The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 48 - 3 Core Principles For A Better Life: Mark Manson

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Mark Manson has sold over 13 million books, and is the genius behind ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ and ‘Everything is F*cked’. His advice here is so simple, yet so moving and easily applicable to our everyday lives. For Mark, becoming a better person requires these three principles. Dealing with responsibility, making choices and managing expectations are at the core of our personal development and all interlink. If there’s no personal responsibility for our choices, nothing else is ever going to work or improve. Accepting responsibility, will allow us to move away from the danger of disempowering ourselves to progress. In turn, if we can make those better choices, and take responsibility, our expectations will naturally align. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/mVt7Zig7hob Mark: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson/?hl=en https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Watch the Episodes On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue one of the other things that i really loved when i was reading all of your work is this undercurrent of personal responsibility that runs through everything. And in our society, for whatever reason, people don't like that. Some people really don't like that idea of personal responsibility that you might be more so than you believe responsible for the circumstances of your

life. Because for some people that shines, that turns the mirror on them and says, you've got no one to blame. It's not the government. It's not this, that, this, your uncle, whatever. It's the decisions you've made. And for some people, that's a motivating thing. It's liberation. It's, oh, I'm in control.

Okay. But it feels like some people would rather there be a puppet master to point to. So what's your beliefs and thoughts on personal responsibility, the importance of it. And if you can as well, um, like why some people hate it? I think, uh, to me, responsibility is kind of like the, the core understand, like if, if there's no personal responsibility, nothing else is ever going to work or improve, you know, to improve anything, you have to believe you have some sort of power

influence on it. And if you have some sort of power influence, you're responsible for that power and influence. So if you, if you just reject the idea that you're responsible for an area of your life, like it's like, I'm not responsible for my shitty relationships, it's all their fault. You're basically disempowering yourself from ever improving them because you're, you're rejecting the idea that you have any influence on them. I think, I think the reason or one reason why people really kind of bristle at the idea is I think we, we tend to mistake responsibility and fault, right? So if, if I, if I'm like a typical dumb American and walk, try to cross the street in London, looking the wrong way, uh, and I get hit by a car, you know, it's not my fault that I got hit by a car, but it's still my responsibility. Like I still need to take, take control of my recovery. I need to like take care of my body. I need to decide, you every moment we're choosing what to do, what to perceive, what to believe, what to focus on. Like that choice is happening every single

moment. And because that is a choice, there's responsibility for that choice. Right. Um, I use the example in subtle art of like, if somebody left a newborn baby on your doorstep, it's not your fault that there's a baby on your doorstep, but it sure should is your responsibility. Like you have to do something. You can't just shut the door and be like, not my baby. Like it just doesn't work that way. And so I think particularly people who have had a lot of bad things happen in their life and those things are not their fault, it's very, very difficult for them to accept responsibility because, well, for a couple of reasons. One is it's once you accept responsibility, it means you have to do something. You have to change something. You have to change your perspective. You have to change your actions. You have to change your beliefs. And all of those things are very uncomfortable. a terrible thing happens to them, it kind of fucks them up and that becomes their identity.

Like that's how they get sympathy from other people. It's how, it's how other people know them. It's the basis of a lot of their relationships. And so they're actually afraid to let it go. Right. Like it's, it's actually a scary thing to, to let go of that identity. So yeah, it's, it's a hard thing to do, but we all have to kind of go of that identity. So yeah, it's a hard thing to do, but we all have to kind of go through that struggle. It's really interesting. It's something that I see a lot in our culture at the moment, specifically with young people, because I think Instagram has created more of a community

for that kind of like, I'm going to just be honest, that kind of like self I'm going to just be honest, that kind of like self pity and blame, um, and the algorithms are now kind of reinforcing that. And, you know, you'll get more likes if you do the, it's, you know, I heard it referred to as the victimhood Olympics. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like, Oh, you win. You've had the worst shit happen to you. Here's your medal. One of the kind of self-development, you know, tropes or like, you know, piece of advice I hear often that's linked to that is that happiness is a choice. How do you feel about that phrase? I mean, I think it's fundamentally true. Obviously, I think it's a little more complicated than that. But it kind of comes back to what I was saying. Like you, I think when people say that, what they're referring to is like in every moment you get to choose can either focus on how unlucky I am and how unfair this is and how it fucked up my press trip to the UK, you know, and all this stuff, you know, or I can focus on

something else. I can focus on, you know, how fortunate I am to survive, how, you know, and I think this is where kind of like the positive thinking stuff was intended to refer to, you know, like classic self-help of like, just think positive. Like this is what it, what it was trying to say, but it kind of got distorted and turned into this weird delusional thing. But it's basically like, you know, in every single moment you are choosing how to see things. And so in that sense, you can always choose in every moment to see things in a way that, that makes you feel better. And, uh, it's not easy. It's actually really, really hard, but in that sense, happiness can be a choice. Like it's, it's always within your power.

There's no person on earth that the happiness has been removed from their brain. Like it's, it's all in there. It's all in you. It's just a question of, do you know how to access it? And will you access it? Will you choose to? And one of the things that does feel like a choice link to that is the expectations that we, we choose for life. And you write about how expectations can really be a curse of happiness. Yeah. Um, how, how do we, so why are expect, are our expectations a potential curse and why are they dangerous and how do we set better expectations then? Well, expectations are dangerous because, uh, you know, I think there's a, I forget who came up with it, but I think it's, there's this like old equation where it's like happiness equals reality minus expectations, you know? So if you have these like huge unreasonable expectations for yourself,

you're always going to be disappointed, but then it's a double-edged sword because if you have like tiny expectations for yourself, then you're not going to try to do anything. So like there, there's this weird balance where, I mean, I, I prefer kind of like more of the Buddhist take, which is like, just don't have expectations. Like, just don't expect anything. Is that possible? No, but it's kind of like honesty, right in, in managing anxiety, you know, because anxiety tends to come from, uh, just either irrational or outsized expectations, right? So it's like, you're about to go on stage and talk to a bunch of people and your expectation is like, I'm going

to bomb. I'm going to look like a fool, like people are going to laugh at me. And it's because of that expectation that you start feeling a lot of anxiety, start feeling terrible. Whereas if you just kind of take the expectation of, you know, this is just another moment, you know, it's going to happen. People are probably not going to remember it. Like it just is, it's going to be whatever it's going to be. Um, it can eliminate a lot of that. I do that with, with my book launches. Cause obviously like any author, I'm like, I probably was probably the same with you. Like you're, you know, that when your book is coming out, like you're like crippled on the floor, like everybody's going to hate me. They're all going to laugh at me, you know? And it's, to me, it just helps to just remove any assumption of like what it's going to be, you know, don't assume it's going to me, it just helps to just remove any assumption of like what it's going to be. You know, don't assume it's going to do well, but don't assume it's going to do poorly. Like it's, it's going to do what it's going to do. And you're going to be fine either way.