Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 32: The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus have been through a lot together. They grew up together in Dayton, Ohio, both in families that struggled to make ends meet. They went on to climb the corporate ladder together and both made a comfortable living. So when Josh discovered minimalism, a practice in which you rid yourself of excess stuff to focus on personal happiness, it wasn't long before Ryan joined him. Today, the two childhood friends live in Montana and host a podcast, a website and have a film called "Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things," all devoted to capturing their minimalism experiences and to help others discover the practice. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. My guest this time, we're doing a little bit of an experiment. The guests are in Mizzula, Montana.

This is the first time we're actually doing an interview remotely. These guys are known as the minimalists. You might have heard of them. They have a very popular podcast. They also have a documentary called Minimalism, a documentary about the important things. Their names are Joshua Fields, Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus. These guys grew up together. They were living a very sort of typical American life filled with a lot of striving and sort

of career ambition, which I can certainly relate to. And I'm sure a lot of you can relate to. And then they made a very radical decision. And part of that, of course, was given that we're having them on this podcast part of that of course involves some meditation. So without further ado, here they are. Gentlemen, thanks for doing this. Absolutely, thanks for having us. Yeah, it's pleasure to be here.

So just so the listeners can differentiate between your respective voices, can you introduce yourselves, Josh, you go first. Give me your name and your favorite food. Hey, I'm Joshua Fields-Millburn, and of course my favorite food is guacamole. Strong, I agree. Yeah, my name is Ryan Nicodemis, and my favorite food is Massamon Curry, hands down. Massamon Curry. Yeah, man. I don't even know if I can pick that out of a lineup,

but I feel like I'm like somewhat culinary literate. It's a tight dish. Yeah, you should check it out, man. If you're next time you're in a tight restaurant. Well, let's get down to the, as you guys like to say, important things. There's a lot of, I want to talk about your documentary

and minimalism and your lies now. All that stuff. But since this is at least ostensibly a meditation podcast, let's just start there. So how did each of you come to meditation and what does it do for you? So let me start with you. Let's go Ryan. Well, you know, for me, we actually wrote about this in our book, everything that remains. We talk about this 20 minutes of awesome. So for me, this was a really good approach to kind of start with meditation, where I literally would just take 20 minutes a day and kind of sit and let my mind wander,

let me have all of that. How did the idea even come to you? Like, why did you even start doing 20 minutes of awesome? It was actually through a friend, his name is Colin Wright. He's got a whole minimalist blog himself called Exile Lifestyle.com. And yeah, he's the one that actually introduced me to it. Because I was like a lot of people just kind of skeptical with meditation and being too woo-woo and having to have some know, have some type of spiritual practice

related with it. And Colin introduced me to this 20 minutes of awesome. And I kind of took to that. That seemed like a practical approach. I rudely interrupted you when you were actually describing what the 20 minutes of awesome was. So, A, let me apologize and B, carry on and tell us what it actually is.

Oh, no worries. So, you know, 20 minutes is awesome is basically just taking 20 minutes to allow your thoughts to just roll and to not judge any thoughts that you have, but to really kind of just sit there and let your brain express itself as much as it wants to. And ultimately, what I found is by kind of letting those thoughts roll, eventually I would feel this calm and I would feel a bit of a quietness after letting it roll for 10 or 15 minutes. And what this does for me just kind of helps me reset, especially if I'm feeling a lot of anxiety, if I'm, you know, stressing out over an interview or a book tour stop or whatever it may be, it was just a way to kind of help me to regain a little bit of control over

my thoughts. So let me press you on this just a little bit because to my, I'm, this may expose me in some sort of meditation, you know, Stalinist here, but, you know, I just personally, because my mind is so irretrievably disorganized, I needed some structure. So like the structure didn't have to be a lot, but it was at least at the beginning, you know, pay full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out and then every time you get lost, start again. And when you get lost, you know, when you get distracted, don't judge the thoughts

that are coming up, just make a little note of them and then start again. Do you feel like not having that structure was okay for you? And how do you sit and just watch your thoughts and done judge mentally without getting caught up in them, you know, if like, how do you not get caught up in the planning or worrying or whatever else comes up when you sit and just watch your thoughts and don't judge mentally without getting caught up in them? You know, if like, how do you neck get caught up in the planning or worrying or whatever else comes up when you sit? Typically, if I start to get caught in the weeds with a thought,

that is when I would draw my attention back to my breath. There's this, I think it's like a Tai Chi breath where you focus in on bringing in breath to your stomach, then to your chest, and then out through your chest, and then out through your stomach. And it kind of helps me to kind of reign it in a little bit. But what I have found from practicing that 20 minutes of awesome is now, I will typically, before I go into the practice, I will think about, okay, what do I want to accomplish today? Because that's usually when I meditate

is in the mornings. And, you know, for example, if I have a mentoring client, or if I got a bunch of mentoring clients that I'm going to talk with, you know, I will sit there and think to myself, okay, I want to be a really good teacher today. Today, I want to be a really good teacher today. Today, I want to be a teacher. So what I've gone from, you know, kind of letting those

thoughts wandering and trying not to get, you know, caught too much in the weeds now, I kind of develop this, you know, a little bit of a mantra, I guess, where on my in-breath, I will think to myself, today, I will, and then on the exhale, be a teacher. And it's not like I'm actually, you know, saying that loudly in my head, it's more of a, you know, more like a whisper if anything. But it does help me to focus on what I want to accomplish that day, and it helps me to kind of keep a steady line of consciousness going without it,

getting too out of hand. It's funny just listening to you, is I realize that I must be like a rule follower because I wanted to know, especially when I began, and to this day, when I started meditating and to this day, I wanted to know and I still want to know that I'm doing it right. But you, whatever that means, you know, and that's a whole discussion we can have.

