The One You Feed - Mark Manson on Important Lessons in Life

Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh boy, it's holiday time again. You know how that brings up all sorts of negative feelings for me. Well, you're not alone in that. Lots of people have negative feelings around the holiday, which is why we are doing a One You Feed community event that we are titling, Stressed by Holiday Expectations? How to Feel Peace Instead This Season. Everybody is burdened by expectations during the holidays, whether that's other people's expectations of you or your expectations of the holidays. It's a struggle for all of us. So we are going to get together as a community, and I'm going to teach a spiritual habit that will allow you to release these types of expectations

Starting point is 00:00:37 and touch into a deeper feeling of wholeness, peace, steadiness, and presence. Ground yourself through a dose of genuine nourishing connection with others in this wonderfully supportive community. Go to oneufeed.net slash holiday to sign up for this free community event. That's oneufeed.net slash holiday. In case you're just recently joining us or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize that we have over seven years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you. But if not, it definitely is worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Mark Manson. It's far more pleasurable to sit on

Starting point is 00:01:21 the couch and eat Cheetos and watch Baywatch reruns, but running a marathon brings far more pleasurable to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch Baywatch reruns, but running a marathon brings far more happiness and fulfillment. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living.

Starting point is 00:02:12 This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Manson, author and personal development consultant. His writing is a different take on the self-help genre. He calls it self-help from a first-person perspective. Mark has been published and quoted by CNN, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Yahoo News, the Sydney Morning Herald, and a variety of other publications. He is also the CEO and founder of Infinity Squared Media, LLC.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Your writing is really a combination of, A, it ties very closely to a lot of the things I think about. So it's, you know, I align with it philosophically. I think it's very well done and it's usually pretty funny. And that is a great combination when all those three can come together for me. So I'm looking forward to this, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.

Starting point is 00:04:08 And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, in the work that I do, I write a lot about these kinds of subjects. So I kind of automatically interpret it. I've heard the parable before, but it's probably been 10 or 12 years since I've heard it. But hearing it now, I immediately interpret it through kind of the lens of um a lot of the way i frame things and talk

Starting point is 00:04:47 about things in my own articles um basically for me what it always comes back to is is we are always choosing what to find important and i think everybody realizes to a certain extent that everybody makes choices around what they find important, but I don't think everybody realizes that they actually choose what they find important. And the parable brings that up for me, that it's a very subtle level of awareness that I think is very, very important for people to get to, or at least it was very important for me to get to personally. And that being taking the time to really consider what you think is important, not just focusing on orienting around what you sort of think is important, but taking time to make sure that that what really is important to me question is answered right. Exactly. So for instance, in my own life, there were times where I would dedicate years of time

Starting point is 00:05:50 and energy and effort towards pursuing some goal, let's say, building a business and making a lot of money or being really popular and well accepted among my peers. And if you had asked me at the time, am I feeding the good wolf or the bad wolf? I would have said, obviously I'm feeding the good wolf. Like I'm trying to be a great guy. I'm trying to be successful. But looking back at those periods, I don't think I was like the yardstick I was using to measure myself was not the right one. I wasn't choosing what to find important very well. So for me, yeah, it's for me, it and if you read through my archive, this comes up over and over and over again because it's been so crucial in my own my own development. But it's looking at what I'm choosing to find important and then asking myself

Starting point is 00:06:49 whether that should actually be important or not. Right. And one of the things that you, you spend a lot of time talking about is, is opportunity cost is the idea that, you know, when we choose something, there are other things that we can't choose, which is something that I think I certainly wrestled with. I still do occasionally, right? There's just so many things to do, but you're, you're very, um, straight to the point on that about making those choices and then sticking with them. So talk to me a little bit more about opportunity cost. So I think there's, there's a lot of tendency to think these days. People who are very goal-oriented or goal-driven,

Starting point is 00:07:28 they kind of have this vision in their mind of, okay, this is the perfect work situation that I want to achieve. And this is the perfect family or love life situation I want to achieve. And this is the social life situation I want to achieve. And we all kind of have this vision for ourselves. And when we're pursuing these goals, when we're so focused on kind of achieving these goals or these things that we hold important, we aren't aware of the sacrifices that are involved, the things that we have to give up. And I think one of the things that most people eventually learn the hard way is that everything requires giving something up in return.

