Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life, by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, recounts how the authors found happiness and a meaningful life after rejecting the “American dream” of wealth and success, and instead embracing minimalism.
Based on their experiences, they offer a formula for living a meaningful life by eliminating extraneous possessions and entanglements, and instead focusing on living by a specific set of personal values.
Minimalism is a tool to eliminate clutter in your life and focus on essentials.
Both men, who were boyhood friends, achieved success by conventional standards in their twenties — they worked 70-hour weeks and were star salesmen for their company, winning praise, awards, and promotions. But they didn’t feel fulfilled and so, following the dictates of consumer culture, they sought happiness by buying things — big houses, fancy cars, clothes, furniture, and the latest electronics. This left them feeling just as empty and depressed as before, with the added burden of a mountain of debt.
They knew something had to change, and undertook an intense re-examination of their lives. They systematically examined their lives to figure out why they were unhappy, and what needed to change.
First, they identified dozens of “anchors” — things or situations that made them feel stuck. Next, they prioritized by categorizing their anchors as major or minor. Major anchors were mortgages, certain relationships, car payments, major debts, and their careers. Minor anchors included cable and internet bills, smaller debts, and unneeded possessions.
They got rid of as many anchors as possible, starting with their debts, which ran into the six-figure range. They cut spending on trips, expensive dinners, and vacations, and traded in their expensive cars and houses for cheaper ones. They also sorted through and sold unneeded possessions. They used the savings to pay off their debts over two years.
After clearing the clutter in their lives, they focused on “Five Values” that they determined were necessary for a meaningful life: health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others.
The rest of the book explores why these five areas are key, and recounts how the authors transformed their lives over time by making small daily improvements in each of these areas.
Based on their experiences, they recommend:
The full summary contains many more details on how to execute their recommendations for each area.
In summary, possessions, money, and success don't make you happy, or give you a meaningful life. The key is to live intentionally, by focusing on the important things, and happiness will be a byproduct.
Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus offers a formula for how to live a meaningful life, based on their personal journey.
The coauthors achieved success by conventional standards in their twenties — corporate success, money, and possessions. They expected this to make them happy but it didn’t.
They realized that they and many others pursuing the so-called American dream were deeply unhappy. They were exhausted from overwork and heavily in debt. Their lives felt empty and unfulfilled. This book and a website, TheMinimalists.com, grew out of their determination to understand why they were unhappy, what it would take to be happy, and how to change.
They discovered a lifestyle — minimalism — that enabled them to:
This book, along with several others they’ve written, and their website are intended to help you similarly examine your life, so you can reshape it to be more meaningful and be happier in the process.
It begins with the question, “Are you truly happy?” and it guides you through the steps to transform your life so that the answer is “yes.”
It’s organized into seven chapters, including a chapter on each of five values described collectively as a “recipe for intentional living,” which you can adjust to fit your personal lifestyle. The writers recommend that you:
Society tells us that working hard, climbing the corporate ladder, acquiring material things like a big house and fancy car, and taking expensive vacations is the American dream, and will make you happy.
Co-authors Joshua and Ryan achieved those things. In 2009, they both worked for a telecommunications corporation and attained the career successes and lavish lifestyle that many aspire to.
But they weren’t happy, fulfilled, or content — in fact, they felt empty and depressed. Together they examined their lives (they were longtime friends) to determine what was missing and how to achieve happiness and meaning.
Their problems didn’t develop overnight but started with unhappy childhoods.
Joshua and Ryan, who knew each other as kids, both grew up in dysfunctional households. Their parents divorced, and their mothers suffered substance abuse issues.
At age 12, they were both overweight, unhappy misfits. They tried unsuccessfully to escape through the instant gratification of overeating but it made things worse.
As they talked and compared their lives to others’, they concluded that poverty was the reason for their unhappiness — therefore they’d be happy if they made money as adults (they set a goal of a $50,000 annual salary) and could afford whatever material things they wanted.
Ryan eventually moved in with his father, who had a stable job as the owner of a wallpaper company. Ryan’s father was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who genuinely cared for his son, but the change was too big and unsettling for Ryan and he rebelled, using alcohol and drugs.
After graduating from high school, Ryan joined his father’s company. He made enough money to meet his basic needs, but not enough to afford the luxuries he thought he needed to be happy. So he searched for contentment in other ways.
He sought happiness through his father’s religion. He married and became a devout Jehovah’s Witness. He and his wife bought a house and planned to start a family, but the couple didn’t get along and the marriage ended badly. Ryan turned again to drugs and alcohol.
Because he was dissatisfied with the money he was making, he eventually went to work for the same telecommunication company Joshua worked for. He worked hard, excelled, and earned promotions.
As a result of the disorder in his home life, Joshua developed OCD—he started obsessing over small things and losing weight.
After graduating from high school, he got a sales job with a telecommunications corporation. He realized his job had long-term growth possibilities, so he worked hard, taking little time off; he became a top salesman.
He got married, built a large house, and continued to work harder and longer. But he neglected his relationship and didn’t spend much time at home because he was always working. Because he still felt unfulfilled he bought things in order to achieve temporary highs.
