513 | The Sound of Life

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 Yes, yes, yes, yes, hello simpletons Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast We'll rediscuss what it means to live a meaningful life With less My name's Joshua Fields Millburn, if I look different to you on camera I've been trying these glasses during the day They're like blue light blocking And it's supposed to help my sleep It's not working yet, but who knows, maybe it will You look like Vandiezo from Pitch Black, man That's what they all say They've told me that for years That other voice you hear right next to me is My good friend, he's joining me here at Earthing Studios In West Hollywood, California, that's TK Coleman Hey, thanks for being here today Have some fun I'm ready to have fun, I wish I would have brought my shades But it's all good Well let's be frivolous today Coming up on this episode, we're talking about Making time for frivolous pursuits We're going to talk about what we're willing to sacrifice For the important things in life Also, we'll talk about clutter that shows up unexpectedly That was supposed to, we were supposed to get to that last week But, you know, with Guy in here How amazing was that? There were some things we couldn't get to And thank God we couldn't Because what a beautiful episode that was with Guy Finley We got much more to talk about Also on page three, we're going to talk about Five easy decluttering tips you can apply to Every space this winter What do you say? Let's start with our callers? Yeah, sounds good If you have a question or comment for our show We'd love to hear from you 406-219-7839 That's our phone number If you want to be on the program Or you can just send a voice memo right from your phone To podcast at theminimalists.com Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber So we can prioritize your message By the way, big thanks to our patrons Your support keeps our podcast 100% Advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all Advertisement suck Yes, our first question today is from Paul Hello, Minimalists Josh and TK and the rest of the gang This is Paul from Delaware, a Patreon supporter I love music, music is great But I have a hard time listening to music I just don't spend time listening to much music And I don't do many activities that allow me to just listen to music It seems that Josh listens to a lot of music And curates a lot of the music experience that he has Obviously he is prioritizing this in his life at times Over other audio content So I'm curious, when does Josh listen to music so much? And what does he sacrifice in order to listen to music And to have all these thoughts and opinions on the music he listens to Alright, thanks TK, you got this earpiece in right now You might think it's for the podcast I'm listening to music right now It's every little step You will be there Yes, come on Actually, we're at Sunday symposium this weekend I'm pulling into the parking lot And all of a sudden Bobby Brown, every little step comes on Right as I see TK, I get out of the car And he starts doing the running man, it was amazing And then a couple drives by and they say, hey, we're here for the show Are we early? And we say, yeah We're just here talking about Bobby Brown And the guy in the car, he's there with his wife He says, no kidding He goes, they're actually going to be playing at the forum Yeah, in the addition, yeah, yeah, yeah And he voiced him in And who else was it? Tony Braxton, I think That's right, that's right And so one of the things about music for me Is I used to listen to a very narrow band of music Especially like in the 90s, I liked Midwest hip hop And that was pretty much it If you were bringing some rock music around me Or some like East Coast hip hop music But then R&B started sort of permeating my life Because there were a lot of girls who liked to listen to R&B And so where I grew up, a lot of people were listening to R&B And so I said, oh yeah, they like it So I'm going to like it And I found the beauty in it, right? And so when it comes to these, a question like this I was trying to figure out how do I summarize this question I was asking Professor Sean And what he wrote here is like How can we justify making time for seemingly frivolous pursuits? A couple important words in there, seemingly, right? Because it might feel frivolous Because like, is this the best use of my time? And you know, it may not be frivolous though Sometimes like doing something like reading a book Especially if it's like a novel that feels luxurious And that can feel frivolous Like shouldn't I be doing something more important? Something more profound, something more difficult? And it's like, well, there are no shoulds And so what do I want to do with this time? Am I simply just living my life for the moving widgets around? What is your purpose? Like you're a machine sort of thing? Or is it like, do I find deep meaning? I often make a distinction between purpose and meaning I don't think human beings have purpose In the sense that like a machine has purpose My coffee maker's purpose is to make me coffee, right? My purpose isn't to make coffee or to drink coffee But I can find deep meaning in a morning ritual Of preparing the coffee And the same thing is true with music Although the thing I'll say about music That's different from a lot of these other He used the word audio content, right? I've never thought of music as content But I understand what he means there Is it can be done while you're doing other things And not get in the way of those things In fact, great music enhances many of the things that we do At our Sunday symposiums How do we open each Sunday symposium? We have a sound bath and it's beautiful And Kelly Jean is there And it's amplifying the experience of the event And then when Matt and