The Key to Happiness No One Wants You to Know: Simplify

0:00 Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast, the only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What is up guys, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the UMP, I really do appreciate it. And today we are going to talk about simplifying your life, which is one of the unknown secrets to happiness. And to keep things as simple as possible, what do you say we jump right into the content? In today's society, we are pushed to get more and more things.

0:39 In fact, we're convinced that the more things we have, the more happiness we will get. But as most of us find, especially in America, you know, we have a very abundant society. And oftentimes when we get more, the more unhappiness we get. In fact, United States is one of the unhappiest nations in the entire world, which is ironic because we're one of the richest. And part of the reason for that is this influx of just greed and consumerism where we're just trying to get more and more and more.

1:08 And before we know it, we have so much crap around us that the things we own end up owning us. So this consumerist dynamic that we have puts us in a forever seeking mode. I talked a little bit about it with the ego. The ego is never satisfied. It just wants more and more and more. Well, in today's society, we can get more and more. Actually, unprecedented throughout history, we've never been able to do this before. Now, the reason we want more is because in hunter-gatherer societies, we needed to be motivated to get more in order to stay alive.

1:38 But there wasn't quite the abundance that we have now. I mean, you can literally hop on Amazon Prime and buy whatever the hell you want. And you can even buy shit if you don't have money. You just slap it on a credit card and pay for it later. Well, the way we evolved was to keep seeking things because that kept us alive, right? So what advertisers have cleverly done is use that need for us to seek against us. Take Instagram, for example. Did you know that the way the feed goes works on our instinct to keep hunting and seeking?

2:14 And each time we come across something that we're interested in, we get a dopamine hit. So let's say you're in the forest and you're looking for some berries and you come across a juniper bush with ripe berries in it, you're going to get a big dopamine hit. Then you're going to collect up those juniper berries and you're going to feel good because you achieve that success. Well, when you do Instagram, you're doing that like times 100. Every single post that comes up, you're just being rewarded over and over and over again.

2:39 And we get addicted to these dopamine hits. When you buy stuff, you buy like more clothing, you fill your room up with more crap, you buy more toys, you get more cars, you get more and more and more. It's that constant dopamine hit that we have evolved to develop within ourselves, but now it's kind of working against us. And then the United States, the suicide rate is so damn high, partially because of that dynamic. Also because of egoic issues, which I talked about in a past podcast, but this is a huge problem.

3:07 So what's the answer to that? First off is to recognize it and to say, wait a minute, maybe this isn't the answer after all. Maybe the answer is to do the opposite and simplify my life. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So in this episode, I really want to talk about how you can simplify your life right now to get yourself more happiness. And that all starts with your material possessions, the crap that you have right now. So I did this because I practice what I preach.

3:34 The last two days, I went through all my clothes and I literally filled up two huge trash bags full of clothes and I donated it to the Salvation Army. And I do that every year, probably or so, just get rid of crap that you don't need. Now, a good parameter for this is, have you worn the clothes in the last three months? Now, I know some clothing is seasonal, but you can even apply that to winter. Like right now it's summer. You say, well, did I wear that last winter?

4:00 No, fucking trash it. You know, throw it in the bag. You're going to take it to the Salvation Army. Do I really like this shirt? Do I really like this necklace? Do I really like this watch, these cuffs, these shoes? I mean, so many people have so many unnecessary shoes. How many damn freaking basketball sneakers do you need? Really, you just need one, if at all. So, a really good cathartic experience is to go through and clean out all the crap you don't need. Clean out all your clothes.

4:30 Go into your bathroom and clean out all the crap you don't need in there. Like if you have five extra towels, like why do you need all those towels? Fucking trash them. Go into your pantry and your kitchen. Throw away shit that you haven't eaten. Go into the linen closet and throw away all the towels and stuff that you don't need. Simplify. When you declutter, it's really a cleansing experience. In fact, every time I get rid of stuff, it feels like, I don't know, like a monkey has been taken off my back.

4:56 So, that's what I did over the last few days and I want to suggest you guys do the same thing. Go through your room, throw away all the shit. The more you get rid of, and this is the truth about the law of attraction, it creates a vacuum. And what do vacuums do? They fill. So, when you get rid of clothing, watch what happens. You're going to have opportunities to get even better clothing and it's going to fill back up again. Then you cleanse it out and you fill it back up again.

