Life Uncut - The Subtle Art of compromise, priorities and not bullshitting yourself - UNCUT with MARK MANSON

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Today's episode is with one of the most successful authors of our time and the man who is known globally for not giving a f*ck. Mark Manson's book the subtle art of not giving a f*ck sold more than 10 million copies. Mark brought his unique perspective on happiness, relationship dynamics, and the delicate art of recognising when it's time to break up. We spoke about: When is it time to break up vs what is a normal ebb and flow of a long term relationship? What's good compromise and what's people pleasing and lacking boundaries? What indicates whether a couple can survive one of them cheating? The need for healthy conflict and how to have healthy conflict Opportunity costs and inherent sacrifice  Fleeting happiness You can find all of Mark's work here! His newsletter, books and podcasts are fantastic. If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And we have a bloody good interview for you guys today. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast for a very long time, you may have heard a couple of years ago, we interviewed Mark Manson.

It was one of our most downloaded episodes and we have Mark Manson back and he is joining us on today's episode. If you don't know who Mark Manson is, you definitely know his work. He is the writer of the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He has authored four books in total. And his second one, which is Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. It's truly incredible how he manages to unpack all of the self-help jargon, all of the things that we know we should be doing in our lives, but he does it in such a way that is very relatable. And it is also not necessarily done in the way that you would expect from a self-help guru. The other thing as well that Mark has, if you guys are not subscribed to it, is that he does a weekly newsletter.

I have been subscribed to his weekly newsletter for years. I genuinely love so much his insight and his deep dives, his weekly deep dives into different aspects of life and how to navigate love, relationships, and just be a better human without all the fluffy woo-woo-ness that sometimes comes with the self-help industry. I feel like he's that type of person that doesn't tell you what you want to hear, even though it is like you just said, Laura, it's a self-help book, but it's not. He gives it to you hard, but he does it in a way that's so caring as well and so insightful. And you know, he's been there himself, you know, he's experienced it and it makes you want to be harder and better on yourself simultaneously. I don't know if that makes sense,

but it gives yourself tough love because sometimes you don't want to hear something and you'll go around. It's like this bias, right? You go around and ask all these people their opinions until somebody tells you what you want to hear. Mark doesn't do that. And I think that's one of my favorite things about him. If you kind of weren't in the world of Mark Manson and you hadn't really listened to or read any of his stuff, if you looked at one of his pieces of self-help, you may think that he's quite a pessimist. You might think that he's quite pessimistic in the way in which he delivers the information that he has. But I think so much that it's not pessimism, it's realism. And sometimes I think we can show up to this idea of like, you know, being a better person,

this self-help ideology, and it can be so aspirational that it's not achievable. And we all know the right things that we should be doing with our life. We know the right way to behave in a relationship. We've read the books. We know the information, but it doesn't mean that that's actually how you apply it in your own life. Like we can all give the advice. Sometimes we can't take it for ourselves. And that's what I love about the way in which Mark gives the information and the way in which he unpacks it. He is very realistic to how we show up in relationships, talking about happiness, talking about fighting and conflict in relationships, talking about resolution and I guess ultimately how we are all flawed and how we all make mistakes,

but what can we do to be better people at the end of it? Yeah. Some of the other stuff that we talked about is healthy conflict, how to have healthy conflict, a question that we get all the time, which is, should you break up or is it a normal ebb and flow? Like, should you see something out? Is this normal part of a relationship? Should I pack up and leave shop? Which I think resonates with a lot of people. We speak about if people can survive cheating, opportunity costs and inherent sacrifice, what they mean and what the difference is. It's truly a very insightful chat. I learned a lot from it and I'm really excited to bring it to you today. Now, last time you joined the pod, Mike, it was about three years ago. You probably don't even remember now. And you were in New

Zealand at the time. You shared an accidentally unfiltered, your embarrassing story from when you were a kid and you ran across the street naked on a deer. Your brother and his friends and stolen your clothes and locked the door and we had we had a good old chuckle about that welcome back to the podcast thanks thanks for uh reminding me of that traumatic memory the deep trauma that you had suppressed over all these years mark before we get into all of the unpacking of relationships we are not going to let you off scot-free i am hoping that you've done something since the time you ran naked through the streets to embarrass yourself again oh i know there's i I was thinking about this earlier. So, okay. 2019 was maybe one of the busiest years of my career.

I was simultaneously working on three books at the same time. So my follow-up to subtle art was coming out, which was called everything is fucked about hope. I was finishing an audio book original for Amazon. And then I was also starting on the Will Smith book. So all this was happening at the same time. And right in the middle of this, my agent came to me and she said, oh, we're so excited about your book launch. We want to book like a 20 city speaking tour for you. And of course, my dumb ass who can't say no to anything was like, sure, that sounds great. And it literally got to be the night before my speaking tour start and I still didn't have a talk ready. So the first date was in New York City. It was a sold out theater of probably like 600 people. And I

basically got up on stage and started winging the talk. And I kind of just followed where the chuckles went. And I made a joke about sex robots. And I got a really big laugh. And I'm like, Oh, cool. So this is this is my thing tonight. I went on like a 10 minute diversion in the sex robots and the place got so quiet it's so awkward that I honestly like I didn't think I was going to recover and then finally like the emcee got on stage it was like uh okay so that was the kickoff of my speaking tour of 2019 I mean it's a good hard pivot when you've done it once you know okay maybe that gear is not going to land I'll change it for the next show but did this come from like unbridled confidence or was it just a total lack of preparation complete lack of preparation

It was that so that first date was a complete and utter disaster. One of the most embarrassing public appearances of my life. The second date was OK. It was hit or miss. I think by like the third or fourth date, I'd kind of gotten a talk together. And then and then I actually finished the tour in Australia. So by the time I got to Australia, it was like nailed, practiced, knew everything front to back.