But you came up with a bespoke model for yourself, and you're just going with it. And you sound, at least with coming through in your voices, it sounds like it's working for you. You're pretty confident about it. Yeah, I mean, it works really well. I am not a real follower. Josh will probably be the first to tell you that. But, you know, for me, doing it right means that I'm feeling better. Or it's, you know, it's adding value somehow to my daily routine or my daily process or whatever. And I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, now I was gonna say, I am open to mindful meditation. In fact, I'm kinda going through your weak intro

right now, I'm on day two or three. Oh, on the 10% happier app thing. Yeah, on the 10% happier app. And I can see benefits from it over, you know, just using that the last few days. So that is something that, you know, I am flirting with right now. But, you know, I don't claim to be an expert at meditation

and, you know, the strategy that I currently use now won't necessarily help every single person listening to this. But, but I think what it has done for me going from the 20 minutes of awesome to kind of developing this very simple mantra, it has helped me to get into maybe more a more mindful meditation practice. All really interesting and cool and thank you for the plug and trying the thing out

So Josh let me torture you for a second What is do you have a daily practice and if so what is it and how how did you start? I also am a rule follower Although the problem with me is I never know which rules to follow yes, especially in this area right because yeah Have you tried a transcendental meditation at all? You know, I'm going to get taught how to do transdental meditation from this guy Bob Roth over at the David Lynch Foundation. So I've done a tiny tiny amount of mantra meditation, but I'm

And I feel guilty about not being able to talk about it with authority. So I'm going to go learn how to do it. So I can say something without being a complete ingramous. That's kind of how I feel, although I also feel like I shouldn't have to be taught how to how to do it as well. And so I'm sort of in a weird way. You feel that way about like, you know, operating heavy machinery, um, uh, you know, brain surgery. Yes, I mean, like what's wrong with pedagogy? Yeah, well, I'm somewhat of an auto-diedact. I don't know if it's just been like anti-authoritarian. I never did the whole college thing.

So you're not a rule follower? Well, I like following my own rules. I see. Establishing really sort of, abs�truist systems of rules for myself. I like to build walls that I then have to climb over, I suppose. But yes, I do have a daily practice,

but I always thought I kind of hated the idea of meditation. I thought it was just to be frank, stupid. And then I read this book called 10% Have Year. Yeah. And I know that sounds like flattery will get you nowhere. That's actually, that's not true. Here's the thing. I had a lot of friends who meditated and expressed the benefits, but it seemed very, just, it seemed odd to me. And I was very much in the corporate world, you know, Ryan and I throughout our

our lotus eating 20s, we sort of climbed the corporate ladder together. We both grew up really poor and then figured out the key to happiness was of course to make more money. And so we spent our 20s working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and stressing ourselves out. By age 27, I was the youngest director in my company's 140-year history. Instead of happiness, I had a lot of anxiety and stress and discontent and not to mention debt, which then added to the stress, anxiety and discontent. It was this vicious cycle that just kept going. I stumbled across this thing called minimalism and and Simplified the External Clutter in my life. But I found that by dealing with that I was able to start looking inward and dealing with some of the Internal Clutter.

And as I started dealing with the Internal Clutter eventually, I did stumble across your book thanks to Sam Harris and and we yeah I Started I started you to incorporate in just a daily practice into my life with Sam Harris's Daily, yeah, he sort of had this guided meditation up on his website that that made sense to me because it wasn't it It wasn't woo woo, but your story really resonated with me because you know like me you were sort of this regular, suit and tie guy who didn't want to go live the rest of his life in a cave and be an ascetic and issue worldly experiences, but you wanted to have a practice that allowed you to deal with that internal clutter. And so yeah, for me, it was just following basic mindfulness meditation in the mornings

and it started out doing it five minutes a day. And I used an app called Headspace Original In. And that was a great way to sort of have an introduction into that world. And then I just built up to 10, 20 minutes a day. And I'm doing about 25 minutes a day right now. In fact, mine's a little bit different now. I've been doing a daily practice in a sauna,

in a dry sauna. So I'm in a dry sauna for 25 minutes a day, and I do meditation while I'm in there. All right, when I ask you about that, and about what kind of impact is having on your life. But let me just amplify a few or talk about a few of the things that you mentioned in the foregoing paragraph. Sam Harris just for the uninitiated, he's a friend of mine.

He's also one of the, I guess, leading atheists in America and made his name railing against organized religion. But very interesting on the side, he, not on the side really, actually well preceding his becoming a famous atheist. He had a very deep and longstanding meditation practice. And he then wrote a book about that that got into some of that and also some of the brain science he went off and became a neuroscientist as well so he writes about it with a real authority both

as a meditator and as a scientist called waking up which is phenomenal book I recommend it heartily to everybody's also got a podcast called waking up that I also recommend to everybody and he posts guided meditations. In fact, he's going to be coming out with an app to teach people how to do meditation, which I suspect will be amazing and his guided meditations are amazing. Then you also mentioned headspace, which is also amazing. I say this even though I too am in the meditation app game, but the headspace is definitely the industry leader, the first mover, and I know a lot of people who've derived a lot of benefit from it.

