Marty Stano: Adventures with Minimalism and Happiness @ TEDxUMDearborn (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of filmmaker and traveler Marty Stano’s TEDx Talk: Adventures with Minimalism and Happiness @ TEDxUMDearborn Conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio: Adventures with Minimalism and Happiness- Marty Stano @ TEDxUMDearborn

TRANSCRIPT:

All right. So I remember the first time I left home. I was only about five years old, and my sister and I had got into an argument; I don’t remember what about. I remember being so mad that I clenched my little fists and said, ‘That’s it! I’m running away and I’m never coming back.’

So I ran to my room and the only luggage I could find was this little red plastic briefcase, and in it, I packed all my things, stormed out the front door and traveled all the way to the end of the block. When I got there, guess what happened, I was bored.

A few minutes is a long journey for a five-year old. So I went home and started unpacking my things. And I remember my intention in that frustrated moment was to run away and never come back. And so I would assume that I had packed everything I needed to live and survive in this little red plastic briefcase. And so I don’t remember why I packed the things I did. I remember when clicking the little latches, opening it up and seeing five pairs of clean underwear. That’s all I thought I needed as a five-year old to live. Five pairs of underwear!

I was running away to a utopia world where no one can make me wear a shirt or pants. So as an adult, I still run away from home a lot. Instead of a little briefcase, I pack a backpack. And I’ve also accumulated more than just underwear, I pack my basic needs: a tent, warm clothing, a pot, food water and mini stove.

I also carry things I don’t really need to live but which I enjoy, like my camera, computer and more.

Still I find it empowering to know that everything I need to live and be happy, I could carry on my own back with my own two feet. It gives me a sense of freedom, mobility. I find much happiness living simply with few things.

So I began retracing my journey to happiness and I found a pattern — a pattern by which I had been living most of my life, whether I was conscious of it or not: Minimalism. My simplest definition minimalism means less is more. One purpose of minimalism is to get rid of the things in life, the distractions that we don’t truly need, to find more of the things that bring us happiness. We can apply this idea ‘less is more’ to all aspects of our life: material possessions, health and diet, our work and non-material things like thoughts. When we practice minimalism, we could benefit with more time, more energy, more money, more freedom and ultimately more happiness.

As a minimalist in college, I was only concerned with material things and I decided to live an experimental semester homeless. I went back the next semester and all I brought with me was a single backpack. And I packed everything I needed to learn: had all my books and then I went to the locker from the recreation center where I kept a small hamper of clothes and toiletries. I lived mostly in library studying and I would couch surf among friends, sometimes I slept in the libraries. But what I learned is that with less possessions, less distractions, fewer showers, I had my most productive semester, and I also saved a lot of money.

After college, I experimented with minimalism with my health and diet. On a whim I went to intern at two natural health and wellness centers: one in Michigan and one in Puerto Rico. And I worked in the kitchen and in the greenhouse. I didn’t make any money but I had healthy food to eat, a place to sleep, time to exercise. And I was learning a lot about nutrition and I learned how destructive our standard American diet is. And it’s based on the opposite of minimalism; it’s based on more processed foods, more meats, more dairy and less fruits and vegetables. This leads to a more consumption of fat, salt, chemicals, refined sugar, artificial additives, ingredients, all these foods and things that we don’t need that aren’t good for us.

And so for six months at these natural health institutes, I experimented with my diet. I tried eating a plant-based diet. I was eating much less to no processed foods, meat and dairy. And after about four weeks, I felt absolutely phenomenal. I felt physically different like I’ve never felt this way before. I seriously like felt high. I had been high before in real life. I had — I had these energy bars, I had all this energy, I didn’t know what to do with it. Just by changing the way I ate and I started running. And I played soccer in high school but I was never a super athlete, I never ran much. But I had all this energy. So I was running every day, every day and I felt great. And I trained for my first marathon which I ran four months later in under four hours. Thank you.

ALSO READ: Inside The Mind of a Master Procrastinator by Tim Urban (Full Transcript)

So after Puerto Rico, I went to Chile to teach English and I learned a new form of minimalism — minimalism of the non-material, with things like communication. When I first arrived, I didn’t know any Spanish. And so I had to learn to communicate with less. I would live and learn with the Chilean host family who welcomed me and treated me as a son, even though we didn’t understand each other well. I had a point, used hand signals, I would learn a few words, I learned each day. Simple tasks like taking a shower and trying to ride the bus could be very difficult.

