3051: A Minimalist, a Japanese Cowboy, and an Arrogant American Walk into a Museum AND Is This What You’ve Been Waiting for Your Entire Life? by Joshua Fields Millburn

[00:00:00] It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily Episode 3051, A Minimalist, a Japanese Cowboy, and an Arrogant American Walk into a Museum. And Is This What Youve Been Waiting for Your Entire Life by Joshua Fields Millburn of TheMinimalist.com

[00:00:18] and I'm Justin Malik, the guy that reads to you every single day of the year including weekends and holidays to help you live a life that's a bit more meaningful and positive. And I've two posts today so let's get right to them as we optimize your life.

[00:00:36] A Minimalist, a Japanese Cowboy, and an Arrogant American Walk into a Museum by Joshua Fields Millburn of TheMinimalist.com I'm standing outside one of my favorite places on earth, the Getty, next to an Asian man

[00:00:50] outfitted in Rancher's attire, white cowboy hat, yellow snakeskin boots, head to toe denim. The views here are stunning, even under a ceiling of cerebral clouds you can see miles in every direction. I think I finally understand the true meaning of the word panoramic.

[00:01:06] With a galaxy of green hills to the south, downtown LA's diffused skyline to the east, and a string of ruby-tail lights scorching the congested 405 to the north, the sun is preparing its descent into the hills of Santa Monica to our west, casting long,

[00:01:21] angular shadows before it disappears behind the Pacific's metallic horizon like a glowing coin placed carefully into a wishing well. I like your hat, I say to the denim-clad man towering over him even with his healed snakeskins.

[00:01:33] I like it too, he responds definitively with a thick Japanese accent and a nicotine smile, his cadence dressed in conviction. I love living life, he says with no further explanation, as if everything that needed to be explained about him, about life in general, is contained inside those four

[00:01:50] words. Although we've never met, the two of us are bystanders in the museum's afternoon architecture tour which is just wrapping up. Our tour guide points out that he thousand year old granite pillars framing the impending sunset.

[00:02:03] Behind us, an American man is complaining to his wife about the cold breeze, about the clouds overhead, about the lack of amplification in the tour guide's voice. He's been pompously protesting the entire tour. Apparently the universe has conspired to ruin his day.

[00:02:19] From the sound of his steadfast objections, everything here is ill-suited for his presence. There should be something out of place with a five foot tall Japanese cattleman standing among Rembrandt paintings and modern architecture in Southern California, but there's not.

[00:02:34] And yet something is off with the everyday American monitoring about the world's inadequacies. Tuning out the American for a moment, I let the cowboy know he would fit in well back home in Montana. We have a lot of big hats and pickup trucks, I tell him.

[00:02:47] He says he likes that part of the country, the Wild Western, he calls it, and then recommends a book called The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. Although the book is out of print, I later find a copy online and discover for myself

[00:02:59] Ehrlich's gorgeous rumination on life on Wyoming's high plains. Despite the cowboy's unconventional appearance, or maybe because of it, it is obvious that he would fit in almost anywhere. His posture, his gait, even his gap-toothed grin speak volumes about this man's interior life.

[00:03:17] He seems composed, resolute, content, many miles from arrogant. In a word, he is confident. Conversely, no place seems fit for the babbling American. His regal standards and his poor expectations make assimilation a constant problem.

[00:03:33] After another snarky comment directed toward his wife, I give him a searing eyeful and his gaze immediately searches for his feet. His voice may be the loudest in the pack, but volume isn't a measure of confidence. A truly confident man need only whisper to be heard.

[00:03:49] The sun is completing its coin toss into the ocean, or group outlined in twilight. Looking over the cowboy surveying his staunch temperament, I realize that his confidence is simply an external display of a rich interior life, congruency between his internal and external worlds.

[00:04:06] Arrogance on the other hand, is the opposite of confidence of a near of composure, incongruence at its zenith. This is why a confident man is able to coalesce with any group anywhere, an arrogant man nowhere at all.

[00:04:20] Confidence holds up under scrutiny, whereas arrogance fractures with the slightest crack, and as human beings we all have cracks. Sooner or later, a spotlight is shown in the arrogant man's pomposity is exposed, seeping through the veneer, while the confident man just admires the beauty of his flaws.

[00:04:42] Is this what you've been waiting for your entire life? By Joshua Fields Milburn of TheMinimalist.com But according to most people, many of the people around me, I had it figured out. I had the safe, impressive corporate job that nobody questioned and everyone could be proud of.

[00:05:23] I had the luxury cars, the oversized house, the superfluous stuff that was supposed to make me happy but never did. I also had the debt and the discontent that came with those things. I was a consumer, not a creator.

[00:05:35] The worst part was I didn't know how to break the cycle. I was stuck and I didn't know what to do. I went home one night after a long day at work, loosened my neck tie and contemplated the last 30 years.

[00:05:46] I literally looked in the mirror and asked the man staring back at me the most important question I've ever asked myself. Is this what you've been waiting for your entire life? I knew at that moment that this wasn't what I had been waiting for.

[00:05:59] I knew that my younger self, although proud of the money and ostensible success of the corporate world, wouldn't approve of what I'd become. And I knew that my future self would look back and wish I'd made a change.

[00:06:10] Three days later I sat down with my boss and I told him I wanted to move on with my life. I'd worked at the same corporation for 12 years, diligently climbing the corporate ladder one wrong at a time, but it was time for me to move on.

[00:06:23] We worked out an exit plan together and in a few months I was out of there without a definitive plan of how to live. And now, a year later in 2011, everything is different. For the first time in my life I can answer that same question much differently.

[00:06:37] Yes, this is what I've been waiting for my entire life. Is a question worth asking? You just listened to the posts titled, A Minimalist, a Japanese Cowboy and an Arrogant American Walk Into Museum. And, is this what you've been waiting for your entire life?

[00:06:58] Both by Joshua Fields Milburn of TheMinimalist.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Joshua. The Minimalists were the first authors to give me permission to narrate their work. That's why Episode 1 is from them.

[00:07:12] And actually I did a flashback to Episode 1 for Episode 3000 recently, so maybe you got a chance to hear that. Anyway, the second post reminded me of a couple of things. One is how outside appearances really don't mean anything at all.

[00:07:29] Someone can drive the most expensive car in the world and that doesn't mean that they're rich or happy. The other thing that reminds me of is this idea that everything's a journey rather than a destination. Meaning, we might constantly wait for a specific goal to be reached

[00:07:47] like a certain weight on the scale or a certain amount of money in the bank. Maybe retirement. So we spend all this time fixated on that goal only to realize that once we reach it, not much has changed if anything. Just a lot of time has passed.

[00:08:05] Happiness doesn't magically appear. It's a regular theme that comes up now and again on this show, but I think it's an important reminder. So a good question to ask ourselves as we start this week. Wherever we are right now,

[00:08:19] is this what we've been waiting for our entire lives? That should do it for the Monday show. Hope you're having a great start to your week and I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.