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.
Yes, the minimalist Joshua Fields Milburn over here.
TK Coleman is over there.
Hello, hello.
TK.
Today we are joined by a world-renowned human behavior expert whose work has been described by his students as an extensive library of wisdom.
Please welcome to the show our new favorite polymath, Dr. John Demartini's here.
Dr. Demartini, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
I've been looking forward to this and before we get into our calls, here's something to chew on.
Last week we did this quote from Charles Bukowski and I was trying to pick between two of them and I said I need to save the second one for Dr John Demartini.
Charles Bukowski said if something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it's your duty to be reduced to ashes by it.
Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.
Dr. Demartini, do these words resonate with you?
They do.
I've been a man on a mission for 54 years.
So I'm a firm believer that there's a teleological, most purposeful and meaningful aspect inherent within our being.
And so when you're doing what you love and loving what you're doing, doing it in a way that serves other people, there's a lot of fulfillment.
And I would say that our purpose is the most efficient and effective way and pathway to fulfill the greatest amount of voids in our life with value.
And so our meaning comes from doing something that's a great service.
TK.
One of the things we often talk about on this show is the void that is often created in our lives.
And we try to fill it, obviously, with stuff.
In our culture, especially.
The average American household, according to the Los Angeles Times, has 300000 items in it.
And yet we always want more, more, more.
And what you're talking about with respect to this void is when that doesn't work, then we turn to something else.
It can be alcohol, it could be sex, it can be any sort of impulse that we try to pacify ourselves with.
And so I do want to dive into that with you today.
Coming up on this episode.
I want to talk to you about loved ones who criticize your minimalist lifestyle.
We've got a question about that.
Ways to reconcile the tension between simple living and purchasing luxury goods.
And how our consumption patterns shape our identities.
All that and much, much more.
Plus on page three.
I plan on coercing TK and Dr. Demartini into a heated debate.
Coercing us into a heated debate.
Let's start with our call.
If you'd like to join the program, we'd love to have you.
Our phone number is 406-219-7839.
Or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to podcast at theminimalists.com.
Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message.
Shout out to our patrons, by the way.
You keep this podcast 100% advertisement free because advertisements suck, y'all.
And so let's start with our callers.
Our first question today is from William.
Hey, Minimalist.
This is William from Charleston, South Carolina.
I'm a more recent Patreon subscriber and I'd be highly interested to know what your opinion is on a certain situation.
What do you feel is the best way to deal with detractors of the minimalist lifestyle and with other improvements that I am making in my life?
It seems to only come from family members and they question about me having some ulterior motive to exercising more or eating better food or actually trying to get seven hours of sleep a night.
And...
It's really odd because I feel that it only comes from people that I love.
Other colleagues, they've actually given me some compliments.
And I just find it kind of strange that trying to live longer and feel better would be a problem, that I've got some nefarious thing that I'm trying to do or trying to get out of it.
I'd really love to hear your advice on how to deal with people like that.
Thank you.
John.
So William is struggling with the people closest to him or criticizing some lifestyle changes that he's made, specifically with respect to minimalism.
But of course, it doesn't always end there.
When we make big changes in our life, the people close to us often feel a sense of loss, I think.
And so when TK and Ryan and I, we talk about minimalism.
The thing we said in our last Netflix film is minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can make room for life's most important things which, it turns out, aren't things at all.
And then a few years ago, TK wrote a book called Emotional Clutter.
And the very first line of that book was minimalism isn't scarcity anymore.
It is abundance healthfully expressed.
And so, with that context around minimalism, what insights do you have for William, who feels like his family members, his loved ones, are criticizing these lifestyle changes?
Well, every human being William, including yourself, has a set of priorities, a set of values that are unique to you fingerprint, specific
Everybody around you is going to project what they believe in their hierarchy of values is important.
And they're gonna basically project onto you what they think will be best for you, which is really what they think is best for themselves.
It's a projection.
And they're gonna demonstrate their love by that mechanism.
And so the question is, are you willing to be yourself in a world that doesn't want you to be?
And is it important enough to be true to yourself and let the voice and the vision on the inside be louder than opinions on the outside?
And know that it's not because they're really criticizing, really.
They're just doing what they think is wise and they don't understand and don't see how what you're doing is helping them get what they believe is valuable.
So you know, if you know something and you learn something, some people are maybe not aware about what you've learned and you want to give yourself permission to pursue what's truly meaningful.
There's nothing unwise about prioritizing what you fill your space with and your time with, and how you exercise and how you do things.
This is wisdom.
This is not something to be disrespected by.
So if they don't understand that, it just may be they haven't gotten the realization you have.
