The Iced Coffee Hour - The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck | The Secret of Life, Sex and Money

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Netsuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s FREE KPI checklist: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Streamyard: Start creating high-quality content easily with https://clickurl.ca/ICH-StreamYard Mark's Channel:    / @uc0tnw9acnxqeojxxdmbohca   Malka Media: https://www.malkamedia.com/ NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselbyhttps://www.instagram.com/gpstephan TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 05:48 - How To Get Girls - With Mark Manson 25:27 - Social Media Is Creating Social Anxiety 41:03 - How Mark Came Up With "The Subtle Art.. 01:09:10 - Contemplating Mortality 01:22:05 - How Money Changed Mark Manson 01:28:50 - How Mark Learned To Say No 01:55:02 - Mark's Biggest Insecurity 01:58:26 - Mark's Best Book Recommendations 02:02:42 - Enduring The Right Types Of Pain Official Clips Channel:    / @theicedcoffeehourclips   For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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How could you offer thousands of dollars of value? You couldn't. I would approach a woman. And if she was not enthusiastically into me, I would say, nice to meet you, have a nice night. But what if she was extremely attractive? So maybe this is where Tate actually comes in handy. Can I ask how much you made from the book? Um...

Thank you so much for coming on the ace copy. Really? Let me say that again. Too early. Thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. We really appreciate it. I'm a huge fan of your book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. I am someone who gives an F about too many things. I overthink everything. This book was recommended to me or it came up. Someone sent it to me. I can't remember exactly how it came across it. I read it and it completely changed my mindset

in terms of what to prioritize, what to give an F about. And just, I guess, life in general about kind of letting things go, which I'm really bad. So for that, I thank you, and I'm so grateful for you to come on. I appreciate that, yeah. When did the desire to become an author start? Uh, maybe like late 20s? Late 20s? 27, 28, yeah.

So it was, I'm assuming after you spent plenty of time introspecting and kind of like fostering the current philosophy that you have? Kind of, yeah. I, you know, there's a saying with writing, which is, um, writing imitates life. So you need to like go out and live. live. I think I spent most of my 20s just like living and trying a bunch of shit. And I never knew

I was a good writer. I got bad grades in my writing classes. And at the time, I thought I was like, oh, I'm just not a writing guy. I'm like a science guy. But looking back, it was because I didn't follow the assignment. You know, they would, they would tell me like, write a piece exploring the thoughts of George Washington or whatever. And I would write a fan fiction that imagine that George Washington was an alien implanted to like bring democracy to earth. I read that. And I get like a f because they're like, this is not what we assigned. Then I was like, oh, I guess I'm a bad writer then.

You know, it didn't even occur to me until I was like 30. Then I'm like, oh, wait, maybe that's actually what made me a good writer is that I didn't follow the assignment. I didn't write like exactly what people expected of me. So it wasn't actually until I had started my online businesses and started blogging. and got a lot of traction blogging and started getting all these emails of people being like, man, you're an incredible writer.

Like, you should write a book sometime that I was like, huh, maybe I should write a book sometime. What were you blogging about? Initially, a bunch of things. So I started my first, I read four-hour work week in 2008. That's when I first read it to when it first came out. Yeah. I remember the one real job I've ever had,

I worked at an investment bank in Boston and hated every second of it. And I remember I had four-hour work week under my desk and any like little break I got, I'd pull it out and read a few pages. And I just remember by the time I got to the end of the book, I was like, I got to get the fuck out of here. I got to build a website or something. Like this is, I can't do this. So I started a handful back in 2008 after reading four-hour work week.

I started a handful of very crappy kind of e-commerce affiliate marketing website. And back then, if you wanted to get traffic to those websites, you blogged. Like blogging was the big thing. It was what Google loved. Back then, you didn't have news feeds. People didn't really post a ton of links on Twitter or whatever. So if you wanted traffic, Google needed to love you. And Google at the time was loving blogs.

So everybody was like, if you want to get customers, you got to blog. So I started blogging for all these different kind of e-commerce businesses or affiliate marketing businesses, one of which was dating advice and promoting David DeAngelos, W. Dating. And that was the one that started to take off. And I got, within probably six months, I got more traction with that one than all the others combined. And so I was like, oh, I'll just like kind of keep hammering on this one. That's how it started. But it was still, even it was like two years of that before it even occurred to me. Like, maybe I should be an author. How did you decide on dating that you're going to be writing about that? Did it start with dating?

or you started writing about other things and then dating just seemed more natural maybe? I started writing about a bunch of different stuff. The dating stuff, and this is the funny thing about writing, so the dating stuff came easiest to me because I was a single 23-year-old dude and it was fun to write about my dates and parties. Or were you successful with the ladies?

Well, define success. Like, you know, confident enough to go up and talk to one and then get a date, you know, like, why was that easy for you? It wasn't easy. So the pickup artist thing had been happening around this time. And I had read the game and a couple of other books. And I had a bunch of friends who were like really into that world.

So we had been going out a lot and, you know, going to bars and stuff and approaching girls. And so I had been doing that for a couple years. And I had gotten like I, by that point I was getting good results. Like I was hooking up a bunch and dating a bunch of girls. But it's funny because it never occurred to me of like, oh, you could be one of these guys who's coaching. You could write one of these books. Like it never dawned on me. For some reason, maybe this just has to do with like the level of their marketing back then.

But it just seemed like they were in like another world. I later realized once I met most of them that they were just normal dudes with really good marketing. The dating, writing the dating stuff came easy. And I think one thing that I've learned throughout my career is that if there is a certain subject or topic that flows naturally out of you as you write it, that tends to be your best content. And so I don't think it was really a coincidence that it was the easiest for me to write. It was the most fun for me to write. And it's what got the most traction when I started putting it out into the world. And so was it a program that you were selling at the time to make a living writing about dating?

No, so when I first started out, it was just affiliate, like, you know. And that was for David DiAngelo? Yeah, David D. used to offer 200% commissions on his e-book. How? Oh, was that because of all the upsells? Yeah. So it was funny.

We were talking about this before filming. Yeah, yeah. I found David DiAngelo probably when I was 14 or 15 years old in high school. I think it was on eBOM's world or something like that. And I signed up for like an email newsletter or something like that. And I'd get his newsletter every single day in my email. I'd read all of them. His titles were so good.

He was so captivating. He would basically answer questions that people would send in, say, hey, David, here's my situation. This girl's, you know, this. How do I get her to like me? And he would write this whole thing and say, you know, I recommend you use my technique that, you know, you could have in my book. And then I think, because I didn't have any money at the time. And I had like a credit card or anything put in.

I think I just downloaded it illegally. Sure. And I read the whole like double your dating at 15 years. all. Yeah, as we did back then. Yeah, he offered 200% commission just because he had so many audio courses, seminars. Expensive, like hundreds of dollars, which at the time, what was the most expensive one he offered? Oh, it went up to thousands. Thousands? How could you offer thousands of dollars value in like... You couldn't. You couldn't. But it's funny because So this is one thing that my team and I talk about quite a bit.

Because at this point, I'm like, I'm a dinosaur in this world. Like, I've been doing this for 15 years. The prices of online content has consistently dropped over the past two decades. Back then, back in like 2007, 2008, whatever, the concept of an online course was so novel and just nobody had ever seen it before that you could charge this insane pre-year. because people are like, oh, well, it's online and you can access it any time and, you know, it's got 20 videos. So of course it's worth $2,000. Whereas like these days, online courses are dime a dozen. So you really, really, really have to have massive amounts of value in a big, I guess, a lot of credibility to be able to like even charge a few hundred bucks these days.

So I haven't done very much research into the pickup culture, but I know a lot of people that very interested in it back in the day. Could you maybe say a few of like the pillars of pickup artistry that like people like to teach or like the grab the pole of it? Sure. So there were different schools of thought, believe it or not. I'm not kidding. I could give a fucking dissertation on this. There were different schools of thought. So there were basically kind of two categories. one was known as canned game, which... Dude, yes. The thing is, I haven't heard of this.

This has not crossed my mind in probably 15 years. That's crazy. It's funny because you would memorize these lines, man. Oh, my gosh. So the philosophy behind canned game was basically, you know, you as a guy, you have, there's probably two or three life stories that you have that are better than all the other stories. You probably have two or three questions or ideas that are better than all your other ideas. And so the philosophy was you should just figure out what those best stories and those best lines are

and then just use them on every single girl you meet because that's your best material, right? Which is like there's a certain logic behind that. The problem is, is it kind of turns you into. a robot and it turns your dating life into like this algorithmic like okay she said response why deploy story C2. But then also like you're using these crutches. Yeah yeah they're using these crutches and you come across a girl that's maybe a little I don't know more sporadic and she says something that throws you off and you're like uh uh uh and you can like yes so that was the problem that was the problem with can't yeah it only get you so far until you come up with the situation you're like

I don't have a story for that. Right. And then you've got to start over. That's crazy. You know about this. This was me at like 15 years old. I had the canned game and it was a few lines. 15 years old?

How were you even? At 15 in high school. Were you using this at 15 or were you just like? Well, try it. The best you could do it 15. It didn't really work. It didn't really work. To try to score a date, which failed miserably.

Score a date. Yeah. You're just trying to get a date. That's all it was. And I'd have the canned material. None of it worked. I mean, some of it would get you so far. Sure.

And a lot of it was over like AOL instant messenger. Be like, you know, aiming back and forth and you'd come up to a line. It only got so far. Okay. All right. What we're going to do right now is an exercise. Okay. You're going to say a canned story.

And you're going to say a canned story. What was your go-to canned story? No, no, I hate it. I hated canned name. I hate it. Oh, you didn't have. You didn't have. No, no.

So this is the first school of thought. I was not part of this school of thought. So this was like Neil Strauss's The Game was kind of like the main can game thing. You know, Mystery, who was talked about in Neil's book. A lot of the earlier pickup stuff, so I guess like 2004 to 2007 was like very focused on this. What guys eventually realized is exactly what you just said, which is like as soon as you run out of stories, you revert. You know, it's like Cinderella turning back into a pumpkin. It's like as soon as you run out of stories, you're like, oh, yeah, I'm back to being that nerdy dweeb who has no confidence around girls.

But before we get into that, you guys actually may not know this, but Graham and I have had so many different businesses we've tried over the years. And if you've ever started a business yourself, you know it is so hard to manage so many different spreadsheets, softwares, softwares, plugins, all at the same time. But today's sponsor NetSuite is here to help. With NetSuite, all you got to do is remember three numbers, 36,000, 25, and 1. 36,000 because 36,000 companies have upgraded to NetSuite. They've also stopped doing things like typing in manual data entry, which is prone for errors and sifting through scattered information. 25 because NetSuite has spent 25 years helping businesses drive down their costs. And one, because NetSuite is an all-in-one solution that allows you to manage all of your KPIs or key performance indicators with one efficient system.

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But the idea behind natural game was like, okay, it's not about learning lines or stories or whatever. It's about developing a skill set, right? Developing social confidence, developing social awareness, developing a sense of humor. These things can be practiced, right? Like you can go take an improv comedy class and become a funnier person. You can join Toastmasters and develop more confidence speaking and better body language and all these things. So the idea was like work on the fundamental skills and principles within yourself. And then that will just kind of naturally translate into greater success dating, which is fundamentally true.

