The Rich Roll Podcast - Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Mark Manson is the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and host of the Solved podcast. Back for his third appearance (eps. 476, 882), we skip the backstory and pull questions from a fishbowl. We discuss vanity goals versus values-aligned goals, why procrastination is really about emotional avoidance, the trap of people-pleasing, how to distinguish intuition from impulse, and the delusion of passive manifestation. I also share my own shifting perspectives on positive thinking and the dissolution of self. Mark is the anti-guru. And this conversation is your New Year intervention. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: Use code RICHROLL20 for 20% OFF your first order👉🏼https://www.seed.com/RichRoll  BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼https://www.betterhelp.com/richroll Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll WHOOP: The all-new WHOOP 5.0 is here! Get your first month FREE👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

I think most people, when they set goals or aims or have dreams, they orient it purely around the upside, the positive benefits. They don't think about the costs or the challenges or the struggles that are going to come along with it. Probably the most powerful reorientation for me and my life has been simply looking at the struggles that I actually enjoy having and the pain that I secretly enjoy. Find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for. On the one hand, life is short and take advantage of the time you have left, but on the other hand, I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say, past the age of 40 or 50 without realizing, like, they're decades.

This is the Mark Manson 2.0 stance on positive thinking. It is January 2026. Welcome to our global ritual of going about bettering ourselves in some positive way. If you have struggled with this in the past, you are in the right place, I promise you. Because today, the master of no bullshit self-improvement advice, the anti-gourou himself, Mark Manson, is here. And he's going to help us dispel some self-help miss. and set matters to rights when it comes to making real life change and sustaining it over time. And basically, our shared purpose today is to set all of you guys out there across the Internet

to set you up for success in the new year. We're going to do it together. So if you are new to the show, my name is Rich Ruhl, and by dint of hosting this podcast for more than 13 years at this point, and also myself having navigated a series of person, life transformations, from alcoholism to middle-aged malaise. I also happen to know a few things about the subject matter that we're going to get into. Nothing in comparison to my very esteemed guest, of course.

So I think you guys are in good hands today, and I guess we're going to find out if this is going to work or not. What do you think, Mark? Either way, we'll learn something ourselves. Yeah, so we have a different kind of format today. Mark's been on the show twice before. This is his third appearance, and I thought, like, we're not going to talk about his backstory. We're going to get right into it. And the most effective and also the most fun way to do it is just to create this fishbowl full of questions that we have in front of us crumpled up on note cards.

And we're going to take turns, putting our grubby hands into it and pulling one out and reading it and seeing if we can answer it. So are you game for that? I'm ready. I do want to start out with one. question in case it doesn't get pulled, and I'm going to tee you up for this one. And maybe I'll take the one after that. But this question is, Mark, every year I set a New Year's resolution only to flame out by February. Why is this happening to me, Mark? And what do you suggest I do differently this year to avoid that? This literally is the perennial question. Like, this is the

question that comes up over and over and over throughout our lives. I generally, whenever I miss on a New Year's goal, I generally find one of two things is the case. One is I didn't set a good goal. It's something I thought I wanted, but it actually, when I started working on it, it didn't mean a whole lot to me. It was, I think for the sake of this podcast, we could call it a vanity goal, which we all fall prey to vanity goals quite often. And then I would say the second thing is a bit more tactical, which is that I didn't think through how to actually integrate the goal into my life effectively. I think most of us at the starting line on January 1st, we're super excited. We're really committed. We're like, I'm going to make this change.

But we're primarily thinking about our enthusiasm and our willpower. We're not thinking through like, oh, I have to pick up my kids from school five days a week and, oh, I have this softball commitment on Thursday nights and, you know, well, what if my partner gets sick and my Sunday mornings aren't free anymore? You know, it's, we don't think through all those second and third order effects and actually kind of plan for the time commitments and the energy commitments that we're going to have to make down the road. So when those moments, when the enthusiasm runs out, we have no plan in place and we go back to sitting on the couch. Yeah. Over-reliance on enthusiasm and short-lived temporary inspiration or motivation.

Yes. But I think the bigger piece is what you led with, which is setting the right goal. I think that's a big one for a lot of people. Like, we're quick to set a goal, but we're often reactive in how we set it. And we don't really spend the time to think through, like, is this really the right goal? Like, what am I trying to get out of this? Or is it just a challenge that I haven't even really thought through? that I'm actually not that wed to, you know what I mean?

