0:01

Every

0:11

little thing you think

0:14

that you need Every

0:25

little thing you think that

0:27

you need Every

0:30

little thing that's just feeding

0:32

your greed Oh, I bet

0:34

that you'll be fine without

0:36

it You're

0:39

listening to The Minimalist Podcast with

0:41

Joshua Fields-Milburn and T.K. Coleman Thank

0:44

you, Malabama. Hello, everybody. Today we

0:46

are joined by Colin Wright. Colin

0:49

is the man who introduced Nicodemus

0:51

and me to minimalism way

0:53

back in 2009. He

0:56

is the author of 40 books,

0:59

including his brand new book, How

1:01

to Turn 39, Thoughts About Aging

1:03

for People of All Ages. He's

1:06

also the host of two of

1:08

my favorite podcasts, Brain Lenses and

1:11

Let's Know Things. Coming up on

1:13

this free public minimal episode,

1:15

a caller has a question about

1:17

the ugly pressure that our culture

1:20

puts on women to look youthful,

1:23

as if aging is bad or evil.

1:25

And then we've got a lightning round

1:27

question about whether your 15 year

1:29

old self would be impressed by your

1:32

current self. That's followed by our right

1:34

here, right now segment spoiler alert. It's

1:36

my birthday and I demand

1:38

a birthday gift from you. And

1:40

then we've got a listener tip for you as

1:42

well. You can check out the full maximal edition of

1:44

episode 448. That's

1:47

the full episode where we answer

1:49

five times the questions and we

1:52

dive deep into several simple living

1:54

segments. That private podcast episode is

1:56

out right now at patreon.com/The Minimalists.

2:00

podcast 100% advertisement

2:02

free because sing along at

2:04

home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with

2:06

our callers. If you have a question or a comment

2:08

for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Give

2:11

us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or

2:16

just email a voice memo right

2:18

from your phone to podcast at

2:21

theminimalists.com. Our first question today is

2:23

from McKenna. Howdy,

2:25

minimalists. My name is McKenna,

2:27

and I'm calling from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I've

2:30

been listening to your podcast since I was 16 years

2:32

old, and now I'm almost 22. I

2:35

want to thank you for introducing me to

2:37

the world of minimalism and helping me embrace

2:39

simplicity in some of my most formative years.

2:41

I'm also a Patreon subscriber. There's

2:45

a pressure on women to maintain youthful

2:47

skin, free of wrinkles, sagging, and other

2:49

natural signs of aging. I

2:51

think this topic becomes especially interesting, given

2:53

that Botox and fillers are becoming more

2:56

accessible and are no longer just for

2:58

celebrities. My question for you is this.

3:01

How do we learn to embrace the

3:03

natural aging process when there is such

3:05

a societal pressure that encourages us to

3:08

spend hundreds on fillers, Botox, and anti-aging

3:10

products in the name of looking youthful?

3:13

How can we learn to flip the narrative and embrace

3:15

aging? Thanks for all that you do,

3:17

and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Now,

3:20

Colin, you start your new book, How to Turn 39. It's

3:24

really a book about aging for all ages,

3:27

but you talk about what aging

3:29

is. So what does it mean for

3:31

McKenna or anyone else who's listening to this to embrace

3:34

the natural aging process? Because it's

3:36

wild to hear like, I'm 22

3:38

years old, and I

3:40

really feel like I'm aging out of my youth

3:42

at this point. I

3:45

think that there are good arguments to be

3:47

made for trying to stay healthy. And I

3:49

think a lot of the things that we

3:51

associate with youth is healthfulness, because at a

3:54

certain point, what we consider

3:56

to be aging and middle age and stuff,

3:58

that's actually just the physical manifestation. of our

4:00

bodies entering a different stage of life. And

4:02

that's okay, that's natural. It's

4:05

also natural to a certain degree within

4:07

a culture that romanticizes

4:09

and sexualizes youth

4:12

to look at that and say, that is beauty,

4:14

that is appeal, that is what makes me worth

4:16

something. And then to try to do what you

4:18

can to line up with that. That's what we

4:20

do with anything that culture tells us is good

4:23

and correct. We, latently, unless

4:25

we really think hard about it and decide

4:27

to do something differently, we try to align

4:29

with that current. I

4:31

think it is very useful to

4:34

take a step back and recognize

4:36

that there are different types of

4:38

value, different types of appeal, different

4:40

types of sexuality, different types of

4:42

aesthetics that we can appreciate, not

4:44

just those directly associated with youth. And

4:47

I don't think that there's anything inherently

4:49

wrong with moisturizing and

4:51

applying sunscreen and dying our hair

4:53

and getting injections if you choose

4:55

to do that. If that's something

4:57

that you really feel allows

5:00

you to reflect what's inside, outside, I

5:03

think do it. There's a lot of good arguments for that.

5:05

There's a lot of confidence value.

5:07

There's a lot of value in

5:09

you feeling more like yourself physically

5:11

as well as psychologically and mentally.

5:14

I think a lot of people who do it are

5:16

not necessarily doing it for that reason. I think there's

5:18

a lot of marketing messages out there trying to convince

5:20

us that we have to do it. And

5:23

I think it is a very good idea to

5:25

take the time, whatever age you are, to

5:28

recognize that there are different ways to

5:30

age. There are different ways to look

5:32

attractive and appealing, to be valuable, to

5:35

be worthwhile and worthy. And

5:37

if you can do that work first

5:39

before making that decision to do anything

5:41

permanent, to do anything surgical, but then

5:43

also injections and expensive creams and anything

5:45

else that you might feel like you

5:47

have to buy, do that

5:49

inner work first, and then you'll probably make

5:52

better decisions about the external applications that you

5:54

do related to that. One

5:56

thing that helps with that tremendously is

5:58

just expanding your vocabulary. of like

6:01

what it means to grow as a human being. So for

6:03

me, when I first entered my 30s, I

6:06

really felt like a loser and I struggled with this

6:08

greatly. And when I got to the bottom of it,

6:10

I realized that all of

6:12

my heroes were professional athletes and

6:14

entertainers, people who peak around the age

6:16

of 31, 32, 33, and

6:20

in popular culture, their legacies are sealed, right?

6:22

So if you play in the NBA or

6:24

the major leagues, or you're a rapper, by

6:27

the time you're 32, 33, that's it, your

6:29

career's over and we're having debates as to whether

6:31

or not you're the greatest of all time.

