The Jordan Harbinger Show - 198: Mark Manson | Channeling Hope, Choosing Problems, and Changing Values

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Mark Manson (@iammarkmanson) is a blogger, entrepreneur, and author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life and his latest, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope. What We Discuss with Mark Manson: How acknowledging the uncomfortable truth of human existence's meaninglessness can ultimately serve as an argument against nihilism. What the paradox of purpose tells us about the stress that accompanies an overwhelming abundance of choice. How the feeling brain and the thinking brain might seem at odds, but they actually conspire to guide our values (for better or worse). Why your identity will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it, and how you can change your values to fit your current narrative instead of one that's outdated. What the God value is and how it aligns your hierarchy of values by way of the feeling brain. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/198 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! We all have a love affair with the silver screen. Listen in as Chuck Bryant talks with your favorite people about their favorite movies on the Movie Crush podcast here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. Our feelings control us. The thinking brain and the feeling brain, seemingly forever at odds with one another. Rationality used to be the highest of human virtues. Now it seems the pendulum has swung perhaps too far in the other direction. Many of us seem to be convinced that our feelings are all that matter. This thought trap lodges us firmly into a quagmire where we get stuck in one identity, unable to see past our own values and The problem is that we puny humans actually need that conflict of values to derive meaning. I know it might be too early for all this philosophical BS. I get it. So let me rephrase this. We're all starting to become way too friggin' soft and we're running headlong into a crisis of meaning because of that. In this episode, my friend and one of the best-selling authors of the

decade in order of importance, Mark Manson, joins me to discuss the research behind this phenomenon and, as always, what we can do about it to correct course. Despite the subject matter or perhaps because of it, this is a fun conversation with a good friend of mine, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. If you want to know how I managed to create networks that contain superstars like Mark Manson, well, I'm showing you how to do that for free,

no upsell, change in life stuff. This is what it is. The biggest thing that's ever changed my life, these networking skills, go grab the course. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where that's at. In the meantime, here's Mark Manson. One thing that's great is you're good at writing like people think. Like the inner dialogue.

Is that something, you do that on purpose, obviously? Yeah, well, I try to write the way I think, you know, and the way I talk. Yeah. Which is kind of like just a dude in the bar. Yeah. So I think people resonate with that. That's very like writer, a guy with a typewriter of you, right? Well, it's funny.

I do feel like a lot of writers try to create their voice. You know, they try to sound a certain way. Yeah. And for me, it's just, I just tried to match the voice in my head. That's funny. I wondered about that because I do see other authors trying to do that. And you can tell they're trying because it sounds like an MLM, like a multi-level marketing sales pitch, but in book form.

Or it's like a kid's trying to sell. Someone's trying to sound hip to 20-somethings to increase their downlines. So they're like, you know, I'm going to show you my whack-ass dance moves and you're just going to have to deal. Okay. And I'm like, okay, this is nobody. he's really, that's not a real internal dialogue. It's like, hello, fellow kids.

Yes. Yeah. It's from the Simpsons, right? That is Steve Bouchamey in some... Some movie. Yeah, some movie that he... Yeah. Hello, fellow kids. He's like got a skateboard.

Yeah. Well, who knows? Maybe that's my future. Maybe. They're like, hey... Bring me back in 10 years. Hello, fellow kids. Yeah. Like, hey, look, we just want you to recreate that one big hit, man. Just keep doing that.

Don't, don't mess with the recipe. Don't grow as a human or a writer at all, if you can avoid it, please. Not profitable. No. I can see the temptation in that, though, right? Musicians have to do that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was tons of temptation to do that with this as well.

Like, you know, subtle art was so huge. Like, it's... Toot your own horn, no one's going to judge you. Yeah, I mean, so it's, at the time of this recording, I think it's around seven and a half million copies. That's bonkers. Yeah. And it's been number one in 13 countries. and it's just it's it's like a once a decade type book yeah and um and so yeah obviously everybody's

like dude just do it again i mean yeah the cover right just put an f-bomb in the title use the same yeah yeah it's it's i had to fight them you know i kept telling them i'm like look i'm not just going to cram fuck into it just to have fuck into it you know it needs to have its own theme its own idea its own like its own purpose like i'm not just going to try to like keep beating the same horse. So I think we found a happy medium. You know, I'm super happy with the book. I feel like it's, it's an extension and a maturation of what subtle art was. I think it's deeper. It's more thoughtful. I think it's a better book. And then they got their fucking the title. So they're like, all right, well, good. It'll be fine. Yeah. That's the reason it sold so many copies before.

Yeah, exactly. That and because it was orange. So we just need another type of orange, like a blue, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever, you know, I notice when people go, oh, what's the title? I say, oh, it's called everything is fucked, and they go, oh, okay. And I said, it's a book about hope. They universally, they start laughing. Yeah. So I don't know if you did that on purpose.

I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah? Absolutely. Because I think what a lot of people, you know, I've always told people the most important word of the title, subtle art of not giving a fuck, is actually subtle. Like, what makes the title good is subtle art, you know? Because fuck is just such a bold, like, gaudy, like, ugly, in your face word, but then when you have the subtle art, you know, it makes you chuckle.

You're like, oh yeah, there is a subtle art to not give it a fuck, I guess. Otherwise, it's just chucking the glass of the wall and smashing things. Yeah, so there's a little bit of irony there. So, you know, I went for the same thing with this. It's, it's, you know, we all seem to feel like everything in the world is fucked right now. So it's a book about hope. So aside from like it reigning money, not probably not literally, but who knows, seven and a half million copies, What opportunities have you gotten from that, that create? Because if it's once in a decade, you've got to have some once in a decade opportunities other than just being like, cool, I can retire now.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm doing, so I'm doing Will Smith's book. Yeah, no about that. Which that's, that's the huge one. Yeah. I'm doing, I'm doing a cool project with Audible. So I'm doing kind of like, I don't want to call it coaching, but it's like I basically

talk to people about the relationship problems in the studio. And then we record it. And so we kind of, we build a book and a thing out of that. So that'll probably come out end of this year. So there's been some pretty cool projects that have come down the pipeline. The funny thing is, and this is actually something that is just like confusing everybody in the industry, is I have still gotten zero mainstream press. Really? I didn't even think about that.

Until Michelle Obama's book came out, I was the best-selling nonfiction book of the last three years, probably the last five years. And not a single publication has written anything about me. No TV show, no radio show. That's a nut punch in a weird way. It's kind of like if there's some sort of jock analogy here, right? It's like people are going, you know what, we don't like this guy or this title or this book or this idea. For some reasons, we're just going to be like, no.