So I'm always encouraging people to like, like, people will come to me. I'm going to do an Iron Man or I want to run a Maryland. It's like, okay, like, why? You know, like, you know, like it's cool. Yeah. But I think there's, you know, it's just like, oh, well, it's the obvious goal or like my friends are doing it or, you know, there's some sort of flimsy relationship with whether it's vanity or some kind of external validation or because your peer group, like it, it's

about like your good standing and your peer group will latch on to something like that only to find out like this isn't or even to go and achieve it and realize like, well, this didn't really do anything for me or it didn't deliver on whatever promise I thought it would because I actually didn't really think it through and it doesn't necessarily align with the values in my life that I'm most earnestly trying to advance. Yeah. I think there's the goal itself, which is like the behavior or the result. And then there's the feeling the goal gives you, right? So, like, running a marathon.

And by the way, that is a failed January goal that I have had in the past is the marathon. Looking back, the important thing for me wasn't the marathon. It was, I wanted to feel really fit. I wanted to be the fittest I had ever been. I wanted to be in really good shape. And I think it can be useful to look at that feeling that the goal is ideally going to deliver you to because there are probably a lot.

lot of ways to get to that feeling. Right. It doesn't have to be a marathon. If you're, if you get clarity on what's animating that, then there's many different threads that you can pull to achieve that. Yeah. Yeah, you've talked about the abandoned, like, it's okay to quit these things, you know what I mean? And, and, and also on top of that, the, just being in the atmosphere where there's an expectation that you're supposed to set a goal, you know, like, you don't, you don't have to. Yeah. You know, you don't have to. Just because, it's New Year's doesn't mean that you have to. It's a good time to do it because there's a lot of collective enthusiasm around these things, but it doesn't mean that you have to, especially

if you don't even know what a goal would be. It's better to get clarity on that before you start marshalling resources, time, and energy towards something only to find out that it was, you were climbing up the wrong tree. Yeah, for sure. All right. Did we cover that? Yeah. Anything else you want to say about that? No, I think we'll hit plenty more. All right. And then the coming, should I do the honors? Yeah, pick one.

Okay. Let's see. I'll go to the bottom. What piece of self-improvement advice have you changed your mind about and why? Are you asking me that? Because I penned that up just for you. Why don't, I'll go first, but I'm curious to hear yours as well. So, funny story.

As you know, I often shit on. on the woo-woo positive-thinking train that everybody, you know, in this industry. This is your brand mark. Yeah, it's like, look, man, life's hard, things suck. Let's just, let's be real about it. But it was funny, so my podcast solved, we do these deep dives into like one specific topic

for four or five hours. And we did an episode on resilience last fall. And that episode, I think that, episode was mentally challenging for me because I started digging up research that made me questions some of my cool kid credentials in this industry. The main one being some of the positive thinking stuff. So one of the biggest things that the research shows is the number one factor for resilience or dealing with some sort of hardship or struggle or pain is self-efficacy.

And self-evocacy is basically the belief. that you can handle whatever you're going through. And so it came back to this positive self-talk and positive affirmation. And I was, I was, like, reading these studies, and I was, like, my research team, like, gave me a summary of everything. And I'm just sitting there with, like, my head and my hands being like, no, guys, I can't be the one. The Stewart Smalley, look into the mirror and, like, you know, I'm good enough and, like, all

of that, right? Yeah. And so I had a little bit of a mini-crisis of, like, Like, okay, I'm just going to have to eat humble pie when I get on the mic. But it was actually very interesting because it is nuanced. And I will say this. Like, I always thought there was, like, positive thinking is fine. Like, it's nice and everything.

But, like, what the resilience research showed me is that it's actually very context dependent. So here's, like, my current stance on it. And I feel good about this stance. This is my new, this is the Mark Manson 2.0 stance on positive thinking. So if you are not going through a whole lot, if you're kind of just sitting on the couch scrolling on your phone, positive thinking is probably not serving you in that moment, right? Like telling yourself that you're amazing, unique, special, going to accomplish incredible things, you know, as you scroll to cat video number 16 is probably not helping you in that moment. I would still argue that that is potentially keeping you on that couch. But the research overwhelmingly shows that when you are in the shit, when you are going through something hard, when you are mid-struggle or mid-challenge, that that positive thinking can be, it can be the difference between success and giving up.

