SOLVED with Mark Manson - Building Real Confidence, The Motivation Puzzle, and Understanding All Your “Parts”

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Drew comes in hot today as we dig into the nitty gritty of confidence and motivation. We explore the counterintuitive idea that true confidence doesn't come from expecting success, but from being comfortable with failure. If you've ever struggled with self-doubt or felt demotivated despite external achievements, this episode might just change your perspective. We start by dissecting what I call the "Confidence Conundrum" and how it applies to various aspects of life, from business to relationships. Then, we challenge some long-held beliefs about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, discussing research that questions the idea that external rewards always undermine our natural interests. We wrap up with a thought-provoking exploration of Internal Family Systems theory and how understanding the different "parts" of our psyche can lead to greater self-integration. This is a grab bag episode that we had a lot of fun with, so I hope you enjoy it. Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Chapters: 00:00 Drew comes in hot00:53 The F*ck of the Week: Confidence21:55 Brilliant or Bullsh*t: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation42:44 Q&A: What do you think of "parts work"? 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. Mark. Yes. I got a bone to pick with you.

Uh-oh. I'm coming in hot today. It's not my fault. I'm coming in hot today. No, no, no. Okay. So lately, I've been doing all this work, getting these episodes ready. Yeah.

I do all this background research. Yeah. I come up with these ideas. And then you come in here and you just shit all. over him. You shit all over them, Mark. So I got a bone to pick with you. I'm coming in hot today. Okay. I got copious notes. Oh boy. I stayed up late last night going over this, got a good night's sleep, got up early, went over these again. I'm coming at you. Should I be intimidated? You seem confident, Drew. I'm very confident today. Good seg, Mark. It's the subtle art of not

Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. These are three things I really want to talk about today. I've wanted to for a while. And I'm ready. I'm coming in hot. I'm going to argue with you when you push back on me today. My hair, I'm liking how my hair is looking. I'm confident today, Mark.

I'm exuding confidence. Drew is fucking locked in. I'm like suddenly unconfident because I think I got complacent on these. And I'm like, yeah, Drew's got it. I like glance through the outline a couple times. I'm like, I'm good. I've been talking about this shit for 20 years. All right.

Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. All right. And that brings us to the fuck of the week, Mark. Yes. Which is confidence. Yes. Now, several years ago you wrote this piece called the confidence conundrum.

Several. It was like 11 years ago. Is it that long ago? Yeah, we're old. Okay. It was a while ago. All right, right. It's a fairly short article, though, so I wanted you to expand on some of the ideas.

Sure. First, we'll go through like what the conundrum is. Yes. Okay. And then I want, there's several points you make in this that are a little bit counterintuitive. I think that we can wrap our heads around. Okay. You know, it's funny because this article never took off when we published it.

It didn't, yeah. But it's, I find myself referencing it in reader questions, audience questions, fan questions, all the fucking time. It comes up so, so many times. And basically, basically for people listening, the confidence conundrum is that, Confidence does not come from an expectation of success. It comes from a comfort with failure. And I think this is something that people misinterpret or get wrong or misassume about confidence. They think that they, to feel confident in doing something, they have to have complete assuredness that they're going to do it successfully.

Whereas my argument is what gives you confidence is being okay with the fact that you might not be successful. Right. Okay. So that's the conundrum there is that like how can you be confident if you're not confident about anything in the first place? Like there's just like chicken and egg thing. Right. And yeah. So this solves that kind of paradox that people get locked into of like, well, I'm not confident. So I fail at everything. But because I fail everything, I'm not confident at it at anything. And this resolves that paradox by saying, okay, yeah, you don't become confident that you're going to succeed. You become confident with the act of failure. Because ultimately, the act of failure is. And we can get into this in like more granular detail. But like the active failures is what makes you better at stuff. And so people and then as you fail more often, you become more confident because you become more confident because you are comfortable with those failures. But people misinterpret that as, oh, he's getting better at the thing. Look how confident he is.

Right. Okay. Okay. They think it's the success that's driving the confidence. Whereas actually it's the repeated failures that drives it. Right. Right. All right.

So yeah. Put in the cart before the horse just a little bit here. Okay, sorry. No, no, no, no, that's okay. That's where we're going. That's a good roadmap. There's a few observations you make about confidence that I think illustrates these points that you're already alluding to. One of them is that external achievements don't necessarily create confidence, like you just said. Why is that though? Why is it like, here's an example. Okay. Like Serena Williams, right? One of the greatest tennis players of all time. Yeah. She constantly, she would, she's been very open about like, oh, at the peak of my career even, I was like nervous, anxious, not sure about my. myself. Yeah. That's an example of like this external confidence that or external success that didn't translate into confidence. Absolutely.

Why is that? That's crazy. I love hearing stories of this. You know, the basketball player Bill Russell, who is the most decorated successful basketball player of all time, 13 championships. He vomited before every single game. That's insane. Even after he had won 10 championships and have been MVP like six times, he still vomited

before every single NBA game he played. of nerves and just fear. I actually think success can make you less confident because the more successful you are, the more you have to lose, the more costly failure becomes. Oh, right. Okay. Which makes it more difficult to be comfortable with failure, right? People talk about imposter syndrome all the time.