He remained unhappy and his health suffered — so he worked harder and bought more stuff. Though unhappy, he took solace in the fact that at least he was making money, and his career gave him an identity.
A number of common threads ran through Joshua’s and Ryan’s lives. Both of them sought money and social status from their jobs. They worked obsessively and earned praise, promotions, and big raises.
But these provided only momentary satisfaction. They sought happiness by constantly striving for more of these rewards, achieving more to improve their feelings of self-worth and significance. Like a drug-induced high, the more affirmation they received, the more they needed it to function and feel happy.
Meanwhile, their ever-increasing job responsibilities brought stress, worry, and depression.
They knew something needed to change, but weren’t sure what. So like many Americans, they continued trying to buy happiness through acquiring possessions. They went into debt purchasing luxury cars, big houses with expensive furnishings, and taking expensive vacations.
But again, they achieved only temporary highs, and ended up feeling depressed and empty — with the addition of a mountain of debt.
Eventually, both men realized that:
They decided to take an inventory of their lives to find out what was making them unhappy, and what they needed to change so they could experience happiness and freedom.
First, they identified their anchors — the things or situations making feel stuck. Over the course of a week, each of them wrote down anything he thought might be an anchor. Joshua listed 83 items and Ryan, 54.
Next, they identified their priorities. They started prioritizing by classifying their anchors as either major or minor.
Major anchors were the obvious things keeping them from feeling free: mortgages, car payments, large bills and debts, their careers, and particular relationships — things that demanded attention without returning comparable value.
Minor anchors made up the majority of their lists. They included cable and internet bills, smaller bills and debts, unused clothing and household items, and general clutter. These required small amounts of attention individually, but it added up.
They decided that getting rid of as many anchors as possible would let them reclaim time, which could be used in more meaningful ways.
They started with major anchors. For example, Joshua started with debts, which ran into the six-figure range. He took side jobs and made extra payments toward debts. He cut trips, expensive dinners, and vacations to pay off his car and credit card debt. Over two years, they both paid off their cars and paid down debts.
They addressed other anchors as well. They got rid of many possessions, keeping only the things they liked and used. Selling things they didn’t use generated money that went toward debt reduction.
As Joshua reevaluated his life and identified anchors, his mother died, leaving him with her 64 years’ worth of possessions to sort out. He couldn’t part with them emotionally because they represented a relationship important to him — so he started putting her things into storage.
In the process of handling his mothers’ stuff, Joshua had an epiphany: He didn’t need a storage locker full of stuff to preserve his memories of their relationship.
The turning point was finding boxes of his old school work under her bed. She clearly hadn’t accessed the boxes in many years, but she had kept them in order to hold onto the memories of her son as a child. In the same way, Joshua had been trying to hold onto his mother by keeping her things.
However, just as she had remembered him and his childhood without ever opening the boxes of school work, he didn’t need a storage locker full of stuff to remember her. Once he realized he could hold onto his memories of her without holding onto all her stuff, he donated it to people who could use it.
His key takeaways were:
Josuha and Ryan learned more about how material possessions get in the way of personal growth when they discovered minimalism and how it could be a tool for creating a meaningful life.
While working on getting rid of their anchors, Joshua and Ryan started searching for others who had experienced the same process.
Through several people’s blogs, they discovered the concept of minimalism, which is a philosophy and practice of freeing yourself from the things that weigh you down, so you can live a meaningful life.
Minimalism is a simple concept, yet it can be misunderstood.
For Joshua and Ryan, getting rid of excess stuff allowed them to:
For the authors, minimalism got them started on the path toward a more meaningful life.
Joshua and Ryan had already realized that possessions and success don't make you happy. They embraced minimalism and simplicity as a way of freeing themselves to focus on living meaningfully rather than trying to find happiness in possessions.
When you live deliberately, focusing on the important things, happiness is a byproduct.
They created a website (TheMinimalists.com) to share their experiences and insights, and ultimately left their corporate jobs to focus full time on writing essays and books, and continuing to research and experiment with minimalism.
After getting rid of the things they didn’t need, Joshua and Ryan could focus on changing their lives in other ways. Based on their experiences, they identified Five Values for living a meaningful life: health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others.
The Five Values are the areas in which they experienced the greatest success and satisfaction from making improvements.
The rest of the book explores why these fives areas are key, and recounts how they changed in these areas. The final chapter ties together the values and raises questions for readers to consider.
Besides thinking, taking notes, and making lists based on the questions in the book, they stress that it’s important to take small steps each day, that over time, will radically improve your life.
Your anchors are things or conditions that make you feel stuck or trapped, and stand in the way of your happiness and freedom. They may include debts, problem relationships, a job you dislike, negative habits, or things that waste too much of your time.
What are two or three major anchors in your life? (These are things that make you feel the most stressed, unhappy, and stuck.)
Which one would you feel most relieved to be rid of?
What steps can you take to get rid of it?
Health is the first of the Five Values because living a healthy lifestyle puts you in the best position to enjoy and improve your life.
Few people have perfect health. Health is a continuum, and each of us falls in a different place. It’s not constructive to compare our health with others’. To be happy, we must be as healthy as we can be, given our circumstances.