There's so many things that we wanted to talk to you about because the topics in which you cover, they're so diverse. Most of it comes back down to relationships, but we thought we would navigate this conversation more so around the questions we get asked on our podcast by our listeners and have someone who truly has experience to answer some of them. Now, one of the things that we face pretty often is a conversation around long-term relationships and understanding whether something is just like going through a rocky patch in a relationship or whether it's an irreparable difference and when to know how to leave a relationship or when you should leave a relationship. For you, what are the key indicators that a relationship has come to

the end of its lifespan? I think the first thing you have to ask yourself and the most important thing is, first of all, are both people aware of the problem? Because sometimes one person thinks there's a problem and the other person doesn't. Are both people aware there's a problem and are both people willing to work on it? If one person in the relationship is not willing to work on it, And no matter what you say to that person, it doesn't change their mind. Nothing's going to change. There's nothing you can do other than wait around and hope. But if both people aren't on the same page and recognizing the problem and being willing to work on the problem, then everything else is just off the table. Like there's not even really anything else to talk

about. Nothing's going to change. So assuming both people are on the same page that there's a problem, there's an issue, it needs to be worked on. I think the second question is in the process of working on the relationship, does it feel like things are getting better or are they getting worse? Because a lot of times what happens is people recognize the problem, they start working on the problem, they start trying to compromise on things, and they actually end up making themselves even more miserable. And to me, that's usually an indication that there are just some very fundamental differences in values or philosophies or wherever each person is in their life and it's going to be very very hard to come back from that generally speaking when you

are both in a good relationship or a healthy relationship that's going to improve the more you work on it the more you get back from it and obviously like it's not always like that from like the first minute but generally speaking within a couple weeks or a few months you should start feeling things get better and not just worse what do you think about these general normal ebbs and flows in a relationship where you go through these times in a long-term relationship where you're like we're not fighting like there's nothing wrong but the chemistry is not there anymore it's plateaued a little bit you're just cruising through life because a lot of people will then write in say you know i feel like we're just living we're coexisting or it's boring it's

people love to say relationships shouldn't be work it should just be happy and connecting and the sexual chemistry should just be there what are your thoughts on this i think it's unrealistic to think that a relationship is going to be 10 out of 10 in every category until the end of time, things are going to come and go, you know, things are going to dip to a six or a seven in one category, and then they'll come back a year or two later, they'll dip into a five in another category, they'll come back a year later. As long as it's not like a five in every category at the same time, you're probably okay. It's just a natural process of life. You said something really interesting there, which is, and I hear this a lot too, is people complain that the

relationship's not fun anymore. And I think this is a really serious misconception that a lot of people have. Relationships are not supposed to be fun. It's not, you're not like going to Disney World. It's, this is life. It's a life partner. That means that they're with you through the sucky and unexciting parts of your life. They're there when you have health problems. They're there when you have career problems. You're there for them when they have family problems. There's going to be long stretches that it's not necessarily fun to be together, but you should still like being together. You need something more than just fun and keeping you together because the fun's going to go away at some point. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows that it's not something that

is consistent and can be maintained. But I think we all want to think that we can have it. We all want to think that our relationship will be the exception. And then you get seven years in and you're like, is this what we've become? But I guess you touched on something earlier, you talked about compromise. And I would love to know in your eyes, I guess the balance and how important compromise is in a relationship. But then how do you ensure that you don't lose yourself within that relationship because of compromise? Compromise is absolutely fundamental to any relationship. I think the important thing to understand about compromise is that it's not about making both people happy all the time. It's about preventing misery. The example I give a lot

is that my wife is super, super clean and I'm not. I think most relationships have one person who's the clean person and one person who's not. She has very, very high standards of cleanliness and it would be unreasonable for me to try to match her expectations perfectly. But what we've realized is that if I just make myself like 10% cleaner, it reduces her stress and pain by like 90%. Right. So that's like a really good return. If I just do these things every once in a while, if I just pick this up when I'm done with it, it makes her like 50% happier that day. So those are the sorts of compromises that you want to look for is like, what are the things that doesn't bother me a whole lot to give up, but it increases the other

person's happiness significantly the mistake a lot of people make is they they give up too much they give up 50 of themselves to make the other person 10 happier and that's just a terrible trade-off so how do you manage that compromise then especially if you are a people pleaser yeah actually the most important thing i think is for both people have to realize that you're different people so you're gonna have different standards around stuff everybody has different standards around cleanliness around money around raising kids lifestyle preferences lifestyle habits like we're all going to be different. And I think the first thing is that you need, it needs to be okay to be different. You can't judge your partner or your partner can't judge you for having a

different standard of cleanliness or, or whatever. We just have to understand like, okay, you have a higher standard of cleanliness. I have a higher standard of spending money or, you know, whatever it is. Once you're able to acknowledge those things in each other, then you can discuss it. That's when you can start finding the compromise. Like, okay, you like to spend more than I do. So what's the amount that I'm fine with that can still make you happy you want things to be cleaner than I do so what's the amount that I can get you know if I spend 15 minutes a day doing this this and this how much happier will that make you it's almost like negotiating I would love to know from your perspective I mean you receive so many questions I can only assume from your listeners

