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welcome to the best interest podcast where we believe Benjamin Franklin's advice that an investment in knowledge
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pays the best interest both in finances and in your life every episode teaches you personal finance and investing in
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simple terms now here's your host Jesse Kramer hello and welcome to episode 68
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of the best interest podcast my name is Jesse Kramer today we're going to have
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Rose very on the show Rose is a keynote speaker an Amazon bestselling author a Simplicity coach and a stillsane mom of
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triplets we'll give Rose a bit of a longer introduction later before we get to the meat of the episode let's do our
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review of the week this one comes in from Curtis wh who left a review on Apple podcasts Curtis wrote great pod
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with good interviews I enjoy hearing the interviews and different perspectives definitely should give it a listen
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Curtis thanks for the kind words if you're hearing this Curtis shoot me an email Jesse bestin interest. blog and
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I'll get you hooked up with some cool best interest swag before we get to Rose
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today I wanted to share a few thoughts on the stuff we fill our lives with the stuff we choose to spend money on that
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kind of topic and I thought we could start with something called bodal spending it's an idea I had a few years
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ago I started to adopt it in my own life and maybe I can convince you to adopt it
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in your life too now first things first first let's define bodal out there in
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the real world it's common to see normal distributions uh normal distribution
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occurs when data clumps around the average and then a few data points are dispersed out at the extremes you've
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seen normal distributions before some people call them bell curves when we talk about things like standard
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deviation that usually applies to normal distributions many of us are also familiar with uniform distributions a
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uniform distribution where data is spread even ly among a range you know if we asked a group of 100 people to pick
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their favorite number between 1 and 10 we'd expect a relatively uniform distribution with picks pretty much 10
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people are going to pick every number on average now a bodal distribution as the
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name implies as you might have heard in the name itself it has two modes by modal it has two distinct Peaks which
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often occur at opposite ends of a range so a b distribution if you were to graph
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it out it looks like almost like two mountain peaks with a valley in between so okay let's get back to this concept
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called bodal spending my creative conception is that we should apply a bodal distribution to our spending
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Habits by modal spending it asks you to say either hell yes or no to Major expenses you either go Whole Hog or you
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go not at all there's no middle ground now keep in mind the significance of saying hell yes it fades away if you say
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it too much you you can't say hell yes to everything so you need to think of
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the things you enjoy if you're like me that list is pretty long food travel hiking sports music reading blogging
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spending time with friends and family fostering dogs there are a lot of things that I like you're probably the same if
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I'm not careful and I graft out my passions in in some sort of XY plot everything would seem like it's
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passionate I would I would have so many hobbies so many passions so many things I could or would spend my time and money
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on I could spend thousands of dollars on each of those Pursuits that I listed before I could buy lots of stuff I could
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go on lots of Adventures but is all of that stuff worth it that's the question
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to ask now I say no it's not all worth it only some things are worth it we know
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for example that luxurious spending it brings less fulfillment as we spend more that's called the Fulfillment curve why
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well one of the limiting factors is time we don't have the time to devote lots of
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hours to all of our various Pursuits and passions we need to pick and choose if I
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were to try everything I would spread myself too thin and being spread thin isn't enjoyable it's not optimal so
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that's why I'm reimagining my passion graph so to speak to look like a bodal
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distribution on the one hand I have the true and few passions that I absolutely love
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and on the other end I have all of those passions that I'm just saying even though they're cool they don't quite
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meet my bar and therefore I'm not going to devote any time to them at all if
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something is hell yes I'll devote the time and money to it but if it's only
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kind of fun or an occasional Pastime then I want to prune it I want to get rid of it from my budget and from my
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schedule I want to focus my fund money on the hell yes passions I want to Route all that was not life or eliminate that
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which doesn't lighten my fire if you're a Henry David throw fan we can play that
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quote from that poem right now I'll Now read the traditional opening message by
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Society member Henry David thurough I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately I wanted to
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live deep and suck out all the marrow of Life I'll second that to put to Route
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all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived so how does that translate into a
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bodal spending distribution you ask I want my dollars to go towards either one basic life needs or two hell yes passion
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activities if you were to graph it out and I can include in the show notes the article where I show this graph you
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would see a a peak of spending when it comes to simple survival the necessities of life the food the housing utilities
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you would see a pretty deep valley of spending or lack of spending on things that are kind of fun or somewhat
