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.
You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and T .K.
Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.
Yes, thank you, Malabamma.
Hello, everybody. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about the best way to say no to people she loves.
And then we've got a question about the benefits and downsides of wasting time.
That's followed by our Right Here Right Now segment and a beautiful listener tip for you.
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Let's start with our callers, if you have a question or comment for our show, we would love to hear from you.
Give us a call. our phone numbers, 406 -219 -7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to podcast at theminimalists .com.
Our first question today is from Kristen.
Hi, Josh and TK, it's Kristen Sigler with Minima.
I have a question about boundaries and generosity that was inspired by your recent episode about holiday anxiety.
It was a question TK asked Josh towards the end.
And so I consider myself to be a fairly generous person, but I'm not necessarily generous in the way that others expect me to be.
And so sometimes that friction can cause some internal struggle or guilt and for example, this past week and a family member asked me at the last minute if I could go pick something up for them.
and I could have, however, it would have seriously disrupted my day.
I'm someone who needs a lot of white space, a lot of rest, a lot of me time.
So that similar to what Josh has said, when I say yes to something, I'm really there.
I don't like to do things that I don't want to do, but I will do difficult things, and I don't want to do things and then resent the person later.
but sometimes this leaves me feeling or questioning am I selfish am I generous enough and if a family or loved one were in a serious crisis state or truly needed something for me like no questions asked I'll drop everything and prioritize that need but this particular Aaron was not that and I just had all of this like back and forth in her dialogue for like an entire day about it.
So I would love to hear you all talk about, you know, the boundaries versus generosity versus selfishness and as selfishness even bad if it's not hurting anyone else.
Thanks for your time.
There's a whole lot to touch on here.
First thing I want to note, Kristen, that slight echo in your home, which your home is really beautiful.
She's gonna be on our podcast in about five or six weeks at this point.
We have this five -part clutter series that's coming up in two weeks.
We're gonna reveal some secrets about living room clutter and garage clutter.
Actually, we're just gonna talk to you about some of these problem areas in our homes.
Basement clutter and living room clutter and bedroom clutter and cabinet clutter.
And Chris is gonna join us for one of those episodes.
She runs an organizing business called Minima, and this question about boundaries and anxiety and selfishness and generosity.
There's so much here.
But the first thing that I want to point out is a slight echo in your home.
And that is the sound of simplicity.
You've gotten rid of the excess around you.
And now what you're doing is obviously you're looking inward and you're saying, oh, you know what?
There's a little bit of doubt here.
There's a little bit of grief here.
Am I being generous enough?
Are my boundaries appropriate?
And if not, is that what's causing my anxiety?
So TK, I'd like to start here.
When is it selfish to say no to the people I love?
We have to start with a distinction between selfishness and self -interestedness.
Self -interestedness is the state of considering one's self, factoring in one's own pursuit of pleasure and one's own desire to avoid pain in every decision that you make.
I would contend that it is impossible for us to not be self -interested.
In everything that you do, you must factor in how much time is it gonna take?
How is it gonna affect me?
Is this feasible and sustainable for me?
How does this feel for me?
Nothing is wrong with self interestedness.
You ought to always consider how the decisions you make to help others affect you.
Selfishness I would define as the consideration or pursuit of one's own self interestedness at the expense of others.
It's when you do things like violate another person's individual rights or step on another person's back, or you mistreat them you failed to preserve their dignity in some kind of way because you are exalting your rights and your needs above the value of another person and you're being inconsiderate.
And so how do we know when we are being selfish versus when we are not?
There's no easy formula but there are some guidelines that we can think about to help us within these moments where we either feel internally guilty or externally pressured.
One guideline is to ask yourself, what are you saying yes to?
It's not enough to know what you're saying no to because no is always a means to an end.
Even if you haven't thought specifically about what yes you're protecting with that no. No is just a way of saying, I cannot or will not do this thing you're asking of me because I prefer to be available to something else.
