In the 1920’s, there lived a man named Edward Bernays.

Edward was the nephew of psychologist Sigmund Freud, and became a marketing genius, before corporate marketing was really a thing.

At the time, Bernays’ PR firm was working for a major pork and bacon manufacturer named Beech Nut Packaging.

Bacon wasn’t really a thing back then. It was mostly a scrap meat for peasants. Bacon cheeseburgers didn’t exist, neither did BLT sandwiches, certainly not bacon and eggs. In fact, Beech Nut’s dilemma at the time was how to push bacon into the mainstream as an everyday product. Nobody was really eating it.

Edward Bernays wasn’t new to these dilemmas. This was the same man who convinced the American public that glass cups were unsanitary and people should use paper cups instead. The company that paid him to do that was Dixie Cup, the country’s major paper cup manufacturer.

So Bernays worked his magic. He asked his company’s internal doctor (who was on his payroll, so no conflict of interest, of course) if he would be willing to state publicly that a big breakfast was better than a small breakfast.

At the time Americans often didn’t eat anything for breakfast, usually just coffee or orange juice, maybe a bread roll.

The doctor said of course. Big breakfasts will be great for people.

Bernays then asked if he would be willing to ask 5,000 of his “doctor friends” if they would co-sign his opinion that big breakfasts were better than small breakfasts.

Most of them said yes.

That was all Bernays needed. The advertisements were put together, and a marketing campaign went out in the country’s national newspapers.

4,500 doctors agree that you should eat a big breakfast every morning!

Right beside these words was a delicious looking picture of bacon and eggs.

It was one of the best marketing campaigns of all time. Bacon sales for Beech Nut Packaging soared. Bacon became a household favourite. The classic American breakfast they called it. Suddenly everyone was eating bacon and eggs when they woke up, to be healthy, to get charged for the day.

One hundred years later, every diner in America still serves bacon and eggs for breakfast.

What’s the moral of this story?

I’m sure you’ve figured it out already. But let me tell you another story.

Last week, I started another fast. I haven’t eaten any food for nine days, and I feel fine.

Actually, I worked 7-8 hours today, did 150 push ups, 100 squats, some kettlebell work, drank a litre of green juice. I don’t just feel fine, I feel awesome. I could do another nine days, no problem at all.

Now, if you went and asked people on the street what would happen if they didn’t eat for nine days, they’d probably say they’d be in hospital, they’d have shrivelled up, some might even say they’d be dead.

Yet, here I am. Definitely not dead. It’s 3:25 a.m. and I’m wide awake. Not hungry at all.

How is it possible that I haven’t eaten any food for nine days and feel fine?

Most of us know we need to eat three meals a day. That’s common knowledge. Our brains won’t work otherwise. The world is even designed around that. Lunch menu, dinner menu. Breakfast served until 10. Should be a big breakfast too. Bacon and eggs maybe.

With us needing to eat so often, surely nobody could go a day without food, right?

Nine days? Impossible.

We should do a study.

Well, I am the study. I’m doing it right now.

Now we might think, okay fine, we got tricked into eating bacon and eggs. But it goes deeper. Most of us don’t realise how much influence people like Edward Bernays have on our lives. There are Edward Bernayses all around us. And every day they influence our decisions, they influence our bank accounts. Most importantly, they influence our happiness.

About two years ago, I read a book.

The title?

Influence.

It was a marketing bible by Mister Rob Cialdini. In it, he taught the psychology of selling. How to recognise when you were being sold to, how to recognise when somebody was trying to influence you.

He explained why somebody could say something and you’d ignore them, but another person could add just three specific words and you would instantly take out your credit card. He talked about the one sentence a salesman could say to double your likelihood of buying a car. He examined how Buddhist monks at the airport were able to collect thousands in donations every day, just by using a flower.

Most importantly, he explained how to overcome this, how we could turn these persuasion tactics around and make them work for us instead.

After reading that book, I started to take notice of these things in my everyday life. I started to see that as soon as you step outside your door, you are being sold to, 24 hours a day. Everywhere you go, every interaction you have, somebody is influencing you to spend. Maybe you see a businessman wearing a watch, it sparkles. Suddenly you want one, because you grew up watching ads that made sparkly things look cool. You see a guy wearing sunglasses, he looks confident. A billboard you saw last year pops into your head. Confidence is everything. Suddenly you want those sunglasses too.

It was eye opening.

I started to enjoy getting sold to. I enjoyed deciphering it, watching what emotions people could pull out of me.

