SOLVED with Mark Manson - Your Questions On Manifestation, Confidence, and Getting Over Your Ex, Solved

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

It's been one year of SOLVED. 20 episodes, 20 million downloads, 3 million YouTube subscribers, and a truly unreasonable number of poop jokes. To celebrate, I sat down with over 200 of your questions and picked the ones that hit the hardest. We get into why most people fail at quitting addictions (hint: the problem isn't the feelings, it's that you never planned for them). I explain why, if you have ADHD and can't stop procrastinating, you need to treat yourself like a dog that shits on the carpet. We talk about the real science behind manifestation, why it sort of works but not for the reason TikTok thinks it does. I break down the difference between trait confidence and state confidence, and why "build evidence" is only half the equation. We cover how to handle panic attacks, getting over a "perfect" ex (spoiler: they're not perfect, and thinking they are is the problem), the uncomfortable truth about self-love, the difference between a boring relationship and being bored in a relationship, the purpose vs. money question, what FIRE retirees never tell you, and what I'd reincarnate as. Plus some big announcements: we're going back to the mega episode format in June, the PDF guides are returning, and our first topic is going to be how to actually change your life. CHAPTERS (00:00) One-Year Anniversary and Show Announcements (04:37) Overcoming Addiction and Relapse (08:18) Procrastination and ADHD (11:30) The Science of Manifestation (16:11) Panic Attacks, Siblings, and Getting Over a "Perfect" Ex (20:18) Self-Love, Gratitude, and Religion (27:12) Relationships, Purpose, and Money (36:07) Maladaptive Daydreaming, Personality, and Growing with Friends (39:59) Nomadic Living, FIRE Retirement, Purpose Anxiety, and Reincarnation ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ 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 started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ 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 was brought to you by purpose. If something in this episode hit, you can go talk to purpose about it. Voice mode is now live on iOS devices, so you can actually say it out loud instead of typing it. The purpose app includes a personal AI coach that goes deep, plus all 10 of my courses in one place. Check it out now at purpose.app slash solved. That's purpose. Dot app slash solved. Welcome back, everybody, to the solved podcast.

The last podcast you will ever need. I'm your host, Mark Manson, and we have a very special episode for you. you today. Yes, it is our one-year anniversary of the Solve Podcast. It's been an incredible year. We published 20 episodes, had over 20 million downloads, changed countless lives, and made lots of really bad poop jokes. On top of that, we just reached 3 million subscribers on YouTube, so it's even more of a time to celebrate. And to do that, I'm going to do a Q&A episode with our community. You guys send in over 200 questions, and we're going to cover our a lot of ground today, including advice on overcoming addiction, how to defeat procrastination,

even if you have ADHD, getting over a quote-unquote perfect X, practical tips around gratitude and the limits of self-acceptance. And of course, once again, as always, we will talk about finding your purpose. That seems to be a popular question with you all. But before we get to that, I want to take care of a little bit of housekeeping and make some practical announcements about the show, where things are going, and what our plans are for the rest of 2026 and beyond. So for those of you who listen regularly, you have probably noticed that over the past three or four months, we have experimented with doing shorter episodes, more frequent episodes, different sorts of formats, highlight clips, short 20, 30 minute solo episodes of just me.

and a lot of this experimentation, to give you a little bit of visibility behind the scenes, basically what it comes down to is what we were running into last year is that when you're only doing one massive five-hour episode every single month, that puts a lot of pressure and expectation on that single episode. And so what myself and Drew and the team were experiencing is just that like, we're throwing hundreds and hundreds of hours each month into this one episode. and if it doesn't perform, it kind of felt like the sky was falling. And so we started thinking of like, okay, well, maybe we can kind of branch out and do some shorter shows and, you know, have some spinoffs and have highlights that we can revisit and add to the feed. And while that was a useful experiment, the team and I have decided that we are actually going to double down on the super long episodes.

Starting in June, we are going back to the single solved episode each month. and that episode is going to be as comprehensive as possible. It will follow the show's promise of attempting to be the last episode you will ever need to listen to on that topic. And we just decided that we would rather go big or go home. In the meantime, we have a couple more episodes lined up for May. So in a couple weeks, we have an episode on How to Stop Being Anxious, where we review all of the research on the best interventions for anxiety. That's been a much requested topic from you guys.

And then a couple of weeks after that, we're going to do an episode on why people stay in bad relationships. Both of those episodes are going to be a little bit shorter, probably in the two to two and a half hour range. And they're going to cover narrower topics. But then in June, we're back to the original format. We're back to the original large episodes. We're back to going all in and trying to solve one area of your life. Now, when we go back to these episodes, we are going to do it a little bit differently. there's going to be a little bit more promotion involved.

On the YouTube side, we're going to slice up these episodes into five or six different parts and drip them out over the course of probably a week or 10 days. A lot of that is simply because the YouTube algorithm punishes five-hour videos, and so we don't want to be punished by the algorithm. But also, we've noticed that more people on YouTube like to digest the episodes in smaller chunks at a time. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple or any other podcasting platform, you will still be able to get the entire episode on day one all at once. And lastly, I'm excited to announce that the PDF guides are coming back. You guys can stop griping in the comments.

You can stop sending me angry emails screaming, where are the guides? I want my guide. Why did you stop doing the guides? We stopped doing the guides because the more frequent shorter episodes, it just became impractical to create them. It takes a lot of work to write them out, format them, create all the designs and everything. But if we are doing that one larger episode each month, then it does make sense again to make those guides. So the guides will be coming back beginning in June. You will be able to get them for free and work through them at your own leisure.

So that should be good news for all of you guys. All right. So without further ado, I'm going to get straight into your questions. The first question comes from King Eddie. He asks, how does a person who's facing addiction without any control each time after they make it a few good weeks without doing the activity, they revert and relapse, and they're flooded with feelings and thoughts of regret and guilt. How do you handle that? How do you get back on the wagon and try again? This is a great question, and this is incredibly common for anybody who's trying to

quit a bad habit or quit any sort of addictive behavior, whatever it might be. The problem is that you're relying on your feelings and not your systems. So what happens is you want to quit something. Let's say smoking. You get really worked up. You get all hyped. You're like, I'm finally going to do it this time. This is going to be it. This is the time I'm going to change.