But you know what's crazy? Like even so like you take Jordan Peterson. You know, I've sold like twice as many books as Jordan Peterson. Yeah. Speaking of unpopular ideas, right? People hate him. Yeah. He's been in every newspaper, every TV show.

You know, so there's just, and I go, I talk to my agent or I go to my publisher and everybody just kind of shrugs. They're like, we have no idea. Like, this is just kind of unprecedented. So it's a really strange thing. Yeah, that's, I'm kind of annoyed for you because I know what it feels like to be overlooked for something where you're like, someone will go, I'm the number one something something podcast.

And I'm like, of, what are you talking about? You started this six months ago. I've been doing this for a dozen years. You're 7,000 places below me. But cool that you got your friends with the editor of Vogue, like F you. It's like the guys who put a 20-page e-book on Amazon and put the price at $0. And then they become, you know, number one in like religious humor coloring books or something. They're like, I'm a number one bestseller.

Yeah. You know, it's... You're like, oh, does your agent have it framed in her office? Because mine does. Oh, wait a minute. It was on Amazon. Oh, wait. You don't even have an agent.

Oh, never mind. Yeah. Now we sound like dicks. We might have to cut that out. Or it's just a good clue. Hey, we've, you and I have put in, put in our years. That is for sure true. That is for sure true. We've known each other for a long time. And this book, which is the point of this interview, which we'll get into it a second. It starts off cheery. It's got an Auschwitz story in there. Communist occupation of Poland. Yep. And it concludes with the idea that human existence is ultimately meaningless. So it's a fun read. Buy it today, folks. available it's a bestseller on Amazon what is this idea of the uncomfortable truth that's kind of the first major concept of the book why is that important so it ultimately this is a book that

argues against nihilism I feel like there's a lot of nihilism or nihilistic tendencies growing in our culture can you tell us what that means because I'll be honest I have to look stuff like that sure so nihilism is basically uh the belief that life is point in so you should just do whatever the fuck you want. And I think there are a lot of pressures in our culture that are kind of pushing us that way. And I think as a result, we have a lot of crises of meaning, a lot of crises of hope that happen. And so my take with the book, I did two things. One, I started with the Auschwitz story.

And I did that intentionally because I want to kind of set the stage for the rest of the book. Like, people are coming to this book. They're probably buying it because they're really, really upset about something they saw Twitter and I want to like immediately give perspective and be like hey I know you're really upset that like you know what's his face like you know went to trial and didn't get convicted or whatever but you know here's a guy who was in Auschwitz right and by the way six million people were murdered you know so just like set the stage like all right everybody chill out and then from there you know the first thing I introduce is is the uncomfortable

truth, which is this fact of life, which is that in the grand scheme of everything we know about the universe, everything we know about the world, like we are so tiny and insignificant. Each of our actions and behaviors are so tiny and insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it's really difficult to ignore the fact that whatever we do with our lives is probably not going to have much consequence or any consequence. Do you think about that a lot? Because it's like people go, what would you do? you only had two, three months to live.

And I'm like, oh, my God, I have so many podcasts I got to record. And they're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. You're going to die. I'm like, yeah, but this is what I like doing. And they're like, no one's going to remember this in like a couple decades or a hundred years. And even with a book as big as the one you just had, it's like, do you ever think like, okay, this is going to outlast me, but how long? For how long?

I mean, 100 years, probably nobody will remember. Right. So, like, so disappointing. Wouldn't you love to go down like Plato where you're like, nope, I've forever now? I'm good. Yeah, I would love that. But I mean, the funny thing is, is even Plato, you know, 10,000 years from now, probably probably nobody will know who Plato was.

There might have even been a gap where people didn't care about that, right? Yeah. If you think about it, and I'd love to know, was there like a 5,000-year period where people were just like, or about the ancient philosophers or the old stuff, like thousands of years or hundreds and hundreds of years where people are just like, and we don't care about that. So there's actually, to plug another book really quick, there's a great book by Stephen Greenblatt called The Swerve. And it's this insane story in the 1400s about how the Roman philosopher Lucretius was rediscovered.

So basically when the church formed, they, Lucretius was like staunchly atheist. Persona non grata, yeah. Yeah, no, there's no afterlife. And he, like, he came up with the theory of evolution. He hypothesized, you know, the atoms. He had, like, all these scientific theories that didn't come around for 2,000 years. Like, he was on top of that. and the church destroyed all of his books,

and there were only, like, a few dozen left in the world, and there was some guy in the 1400s just happened to walk into a monastery and find one of them, and it, like, completely changed the course of European history. Wow, and now they're like, we told you to burn these. Yeah. This is why. The Pope is like, damn it.

Well, I'm just going to keep one of these in my room, he said. Yeah. Thanks a lot, buddy. But so back to the uncomfortable truth. I mean, the uncomfortable truth. I mean, the uncomfortable truth, I think it's not something, we've all thought about it before. I don't think many of us dwell on it, but anybody who's been particularly depressed at any point in their life, it's, the uncomfortable truth is always front and center. It's like, why bother?

What does it matter? Nobody cares. We're all going to die anyway. Like, we've all been in that place before. And so the only way we get out of it is finding things to hope for, is finding, finding, finding, these visions of a better future or a better life that we believe are valuable or important, and that we also believe that we are capable of pursuing or achieving. And so the only way to escape the uncomfortable truth is to develop a sense of value and importance and then push yourself

towards it. And so we use that to achieve progress, hopefully, in society. And then we end up with the paradox of progress, which, as you put it, which is something that I guess I was subconsciously Yeah. Thinking about because I was like, how are people so upset about all these things that are really trivial? I'm sure every person who's getting older probably has that realization at some point. I mean, I'm 39 and I'm always like, wait, you're upset about what now? Like, I get teenage angst where it's like, she posted this picture of me and everyone saw it and I'm embarrassed. Like, I get that.

