498 | Nonsense

The Minimalists speak with Kapil Gupta about letting go of nonsense, the many ways humans waste their lives, what happens when you minimize ambition, and more. Discussed in this episode: What does it mean to "overcome the world"? (3:27) Why does Dr. Gupta have a disdain for smartphones? (9:42) Why is "getting something to be happy" an empty act? (16:13) What does a wasted life look like? (22:28) Why has Joshua abandoned most of his ambitions? (38:41) 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?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. I'm joined by TK Coleman here at Earthing Studios in West Hollywood, California. This episode is going to be a special one. We are deviating from our standard format today because we are joined by my favorite living philosopher, Dr. Kapil Gupta. Together, we're going to talk about letting go of nonsense, the many ways humans waste their lives, what happens when you minimize ambition, and much more. That's page one. Then we'll answer some listener questions with Dr. Gupta on page two and page three. Dr. Kapil Gupta, thank you for joining us today.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I wanted to start by telling you a story about the last time that TK Coleman was at my house up in Ojai, California. We were there working on a project together, and he walked into my room. I have a small bookshelf there, some poetry books, some detective novels, and a stack of Kapil Gupta books. And for whatever reason, TK walks into the room, and he walks up and he pulls one book off the shelf. He identified this book, your most recent one. It's called "Overcoming the World." And he pulled it off, and then I saw him for about the next hour or two, just sitting in a chair mesmerized by the text of this book. TK, what compelled you to grab that book off the shelf?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  The title, man. It's a title that can't be ignored. You know, people talk about overcoming things, in particular, overcoming obstacles, overcoming toxicity in relationships, overcoming vices and unhealthy habits. But that title delivered a different kind of question. What does it mean to overcome the world itself? And growing up in the church, and I don't know if you know this, Kapil, but my father is a pastor. And there's a Bible verse that I've heard so many times growing up, where Jesus says to his disciples, "In the world there are troubles, but fear not, for I have overcome the world." And so even if I didn't know that verse, just reading that title would have caught my attention. But then when I thought about that, I just couldn't help but ask, I wonder what his take is on what it means to overcome the world.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  And when you look at people like, you know, you could say, great achievers like Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Sidney Poitier, and whether it's in business or sports, there are people who seem to have overcome the world in the sense of overcoming some kind of prescribed mindset or some kind of way of looking at things that was just handed to them, that they found a way around that. And so I wanted to dig in, and I wasn't disappointed.

• 3:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, today is the opportunity for us to dig in. Kapil, I was rereading the book recently, preparing for this conversation. And it occurred to me that maybe the book was fundamentally about overcoming nonsense, which might be an appropriate title for this episode even. Which brings me to my first question for you is, what is the world that you're describing? And why might someone benefit from overcoming its nonsense?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Well firstly, what Jesus said is truth. That statement is truth. And as far as the world, I don't think it's about, like for me, where I come from with this, the standpoint from which I am speaking and from which I wrote that book and so forth, it isn't overcoming things in the world or obstacles in the world or, you know, difficulties in the world.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  I am talking about overcoming the world. And as always, in the very same breath, I must say that I'm not recommending this to anyone. I write everything from my own perspective. And my interest is to speak straight, direct, raw truth. With really no hope to have anyone get anything or, you know, move someone in a particular direction. So for me, overcoming the world is, the world, when you look out your window, you see the world. And you might say, well, what do you mean? I mean, I see buildings and I see people and you see trees.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And yes, you do, you see buildings, people, trees, concrete, you know, sidewalks, cars, trucks, you see all those. So there's a world out there. And if it was just the grass and the trees and the cars and the trucks and the buildings and the sidewalks, there really would be no issues. The problem is that the world is poison. The world itself is poison. A tree isn't poison. A car or a truck or a sidewalk or concrete or grass is not poison. The poison is in the culture. The world is culture. And culture is poison.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Because culture is belief systems and opinions and concepts and notions and ideas. And all of these things are the world. These are the substrate of the world. And one will, when he comes into the world, he will enter into that poison. He will either take sides or believe this side over that side. He will enter into the fray. He will enter into the argument. He will enter, whether he is, he has no choice. Unless he is a wild man who disbelieves everything out of the box, walks away from everything out of the box because his DNA is that way.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Unless he's that way, which is almost never going to happen, except for like, maybe...

