Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck | Mark Manson

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Mark Manson, the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, the mega-bestseller that reached #1 in fourteen different countries.Mark’s books have been translated into more than 50 languages and have sold over 12 million copies worldwide.He runs one of the largest personal growth websites in the world, MarkManson.net, a blog with more than two million monthly readers and half a million subscribers, making him one of the largest and most successful independent publishers in the world.Mark’s writing is often described as ‘self-help for people who hate self-help’ — a no-BS brand of life advice and cultural commentary that has struck a chord with people around the globe.And the same can be said for this conversation – it’s a no BS, candid look into Mark’s upbringing, what inspired him to start writing, and why he’s a fervent believer of getting to the truth._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And also, he's a writer and author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, a counterintuitive approach to living a good life. And that is a mega bestseller that reached number one in 14 different countries. So how did he do it? He hit a chord. And that chord is one of truth. And there is a methodology to get down into the truth. It involves examination.

It involves conversation. It involves introspection. And I mean, think about this. Mark's books, they've been translated into more than 50 languages and have sold over 12 million copies worldwide. Mark's writing is often described as self-help for people who hate self-help. no BS brand of life advice and cultural commentary that definitely has struck a chord with many across the planet. And of course, this conversation is no different. There's no BS. It's a candid look into Mark's upbringing, what inspired him to start writing, and why

he is just flat out committed to get into the real stuff. So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with the legend, Mark Manson. Mark, how are you? I'm good. It's good to be here. Yeah, good to be with you. First order of business, congratulations on being disruptive. Congratulations on finding your voice that seems to be incredibly authentic and, you know, working from that place. So that being said, like, can we just take a quick minute and talk about just, you know, a frame for where you come from? And maybe even just if you could name

the chapters of your life. So, you know, from early days to whatever, and I'm not sure how many chapters of your life you have, but if you could just give me a frame of like where you've been, what you've understood would have been some milestone experiences and, uh, and, and phases in your life that would help. 80s and 90s kid, you know, white picket fence, two and a half dogs or whatever, uh, went to church every Sunday. Like it was a very idyllic childhood and generally happy. It was good. Chapter two would be a very angry and bitter adolescence,

mainly inspired by the uncomfortable realization that the idyllic childhood of chapter one was actually just a thinly veiled facade for a bunch of bullshit. You know, I had a lot of things that started to happen when I was a teenager. You know, it's, I grew up in a very, even though it was outside of Austin, it was a teenager. I grew up in a very, even though it was outside of Austin, it was a very conservative part of the country. Williamson County is one of the most conservative places in Texas, which makes it one of the most conservative places in the US.

Very Bible belt. And I just didn't fit in. I just didn't, I didn't get it. It wasn't, I wasn't, you know, the, the, the joke I always make is that, is that people where I grew up worship two things, football and Jesus in that order. And I was terrible at football and I, I didn't get the Jesus thing. And so that ended up with me being pushed into a significant amount of lockers and, um, and you know, my parents divorced and I got into drugs and loud music and it just kind of like was a downward spiral from there. So it was a pretty angry and, um, lonely adolescence, I suppose. I was going to ask, underneath the anger, was it more anxiety or more fear?

I'm sorry, more anxiety or more sadness? It sounds like it was more sadness. Yeah, I think there was definitely some grief there from the loss of the chapter one, a simplistic view of the world, you know, like realizing that the world is not simple. People are full of shit, you know, things don't work the way they're supposed to, things like that. And what broke your heart, you know, at a young age, was it the divorce? Was it, you know, what, what broke your heart there? I think it was primarily the divorce, but it was also, I think it was just, it's funny.

I don't feel weird talking about this because I'm ashamed of it. I feel weird talking about it because I feel like it's such a ubiquitous experience. I always start thinking like, oh, here I go being just like a whiny, rich, white, middle-class kid again. But I think it was just not being accepted. I was into weird things. I was into computers when I was super young, and I was into reading about philosophy.

And I had interest in different cultures and religions, and that wasn, wasn't respected where I grew up. That was looked on as suspicious as like you, you were doing the wrong thing. And, um, and so I think there was a little bit of heartbreak with that of like, you know, of just being rejected, I guess. This was the beginnings of the title of your book. Yeah. I mean, it's the whole not give a fuck thing. I mean, it's a coping mechanism in one way, right? It's a skill that we all learn at some point in our life, but the reason we have to learn it is because we get hurt and things aren't going our way. And so we have to learn how to shake it off, essentially. And you would recognize, you know, that the two things that you're talking about is the hope of a future promised, right?

So that was the breaking of that was a first heartbreak, if you will. And then the second is it is natural for us to look out in our world to want to belong. Like biologically, there's some real evidence that would suggest that belonging is deep in the brainstem. And it's a tactic for survival, you know, on top of that. And so I think that you've learned maybe how to say it in a way that is modern, that is not psychobabble. And you've learned how to say that, but you learned it from earning those scars to say,

oh, wait, hold on. When I was getting pushed into lockers, that's not cool. It's embarrassing. And so I became highly attuned to seeing who's walking toward me. What's their gaze look like? Are they going to be in shady? Do they have this grin like they're coming to take my lunch money? And that would, and I'm making some stories up for you,

but that would attune somebody to caring a lot about what other people think. Because when we're bullied, it sounds like a little bit, or picked on, if you want to go a little bit lesser than that, that would be a great survival strategy to say, Hey, I got to pay attention to how these people are thinking because before I know it, like my back's up against, you know, the locker. I think it forces you to develop a high sensitivity to other people's emotions and other people's motivations. And to see kind of through the surface level, you know, somebody's smiling, but you know that they don't like you. It's like learning how to spot that at a very young age. And it's interesting because it's

over the years, just through my work, it's something that I've learned is extremely common. This wasn't my case, but it's extremely common with people who grew up in abusive households or with alcoholic parents. They develop a very keen sense of reading the room and knowing just like instinctively when something's off and not being able to explain it, you know? And then on top of that, there's a strategy and there's like five basic strategies. You know, one of those strategies is to be the court jester, make a joke, do something fun. Another strategy is to be a bigger problem than the perceived problem. So these are the kids that, you know, um, getting a lot of trouble, right? Because at least they, you know, it's, it's kind of controllable as opposed to looking out to the parents and not

knowing how that trouble is going to actually land in their lap. A third strategy is being the angel. You know, like, you can't come over here because I got straight A's. And I say, please and thank you. And, you know, I've got my application for MIT on my desk and I'm 12. You know, like all of that. So there's many strategies that people learn. And what was yours? Oh, the first two. I mean, you summed it up. I was the jester. I was the class clown.

