The Bossticks - Mark Manson - Everything is F*cked, How To Find Hope, How To Stop Feeling Hopeless, The Pitfalls Of Success, & Why Self Control Is An Illusion

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

#188: Mark Manson is a, Best Selling Author, Entrepreneur and Blogger. He has a highly popular blog called Markmanson.net and he's the author of the massive international Best Seller titled; The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. We were fortunate to interview (Ep 48) Mark during the early days of our podcast when his book first released. Mark is back on the show to talk about his new book: Everything Is Fucked, A Book About Hope.  To check out Mark's new book: Everything Is Fucked To connect with Mark Manson click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by GOMACRO Enter promo code SKINNY for 30% of your order at check out. We love these all natural, plant based, and organic bars. We keep them in our bags on the go and love that they are a completely natural and farm produced bar.  This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that's reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you're ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your 'Lifelong-Health-401k'. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body?  Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a dear media production. This episode is brought to you by Ritual. You guys know I'm a human guinea pig, and I'm still here taking ritual and loving it. Okay? It's filled with iron, vitamin E, magnesium, folate, and omega-3. Kind of everything. It's made in the USA without synthetic fillers. 95% of women do not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis,

so Ritual created a smarter vitamin with the nine essential ingredients women lack most. Go to ritual.com slash skinny today. to choose clean ingredients backed by science. Sign up now at ritual.com slash skinny. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie.

And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. You know, if you have this dream, it's like this vision of your future that is better. It's some better version of yourself. And you wake up every morning and that vision motivates you to get up and start working towards something and start building yourself. And it creates the sense of meaning in your life. And then as soon as that vision is taken away from you, then you feel like there's nothing meaningful to work towards. Welcome back. Welcome back,

everybody. Everybody, welcome back. That clip was from our guest of the show today. New York Times bestselling mega, mega author, Mark Manson. On this episode, we discuss hope, the feeling of hopelessness, why depression as an all-time high, uncomfortable truths, and how to rid yourself of feeling hopeless. My name is Michael Bostic. I am a serial entrepreneur and brand builder. Most recently, the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network and the co-host of the skinny confidential him and her show. You don't say. Fancy seeing you here. And across from me, my voluptuous wife. Lauren Everts, creator of the skinny

I don't know, your lips are looking good today. Okay. I did a post on my lip filler. Did anyone see it? Did you see it, babe? I did not see it, but I... You got to go check it out. It's on the blog. I'm Lauren Everts. I'm the creator of the skinny confidential. If you want to read that post, you can just Google the skinny confidential lip filler. It's up. It's live.

Guys, we have so many great episodes coming through. If you didn't check out last week's episode with Kaleo Rafati, go check it out. It was a tearjerker. But outside of having some great episodes coming, we also want to know how we can get better, how we can improve, constant feedback. We read all of the comments, concerns, emails. And we honestly just want you guys to be involved. Give us the feedback. Let us know who you want to interview or us to interview.

Yeah. And if this podcast has brought you any kind of value, I know last week I got so much value from Khalil. Please leave a review. It takes five seconds. And it's such a great way to build the podcast and build the community because we will be doing live tours soon. Right, Michael? Working on it. So let us know positive, negative, any feedback is good for us to review.

Let us know if you want to take a particular guest on the, or get a particular guest on the show. Do you know I've been having a lot of requests for someone that you're going to be surprised? Who? Who? Who do you think? I don't know. I mean, there's so many different, my mind goes to 50 different places. A lot of people want Taylor, the bare naked cucumber, to come back on the show to give us an update on his one-minute man situation.

Watch. Let me guess. Taylor, your mic's not on, is it? Nope, it's not. His mic's never on. He just can't get it together. Do you know what's so funny, too, is on Instagram stories. Whenever he sees that I'm walking in, I notice that he starts, like, pulling his hairbrush out

of his drawer and starts, you know, playing with his mustache if he has one. I don't think I've had a mustache all my life, actually. There was, like, a couple hairs. It kind of looked like my mustache look this weekend. It's like a long black hair. Like an evil villain. Like an evil villain. You do try to, like, get ready when you see me coming in.

You know what I should go for? is the Fumannchu look where you have the long like handlebar mustache that goes down. Must have missed that one. You should get the Kill Bill. It's Palmei and he's got that long. You should go for the competent producer look and the competent producer look is having your mic

and your headset ready to go when we're podcasting so you don't have to fiddle back around back there. I made an assumption. I was like it's probably not going to be in this one and then I was wrong again. You never know. I love a plot twist. I want to say 10 out of 10 times I've been wrong

and making that assumption. As Michael's dad said you're fiddle fucking around. Fiddle fucking around back there. But a lot of people want Taylor to come back on the podcast to give an update. I'm 100% positive. I include me. I'm down. We know.

We know. Twist my arm. Why don't you? It's the only three-sum you'll ever have with us. Speaking of people that just that are getting ready to come back on, guys, one of the most requested guests is Ed Milet for doing around two. Lauren and I were just on his show down in Orange County. And that will be coming soon. one of the interesting topics that came up when we were on Ed's show.

And if you haven't heard Ed's show with us, it was the beginning of this year that we posted, one of the best ones that we've ever done. But when we did this recent episode with Ed, one of the topics that came up was around self-improvement. And one thing that Lauren and I have been talking about frequently, Lauren. Wait, we've been talking about or I've been telling you about and you've been making it your own idea like you always do. That's probably a more accurate way to describe it.

Is all of us as individuals, everyone listening, ourselves included, We're always so focused on self-improvement, reading books, listening to podcasts, watching seminars, watching whatever it is, self-improvement. And it's very rare that outside of the self-improvement improving yourself that you actually take the time to improve the relationships that you have to improve the intimate relationships you have, the friendships. So Lauren and I, Lauren, I see you looking at me, are really focused and committed on doing that and committed to doing that as well. I just told Michael the other day when we were driving up to Orange County, we had some time in the car, which is rare, because normally we're scheduled back to back. I said, you're so focused on self-improvement, and so am I. I think it's so important to improve yourself, which obviously is the foundation. You got to do self-care.

You guys know I'm all about that. But I also think that as a couple, instead of growing parallel, it's important to also grow together and work on your relationship together. So, you know, whether that has to do with sex, intimacy, writing each other love notes, hint, hint, Michael Bostic, making your wife coffee with cinnamon in the morning. hint, hint, Michael Bostic. Massaging your wife's back. Hinting Michael Bostic.

Anyway, I think it's important not to just focus on self-improvement, but to focus on relationship improvement. And that could be a relationship with a friend, too. Yeah. So the key message there is just to not focus on only improving yourself, but also focus on improving the relationships around you. Speaking of that, I don't want to bash reading books because we have a very prominent author on the show

and we love his books. So who is Mark Manson? Mark Manson is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and blogger. He has a highly popular blog called Mark Manson.net, and he's the author of the massive international bestseller that many of you have probably read, the subtle art of not giving a fuck. What a title. That book has sold tens of millions of copies, and it's honestly a phenomenon in the book world. If you haven't checked it out, you have to. It's the bright orange cover with a big paint splatter that says fuck right on the front. We were lucky enough to interview Mark during the early days of our podcast career

and when his first book, the subtle art of not giving a fuck, was first released, we did not have the pleasure of sitting face to face with him at the time. We now, we had to do it over Skype and we now refuse to do any interviews that aren't in person.