• 6:27Speaker 02

  You know, three people in the history of the world. Then he will succumb to the world. And so he will begin to speak the world's language. And then by that, by language, I don't mean that you speak English or Chinese or, you know, Italian. I don't mean that. I mean, I mean, the language of concepts, the language of belief systems, the language of, you know, advice, the language of all the stuff. So it's all, so when you look into the world, you see the cars and the trucks and even the people and the trees and the grass and the sidewalks, but you don't see the poison. And the poison is invisible. The poison is the culture.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And when I say overcoming the world, it is, I, I literally mean exactly that. Overcoming all that the world stands for, all that it believes in, not taking sides, not entering the fray, to be, to literally have overcome the world, like Jesus said.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  And you're setting that forth descriptively, not prescriptively, like when one is aware, this is what happens?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Everything I say is descrip-, everything I say is non-prescriptive and non, non-recommendation. And not, and I'm not even gonna say this is what happens. It's, I, I write about things that interest me. Um, I write about things that move me. I write about, the, the truth moves me. And so I'm not even saying that, you know, if you do X, Y, and Z, this will happen. I will never say that. I don't believe in that. That's another worldly concept. Um, I'm just speaking from a place of, um, what, you know, the, the truth, what the truth actually is. And the truth is never about, um, you know, entering the fray of the world.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Anything that's worldly is non-truth. And, and even then, I will say, like, you have to always be on guard with me because you will absolutely 1,000 million percent fall for the trap of thinking that I am recommending this, even though I'm not saying that. And I can't disclaimer every single sentence. So, but I am not recommending anything. I am just saying. That overcoming the world, that is a truth.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  I think you do about as good of a job as one could do at making it very clear that you're not offering prescriptions. I think part of why it's so difficult for some people to listen to you without assuming that is because the world you just described is one where people generally don't talk about certain things as.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  That's all it is. It's all prescriptions. It's all prescriptions.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Exactly. So I, I, I, do you, do you think this is accurate? I describe what you do as like a force of nature. He is like the fire that burns, or he is like the cloud that pours forth rain. The cloud isn't trying to make you wet. The fire isn't trying to burn you or cook your food. It just does what it does and you can decide how you want to engage it.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 9:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Kapil, it's something we get into some of the difficult insights from overcoming the world and other bits of your work as well. I isolated some topics that we could talk about during this episode and try to get your insights on those. In the book, you seem to have a disdain for smartphones. Can you talk about why?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just the new cigarettes, right? I mean, so it, I have a disdain for anything that becomes popular.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  And this is yet another, you know, cultural trap, you know, of humans. And once again, I don't recommend it because if someone says, okay, well, I'm not going to look at my smartphone anymore. Okay, that's good. I don't care. I'm, I'm not, I'm not lessening the smartphone use, increasing it, getting an app to monitor your use. Like I don't like, like it's about the bigger picture. It's about the essence. It's about the fundament. It's about the foundation. It isn't about the branch of the tree. It's about the root. And so whether it's smartphones or cigarettes or alcohol, to me, it's all the same.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Why the disdain for what's popular?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I, I, because I disdain the world. I mean, it, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, if you walk into an area which is full of, like if you walk into like a landfill, it smells. And and you like you you recoil at the smell, right? Like you might say, well, why are you covering your nose? Why? Why are you like moving your mouth and disgust? Why are you like, you know? So I I look at the world and I I disagree with everything, you know? I the the fundament, the fundament in which it moves, the um, the the notions from which it operates,

• 11:31Speaker 02

  the directions at which it goes, like I I it's disgusting to me.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Now, would you say that this is more of a of a tendency? And I mean, like, may maybe there's a song, a Miles Davis song that you really love, and maybe someone puts it in a movie than, you know? And and now the song becomes popular and everybody loves this Miles Davis song. You're not saying, hey, now I can't like it because it's popular.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. No, no. I'm saying just whatever, whatever the world stands for. Like, so it isn't about the details, it's about the foundation. It's about the very so like the world could say, you know, you know, help people who are there's been a fire in, you know, in this village or country, whatever it is, and help people, you know, you know, who are destined to to help overcome that the the effects of the fire. I mean, that's a good thing. So like, I don't disagree with that. So I'm like I said, it's about the foundation of what it stands for. It stands for all things superficial. It stands for all things cosmetic.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  It stands for all things that are top of the head. It stands for all things that are popular and in vogue. It doesn't stand for truth. And and what move and I'm not saying it should. I'm saying what what moves me, me, not you, not me, is truth.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  There's this interesting tension I feel when I when I listen to you. There are these things you say that are so fascinating that I want to ask you for advice about something that it makes me think of, right? So when you talk about the masses and how catering to the masses sort of leads to a certain mindset or the values of the culture that determines what makes something popular. It makes me want to ask you a question like, hey, how do you cultivate the mindset of someone who notices what's really bad? But the reason I feel tension is because I feel like you're not going to give me advice.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Right, but so I'll respond to that. No, that's a very fair statement. That's a very fair statement. And it's very reasonable, very reasonable to say, well, how is it that I can cultivate X, Y, and Z? It's a very fair statement. I think, I think that one of the traps you can fall in with me, and there are many, is that you could view my take on prescriptions and say, no prescriptions, I'm going to follow no prescriptions. That's a prescription then, if you do that, right? So I'm not recommending that. Like, no one told me, don't follow prescriptions. No, it doesn't even exist out there, that message.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  But it was because I evaluated them through my own evaluations and experimentations, and I came to the truth. So I'm not telling not to follow. So it's about, it's about understanding that one must understand for themselves. And listen, if they come up with, well, prescriptions helped me a lot, then fine, you need to go with you. But it's about, it isn't about like biting your tongue to say, I'm not allowed to ask him for advice. It's about deeply understanding, the same way that you don't bite your tongue if you