Um, you know, the humor, I think protected me from my peers. Uh, cause you know, if they're laughing, they can't, they won't punch you. I actually, I remember, uh, you know, there was this kid, I think I was in like seventh grade and there was this kid named i still remember his name his name was eli and he was kind of i mean he was kind of one of the bullies and and the grade and uh he used to pick on me a lot and um his favorite thing to say he'd get up in your face and he and his favorite thing to say was was do you want a box and he'd like start talking a bunch of trash and get up like right and right like an inch away from your face you like you want a box let's go you want a box and i remember i was i had an art class with him

and he like got up in my face and started talking a bunch of trash and uh and everybody in the class is like sitting there looking at us and frozen silent. And he's like yelling at me. He's like, you want a box, Mark? You want a box? And I reached over on the shelf and I grabbed the cardboard box. I'm like, no, I already got a box right here. And he just like, I could see his face.

Like he's trying to hold it together. And then he just like starts cracking up. And he's like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And I'm like, hey, do you want a box? There's more over here, you know? And like, and sure enough, he didn't kick my ass, you know? Like that's... So, you know, that's...

So you probably, out of survival, you probably started to begin your identity at that point. Whether you're funny or not, you probably started to begin your identity at that point. Whether you're funny or not, you're definitely smart and clever. And then, you know, you probably, I'm making this up a little bit, of course, but that was maybe the beginnings out of some fear to say, oh, I'm the funny one. And, and did that start to carry forward for you as well? Yeah. I mean, humor got me out of a lot of pickles. That's for sure. Yeah.

And it probably still does to this day. But, you know, the other one was be a bigger problem. You know, the way I remember when I was in therapy in my 20s, the way I used to talk about it to my therapist was, uh, you know, there's no such thing as bad publicity. You know, my, my parents weren't, um, my parents weren't abusive. Like they were, they're good people. Like they, they did their best. Um, they were more on the, they just weren't paying attention. Like they just kind of were doing their own thing. Like they, they weren't around a whole lot. And, uh, and so I think the strategy there was, was like, well, if I can't get their attention being like a good kid, I can definitely get their attention being a bad kid. Um, and so,

you know, there's no such thing as bad publicity in this case. So I was in trouble all the time and it was usually for stupid things, pranks, mouthing off in class, making sarcastic jokes to teachers, you know, things like that. And, you know, and then, and then it later, when I got a little bit older, it kind of spiraled into, into drinking and drugs and stuff like that. And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, that was kind of like those two, that was like a two prong approach for me kind of coping with that period of my life. There you go. I mean, as, as lame as it is, it was setting you up for much of your career now. Right. And so how do you get to chapter three and four and whatever? How do you

get to the next chapters? You know, chapter three was, I would just say getting out of Texas. And it was, I went to school in Boston and it was, I mean, moving to the East coast was very like revelatory for me. And it was, you know, it was, I felt it was a culture where I felt like being intellectual was respected and it was, we're being clever and witty was also like, you weren't seen as disrespectful. If you had a, a, a funny quip, like interrupted class with a quip or something like that, it was, you know, teachers didn't look at you like you were out of line. You know, so I think it just, a lot of my natural gifts were fit in with the culture there a little bit better. You know, in Texas, I was always, people were always telling me I was rude. I was mean. Cause, and I always thought I was just

being honest, you know, and people are like, you're not supposed to say that. That's rude. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, and then you move to Boston, everybody's a asshole. So suddenly it's like, I'm like, oh, these are my people. You know, people are just like, they say how it is, like straight to your face. And it's, you know, Boston to this day, Boston's really the only place I've ever lived that felt like home. And I get very nostalgic about it.

And I think it's for that reason. It's the first time in my life that I'm like, I found a place where a culture, a community, that sense of belonging, you know, it's like I fit in there. So you fit in with them assholes. Totally. Good context. Good context. All right, perfect. it's like i fit in there so you fit in with the mass holes totally good context chapter four where we at uh chapter four i would say um so i graduated school um i graduated in 07 worst job market you know in in 85 years or whatever, living on a friend's couch. And I was doing some freelance web design just to make a couple extra bucks. And I was doing some work for a couple of friends of mine who were trying to start an online business. And they

tipped me off this book called Four Hour Work work week by tim ferris and um so i read the book in like two days and it's it was basically all about this was back 2007 2008 so it was internet was still kind of this new exploding thing and it it just talked about how anybody can get online start a, find a thing to sell. And if you can sell a decent amount of it, you can automate it with software and like go sit on a beach somewhere for the rest of your life. And to 24-year-old Mark, that was like the dream. Drop shipping, sign me up. Yeah.

I'm like, where do i begin and um you know lo and behold it took about two years of working 80 hours a week to get anything that made a decent income going you know i i my friends and i used to joke around that, uh, you're like, Oh yeah, online business, you work 16 hours a day so you can make money while you sleep. Um, but it's eventually by end of 2009, I, I, I kind of got something off the ground and, um, and, and all also discussed in, in Tim's book is, is this idea, he called it geo arbitrage, but it was basically like, you know, look, if you, if you've got a website that say makes $2,000 a month, you can't live in Seattle or New York or wherever on $2,000 a month. You just can't. But at least back then, you can definitely live really well in say Argentina or um you know Thailand or in Prague and it's

especially with the exchange rates and everything you could live like a king it was the equivalent two thousand dollars a month in you in U.S. dollars and Prague was like making six figures you know um and you still had all the infrastructure and internet and everything. So I was like, that sounds amazing. And I took off. So chapter four would be me living abroad for almost seven years. Where'd you go? I went to over 50 countries, learned two different languages, spent, I'd say I spent at least two months in probably like six or seven different countries. I ended up living, I lived in Brazil for two years.

