Name: The Art of Letting Go | The Minimalists | TEDxFargo
Uploaded: 2018-06-21T10:14:28.000Z
Duration: 18 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Morgane Quilfen Reviewer: Helena Bedalli

Joshua: My name is Joshua Fields Millburn and this is Ryan Nicodemus.

Together, we run a website called theminimalists.com

and we promise the folks we'd kick things off this afternoon

So, I'd like to talk about something uplifting.

If any of you are uncomfortable talking about death,

now might be a good time for you to leave.

I have a feeling we will be seeing him again in a minute.

I was 28 years old, and up until that point in my life,

The six-figure salary, the luxury cars, the closets full of expensive clothes,

the big suburban house with more toilets than people,

to filled every corner of my consumer-driven lifestyle.

And then my mom died. And my marriage ended.

And these two events forced me to look around

and start to question what had become my life's focus.

I realized I was so focused on so-called "success" and "achievement,"

and especially, on the accumulation of stuff.

And it took getting everything I thought I wanted,

to realize that everything I ever wanted wasn't actually what I wanted at all.

You see, just a year earlier, mom, she moved from Ohio down to Florida,

Because that's what you do when you live in the Midwest.

And, well a few months after she moved down there,

I spent a lot of time with her down in Florida that year,

as she went through her chemo and radiation.

And when she passed, I realized I needed to make one last trip,

So, I flew from Dayton, Ohio, down to St. Pete Beach, Florida,

and when I arrived, I found about three apartments' worth of stuff

crammed in a mom's tiny one-bedroom apartment.

But don't get me wrong, it's not like mom was a hoarder,

I mean, I didn't find any dead cats in her freezer.

that the average American household has more than 300,000 items in it?

But of course, most of us aren't hoarders, right?

We hold onto a lifetime of collected memories.

I called U-Haul and I asked for the largest truck they had.

I had to wait an extra-day, until the 26-foot truck was available.

And as I waited for that U-Haul to arrive,

I invited some of mom's friends over to help me deal with her stuff.

I mean, there was just too much stuff to go at it alone.

Her living room was stuffed with big antique furniture,

And her kitchen was stuffed with hundreds of plates, and cups,

with enough hygiene products to start a small beauty supply business.

well, it looked like someone was running a hotel out of her linen closet,

which was stuffed with mismatched bath towels, and beach towels,

and bed sheets, and blankets, and quilts.

And don't even get me started on her bedroom.

Why did mom have 14 winter coats stuffed in her bedroom closet?

Now, come on, she lived in St. Pete Beach, Florida!

Suffice it to say mom owned a lot of stuff,

and I had no idea what to do with any of it.

So, I did what any good son would do; I rented a storage locker.

When I called, I asked for the largest storage unit they had.

"Do you want one that's climate-controlled?"

Climate-controlled, just so mom's stuff could be comfortable?

No, I don't want one that's climate-controlled,

just give me a big box with a padlock on it!

You see, I couldn't co-mingle mom's stuff with my stuff,

I already had a big house, and a full basement full of stuff.

A storage locker would let me hold on to everything!

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The Art of Letting Go | The Minimalists | TEDxFargo

stuff

ultimately

entire

material