• 14:59Speaker 02

  go to somebody and say, hey, I don't like your clothes. Like you would never say that you would never bite your tongue about that. You just wouldn't do it because that's not how you live, right? So that's natural to you. So there's, there's not, it's not a rule that don't follow prescriptions and don't ask me for. It's, it's about understanding the superfluousness of that in your own time, in your own way. If it, you even want it to happen. So that, that's my honest answer to, to your question, because it's a fair question.

• 15:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, since you're on the minimalist podcast today, I wanted to bring you into our world for a moment. TK and I were talking about this beforehand. It's always nice to try to talk about things through the lens at which our audience is familiar. And then we branch out from there. Minimalism has just been the Trojan horse for us to talk about whatever we want from philosophy to mental health or, or whatever is interesting to us at the time. But we often see it through the, the lens of, of excess stuff and cluttered houses and, and consumerism. And consumerism is sort of this ideology that acquiring things will make you happier or more complete. And we've seen many, many people try it. I tried it myself, but I've never seen it work, at least in a lasting way.

• 16:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you wrote once that getting something to be happy is an empty act. Kapil, why is that a truth that you found?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Well, in the same way, decluttering to be happy is also empty.

• 16:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Absolutely. Yeah. That, yeah. And I think that, that becomes the trap where it is, we, we've amassed a lot of clutter. We, we fill our homes, our lives, our cars, our offices, our basements, our garages with things. And all those things are supposed to make us happy. And they don't do their job. So of course we go out and we get more things. And then we say, oh, more things didn't make me happy. You know what the problem was? I didn't get the right things. I, uh, uh, the Toyota didn't do it for me. I need the Lexus. And then we start to moralize, well, I guess the things must be wrong. You know, what's going to make me happy is, is simply getting rid of those things. If I declutter, that is the thing that's going to make me happy. And of course that is just another chase.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And this is what I was talking about. Like, any direction that you take will all lead back to cosmetics. Because that's what the world is. So, because the world is, the world knows nothing about the root of the tree. It only knows the branches and the twigs and the peripheral most aspects. So, um, and, and, in all honesty, I would say that like, you know, I'm not saying, I mean, listening to me might not help anybody, to be honest, you know? I'm not trying to, but like, I'm not trying to help, but like, I'm a human being, like, the assumption is that it, like, everyone who's listening to this is looking for truth.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And that's complete nonsense. Um, so, so, so, so at the, so at the end of the day, if someone is not looking for truth, like, with no, that's not like negative or just whatever, if there's not. You know, something like declutter, whatever, that might help them, you know? On, on their level, and I, and I hate even saying that because it sounds, you know, it sounds like, oh, you're on a low level, and I don't mean that. Like, I can't speak without disclaimers. Um, because the world has been bastardized, the language has been bastardized, and everything has been, you know, put into goods and bads. Um, so like, so, listening to declutter, like, that may help people, you know?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Um, that may make their life, life better. So, there can't be an assumption that, so, in, in, in essence, there's a, the reason why millions of self-help books sell. There's a reason why millions of spirituality books sell. There's a reason why all the how-to manuals and the good, and the hacks and the five-step plans sell. Because that's the level the people are on. So, like, they don't want truth. And, and once again, that sounds derogatory, and I don't mean it that way, they just don't, fact, they just don't. And so, a person who doesn't want truth, and who's swimming in the ocean of the how-tos,

• 19:14Speaker 02

  then, yeah, they're better off getting a how-to as to how to declutter versus a how-to as to how to accumulate more stuff.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  You know, there's a phenomenon in the world of ideas that's similar to what you see. Sometimes you go to a place like Venice Beach, people watching, where someone is there at the beach, but they're not there to go play in the ocean or be on the sand. They are there to watch the people at the beach. And in a similar way, there's a kind of content consumption today that's sort of like people watching for ideas. People will listen to podcasts, they'll watch talks, not because they want to learn truth, but because they want to judge how you look. They want to, they want to catch you in a gotcha moment. They want to disagree about something and argue about something. And so here's my question for you. One of the fascinating things about you is that you, you seem to enjoy talking about