Starting point is 00:08:10 Nothing is free. Nothing comes freely through work. It's not just working for something. You have to be willing to give up other hopes and dreams and aspirations and time that you could be spending doing other things with other people. And that's a really hard pill to swallow, I think, for a lot of people, especially kind of when you're super ambitious or maybe young and starry-eyed and think the world can be your oyster. ambitious or maybe young and starry-eyed and, you know, think the world can be your oyster. It's a little bit of a rude awakening when you wake up at 30 and you realize that there's all these things that you wanted to do, but there's no practical way you're ever going to be able to do them. Yeah. I mean, you talk about that most people look at it as a work-life balance or,

Starting point is 00:09:02 you know, I'm always too busy. And then you say, and I'm just going to read it because I think it's, you say it very well, but what if the answer isn't to do more? What if the answer is to want less? What if the solution is simply accepting our bounded potential, our unfortunate tendency as humans to inhabit only one place in space and time? What if we recognize our life's inevitable limitations and then prioritize what we care about based on those limitations? What if it's as simple as stating, this is what I choose to value more than everything else, and then living with it? Yeah, this is why I'm a writer, Eric, because that's like 10 times better than what I just said.

Starting point is 00:09:42 No, I totally get it. I first was introduced to you with a post that, I don't know what your most popular post ever is, but I'm going to guess this was one of them, which was the subtle art of not giving a fuck. That is the most popular one. Yeah, I was going to say it's done certainly in a humorous style. I think you use that word as many times as you can fit into it. So it's very entertaining, but it is also incredibly insightful. And you

Starting point is 00:10:11 basically talk about a couple of subtleties to not giving a fuck. And one is, I guess I've said it enough at this point, there's no reason to hold back now that the episode is going to explicit. So all right, listeners, if you don't want to hear it again, fast forward 30 seconds. All right. You say, do not give a fuck about adversity. You must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity. And then you also say, we all have a limited number of fucks to give. Pay attention to where and who you give them to. Yes. I think what I talk about in the article is that I think there's this misconception that people, as we sometimes colloquially say, who do not give a fuck, who we perceive to be particularly bold or confident or resilient in some way. I think the perception is generally that these people are that way because they're not phased by problems. Things just don't seem to bother them. They do what they want to do and they kind of disregard

Starting point is 00:11:12 everything else. And I actually think this is a really, really bad and almost dangerous misconception of what confidence is. Because people who behave that way, who just do what they want and are completely devoid of any sentiment for the way they're affecting the people around them. Like this is actually, it's very, it's sociopathic behavior and it's actually, it's something that we don't really, we shouldn't be encouraging people. And so I actually, I struggled for a long time in my writing. How can I describe this in such a way that, like, how can I describe what, what's really going on? Like what a confident person actually is in a really succinct way that is also catchy and interesting. And for me, the conclusion I came to

Starting point is 00:12:06 is basically people who are confident or resilient, it's not that they don't care about the problems that they face or the struggles that they go through. It's just that they choose to care about something even more. They choose to find something else more important. That article was great for a bunch of reasons. The fact that it has a picture of Bunk Moreland from The Wire, a picture of him sitting there saying, Bunk Moreland not giving a fuck since 2002, was almost the best part of it, because that guy cracks me up. Yeah. But I think what's really interesting about that,

Starting point is 00:12:46 I mean, some of it is about, you know, knowing what you control, what you can control and what you can't control. And if you can't control something, then, you know, to use the language you're using, you know, giving a fuck about something you can do nothing about is a complete waste of energy and takes away your ability to apply that energy to something that you do care about.