Bonnie and Sean Are like tearing down the stage to get prepared for us They're playing Every Little Thing from Peter Doran And that is injected into the event And enhances the event But it doesn't have to be something grand like a big event You're just driving to the Sunday symposium And Every Little Step comes on And now all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah This is enhancing, it's amplifying my experience Sometimes it anchors my experience in a way You know, that song comes on And it's like, it could be something similar like I wish I was a little bit taller And all of a sudden you're transported back to 1991 Or whenever that was, right? Or Will Smith's Summertime comes on And I'm transferred back to the Dayton, Ohio humidity In the park, in the early 90s And so it's a time machine as well It anchors those experiences and brings you places That you didn't even know it could bring you back to That's exactly right, man And I have deep, deep concerns about this idea that Frivolity can only be justified If we can appeal to some way that it makes us more productive Whatever happened to the concept of intrinsic value This is one of the consequences of consumerism, by the way Where things matter because everything is a means to an end But personalism, which is the philosophy that At the heart of reality, persons, persons are fundamental We get back to that idea of intrinsic value That some things matter simply because you think they do You know, Descartes says, I think therefore I am Perhaps we could say, hey, it matters to me Therefore it matters, period And so I agree that if we make time for music We make time for play, we make time for fun That it probably can make us more interesting people Make us more valuable in our relationships It has ways of being economically useful That we could have never predicted But even if it didn't do all those things Are you telling me that I would have the power to ruin your life Simply by eliminating your need to produce What a horrible reality, right? There's no paradise possible for such a creature Hey, sit back, relax, enjoy yourself, have some fun There is nothing you can do that must be done Oh, no, this is hell, right? But in addition to that aspect of us That can be characterized by the phrase, I must There is that aspect of our humanity That is characterized by the phrase, I can Play is essential to our humanity And play must arise from a space within us That is not compelled by I will be punished unless I do X Yeah, I never feel like I must listen to music I feel like I can, but also I get to What a gift that I have these ears to listen to this music And so I think about quite often music doesn't feel excessive to me It feels as if it is essential And a lot of the so-called audio content that Paul is talking about Is really compelling and it's even addictive, right? And we can get stuck in the YouTube loop or the podcast loop Or whatever else and there's nothing wrong with those things I find great benefit in YouTube and in podcasts Tremendous benefit, but at some point it can become excess And so I think I have to unseat that excess sometimes To make space for the essentials And music is an essential part of my life In fact, at the end of every year, I didn't do this last year But Paul, you've inspired me to do it So I'm going to do it sort of post-hoc here Every year I do my top 10 list And sometimes it's a top 12 list or top 9 list Or top 15 list of the albums of the year It's called The Sound of Life You can find it at theminimelist.com And it's just a list of my favorite albums from each year Since we started the minimalist So I didn't do one in 2010 But every year after that, 2011 and after Here's a weird thing Every odd number year, so this year, 2025 I tend to have a better relationship with the music In odd number years I don't know why that is But odd number years often produce better music for me For my own taste But you'll notice on those lists the amount of diversity there Because I stopped being so dogmatic and programmatic About this is what I should like It's like, no, let me explore There are no shoulds here It doesn't mean I'm going to like everything But my two favorite albums so far this year Rust and Kelly, which is borderline country And I don't even typically care for country music It's Singer-songwriter with a little bit of country Interjected into it And then Justin Bieber's album, which has 44 songs on it I shouldn't like it It might be my favorite album of the year A lot of songs It has a lot of songs It's actually a double, like double disc Even though they don't do discs anymore Swag one and swag two I think this was the album that made you want to declare him King of R&B, right? Replacing Bobby Brown, right? He's put out... So here's a weird thing Like I think he was disconnected from his whole management group And a lot of his handlers And he finally was able to become a version of himself But also carry forward all of the skills that he's built up over the years And he created a project that was fully him And where it was outside of the demands of the corporate machine And he created something really special And if I was dogmatic like Justin Bieber Justin Bieber Now why would I say that? Because of everyone else's judgment And I want to fit in with them And I was like, no, Justin Bieber, like what's wrong with him? Nothing's wrong with him He's hyper talented He was a child star So yeah, maybe he has some problems as an adult But what child star doesn't? Who among us would not be a little messed up from constant scrutiny Since you were prepubescent, right? Easy for me because I'm untested by that level of fame, right? That's right Right, and so it's easy for me to say Easy for me to be like, I wouldn't be affected by it Yeah, I'd be even more affected Let's be honest about it, right? And