They haven't been listening to the minimalist.
And as a result of it, they may not have that awareness.
If you don't fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, your day is designed to fill up with low priority distractions that don't
Whenever we're living by our highest values, our blood, glucose and oxygen goes into our forebrain and our medial prefrontal cortex, which governs us.
And we become self-governed, self-actualizing, purposeful beings.
The second.
We don't, and we let other people's influence dictate us and try to be second at being somebody else.
Our blood glucose goes into our amygdala and our amygdala wants immediate gratification.
And immediate gratification costs.
That's where the impulses and instincts and the addictions and all the distractions, including consumerism, And so it's really letting us know if we're basically great at what we're being and true to ourself.
It's very common to have people not understand.
To be great is to be misunderstood, according to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
So stick to what you know is working for you. and allow other people to praise or reprimand you.
Praise plus reprimand is really a combination that builds respect.
So if you're not being ridiculed, you're probably not on purpose.
TK, I'm reminded of this lyric from Matt Carney.
He said, I want the highs without the lows.
Well, the addiction to one-sidedness is a source of The Buddha said.
The desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable is a source of human suffering.
And so people are wanting to escape the inevitable and try to get the fantasy.
And the fantasies, the addiction to the fantasies make the nightmares more nightmares.
So I'm a firm believer in embracing the two sides in life and the pursuit of something meaningful, the mean between the pairs of opposite, instead of trying to get one pull of an opposite.
Yeah, yeah.
It's fascinating because before we started recording TK, do you remember the question you asked Dr Demartini about criticism?
Yes.
I said, how do you handle the experience of being misunderstood or unfairly criticized?
Well, I've been working in the field of human behavior for decades. over five decades.
And I discovered something about 26 years ago that whenever somebody is critiquing you somehow, you're above equilibrium and they're bringing you back into equilibrium.
You know, when we exaggerate ourselves, that's inauthentic.
When we're actually being ourselves, we get grateful.
And And we minimize ourselves, that's inauthentic.
And it's basically a feedback to get us back into authenticity.
So criticism is not an enemy.
Criticism is a feedback to let you know if you're not communicating in people's values and they don't understand you, or if you're above equilibrium and a little cocky they bring you back into balance.
And the same thing if you're down, they lift you up and try to get you upward.
So everybody is basically a feedback mechanism to guide you to authenticity and equanimity, where your sustainable, fair exchange is at its maximum.
So I always see that when somebody's criticized me, I look at it and I go.
Whatever I'm judging in them, look within me.
And then, if I find myself not communicating effectively in their values, maybe I can learn more about them and ask them questions so I can effectively do so.
And I may look at where I may be a bit cocky and I need to be a little humbled.
And then I realize that they're my friend.
They're not my enemy.
You can't go through life expecting to be supported without challenge, or have positives without negatives.
Nature has a balance of opposites, a unity of opposites, as Heraclitus used to say.
TK, what do you think it is about the big life changes that we make?
Someone embraces minimalism or they are on a new spiritual path.
They found a religion that resonates with them or they even change their diet.
Or sometimes it's just I want to walk away from the career that I dislike to pursue something that I'm passionate about.
The people around us, especially the people we love and the people we think care about us the most, they're often the most skeptical.
And they make it some of the most challenging moments are these decisions we make.
And then we have to justify it to the people closest to us.
I think it's because the people that are closest to us feel most invested in the outcomes of our lives.
So they feel the risk.
I mean look, if I'm talking to some kid that's not mine.
Yeah, fall in love with whoever you want, man.
Follow your heart.
If you love the girl, be with the girl.
But if it's my son who he brings home, affects me on a day-to-day basis in a way that's not so detached and easy to be casual about.
And so I think we underestimate how much we are characters in other people's story.
And when we make changes in our lives, it challenges them in ways they didn't particularly ask for or expect.
If you and I get together every night after a hard day's work and we eat snacks and watch TV to decompress, And then one day you decide you wanna be healthy and not eat snacks anymore and read books instead.
Well, that means I now have to make a conscious decision to be a snack eater and a TV watcher in a way that I didn't have to before.
You just put a really big spotlight on me that makes me see myself in a different way.
And now I've got all sorts of questions, right?
Are you judging me?
Do you think I'm bad for still eating snacks?
Is this what I still want?
And I didn't ask for this.
And now I'm forced to do all of this self-examination.
And so I think many times when we make changes, especially for the better, it makes the people that are close to us feel challenged and they may react in that way.
A second reason why you may get some resistance is because strangers don't really know you.
They don't have a past to compare your present actions to.