We just think it makes for a better interview to have the person right in front of us. So, no matter who the guess is, that goes for everybody, even if Obama wants to come on the show. Really? Obama open invite. Still, the episode is worth checking out.

one of our earlier ones just to see his progression in ours. That's episode 48. Well, now Mark is back on the show in person, in the studio, and we are talking all about his new book, which I'm sure will be another massive seller. The book is called Everything is Ficked, a book about hope. We love Mark in his writing because he calls it how he sees it while also presenting really insightful, high-level content that is digestible by all. He doesn't try to be fancy. He doesn't try to seem smarter than the rest of us, even though he's a good chance that he is. He is relatable and his books speak volumes. So buckle in for this deep conversation with one of our favorites, Mark Manson. But first, we need to talk about a real epidemic that's happening, hypoglycemia. I have found the cure

to hypoglycemia. We all have a friend or significant other that's constantly complaining when they get hangary. So I traveled to Charleston last week and these bars, macro bar minis, saved my life. Michael was so grumpy. He forgot to eat breakfast, which is normally not a big deal, but for some reason, he probably had a small dinner the night before and he was complaining. And when he complains, it's like, you know the teacher in the peanuts, you know what I mean? Want, want, Charlie Brown, want, want, want, that was him while we were traveling. Thank God I had my macro bar minis. Basically, they are these little mini bars that you can keep in your purse and they have amazing ingredients, okay? Ingredients that you want in your purse. They're vegan, they're organic, gluten-free, kosher, non-GMO, clean, raw, and my favorite part, this is a big deal, guys, soy-free. Soy-free is so important. All macro bars are made from simple, high-quality ingredients. Like I said, their mission is to spread awareness for a balanced plant-based lifestyle

with products that have positive effects on the world. I have to personally shout out the peanut butter chocolate chip because that's Michael and my favorite, and that's the ones I always keep in my purse. but my nephew also likes the sunflower butter and chocolate. So you just have to do you here. You know what I mean? Anyways, a few cool things about the company that I think make them really unique. Their mother-daughter owned.

They use 100% renewable energy in the production of the bars. They're made from sustainably grown ingredients. Like I said, they're plant-based. And they're available in over 25,000 stores nationwide, which is insane. Anyways, stock up on the peanut butter chocolate chip. If you have a kid, try out the sunflower butter plus chocolate. it. You're going to love it. For a hot little 30% off plus free shipping discount, use promo code skinny at checkout. You get free shipping plus 30% off when you use the promo code at checkout.

That is skinny. Guys, try the bars. You're going to love them. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Mark Manson back in the studio. Actually, the first time in the studio. First time. First time in the studio. Last time we did this was almost three years ago, almost episode I think it's like 4850 so we didn't even hit the year mark and now we're like 180 something so it's evolved since then and we didn't have the pleasure of sitting with you the first time it was over Skype and those are always a little bit awkward to do because you can't see you know we actually refuse to do them now people come in like hey we're gonna be on sky no no no yeah we don't do them just because it's it's that awkward thing where you're you're

trying to ask somebody a question and you don't know if they're talking or not and then you're like trying not to interrupt them so it's good to be able to look in the face your life has a rocket ship since then, to say the least. The subtle art of not giving a fuck. There's a lot to give a fuck about now, I think. Yeah, there is a lot to give a fuck about now. And I think we'll probably get to that. It is funny to think back because I think you guys were like one of my first interviews

for that book. Wow. And I think it was right around launch week. And so I remember talking about that book and being like, oh, well, I really hope it does well. like, gee whiz, it crushed it. Yeah, gee whiz, seven million copies later. What is it? How many countries is this book been a national bestseller?

It's been number one in 13 countries. Wow, that's what I thought. Yeah, I mean, that's insane. Well, Lauren's been a fan of your blog content for so long. She showed me early days, even before you had the book. And then I became a fan. It's been pretty incredible. I mean, literally, you cannot go to an airport in the United States

or even most of the world and not see the book. Yeah. It's almost impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's been nuts. It's been a little bit nuts. So for those that are new listeners or new audience, let's get a little context, a little background for just like, you know, bullet point brief.

Sure. So I actually, I started blogging in around 2009, 2010, mostly about like relationship advice and dating advice. And then around 2013, I switched to just talking about life issues because like, let's be honest if you're having issues and you're dating a relationship life. it's because you have a personal issue going on in your personal life. And then as soon as I did that, it just blew up. My blog took off, started getting millions of readers, had a bunch of articles go viral. And then from that, I got the book deal for subtle art. And then, you know, the goal, my style and my approach has always been, you know,

it's self-help and personal development, but it's non-bullshitty. You know, I've always felt that that whole genre of book is kind of, You're not sugar-coding anything. Yeah, it's all fluffy and rainbows and, you know, hey guys, we're all the greatest. And no, no, no, that's not, we're not all the greatest, you know, like life sucks sometimes. And so I really wanted to write a book that was just very honest about that. That just things suck. We fail a lot.

And we need to just get good at accepting it and dealing with it. And yeah, it resonated big time. What kind of response was it from the first book? Ooh, I mean, you. It's just, the funny thing is, is, it's weird being an author because you're so removed from your fans and followers. So it was literally just me waking up every other day and like clicking on the numbers and being like, oh, wow, they went up again like 5%. And that just happens like 100 weeks in a row to the point, you know, where it's like you hit a million sales and then 2 million sales and then 3 million sales and 5 million and 6 million. And the whole time I'm just kind of sitting around on my couch, like, this is crazy.

What about like DMs and people tagging you on Instagram story and Instagram? I mean, that must have been crazy. I know I wanted to Instagram the book right away because like the cover is dynamic. We talked about this little bit off there. Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, the tags and DMs and everything, I've always gotten, you know, even back in my blogging days, I'd get tons of those. So I was kind of used to that. And I've already got like, you know, my assistant kind of screens them and, you know, I've got,

I schedule my time. It's like every Monday afternoon. It's like I go through all my email and my DMs and everything. And so it was weird because my life didn't really change, but there's this huge book out there that's that's on everybody's bookshelf. So it was a very strange and kind of disorienting experience. It was, I think when I talk to people, they expect that it's like this, you know, massive, like you said, a rocket ship taking off.

Like all of a sudden your life's just completely different. But it was actually, it was very disorienting. orienting in the opposite way and that my life felt exactly the same but you know there's like three million of my book out there or whatever when your publisher sees you do they just look with like hearts in their eyes money signs money signs coming out of their eyes roll the red carpet or what you know it's so funny so when I was taken when a you know before subtle art came out when I was taking meetings at my publisher you know I live in New York so I'd actually go down to the office and and they'd put me in like a cramped little conference room and it'd be like my editor

and some assistant publicist. And they're like, all right, we got 15 minutes. Like, you know, here's the one thing we're going to do for you. And now I go down there. It's like the CEO comes out, the VP of marketing, the VP of publicity. Ask for caviar. Yeah. It's like I should just create a writer for every time I walk in.