For example, Joshua broke his back while playing basketball in school. The injury limits his flexibility, but he still strives to be as healthy as he can be given his constraints. There are many examples of people living meaningful lives with diseases, disabilities, and other problems — because they live as healthfully as they can based on their individual situations.
When we talk about health we’re not talking about competing with others, building impressive muscles, or bragging about our stats. Those are destinations. But health isn’t a destination, it’s a vehicle to take us where we want to go.
To enjoy life, we need to take care of the vehicle we have, which may include getting rid of harmful habits, getting regular exercise and check-ups, maintaining a good diet, getting adequate sleep, and reducing stress through daily meditation.
Although some people adopt diets and exercise in order to look better, the point of improving your health is to feel better — if you feel better, you’ll enjoy every other aspect of your life more. Of course, when you start living a healthier lifestyle you start looking better, which is a bonus but, again, not the main objective.
The keys to a healthy life are eating and exercising — controlling what we put into our bodies, and what we do with them. While this sounds simplistic, these are the two things that affect our health the most, yet people often ignore them.
The term “diet” is typically used to mean a temporary change in what you eat to achieve a specific weight-loss goal. A temporary diet almost always fails when you resume your pre-diet behavior.
However, this book uses the term diet to refer to a dietary lifestyle. A change in dietary lifestyle is a change not only in what you eat, but in how you think about what you eat. A lifestyle change is long term rather than temporary, and it can’t fail, unless you reject the lifestyle.
There isn’t a single, ideal dietary model to follow to live a healthier life. This can be frustrating because it’s easier to be told what to eat, and to have a set of clear guidelines to follow.
It’s also important to note that what you put into your body encompasses more than just food. It includes medicine, or anything you ingest, as well as anything that enters your body in any other way (for example, through the skin).
Remember: The goal isn’t to lose weight or to look better; it’s to live a healthier life and feel better.
Major dietary changes usually fail because people find them overwhelming and too hard to maintain.
To avoid this, try changing your diet for just 10 days at a time. Experiment with the authors’ recommended dietary lifestyles (not diets) and see what works for you.
Regardless of your dietary needs or requirements, there are two categories you should eliminate if you want to feel better:
It’s easier to eliminate specific types of foods than to eat less of them. That’s because people have every intention of cutting back, but end up thinking, “One more breadstick won’t hurt me.”
If it’s too hard to cut out something entirely, you can always stop eating it for a specified period, like 10 days, and then reintroduce it in smaller amounts.
These should be on your reduce-or-eliminate list:
You can replace the foods and beverages that you eliminated with healthier options. Try these:
The Minimalists doesn’t advocate a specific diet or dietary lifestyle because different people have different dietary needs. Try experimenting with different elements of your diet until you get the results you want (feeling better). However, here are five diets that deliver good results.
Some medications are important and life-saving but others have side-effects and/or can be eliminated with improved diet and exercise. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Everyone knows being a couch potato is bad for your health, but you don’t have to go to the other extreme to be healthy — for instance, running five miles or going to the gym every day. The goal isn’t to look like a bodybuilder but to be healthy and fit, and feel good.
The primary goal of exercise isn’t to lose weight either. It’s steady improvement. The key measures are:
You can lose weight and still not be happy with your physical fitness. For example, although Joshua lost over 80 pounds he was flabby and weak. Over two years he developed simple daily habits that improved his physical fitness.
Developing daily exercise habits is part of attaining a healthier lifestyle, just like developing new daily food habits.
People typically try running, lifting weights, swimming, or team sports. They all improve physical fitness, and all are better than not exercising. But they may not work for everyone.
Joshua came up with something that works better for him: three principles and four daily exercises.
Joshua’s Exercise Principles
Joshua’s 18-Minute Exercises
Alternate among the following:
You can work your way up, even if you can’t do a single pull-up or push-up. And 18 minutes a day is a small amount of time to focus on your health.
People often skip sleep to accomplish or complete something. But to be healthy, you need adequate rest. The amount of sleep needed varies by individual but many studies recommend eight to 10 hours a night. Make sure you’re getting the amount you need, or you’ll lack energy and focus.
Adopting a healthier lifestyle for the long term requires motivation. You acquire this by turning your “should dos” into “must dos” — because once you decide you must do something, you will.
Here’s how it works. When you want to change a habit (diet, exercise, or something else), you need to give yourself a rationale or leverage that makes the change urgent and essential.
Leverage comes from wanting to avoid a negative outcome, or wanting the rewards. For example, you might tell yourself that the negative effects of not improving your physical fitness would be greater than the short term pain of exercising. Psychologically, changing your habit then becomes a must.
On their website Joshua and Ryan recommend creating must lists for various areas of your life — for instance create a list of things on which you have procrastinated; then turn those shoulds into musts.
Here are some important health musts:
Striving to be as healthy as you can be given your unique circumstances puts you in the best position to enjoy life. Yet many people neglect their health.
Create your own must list — what must you do to lead a better, healthier life?
What small step can you take immediately to address your biggest health concern? What additional step can you take to build on the first one?