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interesting or nice to have and then you see a second big spike in spending when
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it comes to to my biggest passions either the bare necessities or the true marrow of life that's what I'm going to
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spend time and money on but not much in between anything in the middle of the graft will bring me very few units of
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fulfillment per dollar spent I want the dollars I spend to do good sometimes that's through charity giving to others
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contributing to group activities but if I am spending on myself I want to squeeze out as much fulfillment as I can
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there's a gentle reminder you might have heard this quote before look at all the stuff around you that
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stuff used to be money and that money used to be time I don't want to spend money or my time on average stuff I'll
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pay for the necessities and then after that I want my spending to make me say hell yes bodal spending is a rehash of
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the predo principle also known as the 8020 rule Focus 80% of your fund spending on your favorite 20% of
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activities or you can push that ratio even further spend 95% % of your fun money on your top 5% of activities the
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other 95% of your fun activities spend as little there as you can they aren't
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hell yes activities they're milk toast at best they'll only pull resources away
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from the activities you truly enjoy whatever the ratio you choose you know 80 20 90 10 it's amusing that Pito rears
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his Mel head yet again and some of you might recognize that botal spending is reminiscent of RIT seti's rich life idea
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to quote RIT living a rich life means having the ability to spend my time and money on the areas that are important to
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me now how does remit suggest you pursue your rich life simple he tells you to spend extravagantly on the things you
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love and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't that is botal spending
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categorize your Pursuits as things you love or as things you don't or you can
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create a bimodal passion graph spend extravagantly on the right side of your passion graph and cut mercilessly on the
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left side of your graph ramit seti is a bodal spender now for a quick anecdote friend of the best interest Martin he
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and I have talked about this before he loves travel he loves fine dining those things are his passions and that's why
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it made sense for him to spend two weeks in Lima Peru and plan a meal at Central
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considered to be one of the best restaurants in the world it's a Once in a Lifetime experience the memories of
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that trip still bringing him Joy today now that is a hell yes hell yes spending lies elsewhere I'll buy say a $200 pair
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of hiking boots or a top-of-the-line laptop to support the best interest but I might not go to Lima Peru I might not
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eat at Central I might not buy new golf clubs even though I do like golf but another friend of the blog Mark I know
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he absolutely loves golf he plays as much as he can he's traveled to Ireland
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to play historic courses he plays in the rain and the snow because you've got to
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make the golf season count here in Rochester New York so new club clubs and a Course membership they help Mark live
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his RIT seti Rich Life Golf is a hell yes for Mark Different Strokes for different folks we each get to create
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our own passion graph and plan our bodal spending accordingly even down in the bare necessities categories like food
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and housing I found that bimodal spending helps me feel more fulfilled cars for example I don't love cars I
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don't want or need an expensive car I want to spend as little on cars as I'm
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able to I plan to drive my Toyota into the ground and then continue to pay for a car that's more function over form so
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for groceries I love cooking and baking for people I want to spend extra money to make sure my pizza has the highest
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quality cheese I want to spend money on imported vanilla extract for my cookies but for the average meal on the average
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day I'm relatively Spartan all I need for breakfast were a few eggs and an English muffin 95% of my meals are
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simple 5% are extravagant and nice so that's mostly no with a little bit of hell yes at the time I put botal
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spending as an idea down on paper my laptop was a 5-year-old HP and the cooling fan it sounded a little bit like
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a weed eater it sounded like a disgusting metallic engine it was not a good sounding laptop it was probably a
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$250 model way past its prime but the best interest in working on this project was one of my big passions so to support
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the blog and the podcast I was saving up for a new Macbook and that's the MacBook
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that I'm recording this episode into right now I waited and waited and waited
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and on buying that new laptop because I I didn't quite have a hell yes reason to
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spend that much money but the best interest made me realize I do have that reason so I budgeted for a few months to
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save up money for that laptop and then once I had the money saved I pulled the trigger and the last one dining out my
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wife at the time I wrote this article she was just my girlfriend she loves dining out and I certainly enjoy it too
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it's a great way that we spend time together we started saving our dining out dollars for hell yes dining
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experiences so we forgo a few average dining out experiences and we save those dollars for a more unique and memorable
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experience I've had my lifetime share of $8 hamburgers they're fine but I'd
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rather save my dollars to widen my pallets Horizons if you will it's quality over quantity it's that kind of
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decision but speaking of hamburgers let's switch top to something called the
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McDonald's test the McDonald's test is a simple way to ask yourself am I really