So I was a natural game guy. Like I had probably a similar experience to Grant and a lot of people, which is I read the game. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe this works. I went to a bar, tried a bunch of lines. And the girls just kind of looked at me like I had four heads. And I was like, you know, I think I did better when I was just normal. So I like went back to normal and then just started working from there. I was like, why don't we start at normal because I'm already good at some things and then just work at the things I'm not good at, right?

Which is just logical. So I fell in the natural game camp, which a lot of my focus. And as I, so I built the blog, I developed an audience and then originally I promoted people like David DiAngelo. But then people started wanting me specifically to give them advice. Right. So they're like, hey, Mark, I've been reading you for a year. I really like your take on things. Here's my situation with this girl I'm seeing.

What do you think? And the first dollars I made was charging money for that kind of thing. Like, you know, hey, for $100, I'll hop on the phone with you for an hour. Like, talk me through it. I'll give you my two cents. And eventually, you know, my focus. generally became mostly like what I started to realize once I started working with a lot of different men what I started to realize is that you don't even have

like yeah it's good to be funny that's great you don't have to be funny to get a girlfriend or get a date right like you it's good to have social confidence or be clever or be really charismatic but like you don't have to be charismatic to get a date ultimately what it comes down to is a certain amount of confidence in who you are an ability to deal with rejection or the possibility of rejection and simply being intelligent about which women you approach and which women you ask out and so that became most of my focus in my content it was very psychologically driven it was like forget all like definitely

forget the pickup lines let's even mostly forget the skills and that the principles and stuff like let's just focus on you your ability to deal with your own fear, your own sense of rejection, your own identity. If you get those things straight, then all this other, like everything else will kind of fix itself. And that's kind of what I became known for. Yeah, when Simple Pickup was making their first videos, 2010, 2011, YouTube, I learned it really doesn't matter at all what you say. It's just how you say it. Yeah. That's it. I love their videos when they go up and mumble some random stuff and say, can I get your number? And they'd be like, sure. Sure. Yeah. That's fine. I'm curious. As a man,

at the dating pool right now. The hardest part, and I'm probably speaking for a lot of the audience as well, is the fear of rejection, right? For sure. How did you overcome that fear of rejection, or were you still scared of it, but you were just managing it? You know what? And I, by the way, when it comes to rejection, I think it's more so embarrassment. That was what it was for me as is getting embarrassed. Yeah, really. It's not the rejection itself. It's like, am I going to look like an idiot? Yeah. I think, so there's kind of two takes. One is, A certain percentage of it is just simply desensitization. Like, the way you realize rejection doesn't matter is you get rejected enough times.

And you're like, oh, this doesn't matter. So that's part of it. That's the answer nobody likes hearing, but it's the truth. But another huge part of it, and I talk about this. So I did end up writing a dating book called Models Attract Women Through Honesty. And this was a huge chunk of that book, which is most men who, particularly men who struggle with dating, they approach dating as as though it's a performance right like okay you got this hot girl to go out with you now you got to say the right things you got to do the right things you got to make her laugh at

the right jokes and if you do that then you get to win you get to kiss her or hook up with her or whatever and like it's it's like they approach it like they're approaching a level in a video game you know it's like oh clear all the obstacles and then you know you win the princess at the end and that's a terrible, if you actually look at how human interaction works, that's a terrible way to approach any relationship in life. Like the idea that you need to perform to make somebody else like you, it's going to, even if you succeed, you're going to be dissatisfied with that success, because it's not your actual self that they're liking. It's the performance that they're liking. So a much healthier way of looking at dating is that here's who I am.

Here are the things that I care about that are important to me. Here's the lifestyle that I want for myself. Understanding that a vast majority of the women in the world are not going to be compatible with those values and that lifestyle that you want for yourself. But also understanding that a small percentage of women are going to be highly compatible with those values and that lifestyle that you want for yourself. And so your goal, therefore, is not to make every woman like you. It's to find that small percentage of women who are highly compatible with you as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And so once you like really integrate that into your head, rejection no longer becomes a bad thing. Rejection is simply part of that process of finding the compatible women. So it's women are actually doing you a favor if they reject you, especially if they reject you quickly because they are saving you all of the time and energy that would have been wasted on a woman who is not compatible, who's not going to make you happy. Again, you can't just like read that and overnight feel it. but over enough time, you can reach that point where you do feel that way. And so it, you really, not only do you stop caring, but you're actually like completely comfortable with it. I got to the point where I would approach a woman at a party or a bar or whatever,

talk to her for five minutes. And if she was not enthusiastically into me, I would say, nice to meet you, have a nice night. And I would like to move on. But what if she was extremely attractive? Ten minutes. Yeah A couple more times

Give it 10 minutes Well then I got this story That I practiced Yeah That's when the can't get comes in Yeah But how do you differentiate Between being okay with rejection

But also working on yourself To the point where maybe you're just not presenting yourself on the right way Like this person could be a great match Sure But if you don't convey yourself in a confident way then you're just shooting yourself on the foot right from the very beginning. It is true.

It is true. And so that's the argument to work on yourself primarily, you know, to develop social skills and humor and all those things. Like those are very valuable things. And by the way, not just valuable in dating, valuable in everything, valuable in business, valuable with your family, your social relationships. So those are just very, very important skills to have regardless. But the answer to that question and also the answer to yours is guys get so caught up,

especially like if you're in a room and there's a super hot girl in front of you and you get the chance to talk to her, there's something that happens to men's brains. They start acting like every other woman on earth died and this is like the last chance they're ever going to have to procreate. And it's like, dude, there are fucking four billion women on this planet. Hundreds of millions of highly attractive women just in, you know, this continent. There's no scarcity in terms of opportunities, chances, whatever. Like, you're going to meet another woman at some point. You're going to meet another hot woman.

You're going to meet another woman that you vibe and gel with. The other thing that it's important having this perspective for, too, is that it's very real in dating that you meet the right person at the wrong time. Like, you can meet somebody who's extremely compatible with, but they're moving across the country in two weeks. Or they just got out of a relationship and you just got into a relationship. There's a lot of stuff that happens that's completely outside of your control that if you would just met two weeks prior or a year prior You would probably have a great relationship and it would change both your lives, but you didn't

So you just kind of learn to let those go as well like as they say there's always more fish in the sea Which I hate that cliche, but it's great Yeah, I mean it's cliche for a reason Abundance mentality exactly it's cliche for a reason I love that I love saying it's cliche for reason But before we get into that if you guys are looking at that to create high quality content just like us at a very low cost, unfortunately unlike us. We strongly recommend you guys try out our sponsor StreamYard. For those unaware, Streamyard is a live streaming platform that allows you to create really

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The link is down below in the description. And they're a huge supporter of the podcast. So if you want to support us, support them. Link is down below. And now what that said, let's get back to the episode. Do you feel like there's something that every guy should learn? When I hear Pickup, for me it means more so working on yourself. And it was the confidence that I gained from being able to go up and talk to somebody that helped me so much in sales.

It's just being able to have that understanding that, like, no matter who it is, I can go up and talk to them. Yeah. And it'll be okay. Yeah. I would differentiate between, say, pick up. and just developing very useful life skills. Because like the line between those two things is very blurry. And a lot of cases for a lot of people, like I had a lot of clients back in the day.

Really their only issue was what you just said. They just needed, they had some social anxiety. They were a little bit unconfident or insecure around strangers. That's really all they had to get over. And it just so happened that being single and hiring a dating coach was the way they got over it. But, you know, you probably could have hired a business coach, gone the networking events. Like there are a lot of ways to attack these issues. I would say some of the fundamental skills that every man should learn, social skills for sure.

Like you should absolutely focus and work on your social skills. You should absolutely focus and work on your sense of confidence, sense of identity. And that goes for any single person. Like it's any single person who does that man or woman, it's going to make your dating life easier. But, I mean, there are plenty of people who just marry their high school sweetheart and, like, never think about dating a day in their life. And that's cool, too. So, you know, everybody's mileage varies a little bit. Do you think social media is making social competence better or worse?

I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. I think what I have observed, particularly among, like, say, Jen's ears, is social media, it increases their exposure. to say social expression, like exponentially over, say, what we were exposed to when we were young. And so they seem, I find that young people today are extremely adept of like noticing, catching memes, ideas, common threads that are showing up in different places. Like, they seem extremely nimble and like managing that and like noticing that. I think what where they

so I would say they're maybe ahead of the curve in a certain sense of maybe just social awareness I think where they might be behind the curve is a certain amount of I don't want to say emotional maturity but like there's a certain amount of emotional development that can only happen face to face

it can only happen when you are out with a group of friends and somebody says something that hurts you or when you're in awkward social situations where you have to be the person who walks up and talks to a group of strangers. And I think the more people rely on social media and online platforms for their socialization, the less they are forced to be put in those situations and develop those emotional skills.

And so what I notice is just people being a little bit behind the curve in terms of their social emotional development. I would say what I've noticed being a Gen Zier is a lot of people, they're able to understand where a lot of people are coming from. And like you said, like reading and navigating social situations they're pretty good at. There's not a lot of depth to them. You know what I mean? So they can go a mile wide, but not really a mile deep on anything. That rings true.

It's funny, I've just recently hired a couple of Gen Zers, and I've noticed that. Like, they are so fucking aware of everything and, like, really attuned. Who wants in conversation is like... Really attuned the stuff. How so? I'm so curious. I don't know. It's exposure. Yeah, I really think it's just exposure.

You get to see so many different people, personalities, and points of view. Points of view on social media, and it's just constantly seeing it. And so you're aware of it, and you kind of know how to act and react, but you don't know the depths of, like, where they're coming from. Because it's not like, you know, in person conversation, I can see you and I see, you know, your point of view, but also we're going to go in depth about it. Yeah. But on social media, it's kind of just like, oh, this guy, you know, he's like one of those funny, like, fedore wearing trench coat guys that, like, you know. You give us an example. Like, I have a problem understanding, like, the depth aspect of things. Well, I, so I have found, you know, when I've talked to Jin's ears, I have asked questions, which I think when I was in my 20s would have promoted, like, just very thoughtful conversation.

Like, I've, point blank asked some Jin's ears, like, what are your long-term goals for yourself? And they kind of stutter around and really get kind of uncomfortable and kind of give like a non-answer. And I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. Especially because 90% of the Gen Z ears I'm exposed to are super fucking smart and like really savvy when it comes to like culture and what's going on in the world. But then it's like you ask a personal question and it's just like they're kind of like stumbling around. But you think if you asked a millennial who was the same age back then, the same question, they would give a better answer? I used to sit around with my friends in my 20s, and we would, like, sit there and dream of, like, what we were going to do in 10 years and what we were going to do in 20 years. But that's only because you only knew of a certain, like, a selection of things that were possible.

Whereas now with social media, you're, like, aware of, like, okay, I could be a plumber in Nebraska, or I could be, you know, like a multi-billion-dollar media company manager. It's like, you know what I? There's like this weird relationship between like as awareness expands the the in the possibilities expand the harder it is to narrow your focus and I think that's where the depth comes in because depth to have depth you have to kind of pick a plot of land to die on like you have to be like this is who I am and this is the thing I care about and this is the thing I'm going to defend and the wider the options the harder the harder the options the harder. it is to choose that spot of like, this is my identity. So do you think there are too many options right now across everything? Absolutely. I think that is arguably the largest unspoken psychological hazard of today's

day and age. And I've mentioned that in each of my books, particularly the end of that book. Like it's, there's this concept of paradox of choice, which you know, the more options you're given, the more optionality you're given, the least, the less satisfied you are with whatever you choose. Ultimately, and you especially learn this once you start getting older, like you have to fucking choose something. Like you can't, when you're young, it's easy to kind of sit around and dream about being like a world class expert at five different things.

