SOLVED with Mark Manson - How to Find Your True Path in Life (ft. Robert Greene)

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

What are you called to do in life? What is your life’s task? And once you figure that out, how do you pursue it? The one and only Robert Greene sat down with us on the pod to talk about all of these questions and a whole more. We discuss finding and pursuing one’s life task, the nature and causes of “Peter Pan Syndrome”, science vs timeless wisdom on life, figuring out what do in midlife after you’ve taken the wrong path, and a much more. Enjoy. Sign up for my newsletter, ⁠Your Next Breakthrough⁠. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁠ About Robert Greene Robert Greene is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, The Laws of Human Nature, and most recently of The Daily Laws. In addition to having a strong following within the business world and a deep following in Washington, DC, Greene’s books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest musicians in the industry (including Jay-Z, Drake, and 50 Cent). Greene attended U.C. Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a degree in classical studies. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Robert’s Website: https://powerseductionandwar.com/ Robert’s Books: https://powerseductionandwar.com/books/ Robert’s social media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RobertGreeneOfficial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robertgreeneofficial X: https://x.com/RobertGreene Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Robert-Greene-100085341047380/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robertgreene Chapters: 00:40 The F*ck of the Week: Finding Your Life’s Task 29:37 Brilliant or Bullsh*t: Peter Pan Syndrome 43:15 Q&A: Science vs Timeless Philosophy, How to Start Over in Midlife Theme music: “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. Robert Green, in studio, in the flesh. You are actually one of our most requested guests. Is that right?

Yeah, for the past year. Who's the most requested? Dr. K, the gaming psychologist. Don't even know who that is. Wow. Have you had him on? I have not.

I've contacted his people. but um what's so amazing about dr k well he's uh he's a psychiatrist who uh targets mental health for gamers that's a lot of your audience i guess so a lot of youtube yeah a lot of YouTubers I guess so it's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host Mark Manson so my first question for you is actually quite selfish as a younger author it I find your career So fascinating because you have this long history of successful books. But it really seems like there's this resurgence of interest, especially in the 48 laws of power over the last few years.

It seems like Gen Z is discovering Robert Green and you're getting this whole second wave of attention. I'm curious what that experience has been like, what your thoughts on that are, and whether you feel like you have any control over that or if it just has. happened? Well, I don't know. It's probably a confluence of things. Who knows why things happen in this world? It's complex and it's mysterious. But I would say social media has played a huge role in it because back 10 years ago or so, you know, nobody really know who I was. I had no Instagram. I was a little bit on Facebook. But I hadn't really gotten into social media at all. I was very, very scant on on Twitter. And so I think a lot of it is about five years ago, some, some fans said,

you've got to get on social media. And he took over and he did it himself for me. And we ended up having to fire him because he was kind of a control freak. But he was a nice guy, but he just wanted to like kind of run my empire. He would call it my empire. He would say your legacy. I'm going to protect your legacy as if I'm dead or something. So I got rid of him. Anyway, um, Suddenly, you know, it started growing. I have this guy, Stanley, who's my assistant who puts clips, and he's very good at choosing certain clips. And so a lot of it is social media, giving me a presence.

You know, up until recently, I could walk down the street. Nobody knew who the hell who the hell I was. Yeah. And suddenly people started recognizing me because of this. It was just exploded. Yeah. You know, even in places like London or Paris. It's like got this international reach.

It was incredible. Yeah. And so I have to thank social media. for that for paying my mortgage and all the other things like that. But then why has it resonated now? And I think young people are dealing with a world that's so much more chaotic and confusing. Some of it has to do with the conditions of the world that we're living in, which is, as I said, much more chaotic than it was maybe 10, 15 years ago. Some of it has to do with the parenting issues, how differently they have been raised and the culture that they're entering. And so because of that's feeling kind of very lost and confused, the 48 laws of power kind of gives you sort of a grounding and kind of the dark, harsh aspect of life.

Because I don't know, I'm not Gen Z, so it's hard for me to generalize. Of course, it's ridiculous to generalize. But a lot of them feel maybe they've been a little bit sheltered from that kind of harsh aspect of life. I know when I was 21, if I can remember back that far, I entered the work world out of college and I was a liberal arts major, ancient Greek and Latin. You can't get any more irrelevant subject than that. My first job was at real job, because I had many different. My first real job was at Esquire magazine.

I was the lowest editor there, an editorial assistant. It was like mind-blood. I couldn't believe power games that were going on because nothing in. college prepared you for that. All the egos of the writers and the editors, the celebrity, the weirdness. I once edited an article by John Irving, you know, the writer. Yeah. He turned in a travel article about Vienna because I was like the travel editor.

It was such a bad article. It was like, go to this cafe, turn right and then go here and then turn left and go. It was like that kind of writing. I edited totally. I made it like a narrative. narrative. And I got essentially fired because of that or got demoted. I had outshone the master, law number one. So it was this rude awakening into this is what the world is really like. I had to school myself very quickly. And then with my 50 different jobs, I learned over time, this is how the world is. Young people are going through that, but times 10, because the world is even more confusing. They're not used to dealing with all of these egos to all the political games. So I think, I can't say for sure, but I think these are some of the components that go into this revival of the book. It's selling five times more than it ever did 20 years ago.

Wow. That's insane. I feel like cynicism travels on the internet faster than it does in real life. And I think as a generation that grew up on social media and grew up on the internet, what I detect from Genzi is just kind of an, an embedded cynicism about the world and like is that right skepticism and and i i could see why a book about power appeals to that it's like okay well this book's going to just cut through the bullshit and actually tell me what's going on um so i the appeal makes sense but i'm not i'm not a cynical person i know people think of the book as cynical but i don't really think of it as

cynical yeah because cynical is is basically uh you know leaning into all the bad things and life, et cetera. And it's not very realistic because not all life is bad. There are bad people out there. I just think the book is realistic. Yeah, for sure. Because I'm not a cynical person at heart. You know, I'm actually got unfortunately more of a romantic, naive streak. And I think it, in some weird way that comes out in the book. But yeah, it's interesting, you know, you and I have met in person a few times now. And I imagine the image that people get from reading your books versus how they see me, how you actually are in person. Do you get people like assuming that you're like trying to pull puppet strings and manipulating them? Yeah, like I'm five minutes late for a meeting. It's not because

of the traffic. It's because I'm playing some kind of weird game on them, you know, kind of thing. It's all 27 or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I know, I've said, I've told the story before, but when I met 50 cent for the first time before we ever thought of writing a book together. He was like, he later told me he was kind of a little bit intimidated by this. He expected an older man. He picked like Henry Kissinger to show up when we first met. And then he was kind of surprised, maybe even a little bit disappointed that I wasn't like that.