So if you go through your whole life being a yes man and one day you wake up and say I'm going to start saying no,
And some stranger says, hey, man, you want to do this thing that you don't like doing?
You say no.
They say, oh, that's TK, man.
He doesn't play.
He's firm.
But when I go back to my family and I pull that no act, they look at me up and down like please, you're not serious.
I don't believe you at all.
You just spent the last 20 years of your life being a total yes man with no spine and no backbone.
I don't trust you.
Earn my trust.
Earn my respect.
Show up and do what you say.
You're going to do every single day for a long time, in spite of the fact that I have zero faith in you and I predict that you're going to fail.
You do that, people start to respect you.
But it takes time to earn trust and to earn respect.
But when it comes to family, it feels so good when we get it that we often want them to give it to us as an act of charity.
And even though it might be nice if they did, they often don't.
So my advice, I guess, would be to take a note from the comedians.
If a comedian has a roast, where someone is there to make fun of them.
How do you win?
I mean, you lose.
That's the premise, right?
You got to make me feel bad about myself.
But you win by laughing at the joke.
The moment you say hey man, what are you doing?
Making fun of my height, making fun of the size of my nose.
You lost.
Well, actually, I'm not 5'5".
I'm 5'6".
You missed the whole point of the joke here.
You missed the whole point.
You've got to laugh at yourself.
And I think the philosophical version of laughing at yourself is engaging people's criticism not with contention, but with curiosity.
So if you're working out and you're changing the way you eat and you're keeping your life simple, and people say oh, you have some sort of ulterior motive.
Like what?
Like you don't have to, if you say, well, no, I don't.
My motives are good.
My motives are pure.
My motives are holy.
That's like saying, I'm not racist.
I have a black American express car.
You're just making yourself stop.
Don't defend yourself.
You're just making yourself look even worse, right?
Don't do that.
You lose.
So you step back and you say like, what?
I thought I was doing something, you know, for my health.
But what is it about what I'm doing that makes you feel like I have an ulterior motive?
What do you think that ulterior motive is?
Oh, interesting.
I never thought about it that way.
What can they do?
It's like a game of tug of war, where you drop your end of the rope and they have nothing to do other than just stand there swinging a rope, or to let it go to and to engage you in a different way.
Yeah.
Dr. Demartini, I'm reminded here of my daughter just turned 13.
This past weekend, we had her 13th birthday party and she had seven friends over.
Six friends.
I had seven 13-year-old girls doing a sleepover at my house this weekend.
I'm still kind of exhausted by it.
And what I noticed is that several of her friends not all of them, but about half of them have iPhones.
And I was so shocked by this because my daughter doesn't have a phone at all.
And I wasn't even playing.
People call into the show and they're like...
Hey, well, what about my kid?
I'm like, yeah, just don't get him a phone.
Like, what's the problem?
It's easy for me to say that when someone calls into the show.
But when it's my daughter in front of me and she's like, can I get a phone this summer?
Then it's a lot more difficult because this is someone I care about.
And it's easy for me to say no to the person who's calling in who I don't really know.
But it's so much harder when I've got that person in front of me.
And the way that I sort of diffused it was to have the conversation around it.
And it was hey, help me understand.
What will a phone do for you would just be so much more convenient.
Okay, what would be convenient about it?
It was exactly what TK was talking to here about getting curious.
And so I find that, instead of being defensive I've noticed this about your work you tend to get real curious about things.
And sometimes it might even drive people crazy, because you're not willing to just get into a heated argument just for the sake of arguing.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
I'd like to address some things you mentioned.
42 years ago, I noticed that the things I was sometimes saying to other people were for me.
Noam Chomsky said that language and speech wasn't just for communication to others.
Much of what you were saying to them was for yourself.
And I noticed that when I would be praising or criticizing people, I thought about that and I reflected on that.
And then I realized, what am I praising or criticizing about?
And I realized that there were parts of myself I had disowned.
So I went to the Oxford English Dictionary, the biggest dictionary I could find at the time.
And I went through and I underlined every single human behavioral trait in there, 4,628 traits.
And I went to the side on the edge and I wrote out who do?
I know that displays that trait to the fullest degree that I'm aware of.
And I wrote their kind of a name out on the side, really small.
And then I looked at myself and self reflected and I thought where and when do I display or demonstrate this behavior?
And I wrote down where I did it, when I did it, who I demonstrated it to and who perceived me that way.
And I went through all of those.
It took a couple of years to do it.
Was that painful?
No, it was actually tear-jerkingly inspirational when you realize that I had every trait.
Okay.
I was kind and cruel and nice and mean, and positive and negative, and considerate and inconsiderate, and cold and very nice at the level of the soul, as the theologians call it.