It may be rest. It may be thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your day.
It may be a birthday party.
it may be a job and when you don't know what you're saying yes to it's much easier for you to be manipulated because you tend to say no with less conviction less certainty and with only a sense of what the other person is thinking about you but it's when you say yes i am saying yes to this that you can speak with conviction it's one of the reasons why most people who struggle with saying no do not experience that struggle when the reason they have to say no is because of their job because it's a yes that they feel so confident in and they're so sure that other people have to accept it that even the person that's completely
scared of saying no has no problem saying, sorry, I gotta go to work.
And you gotta get to that place where you have that same confidence with the other things that you do.
And if you don't have that confidence, well, why is that?
So what are you saying yes to is my first guideline?
I'll pause here. Well, I think the, what are you saying?
Yes, too, is important because even the work thing, The culturally accepted norms that okay, everyone's fine with that.
Now imagine if I'm walking past a swimming pool and I look over TK's in there and he's drowning in the swimming pool.
Say, I would help you, man, but I've gotta go to work.
We know in that context, that doesn't work because there is something that is truly more important than me being on time for work.
And you would do that, by the way, even if your boss said to you, you're fired the next time you're late.
Without a doubt. Yeah, and I'd feel good about being fired there, right?
And then I'd be living in your 400 square foot apartment with you because I don't have a job anymore.
And I would say thanks for not being me, or I'd be dead.
Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I think about Anthony D 'Amello and what he talks about.
He says, saying no is a way of being precise with your love.
Another thing he often says, I've heard him say this a few times, It is a joy to say no to someone.
It is a joy to tell someone no, because he knows what he's saying yes to.
And sometimes you're saying yes to a specific thing.
No, I have a track meet at that time.
Or no, I have to be at work.
Or no, I already have a hike planned with some friends of mine.
Or no, I got to go to my daughter's soccer game.
And those are all acceptable.
But sometimes what you're saying yes to is your own peace.
And that's harder to explain to someone.
Originally I wanted to title this episode, Don't Explain Yourself.
We're gonna do a separate episode about why you don't have to explain yourself in these situations.
It's really freeing though, to realize that I can simply say, no, I don't have to explain myself.
I think about Osho and what he talks about what any time you explain yourself, you're explaining the love away.
Your explanation gets in the way of love because if someone loves you, They simply take no for an answer.
Now, if you feel compelled to explain yourself, that's fine, but you don't have to explain yourself.
We go to the generosity part of this.
Generosity can be a sneaky thing.
I think about our friend Dave Ramsey, he says, no one regrets being more generous.
No one's ever regretted being generous yesterday.
But it depends on what you mean by being generous, right?
If being generous is self -harming, because you're afraid of looking selfish, then that's actually not a type of generosity.
That is almost a type of martyrdom in a way.
Yeah. That's exactly right.
And what happens is you end up resenting people later on in a way that might negate or cancel out the so -called positive effects of your act of generosity, because that generosity had so many unwritten rules and expectations attached to it that you weren't forthcoming about.
And so this leads me into a second guideline, which is what are the conditions that define your yes?
So when you say no to someone, what would it take you to say yes?
I think this is important because even though on the surface, it often appears to be the case, oh, nothing can make me say yes to that.
There are very few things like that.
Usually these are like deeply seated moral issues, as matters of principle, but for the most part, there's a yes built in there somewhere.
So if I have to go to work and you're like, hey, wanna come play video games with me?
I could say, well, there's nothing that would make me do that but if you were like, sure, how much does your job pay you?
I'll give you a year salary in one check right now, if you come play video games with me.
I'm out. Sign me up.
Right, I'm out. I'm so in, let's go.
I'm so in. Now it may seem unrealistic to expect that that's what's going to happen but that's not what I'm preaching.
I don't think you should expect that that's what's going to happen, but I think it is a helpful exercise to always know what are the conditions that would allow me to say yes to what you're offering, because there is always some kind of cost in the things that you do for others, and when you think about what the conditions are that would motivate you to say yes, it allows you to invite other people to take some ownership in the things they ask of you.