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enjoying the fruits of my labor while chatting with a client last year we covered a vital financial planning topic
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spending his retirement savings it's challenging for many retirees to switch
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from a saving mindset to a spending mindset this client quite plainly hadn't
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started spending at all so off the cuff I asked him humor me what's your favorite meal and he answered it's got
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to be hamburger and fries guys so I replied well what's the best burger you've had recently what's your go-to
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hamburger spot here in Rochester and he said honestly I'm pretty easy McDonald's
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is just fine for me and at that response I paused and I thought to myself well perhaps it's a frugality decision
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frugality certainly a tenant of the best interest I'm never going to begrudge
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somebody for including finances in their decision-making or maybe he chose McDonald's maybe it was a flavor
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decision I'll admit a picture of a Big Mac and Fries makes me hungry but the
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burger spectrum is pretty vast and I'm sure that McDonald's has Rivals and
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wouldn't he want to explore what's out there or maybe for this client McDonald's was just a Simplicity
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decision in the same way that Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day to reduce
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decision fatigue maybe my client decided on McDonald's and that's that he doesn't
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have to make any more Burger decisions in his life trying to be respectful I asked him if he tried other burger
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places in Rochester and he said eh not really now I knew already that he liked driving his old school car so I replied
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to him I said you know Mr client if you wanted to you could do something like plan one trip per week to the most
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renowned burger joints in Upstate New York you could drive New Roads try new fries take notes along the way now
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that's just one example of something you could do my bigger point is you've saved
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money your whole life and now you get to spend it and the way I see it you might
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as well spend on your favorite things I want to make sure that you know as a client what I know as your financial
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planner you you can eat all the McDonald's you want but you could also afford any Burger and Fries you want
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that question it turned out was the creation of the McDonald's test since that meeting about once per quarter
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calendar quarter I get an email like this we took Roots 5 and 20 from Lia to skinny Atlas and then we went North into
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Syracuse Final Destination ale and Angus Fantastic Burger I can see how they've
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gotten all those accolades 10 out of 10 you and Kelly should definitely go it was a rainy weekend but still nice to
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drive through some of those old cities I hadn't been to in years waterl Auburn
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Etc so listeners if you're big Savers that's great but eventually you should
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run the McDonald's test on your life ask yourself are you at least spending money
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on the stuff that brings you Joy are you remembering both sides of botal spending
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if you just want McDonald's all the time fantastic don't let me turn you off but
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if you want to take that road trip to alen Angus and you can afford to take that day trip to alen Angus for that 10
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of 10 Burger why aren't you doing it are you just big macking through the rest of
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your life or are you enjoying the fruits and the meats and the potatoes of your labor that's the McDonald's test here's
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a quick ad and then we'll get back to the show did you know my written Blog the best interest was nominated for 2022
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personal finance blog of the year and it's been highlighted in the Wall Street
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Journal yahooo finance and on CNBC I love writing especially when that writing is to share financial education
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and I usually write one or two articles per week you can read them all at bestter interest. blog again the web
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address is bestter interest. blog check it out so with that let's bring on Rose
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Lounsbury onto the podcast Rose is a keynote speaker an Amazon best-selling author Simplicity coach and the
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stillsane mom of triplets Rose helps overwhelmed people create Open Spaces in their homes in their workspaces and more
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importantly in their minds by letting go of the excess stuffff that gets in the [Music]
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way Rose thanks for joining us today and I thought we could start today's conversation with towels all right H how
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many towels do you own why am I even asking that question in the first place because I know our listeners are going
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to be a little confused and then what are some of the big lessons that our listeners can take away from such an
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innocuous question yeah so I'm gonna guess the reason you're asking that
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question is because I did a tedex talk called how many towels do you need and Unown to me that's a question people are
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very curious about because it is the only thing I've ever done that's gone
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even somewhat semi viral of sorts I have almost 600,000 views on it which is crazy to me but it's interesting because
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towels are something that everybody has and to answer your question the first question I have two tow per person in my
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house and we are a family of five so there's 10 bath towels in our house for
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the humans in the house my dog actually has more than two towels because he ends
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up with all the old towels and so when we just forget to throw them away so so Rudy gets more than two I guess why does
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it matter well it matters because when I started my minimalism and simplicity journey I started with my towels and in
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retrospect the reason that I started by looking at my towels and asking questions about them was because it was
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a really easy place to start and so anybody body listening who might want to simplify or declutter their life just