• 20:05Speaker 03

  ideas in this agenda-less, agenda-less fashion, and yet there are so many people who consume ideas with an agenda. How do you process the experience of having someone listen to you and then respond to you by saying, this is BS, Kapil, or I hate you for saying this, Kapil, or you're flat out wrong and you don't know what you're talking about, man? How do you process that kind of experience?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Tell me more.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  I don't process it. Well, there's nothing to process. I mean, you know, if you, I've said this a thousand times, if you ask me, should you listen to me or not? And are those the only two choices I have? I'll say don't, because it probably not going to be for you. So if you ask me, should I read your books? And the only choice is should you or shouldn't you? I'll say probably not. So I'm already there before you are.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Right, but, but let's say, let's say I run into you at the mall, which is never going to happen for either of us, but I, I run into you at the mall and I walk up to you and I say, Kapil, I just read that book. I hate it, man. That's nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about. What would you do?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I'd probably just walk away.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Because there's like, like if, if you say that, oh, I really liked that. Okay. If you say you didn't like it, okay.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Like even, even, even if you liked it, like what do I get from you liking it? Right? And I don't care. If I would care if my motivation for writing it or speaking it was to have you like it, then I would care.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  And then you might also-

• 21:51Speaker 02

  If I get out of bed in the morning to do something, to have others, to make, to please others, that's a waste of my life. That isn't what moves me. What moves me is to write and to speak direct, raw truth. And the whole world despises it. Okay. I got what I wanted out of it, which is I wanted to write and speak truth.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. The wind's gonna blow, no matter which way everyone else decides to go.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 22:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Speaking of humans wasting their lives, you once said that if a human placed video cameras in every corner of his house, then watched the footage on a weekly basis, nothing more would need to be said. They would not, they would not need to read anything, or hear anything, or listen to anything, or anyone. It would all be there plain to see. What is a wasted life, Kapil?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Well, and, well, I was just gonna respond to that by saying that after they watched the footage, you know, it would be incorrect to assume that after they watched the footage that, that the universal reaction would be, oh no, look what I'm doing. I'm wasting my life, let me change. I don't think it would be. I think for an, just like always, maybe for an extreme minority, they would see that what they're doing, because it's, you know, the camera is held before them, and they, and that some, that might shock them, right? But for the majority, they might even make jokes out of it, they might even, they might even get in the competition as to who'd waste their life more.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Like, the, the, I don't-

• 23:40Speaker 02

  I fundamentally reject any notion that if someone has shown the truth, that they're like, "Oh, thank you. I'm gonna go follow the truth now." It simply isn't true.

• 23:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It may also be true that a lot of the people who aren't going to change everything about their life, they go back and look at that footage and they're like, they identify some things that they're like, they didn't realize the, maybe the patterns that they were in. And sometimes, we don't realize the ways in which we waste our lives. And so we keep doing it until we actually realize that it is a waste. Which makes me wonder, what would a life that isn't wasted look like to you?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I can't define that for anybody because the definition will become a prescription. But, you know, I cannot look at someone and say, "Look, you're wasting your life, so you need to change." If, everything is internal. So it isn't about, "This is not a wasted life, and this is a wasted life." I mean, to me, to me, a pursuit of truth is not a wasted life. Because if one finds, even if one finds small truths, those small truths transform parts of him. And they transform parts of him which never, which never revert.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Self-help reverts, if it moves at all. So, that to me, that to me is valuable. But, look, once again, who are you, who are you talking to? You're talking to the world out there, right? So like, what do you, I just, I just think all talk is nonsense because there's no one there.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  So you're gonna talk to, you know, some guy who spends his time in a bar and then goes on cruise lines and drinks, guzzles beer in the pool and then his whole life is about, you know, choosing politics and, you know, and menial things and you're gonna tell that guy, "Oh, you're wasting your life and you need to go check..." Come on, give me a break. I mean, I think, I think everyone has an internal meter and everyone has an internal wavelength upon which they live and that wavelength is, you know, what they desire,

• 26:16Speaker 02

  what means, what means something to them and that, and that's why they're looking at the footage of that video camera in the house, that demonstrates the meter because the person who looks at that video camera and says, "Wow, I can't believe I'm just wasting my life doing X, Y, and Z, something needs to be done and something needs to be done now." Well, then that guy's meter, his internal meter is one of perhaps looking for truth then. Like he has a vision or a desire for his life that is of some substance and, and it isn't about that guy going to the beer drinking guy and saying, "Your life has no

• 26:59Speaker 02

  substance, you need to make it of substance." No, that does not, that's not gonna go anywhere. They'll create a fight. So the person who has the internal meter of something of substance, then, you know, that, that's where he, that's who he is, right? And, and once again, you have to be honest. You can't nickel and dime every single comment because that's disingenuous. Say, "Oh, well, what is of substance?" Well, hey, drinking beer all day long and living that kind of life, that isn't of substance. Now, if you wanted to here and do an argument over that, well, then, then the podcast just, just end. I mean, there's gotta be some, there's

• 27:40Speaker 02

  gotta be some basic level of, of like substance that you walk into the conversation with. Otherwise, if everything's up for grabs, okay, well, then there's no conversation.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  I mean, that makes perfect sense and...

