SOLVED with Mark Manson - Advice To Avoid, The Dark Side of Therapy, and Taking Your Own Medicine

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

You ever notice how some people can’t stand being told what to do—even when the advice is good? Yeah, that’s me. In this episode, Drew and I dig into why so many of us rebel against advice, why others chase it like their life depends on it, and whether all that “actionable advice” we’re constantly fed is actually helping anyone. Spoiler: I’m not a fan of cookie-cutter solutions, and I’ve got some opinions about the self-help industry’s obsession with telling people exactly what to do. We also get into the bigger picture—how advice often misses the mark when it’s not tailored to someone’s unique situation, and how therapy culture might be trying to replace something deeper that’s missing in our lives. I’ll share why I don’t give rigid life hacks, the trouble with universal solutions, and the surprising reason why most breakthroughs aren’t about the advice at all. If you’re tired of “do this, don’t do that” advice, this one’s for you. Enjoy. Chapters 01:26 - The F*ck of the Week: Actionable Advice 21:26 - Brilliant or Bullsh*t: Therapy vs Therapy Culture 38:04 - Q&A: Taking Your Own Medicine Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Follow me: https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Theme song: Icarus Lives by Periphery, used with permission from Periphery. 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. That is purpose. Dot app. Drew,

I feel like I have this like chronic inability to do what people tell me to do. Like I just, anytime somebody suggests something for me to do, especially if they're like an authority figure, my immediate reaction is to do the opposite. Yeah. Yeah, you are a little bit of a rebel. Would you go yourself a rebel? I don't know. A compulsive contrarian is actually something that I've, I've actually come to terms with.

Oh, okay. And communicated to some people in my life. How's that going for you, Mark? I see it's okay, maybe. Yeah. You know, when it pays off, it really pays off, right? Because it's, if you're contrarian and correct, that's when the huge payoff's gone. Okay, yeah.

But if you're contrarian and incorrect, you just look like an asshole. Right, right. And that happens quite a bit. That happens just as much as, yeah, probably more so. Probably more so, yeah. Yeah. What about you? Do you?

I hate being told what to do, too. I've noticed, yeah. Come on, well. Oh, no. Sorry, Mark, I love taking your direction, and you're always so logical, and you're always, you're like, you have the best ideas ever, and so I don't question anything you told me to do. Drew, I'm detecting a hint of inauthenticity in your voice. Well, trust your instincts on that one.

It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Are you, but do you feel contrarian? Are you like, I don't know if I feel contrarian so much. It's just like when somebody tells me to do something like, oh, fuck you. I'm not doing that. So I guess that is contrarian in a way. It's a little bit. There is just something about that though.

You're just like, it could be the best advice ever and somebody tells you to do it. And I'm just like, man. What is a situation where you got really good advice and you didn't take it? And why didn't you take it? Oh, man, I feel like that's your whole life. My whole life. The story of your life. That has up to this very moment, actually.

Because I did that around health stuff all the time. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, people, for years, people told me, like, you know, if you, I don't know, if you didn't order a drink at the beginning of dinner, then you wouldn't eat as much later, you know, like all this shit. And I'm just like, I'm fine, I'm fine. Sure enough, they were right about everything.

Yeah, health stuff is a big one. I think that a lot of money, too. Yeah. The big ones like that, money, relationships. Taking people, taking relationships for granted or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Those are common.

It's funny because I think this is a weird thing. You know, in the self-help industry, it is pretty much standard to include actionable advice. Right. In everything you do, right? Like I remember when I was writing both of my books, one of the first notes that came back from the publisher, when I submitted my drafts, they were like, oh, you should put exercises and like bullet points for things to go do, people to go do. I remember this.

After each chapter. And I was like, fuck no. No. Absolutely not. No. And I had the butt heads with them about it. And my argument was always, no, the whole point of the book is that they're supposed to figure it out themselves, right?

Like, the book helps them ask better questions. But then ultimately, they have to go figure out what the answer is. But I do notice there is a in-line. insatiable demand for basically just like tell me what to do. Right. Type of advice. And it's kind of, it's a little bit of a weird paradox that we're talking about.

A lot of people don't like being told what to do. And then they seek out advice being like, just tell me what to do. Right. So that's a weird kind of place that people wind up in. And also, yeah, then there's just this huge blob of advice and people just don't even know where to start. Yeah.