They bring in the drink cars. Yeah, totally. When did you decide that you wanted to write another book? How quickly? Well, so it's funny because there was tons of pressure. one thing that happened is that as soon as subtle art took off there was tons of pressure to write another one like immediately after and so i signed on to do another one but it took about a year for me you know the way my writing process works is it's kind of like therapy for me so i need it's the way

i process all the crap that i deal with in my life is i write it out and so i needed i needed more time to kind of figure out what i needed the process i always tell michael as a creative it takes me a minute to my head around things. Yes. I can't just, and when you create something, you almost need space between the next creation. Absolutely. I feel for you. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's almost like, you know, it's like if you go out and run 10 miles or something, like you can't just get up and run 10 miles the next day. Yeah, you're not a fucking racehorse. Yeah, yeah. You got to rest and recover and kind of like recalibrate. So it took about a year to start this next one. So I just, I have my notes up now and I see episode 48. That's the episode you're on.

So if people want to go and look back and listen to that episode about the subtle art, not giving a fuck, you should go there. The new book, Everything is Ficked. A book about hope. A book about hope. We all need some hope. Because everything's fucked. Let's type in.

So let's, why talk, like, what made you want to write about hope? Like, what triggered that? Was it kind of the response to this book, or was it analyzing human culture? Like, what was it that made you want to write about hope specifically? So it was a combination of two things, really. The first was personal. So like I said, the whole subtle art thing was very disorienting. And one of the reasons why was, and this is going to sound crazy to people, but hear me out.

You know, I had a dream for like 10 years. I want to be an author. I want to be a bestselling author. I want to sell a bunch of books. I want to like go speak all around the world and all these things. And that dream carried me for a decade. Like I worked my ass off for a decade. And in my mind, I was going to work on towards these dreams for the next 20, 30 years in my life.

And slowly one by one, I'd accomplish them. And I'd have a very, like, meaningful and fulfilled career. Subtle art knocked all of those out in, like, three months. So I basically go from, you know, sitting at my desk, sticking like, all right, yeah, I've got this long career ahead of me because I've got all these goals. And then, boom, all the goals are done. That's so gnarly. And it's astronaut syndrome. Yeah.

What is that? Astronauts when they go to the moon and they come back to Earth, they feel depressed because they've gone to the moon. And so what ends up happening is if you grow too fast, it almost ends up fucking you. Yes, absolutely. And it's funny because you got to write a blog on that. Yeah. So I, yeah, I got depressed. Like 2017, I was actually the most depressed I've been since like I was a teenager.

So interesting. And the worst part about it is that. you can't really tell anybody because they're like hey asshole you just sold a million books you know like people people can't relate absolutely but it's very common with with high achievers where they yeah they think that this you know they're going to spend their life attaining this goal but then they get it yeah it's like what do I do now yes walk us through that though so you're you're depressed you can't talk to anyone what do you do like do you just sit in it well I played a lot of Zelda.

Don't you play that? The Breath of the Wild. Okay. So good. It's so good. Played a lot of Zelda. I played a lot of video games. And it was funny because, you know, I think everybody has this, this imagination.

It's like, you know, you get this huge bestseller book. You get a ton of money dumped on you. And suddenly, like, you don't really have to do anything. Like, I, there were a whole months that I sat around in 2017, didn't do a damn thing. And I checked, you know, the reports and everything. everything and it's like, oh, sales went up 20% this month. So there's this bizarre thing where it's like, wow, I'm making more money every month by not working. And when people hear that, they're like, dude, that's the fucking life. Like, what are you talking about? But people don't realize how it gets old

very fast. Like it's, you know, you take the wife to Paris and then you, you know, maybe take your parents to a nice restaurant or something and you buy a few things and then like three weeks later, you're like, what now? It's very relatable in a way, right? I will we talked about on the show. There's that line in the dark night, the Batman. I've talked about it here before, where they're basically like interrogating the Joker. Yeah.

And he says, I'm like a dog chasing a car. I wouldn't know what to do with it if I caught it. Exactly. It's like that. And so you have to, you know, you have to find those moments between the goals and between the process where you're enjoying it. Yeah.

Because it's the same thing. Like we have this issue too, like not celebrating a milestone or a success. It's because I think every time you do that, when you get to the goal, you're like, okay. Now what? not, first, it's not what you expect. You're not as happy as you are when you get there. That's my experience.

And then you're constantly like, okay, well, I did that. What else you do? And it leaves you almost in a way feeling unfulfilled, which is scary because something that you chase for so long, all of a sudden you realize, like, wait a minute, I've got it. You're not that happy. Why am I not that happy? Yeah. So back to the question of kind of where this book came from, this whole astronaut syndrome,

like, it really fascinated me. I was like, what the hell is going on? Like the last time I was this depressed was when my life was awful. And like a bunch of things had gone wrong. And so it got me thinking about hope because, you know, if you have this dream, it's like this vision of your future that is better. It's some better version of yourself. And you wake up every morning and that vision motivates you to get up and start working towards

something and start building yourself. And it creates the sense of meaning in your life. And then as soon as that vision is taken away from you, then you feel like there's nothing meaningful to work towards. And the most typical way this happens is, you know, like somebody close to you dies or a relationship ends or you get fired from a job or something like that. And what I never considered is that another way that vision, that dream can be yanked away from you is if you achieve it. And so if you hit all your dreams at the same time, suddenly you have no more dreams. and you have no vision for the future, you don't know what to hope for anymore. And so this idea that we're essentially motivated by hope and also we derive meaning from what we

hope for in our lives was kind of the starting point of this next book. So that's the first component. That's the personal side. The second component that kind of motivated this book was, I think we can all agree. I mean, you guys, your career is on social media, my career is on social media. I mean, you get on social media for 10 minutes and you would think like it's the fucking apocalypse is upon us. You know, everybody is freaking out over everything all the time.

And then two days later, they've like forgotten what they freaked out about two days before because there's something new that everybody's freaking out about. And so, you know, everybody's kind of feeling this like growing sense of panic and stress in our culture. And there's this really interesting paradox that's going on right now, which is, you know, materially, the world is better than it's ever been. We're safer, healthier, wealthier, we're living longer. We've cured a bunch of diseases.

Making more money. Making more money. You know, fewer wars, less violence, more equality. You know, more connect to everything. Yeah. But depression, anxiety, suicide, drug overdoses, all these things are coming back in a big way. They're surging right now. And so if everything is so good, if everything's not,

the best that's ever been, like, why is everybody emotionally and psychologically just feeling so panicked and, like, upset all the time? And so I made this connection of, like, you know, this idea of hope that is, you know, such a central issue of my life over the last few years. I kind of looked out in the world, and it's, I think there are a lot of things about our technology, about our media, about social media that are making hope difficult these days. It's complicating our ability to create that vision for ourselves or that vision for our society or our culture. What's an example of that?