so the judgment keeps us from the enjoyment And so it's like, I can dismiss Like, oh, like if you listen to this, you're like, I don't like country music Okay, you're allowed to not like it But that's a pretty broad sweeping statement Is there never a country album that's ever been made That you might enjoy one song from? Like, oh, are you just telling yourself a story you're not allowed to enjoy? Isn't that a story we tell ourselves all the time? I'm not allowed to enjoy this I'm not going to do that because I'm not supposed to enjoy this It's wrong to enjoy this Now, of course, there are some things if you're harming others and enjoying it That's not what we're talking about here But there are some things just like, that's taboo It's uncool to like that No, it's cool to like the things that you like It's uncool to allow other people to shape your preferences And shame you out of the things that you might enjoy That's exactly right And I love the example you gave of Justin Bieber Because it illustrates the underlying principle here That when we're willing to uncouple from the machine of compulsion There is a kind of creativity that comes out of us That's valuable in a different way And that brings us a different kind of joy And so Bieber is an example, I think of Colin Cowherd leaving ESPN There are some people who, it looks as if the machine makes them Oh, they're only a star because of the machine They only dance like that because they have the best choreographers Their songs are only number one because they've got, you know, the producers from Sony or whatever it may be And then they break away from that machine And maybe they're not as famous Maybe they do lose some of the bells and whistles But we see them take things in a direction Oh, I didn't know she could write like that I didn't know he was willing to take it in that direction Why? Because it's not coming from a place of you must, you must And it's coming from a place of, hey, I can And sometimes it's great to find your why But it's also great to get into it with your why not Because your why is your sense of the purpose that compels me And I love that But your why not is your sense of possibility Your sense of what do I give myself permission to do Even though I don't have to do it Simply because it makes me come alive Yes And that music is a soundtrack to life That's why I called that the list I do, the Sound of Life And Sean, please send me an email, remind me to update I've never, I didn't do the 2024 list I just didn't feel compelled at the time Although there was a great album that was definitely at the top of my list last year Donovan Woods, he had now come out last year that it's a masterpiece It is a perfect album So if just for that, if I were to put one album on the list It's that, it's that good But I like music as this soundtrack to life It's really important I'm working on a new film right now And one of the people who's in charge of certain elements Of certain elements of it He was like really concerned about like, I don't know I just, I think the film isn't really finished And then he got a new cut yesterday With the new music that VVE made Nate and Drew and another guy named John And he's like, oh, now I see it It's the music, I was telling him for weeks Like, you gotta wait for the music It's the music that brings it all out If you look at our first film Minimalism The seventh version is very similar to the final version Which is the ninth version But it lacked the life Because we needed the music injected into it So the version you see now and tens of millions Almost a hundred million people have seen that film now It's because that music brought something forward Those emotions forward But you can do that in your everyday spaces Savvy Dee, first thing you do when you come here What do you do to help prepare the space? We put on some meditative music Yes, we want the space to be meditative So there's like a Zen garden playlist that we have And we turn that on And you put some essential oils going And you're sort of setting a mood I do that at home in the mornings I'll do the same Zen garden radio station on Pandora And then throughout the day that might change Later in the day we might be playing Two Lanes Which is like this German duo electronic And it's like you get you moving Or I wake my daughter up every morning with a song And it's just a different song It might be something from Dua Lipa It might be Justin Bieber It might be a Drake song And at first she's grouchy But then her mom and I are in the room just dancing And like how can you be grouchy At two people just being the silliest versions of ourselves Enjoying the morning together And music helps us do that It's so much more difficult Could we still enjoy ourselves absolutely without music Not necessary Yes, it is non-essential But it adds so much value Why would I want to get rid of it There's so many things I'd rather get rid of Here's one other thing that I often think about Especially when I was managing a bunch of people in the corporate world And you get people to call off in retail stores, right? And the question that I would ask them Is if I gave you $10,000 today Would you be able to make it in? And most people wouldn't Yeah, of course I guess I could force myself to come in But sometimes the answer is honest The answer is no I couldn't have made it in Because I got into a car accident And I ended up in the hospital You could have given me $10,000 And there's nothing I could have done I never say a million dollars Because it's like, yeah, I'll drag my body Into the retail store for a million But for $10,000 Which is a lot of money And life changing for many of us There's still some things that I couldn't do Now why am I bringing that up? Because I feel the same way with music It's like, hey Paul If I gave you $10,000 