very Simple is now available in print. (26:26)
Listener Tip: What is the relationship between our consumption patterns and our identities? (26:58)
Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected] .
Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists
Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:20 Speaker 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.
0:38 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes, the minimalist Joshua Fields Millburn over here. TK Coleman is over there. Hello, hello. TK, today we are joined by a world-renowned human behavior expert, whose work has been described by his students as "an extensive library of wisdom." Please welcome to the show our new favorite polymath, Dr. John Demartini here. Dr. D. Martini, thank you for joining us today.
1:07 Speaker 02 Thank you for having me.
1:08 Joshua Fields Millburn? I've been looking forward to this. And before we get into our calls, here's something to chew on. Last week, we did this quote from Charles Bukowski, and I was trying to pick between two of them. And I said, "I need to save the second one for Dr. John Demartini." And so, Charles Bukowski said, "If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it's your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life." Dr. D. Martini, do these words resonate with you?
1:43 Speaker 02 They do. I'm a man, I've been a man on a mission for 54 years. So, I'm a firm believer that there's a teleological, most purposeful and meaningful aspect inherent within our being. So when you're doing what you love and loving what you're doing, doing it in a way that serves other people, there's a lot of fulfillment. And I would say that our purpose is the most efficient and effective way and pathway to fulfill the greatest amount of voids in our life with value. And so our meaning comes from doing something that's a great service.
2:18 Joshua Fields Millburn? TK, one of the things we often talk about this on this show is the void that is often created in our lives. And we try to fill it, obviously with stuff in our culture, especially. The average American household, according to the Los Angeles Times, has 300,000 items in it. And yet we always want more, more, more. And what you're talking about with respect to this void is when that doesn't work, then we turn to something else. It can be alcohol, it could be sex, it can be any sort of impulse that we try to pacify ourselves with. And so I do want to dive into that with you today. Coming up on this episode, I want to talk to you about loved ones who criticize your minimalist lifestyle. We've got a question about that. Also, ways to reconcile the tension between simple living
3:01 Joshua Fields Millburn? and purchasing luxury goods, and how our consumption patterns shape our identities, all that and much, much more. Plus, on page three, I plan on coercing TK and Dr. D Martini into a heated debate.
3:16 Speaker 02 Coercing us into a heated debate.
3:19 Joshua Fields Millburn? Let's start with our calls. If you'd like to join the program, we'd love to have you. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected] . Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. Shout out to our patrons, by the way. You keep this podcast 100% advertisement free because advertisements suck, yo. And so let's start with our callers. Our first question today is from William.
3:48 Speaker 03 Hey minimalist, this is William from Charleston, South Carolina. I'm a more recent Patreon subscriber and I'd be highly interested to know what your opinion is on a certain situation. What do you feel is the best way to deal with detractors of the minimalist lifestyle and with other improvements that I am making in my life? It seems to only come from family members and they question about me having some ulterior motives to exercising more, or eating better food, or actually trying to get seven hours of sleep a night.
4:27 Speaker 03 And it's really odd because I feel that it only comes from people that I love. Other colleagues, they've actually given me some compliments and I just find it kind of strange that trying to live longer and feel better would be a problem, that I've got some nefarious thing that I'm trying to do or trying to get out of it. I'd really love to hear your advice on how to deal with people like that. Thank you.
5:01 Joshua Fields Millburn? John, so William is struggling with the people closest to him or criticizing some lifestyle changes that he's made, specifically with respect to minimalism, but of course, it doesn't always end there. When we make big changes in our life, the people close to us often feel a sense of loss, I think. So when TK and Ryan and I, we talk about minimalism, the thing we said in our last Netflix film is, "Minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can make room for life's most important things," which it turns out aren't things at all. And then a few years ago TK wrote a book called Emotional Clutter, and the very first line of that book was, "Minimalism isn't scarcity, it is abundance healthfully expressed."
5:46 Joshua Fields Millburn? And so with that context around minimalism, what insights do you have for William who feels like his family members, his loved ones are criticizing these lifestyle changes?
5:56 Speaker 02 Well, every human being, William, including yourself, has a set of priorities, a set of values that are unique to you, fingerprint specific. Everybody around you is going to project what they believe in their hierarchy of values is important. And they're going to basically project onto you what they think will be best for you, which is really what they think is best for themselves. It's a projection. And they're going to demonstrate their love by that mechanism. And so the question is, is are you willing to be yourself in a world that doesn't want you to be? And is it important enough to be true to yourself and let the voice and the vision on the inside be louder than opinions on the outside?
6:36 Speaker 02 And know that it's not because they're really criticizing really, they're just doing what they think is wise and they don't understand and don't see how what you're doing is helping them get what they believe is valuable. So if you know something and you learn something, some people are maybe not aware about what you've learned, and you want to give yourself permission to pursue what's truly meaningful. There's nothing unwise about prioritizing what you fill your space with and your time with and how you exercise and how you do things. This is wisdom. This is not something to be disrespected by. So if they don't understand that, it just may be they haven't gotten the realization you have, they haven't been listening to the minimalist.
