# \[REPLAY\] Love People, Use Things | The Minimalists

An episode of [Minimalist Moms Podcast | Purposeful Life & Parenting Tips](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1159498258), 24 Apr 2026, 48 min.

Audio: https://prefix.up.audio/s/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/mgln.ai/e/35/audio2.redcircle.com/episodes/19574900-6124-4339-a9b0-97f81a603a21/stream.mp3

If you’ve been a listener here for awhile, you’ll know that minimalism goes beyond stuff. I’m thrilled to share today’s guests, Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus - otherwise known as ‘The Minimalists’. Today they’ll dive deeper into the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people and how minimalism makes room in our lives to re-evaluate and heal these areas. Episode Sponsors | The Minimalist Moms Podcast would not be possible without the support of weekly sponsors. Choosing brands that I believe in is important to me. I only want to recommend brands that I believe may help you in your daily life. As always, never feel pressured into buying anything. Remember: if you don't need it, it's not a good deal! Enjoy the Podcast? Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning into this podcast, then do not hesitate to write a review. You can also share this with your fellow mothers so that they can be inspired to think more and do with less. Order (or review) my book, Minimalist Moms: Living & Parenting With Simplicity. You can contact me through my website, find me on Instagram, Pinterest or like The Minimalist Moms Page on Facebook. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Cure Hydration and use my code MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://www.curehydration.com * Check out DeleteMe and use my code joindeleteme.com/MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://joindeleteme.com * Check out Wayfair: https://www.wayfair.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It felt like the right moment to revisit this conversation because minimalism isn't just about what we own, it's about how we're living.
[0:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you've been feeling stretched, distracted, or just a little off, this episode offers a powerful framework to step back and reevaluate the relationship shaping your life.
[0:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I have a feeling you might hear it differently this time.
[0:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So with that, let's get into this replay of episode 180 with my guess, the minimalist.
[0:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Hello and welcome to the Minimum's Mom's Podcast.
[0:41] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm Diane, I'm a mother of three living in Columbus, Ohio.
[0:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm trying to make room in my life for what matters by getting rid of the clutter and living life with purpose.
[0:50] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I hope you'll join me on the journey to think more and do with plus.
[0:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you've been a listener here for a while, you'll know that minimalism goes beyond stuff.
[0:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I am thrilled to share today's guests, Joshua Fields Milvern and Ryan Nicodemus, otherwise known as the minimalist.
[1:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Today they'll dive deeper into the seven essential relationships in our lives, stuff, truth, self-money values, creativity, and people.
[1:15] \[SPEAKER_01\]: and how minimalism makes room in our lives to re-evaluate and heal these areas.
[1:19] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I was beyond excited to have this conversation with the two of them.
[1:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: They were so down to Earth and I think that element of the conversation honestly just shines through.
[1:27] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I can't wait for you to hear it.
[1:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But before we get to the conversation, I want to encourage you to leave a rating and review if you haven't done so yet.
[1:34] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Leaving a rating and review on iTunes is the best way you can help this podcast succeed and grow.
[1:38] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So for those of you who didn't catch Friday's bonus episode, really the bonus episodes aren't necessarily going to speak to my entire audience.
[1:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I always hope that the episodes I release on Tuesday cover a lot more of my base.
[1:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: However, I love the bonus episodes because you can pick and choose what interests you.
[1:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'll let you stay on that episode.
[1:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I shared how I wanted this beginning part to feel a lot more conversational and not so stuffy.
[2:03] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What I wanted to share is, again, a post from last week about my suitcase and how I packed all three of my kids and myself into one suitcase for our trip.
[2:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I wanted to note that we did have access to a washer dryer, which makes it a heck of a lot easier.
[2:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Usually if my husband and I are traveling by ourselves, we'll pop into a laundromat, midway through our trip, depending on how long we're gone.
[2:25] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But really what I try to do for trips is just make little capsule wardrobes.
[2:30] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And it's weird because I don't actually have a capsule wardrobe in my day-to-day, but I find putting a capsule wardrobe for a vacation so much easier.
[2:37] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I always give the example of when I was pregnant in New York City.
[2:41] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Barely anything fit me at that point, so I went with limited options, and my getting ready each day was so straightforward because I had one of Three dresses while the other two women that I was there with were always struggling in the morning.
[2:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I was like, well I know what I'm gonna wear.
[2:56] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's one of these three options and again, maybe that sounds boring to someone that's more of a fashionista I would say I do love clothes, and I want my clothes to look good on me
[3:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, that's a say.
[3:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm also about convenience.
[3:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I know that everything in my closet does look good at me.
[3:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I've whittled it down to make sure that anything I throw on in that season will fit my body and will fit my style.
[3:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Anyways, back to the luggage.
[3:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: In that post, I just went through some of the things that I packed for my kids, and it really just came down to four T-shirts, four pairs of shorts, a pair of active sandals, a pair of PJs, which I said, my kids aren't really big in the PJs.
[3:35] \[SPEAKER_01\]: They usually wear their clothes to bed, which is where the washer and dryer came in really handy.
[3:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But we are also on a beach trip when we are in bathing suits for the majority of our time.
[3:43] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, you may just chalk it up to circumstances that we were able to do this this time around.
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But,
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I would highly encourage you to pack 50% less next time than you usually do, and see if it does make a difference.
[3:56] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I always say even in your home, you can live with far less than you think you can, just give it a shot.
[4:01] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So that's one of my thoughts this week.
[4:03] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Again, thank you for being here.
[4:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Thank you for listening.
[4:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I think you're going to really love this interview with the minimalist.
[4:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Even my husband gave this one a thumbs up, so I can't wait to hear what you have to say.
[4:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Joshua Ryan, thank you so much for joining me today on the Men of the Most Mom's Podcast.
[4:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Thanks for having us.