to figure out how to inject An hour more of music into your day Would you figure out what else to get rid of? Oh, can I ask a variation? Yeah A real time honest question for you If I gave you $10,000 to stop listening to music Well not a chance That one's easy That's so easy What about a couple of days a week? No, not a chance You could give me a million dollars And I wouldn't stop listening to music a couple of days a week Because what can I do with the million dollars That's going to change my life more Than that frivolous pursuit of music Which isn't frivolous at all It's inspirational It's joyous It's life, man Yes, I can give you a billion dollars But I kill you next Wednesday No, no, I want to live I don't want to die as a billionaire, right? I want to live right now And for me, great music enhances the moment And here's the other side The last thing I'll say about the music side There's music I don't like that I really enjoy Because my daughter enjoys it And so every Friday I take her to her unschooling program I'm driving her there And I'll put on a song and then she'll put on a song And then I'll put on a song and she'll put on a song I love that And we're listening to Whitney Houston's National Anthem And then she's playing a Stray Kids K-pop song for me And she's singing every lyric Even though she doesn't speak Korean And most of it's in Korean But she knows all of the words or the sounds And I don't like the music And I wouldn't listen to it by myself But the compersion I feel for her The joy I get from her joy Wooo It's made possible through and with the music Wow, wow, what a great start here Paul, thank you so much for your question Let's, before we get back to our callers It's time for the lightning round This is where we talk about the Patreon community chats question of the week And we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim You can find this episode's maxims Right over there in the show notes at theminimalists.com And find every minimal maxim ever At minimalmaxims.com Savvy D's doing something great We have thousands of minimal maxims there at the site And he took a list I think Sean got the list of 1200 maxims I started with the first 1200 There were way more than that And we pared it down to 250 of my favorites And he's putting them in fortune cookies For our Sunday symposiums Because we like talking about some of the things We're unpacking them together And so we're putting these I've always wanted to be a fortune cookie, right? Or now I accidentally became one And so we're going to unpack these together At our live events In fact, we could talk about Actually, our next Sunday symposium is coming up It's in Orange County Black Friday weekend That is November 30th You can join us there By the time this comes out There should still be a few free tickets If not, please put your name on the waitlist We'll let you know as soon as some tickets open up By the way, we'll deliver our weekly show notes To your inbox Including seven new maxims every Monday For free if you sign up for our email newsletter At theminimalists.com We'll never send you spam or junk or ads But we will start your week off With a dose of simplicity Oh, I should say Tickets for Sunday symposium Sundaysymposium.com Alright, the question of the week this week We actually had two Do you remember the debacle TK Of the question of the week? So originally, it was written sort of like this What is the hobby activity or ritual That you prioritize making time for Even when it means sacrificing something else And I like that But we got a bunch of answers where It said that what people enjoyed doing But I didn't know what What are you sacrificing for, right? Because it's like, yeah, everyone wants to be a billionaire If someone hands you a billion dollars No one's going to be upset with that necessarily, right? But I'm not willing to sacrifice what it takes To earn a billion dollars So the same thing can be said with music Or any other activity And so I rephrased it a little bit here So the new question of the week is Solve this equation X is so important to me That I'm willing to sacrifice Y To spend time on it X is so important to me What is that X? What is that thing? It's so important to me That I will sacrifice Y This other thing that's also important to me So I can spend time on X Now before we get to our pithy answers T.K., let's hear from some of our listeners Lee said, taking my motorbike into the hills Through the forest Emerging onto a beautiful hilltop view I get there as the day fades Slightly smelly, very muddy With a huge grin on my face Having seemingly left all my troubles behind I sacrifice time that could serve Productivity or relationships I risk physical safety for solitude I abandon the social script that says Evenings belong to family, work or rest But every sacrifice is a trade for something rarer Clarity, self-ownership, silence The loss is surface, the gain is depth Oof, T.K. Tell me about gaining depth by sacrificing Some of the surface things I mean, it's almost like the difference between Swimming and snorkeling Which one is right? I mean, they both have their time They both have their place They're both beautiful You can't do either one of those things all the time But snorkeling or scuba diving Allows you to go deep You can't cover as much of the surface So swimming is more fun in that way You get to cover more, not ground But cover more surface But when you scuba dive Or when you snorkel, you go deep And you don't get around as much But you see the life that is underneath You see the life that dwells in the waters And there's something beautiful about that And when you see life in the depths You're able to come back up And appreciate the surface in a very different way You can live in the depths But you can live from the depths And if you're going to