And oftentimes we stress ourselves out unnecessarily by saying yes to other people, without giving them any opportunity to take ownership in what they say they want from us.
It's the old phrase, help me help you.
Yes, I can do it, but I need to use your car.
Yes, I can do it, but I need you to understand I won't be able to be there for it.
It'll have to be 4 .30.
Yes, I can do it, but I need you to pay for gas.
Yes I can do it, but not today.
It'll have to wait until Saturday.
Yes, I can do it, but if I'm gonna get my time to that, then I need you to commit to doing this because that's what it's taking me away from.
And now it gives people the opportunity to see the trade -offs that are involved and they might be more empathetic, but more importantly, it allows them to make a more honest request because sometimes when we ask things of people, we don't know what the costs are to them.
We just know what the benefits are to us.
And it's always easy to look at another person's life and say, it's probably easy for them to give me what I want.
But when you invite other people to participate in those costs, it helps them to be more honest and it helps you to be more convicted and how you feel about it?
Being generous isn't always easy, but it doesn't ever feel like an oblig, as soon as it feels like an obligation to me, it removes that blessing from the thing.
It doesn't feel like I'm giving a gift anymore.
It feels like I'm showing up because I have to be there, I have to do this.
This is what I'm supposed to do.
You should be more generous.
I remember, about a decade ago, we were working on this charity project with the minimalists And I was talking to a family member about it.
And what are you working on LayLAAS, we're doing this really great philanthropic thing.
We're building some wells here.
And they're like, well, yeah, that's what you should be doing.
And it just took all of the air out of the room.
I said, what do you mean, that's what I should be doing?
I get to do it, I don't have to do it.
Right? I'm being generous because it's something I want to do.
And is it in line with my own self -interest in some way?
Sure, I get some good feeling out of it.
that's not completely altruistic.
But also, as soon as I feel like, oh yeah, this is what I, I guess I should be doing this, it really makes it feel like it's not generous anymore.
It feels like an obligation.
I'm thinking about back to that swimming pool that I see you in and you're drowning, right?
Well, what if I can't swim?
Am I generous if I jump in there with you and then I try to save you even though I can't swim?
No, I'm going to make the problem worse.
And I think that maps onto Kristen's question really well because you may not have enough to give here.
You may not be able to swim in every area in which you want to help someone, right?
And that makes you, well, it makes you look generous, but you might be harming yourself by being generous.
Any time that's happening, it actually harms you because you're gonna feel like you want to be less generous in the future.
That's exactly right.
Hey, I'm gonna say two more things more succinctly here.
Just a couple of quick guidelines.
Number one, take the time and do the work to develop a code of ethics.
I think this is a kind of ancient art form.
I think most people inherit some basic views about right and wrong, but we often determine what we feel guilty about and not guilty about based on social approval and how other people react to us.
Philosophical questions like the age -old trolley problem or even questions like hypotheticals, what would you do if you saw a drowning man but you knew you would lose your job to save him.
These are valuable questions not because these hypotheticals are likely to occur, but they force you to think about your underlying moral principles.
And all too often we do our thinking in the heat of the moment, about what we're gonna feel guilty about, and that makes us subject to manipulation and misdirected guilt.
We need to do the work of asking ourselves, what are those moments in life, categorically speaking, principally speaking, where it is actually a good thing for me to sacrifice myself and suffer for the wellbeing of another person.
And when we encounter situations where someone is saying, hey, I need you to do this for me, we should have done some thinking in that moment about is this the kind of moment where I believe it is a morally good thing for me to lay my life on the line to help the other person.
The last thing is whatever it is you use to determine your code of ethics, it cannot be the disapproval of other people.
No matter what you choose to do in life, there is someone somewhere with a different code of ethics who will think you are evil and try to make you feel guilty for that.