what do you think are the number one relationship or life questions that people are struggling with I mean, I would say two thirds of the relationship questions I get are some permutation of a boundaries issue of somebody who is taking on too much responsibility for their partner's life or is allowing their partner to control too much of their own life and isn't aware of it or doesn't realize it. And it shows up in so many different forms. I personally have found that just a basic understanding around boundaries and having strong, communicating strong boundaries within a relationship is like the simple thing that immediately makes a relationship 80% better. If you've been very weak in your boundaries throughout your entire relationship, and it's something that's eroded over time, how do you then kick into gear? Okay, this is my man says this is going to fix our relationship. How are we going to start implementing some boundaries here? Because I would assume that usually from the person who is breaching those boundaries, they would respond to that poorly. They usually do. Yeah. If you take a relationship with really poor boundaries and then you start implementing good boundaries in it, one of two things happens. Either it fixes the relationship and it's kind of an ugly, messy process or it just ends because the other person is no longer getting what they're there for. But generally, boundaries like anything, it's starting with the small stuff and working up. You know, I think people generally, if you're a people pleaser or somebody who really,

really struggles to have difficult, uncomfortable conversations, then it's best to start with the small, uncomfortable conversations, the little things. Why did you use my car without asking me? Where were you last night? Why didn't you call? Little things like that. And again, you're not trying to pick a fight, which I think this is a mistake a lot of people make. they're like, Ooh, he did something wrong or she did something wrong. Let me get them for it. It's not about that. It's about, look, you've just been doing shit wrong. Whenever you feel like it without any consequences, I want you to know now that there are going to be consequences because that's essentially what a boundary is, is it's kind of creating like an if then

statement for the relationship. If you go out at night and don't call me, then I'm just going to assume the worst. Or if you take my car without permission, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. You have to start implementing rules and consequences. And this makes people who are bad at boundaries, this always makes them feel really uncomfortable because they tend to have these romantic notions of like, well, I don't want to put limits on each other and we should just be able to live in harmony. And it's like, no, no, no, we're fucking humans. And if you give us an inch, we'll take a mile. And we're fundamentally selfish, even with people that we love. So rules are good for everybody. Rules are good for your partner and they're good for you. And they make sure that

you don't fuck each other over and you don't take advantage of each other. So it's like good to get really clear on them, what you expect from each other, what you'll tolerate, what you won't tolerate in each other and get on the same page and then consistently have those conversations that stay on the same page. But I think boundaries are only going to work and only going to be a positive thing in your relationship if you're actually going to stick to them. Like you have to ask yourself if you are going to stick to these boundaries or not there's no point setting them and then when it happens like you know my non-negotiable my boundary is cheating they cheat you're like oh it's okay because i'm too weak and too scared to be alone and leave

if you don't or you are not going to stick by them don't set them 100 words don't mean shit people really overestimate words they're like but i told you not to do that it's like well you're not doing anything it's like it's like if you were raising a kid like a three-year-old I am. I can imagine it. Always testing boundaries, right? They're always testing your boundaries. And you can tell them, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. If they do it and nothing happens, you just kind of sit there and yell at them. They're going to keep doing it. And that's just human nature. It's not about being a good person or a bad person. It's just

human nature. We operate on incentives. And so unless there is some sort of negative consequence for our actions, we're going to keep doing the action. What's the impact, though, that it has on our, I guess, our self-worth? Like if we are in a situation where you're prioritizing maintaining the relationship keeping the relationship because you're so scared of losing it that therefore you compromise some of those boundaries that you've put in place what is the negative impact that has so it's a spiral that works in both directions so you know the downward spiral is you have no self-worth so you're so desperate to keep the relationship that you let your partner walk all over you and you don't enforce any boundaries

because you have no self-worth and the fact that you don't enforce the boundaries lowers your self-worth, which makes it harder to enforce boundaries, which it's a feedback loop that just keeps going. But you can spin that around the other way because as soon as you start enforcing boundaries, what you're essentially telling your unconscious brain is I matter. My values and my expectations matter. And in this case, they matter more than my partner's behavior. And you are putting into practice that belief. And so that builds self-esteem. And the more you do that, the more self-esteem it builds, the easier it becomes to enforce other boundaries. And so this kind of comes back to start small and kind of work your way up to the big conversation.

And generally what you'll find too is that the big conversation will show up anyway, if you start the small conversation. Like if you start the conversation about taking the car out without your permission, suddenly you end up at like, well, you never respected me and you fucking cheated on me with this person. And now everything's out in the open. So you need to flip the script and get the spiral working in the other direction. Well, what do you think about cheating in a relationship and coming back from cheating in a relationship? Do you think cheating has to be the end of the relationship? Or do you think it's something that, you know, you can find forgiveness and can make the relationship better and you can move forward? I don't think it has to

be the end. I think obviously it often is, but I think that the thing that is the end of the relationship that cheating causes is the breach of trust so you can't have a relationship without trust and so if cheating happens the project afterwards is it's really about rebuilding trust within the relationship and it's a very very difficult process and obviously a lot of it has to do with the circumstances that the cheating happened under and how each person reacts to it etc i think an interesting question off the back of this is we often sort of unpack is cheating the end of a relationship and we kind of go no it doesn't have to be which you know it doesn't have to be I believe that have I experienced it no it's always been the end of my relationships

to be honest I think it's easy to say oh it doesn't have to be the end of your relationship you can work through it but like it's fucking hard to and I think anyone who's ever been cheated on realistically would say 99.9% of the times it does it is the start of the demise what are the relationships that are different what are the ones that actually are able to overcome the cheating What is the thing that if you're cheated on should be the indicator that you can actually work through it rather than knowing, okay, well, this is the beginning of the end? Well, I think a lot of it boils down to the person who cheated needs to have some degree of understanding or awareness of why they cheated.