6:33

And so when you turn 32, 33, and

6:35

all your heroes are like that, and

6:37

then you continue to watch these things, and now

6:39

all of the people that are really good are

6:42

five, 10 years younger than you, you

6:44

start to feel really old and really

6:46

behind. But then when you expand and

6:48

you start to study history, you start

6:50

to look outside of pop culture, and

6:52

you take control over your own input,

6:54

you realize, wow, there really is

6:56

something to this idea that life doesn't begin until you're

6:58

40, because there are so

7:01

many cool people that are 50,

7:03

60, 70 in so many interesting ways, they're

7:05

just not glorified by the marketing, as you

7:07

say. Colin, I would also say

7:09

there's something, to piggyback on what TK is saying,

7:12

there's something about we dismiss

7:15

older people in our culture.

7:17

Now, not all cultures do this, obviously,

7:19

and so you don't want to be

7:21

dismissed and therefore you want to be

7:24

youthful as a result. And

7:27

part of it is because that sells,

7:30

it's very easy to sell youthful

7:32

appeal because youth is associated with so

7:34

many other things that we biologically crave, but

7:36

then also again, culturally throughout all of history,

7:38

that has been a valuable thing to trade

7:40

upon, has been youth and everything

7:42

associated with youth. And especially for women,

7:44

we see it in this culture where

7:48

the youngest woman,

7:50

19 to 25, is like,

7:52

this is what is the ideal woman in a lot

7:54

of movies, certainly

7:59

magazines, especially in advertisements. Yeah,

8:01

yeah. And we reinforce this in so

8:03

many ways too. It's part of what

8:05

sells. Something that I was

8:07

surprised to find actually when I was doing research

8:09

for the book is that a lot of our,

8:12

throughout all cultures, a

8:14

lot of our most meaningful

8:16

milestones and celebrations are also

8:19

associated with youth, the things,

8:21

quinceaneros. And we have these

8:23

celebrations as we're young because

8:25

they're associated with fertility, traditionally,

8:27

historically. When

8:29

we move out of the fertile

8:31

period though, in biological ways, but

8:33

then also like cultural ways, there

8:36

are not a lot of celebrations that continue

8:38

till today that celebrate the transition to that

8:40

next stage, whatever that stage even is, like

8:43

it's very difficult. We don't have a good

8:45

vocabulary to describe what is it

8:47

when you're done with having

8:49

kids, when you're done with raising kids,

8:52

when you're done with maybe working in a

8:54

money earning sense. We've got retirement, but that's

8:56

an economic term. We don't

8:58

have cultural terms. And there's very, very

9:00

few cultures that have done this and

9:02

maintained this. And the ones that

9:05

have historically have had ceremonies to

9:07

represent moving on from the stage of where

9:09

you maybe had kids, maybe raised kids, now

9:11

the kids are off having their own kids.

9:13

What are you doing now? Well, you are

9:16

ascending to the role of elder. You

9:18

are becoming a distributor of wisdom, somebody

9:21

who has accumulated a lot of experience and

9:23

knowledge, and now you are there to share

9:25

it with others, to be like

9:28

a communal grandparent, somebody who takes care

9:30

and helps other people learn things. I

9:33

love that sort of thing, but it's

9:35

not something that's really imbued and diffuse

9:37

throughout a lot of cultures today. I'm

9:40

curious to know how much you think

9:43

seeking out, whether it be

9:45

parenthood or opportunities to be a mentor, to

9:48

invest in and celebrate the growth of younger

9:50

people or people that are just younger than

9:52

you, how much that can be

9:54

a kind of antidote,

9:57

if you will, to the

9:59

sense of insecurity. about our own aging.

10:02

Yeah, the way that I've been framing it actually

10:04

for myself, I don't want

10:06

to have kids, but I have three siblings

10:08

who all do, two of them actively. I've

10:10

got two nephews

10:12

and a niece now. I

10:17

consider it being an uncle, like uncle energy,

10:19

bringing uncle energy to the world. And a

10:21

lot of cultures have like the aunties and

10:23

uncles and that sort of people I'm not

10:25

directly blood related to, but they are significant

10:27

adults in my life. I consider

10:30

my role as an uncle for my own,

10:32

my siblings, kids, my nieces and nephews, but

10:34

also for just young people in general, trying

10:37

to be that significant positive adult figure

10:39

in the lives of people younger than

10:41

me is something that I take very

10:43

seriously, increasingly so, in part because

10:45

I see that is something that I am now

10:47

in a position to do. I've accumulated enough experience,

10:50

I'm far from done learning,

10:52

I hope, but I've

10:54

accumulated enough experience that I feel like that

10:56

is an opportunity that I have to either

10:58

be a negative influence, to be no influence,

11:01

or to be a positive influence. And so

11:03

making that choice, I feel like, is something

11:05

that allows us to have

11:08

some of that later in life energy,

11:10

to take it, draw upon it, and

11:12

use it for good, for the

11:14

good of our community or society, whatever communities we

11:16

happen to be a part of. Yeah. You

11:19

know, you have a podcast called Let's Know

11:21

Things. And the thing I really like about

11:23

both you and TK is you get curious

11:25

about things in a way that is non-judgmental.

11:28

It's also in many ways

11:31

non-instructive. Yeah, I didn't ever

11:33

listen to Let's Know Things at the end of it,

11:35

and Colin's like, and here's what you should do with

11:37

that information. Like that would actually ruin

11:39

it. And so I think the same thing with the uncle

11:42

energy, the father energy, the grandparent energy,

11:44

whatever you wanna call it, it's not

11:47

about being didactic. And quite often we

11:49

think that, we think that, oh, you

11:51

know what, you know how I can

11:53

be a great parental figure or adult

11:55

figure? I can teach them,

11:57

I can show them the only way that.

12:00

it is, but it seems to me, but

12:02

what you're talking about, that uncle energy is

12:04

not that at all. No, it's not about

12:06

shaping in the next generation, it's about enabling

12:09

in my mind. It's trying

12:11

to provide the resources that they

12:13

need. Sometimes that's informational resources, sometimes

12:15

it's just being the person there

12:18

to encourage them. Half

12:20

the emails that I answer from people who read

12:22

my work or listen to my work is just

12:24

people telling me about neat stuff that they're doing

12:26

and they're feeling uncertain, and I just send them

12:28

encouraging words, and then sometimes I'll hear from them

12:30

years later. And that was like a

12:32

really important email because nobody else in their

12:35

life was just telling them, hey, that's cool.