Relationships are the second of the Five Values because without successful relationships (someone to share your life with), you can’t live a meaningful life.
Your relationships are the people around you with whom you have frequent contact: spouses, lovers, friends, roommates, coworkers, acquaintances, and anyone else you interact with regularly.
Extroverts need the love and attention of many relationships, while introverts seek fewer relationships. People have different needs and preferences but we all need at least some personal relationships. And we have to tend them or they won’t thrive.
There are three ways to have stronger relationships:
Examining your personal relationships, past and present, is the first step.
You can learn from past relationships, good or bad, and apply the lessons to improve current and future relationships.
Often we obsess over past relationships, particularly those that went wrong. However this doesn’t get you anywhere. Living in the past is like trying to use your rearview mirror to drive — you won’t see where you’re going and you’ll crash.
Fortunately, however, past problematic relationships aren’t necessarily indicative of future relationships. You can create better new relationships by analyzing (not obsessing over) past relationships.
The good times can tell you what worked and give you a strategy for the future, while bad times tell you what went wrong, and suggest how to avoid the same problems in the future.
Next, consider your current relationships. Overall, do they make you happy? Are your relationships positive, supportive, and helpful?
Here’s an exercise to help you answer these questions, and evaluate your current relationships. Make a list of every relationship — include every person with whom you interact regularly — in which you’re currently involved. Add two more columns and fill it them in as follows:
Important points: Many close primary relationships can be neutral or negative. The fact that someone is close to you doesn’t mean it’s a positive relationship. Some of your most negative relationships are in your top two tiers. As for the peripheral category, many of these relationships are neutral but some might be positive.
Look at your list and consider:
Although your primary and secondary relationships are your most important, the people in your peripheral category (those less significant to you) probably get most of your attention because they’re often part of your daily life.
What do you do about this? First, you may want some of your peripheral category to play a larger role in your life (move to your primary or secondary levels). If so, think about how you could strengthen those relationships.
As for those remaining in your peripheral group, even though you may like them, you need to devote less time to them and more to your primary and secondary relationships. This might mean saying no more often to casual gatherings or commitments that you’re on the fence about attending anyway.
Similarly, you may have primary or secondary relationships that you want to de-emphasize, especially if they’re negative. Rethink what role these people should play in your life.
Your relationships don’t stay the same throughout your life. People come and go, and their significance to you changes as both of you grow. People important to you a decade ago may be less so today.
You must actively choose your relationships, which requires difficult decisions.
The rest of this chapter focuses on your primary relationships (current and future). They are the people you love, the ones for whom you would do anything. These relationships typically include:
Secondary relationships are also important but should get your attention only after fulfilling your commitments to your primary relationships, which are your top priority.
We all change over time. The fact that someone has changed doesn’t mean they don’t care about you — just that they’ve changed.
People evolve, separately or together. You can’t expect a person to stay the same or to change the way you want them too. They’re not obligated to meet your standards.
Changing yourself, however, can lead to more positive relationships. For example, if you improve your diet and start exercising, people around you may follow suit. You can bring out the best in other people.
That said, occasionally you may have to end a relationship if someone’s beliefs and values change in a way that you can’t tolerate (for instance, they express racial prejudices you strongly disagree with). Terminating or changing the terms of your relationships is part of managing them.
Sometimes relationships just don’t work, or they stop working. Problematic relationships may include intimate relationships, close friendships, employee-boss relationships, and family relationships.
You can try repairing a valued relationship, but know that you can usually step away. For instance, when Joshua and his wife began having difficulties getting along with each other. They both worked to improve their relationship, including going to counseling, but in the end it didn’t work and they eventually divorced. You don’t have to stay in a negative relationship — in fact it’s not healthy to do so.
The best relationships continue to grow. But if you want them flourish, like a gardener you must apply attention, time, and effort.
More specifically, for a relationship to grow and improve, you must cultivate eight attributes: love, trust, honesty, caring, support, attentiveness, authenticity, and understanding.
Here are four behaviors for deepening your understanding (and avoiding misunderstandings), with the acronym TARA: tolerance, acceptance, respect, and appreciation. They’ll help you strengthen any important relationship, not just intimate relationships.
Occasionally TARA isn’t the right approach. If someone engages in harmful behavior (drugs, crime, racism), you can’t accept their conduct and need to walk away.
More often, however, practicing these four behaviors deepens your understanding and therefore your relationship. You understand what drives the other person, what they want and need, and what makes them happy. With this understanding you can meet their needs and they can meet yours.
You need both differences and commonalities to make passionate or intimate relationships work.
Sometimes two people enter into a relationship based solely on chemistry — they’re attracted to someone because they’re different. But chemistry alone isn’t sustainable — over time too many differences can become a problem. This is especially true of differences in values, beliefs, and individual needs — these can destroy a relationship in the long run.
At the same time, having too much in common becomes boring. A relationship can fall apart when two people become extensions of each other, instead of maintaining separate identities.
To be sustainable, passionate relationships must achieve balance by embracing commonalities and respecting each other’s differences.
Without a vision for your relationships, especially primary relationships, you’ll accept whatever is in front of you. You need a vision of what you want your relationships to be.