I think cheating rarely just happens in a vacuum. It's rare that a person simply cheats because they're bored or horny and there's an attractive stranger next to them. And if it does happen in that circumstance, they're a fucking terrible partner anyway. So the cheating is not even the biggest issue. Usually cheating happens because there's some other underlying issue that's gone on for a long time and hasn't been discussed or resolved. And so I think a lot of the work around the cheating is to figure out what is actually

the motivation here. Like, why would you, why would it feel worth it to break that trust that you've built over so many years for just like a simple one night stand or whatever. And that's a really important discussion to have and to figure out. And it can take a long time to figure that out. And it's probably different for a lot of people. So I think until there, if you can get an understanding around that, like if you can get the person who cheats is like, you know what? Like I've been really unhappy and depressed for a long time. And you know, we've grown distant and I feel disconnected from you and I'm just in a bad place and I met this person and if they show an awareness

or an understanding of that and then you can actually start talking about the more fundamental issue of like okay well why why were you depressed why were we disconnected why weren't you coming to me with these issues before why weren't we talking about this like then you can start to rebuild that trust and understanding but if the person doesn't have that awareness to begin with then you're probably not going to get anywhere. You spoke about conflict and you said that, you know, we can talk about boundaries and we can initiate these small conversations and it's not about having a fight, but is there ever a positive from having real conflict in your relationship? Obviously there's healthy ways to have conflict and very unhealthy ways to have conflict, but

surely in some of these instances, when you are setting boundaries, it's actually healthy to have a fight and to have some sort of conflict. You have to have conflict because again, it comes back to both people are different. Both people have different values. Both people have different expectations for their lives. And sometimes those expectations or values are going to clash or contradict. And so if you're not occasionally having a fight about it, or at least arguing about it, then that probably means both of you aren't being 100% open or forthright with what you feel or believe. This also relates to the trust piece too, because if you never fight about anything in a way, so people pleasers, they never want to fight

because they're ultimately, it's like a fear of abandonment. It's like, well, if I fight about this, then maybe he or she will leave me and then I'll be alone. But if you're never fighting about anything, then you never actually know how either of you really feels. And if you're actually committed to the relationship, if you have the fight and then you wake up the next day and the person's still there and they still love you and they still respect you, then that actually affirms the trust because you're like, well, we just had this big fight. We see this thing completely differently. We're struggling through it, but they're still here and they're still showing up and they still love me just as much as they did yesterday. That sense, it's actually really good

for the relationship. Fighting is, again, it can be done in a healthy and an unhealthy way. And I think healthy fighting is not only inevitable, but it's probably good. Mark, two things I've heard you talk about are inherent sacrifice and opportunity costs. And I think the two link together and something you said at the very beginning of the episode was you know they asked me to do a 20 city book tour and of course because I can't say no to an opportunity I said yes and I jumped in can you talk to us about inherent sacrifice opportunity cost how they link it's all economics 101 there is no free lunch everything has an opportunity cost anything you prioritize in your life it means you have to deprioritize something else and I think this is another

of thing that a lot of people kind of delude themselves about. You'll meet a guy who works 80 hours a week and he's like, oh, family's everything to me. It's like, well, dude, you haven't been home in like three days. So we can trick ourselves a lot by telling ourselves that we value something, but we're continually compromising that thing to chase something else. And this is an area where I think I'm a very deep believer that the quality of our relationships with other people is very much a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. So if we are bullshitting ourselves, if I'm telling myself that, you know, oh, my family's everything, I would give up anything for them. And I'm like running off and doing three months speaking tours

every year. I'm bullshitting myself. That's an issue with my relationship with myself. I'm lying to myself. I'm in denial about something. I'm like not owning up to some of my own values and prioritizations. And then that's going to bleed into my relationship with my wife. She's going to be like, well, what the fuck? You're never home. You know, I thought, I thought we were number one and I'm not going to be prepared for that conversation because I'm lying to myself. So I can't even defend myself properly because I'm just full of shit. So I think we all do this to a certain extent. And I think this is where kind of improving our awareness and our relationship with ourselves has like knock on effects with other people. And I think for me at that time

in my life, I went through a situation where my career just kind of blew up like 10x very, very quickly. Within the span of like a year, year and a half, I suddenly found myself with all these crazy opportunities that I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm getting offered this right now. I just said yes to everything because shit, who knows if this will ever come around again. And to a certain extent, I don't necessarily regret that, but it definitely ended up causing a lot of problems in other areas of my life because I was, again, I wasn't aware that I was necessarily deprioritizing other things in my life when I did that. I actually love this example because I deeply relate to it. And also I've seen it play out in so many of my friends' relationships.