One day, I went for a “free eye test”. As soon as I got in the room, I got sold a not-free eye test, twice.

That machine will let me do a more complete test, she told me.

So you’re saying this machine will do an incomplete test? I asked.

Well, no. This test is still good. But that one’s…better…

On my way out, the lady at the desk asked if I’d like to look at some sunglasses. We’ve got the new model of those ones, she said, pointing to the ones in my hand. Come take a look.

These ones are still working fine, I said to her.

Good time for an upgrade! These are actually on sale, they’ve been very popular. Try them on? No obligation of course…

I started reading more books, like Made to Stick by the Heath brothers, which again taught how advertisements draw emotions out of you, stick to you, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, to try and understand our instincts, why we make sudden decisions to like something or want something.

Money wasn’t a mystery anymore. I could see why everyone was broke all the time. Because every moment of the day, someone is selling you something useless. Watches. Sunglasses. Bacon. And eventually, you buy it.

They say every time you do a long fast, you learn something new. About yourself. About other people. That’s expected. We’re used to eating all the time. Don’t eat for five or ten or twelve days, and that’s a big change. Big changes always have lessons in them.

This year, my mind drifted towards these ideas above. About how we arrive at the habits we follow and the beliefs we have. Last night, I had just finished a workout and was feeling so great. I thought to myself, how is it possible to not eat for nine days and feel so great? Logic would tell you it should be the opposite!

But I’d mistaken logic for Edward Bernays.

Three meals a day, every day. Edward had told me that since I was born, said it was healthy, gave you energy.

Funnily, it’s actually the opposite. Eating too often saps our energy, and most food we eat is bad for us. 90% of the population would be far healthier if they skipped a meal every day. We’re supposed to eat for survival, and myself as a living example, you can see we don’t need to eat every day to survive, or even flourish. Mike Rashid eats once a day and can’t fit his muscles in his shirt. Coupe only eats a few times a week, and he’s stronger than all of us.

But, Edward Bernays wouldn’t like you to know that. He needs you to eat three meals a day, that’s his job. Well, he needs you to buy three meals a day. He probably doesn’t care if you actually eat them.

Can you imagine what would happen if the government recommended people fast two days a week? To only eat one big home-cooked meal per day? Do a ten day fast every year?

Edward Bernays would lose his job. Bacon companies would lay-off half their staff. Restaurants, cafes, farms would lose 2/3 of their revenue overnight. Supermarkets too. The country’s economy would implode.

Yet, that’s exactly what we should be doing. Obesity is off the charts, everybody’s on cholesterol meds, we all know someone who has diabetes. Maybe we should eat less, Edward?

No way! Keep buying three meals a day. Please.

Except nowadays, it’s not even just three meals anymore. It’s five meals, six meals.

Try this! Perfect for a mid-afternoon snack! Treat yourself to one of these before bedtime!

We’re sold things to eat while we’re watching television, while we’re in the car, before we go to the gym.

Want some popcorn? You can’t watch a movie without popcorn!

Suddenly we’re getting told to eat when we’re bored, when it’s a holiday, when someone gets married, when we’re celebrating, when we have an office meeting.

In fact, Edward Bernays tells us, eating to survive is silly now. Instead, eat to have fun. Eat to show friends how much they mean to you. Eat because it will make the movie better. Eating this will make you happy.

They never tell you the real reason:

Eat because we want to sell you more food.

So, what can we do about it? Well, the solution is kind of simple: Eat less food.

But why stop there. Imagine if we didn’t just change our behaviour with food. Imagine if we decoded the influence in every area of our lives.

Example: It’s Valentine’s Day. Of course, Edward Bernays is telling you to spend a shitload of money on meaningless things buy an expensive dinner for your girlfriend and maybe some flowers and chocolate. If he doesn’t do that, Edward says, he doesn’t love you.

But what if you just, I don’t know, do things that actually show her you love her. Such as giving her a massage, holding her hand, baking her a cake in your kitchen, picking her a flower from the garden, taking a long walk with her and having a meaningful conversation. That would be crazy, right?

Well, Edward definitely thinks it’s crazy, because none of those things require a credit card. He’d be having a seizure hearing people suggest that. If everyone did that, both him and the CEO of Hallmark would lose their jobs by the weekend.

But, this is the world we designed. We need to spend. It’s what keeps this system turning. If every adult in the country buys a BMW, people will celebrate – GDP is going to grow 10%, the government will collect billions of tax, everyone’s going to look rich. The country will be booming.

