The One You Feed - Mini Episode: A Reply to Mark Manson’s "Motherf*ckin’ Monday"

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

I love Mark Manson's weekly newsletter called "Motherf*ckin’ Monday" where he discusses three ideas about the mind, life or the world.This weeks episode had three important ideas that I wanted to discuss and debate to some degree with Mark. They are:1. Your next big breakthrough is already here2. Is the growth mindset just another fad?3. Breakthroughs rarely feel good As someone who focuses on breakthroughs, transformations and slow changes over the time and someone who has gotten some mileage out of the growth mindset, I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion. I hope you enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and

conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, WeezyWTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests

to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, I am doing something totally different here. And this is a mini episode that is focused on sort of a, well, I wouldn't call it a rebuttal. I would call it further commentary on the author Mark Manson's, he calls it his Mother F-ing Monday newsletter. And he points

out three different things that are interesting about the human mind. And I always find it useful. And this one sort of hit a couple of topics that are pretty close to what we do here. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about his newsletter and some ideas. So the first idea is your next big breakthrough is already here. And what he's basically talking about here is we tend to create narratives and certainly Hollywood and fiction creates these narratives where all of a sudden something happens, boom, we have this moment of transformation and everything's different. And Mark is saying, well, that's not really how it works. Sure, there are moments that appear to be big transformational moments, but there's hundreds, if not thousands of little changes that are leading up to that moment. And I would mostly agree with everything he's saying here. I think

it's interesting when I look at my recovery, you could point at the day that I went into detox in December of 1994 was when I got sober from heroin addiction. And you could say that was the turning point. And when I tell the story, I even talk about a turning point. They told me to go into 30 day treatment. I went back to my room. I had a moment of clarity where I thought I'm going to die if I go back out there. And so I went back to him, said, I'll go into treatment. So very clear moment, right before and after. However, of course, it's not that simple because there were so many things that led up to me being ready to make that change, both positive and negative things, right? I'd been to treatment before. I'd been to a bunch of meetings. I'd had a sponsor.

I'd done a little of this, a little of that. I'd been arrested. I mean, so it's impossible to sort of say that moment, but it's a clear moment. And one of the things that Mark is warning against in this article is saying, hey, if you believe that transformation happens in one moment, then you're easily deceived by people who want to sell you transformation. And as somebody who sells something called the One You Feed Transformation Program, this is an interesting thought. However, the One You Feed Transformation Program is not a moment of transformation. It's six months of transformation, right? We're working on our daily choices day in and day out for a six month period and beyond, right? That's how real change happens. So I agree with them 100%. And

there are powerful transformative moments. On a retreat with Adyashanti a couple years ago, I had what we would consider an awakening, an enlightenment moment, Zen, we'd call it Satori or Kensho, that was so overwhelming and so powerful and it lasted for maybe 36 hours or so and I emerged from that a different person. Now again, you could argue that everything that was happening up till then prepared me

for that moment. All the meditation, being on the retreat, all the interviews, all the podcasting, absolutely true. And that moment, though, was really powerful. And I walked away a different person and parts of me have never gone back. So change is both very gradual and then sometimes very sudden, right? The day that I stopped using heroin, the next day was radically different, right? And every day after, so it was a big transformative moment, but it's the little

choice points in and out, day in and day out that we can work with. And in Zen, we would say, or in awakening circles in general, what is often said is, you can do all the preparation, you can do the meditation, you can do the reading, you can do the self-inquiry. And then that moment, that final moment of it sort of happening is a gift, or it's grace, or it's luck, or think of it the way you want. So again, gradual and sudden. So I think Mark's point is really good. And I think that it's worth focusing on because that's all we can do. We can only make the small incremental daily changes, make the right decision, make the right choices, do the right choice points. And then the bigger moments of transformation are kind of out of our hands. So that was the

first part of his article that I thought was really interesting. The part that made me want to really discuss it though, is number two, which is, is the growth mindset just another fad? And he talks about Carol Dweck, who we had on the show, who talks about the fixed and growth mindset. Basically, if you believe you can change, you can change. And if you don't believe you can change, you don't change. And so having a growth mindset allows you to do things that you wouldn't do if you have a fixed mindset. And hugely successful book, TED Talk, she's been all around the world, really influential idea. And now it appears there's a meta-analysis out there that analyzing the results of 400,000 high school students, and it says that, hey, it doesn't appear that all this investment in the growth mindset has done

anything that we can tell in the data. So what does this tell us? Well, the first thing it tells us, as Mark says, is psychology is hard, right? We are very difficult to figure out. It's difficult to run experiments, psychological experiments. There is a huge reproducibility crisis, etc. So what do we do with all of this information? And where I land with this stuff is to kind of go back to one of the Buddha's original teachings, which is,