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You need certain things to get a conversation off the ground. You know, Kapil, we all have observed examples of someone who maybe is not ready or willing to look at a certain truth, or examples of someone who pretends like they're interested in it and they're not. But I want to talk with you about the person who is seeking after something. Do you think it's possible to ever seek something and not sincerely find it? So for someone to be like, "I want the truth," and for that person to fail?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  It's a very good question.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  I would respond to that by saying how genuine and deep their desire is for truth.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  So it's, you know, I've talked before about desire, small d or big D, right? And what... So a perfect example is Buddha. It's a perfect example of what you just said.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  So this is a guy, you know, who saw the death and the sickness and the old age and stuff, said, "I'm not, I don't want all that. So I want the truth."

• 29:11Speaker 02

  And so he goes into the jungle and he went into the jungle and you can't deny... So here, you know, this is desire with a big D here, right? You can't deny that guy's desire for truth being like too shallow or not authentic enough. No, he deeply authentically desired truth. And he goes and he listens to the aesthetics and does the meditation for, you know, whatever, 20 hours a day and drinks, you know, his own urine and eats one grain of rice and all that stuff. And years go by, he doesn't get anywhere. And it was because of his big desire. It was because of the depth of his genuine desire that he was able to walk up from that

• 29:55Speaker 02

  place and say, "This is no good, because it's not getting me anywhere." And so that's my response to your question. It depends upon the depth of desire. Because if somebody wants truth, they will inevitably go to spirituality, right? And they'll read the books and they'll do the stuff and the mindfulness and the, whatever their flavor is that they like, right? And I think the depth of their desire will be determined by if they get up from that or not. And I would say the depth of desire is so rare. It isn't the getting up that is so rare. That is rare, but that isn't why. It isn't the cosmetics.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  It is because the depth of desire is so rare that that person will not recognize that he isn't getting anywhere. Or, or the 20 minutes of this and the 14 minutes of this and the kumbaya of this and the incense of that won't be enough to, to, to satisfy and quench the level of his thirst. And if it is, then the thirst wasn't deep enough. And once again, I'm not saying it should have been deeper. I'm not saying that. I'm saying the depth was of the depth or the shallowness that spirituality and all its how-tos could satisfy.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  That's my answer.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Sometimes you hear certain athletes, like Tiger Woods would sometimes speak this way in his prime, Michael Jordan would sometimes speak this way in his prime, where they say things like, "I decided to win." But you were down by this much, but you only had this much, but you had these odds going against you and they just decided to win.

• 31:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Do you think that it's possible in this world to do that? And I'm not limiting it to winning, but do you think it's really true that a person just decides who they will be in this world, that they just?

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. I do. I don't mean that like for a particular event or circumstance at this time it's gonna happen. I don't mean that, I don't think it's that detailed, right? Because if that was the case, then you would never lose any tournament then. You just always decide, right? So, so it is, nothing is like that. But, but from a foundational standpoint, absolutely. And I think that what you just described is Big D.

• 32:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, I want to go back to the GoPro example. If I strapped a GoPro on you for a week and then you had to watch back the footage, I also think you can figure out what your true desires are there, not just the lip service desires, like, oh yeah, I really, I really am seeking out truth and I, my values are my health and my relationships and my family and getting eight hours of sleep, I really value that and hygiene. And we say we value a lot of these things, right? And then I go back and watch the footage and then there's this underlying level of shame. And I think the shame bifurcates in two directions here. If you go back and watch the tape, you might look back and say that, oh, there are a bunch of things that I wish I wouldn't have been doing.

• 33:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I wish I wouldn't have been wasting my life that way, without anyone else seeing it, anyone else knowing it. But I think the more powerful one is the shame from the world. If I go show that same videotape to other people out in the world, they might come back to you and say, oh, you should be ashamed because you're getting up at 6:00 AM, you should be getting up at 5:00 AM, right? Or you're going to the gym two days a week, you should go three days a week. And so there's almost this shame that is handed to us. Do you see one of those as being more powerful than the other, TK? I mean...

