SOLVED with Mark Manson - 3 Questions That Determine 99% of Your Happiness

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

We all overestimate how much you have to do to actually be happy. But what if I told you that achieving happiness is much simpler than you think? That’s right, the smallest lifestyle changes can have the most unexpected knock-on effects towards positive change. It’s actually quite incredible once you experience it. In today’s episode of the pod, we delve into the 3 of the most important questions that you can ask yourself in determining your own levels of happiness. These are questions worth asking. Make me happy by liking and reviewing the episode. Make someone else happy by sharing it with them. Get 10% off your first month with BetterHelp at: ⁠https://betterhelp.com/idgaf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose.app. That is purpose. Dot app. So as you know, Drew, we post a lot of stuff on social media. Across all platforms, in 2023, there were probably close to a thousand pieces of content that went out.

The most viral piece of content was what we're going to talk about today. The thing that most people shared, most people clicked on, most people were interested in. And that is three questions that determine 99% of your happiness. What's funny about this post is that it doesn't actually give people any advice. It's more just like, hey, dumbass, focus on the simple things. There's a lot to investigate down there. And so we're going to spend this episode talking about why they're so important and helping people understand their own answers to those questions.

Why don't we kick it off with how well am I treating my body and why? Now, before people start freaking out and turning us off and thinking that they're about to get another lecture on how they need to go to the gym, all that shit. I do think it's important to zoom out from the typical conversation around health and just think of it in terms of like, how are you treating yourself? When you look into the research on happiness and well-being, it's actually quite shocking how much even a little bit of physical activity or a small change in nutrition or diet or a small improvement of sleep can have these drastic outcomes on people's psychology. For example, I saw a study recently that said that 30 minutes of exercise per day,

and it doesn't even have to be strenuous exercise. You can just go outside and walk around the fucking block. 30 minutes of exercise a day can have just as much of an effect for people who are depressed as medication does. Now, that's absolutely mind-blowing to me. All the prescription, medication, shit that you have to deal with insurance and fees and fucking pharmacists, you can just go outside and walk around the block. And statistically speaking, you're have just as much of a chance of improving as you do if you deal with all that other medical bullshit. So the subject of physical health and fitness, I think, gets overrated in terms of trying to optimize and be in perfect health and have six-pack abs for summer. I think it's vastly

underrated for just basic happiness and well-being. We have all these side effects, I think, that really what they are, that people peddle as benefits, like they're looking better, the feeling better, more energy, all of that kind of stuff. I think there's a deeper point to be made, though, too with all of this as well. And that is, I hesitate to use the word, but there's like a spiritual side to physical health. I'm not going to get all woo-woo. I'm not going to get all woo-woo. I'm not going to get all woo-woo. Drew the scientist, breaking out the S-word. To me, spirituality is very practical. Self-discipline at its core is an emotional regulation process, right? And learning to do that, learning to regulate your emotion.

and aligning them with the actions you want to take in your life, that's, to me, is a very, it's very practical, but there's also a very spiritual side to it as well. And it's, it's this alignment of values and desire in your life with your emotions. That was kind of an unlock for me when it came to physical health and taking care of myself. Well, it's funny because I, so I had a similar experience as well. You know, the last few years I've been on a pretty intense health journey. And when I look back, like, my motivation's getting.

into it were a little bit superficial. I'd say it was 50% I just had gotten really fat and out of shape and I was like, this can't go on. And then 50% of it was actually, there's a lot of health issues throughout my family history. And basically, I, you know, I kind of woke up one day in my late 30s and was like, if I don't get this handled now, it's all downhill. And this might actually, these next few years might actually be my last chance to do this. So it was in many ways externally motivated what you call the spiritual side of it, developing the simple pleasure of taking care of yourself, experiencing the self-esteem that comes from it, the self-respect that comes from it, the pride. You know, that didn't really kick in until later. When I look back the first year or two,