But like once you actually start working on stuff and you realize how the insane amount of effort and energy it takes to get good at just fucking one thing, you realize like, oh shit. Like I really only get like two or three things in my entire life that I get to dedicate myself to. And so I need to be like very conscious about what those things are. And so yeah, to your point, if you've grown up with literally a million options at all times, how do you pick those two or three things? See, as a millennial, or sorry, not as a Gen Zer, I hate the idea that I restrict my options. Yeah. You know what I mean? I can only choose between some subset of choices.

I feel like it's more so the distractions. Like you pick an option and you are aware of all the other options, but it's all these distractions. Like these ads and like, you know, you could be a drop shop, you could be this, you could be that, which distract you. Although it is another option that you're kind of aware of, do you think that it's possible to separate options from distractions

and you're aware of all of the options? I think distraction is another, I think I see them as two issues around the same thing, right? So it's like even if you have chosen, you know, I'm going to be a fucking great world-class podcaster. Always 10 other things going on at all times in your life. So it's like how do you say no to all those things? How do you turn all those things off?

It's another complication added on top of the initial complication. How do you know what to pick? I would say it's a combination of finding what you're naturally good at, finding what you enjoy quite a bit, and finding what, making sure it's compatible with a wider lifestyle that you want to have. Right. So it's, it's maybe you, like I enjoy science a lot.

I enjoy reading research papers. I would fucking hate it in academia. Like I would be so miserable. And so for me, it just, I realized years ago that that should probably be off the table. So yeah, I think it's a combo of what you're good at, what you consistently enjoy. and what is compatible with the rest of your lifestyle. And I guess part of that too is getting paid for something. Yeah, I think you really said it best in a prior podcast.

I really liked when you said that you know what you're really good at when it comes easy to you. When other people ask you, how were you able to do that? And you just say, well, it was easy. I just did it. And I think for me, personal finance is something that I've been obsessed with. And even before making YouTube videos, I was on Reddit talking about personal finance, writing these long, like, You know, analysis is on random things, and I'd post it on Reddit, and people would like it. Yeah, it's basically like what feels like play to you that feels like worked to other people.

And I realized, like, I learned this in music school because music school is so insanely competitive for obvious reasons. And I remember I was slowly, like everybody kind of gets weeded out, like 90% of the people in music school get weeded out. And I was, I made it through the first two semesters. I was coming to the end of the second semester. And I could feel like my time was coming. And so I was practicing and studying super hard, like six, eight hours a day. And I remember I went into one of my private lessons with my guitar teacher. And I played a piece that I've been practicing all week.

Like my fingers were sore. I was starting to get tendonitis, all this stuff. And I started playing it. And I got 15 seconds in. And he, like, put his hand on my guitar. And he was like, stop. You're not practicing. seen enough. And I was like, all right, dude, if this isn't enough, like, fuck all this. I'm out of here.

This reminded me, you know, in high school, I really wanted to be a drummer. And I was in a band. And I remember the moment that I realized I couldn't do this as a career. I played a show at the Roxy. And there was a band that played after us. And I thought we crushed it. But this band after us, the drummer was insane. I bet the drummer was probably late 20s, early 30s, and this was like Danny Carey's sort of style that to me was like, I'll never get that good. Like this guy was amazing, like naturally gifted. And afterwards, we're talking to the guy and we're talking to the band and, you know, congratulations. Hey, great set. You know, just, you know, being fans. And the guy lived in a van on Sunset Boulevard as the drummer. Yeah. And purely because the band wasn't making any money.

Yeah. He was practicing full time. The rent that he would have paid, goes to a studio that he's supposed so he could play the drums. And I'm like, if this guy can't make it, like, what does that leave me? And this guy is so much better. Dude, music is one of the most ruthless markets. Maybe the most ruthless market in the world. I can't tell you how many, like I still watch a lot of amazing musicians on YouTube, just for fun. I can't tell you how many 18-year-old kids that I watch on YouTube who can play circles around what I could ever, like I could play at,

my peak and I just look at it. I'm like, I'm so glad I quit music. My God. But to finish that story really quick, I remember I got desperate. So there was one guy in my program who was just clearly better than everybody else. He was the one guy. Everybody was like, that guy is going to make it. And so I went, I cornered him in the cafeteria the next day. And I was like, dude, I'm like, I'm having a crisis here. And he's like, oh yeah, what's going on? I'm like kind of like laid it all out. I'm like, I'm doing this. I'm practicing this. And my teacher said, no, I'm just not practicing enough. I started asking him questions. I'm like, how much you practice, man? And he was like, I don't know. I was like, what do you mean you don't know? He's like, I haven't really

thought about it. I was like, okay, well, like, how do you approach a new piece? Like, what's your process? You know, how much time do you spend on each part? What's the warm up? And he was like, I don't know. I don't know. I just kind of like sit down and figure it out. And like he couldn't explain to me what he was doing. And I was like, I was like, I don't. And I was like, you know, I was like, okay, if you would guess how many hours a day are you, like, physically playing your instrument? And he was like, I don't know, like eight or 12, but I've never really sat down and counted. That's really it. That's an interesting question.

Like, it blew my fucking mind that this guy was just naturally, unconsciously doing all of the behaviors that were required to be a top-level musician. He did end up making it. And I remember that conversation, I was like, okay, I'm out of here. I had one friend who made it as a bass player, and it was his entire life. But he loved it. Like he would be watching TV, practicing fretting. And he would listen to a click track, just normally. That would be his background, said to listening to music or a click track.

And at different, you know, BPMs, and that was it. And he would just internalize it. And you give him, you say, play 90 BPM and this. You would just do it. Yeah. It was so instinctual for him. We all have a natural competitive advantage somewhere. our personalities are different

our interests are different our proclivities are different like there's something in each of our lives that we naturally do well that most people don't or it takes a lot of effort for most people and the tricky thing about it is that the things

that we naturally do well they're so natural to us that we don't realize that we do it well like I never it never occurred to me I was a good writer I just I would get on forums I would get on music forums and I would like start arguing with a guy about which band is better.

And I would write, like, my idea of a fun Friday night was writing like a 10-page dissertation on why this tool album is better than this tool album or whatever. That's like what I did for fun. And it never occurred to me that that was writing and that I was good at it. And I think people make that mistake a lot, that it is, because it is so unconsciously natural to them,

they don't realize they've gotten so good at it. And that that's actually their huge competitive advantage. Yeah. At what point did you decide to exit the dating segment? Can you share how much money you made throughout that process? Not that much. Really? I was imagining. Yeah, I was listening to the Diary of CEO and I was like, yeah, it sounds like he's making

a thousand of dollars. And I thought like, oh, yeah, you just retire from that. Like that industry was shrinking by the time I left. And I could see that it was a sinking ship. I started coaching in 2008. I was making a full-time income in 2009, full-time being like 50K a year or something. I left in 2012. Coach my last client in 2012.

I wrote my dating book in 2011. That was kind of like my mic drop moment of like, fuck all you toxic motherfuckers. Like here's a healthy version of men's dating advice. And then I left in 2012. I think by the time I left in 2012, I was pushing up close to 100K a year, but that was mostly through online courses, through the blog. I thought it would be way more.

I was kind of imagining like three to 500, right? I don't know. I mean, these guys made it seem like they're making so, and maybe they are, but like. You know, it's funny. I was never, when I was in that industry, I was never a big player in the industry. I was kind of like a B level or C level guy. it was after I left that my stuff blew up in that industry. So like my dating book became the top men's dating book on Amazon for like eight years.

I think it might still be the top men's dating book on Amazon today. How do people find it? Just go on Amazon. Just Mark Hanson. It's right there. Yeah. And I still like I still get royalties from that today. So yeah, it was weird.

When I was there, I was kind of just this margin. guy who kept trying to like fuck everybody else's thing up because I was like no no no no that's that's toxic don't do that do this instead and I was I was very contrarian but then once I left and I kind of pivoted just the self-help in general I think a lot of people became more aware of me and then things took off in that industry so when did the idea for the subtle art come to fruition so the book itself I started writing in 2014 so I pivoted I just pivoted away from dating the self-help in 2012 and then in 2012 2013 my blog just blew up like

traffic probably five or ten X. The reason I did that is because in 2012 I realized that it's actually very surprising. By the end of 2012 I'd actually built up a sizable audience of female readers and I kept getting emails from women saying like I love your blog, I love your articles. Is this true for women too? each time I would sit there and think about it. I'm like, yeah, it actually is kind of true for women too. And that happened enough times that I'm like, why am I writing for men?

I should just write for everybody. So I rebranded, switched to just kind of generic self-help. Audience blew up 2013, and that's when I was like, okay, I need to write like a real book. And initially I thought I was going to self-publish it, like my dating book.

But by 2015, the audience had gotten so big that publishers and agents and stuff had come knocking. As for the title itself, that was an article in 2015. By then, I had finished most of the first draft of the book, but that article hit so hard. Like, I had had a bunch of stuff go viral, but that one just was like so insanely viral that my agent was like, you should make that the title of the book and, you know, make that chapter one.

And I was like, that's not a bad idea. And that, you know, that that that you wrote back then, what did you define as viral? How did you know? Does it show views? Is it by comments? Is it by, you know, people responding? It's funny back then. You used to be, so Facebook and Twitter used to show you how many times things got shared.

Like, people would post. So, like, at the top of an article, you could see this has been shared on Facebook 2,000 times, and it's been shared on Twitter a thousand times. they stopped doing that years ago but you would see I mean I kind of knew like a standard article I would write would get I don't know three to five thousand shares

just like from my core audience and then if things kind of hit 10,000 20,000 whatever you knew something was kind of popping off and so I had a number that I had a number of articles that ended up with 50,000 shares or 100,000 shares on Facebook each of those shares is probably

reaching anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand people. And then subtle art hit over a million shares across social platforms. And so that article alone did, I mean, it's funny. And these days with YouTube numbers, it seems scant. But that article alone, I think, did 8 million page views in the first couple months, which back then, I think the New York Times got 30 million page views, like the entire website. Yeah.

So, so, yeah. That's like massive. How did you come up with the idea? The big contextual piece of information here that matters a lot is that Facebook released their news feed in 2011. Facebook realized pretty quickly that they wanted to compete. They wanted to be everybody's homepage. Like they didn't want you to go to the New York Times and like see what articles they had posted.

They wanted you to just get on Facebook and click on links through Facebook. They started juicing any sort of like published content on other websites. they started juicing their algorithm to like promote that because they just wanted everybody they wanted Facebook to be the home page of everybody like that's the first thing you look out in the morning so if you could create an article that went viral on Facebook you would just get this insane and insane amounts of traffic so I figured this out pretty early like definitely earlier than most people very similar what people do with YouTube these days I also because I had studied copywriting in previous years I understood that the two most important things

when you post something on Facebook or any social media is going to be the title and then the image that pops up. So if you have a great image and a great title, a lot of people are going to click on it and then if it's a great article, they're going to share it. And that share is going to get a bunch of clicks

and then it's just going to, you know, start the flywheel. So I spent a lot of time focusing, that's when I actually started, again, doing what YouTubers do now, which is title first. So come up with the title, then create the article. What most people did back then is they would think of the article they wanted to write, write the article,

and then be like, oh, I should put a title on it. I realize that the title basically controls your distribution. So pick the best title possible, then write an article that delivers value based on that title. So I started doing that, had a few quick viral hits. I'd say between 2013 and 2012 and 2015, I probably had like 10 different articles that just, blew up. So I went from my dating blog. I think when I pivoted over,

my dating blog probably had 50K to 100K monthly readers. By 2015, I had like 2.5 million monthly readers. Wow. So yeah, I guess that's a 25X. What were some of the biggest self-health points

that you wanted to get across or that really did well that people resonated with? So I grew up, consuming a lot of self-help content. And when I was a kid, when I was young, it was all the Oprah stuff. So it was like the secret and power of now and manifesting

and like power of positive thinking. It was all very like touchy, feely, believe in yourself. You know, you're going to be great, whatever. And being a millennial, like millennials were kind of known for just being disaffected and cynical of everything. And I read all that stuff as a teenager and by my mid-20s, I was a little bit bitter about it.

