MINIMALISM: Official Netflix Documentary (Entire Film)

foreign 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 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] 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 auto 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 clawing for more it's why lottery winners are miserable it's why homeowners have three-car garages first car creates an exponential awesome Rush of happiness and joy and utility

the 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 and information [Music] 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 lives should be perfect it's natural to use other people's lives and even imagined lives you know the Confections we see in advertisements as a yardstick the 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 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 [Music] 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 doctor's 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 this is something that has been sold to us over say the past hundred years slowly but surely by those that want to make a whole lot of money no that's what I call a good looking car they us to believe that you really need these things every year that passes there's more stimuliers more pressure there's more options there's more media there's more

noise always noise and by streamlining and simplifying and just letting people know that they have the option it's that wake-up call that uh is really valuable in in a very critical time right now it got to a point in my life 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-something 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 corporate 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 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 [Music] 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 just justify to myself does this add 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 the suit and tie corporate guys to minimalists and so now we're gonna 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 eight minute reading because I just don't want to feel rushed to talk that's all [Music] ready I was born ready nice hello thanks for coming out my name is Ryan Nicodemus and this is the Joshua Fields Melbourne and together we run a website called the minimalists.com so today Josh is going to read from our 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 all right we've we've had events where we've had two people show up and that was amazing because 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 yeah for sure yeah our pleasure thank you did you forget your Kindle land badge in there oh yes thank you [Music] 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 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 ly after she left my father she she started drinking it was my biggest fear that I was going to get taken away from her she was sober she was a phenomenal mother 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 graduated high school I want to start on a path that is going to take me somewhere other than a struggle half a mile turn left on the San Pedro Drive we're currently on

our way to MPR for a radio interview those are our peeps that's our demographic howdy you're looking for a Rita Daniels I think so yes we are indeed how are you I'm Scott I'm Ryan I'm a hunger man oh nice to meet you buddy oh thanks for filming too Joshua nice to meet you all right I think my light bulb moment is when I was showing my guys how to sell cell phones to a five-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 and you know to do that I had to sell cell phones to five-year-olds 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 realized 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 has 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 a hundred thousand dollar 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 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 in their 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 have traveled inside their homes over the course of a normal day was a family of four and they were in the 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 foreign [Music] 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 to eat or 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 percent of our stuff I mean you can't bring all your stuff into a tiny house I was commuting about two 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 mmm 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 upsize [Music] 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 and 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 five hundred thousand dollars let me buy whatever 500 000 can get me and the big mistake there was that

these individuals didn't have five hundred thousand dollars 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 percent here a loss of 37 points or so Apple shares were just getting hammered this morning we're down by between three and four and a half percent 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 at it is just like hey I think we got to take a step back here [Music] we're very much a mission-based company the mission being to do more with less life edited

prototype Apartments started with me buying a place 420 square feet 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. I'd 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 because going from the 1200 square foot 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 a 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 re-examine what it means to be successful in life it's no longer that white picked 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 there their options than they once thought they did foreign

a recipe you know we're not out here trying to proselytize 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 give value from and apply those ingredients to to their own life there's 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 lives we're at the Tucson Book Festival we're getting ready

to go sign some books and then a little bit later we'll do our speech man look at all these people waiting to get their book signed by us let's sit on the outside then we will go out to the front and stand there okay and you've got your talk this afternoon what time is it at we are at uh seven o'clock 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 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 afterwards I was 27 years old was the director of operations for 150 retail stores it was December 23rd 2008. I got a phone call for my mom I sent it to voicemail because I was in a meeting at 7 pm going through this barrage of emails and I

realized I had several voicemails one was for 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 has said honey it's me can you call me back [Music] told me the doctors have found something [Music] she found out she had a stage four lung cancer she went through chemo and radiation stage four usually don't get out of that I got the hospice my mom was still in the bed 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 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 bins and boxes and 50 gallon 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 gonna 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 and body that particular style does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy but professional vibe exactly how edgy am I what espresso maker defines me as a man because 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 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 we're gonna need one of those and I'm also going to need well 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 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 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're

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 things [Music] [Music] I was talking to the author and sociologist Julie Shore and I said the problem with that 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 are shopping for clothes or our grandmothers there were four seasons a year or maybe even two seasons you dress for the cold you dressed for the warm now we work in a cycle of 52 Seasons per year [Music] foreign 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 accounts 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 sweatshops so we're not paying the true labor costs and we're not paying the ecological costs 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 [Music] for

a scholar of these things it's kind of breathtaking and horrifying this 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 bottom line 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 they will bring us want to feel whole you want to feel content this mindless consumption that 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 we're 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 are 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 secrets 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 go to new countries and rent Flats so it's uh maybe in between homes 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 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 found out that I had 51 things in the entire world I started Living this way about four years ago I was running a branding Studio I'd 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 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 now now I carry everything that I own on my back much like a hermit crab or turtle 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 treaded 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're they're dollars and cents 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 then Global Research below 70 000 US dollars a year adding greater material well-being is linked to Greater psychological well-being 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 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 because not everyone has those things 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

which you do have control over is having less and that by automatically stretch what you do have it's not so much about financial gain for me as it was 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 consuming things 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 it is worth it but 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 the 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 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 is 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 it was almost and I walked out of his office and I walked back into my own and and I just closed the door behind me and I just started weeping um because 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 will 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 gonna be that dude for the rest of my life and I just took the elevator down 28 stories and then 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] yeah that was good all those people are waiting and I'm not sure where they're supposed to be I'm thinking do you want to go take a look over here sure we can do that or scramble into