12:38

That's really great what you're doing, congratulations, you should be

12:40

very proud of that. Sometimes

12:42

just doing that, I think

12:44

can be the most meaningful thing, but doing whatever

12:46

you can, whatever that person in

12:48

that position needs, somebody who could benefit from

12:51

that, trying to figure out what that

12:53

is and then trying to give it to them and just like lifting

12:55

them up, putting them in

12:57

the position to do whatever it is that

12:59

they're going to do based on what they believe, what they think

13:01

is important. You get that

13:04

directly to McKenna's question here. I

13:07

think there's something about insecurity that

13:09

is sort of embedded in our culture

13:11

now. And I think advertising does a

13:13

great job of making us feel insecure

13:15

in order to sell us products that

13:17

we didn't even know we needed, but

13:19

they have a solution to a problem

13:21

I didn't even know I had. And

13:23

for McKenna, it's like, oh no, I'm

13:25

22, I'm aging. So

13:28

of course what products will help

13:30

me not age? And of

13:32

course you can change your externalities as

13:34

Colin alluded to, but that often doesn't

13:36

make you not you. You

13:38

are still you beneath those externalities.

13:41

And so I wrote an essay recently, and

13:43

this is good timing, it's called store brand

13:46

insecurity. There's a link to it we'll put

13:48

in the show notes. I was driving one

13:50

day and this line just came to me.

13:52

I was talking to myself and that line

13:54

is, it's pretty simple, but

13:57

it has to do with our

13:59

own. And that line is you

14:01

care what other people think. You

14:04

yearn for their acceptance because

14:06

there's an underlying dissatisfaction

14:09

in your own life. And

14:11

so quite often when I care

14:13

about the judgment of others, when I

14:15

care about the opinions or the beliefs

14:17

of others, it's because there's something

14:19

going on inside me. And

14:23

there's this malaise of suffering,

14:26

right? That's dissatisfaction. But

14:28

I would say that misery is

14:31

the norm in our

14:34

affirmation-based society.

14:36

And so what's happening here, the

14:38

advertisers are showing us, here's how

14:40

you get accepted. Here's how

14:42

you become part of the group. It's

14:45

whether you're using the right makeup,

14:47

the right clothes, the right car,

14:49

the right furniture, the right cleaning

14:51

products. This is what will make

14:53

you you. And

14:55

in the essay, I basically posit, well,

14:58

I'll posit a few things. Imagine if

15:00

your neighbor tells you that she's disappointed

15:02

because you don't own a private jet

15:04

or a professional sports franchise. I

15:07

mean, you just laugh that off, but

15:09

that same person can make you feel really insecure

15:11

because they say, you know what, what's going on

15:14

with those wrinkles right there? And

15:16

it's like, oh, I feel something. I

15:18

feel dissatisfied in me

15:20

and they're amplifying that

15:22

dissatisfaction. I don't feel

15:24

dissatisfied by not owning a

15:27

private jet. It's not something I've ever

15:29

even considered. And so if someone else

15:31

is disappointed by that, guess what? It

15:33

doesn't really matter to me, right? I'm

15:35

a little disappointed, frankly. But

15:38

I can explain. Aren't you going to buy a

15:40

hockey team? You

15:42

guys are doing pretty well. Why aren't you going to buy the minimalist

15:44

hockey team? No equipment. They

15:48

are the hardest core hockey team out there. So

15:52

toward the end of the essay, I posit

15:55

that there are basically two ways to increase

15:57

your sense of security. First you can enhance

15:59

your external. You can

16:01

get a better credit score. You can get

16:03

more square footage. You can get a job

16:05

title that is more impressive. You can get

16:07

makeup and designer clothes and luxury cars and

16:09

six pack abs. And maybe

16:12

after a few decades of

16:14

accumulation, these accomplishments will hush

16:16

your imaginary haters. The

16:18

key word there being imaginary. Quite often we

16:20

think we're being judged by a

16:23

myriad of people. And yet

16:25

we aren't actually at all. Those people

16:27

that we think are judging us don't

16:29

really care. Of course, the second way

16:31

is to simply need less. To

16:34

need less affirmation, less

16:36

veneration, less acceptance. Just

16:39

like you don't need the jet or

16:41

the sports team. You also don't need

16:43

any amount of respect or worldly goods

16:45

or wealth to make you, you. Of

16:49

course, there's no formula that will

16:51

instruct you how to need less. That's why

16:53

I love the title of this book, How

16:55

to Turn 39. It's not like

16:58

there's an actual, I was joking during

17:00

the private podcast intro, like, oh, I really wish I

17:02

would have had this five years ago because I

17:04

went straight from 38 to 40. But

17:08

knowing that it's not about how to turn

17:10

39, it's about

17:12

understanding the process of aging. So Colin,

17:15

when you're talking about how to here,

17:17

you're really talking about what

17:19

it takes to age

17:21

responsibly. Yeah, or to age

17:24

in a way that makes sense for you

17:26

and your specific needs and wants and values

17:28

and everything else, because all of us want

17:30

different things, all of us have different priorities.

17:33

It's also the title I thought was funny because

17:36

it's something that we're all going to do anyway.

17:38

So it's like giving instruction on something you can't

17:40

help but do. Like, nobody

17:42

is going to accidentally skip past

17:44

39 except Josh. Some

17:48

people are remarkable. Josh

17:50

is remarkable in different ways than most. But

17:54

yeah, I mean, aging is something that we all

17:56

do. It's something we all do in different ways.

17:58

We all carry different baggage. associated with aging.

18:00

I think some people have a more healthy outlook

18:02

just latently because of how they grew up than

18:05

others. I think a lot of

18:07

us have very disordered

18:09

approaches to aging, just the way

18:11

that we treat it or treat

18:13

different aspects of it. I know

18:15

I certainly did and I've, I mean, the past five

18:17

years or so has been an adventure

18:19

in figuring out, oh, hey, I have these

18:21

assumptions. I have these biases. I have these

18:24

self prejudices about what this means and what

18:26

the implications are. Maybe I should sit with

18:28

this and sort it out because this is

18:31

the sort of investment that will pay dividends

18:33

for the rest of my life. Do you

18:35

have any examples of some of those preconceived

18:37

notions that have changed over the last five

18:39

years? Yeah, I mean, so

18:42

a lot of us have certain ideas about where we should be

18:44

at certain moments in our life.

18:46

At 40, I need to have X, Y,

18:48

and Z. I should definitely have a mortgage.