[4:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Thanks so much.
[4:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Happy to be here.
[4:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yes, absolutely.
[4:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: As I told you before we go in the call, I have been following your work for some time now.
[4:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So I'm excited to have you here today.
[4:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And for anyone that doesn't know, maybe a little bit of your background, I'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself.
[4:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And then we'll get into the topic of your new book, which I can't wait for people to get their hands on and discuss more.
[4:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But go ahead and just maybe give a brief introduction of who you guys are.
[4:47] \[SPEAKER_06\]: sure about a dozen years ago i stumbled across this idea of minimalism my mother died my marriage ended both in the same month and those two events forced me to look around and start to question
[4:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, everything in my life, really, the stuff, the so-called success achievement, the status, et cetera.
[5:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, I grew up early poor, so to Ryan, we've known each other since we were fat little fifth graders.
[5:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I thought money and status and achievement were going to make me happy and content, because that's the meme we've been sold by culture and by society and by our peer groups.
[5:19] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so, of course, as I climb that corporate ladder throughout my 20s, I...
[5:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: didn't find happiness.
[5:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I certainly found bits of pleasure.
[5:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But then I realized that all the things I thought were going to make me happy were often doing the opposite after I had attained them.
[5:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I got the things I wanted and turns out that everything I ever wanted wasn't actually what I wanted.
[5:44] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so
[5:46] \[SPEAKER_06\]: this idea of minimalism allowed me to start to question the things that I brought into my life.
[5:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And eventually it started with the stuff, right?
[5:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But dealing with the external clutter, that's just a symptom, right?
[5:58] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Our material possessions are a physical manifestation of what's going on inside us.
[6:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So,
[6:04] \[SPEAKER_06\]: As I let go of the external clutter, I was able to look inside and start dealing with some of that internal clutter, the mental clutter, the spiritual clutter, the emotional clutter, the familial clutter, the career clutter, and people around me noticed a profound change that there was some sort of shift in me, people noticed I was less stressed, I was calmer and then Ryan, who was my best friend, we even worked in the corporate world together, he came to me and he asked, hey man, why the hell are you so happy lately?
[6:32] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so I told them about this thing called minimalism.
[6:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, I mean, I wasn't the same spot as Josh here, living the corporate dream, or what really was actually kind of a corporate nightmare.
[6:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And I did not have control of my time.
[6:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I didn't have control of my finances.
[6:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I was very out of control.
[6:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And I coped in the worst ways possible with drugs and alcohol, and any other a femoral pleasures I could
[7:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I could get my hands on and it, you know, this is any drug addict will tell you like they eventually stop working.
[7:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And I had to find something to really help you make a deeper change.
[7:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so yeah, I saw Josh, he was setting up boundaries that I've never seen him set up before.
[7:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was happier, he was,
[7:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: he was moving through life a little easier.
[7:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So yeah, I went to him and I asked him, hey, why the hell are you so happy?
[7:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And when he introduced me to this thing called minimalism, when I saw, was some really common sense stuff.
[7:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It was, it's unfortunate that, you know, I didn't really have a common sense.
[7:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In fact, common sense these days is really kind of uncommon.
[7:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But I saw an opportunity for me to regain control of my time, for me to regain control of my finances.
[7:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So,
[7:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I looked at Josh and I'm like, all right man, I'm in.
[7:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I want to be a minimalist.
[7:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What should I do now?
[7:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Because I didn't really know where to start.
[7:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, Josh and I, we came up with this idea called a packing party, where I decided to pack all my belongings as if I were moving.
[8:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then I would unpack only the items I needed over the next three weeks.
[8:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So Josh came over and he literally helped me box up everything.
[8:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: My clothes, my kitchenware, my towels, my TVs, my electronics, my frame photographs, and paintings, my toiletries, and even my furniture.
[8:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We literally like pretend to like I was moving.
[8:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So after those three weeks, you can imagine like the first day or two I'm unpacking, like my toothbrush, that bedsheets, clothes for work, the furniture I actually use.
[8:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And after this experiment, after three weeks, I had 80% of my stuff.
[8:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: still sitting in those boxes where I packed everything up and I just had this light bulb moment of like wow here are all these things I brought into my life to make me happy and they're not doing their job and that's when my perspective really started to shift with my consumption with my impulses and really that packing party story that's that's where the minimalist's
[8:55] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I love reading more about the details of both of your, I guess, your history with all of this in the book.
[9:01] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I think one of the reasons.
[9:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Just as I was kind of thinking through a packing party and actually going through that process, I feel like a lot of us might be hesitant to even take that initial step because, like you said, we are pacified by these things.
[9:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What if I need this in the future?
[9:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Or just in case I might need this in the future?
[9:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't want to see what I can live without.
[9:26] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think that's a scary thing to do.
[9:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't know.
[9:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It was just something that crossed my mind when I was reading through that.
[9:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I feel like it's a brave step.
[9:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah.
[9:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, it's funny.
[9:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The stories we tell ourselves, right?
[9:37] \[SPEAKER_06\]: All of the stuff is going to make us happy or secure, but security is a bit of a misnomer in a way.
[9:43] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You probably noticed in the book, we actually had 47 individuals and families who also decided to embark on their own version of the packing party.
[9:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Now, you're right for some folks.
[9:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That is a bit too radical.
[9:53] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So we even gave those folks three different options.
[9:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You could do the whole how
[9:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Or you can do just one room.
[10:01] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You could pick, okay, you know what, I really need somewhere to start.
[10:05] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm going to start with my attic or my basement or my spare bedroom or the other bathroom down the hall that has all this extra stuff in it.
[10:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: and getting somewhere to start becoming familiar with that process of letting go.
[10:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, of course, the more you do it, the freer and happier and lighter you feel.
[10:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And the more you want to throw overboard, right?
