Life Uncut - UNCUT with Mark Manson - The subtle art of not giving a f*ck

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Lifers! We literally couldn’t be more excited about today’s episode! We have an incredible guest and we had so much fun with this interview! Also it’s our first male guest (besides Matty J but he doesn’t count) so we wanted to make it a good one! The Sunday times describes him as “the local drunk who spent too much time in the philosophy section of the bookstore” and honestly, what an accurate description. He’s a two-time #1 New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold over 13 million copies worldwide, have been translated into more than 60 languages and have hit the bestseller lists in sixteen different countries. Ladies and gentlemen, we introduce to you Mark Manson, author of The subtle art of not giving a f*ck” and “everything is f*cked”He’s funny, he’s intelligent, he’s insightful and he’s relatable, we hope you listening as much as we loved recording.You can find mark @markmanson and you can buy his books, well, literally anywhere.Also, if you’re not already in the Facebook discussion group what are you waiting for!If you loved the ep please be a good egg and leave us a review! Whilst you’re there you may as well hit subscribe and 5 stars too ;)And don’t forget to share to love, because, well, we love love xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany and Laura's paying me out. She's saying I'm stuck in the 70s. I don't know what she's talking about. No, we just tried to do the intro and I was like, I am so excited about today's episode. And Brittany was like, yeah, it's killer. I'm sorry, what's wrong with killer? It's a very descriptive and emotive word.

Well, I mean, if this was a true crime podcast, maybe. That just to me sounds very 90210. It was killer, man. Well, I was. Tubular, dude. I mean, I grew up in that generation and we all know I'm a nerd burger. It's not like I'm the coolest kid on the block. Well, I grew up in that generation also.

But speaking of our generation, the reason why we are so excited for today's episode is because we have such a good interview for you guys. We interviewed Mark Manson, who is the author of New York Times number one bestseller, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which I'm sure so many of you have read. I'm sure so many of you know of if you haven't read it. And even if you haven't read the book, honestly, this episode has to be one of my absolute favorites. He is so insightful. He is so interesting and Brittany is dying to say something. Oh no, I'm not. I'm just like getting ready.

I'm just like, I have my sentence ready. It's probably the most excited I have been about an interview in a really long time. Not only is Mark a New York Times bestseller, he's a two times number one New York Times bestseller. The guy has collectively sold 13 million copies of his books. That is absolutely incredible. I'm a big fan of his work. I have read his blogs a long time ago.

this guy's been blogging for like 20 years this is how he started he didn't just get into running books he was a blogger and Laura and I both used to read his stuff it's been a long time since I have just sat there and spoken to someone and just been absolutely captivated by him he was so effortless the way he interviewed and so engaging and I could have spoken to him for hours I didn't want it to end I hope that he dms me we're best friends it's highly unlikely but that's what I'm looking for mark if you listen slide in but also like and you guys will hear it from the interview like he he really challenges some of the social norms that we're led to believe like we get into this conversation around dating and around like the concept of settling and also around this whole

idea of like you know I don't give a fuck like you know and we glorify this concept of like not caring and he really breaks that down and in such an insightful way so we're both so excited to get into the interview. I think the Sunday Times said it best they described his writing as the local drunk who spent too much time in the philosophy section of the bookstore. Do you know why I think this resonates with us? Because we're drunk. That could literally be us. That could be me. More so like your local slightly drunk mum who has spent way too much time giving relationship advice because she spent way too much time in shitty relationships. I think it's just the two friends that are drunk and spend too much time in their undies in the bedroom. And I know that sounds

awkward. That sounded really weird. But it's also kind of true. It's literally the most truth we've said today. Before we get into the interview, Brittany has some very sad news. Guys, it was only a week ago that I told you guys I was in love and happy and spending all my time with my boyfriend and I still am in love. She's, yeah, don't worry. She hasn't broken up. Don't worry. This is not a breakup speech. That sounded really dramatic really quickly. No, Jordan has left for overseas to do his tennis tour, but he's gone for the year. Like that is it. He is gone until December which is devastating I like that you choose relationships that are particularly hard like out of all the men you've dated in the past two years since we started the podcast you were

like the one I'm gonna fall in love with is the one that's gonna be the most fucking complicated relationship I've ever had yeah well played universe this guy is great but what can I do to make it dysfunctional oh oh I'll date someone who's gonna be out of the country for eight months during a pandemic that's perfect let's not even let you have a physical relationship show me that Britney. I can't wait to do an episode on Zoom sex though. That's going to be great. You can tell us all about the ins and outs. You want me to record it, do you? No, but it is actually great. So I put this up on my stories and I told you guys all about it. And I can't believe how many of you, I got hundreds of messages from you, all you guys that are in long distance relationships.

I was gobsmacked. A, not only at how many of you are in long distance relationships, but B, how many of these long distance relationships have been really long-term. I'm talking people being like my partner and I've been doing long distance for 10 years and I'm like girl what wow where is he is he in Antarctica saving the penguins like why is there a 10 years long distance is he made up is he not real is he a catfish is he on the internet have you actually ever seen him this is there's a lot in this but there were a lot of people that wrote in with this like four five six year kind of long distance relationships and I I'm really interested by it so we are going to do an episode on it in a little while but we might reach out to you guys and get

some of your stories and I mean it's definitely hard it definitely takes a specific type of personality but I know a lot of married couples who have ended up having to do long distance like I mean my ex's parents end up having to do long distance for three years because he was he was post overseas he was an engineer and it was a hugely well-paying job and then his mum was here and their whole life was here and everything they did was here and all the kids were here so she was like well I'm not gonna just uproot and go over to and they were living somewhere which was like a bit obscure and she was like I'm not gonna get anything out of living there so she stayed and they did long distance for three years as a married couple that have been married for 15 years you

wouldn't really think that that happens they probably love their time apart at that point oh you're leaving for three years this is devastating but you know honey what i think the funniest thing about this is i just feel like the universe is sitting out there looking at me being like you know what one day i'm gonna let britney fall in love and he's not gonna be around so i'm gonna prepare her for that moment by making her be single for 10 years so that when the time comes so i feel like that's what i've done because i actually i'm sad and i miss him and i loved for the first time i felt that affection and love and looking forward to see someone but girl i've been on my own a long time like i'm so used to it and i i will be fine we'll speak every day but i am

such a busy person you laura know how much we've got on i'm sort of looking forward to knuckling down and just filling all my time with work i mean that's what i've always done you actually have the best perspective on this because i i wouldn't have put that i wouldn't have kind of link those two things together but you're so right like maybe this is even a positive thing the fact that you are so fiercely independent that that you still get to have that independence but you can kind of like slowly migrate yourself into a very full-term very full-on relationship and I mean like eight months of like slowly easing yourself into it everything's gonna be fine totally the floor is lava the floor is lava everything's fine everything's fucked uh okay

guys so um just gonna give you a little update on my week my week has been easily like you just laugh at me because I know your week my week has easily been the most challenging parenting week I have ever had like hands down I can't even begin and you know what it really really floored me because I feel like last episode I was a little bit like yeah I've got this whole two kids thing I don't I fucking lied I am failing this week they're both of them either Marley or Lola have had me on blast like one of them's screaming both of them are screaming Marley was sick and she had a temperature Matt's been working so much which I can kind of tell you about that very soon but not yet um so he's not been home the suspense he's not really been home since um Lola was five

days old like he's been home for night times and stuff and he's just working so much and I'm used to having a very very hands-on partner because I'm also working like I'm not getting any time off at the moment and um yeah it's been so full-on Marley's also just uh realized that she's jealous of Lola like the first couple of weeks it was entertaining and she enjoyed having a little sister and having a baby in the house oh baby baby baby and now I can't tell you the amount of times in the last week that she has literally kicked Lola in the head we're hoping that everything's fine yeah don't turn your back on that one finger fingers crossed and hope for the best so um yeah like they've both been an absolute wild bit of gear and I'm just adjusting