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know you probably have towels and that might be a great place to start because it's not emotional we don't have
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memories usually closely wrapped up with towels like we might have with pictures
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and letters and cards and that sorts of stuff or gifts that people have given us
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so towels are an easy place to begin and I started there and the question that I
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asked myself was how many towels do we need and the reason that that question was really impactful was because I think
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a lot of times when we're looking at stuff especially Americans which I'm
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guessing most of your listeners are Americans probably with all their needs met many of them most of us don't look
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at anything we consume really from the perspective of need because most of us have what we need and more so a lot of
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times we're looking from the perspective of how much can I afford to buy or how
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much can I fit in my space or even another question I would ask a lot which is how could I best organize this stuff
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which is often a question of how could I keep all my stuff in a way that looks nice and I can find it but none of those
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questions really address how much we need need is a very different question and so when I asked myself how many
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towels do I need it was really clear to me that the answer really was just two per person because we're the kind of
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family where we have one towel at a time I'll use the same towel for a week and I
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know everybody's some people might just be a guas at that you know some people
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are you cannot use the same towel twice and if you're that kind of person too is
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not going to be enough for you right so it's important to recognize that just
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because I say that's the amount we need as a family that's not going to be the
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answer for every single person out there and that is okay the amount that someone
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else might need is going to be different than the amount that I need so it's an
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important question because it has you begin looking at the things you own from a very different perspective than the
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perspective that most consumer culture has us look at things which is how much can we consume how much can we afford
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what's in style now what do we need to get rid of that no longer in style well
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why don't you just buy a bigger house so then you can have more bigger and better
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so it's a very different perspective and what's great about it you can look at
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your towels this way how many do you need and then you can look at everything else that same way how many pairs of
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shoes do you need how many spatulas do you need how many hammers do you need you know you can go through really all
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the things that you own and you can ask yourself how much do I really need and I
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want to be clear that I'm not advocating for a just utilitarian Bare Bones aesthetic lifestyle I'm not recommending
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anyone become a monk and own nothing and renounce all their possessions but I think that we all could do better by
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looking at our things from the perspective of need versus want or ability to consume and what I found
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personally in my life the whole reason that I ended up doing this and continued to do it was that when I looked from
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that perspective it was very freeing because when you know how much you need and you know that you have what you need
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it really alleviates all that excess noise that you might not even realize you have that's telling you you need
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this to be successful you need this to be beautiful you need this to be professional you need this to show your
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status these voices that we're not always even aware are there when they're
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silent you have this open space to think about much bigger ideas for your life so
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that's the deeper philosophical answer to the towel question and a funny story
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that I will add to this so my my husband is charge of washing the towels we have
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a laundry schedule I'm very organized so he's he's in charge of washing the
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towels he's supposed to do it on Saturdays but he doesn't always do that
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and so he had let it go for like a few weeks and I just don't say anything because I'm like he'll do it when he
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wants to do it well by the time he did it we were pretty much out of towels because by that time people had replace
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the towels there's only 10 and there's five of us have have 14-year-old triplets and he comes out of the shower
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so he's put all the towels in the in the washer but they're not gone to the dryer
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yet he comes out of the shower and he's in his bathroom and he's dripping wet
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he's like we don't have any towels I would have to go down and get one of
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Rudy's towels so he goes down and dries himself with the dog towel because that
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was all that he could use so how many towels do you need also might depend on how often you do the laundry at your
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house and who's in charge of doing the laundry so just a little warning or kevat for people there extra towels they
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might be a want they might be a need but when they're all in the wash and you
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come out of the shower wet it's definitely a need at that point I would say yeah if you don't want to dry
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yourself with your dog towel make sure you've got enough well one thing Rose
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you're talking about the towels and and you talked about how towels are this
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thing that they're a very useful item there's really not much Beauty to a
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towel but maybe when evaluating other things in our life maybe they're not particularly useful but they are
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beautiful or meaningful in some way and I've heard you before kind of rate items