So that's the fuck of the week this week is. Actionable advice. actionable advice. How much should we give a fuck about actionable advice in our lives? You are not one to get dole out a lot of like super specific. No. You know, do this morning routine. You should especially don't like morning routines. Do this. Don't do that. You're not like that at all. What? What is that all about? I a few reasons. One is is our audience is so broad and diverse. Right. They come from all over the world. They're all ages, both, both, every gender. Uh, And I've always just felt really strange. I mean, there's so much conventional life advice that I tried and didn't work for me that I'm very aware of the fact of how individual each person is and how you really can't make a good suggestion to somebody without like really getting to know them and understanding their situation and their personality and their childhood and all this other stuff. So that's the main reason, truthfully. But I also do think there's like a deeper philosophical reason, which is I personally find that a lot of people, who struggle a lot in their lives emotionally and socially and otherwise.

The fundamental issue is that they don't know how to take responsibility for themselves. Yes. They have spent their entire lives waiting for other people to tell them what to do, waiting for other people to tell them that they did a good job or a bad job or they're a good person or a bad person. And when they come to personal development, they bring that same attitude. I'm going to buy this guy's book and pay him a bunch of money and he'll tell me what to do. And it's like, well, that's the mindset that got you here in the first place.

So you have to let go of that mindset to get out of this place. So I just honestly feel that like if I ever gave very rigid, directed, actionable advice of like, go out and do these three things and your life will change forever, even if it works, which is doubtful in a lot of cases, it kind of robs the people of the agency and the identification of the success. because then if it works, it's like, oh, Mark Manson did it for me, or like, I listen to Mark Manson and he fixed my life. They don't get to feel I fixed my life, which is what they should feel. Right, right.

It's very patronizing a lot of times when you're telling somebody this is what you should do. I think the larger point you're making, though, is that everybody's at a different place in their life or what works for me, won't work for them. And we've seen that you have this idea of like people going from good or bad to okay and okay to great. We've talked about that before, too. Those are two different completely types of problems. Absolutely. So like somebody who is like in a pretty good spot just trying to get a little bit better, they're going to be like, that's fucking stupid. Why would I do that? Hopefully they do say that. That's great that they say that. So just a review for the audience really quick. The two categories of people who look for life advice. There's the good, the great people, which is like people who have their life together and they feel pretty good about things. But it could be better. And they could get better. You know, maybe their relationships. could be a little bit better, maybe they could be doing better at their job or be more productive or whatever. That's a huge percentage of the market and the audience.

But then there's this other segment, which I think of as the bad to okay. And so these are the people that are depressed. They're severely anxious. Their life is falling apart. They're grieving. They've gone through some sort of trauma. And frankly, they're kind of a mess. And they're just, they just want to feel okay again.

They just want things to be fine. And what you find is that a lot of advice will be good for one of those groups and not the other, right? So I could easily tell somebody, you know, you should be more honest with the people in your life. And that will improve your relationships. And like maybe a person who's looking to go from good to great, that's a really useful piece of advice. But if you have somebody who is just dealt with a bunch of trauma and abuse and is surrounded by like just really, really horrible people and needs to get away from those people, that actually might be terrible advice.

Right. And you potentially put that person in danger by giving them that advice, right? So I just try to be aware of like all the potential counterfactuals of ways that this could be taken wrong. And not just in like the good to grade or okay to good spectrum or bad the okay spectrum, but like also the just cross-culturally, right? Like, there's, there's advice, like dating advice, right? Like, I get, I get emails from people from, like, Pakistan and India and Syria. And they're like, well, you said this in this article. Should I go out and try that?

And I'm like, I don't fucking know. Right. I've never dated in Pakistan before. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. So I just, I'm very wary of it. And I, to your point as well, I do find it a little bit of patronizing. And I think there's probably too much specific advice in this industry. I look at other people in the industry.

I think they overdo it. And I think they're a little bit overconfident in a lot of things they prescribe for people. It is a bit egotistical, yeah. Yeah. And so I try to counterbalance that. Okay. Yeah. I heard this saying one time a few years back and I thought it was great is that all the device is autobiographical.

Yeah. So whenever you do hear advice from somebody else, obviously they're telling it to you through the lens of their own experience, obviously. Right. But that's not always super obvious in the moment. They think they understand the situation where they might not. You and other people, I think in this space that I've really come to kind of respect in this realm anyway, have this kind of first draft is for me approach. Yes. Like the advice you come up with is like this is and you're very open about it.

