SOLVED with Mark Manson - Solved, Highlights: How to Find Your Values

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

If you’ve ever felt stuck, or like you’re doing all the right things but something still feels off, there’s a good chance it’s a values problem. Not a discipline problem, not a productivity problem. A values problem. Most people have never actually sat down and figured out what they care about. Not really anyway. This clip is from our episode How to Find and Live By Your Values, which came out back in May 2025 and is honestly one of the episodes I’m most proud of. Drew and I go through a bunch of exercises to help you actually figure out what you value, not what you think you’re supposed to value.  We cover things like: How to identify your core values with a simple hypothetical scenario. How to clearly define what you want your legacy to be Ways to prioritize your values by making tough decisions. How to turn frustrations into your deepest values. Why the hierarchy of your values is more critical than any single one of them. And why your willingness to sacrifice for something says a lot more about you than just what you think you want in life. • Listen to the full Values episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5pdYVl60TqKLNAwKgFdk0C?si=0aa34991b49f4fcc • Get your FREE five-day mini course: https://www.solvedpodcast.com/values-mini-course • Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get 7 days free at ⁠⁠https://www.purpose.app Follow Mark Mark’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season or any season.

Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Hey, everybody, Mark here. If you've ever felt stuck or like you're doing all the right things, but something still feels off, there's a good chance it's a values problem. Not a discipline problem and not a productivity problem, but a values problem. Most people have never sat down and figured out what they actually give a fuck about.

This clip is from our episode, How to Find and Live By Your Values, which came out way back in May of 2025 and is honestly one of the episodes that I am most proud of. Drew and I go through a bunch of exercises to help you actually figure out what you value not what you think you're supposed to value. We cover things like how to identify your core values with a simple hypothetical scenario. How to clearly define what you want your legacy to be,

ways to prioritize your values by making tough decisions, how to turn frustrations into your deepest values, why the hierarchy of your values is more critical than any single one of them, and why your willingness to sacrifice for something says a lot more about you than just what you think you want, life. If you want the full episode, it's in your feed. And if you want to take this further, I built a free five-day values mini-course.

Over five days, you'll learn what values actually are, how they shape every decision you make, how they change over time, and how to figure out whether yours are serving you or holding you back. It's free, it's only five days, and it might be one of the most useful things that you do this month. So go to Solvpodcast.com slash values slash mini-dash course or grab the link in the show notes. We're going to start with something called the Desert Island Visualization. One of the things that I find is really clarifying for people is that like a lot of people, you know, we talked earlier about how there's like a murky line between what our values are and what the people's values around us are and how do we know that we're actually doing something for ourselves versus just doing something to please other people. And so I think one of the one of the kind of the initial useful exercises is simply practicing a thought experiment of like removing those social pressures. So the simple version of this is that imagine you're on a desert island.

And the desert island is absolutely abundant. So it's everything you could ever want materially is there, any like video games you enjoy or hobbies you might have or different foods that you might want. Like hypothetically, you are capable of doing anything on this island that you can do off of the island. Okay. But you're alone on the island. And so the question is, what do you spend your time doing? Oh. Are you reading?

Are you watching TV? are you painting? Are you making music? Are you learning a new skill? Are you studying a language? Are you like, what are you doing? Yeah. Right?

What would you do? When you said reading, I was like, oh, I'd definitely bring a bunch of books because I just, I love that. I think I would, I still think I would work out. I actually think I would. Even though I think I started working out to look good for other people, but I still think I would because I feel so good about it. Yeah. So I think I would definitely still work on my health because even if you're alone,

there's a lot of value with that. Yeah. And yeah, I would explore all sorts of creative stuff too, just anything and everything. If nothing mattered, if nobody, there was no social pressure around to judge my work or anything like that, I think I would go nuts with that, yeah, in an ideal world. Those are the top of mind for me anyway. What comes to mind for you first? It's funny because I don't think my life would be that different. Oh.

Oh, Mark. Wow. That's a total, yeah, that's a huge flex. I should say that in a lot of these exercises, that is kind of the ideal response. Right, right. Yeah. Because it's like if I was alone on a desert island, I would probably spend most of my time reading and writing and playing video games, which is basically what I spend my time doing now.