Consider three things when seeking new relationships or improving current ones:
Once you’ve answered these questions, read this list daily to reinforce what you’re seeking in a relationship, what you want to avoid, and how you must change.
You need successful relationships in order to have a meaningful life. Your primary or most important relationships should get most of your attention — you need to nourish them so they grow. But people often spend less time on these relationships than on peripheral relationships such as coworkers, neighbors, community members, and acquaintances.
What are the two most important relationships in your life? How much time do you devote to them per week, compared to your peripheral relationships?
How can you come up with more time to devote to your most important relationships? What other relationships or activities could you drop?
What step could you take immediately to improve one of your key relationships?
You won’t feel fulfilled if your life lacks passion. This is often the root cause of the empty feeling many people experience. But there are things that get in the way of discovering and pursuing your passions — starting with your work.
How do you characterize your work? Typically people call it a job, career, or mission. A job is a daily grind, while a mission is something you feel passionate about. A career can be either or both.
Work that’s a daily grind impedes your happiness and ability to live a meaningful life.
If you’re like most people, you have a job you aren’t passionate about. We’re taught from an early age that that’s the nature of work; it’s about simply making a living, which we have a responsibility to do.
We’re taught to work hard in high school and college, doing stuff we don’t care about, so we’ll find a “good job” with reliable pay and benefits, so we can go into debt purchasing a house, car, consumer goods, etc. This process is touted as the American dream.
We’re to keep our nose to the grindstone, so one day we can retire and enjoy our lives for a few years before dying (the average lifespan of a retiree is often only three years after retirement). For 40 years or so, we trade our most precious commodity (our time) for a paycheck.
It’s true that we all need money to live — for shelter, food, clothing, medical care, etc. But beyond that, attaining the American dream won’t make you happy. For many, pursuing it saps joy and meaning from life.
Many people expect a career to be more fulfilling than a job. They believe it’s the ticket to a meaningful life.
However, having a career often sidetracks you from that goal. The reason is that people invest in their careers to the point of assuming an identity and social status based on their job title.
Our cultural norms aid and abet this tendency. One of the first things people ask when getting acquainted is, “What do you do?” This seems innocuous, but the implied question is, “What do you do for a living?” — and you know you’ll be judged (assigned a social status) based on your occupation.
Once you believe your career is who you are, it’s difficult to give up that identity even if you come to hate your career.
(A better way to answer the “what do you do” question is to reply with what you’re passionate about. For instance, “I’m passionate about cooking; what are you passionate about?” It leads to more interesting conversations than the typical answer along the lines of “I’m a director of operations.”)
The truth is, you’re far more than your career; you have passions that you can pursue for a meaningful life.
Josuha and Ryan had conventionally successful corporate careers, but eventually they felt stressed and unhappy instead of fulfilled. So they worked harder and turned to consumerism — they bought stuff in an effort to purchase happiness. Eventually they realized this wasn’t the path to happiness — they needed to cut the excess in their lives and pursue their passions.
To discover their passions, they had to remove the many anchors holding them back, including the status/identity of their careers, and their lavish lifestyles and debt.
In creating and operating their website, TheMinimalists.com, they pursued their passions and turned them into their mission. Joshua’s passion is writing, while Ryan’s is mentoring others.
Sometimes people stumble into a line of work that brings them great satisfaction. They feel they’re being paid to do what they love and they refer to their work as their mission. But they’re exceptions.
If you don’t feel grateful and passionate about your work, then you probably haven’t found your mission. The rest of this chapter is intended to help you identify, then cultivate your passions, and pursue them as your mission.
You can be passionate about almost anything (and you can have multiple passions) — as a result, any line of work can be your mission.
Some people know what they’re passionate about, but may not be pursuing it as their full-time mission. Others don’t know what they’re passionate about, or what their mission is.
Regardless of where you fall, this chapter will help you identify the anchors keeping you from discovering and cultivating your passions.
Two things characterize passionate people:
Using what you’re passionate about to keep you focused and spark more passion is part of discovering your mission. But first you must discover what you’re passionate about by removing your anchors.
It can be difficult to find your passions because you tend to get stuck in the daily grind, held back by four main anchors: identity, status, certainty, and money
Your occupation is an anchor holding you back when you believe it defines who you are as a person.
When your job or career becomes your identity, it’s difficult to do anything else. That’s why many people stay in the same industry when they change jobs. It’s hard to realize you are much more than your vocation and/or your stuff.
Joshua and Ryan worked to come up with more meaningful identities than their corporate titles. They had to publicly identify themselves with new labels, such as mentor, leader, contributor, and minimalist. These identities are transferable to whatever they do, unlike their career identities.
Once you remove the anchor of identity, you can remove other anchors.
As people climb the corporate ladder, get more tenure, and become more comfortable in their careers, a feeling of status becomes part of their career identity.
A perceived loss of status makes people feel ashamed, useless, or depressed when they lose their job. They feel insignificant without it.
People associate their job with status because it’s something they have some control over. If you work hard, you’re rewarded with awards, praise, perceived power, promotion. Society programs us to want instant results, and puts more emphasis on career and money than status of any other kind.