Your world is small. But you see adults doing this where in the idea is the wealthier and safer we are, the, in fact, the more likely we are to be super depressed, commit suicide and like end things. And it's like, by the way, it's going to be a very uplifting show. people, as you can tell, so far. Everything is fucked. Right. A book about hope. Is it because the more we have, the more we have to lose, or is

there something else going on here? I think that's part of it. The more we have, the more we have to lose. I think also the more we have, the more complicated those visions of hope become. So one of the examples I give in the book is that there's a thing in

academics called the Easternland Paradox, which is basically they find that people in poor countries are generally have better mental health, are happier or more content with their relationships and their lives. Yeah, you hear that and you're like, how dare you? Yeah. Yeah. And then in the richest countries, you know, suicide rates go up and depression, anxiety, all these things. And it's basically, if you're like a subsistence farmer in India, that vision of hope, that, that purpose that you have in your life of like what a better future is, it's really simple and obvious. It's like grow more food. I just need to grow more food and things will get better.

And that gets you up every day. There's no, there's no ambiguity around that. But then once you have a society with like tons of opportunities and you've got all this education and there's 18 different career paths you can choose from and you've got, you're connected to like 2,000 people on social media who you're constantly interacting with and talking to, suddenly those visions of what a better future could be get very, murky and confusing and a lot of us just get very we give up essentially it's like well i don't shit everything i think is good there's somebody online trashing it so i don't know what to think anymore yeah plus it's like do you do you become a lawyer do and then your mom is happy do you do you become

a writer and then like hopefully you can make a living but that's what you like but everyone tells you it sucks and it's a bad idea and then your friend wrote something and nobody liked it then your other friend wrote something and it sold well but then he still was wasn't happy. So where are you going to end up? Meanwhile, this other guy's like, I just want to make sure my kids don't die. Yeah. Plant corn. Feed my kids. You know, and he's happy. You know, he feels good about it. There's a lot of stress that comes with an abundance of choice. And it's, I think that stress wears down on us psychologically. I know that to be true for me. I mean, I remember very recent, this is like embarrassing to admit, but I don't care. That's the whole point of the show, I guess. It's like,

I remember having like really, being really distraught that like my Instagram wasn't growing fast enough. And then I realized after a lot, way too much thinking that I didn't actually care about that at all. Yeah. It's, it's so easy to get sucked into that vortex. Like that, that, I had one of those recently. I sent out an email to my email list with the subject line, what if Hitler did yoga? And sure enough, like 20 angry people were like super offended. can't believe you made a joke about Hitler, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like, you're an awful person. And I was like, all right, it's time to set these people straight. You know, and I'm like super into it, super angry. And I started, like, writing all these replies. I was like, what the fuck am I doing, man? Yeah, you're like, first of all, somebody should be answering these emails for me. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, I have like half a million people on my email list.

And I'm like, I'm like going to give up my entire morning and be pissed off all day because like 12 people, you know, sent me an angry email. I'm so relieved that you also do this kind of shit. It's important. Like, you don't even notice. You don't even know. You just get sucked right into it. Yeah.

Like, I'll do that with like Twitter. And then I'm like, this is why I only check Twitter every two weeks, damn it. And then I'm like, wait, I like, the other 99 people that engage with me yesterday were awesome. Well, and then it spoils everything. So, because then it gives you this false perception of like, well, everybody on Twitter is an asshole. and so fuck Twitter You know And when that's not true

Like it's it's there's some weird Threshold where If there are just enough bad apples It just spoils the whole whole bunch for everybody And I think that that happens with email It happens with social media I think it happens with news media Like I know that like

You know I'll probably read 10 20 articles a day But if I read one that's just like stupid as hell And like pisses me off I'm like ah the fucking media these days Can't read anything anymore you know And it's it's hard to like stop ourselves from doing that. In part, because of the feeling versus the rational brain.

There's other stuff going on here. Sure. But it's a good, it's kind of a shitty segue, but I'm going to go with it anyway. We'll go with it. We'll go with it. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mark Manson. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show.

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Now back to our show with Mark Manson. I actually talk about this a lot on the show, the feeling brain versus the rational brain, and it's extremely useful as a concept because a lot of us, we think, okay, you know, I'm doing this because this is the best decision. It's like, really, you buying a vintage, Corvette is the best possible use of this invest. Like, oh, you're investing in jewelry or Rolex's.

Okay, watches do appreciate sometimes, but usually not, probably. Let's talk about this because I think, sure, you said it really well. The thinking brain is not in charge. That rational brain is not really in charge. Our emotions are driving the car. It's just that the thinking brain is the supporting character that imagines that it's the hero. Yeah, which is, that's the coneman quote. So I create, in chapter two, I create this kind of silly metaphor. And then I, I basically sat down. I'm like, I want to create like a ridiculous metaphor and see if I can like keep it going over like 40 pages. And so I created this idea like, imagine your consciousness is a car.

And you have a thinking brain and a feeling brain. And most of us are assumption is that the thinking brain is driving. The thinking brain is like being very responsible and like, oh, it's time to go buy milk. And the feeling brain is in the past. your seat, screaming and yelling and being really obnoxious and pointing at things out the window. And it's like, you're thinking brain's job to be like, shut up feelings. We've got to go buy milk. And that's kind of just what we assume about life. It's if we see somebody who has a drinking problem. We're like, oh, man, that guy's not disciplined. You know, he needs to, like,

dampen his impulses and put his feeling brain in place. And the truth is, when you look at all the psychological literature, the feeling brain is actually driving the car. and the thinking brain is drawing the map. And so ultimately, the thinking brain has no control. Like, you can't, anybody who's ever tried to, like, lose 10 pounds by reading a book, like, has experiences. You cannot think your way to doing the correct action. Ultimately, the action needs to feel good in some way for you to continue doing it.

And so in that sense, any issue of, like, self-control, self-discipline, procrastination, underachievement, like, these are all fundamentally emotional problems, but we attack them as if they're logical problems. We think if we just learn all the benefits of, you know, low-carb diets, then we'll stop eating carbs. It's like, no, it needs to, you need to find a way to emotionally enjoy whatever habit you're trying to take on for yourself. Right. And the idea that the thinking brain is drawing the map is, your emotional brain will go, okay, we're going to eat a bunch of crap. And then thinking brain goes, okay, I got to make this make sense, even though we just

said we're going to lose all this weight. Sure. So what I'm going to say is, I'm going to eat all this crap because then I won't want crap because I'll have been full of eating all this crap. So I'll be over it. Yeah. And that will then help me lose weight. And the emotional brain's like, yeah, whatever, man.