I was like, this kind of feels like bullshit. Like, it makes you feel good for a little while, but it doesn't actually change you. It doesn't actually, like, create any behavioral change. Around the same time, there was a bunch of new, like, positive psychology had just started up in the 2000s. And so we were starting to get the first research, like first actual credible research on, like, things like happiness,

what improves well-being, how people emotions react to certain experiences. And so I started diving into that content. And it turned out that a lot of the actual academic research on happiness and emotions completely contradicts like the classic self-help stuff. Thinking positive all the time doesn't always necessarily help you. Feeling good about yourself isn't necessarily always a good thing.

So I basically started taking a lot of that academically rooted information and then zeroing in on that contradiction of like traditional self-help, right? So I would take, you know, a piece of research, and then I'd create an article called, this is why you shouldn't try to be happy, or like stop trying to be happy, which back then that was super controversial take in the self-help space. And so people would click on it.

They're like, what, stop trying to be happy. Like, they click on it, and then they start reading it, and it's actually like, no, it's like rooted in a lot of like very, arguments of how this sabotages you. And so that was basically kind of the initial Mark Manson piece of content. Like that was what I became known for. These days, you see that shit everywhere in my industry. Like these days, that basically is the industry to a great extent.

But back then, I think I was probably the only person doing it or the first person doing it. So it's like I captured a lot of that momentum. Do you think any of like the OG self-help books have any value? Because for me, I read The Power of Now and I thought that was like one of the best books I've ever read. And I've read a lot of like self-help books. Sure. None have made the impact on me that that book has. So here's the funny thing about like classic self-help books.

It's every single one of them has a nugget of truth, right? So Power of Now. Yeah, developing the ability to be present is extremely important. is that the only thing you need to know how to do? No, it's not. And in fact, you need to know how to think about the future and also worry about the past because those things are useful.

But you don't want to only think about the future or worry about the past because then you're just going to be this like neurotic person, right? So there's like, most of my criticism for classic self-help isn't that it's wrong per se. It's just that it's not the full picture. Like, life's complicated. and in fact, a lot of the things that are good for us are unpleasant.

And I think the function of most self-help throughout its history has been just make people feel good. Like, here's the thing that's going to make you feel better. And in a lot of cases, that's helpful, but in some cases it's not. But to give a few examples, I'm a huge fan. There's a classic book called The Road Less Travel. Huge fan of that book, It's Imscott Peck. I like the Four Agreements a lot. Like, it's got all this like shamanic universe, blah, blah, blah, which I'm not really into.

But like, in terms of just four simple concepts that you can read that book in an hour and those four simple principles that it gives, like, we'll probably make everybody's life slightly better. Like, that's just, that's a good book. So I trash the industry a lot, but it's, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like it's, as with most things, it's complicated. I feel like with the power of now, the part that I didn't necessarily like was like the whole reframing of your entire mind and your behavior and your personality and your character. The way that you see life, I don't think that that's very productive because nobody's actually going to do that.

But if you do use the tool of presence, just like I said, as a tool, then it's great. I think you make a really good distinction. I think if you approach these things as tools, like another great example is the secret, right? From a purely scientific point of view, the secret's just complete and utterance. bullshit. But the experience of manifesting, like if you look at like perceptual biases and confirmation bias and how you can leverage confirmation bias in your favor, like that's a real thing. Like if you focus on a certain goal or idea that you have, you will start noticing

things that are opportunities to move towards that goal or opportunity. So that is a real thing. It's just all kind of the fluff and the secret of the law of attraction. Like it's a universal law like the law of graph no it's not it's just like human brains are weird we tend to we prioritize what we perceive based on certain heuristics here's one heuristic that you can take advantage of now do you have to explain that all in a book no but just like don't don't show it as gospel yeah that's the thing i don't like is where it's like this is the only truth and everything else is wrong yes because i see that yeah but i feel like you have to be like that if you're writing a book about something you have to be pretty like you know divisive in terms of

You can't be like, well, it's sometimes true, but sometimes it's also not. But, you know, this case could be true for this person, but not always. That's why I'm like stumbling on happiness. And I know that you like that book, too. I love that book. Because it's not necessarily like, it's like, hey, you know, one size does not fit all. Yeah. Which I really appreciate it.

It's not like just like, this is the gospel of how you live a good life. What about you mentioned reframing your mind? Yes. What do you mean by that? Like, what way? Okay, so like completely ignoring certain things that are 100% true, like the fact that the past, yes, it kind of will define in a sense who you are, happens to all of us. And acting just as though that does not exist, which is kind of what the power of now.

It's not saying it doesn't exist, but it's saying like you should not necessarily ignore that, but like almost act as though it doesn't exist. I'm not using the right verbiage, but that's kind of what he's saying. And I don't think that that's a very productive way because you're ignoring something that is 100% true. And it's also, okay, Andrew Tate says he only has a set of, beliefs that serve him. Even if he's ignoring things that are biologically true. So he says he does not believe in depression.

Now I know that that may come off as silly, but he does not believe in it because to not believe in it does not allow him to be depressed. It's his logic. And if that's not true for everybody, but if it just does so happen to be true for him, right? If it works for him. I don't believe in taxes. They just don't exist.

Right. Because it doesn't serve me. But that belief wouldn't be. serving you, right? Because then you'd be back on your taxes. But if he doesn't believe something, and if it works for him, what do you think about ignoring certain things that are 100% true to carve out a belief system that only serves you, even if you're living in blissful ignorance of certain things? It fucks you up. You think so? Absolutely. It will, maybe it wins for a month. Maybe it wins for a year. Eventually it will come and bite you in the ass. Because any part of

that you ignore, you are preventing yourself from building the tool sets and the ideas necessary to handle that aspect of reality. So if God forbid Andrew Tate ever becomes depressed or somebody very close to him in his life becomes depressed, he's going to be completely ill-equipped to deal with that situation. And very much like not believing in taxes as soon as the IRS shows up, suddenly it's not in my interest anymore, right? So how do you, first of all, you get this fuzzy definition of like, what is actually in your interest on what time scale? Like, okay, it makes you feel better today. That's great. But what about a year from now? What about 20 years from now? But then second, it's just

I, and again, this is like backed up by the research. Like, it's, I fundamentally believe that you should, we should make every effort possible to see reality as it is and not turn away. But then, but what's the difference between that and focusing on things that benefit you? Like, let's say a situation happens, you know, and it's a bad thing, but you could find a positive in that and focus on that. Or say, maybe I don't know the real reason that this happened, but how could I benefit from it happening and learn from that? As long as you're not denying the bad thing that happened, right? So like a bad example of it. So an example of like doing this in an unhealthy way is like let's say my wife divorces me and all my friends come up.

over and they're like oh my god dude I'm so sorry this is terrible and I'm like no you know what it's great because like now I can I can travel whenever I want and go out whenever I want and hey I get to date again this is going to be amazing obviously I'm just like fucking diluting myself now maybe I do after the divorce start traveling again dating again trying a bunch of new things and a lot of these things do improve my life and I do become a better person and I can look back later and say you know the divorce sucked, but all these good things happened as a result. So I don't regret it. It was a learning experience, whatever.

Like that latter interpretation is the healthy interpretation. Like bad things can lead to good outcomes. Just pretending the bad thing never happened and everything's good all the time, that's just delusion. And so you're going to, again, and what we find is that people who don't admit that a bad thing is a bad thing, they you're basically you know your brain is like your body you're like your muscles if you don't use it you lose it so if you're not using the muscles in your mind that deal with negative emotion you're just going to remove your ability to handle negative emotion when it does happen so it's like at some point something absolutely horrible and tragic is going to happen and i'm going to be

completely ill equipped to deal with that reality when it does whereas if i'm consistently practicing noticing negative emotions and negative things that happen in my life and coming to terms with them and being realistic about them and understanding that life is complicated. There can be good externalities and bad externalities to good and bad events. When the next bad event happens, I'm going to be very, very stable and flexible in handling it.

How do people get to that point? How do they start? It is as simple and difficult as simply not turn. away from it and we trick ourselves and invent all sorts of methods to turn away from the the bad ugly things in our life but it's it's really just developing a habit and a skill set of recognizing a pile of shit's a pile of shit you know depression is depression you can call it whatever you want but most people on this planet at some point in their life fall into a funk where they feel a lack of motivation,

they feel a lack of self-worth, they feel a lack of direction in their lives. You pick whatever label you want. It exists. It happens, right? And it happens to everybody at some point. If you don't admit that that's a thing, then when it happens,

you're going to be completely ill-prepared. So it's this regular and constant practice of being like, okay, a bad thing happened. It's okay. You know, there's good externalities. They're bad externalities to that. Like, how can we make the best? of it and and this is why like I don't know I always tell people like so many people spend so much

time and energy worrying about whether something is deserved or not like oh this bad thing did well he deserved that or no he didn't deserve that he he deserves better whatever it's like it doesn't fucking matter all all that matters is what actions you choose in reaction to that event like so the worst fucking thing can happen in the world the first question you should should be asking yourself is, okay, what's the best action I can take based on this situation? If the best thing happens in the world, your first question should be, what's the best action I should take based on this event? It should never change. What I loved in this book, as well as the subtle art, I think you brought it up in both, was that people conflate responsibility

and fault all of the time, which kind of reminded me of what you just said. When I 100, percent agree. Everything that happens to you in life and every choice that you make is 100% your responsibility. Yes. And of course, there will be certain things that occur in your life that are not your fault. Absolutely. But at the end of the day, if you get hit by a car and you're lying in a hospital bed and you're like, well, it wasn't my fault. Still your responsibility to go through physical therapy to get better to, I don't know, reach out to people that can help you maybe if you're struggling mentally. And what's crazy too is that, I mean, so if you, something bad happens to you and it involves another person a lot of people it's very easy to

blame that other person but but if you end up in a situation like i don't know like let's say an earthquake hits california like the middle of this interview and kills one of my best friends that's obviously nobody's fault like that's just fucking life right and and it's but still people will spend so much time and energy laying awake in bed trying to figure out well did he deserve that you know was he a bad person was he at fault for that was it god was it was it was it the universe was it like all these things like we just we keep we spend so much time spinning up all these stories and so little time asking ourselves what's the best thing we can do in this situation doesn't matter whose fault it is doesn't matter why it happened 99% of those

stories that you invent for yourself are going to be false they're going to be made up they're going to be inaccurate so what can you do that's going to be beneficial and on top of just being It's also ethical because you can get caught in these echo chambers of either entitlement if you think that you earn something or it could be victimhood if you think like you're just lamenting over something that happened to you or happen to somebody that you care about. Yeah. Yeah. And it's what happens is a lot of these narratives then prevent us from taking certain actions, right? So it's it's if I convince myself that a certain people are to blame for this horrible problem in my life, that's going to alter my ability to take action in my life or take action in a situation that might involve them. Why do you think people overthink everything? So we have this natural proclivity to spin up these stories around events in our lives. And there's a practical evolutionary purpose to this, right?