Right. And talk about a waste of now if we're constantly trying to appease others to show how generous we are.
So they think we're generous, they feel that I am generous.
And Kristen even said this, she said, I generally think of myself as a generous person, but then maybe someone else doesn't think I'm generous and therefore I don't feel as generous as a result.
it makes it much more difficult to say no, but if you're saying yes out of this sense of sort of pious or self -righteous obligation, that is in and of itself a waste of now.
Getting back to the drowning TK analogy, I can't save a drowning person if I myself cannot swim.
And so what are these areas in which you can't swim, Kristin?
Maybe you're an extreme introvert like me, And then going to networking events each night and volunteering at them may not be the best thing for you, may not be the best way to be generous.
Whatever way that is in front of you right now is one way to be generous with others but it is not the only way.
In fact, if it is a way to be generous but you're unable to swim in those waters you might be doing the opposite of being generous.
You might be trying to look generous but harming yourself in the process.
Speaking of being generous, we have a dozen free resources over on The Minimalist website.
You can download them for free, just head on over to theminimalists .com, click resources there at the top.
Everything from our 30 -day Minimalism Game calendar, which you can print out and then play the 30 -day Minimalism game with your friends and family and coworkers.
Or maybe it's our free rule book, It's 16 Rules for Living With Less.
or TK's free ebook, Emotional Clutter, you can download that at TheMinimalists .com.
Also this weekend in Santa Barbara, today we're releasing the last 30 tickets.
We set aside a few tickets for our next Sunday symposium.
We do these live events in Southern California once a month, the final Sunday of each month, and Kristen's gonna be in town next month.
Maybe we can get her to join us in Orange County when we're doing our first Orange County Sunday symposium at the end of February.
Kristen, let me know if you want to join us at Sunday Symposium at the end of February, and then we'll be back in Los Angeles in March. Now, these events always sell out and so if you go there and the tickets are gone, go ahead and put your name on the wait list because here's a secret.
Sometimes people can't use their tickets.
We released a bunch of tickets on the wait list last time.
You have 24 hours to claim those tickets and so if you're unable to get a ticket because they've already sold out, these are free tickets by the way.
These events are free to the public, but seats and space are limited there at these small venues.
They hold just a couple hundred people, and so we always have these large wait lists.
Get on the wait list. We love to give you tickets to Sunday Symposium.
sundaysymphosium .com is the website.
We hope to see you over there.
Before we get back to our callers, and we got a bunch of callers, Malabam, what time is it?
You know what time it is, it's time for the Lightning Round where we answer the Patreon community chats, question of the week.
Yes, indeed. Now, during the Lightning Round, we attempt to answer your question with a short shareable minimal maxim.
You can find this episode's maxims at the show notes at theminimalists .com slash podcast. And every minimal maxim ever over at minimalmaxims .com will also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free.
If you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists .email, we'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose What's the question of the week this week?
What are you most likely to waste your time on right now?
What are you most likely to waste your time on right now?
Being generous apparently.
There are worse things.
Now TK, before we get to our pithy answers, I wanna hear from some of our Simpletons.
Malabama, what do some of our listeners have to say?
Sandra and several other patrons said, I'm wasting a lot of time on social media.
For a year or so I had completely quit Facebook and Instagram, But my job brought me back.
It's unbelievable how much time you can waste there?
Well, if you don't set your own boundaries, someone without your best interests in mind will set them for you, right.
And that could be, take your job out of this for a moment.
We often have our boundaries set by external factors.
So we just got back on social media as the Minimalists.
We're the Minimalists on all platforms and we're focusing a lot on Instagram.
In fact, SavvyD and Jordan O 'More and I were out at a mall recently and we were filming.
We still have those things, the malls?
We're going to get to that in the private podcast. Shopping malls are dying at this amazing rate and we have an article about that and I want to talk about my own experience.
I used to manage 150 retail stores.
So we'll talk about that on page three.