[10:27] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I mean, but if that is still too radical, there are plenty of other ways to simplify.
[10:32] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, that's why in the book we have 16 rules for living with less.
[10:37] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And one of those is our 30-day minimalism game, right?
[10:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And you want to talk about that?
[10:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sure.
[10:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah.
[10:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, we know that decluttering can be pretty boring, right?
[10:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But if you inject a little friendly competition and what that becomes a little bit more fun.
[10:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So yeah, Josh and I, we came up with this, this game where anyone can play, they find a friend or a family member or maybe it's a group of people who want to start decluttering people who are overwhelmed by their stuff and then they want to start letting go.
[11:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They all agreed to play this game and it starts on the first day of any month.
[11:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the way the game works is on the first day of the month, everyone gets rid of one item.
[11:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then on the second day of the month, everyone gets rid of two items.
[11:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then on the third day, three items, so forth and so on.
[11:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It starts out really, really easy, right?
[11:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One thing, two things, three things.
[11:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But then you get to like day 19.
[11:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Oh, you got a good 19 items in the next day.
[11:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's 20.
[11:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So whoever lasts the longest wins and you can bet something real simple, a dinner or You know, maybe someone has to wear a silly hat.
[11:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I don't know.
[11:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I've seen all sorts of things that will bet But it doesn't have to be anything major.
[11:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It just has to be something that, you know, makes it a little bit more fun But here's the thing if everyone makes it to the end of the month and everyone wins because every they would have gotten rid of about 500 items each
[11:47] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know Ryan, I bet a million dollars when we played it and still owes me.
[11:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Wait a minute.
[11:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I thought you would me a million dollars.
[11:55] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I love it.
[11:57] \[SPEAKER_02\]: No, it that's such a good idea.
[11:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: In my sister, I was actually just talking to her.
[12:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I gave her that idea.
[12:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm like, look, this would totally work.
[12:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's just getting over that mind game that you're telling yourself that you can't look without these things that you have at your home.
[12:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So I love that you guys have promoted that and I love them and all of
[12:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Isn't it called the men's game you said, the men's game?
[12:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: How did you what did you call it?
[12:17] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Sometimes we call it the men's game like M-I-N-S. Yeah, yeah.
[12:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Because that's the hashtag that people share on social media.
[12:23] \[SPEAKER_06\]: In fact, because I go look at that.
[12:25] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I mean, you can see tens of thousands of people who have let go and you see photos, people sort of sharing because, well, yeah, doing it by yourself as Ryan mentioned could be boring, but if you have the support
[12:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, then it sort of propels you forward.
[12:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Absolutely.
[12:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right.
[12:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Well, let's get into your new book.
[12:48] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I want to know what is different about this book.
[12:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You've written other books before, but how is this one a little bit different than your previous ones?
[12:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, this one is, is fundamentally it's a relationship book.
[12:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Now, we are, so we've written three other books together.
[13:02] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Our first book was called Minimals and Love a Meaningful Life.
[13:04] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Those are sort of a self-help book.
[13:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The second book that we wrote was called Everything That Remains and that was a memoir.
[13:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So these two suit and tie corporate guys become minimalist, right?
[13:15] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's sort of this five-year journey of letting go, not just letting go of the stuff.
[13:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Of course, it starts with that.
[13:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But letting go of careers, they weren't serving us anymore.
[13:25] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And also understanding who we are as we sort of grew out of our 20s and into our 30s.
[13:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And now that we are, and we're both turning 40 this year, Ryan.
[13:36] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so what we learned, you know, over the last seven year, I followed with a third book was called Essentials and Essay Collection, 150 different essays from our website.
[13:46] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So the most stock com.
[13:49] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So it was sort of the best of the minimalist website.
[13:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Anyway, this book is completely different from those in myriad ways, but mainly it's a relationship.
[13:58] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We set out to write a relationship book.
[14:01] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But then we realized that, well, it's not just our relationship with other people, that's important, but it's our other relationships that often get in the way of the people in our lives.
[14:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So seven essential relationships, it starts with the stuff, our relationship with the stuff.
[14:17] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And as soon as we examine that, we begin examining these other relationships, the truth, self,
[14:23] \[SPEAKER_06\]: relationship with our values, which most of us don't even know where our values are, our relationship with money.
[14:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I mean that's one of the most fraught relationships that breaks up marriages and businesses and makes us miserable to our relationship with money because of debt and consumerism associated with that.
[14:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Of course, our relationship with creativity, you can't talk about creativity without talking about your relationship with your distractions and particular tech distractions in our lives, we're so heavily distracted everyone is vying for our attention and then finally our relationships with people we try to do is heal these different relationships throughout the book.
[15:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What made you realize that minimalism extended beyond just the stuff because I have always felt like I needed to get it together, I guess in those areas outside of even my possessions, I felt like if my mind was right then I could apply it to other areas and then I think the possessions were just to have the accident.
[15:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's, I first realized it really after that packing party.
[15:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I just remember sitting there and looking at 10,000 or tens of thousands of dollars with the stuff sitting in my second living room and thinking about how there was this disconnect between what I was doing with my money.
[15:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And what I wanted to do with it and what I wanted to do was retire early, I wanted to save, I wanted to, you know, have a nice little nest egg, but then when I was, you know, they're confronted with all my things, I realize like a wait a minute, like I say that saving for retirement is important, but my actions don't show that.
[16:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And really my.
[16:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You know, it was my first experience with kind of seeing how our priorities there.
[16:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It isn't what we say they are.
[16:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's what we actually do because, you know, that 28-year-old self who did the packing party, you know, if you would have asked me, hey, what are your priorities?
[16:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I would have said, oh, it's my health.
[16:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I want to, you know, you can't have a good life without your health and relationships with people.