it very much felt like just suffering through, oh, God, I got to like count my calories and skip dessert tonight and fuck I probably shouldn't drink but I really want to have a drink like it was just that internal struggle that I think most people experience and it wasn't really until I got those things handled that I started realizing like oh there's this whole other thing on the other side of this that is really satisfying and actually quite profound I think probably the simplest example is quitting alcohol like I really enjoy alcohol I'm a very happy drunk so it was one of my justifications for drinking so frequently was like, well, it just makes me happy. Like, if I'm having fun, alcohol makes me have more fun. If I'm not having fun, alcohol makes me have fun. So, you know,

how bad can it be? And one thing that really surprised me is that after I stopped drinking, the marginal benefits of sleeping better, exercising better, having more energy each morning, working, being more productive, being more present, like emotionally present. One of the things I underestimate is how much my alcohol caused my emotions to fluctuate even after drinking. Like if I drank a bunch on, say, Friday night, my emotions would be like up and down all over the place for the next two or three days. And I really didn't realize that until I cut back drastically. And so the satisfaction that came from all those marginal benefits in every other area of my life, I underestimated how much of an effect that would have just on my general happiness and satisfaction with myself and with

everything. So I guess the point here to people is it's easy to overestimate how much you have to do, especially if you're on social media all the time and you're seeing all these fitness ads and shit. You don't need to turn into a fitness model to experience the benefits of this stuff. It's actually trying to be a fitness model. There's probably a massive diminishing returns at some point when it comes to health and fitness. It's like an 80-20 thing. If you just do the the first 20% you're going to get 80% of the benefit, both physically and emotionally. So I think just going from doing nothing to doing something, even if that something is really tiny, even if it's just I only drink once a week and I go for a walk every day after lunch.

Like those two things will actually probably increase your happiness more than most of the shit that is on your annual goals list. That's shocking to me, but I've found it to be true in my own life. You mentioned, too, the presence that you get. And I think that's another kind of unexpected benefit. You have to be more mindful and present when you are really focusing on your health. And then there's kind of this knock on effect, too, that you give the drinking example. And I know for me, when I stopped drinking too, it really made me focus on things like, you know, friendships. There's probably going to be people in your life who you thought were friends. Well, they were really just your drinking buddies, right? Again, it kind of gets to that spiritual side of things. where you have to take a hard look at your life then and be very present like you talked about. And I really think that's a big kind of unexpected benefit that comes about from it too. Yeah, there are knock on effects to these things. Like it absolutely has a result on your social relationships.

And that's just true. That's not even necessarily the behaviors. Like if you start going to the gym all the time, yeah, that changes how you're using your time and you're going to see some people more often and other people less often. But just feeling good has knock on effects throughout your life. life. It makes you better at work. It makes you more likable at children's birthday parties. You know, you get invited to more stuff. And then what you'll notice too is that the people, the people in your life who are miserable will see that you're feeling better and they will start resenting you for it.

What I've noticed in my own life, and I think a lot of people find in theirs as well, is that when you start improving yourself, even just marginally, it kind of smokes out the toxic relationships in your life, the people who are there for the wrong reasons. Because it's basically when the people who genuinely love you and support you, when they see you feeling better and doing better, they're on your team and they're going to be excited for you and they're going to cheer for you. The people who are there for the wrong reasons, which is some sort of sick, toxic cycle of validation, you're going to disrupt that toxic cycle of validation and they're going to

start feeling insecure around you and they're going to get really upset and they're probably going to start presenting you for stuff. So this is actually probably a good segue into one of the other questions, which is, who am I spending my time with and why? You know, we're talking here about toxic relationships. One thing that I noticed consistently in people is that they tend to overestimate how cruel or mean the world is if just one or two people around them is particularly cruel or mean. So we did this video a couple months ago where I flew out to Atlanta and spent a weekend with a fan. And I was basically trying to help him like not give a fuck. And the process of that was taking him out in public and doing a lot of