18:50

I should definitely have X number of kids

18:53

in a backyard in a trampoline. And these

18:56

are cultural. They're very different from place

18:58

to place wherever you go, but most

19:00

places have a set template. You ask

19:03

somebody from Sri Lanka, you ask somebody

19:05

from Philadelphia, they will tell you the

19:07

set constraints and templates

19:09

that exist within their space, even if

19:11

people tend to deviate from those. I

19:14

had a lot of those. And even

19:17

having deviated from that quite

19:19

substantially. Earlier, when I started traveling and got

19:21

rid of all my stuff and had that

19:23

little adventure, there's

19:26

still the implication that, ha ha, wasn't

19:28

that fun. Now let's get back

19:30

to the template. And even

19:32

people who are very open-minded and who do

19:35

not lock in on that

19:37

sort of thing and try to

19:39

enforce it consciously on other people,

19:41

there are still certain expectations. You

19:43

can get away with that kind of

19:45

thing pretty easily and even be celebrated for it in your

19:47

20s. Get into your late 30s

19:50

and people start to wonder what went wrong. Why

19:53

don't you have the mortgage? Why don't

19:56

you have the wife? Why don't you have the kids?

19:58

Why don't you have that trampoline? Where's

20:00

the trampoline, Colin? And

20:03

it almost becomes accusatory as well. What

20:06

did you do wrong? Exactly. And even

20:08

people who have the best of intentions

20:10

and who do not consider themselves to

20:12

be strict adherence to the social

20:15

mores and folkways that they grew up in might

20:19

subconsciously without even realizing it, try to enforce

20:21

it upon others. And I found myself periodically

20:23

doing the same. Like that's kind of how

20:25

we knee-jerk, make

20:28

assumptions about other people like here

20:30

are my heuristics, my set of

20:32

mental shortcuts and frameworks for how

20:34

the world works. This person fits

20:36

into this category, including their age.

20:38

Why don't they have these other things

20:40

that are supposed to go along with

20:42

that category? And then without even knowing

20:45

anything else about that person, I've made

20:47

this whole array of assumptions about them.

20:49

And without realizing it, those assumptions can

20:51

then inform other things about how I

20:53

interact with that person, treat that person,

20:55

etc. Wow. Okay. Two

20:57

things. One, I have a horror movie idea

20:59

where Colin is in a Pleasantville type community

21:02

where everyone's got the white picket fence, the

21:04

so-called stereotypical American dream and his neighbor knocks

21:06

on his door and he's smiling and he

21:09

goes, where's the trampoline, Colin?

21:12

And then the music goes, Okay,

21:17

coming soon to a theater near you. One

21:20

thing I like to hear your thought on is

21:22

Josh and I have talked before about one

21:24

of the negative externalities of traditional

21:27

education is that we internalize this

21:29

deep sense of age segregation. We

21:32

grow up in an environment where the

21:34

fifth graders hang around the fifth graders,

21:36

the seventh graders hang around the seventh

21:38

graders and it's really dramatic if you're

21:40

in seventh grade and you're around fourth

21:42

graders or vice versa. And

21:44

we learn to think about who we are in terms

21:46

of like, oh yeah, I'm 12, I'm 17, I'm 20.

21:50

And it's usually not until we get

21:52

to college or beyond college where we

21:54

start to intermingle with other age groups

21:56

in a way that's part of normal

21:58

life, which is why for many people

22:00

those first two years after college are

22:02

very depressing because you're working with people,

22:04

you're 21, 22, you're

22:07

working with people that are 26, 27, 35, and

22:11

that feels really dramatic. How much

22:14

of a role do you think that kind

22:16

of mentality plays and are grappling with like

22:18

the aging process? Oh, I think it's huge.

22:20

That age stratification throughout society, like you nailed

22:22

it with school. School is training for work

22:25

to a certain degree, but that

22:27

stratification of age, like even look

22:29

at the way well-meaning programs within

22:31

school operate where some people move

22:33

forward, some people are held back.

22:36

There's implications that if you're not doing X, Y,

22:38

and Z on standardized tests by a certain age,

22:40

you are more than or less than. And

22:44

I understand why they do this because they want

22:46

people to succeed within a certain matrix

22:49

of assumptions about success, but I

22:52

don't think that's necessarily the best way to handle

22:54

things. I don't think it takes into consideration the

22:56

broad spectrum of different ways of being and interacting

22:58

and different types of maturity and different types of

23:00

brain growth and development and everything else. And

23:03

I think that does carry over. And like personally,

23:05

this is something that I get into in the

23:07

book as well. Cross-pollination between age

23:09

groups is one of the most valuable

23:11

things you can possibly have because it

23:13

allows us to take knowledge that exists

23:16

in older generations and pass it down

23:18

before it disappears. Otherwise we

23:20

lose that knowledge. And

23:22

this is something that exists within companies in

23:24

a lot of cases where you have a

23:26

lot of workers who have been there for

23:28

20, 30 years, they all retire. And that

23:31

knowledge of that industry, of their client list,

23:33

of the way software works or certain finicky

23:35

knobs on the stove in the back and

23:37

the kitchen work. And when you

23:39

don't have that, you have to learn those things

23:41

all over again. And that wastes a lot of

23:43

time. It's unnecessary suffering that the next generation has

23:45

to go through to learn the same things. The

23:48

more we can pass on that knowledge both

23:50

from older people to younger people, but then

23:52

also younger people to older people to help

23:54

them exist within the world as it exists

23:56

today that has changed, that has progressed in

23:58

many ways, that. Technology has

24:00

changed, society has changed, the way things are

24:02

connected has changed. One

24:04

of my favorite things about the neighborhood

24:07

that I live in in Milwaukee is

24:09

that there's a huge diversity in terms

24:11

of people in general, just economic backgrounds

24:14

and cultural classes and age. And

24:16

you can walk down the street and there's

24:18

toddlers, there's young professionals in their 20s and

24:21

30s, and then there's older people who have

24:23

lived there forever. And I love the

24:25

idea of having opportunities to bump

24:27

into people of different age demographics

24:29

and just have a conversation, just

24:32

learn people's names, learn

24:34

something about the way that they see the world. There's

24:36

not a lot of opportunities to do that. And

24:39

I love my neighborhood for having that, but

24:41

part of why I love it and part of

24:43

why I ended up renting there is that it's

24:45

so rare. Like there's just not a

24:47

lot of opportunities for that lately. McKenna,

24:50

I would love for you to check

24:53

out that essay. It's called, Store Brand

24:55

Insecurity. And it

24:57

has a lot to do with

24:59

the way that we project ourselves

25:01

onto the world, the dissatisfaction that

25:04

we feel, and the unnecessary insecurities

25:06

that we feel, like as a

25:08

22 year old worrying about these

25:10

skin routines, nothing wrong with using

25:12

the creams and everything else that

25:14

Colin just said, although some of

25:17

them I'm sure can be rather

25:19

toxic. So that's a different conversation.

