This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 45, The Burden of Ownership, by Colin Wright of ExileLifestyle.com. Get ready to maximize your potential with Optimal Living Daily, the podcast that brings you the best in personal development and productivity every day of the week. Your Optimal Life awaits. Now here's your host, Justin Molick.
Hey, how's it going? This is the Optimal Living Daily Podcast. If you don't know where you are or how you found this, I'm Justin Molick, if you have no idea who's talking to you right now. Although that name probably doesn't mean anything to you, so I will tell you that I'm a California native with a Myers-Briggs personality type of ISTP.
And today on the show is Minimalist Monday. I'm trying to create some structure here. This podcast is only 45 days young, or actually 46, we count episode zero. So I'm kind of learning as I go, and since I said that yesterday was Silver Sunday, I've made the executive decision that today should be Minimalist Monday.
I'm going to need help with naming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday though. I got nothing for those. So if you have an idea, tweet me at old podcast. And today's minimalist is Colin Wright, one of my newer authors on the show.
He has an incredibly interesting lifestyle because he's basically traveling constantly, living in a new country every few months. And to make it even crazier, he lets his readers of his blog vote to decide where he lives next. So definitely check him out at exile lifestyle.com. And I'll briefly mention that today's episode is ad-free, so if you appreciate this passion project to mine, there are a couple of ways to support it, one of which is financially, which would be a huge help to cover the server costs.
And you can do that by becoming a patron of the show at oldpodcast.com. And another option is to simply show that you like this podcast by joining my free weekly newsletter, which by the way comes with some fun gifts. And that's also at OLDpodcast.com. And however you show your support, I'll be super grateful.
So with that, let's start optimizing your life. The Burn in a Vownership by Colin Wright of exile lifestyle.com. Take a look at your hobbies. Are they corporate tools?
As an useful device or implement, not a person who's a due pick. They almost certainly are. I, for one, have had many hobbies that, in retrospect, seem to have involved little but buying, buying, and more buying. Take, for example, my years of competitive, magic, the gathering card playing.
I love the social aspect of the game, being able to attend conventions and tournaments, keep up with the story line in the lower of the game, and I definitely loved the strategy involved in both playing the game and building up my collection by trading the cards. I moved on from magic to what I, at the time, consider to be a much more evolved hobby, namely Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. The difference? One takes 40,000 years after the other.
Duh. Warhammer is a tabletop fantasy war game. Think Lord of the Rings, but more complex. In which you pit your army, a horde of self-assembled and painted plastic and pewter miniatures, against your opponents, an army of similar material composition, the likely with a different storyline, weaknesses, and strengths.
The real wallet buster was that all the pieces were shipped from the UK to the US, which resulted in peak pricing, despite the massive size of the armies. In the end, though, the whole point behind both of these hobbies is to acquire more. Go buy some booster packs to get more cards, not enough, buy a box of them. Board of this set?
Don't worry, there's a new expansion coming out tomorrow. We should buy a box. And don't forget to snag a blister pack of orc storm boys while you're at the comic shop. Keep in mind, I'm not criticizing either of these hobbies.
In fact, I probably owe a lot of my social skills, my penchant for strategizing and a good deal of my acumen to having partaken in them. I do know, however, that at some point, they became too much for me. I started having these really bad nightmares, the kind of what you were running through in unfamiliar environments. For me, it was usually a derelict office building, read into that what you will.
And being chased by an unidentified pursuer. You don't know who they are, but you know you need to get away. And in my version of the dream, I was trying to run while carrying all of my Warhammer miniatures and magic cards along with me. I was really into these games, so I had thousands upon thousands of cards and boxes and boxes of miniatures piled high in my closet, so it was quite a task to drag all this stuff along with me while running from a dream demon.
I was very careful not to hurt anything, too. These things were important to me. They demonstrated my dedication to the craft and money and spent time, so I wasn't going to leave them for this, this, whatever that was chasing me. After having these dreams several times a week for a few months, I began to sell and give away my magic cards.
The result? Fewer bad dreams. Then I reduced my Warhammer collection down to one army. Again, fewer bad dreams.
By the time I left for college and completely stricken the hobbies from my lifestyle, the dreams were gone. The point of the story, and presumably the point of my dreams, is that your possessions can wear on you in ways you barely recognize consciously, but definitely feel the results of. Think of someone you know, or yourself if this is you, who bought that big screen TV, only to find many aspects of their lives suffering because they are now spending all the time they had for other activities, pounding back pizza and watching American Idol. Think of the time, money, and attention spent on accumulating and protecting tacky, precious moments, statuettes, and beanie babies.
You have to remember those. In the United States, especially, accumulating possessions is representative of wealth. A bigger house means more space, but things that you buy and forget, or worse, buy and obsess over. I find that going through everything I own once per month and getting rid of the things I don't use is incredibly soothing.
I literally feel a physical tension release in my shoulders and back. I tightness I didn't even realize was there until I got rid of some junk that was taking up space in my townhouse and in the back of my mind. I feel lighter. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.
You just listened to the post titled The Burden of Ownership by Colin Wright of exile lifestyle.com. He says right at the end there to give it a shot, try getting rid of some stuff and see how you feel. That's my challenge for you today. Try getting rid of 10 things.
It sounds like a lot, but I can just look around and see 10 things I can personally get rid of without having a major negative side effect on my life. I'm serious. What I'd really like for you to do is take a picture of the 10 things you're getting rid of, whether you're throwing it away or donating it or whatever you're doing with it, and show me the picture. You can post it on Twitter, share it with everyone, and tag me in it.
My handle is at oldpodcast, or you can email me. Just visit oldpodcast.com to get in contact. So let's see who does it and who knows. There just might be a prize for a random person that actually does it.
And while you're at it, if you enjoy this free service I'm providing for you, I'd really appreciate your support, which you can show by visiting oldpodcast.com and joining my free weekly newsletter, or you can also contribute to this project and become a patron of the show there as well. Again, that's OLDpodcast.com. That's 45 episodes down and the very first minimalism Monday. I'll see you tomorrow for Tuesday talk.
I don't know. I got to think about that. Alright, have a good one. Your optimal life awaits.
You've been listening to Optimal Living Daily. Be sure to hit the subscribe button to stay up to date on each new episode. And head to oldpodcast.com. That's OLDpodcast.com for a free gift, as well as more actionable tips and resources to help you maximize your potential.
Thanks for joining us, and remember, your optimal life awaits.