This is first for me. This is how I find. This is how I fucked up. And this is what works. See if it works for you. Which if you think about it, right. Like let's say you've got a problem in your life and you sit down with like your siblings or an old friend and you're like, I got this thing going on in my life.

Or imagine it's the other way around. They sit down with you and they're like, Drew, I got this thing going on in my life. And they're looking for advice. How do you go about giving that advice to like say your brother or your high school buddy or a cousin or something? or a cousin or something, you don't sit there and you're like, well, I've got a four-step method. And it solves your marital problems every single time. You never say that to people.

What you say to people is like, well, I remember with my last relationship, I had a similar, like, I kind of felt similarly, and this went wrong, and that went wrong. And I tried this, and that was really helpful. So maybe you should try that. But it might not work for you. Like, that's how most people in the real world give advice to each other. And so I don't understand why that doesn't.

and apply commercially and professionally in this industry. I've got an idea why it's or why they've tried to do it that way anyway, and it's because they're trying to market. And so they're trying to get everybody into their little silos. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it strips us of our individuality at some point, right? It's not a sexy, it's not a sexy ad campaign to say like, my four-step method that may or may not work some of the time, depending on what culture, background, and gender you are.

Yeah, right, right. That doesn't fit on a book cover. Yeah, that's not, that ad's not going to perform very well. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think we should be doing more actionable advice? No, I don't. Should we finish every podcast with a... I have always...

No. No, I mean, maybe we finish a podcast with a recap. Sure. Like, this is what we went over. But if we're going to sit here and say, okay, go out, try this, this and this. Now, there's sometimes that's fine. And like in the newsletter you put out, you're like, go out and try this. Sure.

And see what happens. You're not saying this is going to, you know. Right. This isn't going to solve. of all your problems. It's like, hey, we just talked about this thing. Here's the thing to try this week. Yeah.

But no, I don't. One of the things I've always, one of the things I drew me to you initially was these are the principles under which I'm operating, not the, this is the hyper specific tactic. Because every time I've gone down that rabbit hole, especially like in the productivity realm. Right. It's like, try this. You need to do it this way.

And it just doesn't work for me. Yeah. We've talked before like, you like to do this, which I think you're crazy. I like time boxing. It works for me. Great. But what happened was I had to try a lot of different things on my own. So maybe there is some value out there to, yeah, there's some people who do it this way and they have very actionable advice.

Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Another way I've heard this put, though, before is like if, you know, you sign up for, say you sign up for a business course of some kind and we're going to, they're going to lead you through how to start this business and you're going to be a bigillionaire at some point. Right. If they have a method and a recipe for this, it cannot be that original.

It just cannot be. Well, by definition, if there's a method or a recipe, then it's not unique or differentiated. Exactly. And if it's not unique or differentiated, then it's not going to be a sustainable business. Same goes with any kind of advice, I think. It's like, well, if this is, this worked for this segment of the population or whatever it is. Which I've also found that. So, like, generally the only actionable.

advice I will ever give. It's stuff that is so, there's like the, the scientific evidence is just so overwhelming. Yeah. That it strikes, and it ends up striking people as like banal and obvious, right? So it's like, get eight hours of sleep. Like, you want to know what actually works people? Get eight hours of sleep every night. Go outside occasionally.

Don't eat shit. And, you know, surround yourself with people who treat you well. Like that's actually kind of, that's like the, you're like 90 some percent of the way there. 90 percent of it. But that's not sexy. It's not exciting. It's not, people are always looking for the secret or the hack or the shortcut. They don't really exist.