5:19 And by the way, the same thing is true with money. If you hoard your money and you don't share it, you don't enjoy it, you don't buy things, then what happens is the money stops. Money is an energy. And what is energy? It's circular. So, when you keep the money moving by giving it to other people, having a good time with it, and yeah, buying things, but also getting rid of things at the same time, the things keep coming. And it's a circular motion. Then you can donate like I always do.

5:46 Every time I see a homeless person, I give them dollar bills. I always keep dollar bills on me because I understand the universal truth that when you give part of your income to people in need, you get even more income. And I have an abundant life, so I can share those things. And when I went to the Salvation Army today and gave them all this really cool stuff, like I gave them diesel stuff, Versace stuff, Gucci, there was some really good shit in there. Like somebody's really going to enjoy that.

6:12 Somebody less privileged as me is going to get to really enjoy that stuff. So, not only is it cathartic for me to clean up my space and open up, you know, my area, let the energy flow throughout my space, but it's also good for other people. So, this cleansing of your material possessions is a really smart thing to do. And, you know, if you have stuff that's worth a lot of money, like I had some motorcycle jackets, I had a nice shoe-y helmet and some boots and stuff.

6:39 I used to ride street bikes until I freaking almost got myself killed, going 130 down the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic. I was like, okay, time to sell the fucking crotch rocket. And I had like a bunch of helmets and jackets and boots and stuff, so I just sold those on Craigslist. Actually, I hired a kid to do it, and that's part of simplifying your life is hiring other people to do the shit that you don't want to do. So, I knew this college kid, I said, hey, I'll kick you 20%, just fucking sell all this stuff.

7:06 So, he came over, I gave him all my stuff. He left, and now he's selling it on Craigslist and Facebook. And, you know, he's sending me money, and he gets to keep some money, and that's good for him because it's going to pay for his college. So, another thing is to don't buy so much crap, and I talked about this with the Ego podcast. You know, we really need to temper ourselves, and it is a spiritual practice to hold ourselves back when we really want to buy something and we don't let ourselves do it.

7:33 Now, I'm not going to sit here and preach, bro, because I haven't been really holding myself back lately. So, hunting season is here, elk hunting season, and we have archery tags for both Wyoming and Colorado, which is bow and arrow archery. So, I just bought a new bow. I got a new knife, a skinning knife. I got a whole new outfit. I bought a new ATV. Just about everything. So, hey, practice what you preach. I'm not really practicing what I preach as far as this point is concerned, but I did get rid of a bunch of stuff, and that's the vacuum that fills back up.

8:06 And I really want to hunt and provide for my family, right? I want to get that meat. And you get one elk, it's like pretty much a year's worth of meat. That's going to save me a lot of money. It's also going to save me from having to buy meat from the factories where animals suffer a lot. Entire different podcasts, but that's free-range, organic, and for your anti-hunters out there, quick, quick thing, is they give tags out to hunters like me because they need to manage the populations.

8:33 If they don't manage the populations, then they get overrun, and then the entire habitat suffers because of it. So, guys like us, and also, all that hunting shit I bought, a big portion of it goes to maintaining the national parks, and it goes to maintaining the environment and stuff like that. So, I should do an entire podcast on hunting because I know there's a lot of anti-hunters out there, but it's actually a really positive thing when you really get down to it. So, in simplifying my life, I want to provide meat for my family.

9:05 I don't want to go to the supermarket so much anymore. I want to get that meat the way we used to. We used to be hunter-gatherers, and that's what I want to do. So, that's why I just dropped like five grand and fucking – actually, it was probably more like nine grand if you count the ATV. Jesus. Yeah, it was kind of extreme, but it was fun, man. It was fun to go buy a bunch of new shit, and I can't wait to use it. All right, now let's look at, you know, like your desk and your bed and your bathroom, and I kind of want to go through that stuff.

9:32 So, on your desk, how many pens do you have? Be honest with me, man. If you have 800 pens, it's like do you really need all those pens and pencils and erasers and all these different staplers and shit? Like, get rid of it. Simplify. You get one pen. One damn pen is all you get. And like one lamp, one pen, one freaking water bottle on the desk, which I have right here. Boom. Done. You don't need all kinds of knickknacks in your room. You don't need all kinds of lava lamps and these salt rocks and pictures everywhere like I talked about in my six neurological processes of NLP podcast, which is a few podcasts ago.