try these things for yourself and see what happens, right? That's the ultimate test of anything, whether I say it on the podcast, or it's in somebody's newsletter, or Eckhart Tolle comes out and says it, right? We've got to try things in our lives and see if they work. However, this can be tricky because a lot of things that are really effective in life, if you try them once, they don't do anything. One time of sitting down to meditation doesn't really change your life. So what do you do? When do you know whether to go on faith or to go on questioning? I'm referencing Zen a lot. There's a phrase in Zen, great faith, great determination, great doubt, right? So all

these things are in there. We have faith, but yet we keep kind of grinding away with the determination. Then there's a doubt. There's a questioning. Is this real? Is this right? Another idea that comes to mind I've been talking about a lot lately is if we look at the work of Stephen C. Hayes, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we just released another interview with him. He talks about an idea that I love. He says, you should judge a thought by whether it's useful or not. And I love that idea. And so less is this thought true or not true. Again, there are things that are factual, but most of what's happening with us is perception and story and it's made up to some degree right so not is it true or not true but is it useful or not useful is it leading me in the direction

I want to go and so I think if we look at Carol Dweck's work through this lens we can see where it can be helpful and not helpful right it's not enough to just say all right I have a growth mindset and now everything happens right and oh I just you, I have a growth mindset and now everything happens, right? And oh, I just, you know, I have a growth mindset about playing guitar, so I'm a better guitar player. It doesn't work that way. What I have seen though is the opposite of a growth mindset over and over and over. And that's the fixed mindset. I see it in coaching clients all of the time, which is we believe we are a certain way and we usually believe negative things about ourselves. One of the biggest ones from people is I can't stick with what I start. I can't finish anything.

I don't have discipline. I'm lazy, et cetera, et cetera. And that belief gets in the way. Because what happens often is people start off, they're doing good, but the whole time they're doing good, there's a little part of the back of their brain going, well, I don't really believe you can keep doing this, right? And then inevitably with life, something comes up, life gets in the way. And the next thing you know, we fall off of our change for a short bit. And that's when that brain goes, see, I told you you couldn't do it. I knew you couldn't do it. That's the fixed mindset. And the fixed mindset in that case is a problem, right? And so what we're really talking about with mindset is we're talking about identity. James Clear talks about

identity. He says it's a lot more powerful to say, I don't smoke than to be saying, I'm trying not to smoke right now, right? If you have your identity, and identity is one of those things that I think applying the useful context to is really good. Identity is all a creation of some degree, and the deeper spiritual truths you get into, the more you realize this is true at deeper and deeper levels. But at any level, an identity is something we are more or less choosing to identify with, or we may not be consciously choosing, but on some level, it is a identification that isn't real. And so it's very useful to look at identity and go, is that identity helping me? If I have an identity as somebody who runs five days a week, I'm a runner, that's a good identity. That's pretty helpful. On the other hand,

if I have an identity as somebody who isn't good at math, or I have an identity as somebody who can't stick with things that they start, that's an identity that's holding me back. And I think that's what this fixed or growth mindset is really talking about. I think that's the usefulness of the fixed or growth mindset. The way I'm viewing myself in my life in relation to different things, is it limiting me or not? Just because I take off the fixed mindset doesn't mean that everything gets better. There's lots that still has to happen. But you can think of the fixed mindset as acting as a brake.

It can stop us when otherwise things are going well. So again, I think it's a good point that Mark makes. Let's not take everything that comes out in a psychological study as gospel truth. We have to try these things on for ourselves. We have to ask ourselves, are these things useful or not? So just more thinking there, but I do think that the fixed or growth mindset is an idea that can be useful in the right context. And then the last part of his newsletter is breakthroughs rarely feel good. And he quotes one of his favorite philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, and says he was cranky, grouchy old man,

which sometimes is what Mark seems like through his writing. Just kidding, Mark. Love you. Well, not kidding. You kind of do seem that way, but I do think you're brilliant. But he talks about how change is inherently painful. And this is true, right? Real change, real dramatic transformation is difficult. There are times that we are decidedly uncomfortable. We are uncertain of where we're going. Oftentimes, a change like quitting drugs or alcohol or other coping habits makes us feel worse before we feel better. Meditation and emotional work can often turn up things that we'd rather not look at. So change is difficult. And so it's really helpful when we're going through change to have people around us, ideally some people who might be a little further down

the path often who can say, oh yeah, that's all normal. Keep coming, keep coming this way. Right. When I started getting sober at first, it was a lot worse, but what was so important was I could see people who were kind of across the river and they just kept saying, Hey, keep coming this direction. Believe me, it gets better over here. It gets better over here. And I believe them and that helped me to keep walking. And so change is difficult and it's important to have help as we make real change because that help can often not make us feel better, but help us to at least know that we're on the right path and put everything we're going through in context. So there you have it. There's a little mini episode. Mark, thanks for a newsletter that

as always gets me thinking and we'll be back with an episode coming up soon. Take care, everyone. Bye.