Like it's psychological well-being and personal growth and stuff. It's generally boring things done very consistently. And that's not an exciting marketing headline, right? A lot of people, what they do is they find like very, very, fancy ways to package stuff. I should mention that I think a lot of kind of fancy actionable advice, quote unquote, works for people, mainly just because of a placebo effect, right? So I think I've talked before on the podcast that, like, my personal opinion is that most self-help seminars, the perception of the perception that people get that the seminar,

quote unquote, worked is actually just the fact that they spent five, days having very vulnerable conversations with the other attendees. Five days and $5,000. Yeah, yeah, that too. Yeah, that too. But seriously, I mean, if you take somebody who is socially isolated, somewhat depressed, feeling very lost in life, maybe isn't completely aware of their emotions, and you just put them in a room with some strangers who are in a similar position and give them a context,

an excuse to talk about their problems for five days. Yeah, of course they're going to walk out of that. that room feeling much better and feeling like they had some sort of profound breakthrough or whatever. That's just human nature. When you sit down with people who are in a similar situation as you and you share yourself and you're vulnerable with them is very therapeutic. But the packaging and the context that gets people into that situation is, you know, it's all about the guru and the method and here's our like special five-star upgraded premium seminar

for VIPs only and blah, blah, blah. And it kind of tricks people in the thinking that, oh, yeah, the guru in his five-star VIP method fixed me. You know, I got, I was, I was saved. I was solved by whatever. And it's like, no, actually, you just needed to sit in a room and talk about your problems with five sympathetic people for five days or whatever. Yeah, which there's value to that. There's a ton of value to that. Sure.

It's just, it's funny because it's almost, you know, my opinion on seminars like that is actually swung around. It's almost like a horseshoe theory. Like I used to hate them so much because I'm like, it's such bullshit. None of it's true. And now I'm like, ah, it's all bullshit. None of it's true. But it gets people to do the thing they need to do. Ah, okay.

It's almost, you know, it's like a, it's like a Trojan horse. Yeah. Well, maybe there's, maybe, maybe there's value to it. Maybe there's some value to it. Yeah. I mean, there is, obviously. Hey, Tony Robbins wouldn't still be doing what he's doing if there wasn't. But just the, I mean, if you sat down and just the sheer amount of, you know, the advice industry, which, you know,

were a part of. I get it. If you just tried everything, though, there can't be, somebody can't be sitting and listening to some of these podcasts that drone on and on for hours and hours about with very, very specific actionable advice and trying all of that. What is like, is that just the, is it an entertainment value in it? That's part of it, I'm sure. There's definitely, there's definitely an entertainment value. It probably makes you feel like you're getting, doing something even too. Personal development. I have, I have found that personal development is a hobby for a lot of people. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think a lot of them don't realize it's their hobby. I feel attacked now. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's actually a very good hot. There's a very harsh things to do. Yeah.

There are much, much worse things to have as a hobby. But I do think for a lot of people, it's a hobby. Like, to them, it is fun and exciting to discover, like, new productivity tools or hacks or figure out a new meditation and get that sensation of, discovering something new, trying it, feeling slightly different, you know, telling themselves that they just had an epiphany and moving on to the next thing. Like, that's a very fun, that is fun. That is fun. It's harmless. There's nothing wrong with that. But like some hobbies,

I do think it can become a little bit compulsive or even an addiction. Like I have absolutely run into people who are, there's almost like this desperation for the next thing, the next, the next, the next method, the next seminar, the next you know, whatever profound experience. And that becomes a, yeah, that becomes treacherous, in my opinion.

Yeah. Yeah, you see this a lot in like the productivity space especially. I remember I was trying to like come up with some sort of personal productivity system of mine and found, came across someone and they were like they were three or four, I don't know, 10 iterations in and they're like, this is my most advanced system yet. And it dawned on me.

I was like, I don't want an advance. I want something simple that I need to just. Yeah, right. I don't want to think about this. Yeah. Yeah. So we can get out of it. But there's some people, there are some people who are in.

Like, I've got a friend out here in L.A. And he, he loves optimization. Like, loves it. It is. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah. It is his hobby.

Like, he got so excited once. He, like, figured out a way to program the light switches in his house to, uh, like, basically like he could gesture to his phone and it would like turn him on and off depending on what room he was so excited about it

and he was like explaining this to me and he's like yeah I don't have to walk across the room and turn the light switch off and you know I don't have to like open an app and wait for it to look and I'm like that's great dude you just spend a week working

like what do with those extra 10 seconds every day you just save yourself five seconds a day but it's clear like it makes them happy like it makes them really really happy And that's cool. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. I,

I think it's, it's, it's, it's fine to recognize that it can be kind of a glorified hobby. And then it's also fine to recognize that there's nothing

wrong with that. I, I think where I worry about people is when they, they kind of drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak. Yeah. They get religious about it.