Of course, I had the same impression about him. I was expecting someone really kind of mean and intimidating and thuggish. He was the sweetest, gentlest, nicest person you could ever imagine. But yeah, people expect this that everything I do is a power move, but it's not true. Yeah. Do you just kind of see that as the cost of the success of the book? You know, because it's, I get this with my fuck books. Like people make assumptions about me that I'm, and then they meet me in person.

They're like, oh, you're not like that at all. Well, you do, you do give a fuck, don't you? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, I'm just good. Yeah.

You're outing me, Robert. You're outing me. Exactly. Sorry. Sorry. You can start being mean to me now. You can show people. You know, there's a theatrical element to the social world, which I embrace, and I think

is kind of fun and interesting, and it's part of the 48 laws of power. So when you enter the world, you're not yourself. I think it's something a mistake people make. They have no distance between their inner self and their public self. So they enter the work world, and people are different. and weird and stuff, and they take it personally. And I try and strike to people, it's not personal. It's a game.

People are wearing masks. It's like something from the 18th century where people are in costumes and they're in theater and they're performing. People are constantly performing. Well, I'm performing as well. And so if people have this image of me as this dark, sinister figure, sometimes, you know, I don't mind. I might lean into it a little bit.

I might give that out that impression because I kind of enjoy that. I kind of enjoy playing that role sort of thing. Yeah. You know, I don't have a problem with it. Yeah. But it's not really who I am. Right, right. Tell me about, in your book mastery, you talk about finding your life task.

And from what I know about you and from the bits and pieces I've read about you and talked to you, you seem to know pretty early on that you wanted to be an author. You seem kind of just built as to be a writer. Like what was your process of searching and discovering and finding what you consider your life? You know, my story was was fairly clear. I mean, like you, it goes up and down. It's never like a straight path. Of course.

But when I was very young, I loved writing. I believe I wrote something like a novel when I was about nine years old. Oh, wow. And it was about our early, early humans first entering. the scene, you know, walking in the savannas of Africa, and I'm nine years old. And it's told from the point of view of a vulture who's watching them, you know, I'm sure it's terrible. But for a nine-year-old, that's impressive. That's very impressive. I was really obsessed with vultures, and I did little sculptures of vultures. Yeah. So you kind of see the dark side already there when I'm

nine years old. But, and so, you know, I love words, just the sound of words, the sensuality of words, the weirdness of, you know, I never took language at its face value. I thought there's something strange that we speak in words, that we have these symbols that we take for granted that we talk so smoothly. But they're not, they're weird, that these little squiggles that mean something that have a sound attached to them. So, child, this is really strange. I was obsessed with words.

I played with words. I still do that to this day. I love like palindromes and word games and such. So words obsessed me And obviously I wanted to be a writer I thought when I was 18 in my Drug days That I would be a wild novelist

You know that was my real dream I still am kind of a failed novelist So to speak And so I tried as I've told people before I tried many different types of writing I tried journalism I hated it I failed at it It wasn't good fit

I tried writing novels Bumbing myself around Europe With a backpack I failed at that. I came back to L.A. tried to be a screenwriter. I failed at that. These weren't fits for me because I have a weird mind and I'm also a control freak and I didn't have any kind of control in Hollywood. And so, you know, I lucked into the 48 laws of power by meeting this man.

In Italy, we were there to start a new media school for Benetton, some weird project like that. It was kind of a meaningless venture. It really was about being in Italy and having good pasta and espresso and wine. It wasn't about getting anything done if you know the Italians. This is the land of Machiavelli. And so he had Yost and I, the man who did that, we kind of bonded over it. One day I'm in Venice, Italy, because it was near Venice and we were walking. He said, do I have any ideas for a book?

And the 48 laws of power just almost like I vomited out of me. I kind of improvised that just a gist. The gist of it, actually, I told him a story, the story that opens the book. I said, this is how I'd illustrate it. He said, that's fantastic. I'll pay you to live while you write the book because I was very poor. And so I kind of found my way in this kind of circuitous way, manner to what I was really meant to do. But the lesson I think for people, because I get so many emails people telling me,

I don't know what my life's task is. I can't figure out what my purpose is. Can you help me? Can you help me? And there are signs. I believe everybody has signs. And these signs come out. A lot of them are negative signs, which you're not paying attention to.

Things that you hate, things that frustrate you. So you're in music. It isn't quite working. You feel a little bit uncomfortable. It's not a fit. Yeah. So you make the wise decision that it's not for you to get out. other people they maybe feel that frustration but they don't go there they go oh i've already trained as a musician

i got to stick with it they go and then they then they burn out that 30 years old and it does it's not working for them they go what's my life's purpose i have no idea you've got to listen to the signs sometimes the signs are physical they're literally in your body you literally feel frustrated you literally feel like you're swimming against the tide it's not working for you you get up in the morning, you're not interested in this. So the negative is very important, but also there's the positive, you know, so for me the negative was I hate, I actually hate office politics, which is very ironic for me, you know, who wrote that. I couldn't, I can't stand working for other people. And so I have to work for myself. I have to be an entrepreneur. I have to write books.

