510 | Say Less

The Minimalists talk about verbal minimalism, the things we regret saying, the best ways to let other people down, seven things people regret tossing while decluttering, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How do you practice verbal minimalism? (3:43) What's the last thing you regretted saying? (18:54) Right Here, Right Now: Joshua's new documentary, Food for Humans, goes on tour. (38:08) Listener Tip: Creating a list of items you might want again later. (44:05) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here at Earthing Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful day.

• 0:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, I'm sounding a little bit hoarse today and I'll explain to you why here in a moment, although I was trying to sing this morning, I had this song stuck in my head on the drive down. I'm gonna sing the first line, maybe you can finish it for me. Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high. Yes. Yes, I was trying to sing that, I'm like, man, I'm off key, but it turns out I'm always off key, so it doesn't really matter anyway. What would you do if you found out Michelle, your wife, was texting Lavar Burton on the side?

• 1:24Speaker 02

  I'd be like, when is he coming over?

• 1:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You'd be like, damn girl, you got a type.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just redundant, she texted me earlier.

• 1:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I found out my wife has a type this weekend. I took my daughter to the Dua Lipa concert and it turns out Dua Lipa's her type and I think I'd be really excited if I found out she was texting Dua Lipa. But I totally lost my voice there. I think I danced more in one night at this Dua Lipa concert at the Forum in Los Angeles than maybe I have in the other 44 years of my life. Ella was just singing her heart out and dancing and it's pretty decent seats too. I got her as a Christmas gift last year, I bought these tickets like 13 months ago. And she was so excited leading up to it, like this anticipation and like being there at the event and just singing our hearts out.

• 2:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And screaming, woo, I realize I haven't screamed in at least a decade. How wild is that? And so I'm driving home, I'm like, am I getting sick? I have a sore throat? No, I just haven't screamed for a while. And that's the perfect way to start this episode, because we're going to talk about, well, a bunch of things. I want to talk about verbal minimalism with you. We'll talk about the things we regret saying, the best way to let other people down, talk about saying less, but saying more by saying less as well, and much, much more. Also, TK, on page three, I've got this article for you. Seven Things People Regret Tossing While Decluttering. And I want to disagree with it a little bit, but then maybe we can end up agreeing with them as well.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Chris Rock would say number one is salad.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  That's inside baseball, man. That is inside.

• 3:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, well, let's start with our callers. Let's say less and start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219-7839. If you'd like to join the conversation, or you can email a voice recording to [email protected]. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber, so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free, because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Our first question today is from Ted.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, hi, this is Ted from Minnesota. Here's my question. Can words be clutter? And if so, how do you practice verbal minimalism in a world full of sarcasm, self-promotion, and noise? Minimalism has helped me clear my space and head, but I'm still tangled in the mess of other people's words, especially the ones that feel performative or just plain wrong. How can I stay grounded when language itself feels like a distraction from authenticity? Thank you.

• 4:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, I struggle with this one, one day a week. And so whenever we do the podcast, practicing verbal minimalism ironically is pretty simple for me six days out of the week. Yeah. I don't talk a lot, I don't interact with people. When I do, I'm kind, I'm nice, and I'm, I tend to be pretty outgoing as well. But that's like 10% of the time, the other 90% of the time, I'm by myself. But there's also the voice in my head, and quite often I wish the voice in my head would say less. So maybe we could talk about that. There's, there's something there. The language that's going on externally is a byproduct of what's going on internally quite a bit. And he mentioned like the sarcasm, and sometimes that sarcasm is sort of descends into cynicism.

• 4:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And everyone's wrong, that's how I'm going to make myself right, or I'm going to be dismissive in order to make myself right. The self-promotion, the noise that he mentions. And I do think we're in a unique time in the sense that we've always dealt with mental clutter, well before minimalism was a term.