What is imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is experiencing a great level of success and feeling worse afterwards, right? Being more fearful after your incredible success. And I think the reason that is is because once you have that great success, it actually calls into question whether it was a fluke. Did you get lucky? Are you going to be able to replicate this? Are you going to be able to do it again? And if you fail next time, it's going to be so much more costly and hurtful than it would have been before you had that success in the first place.

So success can actually increase in security because it makes failure more expensive. Right, right. Yeah, and you make that point that that confidence is rooted in the perception of ourselves, not the external reality like you were just saying. Yes. Basically, which I thought of this example of like, there is a real fine line there, though, too, because you can have, let's say, a startup founder. Yeah.

Who one of the ways they've become successful is through these repeated failures, but they don't lose their confidence along the way. But then you might have somebody else who's got like this high paying job who is very insecure because they're afraid of losing that. Yes. And, but where is that line? So, like, how much of this is delusion? If you have that startup founder who's like, well, this failed, I'm going to go on

on the next one, try something else. Sure. Whatever. I'm awesome. I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. Like, where is that line between delusion and actual, like, real confidence? I think there is some useful delusion of just kind of irrationally believing that you're going eventually figure it out and get it right.

Yeah. I think ultimately, like, when people talk about confidence, really what confidence is is, is it's a trust that you are going to progress and get better, right? So it's like in my own entrepreneurial journey, I failed dozens and dozens and dozens of times. But what made it feel okay to me was just the fact that I knew that I was smart enough and honest enough with myself that each failure is going to get me closer to my goal. So each product launch that failed, each book I wrote that nobody downloaded or bought, each article, that bombed. Every single time I trusted my own ability

to look at it and be like, okay, what could I have done better? What can I learn from this? How can I improve? And because I was good at those things, or I eventually got good at those things, it gave me a confidence to weather more failures, right? And then once you're comfortable weathering the failures,

you stop fearing failure, which actually gives you other people perceive you as being confident. Okay, okay, yeah. So it's not necessarily a delusion. It's more just like a reality check you're saying. Yeah, and it's a trust of like, I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I trust eventually I'm going to figure it out. Like, I'm going to keep trying things and I'm going to keep learning. I'm going to keep getting better.

And one day I will find my way there. Okay. Now, but you also point out some ways that some common ways that we try to increase our confidence that aren't, that don't work very well. Yes. One of those is through delusion. Yes. So what about, you know, there's kind of like this, there's a lot of like the affirmations, especially like affirmations that just are like blatantly obviously not true, right?

Just they're bullshit. Yes. That's one way we do it. The other way you pointed out was focusing solely on external self-improvement. Yeah. Can you elaborate on that one a little bit? Okay. Well, let me start with the affirmation thing, right?

So it's like a common piece of self-help advice. If you want to be more confident, you know, stand in the mirror and tell yourself like, I am beautiful. I am smart. I am brave. All these things. The problem with that is that as you try to convince yourself that you have these external qualities, essentially you're trying to convince yourself that you're already at the finish line. And the more you convince yourself you're already at the finish line, the more costly failure becomes, right? It's like, well, I just spent three weeks looking in the mirror and telling myself how smart I am. So this next thing has to work. Otherwise, I've just been lying to myself, which creates a greater fear of

failure, which creates more anxiety, which creates less confidence, right? Whereas I think the correct affirmation is, I'm going to figure it out. I'm smart. I work hard. I don't give up. I'm honest about my failures. I can take feedback. I can stomach a little bit of embarrassment or rejection. Between all those things, I'm going to eventually get there, right? I think the external thing is that people just, they put too much weight on the external markers, right? Like, you could be, to use the Serena Williams example, right? Like, you could be the best tennis player in a tournament and not win the tournament. So if you are placing all of your satisfaction and all of your definition of success,

simply on, you know, winning the tournament or winning the match or whatever, then you're potentially setting yourself up for, You're measuring yourself by something that's not 100% within your control. Ideally, you want to measure yourself by things that are 100% within your control because that is going to give you a more accurate sense of progress, improvement, progression, et cetera. Okay. I got you.

If you get somebody, you know, you might think getting a six-pack abs, you know, or a six-figure income, whatever. Even after achieving those goals, though, you can still feel. feel very insecure if you haven't addressed those deeper self-perception issues, which the self-perception issue is something like you just said, I think would be within your control. Totally. And I don't know. There is a little bit of going back to the affirmations thing.

There's a little bit of research around this where, yeah, if you're doing, especially like the external wants, I am beautiful, I am smart, I am loved by everybody outside, you know, those don't work very well. I think you're right there. The nuance there is the, if you look at things that are within your control and things that can actually be, can actually be verified, you know, around you. Then that's, those can maybe, yeah, those can work short term, probably. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, as you know, I'm not big on affirmations.