to what my new life is now it's a lot more challenging than I think I thought it was going to be it's also tough too because Lola is very dependent on you and I don't mean dependent like she needs you physically for your boob I mean like even today when I just tried to take her from you for a second she has like an attachment to you and she'll just cry she'll go back to your arms and she's okay I mean who would think that a newborn baby would have an attachment to the mother who birthed and raised them and reared them and grew them from their own uterus why are you so obsessed with me she's obsessed with your boobs but she's only human but my point is some kids are happy to go to other people and they're pretty chill but right now Lola

is like there's a separation anxiety and she doesn't even want to be held for a second by someone else so that's like doubly challenging for you I think if you can get through the next few weeks you can literally get through anything because it's been like it's been like to hell and back with you yeah there's been a couple of days where it's been touch and go but anyway like guys after last week's episode where we did talk about the birth story and we talked about lots of different aspects of like the first few weeks with a newborn I had received so many really amazing messages from people and also people who have been saying like oh you look like you have it all together and you like you know it's so inspiring and I just want to tell you that I'm sorry that

you've been lied to across social media. I don't have it together and there have been a lot of days in this last week where I feel like I'm absolutely drowning. So if you are also a mum to any amount of children and you feel like you're drowning sometimes we're in this together. But anyway we want to keep this intro really short and sharp because this interview is it's so awesome like hang out for it. Also, I just want to apologize. The audio from Mark's side is not as amazing as what we normally give you. I am absolutely anal and pedantic when it comes to the audio and it comes to sound quality. And because he's overseas and we had to record this via Zoom, there is a little bit of feedback. It's so minute. You probably tell me that I'm being crazy, but I'm

a perfectionist. They're not even going to notice. They're not even going to notice. But I notice and it drives me crazy. But before we get into the interview, it is time for our favorite part of every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered and britney you were going first because you said you have the best one today which you know what i am really torn i have so many good ones stacked up that like i wish i let's just do a whole episode soon okay but i have picked one because i just thought it was so funny actually can i do two nah one one save that shit we'll do a full we need them hey guys boy do i have an accidentally unfiltered for you my eyes are on fire i'm 21 still even at home my dog was wanting to go into my parents room at 7 a.m this morning yes that's

right this happened just today as i opened the door to my parents room i caught them having sex i was mortified however it gets worse after quickly shutting the door i went and hid back in my room i ignored my parents once they got up for about an hour seemingly thinking i had avoided the awkward small talk yes i'd gotten away with it in the meantime i do what anyone would do I have started Snapchat vlogging the whole thing to my friend, explaining what had just happened and detailing the everlasting picture that I will never get out of my head. You know how before you send these videos, you always play them back one, two, three times?

On the third time, I hear my mom yell up the stairs. Just to let you know, we can hear your whole story through the speaker. It was at this point that I realized I had thrown myself under the bus by accidentally acknowledging the whole situation to them indirectly because my phone had automatically connected to the downstairs speaker which was on loud so i was just uh minding my own business and i walked to my mom going down on my dad and yeah guys i just want to share this with my 500 followers and she played it like three times and the whole family was listening on the speaker i learned that she wanted to avoid this from her parents but she felt okay with sharing it across

social media fucking hell girl honestly the things we think we need to share and as we say that we're literally sharing the story now to you guys but I also share everything do you know what happened to me so okay we have a sponsor that's coming up on the podcast in a few weeks time and it is a sex shop you know who sent us some toys right and I this might surprise you guys I've never owned a vibrator I've never owned any toys and I was like yeah send me some I'm like down for trying this anyway the last week well actually I picked it for you I had to pick Laura's toys for I was like I think she'd like this one Brittany got me a cock ring well I mean I wanted to make Matt feel included so okay so I didn't know that but yeah Brittany picked me some sex

toys our relationship has gone to a whole new level last week I had Matt's mum staying with me so um Matt's mum's been here to help with the kids actually once Matt's mum left that's when all the wheels fell off the wagon things were great while she was here but um yeah I got this package from Brit and I left it on the table and Matt's mom was doing some cleaning and she opened it up was like oh what is this delivery and it is a box full of sex toys and cock rings and clit stimulators and I was just like wow our relationship is not there yet Ellie she wanted to know the funniest part of that and I almost wish I didn't tell you this actually ties back into what we're talking about who uses what for lube. Laura was going through the box and I picked something out

and she goes, oh, just leave that to the side. That's just lube. And I was like, do I tell you or not? I was like, babe, that's not lube. Like that's what you clean your toys with. It was like cleaning on it. I would have loved to have let that slide and you used it as lube. Okay. This is actually my accidentally unfiltered story. Don't know. I didn't use the cleaning solution as lube. Although somebody did actually write that in. On the last episode, we put it out to you guys. If you've ever been in a situation or if you've ever known anyone who's accidentally use something that wasn't lube as lube and we received so many messages one of them was legitimately that story they bought this sex toy in japan right and it came with a solution

what's your first mistake they were like was it from a vending machine yeah yeah yeah someone's used undies so it was a sex toy that they'd bought while they were overseas everything was in japanese and it came with this solution and she's like we sprayed the solution on and started using it and she's like all of a sudden I was as dry as the fucking Sahara desert then discovered that it was cleaning solution that actually wasn't my accidentally unfiltered story this is it no I probably got it it's probably the one I'm about to tell this is the accidentally unfiltered story that I had up my sleeve for today my partner and I were getting into it one night in the absolute darkness feeling energetic I was on top and to avoid ruining the moment I reached over to

his drawer to grab the lube it was empty without turning on the light i knew i had another tube of lube in my top drawer so i reach over to my side table and i grab it and after a solid 6.5 minutes i love how specific this is of legs cramping and swapping positions we were done okay 6.5 minutes that's i mean a why'd you time at b it's pretty quick that's inefficient i like that i'm all about efficiency when it comes to my sex it's i mean i'm not even about sex at the moment but Okay, back to the story. After a solid 6.5 minutes, we were done. My boyfriend did a quick dash to the bathroom and we both went to sleep.

The next morning, my partner got up early, had a shower, went to work. Later that morning, I get up. I take one step out of bed, only to see a tube looking out of place on the floor. Then the realization hit me. The tube I had grabbed from the side drawer in the dark wasn't silky lube, but instead, it was heel balm gold. oh that's so rank like when you get a crusty thing after frantically scanning the lube for external use only or a poisons hotline i called my partner and told him that he would probably

see visible results in three days it's so good so good you know we had so many of these like when we put a call out we had so many of you guys writing these hilarious stories like i was rolling around hysterics so i actually want to do a whole segment on it i reckon we could do a whole segment let's put them all together and just have a laugh an accidentally unfiltered bonus episode we are so ready for a bonus ep and also because we were away for five weeks we've done two episodes and we're like okay we're ready for a bonus ep guys i know you've been missing us no but also we're away for five weeks and we received so many absolute cracker accidentally unfiltered stories so i feel a little bonus ep in my waters as well my favorite thing is still though that these things

are happening and we get the message like 10 minutes after yeah like literally as shit is going wrong in your life you're like oh I've got a message those girls from life on card people pulling something out of their butt as they're texting us they're like it's hilarious and I'm like love you girl wait so okay I was walking um this is just like a big thank you to you guys when you do listen to the podcast and then you see us in person and you stop us in the street and tell us how much you love the podcast it genuinely absolutely makes our day but the other day I was walking down Bondi with Matt and this girl who was blitzed on Margie's was like Laura grabbed me by the arm I was like hi she's like I love your podcast and Matt is there Matt was like oh

I'm gonna be on something or other very soon and she was like who are you I don't even know who you are no I feel for him because that would hurt him so bad oh I think she was definitely joking but The level of confidence that she had because of those margaritas was truly inspiring. I love that. I miss that level of confidence. Let's all have a little of her in us. Her name was Samantha. She was great.

All right, guys, with that out of the way, let's get into this episode. Mark is a bestselling author whose books have sold over 13 million copies worldwide. They've been translated into more than 60 languages and has hit the bestseller list in 16 different countries. If that wasn't enough, he's also a blogger that receives 15 million downloads a year. He's a guest lecturer at multiple universities. He speaks three languages and has a business and international relations degree. He's also somehow only 36 years old.

