PDF Summary:Minimalism, by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Minimalism offers a formula for how to live a meaningful life by first getting rid of clutter (like excess stuff and debt) and then focusing on five key areas: your health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others.

The authors Millburn and Nicodemus achieved the American dream of corporate success and conspicuous consumption, but it left them unhappy, exhausted, and deeply in debt. They quit their jobs, re-examined their lives, and started the popular website TheMinimalists.com. In this book, they explain how anyone can follow their path of self-examination and how to make small daily changes to achieve a clutter-free, debt-free, and fulfilling life.

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The authors say there are three ways to have stronger relationships: Seek out valuable new relationships, improve your current relationships, and change yourself. The first step is examining your past and present relationships. You can learn from past relationships, good or bad, and apply the lessons to improve current and future relationships. Then evaluate your current relationships by considering whether they’re positive, negative, or neutral, and whether they belong in your primary (closest family and friends), secondary (similar to primary but of less value), or peripheral (minor characters in your life) circle. Your relationships don’t stay the same throughout your life. You must actively choose relationships, which requires difficult decisions.

Changing Relationships

Because people change over time, you can’t expect others to stay the same or change according to your wishes. However, changing yourself can improve your relationships and even encourage positive changes in others. That said, occasionally you may have to end a relationship if someone’s beliefs and values change in a way that you can’t tolerate. Terminating or changing the terms of your relationships is part of managing them. You can try repairing a valued relationship, but know that you can usually step away.

Growing Relationships

The authors say that for a relationship to grow and improve, you must cultivate eight attributes: love, trust, honesty, caring, support, attentiveness, authenticity, and understanding. They suggest four behaviors for deepening your understanding (and avoiding misunderstandings) with the acronym TARA: tolerance, acceptance, respect, and appreciation. They’ll help you strengthen any important relationship, not just intimate ones. Occasionally TARA isn’t the right approach—if someone engages in harmful behavior (such as drugs, crime, or racism), you can’t accept their conduct, and you need to walk away. More often, however, practicing TARA can help you meet their needs and they can meet yours.

Future Relationships

Without a vision for your relationships, especially primary relationships, you’ll accept whatever is in front of you. You need a vision of what you want your relationships to be. The authors recommend considering three things when seeking new relationships or improving current ones: What do you want? What are your deal-breakers? How must you change to attract this kind of person? Once you’ve answered these questions, read this list daily to reinforce what you’re seeking, what you want to avoid, and how you must change.

Value 3: Passions

Passions are the third of the Five Values because you won’t feel fulfilled if your life lacks passion. This is often the root cause of the empty feelings many people experience. But there are things that get in the way of discovering your passions—starting with your work.

Anchors Blocking Your Passions

Many people who get stuck in the daily grind are held back by four main anchors:

• Identity: You believe your occupation defines who you are.
• Status: As people climb the corporate ladder, a feeling of status becomes part of their career identity. A perceived loss of status makes people feel ashamed or useless.
• Certainty: Everyone needs some level of certainty. It feels comfortable, but it can be the reason you don’t make changes—you don’t want to trade your comfort today for something that could be less comfortable tomorrow.
• Money: This is often the reason people keep doing something they hate. But while you need to make a living, you can do it while pursuing your passion. The best way to remove this anchor is to give it less importance and take control of your financial life by making good decisions with the resources you have, changing your financial habits, and living deliberately.

Finding Your Passions

You can find your passion by considering what you’d do with your life if money weren’t an object. Think about things that excite you the most—that’s probably your passion. Then, figure out how to turn your passion into your mission. To do this, emulate someone who’s already doing it. Of course, it isn’t easy. It takes action to remove your anchors and reject social messages so you can live a meaningful life. But it’s worth it to pursue your passions and live your mission. For example, after removing the anchors holding them back—like their career-based identities and their lavish lifestyles—the authors turned their passions into their mission: Writing for Millburn, mentoring others for Nicodemus.

Value 4: Growth

The last two values—growth and contributing to others—work hand in hand to create meaning in our lives: We need to grow as individuals and to contribute to improve others’ lives.

The authors write that growth is an ongoing process. You’re not finished after you make a change—you have to keep making changes. One way to do this is by taking a leap, a huge and immediate change like ending a relationship, quitting your job, or moving to a new city. However, the most important changes are baby steps that allow you to eventually take the leaps.