So a really basic example is like, let's say you want to lose some weight. Very simple example. You go online, you look around, you're like, oh, okay, cool, you know, gluten, carbs are bad. and then 10 minutes later you're like okay so I'll stop eating carbs 10 minutes later there's all these articles start popping up on your news feed saying that no carbs are great it's fat that's bad and then there's you know the next day there's a bunch of articles that are saying that you know nutritionists don't know anything and they're tricking you just to make money and then there's another thing that pops up and says no no no don't listen to them buy my ebook and it's there's all these like conflicting

And information overload. And it's contradictory information. So, you know, for me personally, with like the whole new, like, I don't even know what the fuck to believe anymore. Like I've seen. You can't eat anything. You can't eat anything. Everything's going to kill you. Everything's going to make you fat.

You know, it's so you just stop caring. And you're like, well, fuck it. You know, why pursue anything? And so I think in a sense that that information overload, since it's so contradictory, it makes it hard to find something. coherent to wish for, some like coherent path to pursue. And I think that's just happening on so many levels of our society. Like it's everything from politics to education, to relationships. I mean, if you take something like Tinder, you know, it's on paper, it sounds amazing. It sounds perfect. But it's like anybody who's spent a year on Tinder knows that it's like this hellscape because

it complicates, you reach a point where there's so much, so many options. You don't even know who you're attracted to anymore. You know, you don't even know who you want to do. You know those college kids, they build the machines with the eraser and just the pencil spinning around. It just swipes right on every picture. No, but that's pretty funny. They don't even look at the phone. It's just a machine that twirls around and around.

I think we all kind of miss the Tinder era. Yeah, yeah, all three of us did. You certainly missed it. I know. Thank you. You know, thank God, though. I don't know what I would be doing. Yeah, yeah, it's funny because I remember. If I did, maybe I'll get somebody to build me one of those.

machines, who knows? Tinder came out, I think, like, a year after my wife and I met. And I remember when it came out, my wife and I were like, oh, man, maybe we should just like break up for two weeks, just to go on Tinder and see what it's like. And now it's all of our single friends are like, man, you guys are so lucky. It's a dark world out there. Some of our buddies are on there. Listen, power to anybody that wants to use it.

Sure. It's a, it's a, some of those people report a dark, dark world. So what should you do with all this information? Should you get off social media? Should you not let it affect you? What's, what's your thought there? I think, I think the social media question is, um, it's, we need to become much more conscious of how we're using our attention.

Um, I'm definitely not one of these people who thinks that, you know, Facebook's ruining the world and we need to delete everything. Like, I think there are practical uses for social media, and there are benefits to it. But I think the problem is, is that it's such a new technology and it's such a new force in our culture that we need to be aware of the drawbacks. We need to be aware of how we're using it. And we need to train ourselves to have a lot more control over our attention or our choices that we're making. I think it's the same way, you know, like when TV came out, people freaked out. They're like, oh, man, kids are just watching TV 10 hours a day.

And it's because it's a new thing. Nobody realized the effect it had on people's brains. And by the time you get to the 80s and 90s, people, there's all sorts of tools and tricks and parents learn. It's like, yeah, don't let your kids sit in front of the TV all day. Like, we have to learn to psychologically adapt our behavior to the technology. And I think just with social media and the internet, everything's happening so fast. Like, we never have time to do that.

We always feel like it's run. running us, not the other way around. I think it's just because of our relationship to it. Like there's, you know, there can be healthy balances to that, but people can abuse those relationships. So would it be fair to say, and tell me if I'm wrong here, that I don't want to say the sum of, it's not the sum of the book, but like the core, one of the core principles is that in order to consistently generate happiness or be happy that you have to find hope

in an area of your life. Is that fair to say? And I think at the core of your book, you're saying, you're saying, you're, you know, you're you know, we as humans, we want to feel in control all the time. And if we feel out of control, there's a feeling of hopelessness. Yes. So what have you seen then to inspire hope in individuals? Well, I think, so I have a chapter in the book that I talk about freedom.

And one of my, I have a criticism of our cultural conception of what freedom is, is I think our culture is confuse freedom with variety. It's confused freedom with opportunity. I think in terms like, and a lot of this comes from commercialism and stuff like that, but it's, you know, if you ask a random person off the street, like, would you rather have the choice between two types of pizza or 15 types of pizza? You know, everybody's going to say 15. That's, we perceive that as more valuable. But in a lot of areas, adding more variety and opportunity for experience actually detracts. from the meaning and enjoyment of that experience.

So, for instance, it's like, if you want to try to learn or like every sport, if you want to go out and do baseball and basketball and track and football, like you're not going to be good at any of them. You know, this is, it's basic common sense, but we don't apply this to the information that we consume. We sit on the internet and we consume everything. We dive down every rabbit hole. We feel like we're missing out from everything.

that comes through. And so I try to redefine our concept of freedom, not as experiencing more necessary. I redefine it as self-limitation. The only true freedom is deciding which ways you're going to limit yourself. You know, what are my social media habits going to be? What is the information I'm going to consume? What is the one sport I'm going to pursue? You know, this is the only freedom in life, especially when you live in a world of abundance of infinite opportunity. because when you have infinite opportunity, like, you just, you start losing control of your, your attention and your impulses. I always say that you're the top five people of whose content you consume.

Yeah. So I strategically picked five people that I was going to consume every day, and those are the only five Instagram stories I watch. And I will not watch anyone else's. Yeah. And I put that limitation on myself. So, and that's, I think that's helped me or else I would go down a rabbit hole, like you set of so many different people.

Oh, yeah. When you look at successors, I'll use you and Lauren as an example. You guys really started in a niche area writing on blogs. Yeah. And over time, like the success of those writings evolved into, you know, best selling books and podcasts and whatnot. But you didn't launch and say, okay, I'm going to do a YouTube channel, an Instagram, I'm going to do a blog.

I'm going to go do a podcast. Like you started in one specific area. And I think a lot of people are seeing individuals create online now. And they're like, oh, okay, they're doing all of those things. maybe you're looking at a career that's been established over 10 years. You're saying, okay, I'm going to do all of those things. Like, I always say I'm not the best on social at the heart. I'm a business person.

But I like to talk. So I was like, okay, I get on a mic. That's easy. Yeah. I have interesting conversations. If I try to do everything else, I think I'd be completely fucked. Sure. I mean, there's a practical component, which is, you know,

Jack of all trades is an expert at none. But then there's like a, there's a well-being component as well. And I think, you know, what we didn't have to, you know, so back in the day, like, our parents or grandparents, like there's three channels on TV. So if you don't like what's on, you just turn the TV off. You know, today there's essentially with the internet, there's infinite number of channels. And so we've lost, we haven't, I don't think we've realized as a culture that we need to develop the skill to just turn it off. Instead, we let ourselves be sucked down those rabbit holes consistently.