So I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life. Mark, you're not making me feel very good over here. Welcome to Life Uncut. Thanks for having me. Mark, thanks so much for making time for us. We actually have you coming from New Zealand at the moment. so my first question has nothing to do with all the things you've achieved it's how the fuck did you get out of the states to get into new zealand because right now that seems like

a feat in and of itself i was gonna say it might be my greatest achievement yeah we're supposed to put that at the very start but congratulations on being in new zealand exactly i was very very fortunate in that i'm working with a film production company they bought the rights the the film rights to do a documentary of of my books and i was very lucky that they happened to be Kiwi. And so we had been kind of talking on and off, we were planning on working on the film end of 2020, like second half of 2020. And usually what they do is they fly to New York or LA or whatever and do the production there. But then when the pandemic started, I got on the phone with them. And it was so funny, because they were like classic, unassuming Kiwis, you know,

super polite. And they're like, Well, you know, we could do it remotely. And they start telling me about all this technology. And they're like, you know, because we would never ask you to quarantine for 14 days and i was like whoa whoa whoa whoa time out time out you can get me in and they're like well yeah but it's you know the hotels are really uncomfortable and you know it's just it's it's a lot of paperwork and i'm like hold on like stop everything i'm coming down right now can you get my wife in yeah we could get her into fuck that i'm coming right now as soon as you can let me in i mean we were basically locked down all last year anyway so 14 days is nothing so yeah it took a few months but we managed to get down here and we are just milking

every second we can while we're here so this is gonna sound like a dumb question but pretty amazing they're filming a documentary are you obviously are you just overseeing it are you the star of it because you are the star of it apparently i'm gonna be the star of it it's really quite funny because i mean obviously they're consulting me for my my opinion and things like that but i don't know the first thing about making films i got down here and met with them and talk to them for a while and they're like yeah we're just gonna you know throw a bunch of cameras around you and do a bunch of crazy shit and talk to you like record you for like six days and then we're gonna make a movie out of it i'm like all right sure that literally sounds

like the bachelor we've both done the bachelor you just stand there for days on end non-stop filming so i feel for you already except you know you've already got a wife so you're not competing against you know a whole lot of other men to try and make out with one chick i think things are going to be different with this documentary but same same mark we start every interview with asking our guests if they have an accidentally unfiltered story which is basically just your most embarrassing story do you have one for us a most embarrassing so i've got one when i was when i was a kid but i feel like that kind of doesn't count um no i think it counts i was dared once when i was a kid to run across like take off all my clothes and run across the street

naked and uh and of course when i was a kid i was i was the one who always just did i didn't give a so i just took off all my clothes and like i was like oh that's easy i'll do that so i ran across the street naked well unfortunately i didn't think very far ahead and so my brother and his friends picked up all the clothes ran into the house and locked the door and so i i stood outside for a good like 30 40 minutes just butt ass naked i was maybe like 10 12 years old and uh and then my mom came home and she was absolutely horrified but yeah that was pretty like agonizing in fear of being one of those dickheads that like one-up someone's story when i was at uni games so this guy that i was dating had done something to really piss me off and so i we had this game where

everyone would dare each other to do stuff and we were in the middle of perth about half an hour from the hotel that we were staying at and i dared him to get nude and run around the fountain and then i got into a taxi and took all his clothes home half an hour drives and he was 35 and he deserved it i'm not alone that actually that's healing that's very healing it's i i'm not it's not just me i think it's kind of more evil when you're in your 20s and you do this to someone than when you're you know in your teens but anyway yeah i didn't think things through mark you started off your journey into philosophy by selling relationship columns and relationship advice now we also give relationship advice here on this podcast but why did you get into this why

did you start off because you kind of merged from being solely relationships to being a very contemporary self-help in some ways which maybe you hate the term but i like i'm going to put you in that basket but how did you get into doing relationship columns uh it was kind of on accident i mean i started writing about it because it was what i had problems with in my 20s you know i started blogging back in 2008 which was podcasting before podcasting everybody started a blog you wrote about your life everybody linked to each other and so a bunch of my my guy friends had blogs that they were writing random stuff so i started a blog and i was writing random stuff and then it was kind of my crazy dating stories that started catching on with people you know outside

my friend group started getting shared around different people around town it was completely unintentional it just it started to take off and next thing i know i'm getting emails people asking me questions asking for advice asking for relationship advice and i'm like how the fuck do i know i don't know i'm completely unqualified it's like dude did you read my stuff like have you seen how much of an idiot i am i'm perpetually being dumped that is us that was us to a t we are here giving relationship advice and we're like well it's because we've made so many fucking mistakes up until this point that's the only reason and the only place where it comes from you know there is an old saying of like people who can't do teach so I mean all these

people started like wanting me to answer things so I was kind of like I guess I should know what I'm talking about so I went out and bought like 10 or 20 relationship books and started reading them started kind of piecing things together and figuring it out you know through the books and through my own experiences and that eventually just started evolving into a business what do you believe are the fundamentals and non-negotiables in a relationship if you're going to give like your top five or your top two or whatever it is what are they trust and mutual respect for me those are those are like the non-negotiable if you lose trust in a relationship you've essentially lost the relationship and if you don't respect each other then like why the hell are you with each

other it makes no sense so for me those are the two fundamental things and generally trust and respect is you know it's protected by honest communication and through finding some sort of mutual admiration like you should admire something about your partner other than just like you know how good they look after they get out of the shower some component of them that you actually admire as a human being because that's what's going to keep you with them and keep you interested in them i mean i respect that my fiance has abs that's fine right i think looks are still i mean how they look after the shower is critical also i mean looks they're gonna go away they're great look everybody likes a sexy bot but you know it's temporary i love that you said this and also we

just did an episode it's kind of what actually inspired us reaching out to you and having this conversation was i came across an article that you've written quite a few years back which was love is not enough and we did a whole episode unpacking this concept that you know we put so much pressure and emphasis on on feeling overwhelmingly in love with someone and that's what we should use as the basis for a relationship but actually that's not the most important thing because love is kind of similar to happiness sometimes you're not always going to feel super in love with your partner sometimes you're going to probably fucking hate them a little bit because they've really pissed you off and having that as your benchmark for a great relationship sets

yourself up for failure whereas having mutual respect and having trust you can always get back to feeling super happy and feeling super in love if you have those things there yeah it's um love is great but it's not sufficient on its own you know and it's i think what everybody learns as they get older and as they've gone through a few relationship catastrophes is that uh you can love people for very bad reasons and you can love people who like are very bad for you as well you don't the the combination the personality combination actually doesn't work very well and so it's for that reason there needs to be like more fundamental things that you look for in the relationship and like you said it's like if you get the other stuff right then the love will

come as a result but i i think there's just kind of this romantic ideal that that love fixes things that if you just love each other enough then everything's gonna magically fall into place and work out and that might work in disney movies but it doesn't work in real life we're definitely fed this false sense of security growing up aren't we because of all these hollywood movies and all the fairy tales that we're seeing that it literally doesn't matter what he's done what she's done where you live in the world what other problems there are if you love each other that's it but like i'm calling bullshit straight up because i've been there in every situation before we get into not giving a fuck and how you got there i just want to know a bit about you

you have a really interesting story about what you studied and and your job that you did for i think a total of one week and then traveling the world can you just give us like a little summation of your life before you started to write and became like the world's god and bestseller world's god there you go i thought we were already done with the accolades but there we are add that to my intro yeah so i you know as i said earlier i never intended to end up into this line of work you know i spent most of my uni years drinking and playing poker and i was pretty good at both of them and uh unfortunately you can't you know drinking is not a career path but poker is you

know like being good with wagers and numbers and things like that and all the guys i played poker with they were going into finance so i figured like hey i'll go into finance if i'm good at this i'll be good at that i managed to get a job and it was i actually i lasted about a month it was some of the most miserable weeks of my entire life and i remember there was a point when i was in the job with uh with with my team it was like oh there's a bunch of college grads who came in and just got trained and we're all kind of like they pushed us into a corner of cubicles together and uh everybody was going around and people were talking about when i start making when when i start making six figures this is what i'm gonna do and like everybody was like when i start making six

