Author and entrepreneur Jeffrey Saad breaks down his transformative new release, The Reduction Book, and shares how to cultivate deep joy by stripping away mental clutter. If you feel overwhelmed by internal narratives or external stress, this framework helps you align daily actions with your core values. Learn how to stop negative storytelling, focus entirely on your circle of control, and build a lasting personal constitution. Jeffrey explains why true self-improvement isn’t a quick fix, but a deliberate process of rewiring your brain to achieve more while doing less. Discover how to create your own personal operating system so you can wake up loving your life every single day.
—
Listen to the podcast here
The Reduction Book Is Available! What Is It All About?
I am holding in my hand my book, The Reduction: How to Cultivate Joy and Build a Life Worth Savoring by Jeffrey Saad and Steve Shaw. I cannot believe it’s in my hand. I finished the audio book. That’ll be available on Audible and everywhere else very shortly. The book is available November 10th, 2026 in bookstores and in your mailbox, but you can pre-order now. Only if you find it worth your time, I would be so honored and grateful for you to pre-order it because the more pre-orders we get, the more it helps with the Amazon bestseller. Most importantly, it helps spread the word, which is my number one goal with this, to make people’s lives better.
Defining The Reduction Concept
For those of you reading, you already know what it is because it’s what I talk about all the time. I’m going to do a quick summary of what the Reduction is, the book, and how it’s related to my life, how it’s made my life amazing. If you’re new to the show, then it will be a great intro as well. I’ll talk about what the book is, what it isn’t and how it’s different. What is the Reduction? It’s becoming your true self. It’s living a life that is aligned with who you’re and what’s important to you. Not anybody else.
It’s doing less and achieving more personally and professionally. It’s living in a joyful flow state with extra time on your hands and no regrets. It’s not an idea or a concept. It has been my life. What I’ve loved most is that everything in this book is how I’ve lived. It’s what makes me so proud and excited to share it because I see the joy that it’s given me. Along the way, I also have always believed that everybody deserves to live their version of a joyful life. As long as you’re not hurting anybody or doing anything illegal.
It’s you that needs to wake up every day and say, “I love my life.” I’m glad my wife’s not in the room because she hates that. She’s like, “Nobody wakes up and says they love their life,” but I do. I wake up every day and I just love my life. I love what I do. I’ve never woken up and not wanted to do it. I’ve never not felt joyful about the sunrise, my cup of coffee, and every single thing that happens throughout the day. Sure, I have bad days. We all do. You get in a bad mood or something happens. I want to say that up front. It’s so important to me. Two things are important to me.
Living Life by Design Not Accident
One, if you wake up and love your life, hit pause or turn this off because that’s all I’m trying to achieve, is help people love their lives. Whatever you’re doing, if your version, you love it, keep on going. Good for you. Also, everybody’s version is different. That’s the most important thing. Are you doing what you’re doing, living the life you’re living on purpose or on accident? One of your parents did what you do, or because you were with this partner for a long time. It seemed, “We should get married or be together, or whatever,” and now you realize but maybe you’re not a fit.
Eliminating Destructive Mental Storytelling
It is so easy to rush into life and never stop and go, “What makes sense?” That’s what the book’s made up of. It’s the story of my life as well, but it starts with the idea of storytelling. Stop telling yourself stories. I know this is a hard one to digest, but anytime you’re thinking, you’re not doing yourself any good. Have a thought. Take action. When you’re stewing over something or going over and over in your head, it rarely comes out well. I know some of you’re probably thinking, “I ponder stuff and then I finally get the right idea.” Again, whatever’s working for you, keep doing it.
Living in a joyful flow state isn't about doing more, it's about reducing what doesn't align with your core self. Share on XIn general, most times, instead of people going, “This is what I want to achieve. What should I do to achieve that?” Have a thought of , “I need to do this,” then start going about doing that. Instead, most people continue to negotiate with themselves and never get to the actual doing. For our mental health, storytelling is about not saying things that aren’t factual because you think it might be true. It’s like, “Why didn’t this person call me back? They must be mad at me. They didn’t like what I said the other night. They don’t want to hang out with me anymore. They don’t want to work with me. They don’t want to do business.”
Protecting Your Circle of Control
You’re going on and on in your head about all these possibilities and none of it is even true. They were out of town and that’s why they didn’t call you or somebody died or they got hurt. Yet, we are so willing to quickly start making up these stories in our head. Stop storytelling. Number two, circle of control. All of this is equally valuable. The circle of control has been super powerful because in the moment, it snaps into place for me. It’s a reminder that’s all about only focusing on what you can control. Who’s president other than you voting, or if you decide you want to petition, raise money and organize? Good for you.