25:21

But outside of that, it's really

25:23

about understanding what's going on in

25:26

here and how was that influenced

25:28

by these external forces. And then

25:30

also how do we transcend that?

25:33

Malabama, before we get back to our

25:35

callers, what time is it? You know

25:37

what time it is. It's time for the lightning

25:39

round where we answer the Patreon community chats question

25:42

of the week. Yes, indeed. Now

25:44

during the lightning round, we

25:46

each have 60 seconds to

25:48

answer your question with a

25:50

short, shareable, minimal, maximum. You

25:52

can find this episode's maxims

25:54

in the show notes at

25:56

theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim

25:58

ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll

26:00

also deliver our weekly show notes

26:02

directly to your inbox, including five

26:04

new maxims every Monday for free.

26:07

If you sign up for our

26:09

free email newsletter at theminimalists.email, we'll

26:11

never send you spam or junk

26:13

or advertisements, but we will start

26:15

your week off with a dose

26:18

of simplicity. Malabamma, what is

26:20

the question of the week this week? Would

26:22

your 15-year-old self be impressed by

26:24

you today? This one is a

26:26

doozy because it really made me

26:28

think and I want

26:30

to hear your answers, but I want

26:32

to turn to our audience first because

26:34

we had some patrons give some interesting

26:36

answers. Some people said, yes, my 15-year-old

26:39

self would be impressed. Other people

26:41

said, no, my 15-year-old self wouldn't

26:43

be impressed. Malabamma, take it away.

26:45

This one comes from Cordelia. 15-year-old

26:48

me would be relieved. So many

26:50

of our dreams were realized that

26:52

I raised a family with a

26:54

great life partner and remained a

26:56

good mix of adventurous, rebellious, and

26:59

responsible while dealing with adulthood. Young

27:01

me would also love that I ride a motorbike

27:03

and still go to lots of live music gigs,

27:06

but would definitely kick my butt for not

27:08

picking up my own guitar for the last

27:10

couple of years. Okay,

27:12

so there are pieces there where it's like, oh,

27:15

my 15-year-old self would be like, hey, why didn't

27:17

you stick with the guitar?

27:19

Now sometimes it might be like, I didn't really

27:21

like the guitar anymore. Other times, like, well, life

27:23

kind of got in the way. And

27:26

you know what was more important than that?

27:28

The trampoline, obviously, right? And so I had

27:30

to decide between the two. Now

27:33

we also had some folks say, no, my 15-year-old

27:35

self would not be impressed. Velenie said this. My

27:38

automatic answer was no, my 15-year-old self

27:40

wouldn't be impressed. But after taking a

27:43

day to think deeply about this, I

27:45

realized my initial answer was cluttered with difficulties

27:48

in my past that I'm still working on

27:50

in therapy. I have a kind and loving

27:52

husband, an amazing daughter, all debts paid, and

27:54

a good stable job. I'm

27:56

doing just fine. She would be

27:59

impressed that I found the strength of my life.

28:01

encouraged to escape a hard life and that I'm

28:03

happy now. Reminds me of, we were doing one

28:05

of those more about less segments on the private

28:07

podcast. We were reading some quotes, the

28:09

five most popular quotes from the Waking Up

28:11

app, Sam Harris' Waking App. And one of

28:13

them was from Sam Harris. And Sam said

28:15

that there are at least a billion people

28:18

on earth who would be

28:20

willing to trade their life for

28:22

your life today. And it

28:25

just, it creates this perspective like, oh

28:27

yeah, I know I've got pains. I

28:29

know I have misery. I know I

28:31

have literal aches and pains as I

28:33

age, right? But there are

28:35

over a billion people who

28:37

would love to be in my

28:40

situation, even with all of those

28:42

pains today. Yeah.

28:44

I wake up every

28:46

day trying to remind myself of those sorts of things.

28:48

And partially that's because I have to take a pill

28:51

now for hypothyroidism, something

28:54

that's come to me with age. But yeah,

28:57

I mean, I think that type of perspective helps. And

29:00

honestly, looking back, my 15 year

29:02

old self probably wouldn't initially understand

29:05

the way that I do things now. But

29:07

I do think that once I explained to

29:09

him that we're playing a different game now,

29:12

you know, and we're actually doing okay according

29:14

to the rules of this new game, that

29:17

he would probably get it. He'd be a little disappointed

29:19

at first that we're not only playing games all day,

29:21

every day, because that was a long held ambition. And

29:24

you know, there is a piece of your life

29:26

that continues to change. I remember when I first

29:29

was introduced to your work back in 2009.

29:32

We are so old. You

29:35

were so young at the time. I was 12 years old. I think

29:37

you were 24 when

29:42

I was first introduced to your work. And

29:44

what I was really impressed by wasn't the

29:46

details necessarily, but I was

29:48

impressed that you were able to shun the

29:51

societal and cultural expectations that I had

29:53

heaped onto myself. I had adorned myself

29:55

with all of the cultural expectations. And

29:58

if I just get another car, I

30:00

just get more square footage, if I

30:02

just get better suits and I get

30:04

better possessions, then I will

30:06

be a better version of me. And

30:08

that was really what consumerism is. Consumerism

30:10

is the ideology that buying more things

30:12

will make me better. And

30:15

man, I tried it out and it wasn't

30:17

working. And then here comes this guy and

30:19

he did this, there was this interview, I

30:21

saw someone tweet and he said

30:25

he owned 51 things and

30:27

everything he owned fit in his backpack.

30:29

And at the time, Colin, you were

30:32

a full-time traveler, like full-time traveler. It's

30:35

really important where the hyphen goes there. Full-time

30:37

traveler. You know, the early 19th century

30:40

is really lovely if you get the chance to visit.