But getting back to the boundary question around social media, I don't think social media is inherently good or bad.
Just like I don't think a knife is inherently good or bad, but I can do some terrible things with with a knife.
I cut my hand, remember when Alyssa was in here her first like two days?
She had to go to the emergency room.
She sliced her whole hand open with the knife.
Now I'm not saying, you know, we really need to get rid of knives now because she sliced her hand open trying to cut open an avocado.
But I want to be responsible with that tool that I have. And the same is true with Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or any of these other platforms. And for some of us, the boundary might mean, you know what, I'm gonna go without this completely.
No knives in my home because I'm going to cut my hand wide open.
Totally fine, that's an intentional decision.
But for some of us, we decided, especially with the minimalist here, and I'm gonna talk about this more during it right here, right now, but we've decided that this is a great way for us to connect with people and to add value as long as we have the appropriate boundaries in our life.
Yeah, you gotta think ahead about these boundaries if you're making all these decisions in the heat of the moment.
It's the casino technique we talked about.
you can go in there, you can gamble, you can play around, but know you're a number ahead of time because when you get inside that place, you will realize it is designed to keep you in there as long as possible, so it is with social media.
Violet and several others said, I start each day by going to YouTube with the intention of watching a self -improvement video.
But before I can even type anything in the search bar, I spot several videos that the YouTube algorithm feeds me.
Three hours later I realized I've fallen down a rabbit hole and watched dozens of random videos by channels I'd never seen and I still haven't watched what I have intended to.
Violet, I tend to have the same exact issue, but not with YouTube, but with Instagram or TikTok.
I can follow down those rabbit holes.
It's another question about boundaries here.
Sometimes there are some tools that help us set up some boundaries because you're talking about these future regrets that you experience, right?
You're wasting your now and it's producing some future regrets.
It feels pleasurable in the moment, but something that simply feels pleasurable but doesn't have much of a payoff often feels like regret in the future.
And so what I did is I reached out to our good friend Professor Sean I sent him an email and I asked him what YouTube blocking app does he use?
Because I know for him he wanted to cut out the ads, but he also wanted to cut out the distractions.
What did he have to say?
Professor Sean said, I use one blocker.
It has Mac, Safari, iOS, iPadOS and VisionPro versions.
It's three dollars a month $15 a year.
It has as decent YouTube ad blocking as you're going to find.
But blocking recommended videos isn't as simple as just checking a box or turning on a feature.
You have to use the app to block an element and then select the area of the page you don't want to load, in this case the section with the recommended videos.
It can take some fine -tuning but it's worth it.
Finally just turning off autoplay and your watch history in YouTube will do wonders.
There There won't be any recommended videos on the front page and any recommendations in the sidebar or at the end of a video and it won't be based off a personal algorithm they'll just be pretty uninteresting.
So if you're wasting your now whether it's on social media or YouTube there are ways that we can block that out altogether.
You can of course keep it off your phone or not have it on your computer but eventually when you get there there may be these boundaries you wanna set up like having a blocking app there.
For me, I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid having any ads, but there's still all of the recommended videos on the side.
And I tend not to fall into that for whatever reason.
I'm not as compelled by it, but I could see why it would be compelling for many other people.
Julia said, my husband and I just bought our first house and there are quite a few things we need to purchase.
A lawnmower, a ladder and several other items that we didn't need at our apartment.
I've wasted a lot of time scrolling Facebook Marketplace and messaging sellers to purchase these items in a more sustainable and cost -effective way, but many sellers don't respond, even if you send a friendly message.
Yes, well, the true cost of a thing extends way beyond its price tag.
If you're wasting your time, you're wasting your now.
And so sometimes it might feel like I'm doing the responsible thing.
I'm going to spend eight hours researching this $13 purchase.
Is that the best use of this time?
Is that even a sustainable use of your time?
Because your time in used like that is not sustainable.
It's simply being wasted.
Right, a money budget is when we say, how much money do I want to spend on things like that?