• 5:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But now we have more noise than ever. We have the noise from social media, we have the noise from entertainment, from TV shows, from movies, we have the noise from the street. I grew up on a street in Dayton, Ohio, that was the main thoroughfare for an ambulance. So much so that you, you stop realizing that you're in the middle of the noise. You become steeped in it so long, it doesn't mean that it's gone, the chaos is there, you become used to the chaos. And then there's like this existential dread or boredom when you pull yourself out of the noise, because for the first time, you can actually hear yourself. And I experienced this the first time I went to a sensory deprivation tank. I haven't done it a bunch, but the first time I went, I was in Spokane, Washington, and

• 5:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I got in there, and it turned the whole world down around me. But it felt like the inside world was turned way up, because no longer was I numbed by all of these external stimuli, and I realized how much chaos was going on inside me. So TK, talk to me about practicing verbal minimalism. What does that look like to you?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Well, this reminds me of the silent retreat that I was on. We talked about, and we were there with a group of people. And one of the most interesting moments was when the silence was over. At the beginning, there's kind of like a dinner and an orientation and a short talk. And then, any questions? All right, silence begins now. In the end, you break the silence with the meal. And I tell you, Josh, it felt like, my wife and I joked about this. It felt like everyone else had spent their entire time in silence, thinking about what they were going to say as soon as the silence broke, because the noise came rushing in. I saw people running to my wife. There were people like running to me. You can see it happen in slow motion.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  And it was like, da, da, da, da, da. And I was like, whoa, it's so shocking. We just spent two days together without saying a word. And within the first two minutes of the silence being broken, I felt like I had more words flooding my ears than I wanted to hear for the rest of the week. And sometimes that really can be true. When you begin to cultivate a sense of interior quiet, the noise of the world can feel so, so shocking. And I think relating to your observation about how the interior noise is often what facilitates the exterior noise. I think moments like that reveal to us that there is a deeper level of silence to achieve. Because even when we are quiet ourselves,

• 7:51Speaker 02

  we sometimes have these narratives speaking to us that says, if a question is posed to you, you are obligated to answer it. Or you are obligated to answer it as it was posed. Or if someone wants to talk to you, you are obligated to listen to them right then, right there, without boundary. And so there's still a kind of lack of silence in us that often creates this tension when we feel like the world out there is too loud. And so that deeper level of silence involves negotiating and rising above these narratives that are way, way, way underneath the surface,

• 8:31Speaker 02

  quietly whispering to us, you must, you must, you must make noise. You must attend to the noise.

• 8:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when you step back and you say, "I'm not going to listen to that must, I'm not gonna listen to that should," in a way, you say more when you say less. I've noticed this with some stoic friends that I have. In fact, we're gonna have a stoic on the podcast next week, ideally. We'll save that for, uh, that announcement for the next episode. But some friends who are just a bit more stoical, when they speak, man, does it matter? My friend Nate Green, he lives in Missoula, Montana, and I quoted him in Love People Use Things, when he talked about, "I speak only when it adds more value than silence." And what you realize, the implicit message behind that is, wow.

• 9:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Quite often, the silence will add more value than just these bland natterings, right? And in fact, that's my pithy answer later in this episode during the lightning round. We're gonna talk about how silences speak louder than these bland natterings. The bland natterings, it's like filling the space. And I say I struggle with this, and there's an irony to us doing an episode like this, because in real life, outside of the podcast, this is real life too, but in life outside of the podcast where it's less of a performance, I don't feel compelled to fill the air with those bland natterings. I, I'm completely comfortable with silence. I'm comfortable with the discomfort of the awkwardness of the moment, right?

• 10:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Uh, some of that is like, fun to play around with, to, to see, to witness, to know that there's nothing that's going to hurt me just because it's awkward or quiet for this moment. But I think one of the reasons that we build into the noise, we shout into the noise, we create more noise, or we seek out the noise, is because we're so uncomfortable with the silence. You know, it's reading, we read less now than ever before, in terms of long-form books or long-form essays, even magazines. We read social media posts and things like that, attenuated things. And that's great when it's condensed down to something that is weighty and you can unpack on your own.