Yeah. Well, well, you know, I shouldn't have to walk cross room, turn my light switch off. That's fucked up. Like, we need to fix this.

I'm like, all right. And it can definitely get there very, very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. We'll be right back. All right. We're back. Brilliant or bullshit this week, Drew. Yes. I'm excited about this one.

You are. You came to me with this one. Very excited. Mark, we're talking brilliant or bullshit. There's this idea of going to therapy versus engaging in therapy culture. Yes. So this was a piece. There's a writer, great writer on Substack, name. Freddie Dubour, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. He had a piece called selfishness and therapy culture. We'll link it in the description and the notes. I love this because as longtime regular listeners of the pod know, this is a topic that has come up periodically over the past year.

Has therapy gone too far? There is a lot of new research coming out saying that particularly among young people, therapeutic interventions are starting to backfire a little bit. We're definitely seeing a lot of issues around schools and just kind of an over-medicalizing, over-diagnosing of any small issue that goes on with a young person. Abigail Schreier came on the podcast. She wrote a book called Bad Therapy, which very aggressively made the argument that therapy is backfiring and causing more problems than it solving.

She was a bit controversial. Yeah, that triggered some people. Yeah. You know, it's funny because when she was on, I really, I really do wish I pushed back a little bit more when she was here because my sense then and my sense since then was that like she's on the something. Yeah. There's clearly something here.

But I don't know what it is. And it does seem, it did seem a little bit like she was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because it's like we at this point, we do have 100 plus years of empirical data showing that therapy is good for people. Like therapy is helpful. Right. Then I found this piece by Freddie D'Gaure. And to me, he like explained it perfectly with a very simple dichotomy.

Essentially what he says is he says there's therapy, which is the classic ego, sit down in a small room with a therapist in private and it's all confidential and you get to share your issues and talk through them and et cetera, et cetera. And that is a very beneficial thing. But then there's therapy culture, which is when the language in the, ethos of therapy starts to pervade social spaces, particularly schools, work organizations, politics. And that can actually be extremely toxic and backfire quite a bit. And as soon as I saw him explain that, I'm like, that makes sense. Because when it's just you in private one-on-one with a therapist, it's great. Be vulnerable. You know, consider yourself a victim.

Think about your shortcomings. Really push yourself, like, lean into your fragility and think about your emotions and express your fears and all these things. That's great because it is in a, it's a cordoned off environment. It's a safe space. It's designed for that. When you put that in public, you start creating all sorts of twisted social incentives. Like when you start socially rewarding people for identifying themselves as victims or feeling victimized, When you build into educational systems or workplace systems, the protection of people's feelings,

preventative measures of anybody being offended at any time, this stuff backfires horribly. Like it just creates an even more toxic environment and seems to diminish people's mental health even further. And so I think the key distinction here is individuals in private versus social. groups in public and the same concepts, the same therapeutic concepts, the same, the exact same principles that make therapy so effective in private are the same principles that make it toxic in public. Right. And anyway, I love this.

I thought it was brilliant. I put it on the docket because I was like, this just solved so many, so many questions for me. Yeah. I'm curious what you think. Yeah. I think what you're saying, therapy doesn't scale well. Yes.

That's a good way to put it. It is a perfect way to condense it into a single sentence. And the, I mean, the thing, you and I are old enough to remember when nobody talked about going to therapy. Yeah. Right. When we were kids, it was weird. Yeah.

Especially where we grew up. Yes. Yes. That's right. Yeah. That should be acknowledged too. And now I think it's better. The goal was to destigmatize that, right?

Which I think was a very noble and good goal and should still be a goal. Right. And there has been a lot of, I think we've made great strides along those lines. Yes. The problem is is that. that like, and when every conversation starts with what my therapist says, that's when the therapy culture starts creeping in. And now one point that Abigail Shrier did make that I thought was pretty, it was

insightful is when you're starting to insert a therapist into, between you and somebody else or between you and society or between you and any other group or person, that's kind of when it becomes a little bit more of a problem. If you keep it small scale, like I said, it doesn't scale. well. Yes. And so, yeah, the whole thing around destigmatization is important. But what we're finding is that there's a lot of unintended consequences about that, too.