Okay, $50 a month for wireless, maybe so.
$300 a month for just wifi, probably not.
We got to do the same thing with our time.
How much time do I want to spend on things like that?
If I can get what I need by maybe spending an hour or less or sending out a few messages, fine.
But if it's two weeks later and I'm still chasing down people on Facebook Marketplace, I don't think giving yourself a part time job when you've got other things to do is a sustainable, cost -effective approach. The minimalists call this a selling deadline.
And this often works like if I'm trying to sell something, I'll give you an example.
My daughter's outgrew her smaller surfboard. We live maybe 20 minutes from the beach in Ventura County and she outgrew her surfboard, which we got from Facebook Marketplace originally and now we put it back on Facebook Marketplace and sold it.
But if we couldn't sell out the price we wanted within the first week, what do we do?
We lower the price.
If I can't sell it in a month, then I try to donate it.
If I can't donate it, then I try to recycle it.
If I can't recycle it, then eventually it will end up in the trash.
That is how I let go of possessions in a sustainable way.
But notice that there is a trash component there because I also recognized that my time is worth something.
And for me, I don't want to hold on to that thing for 90 days, 100 days, just because there's the, well, I paid some money for it.
And so we look at Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or eBay as our storage locker.
And we went to the storage locker, got a surfboard that we used for a couple of years, she's outgrowing it, so now it goes back into that storage locker and someone else gets to use it.
I'm wondering if there's a reverse here, TK, where there's a buying deadline piece of this, where it's like, if I can't find the most sustainable option within an hour, then I'm going to go with whatever plan B is.
That's exactly right.
It's like driving around, checking out different stores to get a sale.
That's totally fine.
That's actually a good thing.
But how many stores do you have to drive to before you say, all right, the cost of getting a better deal has now gone up so high that it's offset by me just buying the more expensive version by the place that's near where I live.
And of course, remember that the most sustainable purchase is the one that's left at the store.
Let's do one more, Malabama.
This one's from Hannah.
I've been wasting time wallowing in the sorrow of a divorce I wasn't expecting.
It has been almost nine months and the emotional progress through the grief has been so small.
D .K., what can you tell Hannah about grief and other forms of unexpected emotional clutter that are really hard to let go of?
Well, I don't know if wallowing is what you're actually doing or if that's a word that you're using to judge yourself for what you're actually doing.
Certainly we don't want to wallow in sorrow, but we do need to process our grief.
And perhaps you are processing.
And if you are processing slowly, that's okay.
Sometimes we need to process slowly.
You can't process according to someone else's quote, unquote, socially acceptable guidelines or demands.
So I would encourage you to take your time to go slow, you're not doing this for anyone else but you.
And I would encourage you to have people in your life that you can trust and that you can talk to about these things.
Processing is an important thing.
You're not a bad person, you're not going too slow because it's taking you a while.
I guess I should stop working on my How to Let Go of Grief in 10 Minutes Book.
How about you listeners?
What are you most likely to waste your time on right now?
Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, did you know you can join the Patreon community chat for free.
Even if you don't subscribe to the private podcast, of course we'd love for you to support the private podcast and get the rest of the full maximal episode.
There's so much more of less over on Patreon.
But even if you can't afford to subscribe, you can still join us in the Patreon community chat, interact with us over there.
Okay, give me something pithy, TK, what are you most likely to waste your time on right now?
All right, comfort is a prison for progress.
There are two kinds of comfort, Comfort as rest, comfort as hiding, comfort as rest is when you do things that are not work, that are familiar, that do feel good because they replenish the soul, they revitalize you with energy, they are good for you.
But then the other kind of comfort is one where you know there are areas of life where you need to be challenged and endure some pain for the sake of something better on the other side and you hide from it, you resist it.
And so for me, the thing I've got to commit to this year is to embrace more ascetic discipline in my life and do things that feel painful in the middle of it because of the way in which they reflect my values and bring into manifestation my future self.