Maybe you line up a bunch of plans or tell a bunch of people. And you do great for the first week or two. But the problem is that that feeling eventually wanes. And pretty soon, you're left with all of the feelings that the activity, in this case, smoking, was numbing and covering up before. And so when those underlying feelings come up, you start to feel awful. Maybe it's you're overwhelmed by anxiety or maybe there's a deep sadness or depression down there. Or maybe you're just like incredibly bored and undisciplined. And when that happens, you naturally desperately want to go back to the activity that was numbing and moderating those underlying feelings.

So the problem here is not the feelings. The feelings are completely normal and natural. The problem is that you have not planned for those feelings. You have not systematized around those feelings. You have to count on the fact that you're going to lose enthusiasm at a certain point, and then you're going to have to face a bunch of underlying emotions that you've struggled with in the past or that you've probably never dealt with before. So the best thing for this, in my opinion, is simply developing an accountability system.

So finding other people who are either on the same path as you or people who can hold you accountable so you can reach out to them when you're tempted to indulge in whatever compulsion or addiction that you're trying to get rid of. And then talk to them about those feelings, right? It's like, man, I'm three weeks in and they're not drinking. I'm really struggling. I'm like, you know, freaking out. I'm anxious all the time. I'm not sleeping well.

And then having somebody there who like understands what you're going through can talk you through it, can empathize with you. and can just be kind of like a rock for you to hold on to during that period. This is why AA and other addiction programs are so successful is because of those ingrained accountability systems that they have for people. There's a place you can go every single day if you're freaking out and you think you're going to drink again or you think you're going to use again. So again, the issue is not the feelings here. The feelings are completely natural.

They're actually part of the process. The failure here is to plan. for those feelings and to build a system around them and to know what you're going to do when those feelings arise. The other way to address this is to replace the behavior with another behavior. So there's tons of research on addiction and they find that simply quitting the addiction is most people are not very successful. But when you replace one addiction with another, in this case a healthier addiction,

people are much more successful. So perhaps you replace smoking with working out or drinking. with, I don't know, ice cream or video games or whatever. It sounds ridiculous, but allowing yourself to have a safer, healthier, compulsive behavior instead of like a very destructive compulsive behavior can be the thing that saves you from the destructive compulsive behavior. Next question. This comes from FroStyle.

He says, I feel like the most difficult thing for most people is to prioritize delayed gratification. No matter what tips that I apply in my life, I always cave into instant pleasure, no matter how easy I make it or how satisfying I make it or how enjoyable I make it, playing video games or doom scrolling is always more appealing. I think the fact that I have ADHD makes this even worse. So what I'm hearing here is that you've applied a lot of the conventional productivity tips, you know, make the thing fun, make it appealing, make it easy. This is all stuff from like atomic habits or all the abdahl's work. And it's not working for you. Why? Because shit,

video games are really fun. And I don't care how fun you make your work. It's never going to be quite as fun as a good video game. My advice for people like this, and I speak to you as somebody who has ADHD and has struggled horribly with procrastination in the past and also loves video games and doom scrolling, you have to treat yourself like a dog that shits on the carpet. Like, you can't trust yourself. We are animals at the base level. And so you have to go into this expecting that you're going to behave like an animal at the

base level. So if you have a dog that's shitting on the carpet all the time, what do you do? You set up little fences in your house. You get rid of, maybe you get rid of a rug in the kitchen because he's going to shit on it. So you'd rather clean up a tile floor than a nice carpet. You put him outside certain times each day, right? Like you build systems and structure around the dog. You don't expect the dog to stop being a dog. But for some reason when it comes to ourselves, we expect our inner dog stop being a dog. We expect our inner selves to suddenly stop enjoying video games and start enjoying, I don't know, doing the dishes or our homework. And it's just not going to happen. And if you were somebody with ADHD and you have a mind that is very predisposed to procrastination,

then you have to get religious about this. Like you have to get actually extreme. When I was in my second year of university, I literally sold all my game consoles because I had a very stark realization, which was that I was playing so many video games that I realized I'm like, I can have grades, I can have a social life, or I can play video games. I cannot have all three. I can only have two of those three. So obviously one of them's got to go. And the only way that I was able to actually implement that into my life was to sell all my game systems, all my games. And then once I didn't have access to them anymore, I started studying because I had nothing else to do. I was bored to shit. So I'm like, might as well open a book and actually read it. So you have to get quasi

religious about this. Like you have to, if you really want your life to change, you have to alter your environment in an extremely strict way. Like imagine if you were a parent of a small child and you wanted to protect that child from itself, what would you do? You would remove the things from the child's environment. You wouldn't sit there and yell at the child to like, stop being a child. So do the same thing with yourself. Next question. It comes from Project Soma.

They ask, more and more neuroscientists talk about manifestation in a practical way, not like the secret. What mechanism does this involve and can we really apply it? This is my pet peeve topic. So manifestation, it is making a huge comeback and it's becoming extremely trendy on Instagram and TikTok right now, you see all these videos of people being like, I'm a neuroscientist, and this is why manifestation is real. And then they go on to describe something that is not scientific whatsoever. So this is a tricky and nuanced topic. And the thing that is true is not the thing that goes viral. And the thing that goes viral is not completely true. So does manifestation exist?

Yeah, sort of, to a certain extent. Like, what is it scientifically, specifically? Well, basically, the best way to think about it is that you and I, we're flooded by way more information in our environment than we can actually process. I forget what the exact ratio is. If Drew was here, he'd probably know it off the top of his head. But generally speaking, we're exposed to like a thousand times more stimulus in our environment than our brain is actually able to process each second. So our brain has developed a bunch of systems of like filtration and screening of the information that we allow into our consciousness in order to actually like properly comprehend what's going on.

So this is why like something can happen right in front of your face and you like don't even notice it because it's not relevant to what you're paying attention to and your brain is not processing that information at that moment. There's this mechanism inside of our minds called the reticular activation system. the reticular activation system does is that it is that filtration system of our environment based on what is relevant to our wanton needs. And so what manifestation does is that it has you consciously focus more on the thing that you want. And by focusing more on the thing that you want, you prime your reticular activation system to notice things in your environment that are relevant to the thing that you want. And so you start noticing the things that are relevant to the thing that you want, even though they were there the entire time.

