This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 399, an excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by the Minimalist, by Joshua Fields-Millburn, and Ryan Nicodemus, and I'm Justin Mollick, narrating blogs for you every single day. And welcome back if you're a subscriber to the show. And if you are, thank you. I appreciate you coming back for more readings.
And if you're new here, please consider subscribing. A blog a day keeps bad habits at bay, as I like to say. I didn't mean to write that last part, it does way too much. Anyway, I've been playing excerpts for the last six episodes, so I thought might as well make it a full week.
Tomorrow will be something different for the special episode 400, crazy. For now, here's some more from the Minimalists as we optimize your life. An excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by the Minimalists, by Joshua Fields-Millburn, and Ryan Nicodemus. You don't have to explain yourself.
We seem to be explaining ourselves at every turn, but I only did it because, and I was just trying to, no, no, no, what I meant was, wait, let me explain. You've always spent a considerable amount of time explaining yourself, justifying your actions to others as though you were in a court of law. The people who require an explanation probably won't understand you anyway. You can't control what they think.
The people who really understand you, the important people closest to you, don't need any explanation at all. They already get you. Here's a simple solution. Stop explaining yourself.
If you want to explain yourself, go ahead. It's okay to do so. Just don't feel obligated to. You don't have to waste your time.
Hey, look at me. I'm relevant. Driving through the Midwest after weeks in the mountain time zone creates an interesting juxtaposition, navigating the terrifying interstates between Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. One can't help but notice the sprawl, the gridlock, the cacophony of road noise.
Although some of the best people on Earth reside in the heartland, there seems to be a sort of ever-present east of the Rockies inks there, too. Walking the streets of downtown St. Louis, the overwhelming sounds were unavoidable. People blared car horns with anger, passersby, bellied into mobile phones, pedestrians argue loudly on street corners.
Everything seems caffeinated. If you step back and listen though, it quickly becomes obvious what all of us is about. We make noise because we want to be heard, and because it's a loud world, we're forced to shout amid the backdrop of chaos. Ultimately, we're screaming, tuning our anger horns and disrespecting other people in an effort to feel relevant.
Too often we treat the people we love like not to make ourselves feel better, but to make us feel less bad, and a femoral solution to a perpetual discontent. Tearing down everyone else's buildings doesn't make our building any taller though. Likewise, being the loudest or most angry noise maker doesn't make us any more relevant. Real relevance, true, lasting importance in this world, comes from the influence we yield, and influence comes from our ability to contribute.
We want to be on ourselves, to add value to other people's lives. We are considerably more relevant when we help the people around us build taller buildings. Otherwise, we're just adding to the noise, which makes it hard to hear the soft, beautiful whisper of the world around us. Everyday minimalists.
People often ask us whether there are any quote-unquote normal minimalists out there, meaning, are there any minimalists who make a living in more conventional ways than say writing? Are there minimalists teachers, bankers, factory workers, engineers, architects, lawyers, security guards, plumbers, grocery store clerks? The short answer is yes, thousands. While on tour, we've met thousands of minimalists who lead comparatively conventional lives, from CEOs, salesmen, and professors, to philanthropists, social workers, and rabbis.
Why don't we overhear their stories? While this may seem like an irksome paradox, it's just common sense. The few minimalists who share their journeys are, by definition, more well known than the ones who don't. Take, for example, our friends, Jamar, a teacher in Cincinnati, Adam, a pastor in Tennessee, and Jessica and Matt, an awesome couple in Los Angeles.
Although they are minimalists, rarely do these people boast publicly over their simpler lives. Rather, they use minimalists and privately as a tool to focus less on consumption, and more on health and relationships, experiences, and creativity. It is difficult to point to these people as examples of everyday minimalists because simple living is part of their interior lives. They are private citizens, and for obvious reasons, we rarely see public illustrations of their journeys.
By the way, this is why we interview dozens of them for upcoming documentary, to shed light on the silent majority. There are many different flavors of minimalism. Minimalists who publicly share their journey, people such as Courtney Carver, Patrick Roan, Alan Coltrane, and others present their recipes and hopes others make lean insight and spoon out a few ingredients to create their own flavor of minimalism, using their own recipe. These sharers, bloggers, authors, and speakers are just the tip of the iceberg.
For every one minimalist who shares their journey with the masses, there are thousands who live their private lives with more meaning but less stuff. You just listened to an excerpt from the audiobook, Essential, Essays by the Minimalists by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan DeGademis, and that's from the audiobook that I made for them. And after your not on my weekly newsletter email list, but you've listened this far, I recommend joining. I give away a lot of books in the last couple of weeks I think I give away like four, which I still have to ship by the way, but that'll happen soon.
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That's it for today. I hope you have a great start your weekend, and I'll see you for the big episode 400 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 Remit Satey, Mr.
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