3539: Minimalism: The Lean Life by Leo Babauta of Mnmlist on How to Be More Intentional

[00:00:00] ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten – für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern. All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow. Mehr auf servicenow.de slash AI for People

[00:00:30] It's a Minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily. Minimalism, The Lean Life by Leo Babauta of MnMList.com and I'm Justin Malik. Happy Monday and welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD Podcast, where I read to you from some of the best blogs I can find and get permission from, mostly covering personal development and minimalism on this show. We cover a bunch of other topics in the Optimal Living Daily Podcast Network, which includes four other shows. Definitely subscribe to those if you like this one. Just search for them.

[00:01:00] for optimal living daily to find them. But for now, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. Minimalism, The Lean Life by Leo Babauta of MnMList.com Often people think that having more will lead to greater comfort, pleasure, happiness, and security. But in my experience, living a leaner life leads to greater freedom, lightness, happiness, and peace.

[00:01:29] Take the example of traveling. There's the case of the prepared traveler. You can travel with everything you think you might need, from every possible outfit combination to equipment, food, tons of electronics, books, notebooks, travel pillows and blankets, multiple shoes, and more. This person has to lug around a rolling suitcase plus a backpack, making travel more burdensome, more stressful, more tiring. It takes a while to travel anywhere, and then you're tired when you get there.

[00:01:57] Then there's the case of the light traveler. She carries almost nothing, just the essentials, and doesn't have to lug around anything heavy. As a result, she's faster, lighter, more energized, with greater freedom. She doesn't always have everything she might want, but she has what she needs, and learns to make do with less. It's actually not hard once you learn a few skills, and you don't feel stressed out.

[00:02:20] This leanness values freedom, lightness, flexibility, energy, and contentment over maximum comfort, just-en-casedness, or having it all. A few other lean examples. Number one, weight. If you eat less, sure, you don't get the gastronomical pleasures of someone who eats a huge amount of delicious food every day, but you learn to be happy with enough so that you eat good, healthy food and find pleasure outside of eating instead.

[00:02:48] And then you're leaner and lighter, which allows you not only to be healthier, but you can do more activities with more energy. You can zip up a mountain, or run a marathon, or climb a rock wall with much more ease. Living with a leaner body is easier on the joints, less stressful, and gives you greater freedom. Number two, possessions. Lots of people shoot for a bigger house, accumulating more stuff over the years. Feeling like more gives them greater comfort and security, and ability to pursue hobbies and the like.

[00:03:17] I'm not immune to this myself. Instead, you could try going with less stuff. Imagine a bare room with a mattress, a few books, a notebook, a laptop, and a handful of clothes. A cushion for meditating, a bowl for eating, a pot for cooking beans and veggies. I'm not saying you should have a house like this, but could you be happy with so little? I believe a wonderful life could be led with such leanness. And in doing so, you'd be lighter, less stressed, with less financial burden.

[00:03:46] You'd be less bloated and content with less. Number three, finances. Speaking of less financial burden, we often believe that having a bigger income will lead to greater happiness. And at the lower levels, when you go from poverty to the middle class, this is true. You don't have to worry so much about putting food on the table. But when you go beyond this level and have more and more income, you often have to work more in order to get it.

[00:04:12] And then you fill your life with possessions, bigger bills, more expensive cars, a more expensive house, more expensive luxuries. This doesn't lead to greater happiness. Even if your income doesn't get too high, you might load yourself up with expenses and get into debt. This is stressful and a huge burden. Instead, living lean means you downsize your life so that you have fewer bills, you buy fewer things, you don't spend a ton, and instead find contentment with little.

[00:04:39] And this not only gives you greater freedom and flexibility, but less stress. You can work less, travel more, and focus more on experiences that cost little than on experiences and possessions that cost a lot. Number four, business. If you own a business, you know that it's easy to invest in the business by spending a lot so that your business will grow. There's nothing wrong with this exactly except that these expenses can quickly add up and then you're burdened with lots of expenses and not enough income.

[00:05:07] Your debt grows, your stress grows as you worry about how you're going to pay for everything, you work harder than ever to get more income, but as you do, your business grows in complexity and the expenses add up. Instead, there's the option of creating a lean business. This is one that doesn't take a lot of employees, that you bootstrap yourself instead of getting investors or debt, that you grow slowly but sustainably, and then you can limit so that you don't have to work crazy hours.

[00:05:33] This leanness leads to greater flexibility, less burden, less stress, and greater contentment. You can see a theme here as we go through these examples. That will extend to any area of your life. Leanness leads to greater freedom, flexibility, lightness, and contentment. That's not a bad deal for sacrificing luxuries and excess. Getting to lean is a matter of slimming down a little at a time, figuring out what you can live with and still have optimal happiness.

[00:05:59] At some point, you'll experience the joy of letting go and getting light, which is a beautiful thing. You just listened to the post titled, Minimalism, The Lean Life, by Leo Babauta of mnmlist.com, and I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth products are designed to transform your five to nine, the time that matters most, into the coziest sanctuary. Seriously.

[00:06:27] With Cozy Earth, my bedroom now is my personal retreat. With Cozy Earth's bamboo sheet set, luxury starts where you rest. These sheets are buttery soft, keep me at the perfect temperature all night, and I feel like I'm sleeping in a five-star hotel. And the bath sheets are a game changer. They're huge, super absorbent, and super soft. Now here's what I love most. They offer a hundred-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all Cozy Earth bedding and bath products.

[00:06:56] Try them risk-free, but I'm pretty sure you won't be sending anything back. Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Head to CozyEarth.com and use my code OLD for 40% off sheets, towels, pajamas, and more. If you get a survey after purchasing, mention you heard about them right here on the podcast. That's 40% off at CozyEarth.com with code OLD. Sanctuary awaits at Cozy Earth. Thank you to Leo.

[00:07:24] So MNMList stands for minimalist, but I want to make sure you understand how it's spelled. MNMList.com. He's also the creator of the massive site ZenHabits.net, which also covers minimalism, but a lot more about self-help, productivity, and building habits, obviously. And some of what he said reminds me of principles I read in one of my favorite books, Your Money or Your Life, where they showed a graph, a curve, of how, yes, when looking at poverty levels, making more money improves happiness substantially,

[00:07:55] but the higher you go, the slope goes down, meaning the increase in happiness for each extra dollar earned goes down and down until you hit a point where it's pretty much just flat, and that's what they simply call enough. And after that, it's actually not unusual for happiness to go the other way. It goes down with every dollar earned. It's fascinating stuff. You can read more about that in the book, Your Money or Your Life. It was actually required reading for me in business school, but I'll leave it at that. Hope your week is off to a great start.

[00:08:23] Thank you for being here and listening to me and for subscribing to the show, and I'll catch you next time where your optimal life awaits.