So anyway, having cleared my throat on all that stuff, tell me about the sauna meditation and what kind of impact has meditation generally had on you? Are you less of a jerk, more of a jerk, neither? I think you'd have to ask the people around me whether I'm less of a jerk. I can tell you this, people around me, once I started clearing that internal clutter, people at work started saying things like,

you know, people that work around me started saying things that like you seem less stressed, you've seen so much calmer, you seem nicer, what the hell's going on with you. But I think it was subtle, it wasn't like there was this dramatic 180 degree change, it was pivoting. And so I think if you pivot 5, 10 degrees in one direction, it doesn't seem like much at the time, but a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, you're in an

utterly different location. Yeah, I think that's true. So what is the sauna meditation? Well, I mean, it's pretty simple. I sit in the sauna for 25 minutes and focus on my breath, and it's just a very basic mindfulness meditation. It started out with Sam Harris's guided meditations, which are free. I'm pretty sure you can find them at his website. And it was just guiding you through that process of focusing on the sensation in your body, and what you're feeling, and your breath.

And letting go, not just of the thoughts, but letting those sensations pass and realizing, it's just occurring to you. And so, that's why meditation. I'll tell you that in the sauna, it adds an extra layer because it's 180 degrees in there, so it gets quite hot. So you're noticing some other sensations in your body as well,

and obviously you're sweating, so you have more things to notice. I don't know that I would have started out that way, but there's a bunch of benefits have you have more things to notice. I don't know that I would have started out that way, but the, I mean, there's a bunch of benefits for being in Asana having a practice, scientific benefits. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr. Ron DePathric, but she's written quite a bit about some of the studies of, you know, the benefits of being in Asana, and so I figured, well, if I'm gonna be in there for 25 minutes a day, it's the perfect time for me

to do my mindfulness practice as well. Interesting. You mentioned Sam Harris' website, it's samherris.org for anybody who's interested in checking it out. So you said something else, Josh, and I wanna get both of you guys talking about this, about your personal relationship and the nature of your backgrounds and what brought you to minimalism and what minimalism is.

In your documentary, which is correct me if I'm wrong, but minimalism, a documentary about the important things, and I'm saying that correctly. That is correct. Okay. about the important things and I'm saying that correctly. That is correct. Okay, so in your documentary, you talk quite movingly about your childhood, but you had very similar childhoods and were friends since childhood. Can you just tell us a little bit about that and you guys can hold forth and whatever order you would like?

Sure, Ryan and I are both 35 now and we've known each other for the better part of 25 years, so since we were fat little fifth graders. You got the fat? Oh my goodness. We were the two fatest kids in school. It was unbelievable. Where was this?

This is Dayton, Ohio. Dayton, Ohio, okay. Yeah, so we sort of bonded over a cheese fries and cheeseburgers and anything with cheese. And we both grew up poor on, on, on, on, on, on, on, there was, there was government assistance and food stamps and Ryan lived in a, it was almost cliche, like trailer park and, and, and growing up, we were pretty discontented. And, and I remember there was this conversation that Ryan and I had in high school. We school, we were sitting at the lunch table and he figured out that we could be happy if we could just make

$50,000 a year. Like this was the equation because in another one of our parents had ever made that and we assumed that the discontent was there because we just weren't making enough money. And well, it's true that money can certainly help amplify and experience. I found that by making the same decisions that our parents made, money amplified our experience in a different way throughout our 20s. So instead of going to the traditional college route or whatever, I went out and got a sales job when I turned 18 and realized pretty soon I could make $50,000 a year.

Except by age 19, I was spending $65,000 a year. So I started experiencing debt for the first time in my life. And I was always spending toward that next paycheck or that next promotion. And by my mid 20s, although I was all ostensibly successful, I'd climbed the corporate ladder, I had massive amounts of debt, and I was overweight, I weighed 80 pounds more than I weigh now, and I certainly wasn't happy. I was successful, but only in a very narrow sense, sort of monetarily or status wise, right?

I had an impressive job title, which is problematic because it's one of the first things we do when we meet someone, we ask them, what do you do? And I had an impressive answer to that, you know, I'm the director of operations for 150 retail stores, but I didn't feel a sense of fulfillment or purpose or joy from what I was doing with my life. Instead, I thought all these negative feelings. In 2009, my mother died and my marriage ended both in the same month. And these two events forced me to look around and start to question what had become my life's focus. And what I realized is that I was so focused on so-called success and achievement,

and especially on the accumulation of stuff, sort of these trophies of success, these trinkets. And I had a lost sight of what was important in my life. I didn't know what was important anymore. And so I stumbled across this thing called minimalism and found a whole community of people who were sort of jettisoning their material possessions so they could start to focus on what was important. And there were a bunch of different people. It didn't necessarily apply to just a single white guy from a middle income family who I first stumbled stumbled across a guy named Colin Wright who's also in the film. But there were minimalist families, a guy named Leo Bobalta, and he has six kids and a wife and they live in San Francisco and they're this whole minimalist family. And there are minimalist entrepreneurs and minimalist architecture and how did these things overlap? And so I started sort of letting go of my stuff and over the course of about eight or nine months.

I let go of about 90% of my material possessions. Although I think if you visit my home today, you probably don't walk in and say, oh my god, this guy is a minimalist. You just walk in and say, wow, it's really, really freaking tidy in here. And it's because I really freaking tidy in here. And it's because I don't own much, but everything I do own serves of purpose or brings me joy and everything else is out of the way.

And by letting go of that stuff, that external stuff, I was able to start looking inward and say, okay, what's going on inside? Who's the person I want to become? I'm not gonna define my own success. And why have I been so discontented by this stuff? And what will make me content in the long run? Oh, I have a million questions, but I want to let Ryan tell his story as well. So, Ryan, you want to take me back to the overweight cheesy-tea- problems. It all started my first day at fifth grade and Dayton, Ohio.

No, yeah, I met Josh, like he said, we're gonna fight a little fifth graders. And I just, all I noticed was like, there was a kid that was fatter than me. And I was like, sweet, like me and this kid, we're gonna get along. And we did, like we, yeah, we hit it off right away. But yeah, kind of, you know, just the recap what Josh was saying.

