So much of our life is lived in a fog of automatic habitual Behavior we spend so much time on the hunt but nothing ever quite does it for us and we get so wrapped up in the hunt that it kind of makes us miserable [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and I had everything I ever wanted I had everything I was supposed to have everyone around me said you're successful but really I was miserable there was this gaping void in my life so I tried to fill that void the same Way many people
do with stuff lots of stuff I was filling the void with consumer purchases I was spending money faster than I was earning it attempting to buy my way to happiness I thought I'd get there one day eventually I mean happiness had to be somewhere just around the corner I was living paycheck to paycheck living for a paycheck living for stuff but I wasn't living at all At a time when people in the west are experiencing the best standard of living in history why is it that at the same time there is such a longing for
more I think of that as a kind of biologically based delusional craving that autoc craving is a good strategy to keep animals alive including early human animals in really harsh conditions but these days today it creates a Disconnect you're like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Mother Nature and evolution reaching back tens of millions of years we still feel Restless we still are always scratching and going for more it's why lottery winners are miserable it's why homeowners have three car garages the first car creates an exponential awesome Rush of happiness and joy and
utility the second car comes about because we Tire of the first car And as humans we're wired to become dissatisfied it's an addiction really and we are encouraged to maintain the addiction through technology [Music] information American culture has for the most part these blinders on there's definitely this illusion of what our lives should look like whether it's advertising or your Instagram or Facebook feed it's this illusion that our life Should be perfect it's natural to use other people's lives lives and even imagined lives you know the the Confections we see in advertisements as a yard
stick you open Vanity Fair or Esquire and you see very sexy and glamorous lives and then the projects for most people seems to become you know how can I get that or as as close to that as I'm going to get there can be an immense amount of dissatisfaction trying to live That way and many of us see no alternative but to live that way advertising has polluted and infiltrated culture it's in our movies it's in our television shows it's in our books it's in our doctors offices it's in the taxi cabs it's in the
bar sitting next to you the person who you think you're just having an idle chat with could have been placed there by an alcohol company [Music] It's been a slow Evolution this is not something that just happened yesterday this is something that has been sold to us over say the past 100 years slowly but surely by those that want to make a whole lot of money now that's what I call a goodlooking car they want us to believe that you really need these things every year that passes there's more stimuli there's more PR there's more
options there's more media there's More noise noise noise and by streamlining simplifying and just letting people know that they have the option it's that wakeup call that uh is really valuable in in a very critical time right now it got to a point in my life where where I don't know what was important anymore then at some point when I was approaching 30 years old I noticed something different about my best friend Of 20-some years Josh he seemed happy for the first time in a really long time like truly happy ecstatic but I didn't understand
why because we had both worked at the same Corporation we had both wasted our 20s climbing the ladder together and he had been just as miserable as me so I did what any good best friend would do I took him out to a really nice lunch I think we went to a Subway and I sat him down and I asked him a Question why the hell are you so happy he spent the next 20 minutes telling me about this thing called minimalism before I discovered minimalism I think my life looked like pretty much anyone else's
I had a lot of stuff hundreds thousands of books DVDs and vhs's closets full of expensive clothes all of these things that I brought into my life without questioning but when I started letting Go I started feeling Freer and happier and lighter and now as a minimalist every possession serves a purpose or brings me joy I have a bed and a chair and a radio and I have some furniture in my my dining room in my kitchen I have appliances I don't have any excess stuff everything that I look around at I have to be
able to justify to myself not to anyone else but Ju Just justify to myself does this value to my life and if Not I have to be willing to let go Ryan and I just finished writing a book about the last five years of Our Lives from being these suit and tie corporate guys to minimalists and so now we're going to get on the road for 10 months this year and promote that book but really promote a message we really believe in a simple living message of living more deliberately with less oh and I'll need
a Jacket we'll see where the journey takes us so you presented this as a 12-minute talk 8 Minute reading okay yeah cool cuz I just don't want to feel rushed to the talk that's all [Music] right ready I was born ready nice hello thanks for coming out uh my name is Ryan Nicodemus and this is the Joshua Fields Milbourne and together uh we run a website called the minimalists tocom so today Uh Josh is going to read from her new book but first I'm going to tell you a story about how we became the minimalists
we've never been shut out so as long as one person shows up that's all that matters I feel really good I we've we've had events where we've had two people show up and that was amazing cuz we got to spend time with two people and and add value to their lives in a different way I'll get I'm a hugger man okay thanks for coming out Man thanks for coming out and seeing the talk man sure our pleasure thank you did you foret your Kindle and badge in there oh yes thank [Music] you from the day
I was born until the second grade when my parents got divorced I had like the perfect quintessential mom and dad when my mom left my dad she just really went off the deep End by Junior High we had a lot of people over at the house and later I found out they were in there smoking crack um they would cook crack by the eighth grade the SWAT team was kicking in our door busting my mother for selling drugs it was a drug that that overtook my mother Josh had a very similar childhood to what I