I have to have control. But then there are the positive signs. There's the signs of things that you love that you're passionate about, they generally show up when you're very six, seven, eight years old. And so I tell people you've got to go through that process. You have to reconnect with the child inside of you because children are dreamers. Every child thinks, I'm going to be president. I'm going to write a great novel. I'm going to do this side of the other. Then those dreams slowly get squeezed out of them. Right. But you have to return back to that. You have to have a little bit of that expanse of quality, a little bit of imagination, even a little bit of naivete and go back to who you were and go back to the things that excite you in a way

that you can't even explain. You know? The negative feedback thing, one thing I notice in a lot of people, you know, there's this narrative around grit, persistence, hustle culture, right? Like what I notice with a lot of people is when they start running into that resistance and it doesn't feel right. it feels painful. The first thing they tell themselves is like,

oh, well, I just need to toughen the fuck up and keep going, because this is what, you know, all my heroes did is they just kept fighting through it. And it's,

I think it's such, it's so much more nuanced than that of like understanding when the push through and when to let go. Well, the subtle art should be actually the title of your next book

because it is subtle. It is nuanced. Life is not so obvious. So sometimes grit and persistence is the right way. Yeah. So for me, writing, I failed at all these different aspects. I didn't give up.

I didn't say, all right, my parents wanted me to go to law school, wanted me to settle down, wanted me to take these awful television jobs that I had. You know, and I've had the worst television job, you can imagine. I won't even say that. They want me to settle down, you know. I had to have the persistence to go, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to stick with it. I have faith in myself, even though I got very depressed.

But also sometimes persistence could be exactly the wrong thing. Right. And the key is, the key to everything in life is knowing what you really truly love, what you were meant to do, why you were born, why you're a different individual. You know, I know it sounds like a cliche, but everybody, your DNA is unique. There's never going to be another Mark Manson. The way your brain is wired, the way your parents raised you, your early experiences, you are unique. And so that is where your power lies. And connecting to that is the source of everything in this world.

So if you connect to it, if you know who you are, you know what you love, you know what you were meant to do, and it's not a cliche, it's actually very real, then that persistence will become an actual positive thing in your life because you'll know, I can't keep kicking against a wall here. It's not what I was meant to do. I got to get out. Yeah. You know? So I was 25, 26 years old. I was in New York working in journalism. I had a meeting with an editor after I wrote an article.

And I didn't know what the meeting was for. And he was kind of an alcoholic. He was like on his second or third martini at lunch. And he basically said, Robert, you're not a good writer. You're not going to make it in this world. You go to business school. You're not disciplined. You're all over the place.

You don't understand your audience. Right. And so I could have like said, fuck you. I could have stayed in journalism. I'd probably be dead by now. I'd probably be an alcoholic because it wasn't right. But I listened to it and I go, you know, there's something true there. It isn't right.

It isn't a good fit. I'm hitting against a wall. I've got to get out and I've got to try something else. But if you don't know who you are, if you don't know what marked you as a weird person when you were a child, then you're lost in life. You have no radar. One thing that I tell people all the time is I ask them,

what's the form of pain that you enjoy that most people can't tolerate, right? Like it's... And you don't mean like in a kinky way. No, not in a kinky way. Not, not... Could be. Yeah, well, you know, we don't judge here at the solar podcast, but... Just want to clear that up.

Yeah. Keep it a PG-13, Robert. Sorry. What is the challenge or struggle that you kind of... You kind of, you know, like I know for me, and I imagine it's similar for you, like when I'm in the hole with a book, when I'm like just deep, deep deep in a mess of a draft and I'm like agonizing through it, I'm laying awake at night. Yeah, you know what I'm talking. Right now. You know what I'm talking about. There's still kind of a sick part of me that like likes it.

Yeah. Like there's something thrilling about it. Yeah. And, and I think most people, they can't stomach it. Whereas like in music school, like, I remember the moment I decided to drop out of music school. I remember I was practicing four to six hours a day. What did you play? Guitar.

So I was practicing four to six hours a day on top of all my classes. And I remember I went into one of my private tutors and tried to play a song for him. And he just looked at me and he's like, you know what your problem is? You don't practice enough. and like that was the moment I was like I'm done I like I can't and was the practice painful but not in a good way

correct correct it was it was drudgery yeah and it to me that was a very profound lesson you know because I loved performing and I loved getting attention because I could play some song or some solo but I didn't like practicing and music is actually practicing.

It's all practicing. It's 99% practice, 1% performance, right? So it was a very painful lesson of like, you think you like this, but you don't actually like it. Wow, that's very interesting. Yeah.

Well, you know, when you love something, when you really are, when you have that connection like I'm talking about, then the practice, you enjoy it, you enjoy learning. Yes. Because you enjoy the process of getting better and you can feel your brain kind of tingling

and things are happening inside. And I tell people, if you have found the right path, if you are like an artist or creative, and you feel frustrated and you feel blocked, that's a good thing, right? That little bit of pain, a little bit of frustration, it's often a signal that you're actually on the verge of turning into the right direction. You know, it's a signal that things aren't quite working out

and you're listening to it. But if you get anxious and you don't listen to the frustration and you can't be creative, you can't go into it. But you'll learn at a much higher rate and you'll enjoy. Because anything, as I said in mastery, everything involves a degree of pain, a degree of practice, a degree of drudgery. Yeah. There's nothing that's going to come easy in life. So anything is skill that you're going to learn, it's going to involve that.

And if you're not connected to it in a deep, way like you weren't with music, you're never going to get, you're never going to learn fast enough. You know, and you're just going to drive you going to burn out too early. Yeah. What about, Robert, what about reconnecting with that life task and going back and finding that? Because I think you talk about a lot of the negative signs. Yeah. I think people can get stuck. Everything is just a negative sign.

They're like, and they completely forget. Mark, you said that you got disconnected from that at one point. And you kind of, by chance, stumbled back into it. Robert, it sounds like you kind of always knew you wanted to be a writer of some kind. I feel a lot of people who just, they feel like they don't even know what that is to begin with. So can you talk a little bit more about like uncovering that, that connection to your life task? Well, it's a good. It's a good question because a lot of people, they only know the negative.