• 10:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I think we read less because it's uncomfortable to sit in a room by yourself. David Foster Wallace talked about this back in the day, where, where there's an existential dread. Within boredom, he wrote a whole book about boredom. It was called The Pale King, and it takes place in an IRS office in 1985 in Peoria, Illinois. And like, he's trying to affect the most boring place, but what you realize is there's some real beauty inside that boringness. It takes some drudgery to get to the other side of it. All the reward is on the other side of the drudgery, drudging through the silence, drudging through the awkwardness, drudging through the stillness. And so, in

• 11:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a way, you can, I think you're bringing this up early, you can treat yourself to a silent retreat, in a way. It doesn't have to be a 10-day retreat or a two-day retreat. It could be a two-minute retreat.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, when I think about the boredom and what makes it scary, is usually when we find ourselves bored, it's we're not compelled by anything external, and then that horrifying realization that we're not compelled by anything internal. There's nothing that I have to do in this moment. Or maybe there is something that I have to do, but I have a lot of psychological space reserved to myself while I do it. And in my awareness of that space, my presence to that space, I realize there is nothing going on internally that fascinates me, interests me, compels me, and fills me with wonder.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  And that can be scary, because on the surface, that might feel like I have nothing useful going on, or I am not very useful, or I'm not earning my existence. But I think when you encounter those sorts of thoughts, you can realize there is a deeper level of experience that goes beyond earning my existence, that goes beyond making myself useful. And that is the space out of which play arises. We don't play games because they are useful or because they are necessary. We play games because there is a creative impulse within us that says, "I can't be fulfilled unless I do something for the sheer value, the sheer

• 13:09Speaker 02

  intrinsic value of doing it." arbitrarily challenging myself in a way that nature does not arbitrarily setting a goal that isn't necessarily designed to make me more rich or improve my life but just because I can the power that I have as a human creator to make things up which is why as children we play games of make believe and I think sometimes as we get older or as we get addicted to these external sources of stimulation that do all of that work for us when we find ourselves in situations where those elements are removed and we have to return to that native self without the aid of technology or external stimulation and play make believe that feels incredibly

• 13:52Speaker 02

  difficult but like most beautiful things in life that which feels frightening or painful on the side of initiating action makes you wonder why did I wait so long to do that once you get started.

• 14:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Say less. That's funny because that that term has become like it's entered the nomenclature in a completely different way now, right? Because when we're talking about say less, it's literal in the sense that like your words can be more powerful when you say less. I think about the Mark Twain letter that he wrote and at the end of he said, "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter." And that speaks to like brevity requires some restraint but it also requires some discipline and it will require some mental musculature in order to be brief because it's easy to just keep talking and talking and talking especially if half the

• 14:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  talking is nonsense or I think Kapil Gupta would say it's all nonsense ultimately, right? And it seems to me that many of the great thinkers, the mystics and and the thought leaders of yesteryear, Thomas Aquinas, at the end of his life, kind of thought that it was all nonsense too. Is that right?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  It was it was more of a realization that no amount of words, no amount of conceptualizing would be able to adequately capture or do justice to that which is so profoundly transcendent.

• 15:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, so then it's only sufficient to say less because the more you say the more insufficient it is. There's no sufficient amount of words that will capture the love, the beauty, the essence. We can try to approximate it. We could tell you what love isn't, right? But but good luck explaining why I love my wife, right? And it's like, well, she's 5'11" and

• 15:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Has really beautiful curly hair and I like her tattoos. I can list a thousand things and it's still insufficient. It's not even love anyway, these are attributes that I like and she would still be her without those things that I like. And do I still like her when she doesn't have those things? Of course. And so like, huh, all right. So the words themselves are insufficient. Now, when we say say less, it means like, I agree with you or I got you. Yeah, yeah. Or, yeah. I'm sold. I'm sold, that's it. Yeah. And so when we're talking about saying less though, it's about understanding the importance of brevity, of concision. And I think that's where minimalism comes in.

• 16:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I love the question about verbal minimalism here because, and I want to get practical for a moment, for me, verbal minimalism, especially outside of this podcast, ironically, is about the pause, the art of the pause. The art of noticing, I call it, and love people use things. And it's just like, oh yeah, I notice that I'm speaking when I don't need to. This doesn't add more value than silence. And so I can pause for a moment and say, okay, that's that. I don't need to keep filling the air with these words. Ted, I'd love to send you a copy of our book, Everything That Remains. Speaking of brevity, this is one of those exercises in that where, that book was about

• 17:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  700 pages when Ryan and I first wrote it back, we started in 2012, it came out in 2014. And the published version was about 200 pages though. And so it was constantly stripping away. It's like a sculptor who takes their sculpture out of the rock, right? And they don't say less, they have less when they're finished. But it is that stripping away, that subtracting, that leaves you with something meaningful. And I think you could say the same thing about verbal minimalism or minimalism in literature as well. It's what we don't include there. It's the spaces, it's the pauses, it's the noticing that is important so that you recognize those spaces.