100%. When we try to scale it. And to your point of what Abigail brought up, like, I do think what she points to, which is accurate, is that within therapy culture, there's a tendency to overestimate the powers of therapists, like to kind of almost assume they're superhuman. of like, well, this kid's having trouble at school. Let's bring his therapist to school and have his therapist sit in with all the parent-teacher conferences and check in with him after class. Well, it's like a therapist is just a person.

Right. There's like, there's no, there's nothing magical about a clinical psychology degree that, like, makes you able to like snap your fingers and resolve people's problems. Most of the value, and we've talked about this before, but if you look at the meta-analyses around therapy, the 80-20 of therapy is just the fact that you're in a quiet, safe space talking to a person who's listening sympathetically. Right. And it's there's nothing, there's no magical method. This actually ties in very well with the self-help thing. There's no magical method.

There's no magical advice that they're going to give. There's no like actionable steps that they're going to like they're people. They're people who are trained to listen, sympathize and offer, you know, a useful word of advice or two. And that's it. Like they're very, they're limited. And I think within therapy culture, they get a little bit, I don't want to say deified, but they're almost like, they're looked at as authority figures of like, you know, well, Timmy's having trouble at school, you know, let's get his therapist involved.

And let's listen to what the therapist thinks should happen. And well, the therapist says he shouldn't be talking to his parents anymore. Like now you're getting fucked up, right? And I have seen personally in my life, like I've had people in my life who perhaps gave their therapist way too much credit and power, and their therapist steered them in some pretty fucked up directions, and they went that way, right? And it's like it comes back to the actionable advice thing.

I think any good therapist understands their own limitations and isn't going to stick their neck out very often with actionable advice. The other thing I loved about the Freddie DeBoer piece, and this part, it might be bullshit, but it was fun for me to think about. he made the suggestion that therapy culture, for many people, therapy culture is filling the void that the lack of religiosity is filled. Yeah, he went so far as to make the argument that therapy culture presents a fully formed morality that replaces kind of the classic Western Christian morality and essentially exalts one's feelings and feeling. protected and safe at all times over every other consideration, no matter what. And he points out that

the logical conclusion of this is that you basically turn everybody into like little narcissists who think that the world should rearrange itself to please them all the time. And he's probably overstating the case. But as somebody who really loves to think about just the craving for meaning and purpose and some coherent worldview for people to latch on to, I found it very very. fascinating to think about. He could be overstating it, sure. There's this fantastic book. It's one of, it's this book that just blew my fucking mind when I read it. It's called soul self and society. It's by Edward. It's either Edward Rubin or Edwin Rubin. I'm forgetting. I remember you, you recommended that to me like three times ago and I bought it and I never read. You never read it.

Okay. So, so he talks about in Western civilization, there's been three big moralities that have occurred throughout Western civilization. The first one was a morality of honor, a culture of honor, basically. This is when you have kind of smaller scale societies and you kind of, that's honor is kind of what regulates behavior between groups. Then came Christianity and religion and philosophy in general, actually. And we had this moral code. And it was the moral code of salvation. What do you call it? So your life was basically set up. up around getting salvation, getting into heaven, that sort of thing. Over the last 150 to 200 years, it's now become the morality of self-fulfillment. And I think this is the latest kind of

iteration of this morality of self-fulfillment. Interesting. And you can call it self-actualization. Basically, the underlying tenet of this morality, though, is that everyone deserves to live to their fullest potential or at least have the opportunity to live to their fullest potential. Yeah. And I think therapy culture is kind of like an almost an aberration of that. Sure. Taking it so far as to put up everybody's, you know, everybody's feelings are valid. Everybody's, your experience is valid no matter what, always will be, never, there's no exceptions to that whatsoever and nobody can tell you different. And everybody who tries to is an abuser of some kind. And they're trying to rob you of power. And, you know, throughout history,

there has been, you know, people have tried to rob people of their self-fulfillment, sure. Of course. But this is like the latest kind of iteration of it. And every moral code has contradictions and problems and everything like that. Well, it's, yeah, it's one of the, I actually. It's a fantastic book. You should read. I wrote about this and everything is fucked.

Yeah. How, you know, no matter what you put as the most important thing kind of philosophically, you'll pay the price for it. Like everything has a dark side to it. Everything has a cost. Everything has just like a flaw or as you said, a contradiction to it. This is a bit of a hairbrain theory. There's probably a book around.