figures i'm gonna buy a bmw when i make six figures i'm gonna buy a boat you know and like it got around to me and everybody's looking at me like what are you gonna do when you make a bunch of money and i'm like i kind of shrugged i was like i don't know like maybe take a year off and live in asia or something do something that's not soul destroying right now like you know and i was like maybe like backpack around the world and they they all just looked at me like i was absolutely insane and uh i remember it just kind of hit me then i'm like wow this is i'm in the wrong place i'm completely in the wrong place and so around that time i i've been reading a lot of books about internet business you know because the blog was taking off and i was like

you know, I think I can make some money doing this thing. And so I spent the next couple of years, I quit the job and spent the next year or two trying to like hack together a little bit of money for it. And the beauty of it was that as soon as I was making a little bit of money, you know, maybe a couple thousand dollars a month, I could go do it anywhere. So I could go to Argentina and I could go to Thailand and I could go to Hong Kong and Germany and all these cool, interesting places that I had always wanted to go to. So I actually, I didn't have to wait till I was making six figures i could just like spend a couple years building up a website and then go do it was the book that you were reading the four-hour work week yes this was 2008 yeah 2008 so it had

just it had been out for about a year it's funny because i i kind of i have this like love-hate relationship with some of the stuff in that book but it because i think it's the whole idea of working four hours a week is ludicrous but the the mindset shift of like you don't have to wait till you retire like there are things you can do to kind of build this asset on the internet um and then you can all these things that you're dreaming about you don't have to wait 30 years to go do it you can go do it now totally look i read that book too but i jumped the gun a bit i just went traveling for three years but i didn't start an online business that was my fault i just went oops i got through the first chapter um mark for anybody who hasn't read the subtle

art of not giving a fuck can you give us a quick sort of rundown on what is the philosophy of not giving a fuck what does it mean the subtle art not giving a fuck it's a little bit of a a trick you know it kind of it lures people in by by making this promise of like oh yeah all your stress and anxiety like you can just not give a fuck anymore but what the book quickly kind of flips on you is the point that we all have to care about something you have to give a fuck about something and whether you realize it or not you're always choosing what you're giving a fuck about you're always choosing what you care about and i think that realization of that that constant process of choice is an extremely profound one because it calls into question a lot of

things all across our life, you know, like, if you're not happy, why aren't you happy? Like, why are you not choosing the things that will make you happy? If you feel like a failure? Why are you not choosing the things that will make you feel like more of a success? And so it's kind of this, it's strangely a book kind of about almost radical responsibility. But it's also about, you know, I wanted to write a book that was very much against kind of all the traditional cliche positive thinking type of stuff life is full of suffering and hardship and that's fine like it's there's no way to avoid that it's actually the suffering and hardship that makes life feel meaningful you no matter what you do you're going to fail every relationship you have

is going to hurt you at some point it you know like that's the cost of having close intimate relationships so there's there's literally nothing good in our life that doesn't have some sort of like negative association with it and so a lot of the book is aimed at helping people learn to accept that instead of try to run away from it one of the things where you sort of said like the question isn't why do you care about things that are trivial but why don't you have more important things in your life to care about like you've got everyone's got the same amount of to give so why are you giving yours to such small insignificant inconveniences is actually a reflection that you don't have anything big and important happening in your life and that's the

real problem. The problem isn't getting worried about all these small things. It's focusing on what is it that gives you purpose? And what is it that makes you happy? And what is it that's important in your life? And the things we care about are a reflection of what's important in our life. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's probably the most common question I get from people, especially people who read that book is, how do I stop giving a fuck what people think about me and my response is you can't you you have to care what people like it's good you care what people think about you you know we have a name for people who don't care what people think it's called a psychopath uh you should care what your mother thinks you should care what your

friends think you should care what your co-workers think the problem is not caring what people think the problem is that you don't have anything more important in your life than what people think that's what's missing. What's the difference between someone who doesn't give a fuck and someone who is indifferent to it? Like just indifferent to caring in general? Sociopath? Yeah, I guess a sociopath. I think people can be indifferent without being a sociopath. I think people who are indifferent are a bit more uninterested, if anything. But what would you say is the difference between those two things? Indifference is a form of avoidance. And as I talk about in the book, there's actually no such thing as indifference. There's no such thing as

not giving a fuck about anything because if you're indifferent to everything, that's still giving a fuck about being indifferent to everything. So there's just this unavoidable choice. You have to choose. You have to choose. If you are alive and breathing and conscious, you have to choose what to care about. Indifference is just, it's a strategy people use to try to escape that responsibility. I'm glad that you put this book out there to the world because it is literally the most important message I guess or or the most important education I know that for me and like this is this is like tooting your horn but also not I'm just gonna be really honest I learned this lesson before I read your book I learned this lesson I spent a month with a monk who I stumbled

across and the literally the one thing he taught me was that these horrible things are always going to happen in your life you literally cannot ever escape it but it's how you deal with it like you're always going to be shit things always going to be fucked the monk did not swear I added that in it's these things are always going to happen and it's and it's how you deal with it and then I walked away from that and I am not kidding it changed my life I then read your book which just really reiterated everything that I had just learned and this is my biggest piece of advice now to anybody that ever comes to us because we get hundreds of questions a day as well much like you and my thing is what doesn't matter like why why is this such a big deal for you and why do

you have to go to these extreme lengths to get closure from this thing or if he doesn't want to text you back does that really matter like you're the one putting the importance on that and I think when everybody can get their head around the idea that you're in control of how you can feel you're in control of what's important that their whole life will change and I also think the other part to that is like you cannot control other people so if people don't behave the way that you want them to behave like that's a reflection of you and and they're not purposely making you unhappy you're making yourself unhappy by wanting an outcome that you have zero control over and i think we do it a lot i think i used to do it a lot in my 20s i would set my ex-boyfriends up for like

okay i want them to say this to me in their apology and i wouldn't get the exact thing i wanted from them and therefore i'd be even more pissed off that they hadn't said it but then they say sorry and you're like you didn't even fucking good enough no you're like you didn't even mean that but it's true i think when you when you expect someone to react in a certain way or you expect something from someone and obviously it doesn't work in every situation but i think we can do it quite a bit if you have those expectations then you can only be disappointed by those expectations because people are never going to act exactly or do exactly or say exactly what you want them to do and say and you shouldn't want them to because you can't control other

people and you can't control everything that happens around you either yeah absolutely and And, you know, one of the big themes in that book is this idea of like how we define success. And I think what a lot of people do in relationships that kind of backfires is they create these kind of arbitrary imaginary metrics of success. You know, it's like, oh, if he really loves me, he'll do X, Y and Z and say A, B and C. And then when he doesn't do those things or say those things, you get really, really mad at him. And then, of course, you know, as the guy who's been on the other end of that experience, I'm like, what did I do? Wait, what the fuck? What did I do?

It's I think with relationships, it's you have to both people have to be very clear early on. You know, the measurement of success is that we that both people are free to be themselves. I think some of the most important conversations that happen in relationships, and it's a conversation my wife and I have had many, many times over the years. is I don't show love that way. I show love this way. Or I don't perceive that as something that is loving or, you know, I'm not used to that. My family didn't do that when I was growing up. Questions like that, you know, so it's not her that's wrong or me that's wrong. It's just these are the people we are. And we simply have to adapt our expectations to fit the person rather than expecting the person to fit the expectations. I wanted to just graze back and touch on something

you just said because I feel like it is probably the most important thing I've heard in a long time and something that I still battle with and I think everyone battles with I think it's something that we're seeing a lot of this toxic positivity on social media and these people that are like who gives a fuck what anyone thinks who cares what they think who cares what he thinks when you just said actually every single human in the world is going to care what someone thinks that even just then when you said it hit me a little bit because I've always tried to tell myself who cares what they think but I have felt that and I have felt like if I'm if I'm dating someone and he didn't respond to me or didn't want to be with me even if I didn't really want to be with him I was still

like what the fuck like why don't why don't you like me why don't you want to date me or not that I want to date you but why don't you so I think it's it doesn't matter how many times you say to yourself or to a friend like who gives a flying fuck what they think of you you're going to care so I want people just to take a minute and think about what you just said then because I think that that could be really life-changing for a lot of people to i think a mistake a lot of people make too is is they assume that their emotions are necessarily true right so you know i get emails every week from people who say awful things about me and it yeah it makes me feel bad but it that doesn't mean it matters you know it's we're used to assuming that if if we feel a certain way that