7:19 Speaker 02 And as a result of it, they may not have that awareness. If you don't fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, your day is designed to fill up with low priority distractions that don't. Whenever we're living by our highest values, our blood glucose nuction goes into our forebrain and our medial prefrontal cortex, which governs us, and we become self-governed, self-actualizing, purposeful beings. The second we don't, and we let other people's influence dictate us and try to be second at being somebody else, our blood glucose goes into our amygdala, and our amygdala wants immediate gratification. And immediate gratification costs, that's where the impulses and instincts and the addictions and all the distractions, including consumerism, is.
8:02 Speaker 02 And so it's really letting us know if we're basically great at what we're being and true to ourself. It's very common to have people not understand, to be great is to be misunderstood, according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. So stick to what you know is working for you and allow other people to praise or reprimand you. Praise plus reprimand is really a combination that builds respect. So if you're not being ridiculed, you're probably not on purpose.
8:28 Joshua Fields Millburn? TK, I'm reminded of this lyric from Matt Carney. He said, "I want the highs without the lows."
8:33 Speaker 02 Well, the addiction to one-sidedness is a source of... The Buddhist said, "The desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable is a source of human suffering." And so, people are wanting to escape the inevitable and try to get the fantasy. And the fantasies, the addiction to the fantasies make the nightmares more nightmares. So, I'm a firm believer in embracing the two sides in life and the pursuit of something meaningful, the mean between the pairs of opposite, instead of trying to get one pull of an opposite.
9:00 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating because when we... Before we started recording, TK, do you remember the question you asked Dr. DiMartini about criticism? Yes, I said, "How do you handle the experience of being misunderstood or unfairly criticized?"
9:16 Speaker 02 Well, if you... I've been working in the field of human behavior for over five decades, and I discovered something about 26 years ago, that whenever somebody's critiquing you, somehow you're above equilibrium, and they're bringing you back into equilibrium. You know, when we exaggerate ourselves, that's inauthentic. When we're actually being ourselves, we get grateful. And we minimize ourselves, that's inauthentic. And it's basically a feedback to get us back into authenticity. So, criticism is not an enemy. Criticism is a feedback to let you know if you're not communicating in people's values and they don't understand you, or if you're above equilibrium and a little cocky, they bring you back into balance.
10:01 Speaker 02 And the same thing if you're down, they lift you up and try to get you upward. So, everybody is basically a feedback mechanism to guide you to authenticity and equanimity, where your sustainable, fair exchange is at its maximum. So, I always see that when somebody's criticized me, I look at it and I go, "Whatever I'm judging in them, look within me." And then if I find myself not communicating effectively in their values, maybe I can learn more about them and ask them questions so I can effectively do so. And I may look at where I may be a bit cocky and I need to be a bit humbled. And then I realize that they're my friend, they're not my enemy. You can't go through life expecting to be supported without challenge, or have positives without negatives.
10:43 Speaker 02 Nature has a balance of opposites, a unity of opposites, as Heraclitus used to say.
10:47 Joshua Fields Millburn? TK, what do you think it is about the big life changes that we make? Someone embraces minimalism, or they are on a new spiritual path. They've found a religion that resonates with them, or they even changed their diet. Or sometimes it's just, I want to walk away from the career that I dislike to pursue something that I'm passionate about. The people around us, especially the people we love and the people we think care about us the most, they're often the most skeptical. And they make it some of the most challenging moments, or are these decisions we make, and then we have to justify it to the people closest to us.
11:21 Speaker 04 I think it's because the people that are closest to us feel most invested in the outcomes of our lives, so they feel the risk. I mean, look, if I'm talking to some kid that's not mine, yeah, fall in love with whoever you want, man. Follow your heart. If you love the girl, be with the girl. But if it's my son, who he brings home affects me on a day-to-day basis in a way that's not so detached and easy to be casual about. And so I think we underestimate how much we are characters and other people's story. And when we make changes in our lives, it challenges them in ways they didn't particularly ask for or expect. If you and I get together every night after a hard day's work and we eat snacks and watch TV to decompress, and then one day you decide you want to be healthy and not eat snacks
12:06 Speaker 04 anymore and read books instead, well, that means I now have to make a conscious decision to be a snack eater and a TV watcher in a way that I didn't have to before. You just put a really big spotlight on me that makes me see myself in a different way. And now I've got all sorts of questions, right? Are you judging me? Do you think I'm bad for still eating snacks? Like, what's, you know, is this what I still want? And I didn't ask for this, and now I'm forced to do all of this self-examination. And so I think many times when we make changes, especially for the better, it makes the people that are close to us feel challenged, and they may react in that way. A second reason why you may get some resistance is because strangers don't really know you. They don't have a past to compare your present actions to.
