013: Minimalist Gift-Giving by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of TheMinimalists.com

Before we start, please check out our new podcast Good Sleep. Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting. They can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true Good Sleep. So press play on Good Sleep tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a Good Night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. A quick note on this show you hear about how meditation is great for us, actually doing it is the hard part. But walking meditation can be just as powerful and easier to fit into your day. So let's walk together for 10 to 15 minutes on my new podcast. I'd love for you to join me. Just search for Step Into Calm in your podcast app and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 13, minimalist gift giving by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of theminimalist.com. Get ready to maximize your potential with Optimal Living Daily, the podcast that brings you the best in personal development and productivity every day of the week, your Optimal Life awaits. Now here's your host Justin Mollick. (upbeat music) Merry Christmas Eve, if you celebrate it and welcome back or welcome first timers. This is Optimal Living Daily, where I read to you some wonderful content that already exists somewhere. You know, why try to create new content through our long interviews when there is already so much on the internet that we could consume? And all this podcast requires is 10 or so minutes of your time each day and you can be on your way to optimizing your life. And today, since it is Christmas Eve, I thought a nice post about minimalist gift giving would do the trick. So I'll be reading to you a post from theminimalist.com this time from both Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. They've actually written some books together and their first one has just been updated and released. So I definitely recommend checking that out. It's called minimalism, living a meaningful life and the audiobook is absolutely free if you use my link, audibletrial.com/old. That's audibletrial.com/old. You'll get a free 30 day trial of audible through there and even if you cancel, you can keep the audiobook. So once again, that's audibletrial.com/old. And now let's get this moving and start optimizing your life. (crickets chirping) Minimalist gift giving by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of theminimalist.com. Last year we visited 100 cities in eight countries during our everything that remains tour and one question arose in nearly every city positive by parents and children, husbands and wives, even reporters. How do minimalists handle gift giving? Naturally, this question spawned other questions which we decided to reproduce and answer below. Question, before you are minimalist, how did you approach holiday gift giving? Answer from Ryan. Obligatorally, many of us give material items to attempt to make up for the time we don't spend with the people we love. I did this for years. Here's a necktie or a pair of cufflinks or an oven mitt because today is December 25th. Now what'd you get me? Usually little thought went into it. I felt obligated to give something, anything just for the sake of giving without understanding why I was actually giving. I purchased gifts without asking any of the important questions such as, what's the purpose behind giving this particular gift? Will the recipient find value in this gift? Is this something they need? How could I make this more meaningful for both of us? These are important questions, but we rarely ask them because the answers aren't as easy as simply checking the box with a shiny new widget. Question, how do you handle gift giving these days? Do you buy gifts, make gifts, shun gifts? Answer from Joshua. I tend to avoid physical gifts, but I still enjoy participating in the holidays. I now give gifts of experiences, charitable donations, or if I give material goods, I give consumables such as a bottle of wine or a bag of coffee from a local roaster. It must be something someone can use, or if it's an experience, it's a memory that can be shared from concert tickets to an evening of watching the sunset together. It sounds cliche until you actually do it and then you realize it's great. Question, do you have any tips for how to resist the gift giving frenzy? Answer from Ryan. Here are the five steps we've taken to make our holidays more meaningful. Number one, avoid holiday door buster sales. Whether it's Black Friday or any of the subsequent big shopping weekends, it's best to abstain. Consumption is an unquenchable thirst. Retailers and advertisers and manufacturers know this too well and these sales are designed to take advantage of our insatiable desire to consume. Instead, support your local businesses. Support the people in your community who are making a difference. Number two, gift your time. If you could receive only one Christmas present this year, what would it be? The answer for me is simple, time. The best present is presence with a C, not a T. You see, the people I care about mean much more to me than a new pair of shoes or a fancy new gadget or even a certified pre-owned luxury car with a huge bow on top. So the next time someone asks you what you want for Christmas, consider responding, your presence is the best present you can give me. Number three, gift experiences, not stuff. Here's an idea, what if you decided to gift only experiences this year? How much more memorable will your holidays be? Your experience is build and strengthen the bond between you and the people you care about. Don't you think you'll find more value in these experiences than in material gifts? Don't you think your loved ones will find more value too? Number four, ask for better Christmas gifts. I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss the gift of giving, the gift of contribution. The age old apathem is true, to spend better to give than to receive. Last year I gave my birthday to charity water and we raised thousands of dollars with friends and family to give to clean water to hundreds of people in Cambodia who didn't previously have access to it. Perhaps you can do the same this Christmas. Instead of gifts, you can ask people to donate to your favorite charity in your name. Wouldn't that feel better than a superfluous necktie, a pair of shoes or a piece of jewelry? If you're looking for a good charity, consider donating to the orphanage we're