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So let's say somebody's reading your work or listening to this podcast or going to a seminar, there's a section of your book where you write about people feeling in control because they're able to change themselves or change aspects of their life. Yeah. You say that ends up, incorrect me if I'm wrong, being somewhat confusing. And then there's a sense of hopelessness. So how do you, when you're, if you're talking to an individual, how do you, I don't say coach them, but maybe point them in the right direction of like, this is the type of content you

should consume or this is the way you should contextualize consuming content. I think, I mean, if you think about it, if you have an infinite amount of information out there, infinite opportunity to access that information, the most important question becomes what information are you going to decide is most valuable to you? And that needs to be a conscious decision that we make for ourselves. Yeah. Because if you just follow the viral clickbait that pops up all the time. I mean, that's essentially the same thing as, you know, being a couch potato and watching TV for 10 hours. Like, you have no, you're taking no active role in the information that dominates your life. And so, like Lauren said, like I think I really like that idea of, like,

picking five people because it's, it's, you, you essentially decide, like, okay, these are the people I trust. You know, you look for sources of information that you trust, that relate to your interests, and, you know, just bring joy to your life in general. And then you just cut out the rest. Like, you don't, you don't need to hear all sides of every story and get sucked into every little narrative. You know, one thing I find, I think one of the, one of the, one of the reasons we're seeing so much political dysfunction in our world today is that it's essentially that it's, All of the quote-unquote issues are basically just clickbait. You know, it's the stuff that actually affects us as a society doesn't even get mentioned

anymore for the simple reason that it doesn't drive traffic, it doesn't drive clicks, it doesn't create outrage, doesn't create tweet storms. I think we talked about this before, too, we're just people picking up stories that don't really necessarily have any relevance. But it's just you're outraged about something that literally has no effect on you. Yeah. It sounds like the takeaway to the audience here is that instead of subconsciously consuming social media on a day-to-day basis, sit down and have a very real conversation with yourself, write it out about what you want to consume, how you want to consume it, when you want to consume it. Like, I have this guilty pleasure where I read daily mail, which is like total trash, but I love it.

And I, I, I read. Sure they love you ever, I mean, like, I just love like just sitting down and eating a sandwich and reading daily mail. There's something about it that's relaxing. So I have told myself, okay, if I'm going to read daily mail, like, I just want to read it at lunch. I don't want to wake up and read that because it's going to offset my day. So I think putting those limitations on yourself is super helpful instead of hopping out of bed and getting your cortisol all up because you've just consumed 10 different, like,

it's too much. Yeah, absolutely. And my argument is that that is actually what freedom is. Freedom is actually being able to decide, okay, this 30 minutes each day is what I dedicate to Daily Mail because it's not important enough, you know, it's an empty pleasure, you know. I've done the same thing with my guilty pleasure is Twitch, like watching video games on Twitch. And it's, I, if I don't, if I don't create those parameters for myself, I will sit on that damn thing like for three hours straight and not get anything done. And so it's, for me,

I've done the same thing. My lunch break, it's like, all right, load up Twitch, watch some, you know. I got a good Twitch channel. Have you seen those ones? now that they're, where they're role-playing GTA? Have you heard of this? No. The people are like getting, I just, actually, I just met with Twitch yesterday, and they were telling me that there's a channel that exists where all these gamers going in. They actually role-play, like, down to the T, really?

The characters in GTA, like, they are, they become the people. That's the whole thing going on now. I have to see that. I think there's so much, this is kind of a tangent, but there's so much room on Twitch for, like, I can't wait to see what Twitch is like in, like, 10 years. They're, they're going to start to evolve into other things. I mean, listen, Amazon is just. Oh yeah. They're taking over the world, man.

Yeah. With Twitch and everything. So there's a section of this book where you talk about people feeling in control because they feel like they can change, right? They can read your information. Like, okay, maybe I'm out of control right now. But if I remark's book, I can change this act for my life and then I can have a source of hope and I can change and I'm in control of that. Sure. And you somewhat make the argument like, how realistic is it that people can just change on a dime like that? Well, yeah, one thing I talk about, which I think it's a very kind of ironic thing. about self-help is, so this idea, let's say you go to a self-help seminar and you're like,

you know what, I want to like, I'm too anxious all the time. I really want to get better. I want to change. I don't want to be so stressed out all the time. And that desire to change is your vision of hope. So that gets you motivated, gets you up, gets you going to the seminar, yada, yada, yada. What the funny thing that happens, and anybody who spent a lot of time in the self-help world has probably seen this. So you go to that seminar, you decide, I don't know, oh my God, I don't feel anxious anymore. I've changed, great. But that vision of hope is gone.

So you don't know what the hope for anymore. You know, and God forbid you decide like, well, I guess I'm fine now. I like myself. No, there's something else at that seminar that you're like, oh shit, I need to change that now. And so you see a lot of people kind of get into this endless, it's almost like a treadmill of, okay, I got to change this about myself. And then they go and change it. And they're like, oh, God, now I got to change that.

Oh, okay, now I got to change that. And if you actually watch them, nothing's really changing. It's just their perception of themselves is constantly, you know, going around in circles. And so it's one of the arguments I make in the book is like, look, like, stop, you know, stop worrying about yourself. You know, essentially when you fall into this trap of constantly wanting to change yourself, really what you're doing is you're just becoming self-absorbed because you're constantly thinking about yourself.

If you don't want to be anxious, don't worry about yourself. Just worry about anxiety. Just worry about like not feeling anxious. Don't worry about what that means about you, what that said. Are you an anxious person? Maybe I was anxious before. Well, now I'm not. It's like, who knows?

Who knows what an anxious person is? Just like try to live your life as best as you can. And so it's one of my big, I actually, I take some shots at the self-help world in this book. And that's one of them because I think I've always felt like there's a lot of counterproductive aspects to the self-help world. And I think a lot of it comes back to that. Really, what self-help is selling you is some kind of arbitrary vision of hope. You know, it's like, buy this book, be less anxious. Go to this seminar, you know, feel better about yourself. And it's, you don't really know who you are in the first place. And you're not going to really

know who you are afterwards. You know, so it's just focus on the single moments and actions that you commit to throughout your life. We've received some shit because, or maybe I've just received some shit, because we went to this Tony Robinson. I was like, listen, I appreciate what he's doing. And I like his content. A lot of read all his books. But I looked around at the seminar and it's like, you see all these people jumping up and down. They're all excited and they're high-fiving. And I just felt like, okay, how many are actually going to go and apply this for a very long time, to their life?

But Mark's right. He's selling hope. But that's what I'm saying is that how, is that temporary hope? Or is that, you know, You know what I'm saying? Well, the funny thing about Tony Robbins, and I have a lot of conflicted feelings about it. Like, I think he's got a lot of really good advice. Oh, okay, you squint me to say, careful here. Really good advice. No, so the funny thing, so my take on Robbins is, is I actually think a lot of his advice is good.