Nothing's missing in us.
That's the pleuromic fulfillment.
That's gnosis.
But at the level of the senses, things appear to be missing.
And the things that appear to be missing, which leaves us to emptiness, are all the things we're too proud or too humble to admit that we see in others, inside ourselves.
In Romans 2, 1, it said that beware of judging others because you do the same thing.
It's really true.
So I realized that our reactions to people on the outside are reflections of what we have disowned on the inside.
And so if we're critical of people on the outside, it's reminding us of things we feel ashamed of on the inside.
And we've dissociated from our shame, gone into pride and try to cover it up.
And we resist them because they're reminding us of something we're actually trying to fight, run away from within ourselves.
So when I went through there and owned all of them, I noticed that when people had praise or reprimand for me, I was less touched.
I was in the middle path, as the Buddha said, less attached to their responses.
And then I was more grateful because they were testing whether or not I'd owned those parts of myself and not in denial of those parts.
And that was revealing.
I also realized after doing and developing a method for as a result of that, I have people coming in and they go.
You know, my mother was never there for me, or my father did this, or they want to run a narrative and be victims of history instead of masters of destiny.
And so they run these narratives and I ask them to go and now do the reflective awareness.
So go, let's itemize what this individual has done or not done.
And let's go find out where we've done it.
Because otherwise we're a moral hypocrite projecting onto them the parts we're disowning.
And I've done this on about 200,000 people and I haven't found one that they couldn't own.
And so when people actually go and self-reflect instead of project, they end up having an insight instead of an outside.
And instead of blaming things on the outside, they come to a realization of thank you on the outside.
The criticizer is giving me insights about the way I'm communicating.
And In every family dynamic, there's pairs of opposites.
If I ask people, I've done it by the thousands, I said, how many of you have a brother or sister?
It's kind of like your antiparticle.
And they all go, yeah.
And so they're going to have a different set of values.
And maximum growth and development occurs at the border of support and challenge, the praise and the reprimand.
We have the parasympathetic for the praise and the sympathetic nervous system for the reprimand.
We need both to maximally grow.
If we get prey without predator, we get fat and gluttonous and we end up losing fitness.
If we get the predator without the prey, we get emaciated and starving and lose fitness.
But if we get the praise and the reprimand, the supporter and the challenger and the pair of opposites, the people who are similar and different, we get maximum growth and development.
So I'm more about owning all of it. and having reflective awareness.
You simplify your life.
And I really believe that minimalism is actually authentic, because what it is is it's basically shedding the reactions that we feel we have to do to fit in instead of to stand out.
And being second to being somebody else instead of first being ourselves is not where the power is.
We want to make a difference.
We can't make a difference fitting in.
We make a difference standing out.
And we're going to be ruffling up feathers.
We're going to be an unborrowed visionary if we do.
We're going to end up being ridiculed and opposed and everything else, because we're forcing people to face the parts they've disowned.
And so that's not a terrible thing.
That's a growth.
Quick observation and then question.
As you were talking about how criticism is a necessary component of optimal growth, you made me think of the idea that criticism is kind of like a vaccine for self-condemnation, right.
Right.
You gotta introduce the thing that you wanna protect people from, because by having it in a healthy dose you build up resilience towards it.
In a similar way, criticism destroys us when we don't have that resilience.
But when you get the right amount of it, It makes you strong.
So my question for you is a lot of advice that comes to people that deal with these kinds of situations is hey man, get away from those folks that don't get you and that don't affirm you.
Put yourself around people that love you for who you are.
How can you discern the healthy dose of criticism that you need in order to have optimal growth?
Well, when somebody's criticized me, they're unaware of how I, in my actions, are helping them fulfill theirs.
So, because they don't, they're just a human being.
There's no somebody, there's no critical people out there or praising people out there, just individual human beings.
An individual means an undivided being who play out various personas in different settings.
If you support my values, I can be nice as a pussycat.
You challenge my values, I can be mean as a tiger.
So if I run into somebody that's mean as a tiger, that just means it's Somehow the way I'm presenting, the way I am and the way I present myself or communicate is challenging their values or something's challenging their values at that moment.
That doesn't mean that they're that way all the time and that's who they are.
That's just a label that I've projected onto them.
So I find out what is interesting to them, what's important to them.
And in the process of doing that, when I go and find out what's important to them and then I help them do that, they open up and all of a sudden they come on the other side.
So it's a challenge and an opportunity to find out how to communicate more effectively with them.
It's also an opportunity to make sure I'm not cocky.
And you know, I tell people if I'm in a setting and I walk up and you say oh, Dr Demartini, you're amazing or something.