It's so easy to say that the most important thing to you is your family. The most important thing to you is your relationship. And then, you know, I'm doing all this for the family. I'm working so hard to make money so that we can pay off our mortgage and we can do this and do that but really and and it's a conversation I've had with my husband a lot recently the reason why I personally work so hard is because I love working and it's actually not to pay off the mortgage because as much as that's important we both contribute to it how do you I guess like front up those realizations like when you have been and maybe it's because their priorities shift so like maybe in that year of your life, those priorities did shift for that year. The most important thing to you was your

work and without realizing it, but then how do you have those conversations around a shift in priorities or making space to juggle both with the people that are important to you? Because we've kind of been fed this idea that you can have it all and you can have it all at the same time and you can do all the things, but we actually fucking can't. And when we try and do it all, we do it all really poorly. So how would you suggest people have those conversations with their partners well the nice thing it's funny because back then i did have a conversation with my wife about it and i remember saying like hey this could be my 15 minutes these are contracts with a lot of zeros at the end of the number you know this might go away so i'm still young

i should probably just say yes to everything and she was on board so again it just comes back to like and it's something you practice as a couple too of like hey i'm in a situation in my life right now. These are my priorities or this, this is what makes sense to me. This is kind of where I'm at, what I'm thinking. What do you think? Does that work for you? Is this going to cause problems for you? If it's going to cause problems, like how can we compromise and figure this out? What should the compromise be? I just think it's like good relationship hygiene to have these check-ins whenever something significant in either of your lives starts happening. And I know there's even some people these days they have like a they'll have like an annual review like relationship

review where they kind of go through like like a health check yeah like here are five categories here's how i'm feeling in this category here's how i'm feeling about this is what you can work on it's so unromantic but it's also so practical and this kind of comes back to like the long-term relationships are not necessarily fun but they're good and they're very satisfying and so that's very different. And so I think having some of these dull conversations about how are we feeling about our finances this year? How are we feeling about our intimacy this year? How are we feeling about our relationships with each other's families this year? It's dull as shit, but it probably needs to be done at least once a year. So anyway, back to 2019, I had that conversation with my

wife and she was totally supportive and on board with it. And it sucked for her. She spent a lot of time at home that year, but it was fine. Like we both kind of signed up for it beforehand. What I didn't consider is how it would affect other areas of my life. The two big ones, namely being health and friendships, social relationships. I was never around. I was on the road all the time. I was eating garbage and being jet lag constantly and drinking way too much. And it took a toll on a number of areas of my life. And again, to your point, I think I naively thought that I could have it all, that all this other stuff, all these other areas of my life that I had worked really hard on, I completely neglected. And by the end of that

period, it was kind of a mess. Was this a very humbling experience for you? And I ask this because as someone who gives advice around like the philosophies of life, of how to be happy, of like what is important in terms of figuring out priorities to then go through this period yourself where you're like oh how did we end up here it's terrible it's like i can't tell you how many times i would like talk to friends during this period i'd be like man i'm so stressed out and i don't know what to do and blah blah blah blah and then my friend would look at me and be like you know there's this book called and the guy has this really good point about choosing your problems and i was just like ah it's so ironic but it's really affirming that if even

you can find yourself in these situations and you've done all the work you've done all the research like you know the things and the ways to apply it like what help to the people who haven't started to kind of chip away at the self-help what help do they have you know and like I guess it's kind of almost giving yourself a bit of grace that we all go through these periods in life but that just comes back to like I mean think of how many times you can give advice to other people because you know that's what they should be doing but you don't take your own advice and I guess you know Mark's not immune to that he can make his career on giving the advice but it's a different kettle of fish when you've got to accept it yourself. I don't think we ever escape these

issues. And it's funny because I look back now at like the stuff in the subtle art was very much motivated by the problems in my life previous to subtle art. I naively didn't think about the fact that I would be caught off guard in the same way by the problems post subtle art in the same way. So I just think to a certain extent, so much of this is just baked into our nature and it's, we constantly have to check ourselves and kind of fight against it. But even then, none of us are going to be perfect. None of us are going to get it right all the time. It's almost like you just get better at stomaching the mistakes quicker at correcting them than really preventing them at all. With all the newsletters you've written, with all the thoughts

that you've put down pen to paper, what have been, and I guess the life lessons that have kind of been the catalyst to have those conversations what has been the most profound moment where you've been like well that was a real life-changing revelation to me like was there something specific that happened to you or was there a specific teaching that you were like this had the biggest effect on my life personally well it's hard because at this point i've been doing this for almost 15 years and i think in every period like anybody it's almost like you have like a greatest hits album from each decade of your life you know it's like i can look at i can look at my 20s and i'm like yeah those three or four moments are kind of top of the charts and my 30s are kind of shaping

up the same way they're they're a handful of moments that really were really formative but it's hard to point to just one i know it's kind of a cop-out but i mean what i try to do with my work is to just stay as honest as possible with i guess kind of whatever i'm thinking about or whatever I'm going through so that it does evolve along kind of in parallel as, as my personal evolution. And I'm always very careful to like never hide the fact that I fucked these things up too. Because I think one of the things that I always disliked about the self-help industry is this guru idea of like, ah, this is the guy on stage. He's got it all figured out. I just think that's bullshit. I think that's completely unrealistic. I think it's much more valuable

to be open about the fact that like hey i got over that shit that i wrote about in my 20s but now i'm pushing 40 and it's it's a whole new bag of problems that i'm struggling with so i think that's going to be our title of the episode i fuck this i fuck this stuff up too i think that's really important i think what you just said everybody makes mistakes it doesn't matter how many times you give yourself your own advice you know you live and you learn and you're not also going to always agree with something that you put out to the world 15 years ago laura and i think that all the time. Like we have 500 episodes. And I think if we went back and listened to some things we've said, our opinions probably changed on that in some capacity because you grow with

life problems, hit you differently. And I think that's part of human nature. It's part of the cycle. What are the three questions that we can ask ourselves that determine 99% of happiness? I'm so glad you asked. I think about this all the time. There may have been a conversation that just got deleted if this seems like a very different energy that you're listening to. All right. No, the three questions that determine 99% of your happiness is who are you spending

your time with? What are you spending your time working on? And how well are you treating your body? Why are they the three most important? With psychological concepts, this stuff's not complicated. Our psychology has not changed at all in the last 10,000 years. society has changed. So I think we have a tendency to make this stuff way more complicated than it actually is. I think the actual challenge is staying with the simplicity of this stuff.