They only know. And then you kind of beat up on yourself and then you start doubting yourself and you think, well, maybe there's nothing that I'm really good at. Maybe I just need to go make a lot of money, which I'm not against making money. I'm not telling people to say, oh, I meant to be a poet, which you can't make a living off of. You have to be able to put food on the table if you're supporting a family, et cetera. So being able to make a living is important, right? But you don't have to compromise completely in that. So finding that positive element.

Well, the first thing you have to do is it's a process. And people are so impatient. They are so unused to being to introspecting. And being able to introspecting is a very important. a very, very powerful tool. And what that means is you have to be able to examine yourself. And in our culture, we're so outer directed, we're so directed towards what other people are doing to the social world that the idea of who am I, what was I like as a child,

what do I really love, is alien to people. I can't understand it because I've always, I'm a very introspective person. But a lot of people have a hard time with that concept. And I encounter that when I try and counsel them. So I tell people, you have to be patient. It's not going to come in a light and it's not a flash of, wow, I was meant to be a sculptor. Here where I go. Right.

So you've got to be patient. You've got to take a book and you have to make a journal. You know, I think it works for a lot of people. And you have to start going through this process. And I tell people, look for the signs of things that excited you, that excite you in a way that you can't even really control. because we live in a culture that is so damn rational. Everything is an algorithm. Everything is generated by data.

But this is a feel. This is not data. This is a feel. This is an intuition. This is something that excites you in an intuitive way. And there's no algorithm in the world that I could invent or any genius could invent to help you find that. It's a feel.

It's subtle. It's inside of you. But if you can't go inside of yourself, If you're so not into looking into who you are, all the advice in the world will be useless. And I tell people that I can't help you unless you're willing to go through that process. And some of that examining is tough. Some of it is, yeah, I had a rough childhood. Yeah, I had these fantasies, but they weren't necessarily positive.

You're going to come upon negative things, you know. And I had a lot of negative things in my childhood, too. So you have to be willing to go through that digging. You're like an archaeologist with your own past. You're digging in there looking for the signs. And they're there. When you were five years old, four years old, you were naturally excited by certain things.

The other thing I tell people is, we've got to get away from this idea of intelligence as just being intellectual. There's a book I recommend a lot of people. I've probably over-recommended it by Howard Gardner. called the five frames of intelligence. I'm probably always misquoting, but it's something like that.

You'll find it. And he's basically a neuroscientist. He's a scientist of some sort. And he said there are five forms of intelligence. There's kind of a mathematical intelligence that's to do with patterns often related to music. There's a social intelligence that has to deal with dealing with people. There is kinetic intelligence, which is moving the body, right?

sports or dance or whatever. There's word intelligence. There's that kind. There's another one. I can't remember what it is. Imagery or something like that. Every brain has that natural inclination towards one of these intelligences, right?

And you have that as well. I compare it to like a grain that's inside of you and that you have to move with that grain. You have to find it. And it's one of these forms of intelligence. You have it. Yes, you can have two. But if you have two or three, it starts, I don't know, you're going to get a little bit lost.

You're a polymath and that maybe you're a genius or maybe you're just confused. But you've got to find that one thing, right? And if it's sports, if it's dance, that's intelligence. Kobe Bryant, my idol, because I love basketball, he is as intelligent as he's a Michelangelo on the basketball court, you know. It's intelligence. parents like to say, well, no, you've got to go to law school, you've got to be this, you've got to be an academic, and blah, blah, blah. No, it's whatever is that grain of your brain that is natural.

You've got to find that. And so don't think in terms of, I want to be this specific job or whatever, think in terms of what is that natural form that my brain is veers towards. And now, if you know that you're somebody who has a mathematical, abstract, mechanical like brain, right? Let's go into that. Let's go deeper. Now let's find if you're an engineer or if you're a musician or okay, but you've got to go back and you've got to dig. I could go on for hours about some of the process that I go through people. That should give you an idea of some of the positive things that you can do. Yeah, but it is a process. That's what I like about it. It's not

the lightning bolt, like you said. It's not. No. And it also never completely ends. It's not like, no, for sure. You don't just like find the thing and you're like, cool, I'm set. Like there's every five, 10 years, something happens in your life or you evolve or you change a little bit or your preferences change, you know, so it's a perpetual thing for sure. You know, some people like, they get tired of the thing they've been doing for 10, 15, 20 years and then they go try something different. And I often counsel, you don't want to go like, you know, you're a writer and now, oh, no, I'm going to be like, I don't know, choose something totally irrelevant from that, whatever.

grammar or something. Yeah. Okay. That's not, you should, you should go off in a different direction within writing or something. Right. And so you get bored. And the boredom either means I've got to change my job or it means I have to change something within my job. And I prefer the something within my job.

So how I personally deal with it is, every book that I write is on a completely different subject. I never repeat the same book twice. I'm onto something that is not the book I'm writing now, people are going to be shocked because it's completely different from anything I've ever written. So I don't get bored. I'm constantly challenging myself. Yeah, yeah. Cool.

We will be right back. All right, we're back. So, Robert, we do a segment that Drew and I love called Brilliant or Bullshit, which is we take recent scientific research, surveys, new theories, things that have kind of become popular. become talked about. And we discuss whether we think it's brilliant or whether it's bullshit. So we want to include you on this round. We want to hear your opinion. We have something selected. Yes, for this brilliant or bullshit. Robert, we're talking about Peter Pan's syndrome. Now, there's a lot of talk about how men are checking out. They're not getting jobs, not getting

educated, not committing to long-term relationships. City at home, playing video games, watching porn. Playing video games, vaping, watching porn. Yeah. there's a female version of it too called the Cendoral syndrome, but it's the Peter Pan syndrome is really the in the zeitgeist more and more. And actually there are some recent studies that are trying to quantify this and label it a, I wouldn't say diagnosable syndrome, but they do call it a syndrome. And they suggest therapy for it. What I would like to ask you, first of all, do you think calling it a syndrome is brilliant

or bullshit? I think I know what you would think about that. But what do you think the main drivers really are? Is there a problem of prolonged adolescence or the drivers of that prolonged adolescence? Should we be, um, therapeutizing it so much too? Well, you know, um, syndrome, yeah, that's a bit of bullshit. It's a bit like people like to talk about things these days because everybody's an individual. Everybody has their own childhood, their own background, their own reasons for wanting to stay in adolescence.