• 17:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Are just as important as the words are. In fact, they might even be much more important as a punctuation. Ted, I'd love to send you a copy of that book. It's called Everything That Remains. It's still my favorite thing that we have written as The Minimalist. It has a beautiful new cover. The 10th anniversary edition came out last year. You can check that out wherever fine books are sold. We'll be happy to be happy to send you a copy as well. If you want the audiobook or the ebook or the book book, we'll send that to you, Ted. All right, before we get back to our callers, TK, it is time for the lightning round. This is where we answer the Patreon community chats question of the week, and we attempt to answer the question with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's

• 18:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including a bunch of new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, the question of the week this week, TK. What's the last thing you regretted saying? What's the last thing you regretted saying? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, let's see what some of our listeners had to say. Jimma said,

• 19:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "I regret oversharing a heartbreaking relationship situation with a new colleague. Despite her also facing the same challenge, it gave me an immense vulnerability hangover." That's an interesting term, a vulnerability hangover. TK, what constitutes oversharing?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  When you have given out more information about your life than what you feel safe, comfortable, or constructive sharing. The challenge with oversharing is that sometimes we don't discover that until after the fact. There are moments where we can see red flags that indicate, hmm, might be best to exercise some discretion here, might be best to remain silent here, and we ignore those red flags because of fear or whatever it might be. But there are other times where we genuinely believe we are in a situation where it's safe to say something, and judging by the way in which we're misunderstood, the way the other person reacts, the way they're filled with fear, the way they make it about them, we say, ah.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Man, I wish I could have that moment back. And all you can do when that happens is to just get better at discerning ahead of time when you're in that situation and to respond in kind when you're dealing with that person again. You don't have to hold it against them. They just may not be the safest or best person to share that kind of material with.

• 20:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Christina said, "I regret telling my adult daughter, 'My house, my rules.'" It didn't go over well. Even though it's true, I could have rephrased it differently. TK, talk to me about the importance of delivering things like that, like rules or boundaries. "My house, my rules." Talk to me about the importance of delivering that effectively, like with compassion. How would you deliver something like that?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Sure. Seth Godin talks about the concept of enrollment. He uses that word to refer to the process of giving people a sense of agency when it comes to the things that they do for you. There are situations where you might have the power, if push comes to shove, to issue out threats, or to withhold benefits, or to kind of coerce people to do things. But you can often get the same result by simply asking and giving the other person the option of not doing it. And when that happens, people generally feel better about what they do for you. And when you take away the agency and you make the reality of your power too explicit,

• 21:40Speaker 02

  you remove the sense of cooperation that people get to have, and the experience of it just stinks. If I could tell my son, "Hey, since I pay the bills, and you live in my house, and you're the one that used most of the garbage, take that garbage out. And if you don't do it, I'm going to ground you." Now, I may have the power, the authority to do all of those things, but how could he not be antagonized by that way of communicating? I could simply say, "Hey, can you take out the garbage?" And suppose you go, "Well, hey, man, you might need that power." Sure. If I ever need to use that power, there's no expiration date on that. Why not try to appeal to him?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  In a way to where he's not antagonized and he feels like he has some agency here. So sometimes when we spell out the rules, when we spell out our ability to punish people a little too strongly, it can sound defensive and other people pick up on that vibration and they resist us. So how would I have said this? Instead of saying my house, my rules, I would have gotten specific about whatever it is she did that bothered me so much. And I would ask her if she would be willing to do things in a different way. Or I would have told her the way that I would like to handle that particular situation and say, hey, from now on, I need you to do this particular thing in this particular way. We don't need to give a philosophical lecture about how it's my house and everything in here is up to me.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Just focus on what the problem is.