I think it's, there's probably a way to make them work. But I don't know. I think there's just as many ways to fuck them up. Sure. So. Okay. Cool. Okay. The next big point you make is that true confidence comes from being comfortable with what you lack. You've kind of already alluded to this a little bit. You give a few examples like confident business people are comfortable with failure. You've already kind of touched on that. Socially confident people are comfortable with rejection. Yeah. And people confident in relationships are comfortable with vulnerability and getting hurt too. Those are three kind of areas that you touch on. I think those last two are super important because people struggle with that a lot. Like it is part of human nature.

It is part, it is just a natural fact that all of us are deficient in some shape or form in our personalities. Like there is something we are bad at. Yeah. Whether it's some of us are very bad at managing emotions, some are bad at planning, some are bad at empathizing, some, you know, like we all have a thing that we kind of suck at. And that's just a fact of life. Like you can't, there's nobody on earth who's good at everything.

And yet in our social relationships or a relationship with the world, there's kind of this tacit assumption of like, I can't show my flaws or weaknesses. Like I have to pretend like I've got it all together and I'm supposed to be this great person who's always like there for everybody and that everybody's going to like. And that is just a purely unrealistic goal or expectation. The fact of the matter is because you are a unique individual who has strengths and weaknesses, natural flaws and natural gifts, you're going to naturally turn some people off

and you're naturally going to turn some people on. And so the goal, like a successful, quote unquote, successful social life isn't having everybody like you because that means you're just trying, you're basically getting very good at performing and faking for a wide variety of people. A successful social life is being comfortable with that natural assortment of people in the world.

Right. It's like the ones that you kind of naturally turn off or who that you don't vibe with or that just don't understand you or you're not going to get along very well. Just moving on as quickly as possible and getting over the rejection or the hurt or maybe they said something bad about you or whatever. It's like that's like that's just that there's always going to be people in the world like that. And it's there's not necessarily anything wrong with you. There's not necessarily anything wrong with them. It's just a bad match. You're not socially compatible. And so you should move on as quickly as possible to the people who are. And even within a relationship that is also true in certain areas of, whether it's a romantic partnership or a family relationship or whatever. It doesn't matter how much you love a person, how close you are with a person, whether it's your best friend or your mom or your partner, there's going to be some things about them that drive you fucking crazy and there are going to be some things about you that drive them fucking crazy. And you don't hide those things.

You don't pretend like they're not there. You don't try to fix them or change yourself. whatever, it's just that's part of the relationship. As you understand, like, hey, this is the 10% of my personality or your personality that just drives me up the wall. You know, we're both aware of that fact. We still accept each other despite that fact. You know, let's just try to navigate it effectively.

Like, that's what actually creates a comfortable relationship. I would say that's what generates a confidence within the relationship. If there's not a tolerance for those things in each person, then that drives insecurity, which is a lack of confidence within the relationship because then you're always terrified that you're going to say the wrong thing or that the conversation is going to slip into territory that's not really allowed or that you're going to start being judged for something. You have to kind of get all the cards on the table, the good, the bad, and the ugly in order to have that intimacy and that vulnerability because that is ultimately what makes you feel

confident being around another person. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And like the rejection thing specifically within relationships too, I think is a real important point you make. Like in models, your dating book, you talk about how it's used to sort people. But the ironic part about it too is the more comfortable you are with rejection. The less you get rejected. The less you get sorted out, right? Like I was thinking about this. And you've told this story before, so I'm comfortable bringing it up. But when you met your wife, that's what happened. She shot me down. Can you, can you tell that story real quick? I think it's a great one that illustrates this point.

So when I first met my wife, she shot me down. Not like rudely or aggressively or anything, but like I tried to chat her up and she was just, you know, she's kind of given those like one word answers and looking around and like clearly not interesting. Right, right. And by that point in my life, I had developed the maturity and the self-awareness to realize this girl's not into me. instead of wasting half my night trying to fight it or convince her to like me, I should just thank her, tell her to have a nice night and move on to the next person, right? And so that's what I did. By that point, I developed a habit of doing that.

So I get two, three, four minutes in the conversation. She's clearly not into it. So I told her, I said, hey, it was great meeting you. I hope you have a really nice night. And I moved on. And it's ironic because that really impressed her. Like she was like wow He totally picked up on the fact that I wasn't interested

Was okay with that fact And then was still polite and respectful and respectful despite that fact And that subcommunicates a lot of qualities in a person That's that's rare like most people aren't comfortable or aware enough to do that Or confident enough to do that Or confident enough to do that right And so She said that she was like yeah as the night went on

and she's, you know, other guys started talking to her. She was like, shit, I should have talked to that first guy. And that, I mean, and that happens a lot. I mean, it's like, and I don't want to get too sucked down the dating rabbit hole as an example. But like, like in professional settings as well, right? Like it's like I think most people's natural tendency is they don't want to suggest anything, say, in a meeting or to their boss or something that might get shot down. because they're like, oh, that's going to make me look bad and it's going to be embarrassing. But it's actually the people who are willing to make suggestions and put themselves in a place to occasionally get shot down and understanding that like, hey, you know, out of 10 of my ideas, probably five of them, at least five of them aren't very good.

