511 | Holding On
The Minimalists
Joshua Fields Millburn
4.7 • 11.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Minimalists speak with Ryan Holiday about how the stoics dealt with sentimental items, the potential virtue of holding on, stoical insights about values, regrets, mental clutter, seven things minimalists would never put in their living room, and much more.
Discussed in this episode:
How would the stoics have handled their sentimental items? (2:40)
When is it virtuous to hold on? (22:13)
Right Here, Right Now: Books a Clutter Counseling session with T.K. (43:05)
Listener Tip: A poem about the weight of the needs of others. (44:19)
Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to podcast@themins.com.
Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists
Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast
Recorded at Earthing Studios.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Every little thing that you think that you think that you need. |
| 0:24.8 | Every little thing you think that you need. |
| 0:29.4 | Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. |
| 0:33.9 | Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it. |
| 0:45.4 | Yes, welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. |
| 0:52.4 | My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here at Earthing Studios in Rainy, West Hollywood, California. |
| 0:56.1 | It's my good friend T.K. Coleman. It's rainy, but it's still a holiday in my heart. Well, today we're joined by one of the world's best-selling living philosophers. |
| 1:02.7 | His books about stoicism have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold more |
| 1:08.2 | than 5 million copies. He's also the author of a new book called |
| 1:12.6 | Wisdom Takes Work. Please welcome back to the show. Our returning champion, Ryan Holliday is here. |
| 1:21.0 | It's been a while, man. Yeah, when was it? I want to say 2019-ish. We were in our old studio space. |
| 1:28.0 | Maybe it was even 2020. |
| 1:29.2 | No, I think it was 2019. |
| 1:30.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:31.0 | Yeah, it was a while ago. We were talking about stillness is the key back then. That would have been 2019. Yeah, yeah. That was a great episode. One of my favorites that we've done, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. But today, we're going to bring you into our world a bit. |
| 1:43.4 | We have a bunch of questions |
| 1:44.3 | we've curated that are stoicism-adjacent minimalist questions from our audience. We're going to be |
| 1:50.9 | talking about how the stoics dealt with sentimental items or maybe how they would have |
| 1:55.5 | dealt with them, the potential virtue of holding on to things. Also, some stoical insights about values, regrets, |
| 2:04.0 | and mental clutter, and much, much more. Plus, on page three, we'll discuss seven things |
| 2:08.9 | minimalists would never put in their living room. Let's start with our callers. If you have a |
| 2:13.4 | question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219. 7839 is the phone number. |
... |
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