did my very first memories of my father Extinguishing a cigarette on my mother's chest shortly after she left my father she she started drinking it was my biggest fear that I was going to get taken away from her when she was sober she was a phenomenal mother yeah I think she kind of felt trapped my mom always complained about money she didn't have any money I remember being poor growing up and I remember Thinking when I graduate high school I want to start on a path that is going to take me somewhere other than a
struggle halfth turn left on the San Pedro Drive we're currently on our way to MPR for a radio interview U those are our peeps that's our demographic howdy you're looking for Rita Daniels I think so yes you're the minimalist we are indeed how are you I'm Scott I'm Ryan I'm a hugger man oh nice to meet you buddy thanks for fing to Jos nice to meet you I think my light bulb moment is when I was showing my guys how to sell cell phones to a 5-year-old I was like what am I doing this mentality
of getting a better promotion getting a better house getting a better car getting a bigger paycheck being able to buy more expensive bar tabs um and you know to do that I had to sell cell phones to 5-year-olds there There's a template out there the you can call it the American dream or keeping up with the Joneses or whatever that's just a template it's not the template and once we realize that I think we can create our own template that works just for us the American dream has a long history it started out as a
concept that was really more about opportunity the US is a land of opportunity where somebody could start Out at the bottom work hard and do well there's no question that what it means to have made it or to have achieved the American dream in the United States has increased tremendously in material terms $100,000 a year plus kind of income became more and more an aspirational Norm across the society because that's what's portrayed as normal on TV a six figure income beginning from about the mid 1990s Americans went went on a buying spree that was probably
unprecedented in human history and a lot of it had to do with the cheapness of products coming mostly from China whether we're talking about fashion Electronics all types of household goods so stuff's cheaper but it's also more available you can order stuff 24 hours online they big box Stores we ended up accumulating a lot more stuff so much so that even though we have about three times the space per person that we used to in the ' 50s so a lot more space we got so much stuff we need space on top of that and
so there's a 2.2 billion square foot personal storage industry which is ludicrous so you have people living in these enormous Homes and if you really look at it people don't use the space that they have someone did a study and they showed a heat map of like where people traveled inside their homes uh over the course of a normal day it was a family of four and they were in a very average home and what they found is that people used about maybe maybe 40% of their space nobody used the dining room no one used
the living room there was a big you know porch no one used the porch you know I Mean I'm not saying this is the way everyone lives some people use dining rooms but it creates this big vacuum that you have to fill so people are throwing all this crap into their homes that they don't need we're living our life depending on the space we've got rather than creating our space to fit our lives it's so easy to go wrong and you wind up with three dining tables in the same house well you got to Run
pretty fast eat a three tables at the same meal nothing is more responsible than living in the smallest space you possibly can we've probably sold or donated I'd say at least 90% of our stuff mean you can't bring all your stuff into to a tiny house I was commuting about 2 hours a day and then sitting in a cubicle for 10 to 12 hours a day I had gained a lot of Weight I was unhappy and I was kind of like what's wrong with me I should be happy I've got all this stuff nice home
great husband and Logan was like well you know you could probably quit your job if we simplified and moved into a smaller apartment and I was like what the hell are you talking about I don't want to get rid of my stuff I found a YouTube video saw the tiny houses and I was hooked hi Earl what's up dude I think the biggest thing for me at least in the beginning was the financial side of things when we looked at our budget and the numbers I was like well let's just give it a go if
I hate a smaller apartment we can always [Music] upsize I think there's this element of affordability Simplicity and sustainability that just makes tiny houses seem like the perfect solution to A problem we haven't yet figured out which is how do we go from working all throughout a lifetime to enjoying a lifetime with a bit of work here there for a long time when people were looking to buy their first house they looked at their budget and they said how much money do I have to spend oh I have $500,000 let me buy whatever $500,000 can
get me and the big mistake there was that these individuals didn't have $500,000 they had a loan that would Guarantee them that amount um and of course after a few years of people buying houses that they weren't actually buying they were just hoping to buy someday the entire housing market collapsed we're down 1.7% here a loss of 37 points or so Apple shares are just getting hammered this morning we're down by between three and 4 and a half% generally across these markets let's talk about the speed with which we are watching this Market deteriorate it
was The worst day on Wall Street since the crash of 1987 this could be the most serious recession in decades and that means life as most Americans know it is about to change in some cases dramatically I think where that has left us in the wake of a recession is with a really really strong appeal to buying a house outright the vision that really came out of life Ed is just like hey I think we we got to take a step back Here we're very much a a mission based company the miss being to do
more with less so the lifeedited Prototype apartment started with me buying a place 420 ft in New York and coming up with a really aggressive program what I was asking for was a lot live at home for a couple be able to have a sit down dinner for 10 or 12 be able to have guests over in a civil manner and be able to work at home with some Sort of standing desk very quickly I realized that small space made so much sense environmentally but it also made sense on many other other levels one of
the things that we really want to do is Design Homes around a how people live and B what's truly important creating more social homes you know homes that actually bring people closer together it was kind of an incredible experience Cuz going from the 1200 ft space I had never felt more calm in my life there was less stuff to think about our overhead was lower this is when I first started to say you know this life edited thing this philosophy um maybe there's something to it a beautiful future for us would be to do development