One thing I experienced a lot in Chile was lots of kindness coming from strangers and people I’d just met. And it was difficult to not have words to communicate my gratitude. So I was smiling all the time. That’s the only way I learned: is to communicate my gratitude, I would try my best smile. And one of the hosts’ mothers of another volunteer noticed this and she said, ‘Marty is my favorite because even when he has no idea what’s going on, what’s being said or why we’re all laughing, he still smiles.’ And so I was smiling all the time, studying every day, listening, trying to understand this foreign language. And in doing so I experienced great moments of isolation and solitude from which I would learn the most important form of minimalism — minimalism of the mind.

When I arrived in Chile, I couldn’t understand the people around me, the news, the media, all this noise that tries to tell us how to live our lives and what we should do. And the only thing I could really listen to and try to understand was myself. I became much more conscious of all these thoughts I had packed in my mind over the years. I started to ask myself: what thoughts do I really need? What thoughts are good for me? What thoughts are healthy? I started to unpack these thoughts that no longer defined me. If I was to survive the months of mental and emotional solitude ahead, I had to get rid of all the thoughts of negativity, discouragement, fear, insecurity and I had to pack the best, the most positive thoughts to sustain me.

I realized that the thoughts we pack in our minds are much more important to our happiness than anything we could pack in a backpack. So I worked on my mind with minimalism, started cleaning everything out, things I didn’t need. And with a cleaner mind I was able to ask the really important questions in life: how do we live? How do we be happy? And that’s what we all want, right? We all want to live, we all want to be happy.

So how do we practice minimalism to either discover our happiness, or improve the happiness we already have? Well, first, we have to ask these important questions: what do we truly need in life to be happy? And these questions take time. I spent several months in Chile thinking this over and I still wasn’t sure. So we prep ourselves thinking of these questions and afterwards it’s time to experiment with our own lives.

To practice minimalism, take it one step at a time. Take one thing from your life and get rid of it. Temporarily just get rid of it. Go on about your daily routine and after a while if you realize, ‘Hey, I don’t really need that one thing’, great, that’s one success, one win for minimalism. And often you’ll find you’re better, happier without it.

Here’s a real world example. My good friend Charlie. He applies minimalism to his money and what he spends his money on. He decides he’s going to get rid of one thing: he’s going to stop eating out, right? He doesn’t eat out a lot but every little bit adds up. So he looks at his budget and he starts documenting everything he spends his money on, ‘I am going to get rid of this one thing.’ And after several months he’s still making the same amount of money working a full time retail job but he discovers that he’s got so much more money in his bank account just from getting rid of one thing.

ALSO READ: Izzy Sandston: Mentality Is as Important as Skills at TEDxYouth@ParkCity (Transcript)

So what does he do with that money? Well, Charlie is really a musician, he’s not passionate about retail. Music is one thing that makes him happy. So he puts his money towards that. He funds a new record that he releases himself on vinyl. And he funds his own music video and that was one success in minimalism for Charlie and he didn’t stop there. He started removing a few more things that he didn’t really need. And again after several months he found ‘I got more money’. But this time Charlie switched his approach. Before he was focusing on money but really it wasn’t about the money itself, it was about finding the things that make him happy, that’s what it was all about.

And so he switches gears, he decides to live with less money. So now he’s trying to get rid of the money that he was earlier trying to make, and he decides that time is more important than money, that he needs more time to do the things that make him happy. And so instead of working five days a week, Charlie starts working four. And he applies — and now he’s got more time and he’s doing more music and discovering new things that make him happy.

My favorite part of the story is when a co-worker commented on Charlie, saw him using an old outdated cell phone and saw Charlie was packing his lunch all the time and it seemed like Charlie really didn’t have much and he said, ‘Charlie, man, I feel sorry for you, because you can’t like — you can’t afford new things and stuff.’ Charlie looked at him and said, ‘Man, I feel sorry for you, I have 52 more vacation days a year and you have to work every Friday.’ That’s a big success in minimalism.