embarrassing shit, you know, wearing chicken suits, handing out flat earth flyers, just kind of showing that like, dude, nobody cares. It doesn't matter. Nobody's going to remember this. Just make it fun. You know, whatever. That video did really well. A lot of people watched it and people loved it. But there were quite a few people that commented saying, oh, you could never do this in my town. people judge you so much here. And I actually got a lot of emails from people saying, you know, that video is great and that's really cool that you did that for that guy. But, you know, I could never do that because the people here are really mean and they judge you for everything. And so I started replying and talking to a few of these viewers, asking them some

questions. What I noticed is that it wasn't that they lived in this magical town where human psychology is somehow different and they judge you for everything. They had one or two people in their life that judged them for everything. Like their parents, They're parents judge them for everything. Their friends judge them for everything. And because their parents or their friends make up such a majority of their social interaction and social exposure, they had developed these assumptions that the entire world must be like that. The entire world is going to punish you for saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or embarrassing yourself.

I think having really unhealthy relationships warps your perception of the wider world to a greater extent. They're not even aware that that warping is happening. For whatever reason throughout my adult life, I've never tolerated that very much. And the older I get, the less and less I tolerate it. And it's, it is like a magical kind of unlock. Like there's somebody in your life who's just, whether it's toxic or they're very judgmental or they just have a negative streak to them. For whatever reason, I've always just not not attracted those people into my life necessarily. And I've gotten even more ruthless with it as I get older. So yeah. I think that's, that's probably a nice litmus test for people. Kind of go through the people who are closest to you and your life. life and ask yourself, if I failed at something or embarrass myself, how supportive would this person be? And I think any person that you come across that would not be supportive of you failing or embarrassing yourself in some way, you either need to cut them out of your life or seriously manage your exposure to them, get some distance from them. The flip side, though, kind of is true there too. Don't take the people in your life for granted who are very supportive

of you. Yes. That's something I've had to learn kind of the hard way a little bit. You know, I live in Colorado now and I have on and off for like the last 10 years. I've left twice and I've come back twice. And that second time I came back, I was like, okay, dude, this is like, this is a sign, right? And really what it was around was like my social relationships. I took my friend group for granted out here in all my travels and my exploring and experimentation and just wondering what else was out there. I kind of noticed that it's like I'm looking for more. I was always looking for more until I realized I was like, actually, I don't need a whole lot more than just a solid group of people around me that I can lean on. I feel like this is something that, like, just

getting older kind of teaches you. You know, when you're young, you meet people so easily and so frequently. And a lot of that is just simply by nature of the controlled environment of school or university. Like, you were just constantly in contact with so many people, people doing the same thing as you, interested in the same things as you. So I really do think that young people tend to take this for granted. They just kind of assume that, you know, if you lose touch with one person, you're just going to meet somebody else. It's, really not until you get older into your 30s and 40s that you start to realize that, first of all, it's never as easy to meet people as it is when you're young.

Like, that's never coming back. And two, that you have to be really careful because it actually is hard to find somebody that you really gel with, that you share values with, that you're mutually supportive with, and build that history together. It takes a long time to build a really good friendship. And yeah, it's easy to take that for granted when you're young. So there's so much emphasis on romantic relationships, and they are important, obviously. but friends have a way of being more forgiving and accepting of your flaws.

This is true. A hundred percent true, right? Like, you know, the little annoying things that will annoy your partner, your friends are just like, yeah, yeah, that's just, that's Mark, that's true, whatever, they don't care. I can't overstate how important that is to me now. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. like the SUV that handles everything from drop-off to off-road