I lived in Colombia for over a year, lived in Thailand for about a year. But it was just, it was amazing. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO,

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You have a high tolerance for risk? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So you're actually living some of the risk stuff. Most people don't do that. Right. And, and you had a business that you was generating some revenue for you, you to be able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And I could work as I went, you know, did you go by

yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so that's, that's another twist. Okay. Yeah, man. Um, wait, so that's another twist. Okay. Yeah, man. Wait, so hold on. You lived how many years by yourself? I traveled solo for, so I met my wife in 2012. I moved to Brazil to be with my wife in 2013. So I traveled solo for four years straight. Cool. Cool. Okay.

I'm very comfortable being alone. And I think part of that probably came from my adolescence. Like I have no, no anxiety about picking up and going to some strange country by myself for a month, not speaking the language. Let's say that you had, let's say you had a 19, 22 year old kid at some point, and we're going to try to oversimplify by being a reductionist and bifurcating wisdom. Okay. Which is not really a suggested path that I'm trying to take you down. But if we oversimplify and bifurcate this, this insight, what would you say to the 24 year old kid who has got, you know,

22 seconds to say, Hey, listen, if you're going to go travel and really travel and be an adventurer as a traveler, not a tourist, here's the upside, here's the downside. The upside is it really teaches you to be self-reliant and trust yourself, for sure. There was a noticeable difference. I remember I left for about 12, 18 months, and then I came back to Boston for two or three months. Um, and I remember coming back and hanging out with the same people and going to the same places and doing the same things. And I felt different. Like I felt way more secure, way more patient, way more like just in control of myself. Like it was a market difference for sure. So that's the upside.

Downside is, is there's just, there's a lot of unpredictability and you definitely get yourself into situations that suck. You know, it's, you get sick, you get lost. Um, you can get robbed. Um, it's, there's definitely like weeks. I would never say, I wouldn't say there were never months that were bad. There were absolutely weeks that were bad. You know, some of the worst weeks of my life happened during that period. Um, so it's hard. I learned that from surfing, you know, and there's a lot of travel that comes in surfing. And when you're young and you're surfing and traveling, at least for my peer group, my friends, we didn't have money and we find ourselves like

sleeping in our board brags on the cliffs of some, you know, exotic country down in central America and, um, being woken up to police and federales, like, oh man, it's on. And so you end up being kind of physically dirty a lot in those situations. And there's a different type of tolerance for things. And there's a craving I found as well at some point, like, oh, what hot water is amazing like and i don't have to spend you know 30 minutes trying to fire up a a kettle and whatever so yeah but that self-reliance is where i think if i get on a soapbox really quickly right now what's happening in america is there was this moment of crisis when covid came down, which was, okay, what are we made of?

Is our underbelly soft as a nation or are we made of some sort of internal resolve? Is this an entitled culture like we've been fearful of or are we going to be about it? And I'm sad to reflect. That turned out for you. Yeah. This thing, you know, so, oh gosh yeah yeah yeah i mean if there's oh sorry no no i'll just i'll finish that there's real pain and suffering you know that's taking place and holy moly this selfishness is crazy to me it Yeah, it's mind boggling.

And honestly, so I'll make two points about that. One is I would say that that upside and that downside, they're the same thing. You don't get that self-reliance without getting that hardship, without being stranded. And like, you know, one of my low moments, I was stranded in rural India, horribly sick, in a bug-infested room with lice and all this stuff. And there's not a hospital within 100 kilometers. It is so on. When you know that stuff, it's a whole different attention to detail. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like no clean water. I'm like puking my guts out. I'm like horribly dehydrated. Body's like no clean water i'm like puking my guts out i'm like horribly dehydrated body's like shaking and i'm i'm like i i could really be in danger here you know like this could if this goes on for more than like a day like i could i could seriously be in in danger you know so it's but you come out of those things more steely, more resolved. So they kind of go hand in hand.

And I think if there's a central thrust of all of my writing and all my work, that's it. Which is that there's a certain amount of adversity that we need and that we need to seek out to remain mentally and emotionally healthy as individuals. And as a corollary to that, a huge thrust of my work is just, is this kind of culture of entitlement that I see across the entire political spectrum. I see it across all age groups it it manifests itself differently with different age groups and different you know parts of the political spectrum but it's they're all they're all a bunch of fucking snowflakes and it's and it's there's just this sense that we no longer we don't deserve to be stressed or hurt in any way ever ever again and if you do then you're you then this is tyranny and blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. And it's like, no, man, that's not how life works. And oh, by the way, when you actually go to parts of the world where people actually do have problems, it gives you perspective for sure. You're going to love this. It was a multi-billion dollar international corporation reaches out and it's like, okay, Mike, you, you, you have some insights about rugged environments and how people do really well in them. And so we'd like some of that, you know, and, you know, they want to gloss it up with this concept, the psychological principle of resiliency, which is good. Like there, you know, there's a lot of good that comes from being resilient. And I said, right. Okay. You want to get after it? Like in the right way? And they say, yeah.

And I said, okay, well, we got to, we got to put your people through some really hard shit, like really hard stuff. And they said, no, whoa, whoa, whoa. Our people are stressed out. It's, it's the hardest working condition in the world. Like the chronic stress they have is ridiculous. I say, right. We got to come on top of that and like give them acute, intense, radical stress. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Our people are barely sleeping. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, what do you want?

Like, really, what do you want? Well, we want to give our people tools. No, no, no. Tools alone will allow you to damp down your ability to manage, or no, it'll increase your ability to manage chronic stress. Tools will do that. But resiliency, you got to get in the fire. You got to face some stuff, you know?