I think the execution of it. I think the business model, his business model is not optimized for people. It's optimized for money. Yeah. And, you know, that is what it is. And I imagine his argument would be like it's a means to an it. You know, it's like, well, hey, I'm helping people. So whatever.

His message is good and his content's great. But I just think you have to contextualize how those seminars are put out. Oh, but so the seminar thing, you know, what I mean about his business model, too, is that it's optimized for to create that kind of almost religious feeling of hope of like just getting a bunch of people in the room and rah, rah, and pumping. He even says it. He pumps their state. He pumps them, pumps them up emotional. So that they're a little bit more squishy and moldable to hear his advice. But the problem is is those emotional pumps never last.

And then on top of that, he's, you know, to kind of bring this back to the whole treadmill of hope thing that I was talking about, if you go spend, if you go spend time at Tony Robbins seminars, you actually you get you get pitched for other Tony Robbins seminars like half the time you're there. That's what me and Michael were so interested when we went because we were a little looking at the business aspect. So we went in and we're like, oh my God,

look at that, like, Stan that tells you that you need to go to Tahiti to do business. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's so many different facets that it's interesting to look at it from a business perspective. Yeah, and it's,

and it makes me feel a little skeezy, too. The one, the one that I saw was, was he did this whole thing where he pitched, he like, up sold, so everybody's at like a $1,000 seminar, but then he spends like an hour pitching a $10,000 seminar, and everybody who signs up, he brings up on stage, and he's like, these are the people who are investing in themselves and decided to change their lives.

So he's basically like guilt-tripping the whole audience for not signing up. And stuff like that, that just feels very emotionally manipulative to me. And I think it's a perfect example of leveraging those constant cycles of hope. It's like, you've got these people in this room. They want to change themselves. But if they do change themselves, then they don't know what the hope for next. So you give them a, you know, a $10,000 seminar. And then they can hope for that.

What's happening here behind closed doors? Are you getting a lot of shit from a lot of these self-help authors? You get people messaging you? Dude, no. You know what's funny? I get cold shoulders. You know, it's... You get cold shoulders?

Yeah. You're so approachable and nice. Yeah. It's, you know, people, I'd say it's split, you know, pretty... I'd say it's like 70, 30. Like 70% of the people in the industry, you know, they really respect what I say. A lot of them are like, thank God somebody saying it. But I'd say there's probably like 25, 30% of people in the industry who just...

Yeah, because bullshitters don't like being called out. Of course. Who are these people? Drop names. Drop the names. No, I don't want to go that far. But it's... It is frustrating sometimes.

You're not a salesy, selly, sleazy kind of guy at all. No, I'm the opposite. Honestly, like my team is... is always like, dude, you got a pitch sometime. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot to sell my thing. Yeah, but look, look what that did. I mean, look how many sales you got. You're doing something right.

Yeah, and I think I strongly believe that, and I know Gary V talks about this a lot, I strongly believe in this kind of comes back to information overload, but like in this day and age where there's just so much bullshit being slung around all the time, like authenticity and trust is like one of the most value. things you can have as, you know, an influencer or anybody with a platform. It's like you cannot, and I used to tell people on my team this.

It's, it's protecting that trust that my readers have for me, like the fact that I'm being honest. Like I've told my team, I'm like, if we lose that, we lose everything. Like, it's the only reason they're here is because they trust me and they believe what I'm saying. People don't want the BS. It's like me coming on. Okay, listen, you want to learn how to create a great podcast.

Yeah. Give me $9.99. I'm going to show you how to do this. Like, you're a motherfucker. I don't do that. People wonder why that doesn't work. I want to give it all away for free. Let me teach you how to build a social media following.

You just give me $49.99. I completely agree with you that that's the foundation of an audience as keeping and maintaining that trash. It's so important. Oh, absolutely. It's funny. You mentioned that, you know, my go-to, I get asked all the time. Like, how do I build a blog? How do I build a business out of a blog?

And my go-to answer for years was write 50 posts and come back and ask me again. And like out of like hundreds of people who asked, maybe two people did it. Tell the Charlie, or not, it was a Charlie Montgomery. Well, you probably heard some version of this, but basically someone asked Warren Buffett, his investing secret. He's like, okay, if you sit down for five hours a day and you read these papers and these books and these things, you do that every single day and you make long-term decisions and you basically take this information. It's like that's exactly what I've done. That's exactly how I've made the money. I'll tell you like 99% of the people will never do this.

It's just people don't want to put in the work. I mean, on this side of it, obviously running your media, people come and say, okay, how do you do a podcast? Listen, you have to go. You have to be willing to put in at least a year minimum of really like, I mean, honestly, when we first interviewed you. We were in a warehouse. Maybe in our bedroom.

Yeah, I think you guys were at home. It was very like, I mean, I think if people go back and listen to that, they'll see the difference. But you have to, I mean, listen, like I said, we're at almost 200 of these things now. You have to put in the time. Yeah. It's just in anything you got to put in the time. And no course is going to fast track you there.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always told people with blogging. It's like two years minimum before you can even define your voice. I didn't make a dime for three years and I blog seven days a week. Not one dime. Wow. So like when people ask me that, I'm like, you've got to have your intention.

Like, it's got to be the right intention of why you're starting. And you got to love it. You gotta love it. Every blogger I know who's made it, if you want to call it that, they didn't start to make money. They started just because they really wanted to say something. And, you know, for me, it was just this goofy thing that my friends were doing. And I was trying to, like, I had this affiliate business. And, you know, blogging was, it was the cool new thing that everybody was doing in 2008.

And so I was like, all right, screw it. I'll start writing a blog. And I didn't even take it seriously. for like two, three years. But by then I built up like, you know, a cult following and found my voice and figured out like... You love doing it. Yeah, what works. And yeah, and I discovered those like, wow, I really enjoy it.

Like, it was the highlight of my day. I'm obsessed with your blog. I love, my favorite post, I think I told you this on the last episode. And I'm going to flub the title is about what are you willing to struggle for? Yes. Oh, I love that one. So good. You guys go Google it.

What is that? Do you remember the title? It's called the most important question of your life. It's so good. I actually wrote about it on the skinny confidential because it was so good. Is that how you guys originally got connected? That's how I actually took his article completely obviously gave you all the credit and said, this is his article from his site and this really resonated with me.

And shared it. Shared it. And I think you like retweeted it or something. This is a long time ago. But I'm obsessed with that article. Everyone should read it. Yeah. That was one of my first big viral articles.

I think that was 2014. besides reading your book what can people do at home that's something they can do every day that will provide more hope in their life oh i think i think it's it's important to actually just take time for yourself and just actually cut off like i i think it's becoming way way way more difficult to kind of just sit silently and think for yourself um i'm glad you're talking about this yeah it's uh And it's so funny because when I tell people this, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, meditation. Yeah, I've got this program I'm doing. And I'm on like level six on my app.