[16:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You got to have good relationships with people, but when I looked at, you know, how I was eating, I was not eating very well.
[16:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I wasn't exercising as much as I should have.
[16:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I wasn't taking me very good care of my body.
[16:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then,
[16:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You know, I look at my relationships with people and
[16:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: seen her a few times a year.
[16:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So what I saw was this this physical clutter that was really getting in the way of what I actually wanted to do with my time.
[16:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So it was for me it was that that's why we started minimalist.com is I realized like oh wow like there's so much more to talk about than just me getting rid of my stuff.
[16:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Diane you know I noticed you early on like Ryan
[17:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The decluttering doesn't work, and here's what I mean by that.
[17:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I was a hoarder, but I was a well organized hoarder.
[17:10] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So I wasn't really cluttered in the traditional sense, right?
[17:13] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And remember, you would come over to my house and I'd just have all these bins and boxes in my basement, and an ordinary system, an alphabetized system of clutter, but that's still.
[17:23] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Clutter, it may not be as exciting as what we see the TV show hoarders, right?
[17:29] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But I was just hiding my hoard and so in some ways it was even more pernicious because it's accepted by society for us to clutter our lives as long as we hide the clutter really well.
[17:44] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And their entire industries think of the container store.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_06\]: They're set up to help hide your clutter.
[17:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, they're not helping us at all.
[17:55] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so what I learned is that a decluttering doesn't really work.
[17:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: If you own too much stuff, if I were to send you a 67 decluttering tips video, that's not going to help you.
[18:07] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The problem isn't that you have a shortage of decluttering tips.
[18:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The problem is our attachment to stuff.
[18:17] \[SPEAKER_06\]: and giving it meaning and significance, treating everything as precious.
[18:22] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But of course, if everything is precious, then nothing is.
[18:25] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And what I realized as I started letting go is, oh, minimalism's a tool.
[18:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And a carpenter doesn't think the point of part-country is accumulating more tools.
[18:35] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's using those tools effectively so they can do what they want.
[18:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: to do, although of course minimalism isn't something you do, letting go isn't something you do, right?
[18:45] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's something you stop doing.
[18:48] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We stop pretending that everything is important.
[18:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You stop clinging to all the material possessions and all the toxic relationships that we cling to.
[18:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You stop acting like busy.
[18:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: is a good thing, you know, it's a status symbol in our culture.
[19:04] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And, you know, ultimately, I think you stop pursuing all of these achievements that, well, you know, we often think our achievements, we, we, they get we wrapped up in our identity, you know, and, and our identity, I think that is us.
[19:18] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Oh, I am the name on my business card or the title on my business card.
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Oh, I,
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, I'm a mom.
[19:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm an uncle.
[19:25] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm a dad.
[19:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm a vice president.
[19:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm an executive.
[19:29] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm a whatever.
[19:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I don't care about the now.
[19:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's much more important than the now.
[19:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's the verb.
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_06\]: How we are being right now.
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I like how in your book you say on a long enough timeline, everything becomes obsolete.
[19:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And you talked about even cell phones that we have now, or our USC, or our computers, or our platforms, like who knows what is going to be the trendy possession to own and a hundred years from now.
[19:57] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And these things that we say are so precious to us, it's really lead it.
[20:01] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You've given, I think listeners and myself as well, a lot to think about and the things that you just said.
[20:05] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But I want to know more details about these categories that you've written about in your book.
[20:10] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I want to leave, I guess we'll leave stuff out of it just because I think we could honestly unpack that a lot, but let's go into these other six and there is truth, self, money, value, creativity and people.
[20:23] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So what is one takeaway from each of these areas will start with truth and just work our way through.
[20:29] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, you know, I think the truth about truth is relying to ourselves.
[20:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so it starts with with the lies we're telling.
[20:37] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And we are all, you know, we've all lied to someone.
[20:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We've all hurt someone with our lies, but we're also, I don't think we realize it.
[20:46] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We're hurting ourselves with our lies.
[20:48] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We're lying to ourselves.
[20:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so the truth, there's a great quote from David Foster Wallace, the truth will set you free, but not until it's finished with you.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And yeah, it's difficult to be honest and to be truthful.
[21:05] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But the rewards are plentiful.
[21:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so understanding that it is never appropriate to lie to someone else, but also understanding what the truth is, the capital T truth.
[21:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's one of the most freeing things that you can understand.
[21:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah.
[21:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: When I specifically like about that chapter two is, you know, Josh and I really kind of lay it all out there with the truths that we've had to admit and that we're hard to admit.
[21:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But, you know, you asked earlier what's different about this book and certainly there are things in that chapter that we have never talked about before.
[21:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So it was really freeing to kind of get it all out on the pages and, and, uh,
[21:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and that's really what Josh and I are trying to do.
[21:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We're not trying to like tell people what to do.
[21:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We're just trying to share our story and show people that there are ways to start over.
[21:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are ways to begin again and I think that that chopper specifically with truth helps people to get there.
[22:05] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, I mean, you absolutely have to be completely honest with yourself when you are going through this process because I think you have to face a lot of things that you again have been pacifying you or you've been relying on and you depend it on so I think it can be difficult, but it's so freeing.
[22:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What is true freedom when we're actually truthful with ourselves.
[22:33] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right, what about self?
[22:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You know, the self-chapter really, I feel like it's a health chapter disguised as self, because we focus a lot on just our well-being and it's something that we forsake a lot.
[22:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And, you know, I think one of my favorite parts of that chapter, it's a few subsections, but we talk a lot about free medicine.
[22:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the free medicine's available to us to help us to feel better, to help us function better, to help us have more energy.
[23:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's really, like I said,
[23:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Mm-hmm.
[23:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Now, that's really good.
[23:08] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I can't wait for people to dive into that one.