And I mean, that's the joy of getting dirty, for sure. Yeah, I've always, I compare it like, to me, I just use the analogy of the physical body you know it's the same way if you never exit if you just sit on a couch all day you know eating cheetos uh your body weakens it becomes more fragile and then things that are completely normal everyday behaviors you know getting up and going to the bathroom, like these become physically difficult for you. They become physically stressful. And it's because you aren't, because you're not inviting that regimented amount of adversity and stress into your life and, you know, your body starts to experience stress doing everything. Acute stress. We're talking about acute stress, like alarm type of

acute stress is the grail here that we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's the same thing with mental health. It's like if you've got a life that's cushy and easy and everything's given to you and everything's on demand and the customer's always right and all this stuff, you know, it's like when something actually difficult comes along, you, you're unequipped to handle it. You know, you're, you're figuratively, you know, your, your mind buckles under the weight, under the pressure because it hasn't worked up to it, you know? So what did you do with the, with the client? Did you do anything? Yeah. I think it was a little bit more than they wanted to bite off. You know, so I think what they ended up doing is kind of building some of their own internal resources for people, but not really solving.

You know, it's a little bandaid on top of it, which is cool. You know, that's fine. But what this gets bridges us to like what people say they want and what they actually want can be very different. Yeah. And I think much of your work is about, um, you know, kind of a framework shift for people, you know, like to get real is one way that I think about the way that you're positioning your writing and your insights. So what does it mean to you to get real or to be real? I think it's just honesty. Honesty with not just others, but with yourself in terms of, and, you know, honesty is a very,

it sounds like such a simple word, but I think it's actually very complicated because a lot of us, we don't realize the ways in which we're not being honest with ourselves. And I think one of the ways that we tend to be dishonest with ourselves is that we don't recognize the sacrifices or pitfalls with the choices we make. You know, it's, it's, we, we kind of, the human mind seems to automatically be able to dilute itself into believing that it's only going to get the benefits and none of the costs when making a decision. And so much of my work is just trying to point that out to people of like, you know, okay, you want to be happy. You want to have a great relationship, you know, but you need to fight well. You know, it's like, you can't, there's

no such thing as a great marriage, you know, where you never fight, you know, so let's talk about fighting. And for some reason, it's just that, that is eyeopening to people. And I think it's, it's such a basic assumption in our culture these days that it's like, you can have all the benefits with none of the costs. Like you can have everything that's good without the bad. And so, yeah, I, I sometimes I feel like my, I'm just like the, you know, maybe it comes back to the gesture thing that, you know, the gesture ultimately was the only one who could tell the truth to, to the King, you know? Um, and it's like,

who could point out like, Oh no, you're, you're actually probably fucking up there. Um, actually you don't have any clothes on. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's, I, I, sometimes I just feel like my job is like, you know, I get hundreds and hundreds of emails a week from people talking, you know, talking about whatever problem they're facing in their life. And I just kind of sit there and I point out the hidden costs to their decisions that they don't see. And then as soon as they see it, they're like, oh my God, that's, that's so helpful. Or I think most people in the self-help world, which, you know, for better or worse is the world that I'm in. Most people in the self-help world just keep promising that benefit. You know, they keep promising the tools like, like your client wanted, you know, of here's how to make your stress go away. And it's like, well, no, the way you make your stress go away is you add way more stress for a brief period of time.

Yeah. Are you more interested in framework strategies than tools and skills? Or, I mean, it's hard for me to, it sounds like that's what you're doing. It's hard for me to pull them apart because I see it as a bit like the Panama Canal, you know, is that there's this relationship between a multifaceted, multidimensional relationship between the nuances that make each person uniquely themselves, but this collective dam, if you will, of what makes people rather similar to each other. Like the human condition is not universal, but there are some universal principles that cut through culture.

And then as we get down into the particulars of the dam, it's like there's skills and strategies and principles and tools. They all kind of work together for me, but you're more interested in strategies and perspectives, it sounds like. Yeah, I am. It's funny when I wrote Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, the publisher, so it's a pretty standard trope in the self-help genre of like, you kind of finish up every chapter with a checklist of like, here's five things to go do today to make sure, you know, whatever. And the publisher really pushed me to add those to each of my chapters. And I was like,

absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I told him, I was like, look, like this book is about values. And I, it's not my job to tell people what their values should be. You know, my job is to simply help them ask better questions, define their values themselves. You know, I'm not gonna, you know, I don't want to push my, my philosophy or, or kind of how I see the world onto anybody. Cause I feel like that undermines the power of the message, which is, no, you have to choose yourself. You have to choose what you care about. You have to. You have no choice. It's like human being 101. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. I think that that regard for the other person's experience is right down the center lane of where I would sit as well. My experience has been that people already have a philosophy. They already have a value proposition that they've sold themselves

based on what, what car they bought or didn't buy, what bicycle they have or don't have, what watch they wear, don't watch. Like there's already a set of principles that are guiding thoughts, words, and actions. Now, whether those things are thoughtful and overt is, is totally different. And so, so that's why I wanted to take, I wanted to see how, what forcing functions you're using or have found to be useful to help people illuminate, if you will, their values or ways for them to become more honest. And I'm telling you this, that I've got some thoughts on it that I want to add and see how you bounce off of them. But what have you found as ways to help people become more honest? One of the things I talk about with people is kind of, I joke that it's like the obnoxious three-year-old inside all of us. You know, like you should have a little obnoxious three-year-old in the back of

your head who's like constantly asking why about everything, you know? So it's, because I think you're right. I think that, you know, everybody does care about something. Everybody has adopted some sort of worldview or philosophy. The problem is most people don't recognize what they've adopted or they're not aware of which values they've adopted. It's like a junkyard philosophy. It's kind of convenient and it changes a little bit based on what gets plucked around or moved around. It's's, it's more of a junkyard philosophy than like what Dr. King Jr. did or what Nelson Mandela did or mother Teresa did or what Mark Manson is doing. You know, it's like, it's, it's, it's sometimes lacks that, uh, commitment