12:51 Speaker 04 So if you go through your whole life being a yes man, and one day you wake up and say, I'm gonna start saying no, and some stranger says, hey, man, you wanna... Do this thing that you don't like doing. You say, no, they say, oh, that TK man, he doesn't play. He's firm. But when I go back to my family and I pull that no act, they look at me up and down like, please, you're not serious. I don't believe you at all. You just spent the last 20 years of your life being a total yes man with no spine and no backbone. I don't trust you. Earn my trust, earn my respect. Show up and do what you say you're going to do every single day for a long time in spite of the fact that I have zero faith in you and I predict that you're going to fail. You do that, people start to respect you, but it takes time to earn trust and to earn respect. But when it comes to family, it feels so good when we get it that we often want them to give it to us as an act of charity.
13:36 Speaker 04 And even though it might be nice if they did, they often don't. So my, my advice, I guess, would be to, to take a note from the comedians. If a comedian has a roast where someone is there to make fun of them, how do you win? I mean, you lose, that's the premise, right? You gotta make me feel bad about myself, but you win by laughing at the joke. The moment you say, hey, man, what are you doing making fun of my height, making fun of the size of my nose? You lost.
14:01 Joshua Fields Millburn? Well, actually, I'm not five, five, I'm five, six. It's like, you missed the whole point of the, the joke here.
14:07 Speaker 04 You missed the whole point. You've gotta laugh at yourself. And I think the philosophical version of laughing at yourself is engaging people's criticism, not with contention, but with curiosity. So if you're working out and you're changing the way you eat and you're keeping your life simple and people say, oh, you have some sort of ulterior motive. Like what? Like you don't have to, if, if you say, well, no, I don't. My motives are good. My motives are pure. My motives are holy. That's like saying, I'm not racist. I have a black American express car. You're just making yourself, stop, don't defend yourself. You're just making yourself look even worse. Right? Don't do that. You lose. So you step back and you say, like what? Like, I, I, I thought I was doing something, you know, for my health, but what is it about what I'm doing that makes you feel like I have an ulterior motive? What do you think that ulterior motive is?
14:53 Speaker 04 Oh, interesting. I never thought about it that way. What can they do? It's like a game of tug of war where you drop your end of the rope and they have nothing to do other than just stand there swinging a rope or to let it go to and to engage you in a different way.
15:05 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, Dr. DiMartini, I'm reminded here of, my daughter just turned 13. This past weekend, we had her 13th birthday party and she had seven friends over. So I had six friends, I had seven 13-year-old girls doing a sleepover at my house this weekend. I'm still kind of exhausted by it. And what I noticed is that several of her friends, not all of them, but about half of them, have iPhones. And I was so shocked by this because my daughter doesn't have a phone at all. And I wasn't even playing, I wasn't, you know, people call into the show and they're like, "Hey, what about my kid?" I'm like, "Yeah, just don't get them a phone." Like, what's the problem? It's easy for me to say that when someone calls into the show. But when it's my daughter in front of me and she's like, "Can I get a phone this summer?"
15:51 Joshua Fields Millburn? Then it's a lot more difficult because this is someone I care about. And it's easy for me to say no to the person who's calling in who I don't really know. But it's so much harder when I've got that person in front of me. And the way that I sort of diffused it was to have the conversation around it. And it was, "Hey, help me understand, what will a phone do for you?" "Oh, it would just be so much more convenient." "Okay, what would be convenient about it?" It was exactly what TK was talking to hear about, getting curious. And so I find that instead of being defensive, I've noticed this about your work, you tend to get real curious about things. And sometimes it might even drive people crazy because you're not willing to just get into a heated argument just for the sake of arguing. Does that make sense?
16:32 Speaker 02 Yes. I'd like to address some things that you mentioned. Forty-two years ago, I noticed that the things I was sometimes saying to other people were for me. Noam Chomsky said that language and speech wasn't just for communication to others. Much of what you were saying to them was for yourself. And I noticed that when I would be praising or criticizing people, I thought about that and I reflected on that. And then I realized, what am I praising or criticizing them about? And I realized that there were parts of myself I had disowned. So I went to the Oxford English Dictionary, the biggest dictionary I could find at the
17:15 Speaker 02 time, and I went through and I underlined every single human behavioral trait in there, 4,628 traits.
17:25 Speaker 02 And I went to the side on the edge and I wrote out, who do I know that displays that trait to the fullest degree that I'm aware of? And I wrote there kind of a name out on the side, really small. And then I looked at myself and self-reflect and I thought, where and when do I display or demonstrate this behavior? And I wrote down where I did it, when I did it, who did I demonstrate it to, and who perceived me that way? And I went through all of those. It took a couple of years to do it.
17:53 Joshua Fields Millburn? Was that painful?
17:55 Speaker 02 No, it was actually tear-jerkingly inspirational when you realize that I had every trait.
18:01 Joshua Fields Millburn? Oh, wow. Fourth House of 628?