Sounds good. It just keeps eating. And the thinking brain's like, all right. Hopefully I can kind of keep it together. Yeah, and it's, I remember, so I smoked for a number of years, and I remember there was like a, there's a running joke with all smokers is that every single smoker is trying to quit at all times. You know, like it was, sure. You know, I'd be hanging out with like a group of smokers outside a club or something and, and, and somebody would be like, man, I'm trying to quit and like everybody would look up and be like, yeah, me too. Like, it's just, it's just a constant thing. But, you know, every smoker goes through this where, where they're like, okay, I'm quitting. But man, I had a stressful day at work, so a cigarette would help me, oh, shit, I've got that meeting coming up. I really need a cigarette to, like, calm down for it. So I'll start, I'll quit after the meeting, you know, and then there's always some rationalization.

And the next thing you know, like two months have gone by and you're still smoking a pack a day. Right. Oh my gosh. I don't even remember. I remember smoking in college and afterwards and then being like, this is dumb every single time. And I remember people in law school who are like really rational, smart people are like, wow, people still smoke. And then 84 people are like, yeah, whatever. And we're just all looking at each other like, we know this is stupid.

It's like smoking, drinking too much. What is it? Tanning is one thing that I think a lot of women especially are like, oh, I'm just doing it twice for my trip. It's like in May, it's January. Yeah. Yeah. And we do this everything with eating food. It's just this is how it's not just bad habits.

It's our entire life. And you wrote a piece in the book here. They went from recognizing and honoring their feelings to the other extreme, believing their feelings were the only thing that mattered. This has been particularly true for white middle-class yuppies who were raised under the classic assumption, grew up miserable, got in touch with their feeling brains at a much later age. Because these people never had any real problems in their lives other than feeling bad, they erroneously came to believe the feelings were all that mattered, and the thinking brains' maps were merely inconvenient distractions from those feelings. Many of those people called this shutting off of the thinking brain in favor of their feeling brains, spiritual growth, and convinced themselves that being self-absorbed, self-absorbed twats. You can say twat.

And it's fine when you say it that way. It sounds like you're from Boston. Right. The other way is rude. This way is fine. It brought them closer to enlightenment when really they were just indulging the old feeling brain. It was the same old clown car with a new spiritual-looking paint job. It's like you see me, Mark. You've seen this before, though.

I mean, this is like all over the internet and especially in our, I guess, our adjacent space. I don't consider you or me in that space at all. But that's kind of like what a lot of our old friends or like people we know are kind of They're doing like yeah I rip self-help pretty hard yeah in this especially in this chapter because I think There is a little bit of a toxic cycle so first of all the first part of that quote One of the problems I talk about is that people tend to either Completely like suppress and shut down their thinking brain you know so they're just all feelings all the time They don't think anything through or they try to shut down their

feeling brain. So they try, they like block and suppress their emotions and in situations and try to be logical, but even though they can't. Instead, what happens is they just become unaware of actually where they're driving. And so the goal is to like a healthy, mature psychology is when you train the brains to talk to each other. The problem is, is that they speak a different language. You know, the thinking brain thinks in thoughts and the feeling brain thinks in feelings. And so you have to learn how to listen to your feelings, respond with thoughts. and then listen to the feelings that respond to that and just kind of get this back and forth.

One of the things I talk about in the chapter is that a lot, I feel like a lot of self-help has taken people who, you know, if you're like a white middle class, yuppie type who grew up in the Western world, and this is, I mean, this is true in a lot of cultures. You know, I know a lot of Asian cultures as well. Like, you were basically taught to just beat your feelings in the submission.

Yeah. You know, you had a duty to do X, Y, and Z. You had to go finish school, and you had to get good grades, and you had to make a bunch of money. And it's like, who cares how you feel? You just shut it, shut it off. Yeah. And what happens is, obviously, that makes people miserable. And then once they're into adulthood, and they realize how miserable they are, they get in touch with those feelings.

And it's extremely liberating. So, like, realize, like, oh, my God, I've been. angry all this time and I just like never admitted it to myself or or holy shit I've been like so sad and upset with you know my relationship with my mother and I never I never allowed myself to realize it yeah and it's there's this huge liberation that comes with that but people mistake the liberation of their feelings as their feelings being superior more important to their thoughts and so you get there's this whole kind of subgenre in the self-help world where it's just all feeling brain all the time. It's taking like disgruntled lawyers and doctors and pissed off insurance

adjusters and putting them in a seminar room and having them like shout into pillows and scream and cry and hug each other and telling themselves that this is somehow profound. Right. Like they're becoming spiritually grown and it's like no, you're just you're just acting out like you're basically you're being a child. Yeah. And you rip open those wounds for the benefit of the company that's running the seminar because they're like, hey, everybody feel like crap? Okay, good. We just had you like talk about how you're angry at your parents and they both pass away and never reconciled that. Our advanced course, which conveniently starts in three days and is $10,000. It's $10,000. We're going to go through the best self-help stuff in the world to repair all this stuff that you ripped open.

And I'm like, there's a woman who's been crying for three straight days in the corner of this room. Because I've done these seminars, right? And they're not, they're not fun. You don't feel good afterwards. I did it and I was shocked and dismayed how manipulative it all really was. It all really seemed salesy. And I talked about this on the show before. And there are women and men in the room who are crying for like the entire time. And you go, this person needs therapy like right now. This wound that we ripped open on her is so serious.

And like the hug from the stranger she met two days ago who's like lives three states away. This is not going to make her feel better. She is really, really in need of psychological health. And she needs her thinking brain to engage those feelings. Like that's the problem is once you rip open those old wounds, those childhood traumas, you need to use your thinking brain to sort through the meaning and redefine the narrative of like what actually happened to you. And but if you're like shutting down your thinking brain and just feeling all the time, you never actually create new meaning for yourself.

You never create new meaning for your life. You just exist and wallow in that pain. for as long as, you know, somebody keeps telling you to. So, yeah, it's, it's, uh, quagmire that is. Yeah, it's, um, it's a bit of a mess. And, uh, so I mean, I just take some shots at, at the self-help world. Yeah, and, uh, and, we have that in common. Yeah.

Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts of the book is, yeah, look, somebody else, because one of the problems that I have with the whole thing is, sometimes I look around and I go, oh, crap, I'm the only person that's like, this is ridiculous. You know, I'll look around, and this is, could be metaphorical or real, for real in that room. I'm like, so this is BS sales crap, right? And the other person's like furiously taking notes. I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, I don't want to ruin their experience. And I'll look around and like in this room with 300 people, they'll be like one guy who's like a surgeon or a doctor who's more analytical. And I'll go, so what do you think? And they're like, some of it could be a little bullshity. And I'm like, yeah, I think like most of it is. And they're like, yeah, I kind of want to leave. And like, yeah, me too.