So running on the beach, which I also do now. So that's the goal. That's the goal is that you, if there is a large discrepancy, if like all the things you would do on the island have nothing. to do with what you're doing in your day-to-day life, that's a sign. Okay. That's a sign that a lot of what you're prioritizing in your life are not actually your values. It's the values of the people around you.

Okay. Another useful exercise is to imagine your funeral. This is almost kind of the opposite of the Desert Island exercise because this is, this kind of reintroduces the social pressure, but it's also asking yourself, what do you want to be known to other people for? It removes you from it. It removes yourself from it. Exactly.

So the second exercise is imagine yourself at your funeral and what do you wish people would say for your eulogy? What do you wish that people would say about you if you died? Yeah. Mine is, I hope they say he gave more than he took. That's, I think I've heard that something. That sounds like a Gary V thing or something. I don't know. But that really rings true to me.

I hope everybody says, yeah, he gave more than he took. That's like the core of benevolence. Yeah, yeah. Like all the way through. That was an easy one for me. Like that one came to me right away. And I was like, okay, I hope I'm living that out too. And I feel like I am.

So there again, I think I'm in alignment with that, which is good. It's funny. I'm trying to think, actually kind of having a hard time with this. Yeah. I was about to make a joke of like, I don't have friends or I don't like people. I don't want you at my. Like anyone. Yeah, I don't want you at my funeral.

Don't come. You're not invited. Everyone go home. I think what I would want people to say is that that I was authentic and I stood up for what I believed in. And ultimately, I was a net positive force in the world, right? That I gave a shit, essentially. Right. So what's that underlying value then, like a contribution or an...

I think there's some benevolence. I think there's some benevolence in there. Authenticity is definitely... That's kind of the first thing that came to mind. a little bit of self-direct. You know, it's like I did it my way. Right. Like, it was, I wasn't afraid to, like, strike out on my own path and try things differently.

That feels important to me. And then, yeah, the contribution feels important as well. Like, you know, leaving some sort of legacy or. So, okay, what if somebody has the answer to that? I think I'm borrowing from something you wrote one time. Like, he fucked like a wildebeest and I don't know. Had the best golf swing. Yeah.

Yeah, right. Got the wordle them too every time. Yeah. Yeah, well, unless you're Tiger Woods. I doubt that's realistic. So it's a mainstay of the social media account. It goes, nobody's going to stand up at your funeral and say he fucked like a Wildebeest and had the best golf swing I've ever seen. I think the point there is that ultimately when you're dead, you don't really care about impressing people anymore. So what's the value you're really leaving behind? Like what's the statement you're leaving behind? What's the legacy you're leaving behind? I think it's a useful thing to think about. I do think ultimately the things we care about, they should be greater than ourselves in some sense. Like I think our highest values, like the top of the pyramid,

are really things that we should put above ourselves. Yeah, right. Like there's the, that everything we know from the philosophy and psychology kind of states that like that, that is the optimal arrangement. Is that the self is high on the pyramid, but it's not at the top. Right, right.

Yeah. So I think if you are like, if for whatever reason, I don't think very many people would think that. Like, oh, this is what I want people to say, you know, I fucked like oil to be the best golf swing or ever. If those kinds of things are coming to mind, maybe reevaluate that a little bit. Yeah. It's a sign that you're looking for a lot of validation. Yeah. Yeah.

What's another one? This one was very clarifying for me. Look to frustration in your life as clues. to your values as well. What what sets you off? What what what what's your pet peeve that you have? One that comes up over and over and over again. For me, it was just, I see incompetence in the world. And it just, oh, it drives me fucking insane, right? This goes back to my mastery. Like I want environmental mastery or competence in the work you do. I like, I value competent people. I value competence in myself. I expect that in myself and people around me. And when I don't get it, when it's

around me when incompetence is in my environment, oh, it just, it drives me insane. Yeah. But it was, like, when I, when I thought of this exercise, like, that one went straight to it. I was like, yes, that one. You know what the first thing it came to my mind is? It's actually kind of funny. This is similar to this is like my version of the allegory of the taco truck. Okay.

I hate line cutters. Oh, yes. That's another thing. We get it right in the United States. Oh, my God. Everywhere else. Come on, you guys. Like, literally, if you, the.