it must that thing must be important like you said it's like if a guy you're not even that into doesn't call you back, and you get upset about that, that doesn't mean it matters. It doesn't mean it's actually important. It just means you're upset. You know, sometimes emotions just happen for absolutely no good reason. And I think developing the ability to kind of question of like, all right, I'm feeling upset or angry or sad right now. Is this like a legitimate thing to be concerned about? Or am I just sad today? Or am I just upset today? You know, and learning to be like you know what i'm upset over something stupid i'll get over it it's a very important kind of mental skill to develop well i guess if if you don't have that skill it's very self-indulgent

because it you then set yourself up for a case where you think that your feelings are the most important feelings more important than somebody else's so someone if something's someone's done something maybe it's your partner that's you know been in an everyday irritation but you've allowed it to really piss you off then you think you're entitled to voice that and tell them just how much it's pissed you off and yeah maybe you are but that doesn't mean that that's not going to then turn around and bite you in the ass when they're like actually do you know what i cannot deal with you nothing i do is right nothing i do is good enough because you're always wanting to tell me all the things that i've done that's made you so sad so i do think that sometimes you have to keep

your emotions in check especially now at the moment i have like a five week old baby and i haven't slept and so all i do is yell at my partner telling me shit and every so often he's like, but every so often he's like, babe, I'm trying so hard and you're always annoyed. He's like, and it makes me feel like everything I do is not good enough. And he's like, and I know that's not what you actually think. And I know you're not actually that annoyed at me, but you need to rein in the everyday annoyances because it's starting to really grind on me. And then I have to have that mental check and go, okay, I can really get carried away with how you feel about something. And I know I can do that myself. Yeah. And that can deteriorate a relationship very,

very quickly and it's good that you guys like spotted that and noticed because then you can adapt because you can channel that annoyance in another direction oh yeah totally recognize they don't they don't recognize that a they're becoming irritated frequently they don't they're not even aware that they're irritated but b it's like even if people recognize that they're becoming irritated a lot they they assume it's like oh yeah it is his fault you know he's such a piece of shit and blah blah blah blah blah he's not he's actually an angel so i'm such a bitch there's the second layer of self-awareness where it's like oh wow i'm being i'm feeling irritated a lot because i'm not sleeping and and i'm taking it out on you know i'm i'm channeling

it towards this person in an unfair way maybe i can channel it towards you know whatever i don't know punching a punching bag or pilates or something i did some gardening yesterday that made me feel a bit better i was like there you go i cleaned up some dog shit and did the garden there we go you're badass um mark how do you go about how do you go about writing your first book and just being like the world's top seller where do you go from there how do you feel about that obviously you were like obviously you're like yes like i am the king but was there this like i guess an imposter syndrome or this how am i ever going to live up to this standard again should i just retire now because you then went on to write another book that killed it as well

which was equally as illuminating in its title titled everything is fucked a book about hope yeah i love the optimism you know the massive success of that book it really does it like really messes with you kind of comes back to that expectations thing you know you expect certain things to happen in your life you know so my expectations for my career were like all right i'm gonna write a number of books over the next 10 15 years each one will steadily get better i'll become a better writer i'll develop a bigger wider audience and then hopefully by the time i'm like in my mid 40s or 50s uh i'll be like a number one new york times bestseller i'll have like a big best-selling book maybe sell a million copies or something like that like that

was kind of the plan it's like all right i'm about to set off on this like 10-year climb of this mountain i hit yeah i hit the top in like two months and it's so it's like i magically found the escalator to the top i kind of got up there and i'm like whoa whoa whoa i think this is not how supposed to happen this fast and then your life changes very quickly you know suddenly a lot of people want to talk to you who used to not want to talk to you people start recognizing you in places a bunch of money shows up in your bank account like things start getting very weird very quickly and i just like very much was not mentally prepared i think it took a year or two for me to kind of like just wrap my head around it and then meanwhile you've got this publisher who's like

initially they were like oh yeah you know do do your follow-up whenever you feel ready and then three months later they're calling you back they're like no we need it like now are you writing if you're not writing you know it's you need to be writing now and by the way we're gonna like write this massive check but it's all it's contingent on the fact that you start writing like this second and you give us a draft like tomorrow and uh and so there's just all this like professional pressure starts falling on you and so it was just it was a very very strange and disorienting feeling you know one thing i learned back when i did the dating coaching stuff was i i often noticed that people's self-perception tends to lag reality by a couple

of years so i i noticed like i used to have clients who were guys who say like lost like 50 kilos and they'd be like really good looking guys they were fit they were in shape but in their head they're still the fat guy and so even when the girl is smiling at him super interested to talk to him obviously to me obviously into him in his mind he's still the fat friend and he like couldn't wrap his head around the idea that like you know this woman is sexually attracted to him and what i noticed is that it took two to three years for people's self-perception to catch up with like what the reality was and i think that kind of happened with me it's like it took a couple years for me to realize like oh shit i have this huge best-selling book i'm being invited on tv

i'm going and selling out the hall in sydney it's a very weird thing it like definitely messed with my mental health for a while really because you would think like i mean i guess that's the hard thing right sometimes to explain even things that are really positive if they're a huge shift in your identity it can be really hard to overcome and i only say this because we both were on the bachelor i ended up with the guy so the guy who i now have two kids with he was the bachelor that's how we met we met on a reality tv show and for a while there i really really struggled even though I had everything I wanted and even though our relationship was great and I had finally met a guy who wasn't a piece of shit like most of the other people I dated I really struggled with the

fact that we were thrown into this like almost unreal world and 99.9% of it was a really positive world but I really had a hard time compartmentalizing how much things have changed and it took me exactly like you said probably about two years just to get to a point where I felt like I could really authentically be me and stop caring as much about what people thought of me and not have to be this perfect bachelor winner who wore expensive clothes all the time and had her hair done beautiful and had makeup on all the time. Whereas now, I mean, I guess having a toddler in a five-week old truly is a fast track to giving no fucks. It is, but I really appreciate it. Yeah, it really does. It's a real kick into reality. I mean, I just really appreciate you saying that because

I think it works in all aspects. And I'd never ever thought of it as your perception of your own identity lags a little bit by what's actually happening around you. Getting back to you, how did you go from having your first book to putting together your thought processes for your second book? And what is the philosophy behind the second book? So the second book, I kind of, there were two motivations for writing the second book. You know, the idea behind the second book is that if you actually look at the world, if you look at the data about the world, about poverty and war and violence and up until last year disease all these different metrics like right now is the best time to be alive in human history point blank period like there's just you go look

at all the data and information out there like there's really no argument about that it's not to say that we don't you know we obviously we still have tons of problems but it's just our problems today are so much better than they were 20 50 100 200 years ago but then if you go online it's like people are so fucking upset like all the time you would think that it's like the apocalypse every three weeks and so that i found that from an intellectual point i found that very curious that it seemed as though you know you've had kind of this this large rise in mental health issues suicide rates going up and so i was like wow why is it that you know as people as society becomes more prosperous and safe and comfortable people seem to get more freaked out and then

kind of to double on that my personal life from the outside it was things were literally the best they had ever been in my entire life you know i've got this huge number one book in like 16 different countries doing all this amazing shit and yet i felt weird i don't know if it was imposter syndrome but for me there was kind of this aching anxiety all the time of like i peaked it was like fuck the first thing i did is the best thing i'm ever gonna do so like why do anything else but then when i was like actually managed to kind of be objective and look at myself and look at my situation i'm like that's insane like why would you stop writing you know like that's who cares if the next book sells half as many copies or 10 as many copies like it doesn't

fucking matter if it's an important book and if you enjoy writing it so the second book was kind of it was kind of like helping me to reckon with with that own issue that was going on there was a little bit in the second book of me trying to like kind of prove something to myself. I don't need to write the follow up that everybody expects. I think the pressure on me or the what was going on in my mind, it's like, okay, everybody's gonna want like subtle art, part two. But I wanted to make sure that the new book was sufficiently different. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to be a little bit more scholarly. I wanted to add fictional elements into it. I wanted to kind of push myself as a writer. And for me, it was very important to do that to say like, okay, you

know even if i piss off some fans or lose some people halfway through this thing for me personally it's important that i summon the courage to write the book that i want to write and not kind of cave to all this this pressure that uh this external pressure that the the success of the previous book was giving me i love that you took your own advice like there was a moment there that you're like i can't everyone's going to judge me i can't and then you're like hang on i literally write about not giving a fuck let's just write my second book but we are a heavily relationships and dating based podcast what is your opinion on love and dating today like is it as fucked as everyone thinks it is and if you think it is fucked what do you think the problem is with our generation

today because i've just i've been single 10 years that i have just gotten into a relationship in the last few months and i have been through it all and i was borderline on the point of being like you know what i give up i it's fucked it's too hard everyone wants something the grass is always greener everyone's looking for something else and so i guess i want your thoughts on dating today and what you think the major problem is? Men. No, I'm joking. Yeah.