But I'll never know unless I voice them, right? it's those are the people that that a it's eventually they will have a great idea and they'll be rewarded for it and b it's just human nature that you respect people who are willing to put their neck out right like it's it's essentially your boss or the higher ups are going to be like well I really like that this person is willing to to kind of fall on their face it shows a lot of confidence right it shows a lot of a willingness to grow a willingness to improve a willingness to hear feedback and get better. That's just another example of like the more willing you are to be rejected in a situation

over time, the less you will be rejected. Right. Yeah. That kind of ties up your conclusion of this whole idea that you have, which is the route to positivity runs through. Negative. Right. Which is the backwards law, right?

From subtle art. Essentially. So it's the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience. Whereas simply pursuing the positive experience. is itself a negative experience, right? Like trying to be liked by everyone all the time is fucking miserable and completely defeats the purpose, right? Takes up all your mind space.

Trying to be right about everything just is so intensely stressful and agonizing that it completely defeats the purpose. So it is, you have to get comfortable with the failure. It's not even that like, hey, getting comfortable with failure is good because it'll make you more confident. It's like you have to or otherwise you're just going to be a neurotic mess your entire life. Yeah, there's no other way. Yeah. Right. Well, cool. Okay. You haven't disagreed with me yet. Well, that's the warm up. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah. Like, I'm, coming out with your fists up. I was like, no, this one I actually agree with you on. So I'm,

I handed that one to you. You're welcome. Okay. So I guess the next segment is where you're going to come in on. But for now, go forth confidently. Dude, you're looking at me like, this is crazy eyes today. You have three cups of coffee. I've been up since, I was out early. This is what happens when you sleep well. I know. Oh, my God.

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Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. All right, we're back with brilliant or bullshit, and I feel like whatever I say, Drew's going to come at me. I'm coming at you. Here we go. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark. All right, this is something I've been, actually, I found this a couple years ago.

Yes. And I've been thinking about it a lot. Okay. And I think I'm finally ready to talk to you about it and come at you about it. Okay. No in my luck, you're going to agree with this one. And this is the only one you're ever going to agree with. Anyway.

Okay. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark. External rewards don't actually demotivate us to do the things we just naturally enjoy doing. Yeah, we need to set context for this. You need to set some context for this? Well, I mean, we should sum up the, I guess, I don't want to say traditional psychological research. But like the research on motivation until I guess now, like kind of the consensus, I guess you would say, is that for boring, annoying tasks, like, I don't know, say making widgets or filling out a spreadsheet or whatever, external rewards increase motivation. So it's the more you get paid for each widget, the more widgets you're going to make.

But for internally, quote unquote, internally motivated or what psychologist is called intrinsic. motivation, like creative tasks, things that you care deeply about, things that you love. That you would just do for their own sick. You would just do for the fun of it or because you think it's important or because it's a cause you believe in. External rewards will actually demotivate you. So it's like if you're really passionate about saving the animals, saving the seals, and I show up and I'm like, hey, I'll give you $10,000 for every seal you save, it will actually demotivate you and it will complicate your emotional relationship with, with saving the seals and you'll it'll make things more difficult for you right right um that's where the research is right it's called the it's called the undermining effect okay okay okay so that your

your intrinsic natural motivation to go do something is undermined by external rewards and just be clear because have i written about this or i'm not sure if you specifically have because i have a story about. But you go ahead because I feel like I'm going to steal your thunder. Let's, okay, well, let's first start. Just make sure we got the definition. Sure. Okay. So we've already mentioned the words extrinsic and intrinsic. Yes. Okay. So intrinsic motivation is when again, you're just doing something for its own sake. Because you love it. It's exciting. Playing an instrument painting. You're not doing it for any other reason. You believe in it. Exactly. Yeah. Whereas extrinsic motivation is you're doing it for some external incentive. Right.

You get a degree or a pay raise or approval from others. Praise, right, anything like that, right? Okay, so this comes from what's called self-determination theory. Not real important, but that's where it comes from. And we're often told that, oh, yeah, you need to find those things that are intrinsically motivating. Find your passion. Yeah. If you work a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life, you know, like that kind of thing.

Or teach your kids, you know, find out where your kids naturally like and encourage them to keep doing that without any external, you know, reward of any kind. This is what we're told. The assumption underlying all of that is, if you. You're not intrinsically motivated by something. There's something, quote, unquote, wrong with you or the choices you've made up to that point or whatever it is. Yeah. Okay. Well, in fact, it goes even further, like we just said, is that these external rewards can undermine your internal drives to just do these things that you love and you enjoy.

Which anyone in a creative industry can relate to this because it's, it's, you know, you love music when you're playing in your bedroom, but all of a sudden you get a record deal and there's like all sorts of money attached to. performances and albums and right how many songs you write and all this stuff and it like kills the joy and that that's what i want to talk about yeah is that actually true or not is that bullshit or is it brilliant what you want to get your oh should we get your take first and then i'm going to come in and shit all over it maybe i'll shit all over it today i'm skeptical okay i actually don't know okay so it's funny story about this all right and this this might be stealing your thunder no no go But it's not me stealing. It's actually Philip.