If you look at the research on what drives life satisfaction, the vast majority of it really comes down to, are you surrounded by people who care about you and that you care about? Are you working on something that feels meaningful or worthwhile? And are you not treating your body like shit? Are you sleeping a decent amount? Are you eating relatively healthy? Are you not drinking or doing drugs every night? As long as you're basically doing decently on all three of those things, you're probably going to be a relatively happy person. You may not be like maxed out, skipping down the sidewalk every morning, but who is? And if you're lacking in one of those three categories, then you're definitely going to feel it. And so I think sometimes people get

so caught up in all these productivity systems and lifestyle seminars and crazy relationship courses and all this stuff. And it's like, okay, are those three things in check? Because if they're not, just start there. That's the most basic and fundamental thing you can do. It's not exciting. It's not sexy. It doesn't market super well, but that's actually probably what most people need to hear. I also think we have such an aversion to feeling anything other than that, because no one wants to feel uncomfortable no one wants to feel sad no one wants to feel angry no one wants to feel grief like all of those feelings but they are a fundamental and equally as valid and important part of the cycle of life as happiness is but we work so hard not to feel

any of those things and sometimes when you're fighting so much against it you but then they give yourself anxiety so you're gonna have something else to deal with you should have all three of those categories at a at least a seven out of ten and i think as long as you've got all three of them there, you're probably in a good spot. I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they'll kill themselves to get one of the categories as a 10 out of 10. And then they'll sacrifice the other two to get there. So they'll like completely screw their relationships and screw their health like I did to get what they're working on at a 10 out of 10. Or they'll screw what they're working on and screw their relationships to get their health at a 10 out

of 10. It's really just try to be a seven or eight at all three of them. And that's basically a life well lived. I think one of the ones and the relationships that we deprioritize is often friendship. And that's one that you touched on in terms of your own personal life. Like we put so much importance and so much weight on romantic relationships, but I don't think that friendships get enough airtime and they're so important to our general happiness and to fulfilling the cup in other areas. And also like kind of lightening the load on our romantic relationships. So we're not expecting every single thing from that person. Yeah. I feel like friendships are underrated, especially in this day and age. It's interesting if you look at

research on people who are just single, by and large, they're not any less happy than people who are in relationships. I think people who are married are slightly happier, but also that varies a lot based on the quality of the marriage. The point is, is that nobody's miserable as an average on a population level. People aren't miserable if they're not in a relationship. But if you look at friendships you look at people who don't have friendships it's fucking death like it's people with no social ties or relationships their life expectancy is shorter than smokers alcoholics you know people who play in traffic people who play in traffic it's shocking it's shock if you look at the psychological data on loneliness and people who don't have any significant social

connection it's shocking it's shockingly bad it's absolutely atrocious which is why like i think there needs to be this reframe because I know that romantic relationships are important and we, I can't tell you how many questions we receive from people who are, who say, you know, all my friends are in relationships and I'm, it's all I want. And I'm, I, you know, I can't stand another baby announcement. I can't stand another happy couple photo. And I understand why, you know, it's very easy to be in a relationship and then be like, don't worry about wanting to be in a relationship. But at the same time, I do think that sometimes we devalue how important friendships are and how much they can fill the space of the longing for a romantic relationship and often

people get into romantic relationships and then they discard their friendships yeah i think that's really unhealthy i think in general it's unhealthy to make your romantic relationship your identity in your life it's healthy for both people to maintain an independent identity outside of the relationship but the other caveat of that what you just said is that if you're not able to be happy single, then you're going to attract a bad relationship. It's only people who are a happy single that attract happy relationships because they're already happy with themselves. They have their own identity. They feel very satisfied with their lives. They've got friends, they've got hobbies, they've got careers. It's the people who feel like they're lacking something who like,

I don't have a relationship. My life sucks. This is miserable. They're the ones who are going to settle for somebody who doesn't treat them well. They're the ones who are going to not put up boundaries and enforce healthy boundaries or have good communication within the relationships, they're going to invite a toxic relationship into their life and it's not going to solve anything. I've spoken many a times on the podcast about how I was single for the better part of 10 years. But one thing I can say now that I haven't said is that I've been in a relationship for a year now and my happiness isn't more and it's not less, but it's different. So my happiness level is the same. I don't feel like I'm more complete because I've been in a relationship.

I don't feel exponentially happier but the happiness has shifted in the way that I feel it and that's because I think it's really important to have all these other aspects of your life, the hobbies, the travel, the friends. A lot of people automatically link being single with like it's the worst time of your life and you couldn't get lower and you're so unwanted and so unloved, which is ridiculous. But it is hard when you live in a world of social media

and like people's relationships look so good. Like people, of course, we know it's a highlight reel but it equates to the highlight reel for relationships too and like I understand why looking in from the outside it can be like that's the thing I want because I don't have it and it looks so good but also it is often fraught with a whole lot of other issues as well this is just personal anecdote but what I've noticed in my personal life is that the couples that are always posting the perfect pictures and everything's amazing and oh my god we're so happy all the time those are the couples that are miserable and constantly fighting and just completely toxic

and they're usually the ones that end up getting divorced too in my experience and it's like when i think about all the happiest couples that i know they never post like it's very rare like maybe an anniversary or a christmas or something they'll post a little bit as you know a photo or two but it's it's not this like constant barrage of look at my life look how great it is so i i think it's important for people to keep perspective about that I 100% agree and I know that probably to our listeners is going to be some irony in that because we have very public Instagrams like but we also keep it very real in talking about the fact that Instagram's the highlight and we talk about all the rest of the shit on the podcast you know what I mean so it's got a balance to it but