and that's okay. You know, I mean, sure. That's all right. I'll, I don't, I haven't talked about this before, but can I share something with you? Sure. Yeah. So I got called out. It was one of my mentors, my mentor's mentor. And we sat down and she's like, it was just kind of a big moment for my mentor to introduce us. And this was just out of college. And she says, so tell me what you're about and i i couldn't i couldn't say eloquently here it is you know and and i danced around it a little bit well you know the things that matter most and well let me say it this way she's she looked at my mentor and was like i thought you said he was

ready you know like what are we doing i took my tail you know so it's like it's just until you do that hard lift or until you feel some sort of suffering or pain, because I thought I was doing the work, but not until I felt that moment where it's like, oh my, oh, that's wisdom over there, you know? And this is bumbling over here. In my experience, people tend to not, you know, sitting in questioning your own value system is a very difficult thing to do. And it's very uncomfortable thing to do. And I've found that generally speaking, we don't, we tend to not be willing to do it until those values have failed us in some way.

And so that, that, that's how it was in my case. Right. So, you you know my value system in my early adulthood was pretty much like show me the next party like i'm gonna do everything i'm gonna learn everything i'm going to go to every country i'm gonna hook up with every female i can will like even speak to me you know You know, like it, this is, it was this very, uh, indulgent philosophy of like, I just want to experience the world, which is great in your twenties for a while. Um, you know, it's not that, that life philosophy doesn't have strong legs under it. It doesn't last for very long. Um, and I soon found that out, you out. I got about four, five years into my traveling and I started to feel very lonely. I felt a lack of community. I started losing touch with a lot of people back home. I realized that a lot of my friendships and relationships that I

developed on the road were not nearly as significant or profound as I thought they were. That a lot of my experiences that I thought were significant or profound as I thought they were. Um, that a lot of my experiences that I thought were significant or profound were not, you know, they were, they were fun. They were cool, but like, you know, I'm not going to sit and tell my grandkids about them. You know, it's, so I, as I approached 30, I started to realize that like, you know that none of this means anything. This was cool. This was a great experience, but it doesn't mean anything. If I died tomorrow, there's not really anything people can say or there's not anything I'll lay on my deathbed and be proud of. And that, that question like really started to eat at me more and more as the months went by. And, and I started to kind of fall into a little bit of a depression. And that's,

that's when I started kind of looking at all this stuff. I'm like, you know, what have I optimized my, my life around? Well, basically traveling and partying. What good has that done me? You know, like what should I optimize my life around? And then as soon as you hit that question, it's like, holy crap, like, you know, existential crisis sets in, right? And so for me, it's like I had to experience those values failing for me to actually, to actually have the space to question them and, and to ask, is this serving me? Is this good for the world? Like, is this good for the people I love and care about? Um, does this matter?

And I think it takes people a while to hit that point. You know, I think that's generally what's regarded as like a midlife crisis is usually that point. You know, it's like every, you get the corner office and the nice car and you've got the kids and, and you kind of sit around and you're like, now what? And, and you, that, that realization that you have to choose something like completely arbitrarily choose something and commit to it for the rest of your life, not knowing whether it's the right thing. It's a very, very scary proposition, but it's necessary. There's an insight that until you say no, can you fully say yes? So until you say, until you tried some stuff out and say, nope, that's not for me. Can you fully commit to a full open yes to this next kind of thing? And so that means there's some adventure and risk and a little bit of heartache that's involved in

that proposition. And there's a theme that keeps emerging on Finding Mastery Guest, which is this idea is like, I was chasing A, B, and C, and then I realized that that was not it once I attained it. And so that's really easy to say for people that have money in the bank and then say, it's not about money. They have a great relationship and say, you know, it's not, it's more about purpose than it is fill in the blanks. It's like, no, dude, you belong. And you, you know, you've got security from a generational standpoint. Okay. Like, come on, come back, come back to us here. And so I think that that's an easy trap for us to fall into. When I hear you talk about it, I hear you saying, yeah, but you know, you got to

feel some stuff and it's got to be authentically yours. And then you can get, be honest, you know, with the commitments that you're making, the values that you hold, maybe the philosophy that you keep. All that being said is, this is where I was going to go with being honest. I think you probably use it with writing. It's one of the forcing functions because of all the words of your native tongue, you got to put some words on paper if you're going to say something. There's an archival nature to it. So you're using writing. Do you journal? No. No. So it's in other forms. And, do you have conversations with people of wisdom?

Yeah. All the time. All the time. And then, um, do you meditate or have some sort of internal reflection mechanism? Yes. Yeah. So those, uh, are there any others that you use? Cause I keep coming back to those are the three for, um, clarity, honesty.

For me, it's, it's, I've got a, a few people in my life that I really, really admire their brains. And I kind of use them to bounce ideas off of quite frequently, both personal, professional, philosophical, everything. And then meditation has been a good companion. You know, in the past, I did quite a bit of therapy, which was very necessary, you know, so I put that into the same category as well. Yeah, me too. Yeah. About how many hours have you sat, you know? Oh, man. Oh, therapy? I don't know. I did it throughout my early 20s. So I did it for a few years pretty consistently. But I was going to say the journaling thing, at my core, I'm a blogger. And so I feel like a lot of the benefit that people get from journ know, that's just my career. So it's. Yeah, no, that's right. That's exactly. Yeah. Flat out. And I feel like the wise conversations in same vein for me, I do have mentors that, you know, game changing for me. And also that like, when you ask people that are psychologists, like what is, you know, what's one of the benefits is that we get to work on like,

not only refining our craft with clients you know but at the same time like wow we're reimagining and re-experiencing and and like it's this forcing function to go oh what do i stand for because they're struggling and so it's a little bit like journaling and blogging to you is you know the the switched on conversations with wise people is you know it's a little bit of a side gift, you know, for sure. But okay. So, so on the honesty thing, do you have an experience in your life where you, it's really clear that you had a choice to be honest, dishonest, and, you know, that, uh, has been a game shifting moment for you? Um, I mean, I have lapses of dishonesty, like everybody, especially with myself, you know,