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along those two different spectrums or Spectra is it useful is it beautiful can you dive into those two specific words a
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little bit more yeah I got that criteria from William Morris who was a 19th Century interior designer so once people
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had kind of gotten their basic needs met they started thinking about how could I
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make my home more beautiful and interior design became an industry it wasn't
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always an industry so this is the 1800s and he says this quote that I think Rings just as true today as it did then
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which is have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe
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to be beautiful and so the reason that I use those two criteria useful and beautiful really comes from that quote
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that was said well over a hundred years ago and so what I think is really key about it is he he worded it as such that
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you know to be useful and I think it's really important that we only know something is useful if we are using it
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because a lot of times we're keeping things because we think oh it could potentially be useful someday I'm going
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to use the panini maker someday I'm going to use the waffle maker someday I'm going to need all those extra towels
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that I bought on sale at koh's I'm not using them now but someday I might they
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could be useful it's really about knowing something to be useful because you actually use it and then the second
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question is or you believe it to be beautiful and that's kind of going back to what I said earlier about we're not
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really talking about just having the barebones necessary for survival we're talking about having space in our lives
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for the things that bring us joy the things that we look at and it makes us feel good so in my house I have plenty
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of things that are not useful I have paintings that my mom has done I have pictures of my family I have cards that
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my kids have given to me when they were little they said I love you mama is any of this useful no not necessarily not by
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the strict definition of useful but it brings me great joy to behold these items or to hold them or to look at them
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or to read them and I want to have space in my life for those things and what happens sometimes I think is people
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think well Everything is Beautiful Everything is special and what happens is when we think every single thing is
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special is that nothing is special it's kind of that if everything's a 10
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nothing's a 10 right and so when we're simplifying Our Lives specifically our
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possessions we really want to think about what are the things that are truly beautiful and what are the things that
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are kind of just detracting from the beauty because all the extra stuff that you have actually decreases the value of
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the most important things that you have so it's really more about curating like
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a museum curates and they put out their very best things not NE necessarily every single painting that any artist
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has ever done even a single artist not every painting that artist has ever ever done what are the most beautiful or the
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best ones those are the ones that we're going to display and so you can kind of
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think about your home that way you've got to have the useful things because you know them to be useful but make
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space for the beautiful things that bring you great joy when you look at them so that's really how I apply useful
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and beautiful and I'd encourage your listeners if they're interested in doing
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this to start thinking about that when they look at things too I like that museum example it made me think there's
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a local Museum or at least a art studio Warehouse here in Rochester that on the one hand it's it is very neat I think
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it's very neat I've been there a couple times but it's a little overwhelming
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when I go there I look around and a lot of it at least to me is is junk it's not
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so much art as it it's junk and there's just so much of it that it kind of all
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Blends together and it does I think detract from the experience and the ability to contrast the true beauty from
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everything else that doesn't quite make it having that ability to contrast having that judgment is important and it
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it does lead back to a personal finance topic when we think about spending money
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on things that are truly beautiful versus spending money on things that are just medium or or mediocre and I I think
00:25:47
Rose one of my repeating issues we haven't quite touched on on gifting yet but when I think about spending money on
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stuff I know you've talked about gifting before I have amazing friends loving
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family and and once in a while I've received gifts that no offense to my friends and family I have not needed one
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little bit so I'm curious how do you think I should handle these situations and maybe at the same time is there a
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way to be a better Gift Giver well I think one thing we can all know is that those wonderful friends and family who
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have given us gifts we didn't want we have given them the exact same thing we
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have given them stuff that they didn't want this is the nature of gift giving
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we are not mind readers we we're not fortune tellers so we're going to give
00:26:29
people gifts that they don't necessarily need or want and it with all our best
00:26:34
intentions we're just not always going to hit it out of the park with gifts and
00:26:36
that's just the way it goes so when it comes to gifts in general I have a couple rules that I tend to follow and
00:26:43
the first one is to ask for what you want so in the event that it's a a birthday or a holiday where gifts will
00:26:50
be exchanged and somebody asks you what could I get you for the holidays or what
00:26:54
I want to get you something for your anniversary or for your birthday what would be something that I could get for
00:26:58
you or for your child if you have children when you have children you actually ask that quite a lot more than
00:27:03
as an adult so what can I get for your kids so if someone asks you that question tell them what you want I would