However, the most important things in life (health, relationships, passion) are more difficult to control and don’t provide instant gratification. They don’t confer status.
For example, stay-at-home dads don’t get much respect — they might be deemed lazy — because they aren’t making a lot of money or advancing a career.
Joshua and Ryan removed the anchor of status by placing less value on what people thought about their jobs, and also by showing people why their new identities were more important.
With a more positive idea of status, you can embrace more variety in your life, and give up some of the certainty (comfort in the familiar) that’s weighing you down.
Everyone needs some level of certainty. For instance, you must be certain your ceiling isn’t going to collapse while you sleep, or that an approaching car won’t run over you.
But aside from our basic needs for safety, the level of certainty people need varies from person to person. For instance, a race car driver needs less certainty than the average person. But we all need to be able to step outside our comfort zones — and remove the anchor of certainty.
Certainty feels comfortable but can be the reason you don’t make changes you want to make.
You don’t want to trade your comfort today for something that could be less comfortable tomorrow.
There are two ways to motivate yourself to change.
In practice it works differently for different people. Joshua quit his corporate job without having a plan. The pain of not pursuing his passions wasn’t worth the certainty his career provided. However, Ryan eased out of his job more slowly, associating increased pleasure with pursuing his passions.
Money is another layer of certainty. It has a powerful hold on many people. Money is often the reason people keep doing something they hate (Gotta pay the bills!). But while you need to make a living, you can do it while pursuing your passion.
Money problems inject anxiety into our daily lives, and keep us in discontent. We never seem to have enough money; we live from paycheck to paycheck, and can’t get ahead.
The best way to remove the anchor of money is to give it less importance in your life. The authors did this by developing a five-step plan to regain control of their finances.
Taking control of your financial life involves more than increasing your income. It requires:
This isn’t easy, especially in our instant gratification culture, but it can be done with five steps.
Most of us don’t know where our money is going, though we may think we know. This is especially true in a marriage, where it can be hard to keep track of what the other person is spending.
The first step toward financial freedom is establishing a written monthly budget, following a few guidelines:
To make investing seem less complicated, think of it as paying your future self.
It’s easy with today’s online tools. Joshua uses a simple online investment tool (Betterment.com) as his personal savings, planning, and investing software. Using the tool, he puts money into four buckets: emergency fund, retirement fund (traditional IRA), house-buying fund, and wealth-building fund (additional retirement funds beyond the maximum IRA contribution).
Now is the best time to start planning for your future. Even if you don’t have money to invest, create a plan to begin investing in your future self. The best way is to automate the investments, whether you invest 1% of your income or just $20 a month to start.
Contrary to what you might hear, there’s no such thing as “good debt.” Some debt is worse than other debt, but it’s never “good.”
You won’t feel free until you’re debt-free. Besides, it feels great to have no car payments, credit card or student loan payments.
Throughout their twenties Joshua and Ryan ran up debt of more than six figures each. It felt debilitating. Dave Ramsey’s book, Total Money Makeover, provided steps they used to create a detailed financial plan, cut up their credit cards and pay their debts.
(Shortform note: Dave Ramsey’s seven “Total Money Makeover” steps are: Create a beginner emergency fund, pay off debts, save three to six months of expenses in a fully funded emergency fund, invest 15% of your income for retirement, save for your children’s college, pay off your home, build wealth and give.)
Minimalism is a key component for achieving financial freedom. By clearing clutter from their lives, Joshua and Ryan were able to focus on eliminating debt, changing habits, and making better decisions with fewer resources.
By simplifying — identifying which possessions weren’t adding value to their lives — they were able to sell unneeded items and put the money toward debt.
Minimalism doesn’t mean deprivation, but sometimes it’s helpful to temporarily deprive yourself of short-term satisfactions while trying to move in a better direction.
For example, Joshua sold his oversized house and moved into a small apartment. Ryan sold his fancy new car and bought an older vehicle without a monthly payment. They dropped cable, satellite radio, and other luxuries. They also picked up side jobs to pay off their debt faster. And they sold many items including electronics, furniture, and clothes for extra cash.
Now, everything they own serves a purpose or brings joy, and they don’t miss the old stuff.
Helping people who are less fortunate than you are can help you appreciate what you have and gain perspective.
Get started by doing an internet search for volunteer opportunities in your area.
If you contribute even in a small way to someone’s life, you’ll realize your financial problems are small compared to the problems many others struggle with. You’ll feel empowered to take action to eliminate your own relatively minor problems.
The five steps to financial freedom work for anyone, regardless of your family situation or how much/how little you make.
In a short time — two or three years — you can transform your life. It takes a plan, determination (turning your shoulds into musts) and continued progress in the new direction.
Financial freedom doesn’t come from income level, but from decisions we make with the resources we have.
Once you’ve removed your anchors, you can focus on finding your passions.
First, consider what you’d do with your life if money weren’t an object. If you don’t know, you’re likely still being held back by some of the four anchors.
Maybe you’re afraid of what people will say if you pursue what you really want. Joshua never told people he wanted to be a writer for fear of what they might think.