And I'm like, no, no, no. You just like sit and just twiddle your thumbs for a while. And think critically about, you know, whatever's going on in your life. You know, journaling can be a really good way to do it. I'm actually like it's reading like really long books. I'm becoming more and more of a fan of that. It's just like finding the longest book that seems interesting to me. Sounds like you.

And just take it slowly. Like there's something I'm trying to like train myself to savor like really slow, gradual satisfaction. Because everything else that goes on in my life like works against that. Yeah, it's fast pace. I guess I'll share some good book recommendations with you. If you're looking for like really long. What are you reading right now though? That's really long.

I'm reading. Well, there's a, do you know James Clavel? you've heard of him wrote the book Shogun and Tai Pan I've heard of Shogun yeah those books Shogun Taipan I mean they're like 1500 pages each like that'll occupy some time You know what I do I

Instead of turning my phone off I let it die So you can't turn it on Yeah and then I take a real book And like one of those vintage book lights You know what I'm talking about from Martin's Noble And that's like what I'll have And that really helps People don't like to be alone with their thoughts

No think about it you go for a run you got to put it on a podcast or you've got to put on music you do anything you got to be go out with somebody nobody can sit alone at the bar by themselves like no people don't like to be alone with their thoughts i just had a conversation with a buddy in mind he's like listen i think i talked about the other day he's like everything's going so well but i've never been this depressed and he's just constantly around people whether it's in his office or girlfriend or whatever it is he's constantly stimulated and so when he gets alone he doesn't he like doesn't know how to function right now Yeah, yeah, it's almost you have to like desensitize yourself, you know, back to to not having something to do constantly.

And it's, you know, one thing I talk about in the book too is you just mentioned your buddy is like everything's going well in his life. Yep. Why am I so miserable? And I think that that's kind of the core question that so many of us are confronting right now. And one of the points that I make in the book is that if you really look at just kind of how human psychology is built, like there's, There's a Goldilocks level of stress that we need. Like if life is too easy and it's too, like, it flows too well, there's not any resistance or challenge anywhere, it starts to lose its sense of meaning.

Because it's the struggle is, to bring it back to the article you love, it's the struggle that actually creates the sense of meeting. It's by sacrificing something, by feeling some sort of pain that makes an experience when we look back feel like it was worthwhile and meaningful to us. And so when you remove all those struggles and stresses and pains and everything, and it all just seems to feel superfluous and pointless. And so what I talk about is, you know, there's this Goldilocks level of pain. So there's too little. Everything feels meaningless.

And if there's too much, then you just become traumatized and emotionally damaged and all this stuff. So there's like, you need to like lean in just enough that you feel like there's meaningful challenge, but not go too far to one in and burn yourself out. not go too far to the other end and make yourself too comfortable. It's very war of art. Yeah. I selfishly want to know your process. Is there a time that you wake up every morning that you write your book? Is it just when you feel like it?

I want to know how you've trained your... Tell us how you've trained yourself to write these books. I mean, because I know how much discipline that is to sit down and stare at a computer screen. It's hard. It's really hard. I wish I had... I'm not good with like consistent structure. What I have found is that my best creative times are in the morning and at night.

So how early and how late? I don't like getting up super early. So usually, you know, if I'm working on a book, like working on this book, I would typically get up 7.30 or 8 and then I'd be working on it. I'd be sitting down by 9 and working on it. And for me, it's, I have a laptop. So I have my normal computer and then I have a laptop, which on the laptop, everything is blocked. I have one of those programs that's called Focus.

That's so smart. Everything is blocked. That's genius. Everything. That's self-discipline. Yes. Well, it's, I needed it. I'm going to do that to your computer so you can't watch porn on any of the screen.

Focus. Only on the porn. Yeah, when you're watching porn, there's only porn. So everything is blocked, and I even set up the program that it has a thing called hardcore mode, which means you can't actually, you like block yourself from getting into the settings and changing it. So it's like I can't even go in and change it anymore. Those programs are intent. Our producer, Taylor, what was that fucking program you installed the alarm?

We had to do that. He woke up and he was having alarm. Taylor, what did you do again? Like really in-depth math equations, the longer the alarm goes off. and you can't turn it off and what's he couldn't get to the he couldn't figure out the the problems or the answers to the problems quick enough so it just would go louder and louder and louder and you can't get out of it I love it but yeah I mean this is one thing I talk about too is that I feel like for so long our technology has evolved you know our brains are very flawed like we're we're

irrational creatures we're bad at what knowing what's going on and it's our technology has been developed to take advantage of those flaws rather than compensate for those flaws. And so I love seeing apps and programs like these because that's what we need. These apps make us better people. Like they actually implement the discipline and the freedom into our lives that we can't really implement for ourselves. And I think it's a much needed thing. But back to the process.

So I would write usually from like nine to noon. And then I start getting really lazy in the afternoon. So I typically book like all my interviews and business meetings and stuff like that in the afternoon. And then if I'm really deep into a project, you know, my mind doesn't shut off at night. So the only way to get my mind to shut off and be able to go to bed is by sitting down and cranking out another few hours, like, say, eight, nine, 10, 11. And then by then I'm probably like in a fetal position under my desk and crying and, you know, thinking nobody's ever going to read anything I write. And so that's a good time to go to bed. Only seven million people are going to read it.

Yeah. You know, what I love about your work is that you're not scared to go anywhere. And one of the topics that you tackle here is religion. Why did you feel it was important to discuss religion and hope in this book? And maybe you can shed a little bit more like. around the process there? I think religion, it's funny because I get asked about religion for years, and I've never touched it for obvious reasons.

But I felt compelled to go there with this book for a couple reasons. One is I think religion is one of the central sources of hope for most people on the planet. You know, talking about that better vision of the future for a lot of people like Jesus or Muhammad or whoever, like provides them that vision. And because it's a belief in some sort of supernatural being, that vision is unshakable. It doesn't matter what happens in your life. If you're a Christian, you still believe that, you know, God and Jesus did all this stuff and you're going to heaven or whatever.

And most of the time, even if something does happen in your life, it just draws you closer in a lot of ways. Yes. And so I felt like it was impossible to not talk about religion. But I really wanted to be careful. Like, I'm personally an atheist, but I wanted to be really careful to talk about religion in a way that wasn't divisive or judgmental. Because I honestly, unlike a lot of atheists,

I think there's a lot of psychological benefits and fulfillment to be found in religious practices. So that was the first reason. The second reason is that there's an interesting trend. If you look at, there's a lot of studies that show that religiosity is going down in the modern world, like the last few decades. That is the rise of science? or just like access to access to information yeah i think science technology access to information like

we were talking about i also think a lot of it is just that social life so social life used to revolve around the church or the synagogue or whatever social life doesn't revolve around those things anymore so that's been happening but i i find it kind of unavoidable to notice that a lot of the like secular groups um from political parties to you know sports fans to you know, even people like brands, you know, people, there's a religious component where we're talking about Tony Robbins. There's a religious component to a lot of these like corporate and secular groups and entities that's arising that you didn't see before. Like the, I don't think it's an exaggeration to call a lot of what we see in both political parties in the U.S., like it's religious

behavior. I think a lot of the behavior you see around brands like Apple and Nike and stuff like that. It's religious behavior. So I wanted to investigate that too, because that's also a source of hope. You know, it's if you're feeling like you have no aim or vision in life, but you really care about a certain cause and this political party is like championing that cause and doing everything they can to like make sure it happens. Like that, that becomes your avenue for hope. It's in a weird way. It's a way that I see a connection between, I mean, you know, all these increases in depression and anxiety and suicide and whatnot, and then also kind of the religiosity of politics and corporate life that's been happening.