• 23:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Kelly said, I regret saying sorry when I hadn't done anything wrong. But I have this phrase coded into my brain to appease people in conversation. I've gotten better about not saying this as much, but it still slips out from time to time. DK, when is it appropriate to apologize? And when is an apology maybe unnecessary?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the infinite, I'm sorry, Luke, I'm sorry. Stop apologizing, man. You didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I apologize. I'm sorry. I should. I'm doing it again. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I keep on doing it. I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry, but I'm sorry that I'm doing this fact. Oh, my gosh, it can happen. The first thing is recognize that it is a habit. And so when you say I'm sorry, you are expressing something that is bigger and deeper than your intentions. And so be easy on yourself when you do it. You're probably going to make some mistakes and say I'm sorry a little too much. And that's okay. You don't have to quit cold turkey. The goal is to become conscious of the fact when you are doing it. And when you catch yourself doing it, maybe what you can do is use it as an opportunity to get clearer with yourself about what you really want to say.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  I think about this powerful moment in the autobiography of Malcolm X, where he meets someone who says, why do you swear so much? And Malcolm says, I don't know. He goes, I'll tell you why. A man who swears, swears because he doesn't know what's really on his mind. Instead of just using a swear word. And being lazy, think about what you really want to say and express it, articulate it in a similar way. Maybe there's something you really want to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Maybe what you really wanted to say was, excuse me. Or you wanted to make that other person aware of the fact that you acknowledge them. Or that you, you don't want them to be inconvenienced. And so instead of just being like, I'm going to suppress this, I'm sorry. Go deeper with it, like, wait, I just said, I'm sorry. Give me a moment, that means there's something that I really wanted to say to you.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  And I think that is, hey, man, I hate that you had to go through that. Or, you know, um, um, I didn't see you the first time, but I want you to know I see you now. And that's not going to happen again. I'm glad you're here, it's important to see you, you know, whatever, whatever it might be.

• 25:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and when there's a million sorrys, it kind of waters down when you're actually trying to apologize to someone. I think about a friend of mine, I accidentally disclosed some personal information of his on a podcast and it didn't get edited out at first. And this is way back in the day.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  You accidentally disclosed it?

• 25:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, almost a decade ago. And, um, man, I had to apologize to him. Because I didn't mean for that to get out. And we went and we went and did what we could to fix it. Obviously, I couldn't take back that it had been released to a million people at one point. But, uh, going back and correcting what I could correct and, but also apologizing. Part of that apology, though, is not needing to be forgiven by them. And that, that, because if I need a forgiving, then I'm just like, uh, just a transactional sorry, right?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's, hey, I'm genuinely sorry that I did this. Now, imagine if every day I went around saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That one more, I'm sorry, wouldn't have meant as much. But, hey, man, I apologize, I really messed this up, I take responsibility for it, it won't happen again. And that's all I could do. And yes, he forgave me, but even if he didn't, I, I, I put it out there that this is my fault and I'm setting this out here. Do what you must, right?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like that.

• 26:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, one more for you. Holly said, I regret agreeing to meet up with someone I didn't want to spend time with. PK, you said that, you said to me that. If you say yes to everything, you'll serve nothing.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 26:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Can you talk to me about how saying yes can sometimes be inconsiderate? I think about from my own perspective, I don't want to spend time with someone who doesn't want to spend time with me. Like forcing them to to spend time with me, that that is that is inconsiderate. Like, why would I want to spend some time with someone who's like, I don't really want to be here?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's so important to be careful with this business of doing other people favors or perceiving yourself as someone who is doing them a favor. There are times in life when we legitimately need to do someone a favor and it's clear that that's what we're doing. But I think you're on dangerous ground if you're approaching a friendship as if you are doing that person a favor by being their friend. If I'm your friend, I'm not doing you a favor. I'm getting as much out of it as you are, and you might love me so much that you think you're getting a ton of value. But I can assure you, if you are my friend, I am incredibly grateful to have you in my life. You are a gift to me from God, and I'm so thankful that I get to hang out with you. I'm not doing you any kind of favors.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  The moment I see you see myself as doing you a favor, I I am at risk of resenting you if you do not appreciate me sufficiently, if you do not reciprocate whatever it is I think I deserve for doing you this favor. I tend to get tick for tack and look at things transactionally. Are you providing as much value to me as I am to you? And so you want to be careful with favors. It's not that you can't do favors, but sometimes it's best to reframe this in other terms. And you know, when it comes to the saying yes sort of thing, it's sort of like focus. If you pay attention to everything, you'll focus on nothing. What are the most important things for you to focus on, to learn about, to study, to research, to delve into, to devote yourself to, to spend time with?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  You got to say yes to those things and let that kind of be a boundary for whether or not you can do this other stuff. Oh, I feel so guilty saying no to this person. Oh, they really want to have time with me, but I know what my hell yeses are. I know what my value system is. I know what my purpose and my mission is. And if I say yes to that, I got to say no to this, and I can't afford to say no to this.