[23:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think you stay some things not a lot of people have, and I think that it's going to be really eye-opening so a lot of readers.
[23:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So.
[23:16] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Through, we've been through a lot, you know, it's a rough chapter of sort of holding up a mirror and being like, oh, wow.
[23:22] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Wow, yeah, whether it's fresh or it's drug abuse, alcohol abuse,
[23:27] \[SPEAKER_06\]: infidelity, a lot of these things that have happened in our past, you know, that's not me.
[23:32] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That is a ancestor of me that is birthed the current me that is living in the eternal now.
[23:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Right.
[23:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So I can learn from that past.
[23:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I can glance in the rear view and reflect on that.
[23:44] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But I don't have to live in the rear view either because the past is not equal to the future.
[23:48] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That's not where I'm going.
[23:49] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That's simply where I think.
[23:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah and I find peace in that.
[23:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't know because I mean I have not a perfect path and I have some more things that I've experienced in my life, but
[24:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, the personal name now is so detached from that person and and that doesn't define me.
[24:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so I think that there's a piece to say, look how far I've come, look at where I'm going and the freedom that's where I'm going.
[24:11] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So I think that a people stop dwelling on the negative aspects, maybe of their pastor just not and that that's easier, something then obviously that takes maybe some mental work.
[24:23] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But I think that we shouldn't let it get us down and just stay down.
[24:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[24:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, I think that's really where the lessons come from, right?
[24:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's like when people like you, people like Josh, people like me when we talk about those kind of troubled pasts and how we can able to let go of that.
[24:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, people are really when they see our stories, they're really looking at themselves.
[24:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And hopefully we are giving them the inspiration to let go of their past because none of us have perfect pasts.
[24:52] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And by the way, Ryan, you and I, the things we've gone through, a lot of people have gone through these things.
[24:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: No one's talking about it because of the shame, and so what we're trying to do, especially now when you see it on social media and online, it's everyone projecting this perfect image is a 2D image of a 3D flawed life.
[25:11] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And what Ryan and I did is we cut ourselves open and poured our guts onto the pain.
[25:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, here's the biggest money lesson they can just skip this chapter as long as they follow one piece of advice, okay.
[25:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There's no such thing as good debt.
[25:35] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yes, and although, but what about this and the interest rate is so low right now Ryan is wait, all Ryan is saying is it, there's no such thing as good that the, the, the,
[25:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Do you guys, this is just a side note?
[25:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Do you fall the whole day from the idea of just not even taking out a mortgage?
[26:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I feel like there are some debts that we, it's hard to work around, but also, as you said, you're not saying not to do that, you're just saying debt is not good.
[26:10] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm not saying that you need to do anything.
[26:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Don't know what you're doing, yeah.
[26:15] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, there's no judgment.
[26:16] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm not telling you to do anything.
[26:18] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'm simply saying that if you want to be free, you can't also be, yeah.
[26:23] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, Dave's a friend of ours.
[26:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Um, everything that he teaches, these are on the mental principles, right?
[26:32] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Now he's a little bit more hard edge than Ryan and I are and a little bit more.
[26:36] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He can be more militant with these things.
[26:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He'll admit that to you.
[26:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He'll be the first person to admit that to you.
[26:42] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But, you know, we were certainly St. Patico on the avoiding debt front.
[26:47] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, no, I guess that's great.
[26:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The only thing I'll add to this is like, there are,
[26:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: some debts that are better than others, right?
[26:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Like a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is gonna be a little bit better than a corner store or payday loan with a total of the 20% interest rate.
[27:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So certainly there are some debts that are better than others.
[27:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: However, would you rather have a mortgage or no mortgage?
[27:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, the answer's pretty obvious.
[27:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[27:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right, value.
[27:19] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, so your values are what you say they are, they are what you do with your time.
[27:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So I can show you what you value if you show me your calendar and your bank statements.
[27:31] \[SPEAKER_06\]: because what you spend your money on, based what you spend your time in your resources on, that's going to help me determine what you actually value.
[27:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And of course, we all say that we value certain things.
[27:42] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I value my health, our value my family, our value my friends, our value my creativity, our value my job, our value whatever it might be.
[27:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But however you spend your 24 hours in the day, that's what we really value.
[28:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: people will say, oh, I don't have enough time to do fill on the blank.
[28:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I've made the list.
[28:04] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I've actually sat down and written up a list of what I'm actually doing versus what I'm prioritizing.
[28:10] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And there is a disconnect there.
[28:11] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And that's something that I think is helpful to do as well to really face what it is that you're prioritizing and fixing the disconnect and moving forward.
[28:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, 100%.
[28:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I think you bring up a great example because I think about like, oh, I don't
[28:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And, you know, I wanted to have time for them every day, but, you know, I was made these excuses like, oh, you know, I don't have as much time as I wanted.
[28:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Well, now all of a sudden, maybe, you know, had to forbid something happens to my child where they need dialysis every single day.
[28:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And all of a sudden, now I'm gonna prioritize, like, oh, wow, I have to spend time with my child bringing them to the hospital every single day because of the life depends on it.
[28:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So yes, I agree that yeah, it was sometimes we just have to find the right leverage and I think when we get clearance of our values It helps us get there and helps us to get that leverage we need people often ask hey what's what's your definition of happiness and you know First I'll say like happiness, you know, really isn't the point anymore for me living a meaningful life
[29:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: is the point.
[29:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now, when you're living meaningful life happiness just happens to be a by-product that you get every once in a while, but the way to live a meaningful life is our short-term actions aligning with those values.
[29:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I think we do a really good job of helping people see that in that chapter.
[29:23] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Absolutely.
[29:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right.
[29:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We have two more.
[29:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: The next one is creativity.
[29:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, we can't really talk about creativity, without talking about our relationship with distractions.