It was a struggle growing up. And I remember money always being a source of discontent. And I'm sure a lot of people experience that. So, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I got out of high school. All I knew was that I didn't want to experience the same problems. So I was, one summer, I was working for my dad.

He paints and hangs wallpaper. And we were in this pretty, pretty nice home. And it looked like something that I could afford, if I really put my mind to it, just like a Midwestern, middle-class home. And I asked my dad, like, hey, dad, how much do I need to make to have a house like this? And he's like, son, if you can make $50,000 a year,

you could probably have a house like this. So that is where that equation came from, the $50,000 equaling happiness. Cause you know, I thought having a house like that, it would make me happy. The pictures of the families on the wall, they seemed like they were really, really happy when I met the homeowners, they seemed really happy.

And I thought it was because they didn't have the same amount of money problems as what I grew up experiencing. So that's where I kind of set the bar. And I eventually went to go work with Josh, just in a telecommunications company. And I started climbing the corporate ladder with with Josh, I, you know, ostensibly was really, really successful. But like Josh, I was working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hours a week. And I was, I was forsaking some of the most important aspects of my life. I mean, I hardly thought about my health or my relationships or you know, God forbid things that I was passionate about. I mean, the work was my passion, you know.

And yeah, I did drugs a lot. I drank a lot. I was just using as many pacifiers as I could. And yeah, it got to a point where, I just didn't know what was important anymore. But, you know, as this is kind of going on with me, Josh is dealing with his own stuff with his mother passing away and his marriage ending both in the same month. And I'm watching him go through this.

And, you know, as the months go on, you know, I've just started noticing like small stuff with Josh, right? Like I went to his house and his apartment when he first moved out of his home with his wife and moved into his new place. I remember going in there and there was this bracket for a TV on the wall, like it came with the place.

It was like, you know, the perfect spot to put a TV. And I remember looking at that thinking, oh, man, like Josh is going to get an awesome TV that goes up there. Because for something like that was one thing, for some reason him and I always compared each other, like we always compared ourselves to is like, who's got the better TV? Who has the most TVs? So, uh, so I asked Josh, like, hey, man, like this is a really nice TV bracket. What are you? What kind of TV are you going to get, man? You're going to get one of those like, you know, big HDMI, I think or HDMI, whatever, whatever the latest technology was. That's my fault for using

jargon there. I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to technology. But, but yeah, he, he was like, you know, I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to get a TV, maybe, maybe not. And as the months went on, he didn't get a TV. And I was like, oh, that's weird. But, you know, nobody do. He's just, you know, doing his own thing. And then I noticed things like our boss would call him at ridiculous hours, which that's what he did with all his employees.

That's, I mean, that's the the corporate structure was set up there We you know, we're answering our phones until midnight and we were waking up at five or six a.m Getting the emails and returning phone calls and I got to a point where you know, I think it was like Christmas Eve and Josh's our boss like calls Josh and Josh answers his phone and He's like hello. can I help you? And our boss is like, yeah, I need a sales update. Like, where are your numbers right now? And Josh was like, I don't know.

And he's like, what do you mean you don't know? Where are the numbers? You're just supposed to be close to this. You're not close enough to your people. And you just kind of let them go. And then Josh was like, you know, what you're asking right now is unreasonable. It's, it's, you know, 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve. I'm out having dinner with friends and you'll get the report at the end of the day.

And that, that was probably like my first real cue to like, oh my God, like something different is going on with Josh. Like, what the heck is going on? So eventually, I, after noticing just, you know, these things here and there, I invited him out to a really, really nice restaurant for lunch. We went to Subway and as we were sitting there, like eating our food, I just looked up at him and I'm like, Josh, what is going on with you, man? Like, you seem, you seem a lot happier.

Like, why the hell are you so happy? And that's when he introduced me to this thing called minimalism. I thought he was going to tell me that they had put them on Prozac or something. Like, that's really what I wanted to know. Like, what drugs are you on, man? But no, it wasn't anything like that. It was, it was this practice called minimalism that he started introducing into his life. And he went from talking about his experience of kind of

jettishing things over the last several months to make room for life's most important things. He then showed me an entire community of people who called themselves Minimalists. Josh was describing that community earlier and And yeah, I just kind of went down that rabbit hole as you do on on Google and YouTube You search one topic and then you're like, you know stuck on it for hours and hours and I you know, I didn't see any any one person whose life I wanted to emulate but what I saw was just a lot of people who were very passionate people and they were living meaningful lives

and they all attribute it to this thing called minimalism. So I got really excited and I went to Josh, and I'm like, all right man, I'm in. I wanna do it, I wanna be a minimalist. Now what do I do? Cause I didn't really know where to start. All I knew was like, I didn't want to spend eight or nine

months pairing down my items. You know, typical like American. Gotta have it now attitude. I wanted, I wanted fast results. So that's where Josh and I, we came up with this crazy idea called a packing party, where we decided to pack all my belongings. I had like a, it was a 2000 square foot condo,

three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living rooms. I have no idea why I ever. This is in Dayton. Yeah, this is in Dayton. I have no idea why I ever thought I would need two living rooms. That would be millions and millions of dollars if it was in New York City. I don't know how the deal is right.