The, like, if you added up every time I've almost gotten in a fist fight, like 80% of them are because somebody cut in life. Yeah. I fucking hate it, especially when you're at like a concert or something and you're like waiting in line for an hour and somebody just walks right in front of you. Lose my shit. Absolutely lose my shit. I'm always that guy who's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Back, you back, go. Back is the fairness, right?

Yeah. Absolutely comes down. And fairness is a huge thing for me. fairness and fairness justice integrity is like a big thing for me but it's um I do think for me it's fairness is more it's less about equality and it's more about integrity yeah like integrity honesty and integrity like huge things for me the rest of us stood in the line you have to too exactly that's that's how it works exactly and and like the way this plays out in my career is that like I just, I mean, as you know, there's a lot of bullshit in this industry.

There's a lot of shortcuts. There's a lot of things you can say to get some audience or get some money, like a bunch of, you know, little hacks and stuff. Right. Short cuts. Yeah. I can't do it. Yeah. I fucking, I can't do it because it's, it's, if it's not, if I don't honestly believe it's helpful to people, like, I just can't bring myself to say it.

So that's a huge one for me. Okay. Yeah. It's no taco truck, but it's the best I got. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways.

While available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow. The capable Taos, you deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German engineered for all. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the Everyday with Amazon. What else? Okay. Ranking and prioritizing, if you would just put two values up that you're trying to decide between.

I like this. This is like, yeah, yeah, what's that movie, Sophie's choice? You know, where it's like,

I don't think I've seen that movie. Oh, I think it's about a mother who has to choose between two of her kids. Like one, she has to decide which of her two kids dies. Okay. Sounds great. I should really check that movie out. It's just a bundle of fun.

Take the whole family. So I kind of imagine like a Sophie's choice arrangement here with like you put two values, you know, maybe in the gallows and like put a news around their head. Getting a little sick here. But and then you have to like pick one, right? So it's like you have to live the rest. So let's go with like honesty and competency. Okay. So like honesty and competence.

Oh yeah. Gun to your head. You have to live the rest of your life without one of them. Which one do you pick? I'm going with honesty. That was a gut reaction. You'd get rid of honesty. No, no, no.

I would choose it. I would choose it. Yeah, I would get rid of competency, I think. And it would drive me insane. Yes. I would hate it. But I would rather live in an honest world with a bunch of incompetent morons than like a bunch of lying assholes who are highly competent. Yes.

I totally, you know what I just did there? I just made all that up after the fact, too. Yeah, I did the whole, this is the whole John Hight thing, right? That was the writer. Your writer was justifying my elephant there. My gut reaction was honesty, and then I made up a reason for why. Yeah. I'm with you, though, and actually, I think you could actually argue that dishonest competency is like, it's the definition of evil.

It's malignant, yeah, yeah. Right, right? That is, that's like Darth Vader, right? Like, that's, yeah, yeah. Of course, in the real world, we don't have to make those choices, luckily. I mean, sometimes maybe we do we. Or do we. We could be in the Matrix once again.

I mean, have you seen the recent elections? Good point. Fair point. Typically, we don't have to choose between those. Yeah. No, it is an interesting thought experiment of, I mean, you can get yourself in some really ugly situations, right? Like, if you think about, I don't know, like a community versus career achievement, right?

gun your head, you can only have one, which one do you take? I would probably take career achievement, which is not the quote-unquote correct answer, but if I'm being honest, that's what I would take. That's a tough one for me. I don't know. I don't know. I might lean towards more community on that one just because, well, I'm just, I'm making up another. I mean, I think it's the thing you can't think too much about.

I think you're right that it's like the gut reaction there. It's the gut reaction. It's like the first thing that just seems right, you just go with it because that is ultimately like these values exist at a very deep emotional level. This brings up a question I wanted to ask in this section too is how much, how dispositional do you think values are versus aspirational, right? Because I think a lot of these, like when you, when I came down to it and when I was going through like, okay, really decide my values. And I do this every couple of years. Like what am I valuing right now and this and that? It's a gut thing.