it's, I don't know if I've never had an epiphany around that. You know, my, my, one of the, one of the things that always got me in trouble as a kid was, you know, you know, like little kids say things that are true, but you're not supposed to say? It's like, oh, this lady's fat. I didn't completely grow out of that. And then I happened to grow up in a culture that is very face-saving and you don't say certain things in polite company. And then I would just blurt stuff out and get in trouble for it and never understood why, you know? So it's, that's kind of always been with me, but I think as an adult and as I've gotten into, you know, my career and, and all

the philosophy and stuff, I've, I've developed a very profound respect for the concept of honesty, both in terms of just living ethically, but also from a perspective of psychological development. I think I wrote in one of my books, you could argue that the process of growth is just learning to lie to yourself less, learning to hide fewer parts of reality from yourself. And I really, you know, that's a very strong belief that I have and that I guess I preach, you know, through my work. Is one of the mechanisms for that for you, is it meditation? Yes. Yes.

Meditation was really important for me years past. Although, you know, I'm terrible at it. I don't know. Do you meditate regularly? Yeah. Do you? Yeah. Have you figured out how to do it?

Because I've been doing it for like 15 years now. And I still can't get myself to do it consistently. Yeah. I go through phases, you know, like I'll have like, I'll have a year, like 2017 was a really good meditation year for me. I don't, I don't know why, but you know, I did, I did, I was going to a group here locally. I did a couple of retreats and, you know, and then the last, you you know last year it was just like non-existent you know everything was hectic and crazy yeah i think uh i've had the same experience you know it's been i was first introduced it like 20 20 some years ago and i've been up easily more on than off but

there are phases and times when you know um it ebbs and flows like you're talking about. And so because of that, I didn't like that. There's a goal that comes from it. And there's also a gold dust. And when you don't do it, it doesn't mean you don't get both. Maybe you're just living more mindfully. But it is a skill. And if you don't practice skills, they rust up a little bit.

So I've done a couple of things in the practical sense is that I added a morning routine. I'm not a routine person. I really much more value this idea that from form to go form less from structure to break structure. And so I'm not a fan of pre-performance routines for athletes. I'm, you know, however, I have adopted a routine in the morning, which is it's got four little simple parts. And one of them is just one fricking breath. And it's a high quality breath. Okay. So if I can do one fricking high quality breath, I go, okay, like I've at least done a, like the absolute minimum of a deep focus, focus is that going to get me to the promised land of like wisdom no yeah but it's at least like me saying okay i'm doing something on

the internal that is deep focus without judgment and then um when i do that i think when i do those i end up having more interest because i'm kind of priming my day before I get out of bed to do something internal. So, um, the research is earlier in the day versus later tends to be better. Accountability tends to help if you've got somebody that's checking in on you, um, putting something on the line, if you have trouble, you know, kind of rebuilding the habit. Um, yeah. So I don't know. And there's times and places for all things, you know, so maybe you're in a flow or an ebb right now, which is cool too. Yeah. It's, it's come back since COVID started. Um, it was actually, it's actually been really

good the last few months. It's been very helpful, but it's, what does your practice look like? Um, you know, I just got a mat and a pillow and, um, so I, I was very, I learned and I, I was very into Zen. Um, so it's, it's very bare bones. Um, you know, just counting the breaths and usually eyes open. It's a big mountain to climb every 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever the practice is. It is a tough one to climb. So one of the things that I'm doing,'m doing that's been an accelerant is that one

breath oftentimes i haven't taken my sheets off yet turns into a solid 10 minutes yeah you know it's like so before i physically wake up my body i'm waking up my mind spirit something else as well yeah so yeah it it creates inertia it's funny because one of my good friends here in new york is a meditation teacher and uh he's he's got a very similar, you know, he always tells me he's like, he's like, pick an amount of time that is not intimidating. It can be 30 seconds. It can be one minute, you know, like find like if 10 minutes is scary, ask yourself, how about five minutes of five minutes of scary? Ask yourself one minute. If one is scary, ask yourself 30 seconds, you know, and then find the amount of time that's not scary. And he's like, half the time, you're just going to sit there for 10 minutes anyway.

You know, it's just, it's the, it's very similar to writing actually. It's like the hardest part is starting. Once you're started, it's, it's, it becomes very easy to continue. I found that to be true too. And that good science your teacher is offering good science good for hyperformation solid science yeah it's good okay uh solid so like let's go back to the chapters really quickly uh we're at five do you have do you have a five and six and seven eight or like where are we um well one was childhood two was adolescence three boston four traveling so five five i would say was was meeting my wife and um she very much coen meeting her very much coincided with kind of this existential crisis around like i've done all these things,

but I'm committed to nothing. You know, it's, I've achieved a lot of stuff, but it, none of it necessarily means anything. What am, you know, what am I going to commit to? What am I going to stand for? And, and I looked at it both in terms of my career. I wanted to start building a career that I could be very proud of and hang my hat on for decades. And then also in my personal life, I wanted to build relationships that would sustain for my life. And so I met her around the same time. And she just not even overtly, it wasn't even something she and I talked about a whole lot, but it was just simply falling for her, being with her, actually having a healthy relationship with her. You know, I had had romantic relationships in my past, but none of them were particularly functional or that healthy. But with her, it was, and it was, it was,

you know, and I think it kind of gave me the push, uh, into that more committed chapter of my life of like finding something that I could stand for and, you know, give myself to for years and years and years. Okay, cool. And then chapter six? I kind of feel like in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm entering chapter six right now. Like I'm in, I'm like stepping into it. I would say chapter five. So I continued to build my web business from 2013 through 2016. And it became pretty successful. It was doing very well, moved to New York, lived in Manhattan,

like was comfortable, like things were going well. And then I got a book deal and subtle art came out and the success of that was so unexpected and also just like i mean kind of not not to toot my own horn but but like absurd, you know, just like absurdly large. You know, the book has sold 13 million copies. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And it's like, it was, there was a certain, you know, there was, there was kind of this weird like multi-stage experience where at first there was surprise and then there was elation and joy and then there was you know a lot of pride and then it just started getting into the territory of like