And so I've acquiesced on that and changed my mind about it. And I'm actually now, I'm curious to hear your perspective, having done all the ultramarathons and everything that you've done, I'm curious to hear your perspective on both the positive thinking as part of resilience and then also what your answer to those questions. Yeah, I mean, I think in my experience, I mean, I'm not wired for optimism, and I have to act my way towards it. So I'm a big believer in, you know, kind of mood follows action. Like the way to kind of shift your perspective and alter your, you know, negative inner monologue

is by doing things that contrast with whatever that negative stuff. story is and that over time, you know, that narrative starts to shift. But, you know, I'm also somebody who was sort of instilled with the power of positive thinking as a young person through a swim coach that I had. So this is all, you know, kind of deeply embedded in me. And so it doesn't surprise me that the science bears that out, although it is like cringy. You know what I mean? It's like, and I think, I think it's important to contextualize it, too, because what you're not saying is, like, just look in the mirror and, like, you know, it's like that sort of self-help trope of like, if, you know, I know I can and I can and all of that.

Gosh, darn, people like me. Exactly. You know, so that's only going to get you so far. At some point, you have to, you know, translate that into behavior. And then you, you know, then you can kind of create some momentum around that and become self-perpetuating. But in terms of, like, a piece of advice that I've changed my mind about, I mean, I guess, there's a couple. One's very practical and one's super esoteric, but the practical one is around procrastination. You know, there's all this science coming out right now about the benefits of procrastination. And, you know, I'm somebody who, like, I think by and large, everybody's procrastinating too much. But I know that when I sort of fall into a procrastination

K-hole, like it comes packed with guilt and shame and all this, you know, kind of beating myself up sort of stuff, but I have shifted my perspective on it and I kind of perceive it now as like I'm giving, this is like the sort of positive benefit of this is I'm empowering my unconscious mind to problem solve. And I think there's a time and a place for procrastination. And so when I'm in those moments, I think of it like recovery as an athlete would recovery. And so I've changed my relationship with that. The esoteric one has to to do with the idea of self-improvement itself or self-betterment. And the problem with this, at least from a more Eastern or Buddhist perspective, is that

the notion of the self is the problem. So if you're focusing on yourself and you have this attachment to your identity, and that's what's propelling you towards like this notion of a better future self, it's still going to culminate in suffering because of the focus and the attachment to the self, right? And one of the things that's helped disabuse me of this, and this is hardly something that I'm expert at at all, but I've been playing around with this, is another thing that I've changed my mind on, which is the benefits of medically supervised psychedelics, which is something I was very against for a very long time, you know,

somebody in recovery. And I've said this before, but, you know, the idea for somebody who is, you know, who is an addict in recovery, the idea that like a very powerful mind-altering substance has all the answers that you've been looking for, you know, is like, that's an intoxicant in its own right and scares me. But I had changed my mind over many years on that. And I had an experience about a year ago with it that was truly transformative and allowed me to to dip. my toe into what it feels like when your identity dissolves and you have that experience of oneness that you hear about and a sort of death of the ego that I've found to be incredibly beneficial. So in the context of self-improvement or self-betterment or whatever term you want to call it, the betterment part or the improvement part is not the problem. It's your relationship to yourself. And so I found myself paying more attention to that and trying to figure out how I can

be a little, hold these things a little bit more loosely, like be in a place of more detached neutrality about like how I define myself, I suppose. And that liberates you to have a more curious, open mind about things that maybe you wouldn't, you know, have allowed yourself to explore, like the idea of positive thinking or whatever, you know, choose your, choose your idea. Yeah. It's very well said. I like that. It's interesting too, Because if you think about it, the whole notion of improvement is most of our measurements of, quote, unquote, improvement is very arbitrary. Like, we're just making up goalposts and saying, like... I mean, everything's neutral until you apply your perspective and put a label on it.

So are you better? Is your, you know, are you not? Like, it depends on your perspective. Yeah. Which it would explain why self-improvement is often a bit of a psychological treadmill for people where it's, they're constantly chasing. It's just another way for them to chase another thing and not be present in their own lives and realize that all the answers and happiness

and everything that they're searching for is actually available. All right. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, right? I don't know how you're supposed to practice that in any kind of like practical way. We just set up a whole podcast on self-improvement and then disabuse the audience of the emotion.