So up to this point, like, I'm on board with all this. This is just, like, good psychology. Where the manifestation crowd loses me is then they start inserting all this cosmological nonsense about the universe delivering to you the thing that you wants because your energy is vibrating or, and, like, is bringing you a taco on Tuesday morning. Like, it makes no sense. The vibration thing doesn't make sense. The universe does not give a shit about you.

This is purely something happening inside of your head. And by simply focusing and thinking about the thing that you want in your life, you are priming your conscious mind to be more aware of things related to the thing that you want as you move through your life. In psychology, this is known as the frequency illusion. And a simple example is like, let's say you decide that you want to buy a new car. You want to buy a new car, so you're thinking about cars. Now, because you're thinking about cars, suddenly when you're in traffic each day, you're looking at all the cars around you. And you're asking yourself, I wonder how that one is. I wonder how much that costs.

Those cars were always there. It's just you never paid attention to them before because they were not relevant to the thing that you wanted. So it's not that the universe is delivering you traffic because you want a car. It's like, no, no, no. You're focusing on something different in the traffic because you want a car. The key thing to understand, though, about the manifestation thing is that simply thinking about the thing you want is not sufficient, right? So, like, I can think about wanting a car and I can look around traffic and be like,

wow, look at all these cars around me. It's the universe delivering opportunities to have a new car. That's not enough in and of itself. The research on manifestation shows that manifestation only quote unquote works if it is is coupled with a plan of action. So I want a car. I'm going to start paying attention to cars. I'm going to think about cars.

And I'm going to save up money so that I will have a certain budget by a certain time so I can actually go fucking buy a car. If you just sit on the couch and think about cars all the time, the universe is not going to air deliver a car to your front door. That's not how it works. And this is where I think a lot of people get messed up. Next question. Mr. Dan asks a very long one, and I'm going to paraphrase it here. Basically, he says, does confidence only come from competence? People on YouTube are always talking about building evidence,

but if you look at young children, they're often confident to try new things, even though they don't have any competence or experience in anything. Therefore, maybe confidence isn't simply about developing competence or experience, but there's some underlying belief that is the actual source of confidence. I love this question because it has become very trendy on YouTube and among productivity and make money people to like shout at you, like build evidence. And that's just one part of the equation. So one way to think about this is that there is trait confidence and state confidence.

State confidence is very contextual, right? So it's like state confidence is, let's say you're a musician and you've performed your whole life and you've practiced 10,000 hours. When you go on stage, you're probably going to be very confident. You're going to be a great performer. You're going to feel really good. you're going to be a badass when you're up there. But then you come off stage and you get put in a social situation that you've never been in before and maybe you're socially awkward and you don't have good social skills.

And suddenly you have no confidence, right? That's state confidence. State confidence is basically determined by are you good at the thing you are currently doing? And we've all met people and we've all probably been the person who is extremely confident in one area of our lives, but totally unconsolvent. confident and insecure in other areas of our lives. That's very natural. And that's where the build evidence advice comes from. If you want to be confident on stage, the way you do it is you get on stage a hundred times and then you start to build that confidence. But then there's another thing called trait confidence. And that is kind of this underlying permanent state of a belief

that you can handle things. And this is where a lot of people get blocked before they can even start building that evidence. So there are some people who are like, I want to be confident on stage. I understand that the way to do that is to get on stage 100 times. That's going to suck, and I'm probably going to make a fool of myself, but I got to start somewhere. So let's get started. That is somebody with high trait confidence, but low state confidence. If you have low trait confidence, then you're going to look at, I want to get confident on stage. I'm going to have to get on stage 100 times and make a fool of myself, that sounds awful. I don't think I'm going to be able to handle it. Let's find an excuse to not get on stage. And so all of this advice

about building evidence, it's totally appropriate when you're trying to build state confidence, but it is not useful at all when you're trying to build trait confidence. Ultimately, trait confidence comes down to how you feel about yourself. It comes down to your belief that you're going to be able to handle adversity, deal with challenges, handle rejection, deal with setbacks. And And a lot of this is very much formed in childhood, right? Because as you point out, Mr. Dan, children, when they're trying to do something and they're like four years old, they don't sit there and agonize about it. They're not like, oh, if I try to kick this ball and miss, I'm going to look stupid. So I'm just not going to try to kick the ball.

No, kids just do things. And then they fall in their face and they make a fool of themselves and they get up and they try again. what happens is that somewhere along in childhood, that recovery and support after the failure isn't there for them, right? So this is where we start to get into parenting and trauma and self-esteem, right? Like if you had a chaotic childhood where failure was not tolerated, where you did not have loving caretakers who came in and supported you when something went wrong, who encouraged you to get up and try again, then you're not going to build that that underlying trait confidence.

And so you're not going to have the courage or the self-belief to build the evidence to develop state confidence later on in life. The good news is you can build trait confidence as an adult. It just sucks and is really hard and probably requires a lot of therapy. Next question. Walt Rothschild asks, will the OG Mark Manson blog ever make a comeback? No, but I started a substack. You can go to markmanson.substack.com. Check it out.

I'm having fun with it. So we'll see what happens. Glitch operator asks, I've been in conflict between what I want to pursue in life as a career. On the one hand, I'm going to university for an IT degree, and I'm following the crowd. On the other hand, I really want to follow my passion,

which is fitness, and help people as a trainer. It has been hard for me to give time to start as a personal trainer, as my degree's workload is taking up so much of my time and focus. I fear that I will regret not starting in fitness right now. now being in my earlier 20s, and I should just forget about following my passion and stick to the security that a university degree offers. I pick this question because I get this a variation of this question from so many 20-something-year-olds. I think in most cases, the answer is do both. You don't have to go all in on either of them. There's significant value

in doing both of them to a more minimal level at the moment, right? So, The degree, it's probably worth getting the degrees simply because that sets you up with security and opportunities for the rest of your life. You don't need to make straight A's. You don't need to be at the top of your class. But getting that piece of paper will open and keep open more doors throughout your life than almost anything else you can do at your age. But you should also pursue your passion as a side hustle, as a hobby, as something to work on on the side for a few reasons. One is to get some early experience doing it. Second, to discover if this is something that you could actually do for the rest of your life,

that it's something that you do love as much as you think it is. And also to kind of prepare yourself, gain some knowledge and experience before you do decide whether to go all in on it or not. We just did a whole episode on the question of passion versus purpose. And I think the resolution of that episode was that it doesn't have to be one or the other. Sometimes it can be both. Sometimes it can be a little bit of each one. These are not necessarily either or situations. I think it's a passion is something that you can slowly lean into over time.