Like researchers have found that this kind of innate sense of tit for tat justice is very much, inherent in human psychology, right? So it's like, you punch me on the arm, it only feels correct that I punch you on the arm. You know, if somebody steals $100 from you, it only feels correct that you get the $100 back. Like it's like this equal and opposite sense of morality that happens. I think for most of human history,

this was necessary to kind of regulate human tribes, right? Make sure if you steal from him, then he gets something back from you, et cetera. So it makes sense that our mind is always, we're always trying, any event that happens, we're trying to create narratives around two things. One is, is this a good or bad thing? How good is it? How bad is it?

Is it the worst thing? Is it the best thing? And then the second thing, the second narrative that we spin up around it is, does the person deserve this? Are they a good or bad person? Did they do a good or bad thing to deserve the good or bad thing that happened to them? It's just a very primitive, natural state of response to any sort of event. And I think, first of all, those stories tend to be extremely flawed. They tend to be extremely biased.

They don't acknowledge our own imperfect information. I think especially in the day and age of the Internet, we are all learning the hard way how little we know at any given time about any subject whatsoever. And I've just found that so many people that I talk to, or that I've worked with in the past, have spent decades of their lives hung up on these stories of like, you know, they grew up in a fucked up household when they were a kid.

So they generated these stories about how they're a bad person and their parents punish them because of this. And then you fast forward 20 years and they're in a relationship and they've had a kid of their own and it's completely fucking up their family life because they've held on that story for that long. And so they're like, we do this in macro ways and we do it in micro ways.

And I think if you look at a lot of the traditional wisdom, whether it's the Stoics, Buddhists, even Christianity, like it's so much of it is trying to get people to let go of these stories. Right. It's like Buddhism tells you everything is impermanent. Uncertainty is the only certainty. Let go of everything. The Stoics say, you know, like it's don't get attached.

to emotions, don't get attached to narratives, withhold judgment. Christianity says radical forgiveness. Love your, you know, if a person smites you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. It's like as humans, as society is scaled to such a level and complexity, we need these constant reminders of don't buy into that story. That first story that pops into your mind after any event, it's probably wrong. It's probably self-serving.

It's probably extremely judgmental, and it's probably not going to serve you or anybody else. See, I tend to take the approach, if anything happens, whether it be good or bad, I tend to think, how will this serve me in the future? What can I learn from this? And how can I benefit from this? So if a negative experience happens, I just think, first of all, everything happens for a reason is one of the things that I tend to believe and that maybe there's a bigger purpose behind it long term that maybe you're not aware of now.

Sure. But I try to reframe everything is just how can I benefit from this? Where will this serve me in the future? What can I learn from it? And then for a lot of things too, it's just like you have a lot more control than I, than you think. Absolutely. And I think so that that classic, that classic cliche, that's a cliche for a reason,

everything happens for a reason. Again, that's a good example of something that kind of gets imbued with this cosmic significance of like, oh, the universe has a plan for you or God has a plan for you. I don't necessarily believe that. But I do think everything happens for a reason, but you have to go make that reason. You have to decide, okay, my wife left me. This is absolutely fucking horrible. But it happened for a reason, and I need to go find that reason.

I need to go find a way to make this a good thing in my life. You said something at the end of the subtle art. It was one of my favorite chapters I've ever read in my entire life, which was that it's important and productive to always be contemplating your own mortality and know that at any given moment you could die. someone that you love can die and then all can just end. You told a story where you went to the edge of a cliff and stood there for a while. And you also said on a podcast that you have like a fetish for standing at the edge of very steep cliffs where a slight breeze or a little gust of wind could push you off to your death. Yeah.

Is that, is this true? Yeah. Yeah, it's much the consternation of my family. I've done it less lately as I've gotten older and I try to I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie but

yeah there's just a rush that comes I've got this one of my favorite photos of myself is me sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon on a cliff that's probably a thousand feet up and just looking out over it and I don't know it's just it's I feel so alive in those moments and I

had a number of of people close close to me die at a young age. And so it forced me to confront a lot of, I guess it forced me to confront mortality probably earlier than most people are forced to confront it. And I found that a pretty young age that it's one of the few things that clarifies what's important to you. Because it's, and again, this kind of comes back to the point about Gen Z and social media. Like when you're exposed to such a breadth of information and everything, is relative to everything else, right? So it's, it's, this thing here seems important or less important because this thing seems

more important. There, there doesn't seem to be any solid ground to judge everything by. And I found that the only thing that seems absolute and unnegotiable is that you're going to be dead someday. And once you realize that, then you say, okay, dead one day, where are the three things that I care about? And that, that starts this process of clarification of like, Okay, like separate what matters from all the noise.

So in Eckhart Tolls and New Earth, he says, obviously, every experience, everything that happens to, everything that you go through, is an opportunity for spiritual realization. And you're going to have so many opportunities throughout your life and you can realize more and more at different ages. But if you've missed out to be self-actualized or whatever throughout your entire life, you have one final window of time right before you die. You're lying on your deathbed and you think, like, oh, what are the things that actually matter to me? What are my values? You can base it off of that, which I found really interesting. I'm curious to know, how do you contemplate mortality and your own existence and knowing that you're just a speck of dust without becoming a nihilist in a bad way?

I feel like, I mean, you've talked about this a lot. You call it the uncomfortable truth, right? The fact that you are meaningless and there's, you're just nothing, right? How do you not see that and become like, you know, it's all for nothing? I'm just going to sit back, play video games, because that gives me those quick dopamine hits. So maybe this is where Tate actually comes in handy. The answer is because that's not useful.

There are two ways to look at nihilism. One is, nothing matters. We're all going to die, so whatever. Might as well, like, do a bunch of Coke and blow all your money or whatever. The other approach is, nothing matters, we're all going to die. So there's no reason to not do the best things possible for yourself and others, right?

Like we all have a limited amount of time in existence. Our consciousness has a limited amount of time in existence. So we might as well try to optimize that time as much as possible for happiness, love, and well-being. And there are obviously behaviors that are better for optimizing that than others. It's kind of this double-edged sword. There's no reason to do it, but there's also no reason to not do it. And this is recently, it's funny when I was on tour for this book, because that's largely what this book is.

An audience member came up to me and he was like, he said, this is called optimistic nihilism. I was like, what? And he's like, he's like, Google it. It's like there's a small community of people. And sure enough, it's kind of this idea of optimistic nihilism that, yeah, if nothing means anything, then you have no excuse to not get up

and fucking do good things and take care of people and tell people how you feel about them and give everything. everything, every moment you have. So why aren't more people doing that then? Fear, avoidance. It's the uncomfortable truth, Grant. It's uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable. I think people are just too comfortable. I think people are getting too comfortable with having so many options. I think the baseline for what we need to live is almost provided in a sense. Like you had mentioned before that, you know, 100 years ago it was like getting food on the table, finding a place to sleep at night, finding a partner. like if you could do a few basic things, you're set. That's meaning too.

It's fulfilling the purpose. Yes. So it was very clear that if you did these things, you would be happy, you'd be content, you'd be satisfied with it. But now there are so many different options, so many different distractions that you're comfortable, so comfortable in fact that you never even try because you already got what you kind of need. A lot of modern luxury is designed to help us avoid the uncomfortable but important things

we need to think about, right? Like our death or a loved one's death or some sort of tragedy that might happen in the future. Like we don't like thinking about those things, so we distract ourselves and find ways to avoid them. And I think there's a very strong argument that the conveniences of modern living make that avoidance or distraction simpler. And so it's harder. for some people it's going to be more difficult to come to terms with these questions. You said that when you're no longer like needing physical needs like shelter, food, water, just basic things for survival, a lot of the times your purpose and your meaning will go away.

So it turns from like physical struggles to like existential struggles. And you also mentioned the year after you sold the subtle art and it like blew up, did extremely well, exceeded expectations by I don't even know how much. you had your own existential crisis and it was one of the worst years of your life. Totally. I was super depressed that year which is weird because I just experienced the greatest success in my career.

Yeah. But you wrote the book, right? But you know what? I could say to that it's hard to top that. When you get to a certain point it's like, how do I do even more than this? Right, I get that. But you also wrote the book which kind of should have been used as a tool to solve that existential crisis. Why do people know what is good for them, but they don't do it?

I am so tired of people coming to me for advice, whether it's financial, not actual financial advice, but how do I set up a budget? And I can tell them, and I tell them exactly how to do it, and they don't do it. They know it's right. Why do people know they should break up with their toxic girlfriend, but they don't do it? Why do people not do the things they know they're supposed to do? It's hard. It's painful.

It's uncomfortable. They have to confront and deal with a bunch of emotions they're not used to confronting or dealing with. which comes back to the argument of get good at dealing with bad things. Like, that is, that's the muscle to lean into to practice. It's like knowing exactly how to lose 20 pounds, but not going to the gym. And I definitely, I ate a big dose of humble pie after that book came out because it's like, oh, yeah, you think you're a smart motherfucker. Like, here you are sitting on the couch playing video games all day,

like not knowing what to do with your life. I mean, Graham nailed it. though like there's one thing that it it gave me an appreciation of is that there's something to be said about always knowing always having something better in mind for the future right it's like okay you know this project that we did was good but the next one's going to be even better and that works throughout an entire career or even personal life until you get a win that's so massive and so inexplicably off the charts that you're like okay there's no way you know and then then you have to confront the fact of like oh now everything I do going forward is going to be less successful than

this or compared to that yes totally so that that was very hard to deal with and hard to swallow and you know what's funny I the worst thing about it too is that you know you just made millions of dollars and you're depressed and like obviously everybody in your life thinking thinks like you must be so happy. Like this is the best thing that's ever happened to you. So you don't feel like you can complain to anybody. Like you don't be like I felt like an idiot talking to anybody about it, which made it even worse, right?

Because if you're depressed, the number one thing you should do is go talk to somebody. And it wasn't until I remember I was hanging out with a friend in New York who was a really successful startup founder and had sold his business for nine figures a couple years prior. And he asked me, he was like, oh, how are you been doing? Like, how's, how's the book success going? And I was like, oh, it's been amazing, blah, blah, blah. This happened.

This happened. He's like, no, but really, like, how's it been going? I was like, honestly, man, I'm pretty fucking lost. Pretty depressed. And he's like, yeah, I get that. He's, like, selling my company. It's like one of, like, the worst years in my life. Like, I had no idea what to do.

He's like, I still don't know what to do. I was like, goddamn, all right. Well, I think people really like progress. Like, it's a lot better to go from one. to two to three to four than like one to ten back to two yeah it's a big change well also I bet you probably thought that that was going to be the most amazing thing ever right like you built it up and then you actually achieve it and you feel probably exactly the same as you did yesterday you're like oh okay so that's the problem too is that you you hit all these dreams that you've had and you

wake up and you your fart smell just as bad and you're just as hungover or tired and your wife is complaining about dirty dishes. You're like, wow, nothing changed. Absolutely nothing changed. Is that where you came up with a concept or no, no, you got it from Kant about the pursuing the, what was it, the ends or making every decision in your life, seeing it as the ends rather than seeing it as the means to get to an ends. Never treating a human being, including yourself, as a means, but only as an ends. That's kind of bedrock principle behind his morality. And it was funny because when I went into this depression, I started reading a lot of philosophy.