I see it in people who are in my life who are friends who I know the intricacies of their relationships I know some of the big struggles that they've been through and then I see the incredible loving accolade post of like, oh, you know, you're my amazing husband. And I'm like, your husband's fucking suck. Yeah. Like I see that play out and I think we all do in different ways, but it is still hard to sometimes, you know, especially when you're longing for it to kind of see the forest through the trees, I guess. So Mark, it's a new year. What do you think about new year's resolutions? Do you think it's something that we set like unrealistic expectations for ourselves? Do you think it's something that we should stop doing? Do you think

it's a motivation? Clean slate. Yeah. Cause like, you know, new year, new me. Cause it's fucking never knew you it's like it's the same you it's the same you that might try but sometimes it's nice sometimes it's nice to think it'll be a new you yeah you've never stuck to a new year's resolution no I'm all right with me I'll stick with this it could be worse I think it's fine I mean look I think that was convincing yeah it's I think it's a good it's a good habit to periodically kind of sit down and ask yourself how would I like the change in my life and then set goals around that. Like, I think that's just a healthy practice. And the fact that New Year's gets so many people to do that, in many cases, it's probably the only time during the year that

they do that. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I think the problem is most people just are maybe a little bit undereducated in terms of what goals to pursue and maybe realistic means of pursuing them. Just because it's, I think the classic, the stereotype, right, is everybody at New Year's is like, oh, I'm going to finally lose that 10 kilo or whatever. And they joined the gym and by February, they're back on the couch. February is generous. It's like middle of Jan. Yeah, right. I've written on my website a few times that I think we should kind of change the narrative away from goals to habits instead of like, what goals am I setting this year? It should

be like, what habit am I going to adopt this year that I haven't had in the past? Just because habits are way more sustainable you know goals you get this like initial burst of excitement you go to the gym a few times but by like the second or third week it becomes a chore and so i think that having a more realistic expectation of like okay i'm not setting a goal i'm trying to build a habit what's the habit i'm gonna build i'm gonna start small i'm gonna like plan it into my day set up incentives for myself get a friend on board you know like if you can do all those things, then you're actually like way, way, way more likely to succeed. And then once you have the habit, then you actually are a new person. But it's, you know, until you actually have done

the thing dozens of times, it's just wishful thinking. Mark, every week on our podcast, we do Ask Uncut, where we have so many of our listeners write in with their life questions, the things that they're facing. And being that this is something that you are literally an expert in and something that you deal with every day to day in your own community, we wanted to bring you some of our Ask Uncut questions and get your take on what would be the right way for our listeners to navigate the issues that they have in their life. All right. Question number one. I'm having a bit of a quarter, hopefully maybe third life crisis. And I think I need your advice. After finishing school, I took a gap year and worked slash went on a few holidays here and there.

I then went to uni, did a bachelor of business. I finished, got a job essentially working in marketing. I've been there for just over two years now. It's a decent job. My pay is fine. I get along with most of the people I work with. I don't really know why, but I just feel like something huge is missing in my life. Some days I feel like I want to quit my job, kind of blow up my life, go traveling or move somewhere different. But then I don't really want to throw away what I've got and what I've built because it's a pretty good situation. I guess I'm wondering if this is just how it is when you have a full-time job and I need to get over it, or whether I'm just not going to be happy doing this forever.

I think everyone has felt this conundrum. Isn't this when we like look at the young people and we're like, welcome to adulthood? I was going to say, she's like, is this just adulthood? Yes. This is certainly part of it. I would just say that I think people, one thing that happens a lot of times is when people aren't happy,

they overestimate how much needs to change to actually make them happy. So instead of just maybe I need a job that i like a little bit more which is probably the case here they think oh i should just blow everything up and move to a new country and you know completely just start become a surf instructor you know it's like whoa whoa whoa you don't you don't need the you don't step back step back from the edge yeah you don't surf so let's uh let's start start with square one you know i would start here with simply why don't you look around at other jobs in your industry that you're qualified

for. Maybe it could be something as simple as change the company you work for. It could be something as simple as changing the culture, the work culture that you work in. It could be as simple as like moving to a different town, you know, start small, see if that changes anything. If it doesn't, at least it gives you a lot more information. Like if you're now, if you're miserable at two companies, that tells you something. So yeah, start simple. Don't blow everything up. I agree. But what I will say is, you know, I fall into this. I'm 36. I'm not 20. I haven't just started my career I'm 36 and I'm living my dream job you know I'm a radio host and I do a podcast host I guess interview people like you and I've traveled the world I've been to nearly

60 countries but I still I don't reckon there's a week that goes by that I don't want to pack up and move to another country I still have that pull and I'm and I'm like I'm good like I have a like I love my life but I still have that pull to go and I you know I have a real struggle with FOMO of the world like of the entire world I'm like there are so many different cultures out there and people and languages and experiences, and I'm not living them. And that's a constant battle I have. But I think the happy medium is, you know, and maybe this girl, she's young, maybe she should pack up and go and move to the other side of the world for a couple of years.