Okay. Philip makes his podcast debut. Philip makes his diet. So for listeners, Philip has been working with me longer than you. The only person who's worked for me longer than you have. Phillips worked for me for 12 and a half years. And he handles all the tech side of everything. But he also has a master's degree in psychology.

And he's an insanely smart person. He's also absurdly logical and rational. and rational. Yes, he is Dr. Spock, man. Yeah, he is Dr. Spock. So I remember, this is ages ago. I, you might not have even, you probably, you had to have been working for me at this point.

But anyway, this was ages ago. And I don't remember if it was an article or a chapter in one of my books, but I wrote, I wrote a whole thing about this. Okay. I wrote a whole piece about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And I basically, like, the piece basically just said what we talked about. Right. It was like all the self-determination theory and all this stuff.

And I vividly remember Philip sitting there and poking holes in it. As he does. Endlessly. He's done this a number of times over the years. But I remember specifically with this one, he poked so many fucking holes. He was like, well, what is extrinsic? Like, what if you aren't aware that you love it because of the approval you're getting? Oh, damn, man, we're not going to be able to argue about this.

I knew. I was so excited to just shit all over it. I knew. Okay, okay, keep going. I knew he was going to steal your thunder. You know, he kept coming up with all these counter examples, you know, he's like, he's like, well, how do you know if it's actually, if you're actually intrinsically motivated, you know, or like, how do you define an external reward?

How do you separate that from your internal feelings because those two things happen? Like, anyway, he just like went to town on this. And it actually reached a point where I didn't publish the thing. Yeah. Like he tore it, he like poked enough holes in it that I'm like, I don't know if I should publish this anymore. And I remember at the time it like piss me off. I'm like, God damn it, Philip.

Like this was a really good article on motivation. Like, why are you messing up my shit? But I think he had a point. Yeah. And I don't, it's funny because I think over the years I've returned to this theory a couple of times. It's one of those psych theories. It's very elegant. It explains things very, you know, like the musician example I just gave.

Like it's like a just so story that like describes something that we see often. But yeah, my brain always goes back to Philip. I'm like, yeah. It's almost a little too perfect is what it is. It is a little bit too clean. So I'm actually, I'm agnostic on this one. I feel like it's the sort of thing like there's probably something there. But it's probably incomplete.

It's probably just too cutely packaged and perfect and explains everything, you know, with no. Right. psychology is messy. Right. All these things are really messy. So anyway, I'm curious to hear you're a crickie. I feel like you were, you were expecting me to like support this and you were going to come. I didn't know for sure, but I was like, I think you're going to find something in here.

And maybe you still will. I mean, I generally like the, I like the theory, but I also, I don't wholeheartedly buy it. Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, and I think that's, I think that's kind of where I land to. The thing that was really interesting to me, though, was, you know, the self-determination theory kind of came out.

Like, in the 70s, it was starting to become bigger. Ever since then, back in the 70s, there were people, like, critiquing it. Yes. Specifically around this undermining effect. Yes. There was a small group of people who, like, pointed out all, a lot of what, like, Philip pointed out here. Right. But also, they didn't stop, and they still are to this day.

They're like, okay, this is like a pretty well-established, pretty well-executed. theory that has these major problems with it. Yes. And there was this guy, Stephen Reese. He since passed away, but he was one of the lead kind of researchers kind of leading the charge against this whole undermining effect. And he pointed out some things that I thought were just, there were, he had some astute observations around this.

One of them was that just the behavioral measures we used to, like the gold standard for this is what's called the free choice persistence paradigm. That's, you know, psychologists love to make up stupid names like this, right? Essentially what they do is they'll bring people into a laboratory setting. So first of all, you're bringing them into a laboratory setting, all right? They sit them down and they give them some novel task like a puzzle or a game or something that's supposed to be fun. They just inherently think it's fun. And they're just kind of like let them go, like do whatever.

And they're measuring how much time they spend on these. That is supposedly their baseline intrinsic motivation around it. Then they introduce some manipulation where they either say, okay, now I want you to play this puzzle or game. I'm going to give you a reward for it or they don't give you a reward. Yeah. Two groups, right? No reward versus reward. Then they say, okay, experiments over, but they leave the game or the puzzle with the person.

The researcher leaves the room, but there's like a two-way mirror or something. Right. How much time did they still play with it? And then whatever change they've had from the first experience they had, then the reward, then the next experience with this gamer puzzle, that's supposed to be some measure of intrinsic motivation. Okay. That was like the gold standard and is still used in a lot of the research.

today. Okay, first of all, is that really intrinsic motivation? Is that really, are they internally motivated to, like, you bring them into a lab, you sit them down and say, here's a game. What the hell are they supposed to do? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, you're in an empty room by yourself. They're just bored or they want to please the researcher. They want to be a good participant. And so they play it a lot or they don't play it a lot. And then the reward comes in, all this stuff. Like, I don't think we're actually measuring what we think we're measuring here in that paradigm at least, right? So that's, one of the problems that he points out.

Totally. Yeah. Totally. I mean, another one, too, is like a lot of times the results from these studies, they interpret them in a very circular way. Like, if they have a child, if they bring a child in and they have the child draw, and then they reward the child. Right.