It's about a tenth of that cost and date and no. I okay. But yeah, so living rooms, two livingers, man. And I had like, and I had it all like furnished and yeah, just like pack to the gourd with stuff. So I literally packed up everything as if I were moving. So Josh came over, helped me pack up my clothes, my kitchen, wear my towels, my TVs, my electronics, frame photographs and paintings, my toiletries, I mean even my furniture,

we literally packed up everything, a pretended like I was moving. So what I did is over the next three weeks, I unpacked things as I needed it. Just day by day. Like I really wanted to get a sense of what was bringing value to my life. And so you can imagine like I unpacked my toothbrush, some clothes for work. You know, I unpacked a six pack from the fridge, whatever, like I went day by day, just kind of doing this practice

and taking notes and writing. And by the end of the three weeks I had 80% of my stuff still packed up and I just remember like looking at it all and just thinking my god like here is tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff that I've brought into my life to make me happy and and it's not doing its job So you know that's where I decided to kind of make this change and I donated and I sold all of it and That's you know when I went to Josh and I'm like dude. This is a really Interesting lifestyle this packing parties are really interesting experiment. I Think we could totally start up a website like these other guys and share our perspective

with our journey into this. And it was kind of like an outlet at first, just something to kind of jot stuff down and just to put it out there, I guess. I know too, like when I put stuff out there, it makes me way more accountable, so that was a piece of it too. But yeah, that's really where the minimalists.com started.

It was with that packing party story. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve

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on the Amazon or Wondery app. So did you move to a department that had only one living room? I did, I did. Yeah, my goodness. Quit the job right away, or were you still at the telecom retail company and just doing the website or what happened?

Yeah, we were both still in the corporate world for a while. I think it took a while to realize like once you clear that excess, it wasn't getting rid of the stuff, that wasn't the end result. I really think that's the first step that changes everything, right? And so letting go led me to asking some deeper questions about my values and what do I actually value in my life? And eventually I learned that there's nothing wrong with having a 9-5. I think we all have to pay the bills, but what I was doing in that corporate setting where I was, it didn't align with the person I wanted to be.

It wasn't a person who I aspired to be. In fact, the guys who I had aspired to be like, as I climbed that corporate ladder, I discovered as I got closer to them, that they were kind of miserable. Like, the guys I wanted to be were miserable. And of course, we always tell ourselves, like, oh, this, I'll be different, right? But if I follow the same recipe, I'm going to get the same result. And so, and so by, I guess, focusing on letting go of my stuff, I started to figure out these things that I thought were important,

that I dedicated my life to, they aren't important at all. And so why am I pursuing the same path? And so yeah, while I downsize my life, I started letting go of those things, but also started letting go of what was most difficult, which was my identity. I was so tied up into what I did to earn a paycheck, as opposed to the person I wanted to be as opposed to my relationships that were important to me and my health and contributing beyond myself in a meaningful way.

I realized that I needed to focus on what my values were, not on this meme that we've been sold of the American dream. Yeah, so ultimately, Josh laid himself off. He you know his boss went to home and said hey, we need to save we need to save you know one and a half million dollars and we need you to come up with a plan to do that. So he yeah, he did that and he had to had to write people's names down and had to to lay people off to do this and And when he handed in that list, he put his name at the top of the list. And it was about eight months before I left.

But it was really inspiring to watch him do this. So what I did, my boss, he knew about the website, Josh had left. And he knew we were friends. So I kind of thought he had an inkling that maybe I would probably take off eventually. And I sat him down at one point and I'm like, Hey, man, I just, I'm just curious. Like if I ever decided to leave here, um, who do you think we would replace my, my job with? Who do you think we would use to fill this spot?

Who do you think we would replace my job with? Who do you think we would use to fill this spot? And you know, at that point, so my job at the time was selling small and medium business sales for 150 retail stores. And I had implemented this program into these stores that was working really efficiently. And we were talking about it and he's like, you know, I don't know if you left if I would fill your spot. Things are going so well. And I'm like, huh, it's a really interesting thought, isn't it? And then a month later, I got sat down, you know, I got a text that said, Hey, Ryan, we need to meet me in a room, you know, eight, 12, the room

that I have been to several times across from HR and laid off people. And so I knew it was coming. And yeah, I got laid off. And so it was about a year, year and a half after, you know, kind of starting that journey where I left my job. So Josh, when you left, how did you feed yourself? Well, I think the bad thing is,

you're only so far you can take minimalism. Yeah, well, that's true. Unless you're harvesting eight corns in the park or something like that. That's minimalist. Yeah, I guess there's a fine line there between insanity and minimalism. No, when I walked away from the corporate world, I didn't have a need anymore to make

this. I wasn't tied to the same lifestyle I had previously, because even though I made really good money in the corporate world, I made a few hundred thousand dollars a year, which in Dayton, Ohio is a lot of money. And I spent even better money though. And so that equation just didn't work. And so before I left the corporate world, I focused very hard on paying down massive amounts of debt,

hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And I also focused on untethering myself from expenses. Now I had to pay the bills, I still had to haveethering myself from expenses. Now I had to pay the bills, I still had to have a roof over my head. My initial plan, when I walked away from the corporate world, people were asking, where are you going? Who's the competitor you're going to? And because can you take me with you? And the answer was there wasn't anywhere I was going.

My initial plan was just to be a barista at a local coffee shop and the right fiction full time. That's what I wanted to do. I always had a passion for writing fiction and literature was just this thing I wanted to do. And a few months after that, this thing called the minimalist sort of took off. And I realized that I could still apply that passion, but in this sort of nonfiction capacity. And so Ryan and I wrote a few books together. I started teaching a writing class online and doing things that aligned with my values

to help pay the bills as opposed to doing something just to earn a paycheck. And now everything that I do, it's not like I'm allergic to money. I think we all want to make an income, but it's no longer the primary driver for doing what I do. And the best way to be able to say that

is to untether myself from this old lifestyle of having a car payment and having dead and having these things that added these sort of creature comforts to my life, but also added a constant low level or honestly a medium level anxiety to my life. And those things are gone now. What little luxury, what for big luxury, what did you have to let go of that sucked the most?