• 28:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and that also often comes from that pause we were talking about earlier. When it's constant noise and I'm steeped in everything, I think back to my consumerist days where I had the 300,000 items in my McMansion or big suburban home. I don't know if technically it was a McMansion, but it certainly felt like one, you know, two living rooms and three bedrooms and a full basement and a big attic and all this stuff that was in it, right? And it was noisy. Even though it was tidy, it was noisy. There were so many things that it becomes commonplace and you just get used to it. And then you go to a space that's more calming, more freeing, and you're like, "Oh, I feel like I can breathe here."

• 29:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's what the art of the pause is. It's finding that space and then sitting with it, partnering with that silence.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As opposed to renouncing the silence for the sake of more noise, because the noise is comfortable in the moment. It's not really comfortable, it's just what we're used to. I have tinnitus in my right ear. And some days, it's like, right now, it's pretty loud. It's just a constant "eeehhh," like going crazy, right? And some nights, it'll wake me up. It's so loud. I think there's an alarm going off outside, right? So even when it's silent, when I start noticing this noise. But what other noise do you notice when you turn down the volume on all of the physical noise, the physical clutter, or the calendar clutter, the busyness, "go, go, go, go, go, go"? What is that covering up? What is the stuff covering up? What is the financial clutter covering

• 30:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  up? What's my identity covering up? That mask that we wear, which I want to talk to you about my masks here in a moment. But listeners, how about you? What's the last thing you regretted saying? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, let me give you something, pithy TK, and then I'll hear from you as well. What is the last thing I regret saying? Well, I already gave you my pithy answer, that silences speak louder than bland natterings. During our added value segment today on page three, at the end of the show, I'm gonna play one of my favorite songs from Gary Go. I love this album. It's one of my favorite albums of all time. It came out in 2009, and he has

• 31:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  this song called "So So." And one of the lyrics in there is, "Gaps in my diary speak volumes about me." Wow. Yeah. So you know that like, there's some time period, and this will happen in a novel that you're reading sometimes, all of a sudden, they jump ahead three years, and they're sort of referring back to something that may have happened over the course of the last three years. And like, a lot of stuff happened to the right of the frame. David Foster Wallace, who I was talking about earlier, a lot of his stories, sort of, resolve to the right of the frame. And you get to figure out what the resolution is, in those spaces outside of the book itself.

• 31:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "The gaps in my diaries speak volumes about me," or "My silences often speak louder than any of the words that I'm saying." But I do want to address the question head on, so I wrote this thing for you this morning, TK. "Here's a list of my regrets. I regret every complaint that has ever exited my mouth. I regret all those times I put money in the driver's seat. Every time I've gone into debt. I regret buying things I didn't need, even though I felt like I needed them at the time. I regret every time I've worried about a nonexistent hypothetical fate. Worry has no utility.

• 32:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  To worry is to pray for something bad to happen. I regret every time I've overreacted with anger or frustration. I regret every time I've surrendered to my own impatience. I regret every time I've sacrificed the truth in an effort to trick someone into liking or praising me. I mean, come on. You can't like me if you merely like the mask I'm wearing. Speaking of masks, I regret every time I've let my ego run the show. Every time I've made everything about me, me, me. Look at me, I'm so significant.

• 33:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I regret every time I've clung to a feeling, belief, opinion, identity, or ideology. I regret every time I've judged someone, including those times I've judged myself."

• 33:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I regret every ounce of self-righteousness that has coursed through my veins. I regret every time I've blamed someone for my suffering, my misfortunes, my own mental clutter. I regret every time I've been unkind. Of course, being kind doesn't mean being a pushover or a coward. It is possible to be kind and loving while speaking sternly and directly in a way that is grounded in values. Speaking of which, I regret every time my actions didn't align with my values. I regret the hurry and the self-doubt. I regret the false urgency and the busyness. Most of all, I regret not being devoted to the present.