Maybe you’re worried that you won’t make enough money to live on, or you’ll feel insignificant. You have to get past these fears to find your passion.
Here are some additional questions to help you identify your passions:
Once you know what excitement looks and feels like, you can answer the question of what you’d do if you could do anything. The answer is: things that excite me. Think about the thing that excited you the most — that is probably your passion.
What would you love to do each day? What would you be obsessed by? Where do love and obsession overlap? That’s your passion.
The next step is to figure out how to turn your passion into your mission.
You may think, “No one is going to pay me to do X.” But in fact, someone is earning a living doing the thing you’re passionate about.
There are likely thousands of people who pursued (your) passion with determination until it became their mission. You can learn from those people.
To turn your passion into your mission, emulate someone who is already doing it. The authors followed the examples and advice of other minimalist bloggers to become successful at it themselves. Find at least three people making a living doing what you’re passionate about. Learn from them, and then take action.
Of course, it isn’t easy. It takes action to remove your anchors, and reject social messages so you can live a meaningful life. But it’s worth it to pursue your passions and live your mission.
Many people invest themselves in their careers to the point of assuming an identity and social status based on their job title. When their career ends, they lack a sense of purpose.
How do you define yourself, or what is your identity?
If your identity is tied to your career or occupation, what other, more meaningful labels could you adopt that can apply no matter what you do? (Examples include mentor, grandparent, teacher, artist, __ enthusiast.)
You won’t feel fulfilled if your life lacks passion. However, many things can keep you from discovering and pursuing your passions, including work and other daily priorities.
What passion do you have that you have regrets about not pursuing?
Why haven’t you pursued it? (Some common reasons include being dependent on your job/career for an identity and status, or not wanting to leave your comfort zone.)
How could you turn it into your mission? What’s a first step you could take? (Remember: The authors learned from and followed the examples of others who were pursuing passions similar to theirs.)
Money problems can strain relationships, tie you to a job that you dislike, and keep you from pursuing your passions. But money concerns can be eliminated by taking five steps: creating a written monthly budget, eliminating debt, investing in your future, minimizing possessions, and contributing to others.
What is the biggest money concern impacting your life, and what would you do differently if you didn’t have this worry?
Which of the five steps to financial freedom seems most doable for you? What can you do to start implementing this step?
Which of the five steps is most difficult for you now? Why is so difficult? Can you get help with it?
The last two of the five values — growth and contributing to others — work hand in hand to create the meaning in our lives: We need to grow as individuals and to contribute to improve others’ lives.
Growth is an ongoing process. You’re not finished after you make a change in your life. You have to keep making changes in order to grow.
The way to make changes is either by taking a leap, or taking baby steps.
Some changes are huge and immediate: ending a relationship, quitting your job on the spot, moving to a new city, buying a home or a car. There’s only one way to make them: Take the leap.
However the most important changes are baby steps that allow you to eventually take the leaps.
1) Make small changes daily
You can make small, gradual changes in your daily life that add up to huge changes over time.
Most changes build on past changes propelling you forward every day. It’s like exercising — you build your strength and fitness little by little by exercising consistently over time.
Each change improves on the previous change.
Most of the changes Joshua and Ryan made — in health, jobs, relationships — started as incremental changes. Such changes may not seem like much at the time, but when you look back you can see how much you’ve changed in total.
2) Create leverage for change
Making the decision to change is easier if you give yourself leverage, or a convincing rationale for changing.
You have leverage when you feel the benefits of changing are so great that you have no choice but to change — or when you’re so dissatisfied with the status quo that you must change. You can also use a combination of benefits and dissatisfaction as leverage.
The more leverage you have the easier it is to change something.
If a change doesn’t last, it’s because you didn’t see enough long-term benefit from the change to stick with it. Or you weren’t unhappy enough with your current conditions to change.
Joshua and Ryan wanted to make dietary and exercise changes. Their leverage was their dissatisfaction with their current out-of-shape condition, plus the satisfaction they were already experiencing from small initial changes they had made (enjoying daily exercise, and noticing small changes in their physical fitness).
3) Take action
Once you have enough leverage, it’s important to act immediately — take just a small step in the right direction to build momentum.
Don’t start with a big step — because if you try to do too much at once, you’ll be discouraged and the change won’t last. But once you begin building momentum, change becomes enjoyable and you want to continue.
Look for little ways to make daily improvements in each area of your life — for example, exercising for 10-15 minutes daily, strengthening a relationship by having one meaningful conversation a day, and spending an hour a day on something you’re passionate about.
Gradual daily actions like these can change your life in a relatively short period of time.
4) Raise the bar
If you want to continue to grow you have to keep raising your standards. What seems impossible at first eventually becomes easy, and if you don’t raise the bar a little every day, you’ll plateau or even lose ground.
Joshua and Ryan succeeded in continually raising the bar in their daily exercise routines. Neither of them had exercised before and Joshua couldn’t do a single push-up or pull-up — so he started with modified versions and worked up to standard pull-ups, increasing the number he did each day.
5) Be consistent
As you continue to raise your standards, be consistent.