That's what we come for. Yeah, I know. This is what the podcast has become. Mark's hairbrain theories. There's probably a book about this somewhere. But it's just something that I've observed. And I think the board talks about this a little bit. Like the baby boomer generation had this really brought this ethos of, if it

feels good, do it, right? What feels good is right. And previous to that, if you look at kind of the silent generation and the early 20th century and the 19th century, you kind of had this Victorian period of self-denial of, you know, don't show your emotions, you know, sit up straight, shut up, don't talk, don't complain, you know, just get your job done. You go back a couple more generations before that, like late 18th century. and you read about like the courts before the French Revolution and all the intrigues that were going on in Europe during that time.

It's like people were all fucking each other, like smoking, like drinking all the time. Like the amount of alcohol consumption that was going on was just like absolutely preposterous. So part of me is wondered that maybe if you imagine there's a scale and on one side of the scale is self-denial and on the other side of the scale is self-indulgence or you could call it self-fulful. self-fulfillment. Perhaps our ethic as a society kind of ping-pongs back and forth across generation. So each generation becomes a little bit more self-indulgent until it starts causing real social problems. And then there's a backlash and the ethos starts to become more about self-denial and

self-discipline and more rigid. And then that starts to cause problems. And then it starts pinging back in the self-indulgent direction again. And I kind of feel like if you look at all the generations going back to the boomers, like every generation since the 60s is celebrating more self-indulgence than the previous one. And I feel like that's just starting to change. We've flipped the- Just in the last five years, it's starting to go the other way where people are starting to realize, especially with all the technology and social media and everything, people are really starting to realize and appreciate the power of self-denial, of self-restraint. restraint, discipline, being conscious of what you're doing, not indulging in things.

You know, we're seeing drug use is dropping, drinking is dropping, even things like teen pregnancy and sex out of wedlock, those things are dropping, divorce rate is dropping. And kind of this old school conservative ethos of like, you know, take care of yourself, go to bed on time, be productive, don't complain. Like all these things are coming back with the younger generations now. And so part of me it just wonders like, okay, maybe we hit the breaking point. Somewhere around like 2010, 2015, we kind of like hit the breaking point of like, okay, everything's way too self-indulgent.

Like we need to start pushing back on this. And maybe the future generations will become more rigid again. The way I've heard it put before about like the Victorian area, the Victorian era, they would talk about death all the time, but never talked about sex. we talk about sex all the time and never about death. That's really interesting. That's super interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know. I think there might be something to that. And I'm sure there is kind of a scale that we ping pong back and forth between self-indulgence and self-discipline. But I don't know. It's really interesting to think about. Yeah. I can't help.

You know, when we had Sadiq Khan on a while back and the, I think the way I introduced her was I was like, she basically gives dating advice that your grandmother would give. Yeah. And somehow that feels revolutionary. And I've started to notice that in more places. Like a lot of the productivity advice is just stuff that grandma would have told you, right? Like a lot of the health advice is stuff like eat whole foods. Don't buy stuff in packages.

Don't drink too much. Like that's shit your grandmother could have told you. Right. Yeah. Part of me just wonders if we're just if we're doing a little flashback. Stick with us. We'll be back. 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. All right, we're back. What questions were we asked this week, Drew? Yeah, we're riding the advice train still, too. This one comes from YouTube. When have you fallen short of taking your own advice?

Oh, my God, all the time. Can I tell you guys, like, real talk now, writing a best-selling self-help book. That's, yeah. Worst thing that ever happened to you, huh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. It's never been the same. No, one of the downsides, there are not many, but one of the few downsides is that any time you fuck up, one of the things you wrote about, somebody in your life is going to let you go.

Like, all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I've been talking to somebody like my wife or a friend or a family member and they'll just kind of look at me and they're like, maybe you shouldn't give so many fucks about this. And I'm like, damn it. Why do you? Yeah. So yeah. No, it's to come back to the point from earlier, like, I write this stuff because it's what I need. Yeah.