00:27:10
really like a gift certificate to this local organic grocery store or I would like a museum pass you know we're
00:27:18
talking about museums I'd like a pass to go to the museum or maybe you want a
00:27:21
donation to a charity really what do you want or maybe you just want to spend time with this person and you say I
00:27:26
really want a us right now to put something on the calendar a day that we're going to go out to lunch together
00:27:32
and I want to go out to lunch with you and spend time with you and that's what
00:27:34
I want more than anything or maybe I want onesie pajamas that look like a leopard if that's what you want that's
00:27:41
what you want right ask for what you want be really clear about it and then realize whoever asked you this and you
00:27:48
told them they're probably an adult and they get to make their own decisions so
00:27:52
they may not listen to your list or they might think I don't really want to buy
00:27:57
them that in which case that's fine that's their decision and they're going
00:28:01
to give you what they want to give you anyway so the second thing I always say is say thank you for what you get so no
00:28:08
matter what that person gives you we're both midwesterners or we live in the
00:28:13
midwest we understand please and thank you say thank you for what you get even if they gave you the leopard pajamas and
00:28:19
you asked for a donation to you know save the animals they took that as I'm Gonna Get You pajamas that make you look
00:28:25
like an animal they like this wasn't quite what I meant you just say thank you because they put thought into it
00:28:31
they spent time and money on it and what's great about that is once you've
00:28:34
said thank you it's like two magic words that now mean that's yours you own it
00:28:40
your obligation to the gift and The Giver is done at the moment of thank you it you own it so now it's up to you is
00:28:48
you can go back to the questions we asked earlier is it useful or beautiful are you going to wear those pajamas do
00:28:53
you love them do they bring you Joy if so great keep them wear them love them and rock it out if not then you can
00:29:01
decide okay what's the proper home for these am I going to give them away on a
00:29:04
buy nothing page am I going to donate them am I going to give them to my friend who likes wild pajamas I don't
00:29:10
know you get to decide what happens to them but the proper thing is to say thank you to the person who sent you who
00:29:15
gave you the gift and then if you can use it great if not let it go and so that's kind of how I manage gift giving
00:29:22
and I realized a lot of that's a little easier said than done because obviously
00:29:25
there are people's feelings in involved but I generally think after practicing
00:29:30
this for a while and if you're open about your values around stuff if you're
00:29:34
a person like me who maybe has a whole blog and business about this or maybe not maybe you just talk about how you're
00:29:40
pursuing a simpler lifestyle people generally have an understanding that and usually they do come around to you know
00:29:47
this is the kind of person who's probably not going to want a lot of physical possessions and then your other
00:29:52
question was about how to be a better Gift Giver yeah to other people right because we are gift givers and that's a
00:29:59
tricky one right so I generally ask people what they would like what would be helpful for you what would be useful
00:30:06
for you and I try my best to find something that I think would be helpful or useful I as a parent of three kids
00:30:14
have kind of moved toward gifts that allow experiences or time because I think they're just so much more
00:30:21
meaningful I mean I have seen my kids get really excited about a toy the moment they open it up and two weeks
00:30:26
later it was sitting around and they never played with it ever again and I'm
00:30:30
thinking well that was really not very meaningful I know I gave that gift but it's not adding anything you know in
00:30:36
terms of Joy or value to their life and not to our relationship so when I give gifts I I try to think of things
00:30:42
especially to my children that will increase the value of our relationship and our connectedness so for my my boys
00:30:49
for example Last Christmas I gave them tickets to go see the Cleveland Cavaliers play the Indiana Pacers in
00:30:55
Indianapolis and I had never been to professional basketball game I don't even really like sports but we went to
00:31:00
this professional basketball game it was so cool we had so much fun we were we got pretty close seats because it was
00:31:07
their big Christmas gift and it was really fun so that was their Christmas present from me so I think as I have
00:31:13
kind of gone on this journey I've started to think about what kinds of gifts really make a difference to me and
00:31:19
to the giver and my kids will tell you and there's plenty of research to back
00:31:23
this up as well that the thing that makes people feel most most grateful later the things they spend money on
00:31:29
that we feel gratitude about later are things that were experiences instead of stuff and that is true based on
00:31:36
scientific research that has been done so when we think about giving gifts we can think about I'm going to spend money
00:31:42
on a gift how can I make this really valuable in the sense of this is going to be something that's going to make
00:31:48
someone feel grateful or loved or cared about later and we can try to give those
00:31:52
gifts and obviously sometimes you got to buy a gift for your assistant or your boss okay in which case I recommend
00:31:59
something maybe consumable that's not going to add stuff some local chocolates
00:32:03
or teas or honey or something like that that will not necessarily be a trinket that somebody has to dust or take care
00:32:10
of or quietly uh eventually donate so those are some of my general things on on gift giving Which maybe as these
00:32:19
holidays are coming up will be helpful to some of your listeners totally that's
00:32:22
exactly what I was thinking I'm so glad you you ended up mentioning that research about uh experiences over
00:32:28
material Goods because that's exactly what my my mind went to when you started
00:32:31
talking about that Pacers Cavaliers game another thing that I thought about is it
00:32:36
is hard to quote unquote give the right gift I if you aren't asking the recipient what they want and I I think
00:32:43
of an anecdote where I a few Christmases ago I gave my father-in-law a book by an
00:32:48
author named Jim Collins who's a very famous kind of management author about
00:32:51
running good businesses and and the the history of effective businesses that kind of thing because my father in-law
00:32:57
he he runs he's the the president of the firm that he works for and I'm like yeah
00:33:02
this this is right up his alley it's leadership it's running a business it's
00:33:05
that kind of thing it's like well my father-in-law he's just not the biggest
00:33:09
reader so even though it was probably a book that he enjoyed and I think he did flip through it he'd rather kind of
00:33:15
watch a one-hour documentary than than read that book and it just wasn't that
00:33:19
effective of a gift even though I put thought into it even though I wanted to make sure it was unique to him it's just
00:33:25
it's hard to give the best gifts and I like the idea of just asking that question yeah yeah and another way of
00:33:31
thinking about it is I often think of gifts as vehicles for our love and Goodwill so really the book was just a
00:33:39
vehicle to your father-in-law to say hey I I care about you and I thought about you and I love you and and and the book
00:33:47
itself doesn't matter it could have been a book it could have been a sweater it
00:33:51
could have been tickets to a Pacers game or whatever it really doesn't matter it
00:33:55
is you know the thought that counts when it comes down to it the the gift itself
00:33:58
sometimes carries the love and Goodwill to us and what I always say is you can keep the love and the Good Will and let
00:34:03
the object go because it was just the messenger to bring that to you and now you've received it love and Goodwill we
00:34:09