18:04 Speaker 02 I had all. I was kind and cruel and nice and mean and positive and negative and considerate and inconsiderate and, you know, cold and very nice. At the level of the soul, as the theologians call it, nothing's missing in us. That's the pleromic fulfillment. That's gnosis. But at the level of the senses, things appear to be missing. And the things that appear to be missing, which leaves us to emptiness, are all the things we're too proud or too humble to admit that we see in others inside ourselves. In Romans 2:1, it said that, beware of judging others because you do the same thing. It's really true. So
18:44 Speaker 02 I realized that our reactions to people on the outside are reflections of what we have disowned on the inside. And so if we're critical of people on the outside, it's reminding us of things we feel ashamed of on the inside, and we've dissociated from our shame, gone into pride and tried to cover it up, and we resist them because they're reminding us of something we're actually trying to run away from within ourselves. So when I went through there and owned all of them, I noticed that when people had praise or reprimand from me, I was less touched. I was in the middle path, as the Buddha said, less attached to their responses. And then I was more grateful because they were testing whether or not I'd owned those parts of myself and not in denial of those parts. And that was revealing.
19:29 Speaker 02 I also realized, after doing and developing a method for, as a result of that, I have people coming in and they go, you know, my mother was never there for me, or my father did this, or they, they want to run a narrative and be victims of history instead of masters of destiny. And so they run these narratives and I ask them to go and now do the reflective awareness. So go, let's itemize what this individual has done or not done, and let's go find out where we've done it. Because otherwise, we're a moral hypocrite, projecting onto them the parts we're disowning. And I've done this on about 200,000 people, and I haven't found one that they couldn't own. And so when people actually go and self-reflect, instead of project, they end up having an insight instead of an outside.
20:14 Speaker 02 And instead of blaming things on the outside, they come to a realization of thank you on the outside, the criticizer is giving me insights about the way I'm communicating. And in every family dynamic, there's pairs of opposites. You know, if I ask people, I've done it by the thousands, I said, how many of you have a brother or sister? It's kind of like your antiparticle. And they all go, yeah. And, and so they're going to have a different set of values. And maximum growth and development occurs at the border of support and challenge, the praise and the reprimand. We have the parasympathetic for the praise and the sympathetic nervous system for the reprimand. We need both to maximum grow. If we get prey without predator, we get fat and emaciated, fat and gluttonous, and we end up getting losing fitness.
20:58 Speaker 02 If we get the predator without the prey, we get emaciated and starving, lose fitness. But if we get the praise and the reprimand, the supporter and the challenger, and the pair of opposites, the people who are similar and different, we get maximum growth and development. So I'm, I'm more about owning all of it and having reflective awareness. You simplify your life, and I really believe that minimalism is actually authentic. Because what it is, is it's basically shedding the reactions that we feel we have to do to fit in, instead of to stand out. And, and being second to being somebody else, instead of first to being ourselves, is not where the power is. We want to make a difference. We can't make a difference fitting in, we make a difference standing out. And we're going to be ruffling up feathers, we're going to be an unborrowed visionary if we do.
21:41 Speaker 02 We're going to end up being ridiculed and opposed and everything else, because we're forcing people to face the parts they've disowned. And so that's not a terrible thing, that's a growth.
21:51 Speaker 04 Quick observation and then question. As you were talking about.
21:56 Speaker 04 How criticism is a necessary component of optimal growth. You made me think of the idea that criticism is kind of like a vaccine for self condemnation.
22:05 Speaker 02 Right.
22:05 Speaker 04 You gotta introduce the thing that you wanna protect people from. But because by having it in a healthy dose, you build up resilience towards it. In a similar way, criticism destroys us when we don't have that resilience. But when you get the right amount of it, it makes you strong. So my question for you is a lot of advice that comes to people that deal with these kinds of situations is, hey, man, get away from those folks that don't get you and that don't affirm you. Put yourself around people that love you for who you are. How can you discern the healthy dose of criticism that you need in order to have optimal growth?
22:40 Speaker 02 Well, when somebody's criticized me, they're unaware of how I, in my actions, are helping them fulfill theirs. So, because they don't, they're just a human being. There's no somebody, there's no critical people out there praising people out there. They're just individual human beings. An individual means an undivided being who play out various personas in different settings. If you support my values, I can be nice as a pussycat. You challenge my values, I can be mean as a tiger. So if I run into somebody that's mean as a tiger, that just means that somehow the way I'm presenting, the way I am and the way I present myself or communicate is challenging their values. Or something's challenging their values at that moment. That doesn't mean that they're that way all the time, and that's who they are.
23:23 Speaker 02 That's just a label that I've projected onto them. So I find out what is interesting to them, what's important to them. And in the process of doing that, when I, when I go and find out what's important to them, and then I help them do that, they open up, and all of a sudden, they come on the other side. So it's a challenge and an opportunity to find out how to communicate more effectively with them. It's also an opportunity to make sure I'm not cocky and, and, you know. If I tell people, if I'm in a setting and I walk up and you say, oh, Dr. DiMartini, you're amazing, or something, they praise me. If I go and humble myself lower than they wanna put me and go, well, you know, talk to my girlfriend, she has a different view, and minimize myself that way, they'll keep lifting me up.