Obviously, the problem is all men everywhere. No, I think, you know, we live in a very interesting time. I'm very glad I got married when I did. On the one hand, I think there are some things that are better today than there were previously. But I think there are also some things that are much worse, as well as I think there are some unintended side effects of some of those good things.

So the good thing is, is that you do have access, you're not limited in your access of people you can potentially meet. So like you, you know, it used to be like back in the old days, if you wanted to meet somebody, you're basically limited to like friends of friends, family friends. And maybe if you got lucky, like some random person in a bar or something, but like your pool, your selection pool was extremely narrow, especially if you go back multiple generations with all the social expectations and everything. Like, you know, most people 50, 60 years ago, like they only really had half a dozen legitimate, long term options that they would come across. So it's like when you when you found one back then, you fucking took it, you know, it's like, that's why everybody got married when they were 20. So what I think has happened over the, you know, the last couple generations is two things. One is is traditional standards of like, say, family and marriage have loosened up a lot. The second thing that's happened is that technology, I think it's just connected so many more people. And again, on paper, like that sounds great. It's like you can get on Tinder or Bumble or whatever and come like literally go through like a hundred people in a single day, which theoretically sounds great. The problem is, is that the way human psychology works is there's a thing called paradox of choice, which is essentially like if you're given three options and you have to choose one, generally what psychologists find is people are pretty satisfied with whatever they choose.

They're like, okay, that's my favorite of the three. I'll go with that one. You offer people a hundred choices. again theoretically you would expect people to be happier with their choice they they could choose from 100 they got to pick their favorite one like that's actually a more efficient choice than like they probably got a better thing than the person who chose between three options but you actually see the reverse what happens is when you give people 100 options and they choose one they actually spend like the the rest of the day agonizing about the other 99 and whether they

actually got the best one or not and so there's this weird thing with with optionality that happens with human psychology. And it's not just with dating, it's true with, you know, consumer products, job opportunities, places to live, friendships, like you name it, it's the more the more options you have, the more anxious and insecure you're going to be about whatever you end up choosing. And so I think this is kind of wreaked havoc in the dating world, because people are constantly preoccupied with this idea that they that they could, they could upgrade. You know, it's like, okay, well, she's great. I really like these three things about her. But she's got this one little flaw that I'm not crazy about. You know, I bet I could find somebody who doesn't

have that flaw, you know, and so you end up jumping back into the pool and going fishing again. And the problem is, too, is, you know, what makes a relationship meaningful is tolerating those flaws. It's not finding somebody with no flaws. It's loving somebody despite those flaws, helping them cope with those flaws seeing them grow and seeing those flaws slowly wither away like that's what actually makes a relationship meaningful but when you're kind of building this dating culture around maximizing selection for as few flaws as possible you basically just get tons and tons of people who never develop the patience or the willingness to experience that and so I it's having a very negative effect in a lot of ways I like to think of it like you know

when you go to a restaurant and if someone came to you and said here is your pepperoni pizza that's what we've got on the menu tonight you'd be like fucking sick love pepperoni pizza you'd eat the pizza it'd be amazing when you go to a restaurant and you know when you open that moment you open a menu and there's like 70 options on it you almost can't choose anything like i don't even want to eat anything you pick it it comes out and i can guarantee you like it was okay but i wish i got this but also you see somebody else's food come out and you're like you get food envy because you're like oh maybe I didn't want the bolognese over there that that person's eating like it's but it's the same you you mentioned it's the same for all consumerism I mean I own a retail store

I'm a jewelry designer by day and a podcaster by night we have the same thing we have a huge selection of jewelry and we do a lot of engagement pieces and my thing is when someone comes in and wants an engagement ring done I don't say here are all the engagement rings that we can give you because men stand there and they get freaked out and then they have to walk away and think about it I'm like, cool, here's two or here's three. And let's work our way around that. And that works because it kind of hones in the attention span a little bit. But my question is, though, we do have this paralysis of choice. But how do you know that either on one hand, you're not settling and on the other hand, you're not getting caught up in I can do better? Like, how do you find a happy medium

between those two things? You know, I think the word settle, there's a lot of confusion around that because you know this idea of never settle i think there are legitimate uses of that phrase but i think it's one of those phrases that you know it started with very good noble purposes and then it's been inflated to a point like it's being abused now so you go on a date with somebody like you don't like the shoes they're wearing and one of their teeth looks a little funny you're like you know what i'm not gonna sell you know you move on to the next person I think, again, this comes back, you know, to bring kind of the conversation full circle is it comes back to priorities. It comes back to what are your non-negotiables? What are your

very, very important to have? And then what are the things you're willing to compromise on? And it's funny because not having my friends in New York, New York is notorious for this dating environment. Everybody's always got like six other people they can go hang out with. So I've got a number of single friends in New York and you know they all say the same things like I go on so many dates but I can't meet anybody I actually like and blah blah blah blah blah and the question I end up asking them all the time because everybody knows what they want if you ask anybody like what are the three things you want in a partner they can give you a few things but I always say like what are the things you're willing to compromise on what are the bad things

that somebody can have that you're willing to be like you know what I can live with that you know nobody thinks about that. And so it's, I think you, you need to start thinking in terms of compromise, think of dating and relationships in terms of compromise, rather in terms of just getting what you want. If you, if you approach dating in terms of, I, I have this list of seven things and I better get all of them or else I'm just going to be single forever. Puts you in a very, not desperate mindset, but like a very selfish mindset of like, you're entering every interaction of like, do you, do you check the boxes? No. Okay. Next. Whereas I think if you approach dating in terms of like, what am I willing to compromise on? Like, what are the

most important features? And what are the things that I'm willing to give up? And then pursue people that way, you're actually going to end up finding people that you end up being happy with, because you've actually instead of like, creating this impossible, ideal person to find, you're actually creating a human in your mind that you're looking for. It's actually such an interesting way of describing it, because I would almost say, had you said that to me, you know, three years ago, I would say, I don't have things that I want to compromise on. Like I would have kind of dug my heels in and been like, well, we're kind of told we don't need to compromise and we don't need to settle. So why would I say, yeah, I don't

mind if I date a guy who farts around the house and leaves all the cupboard doors open, but now I'm with a guy who farts around the house and leaves all the cupboard doors open. And I'm quite happy to compromise on those things rather than being cheated on or being lied to and all the other things that i put up within past relationships but i guess that that's also one of those things that makes you think you know you have to assess those everyday annoyances and check yourself when when because you can become accustomed like i'm very accustomed to my relationship now and so when he does something that's wrong even though it's so minute in comparison to the crap that i would have tolerated in a past relationship i'll still be like hey i'm going to pull you up

on this but sometimes you become accustomed to your new normal your new normal becomes what's familiar to you and so you go oh well i still don't like that but i really i really love this idea of not just writing your list of what you want but also writing a list of like hey i'm okay with this because i'm not a perfect package either nobody is you could find your dream boat you know it's like mr or mrs perfect they're still gonna fart around the house and leave covered like it doesn't everybody's got something everybody's got some issue some insecurities some baggage some tick or nuance or annoying thing that they do you're never going to find anybody without them i like to think of myself as like a happy balance between the two not settling but not