can keep as much as we want and we don't have to keep every book and every coffee
00:34:13
mug and every t-shirt here's a quick ad and then we'll get back to the show serious question
00:34:19
why do podcasters constantly ask for ratings and reviews yes they do help highlight our shows to new listeners
00:34:26
they help straighten just find us on Apple podcast and Spotify it's totally true and a good reason to ask for
00:34:31
ratings and reviews but I have something more important at least more important to me I want to know if you like this
00:34:38
stuff I want to know if you like my podcast episodes my monologues my guests the information I share with you and the
00:34:44
stories I tell I want to improve and make your listening more enjoyable in the process so yeah I would love to read
00:34:50
your reviews and sure if you throw a rating in there too that's great if you
00:34:54
like what I'm doing please share it with me me it's such a great feeling to read
00:34:58
your feedback I'd love to read your review or see a rating on Apple podcasts
00:35:03
or Spotify thank you so that that covers a lot of the physical clutter at least it covers some of the topic of physical
00:35:10
clutter I think I've seen Ros that you you've written before about mental
00:35:14
clutter and and a connection between routines and mental clutter can you describe a little bit of of some of your
00:35:20
thoughts on that topic yeah so mental clutter is trickier Than Physical clutter because physical clutter if you
00:35:27
had a cluttered closet you could just go in one day and I'm going to take out all
00:35:29
the things I don't use and love and donate and trash and organize and it looks great it'll stay that way for a
00:35:35
while maybe quite a while but in our minds you know negative thought patterns negative habits um ways we talk to
00:35:42
ourselves or patterns that we get into when people say things to us or we're in
00:35:46
certain situations those can be much trickier to let go of but they are also cluttered because they're clouding us or
00:35:54
keeping us from living our best life and so one of the things that I have found to be most helpful is to just begin to
00:36:01
notice when those happen and it can be really tricky and none of us are ever going to catch it every single time but
00:36:08
let's say for example every time you talk to your brother he says something that makes you kind of feel a little bit
00:36:14
bad about yourself and it's not in a direct way but maybe he's the older
00:36:18
brother and so he's always saying something that makes you feel like oh he's right I shouldn't have said that or
00:36:22
I shouldn't or I shouldn't try that and you might notice like oh this is this is
00:36:26
a p pattern that every time that I talk to this person they say something and it
00:36:30
kind of like makes me feel a little bit put down so it's just something that you
00:36:33
can notice and then maybe going into those situations again you can just be aware of it and what's kind of powerful
00:36:40
about mental clutter is we think oh let's just get rid of it that's really
00:36:44
hard but what's easier and also equally as effective is just to notice that that
00:36:50
pattern is happening if every time you interact with someone you start to feel bad about yourself or even something
00:36:56
like I If you scroll on social media a lot and and I I know this about my own self which is why I don't scroll on
00:37:02
social media very often Instagram will make me feel bad about myself I'll start
00:37:06
to feel oh I'm not good enough or my business isn't good enough I'm not a
00:37:10
good enough parent whatever whatever right you attach your own not good enough to that that happens and so
00:37:16
becoming aware while scrolling I'm feeling bad right now I could keep scrolling after that but I'm much more
00:37:24
likely to choose to do something else when I become aware that this is what's
00:37:29
going on inside of me right now because it creates that little bit of pause that
00:37:35
gives us the opportunity to make a choice so routines patterns like that's kind of what I generally associate with
00:37:43
mental clutter it's the things that that happen over and over again and a lot of
00:37:46
them are the same ones from when we were kids not to like get deep into psychology here or anything I was in
00:37:53
college and I had a a journal that I'd kept since I was in second grade wow and
00:37:57
I didn't it wasn't like I wrote in it every single day you know but I ended up
00:38:01
going back through and rereading some of the things I'd written in second grade
00:38:04
and I had this aha moment where I realized oh my gosh I have the same problems that I had in second grade
00:38:11
where I'm worried that people won't like me or I'm worried that I'm not good
00:38:15
enough or I'm worried that so and so doesn't think that I'm cool those are
00:38:20
the same problems that I could even be having today right I worry that people won't like me or they don't think I'm
00:38:24
good enough or they don't think I'm cool a lot of these things are things we were
00:38:28
so used to them that that they become what we think of is the truth or they become so normal and that's that power
00:38:34
of just oh noticing that this is what I'm thinking and and that really weakens
00:38:39
it I think it's sort of like in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy sees the man behind the curtain the Great and
00:38:44
Powerful Oz is really scary but when you realize it's just a man behind the curtain you're suddenly like oh that's
00:38:50
not what I thought it was so the noticing of what's going on it's a practice it's something that I
00:38:57
practice almost daily things like meditation and so forth can be helpful I'm not a great meditator I will admit
00:39:03
that I don't like to sit still and be quiet and hum to myself whatever but it's really training your mind to notice
00:39:10
when things are getting cluttered and usually you can tell because there's often physical things that happen too
00:39:16
like your heart will start racing you'll start to feel anxious you'll feel like I
00:39:18
can't get everything done there's so much to do or whatever your general
00:39:21
anxiety patterns are that's usually when you can tell that mental clutter is
00:39:25
happening yeah that's interesting I was wondering if that MW meditation would
00:39:29
come up well because I I like you I I think I'm the most one of the most amateur meditators out there but when
00:39:36
I've been practicing before and when I've kind of gotten into a good meditation habit one of the patterns I
00:39:41
noticed from the meditation commentator whoever the person is who's kind of talking me through the meditation in my
00:39:47
app is they they tell you things like pay attention to your thoughts and where are those thoughts coming from and why
00:39:54
you why are you even thinking the thing that you're thinking right now it's such
00:39:57
a strange question to ask but until someone's asked you that question most people are blissfully unaware we just
00:40:04
assume that thoughts randomly pop into our heads kind of completely out of our control and therefore whatever feelings
00:40:11
or actions we take based on those thoughts again it's it's not in our control I got angry I I threw the
00:40:19
something across the room and I yelled that that's not me that's just that's
00:40:24
just my thoughts and it's like well hold on a second like if you really try to
00:40:28
slow things down and if you really pay attention to what's going on in your head you'll realize that a lot of that
00:40:33
was a choice maybe it felt a little subconscious but it was a choice somewhere within your mental clutter and
00:40:41
if you practiced organizing some of those thoughts a little bit better it takes some time it's not easy to do
00:40:47
because it's not tangible it's in your head but if you practice these things in
00:40:51
the long run you'll you'll see some net benefit yeah I'm I'm so glad that you
00:40:55
shared that it is hard and it it's also something that I think if you've gone
00:41:01
down this road a little bit sometimes you can feel like you're failing at it
00:41:04
because you'll find yourself doing the same pattern that you used to do like Oh
00:41:07
I thought I was better I thought I was over my self-esteem issues with this person and and the thing is it's just