And there are plenty of people in my generation, particularly in my generation who got stuck in adolescence and are still stuck there. So it's not necessarily endemic just to Gen Z. It's a phenomenon that has existed. I'm not saying forever, certainly not. But since the reign of popular culture, probably since the 1950s, the Peter Pan phenomenon has become more and more pronounced. And what was the second part of the question?

What do you think is driving it? Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. Well, I mean, as I said, everybody's going to be different. I know that's not a good answer. answer for you. But I think a lot of it is it's a very strange time to be a male, to be a boy, to be a man. It's very confusing time. And so I think that's a lot of the source of it. Because when I was growing up, I'm sounding like I'm 100 years old to me. When I was 30,

I hated hearing that stupid ass expression when I walked 12 miles to school in the snow. Yeah. Anyway, you know, there was this being a male was obviously positive because it was very male oriented culture. But, you know, there was no sense of confusion about it really, although some people were confused. And there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, there were icons in sports, in movies, you know, the kind of the rugged masculine hero. But in all aspects of life, you know, I remember as a kid, I'm so old that as a three-year-old, I can remember John F. Kennedy on the television. You know, that got, that I was fascinated by him.

I thought that this was, it was a man who was very commanding, he was the president, but there was also a weird kind of softness to him, like a strange poetic side to it. I drew me in. There were these icons. And so you didn't feel, you wanted to grow up. out of adolescence, you wanted to become a man, you wanted to enter the world and kind of follow in the footsteps of some of these people that you admired. But now it's like being man or being a male, being a masculine, it's almost ugly, it's dirty. It's almost like something you have to wipe off your skin. Ew, you know, toxic masculinity. But, you know, there's something you have to say

about testosterone. It can turn ugly, but it drives you. It makes you do things. It's got a positive element. It gives you ambition. It makes you go out and do things. Twelve thousand years ago, it made you go hunt mastodons and kill them with your other members, right? This should be positive things about being a man. And so then I don't want to stay in adolescence. I don't want to stay in this little cocoon with my mommy and my daddy and my home playing games. I want to go out in the world. I want to conquer. I want to have ambition. I think the root of the problem is that there's no. kind of positive masculinity out there. And so it doesn't give people an incentive to get out of that

little kind of adolescent cocoon, right? I agree 100%. It's funny, we were joking around about Dr. Kay at the beginning of the show. Oh, yeah. I think one of the reasons why he's become so popular is there's this whole demographic of young men who are kind of checked out and they're playing video games all day and he's one of the only popular mental health voices that's speaking directly to them saying, hey, you're playing too many video games. Let's talk about it. How can, like, how can we get you back out in the world? I definitely see, you know, a big portion of my audience is younger men. I definitely have noticed this over recent years and I'm becoming a little alarm by it. I agree that there's, there's a lack of clear role models. There's a lack of, there's

There's not a roadmap, right? Like, it's not obvious to a 17-year-old male who to be, who they want to grow into, right? And that's difficult and confusing. And then I think the ease of checking out today is... Exactly. Is so much easy. I mean, I struggle. I mean, I'll download a game on my phone and I'll be lost for two hours, right?

Still? Yeah, it's tough, man. So it's like... And I've got a... fully developed prefrontal cortex. Like, imagine an 18-year-old. Like, he's fucked. So it's, it's, um, I really, really sympathize, um, with a lot of the young guys today.

And, and it's, I definitely see it as a problem. It does seem to be a growing problem. The syndrome thing makes me uncomfortable. And I, I'm curious what your thoughts are on, on kind of this. There seems to be a little bit of a recent tendency to like medicalize everything. Yeah. And, uh, especially. things that were just kind of not normal behavior, but not necessarily abnormal behavior,

say 20 or 30 years ago either. Like what? Like a Peter Pan syndrome. Like when I was, I remember when I was in college, me and my friends, we used to go out with this guy who was around, he was a divorce guy around 50. A ton of fun. Awesome dude. And we used to go out in the parties and clubs with him.

And we used to joke like, oh, yeah, it's Peter Pan over there. You know? But he was, you know, he was in this phase of his life. He'd just gotten out of a marriage and, you know, he was. Well, you can be a functional Peter Pan. Totally. There are a lot of people out there who are, you know. People like Bill Clinton was a functional Peter Pan.

Yeah. I see them all the time. It's the boomer generation. I'm a little bit younger than that. Yeah. It was full of very functional Peter Pan. I'm a functional Peter Pan. Very true.

It's very true. I sound accused of the same as well, yeah. So, I mean, well, this is a. Exactly my point, right? Is that until, I guess, a few years ago, this was just kind of like something that you would casually talk about in conversation or like, oh, yeah, he's a bit of a Peter Pan, you know, he still goes up the clubs and he's 50. Yeah, there's researchers now. But now there's a syndrome. Have a syndrome.

Social problem. They're making recommendations to therapists. Are they actually, like, medicating people for this? No. No, not that I know of yet. The paper that kind of operationalized this as an actual psychological phenomenon, you know, is in 2021. and they don't give any recommendations for like medications or anything like that, but they do say therapists who are seeing this all around the world should be aware of it.

And to me, that just I'm not sure about that. Yeah, I mean, we can't send all of our kids to therapists, you know, and also, you know, it's like there's too much talking going on in this culture and not enough acting. I fucking love that. I just want to like tape that clip. That's the episode. There's too much talking. It's,

I know where you're going with it. It's so true. Sorry, continue. No, no, but sometimes you just got to get off your ass and you got to act. You got to do things in this world.

And that's the best therapy in the world. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So I make the analogy in, in my book and in some of my talks that I see. see the power and the life out there in our work world as a game. It is a power game, and I frame it that way.

And you're maneuvering. You're constantly maneuvering. It's this fluid game that you're playing where the parameters nobody really sets. The rules aren't very clear cut, but there are certain laws, laws of power that you can operate to get ahead. It's the most amazing game you can ever play, and you should enjoy it. You should have fun. Well, you know, let's start talking about things like that.