It's a side benefit that the audience finds value in it too. But ultimately, it's like it's written because I needed it. I have a tendency to get involved in too many things. And I constantly need to be reminded, what do you actually give a fuck about? what are you going to focus on? What are you going to commit to? I have shiny object syndrome, right? So it's so much of the basis of everything I write about, everything I care about, everything

I preach. It starts because I'm usually fucking it up myself. And I definitely have not mastered it. And I probably won't ever mastered it. So what are some of the common ones, though, that you consistently find yourself falling short on. I'm sure there's a few of those, yeah? I tend to be unfocused. I tend to get too excited with new things. And so I struggle with like focusing and going all in on one thing. That is something that recurs pretty regularly. I definitely, you know, there's a whole section in the book about

metrics and how you measure success and be careful how you measure success because they can come back and bite you in the ass. No matter how you choose to measure it, it will come back and bite you in the ass. Ironically, that bit me in the ass after the book's success because kind of unwittingly, I think I attached a lot of my definition of success to how that book did. And so afterwards, it left me feeling kind of lost and aimless and not knowing what to do with myself. So I went through kind of a weird period for a year or two, like not, yeah, just feeling lost,

essentially. As I've mentioned before, I struggle a lot with commitment or early in my life. I struggled a ton with commitment. Recently, I've gotten much better about it. Struggled with health stuff. Like a lot of this stuff I've been writing and talking about the past couple of years about how boring is what works. And, you know, it's about doing things consistently. And it's about simplicity and how easily is something going to be to, to, to, to, to,

do even when you don't feel like doing it. Like a lot of that just comes from my own health journey of my own inability to change my behavior and stick with things and how I had to learn how to like distill things down and simplify them and make them like and get comfortable with how boring and mundane they were. So yeah, it never ends. It never ends. Yeah. It's, yeah, I don't even know if there's anything I feel like I've like nailed completely. Definitely 100% yeah. One of one of them for me that I was thinking of and this comes up all. the time for me is like the materialism equals happiness like consumption and happiness maybe part of that's i'm sure living in america you know where it's all around us but i so many times where

i will plan out some big purchase or even small purchases or something like that and i realize later i'm like oh i'm thinking this is going to make me happy somehow i'm doing it again and i'm still disappointed when it doesn't you know that's a big one for me i find that it's pretty pervasive in my life Yeah. And I used to be such a staunch minimalist, too. Part of it is when you go buy a house or you settle that into an apartment or whatever for a longer period of time. And you start liking those kind of comforts around you. Yeah, it's, yeah.

No, the home thing is legit. I mean, luxury is funny. It's actually really funny. So there was a New York Magazine did a profile on me. And the journalist was actually a really interesting guy and he and I kind of hit it off. and we've kept in touch a little bit. And he, I forgot how it came up, but one time I asked him, I said, like, what's, what's like the favorite piece you've ever done? And he said that he got to do a piece once where basically he got to try a bunch of rich people stuff, like luxury stuff.

And then he had the article was writing whether it was worth the money or not. So he got to go drive like a, you know, a million dollar McLaren car or whatever. And then he like slept on like a $100,000 bed. and ate at like all the three-star Michelin restaurants in New York. Like did all this crazy luxurious shit. And then actually wrote about the experiences like kind of an average guy and saying, was this really a thousand times better than the normal thing? Or is it just kind of like, you know, an ego jerk off thing?

Yeah. And I always thought that was really fascinating. And I remember I asked him, I was like, what was worth it? And he was like, I love cars. So the car was pretty insane. And then he said the bed. He was like, yeah, the bed, the bed is like sleeping on a cloud. But everything else, he was kind of like, what's the point?

Yeah. Don't give me wrong. There's ways to spend your money that can definitely, even on material things that can definitely improve your life to make you. Some things, yeah, some things are worth the money. But to your point of like, this is going to change things. Right. Yeah. They don't.

Yeah. They don't. In some cases, they just cause more problems. Yeah. On that note, what's the wisdom of the week? What is our non-academic wisdom of the week? Non-academic wisdom of the week. Yes.

This comes fittingly, comes from an 18th century English poet and philosopher named Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And he said, advice is like snow. The softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind. Ooh. Very poetic. Yes. Very nice. Be soft-handed with the advice.

Yeah, very soft. Well, that's it for a show this week. A very soft show like snow. I'm feeling like so... I hope it sinks into your mind. Yeah. I'm feeling so like wafty and light. Lith.

Is that a word? Lith. I don't know. Is that a word? Lith? I feel like... L-I-T-H? Yeah.

L-I-T-H. Yeah. Isn't that a word? Fuck if I know. Liff? We're going to check the dictionary and get back to you next week. I'm a writer, by the way. Be sure to like and subscribe.

We will see you next week. The subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.