Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life (6 page)

We all know that sitting on the couch, eating potato chips, and watching TV isn’t the path to a healthy lifestyle. But there is a common misconception that you must live on the other side of the exercise continuum to be healthy—as if you must run five miles every day, go to the gym four days a week, and be able to bench press a small European vehicle to be fit. But this isn’t true.

Defining Exercise

We aren’t concerned with looking like body builders with our vanity muscles bulging through our shirts. Instead, we’re concerned about being healthy, being fit, and feeling good about our physical fitness. Over the last few years, we’ve tried several things that have worked for us (and many other things that haven’t), and during this time we determined that the most important measurements of success were not measured in pounds on a scale, but rather by two things:

1. Are we constantly improving our fitness? 
   
2. Are we happy with our progress?
   

That’s how we measure our success. Because, face it, you could lose all the weight you want but still not be happy with your physical fitness. In fact, this happened to Joshua. 

Through a combination of pescatarianism and intermittent fasting, Joshua lost 70 pounds over a two-year span. On the surface this sounds great, and it certainly was a good thing. But, by age 28, even though he was 70 pounds lighter, he was flabby, doughy, and weak. But over two years, he developed small, simple daily habits that transformed him into the best shape of his life by age 30.

Daily Exercise Habits

We’ve both tried a bunch of different exercise techniques to improve our health over the last two years. We’ve gone to the gym four to six times per week. We’ve attempted running, lifting weights, playing sports, and a ton of other ways to exercise. And the good news is that they all work. Granted, some work better than others, but every exercise we’ve done has been better than doing nothing at all (which, often, was what we did before—nothing). 

After experimenting with different exercises for two years and speaking with several personal trainers, Joshua wrote about the daily exercise habits he had developed in an essay titled “18 Minute Minimalist Exercises.” That essay outlined his simple exercise habits, including the three principles and four exercises he embraces daily.

Joshua's Exercise Principles

1. Enjoying exercise
   . I only do exercises I enjoy. I don’t enjoy running, so I don’t do it. I attempted it for about six months and discovered it wasn’t for me. If you see me running, call the police, because someone is chasing me. Instead, I find other ways to do cardio: I walk every single day, I get on the elliptical machine at the gym, I do bodyweight exercises that incorporate cardio.
   
2. Exercise relieves stress
   . I use exercise as my number one means to kill stress. I love hitting the gym (or the park) in the evenings if I feel tense or stressed. Exercising at the end of a long, stressful day always gives me time in solitude to reflect on what’s important.
   
3. Variety keeps exercise fresh
   . When I first started exercising, I used to hit the gym three times per week, which was certainly better than not exercising at all. Then, as I got more serious, I started going to the gym daily—about six times per week (even when I was working 70 hours a week). This routine became incredibly time consuming, and doing the same thing over and over eventually caused me to plateau. These days I mix it up: I walk quite a bit every day, and I still got to the gym one or two times a week, but the thing that has made the biggest, most noticeable difference has been the variety of my daily 18-minute exercises.
   

Joshua's 18 Minute Exercises

Honestly, 18 minutes sounds like an arbitrary number—that’s because it is. When I started these bodyweight exercises, I didn’t have a specific window of time in mind. But I timed myself and discovered that almost every time I hit the park for my exercises, I was worn out within 18 minutes. Thus, these are my 18-minute exercises (all of which exercises you can do in your living room, outdoors, or just about anywhere else—even outside during a thunderstorm).

During my 18 minutes, I usually alternate between the following exercises. You can of course pepper in your own favorite exercises as well. And, yes, these exercises are suitable for men and women.

1. Push-ups
   . Like I said, two years ago I couldn’t do a push-up. Eventually I could do one push-up (after doing modified push-ups for a while). After a while, I could do 10 and then 20. Now I can do 100 or so, consecutively. I tend to do three to five sets, resulting in roughly 300 push-ups within my 18 minutes.
   
2. Pull-ups
   . Two years ago I thought I’d never be able to do a pull-up. I learned how to eventually do one pull-up by hanging from a pull-up bar, slowly building my strength. Soon I could do two pull-ups and then four. I can do 30 in a row now. I do three to five sets, resulting in roughly 100 pull-ups within my 18 minutes. I often use monkey bars at the park. You can use a pull-up bar at home. Leo Babauta uses tree branches. I used to hate pull-ups, but now it’s my favorite exercise.
   
3. Squats
   . I recently started doing bodyweight squats, and I’ve already noticed a huge difference. I’m only doing three or four sets of 20 right now, but I’ll continue to work my way up, and I’ll continue to grow.
   
4. Shoulder presses
   . I use two 20-pound dumbbells for shoulder presses. You can use smaller or larger weights, or any random object with a little weight (e.g., a large bag of rice or a couple gallons of water). I tend to do two to four sets, resulting in roughly 50 shoulder presses.
   

I don’t have a specific routine or plan, I just take a 30-second break between sets, bouncing from one exercise to the next. After about 18 minutes, I’m completely spent, and I feel great afterward. I get that incredible tired feeling you get after a great workout. What used to be tedious is now exhilarating.

You can work your way up, even if you can’t do a single pull-up or push-up. Everyone has 18 minutes per day to focus on his or her health, right?

Sleep

People often forgo sleep to “accomplish” whatever it is they want to accomplish. But if it is your desire to live a healthy life—in the optimal condition to experience and enjoy life—then you will need enough rest. 

We believe the amount of sleep your body requires varies by individual. Some of the most compelling studies we’ve read show that you should average eight to ten hours of sleep every night. The best essay we’ve seen about sleep can be found here:
How to Get Smarter, Sleep More, and Get More Sex
by Julien Smith at inoveryourhead.net/sleep-is-awesome/

The Musts of Health

We strongly believe in turning your
shoulds
into
musts
. When you want to change a habit—be it diet, exercise, or anything else—this is the tipping point, this is the point in which you create enough leverage, this is the point in which something you put off becomes urgent, necessary, vital. This is the point at which change becomes a
must
. 

