MINIMALISM: Official Netflix Documentary (Entire Film)

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]