Starting point is 00:13:05 It's like a very vulgar and fancy way of saying, why cry over spilled milk? Like you can't, sometimes things in life just suck. Like even if you achieve a lot of things, like a lot of your goals and dreams, like there's shitty aspects of even the best things in life. And so I think there, there's a really, uh, hard and unpopular lesson in coming to terms with that and, and accepting that. That is,

Starting point is 00:13:34 um, spread throughout your writing. And I think probably in listening to this show, it's spread throughout there also, which is that there aren't easy answers. There's not permanent happiness. There's not a point which you achieve enough or do enough or learn enough or grow spiritually enough that

Starting point is 00:13:51 you're done and life isn't challenging or isn't painful. That day is not coming. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

Starting point is 00:14:35 We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no? No, really? Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really. And

Starting point is 00:15:14 you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got a lot of information about relationships. And one of the things that you talk about, you've got some characteristics of good relationships, bad relationships, some things to look for in a partner, some things to not look for in a partner. One of the oldest pieces of relationship advice is you and your partner should be best friends, but you look at it in the negative. What do you mean by that? Specifically with the friendship test, you know, most people think, well, my wife or my husband or my partner, they should be like my best friend. And oh, they are like my best friend. I spend so much time with them and we go see movies together and we talk a lot and, you know, we buy each other

Starting point is 00:16:02 gifts and whatever. Yeah, of course, they're like my best friend. Those are all like the good things about a friendship. Nobody looks at the bad about a friendship and then ask themselves if their intimate relationship is actually a friendship or not. So basically what I say with the friendship test is ask yourself if you're having relationship problems, say you're having relationship problems with your husband or your wife, basically ask yourself, would you tolerate the same behavior in your best friend? So if your husband is hanging up on you and refusing to take your calls for days at a time and calling you a bitch, would you accept that behavior in your best friend? The answer is usually no. And this usually, it shocks people. And in fact, it's really funny, Eric. I've gotten emails over the last year of

Starting point is 00:16:53 people saying, hey, I decided to divorce my wife. Thanks. And I'm like, all right, way to go. Happy to help, I guess. Mark Manson loves Executioner. Yes. It's one of those things where people, if you can just get people to see things in a certain light, suddenly what should have always been obvious becomes obvious. I think in romantic relationships,

Starting point is 00:17:26 because there's so much emotional attachment involved, we're very biased about them. Like we're very clouded in our judgment about our own relationships. And so one thing that I try to do in a lot of my writing is give people like little logical, like logic tweaks like that to kind of break them out of that cloud. Because most people, when they go through relationship problems, they're so caught up in the, well, he said this, but then I did this, and I'm not going to call him back because blah, blah, blah. And you just need something that will pull them out of that and get them to look at it objectively just for a few seconds so that they can make a better decision about what they're doing. Yep, exactly. So one of the things on the show that I talk about a lot is positive thinking.

Starting point is 00:18:19 And we talk about how it's not, in a lot of cases, the right tool for the job. I ask people a lot, you know, when is it positive thinking and when is it, you know, being delusional? And you talk about that a lot and you've got a great article railing against a book that I also have real challenges with, which is The Secret. Tell me what your problems are with that book. In under 30 minutes and with, uh, less than 15. I was just,

Starting point is 00:18:47 I was just going to say, can I keep saying fuck? Because, because I, I might just unload. I, I mean, this is the thing about the secret is it's easy.

Starting point is 00:18:59 It's easy to rip on the secret, but, um, what it says is not really anything new i mean what it says has been around for uh hundreds of years at this point which is it's basically i i call it collusional positivity similar to what you call it and it's it's basically it's teaching people it's basically, it's teaching people, it's basically taking miserable people, like people who have real challenges and frustrations in their lives, and instead of teaching them how to solve those challenges and frustrations, how to empower them to take responsibility and overcome those