You don't necessarily need to like cut off every other thing in your life and go all in on it today. Also, just as like a PSA, if you're listening to this and you're under the age of 25 and you ever insinuate that it's too late to do something, do yourself a favor and slap your. yourself in the fucking face. Thank you. V. Pulverize asks, I'm wondering what your advice would be to prevent having severe and regular I'm going to die level panic attacks. I've got two pieces of advice here. And the first one is just my generic panic attack advice in general, which is stop trying to prevent them. Panic attacks are weird. Anxiety in general is weird in that it's like it's the effort to prevent it is part of what makes it so powerful and overwhelming. And so if you simply remove the fear and the resistance and be willing to let them happen, ironically, they will tend to happen less and less often.

And they will be less overwhelming when they do. But secondly, if you really are having full-blown, I am going to die level panic attacks regularly. I would definitely speak to a professional because this could be a case where medication could be life-changing. Steve H. asks, how do I stay interested and in touch with adult siblings who, don't act reciprocally. Yes, I must be the one who initiates contact every time. It's going one way all the time. I want more and more than how's the weather? I fucking hear you, Steve. I come from an entire family that is pretty terrible at communication. It's funny too, because we all get along. Like, when we're in the room together, we get along great. But when we're not in the room together,

like nobody talks. Nobody reaches out. Nobody. It's frustrating. And I definitely went through a period in my 20s and 30s where I decided that I was going to fix this, that I was going to be the one to reach out and I was going to hack their people and bother them and ping them and plan trips with everybody and all this stuff. And I'm here to tell you, I'm on the other side of this, Steve, and I'm here to tell you, you can't control it. You can't control them. You can't make them do anything. If you guilt them, it's just going to make them resent you and it's going to make them less likely to reach out. If you get mad at them, it's just going to ruin Thanksgiving and make them want to spend less time with you. And eventually, if you're initiating everything and putting

in all the effort, you're going to become resentful and want to spend less time with them. Ultimately, you just have to let them be who they are. And, a accommodate that relationship the best you can. This is the tricky thing with family is that they are people that you love, but you didn't get to pick who they are. And so you have to do your best to find ways to make the time that you do get with them as easy and as enjoyable as possible. And so I definitely recommend accepting them for who they are and working with them

where they are instead of trying to get them to change. Question from new beginning for me. How do I get over an X when that person is perfect? They are not perfect. And the fact that you think they're perfect is why you can't get over them. So take them down off that pedestal, take a sledgehammer to it, fucking throw it in a dumpster somewhere, set it on fire, and force yourself to see this person for what they are, which is a very flawed, complicated. human being. Don't just do this for yourself. Do it for them too. Because the fact that you think they're perfect is not doing them any favors either. It's actually probably a big reason why they're not

with you or they were never with you. Is that if somebody thinks you're perfect, that puts a lot of pressure and expectation on you that is completely unreasonable. It gives you a power over somebody that is not right. So it's not good for them and it's not good for you. So, Why do you keep doing it? My guess is that you have idealized this person and decided that they are some form of perfection. There's something in you that needs to believe that there's a perfect person out there for you. And the truth is, there's not. There's a bunch of messy, complicated people who are still very lovable and are still great to be in a relationship with.

But until you realize that, this is not going to get any better. Crazy Sheik asks, when is the Android version of purpose coming out? Not only are we working on it, it is imminent. For those of you who don't know, Purpose is my AI coaching app. It's the first AI that is specifically built and optimized for personal growth and development. It challenges you on your bullshit. It calls out your blind spots. It helps you work through difficult decisions and find clarity on things.

So if you want to check it out, go to Purpose. That app. And yes, Android is coming soon. Very, very soon. It actually might be out now. Also, have a lot of big, exciting announcements for purpose over the next couple weeks. so do stay tuned. More on that in a minute, though.

Spoticle asks, first off, just wanted to say thank you for everything you do and everything you are. You're an absolute definition of a role model. You hear that, guys. And I just can't thank you enough for all the helpful advice and knowledge that you've given. There's a lot of questions I love to ask. The biggest one I want to ask is, how did you learn to truly love and respect yourself? The person goes on to describe if you're a failure, rejection, and a dream of getting into acting and filmmaking. So the self-love, self-acceptance question is really interesting because it tends to get marketed to people as this like feel good like, hey, you've got to love yourself.

And it's like an Instagram influencer in a bubble bath being like, this is how I learned to love myself. It's not really like that. So like think about parenting. Some of parenting is fun and exciting. But a lot of parenting is just getting a child to do something they don't want to do. because it's good for them. And that sucks. Like that's hard.

It's stressful. It's tiring. It's repetitive. And self-love is the same way. Most of self-love is it's not fun and exciting. It's not a fucking bubble bath. It is getting yourself out of bed at the same time every day. It's doing your taxes on time.

It's budgeting each month so that you're not, you know, maxing out your credit card. all of these things are forms of self-love. All of these things are the tiring, tedious things that you don't really want to do, but you do them anyway because you love yourself. And so I think that reframe of seeing self-love not as something that makes you feel good about yourself all the time, but rather somebody who's willing to do uncomfortable things for the benefit of oneself, that's the muscle you actually want to exercise and grow. And so when you are confronted with situations of potential rejection or failure or embarrassment,

if you are already practicing doing uncomfortable things for yourself, then putting yourself in those situations is going to feel way less intimidating and way less terrifying. Cirrus asks, what should you do when no accomplishment feels like an accomplishment and you can only recall your failures? I don't know, man, start a fucking podcast because this feels like the story of my life. It's interesting, back in April on the self-help interventions episode, Drew and I talked about gratitude practices and gratitude journaling. I think this is a perfect example of when some sort of gratitude practice is useful, right? Like if you feel like everything good you do is not good enough and then everything bad you do just like lingers in your brain forever, this is when it's probably good to sit down and actually consciously develop the muscle of finding.