They praise me.
If I go and humble myself lower than they want to put me and go?
Well, you know, talk to my girlfriend.
She has a different view and minimize myself that way.
They'll keep lifting me up.
But if I say, well, it's about time you realize how amazing I am.
I'm more amazing than your mind, feeble mind can comprehend.
Yeah.
They'll immediately criticize me on the spot.
So they're basically homeostatic mechanisms trying to guide me to authenticity.
If you get really cocky and arrogant and puff yourself up and project onto them what you think is important narcissistically, they're there designed to humble you, to bring you back into equilibrium.
And if you are supporting them and lifting them up the other side, they're going to play the other side.
So I don't like to label people one-sided.
I think that the distortions and generalizations of the amygdala rob us from seeing the magnificence of who they individually are when we see them through the eyes of love.
And I think a good qualifier here, and I love to know if you agree with this.
But when someone criticizes and we look at that as an opportunity to kind of get back to authenticity, not be too high up it doesn't necessarily mean that the critic is speaking truth.
No, they're bringing us back into balance.
Our addiction to praise is what makes criticism hurt.
There you go.
Our addiction to praise.
Anytime we're addicted to support, the challenger hurts.
If you're addicted to ease, difficulty hurts.
You're addicted to protection, the aggressor hurts.
You're addicted to innocence, the perpetrator hurts.
But those are there to try to help us bring ourselves back into balance.
And because we become juvenily dependent on what we become addicted to and we become precociously more independent, more entrepreneurial-like when we get the challenger.
You don't find entrepreneurs coming from overly protected settings.
They come from the challenges in life.
So, if you want to grow, maximum growth and development occurs in the balance of support and challenge, praise and criticism.
So I don't have the fantasy of trying to be more praised and criticized and avoid people and seek people.
I find myself realizing that there's a pair of opposites and they're simultaneously there.
And 1897 talked about simultaneous contrast, the unity of opposites that Heraclitus described or Hegel described.
If we're able to see both sides simultaneously, we're untouched by the illusions of one-sidedness.
And it's like a magnet.
If you see one side of the magnet, look for the other side.
Stabilize yourself instead of polarize yourself.
That's so good.
That's good.
We've got a lot more to talk about.
Real quick, let me do a quick right here, right now.
Actually, you know what?
William, thank you for your question.
I'd love to send you a copy of Very, Very Simple.
It's 12 Tools for a Simple Life.
It's the audio book that TK and I recorded.
Professor Sean just turned it into a beautiful print paperback book as well.
So if you want to check that out, you can find it on Amazon.
But William, I'd be happy to send you a copy of that.
It's also available as an e-book or you can get the audio book.
Find all of the details at very, very simple dot com.
We got a lot more coming up here, but let's end page one with a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.
And I'm going to talk to you about it after we hear from Lucas.
Hi, Joshua, Ryan and TK.
My name is Lucas and I'm calling from New York City.
I've been listening to the minimalists for around four years now, and your work genuinely changed my relationship with objects, identity and what I pay attention to in life.
I think there is something deeply misunderstood about luxury.
Most people think luxury is about objects, the watch, the car, the suit, the table reservation.
But real luxury has never been about object itself.
It has always been about the relationship between the person and the object.
I realized this recently while watching hundreds of people line up outside of a Swatch store in Soho waiting for the new Audemars Piguet collaboration release.
At first glance it looked exciting democratic, even a luxury icon becoming accessible to ordinary people.
But the longer I looked at the line, the more uncomfortable I became.
Not because people wanted to watch, but because of what the line represented psychologically.
You see, luxury brands understand something ancient about human beings.
People do not only buy products, they buy proximity to identity.
What people truly want is the feeling, the environment, the belonging.
You see, there is a difference between appreciating luxury and emotionally needing luxury to repair your identity.
And I think symbols without deeper grounding can sometimes create emotional confusion about your identity and self-worth.
The danger appears when people begin using symbols to negotiate self-worth.
At that point, the object no longer serves the person.
The person begins serving the object.
Real freedom is different.
Real freedom is being able to move between simplicity and luxury without attaching your identity to either.
It is when luxury stops being proof of your value and just becomes another part of your life.
Anyway, your work definitely shaped the way I think about these things.
And I just wanted to share that reflection with you.
Thank you for everything you put out to the world.
Dr. Demartini, this is an astute observation from Lucas here.
Lovely statement.
Lovely.
What's the relationship between our consumption patterns and our so-called identities?
Well, in 1978, I asked myself a question.
Why do some people walk their talk, some people live their life?
Why do some people do what they say, others don't?
