Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life

by Joshua Fields Millburn

Sleep

“How to Get Smarter, Sleep More, and Get More Sex,” by Julien Smith, and it can be found online at inoveryourhead.net/sleep-is-awesome/.

we encourage you to create a list of things on which you have procrastinated, and turn those shoulds into musts—find leverage so you can take action).

You must eat a nutritional diet to be healthy. You must exercise regularly to be healthy. You must eliminate harmful substances. You must treat your body like it is your most precious possession—because it is.

Without your relationships, you are unable to live a meaningful life.

your relationships are the people with whom you have frequent contact, the people around you—friends, partners, spouses, lovers, roommates, coworkers, acquaintances, or anyone you interact with on a regular basis.

You can learn from your past relationships, though. The good times tell you what went well and give you a strategy by which you can model your future. And the bad times help you identify how things went wrong and give you clues and social cues by which you can avoid bad relationships in the future.

There are three ways to create better relationships: 1. Find great new relationships. 2. Transform your current relationships. 3. Change who you are.

Evaluating Current Relationships It’s time to take an honest look at your current relationships. Do they make you happy? Do they satisfy you? Are they supportive? Do they help you grow? Do they contribute to your life in positive, meaningful ways? These

Positive relationships make you happy and help you grow. Negative relationships make you unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, or dissatisfied. They can stunt your personal growth. Neutral relationships are somewhere between positive and negative. They don’t necessarily make you unhappy, and most of the time you feel ambivalent toward the emotions you feel from them.

First, take a look at everyone in your peripheral tier. Are some of these folks people you’d like to see play a larger role in your life? Are they the people you’d like to have in your primary or secondary tiers?

The idea here is to focus on creating the most meaningful relationships possible—relationships that will reside in your top two tiers.

Change Yourself, Not Others You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

Just because someone has changed, doesn’t mean they don’t love you—it doesn’t mean they don’t care about you immensely—it simply means they’ve changed.

Moreover, you cannot expect a person to change in every way you want them to.

The only person you can change is yourself.

when your relationships grow, you feel alive.

Making Passionate Relationships Work Commonalities make relationships work, but differences make relationships exciting and passionate. You need both—commonalities and differences—to make passionate relationships work long-term.

The best relationships share a healthy combination of commonalities and differences. While you embrace the things in common, you learn to respect and enjoy the differences. You will thus understand the balance of certainty and variety necessary for a sustainable, meaningful relationship.

love, trust, honesty, caring, support, attention, authenticity, and understanding.

Love It is possible to dislike certain parts of a person and still love every piece of them.

Trust When you absolutely trust someone, you are open—you are the real you—which fosters the closest possible relationship.

Honesty

lying is wrong and harmful to your relationships. “Honesty is a gift we can give others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity,”

“Honesty is a gift we can give others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity,”

“Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare f...

Caring

Caring means you are concerned enough about someone to express it through your consistent actions.

Therefore, caring is a verb: your actions are how you show someone you care.

we all value someone who genuinely cares about us, about our feelings, about our lives. Ergo, we must act accordingly.

Support

meaning, not only do you care about the other person, but you are genuinely excited when they’re excited, you’re genuinely happy that they’re happy, and you encourage them to grow as you grow, allowing you to grow side by side.

Attention

the importance of being present—the importance of living in the moment

Authenticity Think of a person you respect for their honesty, their openness, their integrity. You know a few people like this, right? Pick one, and think about that person for a moment. This person feels real to you. Genuine. Authentic. It’s refreshing to be around this person, to get to know this person, to interact with them. We feel safe around authentic people, as if we could reveal to them our deepest, darkest secrets, as if we could trust them with anything. And when we get to know these people on a deeper level—when we establish a connection with them—it’s refreshing to discover they are who we thought they were, that beneath the surface they are authentically themselves. Authentic people have no agenda, and yet they have aspirations. Authentic people are trustworthy, and yet sometimes they fall short. Authentic people are awesome, and yet sometimes they are superficial. Authentic people care enough to listen, and yet sometimes they don’t hear everything. Authentic people can weather the storm, and yet they get wet. Authentic people are passionate, content, carefree, calm, kind, and helpful—and yet authentic people are still people, they are human beings, and thus they worry, possess doubt, and make mistakes and bad decisions. Authentic people are fallible. Authentic people are flawed. Authentic people are fearful. Authentic people are tempted by lust and greed—by all the trappings of this world. None of us is perfect, but we all have the capacity to be authentic, ...

Understanding

Tolerate.

you need only understand you both have your reasons for being on separate pages.

Accept.

Respect.

Appreciate.

you honestly appreciate the other person’s desires, values, and beliefs.

Many of us navigate different roads toward happiness, but even if we travel separate routes, it is important we appreciate the journey—not only ours, but the journey of everyone we love. When we appreciate others for who they are, not who we want them to be, then, and only then, will we understand.

What drives the other person? What do they want? What do they need? What excites them? What are their desires? What are their pains? What do they enjoy? What makes them happy? If you can answer these questions, you’ll be better equipped with the understanding you need to meet their needs.

Nourish Your Relationships

having meaningful relationships is worth every bit of effort you put into them.

Cultivating your passions is the most important of the Five Values.

Now imagine you wake up tomorrow and the next day and then the next day with nothing to do, nothing to be excited about, nothing to fuel your fire.

you can take before you realize passion is missing from your life, before you realize your life lacks meaning. You will not feel fulfilled if your life lacks passion.

Whatever you do, the level of passion you have for what you do can sometimes be measured by the label you give your work. People tend to designate one of three labels to their work: job, career, or mission.