what the fuck is happening like this is just this is getting weird you know and it really it took my career into a place that I was mentally not expecting or necessarily like prepared to be. And I think it took me a couple of years to kind of wrap my head around, uh, I guess the new opportunities and, and I guess the new, the influence that I had garnered for myself. Yeah, for sure. Like it's the preparation. We've learned that if you don't prepare people well for success, it can become problematic. It sounds like, but the book you had. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, you must have seen that plenty of times,

especially with athletes, I imagine. Yeah. And it's really hard to get ahead of it. It really is hard because there's so much commitment to the razor's edge of high performance. It's hard to dance on that edge. and in these highly high performance environments with razor's edge margins that are binary, you know, uh, win, win loss that it's really hard to get ahead of like, well, when you win, how are you going to be? But that now I've tripled down on it. You know, when you find success, um, you know, is an easy way of saying, well, what is success? Let's just start there for a

minute. And, and then I found that? Let's just start there for a minute. And, and then I found that you got to double click under that a few times to get to something that is beyond the fun, the fame, the wealth, the whatever, whatever, whatever. And so, okay. So back to you though on that is that what were some of the mechanics? Cause he hit a chord. I want to, I want to know what you think that chord was, you know, that resonated so well. But you hit a chord. But what were some of the mechanisms that preceded it? Like, did you have a million people on your social networking that were ready to buy now? Or did you hire the best firm for PR? Like, how did you, what were the kind of the mechanical pieces that came into this rocket ship of awareness of your philosophy basically? So by, by the time the book had come out, my, my, my website really took off in 2013 and I started, was this about dating the dating website? No. So I switched my, so my primary business was a dating advice website up until 2012. And then

in 2012, I switched over to just kind of general life advice, personal development, things like that. And then in 2013, things started to blow up. And so by 2015, I was getting about 2 million readers each month. Wow. Yeah, there you go. On a blog. On a blog, yeah. And so, I mean, there was a lot of pent-up demand. And the book launched very well.

And I think that was the expectation. The expectation was it's going to launch well. A bunch of his blog readers are going to buy it. It'll be on the bestseller list or whatever, and it'll do well, you know? And so my expectation was it'll be a bestseller. It'll do well. Maybe one day years from now, I'll hit a million copies or something. And that'll be great. Um, but it, what I didn't realize is that, you know, in many ways, a blog is kind of like a practice field for the book. You know, it's like you get to try out all the different ideas that you've been playing with. You know, so I had like a four-year period where I was trying out different ideas. And I could see how people responded to them.

I could see what people resonated with. And I could see what people responded to them. I could see what people resonated with and I could see what traveled on social media, which ones got shared on Facebook and Twitter and everything. And so coming into the book, I really had an idea of like which ideas worked and which ideas people loved. I just didn't, I think what I underestimated was, most of the world, at least back then, most of the world

still didn't read blogs on that were shared on Facebook. You know, it's in my mind, it's like, okay, I've got, I've got a large audience, but I've kind of like, I've already tapped most of them. Like there's, there's, there's a, there is a wider audience, but it's not going to extend that far. I didn't realize how far it would extend. I mean, the book went number one in like 13 different countries or 12 different countries. And it went number one in a bunch of different languages. And it was a bestseller in Russia. You know, like it was all these places that I didn't expect it

to resonate so much with. It did. It like really struck a chord. And so in one sense, in hindsight, it makes sense. It's like, okay, these ideas were like workshopped in a way with like a large test audience. But at the time, it was impossible to know that was the case, if that makes sense. What chord do you think you hit? I think there were a couple of chords. Um, the one of them I, I intended to set out to hit and the other one I did not. Um,

the one I intended to hit was I felt very strongly, this was even in my book proposal that I gave the publishers when I pitched the book. I felt very strongly having written and blogged in the self-help industry for a number of years by that point. I felt very strongly that people, particularly millennials and young people, did not buy into kind of the classic Tony Robbins, everybody can be great, unleash your potential, here are five tips that will make everybody successful. My generation understood that that was bullshit. You're just selling me something. And I recognized that a lot of my success online was that I was bullshit. You're just selling me something. And I, I recognize that a lot of my success online was that I was presenting good self-help advice. And in a lot of cases, the exact

same self-help advice, but I was packaging it in a much more realistic and honest way of like, look, your life's going to suck. Sometimes we're all kind of mediocre. You know, you're not going to be great, most likely at a lot of things you do. So like, just get comfortable, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it really resonated with that generation. And there was a real, I noticed there was a real hunger within the self-help industry for that kind of like just blunt honesty. You know, people were sick of the marketing message. So that's the first chord. And so I think just the self-help audience just ate it up entirely.

And that's a large audience. The second chord that I didn't expect to hit was there seems to be, I mean, there's a lot of statistics and data that kind of point to this too, but there seems to be like a rising anxiety, just general anxiety throughout the population and anxiety slash depression, I would say. And you see it in rates and all the statistics and studies and everything. But the interesting thing is that it's not exactly clear where that's coming from. It's not like there's not a civil war going on. There's not, I mean, at least back then there wasn't a pandemic going on. It's things were generally good. The economy was good. There were no major wars going on. Life was comfortable. Amazing technology is changing our lives constantly.