30:42

How to

30:44

turn 139. So

30:48

what I learned there is like, oh, I

30:51

don't want to live his life, but he

30:53

was able to, by simplifying his life, embracing

30:55

this thing called minimalism, Colin

30:57

Wright was able to do what he wanted

30:59

to do with his life. And

31:01

I'm currently unable to do what I want

31:03

to do with my life, which at the time

31:06

was just right fiction, because I have all

31:08

of these other obligations that have

31:10

been handed to me by my culture. Now,

31:12

to be fair, they weren't just handed to

31:14

me by my culture. I picked them up

31:16

and I held on to those expectations. But

31:19

Colin showed me that, you know what, you can actually

31:21

set those down. But since then, you

31:23

used to travel every four months, you

31:25

went to a new country, all of

31:27

your readers at your website, Exile Lifestyle,

31:29

they would vote where you were going

31:32

to go next. And for

31:34

me, I thought this was going to just

31:36

last in perpetuity, but that's not really how

31:38

aging works. Sometimes there are chapters and we

31:40

let go of something. We can always pick

31:42

it back up. But can you talk about

31:44

how your life has changed, even though you

31:46

were living the way you wanted to live

31:48

before, now you're living the way you want

31:50

to live now, but that has of course

31:52

brought some change into your life. Yeah, absolutely.

31:55

Part of the reason I eventually, or I finally

31:57

wrote this book is that I realized over the

31:59

past handful of years. I tried

32:01

to write like three different books and

32:03

I got maybe two-thirds of the way

32:06

through one of them about creative seasonality,

32:08

about how our desire to make things, we

32:10

want to make different things, we are good

32:13

at making different things, we are driven to

32:15

make different things throughout our lives. That

32:17

was one of the books I tried to

32:19

write and I realized that was actually part

32:22

of this larger concept of aging and life

32:24

seasonality and the idea that as

32:27

you grow and as you change and as

32:29

you iterate, as you evolve into different versions

32:31

of yourself, when you

32:33

shrug off certain expectations, certain ways

32:35

of doing things, certain norms, certain

32:38

rituals, certain ideas about yourself, certain

32:41

preferences, those are

32:43

not completely left by the wayside. It

32:45

can be instead of like a

32:47

completely mono directional transition, it can

32:50

instead be seasonal where you go

32:52

through rotations and you have periods

32:54

of your life where one thing is important or the

32:56

most important thing in your life and then you move

32:59

on and then there's another thing that takes that prime

33:01

position. You can have different preferences,

33:03

ways of living, different everything in these

33:05

different transitional seasons and that's something that

33:08

happens whether we want it to or

33:10

not but I think that embracing that

33:12

makes it easier to step into those

33:15

new shoes, to get out of your

33:17

rain boots and move into your warm

33:19

slippers and then to take those off

33:21

and put on, I don't know, probably

33:24

flip-flops, whatever people wear when it's hot,

33:26

I try to avoid hot places. You

33:28

can move between these things and they

33:30

are all versions of you and it's,

33:33

they're all versions of you so that's

33:35

good but it's also okay to move

33:37

because you know there's another season coming

33:39

and so you can adopt something that

33:41

might initially seem uncomfortable and something that

33:43

goes against everything that you care about

33:45

and believe in but which something in

33:47

you tells you that you should probably

33:49

check out and for me moving

33:52

on from that stage of my life

33:54

where I was moving, the

33:56

model mostly was every three or four months moving

33:58

to a new country, people voting. on it. I

34:00

riffed on that model quite a bit by the end

34:02

of the seven or eight years that I was doing

34:04

that full time, in part

34:06

because it was so familiar. It sounds

34:08

very adventurous and it's still going to a new

34:11

place. I love it. I love the thrill of

34:13

it, the feeling you feel very alive, all of

34:15

your senses turn on because everything is so fresh

34:17

and new. But it

34:19

also became a little bit rote. I knew

34:21

what I was doing. It was not as

34:23

surprising and shocking and valuable as it would

34:26

have been when I first started doing it.

34:28

And what was utterly terrifying to me was

34:30

the idea of receiving mail every day and

34:32

shopping for furniture. Because

34:34

that was something that I had not done since I

34:37

was 24. And so when I was going

34:39

into my late 30s, thinking, I

34:42

don't even know what I would buy. I

34:44

go into places and I rent furnished places

34:46

in these different countries I go to. I've

34:49

intentionally shrugged off preferences so I can

34:51

fit into any space I happen to enter.

34:54

I have been jello for so long, I

34:56

don't know what shape I would take if

34:59

I was forced to solidify and make decisions

35:01

like that on my own. I didn't know

35:03

who I was in that context. And

35:05

part of me too, living that way for

35:08

so long, going to places where I don't

35:10

know what's happening, I rely a lot on

35:12

other people, watching people trying to figure out

35:14

how things happen, how society works, people very

35:17

kindly taking me under their wing to explain

35:19

all the stupid choices and

35:21

actions that I'm taking. You don't

35:25

have a lot of privacy and

35:27

you are making all of your mistakes in

35:29

public. And there's a lot of vulnerability that

35:31

comes with that. And with enough vulnerability of

35:33

any kind, I feel this a little bit

35:35

every time I put out a newsletter, much

35:37

less going to a place and showing people

35:39

exactly how ignorant I am every single day.

35:42

You can get a bit of a hangover

35:44

from that, a vulnerability hangover where it's just,

35:46

it wears at you and it's exhausting. And

35:48

for me within that context, a vacation was

35:51

going to a place that I controlled where

35:53

I could close the door and

35:55

just like having privacy, knowing

35:57

how everything functioned around me and

35:59

how having that friction-free experience,

36:02

that felt like luxury. And I so seldom

36:04

had it. And every time I did, I

36:07

thought, man, if I ever do this

36:09

for too long, I'm just gonna

36:11

keep doing this. That it just felt so wonderful.

36:13

And so I wanted to face that. I wanted

36:15

to face it in part because it seemed like

36:17

a way to recharge my battery after doing that

36:19

for so long. Part of

36:21

it terrified me. But then I also wanted

36:23

to make sure that I proved to myself

36:25

that sitting still and closing the door and

36:28

allowing myself to recover from that vulnerability hangover,

36:31

I could within that space still push

36:33

myself beyond that. I could move away

36:35

from the vacation aspect of it and

36:37

still challenge myself. I wanted to prove

36:39

that to myself. Otherwise, I would

36:42

probably never do the things that I needed

36:44

to do to recharge that battery out of

36:46

fear. I remember when you stopped traveling, you

36:48

moved to Wichita and then, I think for

36:51

a whole year maybe. Yeah, nearly a year.

36:54

11 months, they allow you to do 11 month

36:56

lease in Kansas. So

36:58

you were there and then you ended up in Memphis

37:00

and now you're in Milwaukee. And

37:03

I think that you're above all your 15

37:05

year old self would not have expected any

37:07

of this. You writing a book about going

37:09

to India and then Iceland and then going

37:12

to every state in the continental United States.

