every little thing that you need

every little thing that you're feeding your greed

oh I bet you'll be fine without it

hello everybody welcome to the minimalist podcast or rediscuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less my name is Joshua Phil's Melbourne and I'm Ryan Nicodemus and together we're the minimalist today we're gonna talk about things that matter you know things like waffle irons and gold watches and handbags that are laden with logos

and I'm just kidding wait a minute we are going to talk about on the public podcast today we're talking about the things that matter which happens to be the title of Joshua Becker's new book you should have a month

let's the general the Joshua Becker is here yeah one of one of the original inspirations I mean yes I don't think we would be the minimalist without your inspiration

yes you definitely got this and you know that when we first discovered minimalism it was calling right who owned you know 52 things which was great but seeing your example was amazing like oh well you can have a family and full time job and house in the suburbs and you can be a regular person and be a minimalist I'm in yeah and so Joshua Becker and his wife Kim and their two kids they were a big inspiration for us early on we're gonna talk about today the things that matter we're gonna answer your questions this Thursday on the minimalist price

that podcast we're going to we're going to talk about a few things including the areas of minimalism and other areas in which we disagree we'll also talk about overcoming distractions using minimalism you can check that out at patreon.com slash the minimalist your support keeps our podcast and YouTube channel 100% advertisement free because advertisements suck Joshua Becker this is a listener driven show we're so grateful you're here let's start with a question from Diane on paper

patreon how do I know what truly matters what can I do if I'm struggling to find meaning in my daily activities hmm well I thought we'd start with an easy question

I'll say why don't you guys take a stab at it and then I can try to well thanks I have this book here it's called things that matter and on page two 10 literally you have this chapter about discovering your purposes plural purposes right and you've got this great

then diagram in here where you talk about the intersection of your passions your abilities and others needs now some maybe we could start by by sort of expanding on those three areas

passions abilities and people's needs so I think science backs up my assumption that when we live our lives for other people when we live a selfless life helping other people that we reach the end of our lives with more satisfaction and how we chose to live

and so the book is all about how do I overcome some of these distractions of money possessions leisure the trivial technology so that I can live a life that that brings the greatest good to the greatest number of people and be proud of the way I lived throughout my life

and what matters most to us or the good that we can bring into the world is always going to differ based on I think what our talents and abilities are what our passions are and then finding that intersection with what other people's needs are we can be passionate about things that don't help other people we can be passionate about things that we're not very good at but when we find that that then diagram we find that sweet spot of who am I what am I passionate about and who can I help

and it looks different for different people like my wife would say like her greatest passion her greatest purpose is to raise our two children and I would say I want to reach a million people on my block like it I want to inspire people unless and so it looks it looks different for different people but I think that's where the diagram fits together

yeah I think that we often get overwhelmed because we think we're born to do one thing I'm supposed to do justice one thing and then we go search around for it wondering whether or not this is the thing that I'm supposed to do and the book what you lay out is yeah it's true there are many things that you can be passionate about

now part of passion involves some sort of excitement meaning like this thing really makes me feel focused or alive but sometimes in fact the root of the word passion means to suffer right pass us means to suffer and so quite often it's the thing that makes us feel alive that we have suffered for in order to get there and so I think there's a sort of amalgamation so if I am tackling Diane's question head on really if she can't find her passion where does she see that?

passion where does she start other than you have some worksheets in your book I mean that's a great place to start but if you just listen to the podcast where does she start?

I would I would tell her to start doing something for somebody else and something you feel inspired to do this is a little bit unrelated but I sound so smart when I say it like I think one of the biggest problems in the world today is that we

judge people who are passionate about different problems than we are too harshly and so if you're not passionate about the exact same problem I'm passionate about then you're off and you're you're not compassionate or you're distracted or whatever it might be but in reality I think we're all wired differently and there are a multitude of problems in the world

and so what's her name Diane I would tell Diane I would say what is one thing that you are one problem that you see in the world that you want to be a part of the solution yes and then go maybe find one person that you can help in that area or maybe it's a nonprofit in your community that's doing that already but just go start doing something and allow that ship to steer

because it's out in the ocean rather than still sitting in port yeah another way to look at it is you know ask yourself Diane how have you been helped that has really changed your life or that has affected your life I mean that's where we're the

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