• 34:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Every moment I stood stuck staring in the rearview or ruminating about the future is a moment wasted. But I also regret clinging to my regrets, so I'm gonna let go of those regrets too. You see, I picked up these regrets, which means I can also choose to set them down. In fact, I've never regretted letting go of something that's in the way. How about you? What do you regret?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  I regret everything I have ever said that I didn't say to God first.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  My corresponding maxim to that would be superficiality is not the result of what we say, but rather of the space from which we say it. When I think about my regrets, it's when I have poured out my heart, or even expressed a casual thought, or an ambition, or some measure of pain, to another human being for the first time. As opposed to taking a walk first, meditating first, taking five minutes of silence first and being present with that thought for myself and articulating that feeling to God and being with it. And then allowing everything, not some things, not most things, not 95% of things,

• 35:44Speaker 02

  everything I say to another human being to be filtered through that process of having communed with God and my deep self about it. When I communicate like that, I don't have any regrets. But when I share a problem or an ambition and it's just raw and unfiltered, I didn't talk with myself about it. You know, imagine if I'm talking about you to someone else first before I talk to you. It just, it just lands differently. But when I talk about it with you first, it's a little bit better. I have that same relationship to me too.

• 36:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was at the grocery store the other day and the guy checking me out was like, he was ringing up the groceries, putting them in the bag. And he goes, so what are you, what are you writing these days? I said, if I tell you, I'll never do it. And because I don't, I don't always know, like this morning, I, I started this essay this weekend and then I finished it this morning in a frantic, like just typing the whole thing out and deleting about two pages of stuff from it, right? And so it was, the space is there as well, like just trying to get it onto the page and then structuring it into, to something. But if I just simply talk about the writing, I did that for a long time. My joke for my writing students is I used to be an aspiring writer.

• 37:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I didn't write very much, but I aspired every damn day to, to write, right? You get aspiration everywhere, but you don't actually end up doing, doing the thing. And that can happen when we're just so quick to say, I'm going to do this. But I like your distinction there because it's not to put a stop to it. What you're saying is I'm going to check in with myself first. I'm going to check in with my higher power first and examine this before I go around announcing the new book that I just decided this morning that I'm going to work on. I will say there is a time to announce things like that where you can have other people sort of be a proxy that holds you accountable. But only after you've checked in and will and found that you're willing to actually drudge through the drudgery to get to the other side of it.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Preston Smiles calls that visceral fact checking. You know, you have something you're gonna say, or something you're gonna do, or someone else says something that you're gonna conform your life to. How does that feel in your body? You know, fact check that with yourself first.

• 38:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I like that. Well, that's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick, for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists. This is something I haven't talked about, but I'm going to finally. The last three years, I spent making a movie. And it is called Food for Humans. It's not a movie from The Minimalists, although I'm in it and TK's in it as well. Paul Saladino, a few years ago, he kept calling me, asking me questions about our Netflix documentaries. And he would ask questions, ask more questions. And I said, what's your film about? And he said, well, it's about simplifying the human diet. Oh, okay. Removing the dogma from this, the judgment, removing the ego.

• 38:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He didn't say it that way, but that's what it felt like to me. Removing the masks and the identities around diet, but also helping people heal. And so, making a documentary about showing people how to heal themselves with food, how to simplify the human diet. It's called Food for Humans, and we're taking it on tour. Tickets are going on sale today, the day this comes out. We're going to five cities. I'll be in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, and here in Los Angeles to end the tour, all in December. These are relatively medium-sized theaters, so they will sell out. So grab your tickets if you're interested. You want to see me, I'll be on stage after the film, talking to Paul Saladino. You can check out the trailer, or there's a teaser trailer up there right now, and