Joy isn't just determined by what feels good in the moment, it's determined by what's consistent with your highest excitement.
I think about wasting my time and I think a waste of time is perspectival, right?
Mal, we were talking about this before we started recording today, And me, you, and Savvy D, we were talking about what is restful for you?
Yeah, and that was a hard thing for me to kind of come to terms with because I twisted my ankle really bad this morning, or not this morning rather, this weekend.
And I spent the whole weekend not being able to do the things that I had planned to do, which involved going and running errands, doing DIY things that required me being on my feet.
And suddenly I couldn't be on my feet.
And you asked a really great question of what is restful to you?
And I went, ooh, I have to think about that.
One of the things that I did that was restful to me was play video games.
We talked about that last week's episode, how I had taken a 10 month break from playing video games.
But if I had played video games for the entire weekend, that would not be rest. There's a point where it's no longer restful, but taking time to do things that are a mono task, that would command my attention in a way that's enjoyable for me like reading or taking a bath Or even taking a walk, which I couldn't do, finding things that I could do with the limitations of my twisted ankle, that was what ended up replenishing me.
So for me and you, reading a book for both of us is a restful endeavor, right?
And yet, it's a monotast. I'm actually focusing on something.
It is an active way to rest. But if I were to hand a book to my daughter who's 11 and doesn't enjoy reading at all, it would not feel restful to her whatsoever.
And I think the same thing is true with wasting our time.
something that feels really important and meaningful and significant to me might feel like a total waste of time to someone else.
And so my pithy answer is, there are no refunds for misspent time.
You know, you can buy something from a mall.
You go into a store, you buy a thing, you don't like it, and you check what the return policy is, and you bring it back in with the receipt and they give you your money back.
But they don't give you your time back.
We can't get that time back.
And so, I wanna be really careful with how I am spending this time right now.
And if I'm not in control of my time someone else is going to control it for me.
I wrote an essay called Unbusy.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
And it's really about, whenever I say I'm busy what I'm really saying is my life is out of control.
Everyone else's emergency is now my urgency.
and so what I've learned over the years is that your priorities are dictated by your now Not by your ideas your priorities are what you do They're not what you say they are because I might say yeah My my health is my biggest priority and I'm eating a McDonald's cheeseburger and smoking a cigarette and it's like Well, I said that was a priority and I might even believe it in my mind But my real priorities are dictated by whatever is going on right here right now now.
Speaking of right here, right now, that is the end of Page One.
We have still have an entire switch board of colors to talk to, but real quick for our right here, right now segment.
Here's one thing that's going on in the life of The Minimalist. Actually, I've got two things for you, TK.
You know, we've been easing back into social media and I've really been enjoying, I've had some revelations and I want to talk about those on a future episode, but going back in was like, it's like taking a year off sugar.
and then if you have a little bit of sugar, like this is too sweet for me.
It was overwhelming with sweetness and stimuli.
And so I learned really quickly like, Oh yeah, yeah, I need to set up some new boundaries here because the apps look a little bit different, the way I interact is a little bit different.
And so I don't do it anything from my phone other than I'll post something, I'll download the app, post something, and then done with that.
If I want to engage with anything on the app, I will just do it from a web browser.
And that's the limitation I've set up.
So I certainly can't do it while I'm driving.
I can't pull over and start looking at things.
And that way it doesn't feel like I'm wasting my now.
When I go pull up my computer, I go to a web browser, I've done so intentionally.
I'm going to go watch this thing, or look at this thing, or read this thing, or scroll through this thing.
There's an intentional element to that.
And some of my favorite videos that you all, our audience tends to share with us, Are these different decluttering or minimizing tips?
Or sometimes they're just hilarious videos like the one we did about the coffee mugs last year.
And so I'm looking for you listeners.
If you would like to have us comment on different videos, we can do different stitches on Instagram and other things, minimizing videos, decluttering videos, purchasing videos, consumerism videos, please DM them to us on Instagram.