Man for me it was my like really nice toyota avalan I had. It was like brand new with you know Bluetooth and sunroof and it was awesome. Well you know that was I think so brand new then would have been like a 2010 maybe or 2011 2011. But now I drive a 2004 Toyota Corolla. So it's got about 230,000 miles on it. It leaks when it rains from the sunroof. So sometimes I look at that and I'm like, man, I really would love to get a new car, one that doesn't leak when it rains. But at the end of the day, the cost of that new car,

it's not going to bring me an exponential amount of happiness. It's not going to add an exponential amount of value to my life, because when it leaks, it's not a big deal. It's a couple of drops, it's not like it's pouring in. The car runs really, really well. But yeah, I mean, I do look back and think, man,

like having that brand new Avalon was really, really awesome. But, you know, for me, I just look at it and think at what cost. Yeah, I don't really miss those things, though, Dan. I had two Lexuses. Two? One for you and one for your wife, or you just took one? One for me and one for my wife also had a land rover. You know, just because and you just like, would take different cars in different days? Well, yeah, I mean, if you have a three car garage, you have to fill it with something. Especially the one that we're in for a reason. You took this pretty far.

I mean, commercialism, materialism, like you were. I mean, consumerism, yeah. Yeah. I don't think consumption is the problem. I think compulsory consumption is the problem. Compulsive consumption. Yeah, yeah don't think consumption is the problem. I think compulsory consumption is the problem Compulsive consumption Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but but also compulsory in the sense that we we feel like it's what we're supposed to do or it's what we must do in order to achieve some sort of

Status or or enlightenment and man advertisements are really good at making us believe how inadequate we are, right? And I will be adequate as soon as I have that that car. Once I get the car, then, then, well, I need something different or I need something better or I need to focus on some other area of my life. And so the void continues to widen and we try to fill it with more stuff. But of course, that just fill the widens the void even farther. So, yeah, I mean, I had a lot of stuff. I'll tell you that I don't necessarily miss anything that I've gotten rid of, though.

It wasn't like there was anything that truly sucked letting go of. In fact, on our podcast, we have people calling and ask questions. And someone said, it seems like you in and ask questions and, and someone said, you know, it seems like you guys didn't really get rid of anything important and, and my answer was, well, yeah, we, we didn't get rid of anything important. And that, that's really, really the point is the things that we thought were important, weren't actually important. They weren't adding value to our lives. They weren't serving a purpose or bringing it as joy. And so the thing is, if I get rid of something and I'm depriving myself of it, then I can bring it back into my life.

Mentalism isn't about deprivation. It's about living a more meaningful life with less stuff, but a lot more in a broader sense. Relationships and people and creativity and passion. So just to pick up the narrative thread here, you said before that it was not long after you laid yourself off and with the dreams of being the next F Scott Fitzgerald or whatever, you, this website, the minimalists started to take off, what is the minimalist? What do you do? Well, first I'll tell you, I think what do you do

is life's most dangerous question. Because, like I said, we ask it all the time, and broadly, it can mean anything. Well, I drink water, I write on little yellow note pads, I go to concerts, but really what we're asking is is Generally when we ask that question, I'm not saying you're asking this but but as a society when we answer We ask that question. What we're saying is where do you work? What's your title? How much money do you earn so I can compare you to me on the socio-economic ladder?

And the reason we don't posit the question that way is because we kind of sound like jerks if if we say it like that So instead we say what do you do? And then we spend the next 15, 20 minutes talking about something that we do to earn a paycheck, but doesn't necessarily mean that we're passionate about or even that interest it in. And so what do I do? I do a lot of things. If you're asking, what do we do to to earn a living? I mean, we do a bunch of stuff now. Ryan and I are partners in a business. We own a coffee shop in St. Petersburg, Florida. We, I teach a writing class online. We've written three books that thankfully have done fairly well.

And hopefully this documentary will do well enough that it'll actually make its money back from all the production and promotional costs that we put out there. And so we do a lot of things, but everything I do now aligns with the person who I aspire to be. You know, 35 years old now,

I'm constantly aspiring to be my 40 year old self. You know, looking at that horizon, and realizing once I get to the horizon, I don't get there, like there's always a new horizon. So once I get to 40, I'll be aspiring to be my 41, 45 year old self, or whatever it may be. So wait, you own a coffee shop? How did that start?

And I guess you did work as a barista for a minute, but why there? But you live in Montana. So we do. Talk to me about that. Sure. Well, we focus on one project a year, typically. And so I'll just kind of go back a little bit. And in 2012, Ryan and I moved from Dayton, Ohio

out to Montana, and we started a publishing company. So we could publish our own books and also some other creative folks' books that we look at other people's work and say, I really wish I would have done that. Let me help you along your journey. And so we moved out to Montana just because it was really beautiful and allowed us to focus on some creative endeavors, write a book called Everything That Remains, which is sort of a memoir of the last five years of our lives. And doing so, we didn't want

to follow a traditional model and wait for a publisher and all that stuff. So we started our own publishing company and we moved out here to do that. And in 2013, actually that was in 2013. In 2014, we went on the road. We basically donated a year of our lives. We went out to a hundred different cities and eight different countries spreading this message of minimalism and really focused on. And this is what you see in the documentary,

just so people know. Yeah, absolutely. So what you see in the documentary is that 2014 tour. We went all over the place and had a bunch of events and just kind of started out with two to six people showing up and then eventually as the message spread hundreds of people started showing up. And it resonated with all different types of people no matter where they were on the socioeconomic ladder.