Stop telling yourself stories about what might be true. Have a thought, take an action, and drop the assumptions. Share on XOther than that, once we do our homework and vote, our job is done. Now, you have to live the best life you can live regardless of who’s in the White House. As one example, wars around the world. I always tell people when they start worrying about all these things they can’t control, like, “Do you realize there’s like 50 other things happening in the world that you forgot to worry about such as sex trafficking, child slavery. The list goes on and on.” There’s atrocities left and right all over the place.
I would never say, “I don’t care. It’s not your problem. My life is good. I don’t have to worry about it.” No. What I am saying is don’t make your life and the people that are important to you lives miserable because you’re getting weighed down with something you can’t affect. If you can affect it and you care enough to affect it, go for it. If you can’t affect it and all you’re going to do is regurgitate the problem and what’s wrong and why it’s bad, you’re literally crushing your circle and making your life worse. When you focus on what’s in your circle, like, “I can go out and be a better realtor. I can go out and be a better partner. I can go out and help somebody. I can paint my house.” Whatever it is.
Drafting a Personal Constitution
What’s in your circle, what you’re able to affect, if you only put your energy there, it’s amazing because then your circle keeps growing. When you think about it, if we all do that, finally our circles will cross over each other into a big, expansive, beautiful life. It’s storytelling, don’t do it. Circle of control, stay in your circle, then the third thing, the personal constitution. This is the thing that I wrote many years ago, I was opening my first restaurant. We lived near Laurel Village in San Francisco. Any of you that know San Francisco and Starbucks opened and they opened at 5:00 AM, which was unheard of for any business. Let alone a coffee shop.
I would go there in the mornings and I literally said, “How do I want to live my life?” As many of you may have read in the other episodes, my mother went to trial for shooting my father in our house, killing him in bed. We had a rough childhood and I subliminally purged a lot of those demons throughout college, throughout my twenties, and then I was ready to open this restaurant at . I had met this amazing woman who is now my wife, Nadia. I said, “No more. I need to decide how I want to live my life.” I don’t know what made me do that exactly, but that’s the idea. Not, I want a mansion or I want this car or I want this person.
It’s what values I’m going to live by. When you do that and you repeat it every single day, and best-case scenario, meditate and feel it. It is incredible how you rewire your brain. If I had to only give you one sentence on the reduction, that’s what I’d say it is. It’s a book about rewiring your brain. What it’s not is pretty sweet frosting on a bad cake. It’s not a self-help quick fix. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s not this great new technique that’s going to change your life in six days. No, this has taken me decades. I’m not very smart and I didn’t have a way to go about it.
You’re getting this book. It can start happening much faster, but it’s still a process. It’s rewiring your brain because everything in your life starts with what you tell yourself and how you think. You have a thought. It turns into an emotion. That emotion has you do something and what you’re doing will be a result of those thoughts and those emotions. As we all know, people’s lives can go very differently right in the same city, even in the same family just because of the choices they make that were a result of the emotions they were having, which were a result of the thoughts they kept putting in their head.
Rewiring Your Daily Behavioral Responses
This personal constitution is key for you deciding how you want to live your life. Once you do that, then you’re no longer renegotiating with yourself all the time. I’ll make this quick for those of you that have read the full episode on the constitution. I don’t want to bore you to death, but for those of you who are new, I’ll give you a taste of it. My constitution opens up with, “Gratitude and joy are my lifeblood. Better every day for myself and those around me. Do the right thing, bring joy.”
I read that every morning for 30 years. When you do that, it affects your brain and now you start being joyful and bringing joy. You’re always grateful. You’re always thinking, “Am I bringing joy wherever I go?” If I get in a pissy mood, I’m in the line at the grocery store somewhere. I’m like, “Am I bringing joy now? No, I’m being a little jerk. I need to stop this.” You catch yourself in the act if you commit to reading it every day and internalizing it. Again, this isn’t an affirmation. This isn’t, “I want to be rich and pretty. I want to have a mansion, I want to travel the world.”
You say it quickly and then you get on with your day and you start behaving like you’ve always behaved. This is about connecting deeply on a cellular level with yourself. Whether it’s having quiet time or whether it’s meditating like I do. This becomes your internal compass. This is the way you live your life. Towards the bottom of my constitution, I talk about my family and I say, “The mother of my children, woman of my dreams will always feel like the most special woman in the world. I will always love her for who she is, not who I want her to be.”