that does really well financially has much lower footprint and have lots of developers copy what we're doing and so that it really spreads and We start to change how we live as Americans and just change this desire for the bigger is better philosophy I think we've only begun to reexamine what it means to be successful in life it's no longer that white pick fence it's no longer that mcmansion I think that people are beginning to recognize that they've maybe been tricked and that they maybe have more agency over their their options than they once thought
they Did we're out sharing a recipe you know we're not out here trying to prze I'm not trying to convert anyone to minimalism but I do want to share a recipe and see if there are ingredients that other people can get value from and apply those ingredients to to their own life there is this underlying discontent and I think that it starts to manifest in our stuff and what I'm finding as we go out on the road and we talk to so many People Everyone is looking for more meaning in their [Music] lives we're at
the tucon Book Festival we're getting ready to go sign some books and then a little bit later we'll do our speech ah man look at all these people waiting to get their book signed by us let's sit on the outside thank God this doesn't feel like us if one person comes then we will go out to the front And stand there okay what's up man your stuff oh thanks I'm a hug her brother I'm going to give you a hug yeah I follow you guys on Facebook and and you got your talk this afternoon what
time is it at we are at uh 7:00 imagine a life with less less stuff less clutter less stress and debt and discontent a life with fewer distractions now imagine a life with More more time more meaningful relationships more growth and contribution and contentment so it's funny because people will inevitably come up to us and they'll be like now I'm not a minimalist like you I've got this book collection I love books and I've got a nice big library and I love the way the books smell I love turning the pages I love how they
feel I love lending them out to my friends and then we talk about the Books later it's and I'm like hey keep your books it sounds like you get a lot of value out of your books and that's what I would say with any type of collection if you get a book or whatever that's great make sure you minimize it afterwards um but I'd love to get a hug from you as well you know we're Big Time Huggers so uh they're they're free and transferable make sure you grab one from us [Applause] Afterward was 27
years old I was the director of operations for 150 retail stores it was December 23rd 3r 2008 I got a phone call from my mom I sent it to voicemail cuz I was in a meeting at 700 p.m. going through this barrage of emails and I realized I had several voicemails one was from my mom and she had been sober for a while but I could Tell in the message she had been drinking on her voicemail she just said honey it's me can you call me back she told me the doctors have found something she
found out she had stage four lung cancer she went through chemo and radiation but stage four us you don't get out of that I got to hospice my mom was still In the bed it was the first time I cried in my adult life sobbed uncontrollably he kept saying I'm sorry I didn't even know why at the time I was saying it it just was the only thing that I could say I really wish that I would have spent more time with her [Music] my mother's death still hangs in the air Around me and now
during the same month my six-year marriage is [Music] ending but even while Rome is burning there's somehow time for shopping at Ikea see when I moved out of the house earlier this week toting my many personal belongings and large B p and boxes and 50-gon garbage bags my first inclination was of course to purchase the things I still needed for my new place you know just the Basics a shower curtain towels a bed and oh I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and a
desk chair and another lamp for over there and oh yeah don't forget about the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffee table and a couple in tables and a TV stand for the TV I still need to buy and now that I think about it I'm going to want my apartment to be my Style you know my own Motif so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor but wait what exactly is my style and do these stainless steel picture frames embody that particular style
does this replica matis sketch accurately capture my edgy but professional Vibe exactly how edgy am I what espresso maker defines me as a man does the fact that I'm asking these questions preclude me from being a quote man's Man how many plates and cups and bowls should a man own I guess I need a dining room table too too right and a rug for the entryway and bath mats and what about that one thing that thing that's sort of like a rug but longer yeah a runner I'm going to need one of those and I'm
also going to need hell what else do I need [Music] my name is Sam Harris I'm an author and Neuroscientist and I'm interested in how our growing understanding of ourselves scientifically can and must and and really should change our conception of what it means to live a a good life gratifying Desires in a starkly materialistic way is really an interesting phenomenon you have this thing that you were obsessed about but then the new version comes out which Is new and improved in a dozen ways when it comes to the newest hottest most crave worthy status
symbols you can bet customers will wait long hours to snag one and now you no longer care about the one you have in fact the one you have is a source of dissatisfaction I think we're confused about what's going to make us happy many people think that material possessions are really at the center of the bullseye and they expect that you gratifying each Desire as it arises will somehow summate into a satisfying life it is clear that as human beings we have strong attachment initially in our lives to people who are caring for us and
sometimes it feels like those attachments spill over to objects as if they were as important as people I'm not so sure that we have such a great relationship with [Music] Things get off of me why are you being so aggessive you're scaring me I was talking to the author and sociologist Julie Shore and I said the problem with with our society is that we're too materialist and she said actually if you think about it in some ways we're not material enough we are too materialistic in the everyday sense of the word and we are not
at all materialistic enough in the True sense of the word we need to be true materialists like really care about the materiality of goods instead we're in a world in which material goods are so important for their symbolic meaning what they do to position us in a status system based on what advertising or marketing says they're about the status quo in the fashion industry right now is driven by fast fashion maybe when our moms were shopping for clothes or our grandmothers There were four seasons a year or maybe even two seasons you dressed for the