Don't worry about any of it. Anyway, all right, well, let's move on that. 2026 goals, dissolution of self and elimination of any concept of improvement. All right, here we go. Mark, if you had to pick one key guiding principle to give me to achieve a fundamental positive life change and sustain it over time, what would that be?

I mean, it's really hard not to choose my main thing. which is find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for. I think most people, when they set goals or aims or have dreams, they orient it purely around the upside, the positive benefits. They don't think about the costs or the challenges or the struggles that are going to come along with it. And really, I think the probably the most powerful reorientation from me and my life has been simply looking at the things, looking at the struggles that I actually enjoy having. And the pain that I kind of quietly, at the end of the day, secretly enjoy to a certain extent, because I just think that's, you're going to get so much more mileage out of that. and in a way that is actually very indicative of who you are as a person or like who,

see, now I'm afraid to say things like that. No, it's fine. Forget that we did the last question. Keep going. Okay. But it's much more indicative of who you are as a person, of like, what you're willing to give up. So I would say, for me, if there was one key principle to give to somebody, It was look for the things, look for the challenges and struggles that you enjoy having

and that energize you and enliven you. So what would be an example of that? Well, you know, the classic example that I use from my own life is, you know, I went to music school and it quickly became apparent that there were maybe half a dozen people in my music school that were going to make it. They were just on another level. And when I spent time around them, it was clear. that they would practice and play 10, 12 hours a day.

And to them, it was as natural as breathing. For me, to practice for more than a couple hours, it took a lot of willpower and planning and structure. And it was something that I would start resenting if I had to do it too many days in a row. And so after a certain number of months, I just had to swallow a painful fact, which is that I don't enjoy the cost of being

a professional musician, which is practicing and playing 10, 12 hours a day. Therefore, I am probably not going to be a musician. On the flip side of that, my entire life, I've really enjoyed, to me, even when I was in school, you know, I was that obnoxious kid who would get on a forum online and write a 12-page post breaking down in minute detail why everybody else was wrong. and why, no, the drummer of Tool was actually a better drummer than your favorite drummer and hear all my citations and hear the receipts. And to me, that was like a fun Saturday afternoon. Like, I enjoy writing and rewriting and rewriting a paragraph like six times in a row

and making it slightly better each time. Like, it's not something I had to learn. It's just something that it just, it's something that most people is agony. and for me, it is pleasant. And so there's a reason that I became a writer. Yeah. You're flipping the equation upside down. So let's say it's January 1 and, you know, everybody wants to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is, right?

Instead of thinking how amazing it's going to be when you can look in the mirror and those pants fit or whatever it is, instead consider how you're going to be able to tolerate those hunger pangs or perform. You know, prevent yourself from reaching for the ice cream or whatever your proclivity is, right, to marinate in the harder parts of it rather than in the glory of having achieved it as a way of, like, stress testing whether you're up for this. Yeah. See, what most people do is they just think about, oh, my God, I'm going to look great for summer, you know, summer beach body or whatever. They try to focus on that. What they should be focusing on is, okay, I need the exercise. I need the diet.

What exercise can I find that I actually enjoy? Like, what's fun? Is it taking tennis lessons, joining a run club? Is it CrossFit? You know, there's a million different things that you could investigate and try and explore. It's, you don't need to have the perfect workout routine. You just need to do something consistently.

And if you find the form of exercise that doesn't feel like work, it just feels like play. then willpower is no longer part of the equation. Like, you can integrate it into your life in a way that's very satisfying and fun. But yeah, people don't approach it that way. Like, they just kind of assume, like, okay, I have a goal, and you have to suffer for your goal,

so time to mentally prepare myself to suffer. And instead, it's just like, no, think about, like, what is the form of struggle or challenge that is actually fun for you in pursuing that goal? Between the lines implicit in what you're saying is the call to action really is to develop your curiosity, you know, paired with a level of self-awareness. Like if you're paying attention to where your attention naturally, you know, points to, and you can kind of track that, you start to get a glimpse of like, you know, what it, because if you're just detached from yourself and you're just reacting to the world or whatever, you may be so disconnected from yourself. that you don't even know what it is that you enjoy or what your preferences are.