It seems like such a gut thing to me. But I don't know how much of that is like, you know, there probably is some mix of genetics and culture and socializing and all of that. How much of these are dispositional versus aspirational? And we'll get to the change part, I guess, changing of value too. But can you aspire to change a value? I don't know. I think you can.

Yeah. You think that, I mean, there's some personality component to it through, though, right? There is. Because, like, for instance, my mom and my sister were both social workers. And they're like both of them like business. just thinking about business kind of drives them nuts. They're just like, oh, whatever, you know. And they're just, both of them have hearts of gold.

And social work makes sense for them. Somebody who's, like, more achievement-based that's going to look at them, like, why would you be a social worker? That's insane. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, there's probably a very dispositional factor that went into that.

There is. So I think you can be aspirational at the margins. Right. I don't think you can wholesale. So let's use the example. I think achievement and community in my life is like a really good example of this, right? So I even if I bullshit you and said community here, because that's the thing that you're supposed to say and, you know, whatever, it does not take a rocket scientist to look at my life over the last 10 years and be like, clearly you value achievement more because you've like just worked like an insane person. You designed your life around it.

Yeah. Right. And like foregone community and connection repeatedly through your choices. That's part of it. But that being said, I can look at my life, like understanding what everything I know about psychology and well-being and human flourishing and whatnot. It's very clear to me that it's like, yeah, I could use more community in my life. Like that would make me a more balanced, better functional person if I like maybe de-indexed

on achievement just a little, like maybe bring the volume knob down from 10 to a 9 and then dial the community up from like a four to a six. Like if that, if I can manage that tradeoff, that's probably overall a beneficial tradeoff in my life, but it's hard, right? So I would say in that sense,

a value can be aspirational, but I don't think you can go from like, I'm trying to think of something like, I genuinely just don't fucking care. So like a formality or proprietary, like we're making the jokes about blazers and stuff, right? Like, if there's anything I just genuinely do give zero fucks about, It is, it is like formality.

Yeah. Like impropriety, social, like social, like I do care about social norms, but like, you know, stuff like you're, you know, when you go to this sort of event, you're supposed to wear your tuxedo like this and always touch this fork first. Like, I don't fucking care. Don't care. Yeah. Never will. I'm with you on that too. I don't care who's princess you are.

I'm going to eat with my. Job titles. I'm from Texas. I'm going to eat with my hands. Yeah. So I don't think I can aspire to start carrying about that. Like, ultimately, if I do aspire to start caring about that, it's probably because it's becoming an instrumental value in something else. I'll give you an example about that.

So we were talking about Tiger Woods earlier. Yeah. I almost had the chance. I had the chance to play golf with Tiger Woods. Oh, okay. And I didn't. Like, unintentionally, I didn't. The hilarious part about this is that I hate golf.

I'm just going to say So the story behind this I was doing Will Smith's book And Will is a good friend of Tigers And Will loves golf He's like fucking obsessed with golf And I was Hanging out with him in Miami

And we were like having dinner or whatever And Will just like very casually Was like hey do you want to play golf tomorrow And I was like no I don't really play He's like oh okay cool And then like Will's manager came over And he's like hey man I think you should go to golf with him

tomorrow. And I was like, dude, I don't play. I'm going to be. And like, I know enough about golf to know that if you don't play golf, you're going to embarrass yourself. And you are going to slow everybody down. Like, you just, you drag the whole game. Right. Like, it just, it makes everybody miserable. And so I was like, no, no, no. I'm like, it's, it's not going to go well. And he was like, he looked at me. He was like, you should really go to this golf game. And I was like, I'm tired. I don't know. I was like, this is kind of. weird. There's a lot of pressure. I was like, no, no, no, I'll just catch up with him after. Anyway, come to find out. The golf game was with Tiger. Okay. And the next day I found,

like, I saw Will and he like comes in. He's like, man, just had a great golf game. Man, we were playing with Tiger Woods. You should have come out. I was just like, what the fuck? What the actual fuck? And so I went through this minute phase in my life where I had this realization, which is like, okay, really rich and successful people love golf. And I just, I could have, I just passed up on like four hours of intimate face time with Tiger Woods and Will Smith. That if I just knew how to swing a fucking golf club, I would have had that, right? And then I started thinking, I'm like, how many other people are there in the world that if I knew how to swing a golf club, I could have that sort of face time and have that access. And man, like, you're just out in this golf course by yourselves and like nothing else to do.