10:13 All right, and now let's talk about your shower. All right, brother. I want you to be honest with me. You know you're rocking the Bath & Body Works Sugar Vanilla Blueberry Bliss Chocolate Dream Apricot Body Scrub with a sexy dream candle packet and pink bubble bath ball while you listen to Celine Dion and shave your legs with your pink Gillette Venus Women's Razor. You know you're rocking that, bro. Fuck that. Throw that shit out. You get one bottle of soap, one bottle of shampoo, one towel, black, and one Q-tip.

10:45 That's all you get in your bathroom and one toothbrush, too. All right, that's it. That's all I'm allowing you. So if I'm looking in your shower, if I come over to your house tomorrow, brother, and I look in that shower and there's some feminine-ass shit in there, man, I'm going to huck that at your head. I'm going to be like, get over here. What are you doing, soldier? Tighten up your program, man. Stand down, Sergeant Female. Let's tighten up your program a little bit. You do not get to have all those things, okay?

11:10 If you're rocking like the 15 pillow protocol in your bed with the little flowers and butterflies on them and you got the pink freaking comforter to wrap everything up nicely and then you guys organize the pillows in the corner before you go to bed, this is exactly why. Let me tell you a quick secret about having a relationship with a girl. This is the secret to my successful relationship with Marissa. We don't share bedrooms. I live in the basement. She lives upstairs. The baby lives upstairs. They have the upstairs.

11:39 I have the basement. Bro, that has made our relationship work so well. We don't have to share the same bed. We don't have to share the same bathroom. I sleep late because I stay up late. She wakes up early to go to work. I literally see the girl for like two hours a day. Fucking perfect. If I had to live with that girl, oh my God, all the pillows. Bro, her pillow game is on 1,000. Like how many goddamn pillows does a chick need? And then like I watch her go to bed sometimes and she's like taking five minutes to take all the pillows off her bed, which basically go from the headboard all the way to the foot of the bed, right?

12:15 There's like 800,000 pillows. I'm like, what the hell? There's teddy bears in there. And she has to like get them all off and put them in the corner. My bed, it's one pillow, freaking one sheet, one blanket, boom, done. I get in the sock and I'm in the G spot until I wake up in the morning, done. It takes me two minutes to make my bed. Her, it's like a whole fucking protocol, right? You need like a blueprint. Okay, this pillow goes here. This pillow goes over there.

12:42 That's what girls do. What I'm saying is if I lived in the room with her, I'd go crazy. I don't understand how guys do it. Honestly, that has saved my relationship and I strongly suggest it for you guys moving forward. I personally think that's the secret. You as the man need your own space. All right, now I want to talk about food, okay? What I do, and I really suggest this even more than living in a different place than your girlfriend, is meal prep. Meal prep.

13:08 So literally tomorrow morning, tonight's Tuesday night. I'm going to drop this Wednesday morning. On Wednesday mornings, I meal prep. It takes me two hours to cook all my food for the week. And I just had a brilliant idea. I'm going to hire somebody else to do it. So I'm going to post on Craigslist or Facebook or something like that. Like, yo, I'm looking for a chef to whip up my meal prep. And basically, as some of you know, I have a very paleo diet. Meat and vegetables.

13:33 It's pretty much it. I eat some nuts. I eat some fruit, salads, things like that. But the meal prep is basically ground turkey, ground beef, chicken soup, and then sometimes fish. Okay? And then I just meal prep it all. I keep it in glass Tupperwares because plastic lowers your testosterone. Go listen to that podcast if you haven't yet. And all my meal prep is done. Literally two hours. Takes me an hour to go to the supermarket. But that's okay because I like to open girls when I'm there.

14:01 And then I do like 30 minutes tonight. I get the Instapot going. And I set it to go off at a certain time in the morning. Boom, it goes off. Cooks up all my meat. I come upstairs. Then I just like throw vegetables in with it. Boom, I'm done. But to get it really simple, I'm going to hire somebody to do it. Pay her like, I don't know, 100 bucks a week. What do you think? 100 bucks? I think that's good. And then I'll obviously pay for my food.