cold you dressed for the warm now we work in a cycle of 52 Seasons per [Music] year they want you to feel like you're out of trend after one week so that you will buy something new the following week there have actually been a count of big fashion retailers bailing all of the clothes from one week together slashing through them with scissors Destroying them and leaving them on the side of the road so that nobody can resell them or even wear them they want consumers to buy as much clothing as quickly as possible the era
of fast fashion in which we're making clothes and Sweatshop so we're not paying the true labor costs and we're not paying the ecological cost of these things drove the price of apparel down so far that used apparel became Worthless I like to think rice and beans cost more than used Apparel in historical terms that's the world upside down and that represents the economics of such an extreme and profound unsustainability for a scholar of these things it's kind of breathtaking and horrifying fast fashion is what's happened to apparel and then increasingly to the whole consumer goods
sector almost anything in the home now it becomes an Object of fashionability and that's been a just dramatic transformation if you think about the concept of fashion it it embodies in it the idea that you can throw things away not when they're no longer usable but when they no longer have that social value or they're no longer fashionable I think people buy because they're trying to fulfill this void inside of them and I know that because that was me but no matter how much stuff We buy and how many different fads that we try we
don't become a more whole person we keep looking this hunger never gets fulfilled I think it goes to the bottomline fact that you can never get enough of what you don't really want in other words deep down we don't really want more goodies more toys more cars we want what what they will bring us we want to feel whole we want to feel content this mindless Consumption this same thing that's not making us happy is also causing the degradation of our habitat we can afford to have 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere where closing in on 400 parts per million it's caused by the burning of oil of natural gas of coal of all the fuels that we use to power our consumer economy to power the making of crap that we don't need this is real and we really have to do something about it we're not going to Ever be able to achieve the environmental gains that we're seeking while still expecting Our Lives to be the same we're going to have to give up a lot the secret is that a lot of that we're not actually going
to miss it has been like four plus years that I've technically been homeless though I I go to new countries and rent Flats so it's uh maybe in between homes or or maybe Home full I just have a lot Of homes just not not in one place not for very long it's always interesting you go on a date or something and have to explain well yes I'm homeless maybe I shouldn't lead with that when I first started reducing the number of things in my life and started getting rid of essentially everything that that didn't fit
into these bags so I went through and took photos of everything that I owned in the world and counted and as a result I I found out That I had 51 things in the entire world I started Living this way about 4 years ago I was running a branding Studio I had always wanted to travel the world and I had never left the country and that was kind of a sign of my failure in a lot of ways so I I started up a Blog left my career behind in Los Angeles and started looking for
something new something a little bit different and something a little bit more in line with what I Wanted out of life and uh now now I carry everything that I own on my back much like a hermit crab or Turtle my partition I was able to get rid of everything that I owned that that didn't fit into carry-on luggage which was an immense decision and not something that I expected from the get-go I realized very quickly I wouldn't need as much and came to the conclusion that anything I left behind would probably be left behind
forever What did it at the end of the day knowing this path had been well tread the the direction I was going and the these very very successful men and women with all of this money and all this Prestige and all this professional background behind them they weren't happy they're very successful but not in an absolute sense they their dollars in sense successful it seemed far more likely that I could find something find a definition of success that would Actually get me to a place where I was both successful and just incredibly happy it does
look like money can buy happiness in some sense in Global Research below $70,000 us a year adding greater material well-being is linked to Greater psychological wellby but when you start pushing past that rough threshold money doesn't buy happiness you can have more money but you're not Happier Jim Carrey has a quote where he says I wish everyone could become rich and famous so they could realize it's not the answer the first response is always this well it's easy for Jim Carrey to say he's rich and famous right and I'm like wait a minute who else
could say that it would take someone rich and famous to be able to say it's not worth it we we all need to have our basic needs met having a house food on the Table you know being safe that's really important to recognize cuz not everyone has those things you think that more money is going to say give you security the problem is is that you don't necessarily have control over making more one thing you do have control over is spending less once you do have control over is having less and that by having less
you automatically uh stretch what you do Have it's not so much about financial gain for me as it is about Financial Freedom which is the ability to wake up in the morning and spend one's day as they see fit part of why we why we consume a thing is that we work for so long and a lot of people aren't finding fulfillment in their jobs and they need some way to tell themselves that is worth it that it is amounting to something more than a few numbers in a bank account there's More there's more to
life than bills and money and work how do you win you win by traditional monikers of success you win by how many zeros are at the end of your paycheck I remember I was sitting you know in a Barnes and Nobles and I was deciding what major I would study and all I was doing was leafing through this book it was a book that showed degree versus earning potential over time and that's when I zeroed in on Finance and Accounting my entire life became about uh winning with a capital W my entire life became about