It’s easier to raise the bar a little every day than to make a big jump once a week.
For example, if you’re trying to strengthen your relationship, you’ll get more benefit from being nice to your partner consistently than from fighting with him/her one day, and trying to make up for it the next.
The same is true for all areas of life. Start slowly, build up momentum, and keep growing.
Personal growth feels great but reaching outward to contribute to others also is necessary for a balanced life.
Humans have a built-in need to contribute beyond themselves. Moreover, the more you help others grow, the more you grow in turn.
People often decide to write a check to charity because they don’t have time to volunteer for an activity. But the personal contact and satisfaction you receive from doing a hands-on task are more rewarding than writing a check.
There are unlimited ways to contribute. Whatever way you choose to contribute is fine — all contributions have value.
Joshua and Ryan contribute locally through hands-on projects with Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchens, and charitable organizations. They’ve also used their website to raise money for development projects around the world.
Whatever you choose, you’ll feel a level of satisfaction you don’t experience in other areas of your life.
Here are some tips for getting started:
Besides volunteering for a particular organization, you can find small ways to contribute in many of your current activities. For example, you can mentor others at work. The important thing is to do something that adds value to others’ lives.
So whatever you’re doing, ask yourself how the task adds value. The question helps you identify how you’re contributing. If you’re not contributing, consider how you could add value to the situation, or how you could add better value.
Over time you’ll start to replace things that don’t add value to your life or other people’s lives with things that do add value.
Unless you contribute beyond yourself, your life will be perpetually self-serving. It’s OK to serve your own interests, but doing so exclusively creates an empty existence. A life without contributing to others is a life without meaning.
While contributing to others in whatever way you choose is a positive experience overall, all positive experiences aren’t the same. There are two types:
Often the reason people don’t participate in a charitable activity is that they identify it as something they dislike or that requires effort, even though it’s positive.
You have to fight the tendency to avoid these experiences if you are committed to finding lasting satisfaction.
Positive experiences you dislike are the key to living a meaningful life. You need to find ways to transform the positive experiences you dislike into positive experiences you enjoy in order to change your life long term.
This strategy can be applied to every area of your life. Here are some examples of how to add enjoyment:
There will always be something to tempt you away from doing the things that make your life more meaningful. You can avoid the temptation by turning experiences that seem tedious into something more fun and exciting.
For example, Joshua and Ryan worked on a Habitat for Humanity home building project in the rain. They made it more enjoyable by singing, competing, and doing impressions — they turned a positive activity they disliked into something fun.
Think of a positive activity that’s good for you but that you dislike. Now ask yourself how you could make the experience more enjoyable. Write down the answers you come up with.
So which of the Five Values (health, relationships, passions, growth, contributing to others) is most important? It depends.
They’re all equally important, but the importance of each value for you changes over time. There are periods in which one particular value takes precedence over another. For instance when your priority is building a new relationship or ending a relationship, the other values might take a back seat.
However, over time each person tends to give priority to two top values, usually the ones that come most naturally. For example, Joshua’s top two values are health and passions, while Ryan’s are relationships and growth.
However you need to maintain balance in your life. So pay attention to which values you are focusing on most — then adjust your focus to give attention to the other three. If you don’t you’ll feel dissatisfied and stressed.
For example, if you put all your energy into working out or running (your health) and too little into relationships, your current relationships will suffer and you’ll be lonely and depressed.
If you neglect growing in any area, you’ll feel stuck. Each day, ask yourself how you incorporated health, relationships, passion, growth, and contributing to others into your life. This will help you see how you’re spending your time.
Specifically, with each action you take, ask: “Which area of my life am I improving?” If it’s not improving one of the five areas, ask, “How could doing this improve one of the key areas of my life?” If you still can’t come up with a way to apply the activity to improving your life, reduce or eliminate it.
Most people’s days are filled with tedious tasks that take up time but don’t add value to their lives or contribute positively. Examples of time wasters include: Spending time on social media, shopping, playing video games, sleeping too late, or staying up too late. Some — like smoking, overeating, and gossip — do harm.
Write down the things you’ve done in the past week that haven’t contributed to the five areas, and think about how you can reduce or eliminate those activities.
Some things you do positively influence more than one of the Five Values. These are some of the most productive activities in terms of payoff.
For example, exercising with someone else improves your health and relationship, helps you grow, and helps your partner (contribution).
What activities can you do that affect multiple values, allowing you to maximize your results?
How do you know if you’re living a meaningful life? There’s no definitive answer or checklist. No one can answer the question for you — only you know for sure.
Joshua and Ryan use what they call the Simple Success Formula. It can be applied to any of the Five Values (health, relationships, passion, growth, contributing to others):
Success equals happiness plus constant improvement.
You’re successful in any area if you’re happy with where you are and constantly improving. For example, you may not be in the best physical shape, but if you’re happy with your daily progress, then you’re successful. If you’re not happy but are constantly improving, you’re on the right track.
Succeeding requires a daily focus and commitment to constant improvement.
Through decluttering their lives and focusing on daily improvement in health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others, Joshua and Ryan discovered they could be happy, and ultimately live meaningful lives — and so can you.