• 33:52Speaker 03

  I'm not a big fan of shame, period. You know, I think the perception we have of ourselves is ultimately more powerful in the sense that it has more causative power. But I think that the way the world sees us tends to be more palpable for people in the sense that you can be lazy and look without and still see what is there to some extent. But it's a little harder to be mindless, unintentional and lazy and see what lies beneath the surface. And so I think it's just, you know, more convenient sometimes to say, I'm just gonna look without, lazily gaze in that direction and accept as true whatever the world throws

• 34:37Speaker 03

  in my face. And the world's opinions are usually the first thing that you see.

• 34:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, Kapil, the reason that I asked TK that question is I feel like I, for the longest time, had constructed this life that was the latter. If I put a GoPro on me back in my twenties and I showed it to the 12 people in my life who I was trying to impress, they would all be impressed. However, if I looked at that GoPro myself, I knew something was missing. And it took many years to sort of start to untangle from that. And when I was 39 years old, was that a half a decade ago? I stumbled across Kapil's work and it made me realize that, oh, yeah, yeah, a lot of my suffering has to do with that desire to impress other people.

• 35:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was a different kind of consumerism. It wasn't just like, oh, yeah, I'm going out and buying fancy things or achieving things. It was consuming the opinions of other people. Yet, Kapil, I think it happens quite frequently. And you helped me start to let go of that. And I find myself pick it up from time to time. But I'm less concerned about what other people might think. It doesn't mean that I intentionally want to harm someone or be a jerk towards someone. In fact, in some ways, it's made me a lot kinder to other people because I'm not trying to get a particular outcome. TK, I'm wondering, where does, where do you think that desire, is it just innate?

• 36:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Is it part of our human existence that we want to be liked by other people?

• 36:22Speaker 03

  I think one could say that there is this innate sense of desiring belonging, or enjoying the feeling of being somewhere or with someone and saying, yeah, I'm enjoying, you know, I'm experiencing pleasure, I'm experiencing comfort, I'm experiencing delight. And while it's possible for other people liking you to be this really superficial thing that doesn't meet your deeper needs, it at least has the outward trappings of having some sense of validation, of having some sense of joy. It has the outer trappings of that. But I find that it's much more substantial when you can kind of get to

• 37:07Speaker 03

  a place where you don't feel like you need to be around people to experience that, or you don't have, you don't need people to tell you that you're all right, that you're a good guy, or something like that, or that they agree with you to experience a sense of being at home in the universe. I'm at home in the universe because I'm here. I'm at home in the universe for the same reason that that tree is at home in the universe. We're here, you know? And anyone who wants to tell me that I'm not at home in the universe, it's like, like Kapil said about me walking up to him in the mall, okay?

• 37:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, Professor Sean's on the couch here, and he has me watching the TV show Mad Men recently. And I'm really bad at watching TV, so I've spent like the last year trying to watch it. And I'll watch an episode occasionally, but there was one episode where the main character, the sort of protagonist, is on the elevator with someone else and who's in advertising. And the guy looks up to him and says, I feel bad for you. And Don Draper, the main character, remind, he gave me the most, he gave the most Kapil answer in that moment. He goes, huh, I don't think anything of you. And I think that's how Kapil would have responded to the person in the mall who said, you know, I think about your work all the time, and it really frustrates me. And Kapil was, I don't think about you at

• 38:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  all. And that could come off as like confrontational, but really what it is, is like, he doesn't have that same desire to win the appeal of other people. And that's really what I wanted to bring this to now, because as I, as I started letting go of that, half a decade ago, Kapil, I found that for most of my life, I've been ambitious. I've been perceived, seen as an ambitious person. But since finding your work, I have I guess to my surprise, abandoned many, if not most, of my ambitions. And I don't really know why that happened, other than I'm less interested in being impressive.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  What's your question?

• 39:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Any idea why ambitions begin to fade when we start to encounter certain truths?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  I mean, they may fade for one, they may not for another, you know? That's the truth can, the truth is the most powerful thing, the most powerful force in the universe. And it, it can do very fundamentally powerful things. And what it will do to somebody versus another, that cannot be predicted.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  But I think what, what is always missed is the undercurrent. So in the way, in the things that you've been saying, there's an undercurrent. And the undercurrent for everything that you've been saying is improvement.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  So if you had seen the camera, that maybe that would not help you waste your life as much. Or if you had seen somebody in the mall, that maybe you would say this and, and, and maybe you become less ambitious. And maybe you, you care a little bit less, not so tied to what people think of you. You know, once again, you see, this is what I mean. Like, everyone is swimming in the pool without recognizing they're swimming in the pool. And when they go to a different end of the pool, they think they're out of the pool. They're still in the pool.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  And, and, and even, even right at this moment, there's an undercurrent. And the undercurrent is going to be that, you know, I'm saying in some way that that shouldn't be, that's wrong and shouldn't be going on. And I know that you intellectually understand that I'm not saying that it's wrong. But this is, once again, I hold up a mirror. That's what I do. And the mirror reveals what it needs to reveal. And the mirror doesn't try to change and the mirror doesn't care if you change. Mirror just shows you a mirror. And the same with the video camera, you know, and the go, you know, in your, in your house does. So like to me, once again, to me, if,