We had a former homeless person show up in Adelaide, Australia. We had a factory worker and a CEO show up at the same event in Atlanta. And what I realized is that while all these people need considerably different lives, they're all striving to still live a more meaningful life. And they're asking the same question, how do I live more deliberately? And it manifests differently. You know, for that CEO, he was trying to figure out why he so he gets so angry when the smallest things happen like his fourth TV goes out in his second home. Whereas the factory workers trying to figure out should I buy a new pair of blue jeans or pay my rent.

And so these questions, they lead to the same place. But we basically donated a year of our lives to get out there and spread this message at a whole bunch of free events. And in 2015, last year, we wanted to focus on a year of contribution. So we, along with our audience at our website, we found a different way to contribute to different communities. We built some wells in Malawi. We funded a high school for a year in Kenya. We built an elementary school in Laos for 66 kids there. We also met some amazing people in St.

Petersburg, Florida, who had this awesome idea to make this community hub that was also a really great coffee shop. And so we had an opportunity to contribute to that in a different way by becoming business partners in that. And so it was serendipity that led us there, but it aligned with what we wanted to do and really set up this community hub. And I was really familiar with St. Petersburg because that's where our mother was when she passed away.

So I had ties in that community already. And then this year our focus has been getting this document around to the world. I watched your documentary and the first voice step comes up is my voice. And I think. and I was like, I don't know if I'm a minimalist, or maybe I'm just a huge hypocrite, because if I look at my desk at home, there's a little glass Buddha

that my wife bought me at Barney's. So, and we have a kid, and there's just a boatload of, he's a maximalist. I mean, he's got every crayon and every color and every toy and every color and just every, just the department is filled with stuff. I defy you to be a minimalist with a one and a half year old.

But, and yet I get that letting go, this term you use, with reference to physical things, letting go in a much larger sense is the sine qua non of the Buddhist path of a toward enlightenment, whatever you want to define that. And obviously when you die, you're going to be letting go of everything. So I'm trying to figure out, I don't know if I'm doing a good job of this. Like, am I missing something here? Should I be going minimalist? What would that even mean?

So save me. You want rules, right? I wish there was a minimalist rulebook, because I'm sure if we could put that, here's a hundred things you should own and you'll be happy because A, that'd be easy and you could follow up. But of course the things that add value to my life are gonna be different for you. But I guess I'm not saying, I don't think the style,

I like that little glass booter that my wife bought me. I like my kids to it. You can't be a minimalist and have that. So we're not aesthetics, right? No, no, I get it. I don't misunderstand what you're saying, but I guess, I bet I have a lot more stuff than you And I suspect if I went through it and and with the with my wife and and we only

To kept the things that gave us joy. I'm sure we would lose a lot of stuff But still I feel like I feel like I'm not overly oppressed by my by my stuff and yet I have a lot of stuff I think right well Well, the soundbite answer is that minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can focus on life's most important things, which actually aren't things at all. But that doesn't mean that there's anything inherently wrong with stuff. The problem is the attachment and the meaning that we give to those things. And we get so caught up in what these things mean to us that I think we lose focus on other stuff.

And the question I would have for you is, is do these things actually get in the way or do they augment your experience of life? And for me, the things that I own now, they augment my experience of life. They improve it. And I'll do little stoical experiments from time to time I'm definitely not a stoic but but you know I'll occasionally temporarily deprive myself of something

Just to figure out whether or not it's truly adding value to my life and and I think you don't ever get there Though you don't get to the the thousand things you own and then and then you're happy I mean Dan did you know that the the average American household has 300,000 items in it? And I probably had more than that. Now, I was a well-organized hoarder, but all that, you know, so we see this sort of continuum or the spectrum where we think the organized people are on one side and the hoarders are on the other side,

but it's all still one continuum. I was a well-organized hoarder, which means instead of being a contestant on the show hoarders or a candidate for that show, I had all of my stuff in an ordinal system of boxes and bins stored in my basement, but it still looked like a maze of unused stuff that was actually getting in the way and preventing me from pursuing a life of meaning or a life that I wanted to pursue. And so, yeah, I got rid of 90% of my stuff, but let's do the math there. I mean, I probably still have 20 or 30,000 items, whatever that means. I haven't counted my stuff, although I did once as a parody

and people took it very seriously. I wrote an essay about having 288 items because I was sort of making fun of the people who do count their stuff, but in a ribbing, very nice, friendly way, because we have friends who, you know, like Colin, who's in the documentary, who has 52 things, everything he owns fits in his backpack That's great for him because it allows him to do what he's passionate about which is travel around the world He moves to a new country every four months and everything he own fits in his backpack because he doesn't own a kitchen table Because it would be hard for him to carry that on to a plane. I'm sure he also doesn't have a one and a half year old Right, no, same here. I And I have a three year old now.

And I, so my life now at 35 looks different from what it did at 32 or at 28. And so that ideal self is constantly changing as well. And so as my life changes, I'll bring new things into my life that add value. I'm also, I also have to question the things I hold on to because just because something's adding value to my life today, it doesn't mean it will, you know, five years from now. So I have to keep being cognizant of that.

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound, maybe I did, maybe I didn't, I don't know, but I definitely didn't mean to sound defensive about me and my stuff. Maybe I'm just naturally kind of minimalist in my tendencies anyway, because I don't, if I were to just sort of mentally do an inventory of all of my stuff, I don't, I don't have like lots of extra stuff in boxes packed away, like I only have the stuff I want to have. I would say. You're a Buddhist.

Yeah, I guess that's really true. I mean, definitely it's true that I'm a Buddhist. I don't know that I'm a Buddhist. Well, we get people come to us and we're on tour in Mississippi. We had this young Christian couple of come to us. It's so great to see two guys out here spreading Jesus' message. And then we were up in Seattle a few months later and someone said, it's so great to see these guys out here spreading these Buddhist maxims.