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 to rent the space thankfully there are some awesome people here who are really helping us somehow we're going to make this work yes you know what's funny I used to think Rich was earning fifty thousand dollars 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 pontificate for only so long we're really here for you as Ryan mentioned and so we like to do what we call questions and attempted answers dedicated you're creative you're Innovative you have a sincere desire for mankind the very people for the rules of Wall Street fear and to me you're moving yourself from the war if you really talk about mineralism the ultimate Mentalist is a

Hermit a recluse or a monk and to me that's not gonna change the world you know what I'm saying you're the only threat to that system you're right there are two sides of the spectrum I think you know we're ideally somewhere in the middle of that right because 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 we're trying to destroy those you know ones amen let me grab a hug yeah thank you so much I tell you your personality and your straightforwardness and answering all the questions that Charisma about me was connecting with the people as you can see yourself all right it's like 4 30 in the morning yes and we are gonna go be on TV good morning 5 20 . always 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 the simpler route and are living a life of minimalism hi we're here for uh five o'clock hour and six o'clock hour Josh and Ryan with the minimalists 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 missing Malaysian flight the Disappeared five days ago plus how you can show your room minimalism is not a radical lifestyle 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 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 is 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 I also have a laptop with me but that's it for 10 months we didn't really have a plan which is pretty much our 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 three 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 see every day I'd go to sales meetings and for that first three 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 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 100 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 gonna put on in the morning because 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 at 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 two 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 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 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 [Music] since then I have not had what I would consider a relapse 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 so as I started to move that stuff out I was able to finally realize what I had sacrificed by being busy by engaging in constant work we have this capacity for focus but we're living 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

her phone rather often I think there's a price we pay for that it's really become a it's become an issue there's a Nokia 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 your social media feed and consume because you can do to 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 to Garner sympathy I got here to ABC News when I was 28 years old and I was really ambitious young guy in 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 raised 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 I spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan without really thinking much about the 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 provoke a

panic attack on live television we're going to go now to Dan Harris is at the news desk Dave news now one of the world's most commonly prescribed medications may be providing a big bonus researchers report people who take cholesterol low in drugs called statins for at least five years may also lower their risk for cancer but it's too early to prescribe statins slowly for cancer production that does it for news we're gonna 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 five million people 5.019 million people according to the Nielsen 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 meditation 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 the sensation of breathing [Music] 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 a 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 nanoseconds 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 making us the lab rat 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 of the 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 transformed from scorn slash 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 them 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 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 a [ __ ] Spiel and 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 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 the stairs oh put it together [Music] from NBC News this is today with Black

Friday Cyber Monday bows of holly and stuffed stockings it can start to feel like the holidays are more about more and less about what's really important Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus have come to see things differently they are what you call the minimalists in the hypothetical world what if one of you Falls madly in love with a maximal list yeah who likes her stuff what are you gonna 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 [Music]

but what I will say is that her and I have very similar values and beliefs yeah we respect one another we love one another we appreciate one another it's a great lifestyle great topic for today latest book everything that remains is in stores right now what a concept okay 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 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 bookshelves wall-to-wall hey thanks for everything you do I think your story came at the right right time Serendipity you guys are my inspiration awesome thank you so much for that I'm glad we couldn't help thanks for coming out brother we're seeing more and more and more people

show up so it's great to see the messages 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 message [Laughter] [Music] forget to do too much [Music] I'm moving campus black things little but we love things cars homes and six digit salaries it may sound like a dream life Joshua Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus on a world book tour and here to explain why someone would just give up all of

this stuff letting it go was was really difficult I wish I could say it was as easy as running a dumpster and throwing well on my stuff but it was really a process [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] I love watching how it's spreading like wildfire and 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 exec has written an op-ed in the Globe and 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 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 guys have anything you ever could have dreamed of has been thought of advertisers have

just realized there's this huge Market 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 mini wrestling 120 new characters you can collect the secret is they're flexi spawn 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 it [Music] yeah so I've heard someone say there's another word for minimalism it's called being a bachelor help 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 like you know 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 Joes we've welcomed things into our life but definitely with the intention of thinking about what we're doing as opposed to just 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 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 the minimaloves is 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 the whole 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 could 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 is 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 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 feel the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose this is not a message of how 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 thank you that 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 balance having enough that's what you're looking for thank you 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 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 spend I'm not perfect obviously but I do constantly ask the question it's just adding value am I being deliberate with this decision you'll see in tonight at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles at seven o'clock 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 a similar 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 minimalists [Applause] [Music] imagine a life with less a life of Passion unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around me 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 this stuff like it's not gonna do it it's not the answer there's a move in the growing I don't think that there's a cap to it I'm now surrounded by people who are inspired

in creating massive social change and impact the depth and profundity of my relationships is beyond anything I could have ever imagined recognize that this life is yours and that it is your one and only and one that ceases to be esoteric [ __ ] when that's not Hippie poetry anymore when the pragmatism of that statement seats directly in your 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 could give you one takeaway one thing to bring away from all of this it'll be this love people and use things [Music] because the opposite never works thank you so much for coming out [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] but we love things foreign [Music]