things in your life that are actually great and that you're happy about and you can feel proud of. And sometimes this takes work. It's it doesn't come naturally to some people. I definitely tend to be a person who is like in kind of a perpetual state of mild dissatisfaction about everything at all times. It could be a downer sometimes. It's like sometimes I have to very consciously like force myself to zoom out a little bit and think about how great things are and how fortunate I am and give myself a little bit of credit for some of the things that I've done. And it's hard. It doesn't, it doesn't come naturally for everybody. So it's, I would see it as like a tool that you want to

develop and put in your toolkit just because if you never do develop the skill, then, yeah, it's going to lead you into some pretty dark places. Andre de Danco asks, what are your thoughts on religion, your personal journey with different religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. I'm curious what your experience has been like and what opinions you formed over time. Okay. It's funny because Drew and I joked about doing a religion-solved episode maybe like four months ago. Ever since people keep asking for it. And I keep saying clearly our audience wants us to get canceled because why else would they want a religion episode?

But being serious, I would love to do a religion episode. I think religion is one of the most fascinating and under-discussed topics from a psychological point of view. It's also just like so core and inherent to so many people's lives and human history in general that it just feels like it feels like a massive topic that should be addressed or talked about at some point. So I would love to do it. That said, it's also a very sensitive and controversial topic.

So I don't want to do it lightly. The fact that we are going back to these kind of one epic episode per month format, I do think it will create the opportunity to do a religion-solved episode at some point. But probably not soon, but it is definitely on the list and it is definitely something that I want to do. Since you ask, though, I will give you just a brief overview of my experience with different religions. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I grew up very Christian, not evangelical, but I grew up around a lot. lot of evangelicals. And all through my childhood, it was church two to three times a week, youth groups, Bible studies. I went to a Christian school. So we had theology class. We had chapel

every single day. By the time I was 18, I got more Jesus than like probably 98% of Christians do their entire lives. So I'm very familiar with the Bible and Jesus and the whole thing. That said, I decided, you know, when I was about 13, I decided I was an atheist, but I never kind of became one of those viralant anti-religious atheists like a Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens. Simply because it was such a foundational part of the community that I grew up in. And especially as I've gotten older, I look back and I see there's just so many positive side effects. Like even if you don't believe in the theology, there's so many positive side effects. that emerge as a result of the community building that happens around a religion that I honestly don't think can be replicated in other ways.

Like I don't think even the most hardcore CrossFit gym is even going to approach your average church in terms of community building. Once I got to school, I personally got very much into Buddhism in terms of like practicing. I joined a Buddhist center in Boston when I was in school. I used to go to retreats. I used to meditate daily. It was a big part of my life at the time. I'd say within a few years, I felt like I kind of hit a ceiling with Buddhism. I still think it's the most practical and probably useful religion in terms of like the practices it teaches you.

But like the place that I got to to go any further, you really had to kind of buy into this idea of nirvana and enlightenment. I don't know. I just couldn't quite get on board. And man, like sitting and staring at a wall for like 20 hours a week, it's a fucking lot. It's a lot. And, you know, there were a lot of parties I needed to go to and girls that demanded my attention. So, you know, Buddhism kind of got left by the wayside. Speaking of girls, I was in a relationship with a Jewish girl, a pretty like, I wouldn't say like she wasn't like conservative Jewish, but like her family was very Jewish, went to Israel with her, spent a lot of time, went to temple with her, like spent a lot of time around her and her family and her friends. So I got some exposure there. And then the Iraq war started when I was in school. And so I took a number of classes on Islam as well just to understand like kind of what was going on in the Middle East.

So I've always had a very deep curiosity around religions. I find them completely fascinating. And as I joke often on the podcast, I'm probably the most pro-religious atheist you'll ever meet. Mei Jing asks, I'm an optimistic person finding the good and everything. But I finally met the gray area where both black and white are equal. For some days now, I've been feeling nothing and asking what is the point in life anymore. Yes, this dream can fulfill me in the long run, but is it really worth the struggle? because there are bads and sacrifices and everything. So do we acknowledge these feelings or do we just let it be? I would say definitely acknowledge them. There is a trade-off to everything. And what it sounds like to me is that your constant optimism and positivity before was not genuine, but rather a compensation for things that perhaps you didn't want to deal with deep down. The truth is, is that there is a positive and negative in almost every experience. There is a sacrifice and trade-off in any pursuit. And if you,

If you are only focusing on the positive and the upside all the time, you are actually setting yourself up for a lot of failure. So the fact that you are kind of in this, you know, existential vacuum of what matters, it doesn't feel like progress, but I would be willing to bet that it is progress. Because when you go from kind of constant delusional positivity, you have to drop back to this level of what really matters before you can actually build an optimism that is actually informed on sacrifice, not in denial about it. Lawrence Gutierrez asks, on the topic of relationships, how do you distinguish between

having commitment issues or just not being into somebody? Because people say that healthy relationships sometimes feel boring, but one of your primary pieces of advice is that the fuck yes or no principle, where you should only be with someone because you're enthusiastic to be with them. This is a great question, because it can't. be hard to differentiate sometimes. So I would say commitment issues are when you imagine there being problems where there actually are no problems, whereas just not being into them means that there are no problems, but you're still not really satisfied anyway. So generally,

a commitment issue you're going to have, it's going to feel like there's an intense tension within the relationship. They're going to be days where you're like, oh, my God, I love being with this person. I'm so happy I'm with them. And then the next day you're like, oh my God, get away from me. I can't stand being around this person. This sucks. This is never going to work. And you're kind of like on this seesaw going up and down, up and down all the time. Whereas if you're just not into them, you're just going to kind of be bored. And I would like to differentiate between being bored and a relationship and a relationship being boring, right? So for a example, my wife and I's relationship is objectively boring. We are very boring together.