So what I find great about minimalism is there’s really only two outcomes. One, you experiment, you try getting rid of one thing in your life and you discover, ‘Hey, I’m happier or better without it’, like Charlie’s case. The second example, or second outcome is more interesting. You get rid of one thing in your life and then later you realize like, ‘Haa, I like that thing. It was contributing to my quality of life, it was making me happy.’ So what do you do with that? You bring it back into your life, duh. Minimalism is experiment, it’s not all or nothing. No one’s making you get rid of things in your life, it’s you experimenting with your own life trying to discover what makes you happy.

And the great thing with the second outcome is that because of that temporary absence from that thing that we discovered makes us happy, most often when we bring it back into our life we appreciate it much more, right? A lot of us have probably heard the cliche ‘we never know what we’ve got until it’s gone’ but when we practice minimalism we give ourselves the opportunity to appreciate the things we have before they’re gone completely. I find that this appreciation, this gratitude is one of the things that contributes greatly to our happiness.

I’ve traveled from Alaska to Patagonia and some of my best travel stories are the simple moments of gratitude. My most profound moment in minimalism occurred in a drainage ditch. I’d spent three and a half months backpacking in Patagonia, sleeping in my tent, waking up and seeing the most beautiful works of nature every day. I was running out of money and it was time for me to get home. And I was hitchhiking north alone, I hadn’t eaten much for several days. I was rationing my food and not sure how long this journey would take. And I caught a ride through a group of university professors and they left me at a crossroads with a generous sandwich.

ALSO READ: What Happens to Sex in Midlife? A Look at the “Bedroom Gap” - Maria Sophocles (Transcript)

The sun was going down and the wind was starting to pick up. Two weeks earlier, the same wind had destroyed my tent which was now duct-taped and ripped. And I found my next spot to hitchhike on the side of the road and nearby I saw a drainage ditch. I ran over to it and I was excited. I saw that it was dry and I said, ‘Yes’, I was delighted. This dried drainage ditch and seriously in that moment I thought this was going to be the perfect home for the night — a concrete shelter near the road, I would save time in the morning packing up my tent, I would be able to hitch-hike and carry on.

And so I put down my backpack and I quickly retraced my steps. I said, hold up and it felt like an out-of-body experience like I had become this new person and I ask myself, ‘did I seriously just become sincerely joyful and grateful over sleeping in a dirty ditch?’ And as ridiculous as it may seem now and then, the answer is yes, I did. And it was then that I realized the real home that we live in is not an apartment or parents house, a commune or a tent, our real homes are our minds. And because I had spent the last two years living and pursuing my curiosity, passions and dreams, I was fortunate I had great moments of happiness, gratitude and wonderful learning experiences into my mind, my home.

And I went to sleep in this drainage ditch that night and I woke up the next morning, happy and grateful, to be alive. When I realized that I could find gratitude in such a simple thing as a dirty ditch, I realized I might be happy anywhere in the world.

So my journey with minimalism has taken me to places I couldn’t predict. Since college, if I would have thought my most successful moment was going to be in a dirty ditch, I would have said heck no, I’m a filmmaker. I would think that one of my greatest moments would be accepting award for a film or something. But this right here is one of my greatest moments and successes with minimalism.

And I want to share a post card that I wrote during a moment of clarity and happiness in Patagonia. And I addressed it to my future self, because it’s easy to get distracted, right? Sometimes with minimalism we do discover the things that truly make us happy but then we get caught up in that daily routine, the real world, all the noise, the news, the media and it distracts us. So I wrote this post card to myself to stay focused on what I think is important and what makes me happy.

March 1, 2013, Puerto Williams, Chile

Dear future Martin,

Remember your journey to the bottom of the world, the joy, strength, truth, simplicity and clarity found. Remember your aspirations to live simply with few things and little to no money, to live as close to nature as possible. Remember the joy created within you, share that joy and accept the joy given to you. Continue to grow physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Continue to learn. It’s one of the few things worth doing. You’re capable of anything.

Love,

Martin, Age 26

Now I understand that when I talk about minimalism, I am a very extreme example. I’m not crazy, I don’t expect that for all of us to be happy that we need to travel the world, live out of a backpack and sleep in a ditch. That’s not going to happen. But I think that if we all want to be happy, we must make an effort to practice minimalism, to become conscious of the distractions in life that we don’t truly need, to discover what truly makes us happy and appreciate what we have.

I wish you all health and happiness. Thank you.

Marty Stano: Adventures with Minimalism and Happiness @ TEDxUMDearborn (Transcript)

Related Posts