Like life is a game. Get out there and be active. You know, when it comes to dating, stop all this bullshit with your phone. Go out to bars. Go to supermarkets. Learn how to pick up on women. Learn how to get over your fears and actually interact with them. So start acting and stop talking and stop over-analyzing things, but actually act in the world.

That's, to me, the greatest therapy in the world. I, I, I, I, I, as someone who for better or worse, kind of operates within the self-help industry, this is, this is, this is my personal pet peeve. It's the thing that drives me insane is, is there's seems to be, there's so much emphasis put on awareness. Like, let's be aware of our problems. Let's be aware of our emotional issues. Let's be aware of our mental health problem. You know, and it's it's people treat that as an end of it in itself. Like, well, the fact that we're sitting around. talking about our trauma and our baggage, you know, we're doing the work. They even call it that, doing the work. And I'm with you. I'm like, okay, that's great. We can talk until we're blue in the face, but until you actually go and behave differently, until your behavior has shifted in some tangible way, what is it, what is it meant? What are we doing? Well, I don't know if I can remember it exactly right, because it's about a chapter I was writing just a few months ago and I've already forgotten it. But there was a psychologist professor at UCLA named Schwartz. I forget its

first name. His study was OCD, right? And this is back in the 80s when people were first calling it a syndrome. And so much of the therapy was a talking therapy, right? And giving them these certain ideas about, let's talk about, let's figure it out. He came up with these action strategies. He literally had you go out and do things that were your biggest. fear because OCD is all about fear, right? So if you're afraid of germs, go out and rub your hand in some dirt or whatever. He had them do this over time. He took brain scans and their brains were literally changing. The brain was rewiring itself through these action strategies. So when you take action, your brain changes. It adapts. That's how the human brain is.

But if you're always internal, if you're just talking about things, none of that stuff is going on because it's not how our brains are wired. Yeah. And I feel like the danger in it is that it can, like, let's say you and I have a very profound conversation. It gives you the illusion that something has changed. Yeah. Even though we're still sitting in the same damn couch.

Yeah. Doing the exact same thing we were doing 30 minutes ago, right? And so I see that all the time, that so much of this industry is just built around giving people the sensation of having a change happen without any necessary behavior shifting. I'm going through something similar to you, like questioning and wondering about the self-help thing and whether I'm just part of that problem as well, whether I'm just a bunch of words. But I think that at least I know that my approach is to give people maps on how to act.

And I'm very much against over-analyzing and talking. talking things to death. Yeah. Talking is necessary, but not sufficient. No, definitely not. Yeah, for sure. Great. All right, we solved Peter Pan syndrome.

We'll be right back. And we're back. All right, we've got, we've got questions for Robert. We do. But we do. We have some listener questions. This one actually came in from Spotify. And Mark and I recently did an episode on behavioral change.

And there was this big study where some psychologists just came up with all these interventions to get people to go to the gym more, and it turns out they were terrible at it. Who was terrible at it? The psychologists were terrible at coming up with these interventions that would work. And we got a question in response to this

that I think was a really good one for you, Robert. It comes from Ian, who says, as bad as modern psychology is at helping people, is our current best bet given that it's at least based on science, or is this a wrong approach given that science doesn't tell us what's right and wrong, and we should instead turn to things like timeless philosophy.

Basically, the question is, is like, what's the value of science and behavioral intervention specifically in our lives? You mentioned a little bit already that you were skeptical of, oh, we need all this data to make a decision, or we need some sort of guidance from above to help us make these decisions. What's your take on this? Well, I mean, is it related to something like going to the gym or exercising or what? what is it in relation to? That was what the question was, but I think the larger question is, how much should we lean on science or, you know, the behavioral science academia in general, I think, for improving our lives? Well, I'm old school.

You know, I'm an old guy. Let's let's call spade a spade here. And I think it's bullshit. I mean, look, what happens with big data and with algorithms, and we've seen it with Facebook early on is, you think that you're accumulating big data about how people actually are, but what you're actually doing is you're changing who people are. You're changing their behavior because now you're feeding them the very algorithms that you think that they are that involve their behavior.

And then you're turning them into lemmings. Everyone heard. Everyone's now going to be responding the same way. But you're an individual. It all starts with who you are as a human being, as an individual. born into your body with your parents, with your background, with your genetics, okay? Big data doesn't have anything to do with it. Doesn't know what that is.

AI can't possibly see into that. So I'm more of the timeless wisdom type person, but I really think you have to know who you are in a gut way. And we're talking about awareness and talking. And talking has its value, as we were saying, as we were talking. but there's also this very important gut element of knowing what, you know, what makes you different, what motivates you, what you were meant to accomplish, what you hate, what you love. And if you're constantly looking for science and big data and algorithms to solve all your problems, well, you're not because you're running away from the only source of your,

of your salvation, which is you as an individual. I'm going to sound like a nutty preacher. We do not have enough individuals in this world. We do not have enough weirdos. We do not have enough people who are happy to be unique and different. And no amount of AI, in fact, all of that stuff is turning you into just a glob, a big social glob on social media where everybody is the same. Everybody is told to respond like little mice to this algorithm to this algorithm.

And we're turning into something that's not human. Yeah. So I'll shut up, but that's sort of my answer. We'll take your soapbox away now. No, I sympathize with this a lot. It's interesting, early in my career, my career kind of began around the confluence of positive psychology. There was this whole movement in the 2000s of positive psychology where a lot of psychologists felt like they were able to quantify happiness and deduce exactly which practices led you to. to be happier and feel more fulfilled in your life. And, you know, I was young. I was naive. I

bought fully into it, hook, line, and sinker. I wrote tons of articles around positive psychology research and everything. And it's been interesting because over the past 10 years or so, something like 80% of those studies don't replicate. Like they don't, like they're insufficient sample sizes. They can't be reproduced in other studies. And so we're kind of back to square one. of like, oh, actually we don't know what makes us happy. And we don't know how much willpower we have. And we don't know how much motivation is external versus internal. And like it's it's giving me a much deeper, more profound appreciation for the timeless things.