[29:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We're so heavily mediated, right?
[29:36] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I have a distraction machine and my pocket.
[29:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: In fact, there's a quote from the Google Ethosists.
[29:43] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He talks about how the smart phone he refers to the smart phone is our 79-dorgan and then Ronnie Chang The media has that great joke where he he talks about it feels like every night in America is a competition to see how many screens I can get between my face and the wall
[30:01] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You start with the TV on the wall, and then it's my laptop, and then my iPad, my iPhone, and boom, my Apple watch.
[30:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Of all of a sudden, I've got five screens, five different bits of distraction between me and the wall.
[30:13] \[SPEAKER_06\]: By the way, me staring at the wall for a moment that is probably going to get far more value from that than any of those.
[30:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: those screens because it's not about what's going on externally in the external validation and everybody else is implored but it's about subtracting and so really we have to talk about our relationship with distractions and specifically tech distractions it's not a new idea I mean 2,000 years ago the stoics talked about getting rid of your books but today having a book sort of
[30:42] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It feels like a luxury, right, because I who has time to read a book when I've got all these other screens and distractions and TikTok and Instagram and everything else.
[30:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: There's nothing morally wrong with those things.
[30:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The problem is they're making us miserable.
[30:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, why do they make us miserable?
[30:58] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Because fundamentally we're creators.
[31:00] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We have the desire to create.
[31:02] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We've been told that we're consumers, especially by advertisers and marketers, the consumer products.
[31:07] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And that's partially true.
[31:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We do need to consume some stuff.
[31:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But we're much more creators than we are, consumers.
[31:14] \[SPEAKER_05\]: Yeah.
[31:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the only thing I'll add to that is with social media.
[31:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, the way it is today, everyone has a megaphone.
[31:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And I think that that megaphone, it apes the form of creativity.
[31:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It is like, it's this fake creation.
[31:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And really, I mean, the creative things that come out of us, it has nothing to do, very rarely does have anything to do with technology.
[31:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, everyone out there, I think has the desire to create in some way.
[31:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And yeah, that chapter really helps people get clear on that.
[31:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: something that I think about a lot with my kids, just as a mom of three, I want their creativity to keep overflowing out of them, especially at these ages, and so it is something that I try to be really diligent about getting the screens out there, because I know when they're just sitting there, what TV it is pretty much mindless, you don't have to think go out when you're watching television, and so I try to keep that at bay, and so I think that we can even apply some of the principles and that chapter specifically to the things
[32:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, I'm happy to talk more about kids as well.
[32:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We can get to the people part.
[32:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, let's talk about people.
[32:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And then we'll talk more about kids and motherhood.
[32:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Love that.
[32:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, yeah, since Ryan and I are both, we're great at motherhood.
[32:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I guess what to, yeah, we'll talk about your encouragement to moms, maybe as, yeah, we'll hear what you have to say, but let's get through people first.
[32:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I'll tell you, I'll talk about my wife's own motherhood as well, once I've learned from her over the last eight years.
[32:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But yeah, let's talk about people, because ultimately that's, that's where we wanted this book to go.
[32:45] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We thought it was going to be a relationship book in the traditional sense, but then we realized like,
[32:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The relationship I really need to understand, you know, you might as a fix, put that in quotes, right?
[32:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But the relationship that I want to understand is all the broken relationships that are within me.
[33:02] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But then, of course, we have a language problem.
[33:04] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, we use this word love.
[33:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It hints the title of the book.
[33:07] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Love people use things.
[33:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You're Ryan and I have recognized it for a long time.
[33:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We used people in love with things.
[33:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And that is a broken equation.
[33:16] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But the problem is we have a language problem.
[33:18] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, you might say you love your kids, but you also to love burritos, right?
[33:25] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I love my best friend Ryan, but I also love the new Matt Carni album, right?
[33:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And it's like, well, okay, yeah, but all right, I love my daughter, but I also love the colors of the flowers and my neighbor home.
[33:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And one love is, it's about sort of bottomless devotion, a birth from a deep affection, right?
[33:47] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And the other is just sort of like, oh, it's my preference.
[33:49] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I like the color blue.
[33:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I love the color blue, right?
[33:53] \[SPEAKER_06\]: One, we're talking about a like.
[33:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: An extreme like is what I extremely like burritos.
[33:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That's what we mean, we say, I love burritos.
[34:00] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And of course,
[34:01] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We we just don't have the distinction.
[34:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The the Inuit dialects spoken in none of it in Canada, they have 53 different words to describe snow.
[34:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Now, we don't even have five words to describe love.
[34:15] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So we don't have 10% of that to describe love.
[34:18] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And we're the sockets snow.
[34:20] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Not nearly as important as love, which is everywhere all the time all around us.
[34:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so we've stretched love
[34:31] \[SPEAKER_06\]: lovers and Louis Vuitton bags.
[34:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But whenever you stretch something beyond its natural limits, it loses its strength.
[34:37] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I think that's especially true with love.
[34:43] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I haven't made it through that chapter yet.
[34:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's I'm almost there.
[34:46] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But there's a section called the symbiosis of love.
[34:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And then we talked to Erwin Raphael McManus who is a futurist and iconoclast and just a brilliant person when it comes to relationships.
[35:00] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He's actually doing a live event with us.
[35:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's free for anyone who wants to join us the day the book comes out on.
[35:06] \[SPEAKER_06\]: on July 13th.
[35:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And we're going to be talking about healing our relationship with people.
[35:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so, you know, the, the very last section of the book is called Love is more, you know, because we always hear less is more, right?
[35:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And that's true.
[35:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: If you're able to subtract, that's how we find more in our lives.
[35:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But,
[35:27] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I think that we also want to better understand love, and so because it's heavy.
[35:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: A real love is heavy, and I don't think the biggest challenge is even love itself.