being the guy that would be respected had a series of vertical leaps from my 20s which landed me to this place in 2008 I'm making a ridiculous six-figure salary I've got a corner office and on December 31st 2007 my boss calls me into his office and he tells me that I'm getting a promotion and this is it this was the Game changer this is me being a junior partner in this firm and everything that I had ever worked for um was going to be handed to me right then and there you know in banking terms
I was minted and and I remember just hearing this man say that and it was just a really bizarre kind of um ethereal moment where I was like watching this happen you know almost and I walked out of his office and I and I walked back back into my own and and I just closed the door behind me And I just started weeping um cuz I realized that I was completely and utterly trapped and that I would never be able to walk away from that amount of money ever in my life and any dream that
I had of living a life of purpose and meaning and and and being an adventurer and somebody that would actually take risks and and live a life that's deliberate and intentional those were gone when you see your life scripted out and You recognize that this is not this is not anything I why am I doing this this guy that's handing me this from I don't want to be him I don't envy his life you know maybe this was never for me to begin with and maybe if I don't leave right now I'm going to be
that dude for the rest of my life and I just took the elevator down 28 stories and that was it and ever since then I decided that this life was going to be mine and it was going to be Wildly flamboyantly my life you know ready here it is [Music] nada NADA NADA NADA we're back Nevada woo yeah that was good all those people are awaiting and I'm not sure where they're supposed to be I'm thinking let's do you want to go take a look over here sure we can do That we're scrambling to fine
seats for roughly 30 people this is the most disorganized night of the tour so far we're in Las Vegas go figure and the space that we rented here for whatever reason aren't ready for us even though that we we paid the rent in the space thankfully there's some awesome people here who are really helping us somehow we're going to make this work yes wow thank you very much you know it's funny I used to think Rich was earning $50,000 a year then when I started climbing the corporate ladder in my early 20s I quickly began
earning 50 Grand but I didn't feel rich something went wrong I had to go back to the drawing board and I found out that I hadn't adjusted for inflation okay so we can ifate for only so long we're really here for you as as Ryan mentioned and so uh we like to do what we call questions and attempted answers you're dedicated you're creative You're Innovative you have a sincere desire for mankind the very people who the Wolves of w Wall Street fear and to me you're moving yourself from the war if you really talking about
metalism the ultimate mist is a Hermit a recluse or a monk and to me that's not going to change the world you know what I'm saying you're the only threat to that system you're right there there two sides of the spectrum I think you know We're ideally somewhere in the middle of that right cuz I don't think there's anything wrong with consumption the problem was compulsory consumption buying stuff because that's what you're supposed to do that's what advertising tells you to do or that's what this magic template is for happiness and then when you get
it you realize that it doesn't make you as happy as you thought it would yeah it was a great comment thank you so Much but try to destroy those wall I'm serious amen let me grab a hug yeah thank you so much I tell you their personality and their straightforwardness and answering all the questions uh that Charisma about was connecting with the people as you can see yourself it's like 4:30 in the morning yes and we are going to go be on TV good morning 523 a lot of us look forward to buying the latest
gadget or Smartphone but this morning I'm joined by two men who've taken what they say is a simpler route and are living a life of minimalism hello hi we're here for 5:00 hour and 6:00 hour Josh and Ryan with the minimum ists I was living the American dream and I realized it wasn't my dream I looked around all the stuff in my life when my mother died and my marriage ended both in the same month and started questioning what was actually important What things were actually adding value to my life and I realized that many
of the things that I bought to make me happy they weren't actually doing their job okay well good luck to you take it easy don't do too much don't buy anything today all right amen good luck with that we'll be back in just a bit well next at 5:30 the latest on the search for a missing Malian flight that disappeared 5 days ago you show minimalism is not a radical Lifestyle I yeah I absolutely believe in quality over over quantity right so I'd much rather have one nice sweatshirt than a closet full of ugly sweatshirts
that I don't enjoy wearing I don't own a lot of clothes now but all the clothes I do own are my favorite clothes so let's take a look at what I have packed for 10 months of traveling I'm wearing my my one pair of jeans got a couple denim shirts I have a short sleeve button up Oxford a few T-shirts a blow dryer a every good minimalist has a blow dryer and plenty of underwear now here's the secret with underwear you have to have one color that's in the middle this how you this is how
you separate your dirty underwear from your clean underwear with the red pair of underwear toiletry bag everyone needs a toiletry bag obviously and I also have a a laptop with me but that's it for 10 Months we didn't really have a plan which is pretty much our [Laughter] story in 2010 when I was really digging into this decluttering and simplifying I thought about the one place in my house that was the most cluttered and that was my closet and so I decided to create a minimalist fashion challenge to use less than what I had so
project 333 the challenge for me was to wear 33 items For 3 months and the 33 items included clothing Jewelry accessories and shoes that's where I usually lose people it was a great way for me to really see what I needed what I was using and just if it would make a difference and so I was working in advertising I had a lot of clients I had to every day I'd go to sales meetings and for that first 3 months nobody noticed the story got picked up by the Associated Press because so many people Were
writing about it and practicing it and trying it in this video I'm going to talk more about how I plan my project 333 project 333 project 333 and I thought oh boy this is it and they didn't notice so um I probably went that full year until I left my job with no one really knowing that I was dressing with only 33 items I do this thing called project 333 and it just kind of helps me keep my Wardrobe really simple I went from this giant closet where I had I don't know a hundred sweaters