Let's leave together. Because they don't want to go like, this is a bunch of crap. And then it's like, this person is harming my experience. Yeah, yeah. Because they want to remove people like that in general. Sure. You know what's funny, and I've never understood this, but like the touchy-feely woo-woo self-help types have always loved my work. Yeah.

And I have no idea why, because I just shit all over it. But they think I'm one of them for some reason. And I used to get invited these conferences sometimes. And I actually did one once where they, it was over in Europe. They flew me over to Europe. They didn't really tell me a whole lot. They just said, oh, we just want to, like, interview on stage and, you know. Fire side chat.

Yeah, exactly. Except everyone's naked and high on LSD. But whatever, it'll be fun. Well, it's not too far far. So I get there, and, you know, it's like the whole event. It's like people are, there's, like, cuddle breaks and people are doing these, like, weird tantric vision things. and I'm just like, oh, okay, I'm out of place. Yeah.

And it would always be so awkward because then I'd get up on stage and they'd start asking me stuff. They're like, oh, so, you know, tell us about your spiritual growth. And I'm like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. And then the audience would hate me. Yeah. They'd be like, who is this guy? Yeah.

Why is he here? And why is he still wearing pants? Yeah, exactly. He's like, why isn't he hugging anybody? This guy's an asshole. You're like, the title should have given a little bit of the, this. away, but, you know, that's cool if none of you read the book. You just saw it on a show.

Your friend had it also didn't read it. Saw it on the bestseller list. Yeah, that's cool. Thanks for the trip to, like, Frankfurt, though. That is weird. But you know what it is? It's people, kind of to your earlier point, people are taking the meaning out of, they want to see this.

So they read this book and they're like, hmm, this makes me feel this way that I don't really agree with. Oh, well, my meaning, my thinking brain's going to write this as, oh, this book is challenging me and that's what we need and this is all satire he did he must mean the opposite of what's going on in here so let's invite him to the conference and then we'll find out what mark manson really thinks yeah oh what was on the labels what's inside the jar oops yeah it's like they think i'm i'm like uh yeah like i'm a i'm a self-help ninja you know it's like i'm i i secretly believe all the woo-woo stuff that they believe but i'm just putting on this like hard act to

uh to reach the mass right you know and it's like i'm not No. I think this is a bunch of bullshit. This is based on like real research. This is based on like real psychology. And experience because I don't know how many people know this. It's a little embarrassing for both of us probably at this point. But we were in that dating pickup artist back 10 plus years ago. On the same message boards, knew all the same people talking about our field reports or whatever on like online email lists.

We went through all that stuff where it was like, oh, let's dive in hard to all. this and then some of us came out the other side going wow that was not that was not it that was not the solution yeah i even thought you moved to brazil i was like that's a good move because everybody down there like you can meet tons of women down there and you can and i know that there were guys that were like moving to Brazil to be like photographers and it was a little creepy and i was like oh mark must be doing that and then you came back and you were like normal and had a wife and i was like oh just kidding he grew up down there that wasn't supposed to happen I don't even know what to say

to that. There's a lot in there. There's a lot to unpack there. Let's just say I never thought, I never knew you thought of me that way. No, I mean, not really, though, but I thought like, oh, he probably moved to Brazil to, like, escape with all this BS that we're doing here.

I mean, I traveled all around the world. Yeah. And I was a single guy, so I was partying, meeting girls in different countries. And, you know, that was fun. But, yeah, I mean, I, that whole industry and seeing, you know, I wrote my dating book in 2011 models that tracked women through honesty.

And that was kind of like my farewell project to that whole industry. You know, it was like, hey, you guys are all a bunch of like fucked up, manipulative assholes. Here's like an honest way to do the same thing you guys are trying to do. I'm out, peace, you know? And part of traveling was also to just get away from that.

Sure. You know, it was, you know, I knew a lot of people in the industry and I just, I didn't want to be around them anymore. Like, it felt it was like a very toxic group. Online, it seemed kind of cool. And then you met all of them in person and you just went, whoa, no thanks. I mean, it's. Not all. Many.

Many. Yeah. I mean, I think looking back, it's such a weird thing to look back on now because it was super creepy and weird. But I think the impetus for most of it. us getting into like it was just genuine self-help like or self-improvement like that was the drive you know it's like I I had a girl like I had a girlfriend who I thought I was like boyfriend of the century and then you know she just dumps me and leaves me and so and so it just destroyed my understanding of like what relationships were what women were like you know how I was supposed to be

and so I I felt like I knew nothing and that was the only group of people that were like like offering some sort of answer. Yeah. So, yeah, it's, and that's what makes it attractive,

which is, which is a little dangerous if, if you find the wrong sort of seminar, guru, whatever it is. Yeah.

I mean, how many nice guys did we meet in that industry that were then completely horrible because they, they were like, oh,

my guru told me to have to be, like, totally horrible and mean. Yeah. And like, never be vulnerable. Oh,

yeah. And if she likes you, like, come up with stories that didn't actually happen. All the time. You know, like,

it was really, and I remember, the first time I read some of that stuff and I actually went, there was only, like, the only time I ever went out to a bar and, like, tried, like, tried these, like, tactics or whatever. I just felt like such a scumbag, like,

immediately. And then I noticed, I was like, I noticed, like, within an hour, I was like, wow, girls are much nicer to me when I, like, don't do this stuff. So maybe I should just not do it. Yeah. You know, but anyway, that's a tangent. Well, a little bit, but not necessarily, because it sort of goes into your Newton's laws

of emotion here. I don't really want to go through all three. I think that they're great in the book and I want to make sure that we move on to some other topics as well. But one of the, the third law is your identity will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it. And that's, so our values aren't just sort of collections of feelings. Our values are stories. And so these negative self-help experiences can actually, I don't know if they mutate our values, but they certainly tell us that we need to have different ones that don't make us happy. Yeah, so anytime an experience happens to us, our thinking brain, like an experience is essentially either something pleasurable or painful. And if it's painful, a negative emotion will emerge. And if

it's pleasurable, a positive emotion will emerge. And our thinking brain has to construct a story or a narrative about ourselves that explains that emotion. And this is why like childhood trauma fucks us up so much because when you're a child, your thinking brain is still very poorly developed and you don't understand like why things happen to you. So if you are hurt in some intense way as a young child, the story you construct will be very basic of like, I'm a bad boy or nobody loves me.