But, that also means for GDP to rise again the following year, every adult will need to spend even more. They can’t just buy another BMW, they need to buy a Ferrari. If not, GDP will go down. Suddenly people will be screaming recession, the president will be out of a job, it would be a disaster.

So…they get Edward Bernays on the phone.

Morning Edward, job for you. Need you to help us sell a few Ferraris.

Now when you fast for nine days, and you live out of a backpack, and everything in your life is still fine, it tells you something. It tells you you can live outside that world. It tells you how much less you need to live a good life. It tells you how little food you need, how little money you need. It tells you how much time you can get back, just by rejecting everyone else’s influence. It tells you you can give up the bacon and the sunglasses and the eye test upgrade and the sparkly watch, and nothing will happen. Instead of buying all those things from Edward Bernays, you can keep that money in the bank. Which means instead of retiring after 40 years you can retire after 15. Because I’m sure you’ve realised by now, Edward Bernays is a millionaire. He’s a millionaire because of all the money you keep giving him.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if you started keeping that money, and became a millionaire yourself?

The funny thing about that is, it’s so simple to do. All you have to do is, nothing.

Literally nothing.

Don’t go to the mall, don’t look at the menu, don’t try on any sunglasses. Just stop doing it. Do nothing. Watch your bank account grow. What road to becoming a millionaire could be easier than that?

Okay fine, we can’t spend our lives sitting around doing nothing. But you don’t need to give any money to Edward to live your best life. Read a book from the library (it’s free). Work out at the park (it’s free). Go for a run (it’s free). Do some yoga (it’s free). Meditate (it’s free). Have a conversation with a friend (it’s free). Go hiking (it’s free). Take a swim at the beach (it’s free). Write a story (it’s free). Eat less food. Do more exercise. Ride a bike to work. It’s free.

Here’s the irony: After living this way for a while, you’ll start to notice something. You have way more money. Meaning you can start buying whatever you want. The difference is, you don’t want it anymore. So you just keep on living.

I can tell you, for sure, it’s a far happier way to live.

Happy Valentine’s Day, millionaire.

B

I bought a new juicer recently. Want to know how much it cost?

$285.

I agonised over it for days. My old juicer was working fine, but the new juicer was supposed to give me more juice, which meant more nutrients, and less waste, and hopefully that would make it worth it in the long run.

But $285? For a juicer?

When it arrived, I tested it against my old juicer. I weighed the carrots, and put them in the old juicer. Then I put the same amount in the new juicer. I weighed the juice. A 10% difference. So assuming each glass of juice has $4 worth of ingredients in it, and I save 10% each time using the new juicer, that’s 40 cents on each juice, meaning I need to make 712 juices before the juicer pays for itself, and since I’m only in New Zealand for 3 months per year, it would take me around eight years. Worth it? Probably not.

I still had 28 days on the guarantee. I decided I would return it.

A few days later I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. She’s a hard working girl, two young kids, has her own business. I pulled up to her house and saw a new car in the driveway. Audi. I grinned, and shook my head. I already knew what we would be talking about.

She came out and got in the car. I hadn’t seen her in about a year. She looked…older.

“Nice car,” I smiled.

She smiled back knowingly.

“Is it brand new?”

“Yeah.”

“How much was it?”

“I’m not telling.”

“C’mon tell me.”

“$75,000.”

I laughed, and then she laughed, and then I laughed some more, and then she punched me.

Seventy five thousand dollars!!!! For a car.

I decided right there and then – I was allowed to keep my $285 juicer.

As we sat there chatting that afternoon, I was suddenly plunged back into the stress of everyday life in Auckland. We talked about her money problems, all the things she wanted, how she was struggling to stay on top of everything. It was a sudden dose of culture shock for me. Doubly so, because the culture I was being shocked into was a culture I was once a part of. One thing I take for granted is, the community on the road is mostly free of this talk. We never talk about mortgages, or car payments, because none of us have houses, or cars. We never talk about retirement funds, or renovations, or office politics. We mostly talk about how to find cheap flights, and good street stalls to eat at, the Airbnbs we’re staying in, which coffee shops have the best internet, the Australian girl in the hostel we try to avoid at breakfast, how the avocados at Ali’s Fruit Shop are fifty cents cheaper than the ones at Lidl. The energy in our conversations is usually calm and peaceful.

This conversation was not calm or peaceful. She was stressed about her car payment. She was stressed about her business. She was stressed about her relationship. She was stressed about everything. She showed me a house she had wanted to buy on her phone. “Look at it, it’s perfect. I’m in love with it.”