Because I was like, well, fuck, I just maxed out every metric of success I've ever had for myself. And here I am, like, not happy. So, like, time to do some reading, figure out what the fuck's going on. And I came across that Kant's principle. And to me, that kind of solved denialism for me. Like, it kind of, that was the puzzle piece that explained what I said a few minutes ago, which is like, you know, if nothing means anything but consciousness is limited, consciousness is limited, then it is our moral duty to improve the quality of that consciousness

as much as we possibly can until we die. Can I ask how much you made from the book? So it is sold, I think, 16 million copies, 16 to 17. Probably a third of those are foreign. I mean, you probably get, it varies a lot based on format, country, agent fees, stuff like that. But generally per copy, I'm making between a dollar, between one and three dollars, probably, per book, maybe like 150 per book. So, yeah, that pre-tax, that would be 25, 30 million, probably.

Wow. What was the process like of writing that book? How long did it take you? And how do you get in the frame of mind to sit there? And I guess it comes easy for you. But structuring it, how long did that take you do? It took me about two years to write it. You know, my dating book was like 50% blog posts.

and I kind of just dump, like brain dumped into it in a couple months. And then I revised it as I went. Like it went through a few revisions over the next year with help from readers. So I didn't really write that book. Like I kind of wrote it in public with the help of my readers. But I naively thought, oh, writing a book is easy. It just took me a few months. So when I started subtle art, I kind of had the same naive perspective.

But it ended up taking about two years. The first version of it was pretty terrible. I showed it to some friends. They were like, there's some good stuff in here, but there's a lot of weird shit, like just dumb stuff. So I ended up cutting half of it, starting over, writing a second version. That second version is what got pitched to the publisher.

And then I went through a bunch of rounds with my editor. How did you know what to cut out? Because I would have the sense that if you wrote it, you might have the idea that, no, I wrote it. It's good. It's like it's there. You don't know what you're talking about.

How do you humble yourself to take outside opinions and say, no, you're right. I got to cut half. Honestly, I feel like that's the real skill of writing. It's knowing, like, everybody's got ideas and most smart people are able to, like, write down a bunch of their ideas. It's knowing which ideas are good and bad that separates, like, a good writer from a great writer, in my opinion. I will go back and reread my work, and I will reread it from a few different perspectives. So the first and most important one is my own, like just my own.

Like if I get bored reading it, it's gone. Like if I can't entertain myself, I'm not going to entertain anybody else. That's the first cut. Then I'll kind of go back and I'll put myself in shoes of, say, an average reader. So back in my dating advice days, I'd imagine myself as kind of like this lonely single college kid who like can't get a date. And then I would read it imagining myself as that person. And if I hate anything that kind of was confusing or upsetting, I would cut that. And then one thing I don't do as much lately is I'll put myself in the shoes of like a hater or a critic.

And I'll like reread it with that mindset. And same thing, I'll cut some things. The other part two is you just show people. like I've got probably five or six people in my life that I'll show a bunch of early writing to, early drafts, chapters, stuff like that. And if they come back, like if one person doesn't like a section, I'll kind of, I'll take a look at it, but I won't necessarily cut it. If more than one person doesn't like a section or a point, then it's gone.

How is having money changed your perspective on life? That's a really good question. That could be a whole podcast itself. It's funny. It has changed some things that I didn't expect it to change. And then there are, I guess there were other things that I kind of expected to change, but it did not. My day-to-day life is basically exactly the same as it was before being rich, which I'm happy about. I think that's a good thing.

It has changed my perspective on, it's given me a much greater appreciation. of how much perceived status matters unconsciously to a lot of people. Like people, not everybody treats you differently, but a lot of people do. Not only in professional situations, but also social situations. And you can tell that they're treating you differently. That has been a little bit surprising and changed my perspective a little bit. Never thought I would say this. It's definitely altered my politics a little bit.

particularly because, you know, when you don't have money, it's very easy to hold a lot of views about, say, taxes and spending in government. But once you have money, whether you want to or not, you are forced to start dealing with the government a lot more. You have to interface with them a lot more. You get audited. You talk to the IRS more often. You have more accountants.

You have lawyers. You get sued for things. And having that perspective is, I guess it's honestly, it's just being educated now on things like taxes, the legal system, regulations, and seeing up close and personally how the government functions has absolutely changed my person. It's moved me right word, I guess, economically on the political spectrum, because it's not impressive, the interactions that you have. But then, of all places, why would you be in California?

quality of life quality of life i mean government's not everything politics is and everything and i don't think you should make it everything um i love the beach i love the weather and and i i do like the people out here um what else has changed i don't know i i do think there's a natural like when you get a bunch of money dumped on you at first you kind of don't know what to do with it And then there's just this very natural inclination of like, well, I should find something to do with it. Like it shouldn't just sit there, you know, especially back in these days when it was like zero percent interest and savings accounts. So it was like, I should do something, you know, I should go invest and I should buy property and buy crypto and take a bunch of trips. And that's fun for a while.

But one of two things starts happening or two things start happening, really. One is you realize that those things are fun for like a year or two and then they get old. And then the second thing you notice is that a lot of things that are kind of cracked up to be like good financial decisions are not good financial decisions. And so yeah, now most of my money just sits in low fee ETFs and does nothing. What are some of the bad financial decisions that you're talking about? Buying a house that's too big. you'll probably have a lot to say on this or this will not yeah yeah maybe maybe you've been done this road before maybe this will finally are you're hearing up for this let's see it um yeah we bought a

house that was way too big and it's funny because you don't think about the downsides right is the house you're in now no no no okay no the house where in now is fucking great um imagine you said it's too small Yeah. No, you kind of, especially living in New York, my wife and I, we were like so used to places that were too small that when we started looking at the places we could afford, we were like, oh my God, like, what if we got this one? And then we'd go see an even bigger one. We're like, what about this one? Oh, my God. And, you know, we just got, I guess, seduced.

because when we actually moved in, we realized, A, we don't have enough stuff. We literally don't have enough stuff to fill the house. So then you feel obligated to fill the house, which means buying a bunch of furniture you don't need. And now you're dealing with a bunch of contractors

and designers and stuff that you don't really want to be dealing with. So that happened. And then the second thing is that there's actually kind of this, you know, we don't have kids. So it's just me and her. She got an office. I got an office.

she had a bathroom, I had a bathroom, she had like this personal space, I had a library. You know, we all had rooms for all of our own things, so we never saw each other. And so like a year or two went by and we're like, we never see, we're like, we're both in the house all the time and we never see each other. And we realized that we like didn't like that. We like, we started getting nostalgic about our little 900 square foot apartment that we lived in before the house because we were always. basically in the same room together. And so yeah, it was, that house was just like one headache after another. And then of course there's all the usual headaches that come with homeownership,

you know, the maintenance and contractors and taxes and everything. So I was fortunate to get out of that to not lose any money on it. But looking back, it was just, it was a dime. How big was the house? Almost 6,000 square feet. Okay. Yeah. See, I'm in 4,000 square feet now.

But then again, I work from home. We have two offices there. And I'm like, I would love another thousand square feet. Really? I would love, yeah. Because the drum set I have is in the closet. Oh, well. There's no room.

And then you need a guest bedroom for when guests come in. And, you know. Yeah. And that takes up a third of the house right there. Yeah. Yeah. We're in about, we're like 3,800 or something like that. It feels perfect.

But then it's funny. As soon as I started doing YouTube videos, we were like, oh, shit. I need to go get a studio somewhere. Well, that's when you convert the garage. I don't know if you have a garage or not, but yeah. Then you do a converted garage, move the studio there. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're happy now, but it was too much for sure. How did you start saying no to things? Because when you were talking about being in a space where you're like, I don't know how long this is going to last. So I may as well say yes to every opportunity. For me, I really resonated with that because for me going into YouTube, it's like I studied this thing. Like before you've been making a first video, I'm like,

okay, if it goes well, I get maybe five years doing this. And so I'm like, I would say yes to every podcast, every event, whatever people could throw. I was posting as much as I could because I'm like, if I only have two years, I may as well post nine videos a week. And I would just pump out as everything just because I felt it was going to go away. I think this is maybe the most important question for most people's careers. It's also the hardest to answer because I think every. Every career, you have periods where you should say yes to everything.

Like if you're young and starting out, you should say yes to everything. When you were starting on YouTube, you should be posting everything. You should be making every video. You should be going on every podcast. The same thing I did when I started. Eventually you hit an inflection point where you get overloaded and the value you're receiving from each new thing is not proportional to your time and energy that you're putting into it.

So that's when you have to learn how to start saying no to stuff. I got kicked back in the saying yes to things. When subtle art took off, I started getting opportunities that realistically, I was like, this may never happen. Like doing the Will Smith book, right? Or doing a feature movie with Universal Pictures. Like, you're probably never going to get that phone call again. So you might as well say yes to it because it might create further opportunities down the road.

So I had another period of saying yes to everything. 2017 through 2021. And I don't regret it, but it was absolutely exhausting and completely burnt me out. And so I had to go back into a process starting maybe a year ago of, okay, I need to say no to most things again.

For me, it's going to depend where you are personally in your career. And part of it is just kind of a calculation of like, does this add value? Like I could go speak get a conference in Europe and make 50K, right? But is that really adding a whole lot of value in my career? Probably not.

It doesn't scale. And then two, it's like, I don't need the 50K. And that's probably five days. I'm gone and I'm not working on something else. So the opportunity cost is pretty significant. So that these days, that's a no, like just an immediate no. So part of it's the equation. The second part, which I think is the harder part, is developing a trust.

in yourself to know that things are going to be good for a while that like you don't need these opportunities because there's going to be more down the road and that it took me a while to build that that confidence both very early in my career and then again after subtle art because it's you start telling yourself these things of like well maybe this is like my 15 minutes and maybe like this year is it and so I better say yes to everything at some point after a couple of couple years of that and after the success has been sustained long enough you have to trust yourself that it's like okay I've made it this far I've done this many things successfully every year has gotten better in the previous year this is probably going to continue like I can say no to stuff I don't

need to have that scarcity mentality right I guess the third thing which is the the maybe the hardest and most complicated and most personal is I definitely have it helped to like I guess hit hit my number especially leaving New York and coming here like cost of living I know cost living tie here but cost living here is like half of what it is in Manhattan the house I bought here is less than half of the house I had in New York so when I got out here and I like sat down and kind of ran all the numbers and everything I'm like I really don't need the work ever again if I don't want to and I think once you hit hit that moment, then it just becomes like, okay, the only reason to do something is because I want to do it.

It's because I'm excited to do it. It's because it's going to improve my life in some way. And so I took a long period of time off last year and very intently focused on what am I going to do? Like what do I enjoy doing? What am I excited to do? And then you find those two or three things that like you get super pumped about and then you just say no to everything else. Did that happen naturally or were you forced to go and think about those things? I think it was pretty natural. Like I knew by the end of 21, I knew I was extremely burnt out. And I was not enjoying my business anymore.

And I was not enjoying the speaking and the touring and everything. So it coincided with moving here to L.A. Like, and that timing worked out nice. I was originally I told myself, I'm going to take two months off. Took two months off. I got to the end of two months. I'm like, nope. still hate my business, still don't want to talk to anybody.