We weren't always this way, but now in our 40s, we were quite boring. 80% of our relationship these days is like eating dinner together, reading books together, sitting on the couch together, me playing video games, her like watching a show on her iPad. That's like most of it. It's not super romantic or exciting, but it doesn't feel boring. Like we are both extremely satisfied and happy in those moments. In fact, sometimes she and I laugh together because we were both big partiers when we were younger. And we kind of laughed at like, we enjoy sitting on the couch reading books more than we used

to enjoy going the parties. So that's an example of like the relationship is boring, but the people are not bored. And I think that's ultimately like what a really healthy, loving, peaceful relationship looks like. Whereas if you're just bored with the person, then yeah, you're probably not that into. Aravidan talks asks, what's more important life? Having a purpose or having materialistic success. This is actually a complicated question. I think most of you probably expect me to just knee-jerk, say, purpose.

and then move on to the next. That's not necessarily the case. So I would say there are two key thresholds that the first threshold is all of your basic needs being met, right? So you've got food, shelter, a little bit of financial stability. You've got some warmth. You can pay for gas. You can get to your job, whatever. Like all of your basic needs, if they're not met, then all that matters is materialistic and financial security.

Purpose is a luxury problem. So once you get above your basic needs being met, then it becomes kind of a mixture of both. Like money still matters and having more is going to make you happier. But it's also not quite enough. Like you also want to feel like you're spending your time well and doing something that's a little bit meaningful and that you're excited to get up in the morning. Right. So once you're past the basic needs, it's kind of a mixture of both. I would say the more money you make, the more purpose.

starts to matter as you kind of move up the socioeconomic ladder. And then I would say the the second threshold occurs once you reach a place of complete financial security, which is you reach a place where you're like, I'm good, I've got more money than I need, I've got a bunch banked up, I'm going to be set and stable for a long time. If I don't want to work for a while, I don't have to. Like once you kind of reach that financial escape velocity, past that point, it's 100% purpose. That's all that matters. And it's interesting because once you're at that point, you actually have so many more

opportunities and directions you could go with your life that the question of purpose actually becomes incredibly difficult. It's like I've got all this time and extra money and resources and I could invest it into a lot of different things. So like what do I actually do with myself? it's a very good problem to have, but it is a significant problem to have. Like, people really do get depressed and kind of freak out over it. Whereas when you're kind of in that middle area where you're still want to make more money,

but you also want it to matter, there's kind of, there's a lot of tradeoffs going on. And that money at least narrows your options and gives you a little bit more clarity in terms of, like, what you want to be doing. Next question, Shasha asks, how to stop maladaptive daydreaming? I'm so happy you ask this, Shasha. Most people probably don't know what maladaptive daydreaming is. I did not know what maladaptive daydreaming was until I worked on a project back in 2017, 2018. So I have an audible only book called Love Is Not Enough.

And what we did for that project is that we took, I think it was 10 fans. and I coached them over the course of six months, and we recorded all the coaching calls. And I put together an audiobook on relationships that was largely based on those coaching calls. And there was a woman in that book named Daphne who became extremely fixated on people that she had a crush on. And it was like to the point that it was like debilitating fantasies.

Like she literally couldn't stop fantasizing. and it was messing up her life. And in the process of working with her, it turned out we discovered there was a thing called maladaptive daydreaming where it's actually a form of OCD, like a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but instead of like checking if the doors locked 12 times a day,

she would fantasize about this person 12 times a day. And once we realized that it was kind of this offshoot of OCD, then you just kind of treat it as like a, compulsive behavior and it's actually very very manageable. But that being said, you should check out that book, Love is Not Enough, because Daphne and I talk all about maladaptive daydreaming in it and we get into all the ends and out of it. It is a little bit specific to the individual, but I would research it in the context of OCD and kind of treat it as such.

User Muff asks, when will the episode? on personality be released, and please include modern frameworks like MBTI and aneograms. So I'm very excited to announce that our first mega episode in June is going to be on change, how to change your life, how to change yourself. This is going to be a big one. This actually started as the episode on personality, but as it grew and grew and grew, we realized, like, no, this needs to be like just this mega episode on like, how do you actually change yourself. Can you actually change yourself? So look for that in early June, extremely

excited about it. I think it's going to be our best episode ever. That said, though, if you are a big fan of the MBTI or the Enneagram, probably going to have some bad news for you, but I won't spoil it. Ali asks, I had this conversation with somebody. They insisted that the ability to grow makes you a better friend. I think just improving yourself and growing is more about your relationship with yourself and most of it does not affect your relationship with others. So self-improvement or not, you could still always have friends who like you for you. And I didn't get their idea that growth is an important element of friendship. What do you think? I think your friend is actually quite wise. And this is why. First of all, as we talked about in our emotions episode and in our friendship

episode, so much of our personal growth actually happens through the relationships that we have in our lives. Like, humans are literally designed to co-regulate with one another and to evolve and grow based on who we're surrounded by. There's an old cliche that you are the average of the five people closest to you, and it's a cliche for a reason because it's it's backed up by research that the people that we surround ourselves with, they set the standard by which we tend to judge ourselves and they tend to have disproportionate amount of influence on us, and we have a disproportionate amount of influence on them. So if you want to develop a better friendship,

it makes sense to develop and grow yourself and for them to develop and grow because then you are going to be more capable of being better friends for each other. But there's a second point here that is also super interesting, which is that if you do not grow along with your friends, then chances are over time you will grow away from your friends. See, like when you're only focused on your own growth, you can grow in a direction that starts

to isolate you from the people around you. And sometimes that's not a bad thing, but sometimes it is sad. And like if you kind of lose touch with somebody over time, you kind of get into your own thing, they get into their own thing. Next thing you know, you hang out a couple years later and you have nothing in common, you have nothing to talk about anymore. So I do think there is something to be said of growing together, of like finding people who are interested in the same things as you, who want to improve themselves in the same

ways that you do, and then growing alongside each other, because it not only does it help each of you grow faster, but it also grows the friendship at the same time. Suya asks, what do you think of morning pages? What is your morning routine? So for those of you who don't know, morning pages are journaling first thing in the morning. I have never done morning pages. Not because I don't think it's valuable. I actually, I know a number of people in my life who swear by journaling first thing in the morning.

I just think it's an individual thing and I never really, I'm more of an emergency journaler. I journal when like shits on fire and my life is falling apart. But like when things are good, I don't really crack the journal open. But for the fun part. So my morning routine is I wake up probably. probably around 6 a.m. No alarm. By like 602, I've cracked open my first energy drink.