• 41:29Speaker 02

  if one has fallen into the basement of the world, meaning that's the degree of conditioning and brainwashing and being poisoned and all these things.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  To get to the first stair, which leads out of the basement, is nothing to be happy about. Right? So like all things of like, oh, I, I feel a little bit less that people, I feel a little bit less interested in what people think of me. Oh, I'm wasting my life a little bit less. Oh, I have become a little bit less ambitious. Once again, I'm not speaking for you. To me, I'm still in the basement. Right? Like if I am lost in the world, but I'm still, I don't care that, and I don't even care that, oh, I, I am top of the 1% who is of the world. Like the world isn't even part of the comparison. They don't count.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Like they're not even part, I mean, that's already is death and destruction. So I don't care that I'm a little bit less death and destroyed. Right? So for me, it's all about seeing the depth of the conditioning and the depth of the brainwashing. And that improvement itself is of the world. Betterment is of the world. Self-help is of the world. That isn't getting out of the world. That's moving further into the world because you're judging yourself against the tenants of the world. So you're becoming more worldly. You're going up the basement, you're going deeper into the basement.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  It's interesting the way you phrase that because I often say that for so many, self-help becomes a basis for self-hate. When you are looking at things through a lens of, "Oh, I'm better now," or "I'm worse than," or whatever it may be, it can often become just another means for condemning yourself, but in a more positive sounding way. I want to throw out an alternative framing that I have, and I'm throwing it out there because I want to get your take on it. I tend to think of things in terms of freedom rather than improvement. And my analogy would be, let's take an eagle that just enjoys that sensation of flight, just soaring through the sky.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  And the way that you describe how what moves you is not speaking to the masses to get them to praise you, but what moves you is just sort of like engaging life and engaging your mind in the way that you do, regardless of how people respond. So let's say I'm like that eagle and I just love the feel of the wind against my wings. But maybe there's an experience where I get caught in a net. And I struggle and I flap my wings all desperately and it doesn't help. And then after a while of sitting still, I start to realize there are some things I can do, like fold my wings this way a little bit, tuck my head in a little bit, move my body in this way. And then I can slowly but surely get myself released from that net

• 44:30Speaker 03

  and then I can get back to the sky and do my thing. And that doesn't require condemning the net as bad, condemning myself as bad for being caught in the net, or treating everybody who has landed on a net like it is their mission in life to get free in the way that I'm free, because maybe they like sleeping on that net or whatever it may be. But to me, I see it as it is about freedom and it is about the awareness that recognizes that there are things that may obstruct or get in the way of what moves you. And when those things are there, without condemning them or judging them, you can simply navigate them in a way that allows you to experience more of what moves you. What's your take on that?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I agree wholeheartedly. It's all about freedom. And it's all about one's own... And it's about one's own guidance according to what one wants for himself. Even if one wants to sleep on the net, it's fine. I mean, so I guess that's a, that's a foundation which runs through my work is

• 45:35Speaker 02

  there is no you should be this way or should be that way. And neither do I believe in so-called self-love. It's all nonsense.

• 45:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, please explain now.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  So you can turn, you, you can turn the dial, whatever direction you want to make yourself feel better. It's all concepts. All things are a reaction to something else. They all serve each other. There's, there's, there's nothing that stands on its own.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  It's, you don't do this, so you do the other thing. You don't self-hate, so you do self-love. It's all crap.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  It's all concepts pie in the sky. And once again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But if you're asking me the questions, I'm going to respond by how I view things. I don't view concepts and ideologies and self-love and this, that, and it's all, it's all garbage to me. Because it is all reactions to. It's all concepts. What's self-love? And, and the reason that that will be accepted, self-love, is because it's the opposite of self-hate. Humans are dunces. They don't have enough interest to not be a dunce. They weren't born a dunce.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  But they allow themselves to become dunces. So they have only two options, self-love or self-hate. Pick or pick.

• 47:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I don't know how that can't be perceived as a, as a pejorative. Like, it, it, it feels like.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  How do you, anything that I can say, it can be perceived that way.

• 47:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, anything can be, but I'm saying, I don't know how that one can't be.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Well, I, I mean, what didn't you understand?

• 47:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What I'm saying is that your intention to make people feel bad about the position that they're in?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  If I don't, I'm not here to make people feel bad or good.