Or just if they don't reward the child and he continues to draw, they say, oh, that's intrinsic motivation. Yeah. If they reward the child and they draw even more, they're like, oh, extrinsic motivation has now taken over. So it's like heads eye wind tells you lose. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's a lot of that going on with this too. Those two, okay, fine. So those are like experimental designs, which Reese argues this is like, you know, the undermining effect is actually just an artifact of these studies, the way we're doing these studies. Yeah. But the two bigger ones that I really think kind of drive at home are one. He thinks that these rewards are just distractions, especially his one-time rewards. Yeah.

They don't translate very well to the real world. Totally. Right? You're just giving somebody a reward in a one-time setting where in the real world we have salaries or grades if you're in school or there's these long-term incentives. Right. And that has a completely different dynamic, he argues. And it's not very well studied how those work, but the few that do suggest there is no

undermining effect in these long-term situations. Yeah. I would agree with that as well. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to think like, I'm trying to think about my own personal experience. Like as somebody who is paid externally, like I have large external incentives on my quote unquote intrinsic, my creative work essentially. Like things that I would do, like I would write and make videos and stuff for fun even if nobody paid me. Right.

So I'm just trying to think about my experience with it. I don't necessarily believe that extrinsic rewards interfere with intrinsic motivation. Like that's not that is not always been the case in my experience right right there have been there have been a number of cases in my career Where I was extremely excited to do something and I got paid a lot for it or rewarded a lot for it And it it was just a bonus. It was like this is this took an amazing thing and it made it even better Right that's one of the points Reese makes too is that when you interview people and just ask them Yeah like that kind of flies in the face of the whole thing. Yeah, it surprises me nobody like just rounded up like a 100 or 200 creative people or like find find like a bunch of artists

find a bunch of people who work for like NGOs volunteer for nonprofits and stuff you know find people I don't know people who spend time at church like just interview them right and just give them a classic kind of old school questionnaire of like you know does this did these situations interfere with your motivation at all what I have experienced is that where things get dicey. Because a huge part of, I guess, being motivated in your creative work is there is, you are in many ways following your own emotions. Like, it is the thing that makes writing satisfying is writing the thing that feels very important. That like it, it like scratches my emotional itch, right? So like that is what is satisfying about writing. But if somebody shows up

and offers me a shitload of money that is very exciting, but I have nothing that I really want to write about that I'm not like emotionally. Like I don't, that intrinsic motivation is missing. Then the extrinsic motivation can create a lot of dissonance, right? Right. Like then it becomes very difficult because it's like, well, I feel like I should find something in the right, but I don't have anything that I want to write, but I really should write. write it because I want this reward, but then that reward's kind of making me feel bad because

it's making me feel bad about not being excited about the thing I'm writing for it. So that's when you start getting this like tumble dry of emotions going inside yourself. And I think what I have found in my own experience is just getting really good at saying no to those external rewards when they don't align with the internal rewards. Like that's the important skill that you have to develop. Yeah, Reese actually, that kind of jives with one of the theories he has about these external rewards is that they're not undermining intrinsic motivation. They're just distractions from what you're actually going after. That's like hit one of his big points is that we can't separate from like, especially like in that lab setting or really any setting, but especially in the lab setting, if you come in and somebody is, let's say they are just playing this game because they like it.

Yeah. And then you introduce this reward, say, hey, if you play this game and you do really well, you get a reward for it. Now you're like, you've taken the focus off the game and it's now on the reward. It's not that it's undermining your motivation. It's that you're just distracted from it. It's causing maybe performance anxiety. That sort of thing where it's not actually decreasing your motivation for something that you like. And this is where we can bring confidence back into it, right?

Where it's like if I'm just playing a puzzle game because I enjoy puzzle games. You don't care if you fail. You don't care if you fail. And so there's no question. There's no like you feel. good about it. You feel very confident in you're the playing of the puzzle game. But if somebody shows up and says like, hey, if you solve this faster than the other 10 participants in the experiment, I'll give you 100 bucks. Now suddenly it's like now I'm being measured against other

people. Now I'm competing with other people. Now I have to think about failure. Failure has a cost to it. I start becoming insecure. I start getting nervous and anxious. And suddenly the game's not exciting anymore. Right. So you can see the mechanism that causes it. But But, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. It's far more complicated. This, okay, Reese points this out, too. He's like, he goes deeper than just the undermining. In fact, he thinks the whole intrinsic, extrinsic thing is just total bullshit.

Right. Okay. And one of the things is that there's a lot of motivations that don't fit neatly into these two little categories. They're both. Motivation is way more complicated than just these two intrinsic and extrinsic thing. Right. So what should the listeners take away from this? Well, okay.

Don't listen to them. Bullshit motivation research. Well, let me, let me, okay. We talked in an early episode one time, I don't know if you remember this, but we talked about, you know, I love woodworking. And I just do it. That's an intrinsically, according to self-determination theory, it would be an intrinsically motivated thing that I do. Yes. And we talked about like, oh, you know, I could make a YouTube, you know, channel for all this and do all this.