I mean, when it gets to things like purpose and passion, like, these can be violent terms for people that make them feel guilty because it's like, it's very loaded, right? And instead, just like, if you had a free day and you could do anything, like, what are you gonna choose to do or something like that? And try to extract from that little nuggets

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It works. So go to c.com slash rich roll and use code rich roll 20 for 20% off your first month of DSO1. That's seed.com slash rich roll with code rich roll 20. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year does not require a new you. But don't you deserve to be a better and less burdened you? I mean, I think so, which is why this year. year, I'm focusing on overcoming a few things that have burdened me for too long, preventing

me from becoming the better version my family and my friends and my peers deserve. Past childhood stuff, perfectionism, overwhelm, and the anxiety it produces. These are the kind of things that I bring up in therapy because I can't release and heal things without the willingness to embrace an outside perspective. So yes, I am a big fan of therapy. And I'm a big fan of therapy. And I'm a big fan of BetterHelp because it makes therapy more accessible. Their therapists are fully licensed and work according to a strict code of conduct. They do the matching work for you through a questionnaire and with over 12 years of experience, they typically get it right the first time and you can switch therapists at any time to find a right fit. BetterHelp is served over 5 million people globally with an

average rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash richroll. That's betterhelp.com slash rich roll. Should I go? Yeah, go. I know that change is an action-based affair, but despite the changes I've made in the past,

I still have looping negative thoughts about myself. Can I change my internal monologue? Do I need to? How? We talked a little bit about that already, but maybe put a finer point on that. Yeah. I personally believe that our inner voice and our intuition are overrated. That's a hot take.

Again, it's kind of like the positive thinking. It's very contextual, you know, like I think, for example, I think when it comes to decision-making, right? Let's say you want to buy a house and you're looking between three different options, you and your partner are like weighing all sorts of different factors. In that case, then I do think it's probably important to be able to listen to your gut, listen to your inner voice, see what doubts are coming up. But in a lot of context, your inner voice is just this like yammering thing going on in the background. And this is one of the things that you learn when you meditate a lot is that like there's no rhyme or reason to like half the stuff that

is said in your head. And you don't have to take it. seriously, if you don't want to. And so sometimes I just kind of like, sometimes I develop a relationship with my inner monologue of like an obnoxious sibling that, or like a teenage child or something that is just being a brat sometimes. And I'm just like, you know what? Like, I don't have to listen to this, dude. Like it just, and it's not going to stop.

It's going to keep going. But the difference is, like, I get to decide what it means. I get to decide how important and serious this voice is in my head. And just because it's being said in my inner monologue doesn't mean it's true, doesn't mean it's important, doesn't mean it's real. And I think from all the time I spent meditating, that's probably one of the most important takeaways that I came away with, is that your mind is just going to do things. and it's not necessarily, it's almost never really under your control or it's often not under your control. And then just because it does things,

doesn't mean you have to necessarily identify with it or take it seriously. I agree with that completely. If we take, like, who you are, you know, the delusion of self. Like, let's just assume the self is a real thing. We are so entangled. with our inner monologue that we don't realize that that's something very different, right?

Like, what our brain is doing is just, it's on this crazy autopilot, and to the extent that we can create some distance between, you know, quote unquote, ourselves and that voice, it's always going to serve us. And meditation is the most effective tool for that, in my experience. In time, through taking action, you can shift that inner monologue, but it happens as a consequence of things you're doing, not necessarily because you're directing your attention towards it. But I think by having a

different kind of relationship with it, where you don't have to buy into what it's telling you is the liberation that I think we're all looking for. Because we just believe that oh, well, this is, you're creating your own reality because you're so bought in to what that voice is saying. Where I would disagree with you a little bit is

on the intuition piece, but maybe you'll agree with me after I explain it. And I've come to appreciate this a little bit more than I used to in no small part because of this neuroscientist, Joel Pearson, who came on the podcast and Australian, who's done a lot of work on this. Super interesting guy. I think that intuition is a very real thing, and I think it is your best self's inner voice. It's just so muted and, you know, kind of repressed because it's quiet in comparison to like the looping thoughts in your brain. But I think it's confused with impulse.