[35:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's we've conflated love with excitement and lust and attraction.
[35:44] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Nothing wrong with those things, those things can all be wonderful, but they aren't love.
[35:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I think there's nowhere that's more evident than in our material possessions.
[35:55] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We say we love our televisions, our cars, our cosmetics, but we're confused by that, right?
[36:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We're blinded by the propaganda that tells us the things in our homes are just as important as the people in our lives.
[36:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's so funny.
[36:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't have time to go through this kind of worms, but I think about that all the time.
[36:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I am not a skeptic of love when people first get married,
[36:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I feel like over the past few years, I'm like, is that really love or we actually and love or we enlist and then love this through struggles and knowing someone through different seasons and years and experiences?
[36:32] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I don't know, maybe that's me being jaded, but I don't like to define it necessarily as that anymore.
[36:38] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think maybe I've again, I've seen too many relationships fall apart.
[36:41] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I'm like, did you really love, did you really go through and maybe answers?
[36:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yes, but I think
[36:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I like the idea of using different terms and knowing ourselves well enough to say this is how I feel about this and I think in saying all of that, sorry, I kind of did open the can of words in saying all of that I think.
[36:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I feel like I love my husband more now, 10 years in than I did when I first got married to him, but that's because we've been through hard times and we've been through good times, but there were struggles there too, and I think when we apply that too, like you said, if love is coming out of all the stuff as we are whittling down things in our homes, they're just applying this to all these topics you're talking about.
[37:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: There is a struggle there, but it does the struggle really help us determine what it is that we want to love, like actually love and prioritize.
[37:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So, I don't know, do you just make me
[37:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: He made me connect two things that I've been thinking about.
[37:31] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Hmm, if somebody places to go with that, my wife and I, we actually have a podcast called How to Love and what we would do is we try to explore and understand and what we've really learned is that Ryan used to say this thing all the time, I remember when we were in our 20s and if he was dating someone new, he would say, I'm in like with you.
[37:51] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And generally, that was the most honest thing.
[37:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But Ryan's always been the most honest person I've known.
[37:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And he, whenever he said that it was, he was, there was this, the epitome of honesty there because that's really what we mean when we say I, I love you most of the time because
[38:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But Diana, I have no problem telling you, I love you because you're a human being and I love human beings.
[38:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And that's not a problem.
[38:13] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But also, when we're thinking about relationships, often the reason relationships don't work is there's a whole bunch of other reasons.
[38:19] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We write about the book, the compatibility and chemistry and some other things that really send us off the rails.
[38:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Love is important, but love is not enough for a thriving relationship.
[38:33] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Oh no, that's so good.
[38:34] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I feel like you're right.
[38:35] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We could go down so many paths, but we are almost at a time, and I want to get a final word of encouragement to the, I want to say mom, we'll say to the parents, but are listening, what is something that they can do to just make their life more simplistic and intentional and apply these different things that you've said, on throughout our talk and also on your book to their lives.
[38:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You know, I think that this is going to come off the wrong way, so bear with me for a moment.
[39:03] \[SPEAKER_05\]: Okay.
[39:04] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I've learned one thing in my eight years as a parent or a little under eight years, I suppose.
[39:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I think that.
[39:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: As an adult, I have more knowledge than my role daughter.
[39:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: She might tell you otherwise, but yes, I have more knowledge than her for sure.
[39:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But children are so much more wise than us.
[39:24] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I mean intuitively wise, not wise as an lived experience.
[39:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It's a different kind of wisdom, right?
[39:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But our children are so wise and they're much more wise than their condition to parents.
[39:35] \[SPEAKER_06\]: So consequently, I think we're better served by learning from our kids than we are from quote parenting them.
[39:44] \[SPEAKER_06\]: One of the my favorite philosophers who is on this deck, his name is Kapil Gupta.
[39:49] \[SPEAKER_06\]: He said, Adults are fools, children are wise for children.
[39:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Everything is new.
[39:55] \[SPEAKER_06\]: The adult hasn't seen a new thing in years.
[40:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Wow, that's really good.
[40:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You know, it, for me, it's, I'm not a parent.
[40:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So it's really, really easy for me to give parental advice, right?
[40:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Looking from myself and not really understanding it.
[40:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But here's, here's one thing I feel pretty safe to say for, for any parent, is that number one job of a parent.
[40:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The number one job is to enjoy your children.
[40:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That should be priority number one.
[40:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then from there, of course, you want to help a child set boundaries.
[40:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But telling a child what to do, I mean,
[40:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I know that for me, when my parents should have told me what to do, it really worked.
[40:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: When they help me set boundaries for myself, I mean, it's something that would work a little bit better.
[40:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So role number one is, yeah, enjoy your, enjoy your child, figure out how to do that first.
[40:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then, yes, if you need to set some boundaries, help your child set some boundaries with, without telling them exactly what to do, because here's the thing is you want to tell your kid.
[40:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Uh, again, so easy for me to give advice with no, with no, with no kids, but I would say you want to tell your child yes, as much as possible.
[41:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So when you do say no, that no actually means something.
[41:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And when you do say no, let that child know what you are saying yes to because every time you're saying no or something for a child, you're actually saying yes to something else.
[41:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Mm-hmm.
[41:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: No, those, that's great advice.
[41:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I'm sure you've been around enough parents to kind of lean some wisdom from different individuals around you.
[41:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so I think that was great advice.
[41:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Ryan, thank you for the apparent.
[41:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He raised, I did, yeah, I have a bunch of half siblings that I changed all their diapers.
[41:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have babysat them all for hours and hours and hours.
[41:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I have a little experience in that, but you know, I had the privilege of being able to just turn them over when I was done.
[41:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, that bedtime hours are definitely rough, but I like the idea of whatever you're saying, know to your saying yes to something else and just focusing on the positives.