24:07 Speaker 02 But if I say, well, it's about time you realized how amazing I am. I'm more amazing than your mind, feeble mind, can comprehend. They'll immediately criticize me on the spot. So they're basically homeostatic mechanisms trying to guide me to authenticity. If you get really cocky and arrogant and puff yourself up and project onto them what you think is important narcissistically, they're designed to humble you, to bring you back into equilibrium. And if you are supporting them and lifting you up, the other side, they're going to play the other side. So I don't like to label people one-sided. I think that the distortions and generalizations of the amygdala rob us from seeing the magnificence of who they individually are when we see them through the eyes of love.
24:52 Speaker 04 And I think a good qualifier here, and I'd love to know if you agree with this, but when someone criticizes, and we look at that as an opportunity to kind of get back to authenticity, not be too high up, it doesn't necessarily mean that the critic is speaking truth.
25:08 Speaker 02 No, they're bringing us back into balance. Our addiction to praise is what makes criticism hurt.
25:14 Speaker 04 There you go.
25:15 Speaker 02 Our addiction to praise, anytime we're addicted to support, the challenger hurts. If we're addicted to ease, difficulty hurts. You're addicted to protection, the aggressor hurts. You're addicted to innocence, the perpetrator hurts. But those are there to try to help us bring ourselves back into balance. And because we become juvenil dependent on what we become addicted to, and we become precociously more independent, more entrepreneurial when we get the challenger. You don't find entrepreneurs coming from overly protected settings. They come from the challenges in life. So if you want to grow, maximum growth and development occurs in the balance of support and challenge, praise and criticism. So I don't have the fantasy of trying to be more praised than criticized and avoid people and seek people.
25:59 Speaker 02 I find myself realizing that there's a pair of opposites and they're simultaneously there. Wilhelm Want in 1897 talked about simultaneous contrast. The unity of opposites that Heraclitus described or Hegel described. If we're able to see both sides simultaneously, we're untouched by the illusions of one-sidedness. And it's like a magnet. If you see one side of the magnet, look for the other side, stabilize yourself instead of polarize yourself.
26:24 Joshua Fields Millburn? That's so good.
26:25 Speaker 04 That's good.
26:26 Joshua Fields Millburn? We've got a lot more to talk about. Real quickly, let me do a quick right here, right now. Actually, you know what? I'll just, William, thank you for your question. I'd love to send you a copy of Very Very Simple. It's 12 Tools for a Simple Life. It's the audiobook that TK and I recorded, but Professor Sean just turned it into a beautiful print paperback book as well. So if you want to check that out, you can find it on Amazon. But William, I'd be happy to send you a copy of that. It's also available as an ebook, or you can get the audiobook, find all of the details at veryverysimple.com. We've got a lot more coming up here, but let's end page one with a minimalist insight from one of our listeners, and I'm going to talk to you about it after we hear from Lucas.
27:07 Speaker 05 Hi, Joshua, Ryan, and TK. My name is Lucas, and I'm calling from New York City. I've been listening to the minimalists for around four years now, and your work genuinely changed my relationship with objects, identity, and what I pay attention to in life.
27:28 Speaker 05 I think there is something deeply misunderstood about luxury. Most people think luxury is about objects: the watch, the car, the suit, the table reservation. But real luxury has never been about object itself. It has always been about the relationship between the person and the object.
27:51 Speaker 05 I realized this recently while watching hundreds of people line up outside of a watch store in Soho, waiting for the new Audemars Piguet collaboration release. At first glance, it looked exciting, democratic even, a luxury icon becoming accessible to ordinary people. But the longer I looked at the line, the more uncomfortable I became, not because people wanted the watch, but because of what the line represented psychologically. You see, luxury brands understand something ancient about human beings. People do not only buy products, they buy proximity to identity.
28:36 Speaker 05 What people truly want is the feeling, the environment, the belonging.
28:43 Speaker 05 You see, there is a difference between appreciating luxury and emotionally needing luxury to repair your identity. And I think symbols without deeper grounding can sometimes create emotional confusion about your identity and self-worth. The danger appears when people begin using symbols to negotiate self-worth. At that point, the object no longer serves the person. The person begins serving the object. Real freedom is different. Real freedom is being able to move between simplicity and luxury without attaching your identity to either.
29:26 Speaker 05 It is when luxury stops being proof of your value and just becomes another part of your life. Anyway, your work definitely shaped the way I think about these things. And I just wanted to share that reflection with you. Thank you for everything you put out to the world.
29:48 Joshua Fields Millburn? Dr. D. Martinez, this is an astute observation from Lucas here.
29:52 Speaker 02 Lovely, Strickland, lovely.
29:53 Joshua Fields Millburn? What's the relationship between our consumption patterns and our so-called identities?