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People are reporting feelings of loneliness. When I was doing research for everything is fucked, one of the most shocking stats that I came across was back in the 1980s, they asked people, how many people do you have in your life that you would trust with a personal secret? And the median answer was three people. They asked that same question again, and the median answer was zero. The majority of people said that they had zero people in their life, that they would with a personal secret. And I just think, again, when you look at mental health data, you look at the things that drive personal happiness, personal well-being, like having solid relationships in your life is arguably the number one factor, period. You know, there's a really famous study that's become

known as the Harvard study, but for a long time, it was, I believe, the valent study. But it's the longest running psychological study in history. They started it with a bunch of seniors at Harvard in I believe the 1930s. And they surveyed them and tracked them throughout their entire lives. So it's been running for over 80 years now. And I think in the 1990s, George Vailant, the original architect of a study, wrote a book about the results. Like at that point, they had about 60 years of data and results that they could analyze. And he said, I could sum up 60 years of data with one word, love. Basically, people who had solid relationships in their lives, they were happier, they're more productive, They were more successful.

They lived longer. They had fewer addictions, fewer problems. They got arrested less often. Valent measured a bunch of other things as well. He measured how wealthy their families were. He measured how much money they made, what professions they went into. None of this stuff mattered, or if it mattered, it just paled in comparison to the quality of relationship.

So I think this is low-key, maybe one of the most important subject of our time. We just had David Brooks on the pod. He is a political journalist who has basically dropped everything to write about this subject because he has become convinced that this is tearing apart the fabric of Western civilization. So I don't think we can overstate how important this is and how important it is to get it right. The fucking hippies were right. Like that just kills some people, I'm sure.

The fucking hippies were right. It's all about love. There is a resistance to that. And especially like in America where we live, you know, it's so status-driven in so many areas that just saying, oh, what you need is love, right? Yeah. Like, you just need more love in your life. And it's like, fuck off, you dumb hippie, right?

I got work to do. I got car payment. The hippies may have been right about relationships, Drew, but let's talk about something that the yuppies were right about. Their conservative parents were right about. And that is work, what you've been working on and why. I think the biggest misconception about work is that you have to find what you're passionate about. You know, there's that cliche.

It's like, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life or whatever. That's bullshit. Take it as somebody who has their dream job and has had it most of his adult life. There's probably like 30% of the time. I'm like, fuck, man, this sucks. I wish I didn't have to do this. But that's just life. There's a certain percentage of any day.

job that is just going to suck. And there's a certain percentage of work days that are just always going to suck. But I want to talk about this question of what are you working on and why are you working on it? Because if the solution isn't to simply find your passion and do what you're passionate about, then what is it? And I think the best summary or answer I've ever seen to this is in Calvin Newport's book, so good they can't ignore you. I love that book because it turns so much of the conventional wisdom about work and work satisfaction on its head. Basically, Cal argues, based on all the psychological research that we have around this, that it's not about finding work that you love doing. It's about getting good at something. And then as you get good at it,

you will start to love it. So it's you don't find your passion and then get good at it. It's you get good at something and then you become passionate about it. And I think the reason this happens is that fundamentally, humans have a very deep need to feel competent or feel valuable. And nothing makes you feel more valuable than doing something really well and doing something that is admired or appreciated by other people. You know, whether that's writing a book or racing a car or making a piece of furniture out of wood or fixing the plumbing of an old lady's house, like when you become excellent at something and you are rewarded both socially and financially for that thing, you fall in love with it. Newport's argument is that young people should spend less time worrying about what they love

because let's be honest, what the fuck do you know about what you love when you're young? And instead, spend more time focusing on what am I talented at? What can I get good at? What do I have an advantage at? Because once you develop the skills and the knowledge, you will become very satisfied with your work and that work will feel very meaningful. The way he kind of frames it too is the craftsman mindset versus the passion mindset. The craftsman mindset is what can I offer the world?