to now having this super tiny wardrobe and being able to share a closet with Logan and that's made a big difference just I don't fret about what I'm going to put on in the morning cuz all the stuff in my closet is awesome at least I think so there's something about not being prepared for every moment that actually helps you engage with your Community being pregnant for instance it's such a limited time I had a dress up event to go to and I said to David let me go see if I can find a dress
and I was thinking gosh this is really outdated I have 2 months left the event is next week what am I going to do so I called a couple of my girlfriends hey do you have any dresses I can you know go through but in the past you know I definitely would have bought what I needed when I needed it because that's What you do you prepare yourself you know for your situation the beauty of it is it's become very communal our friends ask us for stuff we be you know we've become closer to people
because of it Mark and I got married in 2005 and a year later um I started feeling really bad had a lot of vertigo and tingling and fatigue that following year got really bad and in July I was diagnosed with MS and at first we were Both terrified it was hard that was a tough time I mean immediately my response wasn't I got to simplify things I'm a slow learner so I decided I had to really push hard to prove that I was okay and so I worked more um I worked out more I really
pushed myself for probably that first month and I felt terrible in any disease or sickness one of the biggest factors one of the things that contributes to these things in a negative way is the Stress in your life by getting rid of these things in our lives these material items and all this excess that we used to live in good things happen since then I have not had what I would consider a relap um I'm in Better Health than I was before I was diagnosed people always tell you or at least they did for me
in the early stages of Ms you have to listen to your body like listen to my body I can't even Listen to my family I don't know how I'm going to hear my body and so as I started to move that stuff out I was able to finally realize um what I had sacrificed by being busy by engaging in constant work we have this capacity for Focus but we're living in in a context where we are continually moving from one stimulus to the next in search of the dopamine experience where we're rewarded by the next
email or the next retweet or The next thing that comes into our phone rather often I think there's a a price we pay for that it's really become it's become an issue there was a noia study that says the average person checks his or her phone like 150 times a day you walk down the street in any major city locked into their devices we are totally in The Matrix and it's easier to be mindless than just read the paper update social media feed and Consume because you can do anything you want you can potentially do
everything you want but to do everything you want you have to sacrifice the things that really are important when it comes to the overwhelm the easiest way to solve that is to turn it off really just turn it off it was really powerful to realize that most of my life was in a daydream in an Apparent attempt toar sympy I got here to ABC News when I was 28 years old I was really ambitious young guy and my way of compensating for my insecurity about uh being such a newbie was to throw myself into the
job and really become a workaholic and after 9/11 I raise my hand to go overseas and cover the ensuing conflicts we were fortunate this week to have our reporter Dan Harris on a trip organized by the Taliban we arrived at night a spine Rattling ride down a single mangled Road into a city under siege spent a lot of time with in Iraq and Afghanistan without really thinking much about the um psychological consequences and when I came home from a particularly long trip in Iraq I got depressed and then I did something really really dumb which
was I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs it was enough according to my doctor to uh provoke a panic attack on live Television we're going to go now to Dan Harris who at the news desk Dan Health news now one of the world's most commonly prescribed medications may be providing a big bonus researchers report people who take cholesterol loow drugs called statins for at least 5 years may also lower their risk for cancer but it's too early to to prescribe stattin slowly for cancer production that does it for news we're going to go back now
to Robin and Charlie it raised the level of adrenaline in my brain which according to my doctor primed me to lose it on Good Morning America in front of 5 million people 5.01 n million people according to the neelon ratings that moment set me off on a weird and windy road that ultimately led me to the last thing that I ever thought would would be useful for anybody which was medit We're ruminating about past and future in a way that keeps us from really connecting with the present moment in a way that that values it
as good enough meditation is a is a technique of finding well-being in the present moment before anything happens you can be happy and satisfied simply being aware of you the sensation of [Music] breathing very rarely are we fully Dedicated to one thing we're interrupting ourselves or allowing ourselves to be interrupted by these these streams of data and what would in in any other context be thought of as distractions but now we think of them as just sort of all necessary parts of our bandwidth if I leave my phone in my pocket and it's on vibrate
mode unconsciously I'll Flinch when it vibrates I even Flinch when it doesn't vibrate thinking it Vibrates and that kills that little discussion like those Nan seconds of distraction I think has a hugely detrimental effect everywhere I look it's like constant high frequency flinches this anticipation of of novelty has the character of of making us the lab wrath that's just pressing the bar meditation is a great great antidote to that people around here at ABC News Would ask me why are you meditating parenthetically what's the matter with with you what happened to you eventually I started
to answer oh you know because it makes me about 10% happier and I could see the looks transform from scorn SL skepticism into interest like oh that sounds reasonable I'd like that one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received in my entire life was from a meditation teacher named Joseph Goldstein I was asking him about the Utility of worry in the specific context I was talking about whether it makes sense to worry about missing a flight and I was arguing to him that look you you you Buddhists are always talking about how thoughts