And once that story is constructed, it like your identity is kind of like a ball of yarn that starts getting wrapped up when you're a child. and like it keeps wrapping and wrapping and wrapping and wrapping and like the closer the earlier it happens in your life like the further into the center it is like the more you have to unravel to get back to it and look at it so it's the only way these stories change is when we unravel all those narratives that we've constructed look back at it and be like oh shit that thing that happened me when i was four it's not because i'm unlovable and you know a bad person it's these things just happen to kids. Like your thinking brain has to look at it, re-evaluate it, put a new story to it, and then you have to go live out that new story. You have to like live as if that is your new story. And that's essentially how you quote unquote change yourself. I come from a Buddhist background, so I believe, you know, the idea of no self. Like there is no, like our identity is

just this arbitrary thing that we make up and we believe in on faith. And what that construct is is just this layer upon layer of stories that our thinking brain is constructed throughout our lives. And so at any point, you can pull one of those strings, look at it, ask yourself, like, what if this was not true? What if something else was true? And then depending on how that feels, how your feeling brain feels about it, you know, you can adopt that. And then you just tuck it back into the ball yard. See, I'm keeping these metaphors for a really long time. Yeah, yeah. I like, I do wonder, like, what would happen, this won't happen because you just have such a good, loyal following, but like, what if everything is fucked, like, it just does not do well.

And Molly, your agent and the publisher are like, yo, um, did you email this to your list? And the list is like, yeah, this isn't what we wanted at all. We're all broke now. We're all buying Donald Trump biographies or something. Like, then what does that do to your identity? Or like, because it's like, well, I still had that other thing. but then you have to at some point imagine like what if that never happened then crap I'm like a failed writer sure that sucks so it would change my conception of myself it would change my identity you know it's

like right now my books everything I've written has been a huge hit and at some point in my life I'm going to write something that's not a huge hit and if I'm not prepared for that see you can already tell that I've already like analyzed this narrative in my own brain like if I just told myself I'm a hit author, everything I write, like sells like fucking hotcakes. Like the second something doesn't, it would cause an identity crisis. I would feel like I didn't know who I was anymore. That I, oh my God, you know, who am I good? Am I even a good author? All this stuff. I'd have all these questions. And what I'd have to do is kind of like look at what, look at my experiences, construct another narrative around it that my feeling brain accepted that felt good and true to me.

and then it would alter my identity. But I've already kind of done that work. I'm already, like, the narrative I've already constructed for myself is that one day, you know, maybe it's not this book. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. One day I'm going to write something. It's not going to sell well.

And that's fine. It doesn't make me any worse of a writer or an author or a person. It's actually, it's a very common occurrence in a lot of authors' careers. So that, narrative that I've my thinking brain is put together and feels good to my feeling brain you know it's kind of preempted that experience for me and it's like prepared myself that's a good kind of real-time example of like how this thinking brain feeling brain thing works you're listening to the jordan harbinger show with our guest mark manson we'll be right back after this thanks for listening and supporting

the show your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard visit jordan harbinger dot com slash deals And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to the show on the Overcast Player on iOS, please click that little star button next to the episode. It really helps us out. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Mark Manson.

By way of practical application, and you write this in the book, the other way to change your values is to begin writing the narratives of your future self, to envision what life would be like if you had certain values to possess a certain identity. By visualizing the future we want for ourselves, we allow our feeling brain to try on those values for size and see what they feel like before we make the final purchase. Eventually, once we've done this enough, the feeling brain becomes accustomed to the new values and starts to believe them. Can you walk us through what that might look like? We can throw that in the worksheet for this episode. Well, and so that's actually what I just told you about trying on the, like, you know, what if my next book flops?

Like, that is a experience that I tried on. Did you write it down? No, you just, I mean, you just imagine. I mean, for some people, maybe it helps to write it down. But, no, I just sat down and really imagine, like, what would that mean to my life? Like, how would my agent react? How would my publisher react? How would my wife react?

How would my family react? How would I feel? What would it signify about my skills or talent? All these things. Like, you ask yourself all of these questions. and you look for an answer that is, you basically look for a narrative or a story or a piece of meaning that feels good to you.

It creates essentially a better value. So it's like if my only value is to just sell an ass load of books, eventually I'm going to get knocked on my ass because eventually I'm going to put out something that doesn't sell. But if my core value is to simply write as honestly and compellingly as I possibly, can, then even if I put out something out that doesn't sell, I can still feel good about it. I can still feel like I'm a good writer. I can be proud, you know, look at my fans, my family,

my friends, and still be proud of what I did. When you're trying on these new values, how do you not catastrophize? Like, oh, what would happen is Fernanda would leave me, my agent would stop returning my calls. My parents would say, see, I knew you were a one hit wonder. My friends would be like, oh, yeah, he wrote that one book that one time. Now he's just like some guy who who is try, like, and now he's trying hard. What a loser. Like, I feel like that. Or how is this different from like the bullshit in the secret where it's like, oh, well,

what's going to happen is I'm going to visualize a yacht and a Ferrari in my driveway and that's going to happen. I mean, I feel like it's a little clear to me, but people are thinking that. So it's, the difference is, is with like the bullshit manifesting. You simply, like, it's funny because the secret actually, I feel like gets close to something powerful, but just completely misses the mark. So the secret is like, yeah, just visualize like a yacht and a Ferrari, and then one day the universe will conspire and give it to you.

The problem with that is that the yacht and Ferrari are simply representations of your current values. So if you're just a materialistic shithead and you visualize materialistic things, you're not actually challenging your identity. You're not changing at all. You're simply, like, affirming what you already care about. like the real power of visualization is if you really want a yacht in Ferrari, sit down and visualize what it would be like to not want a yacht and Ferrari. What would that mean for your life? What would

what would that mean for your friendships, your relationships, your career? Like would you still like your job if you didn't want a yacht or a Ferrari? And that's a very scary question. It is scary. Yeah. And it's a difficult, it's much more difficult to answer. But that's where the real like identity work comes in, where you really, you look at the value, not just the stuff. That's a good point, because guys in finance are sitting there going, oh, yeah, I got a house and the Hamptons, I've got, my kids go to this awesome private school, and it's like, okay, but if they start to challenge themselves, nobody wants to do that when they're in that job, and they have what we call the golden handcuffs, right? Because you can't, the switching costs are

too high. Sure. You basically have to tell your kids they can't hang out with their friends at school anymore, sell the house that your wife really loves to go to. And then you have to tell your boss you don't want to do this anymore, take a massive lifestyle downgrade, and then go write books or do a shitty podcast that only a few people care about, whatever. The ball yarn got too rolled up. Yeah. You know, he got that decision, that decision that you made early in life, like, oh, I'm going

to go into finance so I can get the nice car and the hot wife. Like, it's so deep in that ball of yarn that it's too daunting to dig in and reevaluate it. Right. Like it would mean unraveling too much stuff. Yeah, it's hard. And then typically what happens to people in that situation is that life unravels it for them. You know, it's like something catastrophic happens. You know, they lose all their money in a market crash. They, you know, wife leaves them for the mailman. And suddenly it's their ball of yarn is unrolled for them. Right. And they're left with this like tiny meager identity of like, you know, oh shit, everything I thought I was is gone. What do I have left? And then they have to like evaluate everything and then start wrapping a new ball. Right. Which actually can be, that's the blessing and disguise people are talking about when someone's like, well, getting laid off or getting fired or getting this happened was the best thing that ever happened.

