The Disease of More: Why You Feel Unhappy, Lost, Addicted & Stressed | Joshua Fields Milburn

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   Why is it that so many of us are drowning in so much stuff?

2. JMJoshua Fields Milburn0:05

   I think there's a, a bunch of reasons. Quite often there's an emptiness, and it kind of starts there, uh, where we say, "I-- there's this void in my life. I need to fill it with something." That pres- presupposes it needs to be filled, and we could talk about that as well. I, I have some issues with that. Maybe there's a lack that is necessary as part of, of being a human. A- a- and yet there's this void, and we can fill it with relationships, sex, drugs, food, but also we fill it with stuff, or at least we try to. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. The, that void just widens, and so we end up in tremendous amounts of debt. At, at my nadir, I had, uh, about a half a million dollars worth of debt, and I had a lot of stuff. Yeah, the average American household has about three hundred thousand items in it, and I don't think that's inherently wrong or, or evil or bad. It's just that the stuff isn't making us happy. It'd be great if all of the material possessions and the super abundance was making us joyous and, and, uh, brought us to a point of perpetual bliss. But I think it's a misunderstanding of consumption. Now, I'm not against consumption. We all need to consume some things. The problem I have is with consumerism. Consumerism is the ideology that acquiring more, usually more stuff in this case, is going to make you happy. It's as if externalities have the happiness embedded in them. The paradox of that, or maybe the irony of it, is there's a happiness that's inside us. You look at a baby, and they're just cooing and smiling.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:37

   Yeah.

4. JMJoshua Fields Milburn1:37

   They don't need a, uh, BMW or a Rolls-Royce or a Prada belt to make them happy, right? They, they... It's preexisting. And the unfortunate thing is we actually tend to cover up that happiness with those externalities, and it's easiest with the stuff. The Greek have-- The Greek, ancient Greeks have this wonderful word, pleonexia, and loosely translated, it, it stands for the greed for the things that can be counted, right? And our society now has more things that can be counted and measured than ever before.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:13

   Mm-hmm.

6. JMJoshua Fields Milburn2:13

   We have obsessions with square footage. How many square feet is your house? How many material possessions do you own? How much money is in your bank account? And now, of course, with all the digital clutter, it's what's going on with your followers. How many likes do you have? How many views are you getting? And it's this constant chase.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:33

   Mm-hmm.

8. JMJoshua Fields Milburn2:33

   In fact, in America, it's even in our founding documents, right? You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the pursuit of happiness is actually the problem.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:43

   Yeah.

10. JMJoshua Fields Milburn2:43

    There's nothing wrong with pursuing, and we can pursue happily, but it's almost like the equation is inverted there. And so we're trying to find some happy endpoint, and then we make a contract with ourselves that say, "I, I'm going to be discontent until I reach whatever that thing that can be counted is." I have a million dollars in the bank. I have the promotion I've always wanted. I have the relationship I want, or I have all of the material possessions. I really desire that thing, whatever it is. But of course, we never actually desire the thing, and I think that's the problem. We think like-

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:18

    Right

12. JMJoshua Fields Milburn3:18

    ... okay, do you want those new Chrome Heart jeans? Okay, may- maybe. I, maybe they're a work of art, and maybe they're wonderful. Maybe they fit you well. Maybe you've budgeted for them. All that's fine. You can have a pair of jeans. I'm not against the stuff. But I also know the stuff isn't going to complete me. In fact, in many ways, the stuff incompletes us because it makes us-- We adorn ourselves with things, the cars, the houses, the closets, the walk-in closets full of designer clothes. All of these things, we adorn ourselves with those things as if it's part of our identity. Um, the first big book that Minimalists ever did was called Everything That Remains. It came out twelve years ago now. And, uh, the opening line to that is, "Our identities are shaped by the costumes we wear." And I was really talking about me in the corporate world at that point. That was a story of the five-year journey of me sort of walking away from the corporate world that I was in. I was managing a hundred and fifty retail stores, and my life looked successful because I had all those things you could count-

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:20

    Yeah

14. JMJoshua Fields Milburn4:20

    ... that we talked about before. But I also had a bunch of other things that you couldn't count, the things that are hard to quantify. And a meaningful life is often shaped by those unquantifiables.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:30

    Yeah.

16. JMJoshua Fields Milburn4:30

    By-- 'cause I don't have a, a square footage of joy, right? How many yards of happiness are in your life? Or I guess you'd say meters, right? How many meters of pleasure or whatever it is, excitement, uh, of contentment. But also, like, the things that make humanity humane, right? Like grief, sadness, sorrow. These are all parts of, of the everyday human experience, and there isn't necessarily a measuring stick for those things. And so because that's difficult, we search for the, the easy things, the things that can be counted.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:04

    Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons I love your work so much. It really resonates with me, and I, I think I share similar philosophies in terms of how I see the world. For many years, I've been saying that the unmeasurables in life is where the gold is.

18. JMJoshua Fields Milburn5:21

    Mm-hmm.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:22

    I have, like you, a lot of these societal ticks of success, right? If you look on the outside. But the things that bring me true contentment are things that the public can't see. You know, my eighteen-year relationship with my wife. Now, even saying an eighteen-year relationship, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of trying to give you a measurement there. That doesn't even tell you-

20. JMJoshua Fields Milburn5:43

    Right

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:43

    ... the quality of my relationship-

22. JMJoshua Fields Milburn5:45

    No

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:45

    ... with my wife. It just says that we signed a contract to be husband and wife eighteen years ago-

24. JMJoshua Fields Milburn5:50

    [laughs] Yes

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:50

    ... and we're still in that contract. But-

26. JMJoshua Fields Milburn5:53

    [laughs]

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:53

    ... I can tell you we have a fantastic relationship and, you know, we're talking before, I spend a load of time with my two kids, so I very consciously... will say no to so many things that might give me more, in inverted commas, success, because I understand having made poor decisions early on in my life that every single thing in life comes at a cost, right? So if you're doing something, you're not doing something else.

28. JMJoshua Fields Milburn6:22

    Yeah.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:22

    And I think for me, Joshua, as a doctor, I'm not sure if you've spoken to many, um, any doctors about minimalism. I'd be interested if you have. What's really interesting to me is that I believe that the biggest disease in society is not cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, strokes, autoimmune disease. The biggest disease in society is the disease of more.

30. JMJoshua Fields Milburn6:49

    Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:31:39