Why do some people flourish and others flounder?
Why do some people feel inspired and some people live in quiet lives of desperation?
I identified that the human drive, the drive for human beings is their values, what they value.
And I asked, where'd those values come from?
And they come from judgments.
There's multi-generational epigenetic origins, there's gestational and there's also postpartum judgments.
And anything that we've associated a pain or a pleasure to and seen only one side of, not both sides of, Occupy space and time in our mind, in our hippocampus, and get assigned positive or negative in our amygdala and create these seeking and avoiding mechanisms.
And we lose our identity through those distractions.
But what is really really really highest on an individual's value is where they're most integrated.
Whenever you're living according to priority, which is really the simplistic pathway, your blood glucose and oxygen, as I said earlier, goes into the forebrain.
Where you're more objective, it's more integrated.
And there you're not distracted by those disowned parts that from your judgments.
And so when people are attaching to something they think is overpriced, like buying some consumer item, they're actually buying something that is going down in value and they're devaluing themselves and thinking that brand that's been marketed is going to make them feel temporarily high.
And it's a retail therapy, which is short-lived.
Anytime a bank gives you a credit card and you get a pleasure of retail therapy, and then, a month later, you get the pain of the payment and you separate pleasure from pain.
You activate the amygdala and become more addicted to the pleasures of purchasing.
And so you get caught in this idea, and then they feed you the fantasy of the brand and you become that you think is an identity.
And you're subordinating to that identity out there instead of honoring your own.
And I'd say I'd rather go and find out the people that you admire and the things you admire on the outside through reflective awareness.
Where do I have already that in my life?
It's not missing.
It's just, we're not recognized.
And if we go there and think that that's going to make us whole, we're missing out on the wholeness we already have.
So that's why prioritizing your life is significant, because whatever is highest on your value is your ontological identity revolves around, your teleological purpose revolves around and the epistemological area of mastery and expertise revolve around it.
So when you live by priority and get true to what's truly important to you not what other people expect you to do, but what's truly important to you you're less likely to be a consumer of distractions and be buying things that are basically transient, things that get you in debt, that make you think you're going to be better off with.
And that's why I believe that what you're saying on the show is very important, because people get attached to things instead of inspired by being and being who they really are and contribute.
If I ask people, what is the most fulfilling moments of your life?
What I've observed is that people, when they're doing something that they feel inspired to do from within an intrinsic drive and they're doing it in a way that's making a difference in other people, that's when they have the most fulfillment.
The transientness of buying some item is transient.
Hours later or days later, it's forgotten.
And now you've got the debt.
So now you're putting yourself into the pain separating from the pleasures.
If you're going to buy these so-called luxury items, Be intelligent.
I know many, many wealthy people, and the ones that are doing it, are more cautious about blowing money on foolish things.
They're usually more aware.
They prioritize what they spend their money on, prioritize what they do, prioritize who they are associating with.
And those are people that are meaningful.
They're not about attaching to avoidance and seekings.
They're more likely to focus. on what's most meaningful.
Hubert Hal Bancroft, in his book of wealth, said that there were three things common to the wealthiest people in the world.
One that they felt by divine providence or human sovereignty.
They were called and destined to serve vast numbers of people.
They felt it was a fulfillment to make a difference in people's lives.
Number two is that they felt that they were there to invest in quality, not in the sense of owning something to show off quality, but to invest in people who are really inspired by what they do and are great at what they do, and invest in that.
Because if you reward people that are doing something inspiring, you create a ripple effect and give permission for other people to do excellence.
And the third thing is that they had transcended the attachments to financial means.
They were not attached to things.
They realized that money was simply a means of sustainable, fair exchange which allowed people to be authentic.
So those are levels of wealth.
And luxury comes from lux, which meant light.
And luxury meant the one who is enlightened enough and not having disowned parts.
So if we're infatuating with somebody and admiring somebody because they have something, we're blind to the downsides of what they have.
And if we're resenting somebody, we're blind to the upsides.
Anything we're blind to and ignorant of and unconscious of is we're in the dark of.
And so anytime we have pure reflective awareness and realize there's nothing to seek or nothing to avoid,
There's nothing to, I got to be like them or they've got to be like me.
We're just present and we're honoring them and honoring ourselves.
The namaste of the Indians.
When we are there, we're more likely to be present and purposeful and patient and profoundly empowered in our life.
So I always say that anything that you think you're missing, you're not.
Look again, look for the form of what you think is missing, what form it's already in.
It's not missing.
I learned it when I was going down the Udumbamba River on a little raft.
And I came across two little boys running naked on the side of the river.
And they were running with a stick.