looking for perfection either like i literally as i said a single a decade i traveled the world over 50 countries i'm not kidding i dated every country religion race color height occupation name age every demographic i dated them all and i just couldn't find the one and at the end i all i had was people saying to me like you're too fussy why don't you just settle for something like what's wrong with you what's wrong what's wrong with you that's my favorite with you why can't you get a boyfriend but oh i'm a shit person i'm fucking crazy of course what do i answer to that answer that question I mean yeah crazy probably like seven out of ten whatever I 100% it wasn't that I had unrealistic expectations I know I didn't and it wasn't that I was like absolutely

refusing not to compromise it's just that every single person I knew those things I had in my head the things I didn't want to compromise on and I just hadn't met that person now I have and it's fantastic but I think people get to a point too they definitely do they've got these ideas in ahead about what they want and what they won't compromise they hit 30 they're single they're like what the fuck i'm gonna have 25 cats and die alone and then they start to compromise too much on what they want so i think you do have to find a happy medium yeah and i guess it's also i mean not to kind of stereotype but women with a biological clock there's more of a fear i think around that i mean i've definitely seen it in my friendship groups not my immediate friendship

groups but my extended friendship groups where it's like well i'm in a relationship with this person. I've complained about them for the past three years, but I'm going to marry them anyway, because you know, I don't want to start again. So we do see that happen as well. And that's the full spectrum. You know, I don't want to, I don't have to go back and date again. So I'm just going to get married and have a kid. And then some of them are already on their way to divorce because they said, you know, I probably should never have married him in the first place. Well, yeah, you get people who think, well, the relationship's not that great, but maybe if we get married, then it'll be great. Or they're in a marriage that's not that great, but they think,

well maybe if we have a kid then it'll be great you know it's like maybe that'll fix things for us and and it's a terrible mistake it just multiplies the problems it doesn't solve any of the problems as like a prime example of what why you should not write a list of like things you absolutely should not negotiate on i had always said that i would not be with anyone younger than me so the people that i would date younger and i did date younger but that was like for funsies like one-nighters and stuff when i was looking for my life partner i was always it was always like looking for someone my age or older and it was only when I finally finally was like you know what why do I why do they have to be older let me just like try something different

my partner now who I'm obsessed with is seven years younger than me and I would never have met him if I didn't sort of look introspectively and think well like okay why is that a non-negotiable like respect and cheating things like that they're non-negotiables for me but I was like age what is age it's literally just a number you do have this life motto that i i love which is fuck yes or no like that's it it's fuck yes or no what's that about yeah i actually picked it up uh an old friend of mine named derek sivers he's a he's a tech guy in the startup world and he used to he used to say that his rule you get pitched all these like business ideas investment ideas and his rule was always you know it got to a point where he was like you know what if i'm not saying

fuck yes about it then i'm just gonna say no and at the time i was like wow that works so well for dating and it works both ways it works for you because you know you like you said you run into a lot of people who are like they're with somebody and they're like yeah you know it's all right things are going okay like they don't know if they should stay with them or not they don't know if they could do better or not they don't know if it's like working or not and i kind of realized it's like if you're asking those questions then it's probably not you know like like if those question sustained over a significant period of time like if you have to ask if you're happy with your partner or not then you're probably not so it's a nice little tool to help people kind of

become more realistic with dating but it also works in reverse because it's part of the rule fuck yes or no is is that if the other person is not fuck yes then the relationship should be a no you know why would you ever want to be with somebody who's ambivalent about being with you like why would you ever want to be with somebody who doesn't text you back why would you ever want to be with somebody who cancels plans with you half the time and only shows up at two in the morning drunk like why would you accept that for yourself if that's not what you actually want amen it's a nice rule that uh you know it's not perfect in every situation but it's it's a nice rule to help people when they're in a relationship situation that seems very ambiguous and unclear to

themselves it can clear things up very quickly i'm sure you receive this so much as well when people email you and say like hey i need help with this problem or i've you know i'm in this relationship or something with a guy or girl. I think about this a lot because every week we do a second episode, which is our Ask Uncut episode where we answer relationship questions. And I would say a good 50% of the questions that come through, I'm like, you know the answer. Like, you know that that's a no. You know that you need to break up with him. You don't need me and Brittany to sit here and tell you that you're dating a dick or that he doesn't really like you or that, you know, you're a second option for him and he's just time filling until something

better comes along. But people find it really hard to kind of see their own relationships objectively because it hurts you know and especially when you hope for something or you put so much energy into what you think something could be not what it actually is right now and at that time so that's why I love this fuck yes or no so if you're in a relationship where you're like I don't really know what's going on maybe and you were going to email us ask yourself is it a fuck yes and if not then probably no and then don't email us it's hard you've got your answer no but it's hard to take your own advice like 100% think of how many times literally both of us would give advice and I would be like babe red flag what are you doing he's

treating you like shit and then I personally I dated every red flag in the universe and I would come to Laura like off mic and I would just I would be telling her my problems and she's like would you listen to yourself he doesn't call me he said he didn't want to see me except for 2 p.m on a Sunday what do you think I think I really like him she'll be like what the fuck like what would you tell everyone else but like it's hard to see yourself like from the outside it is and also sometimes when you're living it it's very easy to give advice to other people and how they should live their life but sometimes it's really difficult to deny your own feelings and to kind of go okay separate what's reasonable and makes sense and you're thinking with your head versus what you

want and what you're feeling when you've you're able to master that like yeah you know you've kind of found enlightenment but it took me a really long time to to be able to do that as well I was always one that was really great at giving advice and really terrible at following my own advice in relationships, but it meant for a lot of life experience, which is where the advice came from. Yeah. I mean, it's, these things are skills and, and I, I wrote an article years ago saying that it's insane that we don't teach relationship skills in school because it's, we all have to figure this stuff out the hard way by getting our hearts broken and by having stupid drama and fights over nothing. And some people don't ever figure it out. You know, they just continue to

live that way forever thinking that that's what normal is. But yeah, I mean, it's all this stuff, like learning to to separate yourself from your emotions learning to view your relationship objectively learning to have like set standards for yourself and then stand by them like actually live out what your expectations are like it's it's hard stuff and it takes a lot of practice i have a big question for you when you met your now wife how did you know she was the one what was it that stopped you in your tracks and you were like fuck this is how it should be she's it i never want to say anyone else again you know what's funny it was never really like that for me it was always you know when we went on our first couple dates it was like wow i would rather spend

time with her than any other girl i'm i'm seeing right now and that continued as long as that was true that continued for me it's it's um it's something that renews consistently like i never there was never a single moment where I'm like, wow, this is it. It's all over. And it was funny because I actually, I dragged my feet for quite a while on proposing to her. I was very nervous about it for this exact reason. And it had reached that point where family members were asking us about it. And people, friends were like, dude, when are you going to propose? Like, come on, man. You're like, like do something. You're not going to do better than this one. Like you've got it. Yeah. And I couldn't really shake that. Like, you know, how do I know though? I'm happy

right now i've been happy with her since we've been together i foresee us being happy in the future but like i don't how do i know and i remember i was talking to my my dad and my stepmom about it they were kind of bugging me about getting married and uh and i told them i was like i i don't know like how do i know like i'm happy with her now but like how do i know that i'm gonna be happy with her for the rest of my life and uh i remember my stepmom just looked at me my stepmom's like old school texas woman she looked at me and she was like stop with that bullshit i was like what and she goes she's like she's like god damn it mark i've been with your father for 23 years i still don't know if i want to be with him for the rest of my life just shut

the fuck up put a ring on it get it over with and i was like all right it was actually very profound for me because it's like yeah it's this even in marriage it's something that has to continue renew. Like you have to continue to check in with yourself and like, is this relationship working? Am I happy with it? What can we do to make it better? And it's, it's actually been great to like maintain that attitude, even though we've been married for four years now. It's something like, I still don't know if we're going to be together forever, but it's our intention is to be together forever. And we're both actively working at being together forever. So, and I think that's what's actually most important my parents have been married 44 years this year and

they're still in love they still hold hands they still write each other love notes and i said the same thing i was like a how did you know they were the one and b how are you still happy after 43 years because not many people in my life like my friends and other relatives their parents aren't together anymore and my dad has he just said it such a beautiful way he's like your mother he i loved her the day i met her i still love her now does the love change over 43 years absolutely is it easy absolutely not do i have to fucking work at it every day absolutely and i think that's the thing it's too easy to jump ship now people like oh this is too hard now and you used to do this for me and you don't now and they leave but i think we need to really reiterate that

relationships aren't easy they are going to evolve they are going to change and they are hard work and i think that's the thing people need to start to understand is like sure you can throw them away and jump onto someone else, the same thing's going to happen. I guess I have a kind of a slightly a different view. Like I have done really hard work relationships and I don't think relationships in general should be always hard work. I think if your relationship is constantly hard work,

then you're probably doing something wrong. I think that there are times when it will be hard, but that shouldn't be the normal. But I do think that staying in a long-term relationship is a constant choice. Like you wake up and you make the choice to be with that person and to not treat them like shit and to make sure that your relationship's a priority.