And like in the moment when people told me that about like my other show and stuff, I was like, yep, you're kind of being an a hole for even saying that. And then, but then you talk to enough credible people and they're like, no, really. Yeah. Here's what happened to me. And here's how it was the, and you go, okay, well, I'm not there yet. And then fast forward a year, year and a half, you go, oh, you're right. Because since that was unraveled for me, since the other show, which was like primarily a dating brand got unraveled for me. I don't have to carry, I don't have to lug around baggage that goes like, yeah, the show is a dushy name, but trust me, it's not like, like the new show is able to grow faster.

I'm able to focus on what I want. I don't have to make decisions based on. other people's like irrational feelings and their like damaged identities. Absolutely. All that has been unraveled for me because frankly, usually we don't have the balls to unravel that stuff ourselves because it's a fucking mess. It is a fucking mess. It's really, and I think some things can't be unraveled ourselves.

Like some things, like it has to happen to us. That's why like in subtle art, there are four stories, personal stories that I put in the subtle art. And I think if you ranked the four most painful experiences of my life, it would be the four stories in subtle art. art and I did that for a reason. I mean, the whole point of subtle art really was to make an argument for the importance of pain and suffering. And it's, and what we're describing right now is exactly why I wanted to make that argument. But yeah, it's just, you know, girlfriend leaving me, parents

divorcing, friend dying, you know, it's, those are the most powerful moments in our lives because we get to re-wrap our yarn. And if we just wrap it the same way it was wrapped before, it's going to be extremely frustrating and disappointing. Like, we're going to feel like it's unfair that we have to, like, redo everything all over again. What it really is is an opportunity to, like, reinvent ourselves. Right. Like shift the, what you call the God value, that tippy top value, where if it's money, we work in a Wall Street finance job like I was doing. You buy a house, you buy a boat, you buy a bunch of stuff.

And then you send your kids to a fancy private school and you're like, good. But then at some point, you... This is like a lens through which you view the world, right? Sure. But you can run into this like evidence that will do nothing because that belongs to the thinking brain, as you've said. So what do we do? And how do we handle that? Yeah.

Because I think that could be a big problem for a lot of people. So when we're adopting values for ourselves, we kind of put them in an order. You know, it's my kids are more important to me than my friends. And my friends are more important to me than random strangers on the street. and my job is more important to me than say my brother's job or whatever. Like we all have this kind of hierarchy of values that determines our prioritization, determines, like, helps us make decisions on like where our time is best spent. In our value hierarchy, something is at the top.

And I use the name God value, but it's not necessarily a religious. For a lot of people, it's a religious value. But it's whatever our top value in our life, is, it basically dictates the decision making of everything underneath it. So if my, and then like you said, like I say in the book, like it

becomes a lens by which everything else is perceived. So if I, let's say I am a super religious person and my God value is like Jesus Christ, everything that occurs in my life, I will look at in terms of, and I will judge it and I will measure it in terms of

my faith in Jesus Christ and the Bible and all that stuff. If my God value is money, then every experience I have in my life will be measured against the metric of money and what gets me the most money. And so this is the funny thing is that you can even, you can have people who are like, say, Christian, but if their God value is money, they will perceive and approach church and their religious experiences in terms of what is most profitable. Yeah, you end up with prosperity gospel and stuff like that. Exactly. Trying so hard not to do that. mention names, but yeah.

Right? Like so tempting. Also, they have really good lawyers, so I'm going to not do that. So it's fascinating. I mean, ultimately, what defines us is our behavior. And our behavior is defined by what our top values are. And so you can get people who say, like, oh, I'm, I care most about charity and giving back and, you know, and helping.

others and it's like if their behavior is is saying otherwise you know it's they might have those values somewhere on the hierarchy but something else is on top right yeah they just know that they have to say that because that's what the the group kind of wants to see yes they don't want to hear about like your three private jets or whatever that they paid for when they're putting money into the hat as it goes by and uh and this is the part where when i read it i was like oh maybe we should roll up a j and talk about this because you wrote the conflict between you values is actually kind of required for us puny humans to actually achieve. Yes.

What is that? That's kind of like, wait, what? I want all this chaos? Well, I think it's... I want all this conflict. This is depressing. The conclusion I kind of argue, and it's not my idea. It's, you know, it comes from Nietzsche and some other philosophers, but it's basically

we need some degree of conflict because conflict is affirming for our values. You know, so it's like if I believe I'm trying to think it of a, an example that's not going to offend tons of people. Good luck. I'll wait. Yeah. Five minutes later. Yeah, we'll just cut and then fast for like a little time lapse.

Yeah, but like let's say, I'll use a silly example. Like, let's say my, I strongly believe that Stephen King is the best author of all time. And you strongly believe that J.K. Rowling's the best author of all time. Arguing with you about that, it affirmed. my belief in my values. It makes me feel as though I'm living out my values. Like that the way we find meaning in life, and again, this kind of comes back to the hope thing is like, the way we find meaning in life is when we feel as though we're living out our values. It's like, okay, my kids are my highest value. If I'm taking good care of my kids, then I'm living a meaningful life. I'm doing something

important. And that protects me from the uncomfortable truth. If I think Stephen King is like the fucking man and anybody who disagrees is an asshole and an idiot and I'm going to go tell them that, then telling those people is reaffirming my value. It feels meaningful to me. It feels important and it protects me from the uncomfortable truth. So some conflict is a little bit necessary. Like the same way, you know, we need stress on our body to get stronger physically and like grow muscle, like, I think psychologically we need a certain amount of stress to test our values and embody them and reap meaning from them. Right.

