Full text of The Minimalists’ (Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus) TEDx Talk: The Art of Letting Go at TEDxFargo 2016 Conference. This event occurred on July 21, 2016 at Fargo Civic Center Fargo, United States of America.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: the-art-of-letting-go-by-the-minimalists-at-tedxfargo
TRANSCRIPT:
Joshua Fields Millburn: My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and this is Ryan Nicodemus. Together we run a website called the minimalists.com and we promised the folks we’d kick things off this afternoon with something inspirational, something to get you all excited. So I’d like to talk about something uplifting. Let’s talk about death.
Now if any of you are uncomfortable talking about death, now might be a good time for you to leave. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again in a minute.
Anyway, yeah, we can talk about death. Let’s see, seven years ago, I was 28 years old, and up until that point in my life, I had achieved everything I ever wanted: the six-figure salary, the luxury cars, the closets full of expensive clothes, a big suburban house with more toilets than people, and all of the stuff to fill every corner of my consumer-driven lifestyle. Man, I was living the American dream.
And then my mom died. And my marriage ended — both in the same month. And these two events forced me to look around and start to question what had become my life’s focus. You know what I realized? I realized I was so focused on so-called success and achievement and especially on the accumulation of stuff. Yeah, I was living the American dream. But it wasn’t my dream.
And it took getting everything I thought I wanted to realize that everything I ever wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted at all.
And well, few months after she moved down there, she found that she had lung cancer. And a few months after that, she was gone. I spent a lot of time with her down in Florida that year. She went through her chemo and radiation. But when she passed, I realized I needed to make one last trip — this time it was to deal with her stuff.
So I flew from Dayton, Ohio down to St. Pete Beach, Florida. And when I arrived I found about three apartments worth of stuff crammed in the mom’s tiny one-bedroom apartment. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not like mom was a hoarder. She wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t find any dead cats in her freezer. But she owned a lot of stuff: 65 years worth of accumulations. Did you all know that the average American household has more than 300,000 items in it? 300,000! But of course, most of us aren’t hoarders, right? Now we just hold onto a lot of stuff. We hold on to a lifetime of collected memories. I know Mom certainly did.
So I did what any good son would do. I think that’s me on a bad hair day. I called U-Haul. I called U-Haul and I asked for the largest truck they had. In fact, I needed one so large I had to wait an extra day until the 26 foot truck was available. And as I waited for that U-Haul to arrive, I invited some of mom’s friends over and help me deal with her stuff. I mean, there’s just too much stuff to go at it alone. Her living room was stuffed with big antique furniture and old paintings and more doilies than I could count. She loved doilies. And her kitchen was stuffed with hundreds of plates and cups and bowls and ill-assorted utensils. And her bathroom was stuffed with enough hygiene products to start a small beauty supply business. And her linen closet – well, it looked like someone was running a hotel out of her linen closet, which was stuffed with mismatch bath towels and beach towels and bed sheets and blankets and quilts.
And don’t even get me started on her bedroom. Why did mom have 14 winter coats stuffed in her bedroom closet? 14! Now come on, she lived in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Suffice it to say, mom owned a lot of stuff. And I had no idea what to do with any of it. So I did what any good son would do. I rented a storage locker. When I called, I asked for the largest storage unit they had. You know what they asked me?, “Do you want one that’s climate-controlled?” A climate-controlled just so mom’s stuff could be comfortable? No, I don’t want one that’s climate controlled. Just give me be a big box with a padlock on it.
You see, I couldn’t commingle mom’s stuff with my stuff. I already had a big house and a full basement full of stuff. But a storage locker? Oh, yeah. A storage locker would let me hold on to everything just in case I needed it someday in some non-existent hypothetical future. You know just in case. Just in case. The three most dangerous words in the English language.
Anyway, so there I was attempting to finish packing mom’s stuff, and all of a sudden I noticed these four boxes. These old printer paper boxes, kind of heavy, sealed with excessive amounts of packing tape. So I pulled them out one by one. I noticed that each box was labeled with just a number written on the side in thick black marker. All I saw was 1-2-3-4. I stood there looking down, wondering what could possibly be in those boxes. Looks like we’re out of time, folks. Hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. No, it was my old elementary school paperwork: grades one through four.
You know, as I opened those boxes, my curiosity ran wild. And I thought to myself, “What is mom holding on to all that stupid paperwork?” But then all these memories came rushing back. And I realized she had been holding onto a piece of me. She was holding on to all those memories in those boxes, right?
Wait a minute. Those boxes have been sealed for more than two decades, which made me realize something important for the first time in my life. Our memories are not inside our things. Our memories are inside us. See, mom didn’t need to hold onto those boxes to hold onto a piece of me. I was never in those boxes.
But then I looked around at her apartment. I looked around at all her stuff and I realized I was getting ready to do the same thing. Except instead of storing her memories in a box in my home, I was getting ready to cram it all into a big box with a padlock on it. So I did what any good son would do. I called U-Haul and I canceled that truck. And then I called and canceled the storage locker. And I spent the next 12 days selling or donating almost everything. And I learned a bunch of really important lessons along the way.
Not only did I learn that our memories are not in our things. They are in us. But I also learned about value — real value. You see, if I’m honest with myself, I was just going to selfishly cling to mom’s stuff. But of course, I wasn’t going to get any value from it as it sat there locked away in perpetuity. But the truth is that by letting go, I could add value to other people’s lives. So I donated much of her stuff to her friends and local charities, giving the stuff a new home. And the things I was able to sell, well I was able to take that money and give it to the charities that helped her through her chemo and radiation.
And when I finally returned to Ohio, I returned with just a handful of sentimental items: an old painting, few photographs, maybe even a doily or two.