How to Change

The authors give five tips for making changes:

1. Make small changes daily. These small, gradual changes add up to huge changes over time.
2. Create leverage for change. Making the decision to change is easier if you give yourself a convincing rationale for doing so. You have leverage when you feel the benefits of changing are so great that you have no choice but to change.
3. Take action. Once you have enough leverage, act immediately—take a small step in the right direction to build momentum.
4. Raise the bar. If you want to continue to grow you have to keep raising your standards. What seems impossible at first eventually becomes easy, and if you don’t raise the bar a little every day, you’ll plateau or even lose ground.
5. Be consistent. It’s easier to raise the bar a little every day than to make a big jump once a week.

Value 5: Contributing to Others

Personal growth feels great, but reaching outward to contribute to others is also necessary for a balanced life. Humans have a built-in need to contribute beyond themselves. Moreover, the more you help others grow, the more you grow in turn.

The authors write that there are unlimited ways to contribute, and all of them have value. Here are some tips for getting started:

• Visit the website volunteermatch.org to see which organizations are looking for help.
• Explore different organizations until you find the one that’s right for you.
• Serve in a variety of ways, so you don’t get bored and lose motivation.
• Start your own thing. Some people come up with their own unique means of contributing. However, if you’re thinking of doing this, it’s useful to spend time volunteering for local organizations first to learn how you can best help.

Besides volunteering for a particular organization, you can find small ways to contribute as part of your current activities. The important thing is to do something that adds value to others’ lives. For example, you can mentor others at work.

Unless you contribute beyond yourself, your life will be perpetually self-serving. It’s OK to serve your own interests, but doing so exclusively creates an empty existence. A life without contributing to others is a life without meaning.

Tying It All Together

While contributing to others in whatever way you choose is a positive experience overall, not all positive experiences are the same. There are two types:

• Positive experiences you enjoy. This may include playing a sport, spending time with a friend, and opening a door for someone. They are the most effortless and rewarding experiences.
• Positive experiences you dislike. They include things that are good for you but take more effort—for instance, exercising daily or taking on new challenges.

The authors argue that positive experiences you dislike are the key to living a meaningful life. You need to find ways to transform the positive experiences you dislike into positive experiences you enjoy in order to change your life long-term. This strategy can be applied to every area of your life. Here are some examples of how to add enjoyment:

• Health: It’s not easy to exercise the first thing each morning. So focus on the fact that it will give you momentum and energy for the day ahead.
• Relationship: An engaged conversation with your partner may be difficult if you’re tired; just watching TV is easier. But it becomes enjoyable when you focus on the satisfaction of addressing the other person’s needs and strengthening your relationship.
• Passion: Working on your passion takes effort, compared to just going out with friends, but you can make the work enjoyable by singing, listening to music, or just appreciating the quiet time away from your phone.
• Growth: It’s easier to keep doing the same things instead of doing something new. Make new things more enjoyable by giving yourself “points” or small rewards for stepping out of your comfort zone. Ultimately, the activities will generate their own rewards.
• Contribution: Make volunteering a more enjoyable option by lining up less pleasant chores at home as your alternative. Or you could bring doughnuts and coffee to share with other volunteers.

Balancing the Five Values

So which of the Five Values (health, relationships, passions, growth, contributing to others) is most important? They’re all equally important, but the importance of each value for you changes over time. There are periods in which one particular value takes precedence over another. For instance, when your priority is building a new relationship or ending a relationship, the other values might take a back seat.

However, over time each person tends to give priority to two top values, usually the ones that come most naturally. Pay attention to which values you’re focusing on most—then adjust your focus to give attention to the other three. If you neglect growing in any area, you’ll feel stuck. Each day, ask yourself how you incorporated health, relationships, passion, growth, and contributing to others into your life. This will help you see how you’re spending your time.

The Formula for Success

How do you know if you’re living a meaningful life? There’s no definitive answer or checklist, and no one can answer the question for you—only you know for sure. However, Millburn and Nicodemus use what they call the Simple Success Formula. It can be applied to any of the Five Values (health, relationships, passion, growth, contributing to others): Success equals happiness plus constant improvement.

You’re successful in any area if you’re happy with where you are and constantly improving. For example, you may not be in the best physical shape, but if you’re happy with your daily progress, then you’re successful. If you’re not happy but are constantly improving, you’re on the right track.