“How much is it?” I asked.

“They asked for bids in the low 900’s, so I offered 920k. But then someone offered 960k! Do you think I should counter-offer? Look at the deck, oh my gosh. It’s so perfect.”

As if she wasn’t juggling enough already, she was thinking of adding a million dollar house to her problems.

Later in the car before I dropped her home, she showed me a voucher on Groupon. It was $240, for a fancy lunch buffet somewhere. I lost it.

“There is never a time where it’s okay for anyone to pay $240 for lunch. Put that shit away right now!”

“That’s cheap! It’s for four people. It’s usually $100 per person!”

My friend is not poor. She has a business, works hard, makes a good living. As you can see, she drives a nice car and lives in a nice house. She’s the kind of person I would expect to be living a good, stable life. But she isn’t.

Even though I was surprised at the situation, I shouldn’t have been. When I was an accountant, I saw this sort of thing all the time. It was my job to look through the client’s bank statements and sort through all the things they were buying. I had a front row seat to people’s financial disasters.

One particular client I remember well. He earned over a million dollars a year and couldn’t pay his final $50,000 tax bill. All he (and his wife) had to do was keep their spending to $950,000 that year and they would’ve been okay. But no, they had to spend the full million. Where did it all go? Houses, holidays, expensive cars. The kind of cars that cost $75k. The kind of houses that cost a million dollars.

I see this problem every day. Many of us struggle with money. We don’t have enough, we don’t earn enough, we can’t pay for the things we want. But if people earning a million dollars per year can’t even make ends meet, what does that tell you? It’s this:

Your money problems will not be solved by earning more money.

If you want to solve your money problems, the secret is a lot simpler:

Change your relationship with money.

You probably just rolled your eyes. You didn’t want to hear that. Because that’s not a convenient answer, is it? You wanted me to tell you some easy ways to get rich so you can go out and buy all those things you want.

But even if I could tell you that, it would lead you nowhere anyway.

You can see this all around you. Pro athletes going bankrupt. Multi-millionaire celebrities suffering from depression and anxiety.

Even more telling, consider this: Every week someone in your city wins the lottery. Apparently if you win that, you’re living the dream. But statistics show that 70% of lottery millionaires will lose the entire fortune within a few years. Even more telling, 30% of big lottery winners will end up filing for bankruptcy. Big lottery winners are also more likely to become estranged from family and friends, and have higher incidences of suicide, depression and divorce than the average citizen. As the saying goes in the finance world – if you really, really hate someone, give them a winning lotto ticket.

Everybody is adamant this will never happen to them.

“Man, those people must be really dumb or something.”

Ask those same people what they would do if they won $5 million tomorrow, and the answers will mostly be the same. They’d quit their job. Strike one. Then they’d buy a new house and a new car. Strike two. Then they’d go on holiday. Strike three. You lost your source of income, you bought expensive assets that create no income (and a lot of expenses), and now you’re spending your time on holiday splurging and doing nothing. You’ll be broke in five years. The perfect example of a toxic relationship with money.

A healthier answer? Don’t quit your job. Don’t buy a new house. Put all the money in the bank. Go back to work tomorrow, and just keep living your life. You’ll never need to worry about money ever again.

Not a sexy answer. That’s why nobody does it. It’s also why they all went bankrupt. What makes you think you will be any different?

Here’s an inconvenient truth. You and I are average people. Your IQ isn’t 200, your dad isn’t a billionaire, and you’re not inventing the next Google. Neither am I. If we were, you wouldn’t be reading this blog and I wouldn’t be writing it. That means if we want to be at financial peace, we need to do it the ordinary way. But earning more money will do nothing. Winning lotto will do nothing.

You will not solve your money problems until you change your relationship with money.

Think back to when you were a kid. Your mother gave you $5 pocket money each week, and you’d buy a couple of chocolate bars, or a pack of basketball cards, maybe you’d save up for a few weeks and then buy a video game. Then one day you got a job at the corner store, and the owner started paying you $50 per week. $50 per week! You didn’t even know how you were going to spend $50 per week.

And now think about today. Maybe you earn $50 per hour. It’s still not enough. When you break six figures, still not enough. Then you get your first million. Still not enough.

Where do you stop? 

This is the culture we live in. If your salary is not growing, you’re failing. If you haven’t upgraded your car in five years, you’re failing. If your company’s profits are not growing, it’s failing. If your country’s GDP isn’t rising, it’s failing. Nobody wants to be failing.