And by 605, I'm at my desk and working. That is my morning routine. By the way, I don't think morning routines matter either. D.S. New book, when? I don't know, D. One of these days. Someday I'll have time to write again.

Sam Stewart asks, have you gone? back to alcohol since your most recent video on alcohol, the one where you said you were thinking about going back. So yes, I have. I actually drank right around, like pretty soon after that video was recorded. I think maybe two or three weeks after that video was recorded. I was in Mexico with a group of friends and we, it was our last night there. I was kind of tired and cranky. And a bunch of my friends, it's like old friends. People have known for like 10, 12 years. I don't see them very often. I see them maybe once a year at most. And they were all drinking. They were having a great time. I was sitting there like being a fucking sack of potatoes, a negative Nancy. And it was

just so clear that I was sitting there. I'm like, okay, if I'm left to my own devices, I'm probably going to go back to my room and go to bed by like 10. And I'm going to miss out on like some really fun times with a bunch of people that I love and I really enjoy being with. And I don't see very often. or I can have a couple margaritas and see what happens. And so I had a couple margaritas and I saw what happened. And I got hammered. I had a fucking great time and I don't regret it. And I've not had a drink sense.

So I think my current stance on this is that to just really pick and choose my spots in terms of alcohol, I think for me, my issue is less about not drinking at all. Like, I seem to be able to stop kind of whenever I want to. The problem is, is that if I start, I tend to drink too much. So if I just don't allow myself to start, then I'm generally pretty fine. And if I do let myself start, it should be in a situation that it feels very much called for, that I'm not going to regret it the next day.

Like after that night, I woke up hungover the next day and I had zero regrets. I was like, that was 100% worth it. Don't regret it. But I think going forward, when I'm making that decision, I need to think about that. Like, is this, am I drinking because this is a very special occasion and drinking is going to take it from an eight to a 10? Or am I just drinking because I'm bored or anxious or, like, like cranky or whatever. CJ Bird asked, when was the time you changed your mind about something that was important

to you and what made you change your mind? Well, I decided to drink again. That was one reason. Actually, my whole video on alcohol on the YouTube channel from January kind of gets into why after three years of not drinking, I was considering drinking again. But I would say also deciding not to drink was a big time I changed my mind. I mean, there are a lot of times that I change my mind. And it's it's really quite simple.

I think it's being willing to be honest with yourself when something is not working. Be honest with yourself about your feelings and tendencies. And being willing to experiment and be wrong. Like it's just I think it's actually a, to me, I tend to respect people more if they're willing and able to change their mind frequently. because it tells me that they're not, they don't have their ego attached to their beliefs. Christopher Ferris asks, can you please cover the psychology and neurology

of hitting rock bottom? I know you've covered some of this stuff, but I think it could be useful as its own episode. Why is it so powerful? So I know I keep hyping this, but the change episode in June, stay tuned. We're going to have a whole, whole section on this,

and it's very fascinating. Twisted T asks, I'm in my late 30s single, finances are not an issue and my career gives me flexibility to live pretty much anywhere. That puts me at a crossroads that a lot of people face. Do you actually pick up and relocate every few years or do you plant roots somewhere and use your time and resources to travel instead? From everything you've seen, from your own experience, the research and the people

who write in, what are the real tradeoffs? Not just the obvious lifestyle stuff, but the deeper things like identity, relationships, community, personal growth. Great question. So I spent eight years of my life, seven years of my life being kind of a nomad. I've lived all over the world. I have picked up and moved many, many times. This is what I'll say.

So the benefits, obviously, is you get a wealth and a wide diversity of experiences. There is nothing quite like going and living somewhere different and among a different culture, different group of people, and really just understanding how they live and trying to understand how they think and realizing that there's, So many ways to live, to get through life. There's much more diversity of thought and experience in the world than you would ever guess or suppose. So in that sense, I would look at it more from like a personal enrichment and education point of view. Like that's what you really gain. Aside from just understanding different parts of the world and different groups of people, you also learn things about yourself.

You learn a lot about your own values. when you say you live in New York City for a year and then you go live in like a small town and I don't know the middle of Kansas for a year like it's going to show you a lot about yourself and what you need for yourself and so there's a lot of benefits in that way. The downsides. The most obvious one I would say is community is that you really need to invest in a place for a long time to build a sense. stable community of people and feel like you belong somewhere. I think I, when I was younger, I was very naive about this. I thought like, oh, yeah, within a few months, you can make some friends and then you're good. On one level, that's true, but to like really feel like you belong somewhere or that you

have, I think of it as like, you know, if if my house was on fire, how many people could I call to like come throw buckets of water on it? The truth is, is that if you're only living in places for like a year at a time, like, you're not really going to have a long list of people that you can do that with. There is something to be said of that kind of social safety net of having very strong connections with friends and neighbors who you've known for five years, 10 years. So you are going to be, every time you move, you're going to be resetting that clock. and the older you get, I would say it becomes more difficult to build those relationships because the older you get, the more shit people have going on. That's what I've found, at least.

I'll also say that it becomes difficult to maintain friendships in community over long distances. So, of course, you do keep in touch with people and, like, your real true friends, they're always there for you when you go home or go back to wherever you lived before. but it puts a real strain. And like back to the topic of friendships growing apart, you know, when you live in two different places for many, many years, what you'll find in many cases is that you go back and see an old friend and suddenly you have nothing in common anymore because you've just been living this completely different life on the other side of the world.

So my take on it is that if people have not done it and they want to do it, I encourage them to do it just because you do learn so much about yourself and about people in the world. But I would set a deadline for it. I would not do it perpetually. And I will say, too, that the people I know who have been kind of living nomatically for extended periods of time, say like a decade plus, there is something kind of untethered and adrift about them that I can't help but feel like it's not totally psychologically healthy. after a certain period of time. The other thing I'll say here is that if you're going to do this, like really do it.

Don't you said here like move to the other side of the country. Dude, fuck that. Move to another country. Like don't. Like if you're going to uproot and like sacrifice these things, don't just move from like Florida to Kentucky or like California to Texas. Like go somewhere completely. Go to like Portugal or Thailand or Argentina or something.