14:24 I'll write her a check. And I just want her to bring my food over. I don't want to fuck with it anymore. I want to simplify my life. I want to focus on the things I want to focus on. What do I want to focus on? This podcast. Coaching champions like you. Jiu-jitsu. Hunting. You know, doing the things I really enjoy doing. Going to lift weights. Going to talk to girls. That's what I want to do. But really my business. My coaching business. That's super important to me.

14:50 I don't want to fuck around with cooking and taking showers. If I could hire someone to take showers for me, I'd do that too. And you know, I want to focus on self-development just like you guys do. Listen to audiobooks. Listen to podcasts. That's why you want to simplify your life. So moving on with that social media and your phone. You guys got to get rid of all the apps. Okay. This is just as a cathartic an experience as throwing away your material possessions. Is going through your phone and deleting apps you don't use.

15:20 Going through your contacts list and freaking cleaning out the myriad of girls you have in there. Oh my God. When I was single, it would be like Kelly, Kelly, Kelly one, Kelly two, Kelly three, Kelly four, Jessica one, Jessica two, Jessica three, Jessica four. I literally had a note section for every single girl where I met her, what she was into, what she looked like. And eventually I got to the point where I was taking pictures of them. Hey, let me get a quick picture of you.

15:45 So, you know, I can have it in your contacts list, but man, I'd have to go through my phone probably once a month just to delete all those chicks. And you should do the same thing. It's very cathartic. Delete the pictures, unnecessary videos. Just like more and more and more is not the answer. Less, in my opinion, is the answer. The crap in your computer. Let's go ahead and get rid of all that. You know, if you have a bunch of stuff on your desktop and it just looks cluttery, you can start organizing that, getting rid of things.

16:16 I personally store most of my stuff on Dropbox. I found it to be very convenient. And of course, I always back up my computer on external hard drives. But your computer is a representation of you. And so is your car. When I look in your car, is there going to be a piece of cheese stuck on the ceiling and freaking french fries in between the seats? I sure hope not, bro. You got to run a tight battleship. And what I do, as I am apt to do, is I hire a guy to come over and detail my car once a month.

16:43 Come on over here. You clean it. You suck the cheese off the ceiling. Suck the french fries out between the chairs. And I'll pay you a hundred bucks. Like, I give the guy a hundred bucks. He dials in my shit. No big deal. I also have a chick come and clean our house once a month. She's a hundred and ninety bucks. Like, to me, it's worth it. I'd rather work on my business a little bit more. Make an extra five hundred bucks per month to get somebody to clean my car, to clean my house, and to cook my food.

17:10 And then we have a nanny, too. So the nanny comes over, takes care of the kid. I get to see my kid every day, anytime I want. I can go upstairs and hang out with my kid. And it's because I've simplified my life to the point where I have the freedom to do that. And so simplifying your life, in my opinion, is really the answer. All right. Now, your finances. If you guys have credit card debt, I would strongly suggest focusing on paying that off. You know, sometimes it's hard to look into your finances when they're ugly, but it takes a man to just open up that bank account, look at what you got to get done, get on a system where you can pay off your debt systematically.

17:48 And then before you know it, it'll get paid off. And you also want to eliminate some of the expenses you don't use. Like, be honest with me, bro. You know, you're rocking the Pornhub Premium Frequent Masturbator Executive Account. Cancel it. It's done. Pornhub's free, bro. I don't know if you're new. I don't understand why people do the premium. I've thought about trying it, but it's like, I don't know, I got to do a whole different podcast on the whole like beaten off thing. But I don't really beat off that much lately because I kind of prevent myself from doing it.

18:18 Whole different podcast. But why would you go premium? There's literally millions of videos with like ridiculously hot girls. Why would you even bother? I don't know. Maybe somebody can email me and let me know your frequent masturbator executive account on point. All right. You also want to eliminate the people in your life who are not conducive to the growth that you're trying to make as a man. You are the sum of the five people who you hang out with most. So you want to weed out the slapjacks.

18:47 If you have people in your life, including women, who aren't really helping you, who are holding you back, they're toxic, or they just haven't developed as much as you have yet, then weed them out, man. Simplify. Get rid of those people. You don't have to stay with people just because you have history with them. There are lifelong friendships and there are seasonal friendship and multi-year friendships. And just because you've known somebody for a long time, it doesn't mean you need to keep them in the bucket.