And so you're just chatting and like you get to know each other. And like you really build a relationship and all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, knowing how to play golf. And like now I get it. Now I get why all those fucking corporate douchebags and CEOs and stuff play golf all the time. Because it's like the best networking activity there is, period. So I was like, okay, I got to pick up golf. And so I went through this phase for like four months where I'm like, I got to learn golf.

I got to like start liking golf. And so I went to a driving range with a friend. I was fucking terrible. And then I went to another friend's bachelor party and we played golf with a bunch of guys. I got through like 10 holes and I was like, I hate my life. I want to go home. And then I went, I went home, visit my parents. My dad's obsessed with golf.

So I was like, I told my dad, I'm like, you got to take me out, play golf with you. Like, teach me how to play this game. Teach me how I like this thing. Anyway, long story short, after like a few months of this, I'm like, I fucking hate this game. Like, what? There's absolutely nothing redeeming about this for me. There's nothing I like about it. I'm absolutely terrible at it.

And I realize I'm like, what am I doing? Like, this is not, I don't actually value this game. Yeah. I value what this game gets me. This is my achievement value at work, right? Like, the only reason I care about this is because I think it's going to like get me an end with people that I might want to have an end with. I'm like, that's stupid. Like, there's so many better ways to meet people or like have an end of somebody, right?

Instead of like trying to make me. make yourself play a game that you actually hate playing. So anyway, that's my golf career. Nobody will be standing up at my funeral and talking about my golf swing. Your golf swing for sure. Yeah. I, fuck, I hate golf too. So I don't know.

I got nothing to add there because I've tried as well. Yeah. Yeah. Any other fun exercises to discover values? No, there, you know, there's a lot of these. You can kind of even come up with it on your own. There's also you can go out and you can take these online tests for the values. We kind of already mentioned that a little bit.

You can do that. That's fine. Schwartz value survey. Yeah. And then I believe there's another one. I think it's called the PVQ. There's tons. There's a bunch of them.

There's a bunch of them. I found these exercises to be way more valuable for me, though, because it gets a little too analytical when you start, okay, what's my score on this values test and this and that? And it's like, oh, these are real examples from my life that I immediately and emotionally connect with. Like I was saying, you have these like immediate reactions when you do these thought experiments. And those are way more clarifying than any test. Yeah. Because you get these and you're like, you're like 42 on this and 33 on this.

And I'm just like, what does that even mean? It can be super abstract. I mean, I do think I like these thought experiments better and kind of giving yourself time to debrief them a little bit. So since this is the first episode, I'm going to explain something really quickly, which is these are very long episodes. And there's a lot of content in them. And there's a lot of takeaways. And as we were putting these together, we kind of realized this is potentially a little bit overwhelming for the listener. and it would be nice if we could package everything that we're talking about in each episode

and break it down into like daily chunks or weekly chunks and then just give the listener a progression system of like how to move through all this stuff. So it's like if you, let's say you've decided that values is a huge issue in your life and you really need to get this stuff figured out and you would love to spend, say, the next three weeks like just 15, 20 minutes a day working on this part of your life and really trying to get it solved once and for all. So we've created that track for people. And what we're doing is we're doing this for every single episode

and we're putting everything in a community so that people can do it together and that people can keep each other accountable. So the people who are, if you want to work on your values, you can connect with the thousands of other listeners who also want to work on their values and are also going through these exercises and are also like coming up with all sorts of questions

and, you know, stumbling through things and want to ask me something or whatever. And we're putting this together in a community, and we're calling that community momentum. And the idea behind momentum is that real life change, it doesn't happen in a weekend, it doesn't happen in an epiphany, it doesn't happen, you know,

because some guru, like, told you to meditate for 10 minutes or something. Real change happens slowly and gradually over a long period of time. It compounds. It is a bunch of small actions that slowly compound over the course of multiple months or even years. And so the community is built around that concept. It's built around giving people momentum, giving people little bite-sized things to work on every single day,

to implement all the stuff that they're learning on the podcast, and then hold each other accountable, build relationships, meet like-minded people, et cetera, et cetera. So if you are interested in that, you can go to find momentum.com slash values. That's where you'll find the values track. We have dozens of prompts and exercises, similar to the ones that Drew and I just went through, as well as plenty of supplementary content there. And not only will you be able to do this month's podcast episode and work on all the stuff that Drew and I are talking about today, but you'll be able to do it every single month with every episode.