[41:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think like going back to that is really important.
[41:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But great.
[41:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Well, where can listeners find you your podcast and your new book?
[42:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can find everything at the minimalists.
[42:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's plural, the minimalists.com.
[42:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can find our podcasts.
[42:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can find our books.
[42:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can find our documentaries.
[42:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can find what hair products, Josh, feel Joshua fields, and older news is.
[42:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I love it.
[42:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: All right, one of my new questions that I've been asking everyone is, do you have something that you that is so dear to you that you can never part ways with?
[42:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That you could never declutter.
[42:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You could never minimize.
[42:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But I have some sentimental items that really like my grandma gave me a beer Stein from Germany when I was 17 years old.
[42:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have that I've put change in that and that's probably the most sentimental item I have and makes me think about my roots.
[42:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: She was born in race in Germany during World War II.
[42:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The story that she has, I mean, that is a reminder of that.
[42:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But what else say is, throughout this whole journey of minimalism, I really have gained this superpower of being willing to walk away, being willing to let go of anything.
[43:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So there's certainly, there are things that I enjoy having in my life that augments my life.
[43:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But ultimately, like, when I think about that style, spontaneously compusting, I still know that I'm going to be able to live a meaningful life with or without that style.
[43:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that's just my way of saying, like, hey, if you have something that's sentimental, great.
[43:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you have something that your life would be ruined if you lost, that might be something that someone wants to look at.
[43:36] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, I hear it so well said, every attachment that we have is a form of clinging.
[43:40] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so I think a year ago, my answer would have been different.
[43:43] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And I would have had some cool answer about some thing or some person that I wouldn't be willing to let go of.
[43:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But as Ryan said, the willingness to walk away is a particular kind of freedom.
[43:55] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It doesn't mean that you must walk away.
[43:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: It means that you're willing to, given the circumstances, right?
[44:01] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And that's not just, I'm willing to say that about even about people, even about the people maybe, maybe even especially about the people closest to me.
[44:09] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Because the opposite is also true.
[44:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Ryan doesn't want to be in this relationship that he and I have, this friendship, this business partnership out of obligation, and nor do I, that no, I mean, you mad, you want to be in your merit or being in your merit just out of a sense of obligation.
[44:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: That's a type of prison.
[44:28] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so when I talk about attachments, some people will often say, you know, certainly some attachments are healthy.
[44:34] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah, what about our attachment to family and friends, to our community and our
[44:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: whatever else, aren't those appropriate attachments for me and I would just say consider that question from a different angle.
[44:47] \[SPEAKER_06\]: If you replace the word attachment with clinging, that small change exposes the flaw in this idea of healthy attachments.
[44:57] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And you could, some people will say, well, certainly some attachments are healthy, right?
[45:02] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Well, let me just, we'll certainly some clinging of stealthy.
[45:05] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Okay, maybe we're falling off a mountain.
[45:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: At the moment, you've gotten, to the, you've gotten back to the safety.
[45:12] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You want to stop clinging.
[45:13] \[SPEAKER_06\]: In fact, you cling too long and you'll, you'll be dragged, right?
[45:16] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so I don't care if it's a possession or people or you're pride clinging is not healthy.
[45:23] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Every attachment that we have is a teller
[45:26] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And so it's impossible for us to live in the moment if we're always fastened to the future.
[45:33] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And it's also impossible to love fully when we are confined by attachment.
[45:39] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We often think of attachment as
[45:42] \[SPEAKER_06\]: as love, right?
[45:43] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We've been told by pop music and pop culture that to need someone is to love them.
[45:50] \[SPEAKER_06\]: You hear this in songs all the time, right?
[45:53] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I need you.
[45:54] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Wow, it's terrible.
[45:56] \[SPEAKER_06\]: I don't need you to
[46:03] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But we can experience the full spectrum of love when we're willing to let go.
[46:08] \[SPEAKER_06\]: And when we're willing to, as Ryan said, walk away.
[46:11] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Let go of the attachment, not the person, but the attachment to the person or the thing.
[46:15] \[SPEAKER_06\]: In fact, if you get rid of all your stuff, but you keep your attachment, you're going to be far more miserable.
[46:21] \[SPEAKER_06\]: But you could even let go of the attachment and hold on to some of the things, and they're not going to have that same weight on you.
[46:30] \[SPEAKER_06\]: with that all that clinging, the only thing that remains is love.
[46:36] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You even shared the example of a family that lost their home to a fire and in a way, not saying this would be beneficial to everyone, but it was a blank page and it was a new start and it was like we have one another and we don't have this unhealthy attachment anymore to these things.
[46:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And again, that might not
[46:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: be the best example, but I did like that you shared that and I was so curious to know your guys' answers because I figured that you would say something like that because you do talk a lot about what you just said in your books.
[47:04] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm glad that you took the time to answer that.
[47:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, take a time today.
[47:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, thanks so much for having us.
[47:10] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, this was so wonderful.
[47:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I appreciate you guys being here.
[47:14] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We appreciate you.
[47:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What did you think of the episode?
[47:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I will give a plug for their book and three quarters of the way finished and I have really enjoyed it so far.
[47:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I love how research heavy it is.
[47:26] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm someone that has to ask a lot of questions before I jump on board with something and so I really appreciated that fact that the research was just woven into.
[47:35] \[SPEAKER_01\]: The stories that they were telling
[47:38] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Even listening to this episode back as I was editing, I just think these guys are full of so much wisdom and I think these two have done such wonders for this community and I can't wait to see what else they do in the future So what are your thoughts?
[47:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I invite you to keep the conversation going at minimalzmomspodcast.com There you'll find links to the Instagram account, Facebook page and where you can find me all around the web Thank you for joining up on this journey, I wish you a lovely week as you think for and do with us

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