building or visit Give Well for a list of other effective nonprofits who are doing good in the world. Number five, have a soup kitchen Christmas. You can do what we do many years and donate your time to a local soup kitchen or homeless shelter or any place that needs volunteers. Two years ago, Joshua and I were in Vancouver during Christmas where we and a local group of our readers donated part of our Christmas day to a food bank in need of help during the holidays. You see, sometimes we have to contribute to help other people but sometimes we need to contribute to help ourselves. When we step into our discomfort zones and contribute beyond ourselves, we grow, we experience the world in a different way and we gain new perspectives from which to be thankful. Question, any tips for great gifts that don't break the bank? Answer from Ryan. To reiterate my third point above, here are some meaningful experiences that won't break the bank. Take us to a special event, a home cook to meal, walking somewhere together without a plan, full body massage, a sincere handwritten letter, your time and undivided attention. Some more ideas, hot springs, cross country skiing, hiking, backpacking, camping, volunteering, Christmas tree hunting, sun-rye seeking. Question, how do your families feel about your minimalist ways? Do they expect you to buy them gifts? Answer from Joshua. Ultimately, it comes down to setting the appropriate expectations with the people in our lives. Yes, gift giving is a common practice in our society. Yes, many people, friends, family, co-workers, expect us to hand out gifts on holidays. And yes, it is difficult to deviate from this in-veterate tradition, especially in today's consumer-driven heavily mediate world in which our adequacy is constantly questioned. But if we make our intentions and expectations known to friends and family, if we explain why we're making decisions we're making, then we will find that the people who love us will support the choices we make, whether that's choosing not to participate in gift giving or gifting alternatively and creatively. It is support, not gift giving, that is a hallmark of love. Question, there are some deep psychological issues for people around gift giving, especially involving the idea that people are providing for their kids and that the size and cost of the gift demonstrates their love. Any thoughts on how to stay focused on meaningful gifts? Answer from Joshua, you're right. And of course, no matter the time of year, there's always another holiday lurking somewhere around the corner, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Swedish Day, birthdays, Christmas. We've programmed ourselves to give and receive gifts on these and many other holidays to show our love for one another. We've been told gift giving is one of our quote, "love languages." This idea is ridiculous, yet we treat it as gospel. I love you. See, here's this expensive shiny thing I bought you. To stay focused, we must first focus on the right things. We must change our focus from consumption and obligation to love and support. To change these ingrained patterns, we must change our mindsets. This is something we as a society rarely discuss. Gift giving is not a love language any more than pig Latin is a romance language. A obligatory gift giving is a pernicious cultural imperative and we've bought it literally, hook line and sinker. We've become consumers of love. The grotesque idea that we can somehow commodify love is nauseating. We often give gifts to show our love because we are troubled by real love. Buying diamonds is not evidence of everlasting devotion. Commitment, trust, understanding, these are indications of devotion. Gift giving is by definition transactional, but love is not a transaction. Love is transcendent. It transcends language and material possessions and can be demonstrated only through our thoughts, actions and intentions. Perhaps Jonathan France instead of best in his wonderful book, farther away. Quote, "Love is about bottomless empathy. Born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. To love a specific person and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of yourself." But obligatory gift giving isn't surrendering yourself to someone. It's surrendering to consumerism and the status quo. This doesn't mean there's something necessarily wrong with buying a gift for someone, but we needn't fool ourselves by associating that gift with true love. Love doesn't work that way. Instead of thinking of love as some sort of "abstrews emotion," let's think of love as an action verb. If we want to show our love for others, we must do so with our actions. Creating great experiences for the most important people in our lives, gifting experiences, not stuff is a great place to start. You just listen to the post-titled Minimalist Gift Giving by Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of the Minimalist.com. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or non-sleep deep rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this yoga-needra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true Good Sleep. So press play on Good Sleep tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a Good Night Sleep. Again, I recommend checking out their newly updated book called Minimalism, Live a Meaningful Life, which again can be read to you just like I read this post to you. And you can get a free book if you visit audibletrials.com/old. You'll also get a free 30-day trial and you can cancel it anytime and keep the book. And with the topic of gift giving and all, I would like to mention that what I'm doing here right now is free and to date I've made exactly zero dollars of income from this podcast. It actually loses about $300 a month when I combine the server charges to host a site and be threes and everything else. So I very recently added a place to contribute on my site at oldpodcast.com. So if you're in the mood to support the show and want to be the first one ever to support it at the time of this recording, then I don't know what I could say to express my gratitude to you. What I do know is that with patrons of the show, it'll definitely keep me motivated to continue bringing this content to you for free, which is really what I'd like to do. And with that, we end the show. Have a Merry Christmas tomorrow. Of course, I'll wish you tomorrow as well. So make sure you hit the subscribe button to get the next episode and I'll see you there. Your optimal life awaits. [Music]