What you pointed out in that episode was, you said, that's a completely different activity. It's not that that, like, the money in the, you know, the money in the, you know, you know, the YouTube and the tension or anything like that would undermine my motivation to do woodworking. It's that it's a completely different activity. Correct. It's not woodworking anymore. It's content creation. Yes.

Again, that goes back to the distraction thing. The tragedy of all of this is, is that for years, I bought into the self-determination thing. And I'm like, any time I noticed that I was like, oh, I'm going to go do something. And I realized I was doing it for, you know, external, like money or praise from outside or whatever. I'm like, I don't want to do that because that's not. Then I'm not going to like it anymore. Yeah. Like, that's some over intellectualizing bullshit, first of all.

Totally. That I did. But I think there's a way that you can kind of have both, maybe. I do think, I mean, obviously I'm biased because I said that. But like, I do think the best way to think about it is that it is two different activities. Like doing a puzzle for the fun of it versus doing a puzzle competitively for a cash prize. It's just not even the same thing. Those are two different activities, right?

playing music in your basement, writing a song for fun on a Friday night and writing a song for thousands of people to listen to and get paid for, those are two completely different activities. And again, in my career, it's like writing a random blog post and posting it on Facebook

for your friends and family to see and writing a well-researched article that hundreds of thousands of people are going to read and judge and criticize and send you hate mail and all this stuff, those are two completely different experiences. And I have noticed, you know, in this industry, I can't tell you how many YouTubers and podcasters and writers and bloggers and everything that I meet.

And it's, I think it's same across all creative fields where it's they love the creative activity itself. They hate everything that comes around it. Everything around it. Right. And so it's like they love filming videos on their iPhone with their friends in high school. They fucking hate running a YouTube channel. Yeah.

And there are two different things. I'm fortunate in that I happen to love both. Like both versions of the activity are very fun for me. But it's not fun for everybody. And so I guess that is something that people should consider at home is that when you introduce the external rewards, it's not that it demotivates you. It's that it changes the nature of the activity. And you might not like the new version of the activity. And that's okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I'm glad we figured that out. And we didn't fight. We didn't fight. We didn't fight. One day we will fight, Drew.

One day and it will be a glorious day. Drama is good for engagement. We need a little of that. We should make up some controversies. We just invent, you know, it's just invent some scandals. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Time for the question of the week.

Yes, we do. We have a question from Tim, who's submitted this one on YouTube. And this is something I've really wanted to talk about to for a long time. So I'm glad he brought it up. Thank you, Tim. What are your thoughts about the idea that the human psyche is made up of parts? Are there any parts of yourself that still feel dangerous, unexplored, difficult to accept, et cetera? So, yeah, this comes from internal family systems, which Richard Schwartz came up with us back in the 80s.

The idea is that the human psyche is made up all of these different parts like Tim was just referring to his question. that were made up of multiple personalities. We have different, quote, unquote, parts that have different motives, different desires. And all of them serve some function to help us navigate the world in some way. The problem happens when these parts don't work well together. Okay. So they, they, they quote unquote, fight with each other or they're so, they don't even communicate with each other. I'll give like a really crude example.

So I think everybody intuitively has had the experience of like you're kind of a different person at work than you are, say, at home and you're probably different with your partner than you are with your parents and you're different with your parents than you are with your siblings and you're different with your siblings than you are with your best friends. And like we've all got these kind of slightly different variations of our personality. So parts work is kind of treating each of those aspects of yourself as like a separate part in your head. And if there's a huge discrepancy between them, like let's say, for instance, your family is super conservative evangelical Christian and you are a sex worker, then your professional self and your family self are going to clash dramatically. Right. Like they are operating on completely different value systems. They have different perspectives of the world. They don't play well together.

Right. Like there's a contradiction between them. And so you'll experience a lot of dissonance and struggles and tend to. and probably have a lot of anxiety and all sorts of issues going on in your life. So that's an extreme example. I think the theory of IFS is that this plays out in much more subtle ways of like, you know, if there's a childhood version of you that like feels very neglected or shameful about something and in your adult version of you like needs to be confident in that in a similar area,

then like those it's going to hold you back and it's going to create a lot of like internal conflict within yourself. Right. Yes. Yeah, that's the gist of it. That's kind of a simplified version of it, but really, I think it captures it too. And there's different. There's like the types of parts that we have. Well, for one, there's like the centering self that you have that's supposed to be able to lead all the parts. But then there's what they call managers, firefighters and exiles. We don't have to get too far into this. But these parts can either work well together or not work well together. And part of the therapeutic process is getting those parts to work together. Just kind of like what you said too. I think for me anyway, The, the, one of the big insights was this idea of that integration and getting these parts to work together rather than just like if I did feel like I was getting pulled in different directions or whatever. Right. Why is that? And you look down and there's usually two parts that are like, hey, I want this and hey, I want this. Yeah.

You know, that, that kind of thing happens a lot. One of the, like an example I'll use from my own personal experience was that this was, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, I, for the longest time, just assumed I was an avoidant attachment style, you know, that. that I just wanted to keep people at arms distance all the time. When I sat down and actually thought about it, though, I'm actually quite anxious, too, in a lot of ways as well. Those are two different parts of me. And it wasn't just that they were anxious and avoidant in, like, close relationships necessarily.