And we got an email that said, you know, Muhammad was the original minimalist. And so I find is that while this isn't a new idea, it is a new reaction to, or it's an old idea that's a reaction to a new problem, this problem of post-industrial consumerism, which was really skyrocketed, starting in the 90s. We had Juliet Shaw, the economist from Boston, who is a documentary and she talks about how this consumerism, this unchecked consumerism really started in the 1990s. And we now, as a country, just as America, we have $12 trillion worth of debt. I mean, it's impossible for us to even understand

what $12 trillion means, right? I mean, if you were to spend a million dollars every single day since the birth of the Buddha, you still wouldn't have spent $1 trillion by now. And we have $12 trillion in consumer debt. Look, there's no question. I mean, in my mind, I mean, I agree. I think I probably said this in your movie

that we're constantly chasing the next thing that we think is going to do it for us. And obviously that shows up in lots of areas of our life, not just in our buying habits, but in our eating habits and our relationships and in our professional ambitions. And this is the sort of human sickness, uh... this is what the boot of a call suffering that that we are caught we we always think we're always looking for the thing that's

just gonna do it for us and there there isn't such a thing unless unless you believe in nirvana that being said i wonder sometimes as i watch the movie like is there a kind of anti-capitalist vibe to it? Do you think there is? No, I don't think so. I think it's still the best system that there is. A bad system, but the best that there is, right?

Yeah, or democracy has been described that way. Yeah, I think capitalism is similar to that. I mean, the problems with our society is not capitalism. The problem is us. And the unchecked desires. And I think marketers do a really good job. There isn't anything inherently wrong with advertising. But there is something sort anything inherently wrong with advertising,

but there is something inherently wrong with us because we are constantly searching and searching. And so, no, I don't think it's anti-capitalist at all. In fact, it's just pro-intentionality and being intentional with the decisions that we make each day. We all have resources and money is just one of them, but we have time and attention and the people around us, our relationships, our health is a resource and we have to figure out how we're spending these on a daily basis. So if there are people listening who have two living rooms or an extra car just because they needed to fill a three car garage or whatever. If there are people listening who feel like they are, in fact, burdened by their stuff and they're interested in exploring how they could dip their toe in the minimalist

water. What would you recommend? Obviously, your website, but what are the things one could do? Well, if they read all three of our books, they'll be cured, Dan. No, I'm kidding. You sound like a few of this self-help gurus, I know. Man, I really wish that was the case. You know, for anyone out there who wants to dip their toe into the into minimalism water, I'll suggest something that has worked for tens of thousands of our readers. Josh and I came up with this thing

called the 30-day minimalism game. And it works like this. Essentially you find someone who, you know, wants to declutter as well, whether it's a family member, coworker, friend, whatever. You find someone who wants to do this with you, because it's always better when you have support. And plus, we all know that decluttering is boring,

so when you're in it with someone else, it makes a little less boring. Actually, decluttering isn't that boring. Just, I mean, I don't like, yeah, I'm like super into organizing the house and my wife is. And but well, like once in a while, and maybe this is why I don't feel burdened by my stuff, because once in a while, she will help me like prune and

I actually find it kind of invigorating Getting rid of stuff that I don't need anymore. Yeah, I certainly think that that can you know That could be the case especially when you get into it You start to realize all the benefits of like wow. I can see my floor now or wow Yes, I have yes, I have room. Yeah, I've you know, I've maroon in my house Wow, we had a fourth cat. I didn't even know that man It had kittens right exactly so the 30 day minimalism game like basically you just find someone who wants to get rid of some stuff

And you both agree to get rid of one thing Um at the beginning of the month on the first of the month on the second day you each get rid of two things and then on the third day Each person gets rid of three things and it's on the third day, each person gets rid of three things. And it starts out really, really easy, right? Up until you get to like day 19, you got to get rid of 19 things. And then day 20, you got to get rid of 20 things. It's a little bit more difficult. So the the game works like this, like, you know, whoever, whoever goes the longest wins, if both people make it to the end of the month, they both kind of win because they have gotten rid of almost 500 items. But that has worked for so many people

to kind of dip their toe into it. I can get you that momentum that you need to, right? Because we get overwhelmed and we try to start with the difficult stuff. You know, for me, I actually started with the difficult stuff and it was, it made other things easier in time, but it was the hardest thing to do. It was when my mom died, I was trying to get one of these sentimental items, right? but it was the hardest thing to do. It was when my mom died, I was trying to get rid of a bunch of these sentimental items. Right? And that's the worst place to start, because you have this attachment to so many things. Over time, I realized that the memories aren't in our things, our memories are inside

us, but we attach all these memories to these things. And it's true those things can be triggers for memories, but by getting rid of the stuff, I'm not actually getting rid of the memory. So start with something easy, and I think the minimalism game allows you to do that. Fair enough. Well, you've provoked a lot of thinking on my end. I'm keeping that expensive boot of my wife bought for me, but it sounds like you really love it, man.

I do love it. I do love it. I do love it. I do love it. I do love you to keep it. Yes, yeah. Before we go here, let's do in a completely unrestrained bout of pimping whatever you want to pimple. Like what, what, where, what are you interested in us doing, buying, seeing, reading of yours?

We don't have anything to sell to you really. If you want to check out the film, you're, you're welcome to do that. It's just called minimalism. But if, if listeners leave here with one message, I hope it's this. Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. OK, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us.

And if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter, at Dan B. Harris. I also want to thank Hardly, the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work. Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members.

You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.