Like in-group and out-group, for example, and like the us versus them, which actually is something that we see a lot right now in society. Because if we don't have that tension, we have to look for it. Yes. Which leads us to this blue dot effect. I hadn't heard of that before, which is great. Tell us about this. So there was an amazing academic study that happened.

last year. Oh, it's that recent? Yeah, it just happened last year. And it was huge in the psychology academic world because it's like the guys who did it are like kind of an all-star team of researchers right now. So basically what they did, it sounds super boring at first, but it's pretty mind-blowing, like once you understand it. So what they did is they took tons of people, put them in front of a computer console, and they showed them thousands of dots on the screen. And they said, they gave them two buttons. They say if the dots blue hit this button, if the dots not blue, hit that button. And the dots were either blue, purple, or like some shade in between. And at first, they showed tons and tons and tons of blue dots. And so people were mostly hitting

the blue dot button. And then as time went on, they slowly showed fewer blue dots and started showing more purple dots or dots that were kind of ambiguous and in between. And And what was fascinating is that even though they showed fewer and fewer blue dots as time went on, people still hit the blue button the same amount. So, like, their actual perception of what color a dot was shifted based on their expectation of how many dots there was. So that sounds really, like, annoying. So freaking what? Yeah, exactly.

So what? So they did this with thousands. They collected data from, like, thousands of people on this. showed a very strong effect. And then what they did is they replaced the dots with human faces. So they did the same thing. They said, if the face looks threatening,

hit this button. If the face looks safe or innocuous, hit this button. And initially, they showed mostly threatening faces. And so people hit the buttons, and then as time went on, they started showing fewer and fewer threatening faces. And the same thing happened.

When you started removing threatening faces, people started to mistake safe and innocuous faces as being threatening. And then they went even a step further. They started doing it with research proposals. They showed unethical research proposals and ethical research proposals. And the same thing. The more you removed unethical research proposals, the more people mistook ethical proposals for being unethical.

So it's basically this idea that we have this like set expectation of a certain amount, certain amount of threats or pain or adversity that we psychologically expect to see. And so the safer society gets or the more just and righteous things get, it's not like we feel better about it. We simply take, you know, it's like if people stop killing everybody, we don't actually feel better about it. Right. Instead, we decide that slapping somebody is just as awful as killing.

Right. So that's how we end up here with like, well, shoot, everything's safer. So now words are violence. Words are violence. Yeah. Looks are violence. Microaggressions. Microaggressions.

Questions are violence. Reading a book about racism is traumatizing. I mean, it explains so many things, like the concept creep that's been happening in our culture. I think it also explains like why, well, it explains our politics, for one. But it also explains like why we're struggling. so much to, to again, create that kind of coherent vision of hope for ourselves because it's like, if, you know, we've got awesome lazy boy recliners and eight million video games and, you know, Netflix and all this, like, comfortable, everything can be, everything can be

delivered, like, you know, at the drop of a hat. It's, we need to find our brain, like, naturally looks for some sort of, something that's upsetting or adversarial in our environment, even though they might not be there. What can we do about it? I mean, is there anything that we can do about this? We can't fix society ourselves, but is there anything we can do ourselves? Like, maybe we're aware of this. So then when we get offended about something, we're like, oh, am I just getting offended because there's nothing else to do?

My brain is looking for this? Like, what's the practical here? Is it one? I think it comes back to what I talked about in subtle art, which is we need to start choosing our problems instead of constantly feeling like they're being, because if we don't choose our problems, our brain's going to find problems for us. Right. And it will find it in really stupid, obnoxious places.

Like worrying about how my frickin' Instagram is not growing fast enough. Meanwhile, I'm like eating delicious sushi delivered to my house. Yeah. That's a perfect example. While watching Netflix. It's a perfect example. So it's like if we don't consciously choose our problems that give our lives meaning, then our brain is going to look for it and find it in like really silly, stupid places.

And I think that essentially describes Twitter in a nutshell. Yeah. Yeah. It's, we just talked about this. I don't know if it was pre-show or what, but yeah, 99 interactions on Twitter. One guy's a dick. And I'm like, this whole thing is a waste of time. I can't believe it.

I'm going to go off on this guy. Spend three seconds interacting with the other 99 people who have like, your show changed my life. I'm like, hold on. I'm talking to this guy who doesn't even follow me who's correcting my grammar. Yeah. So thanks anyway. It's like that old, I don't know if it was oatmeal or the X-C-D-Y or whatever that comic strip was. And it's like the guy who's like typing and typing and his wife's like, come to bed.

He's like, not now, honey, someone on the internet is wrong. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that in a nutshell, it's funny now, but it's sort of when you extrapolate that to the rest of society. I like the takeaway of choosing our problems. I think there's a lot of power in that. Like you're not going to get rid of the problems. Choose the ones that are worth handling.

Yep. And it's worth taking the time. to figure out what that might even be in the first place. Yep, absolutely. And I think that's actually in one of the chapters I argue that that we need to redefine our idea of like freedom and liberty in terms of not freedom for more nice stuff, but freedom to choose what matters to us. The only freedom is found in like self-limitation and choosing like this is the problem

I want in my life. This is what I'm deciding to sacrifice myself for. Fuck all the rest. I don't need like 15 different types of food delivered to my door. I don't need to like watch every Netflix series. This is the thing I care about. And like that that is true freedom. And that's why everything is fucked is actually a book about hope.

A book about hope. It really is. It's not a joke. It's a book about hope. Mark, thank you so much, man. Thanks for having me, dude. Always a pleasure. Always.

Great big thank you to Mark Manson. His book, one of the bestselling books of the decade. It sold over 7.5 million copies as of, recording and who knows it just could keep on going. I don't think it's even slowing down. One of the bestselling books of the entire decade. Incredible. The original book is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. The new book is called Everything is F-Bohd. He likes his F-Bombs and the titles. I can't argue with this success. So there we go. And honestly, they're great reads. I love both of them and everything is fucked as a great read as well. If you want to know

how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits. Check out our six-minute networking course. That course is free, and that's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Don't say you'll do it later. Don't say you're too busy. It's six minutes a day, not even, and the biggest problem people have is they go, oh, man, I didn't dig the well before I got Thursday. I don't have those relationships, and now I need to leverage them. You're too late when you do that. So get on it. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Mark Manson. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at Jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode is co-produced by Jason always looking on the bright side to Philippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So the fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful,

which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love. Show the show with those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on this show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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