So go to find momentum.com slash values. It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the... The series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. So before we move on, I actually, I'd like to return to the value hierarchy idea a little bit and dig into it little bit more. We've referenced it throughout the episode at this point. And I think it's one of those concepts that people intuitively understand, like you hear

that like, yeah, okay, we all kind of prioritize our values and there's like a ladder, right? There's like my top value and there's values underneath it. But I think it's worth considering a little bit more deeply what the significance of it is. I also think this is really

where the central message of subtle art comes in. Because if you think about the whole concept of not giving a fuck, The point that I make in the first chapter of that book is that there's no such thing as not giving a fuck. Really, all there is is prioritizing things that deserve to be prioritized above the things that don't deserve to be prioritized. Like generally when people are like, wow, I really wish I didn't give a fuck about this. What they're saying is, I wish I didn't care about this as much as I do, right? Like, you're always going to care about what other people think of you.

You're always going to care about obnoxious people hating on you on the internet. You're always going to care about, I don't know, like whether your shoes are cool or not. It's a very human thing. That's not going to go away. What does change or what does go away is your prioritization of that. And if it's not properly prioritized on your value hierarchy, if your highest value is something that is actually very superficial and unimportant, then you're going to suffer pretty intensely because of it. So really the value hierarchy is kind of the basis of the not give a fuck framework. And in the book, you know, I really tried to kind of outline what I saw as good values.

You know, I said like you should value things that are ultimately within your control that are not tenuous or short term or superficial that you should really focus on like long term abstract principles. But it's one thing to just say that. It's another thing to actually do it. And I do think to me the most important, maybe the most important message of my career that I really stand by is this idea of choosing your struggle. Because I think one thing we haven't really discussed yet is that generally speaking, when people think about what's important to them and what they want in their life, you're always thinking in terms of what you gain. You're never thinking in terms of what you give up. And ultimately, I think that is actually what defines what, where something is on your value hierarchy. the thing at the top of your value hierarchy

is not at the top because it's the thing you want the most. It's the thing that you're willing to give up everything else for. And if you want to nudge something further up your prioritization, further up your value hierarchy, the way to nudge it up higher is not by wanting it more. It's by giving up more in the process. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah, it does. And it's also, no matter, there's a cost to, All of this, right? Right. It's the trade-offs. And it's what you are, whatever pain you're going through now, it's because of whatever value you have been prioritizing. Exactly.

Right. And you might not be aware of that. You're like, why am I suffering this way? I don't get it. I don't understand it. It's because of whatever you're choosing to value. So if you value autonomy over comfort, well, get ready for some instability. Right?

Yeah. And like, you're like, why is my life so crazy? Well, because you value autonomy and freedom and refuse to compromise any of your own impulses. Yeah. So I love this idea that real value change actually comes from what you're willing to give up. And I think it's not a coincidence that generally speaking, the largest changes in people's lives occur not after a euphoric or great moment, but actually after either trauma or tragedy. Yeah, loss. We see this over and over again.

So I'm curious, Drew, like, what is it about these intense negative events in our lives that actually do open us up so much to change? Yeah. Yeah, there's this whole field in psychology, this whole theory around it called post-traumatic growth theory. It's been around for a few decades now. There's lots of research backing it up. Essentially, what the research finds is that somewhere between like 80 and 90% of people after they experience some sort of traumatic event, a loss in the their life. And it can be big T trauma. I can be little T trauma even too. After they experience these traumatic events, somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of people report experiencing at least

one positive change in their life. Now, this is not to romanticize trauma at all. Okay, this is not, you don't need trauma to change, okay? And you should not seek out trauma. Do not seek out trauma. Trust me, life will come and give you some trauma. It will deliver on that promise for sure. That said, trauma is incredibly common too. I think that's another point to drive home is that we all experience some degree of trauma. Some people get a worse than others, yes. And I want to acknowledge that, absolutely. But it's an inevitable part of life.