37:15

Or you walking away from your

37:17

design studio business so that you

37:19

could become this full-time traveler. But

37:22

then also the full-time traveler walking

37:24

away from full-time travel, being open

37:26

to any of that. Because as

37:29

soon as it begins to feel

37:31

obligatory, that's when it becomes a

37:34

bit of a prison. And so

37:36

I think your 15 year old self would

37:38

be really impressed by everything that has transpired

37:40

but wouldn't have expected any of it. TK,

37:42

what about you? In terms of

37:45

your 15 year old self, back to the question of

37:47

the week. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

37:49

His 15 year old self would be impressed by the

37:51

number of books. This is the only

37:53

man who if he dies today, he could look God in

37:55

the eyes and say, I gave you more books than you

37:57

gave me years. You know. And

38:00

that kid did love books too, 15 year old

38:02

self. Started working out of bookstore at 14, just

38:05

for the discount on the books. So yeah, that kid

38:07

would be impressed by that. What

38:10

about you TK? Would your 15 year old

38:13

self be impressed by you today? You got

38:15

something pithy for me? Yeah, my

38:17

pithy quote is, my current idea of the

38:19

good life is my childhood idea of the

38:21

bad life. My

38:24

gosh, the other day my wife says to me,

38:27

hey, we don't have any plans for Friday night, do we?

38:29

And I go, no, we don't. And we both say at

38:31

the same time, yay. I'm

38:35

trying to imagine me talking to my 15 year

38:37

old self and saying, hey there little buddy, when

38:39

you get to be my age, you're gonna take

38:41

lots of walks by yourself. You're gonna go to

38:43

a daily mass. Your concept of a Saturday night

38:45

will be doing nothing. And because of

38:47

a little intestinal obstruction that you'll encounter later

38:49

on, you're gonna eat a fiber free diet.

38:52

It's great up here. I mean, we probably

38:54

cry and say kill me now. But

38:57

we have a lot of great books

38:59

on like how to achieve your childhood

39:01

dreams, but I think we need more

39:03

on how to unshackle yourself from your

39:05

childhood dreams. Part of the

39:07

glorification of youth that Colin talks

39:10

about is the way we deify

39:12

the first few dreams we had

39:14

as children. And oftentimes those dreams

39:16

are immature, unpolished, ambiguous expressions

39:18

of a deeper desire that we simply

39:20

have not lived long enough to quite

39:22

figure out. And when you get to

39:24

be this age, you kind of have

39:26

a more refined concept of what it

39:29

is you really want. And so now

39:31

I'm old enough to realize that I

39:33

shouldn't fear being impressive in

39:36

the future to the current guy that I

39:38

am. I should fear still having the same

39:40

level of consciousness and actually holding my future

39:42

self accountable to the unrefined

39:45

ideas I have today. I

39:47

think there's also something about those shackles

39:49

of the past that really get in

39:51

the way of the present moment. Those

39:54

immature dreams that you're talking about, quite

39:56

often they're dreams that, because we feel

39:58

unappreciated. in some way, at least in

40:00

my own case. It was like, if

40:03

I'm successful enough in the corporate world,

40:05

then maybe people will eventually like me,

40:07

right? And then of course, yeah, people

40:09

already liked me or they didn't like

40:12

me or whatever, but is

40:14

that what I really wanna be liked for as

40:16

my car or for how nice my house is?

40:18

Is that them liking me or is it liking

40:20

the things that I have accumulated,

40:22

right? And so, Colin,

40:25

when I think about aging, you

40:27

actually have a whole chapter in your

40:29

new book about accomplishments. I think

40:31

part of the aging clutter has

40:34

to do with accomplishment clutter in

40:36

a way. Yeah, yeah. Well, and riffing on

40:38

something that T. K. just said too, a

40:41

lot of the accomplishments that we consider

40:43

to be valid, I think, are not

40:46

necessarily ours or they're not necessarily the

40:48

best version of what we could

40:50

be thinking about in terms of goals. They're

40:52

inherited. Like they're handed down to us. In

40:54

a lot of cases, we're handed a slab

40:56

of marble that over time, over the

40:59

course of our lives, we have to chisel into something that

41:01

looks more like us. And over time,

41:03

they become more specific. And then in some cases,

41:05

we do up a hard right or a hard

41:07

left and we deviate from something that we thought

41:09

was correct, but then we learn something new about

41:11

the world or about ourselves, about other people that

41:14

then caused us to pivot from that a bit.

41:18

Part of living though, and part of not

41:20

just getting older, but growing older, I think,

41:22

in my estimation at least, is

41:24

refining that and refining that and refining that

41:27

so that we spend more of

41:29

our time, energy, and resources on the right things.

41:32

Core precept of minimalism, the

41:34

idea of spending things appropriately on what's

41:36

most valuable. And a key

41:39

component of that is figuring out

41:41

what's valuable. And as we

41:43

get older, we are able to say with more

41:45

confidence and specificity what that is. We'll become less

41:48

confident about a lot of stuff because we'll have

41:50

more gray areas. Things will seem

41:52

less black and white. We

41:54

won't be able to say as definitively so many things,

41:56

but for me at least, I've never

41:58

felt more... simultaneously confident

42:00

and completely incompetent in my

42:03

entire life. But I think

42:05

that's where we should be. Like if you're going

42:07

through and challenging things and making those difficult little

42:09

chisels onto the slab of marble, that's

42:12

something that you're going to feel very tenuous

42:14

about at times and very uncomfortable. Like you

42:16

have unstable footing, but at the same time,

42:18

if you do periodically take a step back

42:21

and look at what you're doing, the things

42:23

that you've accomplished, the things that you want

42:25

to accomplish, the direction that you're going, it

42:27

will look more and more like you as

42:30

you grow older. I agree that

42:32

there is sort of no, it sounds to me

42:34

like what you're saying, Elise, is there's no one

42:36

right way to age. Absolutely

42:38

not. Yeah. But if

42:40

there is a wrong way to age, it's to

42:42

continue to follow the precepts of your culture if

42:45

it's not what you want. If it's not what

42:47

is important to you, that is sort of the

42:49

opposite of minimalism, spending all of your resources, be

42:51

it your money, your time, your energy, your attention

42:54

on the things that are important to everyone

42:56

else, but not important to you. That

42:59

sounds like a recipe for misery. Yeah.