Starting point is 00:19:40 challenges, or maybe even just live better with those challenges, it basically teaches them how to detach from reality and delude themselves into believing something that doesn't exist. And I just, I think that's a horrible, horrible way to go about it. Because, and yeah, sure, it does make some people happier and it does work out for some people. I don't deny that. I think if you apply that strategy to everything, you can really run into some really questionable, and I mean morally questionable, issues. questionable issues. So for instance, let's say I'm a single guy and I go on a date with a woman and she doesn't have a whole lot of interest in me and she doesn't call me back, but I read The Secret and I decided that, hey, if I just dream about being with this woman and keep pursuing that dream, then I'll make that a reality. It's very easy to connect the dots there

Starting point is 00:20:51 to see how that could be taken by somebody to mean that they should start harassing a person or start doing some really shady and creepy stuff. I think you actually see this a lot more in the business world. I've run into a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly internet entrepreneurs, who kind of buy into the same thinking of, you know, if I just dream about, you know, having my online income and doing this or that, then it will come true and I deserve this. And as soon as you enter into that world of like, I deserve to make this money or I deserve to have this girlfriend or I deserve to have this sort of happiness, I think that kind

Starting point is 00:21:40 of short circuits people's moral judgment. Um, they start becoming okay with like lying in the marketing or they start becoming okay with, uh, you know, doing like creepy and shady things with people that are around. And so, yeah, it's, it's, I, I think I, I understand why, uh, it benefits some people, but the argument that I make is essentially that it's a short-term benefit at a long-term cost. It removes people's ability to make proper judgments. And basically, it removes their ability to interpret reality in an accurate way, which is always harmful in the long run. Right. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think there is something to that idea. There's a reason that there are some results to the law of attraction, but I don't think they're the reason people think

Starting point is 00:22:36 they are. I don't think it's a magic thing, but I think if you generally approach the world with a little bit more positivity and a little bit more openness, better things are going to happen to you. But I agree with you that idea of, you know, never allowing negative, you know, you can't have negative thoughts about things. If you have negative thoughts about things, then you're not going to get what you want would be sort of like going, well, I'm just never, I'm never going to get cancer. So I'm never going to go to the doctor, even if you've got lots of symptoms of it and just go, well, I'm not, I don't have it. I'm not going to get it, you know, did they attract that, you know, did the starving, you know, all these refugees right now, you know, to use a timely

Starting point is 00:23:30 crisis trying to find a safe haven, is that what they've attracted? And so it's, I just, I get hung up on it too. Yeah, absolutely. I often say that you, sometimes you can't think your way into right action, you have to act your way into right thinking. And you actually have something similar where you say action isn't just the effect of motivation, but also the cause of it. Yes. So I call this, and I actually, I really like that.

Starting point is 00:23:57 You have to act in the right action. I call my version of that, I call it the do something principle. And basically, the big discovery I found in my own life is that I found that most people, like most people, I would always wait for an inspiration to occur to me before I took action. And like most people, I would kind of sit around being like, well, crap, where's my inspiration? Like, why am I not, why don't I feel inspired to pursue anything or do anything? Like, what's my life purpose? And eventually at some point something clicked and I realized that inspiration doesn't just cause action, it's also the effect of action. So what I started to notice

Starting point is 00:24:46 is that even by doing something that I don't particularly like or I'm not particularly good at, this would generate some sort of emotional reaction in me. I would go out and try something new and do horribly at it and I would be like, wait a second, I can get good at this. And next thing I know, I'm spending weeks getting good at this new thing. But that never would have happened if I hadn't just blindly gone out and done something. So I call it the do-something principle because it's essentially when in doubt, you just shut up and do something. And it doesn't even matter what it is. It could be anything.

Starting point is 00:25:28 It could be seemingly the most silly and insignificant thing because the idea is that by doing that small and insignificant action, it's going to create kind of a snowball effect of generating inspiration and further action. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think that I always try and encourage people to be biased towards action for, you know, a bunch of reasons that you just listed there. I mean, one is obviously the momentum just builds on itself.