The final lesson I learned – well, it was a practical one – while it’s true that sometimes our memories aren’t in our things, it’s also true that sometimes the things that we have can trigger the memories that are inside us. So while I was still in Florida, I took photos of many of mom’s possessions. And when I went back to Ohio, I went back with just a few boxes of photographs, which I was able to scan and store digitally. Those photos made it easier for me to let go, because I realized I wasn’t letting go of any of my memories. Ultimately I had to let go of what was weighing me down before I was able to move on. And to move on, well, I have to look in the mirror and take an inventory of my own life. Turns out I had an organized life. But really I was just a well-organized order. I mean, everything looked great, sure, but it was just a façade. I knew I needed to simplify things. That is where this beautiful thing called minimalism entered my life.
For me, it all started with one question: how might your life be better with less? You see, by answering this question, I was able to understand the purpose of minimalism. Not just the how to but the why to. I learned if I simplified my life, I’d have time for my health, for my relationships, my finances, my passions. And I could contribute beyond myself in a meaningful way.
See, I was able to understand the benefits of minimalism well before I ever cleaned out a walk-in closet. And so when it came time for me to actually declutter my life, I started small. I asked myself another question: what if you removed one material possession from your life each day for a month, just one, what would happen? The end result: well, I unloaded way more than 30 items in the first 30 days, like way way more. It became this kind of personal challenge discovering what I could get rid of.
So I searched my rooms and closets, cabinets and hallways, car and office rummaging for items to part with, retaining only the things that added value to my life, pondering each artifact in my home I’d ask: does this thing add value to my life? And the more I asked this question, the more I gained momentum. And embracing minimalism got easier by the day. The more you do it, the freer and happier and lighter you feel, and the more you want to throw overboard. For me, a few shirts let the half of closet, a few DVDs let the deep 16 almost an entire library of discs, a few decorative items let the junk drawers who shed their adjective. It’s a beautiful cycle. I mean the more action you take, the more you want to take action.
Ultimately, though, the purpose of minimalism has to do with the benefits we experience once we’re on the other side of decluttering. Hence removing the clutter is not the end result, it is merely the first step. I mean, it’s possible to go home, get rid of everything you own and be absolutely miserable. Come home to an empty house and sulk after removing all your pacifiers. Because consumption is not the problem, compulsory consumption is the problem. We can change that by being more deliberate with the decisions we make each day.
Over the course of eight months, I deliberately jettisoned more than 90% of my material possessions. Although if you visited my home today, you probably wouldn’t walk in and yell ‘Oh my god, this guy is a minimalist!’ No! You’d probably just say, ‘Wow, he’s tidy’. You’d ask how I keep things so organized, and I’d simply grin and tell you that I don’t own much. But everything I do own adds real value to my life. Each of my belongings: my car, my clothes, my kitchenware, my furniture has a function.
As a minimalist, every possession serves a purpose or brings me joy. And everything else is out of the way. And with the clutter cleared, I felt compelled to start asking deeper questions — questions like: why did I give so much meaning to my stuff? What is truly important in my life? When did I become so discontented? Who is the person I want to become? How am I going to define my own success? And these are tough questions with difficult answers but they’ve proven to be much more important than just trashing my excess stuff. And if we don’t answer these questions carefully, rigorously, then the closet we just decluttered will be brimming with new purchases in the not-too-distant future.
So as I let go, and as I started facing life’s tougher questions, things got simpler. And the people around me noticed that something was different too. I mean people of work started saying things like: “You seem less stressed. You seem so much calmer. What is going on? You seem so much nicer.”
You know, my best friend, a guy named Ryan Nicodemus whom I’ve known since we were fat little fifth-graders. He came to me one day. And he said he’d noticed how happy I was. And that opened him up in time to the concepts of minimalism and living a meaningful life with less. And as he simplified his life that made room for these deeper conversations, conversations about how our unchecked consumption wasn’t just affecting our lives, it was infecting our entire society.
Ryan Nicodemus: You see, the more we consume the more waste we produce. But then, of course, the opposite is also true. We consume less stuff, we produce less waste. As you all might know, if the entire world consumed like the United States, we would need over 4 Earths to maintain our unchecked consumption. How can we as consumer-driven Americans keep consuming like this? It’s pretty simple. We go deeper into debt. That’s how.
Did you know the average American carries 4 credit cards in their wallet? And 1 in 10 Americans has 10 or more active credit cards. And the average credit card debt is over $16,000. The total consumer debt in the United States is nearly $12 trillion. $12 trillion!
Let me just put that into perspective for a minute. If you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend $1 trillion. In fact, if you went out and spent $1 million a day ever since the birth of the Buddha, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion by now. And we have nearly $12 trillion in debt. And the only way out is to let go.
When we let go our actions, it encourages others to let go too. Six years ago, Josh and I, we let go of our stuff, so we could start living a life that aligned with our values. We started consuming less, so we could start living more. And when our lives became our message, we started a blog, so we could share that message with others. We call it theminimalists.com. Since then we’ve written books about simple living, we started a podcast about intentionality. And we released a documentary called Minimalism, all in an effort to add value to other people’s lives. And that’s really why we’re here today. We really really hope that we can add value to all of your lives.
So if you leave here with just one message, we really hope it’s this: love people and use things, because the opposite never works.
Related Posts
- Transcript of Tough Luck: Accepting Life’s Unfairness Will Set You Free – Holly Matthews
- Transcript of How To Get Through Hard Times: Jason Redman
- Transcript of An Ethicist’s Guide to Living a Good Life – Ira Bedzow
- Transcript of Resilience: How to Emerge From Your Tragedies Stronger – Sydney Cummings
- Transcript of Confessions of An Accidental Killer: Gregg Ward