This is the culture of more. We can’t complain, we created it. But the thing about a culture of more is, there is no finish line. You’ll be chasing it forever. Since none of us live forever, it’s a game that can’t be won. So why are we still playing?

About four years ago, I wrote an article called The One Simple Lifestyle Change That Will Transform Your Life. It was an article that explored the idea of living simply, based on my experiences on the road. Silly me thought I was onto something new; showing people the cool mini sub-culture of my backpacking family, at the time completely unaware that “minimalism” was already a thing. After publishing it, I started getting hundreds of readers a day searching for “simple lifestyle” on Google, and soon discovered the already thriving minimalist movement that was tearing through Instagram, plus many others, including the very cool nomadic spinoff, #vanlife. 

 

A post shared by ????Vanlife | Nomad | Buslife???? (@project.vanlife) on Jan 23, 2018 at 10:02pm PST

I started reading the stories of many people around the world who had left high-stress high-income careers to live freer, simpler lives. Small houses. No car. Tee shirts. Jeans. Picking fresh fruits and veges. Travel. Long lunches. Music. Reading. I thought to myself, is it actually happening? Is being rich actually going out of fashion? Sure enough, a movement was growing, the culture was changing. I realised I was actually a part of something – a worldwide community of people trying to live simpler, more purposeful lives. But more importantly this told me this wasn’t just a philosophy for the crazies. This was for everyone.

There’s an old saying, which I’m certain you’ve never heard before, it goes something like, “Money Can’t Buy You Happiness”. The thing about cliches is, they’re usually right. That’s why they become cliches. A bunch of people spend their whole life trying to get rich, they get rich, they’re not happy. They tell their kids, “Money can’t buy you happiness.” The kids don’t believe them. They too spend their whole life getting rich. They’re not happy. They tell their kids, “Your granddaddy told me this, and he was right, money can’t buy you happiness.” Those grandkids don’t believe them, so they spend go and their whole life getting rich too, until it’s a story so well known that 200 years later people are blogging about it on the internet.

But that is understandable. Because the thing about the simple life is, like most journeys, this can’t just be forced on you through a blog post, it can’t be preached. It can simply be shared, and either it resonates with you or it doesn’t. That’s because the “declutter” movement, as it is sometimes called, isn’t just about trying to “buy less stuff” or “save more money”. In fact, that’s only a very small part of the puzzle. 

What it is actually about, I’ve learned, is teaching yourself to find joy outside of money.

A Ferrari might bring you joy for a few months, and will cost you $300,000. A short backpacking trip where you meet some new interesting people might also bring you joy for a few months and cost you $800. One requires you to work at McDonald’s for a week, the other requires you to work in a high stress corporate job for 5 years. When you look at it like that, it’s easy to see where the merits are. But how would you ever know this unless you’ve been on the trip and you’ve had the Ferrari?

That might be why many never wrap their heads around it. In fact, a lot of people I’ve talked to on this journey tell me it happened completely by accident. 

I just went on this trip and suddenly everything changed.

That’s how it was for me too.

This is why we preach the merits of travel so much. So much of it has nothing to do with counting countries or seeing famous sights or lounging on beaches. The real epiphanies come from detaching from the life you’ve always been living, to see things with different eyes, to meet people who don’t have a fancy job or fancy house and are smiling and laughing every day, far more than you have in the last ten years. To be able to feel completely happy just reading a book or listening to some music or taking a walk. Things like that open your eyes. And of course experiences like this aren’t exclusive to travel, but it does seem to be a common place for them to happen. These experiences have the power to jolt you into change quicker than you thought. But you can’t experience them through a blog post. You need to feel them for yourself.

So what is the secret to changing your relationship with money? Saving an extra $50 a week helps. Learning to cook helps. Downsizing your car and house helps. And you should absolutely start doing those things. But these are all mini moves; they won’t break the unwinnable cycle you’ve been in your whole life, of earning more and spending more and wanting more.

What will do that is pushing yourself into new experiences. Opening your mind to new people and places. Finding joy in things that don’t cost an entire paycheck, and realising they brought you more joy than any new car or pair of shoes ever did. And if you are able to experience joy in the smaller, simple things, you won’t need to buy $75,000 cars or million dollar houses to fill those gaps. Your life will surely be plentiful already.

How you take the first step on that journey, is up to you.

Bren

How did your journey into minimalism and simpler living start? Was it a book you read, a person you met, an experience you had? Share it below, I’d love to hear!