But there's no reason you can't move to London, get a visa and still work in your job, get a marketing job over there, but see if the different environment helps you in some capacity because some people won't ever outgrow that feeling, but there are little things you can do to get that balance. maybe it's a few more extra trips a few different you know long weekends here or there to try and fill that cup but some people will just like never grow out of it yeah but i also think i mean my only input of this is that i think that age and circumstances are a defining factor if you're 21 and you are having these urges you're way more inclined to explore them and to kind of learn

the lessons yourself than if you're 37 have two kids and are married you know so like i think it's dependent while you can yeah it's dependent on where you are in your life and if those urges are profound and you want to do them when you're young, then there's not going to be any backlash of packing your life up and going fuck it for a couple of years and doing that. Whereas the fallout would be far more significant later in life. And I think that that's the scale. You know, if you do say you do have another marketing job, you do feel the same and you do then need to make a decision for yourself. What's the fallout going to be? Where are you at in your life that the impact is going to, you know, hurt other people or other things? What are the consequences? And

if they're minimal, then go for it. And if they're huge, then maybe consider how much of an asshole it would make you if you went and did all those things because it would impact a lot of other people. I love the point. One thing I wrote on an article years and years ago, but one of the things I said is I said, even your dream job sucks 30% of the time. Even your dream partner sucks 30% of the time. No, I mean it like the person of your dreams who ticks every box, who is actually incredible and way better than anyone else you've ever dated still is going to irritate you and sucks sometimes. Okay. I have a question for you. I've been with my boyfriend now for three years. I'm 22. He's 26. We lived together for the past year. Our relationship is good with no huge red

flags. That's good. He treats me well, but I am starting to find he's becoming quite hard to motivate. What I mean by this is that he sleeps in every day. He works from home. So sometimes he doesn't leave the house. He doesn't really seem enthusiastic about doing anything at all, whether it be with me or exercise. We have been wanting to plan a trip to Europe for a long time, but I'm basically becoming solely responsible for the planning i don't think he's depressed but i'm finding it a lot of work to be the only one trying to get us up and go and do anything is he becoming really lazy are we just not on the same path or do you think that there might be something deeper going on here to me it sounds like he's a little bit depressed i mean that those are the sort of

sorts of behaviors that happens when somebody i mean clearly he's going through something and i think this is a perfect example of how whatever you're going through yourself bleeds over into relationship i'm gonna guess it's not about her or the relationship because if it was they would be fighting about stuff or be having having it like she wouldn't say the relationship is good so the fact that she says the relationship is good yet he doesn't want to do anything like even things that he said he wanted to do a year ago he doesn't really show much interest in doing anymore i mean something's going on with him he's clearly unhappy in some way and i think you know her i don't want to say job or role because it's not an obligation but like as his partner

she should try to kind of help him figure that out he probably doesn't fully understand what's going on with him so you know i think this is a great opportunity for her to try to help him with that yeah i agree and i also think it's easy to say i don't think he's depressed because your relationship's not as in like you're not fighting so like i think if you were fighting and there was like problems you would probably be more inclined to be like oh i think he's depressed because it's having an impact on your relationship but because you're you're like everything else seems fine. We are fine, but this is just a him problem. But I think that that's how depression can manifest. It very much can look like just a him problem. But sometimes people just aren't

planners. Like some people aren't motivated by being organized and planned. So maybe there's an aspect of that that is being intensified by what he's going through inside. Yeah. But I think it's the, you know, that's one thing. I'm not a planner. Like, unfortunately it kind of is always up to my partner to do all of the organization, but I'll get out of bed in the morning. Like it's all the factors linked together that to me would say exactly what you said, Mark, that there's something much deeper going on here. And rather than pointing it as lazy, I would be saying like, why has his behavior changed? What's changed? People don't magically become lazy at 26. If anything, they magically stop being lazy at 26. In my experience, if I was to make a list of

all of the initial signs of depression, I mean, let me put it this way. It seems like maybe she isn't clear on what depression is, but depression is a lack of interest in things that you used to be interested in. And so I would say that them not fighting is actually also evidence of depression because when you're depressed, you don't care enough to fight with your partner. It's like, if I'm depressed and my wife's doing something that irritates me, I'm like, ah, that's a lot of work to yell at her. Like, you know, I'm just going to let it, I'm just going to like roll over and pull covers over my head. You know, it sounds like he's going through something right now. And I think young men really struggle to be aware of what they're feeling and what they're going

through. I'm sure he's aware that he's not motivated to do stuff, but if he's like most young men, he's probably not aware why he's not motivated to do stuff. And I know when I was younger, my girlfriends were always very, very instrumental in helping me kind of being like, hey, what's going on? How are you feeling? Why don't you want to do this? You were excited about this a month ago like why don't you want to do this now sometimes guys especially young guys like you need to prod them a little bit to get them to kind of like oh yeah yeah i am kind of feeling this way but yeah that sucks i wonder why huh mark you are an absolute joy and we love having you back on the podcast as much as we love being up to date on your newsletters and everything else

that you're doing thank you so much for your time thank you for joining us thank you too it's always a pleasure you can get mark's books literally literally anywhere in the entire world that you can get a book they're best sellers in every country and you can listen to your new podcast we also highly recommend going to his speaking tours but maybe book it if it's at the end of the speaking tour not the start yeah i mean for all the aussies you'll probably catch me once i'm a little bit rehearsed and the sex robots have been cut out of this the talk yeah are you making your way back this way anytime soon uh no plans at the moment i'd love to though i mean australia is like it's one of my best markets i love it down there always have great events down there so i'm

sure i'll be back one day but no no mark thank you so much thank you guys We'll be right back.