A personal constitution serves as your internal compass so you stop renegotiating your core values every day. Share on XEarly on in our relationship, which is pretty normal for a lot of relationships, you’re trying to always change them to what you want them to be, “Why aren’t you doing this? You should be doing it this way.” That’s not why you fell in love with them. It’s so important to remember that. By doing that and reading that every day, when I start to slip and act in a way or say something that makes it more like, “Why aren’t you doing it my way?” I catch myself so quickly.
I’m so excited about this book because it works. Over the years, it’s incredible how it has rewired my brain to the point now where it’s almost instantaneous when I’m not in line with my constitution. I feel it. I feel a dis-ease. I love that concept. I think it was Eckhart Tolle. Disease, the word, is dis-ease. It’s the body’s manifestation of where the brain’s at. When you’re feeling that dis-ease, it’s because you’re not in alignment with who you’re meant to be and how you want to live your life. Once you do that, then whatever money you’re supposed to make, you’re going to make. Whatever family life you’re supposed to have, you’re going to have because you’re living by that constitution.
Establishing Firm Work Boundaries
For me, for example. I say, “I know work will fill the space given. I’m only going to give it an amount of time that allows me to enjoy my life, pursue my passions, and give more than I take.” As a result of having that and saying it every day, when somebody comes to me, which they do often with an opportunity like a new TV show, a real estate partnership, or investment. I quickly am running it through my personal constitution. I’m like, “That’s going to end up expanding my work hours further than I want them to.” Again, if your constitution is, “I want to be a billionaire at all costs.” Go for it.
You should say yes to many things because you don’t care about the personal time, the family time, the hobbies and that’s okay. You’re you and I’m me, but have a plan to be consistent because when most people get disappointed or frustrated, in my opinion. It’s because they’re not in alignment with who they are and what they want to be doing. There’s always this internal conflict and dis-ease. They go with the flow at the moment like, “This sounds good, so I’ll do that.” It isn’t thought through or doesn’t align with who you are and what you want to be doing.
The Reduction is not quick fix self-help. It’s not affirmations. It’s a combination of all the things I’ve done in my life and all the people I’ve followed such as Eckhart Tolle, Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Art of Happiness. All these books I’ve been treating as Bibles and reading my whole life. These different philosophies have sunk into me and they’ve morphed into my own way of thinking, speaking and doing things. It’s now all in this book. It has gotten me through crazy hard times, which we all have. Our son’s addiction. My wife and I had a rocky period as a result of that. My father’s death and my mother and that side of the family’s very different way of being.
Work will always expand to fill the time given unless you set firm boundaries using your personal constitution. Share on XIn 2025, I had cancer and none of them changed my life other than the initial thing when I was young because I wasn’t there yet. Once I prepared myself with the concepts of this book. As I entered each of these challenges, it was so much easier to get through it. I didn’t have any life-changing epiphanies. It wasn’t like, all of a sudden, “Now that I’ve had cancer, I’m going to love my life and do this.” I already loved my life. I was already doing everything I wanted to do.
One of the things in my constitution is, no should-haves, could-haves, or would-haves. Only did. I can die any day and my last words will be, “Thank you,” with a smile. It has made these challenges so much more bearable. It’s made me so much more empathetic and compassionate with other people because, again, one of the things in my constitution is I don’t judge other people. Even though I see your flaws, and again, those flaws are by my standards. I don’t see your struggles. I don’t know what you’re going through. Nobody wants to be short-tempered, difficult, or nasty. I don’t think so at least.
They’re going through stuff that’s putting them there. They haven’t done this work to realize it or to bring themselves out of it. It’s a way to prepare yourself for anything that may happen. I always say, for me, a thing is a thing. I don’t put huge weight on one thing and no weight on another thing. I go through life. Everything’s a thing and you stay in this flow state. All of a sudden, I’ll close with this. You end up just emanating joy. Joy comes from within into everything you do.
Most people are looking for joy and looking for happiness on the outside. Once they find it, they’ll be okay. Again, this isn’t about not making money or being a hobbit or living in a tent. I love money. I love success. What does the reduction do that makes you focus on how you do less to achieve more? You’re raising your standards. You’re clear about who you are and what you want to do. You end up being far more successful in far less time and loving the journey. That’s it for this episode. Next up is going to be my amazing wife. I can’t wait for you to meet her and see what an incredible part of my life she is. Whatever you’re doing, I hope it’s a beautiful day. Keep producing and thriving. Cheers.