Starting point is 00:25:55 If you can get moving, you can make a lot of, you know, a lot of progress. And the other one is a lot of times we're trying to figure out something that's a ways down the path. And sometimes if you just take five steps down the path, you can see further down the path than you could five steps before. And so you're in a much better place if you just start moving. But if you sit there kind of staring down the path, hoping to be able to see around the corner, it's not going to happen.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Yeah. Happiness is not the same as pleasure. What do you mean there? One example I use to illustrate this often is if you imagine somebody running a marathon and nearly killing themselves to say break a three-hour marathon, something they've been training for for years, there's nothing pleasurable about that experience. It's far more pleasurable to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch Baywatch reruns. But running a marathon brings far more happiness and fulfillment. It's a great life achievement.

Starting point is 00:26:51 And I think a lot of people mistake happiness for pleasure, happiness for feeling good. I think a lot of times happiness doesn't actually feel good. It's actually painful or stressful. I think back to some of the happiest times of my life and a lot of them involved, you know, working 12 hours a day on some project that I really, really cared about and thought was really important

Starting point is 00:27:16 and wanted to do a good job at. Some of the happiest days of my life were staying up until five in the morning three days in a row with a bunch of friends. Just because something feels good doesn't mean it is good. And just because something feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. And I think true happiness is derived from a meaning of an experience. It's derived from, again, what importance we ascribe to a certain experience.

Starting point is 00:27:47 from, again, what importance we ascribe to a certain experience. I think generally when you look at people who are always struggling to be happy in their life, the issue isn't pleasure. In fact, it's ironic that generally people who struggle the most with happiness in their life, they tend to have a very pleasurable life. They have a comfortable home and they have all sorts of diversions, you know, like video games and television and movies and stuff. They sleep in a comfortable bed. They don't have to worry about, you know, any sort of like kind of existential things. What they lack is meaning. What they lack is meaning what they lack is a sense of importance a sense that like anything they do matters um and so i guess this kind of comes full circle back to the the wolf thing in that uh they haven't yet learned to choose what's

Starting point is 00:28:38 important in their life or perhaps they chose pleasure and comfort to be the most important thing in their life, which, in my opinion, is a pretty shitty choice. It backfires on people. Yeah, it's amazing how I think all of us know that on some level, and yet how hard it is to step away from that. I think it's because pleasure works for a little bit, right? It has its moments where it is pleasurable. I think that where I run into trouble or places in my life where I've struggled is when it's the only source of happiness for me. If I'm not having a pleasurable experience of some sort, there's no happiness.

Starting point is 00:29:16 If I'm not eating something that's good, and that's kind of an ugly place to be in, and then taken to its extreme, it leads to, you know, it's insatiable, right? And I've been down that road with drugs and different things of there's just not enough of it. There's never enough to satiate you. An example I use sometimes as well is, yeah, like a cocaine addict has plenty of pleasure going on, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that you would trade places with him, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that you would trade places with him, you know. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

Starting point is 00:30:15 The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruz really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mendel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Starting point is 00:30:46 Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that you say about happiness is that you say it's the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves, which grants us happiness.

Starting point is 00:31:18 What do you mean by pursuing our ideal selves? It's solving problems in our lives. It's having some sort of goal or ambition to look forward to. I think people, you see this a lot with people who have like midlife crises, you know, they get to be 35, 40 years old and they've got the house, they've got the dog, they got the kids. They've got the nice job. They're taking vacations to where they wanted vacations. And they fall into this like really sort of like existential malaise because there's a real sadness that comes with achieving all of your dreams because then you you don't know what to look forward to anymore um i think i i very specifically in that sentence that you

Starting point is 00:32:14 read the perpetual pursuit of your ideal self like pursuit is i think the most important word there it's uh it's like that old budd, you know, the journey is more important than the destination or whatever it says. I think happiness comes from this constant feeling of improvement, from this constant feeling of solving problems. And if you ever run into a point in your life where you either A, feel like you can't solve your problems, then that's going to make you miserable. But B, if you also feel like you don't have any problems in your life, I think that also brings a certain kind of depression or misery as well. I think there's this need to always feel as though there's something more important to be striving for. Just always needing to be growing or challenged to the next thing.