And the passion mindset is, what is the world going to offer me? What do I get from the world? That for me was a really important framework and shift in. mindset as well. Yeah, and what I like, and I think Newport talks about this in the book as well, is that even with that mindset of what can I offer the world, you don't necessarily start there, but you develop into that. Like I remember he uses an example in the book of a secretary at his university who had worked there for like 60 years or something. And he interviewed her for the book, and she said that she loved her job. She was extremely passionate about it and that she felt very important

and valuable. And when he asked her why, she said, well, I've been here for 60 years. I know everything about this office. I know everything that's ever happened here. And I'm the only person who knows that. And so everybody here relies on me. Maybe I'm not the dean or the president or on a board, but like all of those people need me here because they can't do their jobs without me. You know, the human mind has this amazing ability to rationalize whatever it wants. And I think there's a very deep desire. Whenever we like something, we want it to be meaningful and significant in the world. And so if you fall in love with being a secretary at a mid-sized university, your mind will find justifications of why that's super important and meaningful. And let's be honest,

every job is ultimately important and meaningful in some way, otherwise you wouldn't be getting paid for it. Start with the utility. Start with what's practical. And this is what the hippies parents got right. Start with practical. Start with what makes you a buck. Get really good at that, get rewarded for it, and then all of the feelings of passion and meaningfulness and satisfaction will come with it. So you mentioned a couple of times, you know, the finding something that you get rewarded for socially, financially, that sort of thing. You also mentioned in the article, screw finding your passion. You said, who says you need to make money doing what you love? Since when does everyone feel entitled to love every fucking second of their job? Really, what is

so wrong with working an okay normal job with some cool people that you like and then pursuing your passion and your free time on the side. What is so wrong with that, Mark? Nothing. That's what most people fucking do. Right. But there's, there are things called hobbies, and it's fine that they remain hobbies. It's funny because I remember when I wrote that article, that line got so many responses because so many people were like, yes, yes, this is my life. There's nothing wrong with it. This works. It's perfectly fine for me. I think that is a really, really important point on two-dimensional. One is just, look, if everybody worked the job that they were passionate about, then, you know, we would all be, I don't know, making video games or eating cake for a living. It's just not practical. It's not going to happen. But two, I think people also, and I see this a lot, you know, as a writer, a creator, somebody who makes a lot of content. I see this happen a lot in my industry, which is that people don't realize that when you turn a hobby into a job, it changes your relationship to it. We talked a few weeks ago about intrinsic motivation versus is extrinsic motivation. And a lot of people underestimate the effect of taking something that you

are intrinsically motivated to do, creating some work of art on a hobby, passion project, and adding external motivating factors to it, deriving your paycheck from it. It changes your relationship to it. And for a lot of people, it kind of ruins the fun. I find myself having this conversation with a lot of young people who have just found success, be it on YouTube or podcasting or writing, where, you know, they're a few years in and they just had their big success and they're making a bunch of money and they realize they're like, how do I keep it fun? How do I keep that spontaneity and that creativity? Like now there's stakes. Now there's consequences if I fuck up. And so I guess the point is that in a lot of cases, sometimes a hobby is actually optimal as a hobby. Just because you love something

doesn't mean you should try to make money from it. I think you should be very thoughtful and careful when making that decision. I'm especially fortunate because my day job, I do get a lot of satisfaction out of the work we do. It aligns with my values. I feel like I'm having an impact, all that kind of stuff. Amazing boss. Anyway, hey, who said that? That was really weird. I also, though, too, I have this kind of weird, quirky little hobby that I have, which is woodworking. and some people probably are tired of me talking about this, but there's going to be right. I fucking love it, Mark. I fucking love putting two pieces of wood together and seeing something.

I just, I fucking love it. And it's just like for one of the lines with two of my really like biggest core values that I have, creativity and learning. Like every piece I make, I always learn something new. I have to design something. It's visual. It's very different from what I do for my day job, which is get away. I get away from the screens.

I'm moving, all this kind of stuff. I fucking love it. And I can't really explain it either. Like, I'm like, I don't know why putting, you know, like I was kind of a creative kid growing up. I wanted to be, I wanted to go to art school at one point, all this kind of stuff, whatever. But I never like woodworking and building things never really crossed my mind until I kind of stumbled upon it. Most of the money you've sent, you've sent me.