Yeah. You know, the simple principles, whether it's the Stoics or the Buddhists or the Christians, like, if it's been around for 2,000 years, there's probably something to it. And so we should maybe put a little bit more with that. Well, I mean, if you think about, I tell people this all the time, if you think about 2000, if you only go back 200 years ago, I like to go back to the world of the writer Jane Austen in like the 1810s. You have no internet. You have no television. You have no radio.

You have no. Your only form of entertainment is people. So you're constantly interacting with people day in and day out. That's your only salvation. It's the only thing you have to distract you from the misery of your life. life, right? So people become these incredible observers, right? And then they write about it. I'm not saying everybody, but the great philosophers, the thinkers, the writers, the novelists. They're so keyed into people and who they are that they see things that we're no longer capable of seeing

because we're so this oriented, right? We're not human. As I said, we're not so human anymore. So that's why someone like Plato or Socrates could have this timeless wisdom, because they're wandering around in their sandals and togas, just constantly interacting with other people, thinking about issues that we don't think about anymore because we take everything for granted. We've lost our sense of wonder. So, yeah, look, I studied classics, ancient Greek and Latin. That's my world. I find when I read something from that time, I feel like I'm traveling to another planet.

I'm so amazed. I'm so astounded by what their insights, what they're saying, what they're talking about humans, about our senses, about what it just means to be alive. So, God, I'm losing track of what our questions. I love it. Science versus philosophy, science versus wisdom, data versus wisdom. It sounds like we're all team wisdom. Yeah, but going back to what you said about we need more individuals.

I think I found this in myself when I was, I studied psychology. I studied. I was in academia for a little while, too. And so I got very much, I was like, yes, everything should be data driven. And for the longest time, you know, for instance, Mark mentioned willpower. How much willpower do we have? Well, we thought this was this little finite resource that we had to like parcel out and distribute throughout our lives in strategic ways. Well, it turns out if you believe that you don't have a lot of willpower, you probably don't. And I see this over and over and over again. I'm going down the laundry list of things that I believe for so long. I'm extranic and intrinsic and intrinsic. motivation. That could be complete bullshit too. I'm externally motivated by a lot of things. Is that such a bad thing? No, it's not. It reminds me, there's so much like recursive stuff in psychology. It reminds me of a there's a great one-liner from the comedian, Emo Phillips, where he said, he said, I used to think the brain was the most amazing thing in the universe. Then I remembered who was telling me that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but I mean, a hundred years ago, there was this, or more than a hundred years, this man named William James, a psychologist. Oh, yes. Big fans. He wrote things about willpower that blow all of this bullshit in our culture now out of the water. He nailed it perfectly.

If you want to understand will and the power that you have through your willpower, go read William James and throw all those studies out. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Here, here. What else do we got? Yes, we do have some more questions. So these came in. We asked people to ask you questions.

Yeah. One of them would kind of get out through the true self one. What is your recommended process to get back to one's true self after getting lost, exhausted, and cynical and midlife? 40 laws came out when you were like 38 or 9, right? 39. Yeah, so you were older. We have a lot of people like, I'm 35, my life is over. What do I do?

I felt that way pretty much too when I was 35. Sure. Well, you know, as I said, everyone's different. And I don't know where this person comes from. but hopefully in that period up until your age of 35, you have done something with your life. You have learned some skills. You have followed some kind of career path.

It just wasn't the right one, okay? But you can't just junk all of that and suddenly start over. You have to build from what you already have, right? It's kind of an organic process. You can't just suddenly start from a blank slate and say, I'm going to go completely redraw the course of my life. You're setting yourself up for a misery because it's not how the world works. You have a brain.

It has developed certain things. It has functioned in a certain way and it has accumulated some level of skill. So where can we apply that skill that fits you better? So when you're 22, 23, that process that we went through earlier on, it fits more. But now you're 35, you're 36. It's a different process. And if you're 50, it's even more different process. If you're 70, I don't think there is any process anymore.

I think it's open. But I try to see in the seeds of who you are, the 35-year-old, where it went wrong. And so I like to go back to people and sort of go back where they felt like they made a wrong turn. And often where they made a wrong turn was they decided on a career either because it was money, and they needed the money, or because people told them that this is what they should go into, right? Like your parents. Yeah.

A lot of people who end up becoming lawyers, I don't mean to pick on lawyers because we need lawyers, obviously. But they go into law school for that purpose to make money. And then they kind of burn out because law, certain kinds of law just are so repetitive. And after you turn 35, what shit, I'm trapped in this thing. It's so bored.

So turned out. So we've got to go back and figure out where you made your wrong turn. And often it's because you listen to someone else or you grab for money. All right? So you grab for money because you're anxious. You feel like you don't know if you're going to make it in this world. You need that. You need to eat and you're worried about your future and your career.

Okay. So if you're 35 and you made a wrong turn and you still have that anxiety about making money, We have to prescribe something that fits you. I don't like telling people to do things that are going to ruin, they're going to make them miserable, or that can potentially really screw up their future. I'm very sensitive to that. So if money is very important to you,

we have to take that path that you're on, and we have to deviate it a little bit in a slightly different direction. And I talk to people about that, and we go back into their childhood, we go back into things that indicate more of where they would like to be. and even if you're like flipping burgers at in and out, there's going to be some other path slightly different from that that will still be better than where you are right now.

Okay. So if the money thing isn't so important, if you're not so anxious, then we have a little bit more latitude to explore and go into something that deviation does have to be like this. It can be more like that, but it can't be like this. Yeah.

Okay. So everything depends. depends on who you are, your psychology. And your level of anxiety plays a very important role in this, because making these changes can be very frightening. I once had some guy who was in his mid-20s, who was basically trapped at a terrible job, kind of like a fast food-type job.