Starting point is 00:33:11 Basically, yeah. And I think as we go through our life, the nature of that growth or challenge changes a lot. So when you're young, a lot of it is determined by figuring out what you're good at, figuring out what kind of people are going to be close to in your life, figuring out, you know, making a lot of important, some of the first major decisions with your life. they become more about being a good parent or being a good friend or being a good partner, about achieving some sort of stability, long-term stability, making sure your future is secure, your children's future is secure. So these things evolve as time goes on and you see them play out and people in different stages of their life. But, um, I think what matters is that there's always something there that you feel is more important than yourself, um, or your current self rather, um, something that you're always working towards. Excellent. And we're getting near the end of time, but I'd like to quickly ask you,

Starting point is 00:34:23 you wrote a very long article about Ken Wilber. First, could you tell us who Ken Wilber is? I joke in the article, I say, Ken Wilber is the smartest man you've never heard of. Yeah. So Ken was a American intellectual slash, or I shouldn't say was, he is. He stopped writing, but he's still alive. He is an American intellectual slash philosopher slash kind of mystic. He really gets into spirituality, particularly Eastern spirituality. And his whole deal is that starting in the 80s, he decided that he wanted to try to integrate all fields of human knowledge into like one unifying theory. And that sounds kind of crazy, but when you read him, even if you don't really think he did it, and I actually kind of don't think he did it,

Starting point is 00:35:25 it's pretty amazing what he did. Like what he comes up with, his grand theory of everything, which by the 90s came together and was pretty solidified. It's pretty incredible. And the breadth of his knowledge is incredible. And his ability to tie seemingly completely unrelated fields of knowledge. So he'll have chapters in his books that will discuss spiritual states in Hinduism. And tie that into Freudian psychology.

Starting point is 00:35:59 And relate that to 19th century industrial development. And he does it in a way that makes sense. I read all of his books in my early 20s. And I, I just felt myself getting smarter, the more I read them. I read a bunch of his work also. And I agree with you, the things he says, you're just sort of staggered by the seems so incredibly smart, you know, and you feel smarter. You, you came to a point with it. It sounds similar to the point that I did after I read it all. I was sort of like, now what? Like, I wasn't quite sure how a lot of it applied in life beyond, like you talk about in certain cases, feeling like people who have this mindset are smarter than other people. But you go on to talk about in certain cases, feeling like people who have this mindset are smarter

Starting point is 00:36:45 than other people, but you go on to talk about kind of what happened to him and some lessons that you drew from that. Yeah, I basically, the big lessons I drew from him is that it doesn't matter how smart you are or how evolved your thinking is. Like nobody's immune. I mean, we're all humans at the end of the day and we're all biased and we're all flawed. And we all kind of cave to these natural tendencies to form these in-groups who judge themselves as superior to the out-groups.

Starting point is 00:37:21 And even when the people are extremely well-meaning and compassionate and worldly, like these things happen unintentionally. They're human nature. And for me, watching him and going through my experience, you know, I had the same experience, which is I read all of his books and I was blown away. And I had this huge excitement of like, all right, you know, let's change the world or whatever. And there was just no application of it. At the end of the day, it was a lot of theorizing. It was a lot of kind of armchair, this is how humanity is.

Starting point is 00:37:57 And unfortunately, or fortunately, life and humanity is experienced in our day-to-day actions. And I just found that as interesting as his ideas and theories were, they didn't really inform or change my life in any significant way. And when I look at his career, I feel like his big downfall was choosing to believe that they could. Exactly. Well, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoy your writing.

Starting point is 00:38:34 We'll have links in the show notes to where people can find you and read more of your stuff. Thanks, Eric. It was a pleasure being here. Okay, take care. All right, thank you. All right, bye. Yep, Bye. please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

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The One You Feed - Mark Manson on Important Lessons in Life

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