And I got off on the river on the side and I followed him into the jungle.
And I came across this little lean-to in a complete naked family.
And I watched these little boys playing with a stick in this mud and they were just having this great time with a stick in this mud.
And I thought if I was to give my son a stick in some mud, he would think that that's because he's expected so much he can't appreciate.
Hedonic adaptation automatically calms down the highs and brings it back down to a set point.
What brand of stick is this that you got me?
Yeah, what brand of stick?
I need a Nintendo or something.
But I realized that it's a relative thing.
We have what is called hedonic adaptation.
So anytime we go up, we come back down, humble ourself.
We go down, we go up.
We also have a moral licensing effect.
The moment we do something we're proud of, which is an inauthentic expression of aggrandizement, we give ourselves permission to do something we're ashamed of, to humble ourselves.
We've got a built-in homeostatic set point inside our brain.
And the moment we do something we're ashamed of, we go and give ourselves permission to do something we're proud of.
If we go out and work out and get our abs looking good, we give our permission to go and eat more and drink more.
If we go out and overeat, then we give ourselves permission to go and fast and go and work out the next day.
So we have a homeostatic mechanism to try to get us to authenticity.
And I'd rather help people listen to their wisdom within instead of the opinions, without to help them master that awareness, so nothing's missing in their life.
Nothing's missing.
That has come up with both questions we've had here so far.
And I think there's this wisdom in here, because when nothing's missing, then you can still show up and enjoy the so-called luxury.
How are you going to have fulfillment when you keep comparing yourself to others?
You know, if we compared our daily action to what we value most...
Instead of comparing our daily actions to what others are doing.
Being second at being somebody else is not as powerful as being first at being ourselves.
So I'm not interested in my comparison to other people.
I learned from Phelps, who got many, many medals, that if he looked on a guy to the left or right when he's about to dive into the water, he automatically lost.
He focused on his mission and didn't compare himself to others, and focused on his mastery and skill of doing what he's trained to do his mission instead of distracting himself by comparisons.
And a lot of our non-minimalistic effects are a result of our comparison to other people instead of comparing our own actions to our own dreams.
That's so good.
And, by the way, that can include the comparison trap, can include the judgmental comparisons we make between our supposedly enlightened selves and those who love these luxurious things right.
How you talked about there's nothing to avoid.
I walk past and I see these people standing in a line.
Oh, what superficial things are they waiting for?
These fools.
Yeah, what superficial reasons underlie this vice of persistence?
But Just because I might judge myself that way if I were in the line doesn't mean that the other people are to be judged that way.
I know people who will stand outside of GameStop three hours before the thing opens.
I've got friends who've done these types of things because this video game is gonna be there.
But, more importantly, they know all these other people are gonna be there in line.
And they wanna talk like, hey man, you into this too?
And they're not seeking proximity to a false identity.
What they're seeking is genuine human connection and they know their people.
They know how their tribe functions.
And they want to situate themselves in those spaces.
So look, sometimes the people who go on the red carpet are superficial as they seem to be.
But sometimes they're more sophisticated than we might be in our pursuit of the things that we love.
And so it truly is the case that there's room for it all.
And even people who might seem to be unenlightened, people who might seem to be non-minimalist, they might be enlightened and minimalist in a way that just looks different from our way.
Nicely said.
I have people who come to some of the seminars that I've done over the years.
And they say, my husband, he's not growing.
I'm going to personal development programs and I'm growing, but they're not growing.
And I said there was a woman that came to me and she said she says I'm growing spiritually, but my husband he's not.
He's a materialist, he's not a spiritualist.
And I go, do you work?
And she goes, no, my husband does.
I said, and does he have a company?
Yes.
And he says, yes, he has 200 employees.
And so he's going to work.
He's giving 200 people an opportunity to raise a family, paying taxes and things of this nature, but he's not spiritual.
Well, he's inspired by his career.
I said, you're not more spiritual.
You're not less spiritual.
You're spiritual according to your values and he's spiritual according to his.
And you partly depend on his because you're not working.
So the meditations and the retreats you're doing are partly because he's going to work.
So what you're saying, I think, is really important.
All of it is included.
It's wise to be inclusive instead of exclusive, not having group out group biases, but to have a wholeness.
Our amygdala automatically distorts things in order to capture prey and to avoid predator.
Our heart and our wisdom of our more advanced part of our brain sees things as they are, which we call self-actualization.
And there, there's nothing missing.
And so.
But minimalism is not because of trying to, you know, get rid of things, or I gotta have only this.
It's the transcendent to the attachment of all those forms and allowing yourself to let he said it, the gentleman that called in allowing yourself to have all the above, to move in and out of it without the attachment to it.