And I was very sensitive. He had a wife and some kids. And I said, all right, we figured out what he really wanted, what he was really excited about, which was great, because otherwise you never do figure that out. And I said,

don't quit your job, but I want you to start studying this new field on the internet, absorbing it at night in the one or two hours that you have free. And then I want you to go to night school and spend maybe work four days a week and spend some time there. You still can pay your bills and go to night. school, he said just the thought of doing that made him feel a thousand times better, that there

was some kind of hope that there was a path. Yeah. Right. So you've got to be, I've got to work with the individual and where they are, you know, and deal with the anxiety about making a living. Yeah. Totally. One thing for sure is I think people definitely underestimate how much a small shift.

I think it's when they feel emotionally overwhelmed, because the emotion is so all-encompassing, they assume that they just have to throw everything out and start over from scratch. Whereas it's like if you just shift a couple things in the right direction, it's like dominoes. It has like a reverberating effect across your life. It was really interesting, though. We ran a survey maybe three or four months ago on our audience. And one of the questions we asked purely out of curiosity was just what are you struggling with right now? Like what is the biggest struggle in your life?

And it was very interesting among the middle age cohort, say people in their 40s and 50s, one of the most common responses was people saying, I have a great career. I've got a great family, great spouse. Is this it? I kind of want to just disappear and go to Tahiti and start over. Like they kind of had a little bit of this midlife, this can't be it, right? Like there has to be more. And almost like a little bit of a panic that went on. And I'm curious what your thoughts with somebody like that would be.

Well, my thought is, for those of you out there who are in your 20s, do not get to that point, damn it. Don't ever let that happen to you because it will happen to you and it's terrible. Yeah. It's tragic. Yeah. Right. So don't let that happen.

Yeah. Figure it out before then. But some of it is like unrealistic. Yeah. I mean, if you're in your mid 40s and you've got all these things that you said, maybe you have to find, maybe you have to kind of accept it and find some beauty in it. Now, this will sound completely irrelevant. and off track here.

But six years ago, I suffered a stroke, right? And prior to that stroke, I was somebody that swam every third day, rode a mountain bike up into the hills and hiked and other things. I was just very active because it was my main way of distressing. Overnight, all of that is taken away from me, right? I can't walk, I can't hike, I can't swim. I can't take even a simple walk. I'm not trying to get pity, but I'm saying, you know, it's, I had to go through, I had to adapt.

Yeah. And what I had to do is I meditate every day. And I had to go through this process and I'm writing a book right now. And I had to find what is beautiful, without being cliched or polyanish about it, what is beautiful about my life as it is. These are my circumstances. This is, you know, if I was punished or whatever happened, it happened. It's just who I am now. I am this person who can't walk.

That's who I am. But I'm still able to think. I'm still able to write books. I'm still able to find beauty in my limited world. Yes, I wish I was an athlete. Yes, I wish I could do the things I did before. That doesn't help me at all. So my advice to someone maybe in that era is become a little more zen and find a little bit more of the beauty in your life as it is.

And don't be thinking that there's some golden ring out there that at 45, 48, some hot model that you can run off to with Tadhi and start over and, you know, have new, you know, all the other things. Peter Pan syndrome. Yeah. There's definitely, there's a connection there for sure. You could almost say, like, to a certain degree, maturity is the acceptance of your own limitedness, I think. Yeah. You know. I mean, you can get too accepting.

Yeah, that's true. You can get complacent, which is different. Yeah. Yeah. No, we've talked about a lot about that, though. I think there's a gratitude piece in that where acknowledging just your existence is a miracle, first of all. Yeah. And I've leaned, the older I get, the more the simple things around me are very much.

Like, this is amazing. There's literally, now it's going to sound like I'm gloating, but there are literally days where I'm like, I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet. Well, you are. You are. Yeah. That's the subject of my life. A new book, by the way. Oh, it is.

Okay. Oh, we outed you. Okay. Yeah. Good. Luck or gratitude? No, neither. It's about...

Drew Bernie. That would be shocking. The biography, the unauthorized biography of Drew Bernie. Everybody would be shocked by that. No, it's a book about the sublime. Ah. Yeah, that's it. That's the word I want.

Nice. Yeah. So, you know, I'm trying to say, I have a chapter called, awakened to the strangeness of being alive. And so, like, being alive is a very strange thing. That's so weird. You know? It's so weird.

To think that in this vast universe, there's life here on this one tiny little, little thing in this vast ocean of darkness. And we're here. And do you know the chances of your parents ever coming together and reproducing each room? you can never calculate it. It's impossible because, you know, your parents met on some quirk of fate, right? And they may have never met. Multiply that by 70,000, all the generations that went prior to them meeting. Yes, maybe a tiny little part of you might have been born if that had gone off 70,000 years ago differently. But it wouldn't be you at all. Who you are is the strangest thing you could possibly think of. So it's a book about triggering those kinds of thoughts and people about everything around them.

Because for me, writing that book is like live or die. I don't start thinking like that. I'm just going to get so goddamn depressed. I'll kill myself. I have to think about these things, you know. Well, there were several questions people asking, when is the next book coming out? So when is that book coming out? Every author's favorite question.

Yeah, I know. It's the worst question ever. You know, you know. But people want to know, though. Sounds like you're in the midst the throes of writing it. There are 12 chapters. I'm on chapter 10. Okay.

Okay. And I was hoping you'd be out next year, but I won't, I'm not getting my act together. No promises, yeah. So 2026. Okay. It'll be out in two years. Okay. If I don't die before then.

But if I die, they'll still be able to get the book out because I have enough of it out, finished. Okay. Well, we'll look forward to it. We'll have you back. We'll sit and bask in the miracle of life. together. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to that one.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a weird book. It's like, my wife says it's kind of like taking drugs without drugs. Yes. It's funny because when we were sitting here talking about how weird life was,

I was like, man, we sound like a bunch of stone kids in a college door. Isn't it so weird we're alive? That's the kind of thing that you, yeah, I remember seeing that thing I did smoke some pot. Yeah,

we did not drop any acid for this episode. Yeah, This was a sober episode. Yeah, maybe we should. Maybe we should. Maybe next time. That's the next one. Next time. All right.

Thank you so much, Robert. Thank you, Mark. I was a pleasure. It was a great time. Thank you. 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.