00:41:13
it's all practice which is I think why people call it a meditation practice if
00:41:18
I ever met anyone who said they were a meditation master I would Pro that's a
00:41:22
big red flag to me that I probably don't want to listen to that person because
00:41:25
right any one who practices meditation is a practitioner even the people who've
00:41:30
been doing it for years and years and years are still practicing I've heard it
00:41:34
described as training a puppy if you've ever tried to train a puppy they kind of
00:41:38
you know they're hard to train they get distracted and they go off here totally
00:41:41
you gently try to pull them back and now we're going to practice sitting and
00:41:43
they'll sit for a little bit and they'll kind of wander off and the next day you
00:41:47
thought you made progress and they're back to peeing on the floor again you're
00:41:50
like Oh I thought we worked on this and so our minds are kind of like a Perpetual puppy that we're always
00:41:54
training but they do eventually grow maybe into an adolescent dog at some point in time but yeah it's a continual
00:42:01
thing it's the kind of the next level which is actually why I really recommend
00:42:05
if people are interested in this journey that you start with the physical things
00:42:09
because they naturally as you create that open physical space it's so tangible it's so black and white it's so
00:42:15
before and after it's going to create the mental space for you to start doing
00:42:19
that work inside and it makes that inside work easier I feel like people don't always see that there's a
00:42:26
connection to these two things but starting with the physical space is going to help you delve into the mental
00:42:32
space because they're very much connected and and I know that because generally when I started my business I
00:42:38
used to go to people's homes in person and we would clear out closets physically side by side and the thing
00:42:45
people always said to me when I left was the same whether this person lived in this sort of palacial residence or a
00:42:49
studio apartment they would say I feel so much better and so I started to notice that
00:42:56
the underlying similarity was the feeling people had in an open clear space so creating open clear physical
00:43:03
space will help you start to create open clear mental space which makes it way easier to examine some of the patterns
00:43:10
that are going on the scripts set of running in the background of that mental space that most of us aren't aware of
00:43:16
right and and it's funny some of those scripts that you talked about obviously
00:43:20
I know a lot of them are they have to do with relationships and how we see ourselves in the world and and some of
00:43:24
that emotional side I mean there is we can tie this back to personal finance there's a spending script oh yeah and
00:43:30
and some of the people who I've talked about before when you kind of pull back
00:43:33
and you say well what what were you thinking I'm just curious what were you thinking when you made that decision to
00:43:38
buy that thing that you now regret I don't know what I was thinking yeah or or it's almost like it's almost like
00:43:43
they were in some sort of it's like asking someone who's addicted to chocolate chip cookies like why why did
00:43:48
you eat the whole bag of chips aoy I don't know it was just in front of me and I went for it it's these it's these
00:43:54
old I don't want to say reptilian but it's these old scripts somewhere in deep
00:43:59
within our brain that just are repeat repeat repeat and maybe we get some little high out of it or whatever it
00:44:05
might be I'm not a psychologist even though I pretend to be one on podcast but suffice to say Me too if you if you
00:44:12
you know sometimes if if you're aware of the script when it starts to play you
00:44:16
can cut it off before it gets to the the crescendo where you do something that you'll later regret yeah it's that
00:44:23
awareness I read this book I don't know if you ever read anything about eart to
00:44:26
so I know exactly who he is I I haven't read his book though okay his book I
00:44:30
have it A New Earth one of the few books I own but he talked about this thing he
00:44:34
called it watching The Thinker and that was the first time that I realized you could watch yourself think the
00:44:42
Consciousness that's thinking and the Consciousness watching you think are not
00:44:46
the same and so sometimes is that kind of wild it is it and I remember reading this this was and this what kind of
00:44:53
coincided with the decluttering journey I started reading this book and I realized oh my gosh the things that I'm
00:44:59
thinking aren't necessarily me I can watch myself thinking that about myself
00:45:05
so who's watching me that's really me that's my Consciousness and it was wild
00:45:12
and just that realization changes the way you show up in spaces changes the way you interact with people I felt it
00:45:19
immediately makes you calmer because you realize you're not at the mercy of these
00:45:23
incessant thoughts and and those are brief moments there's these like little
00:45:27
brief moments of lightness and then you go back to your daily life and you're
00:45:31
like I got to do all these things and oh my gosh I'm behind on email that book
00:45:35
for me really started me on the the Journey of starting to clear the mental clutter even though I didn't realize it
00:45:43
at the time that that's what I was doing but that's when that I returned to some
00:45:46
of those Concepts that I learned in that book that is so cool at this point I know that you're on a on a clock and
00:45:53
this I mean this has been an awesome 30 minute and even though there are other questions I had written down honestly
00:45:59
like I think we're at an awesome point and if unless there's anything that I
00:46:03
miss that you really want to hit on yeah I love the direction that we took here kind of and I think it's important for
00:46:08
people to realize like start with the physical and that's important and that
00:46:11
matters and that's going to take you to places you did not imagine mental clutter Financial clutter relationship
00:46:20
clutter career clutter health and wellness clutter things that you might not have even thought of as clutter in
00:46:26
your life once you start clearing it you're going to see it in all these other areas of your life and then you
00:46:33
can clear it in those other places this is still work that I do I've been doing
00:46:36
this for 10 years and I'm still finding myself in the process of okay I have to
00:46:41
let go of that I'm done with it I need to let it go yeah and it's no longer
00:46:46
about my coffee cups anymore but it's about these deeper things that you and I
00:46:49
been getting into in this second half of the conversation so I appreciate you taking us there that's cool Rose well
00:46:55
you're welcome and and thank you for coming on if if listeners want to get a
00:46:58
hold of you Rose if they want to check out that tedex talk if they want to read your blog how can they find you the best
00:47:04
place to go would be my website which is Ros ly.com and for people listening that's Rose lounsberry is Lou
00:47:12
nsbu r y it's like Berry a bone not strawberry go to my website you'll have
00:47:18
links to all my social media my blog posts you can watch my tedex and all the good stuff there awesome and we will
00:47:24
throw those links into the show notes Rose lsbury thank you for coming on to the best interest podcast oh thanks
00:47:31
Jesse it's been awesome thanks for tuning in to this episode of the best interest podcast if
00:47:37
you have a question for Jesse to answer on a future episode send him an email at
00:47:42
Jesse bestin interest. blog again that's Jesse bestter interest. blog did you
00:47:48
enjoy the show subscribe rate and review the podcast wherever you listen this helps others find the show and in invest
00:47:56
in knowledge themselves and we really appreciate it we'll catch you on the next episode of the best interest
00:48:02
[Music] podcast the best interest podcast is a personal podcast met for education and
00:48:09
entertainment it should not be taken as Financial advice and is not prescriptive
00:48:14
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