And there's a lot of freedom from that.
Resilience and adaptability.
The inability to have resilience and adaptability we call stress.
Stress is the perception of loss of something you seek and the perception of gain of something you avoid.
When you have resilience and more neutral and more objective, you are able to allow the flow and allow things to come and go without so much attachment.
You can have it, but you're not attached to it.
You can be without it.
You're not attached to it.
You're adaptable.
And this is where the person has the most power, the ability to be adaptable.
I do want to talk to you a bit more about the illusion of loss and gain.
We'll get to that coming up on page two.
By the way, Lucas, thank you so much for that insight.
I thought it was beautiful.
Beautiful.
And then when we shun that, then I get attached to the identity of I'm not the consumer, but it's the same sort of thing.
It's just the other pole of these polar opposites.
Some of the people, when they get addicted to the consumption, the pleasure they get out of the temporary high becomes the pain of the debt that they get in.
Absolutely.
And so what they're doing is they're not putting those together.
Pardon me for this tangent, but I just popped in my head.
I asked a woman one time at a dinner, I said, I see you have this very expensive Chanel bag.
And she said, yes.
And I said, and what do you do?
She says, well, I work for Saks and I sell things and I get a little discount on it.
And I said just out of curiosity, I'm gonna ask you some really uncomfortable questions if you don't mind how much the bag costs.
And she said, so many thousands of dollars.
I said and if you were to take all the money you've ever made in your entire life, how much do you think that is?
And she calculated that about $1.3 million in her whole life.
She was 42.
And I said, and out of all that, your net worth of that right now, what exactly is it?
She says, well, I have about $800 to my name, everything.
I said, so you've saved or invested $800 out of 1.3.
So I calculated the percentage of that.
And then I took that percentage and I said, now you took and bought a $5,000 bag.
And on the percentage of that means you had to have earned a lot of money in order to have that bag.
Based on the way you manage money.
Your hierarchy of values dictates how you manage money.
And then I said and the investment, if you were to allow that to compound and grow, that would have bought you a bunch of bags in the future.
And I just really, really made her uncomfortable making her look at that.
The following day she decided that she was gonna start prioritizing her purchases and start putting a little bit of money into investments and have it work for her.
So she's not the slave of money, she's the master of money.
And then allow her money to make the purchases as she goes along.
So she had a real realization.
And about three years later, she asked if she could take me to dinner again.
And she said, she says, I'm now, my immediate gratifications have calmed down.
My self-worth is stabilized.
And I'm now realizing how vulnerable I was to outside influence of other people and sales.
And I realized that I was letting my impulses and instincts run my life.
And now I'm actually more stable, more fulfilled and having money work for me today.
And I don't feel like a slave.
And I was really desperate to find a rich man.
And now I'm realizing that I want to enrich myself so the man's not having to have a dependent but is able to have a partner.
And so she had a whole new perspective on it because I kind of pushed her button one night.
And you found that perspective just based on you were able to zoom out in a way that maybe she wasn't able to.
She was not able to see it.
She was trapping herself in a credit card debt, hoping to find some rich guy which has got its pains, who may also be trapped.
Right.
And she thought that that was the path.
And that was when she realized that there was a lot of emptiness in that and pursuing that which is unobtainable.
There's a lot of emptiness and yet nothing is missing.
Exactly.
If anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, just like Lucas, you can send a voice memo to podcast at theminimalistscom so we can feature your voice on the show.
Up next, page two and page three.
We've got a lot to cover.
But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break.
We'll be right back.
Wow.
All right, y'all.
That is the first 33% of episode 543.
We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition.
It was over two hours with Dr John Demartini, which includes answers to a bunch more questions.
Like, Kathy is struggling to let go of sentimental items like holiday decorations, her children's books and toys and an overwhelming number of photographs,
This is one of the best answers I've ever received about sentimental items.
It was so deep and it's from a perspective that we often cover, but he covered it in a completely different manner.
Also, the question is, How might clutter be a compensation for your unfulfilled highest values?
And how does pride fuel your insecurities?
We'll also talk about how to let go of resentment.
Plus a million more questions and simple living segments on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon.
The link is down in the description.
When you subscribe, you can listen to our private episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.
Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode from 2015.
Big thanks to Dr. John Demartini for joining us today.
You can check him out at drdemartini.com, and his YouTube channel is at Dr. Demartini.
We'll put links to If you leave here with just one message, let it be this.
Love people.
And use things.
Because the opposite never works.
Thanks for listening, y'all.
We'll see you next time.
Peace.
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.