live from the depths You have to be willing to sacrifice the surfaces sometimes I love it She talked about with the social scripts as well Here's how you're supposed to spend your day And some of those traditions are actually useful as templates Not as shoulds, but like Okay, I'm going to structure my day So that I wake up in the mornings Which aligns with my circadian biology Does that make sense? Okay And so if I'm doing that My day is 9-5 Okay, that makes sense And then I'm going to eat meals at these times If it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner That's a societal script These are prescriptions in a way But you don't have to take them, right? You can say, yeah, I'm going to tweeze out this ingredient That works well for me You know what? That doesn't work well for me And I'm not going to feel the guilt Or shame of living differently Because I've made an intentional decision So one example of this is I spoke with someone recently Who lost their precious little dog And took walks with the dog once or twice a day And one of the things we talked about was While we're here in this space Of not yet having another dog Not having decided what we're going to do about that What if we gave ourselves permission To take a walk by ourselves To continue taking that walk And when we do things like that We get to the heart of something We have these societal scripts that says Okay, it's cool to take a walk As long as you've got somebody with you It's cool to take a walk as long as there's a practical reason And you have a dog And so people are confident when they take walks with dogs Because other people do it But you take a walk by yourself Does that make you a creep? And it's not that you should never factor those things in For the sake of your own safety But societal scripts can be very subtle And they can prevent us from doing little things That give us great joy Just because we don't want to look out of place And things that we do alone Take yourself out to dinner Go out on a date with yourself this Wednesday Go to a movie by yourself Go for a walk with yourself Speed Levich says I go salsa dancing with myself every Tuesday night Take yourself salsa dancing It can be a wonderful experience If you have the courage to break away from those scripts And when it's intentional like that It never feels frivolous Life affirming and life giving in ways You make me think about When I used to live in West Hollywood I'd bring my daughter to the dog park down there And we didn't own a dog I'm allergic to dogs But she would just go into the playpen there And people would just imagine She had her dog with her too And it was running around And she'd just go in there and play with the dogs For like an hour I would watch her so much I would watch her petting these dogs And like first she's trepidatious Because like there's just a bunch of big dogs Small dogs, whatever And she's just enjoying the dogs And yeah, she wasn't worried for a second Like is this creepy? What are people going to think about? Like no, she was six And so when we're six We have that child like wonder And we're not worried about What are other people going to think about me? I'm going to dictate my life by these societal norms That doesn't make any sense to a six year old That's why we have some of the best friends When we're children, right? Because we're not yet And we lose this very quickly But we're not yet at this place where we say Oh, am I going to have to make some social sacrifices For having this as my friend? Am I going to have to be unpopular Or not liked by the so-called cool kid If I'm friends with them? We lose that innocence very quickly Yeah, let's do one more here This one's from Music Man on Patreon He said playing league volleyball Playing league volleyball Because it forces me to move And toss around my aging body Be around others and be in the moment When the ball is in the air There is no room for any other thoughts What a metaphor there When the ball is in the air I have no room for other thoughts He says playing volleyball is so important to me That I'm willing to sacrifice certain career goals Skip many social events And leave the comfort of my bed TK, this is fascinating Music Man here He skipped certain social events But he's still able to get his socializing During volleyball So sometimes our perceived sacrifices Aren't actually real sacrifices That's exactly right I like to think of them as initial sacrifices Meaning that upfront You have to make a sacrifice Because you're not going to get Something in return immediately You have to give that thing up And then you go do something else And it's not until after you do something else That you say, oh, I'm so glad I did that And I love that Special interests have a way of focusing our social lives So that we find ourselves congregating And communing and collaborating And connecting with people That we have so much in common with Based on this particular interest But all of these other intersecting interests as well Spot on Listeners, how about you? What hobby, activity, or ritual That you prioritize making time for Even when it means sacrificing something else What is that hobby or ritual? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat Okay, give me something pithy, TK What you got for us today? You can't scroll your way to a soul If you want to be a person of substance You can do as much superficial stuff as you want In fact, you should do superficial stuff But ultimately, you have to be willing to go within And do the work of cultivating your own interior life And in a way, our souls can be likened to a garden You have to cultivate the garden You have to till the land You have to do the work A garden is capable of being a very beautiful place But it's also capable of being a very horrific, ugly place If you don't take care of what's there So I like to think of part of the aim of life As the construction of an interior chapel Where we can go within and meditate And not just go within as a way of escaping from the world But as a way of engaging the world with greater depth From a place of substance And so imagine a person trying to construct a chapel And they're just using pieces of paper And every time they get a wall, it just blows away And you say, what are you doing? They say, I'm building a chapel Well, you'll never get it done with paper It doesn't have enough substance to hold When the wind comes along and blows it In a similar way, if we try to build our souls With all the superficial things, the distractions The things that don't reflect our deepest interest But they just reflect what we're reacting to Based on someone else selling us Or successfully grabbing our attention Then our souls become like paper When the wind blows, life tosses us to and fro Everything comes crumbling apart But when we build that soul with substance Which is silence and solitude We become beings of fortitude, strength and resilience Well, speaking of silence Silence is just like a space between the sounds In a way, right? So my pithy answer is We're sticking to the theme of music here The best music plays with the spaces between the notes And you see that with a song Like it's obviously not just noise If it's noise, that's not a song We don't call that a song But if there are chords and there's a melody The space between the notes isn't space really It's part of the song It's a prerequisite You have to have the space And if you want to slow down a song, guess what? You have more space Isn't that true for your life? If you want to slow down your life It's not about doing more to slow down It's about doing less It's about adding more spaciousness there So that the notes stand out even more As opposed to we fill it up right now And it's just noise, man What have you been up to lately? I'm so busy Here's another way to say that My life is so noisy And if it's noisy out there Guess what's going on inside? I don't notice how noisy it is in my mind But it's chaotic there And if I don't have any space between the notes If I don't have any silence, any stillness Then, yeah, yeah I'm not making room for that joy For the beauty I'm simply moving from thing to thing Amid the background white noise of everyday existence And that's freaking exhausting, man And so when I think about music And I think about the space I don't think about that as a sacrifice so much Right? You're not sacrificing the space for the notes You are playing with the notes with the space And so when done well, the sacrifices, the spaces there Are actually what is required to hear the music Alright, that's almost the end of page one, TK But we still have an entire switchboard of colors to talk to But first, real quick for right here, right now We have one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist TK I hear you've been talking smack about your job In fact, Professor Sean caught it on tape Check this out I feel stuck in a job that's beneath me In a job that drains me In a job that makes me feel deeply unsatisfied Why don't you come to me? Why don't you just tell me, man? Why do I have to find out like this? Why do I have to find out on YouTube? I went into the minimalist YouTube channels Like today we're going to talk about Josh I put on my blue blockers This blue block of wearing Joke cracking black shirt Oh, no TK You just started this new Clutter Counseling series on YouTube You can check it out on the minimalist YouTube channel YouTube.com slash The Minimals You've been doing these videos, they're like short counseling sessions 8 to 20 minutes long and you tackle a specific issue Some great titles so far How to tell people to shut up is maybe my favorite title But what are some of the things you're talking about here in this series? So I have one called, you know, How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty The one that you just played was a segment from What to Do When You Hate Your Day Job How many people feel a gap between their dream job and their day job And they can't just traverse that gap overnight So what do you do while you are there Or how to get out of an argument spiral You know, those conversations that just take a wrong turn And you know that you shouldn't say what you're about to say Or you know that everything they say is going to make you feel bad How the heck do you get out of that? I also have one where, you know, the one about how to tell people to shut up Is really about how to deal with those conversations that You feel trapped in and maybe we feel too politically correct Or polite to end it because we don't want to sound like someone who's saying Hey, shut up, we know that hurts people's feelings And getting free isn't worth that for some people it is But what do you do in those types of situations? So whatever comes up in my clutter counseling sessions Or observations of life, I just take a little time to riff on it And try to give people not necessarily a comprehensive list of all the things That can be said about the topic You know, three or four things that they can do to maybe reframe the way they experienced that Beautiful, and you can check those out for free over at YouTube channel YouTube.com slash the minimalist Looks like we're putting those out every Saturday right now So if you subscribe over there, you'll get the, I don't know What do I tell people to hit the notification bell and ding the like and all these other things Every time when my daughter was really young And I was tucking her into bed And I say, goodnight, make sure you like and subscribe Look at me so confused Yeah, I don't care if you like and subscribe But if you enjoy the videos, you can find those over on our main