And the wild thing about humans is not only can we bounce back from trauma, not only can we endure these traumas, but we actually can thrive and grow after these traumas. That's a very common thing, too. So not only is the trauma itself common, but growing from that trauma is an incredibly common thing. There's five areas, five domains that researchers have identified for areas of growth that people experience after a trauma. You have improved relationships with others, discovering new possibilities in life, increased personal strength, a greater appreciation of life, and spiritual or existential development. You can see already those are like value-laden domains of life, right? Relationships and new possibilities and personal strength. All of these are very, very value-laden areas.

And what happens, what they think happens, there's this kind of process that people go through. You experience a trauma, and there's all these factors. It depends on your personality. It depends on your coping strategies. It depends on your social network around you. Right. But what happens generally is you have this traumatic event and it shakes up your worldview in some way or another. Think of like an earthquake that happens or the fires in Los Angeles recently.

Like something like that happens. Everybody kind of has this sense of, oh, something's different. Something has changed. What I believed before no longer applies. And so it forces you into this space of re-evaluating priorities in your life. You ruminate on the event, trying to figure it out, trying to make sense of it. Our brains are just trying to make sense of the world all the time. So it's trying to make sense of this trauma.

And what happens through that, you go out to your social network. You start talking to people, you engage. You try to come up with a new worldview, basically. And through that, your values change. Or at least they're reprioritized. Yeah. Yeah. The way I've always liked to think about this is that a trauma, a traumatic event or a tragic event, it is part of what makes it so painful is the experience of a value failing.

Yes. It's like you used to really care about this thing or you used to really be. believe this thing was true about yourself or the world. And suddenly that belief or that value fails you catastrophically. And it leaves this like void. It leaves a vacuum that needs to be filled inside you with some other value or some other belief. And that process of like finding the new value or finding a new belief, it's difficult and uncomfortable. But ultimately that vacuum is the opportunity for change and growth. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like a classic example is, you know, someone gets a terminal illness cancer or something like that at some point in their life.

And all of a sudden they're thrown, why am I spending so much time at work? Why am I so obsessed with status? Why am I so obsessed with validation from other people when I have my family right here that I've been neglecting or something along those lines, right? A lower value for a higher value again. It puts that into stark contrast for you. Now, again, I want to go back and just reiterate that you might have these positive changes these value changes that are in the right direction,

right alongside all the bad things about trauma too. They happen simultaneously. So again, not romanticizing it or saying, there's only good things that will come out of this. That's not what I mean at all. It's one of those situations where you have to hold the positive and negative in your mind at the same time. Like I remember seeing a survey data that found that like cancer survivors, something like 70 or 80% of them reported feeling more gratitude and in satisfaction with their lives in general.

after surviving the cancer. And it's funny because I think the stupidest way to interpret that data is be like, oh, we should all go get cancer now. It's like, no, no, no, you still don't want cancer. But if you do get cancer and you manage and you're fortunate enough to survive, chances are you're actually going to develop

a lot of gratitude and satisfaction for the people and things in your life. All right, that's it for today's highlight. If you want the full conversation, the episode is called How to Find and Live By Your Values, and it goes a lot deeper. We cover the philosophy and psychology behind values, how they form, how they change, what happens when your values are quietly working against you.

We also get into post-traumatic growth and why the biggest shifts in people's lives usually don't come from the good moments. It's in your feed, scroll back, go listen to it. And if today's episode got you thinking about your own values, the next step is to actually do something. I put together a free five-day mini-course that takes everything we've covered plus more and turns it into clear, daily actionable steps. So there's no overwhelming homework, just one concrete thing each day that moves you from thinking

about your values to actually understanding and living by them. Five days, completely free. Grab the link in the show notes. I'll see you there. Also, if you're enjoying the show, do the usual, follow, subscribe, leave a rating and review and share it with your best friend, your mother, and your neighbor's dog, who's been saying I need to figure my life out. Don't abandon them.

You know what to do. Thanks for listening, as always. And I'll see you next time. groceries, specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front, helping guide their choices. Instacart, get groceries just how you like.