• 39:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  all the tour dates over at foodforhumans.com. One thing that stood out to me, you were going for a walk with Paul a few months ago in Orange County, and your observations around that really like, it cemented what we were doing with this. Can you share a little bit about your experience of walking around the beach with Paul Saladino?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  First of all, we couldn't walk and talk for more than like three to five minutes before, without someone stopping him to tell him what he meant to them. I mean, people would be riding their bikes past him and they'd come to a screeching hall. It would be people with families, it'd be couples walking by. Sometimes people sitting out on the patio, they'd scream his name and they'd jump down and come out and talk to him. And what was interesting about every single person, they did not praise his celebrity status. They did not talk at all about how much they admire him or how brilliant he is. They talked about themselves. Every single person who came up to him was like, oh my gosh, let me tell you how you changed my life.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I was dealing with this issue, my daughter was dealing with this issue. And we started listening to you and we made these adjustments and how we're so much healthier and so much happier. And you know, I talk with this about Paul, how you know, sometimes there's the celebrity that is like a flame and there's the celebrity that's like a mirror. The flame, you look at it and you're just captivated by it, you're in awe of it. But celebrity that's like a mirror, you look at it and you see yourself in a new light. And I think he has that kind of celebrity status like a mirror. The people who love him, love him because they are able to see themselves and their potential differently and act on it as a result. And I thought that was profound. I've been around some celebrities before and I've seen the way people have meltdowns and they marvel in the presence of celebrities.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  But it's always about that person and how honored they feel to be in their presence with him. It was the other way around.

• 41:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, it was not about me, me, me. It's about, and that's what this film is about too. I mean, Paul Saladino is at the center of it, but to me, he's mostly an avatar. He's a really brilliant medical doctor and I saw these several sides of Paul Saladino. There was like the super scientific side, three hour podcast, getting into the molecular structure of saturated fat. And that's fine, but it doesn't really resonate that much with a lot of people. It resonates a little bit with me. I like sort of geeking out with some of that stuff. But I recognize that like, that isn't for the broadest possible audience. What's for the broadest possible audience is what the other thing he does is like his Instagram clips, which billions of views he's received over the years.

• 42:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so many people have found value, as you said, in his Instagram and TikTok and social media clips. And that's a different Paul. There's scientific Dr. Paul, then there's Instagram performative Paul, but then it's like, oh, but I know Paul. There's the human being who is Paul Saladino. Not Paul Saladino M.D. There's this guy. And so the film starts and he's like at his home, just doing stretches and he's surfing and it's stunning. Chris Newhart directed the film from Booklight and it's, we had 87 people work on this film. The cinematographer, Joe Grasso, is phenomenal, but a huge team of people that put together this thing over the last three years. When Paul told me that the thing was about simplifying the human diet,

• 42:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm like, well, hey, do you want to hire me to, I wouldn't do this for anyone else. I don't want to make someone else's film. I enjoy creating the things that we create. But it's something I really believe in and it's something that has changed my life as well. You hear me, I shout from the rooftops about earthing. I shout from the rooftops about Paul Saladino and this sort of this way of eating. But it's also, what I love throughout the film is the dogmas wash away. And you see this with Paul even. He used to be a carnivore and he's not anymore. He used to be a vegan. He's not anymore. It's about understanding what is food for humans and then the rest of it is kind of noise. And how do we say less with our food? It's by getting that noise out of there and retaining that which is fundamental

• 43:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to what it means to be a human being. The movie is called Food for Humans. It's about 90 minutes or so. It'll be out in theaters in December. We're doing five limited edition red carpet events. I hope to see you there. New York, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, LA. Foodforhumans.com to get tickets. You can also preorder the film over there and check out the trailer. Foodforhumans.com. Much more coming up, but first here's a minimalist tip from one of our listeners.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Hi, my name's Ellie and I'm a longtime Patreon subscriber. In the beginning, I had a hard time giving away certain items, especially things like books and cookbooks, worried that I would never find them again, forget about them, and I felt like they were a part of my identity, even though I rarely used or read them. So I created an Amazon wishlist called Minimized, and I looked up and added the items there, making sure they were still in print and available. And I found that if I didn't even want to take the time to put them on the list, it was definitely worth it to let the item go. For the items I did add, the list gave me peace of mind that enabled me to let it go, knowing that if I needed to find the item again, I could.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  What's really great is that I have not purchased a single item off of that list in over seven years. Plus, it's been fun to see a record of some of the items that I have let go. Hope this helps some other people out. Thanks for all the work that you do. Bye.

• 45:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Take a look. It's in a book. Reading, let go. Yes, Ellie, congratulations. Thank you so much for that useful and thoughtful comment. For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back. All right, that's the first 34% of episode 510. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, what's the best way to let other people down?

• 45:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  At what point does money become clutter? How do I organize my past so that I can be more present? Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to the very first episode from 2015. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean on the couch, and Savvy D is on the

• 46:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  board over there. My name's Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message... Let it be this.

• 46:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Love people and use things.

• 46:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.