But more and more people just kind of seem to have this low-level constant anxiety throughout their everyday life. And I think people consistently, it was a very widely held experience of just giving way too many fucks about things that they shouldn't give fucks about. Just getting really, really upset over spilled milk, essentially. And so the book was like a perfect,

it was positioned perfectly to kind of answer that general experience. I think today in 2020, we're all very aware of that experience and we talk very openly about it. But I think in 2016, it was still a thing that nobody had really pointed out or put a name to. And the book did. There you go. Okay. Yeah. Very cool. Can you talk about, when I read your work, what people think about you, not you in particular, but the general you is an important theme. Can you talk about the fear of other people's opinions and maybe the freedom from that? Sure. I mean, one thing I always remind

people to start is like, you're supposed to care what other people think. There is a name for a person who literally does not care what anybody else thinks and it's psychopath. so let's start out by being very clear about our destination or where we're trying to get to. We're not trying to be psychopaths here. Like, you should care what people think. emphasis are you putting on other people's opinions versus your own? And generally, people who struggle a lot with this issue, it's because they really overemphasize the thoughts and feelings of other people, and they really underemphasize their own. They undervalue themselves in a lot of ways and they overvalue the opinions and thoughts of other people. And so the question is simply how do you bring balance to that? And there are a number of ways to attack it. One is to simply cut out exposure to a lot of harmful and unhealthy influences and opinions. One is to, to go, to do internal work, to kind of investigate why, why do I not put my own needs first? Why do not,

why do I consistently not take care of myself and try to find, you know, what, what are the patterns there? A lot of times it's, it's people experience it as I care too much what other people think, but it's generally, you know, maybe it's one very dysfunctional relationship in their life that is kind of poisoning everything else that's going on, maybe a parent or a sibling or a partner or something. And that needs to be resolved. So it's, um, it's, it's when people, it's kind of like going to the doctor and saying, I have a headache. It can be a dozen different things. Um, but it's, it's also, uh, and you, you, you kind of like dig deeper to see where it's coming from, but also at the same time, it's like, you don't want to get rid of headaches forever

because headaches let you know that something's wrong. And, um, so anyway, that's okay. There you go. Yeah. Okay. So, um, kind of some quick hits, if you will, and I want to honor our time here and thank you again, but on our time. So if there was a master that you could go sit with, who would that be and if you had one question would you ask him or her yeah who comes up for you a master oh my goodness um put me on the spot here you know so this is the only person that's coming to mind and it's i don't know if i could sit down with one person alive today to like learn as much as i possibly could i actually think it would probably be Bill Gates because I think his

ability to perceive the world as a system and to find levers to move that system in good directions is incredibly impressive to me. And it's interesting saying that because I don't see him, I don't admire him on any sort of like kind of necessarily wisdom or spiritual way. It's just like, he is so good. He seems to be so good at just diagnosing, looking at vast amounts of data and information and then diagnosing like, oh, if we fix this thing here, it's going to have a ripple effect and spread. And, and then also understand and being able to find those things and point them out regardless of, you know, public opinion or political preferences or whatever, you know, it's, it's very inspiring to me inspiring to me. And, um, and we're lucky, we're lucky to have them. Yeah. We'd be at a different case if he didn't solve and sort out Ebola many years ago, you know? Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, we could get lots of, lots of diseases. Yeah. It's polio. Yeah. What would be the one question as a forcing function there? I think I would ask him, I don't even know if I would ask him. I think I would say, can I just watch you tackle a problem and just show me what you're reading, show me what you're

researching, show me the questions you're asking? I would just want to be like a birdie on his shoulder as he attacks a problem and just see how be like a birdie on his shoulder as he like attacks a problem and just see how he goes about it like what his process is i had a upfront view or have an upfront view for the last i guess it's been five or six years at microsoft and they had a thing they no longer really do it but they had this thing called precision questioning it was an engineer model if you will of questioning. And so when a statement is made, then there's another question underneath of it. And then underneath of that and underneath of that to see where the logic, basically the intelligence breaks.

And then so they built a culture around people requiring the ability to think deeply and the unintended consequences. Like, wow, if you say something, you're going to have 15 people that are coming at it, you know, so the unintended, the unintended or unexpected condition was that it would create quite a bit of anxiety, as you can imagine, just smart people. They're just looking for breaks in logic, you know, so there's, there's a challenge there. Okay. So quick hits, um, for you, success is. I think success is, is finding something that to dedicate yourself to that is, um, both good for you and good for others. My purpose is?

My purpose is, I guess the mission I've chosen is to disrupt the self-help industry and present a much healthier approach to well-being, emotional and mental well-being. It all comes down to... This. Speaking of meditation. There we are. I appreciate you. Thank you for offering a fresh look into the strategies and processes that help people become. And it's been fun to have this conversation with you. And I want to know where people can find your work, markmanson.com. And then where's the best way? Where do you want to drive them? And then I also want a couple books that you've found to be valuable in your approach to life. So let's take both of those. Where do you want to send them? What's a couple of books here? MarkManson.net. I've been after the.com for

about six years now and I still don't have it. So MarkManson.net, I've got a newsletter there. It goes out every Monday. It's free. You can check it out. Books, Subtle Art and Not Giving a Fuck, and then Everything is Fuck, the book about hope, available everywhere. And in terms of books that have been very impactful on me, one of the biggest ones for me is a book called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker that was just revelatory. I'm a big Immanuel Kant fan, even though I recognize there's some flaws there. There's just a beauty to his philosophical system that I find awe-inspiring. It's really rich. Kant is really rich. It's so deep and dense. I studied him undergrad a lot. Yeah. I still feel like people underestimate him. There's a real subtle spiritual component to it that is not contradictory at all to say eastern philosophy

or buddhist philosophy um it's just he he approaches it from like a rigorous like rational point of view and he arrives at kind of the same destination um i'm a big to Tolstoy fan. I found him, to me, he's kind of like, on my blog, he's been Chris and Leo motherfucking Tolstoy. He's the only one because he's such a good writer. I'm not even sure he was human. And then I'm trying to think of something contemporary that I'm a big fan of that has been very inspiring for me. I'll say Steven Pinker's work.

Steven Pinker's got a few books that to me are just kind of like the high watermark of being a public intellectual. The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Blank Slate are two books that I just, I look at those books and I'm like, that is everything that a popular intellectual book, like a science-based book, should be today. Awesome. Mark, I appreciate you. Thanks, man.

Yeah. Thanks for your time and your shared insights. And I want to encourage folks, if they haven't read your stuff, whether blog or otherwise, books or otherwise, to punch over to the website, find you on social and check out the newsletter for sure. Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

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