are just thoughts they don't necessarily have any connection to reality but the fact is if I miss my flight I'm screwed and he said you're unquestionably correct but there's a certain amount of worry that's that makes sense and a certain amount of Worry that doesn't so on the 17th time that you're worrying about missing your flight and all of the horrible ramifications maybe ask yourself a simple question is this useful Boom for a guy who'd spent his whole life worrying and thinking that my worrying was The Edge I had over everybody else because I knew
I was going to be more anxious uh uh and more compulsive than any of my competitors I realized there was a certain amount of Worrying that is is what I call constructive anguish and then there's useless rumination that's just making you miserable it's not like I'm 100% mindful all the time you know I still do an enormous amount of stupid [ __ ] and if my wife was here she would give you the 90% still aoron spiel there's just no question that I'm still an idiot in lots of ways but I'm less of an idiot
and less of a jerk and more thoughtful and More focused and calmer we've been on tour all year and just when I start to think if we're getting through if we're making a difference The Today Show gives us a call and asks us to be on now we have an opportunity to share this with millions of people which is is huge dude we're we're actually late now so we got to go uh the entrance is the address it's uh 35 yeah but you'll see like the Today Show stuff Set up oh right there right there
you sure this is it yep go down stairs o we're in together it's the most wonderful from NBC News this is today with Black Friday Cyber Monday boughs of holly and stuffed stockings it can start to feel like the holidays are more about more and L about what's really important Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus have come to see things differently they are what you Call the minimalist in a hypothetical world what if one of you Falls madly in love with a Max minist who likes her stuff what are you going to do that's a
great question my girlfriend actually I live with I don't think she would call herself a minimalist she's got about 20 pairs of shoes that's not that's nothing compared to but what I will say is that her and I have very similar values and beliefs we Respect one another we love one another we appreciate one another it's a great lifestyle great topic for today especially you both minimalist latest book everything that remains is in stores right now what a concept so the event last night was crazy we showed up the store owner had about 30 chairs
out I asked him to put out more chairs and he was like are you sure you're going to need more chairs uh Ken Burns was here and he he maxed out all My seating I got 60 chairs total and I said yeah I think we'll have about 50 or 60 people show up uh go ahead and bring the rest of the chairs out and we ended up having like 150 200 people show up I mean people were standing on the shelves wall to wall out to support us man hey thanks for everything you do I
think your story came at the right right time Serendipity you guys are in my inspiration awesome thank you so much for that I'm glad we Can help thanks for coming out brother we're seeing more and more and more people show up so it's great to see the message is spreading so we are on our way to La it's going to be our biggest venue so far expecting one of our biggest crowds and really I think La is a city that could really use this [Laughter] message we like things little but we love things big yeah
I grew out of it You just feel right des and find what is space inside my mind philosophy of nothing in plain s something so familiar so forign forget get to remember to for the same are just a different medium moving canv a picture of myself we like things little but we love things big yeah I grew out of it and you just cars homes and six digigit salaries it may sound like a dream life Joshua Melbourne and Ryan Nicodemus on a world book tour and here to explain why Someone would just give up all
of this stuff yeah letting it go was was really difficult I wish I could say it was as easy as running a dumpster and throwing a well on my stuff but it was really a process everything was somay [Applause] F the truth is we're not leaving because so remain [Music] I love watching how it's spreading like Wildfire and in in a good way it's like a good plague a startling new study shows a huge number of children under the age of four have access to a mobile device and some of those kids started using them
before they were one year old we're building more competitive more interesting environments for the consumer this means ingesting signals they're telling us about their interest and making sure we can control what Message they see next Toronto based ad exac has written an opad in the globe in mail saying it's time we stop advertising to children advertising to children has existed for so long what's changed though is the amount of this advertising and the media through which this advertising comes cuz historically companies which had products aimed at kids would go toward the mothers and getting the
mothers to want to buy the stuff for the Kids what happens is the companies decide to go around the mothers and go directly to the kids I don't know what the most common three words are in American Homes I don't know if it's I love you or if it's I want that 5,000 advertisements we see every single day from the the moment we're born and they all tell us hey this is what your life should be about it should be about accumulating more things or it Should all be about focusing on you if you guys
have walked around you know a a kids store lately but it's kind of Inc incredible anything you ever could have dreamed of has been thought of advertisers have just realized there's this huge Market um their parents who want to give their kids the best and they're really working hard to go that angle [Music] there's a problem of both process and Content and the problem of content is huge the products that are being advertised to kids are junk welcome to mute Mania wrestling 120 M characters you can collect the secret is their flexy spine it's a
junk culture it's food that's bad for them it's crappy toys that are gendered and violent I don't see the argument for subjecting children to this like there's no positive social benefit from it we just know there's a negative and it's Just the political power of advertising and the companies that do the advertising that keeps us from doing something about [Music] it so I've heard someone say there's another word for minimalism it's called being a bachelor so that's yeah I mean I can see how people think oh that's really easy if you're not married and you
