"Simplify, Simplify" (Modern Wisdom from Thoreau's Walden) | Jen Tota McGivney (EP392)
Minimalist Moms Podcast | Simple Living for Overwhelmed Moms
Diane Boden
4.8 • 952 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Discover Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy of living a good life and learn how to apply it to your own. In this episode, Diane chats with Jen Tota McGivney, the author of Finding Your Walden about how Henry David Thoreau’s timeless wisdom can help us simplify, strive less, and embrace what truly matters. They explore practical ways to live more intentionally—through digital sabbaths, mindful consumption, and creating space for personal retreats. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed or craving a slower pace, this conversation offers thoughtful insight and modern applications of Thoreau’s classic call to live deliberately.
Links Discussed in This Episode |
- Previous Episode: Beyond Organic, Local, Delivered: Rethinking the Way We Grocery Shop | Benji Balmer (Yellowbird Foodshed) (EP390)
- Jen's Beneficial Resource: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lammot
- Connect with Jen:
- Website
- Book: Finding Your Walden: How to Strive Less, Simplify More, and Embrace What Matters Most
About Jen|
Jen Tota McGivney is a writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She’s the back-page columnist for Charlotte Magazine, and her work also appears in Success Magazine, Our State Magazine, and Simplify Magazine, among others. She has a master’s degree in English and a soft spot for the transcendentalists. Finding Your Walden is her first book.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Reading Thoreau helps me focus on how I live over how I seem. |
| 0:05.3 | And it may seem obvious, but I think so much of today we really want to seem a certain way. |
| 0:10.5 | We want to give off a certain impression. |
| 0:12.5 | And it comes across in the work that we do, where we live, what we drive, and all of these decisions. |
| 0:18.6 | What I like about Thoreau is he's like, take a minute, |
| 0:21.6 | take a breath, keep a little bit of a retreat from you in the world so you can maintain that interiority and always live a value-based life, even if society is trying to move as fast as it can. The point wasn't to have and to do less. The point was to have and to do more of what mattered. And to remember that we are, |
| 0:38.6 | like I said, we're spending more than our money. We're spending our lives. I think this is where |
| 0:42.1 | total freedom is. If someone is willing to go their own way to live the life that is best for them |
| 0:48.2 | instead of living a life that fits into everyone else, life is a experiment. And no one knows how to |
| 0:53.5 | do it right. You have to figure it out |
| 0:54.9 | as you go. But I think it's a perpetual experiment. Hello and welcome to the minimalist |
| 1:00.0 | moms podcast. Discover Henry David Thoreau's philosophy of living a good life and learn how to |
| 1:06.3 | apply it to your own. In this episode, I chat with Jen Tota McGivney, the author of Finding Your |
| 1:13.0 | Walden, about how Henry David Thoreau's timeless wisdom can help us simplify, strive less, |
| 1:18.6 | and embrace what truly matters. We explore practical ways to live more intentionally |
| 1:22.8 | through digital Sabbaths, mindful consumption, and creating space for personal retreats. So whether you're |
| 1:28.4 | feeling overwhelmed or craving a slower pace, this conversation offers thoughtful reminders |
| 1:33.1 | and modern applications of Thoreau's classic call to live deliberately. But before we get there, |
| 1:38.5 | I quickly want to share a minimalist moment of the week. So for those of you who caught my conversation |
| 1:43.5 | with Benji Balmer, which I'll |
| 1:44.6 | be sure to link in the show notes if you haven't. It's a great one to go listen to if you've been |
| 1:48.3 | considering purchasing more of your groceries through local farmers, which honestly, summer |
... |
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