I've just plowed into expensive tools. And I can't even park in my garage right now because I've, you know, that's. I just, I fucking love it. Here's a question for you. What do you think would happen if you started getting paid for woodworking? For all the reasons you've already listed out, I've been very hesitant around that because I'm like, that's not why I'm doing that. I've actually sat down and I thought about, okay, I can make a YouTube channel.

I've learned so much working with you about, you know, online content and marketing and copywriting and all this kind of stuff. I was like, oh, I could, you know, totally fit this into that. And when I sit down and think about it, I'm like, yeah, but that's, that's a content business. That's not me doing something that I want to do for the sake of just doing it. Maybe someday I'll make a business out of it. I don't know, Mark. Maybe when you finally decide to take up gardening like you've always wanted to or whatever and you call it quits here. Maybe I'll be a woodworker too. Maybe you'll be the gardener and I'll be the woodworker. My secret passion has

has been exposed. Gardening. Yes. Yes. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. It's interesting the point you said about it turning into a content business, and then the content business is a different thing.

It's a different beast altogether. It's a different activity. But it's interesting because I had a realization relatively recently that was very profound for me related to this. It was kind of the other way around though, which is that, as you know, I got very burnt out a couple years ago and took a lot of time off and really questioned what I want to do with the rest of my life, period. Do I even want to keep doing this?

And the profound realization that I came to was that I had always assumed that I was passionate about writing and the content business was just a means to scale the writing and get paid for it. What I realized is that actually what I'm passionate about is the content business and writing was actually the means to build the content business. Interesting. Okay. And I might even be a better writer than I am a businessman.

I probably am a better writer than I am a businessman. But I love. No comment. I love building the business. I love scaling content. I love looking at analytics. I love thinking about brand and marketing. That realization was really,

really important for me because I think the success of my books was so substantial that I just kind of tacitly assumed, like, oh, I'm a writer. This is what I'm meant to do. I'll have my team run all the business stuff. And it slowly made me miserable. So coming back to the business side of things, it feels like play, like I'm having fun. That's been an interesting reversal of that.

And I think when I look at it's interesting too because I'm friends with a lot of people with very large content businesses. And when I hang out with them, what I realized is that anybody who has built millions of followers and is making a bunch of money and has a bunch of social media stuff going on, it's because they love it. None of that happens on accident. There's nobody who's like, you know, I've always wanted to make a movie. Let me go get 10 million YouTube followers first.

You have to love YouTube. You have to love making the content, testing the content, getting feedback on the content. If you don't love that, you don't stick it out. I think people have noticed that switch in you too. I know I certainly have over the last year or two, Mark. I've seen you work hard. Yeah. I've seen you work this hard before too.

I've never seen you work this hard and have this much fun. And I think there's a huge lesson in that for a lot of people. Yeah. it's been eye-opening for myself too. I think I had a couple stretches last year that I worked like a month, a little more in a month without a day off. And as you said, I've done that before. But in the past, I was used to feeling extremely drained and burnt out and like, oh my God, I need a vacation. And last year, I didn't feel that. Part of that is this realization around like what I'm actually passionate about. Part of it, too, is the physical stuff. I'm not drinking. I'm sleeping well

every night. I'm exercising every day. That adds up. It makes a huge difference. And you've got a really good community out there in L.A. now. Yeah. Right? Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, there are a lot of people doing the same thing as me out here, which is cool. I knew a lot of authors in New York, but I didn't know many creators. Whereas here in L.A., it's kind of the opposite. It's, there are tons of creators out here, but they're not a ton of authors. A fun thing to do would be for you and I to grade ourselves on each of these three questions and then maybe just throw out how we plan to improve whatever we're weakest at. Why don't you go first? So for me, how well am I treating my body? I give myself like a six or a seven there, I would say. Who am I spending my time with and why? I give myself

probably a nine on that one. I feel really good about that. And what am I working on and why? I would say an eight or a nine as well for that. What's the plan to get the treat your body better? Your body's a temple, Drew. My body is a temple, obviously. Stop. Stop pouring. shit and alcohol on your temple. Well, that's a good thing. I don't drink. I got a pretty good diet. I think the exercise thing is a more consistent exercise routine is what I need to focus on for

sure. And I have a few things in the works for that. I have some friends who do CrossFit who keep pounding me like CrossFit people do. I don't probably go in with them. And sleep. Yeah. And sleep. And the sleep thing.