There's, they actually, there was other parts in my life, too, that these different parts would take over in certain situations, right? Like the avoidant, like, if I needed to just, like, get shit done and ignore everything else outside of that, that kind of avoidant part was more like, just like grind it out, super logical. Yeah. Get it done. Whereas the anxious part was more like, it kind of has more of a creative need for it to be happy, I guess. And it's sensitive and it's more, it's a little more needy too.

These two parts fucking hated each other with me. Like the avoidant part was like, dude, like sack up, like, come on. Quit being such a baby. You don't need all these things. And then the other kind of like more anxious side was like, actually, no, hey, you're kind of being a dick here and being insensitive. It was a lot of the work I did around that was like getting those two parts to work together a little bit better.

Interesting. Being like this part needs to take over for a little while, let it. Yeah. Like that kind of thing was very, very valuable to me. And then the whole integration thing that I was mentioning, that started to make more sense to me. Integrating means getting those parts to work together more. Yeah.

So back to the whole, does it fit your personality? thing for me I needed that because I didn't feel very integrated I felt all over the place like if you're somebody who feels like that

I think parts work is a great thing to get into you can get it does get weird like you said there's some weird shit it's a rabbit hole

for sure yeah I've found like I'm remembering now I was like coaching a woman years ago and it was funny

because she was professionally extremely successful but her relationships her romantic relationships were a fucking disaster. And I remember talking to her once. She had a really hard time with boundaries, like just could not stand up for her so. Yeah. Could not give feedback or criticize or anything.

And it kept like just screwing her over again and again and again. And finally, I remember being on a call with her. And I was like, I was like, look, you're really professionally successful. Like you clearly have to give feedback and critical feedback and say no to people and establish boundaries in the workplace and with your time and everything. And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm amazing at that. And I was like, okay, so imagine work mode you. What would she say to this guy? Like, imagine he's a client or a coworker and he's behaving this way.

What would she say to him? And she was like, oh, that's easy. And I was like, then just do that. And it was like a real light bulb moment for her. She was like, wow, I do have this in me. Like, I do know how to do this. But those two parts were so separated. They were two completely different worlds that she existed in.

And they never collided. And so I sometimes think about, like, I've noticed that about myself. Like there's certain aspects of me that like I'm very good in a professional context, but in a personal context, I'm not, or vice versa. Like, I'm very good at saying no to people in like a personal context, but like I sometimes struggle with it in a professional context. And it's, so I've found. I found some mileage in thinking about those things.

Yeah. And trying to like apply, you know, take a skill set from one context and try to apply it into another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of value in that, I think. The interesting thing, too, is that this whole IFS and parts work thing, it's really only caught on in the last like 10 to 15 years. 2006, when you first encountered it, that was probably like right when, right before it kind of started to get a little more mainstream.

Yeah. Richard Schwartz was laughed off the stage from like the 80s up until like the 2000s. Interesting. Nobody, everybody thought this was complete bullshit. And now it's like all the therapists I know are like, oh, I want to incorporate this into my practice. Yeah. And so I just, it's funny because sometimes I feel like this is definitely getting off onto a tangent. But like I sometimes feel like a lot of psychology or a lot of this work is simply finding

ways to package things in a way that people are able to receive them. It's not that you're like inventing anything or discovering anything. You're just finding new packaging so that it lands with people. Right. And if IFS is a really, they've like parts work, right? Like it's so intuitive, people kind of, everybody's kind of experience that they have like different aspects of themselves. And so maybe like labeling those aspects of yourself, kind of formalizing it into a little

bit of a system and then approaching it in terms of like integration, getting those parts of yourself to talk to each other and work together instead of against each other. You know, I can see why that's appealing. There's something elegant about it. And I don't underestimate the importance of elegance in terms of helping people. A well-stated theory that people understand intuitively is very, very valuable in this field. Schwartz would agree with you that none of this is new to. He said, you know, he's a brought that already brought young. He brought from Young. He's Buddhism. Yeah. I think you could also argue to like this whole self-led philosophy and the parts in general are kind of a little bit Freudian

as well, which Young and Freud were, you know, on parallel tracks for a little while at least. So yeah, it's nothing new, but the packaging is new. Yeah. And I think the packaging is very helpful. It's packaged for a way that like the masses can kind of access it for sure. And I think that's, yeah, I think there's a lot of value around that. So if it's something that sounds like, interesting to you. Yeah. I'd say go for it. Go for it. We can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Any wisdom for the week? We do have a wisdom for the week, Mark. This one comes from Ralph, motherfucking Waldo Emerson. Oh, my man. Yeah. I love this guy. And it kind of ties all of this together that we've been talking about today. It's to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something

else is the greatest accomplishment. Here, here. All right. Well, we will be back next week. be sure to like and subscribe and if you want to get on the newsletter I send out three free pieces of advice every Monday morning go to markmanson.net slash newsletter and we will see you next week. See you guys.

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