because if you just bank on the fact that oh well we're married so we're going to be together forever then there's no basis to treat them with anything other than well they're not going to leave me because we're married so i don't really have to be that nice to them i don't really have to try i can't be bothered to have sex today so i'm just not going to do it if you use that as a certainty there's less responsibility to behave well in that relationship i think so i guess the way i like to view it is like i'm making an active choice to make sure that my relationship is my priority because it would be very easy for other things to be a priority at the moment. And that's not what I want. I know I want to have a long-term relationship with my

partner. I think the better word for it is it's not work, it's effort. I like to think of it as like a never-ending project that we're both working on. It's like a never-ending team project. And it's like, and neither one of you is allowed to stop working on it. Mark, before we finish off, I do just want to ask you one more thing. And that is, we just fed this idea from, I guess, even like childhood when you start school all the movies all the social media that we're supposed to have this perpetual happiness and happiness is success and it shouldn't be any other way and the second you feel any other feeling other than happiness you're failing why do you think this is setting us up for failure why do you think we can't be fucking 100 all the time because we're

human i mean it's funny i did a q a on instagram last week and somebody asked like what what do think is the root cause of suffering in the world and i'm like being fucking human like it's just humans dissatisfaction it is part of our psychology like it's dissatisfaction is evolutions living through us it's what causes us to change and move and work and do new things so it's dissatisfaction is normal like you're never going to reach a point in your life where you don't have it you're going to be happy sometimes and unhappy other times and that's fine like that's just life the question is what are you happy about and what are you unhappy about are you happy for a good reason or a bad reason are you unhappy for a good reason or a bad reason with positive thinking

why is it so damaging as a philosophy and as like a self-help i mean there's loads of self-help gurus who are like you know you just have to change your mindset and be more positive and that'll fix everything why is that almost the antithesis of what you're teaching well because it removes so if you do successfully do that and you manage to put a positive spin on everything you just become delusional you know it's like oh COVID-19 this is great it's gonna be a great opportunity for society to learn its limits oh can't wait you know like it just makes you an asshole and so yeah it's like positive thinking it's a great tactic it's a great short-term band-aid you know it's like if you're having a bad day or if you're really pissed off at your boss

positive thinking can be very useful to kind of get you through that day as a life philosophy it completely fails because as a life philosophy you need to account for failure disappointment unexpected shocks and events tragedies traumas like if you can't account for those things in a healthy way like it's going to be a disaster mark thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today i personally just love your insight and i love the your outlook on life i guess like sometimes i've read some of the things that you have written and i've been like what a positively negative yet positive way to look at the world which is even-handed and so real because i myself get really frustrated by this idea of toxic positivity and you know it's really nice to

look at the world and have solutions that are realistic and actually applicable with how we live our lives so thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the podcast and sharing your infinite wisdom and we're going to wish you all the luck with turning your book into a documentary. I'll keep mine shorter. I'm just stoked. Yeah, we can't wait to watch it. When's it coming out? I actually have no idea. Probably end of this year, maybe early next year. I'm just imagining you sabotaging production schedule at the moment so you can stay in New Zealand a little bit longer. Ah, things didn't go so well today. We'll have to shoot that again tomorrow. Mark, before we let you go, we do finish every episode with what we call our suck in our suite. So it's

basically can be anything really. It's just your highlight and your low light of this week. um what's been the best bits and what has been the shitty bits but we can start it off because we can't put him on the spot okay you can have two seconds to think about it Brittany what is your suck and what is your sweet okay my suck of the week I had a pretty good week but this I've done this a few times now I was writing an email to somebody called Sian spelled s-i-a-n and I didn't I was running a million miles an hour I was doing a hundred things so I wrote dear Sian wrote the email press send realized when i went back into the email to respond that it auto corrected to dear asian and now i hope to god she's not asian because

like literally dear asian now i haven't seen she didn't i went on to see that's great there was no little tile with her photo or anything so i'm just gonna let that one go my sweet for sure is just having you on today, Mark. I was really looking forward to it and I've really enjoyed our chat. I've learned a lot and I just feel like we're best friends now. Okay, great. Laura. All right. My suck and my sweet is I have had, so like, as you guys will know, I've got a newborn baby. My family have all kind of come down to meet the baby. And my dad has been here for the last week, I guess. My dad is definitely not my suck. My dad being here is my sweet, but my dad is, he's very interesting. Like he's not used to having adult children. Like he still hasn't

compartmentalize the fact that i'm not four anymore and that i'm 35 year old woman and every time we leave the house he tries to hold my hand wherever we walk and it's really fucking weird because it's like my dad's like 67 and he just wants to walk down the street holding my hand so i was doing like the coastal walk with him yesterday and i have a newborn baby strapped to my chest and there's my 67 year old dad holding my hand going down the coastal walk and everyone was kind of looking like wow that's a bit of an age gap which is fine like I don't really care what other people's thoughts are but I know how much it would offend him to be like dad this is weird and no one holds their dad's hand at this age I think it's cute so I did kind of try and

explain to him and he got really upset and then I felt really bad so that's my suck it's cute but it's still weird so that's my suck my sweet is well this is miserable can't think of my sweet I'm just very tired so like the sweets are hard to come by but I have my whole family here so I've had my partner's mom staying with us as well she's amazing and I've had my dad in town and I mean for all the tiredness and all sleep deprivation like having a newborn baby is pretty special pretty much all the time so that's going to be my sweet that was a long suck and sweet yeah I'm sorry about that give me your suck the suck is so we we've got we're staying in a in our apartment here in auckland and because the borders have been closed nobody's lived here i think it's

pretty clear nobody's stepped inside this apartment for at least a year and so everything is like was covered in dust the appliances were like breaking we woke up one day the fridge was broken there's been a lot of like random headaches the crazy thing is it's like it is a really nice apartment it's just like nobody's been here for years like nobody's even opened the door and so it's kind of like it's a weird thing where it's like can i really complain i'm like in this sick apartment in auckland but at the same time it's like the fridge broke and like all the food went bad you know so that that sucks so that's the stuff yeah you can complain yeah and then i mean the the sweet is just i'm here i'm here it's like sunny and beautiful and you can walk around

without a mask and go to restaurants and it's it's amazing i hope that you're still there during ski season because new zealand is actually the tits and during like june july it's amazing i mean it's a tits all the time that's even better than well the visa lasts till end of july so we'll see we're gonna take it month by month well mark thank you so much for being a part of the podcast if you guys like mark if you don't know about mark if you haven't read his book where are you at so markmanson.net is the website hundreds of free articles there i've got a weekly newsletter that goes out every monday which is tuesday in australia you check that markmanson.net slash newsletter books are probably every bookstore airport anything you could ever

like anywhere books are sold okay no need to brag everything everything is fucked the book about hope instagram at mark manson twitter's i am mark manson amazing all right you can find him anyway just google him but mark thanks again so much for coming on we absolutely loved it we've loved having you we've learned a lot and you enjoy the rest of your stay in new zealand awesome thank you guys thank you so much for listening to another episode if you have loved today and you have enjoyed listening then please jump onto apple and leave a review you know that's like we one we read every single one and it's also how we grow as a podcast and how other people find us if you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast then please also hit subscribe because it means that each week

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