43:02

Yeah, it really does. And then the more you

43:04

accomplish, the more you'll feel weird about it because

43:06

it doesn't seem to be getting you what you

43:08

were promised. That's right. You'll get

43:10

everything you ever wanted and then find out, oh, that's not

43:12

what I actually wanted. All right, y'all,

43:14

we're just getting started. We have a swarm

43:16

of callers to talk to, but first, real

43:19

quick for right here, right now, here's one

43:21

thing that's going on in the life of

43:23

the minimalists. It's time for

43:25

the minimalists annual performance review. This

43:28

is your chance to let us

43:30

know how much you enjoy the

43:32

show, most podcasts and YouTube channels

43:34

ask their audience to click rate,

43:37

review, subscribe, ring the notification bell,

43:39

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

43:41

on every single episode, not us.

43:43

We don't want to clutter your

43:45

listening experience. So once a year

43:47

on my birthday, that's right. My

43:49

birthday is next week, y'all. I'm

43:51

learning how to turn 39 again. You

43:54

got a lot of books to catch up on there.

43:59

So it's my birthday. and I'd like

44:01

to ask you for a birthday gift.

44:03

Would you be willing to leave a

44:06

five star review on Apple Podcasts or

44:08

Spotify as a birthday gift to me?

44:11

We ask for this once a year and I'd

44:13

really, really appreciate that gift. I will take

44:15

any time in the next month, if you

44:18

leave a review, I will take the time

44:20

to read that and say thank you for

44:22

giving me that birthday gift. Head on over

44:24

to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate this

44:27

podcast today. And don't worry, I'm not gonna

44:29

ask you again next week, but I would

44:31

really appreciate the birthday gift. I'm turning 43,

44:33

by the way, y'all. I can

44:36

see the maturity by you using that opportunity

44:38

for the podcast rather than your OnlyFans

44:40

account. You're

44:42

really growing up, dude. And you don't look a day

44:45

over 42. I

44:49

remember when our daughter Ella was really young

44:52

and my birthday was coming

44:54

off and I said, how old am I turning? I think

44:56

she was maybe four or five at the time. She goes,

44:58

81. I

45:02

was like, I'm 36. All

45:06

right, Malaban, we've got a bunch more to talk about,

45:08

but first, what else you got for us? Here's a

45:10

minimalist insight from one of our listeners. Hi,

45:14

my name's Jules from New England and

45:16

I have a listener tip that I

45:18

stumbled across. So one

45:21

day I was scrolling and I found

45:23

this blog post from some blogger lady

45:25

about how she did a downsizing challenge,

45:27

but it wasn't quite a 30-day challenge

45:30

and it definitely wasn't a packing party.

45:33

So her challenge was to get rid of 100 items

45:35

in one hour. And

45:38

at first, I kinda went through the motions. Initially,

45:40

I was like, that's so many items. And then

45:42

I was like, that's no items. And

45:45

so I just didn't really know how to feel about

45:47

it. So I just did it. And the first

45:50

like 40 minutes of it went so

45:53

quickly and I got rid of so

45:55

many things. But then the last 30 items,

45:57

it was a struggle to find things. And

46:00

so, So some of my items were like

46:02

old spices or expired medicine or stuff that

46:04

I needed to throw out. So I

46:06

don't know if that really counts, but I'm going to count it. And

46:08

then I found out that when the hour

46:11

was up, I had finished with 104 items that I

46:13

had gotten rid of. And

46:16

I still felt like I could go through my

46:18

home and find little things and get rid of

46:20

them as I went through the rest of my

46:22

day. So it wasn't quite

46:24

the whole 30 days, which I find that

46:26

I try it and I try it and

46:28

still around like day six or day seven,

46:31

I've just completely given up. And

46:33

it wasn't the packing party, which is a

46:36

little too extreme for me. And

46:38

so I found that this was a

46:40

good happy medium that kind of got

46:42

my gears turning and got me to

46:45

get rid of some stuff and purge

46:47

that felt good, but not too overwhelming

46:49

and still tapped into that competitive spirit

46:51

with the timing aspect. So maybe give

46:53

it a try, see if it sparks

46:55

something. And thank

46:57

you for all you do, Minimalists. Jules,

47:00

that is so cute. It's like the

47:02

30 day minimalism game on steroids. Thank

47:05

you for your clutter free comment, Jules,

47:07

for anyone else who has a listener

47:09

tip or insight about this episode or

47:12

any other episode, you can leave a

47:14

comment on Patreon or YouTube or better

47:16

yet, send a voice memo to podcast

47:19

at theminimalists.com so we can feature your

47:21

voice on the show. All right. The

47:24

first 39% of episode 448. See

47:27

what I did there, Colin Wright? The

47:30

first 39% of episode 448. We'll

47:34

see you on Patreon for the

47:36

full maximal edition with Colin Wright,

47:38

which includes a bunch of answers

47:40

to a bunch more questions. We

47:43

answer questions like, how can I

47:45

form meaningful relationships if I am

47:47

an extreme introvert and other people

47:49

often exhaust me? Also, I'm

47:51

22 years old and I feel behind

47:54

compared to my peers. Is

47:56

this a universal experience or is it something

47:58

that will pass as I learned? more about

48:00

myself and how do I

48:03

identify and let go of toxic

48:05

relationships as I grow older. Plus,

48:07

we've got a million more questions

48:09

and simple living segments over on

48:11

The Minimalist's private podcast. We also

48:14

have an outstanding home tour from

48:16

one of our listeners this week

48:18

on Patreon. Just visit patreon.com/The Minimalist

48:20

or click the link down in

48:22

the description to subscribe and get

48:24

your personal link so that our

48:26

weekly maximal episodes play in your

48:29

favorite podcast app. You'll also

48:31

gain access to all of our podcast

48:33

archives all the way back to episode

48:35

zero zero one. By the way, Patreon

48:38

is now offering free trials so if

48:40

you'd like to test drive our private

48:42

podcast you can join for seven days

48:45

for free. Big thanks to our guest

48:47

today. Colin Wright, his new book is

48:49

called How to Turn 39, thoughts about

48:52

aging for people of all ages. You

48:54

can also find his podcast and all

48:56

of his other work, his newsletter as

48:58

well, which I subscribe to over

49:01

at colin.io. We'll put a

49:03

link to that in

49:05

the show notes and that is our minimal

49:07

episode for today. If you leave here with

49:09

just one message, let it be this,

49:13

love people and use things

49:17

because the opposite never works. Thanks

49:20

for listening y'all. We'll see you next time.

49:22

Peace. you

49:26

think that you need every

49:29

little thing you think that you

49:31

need every

49:34

little thing that's just feeding

49:36

your greed oh i bet

49:38

that you'll be fine without

49:40

it