have no kids how do I set an example of myself Being married and having six kids which is totally un minimalist and very ironic how do I live a minimalist lifestyle with those kinds of constraints Jack and I haven't been too prescriptive about out like no you have five toys you know no dude you can only have one truck you can't have three trucks you know it's like no when I was a little kid I didn't have one GI Joe I had like 100 GI Jo's we've welcomed things into our life but definitely with The
intention of thinking um about what we're doing as opposed to just um consuming when you live with other people and you're a family you can't just make unilateral decisions okay we're now getting rid of everything and throwing the TV out the door um there will be a riot that's a little bit frustrating because you can't just get your way but it's also a really interesting experiment in how you can move together As a group and learn about this together as a group at the very beginning when we decided to live with less we knew early
on that minimal was just going to look like the way we wanted it to look I remember going through getting rid of things and finally saying okay Salem let's go through your toys and let's get rid of some of the things you don't need anymore and he had no problem whatsoever my daughter is seven and she Is very different she loves every doll that she can get like she collects rocks and twigs and anything else she can find she she collects and she holds on to you know as parents we get to set some boundaries
for her but ultimately we we let her choose what she wants I think he certainly has been at a different level of minimalism than I am he wanted to get rid of more than I wanted to get rid of and so there comes The compromise his side of the closet looks much smaller than my side of the closet and that's okay with us you know I think one of the lessons that that we've learned through this whole journey is just that our kids are really watching us and we can tell them that we want them
to be certain people but man they're picking up a lot more just from how we how we live our lives this just undercurrent of Consumerism removing some of that stuff provided a a safe environment where they're able to become what they most want to be rather than what the the world will try to convince them to be good evening it's clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages deeper even than inflation or recession in a nation that was proud of hard Work strong families close-knit communities
too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one own [Music] owns but we've discovered that owning things and consuming Things does not satisfy our longing for meaning we've learned that piling up material Goods cannot F The Emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose this is not a message of happiness or reassurance but it is the truth and it is a warning we think we need those things because we've been told we need those things we've been told we
need those things by our Society it's been this kind of slow little thing that's just kind of trickled in and suddenly it becomes the thing you do it really does come down to a value based ideal you want to do the most amount of good and get the most amount of value with exactly what you need having too little is not going to give you that and having too much is not going to give you that right having that that that balance Having enough that's what you're looking for if I had to revise the American
dream it would be more about coming together in community it would be more about a society which had much less inequality and more fairness in which everybody had a chance that is responsible toward the planet and our ecosystem to me that would be an American Dream when you talk about not consuming people think well you're trying to take something away from them but the truth of the matter is that I think that what this movement is really about is questing after A Life That's Good for ourselves and good for the people around us so we're
in LA right now we're here for our biggest event what we're trying to do is show people that there's a different way for Us to to live the people you bring into your life and you should always be hanging out with people who have the same values and that's really what minimalism is about it's about living deliberately so every choice that I make every relationship every item every dollar I spent I'm not perfect obviously but I do constantly ask the question is this adding value am I being deliberate with this decision go see him tonight
at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles at 7 o' thank you Joshua and Ryan for coming in I didn't realize it at the time but I was so focused on what my idea of success was my idea of success was making more money s my relationships were a priority well I didn't pay any attention to the people closest to me including my mom the whole point of this message the Whole point of us sharing this story is to help people curb that appetite for more things because it's such a destructive path to go down I
literally have used people to sell cell phones I've used people to get bigger and better clients and what I love about my life now is I can be genuine and that there is no manipulation it is my very very great pleasure to introduce Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus the [Applause] [Music] minimalists imagine a life with less I life of Passion unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you well what you're imagining is an intentional life it's not a perfect life and it's not even an easy life but a simple one what I
found with minimalism is it's A way of saying let's stop the madness you don't need this stuff like it's not going to do it it's not the answer there's a movement GR I don't think that there's a cap to it I'm now surrounded by people who are inspired and creating massive social change and impact the depth and profundity of my relationship is is beyond anything I could have ever imagined when you recognize that this life is yours and that it is your one And only and when that ceases to be the uh esoteric [ __
] when that's not Hippie poetry anymore when the pragmatism of that statement seats directly in your book bones and you recognize that this is it everything changes I don't know where you are on your journey where you are in Life or wherever you're going on that Journey but we are really grateful you're here with us tonight so if I can give you one takeway one thing to bring away from all Of this it it'll be this love people and use things because the opposite never works thank you so much for coming [Applause] [Laughter] out we
like things little but we love things big yeah I grew out of it and you just feel right Des find what is space inside my mind philosophy of nothing in plain side something so familiar so for it forget to remember to for it the same Are just a different medium a moving can is a picture of myself we like things little but we love things big yeah I grew out of it and you just feel right in [Music]