Like it's really, really put yourself out there because think of it this way. This is going to be like, let's say you plan to do this for three years. That three years is an investment in an education of yourself and a better understanding of the world. And so you want to maximize that time. So if you're going to be completely unmoored, you're going to have to make friends from scratch, You're going to have to learn a new place, a new culture, a new, new routines. You might as well go all out because fuck it. Like, why wouldn't you?

Two other downsides that I'll mention. One, I just mentioned routines. That's something that's very hard. If you're moving around all the time, like reestablishing those routines can get a little bit difficult. And then the other thing that I've found is since moving a lot and living in a lot of different places, I actually find it hard to maintain friendships with people who have not lived in a lot of different places. So like most of my friends in the U.S. now are immigrants or spouses of immigrants or most of my friends in the U.S. are either immigrants or they are Americans that have lived abroad for extended

periods of time. Like it's just, it's once you have kind of expanded your mind to all these different things, it becomes difficult to relate to people who have not. And so just, just, Just be aware that if you are going to get like all this diversity of experience, in a way you're kind of narrowing the pool of people that you're going to be able to connect with on a very deep level. Ultimate Frisbee is fun, ass. What should I do? My wife wants me to celebrate her birthday with her, but I'd rather go to Hooters with my crew. I think you should get a divorce because it's going to happen anyway. Just nip it in the bud.

Emon's TV asks, I've been dreaming of and planning for retirement. for the past 15 years, and I should be able to reach my goal in about three years by the age of 40. I fully intend to quit my job once I get there. I'm excited to have financial freedom and do whatever I want, but I also want to mentally prepare if I can. Once I'm retired, do you think I should let boredom set in so that I can then follow my curiosity on what to do next and find my purpose, or would it be better to start dabbling in what seems purposeful already while I'm still working full time? First of all, congratulations. This is a fire person, so for those of you who have never heard of it. There's a community online called fire, which stands for financial independence

and early retiring early. And generally the goal is to amass enough wealth in savings to retire by by the time you're in your 40s. So I've ended up speaking to quite a few fire people over the years and universally all of them are lost. And this is why. Because when you're a fireperson, when you're in this community, right? Like you have been so focused and intense for so many years to get yourself to this point of having this much money saved up, to cutting this many expenses, to simplifying your life in so many ways. And then you get to this point, not only are you removing work as something that takes up a lot of your time, so you're given all this free time, but you've also removed your goal and purpose free.

so long. And having both of those things simultaneously are, it's extremely disorienting. And what's interesting is that I actually have found that a lot of fire people quietly go back to work after a year or two. Don't tell anybody I told you that. But it is true. And it's not because they need more money or they're like, it's just they, they need something to do. And, and they're still young enough to do a lot. And some of them, they've enjoyed their careers. And so they're like, why not just go back to it? So all that is to say, I would absolutely start mentally preparing for this beforehand. Do not let yourself get to that finish line and have no idea what to do.

That's not to say, like, don't take some time off. Like, sure, give yourself a vacation, maybe a sabbatical, like, okay, plan maybe the first three months. You're just chilling at the beach, maybe go on a trip somewhere, enjoy your life a little bit. but I would definitely start mentally preparing for this beforehand. Line up the things that you're curious about. Set up some activities and commitments beforehand, whether that's volunteering or a hobby or joining a group or whatever it is. Like really give yourself some infrastructure to transition over to. Again, like most of the fire people that I end up speaking to, they are completely and utterly lost.

They're like 41. They got all this money in the bank and nothing to do. And it's hard once you're there, especially if you're not expecting it. Hunter asks, how do I deal with purpose anxiety? Like, what do I do when I don't know what my purpose is? All right. Every Q&A, we get all the purpose questions. We did a full episode in December on purpose.

We did a Q&A largely on purpose that same month. I will hit the highlights here again, but I would encourage you to go back to those episodes. Also, I have a whole app dedicated to this called Purpose that you can go download and try for free. So there's a lot of resources here. But I'm going to hit the highlights. So first thing is purpose anxiety largely stems from viewing purpose incorrectly. Like people think, oh my God, I don't have a purpose. What am I doing with my life? What is the point of this? Thinking that purpose is like this thing you're going to find and suddenly everything's going to make sense. Purpose really only makes sense when you look backwards.

It doesn't make sense when you look forwards. Or it's hard to get to the point where it makes sense when it looks forward. Generally speaking, in the moment, it just feels like you're doing lots of things that feel like they're worth doing. That's it. And finding something that feels worth doing, that's not the highest bar in the world to clear. You can find things that feel worth doing simply because you're curious to do them. You can find things that feel worth doing simply because they're fun to do.

You can find things that feel worth doing because you want to learn something or it helps somebody. Purpose is the sort of thing that you develop and evolve over time by continually investing into the things that feel like they're worth doing. You're not going to like suddenly wake up one day and be like, oh my God, it's my purpose. It's a narrative that you slowly construct over a long period of time. And so being anxious about not having it is just irrational. It just means that you need to follow your curiosity and find something that feels worth doing today or this week. And just focus on that. And it's going to work out.

Don't worry too much about it. You can also talk to my AI, name purpose. That will help too. All right. Last question. Nate asks if you could choose what's, to recarnate into after death, what would you choose? Coming with the hard questions here, Nate.

So happy that you ask this. I would reincarnate as a house cat because what better life could you have than a house cat? I mean, it is, there are zero expectations for your behavior. You can literally do anything or do fucking nothing all day and nobody cares. you could eat, sleep, and lick your balls for 24 hours a day, and people just love you for it. And not only do people love you for it, but you can tell them to fuck off anytime you want, and they will fuck off. Like, it is the height of existence. It is the pinnacle of existence.

I think all of us, I think if there is a karmic cycle, the peak of the karmic cycle is coming back as a house cat. There's a reason the Egyptians worship them. They are perfection made manifest. All right, everybody. That's it for me, now. Thank you to all of you for tuning in. Thank you for making this podcast. Such a huge success.

It's a joy for Drew and I to work on it and record this every month. And I cannot wait for these new episodes coming this summer. So please, if you're not subscribed, subscribe. It's because we're only posting once a month. If you are not subscribed to the podcast, if you're not following us on the platform that you listen to the podcast on, you will not be delivered the podcast because the algorithms are so crowded and noisy these days. So please follow the show.

Can't wait for you to hear what we have in store over the next 12 months. And I will see you all next time. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if.

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