19:13 If they're not up to par, you can weed them out. Totally okay to do that. And your job. How can you automate things in your job? How can you get yourself out of doing work that's only a sign to you because people want you to look like you're busy? Like meetings. Marissa, my girlfriend, she's always in meetings. And I don't know. In my opinion, meetings are sometimes a little bit counterproductive. I lived in Japan for four years. Talk about working just for work's sake. They are the masters of that.

19:42 They work like literally like 16 to 20 hour days. Why? Why the fuck would you do that? My opinion is work smart, not hard. Work less. Get people the results that you promised them like in my coaching. The reason why I like NLP is because it gets results fast and they don't have to invest years of time to get those results. That's a smart way to do it. Why do you need to spin your wheels and pretend that you're like working so hard? And why do you need so much money?

20:10 Why do you need to be a millionaire? That's like this lie that society has sold us. When I was in the woods this weekend, I turned to my friend and I was like, man, this is being rich, right? We got our ATVs. We got each other. It wasn't even this weekend. It was on a Friday. And I was like, this is, this is being a millionaire. You know, we have freedom. We have our time. We can go into the elk woods and do some scouting and get ready for our archery season coming up.

20:33 Like that's freedom. That's freedom. And when you simplify your life, you give yourself that freedom. At least that's what I believe. I really recommend reading the four hour work week that really got me on this kick. Read it a long time ago. And then I just reread it recently. And that guy is all about that. And even with game, right? Even with game. What I suggest to my clients is to hire a virtual assistant. You can find them on websites like upwork.com. You hire a virtual assistant to message all the girls with the template that I give you when you hire me for coaching.

21:07 And you let them message them. And you just take them through the template. Here, message all these chicks on Tinder. And let me know which ones stick. And then I'll take over at XYZ point. That's the smart way to do it. Delegate, get rid of shit, simplify, make things easier for yourself, man. And lastly, guys, let's simplify the clutter in our brains. And this is probably the most important point of this entire podcast is we're all addicted to thinking. We are compulsive thinkers. Let me ask you a question.

21:37 Can you stop thinking anytime you want to? The answer is probably no. You have not found the off switch. And this comes from my favorite book of all time called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I would strongly suggest you guys check that out. It's literally the greatest book I've ever read in my life. If I had one book to go onto a desert island with, this would be the book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He talks about being in the present moment.

22:04 Going into the space that's created when you stop filling your life with so much crap. People are constantly on Instagram, constantly watching television, constantly listening to music. Why don't you just turn that shit all off? When I go into the woods, I turn off my cellular data so I cannot check email. I cannot check messages. I can't check Facebook. My Instagram, how many followers do I get? Did I get an iTunes review today? Nope, I don't look at it and I make myself not touch my phone.

22:34 See if you can do that. Simplify your life by going more into the space of the present moment. Try to stop thinking so much. Meditate. When you're sitting there washing the dishes, turn everything off and be there washing the dishes. Feel the soap on your hands. Feel the warm water. Hear the noises of the birds outside. Hear the sound of the water gurgling over the plate. When's the last time you were there completely when you were doing that? When's the last time you walked up the stairs and you were conscious of every step?

23:06 You were there with every step. They say the dancer practices dance. The swordsman practices swordsmanship. And the master practices everything. Which means he brings his full attention into everything that he does. And that begins with simplifying not only your life, not only clearing out the clutter, but clearing out the clutter inside your head. So I want to leave you guys with that as my final point. So simplifying your life, I think it's one of the biggest steps to happiness that you can possibly take. And I suggest you guys start once again by just throwing away some shit.

23:42 Just begin that tomorrow. Maybe go grab a trash bag and throw away the shirts you don't use. Sell the stuff you're not really into anymore. And you'll start to get momentum. And then other things will start clearing out. And that's what happened to me is just like I went on this six-week kick of just simplifying, simplifying, simplifying. Read the four-hour work week again. Read the power of now again. Started meditating way more. And because of that, my happiness has really been on point lately. And that's because of simplification.

24:15 And finally, guys, Henry David Thoreau had the great quote, simplify, simplify, simplify. To which Ralph Waldo Emerson commented, I think one simplify would have been enough. All right, guys, that's it for me in this podcast. I do thank you for listening. And I'll see you in the next episode. We'll see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.