This is optimal living daily episode 398, an excerpt from the audiobook essential, as saved by the minimalist by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, and I'm Justin Molick. Hello, welcome back if you're a regular oldie, that is a regular OLD listener. If you're new here, this is where I read to you from amazing blogs. I started this like a year ago as a way to declutter blog bookmarks.
I don't know if that happens to you, where there's a ton of blogs that you want to read, or you have an RSS feed of blogs, however you do it. Even subscribing to a bunch of blog mailing lists and reading them through email. Well, here I take the best blogs on personal development and minimalism and simply read them to you, so you can take it on the go. It's also a way for me to speak more, which I need in my life, as I suffer from some pretty bad performance anxiety, sometimes really bad, sometimes not so bad, and this podcast is helping a lot.
And I also started because I was kind of tired of the typical interview style podcast. Nothing against them, there are a lot of great ones, but I wanted to shake the space up a little and do something different. I am an entrepreneur at heart and I love coming up with new ideas and I thought this was unique. Alright, this is getting long, here's an excerpt from an audiobook that I made for the minimalist, and I have another one that I'm doing for them right now that's coming real soon.
So with that, let's start optimizing your life. An excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by the minimalist by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Letting Go of Vacation Photos by Joshua Fields-Millburn. Imagine yourself reaching for your camera phone as the sunset's beneath billowing clouds, a smear pale pink on the horizon, you take a picture, and then another, and then another.
We all want to capture the moment. We desire to preserve it forever, salvaging the beauty of everything we see, so we grab our cell phones, our iPads, our digital cameras, and snap. We take a few photos to safeguard our memories. Harmless, right?
I mean, look around, everyone's doing it. You can't go to a monument, a concert, or even a sunset without scads or pedestrians fiddling with their electronics, trying to save and share the experience. There seems to be two problems with this incessant picture-taking behavior, and I've been an accomplice to set a problem for way too long. First, by fumbling around with my device, looking for the best angle and filter, snapping the picture, viewing the picture, and then often retaking the shot and never to get the quote unquote right photo, I'm missing the actual moment.
My desire to capture the moment actually ruins the moment. It makes it less beautiful, less real, and in many ways, less photo-worthy. Second, the quote unquote result is artificial. Time doesn't happen in this kind of take and retake way.
We don't get to redo the experiences of our lives, and yet we take our pictures as if we can get it just right. It gives us a false sense of security, a sense we can not only change the moment, but somehow save only its best parts. Yet the best parts exist because of the worst parts, not despite them. We cannot enjoy life's mountains without its valleys.
During my last vacation, I avoided reaching for my phone to take pictures. Though I was conscious about this choice, I slipped up a few times. Every beautiful sunset, every Wyoming sky, every rushing Montana river, brought with it the twitch, and urged to reach for my camera phone and seize the picturesque setting. I resisted, though, and after an instant of hesitation, I was able to enjoy each event for all its worth, not attempting to put a piece of it in my pocket to save for later.
I took it all in, right then, right there, enjoying the experience for what it was, a perfect moment. Don't get me wrong, I think photography is a beautiful art form. When well executed, photos are breathtaking. I'm not going to stop taking photos altogether, but I am going to remain more cognizant on my surroundings.
I'm going to enjoy the experience first, and embrace the impermanence of the moment. And if an unobtrusive opportunity arises to snap a single photo, then I will. Maybe. Or maybe not.
It's okay to be on the mountain without proving to everyone else where they're there to see it. Prime Optimist by Ryan Niconemus. I've been excited by exactly one underwear advertisement in my life. Sometime during my childhood, there was a television commercial for Underwear embroidered with Optimus Prime, the leader of the good robots, the Autobots, on the Transformers cartoon.
It was the most exciting underwear advertisement ever. Whenever the kids at the commercial put on their briefs, they transformed into Optimus. Every time that commercial aired, I would beg my mom to buy me a pair. I wanted to transform too.
One day my mother came home with a package of that same colorful underwear. It was early afternoon, and the sun was beaming through the living room windows. Not the normal time of day to be changing one's undies. But as soon as she handed me the package, I ran to my room.
And in no time, I was standing in front of the mirror, wearing only my shirt and my new robot-clad drawers. My hands placed proudly on my hips as I waited in my impending transformation. I didn't feel anything except excitement. After a moment, the excitement began to wane.
I thought to myself, wait, maybe I'm not transforming because my eyes are open. I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could, and my excitement level rose once again. I opened my eyes, but to my dismay, all I saw in the mirror was a dorky kid with his hands on his hips, with nothing but transformer underwear and old t-shirt on his pudgy body. No metal, no cool, transformed parts, just me.
This was my first experience with self-actualization. As it all came crashing down, I realized I wasn't going to transform while standing there in front of the mirror. Every child grows up with exaggerated hopes and dreams. They grow up with an idea of what they want to become, their ideal self.
To adults, childhood dreams, childhood ideals are cute, but far-fetched. Something happens when we become older. At a certain point, we realize simply putting on underwear with pictures of robots isn't going to change us. Worse, as life shapes us, too often the pendulum starts to swing the other way.
We start doubting ourselves. We don't give ourselves enough credit. Our hopes and desires become under exaggerated. Self-actualization has to do with a person living up to his or her full potential.
When Kurt Goldstein talks about self-actualization, he describes it as the ability of an organism to realize his full potential in the present moment. Self-actualization is what drives an organism to live. Kids might not morph into large robots when they change their undergarments, but that doesn't mean they can't transform into something cool over the long haul. As we mature, we have the opportunity to grow.
It's easier to grow if we first visualize as concretely as possible what we want to grow into. Before we set goals, before we take the first step in the right direction, we must see our full potential through self-actualization. If we don't, we'll keep looking for the quick fix. We'll keep looking to change ourselves by just changing our underwear.
You just listen to an excerpt from the audiobook, Essential, Essays by the Minimalist by Joshua Fields-Mylburn and Ryan Nicodemus. And I'm almost done doing a third audiobook for them. That's everything that remains. It's a really good book.
And I hope I do the audio version justice. I'll let you know when it's available. If you want to help keep this podcast alive and well, I've been doing this for nearly 400 episodes, which is a ton of content. And I've relied mostly on you, the listener for support, which I greatly appreciate.
You can support financially or by helping on other ways, I have a list of things that help at oldpodcast.com. Please come by and check it out when you have a moment. And that's it for today. Tomorrow's Friday.
I'm sure you're looking forward to it. Have a great day. I will catch you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits. Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily Podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance.
Justin handpicks the best posts he can find from blogs and authors like Remeats safety, Mr. Money mustache, and more. And I read them to you five days a week. So if you enjoyed this podcast, come on over and subscribe to Optimal Finance Daily, too.
And together, we'll optimize your financial life.