That sleep thing is a big one for me. And actually has a 24 goal. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. We have not forgotten. The audience does not forget, Drew. For me, I would say, how am I treating my body?

I would say it's like at like a nine. Yeah. It was my big goal last year. I feel like I really got it dialed in. What am I working on and why I dare I give myself a 10? I don't know. I just, I feel fucking great about what we're doing right now and I wouldn't change anything. And I also don't see how to make it any better.

The, who am I spending time with and why that I would give myself. I'm going to give myself a six. It's not bad, but it's not good either. So I think there are three factors in this. One is moving to a new city, moving to L.A. To be frank, I have not put in as much time and energy into making new friends as I probably should have. I think another part of that is just getting older.

I'm at that age where, A, it's just hard to meet people. B, when you do meet somebody you really like, they've got a career, they've got a lot of times they have kids. If they're married, you know, my wife's got to like their wife. You know, it gets complicated. It's hard. It's definitely not as easy to like pick up friends as it used to be. And then I think the third factor is, you know, I've basically stopped drinking and partying. And as you mentioned before, a lot of the people I used to enjoy hanging out with, like now I'm like, wait, I kind of don't enjoy hanging out with these people anymore. I don't really know if I've found who I like to hang out with yet. Sober. Drinking was such an integral part of my social life for my entire adult life. and my entire teenage life. I mean, basically since I was like 15, drinking or some sort of substance was a major factor in my social life. I'm still trying to figure out like,

what is my social life as a sober person? What do I do with people? Where do I hang out? What do we talk about? Yeah. So I would give myself a six on the social front. But I would like to see that get better in this year. I'm going to work on it. I don't know. Living in Colorado, there's obviously like a big like beer, you know, culture out here and whatever. But it's usually kind of coupled with another activity. So I found it pretty easy out here. Like we still go hiking and skiing and everything like that. I just don't drink when everybody else is drinking. I'm fine with that. It's funny because in L.A., there are a lot of people who don't drink in L.A. But I actually heard this term a few weeks ago and I loved it. I was at a party and I wasn't drinking. And somebody said,

like, oh, are you sober? And I said, yeah, I don't drink. And then he said, like, are you sober or California sober, meaning there's a lot of people who are sober in California who take psychedelics, MDMA, microdose a bunch of stuff, ketamine. And some people who take it very frequently. And so it's actually very funny to hear people who are like, yeah, I'm sober. And last week I microdose this and this week I'm taking this. And next week I'm going to go to this party and take a bunch of ecstasy. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm completely sober. So that's actually the challenge here is like, you'll go to a party and most people aren't drinking, but half people are like fucking microdosing shrooms and on MDMA and finding the next level of their Tetris Enlightenment or whatever.

And I'm like, all right, dude, I'm going to go home. Have fun with that. No, for sure. All right. That's a wrap. Hopefully this discussion will help you ask and answer these questions for yourself. As always, please like and subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review.

We're a relatively new podcast. And so any likes, subscriptions, reviews, it helps us make better episodes. Get Better Guess. Also, sign up for the newsletter. It's at markmanson.net slash newsletter. I send out an email every Monday morning with a few ideas for the week, a couple questions for you to ask yourself, and one exercise or challenge for you to accomplish that week. And then I share breakthroughs that other people have had from the previous week.

We're building a really cool community on the newsletter. So check that out. Until next time, enjoy what you're doing. Enjoy the people you're with. Don't treat your body like shit. I'm Mark Manson. This is Drew Bernie. We'll talk to you next time.