• 47:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I didn't think so. And that's why I'm saying when-

• 47:32Speaker 02

  So you ask me a question, I give you an answer. I think self-love is nonsense, the same way that I think self-hate is nonsense. I think both are nonsense.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Josh, do you think Kapil sounds like he's trying to make people feel bad?

• 47:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, I, you know what's so fascinating to me about Kapil, like he's the person who picks you up and shakes the hell out of you, and sets you back down and you thank him for it.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But the average person, if they were to do that on the street, you get into a fight with them, you get into an argument with them. But there is a respect level I have for Kapil. And he's added tremendous value to my life and opened my eyes to all kinds of truths. And it was painful and there was a lot of suffering involved, especially the first year or two. As I started untangling, it's maddening to untangle. You know, you take a pair of ear pods and you put them in your pocket and they get all tangled up after a day. Now imagine having 39 years of entanglements. That's what complexity is. And I got to this point in my life where it was so tangled and so knotted up with the good things, the so-called good things, the so-called bad things.

• 48:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and, and the sort of the milieu, the residue of the world that, that I was sort of, I don't know, untangling from. And, and I continue to untangle. I don't pretend that I'm an enlightened being who has,

• 48:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  who's not affected by any of this. But, but as soon as I hear the, the term dunces, I'm like, man, where I grew up, we'd be in a fistfight, but if I, as soon as I heard that, right? And so like, there is, and I'm not saying that Kapil's calling an individual person a dunce. I, I know that he's not. But what I'm trying to do is, is understand, because we're also having this conversation. If it was just me, you and Kapil having this conversation, there weren't other people listening to it, I would accept it for what it is.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  I mean, to me, it is just you and me. To me, it is that. Like, you, you're, you may be outwardly, and I don't want to talking about your voice. You may be intentionally and, and by way of your psyche and intention, be directing it out towards your audience. I'm not.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  You, you, you are asking me a question and I'm not, and I'm not putting bows around the question and putting a gift wrapping it so that I can satisfy you and the audience. You're asking me a question, I'm speaking to you according to what I, I look at as truth.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  However that fall or doesn't fall, that's not my concern. And I'm not trying to hurt anybody or help anybody. And you said earlier about shaking you and I must be very clear. Once again, like you said, everything can be misunderstood that I say, and it will be. Um, is, it could be perceived that my shaking you was like self tough love. What must be understood clearly emphatically is that you came to the work, the work didn't come to you. So I didn't come to your house and shake you. And in fact, in fact, even if, even after you came to the work, if the work shook you, you kept coming back. The work didn't come to you. So if you got shook, it was because you entered the shaking chamber. The chamber didn't come to you. So it wasn't, it wasn't tough love.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  I wasn't trying to shake you for your own good. I don't, once again, I want, I, I don't want anything good said about me. Like, oh, he's being benevolent, been shaking. I'm, I, once again, truth. I'm not, I mean, everything that you wrote, somebody else could have, I mean, everything that you read that I wrote, somebody else could have read it and said, well, like this makes me angry and this is terrible and I'm never coming back here again. And so, so it isn't about the work. It is, it is, it shook you. And so it was in many ways you who did the shaking. I didn't do anything. I just wrote it and that was it. I wrote it because I wanted to write it. I didn't write to shake you.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  And I, in the same way that I didn't write to help you, I didn't write to hurt you, I didn't write to hurt, it's like, it's like you said earlier, you know, the wind blows and the rain falls and the rain doesn't want to get you wet to make you annoyed and it doesn't want to, and the wind doesn't want to blow you down, just, it just blows. And the truth is that way. It just, that's, it just is.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Josh, you brought a fitness trainer here and now you're like, hey, man, you're working me out too hard.

• 51:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK Kapil, we've got a lot more to discuss on page two and page three, including some questions from our audience from our last conversation we did with Dr. Kapil Gupta. It was episode 373. That one was called "No Prescriptions," and we had a lot of really interesting feedback. And I was actually surprised by how many people it resonated with, because I thought there would be three, but it turned out to be a lot more. So, we're going to entertain some questions from them as well. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back. All right, that's the first 33% of episode 498. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Dr. Kapil Gupta. The link is in the description. When you subscribe,

• 52:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  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's a full decade of The Minimalists. By the way, a big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Big thanks to Dr. Kapil Gupta for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about him, kapilguptaMD.com is his website. His most recent book is called "Overcoming the World." We'll put a link to both of those in the show notes over at theminimalists.com/podcast. And you can sign up for our email

• 53:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  newsletter if you want to get our show notes delivered to you every Monday for free. We'll never send you spam, or junk, or advertisements, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. 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 taking notes on the couch, and Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things. Because the opposite, well, the opposite's nonsense, I guess. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.