Well, I like the way you break it. I mean, even in your first book, you don't only, when you read your work, you don't just look inward at yourself. I mean, that's part of it, right? Looking in the mirror and really analyze yourself. But you also call society out in general. And why I wanted to bring up the aspect of religion is whether it's a political party or brand or an actual religion, you write about the us versus them dichotomy. Yes.

And I think that is interesting. Like, even the things, like, if you, like, one of the things you wrote, like, if you don't, like example you use, if you don't support the war, then you support terrorists. It's like, basically pitting, you know, it's like, if you're not with us, you're against us. Or God created science to test faith in God. Therefore, anything that contradicts the Bible is merely tests of our faith in God. Like, you write these, these ways, and it really, you know, I'm not for or against one way or the other.

But it at least forces the question of, like, actually, am I looking at this in an, unbiased, open-minded way, or am I looking, or am I just being completely biased here? Yeah, and it's, so there's a whole section. Anyone who criticizes feminism is sexist. Yep. And I've gotten that a lot. Like, I've actually gotten a lot of emails of like, just for criticizing a woman, people call me sexist.

I'm like, well, those are very different things. Just because I criticize one woman doesn't mean I'm criticizing all women on the planet. But it's, yeah, there's a very long section. in that chapter about the us versus them dichotomy. And I think it's important because we all, kind of our natural psychological tendencies is to fall into these dichotomies. Like it is the tribal heritage of our species,

is to start to be biased to see certain in groups and outgroups and to see people who are similar to us as more righteous or more, you know, or better superior than people who, don't are different than us or share different values than us and the only way to really surmount that is to a be aware of it and be kind of be skeptical of this this whole hope business in the first place you know it's like we need these visions in our lives to move us forward but if you if you cling to that vision too tightly it becomes destructive and and you you you start finding

If it comes down to hurting another person or protecting your hope vision, a lot of people will protect their hope vision and let the other person suffer. And that, I think, is the fundamental kind of moral question that's going on today. Sounds like we need to take the reins into our own hands and not let outside influence dictate where we're going. Yeah. I mean, it's hard because we need to engage. engage in society and listen to other people and care about other people, but it's also

at the same time, we can't let ourselves get. And again, coming back to the technology, I think social media and just the media landscape in general right now is conducive to forming these in groups and outgroups, these us versus them dichotomies very quickly and very intensely. Like it's amazing You'll see something Like my my vice right now is Twitter And it's amazing how

Twitter it's wild out there It's oh man it's it yeah it's crazy I don't even read the feed I don't even I don't click the feed I know I know and I don't know why I do Don't do it but it's it's you'll see these like flare ups You'll see like some art they'll be like two economists like one you know There'll be an economist at like Stanford and another economist at like Harvard and they disagree about something

and you go into the comment threads and it's like by the time you get the comment number eight you might as well read daily mail. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Actually, the Twitter feeds are some of them. It's a lot worse, yeah. But it's just people trashing each other and slapping labels on each other.

And so I think there's something about this, you know, the media, social media, but also the media in general today, the way information is kind of transmitted throughout society. that just makes these us versus them the economies like flare up really fast and really intensely. I really don't like where we're getting into society where it's like one side or the other. Yeah.

I think that's so dangerous, right? Yes. You could be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But in society now, if you're on one side or the other, it's like, nope, you have to be one or the other. Any issues that fall in, if it's not on this side of the fence, then you can't talk about it. Like, I hate that that's where we're, where we have because, you know, I don't get too political on this show. But being in a position where the decision's already been made for you based on the side that you, or the side that you decide to identify with is a bad position to be. Yes.

I agree. And the other thing that drives me crazy is that people instinctually try to, like, find which side you're on. You know, I get emails all the time, you know, trying to figure out which side of the political spectrum I'm on, which side of each side of, each side of, you know, which side of. issue I'm on and if it's like there's any hint that I'm on this side or that side, you know, I'll just get blasted by the other side. It was funny actually writing this book, one thing that I very intentionally did as well, because I have, you know, I have a lot of readers, I think most of my readers are probably on the left, but I have a very large readership on the right as well.

And so I really wanted to write this book and have a serious conversation about religion in politics that could be read by either side, you know, conservative or liberal, and both sides would see themselves and see. I think bridging the gap a bit. Yeah. And I even told my publisher, I said, I think I'm in kind of a unique position to do this. And I really want to write it in such a way that it's, you know, it's not, doesn't condemn either side or.

It's not divisive. Yeah. And it's funny because there were some people, there were some people, you know, there were some sections where people are like, well, man, don't you think Trump should, you should talk about Trump right here? You know, and I'm like, no, that would defeat the whole purpose, you know? It's, it's, I really wanted to write something that was universal. And coming back to the, you know, being number one in 13 different countries, it's this type of, this, whatever's going on here, all the polarization and divisiveness and a lot of the anxiety and stress and panic and everything,

this is happening all over the world right now. And so, I want my readers in Korea or India or Brazil to also read it and see themselves. You know, they don't care about Trump or health care or whatever, you know? And there's a chance that people read this five years from now in which... Oh, yeah. ...arended around at all. Totally. It blows my mind that anyone puts one speck of their energy towards trying to figure out

what side you're on an issue. Like, honestly, people need to put energy into themselves as opposed to emailing you worried about that, in my opinion. Absolutely. I mean, I completely agree, but I also, it's, you know, they have their little tribe. Their little tribe is where they get hope. And they like my writing. And so they want to know if I'm part of their tribe because it makes them feel better.

And I get that, you know, it's it's. You have to be empathetic, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I see where it comes from. But I definitely, you know, in the book, I argue against it. Here come the emails. Before we wrap up, tell us where to find you. So markmanson.net is my website.

The book is called Everything is Fuck, a book about Hope, comes out May 14th. Should be out by the time people hear this. I'm doing a speaking tour all across the U.S. and probably Canada and Australia as well. So you can check out tour dates at markmanson.net slash book tour. And then, yeah, social media. Instagram. Oh. He's like, oh.

Do I have to? Instagram is Mark Manson. Or Mark Mansonnet, all one word. And we'll leave your book in the show notes, and we'll also leave that article that I love about struggle in the show. Yes. Mark, come back anytime.

Glad we got to do this in person. Yeah, this is good. It'd be better when we see each other. Anytime you want to come on. This is great. We'll make our way out to New York sometimes. That'd be cool. Cool.

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