30:00 Speaker 02 Well, in 1978, I asked myself a question. Why do some people walk their talk, some people live their life? Why do some people do what they say others don't? Why do some people flourish and others flounder? Why do some people feel inspired and some people live in quiet lives of desperation? I identified that the human drive, the drive for human beings, is their values, what they value. And I asked, where do those values come from? And they come from judgments. There's multi-generational epigenetic origins, there's gestational, and there's also postpartum judgments. And anything that we've associated a pain or a pleasure to
30:43 Speaker 02 and seen only one side of, not both sides of. Occupy space and time in our mind and our hippocampus and get assigned positive or negative in our amygdala and create these seeking and avoiding mechanisms and we lose our identity through those distractions. But what is really, really, really highest on an individual's value is where they're most integrated. Whenever you're living according to priority, which is really the simplistic pathway, your blood glucose action, as I said earlier, goes into the forebrain where you're more objective, it's more integrated. And there, you're not distracted by those disowned parts that from your judgments.
31:25 Speaker 02 And so when people are attaching to something they think is overpriced, like buying some consumer item, they're actually buying something that is going down in value and they're devaluing themselves and thinking that brand that's been marketed is going to make them feel temporarily high. And it's a retail therapy which is short-lived. Anytime a bank gives you a credit card and you get a pleasure of retail therapy and then a month later you get the pain of the payment and you separate pleasure from pain, you activate the amygdala and become more addicted to the pleasures of purchasing. And so you get caught in this idea and then they, they feed you the fantasy of the brand and you become that you think is an identity and you're subordinating to that identity
32:09 Speaker 02 out there instead of honoring your own. And I'd say I'd rather go and find out the people that you admire and the things you admire on the outside through reflective awareness, where do I have already that in my life? It's not missing, it's just we're not recognized. And if we go there and think that that's going to make us whole, we're missing out on the wholeness we already have. So that's why prioritizing your life is significant because whatever is highest on your value is your ontological identity revolves around, your teleological purpose revolves around, and the epistemological area of mastery and expertise revolve around it. So when you live by priority and get true to what's truly important to you, not what other people expect you to do, but what's truly important to you, you're less likely to be a consumer of distractions and be buying things.
32:56 Speaker 02 Things that are basically transient things that get you in debt, that make you think you're going to be better off with. And that's why I believe that what you're saying on the show is very important, because people get attached to things instead of inspired by being and being who they really are and contribute. If I ask people, what is the most fulfilling moments of your life? What I've observed is that people, when they're doing something that they feel inspired to do from within, an intrinsic drive, and they're doing it in a way that's making a difference in other people, that's when they have the most fulfillment. The transientness of buying some item is transient. Hours later or days later, it's forgotten. And now you've got the debt. So now you're putting yourself into the pain separating from the pleasures.
33:40 Speaker 02 If you're going to buy these so-called luxury items, be intelligent. I know many, many wealthy people. And the ones that are doing it are more cautious about blowing money on foolish things. They're usually more aware. They prioritize what they spend their money on, prioritize what they do, prioritize who they are associating with. And those are people that are meaningful. They're not about attaching to avoidance and seeking. They're more likely to focus on what's most meaningful. Hubert Hal Bancroft, in his Book of Wealth, said that there were three things common to the wealthiest people in the world. One, if they felt by divine providence or human sovereignty, they were called and destined to serve vast numbers of people.
34:22 Speaker 02 They felt it was a fulfillment to make a difference in people's lives. Number two is that they felt that they were there to invest in quality, not in the sense of owning something to show off quality, but to invest in people who are really inspired by what they do and are great at what they do and invest in that. Because if you reward people that are doing something inspiring, you create a ripple effect and give permission for other people to do excellence. And the third thing is that they had transcended the attachments to financial means. They were not attached to things. They realized that money was simply a means of sustainable, fair exchange, which allowed people to be authentic.
35:04 Speaker 02 So those are, those are levels of wealth and, and luxury comes from lux, which meant light. And luxury meant the one who is enlightened enough and not having disowned parts. See, if we're in fat shooting with somebody and admiring somebody because they have something, we're blind to the downsides of what they have. And if we're resenting somebody, we're blind to the upsides. Anything we're blind to and ignorant of and unconscious of is, we're in the dark of. And so anytime we have pure reflective awareness and realize there's nothing to seek or nothing to avoid, there's nothing to, to, I gotta be like them, or they've gotta be like me. We're just present and we're honoring them and honoring ourselves. The namaste of the Indians.
35:46 Speaker 02 When we are there, we're more likely to be present and purposeful and, and patient and profoundly, you know, empowered in our life. So I always say that anything that you think you're missing, you're not. Look again. Look for the form of what you think is missing, what form it's already in. It's not missing. I learned it when I was in, going down the Udom Bamba River on a little raft, and I came across two little boys running naked on the side of the river. And they were running with a stick. And, and I got off on the river on the side and I followed them into the jungle and I came across this little lean-to in a completely naked family. And I, and I watched these little boys play with a stick in this mud.