YouTube channel Not on the podcast channel, but YouTube.com slash the minimalist Also, if you want to book a clutter counseling session with TK Theminimalists.com, click counseling at the top We just opened up his calendar for this month as well So you can book your session there Via Zoom, anywhere in the world Theminimalists.com, click on counseling at the top Much more coming up, but first here is a quick minimalist tip from one of our listeners Hi, I'm a longtime patron subscriber from Charleston And I wanted to share one mindset that really helps me pare down my stuff Which was reconsidering sets This is often the case with kitchen supplies and other household items like sheetsets, vacuums, hairdryers, etc Especially with the way things are made and packaged today I often have found that I have to buy something like six bowls Because they're the style that I like and it's what's available when I really only needed maybe three of them I used to consider sets as one item altogether and wasn't able to get rid of pieces of it But then at one point, I realized that I had had my vacuum for ten years And I had only ever used two attachments for it But was storing a full box of other attachments for whenever I might sell it or give it away Because of course, the next person would want that full set But I realized that if someone asked me to store a box of garbage for ten years in my cupboards I would easily say no So I let go of those attachments and have not looked back nor have I needed them in the few years since Hope this helps someone, thanks Oh, Ellie, thank you so much for that insightful tip Man, clutter could show up in the strangest places and the strangest ways Where have you found some unexpected clutter recently or anytime in your life? Oh man, I usually find clutter in my lifestyle in the arena of those ambiguous maybes We just had something come up last week where Sean was like, you want to do this? And I go, alright, professors like you want to do it? I'm like, alright And then you come up to me and you say, hey And you're like, I'm hearing some maybe in that, yes, man So I want you to know if you're going to do it, do it You can do it, but if you don't want to do it, no, it's cool No is real good sometimes But don't ruin your life with maybes Because you're giving other people permission to follow up with you You're giving other people permission to harass you You're giving other people permission to rightly criticize you To be disappointed with you for justifiable reasons You can save a lot of time and energy by eliminating those unnecessary maybes Sometimes maybes is a good option to have, but you don't want to have too many maybes Yeah, maybe essentially means tell me more And for me, that's much more useful than just saying maybe Because my maybe is like, I'm not fully committed to this But every yes is a micro commitment Am I willing to commit to this? Because I realize I'm saying no to other things So the question for me is what else am I saying no to If I'm saying yes to this, I have to say no to something else And that could be as simple as I'm scrolling on my phone I'm saying yes to this, it's a micro commitment to scroll We don't think of it that way, but as soon as I say that I'm making a micro commitment to scroll for the next 15 minutes If that's still a yes, then it's still a yes But as soon as I say that out loud, I might just like, let's delete this app I did that recently on Instagram I met someone at a grocery store yesterday And they were like, let me give you my Instagram And I'm like, I don't have an Instagram right now I'm like, here's my notepad, you can put it in here And that's freeing because I stopped saying maybe to Instagram It was just, you know what, I didn't want to say I'm making a micro commitment to say yes to scrolling For the next 20 minutes And how often am I doing that? For me, unexpected clutter is exactly the metaphor that Ellie brought up here She talked about the vacuum and getting rid of those what? Attachments What a perfect metaphor Because don't we often hold on to these things that don't serve us And they become attachments It can be literal vacuum accessory attachments But we become attached to all these other things that As she rightly pointed out are functionally trash And if someone else gave you these attachments You would say, I don't want to hold on to your trash But then why are you holding on to your trash for a decade? For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode Or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to podcast at theminimalists.com So we can feature your voice on the show Up next, TK, we got page two and page three But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break We'll be right back Alright y'all, that's the first 39% of episode 513 We'll see you on Patreon for the full two hour maximal edition Which includes answers to a bunch more questions Questions like, how many plates do you actually need in your home? Why is self-destruction necessary for creativity? That was a long conversation, that was one of my favorites we've had, TK And why am I afraid of letting go of my situation ship? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments Over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon The link is in the description When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives All the way back to the very first episode, a decade of podcasts Alright, that is our minimal episode for today Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Post Production, Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave Jordan Omor, Tomcat, Professor Sean over there on the couch And Savvy D on the board, and the rest of our team I'm Joshua Fields-Millburn, if you leave here with just one message Why don't 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