So let's do two more months. And then in the next two months, you know, that's when a lot of the questions, that the real, first of all, the realization of the financial independence and then a lot of the questions of like, all right, dude, you're about to hit 40. You've made it. You can do anything you want for the rest of your career. Like the only question is what do you want? What is fun?

What is exciting? What adds value? And so I spent most of those probably like month four and five kind of like figuring that out, dipping my toe in the water of a few different projects, journaling a lot. So this newer sense of like fulfillment, happiness, ease, I would say like not so much stress was a product of what you would have called or you probably still call it external factors or whatever. because you compare like the external values versus the internal values. So would you say that sometimes pursuing some form of external value

or if you achieve an external value as a product of maybe like going for an internal value, that it still can provide you with like a sense of calmness and joy and happiness? I'm glad you brought this up. So the tricky thing with chasing external metrics is that you can't really stop. It's human beings like, we're always going to like seeing number go up. We're always going to see, like, there's not a person on this planet that if you walked up to them and said, hey, how would you like to double your bank account? Nobody on the planet's going to say no. Like, it's just we're humans.

We like to see things get bigger. Numbers go up. We like the external validation. So like that's never going to go away. The important thing is that you're not basing your life around. those external metrics, that you have some internal metrics that you're then basing the external around. Right.

So if you're just, and this is what happens with YouTubers a lot, like they get on YouTube, they start building an audience. They get addicted to like number go up, right? And so they start making any content saying anything that just makes number go up. And so they lose themselves. They actually, they don't really care about what they're making. They don't actually believe a lot of the things that they're saying. they're just chasing numbers over and over again,

and it makes them miserable. Like if you ever sacrifice the internal for the external, you're going to make yourself miserable. What you have to do is you have to figure out what are the internal metrics they're going to guide everything, whether that's impact, financial security,

taking care of your family, whatever. Wouldn't that be external, though? Financial security and impact? I would say financial security is absolutely internal because I know a lot of millionaires who feel like they're broke. And I know a lot of people with 10K in their bank and they're completely secure and happy. So the internal metric is very much,

it's what is the state of mind that I want to have in my life? Like what is the state of mind that I'm going for? And everybody's, the way that interacts with the external world is going to be a little bit different for everybody. Some people are going to feel broke at 10 million. some people are going to feel completely fine at 10,000, right? So, but you have to start with that, like, okay, what is my internal value? Like, what do I want my state of mind to be?

Like, for me, it's, it's, I enjoy creating without authority above me, without limitation, right? It's like, I just enjoy thinking and sharing ideas. And I enjoy scaling those ideas. Like, that's just fun to me. And so then you have to look at, okay, so what are, what, are the external metrics that align with those internal metrics that will are accurate measurements of achieving that internal measurement. So, you know, say writing an article that people like, like that's a success. That's an external metric that lines up with my internal metric.

So the way that I understood that was that you have these internal values and they basically act as guides or arbiters of certain decisions that you are going to be presented with at a future opportunity right so they're basically making the decision and taking that burden off of your future self's shoulders and that you should feel fulfillment that you stay true to that not necessarily attached and feel fulfillment from the outcome yes of those decisions the internal guides like the values that you decide for yourself they become the heuristics of how you how you move through the world it's like basically like what are you what are you going to

optimize for are you going to optimize for clicks or are you going to optimize for impact or you can optimize for creative satisfaction And like those are all, all three of those things produce completely different careers. And they can all be internal values. There's an external representation to them, right? So if you're optimizing for just attention, that's going to be represented through views and clicks. If you're optimizing for impact, then that's probably going to be represented externally through like emails, fans reaching out, follower, like the thing, the qualitative things that are said to you.

Like maybe you have a hundred fans, but all 100 of those people are like, you completely changed my life. And then if you're optimizing simply for creative satisfaction, then you probably don't give a shit. You just put it out, and as long as it's beautiful and you feel good looking at it, then you're satisfied. But those all create, and those are all completely valid ways to build a life and build a career in the world. But they produce completely different outcomes. And I think it's fine. the mistake that people make is they just pick an external metric because they think it's going to make them look cool in front of their friends or it's going to get them more dates or it's going to ease the anxiety they feel all the time. And the truth is that purely external metrics without any sort of like internal tethering to a value, they just make you feel worse in the long run.

How do you know when is enough? Dude, I don't know. I guess I would say enough is when pursuing more is creating more harm than it is good. Which that inflection point absolutely exists, I think, on most dimensions, most metrics. How did you know it was enough for you? It's based on your own experience. I feel like someone would have had to tell you because I feel like when your judgment is so clouded, when you are in the of it. You're not going to be able to see it from like an outside perspective and be like,

you know what, Mark, maybe I shouldn't go fly out to the speaking engagement because I'm not having a conversation I should be having with, you know, a friend or my wife or something like that. It's definitely one of those things you realize, you often realize after the fact. It's also so hard because in a lot of cases you have to do too much. And like this has been a common theme in my life. I tend to go too hardcore on things to know where where that line is. Like I go past the line in order to find the line. So I look back at that period of my life and it's like, yeah, I definitely went too hard.

I should have like said no to some things and pulled it back a little bit. But part of that, partly I only know that because I went too far and I, you know, in my case, it was during that period of my life, I, you know, aside from just pretty intense burnout and being dissatisfied, my health started to suffer a lot. I gained a ton of weight, was like horribly out of shape, felt stressed all the time, had sleeping problems.

So it's like that's, those are all telltale signs. Like those are all signs that your body's telling you. Like bro. That's interesting because that's actual, like it's a visual one. Yeah.

Whereas like a lot of the other times, you know, like relationships and stuff like that, that's hard to see when they're suffering. Yeah. But if you do look at your body and you're not satisfied

with where you're at and you know that you could be sacrificing a little bit of that for a little bit more of this, that you don't need. But it's funny because I would say even with we're even we're not objective even with our own bodies.

And I'm sure anybody who struggled with their weight knows this. Like it's, I had to go again. It was, I gained probably 40 pounds over like four or five years, 40 or 50 pounds. And it really wasn't until I was like 40 pounds in. And I was like, oh wait, I gained a lot of weight.

You know? Like it was, I was, years into an unhealthy lifestyle at that point before it even occurred to me. I'm like, oh, shit, my jeans don't fit. I'm curious also what role your wife played in your success. She's great, man. Honestly, she is the first person that hears any idea I have. And we have a very strong respect for honesty with each other.

So I mean, she'll, if it's a bad idea, she'll be like, I don't think that's it. She's a great sense of, she's a great taste, not only in men, but in creative work as well. In books. Yeah. So like she'll look at a bunch of book covers and be like, no, no, no, these are bad. This one's kind of good or whatever. She's great for stuff like that. She's also just, I don't know, it's, you know, there's.

there's all this data that married people make more money. And you can actually, and it's pretty causal. Like you can see it, like you can see even high achievers. As soon as they get married, there's like an uptick in earnings. And I think there's so much intangible value of simply having a partner that can be a sounding board. Like any sort of major decision that I'm wrestling with, she can be a sounding board. like she'll tell me if my reasoning makes sense if it doesn't make sense

she'll tell me if I'm being irrational she'll tell me like if I'm having trouble with employees she's like an objective third party who can be like well no actually I think you're being kind of hard on him there's just so much like intangible day to day value not to mention like the emotional comfort

and the stability that comes with a long-term relationship but yeah she's She's been incredible. I love actually what you said. And this is a metric I am now going to apply on my future dates, or I guess maybe not dates, but like,

you know, life partner is you need to be able to hear something like, I don't like that idea or hear criticism from your partner. Yes. That is like one of the, I would say the pillars of a healthy relationship. What was the exact thing that you need to be able to hear from them? Just that sucks.

That sucks. Right. Or no. I mean, it's funny. She, the stereotype, Right is like anytime anytime your wife or girlfriend puts on an outfit and it's like how do I look? You're supposed to be like oh you look gorgeous

You know I was gonna ask you if you say yes I don't You don't I don't you say you your hips look big or like I'll tell her if she doesn't look good? I'll tell her and she fucking hates it and But does she ask you I think that's a difference of you being like hey honey I don't like that on you versus like hey I didn't expect you to actually say that Yeah no she she'll she'll ask for my opinion okay and it's funny because okay so early in our relationship she'd get kind of mad and i'd be like well you asked so i'm going to give you my opinion and then as time went on so first of all that does a couple things one it just it it it's not comfortable in the moment again not turning away from hard things but it breeds so

much trust because now she knows she knows from a very early stage if i say she looks great she must she fucking looks great like i'm not kissing her ass i'm not you know she's trying to be a sweet boyfriend or whatever. Like I actually mean it. Like, wow, you are stunning. And she gets that much happier because she knows it's true and it's honest. The funny thing has started happening, I don't know, around the time we got married. So like these days, now she'll ask me, she'll be like, what do you think about this outfit? And I'm like, eh, not really feeling it. She's like, and she'll be like, well, I love it. So screw you. And I'm like, okay. And so she'll go out in it anyway. So it's like, now we're even at this, this like further level.

where she can hear the no, and then she can decide for herself whether she's going to take it seriously or not. I have strangely, for a guy who traveled the world and just was a chronic womanizer, I've become an unexpected champion of marriage just because it has been so profound in my life and unexpectedly profound.

Like I, if you had asked me when I met her, if I even ever wanted to get married, I probably would have said probably not. Like maybe if I have kids. but other than that, I don't see any reason. How does marriage differ from a long-term relationship? In my opinion, it psychologically differs quite a bit. So there is a reason the institution has lasted for like 5,000 years.

And that is, like, you can, so when you're with somebody for a long period of time, you make an explicit commitment. You know, it's like, okay, we're boyfriend, girlfriend, we're going to be monogamous, where these are the expectations of each other. Maybe we live together. Here's how we're going to share finances. You have all those conversations. And so it's like on the surface level, everything is the same as a marriage.

The difference with a marriage is that you invite every single person who matters to both of you in the entire world. You stand in front of them and you say, we are going to share a life together for the rest of our lives and a very like emotional ritual. And then it becomes legally binding. And so the social expectation, like this whole layer of social expectation, gets added to it. A legal layer gets added to it. And so there's like you basically ramp up the psychological constraints on the relationship massively, which sounds bad, but it has had such a calming effect on me because there are so

many like minor anxieties that can happen in a long-term relationship. You know, it's like, let's say you get in a fight and your girlfriend like storms out and just leaves, gets in her car and goes, right? All sorts of crazy shit starts running through your head. You're like, where is she going? Is she coming back? Is she going to go find a guy? She's going to go to a bar?

Like, what the fuck is she doing? Like, when you're married, you're like, all right, yeah. She'll be back. She'll be back. She has to. She, like, literally has to. She has to come back. Even if it's to divorce you, she has to come back.

So there's something about that, and this comes back to finding liberation and constraints, like narrowing down and finding that little sliver of life and being like, this is me, this is who I am, and these are the things I'm going to live for. There's a psychological safety and comfort that comes with that that is completely unexpected. One way I describe it to a lot of my guy friends is I say, like, you know when you like leave Photoshop on your computer in the background and it's like everything else just gets kind of slow because it's eating up all the ram and then you close it and like suddenly maybe that's why my computer I leave it open yeah yeah because I have everything

unsaved yeah that everything and I don't want to lose my stuff it's always open it's been open for like a month so and then you close it and suddenly your computer's like blazing fast yeah so the way I describe it is there's like this this program that's open in the back of every guy's head which is where's the hot girl is she into me what can I do to get her into me? You know? And like even, even like when I've been in relationships,

that window is still open. I'm not clicking on it and I'm not using it in a relationship, but it's still open. I'm like still thinking about it. Like I'm in a bar. I'm like, God damn, I was single.