36:31 Speaker 02 And they were just having this great time with a stick in this mud. And I thought, if I was to give my son a stick and some mud, he would think that that's, because he's, he's expected so much, he can't appreciate. Hedonic adaptation automatically calms down the highs and brings it back down to a set point.
36:48 Joshua Fields Millburn? What brand of stick is this that you got?
36:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, what brand of stick? I, I need a Nintendo or something. But I realized that it's a relative thing. We have what is called hedonic adaptation. So anytime we go up, we got, bring, we come back down, humble ourselves, go down, we go up. We also have a light, moral licensing effect. The moment we do something we're proud of, which is an inauthentic expression of aggrandizement. We give ourselves permission to do something we're ashamed of, to humble us ourselves. We've got a built in homeostatic set point inside our brain. And the moment we do something we're ashamed of, we go and give ourselves permission to do something we're proud of. If we go out and work out and get our abs looking good, we give our permission to go and eat more and drink more. If we go out and overeat, then we give ourselves permission to go and fast and go and work out the next day.
37:36 Speaker 02 So we have a homeostatic mechanism to try to get us to authenticity. And I'd rather help people listen to their wisdom within, instead of the opinions without, to help them master that awareness so nothing's missing in their life.
37:50 Joshua Fields Millburn? Nothing's missing. That has come up with both questions we've had here so far. And, and I think there's, there's this wisdom in here because when nothing's missing, then you can still show up and enjoy the so-called luxury.
38:00 Speaker 02 You can't, how are you gonna have fulfillment when you're having, you keep comparing yourself to others? You know, if we compared our daily action to what we value most, instead of comparing our daily actions to what others are doing, being second at being somebody else is not as powerful being first at being ourselves. So I'm not interested in my comparison to other people. I learned from Phelps, who got many, many medals, that if he looked on a guy to the left or right when he's about to dive into the water, he automatically lost. He focused on his mission and didn't compare himself to others and focused on his mastery and skill of doing what he's trained to do, his mission, instead of distracting himself by comparisons.
38:43 Speaker 02 And a lot of our non-minimalistic effects are a result of our comparison to other people, instead of comparing our, our own actions to our own dreams.
38:52 Joshua Fields Millburn? That's so good.
38:53 Speaker 04 And by the way, that can include, the, the comparison trap can include the, the judgmental comparisons we make between our supposedly enlightened selves and those who love these luxurious things, right? How you talked about there's nothing to avoid. I walk past and I see these people standing in a line. Oh, what superficial things are they waiting for? These fools. Yeah, what superficial reasons underlie this vice of persistence? But Just because I might judge myself that way if I were in the line, doesn't mean that the other people are to be judged that way. I know people who will stand outside of GameStop
39:37 Speaker 04 three hours before the thing opens. You know, I've got friends who've done these types of things because this video game is going to be there. But more importantly, they know all these other people are going to be there in line. And they want to talk like, hey, man, you into this too? And they're not seeking proximity to a false identity. What they're seeking is genuine human connection and they know their people. They know how their tribe functions and they want to situate themselves in those spaces. So, look, sometimes the people who go on the red carpet are superficial as they seem to be. But sometimes they're more sophisticated than we might be in our pursuit of the things that we love. And so, it truly is the case that there's room for it all. And even people who might seem to be unenlightened, people who might seem to be non-minimalist,
40:22 Speaker 04 they might be enlightened and minimalist in a way that just looks different from our way.
40:26 Speaker 02 Nicely said. I have people who come to some of the seminars that I've done over the years. And they say, my husband, he's not growing. I'm going to personal development programs and I'm growing, but they're not growing. And I said, there was a woman that came to me and she said, I'm growing spiritually, but my husband, he's not. He's a materialist, he's not a spiritualist. And I go, do you work? And she goes, no, my husband does. I said, and does he have a company? Yes. And he says, yes, yes, 200 employees. And so, he's going to work. He's giving 200 people an opportunity to raise a family, paying taxes and things of this nature.
41:10 Speaker 02 But he's not spiritual. Well, he's inspired by his career. I said, you're not more spiritual, you're not less spiritual. You're spiritual according to your values and he's spiritual according to his. And you partly depend on his because you're not working. So, the things that you're, the meditations and the retreats you're doing are partly because he's going to work. So, what you're saying, I think, is really important. All of it is included. It's wise to be inclusive instead of exclusive, not having group-out-group biases, but just have a wholeness. Our Migla automatically distorts things in order to capture prey and to avoid predator.
41:52 Speaker 02 Our heart and our wisdom of our more advanced part of our brain sees things as they are, which we call self-actualization. And there, there's nothing missing. And so, but minimalism is not because of trying to, you know, get rid of things, or I gotta have only this.
42:11 Joshua Fields Millburn? Right.