We're at the minimalist over there.
We'll take a look at them.
and we'll share some of our favorites.
I think people will get value from, especially the really funny ones.
The ones that resonate with a lot of people, we'd love to comment on those with you.
And a quick programming note for next week, we don't have a podcast, our studio is going to be closed because well, I'm going to be on the East coast working on our new documentary.
And so while the studio will be closed next week, we're going to have a little bonus for you in your feed.
Not a full episode, but we're recalling it a Maxi single.
Mhm. Yeah, not a minimal episode, not a maximal episode, but kind of like, you know, a little bonus for you next week when we talk a bit about smart devices.
And then after that we start our five part household clutter series featuring famous minimalists that you already know and love, we're going to bring them into the studio.
And together we're going to let go of your living room clutter and cabinet clutter and garage clutter and closet clutter and so much more.
Mel Abamu what else you got for us?
Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.
Hello minimalist, my name is Alexis and I'm a Patreon subscriber and a longtime listener of the podcast, I really enjoy all that you guys do and as many people who call into the show say, I get immense value from all that you guys talk about.
I wanted to share a little bit of value that I found, shared for your listeners and you guys as well.
I've been doing a yoga teacher training and getting really into that the last few years.
I really like the philosophies of yoga as well and I feel like minimalism and yoga both overlap for me.
There's a book that we are reading for my teacher training and it's called how yoga works.
I have a little excerpt that really overlaps with minimalism and I wanted to share it, and when you're done clearing out all the extra things around your house then you have to go on your very way of life and do the same.
Throw out extra things that you do that you really don't have time to do so that you can focus.
Throw out extra things that you say that don't really need to be said anyway.
Learn to be with your friends, a few good friends, and a happy sort of silence that you both understand and appreciate.
Cut down on all the extra useless outside stimulation of your physical senses, too much food, too much news, too much entertainment.
All of them fine in themselves, all of them healthy, but in moderation and amounts that you can focus upon and enjoy deeply.
And then the mind will be free to come inside and arrive at its own nature concentration, contemplation, uninterrupted attention, medicine for the channels, medicine for the inner winds and so for health and a happy state of mind that lasts.
It's all A kind of cleanliness in a way, tidiness on the outside, tidiness on the inside.
Thanks again for all that you guys do.
Alexis, what a beautiful, beautiful comment.
Throw out the extra things because our material possessions are a physical manifestation of our internal lives.
But you might also say that about our busyness.
You might say that about our careers.
You might say that about our relationships.
These are all manifestations of what we have going on inside us.
That's exactly right.
I love that phrase too, about the mind discovering its own nature.
You know, in the same way that you can expect to build intimacy with another person if you don't spend quality time with them and you're always with your head on a screen whenever they're talking to you.
It's the same way with your heart.
It's the same way with your mind.
It's the same way with interior richness.
You can't get to know yourself without creating that kind of undistracted space.
So good. Thank you, Alexis.
For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode.
Send a voice memo to podcastattheminimalists .com so we can feature your voice on the show.
Same goes if you have an answer for someone who calls into our show and you have a different perspective from what TK and I are giving them.
We'd love to hear that as well.
You can send in your voice memo.
Podcast at theminimalists .com.
Up next, page two and page three.
But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break.
We'll be right back.
Alright y 'all that is the first 29 % of episode 476.
We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition.
We're going to talk about the honey scam it's my favorite advertisement sucks segment yet we're also going to talk about dying moles.
Oh our social media platforms the next dying moles.
We're going to answer other questions like how can i help my husband understand that the way he treats me is harmful to our relationship and our video games and similar activities, a total waste of time, plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon and that is our minimal episode for today.
Big thanks to Erthing Studios for the recording space, on behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, T .K.
Coleman, Malabama, Post Production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, and Savvy D over on the board, Oh, and the rest of our team!
I'm Joshua Fields -Milburn.
If you leave here today 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'll be fine without it