I wonder what I would say to her. You know, like those thoughts still happen. And as soon as I got engaged, it was like that program got shut off and all of this mental ram got freed up. And I just felt like I had more processing power

just more energy more focus there was like no debate it's like okay this is my person it's fucking right or die like this whole

subject is just closed case is closed it's done I never have to think about it again I can think about these things that I really really care about how much of that is just making a choice and sticking with it

because you mentioned that before the paradox of choice is that you know when you make that decision And now you can focus on other things. Do you think it's just that decision? I think that's a huge component of it. I also, so the flip side of this too is that if you're with the right person and you have a good relationship with them, this process of adding these constraints,

it feels really good because it brings you guys closer together, right? So it's like as you're going through this process of getting engaged, planning the wedding, doing the wedding, you know, figuring out. how your life's going to function together. Like, it brings you closer together. You feel closer than you've ever felt before. And that, you know, if you're with the right person and you love them, that feels really fucking good.

So you've got this thing that feels really good that's happening. And it's like shutting off all this noise and bullshit that you used to worry about that you don't have to worry about anymore. How do you have a happy marriage? I know it's a deep question, but from your experience, what have you noticed? Works. I've talked about brutal honesty. Yeah.

I think the two most important factors, and there's like not even a close third, is trust and respect. If trust goes, nothing else works, right? It's like if I don't trust my wife, it doesn't matter what she says, what she does, it's not going to have any value to me because I'm like, why is she doing that? Is she like fucking with me? Is she like playing me? Whatever. So without trust, nothing else functions. And then without respect, it becomes toxic.

You start hurting each other instead of helping each other, right? Because if you don't respect the other person, you start trying to impose your own views and values onto them. And they try to convince you to take on their views and values. So you end up in this like power struggle that's really unhealthy. It can be very exciting and dramatic and the sex can be good, but it's not healthy. So trust and respect have to be there before anything else. The other thing about trust and respect too is when you have those two things, you realize that it's not about not fighting. Like every couple fights, some couples fight more than others.

Some couples rarely fight. Some couples fight a lot. But as long, like if you have trust and respect, you are likely to fight productively. Like that's what matters in a relationship. Every relationship has fights. every relationship has disagreements. Can you fight productively? Can you end up in a better place after the fight than you were before it?

If the answer is yes, then that's probably a good relationship. If it's no, it's going to be rough. It doesn't mean you can't get there, but it's going to be hard. It's like fighting to win the argument versus fighting to achieve or land upon some shared objective or goal. That's a huge part of it, right? Because when people are in a see the relationship as a power struggle, every fight becomes, I need to be right. You know, you need to see it my way.

And that's just, it's fucking toxic. It just deteriorates everything. So one of the most fundamental parts of that is saying, okay, whether I'm right or wrong, matters less than the fact that we as a unit are better after this than before. And my marriage, like, we've both had multiple times where it's just like, fuck, I'm wrong.

Like, I mess that up. I'm sorry. And so I think that the ability to admit that, admit being wrong, ask for forgiveness, and then also the ability to forgive. Because, like, a lot of people are able to say, like, okay, I fucked up, I'm sorry. A lot of people are bad at letting it go.

Like, you need to be able to let it go as well. It's like, okay, it's okay, we're going to be fine. What is your biggest insecurity, and what are certain things you think you're going to be going to go? need to work on. I'm hitting middle age and I'm starting to have a lot of questions around like that realization like not even just thinking about my mortality but like really a realization of like okay you might be 50% of away through your peak years how are you are you using them well like how are you using them are you using them well and so I I have noticed like I've had a I've had an

urgency in the last year of like make sure you're working on things and doing things that are going to matter when you're 80, 90 years old. I think it's not enough to simply know what you want, which a lot of people struggle to know what they want. You need to also ask yourself why you want it and be like uncomfortably honest with that with that question. Because a lot of the things that we do want are driven through insecurity, trauma. You know, we got bullied when we were a kid and we think if we have a Lamborghini, like people like a, you know, whatever it is. So be very, very brutally honest with that question of like, why do you want the thing? In terms of just like improving your life generally, I honestly think physical health is underrated.

I know that sounds weird to say. I don't mean like fucking dieting and fads and getting a six-pack. I just mean sleeping well, not just. drinking alcohol, not eating garbage. Like those three things right there, if you can do those three things, like exercise regularly, even if it's going for a walk, like if you can just do those things consistently for a few months, you will notice a massive improvement in energy and mood. And I think that just gets underrated.

Like it's not a sexy answer. It's not a big life hack that everybody wants to hear. Right. Because it's something that everyone could be doing at the current moment. It's not like, oh, get a Lamborghini. Oh, that's exciting. You know what I mean? Because you know that you don't actually have to work a bunch at this given moment.

It's like, oh, I'm delaying the burden to my future self. But it's like, oh, you know, like maybe I'll skip out on this cookie or, you know, maybe I'll go to the gym, wake up at a certain hour. Like that stuff you could be doing right now. Yeah. So it's not very sexy. Social relationships is another unsexy thing that has completely outsized benefits on happiness. It's, again, there are a bunch of studies around this. It's like, I think it was seeing a good friend once a week was the equivalent of like an extra 80K in income in terms of its effect on happiness levels.

Really? Yeah. I had no idea. There's a bunch of shit. Like marriage is, marriage by itself is worth like, I think, 200K a year in extra income in terms of happiness. Like, it's shocking how these simple things have outsized impacts and everybody continues to ignore them because they're so. boring and quitting. So you're saying you could get hypothetically like 300 grand a year in happiness by seeing

your friends, getting married, exercising on a regular basis, like very basic thing. It's so fucking boring. But yeah. It's probably good. And it's absolutely going to make you more happy than the Lambo. That's really interesting. Can you rattle off a few of the most impactful and powerful books that you've read? We already talked about Four Hour Work Week.

the game. Although I don't know if I would recommend either of those these days. I think they're both kind of of a different era. I'm a big fan of stumbling on happiness. Big fan of that book, The Roadless Travel. In my opinion, that's kind of like the best classic self-help book. It's a little bit more intellectual, but Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate changed my views on a lot of things about like how how much of our personality and disposition is actually alterable and what's not. And that sounds like it's a bad news thing. Like we like to believe that we can change anything about ourselves. But I think actually coming to terms with just kind of how you're naturally built as a human being is much healthier. Just like recognizing like, okay, I'm an introvert. Like,

let's deal with that instead of trying to be something you're not. Jonathan Heights got a great book called The Happiness Hypothesis, which is a really good review of positive psychology. Conneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Super Useful for Understanding just like how bad our brains are at observing reality. It could go on and on. It's good. Yeah, a couple in there. I've read a couple.

I need to read. So one thing that you talked about on Tom Billu's podcast that I loved was spiritual entertainment, like a spiritual diet, like having that, like, having that, like, like, I would say spiritual ice cream for dessert, but not actually do anything for it, doing anything about it versus actual self-realization and using like spiritual enlightenment and applying that in your life. I'm wondering how could someone go from like a spiritual diet as though it's just entertaining? Like I feel like I'm kind of at the place where I'm just reading all of these personal development self-help type books. And I'm like, well, how much of it

am I actually applying in my real life versus how much do I like that little cookie at the end of the book where I'm like, ooh, I feel like I can use these in my life. but I don't actually use them. Yeah. How do you go from somebody who just like has that in their diet versus actually like digesting it and becoming self-realized? My advice, so self-help, there's a certain percentage of self-help content that really is just glorified entertainment.

And there's a certain percentage of it that can become a little bit addictive because that people get hooked on that chasing that feeling of, oh, I learned something, I'm improving something. I'm better than I was before I watched this video or read this book, even though they're not actually changing their day-to-day behaviors. And when people get kind of caught in that loop, my recommendation is actually to just stop. Like take a month, and this sounds weird,

but like take a month and like detox from life advice. Detox, like don't listen to podcasts or read the books or watch the videos. Like go 30 days and just live your life. just do things like you're normally doing and then just pay attention to how happy are you because in a lot of cases you're kind of happy already so like what you don't need to fix what's not broken i i i wrote a number of articles about this years ago and i talked about how like in my head there's there's kind of two versions of self-help and they don't get distinguished often enough one is taking people who are in a bad place and making them okay and then there's another version which is

just taking people who are okay and then trying to make them better or make them good or great. If you're in a bad place, then yeah, you need to work really hard to get to a place that you're okay. But if you're already in a place that's okay and you're just like kind of chronically trying to optimize every aspect of your life, you can actually drive yourself into a bad place, right? Because it's like suddenly a life that is otherwise happy and successful. You are constantly aware of all the areas that you're showing up short and all the things that are unoptimized and that you're not doing well enough. And so you can drive yourself into misery that way.

And so I always tell people, if you feel like you're at any risk of falling into that trap, just stop for 30 days. Just go live and don't worry about it. Like take a self-help vacation. What pain do you want in your life and what are you willing to struggle for? So what pain do you welcome and what are you willing to struggle for? This is your question. You know this.

It's exactly what I'm doing. Like I enjoy You know, I spend about four or five years Kind of in traditional media Doing a lot of books, movies, I did a couple of TV deals Coming back to the creator space Where again, I get to have control I create the content, I build the team, I scale everything

I figure out monetization, everything It's so fucking fun. Like it's stressful as shit It's an insane amount of work as you guys know But I'm so, I'm having so much fun and it's it feels it feels good it feels like play and it feels impactful Graham yeah what pain do you welcome in your life and what are you willing to struggle for pain I enjoy being the underdog and changing what I believe could be done better I don't know if that's quite a pain

geez what discomfort are you comfortable with and you like I would say physical exhaustion something that like for me is something like I could lean into that I could probably do better I could probably improve on that pushing myself there are benefits to that for sure because that's something I can't stand jack knows this I love being comfortable he is so sensitive to any like we'll go in a pool that's like not heated I won't even go it so cold but I feel better after anything all right so I want to close this off with a little quote okay okay this is a quote by you one day must be good One day, you and everyone you love will die, and beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will even matter.

This is the uncomfortable truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose. We are nothing. That is a quote. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Can I drop this? You can't. Also, huge shout out to Malcomedia. This is their studio. They're based in Santa Monica. They have let us use this. They are so generous, so, so, so, so generous. Wish I could go on for minutes about this, but I can't.

If you're in Los Angeles and you want a studio to film that, and this is not, they didn't even tell us to say any of this. Do you guys even do that? Do you rent out the studio or is it? Okay, they do. I didn't even know that they did that. We're speaking out of turn here. Just again, they do.

If you're in Los Angeles, you want a studio to film that, seriously, we can't recommend this enough. This has been, like, the best shoot. This is even better than our set, Jack. Oh, it's way better. And the cameras, they have FX6s, which are... I mean, we have FX3s, so it's at least two times better, if my math is right. If this existed in Vegas. Oh, we would use it.

Yeah, easy. We would just be using this instead of her own set, honestly. So they're linked down below, guys. They didn't pay us to say this. We're just doing it as a favor. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, guys.

I really appreciate the world to us. And your books will be linked down below. Cool. Until next time. See ya. Cool. Thank you so much, man. This has been so enjoyable. It was fun, man.