42:12 Speaker 02 It's, it's the transcendent to the attachment of all those forms and allowing yourself to let, he said it, the gentleman that called in, allowing yourself to have the, all the above, to move in and out of it without the attachment to it. And there's, there's a lot of freedom from that. Resilience and adaptability, the inability to be, have resilience and adaptability, we call stress. Stress is the perception of loss of something you seek and perception of gain of something you avoid. When you have resilience and more neutral and more objective, you are able to allow the flow and, and allow things to come and go without so much attachment. You can have it, but you can't be, you're not attached to it. You can be without it. You're not attached to it. You're adaptable. And this is where the person has the most power, the ability to be adaptable.
42:57 Joshua Fields Millburn? I do want to talk to you a bit more about the illusion of, of loss and gain. We'll get to that coming up on page two. By the way, Lucas, thank you so much for that insight. I thought it was beautiful.
43:07 Speaker 02 Beautiful.
43:07 Joshua Fields Millburn? It was an astute observation that sometimes we, we get lost and we get so attached to the identity of consuming. And then when we shun that, then I get attached to the identity of I'm not the consumer, but it's the same sort of thing. It's just the other, the other pole of these polar opposites.
43:25 Speaker 02 Some of the people, when they get addicted to the consumption, the pleasure they get out of the temporary high becomes the pain of the debt that they get in.
43:34 Joshua Fields Millburn? Absolutely.
43:34 Speaker 02 And so what they're doing is they're not putting those together. I, I, pardon me for this tangent, but I just popped in my head.
43:43 Speaker 02 I asked a woman one time at a dinner, I said, I see you have this very expensive Chanel bag. And she said, yes. And I said, and what do you do? She says, well, I'm in, I work for Saks and I sell things and I get a little discount on it. And I said, just out of curiosity, I'm gonna ask you some really uncomfortable questions, if you don't mind. How much the bag costs? And she said, so many thousands of dollars. I said, and if you were to take all the money you've ever made in your entire life, how much do you think that is? And she calculated that about 1.3 million dollars in her whole life. She was 42. And I said, and out of all that, your net worth of that right now, what exactly is it? She says, well,
44:27 Speaker 02 I have about $800 to my name, everything. I said, so you've saved or, you know, invested $800 out of 1.3. So I calculated the percentage of that. And then I took that percentage and I said, now you took and bought a $5,000 bag. And on the percentage of that means you had to have earned a lot of money in order to have that bag, based on your, the way you manage money. Your hierarchy of values dictates how you manage money. And then I said, and the investment, if you were to allow that to compound and grow, that would have bought you a bunch of bags in the future. And I just really, really made her uncomfortable making her look at that. The following day, she, she decided that she was gonna start prioritizing
45:08 Speaker 02 her purchases, and start putting a little bit of money into investments, and have it work for her. So she's not the slave of money, she's the master of money. And then allow her money to make the purchases as she goes along. So she had a real realization. And about three years later, she asked if she could take me to dinner again. And she said, she says, I'm now, my immediate gratifications have calmed down. My self-worth is stabilized.
45:37 Speaker 02 And I'm now realizing how vulnerable I was to outside influence of other people and sales. And I realized that I was letting my impulses and instincts run my life. And now I'm, I'm actually more stable, more fulfilled and having money work for me today. And I don't feel like a slave. And I was really desperate to find a rich man. And now I'm realizing that I want to enrich myself. So the man's not having to have a dependent, but is able to have a partner. And so she had a whole new perspective on it because I kind of pushed her button one night.
46:12 Joshua Fields Millburn? And you found that perspective just based on, you were able to zoom out in a way that maybe she wasn't able to.
46:17 Speaker 02 She was not able to see it. She was trapping herself in a credit card debt, hoping to find some rich guy, which has got its pains, who's may also be trapped.
46:29 Joshua Fields Millburn? Right.
46:29 Speaker 02 And, and she thought that that was the path. And that was when she realized that there was a lot of emptiness in that and, and pursuing that which is unobtainable.
46:40 Joshua Fields Millburn? There was a lot of emptiness and yet nothing is missing.
46:43 Speaker 02 Exactly.
46:44 Joshua Fields Millburn? For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, just like Lucas, 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. We got a lot to cover. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.
47:04 Joshua Fields Millburn? Wow. All right, y'all. That is the first 33% of episode 543. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two hour maximal edition. It was over two hours with Dr. John Demartini, which includes answers to a bunch more questions like Kathy is struggling to let go of sentimental items like holiday decorations, her children's books and toys, and an overwhelming number of photographs. This is one of the best answers I've ever received about sentimental items. It was so deep and it's from a perspective that we often cover, but he covered it in a completely different manner. Also, the question is, how might clutter be a compensation for your unfulfilled highest values? And how does pride?
47:47 Joshua Fields Millburn? ... your insecurities. We'll also talk about how to let go of resentment. Plus a million more questions and simple living segments on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. The link is down in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private 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 the very first episode from 2015. Big thanks to Dr. John Demartini for joining us today. You can check him out at drdemartini.com and his YouTube channel is at Dr. Demartini. We'll put links to both of those in the show notes. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan, Nicodemus, TK Coleman,
48:28 Joshua Fields Millburn? Audio Bin, Spire Jeff and Dave, Tomcat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Millburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.
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