On our website, we encourage people to create
must
lists for various areas of their lives (i.e., we encourage you to create a list of things on which you have procrastinated, and turn those
shoulds
into
musts
—find leverage so you can take action). There are very few
musts
with respect to your health, and these
musts
are fairly broad:

• You
  must
  eat a nutritional diet to be healthy.
  
• You
  must
  exercise regularly to be healthy.
  
• You
  must
  drastically reduce or eliminate consumption of harmful substances.
  
• You
  must
  treat your body like it is your most precious possession—because it is.
  

We encourage you to create your own
must
list. What
must
you do to experience a better, healthier life?

CHAPTER 3: RELATIONSHIPS

The Importance of Relationships

Your relationships are the most important of the five dimensions of living a meaningful life. Don’t believe us? Let us prove it.

Imagine winning the lottery, getting into the best shape of your life, paying off all your debt, moving into your dream home (on the beach, of course), and not needing to work another day in your life. 

Now imagine you wake up tomorrow and you have nobody to share your new life with. No friends. No family. No loved ones. Oh, the heartache. You finally got “everything you ever wanted,” but there’s no one to share it with. Without your relationships, you are unable to live a meaningful life.

Defining Relationships

Sometimes people use the word
relationship
to connote a physical or intimate relationship, but for the purposes of this book, we use a much broader definition: Your relationships are the people with whom you have frequent contact, the people around you—friends, partners, spouses, intimate relationships, roommates, co-workers, acquaintances, or anyone with whom you interact on a regular basis.

The bottom line is that we all want to be loved. We all want to love. And we all want to have other people with whom we share our experiences. Some of us (especially extroverts like Ryan) desire the love and attention of many relationships (his family, his close friends, his girlfriend, the people he mentors, etc.), while others (especially introverts like Joshua) desire the close connections of a select few relationships. Neither desire is right or wrong; your desire is simply based on your preferences, and no matter who you are, we all need our personal relationships to thrive.

Reflecting on Past Relationships

The past does not equal the future. Living in the past is tantamount to driving using only the rearview mirror—eventually you will crash if you don’t know what’s going on in front of you.

Because of this, your past relationships aren’t necessarily indicative of your future relationships. This is good news. Much of the time you don’t think about why you’re involved in a particular relationship; you just ended up there and accept that this is where you are, even when the relationship makes you unhappy.

You can learn from your past relationships though. The good times tell us what went well and give us a strategy by which you can model your future. And the bad times help you to identify how things went wrong and give you clues and social cues by which you can avoid bad relationships in the future. Everything is clearer in retrospect.

Three Ways to Create Better Relationships

There are three ways to create better relationships:

1. You can find great new relationships.
   
2. You can transform your current relationships.
   
3. You can change who you are.
   

We will focus on all three possibilities with respect to your relationships throughout this chapter.

Evaluating Current Relationships

It’s time to take an honest look at your current relationships. Do they make you happy? Do they satisfy you? Are they supportive? Do they help you grow? Do they contribute to your life in positive, meaningful ways? These are all important questions to consider while evaluating your current relationships.

Praxis: Make a three-column list of every relationship—big or small—in which you are involved: 

1. Name
   . The first column will contain the person’s name. Fill in this column first. Think of every person with whom you interact regularly. Your family, close friends, significant other, co-workers, bosses, teachers, that guy seven cubicles over who picks his nose when he thinks nobody’s looking. Think about every aspect of your life. With whom do you interact? You might have 20 people in this column or you might have 400. Either way, spend some time and create your list.
   
2. Signifiers
   . Once the first column is complete, the second column will contain one of three signifiers for each person:
   primary
   ,
   secondary
   , or
   periphery
   . 
   
   • The
     primary
     relationships, good or bad, are your closest relationships. This tier most likely includes your significant other, immediate and closest family members, and extremely close friends. Your
     primary
     relationships are the main characters in the movie of your life.
     
   • The
     secondary
     tier consists of similar relationships as the
     primary
     tier, except these relationships are of less value for a variety of reasons. Such relationships might include your close friends, your boss, a select few co-workers, and extended family members. Your
     secondary
     relationships are your supporting cast.
     
   • Chances are that the vast majority of the people in your life will fall into the  third category: the
     periphery
     . The
     periphery
     might include people like most co-workers, neighbors, members of your community, acquaintances, distant family members, and the like. These are the minor characters (and, occasionally, the extras) in your life’s cast. You tend to respect their opinions and find at least some value in these relationships. 
     
3. Effect
   . The third and final column on your list has to do with the effects of your relationships on your life. One of three effects go in this column:
   positive
   ,
   negative
   , or
   neutral
   .
   
   • Your positive relationships are relationships that make you happy and help you grow. 
     
   • Negative relationships make you unhappy, unfulfilled, and dissatisfied; they can stunt your personal growth. 
     
   • Neutral relationships are somewhere between positive and negative; they don’t necessarily make you unhappy and most of the time you feel ambivalent towards the emotions you feel from these relationships.
     
   • It’s important to note that many close,
     primary
     relationships can be neutral or negative. That doesn’t mean those relationships can’t possibly change, but just because someone is extremely close to you doesn’t mean they foster a positive relationship—some of the most pernicious negative relationships reside in our top two tiers. Conversely, although many of your
     periphery
     relationships will fall into the neutral category, other relationships in that tier might bring you great pleasure, resulting in a
     positive
     periphery
     relationship.