Yeah. If you don't have a high degree of self-awareness and you're not kind of integrated in your body in a way where you have a conscious awareness of like your emotions and your thoughts and you put a lot of work in, you're going to confuse your intuition for like what you want to do. Yeah. I was like, well, my intuition is telling me or my gut is telling me that I need to eat this or I need to call that guy back or, you know, like, get into this argument, but that's not really your intuition. Your intuition is what's beneath all of that. So you have to do, I think you have to do quite a bit of work before you can actually trust your intuition. And this is something I learned in just getting sober. You know, it's like, like, everything I wanted to do was the wrong thing,

you know, and it's like, I had to, for years, check all my decisions with other people before I made them until I had, you know, gotten well enough where I was like, actually, I can kind of, I think I can now begin to start to trust like what my quote unquote intuition is telling me to do because it had steered me wrong. Because it had been hijacked by. Yeah, I like this distinction. I agree with it. And it's, I think it's a really useful distinction as well because, and I think it's probably worth digging into this a little bit. Because it's, it's because your higher self, your intuition and your lower self, you're kind of implausal. You're kind of implaus. self are both unconscious, you know, it's easy to mistake one for the other. They can kind of get jumbled up. And I think what I, I'm probably biased towards this, just given my nature and the industry and everything. But what I often see in the personal development space is you take people who are highly impulsive and you basically teach them that that is the-

You empower them to like their intuition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the distinction that I'm trying to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I agree 100% with you that there is, there is, you know, the higher order self is, you know, that is the, I think it's what Connman would call System 2 thinking. And it's, there is a lot of wisdom and experience, it's very much based on pattern matching across like a wide range of experience. And, but yeah, it can feel, sometimes it can feel the same way as an impulse. And you, like, you have to be very wary.

All right. my turn, right? We kind of talked about this. I always hear people talk about things like passion and purpose or meaning and satisfaction, and I don't get it. I don't have a passion, like, quote unquote, big quote, you know, capital P passion. Mark, am I fucked? I like how these are these questions are personalized for me. Well, I think it's probably worth separating passion from purpose and meaning because they are different.

They often get conflated, but I do think they're actually very different. You know, passion is, I would say, I would describe passion is something you enjoy or love doing for its own sake. That you're not interested in it to get other benefits. It's just something that you inherently, if you were alone on a desert island with a billion dollars, you would still do it, just for the simple. sake of doing it. I do think everybody has that somewhere in their life. I think I think the challenge is usually people don't allow themselves to feel that. They're so caught up in the conditionality of everything they do and everything they do is with the goal to achieve some other aim to get people to like them or to get further in their career or to win approval of these

people or whatever that like they never give themselves the space to just explore what do I like to do for its own sake. The purpose and meaning question is a little bit, I think, deeper and more complicated in that the biggest difference between purpose and passion is that a passion is, by definition, something that is, like, fun, and you are happy to be doing. A purpose, you are many times not happy to be doing, but you feel a duty to do it anyway because it is so important to you. A simple example would be, you know, raising a young kid.

Like, it's not fun for a lot of the time, but there's no point where you're like, I, you drop the kid and like walk away, right? So it's, it's purpose often has a component of like an understanding that this is more important than how I feel. And it's interesting because I think passion and purpose get conflated because often people will find when they're passionate about. something, they become very good and committed to it. And that, that commitment then starts to create a sense of purpose, but they're not the same thing. The purpose can exist without the passion and vice versa. Yeah, I agree with that. I think my spin on it would be that the word passion tends to trip people up because it has a, kind of an extreme connotation to it. It's sort of like, I think it gets conflated with obsession.

You know, it's like, I'm passionate about this. And I think if you lower the stakes on how you're defining passion and you're just like, this is what I dig doing, you know, I like going down to my workshop or whatever it is that you just naturally enjoy and you give yourself permission to explore that or indulge it and follow it wherever it may lead rather than berate yourself because you feel like you should be doing something that's, you know, quote unquote, productive or what have you, and just allow yourself to have that experience and see where it may lead, then purpose is, purpose is revealed in the doing of the passion thing. You know what I mean? You can't decide in advance, like, this is my purpose. I think purpose is a byproduct of exploring your curiosities, whether you call them passions or whatnot. And then meaning is like a consequence of that, right? Like you extract meaning from devoting yourself to something that you are enthusiastic about

and suddenly discover purpose in. So these things kind of like unfold in lockstep with each other. Yeah. Does that track with all the research that you've done? I think so. The purpose and meaning piece is really funny. There's a great quote that I love. It's funny. So we just did an episode on purpose for solved and it was funny. I did this whole section. It's probably an hour long. going through like the history of Western philosophy around purpose. And in the quote, there was a quote that I found that basically summed everything up. And it actually came from Picasso. And he said, the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose is to give it away.

And generally what you find is that there's a Venn diagram, you know, there's that Ikegai Venn diagram in Japan of, it's like four circles. but I would say for the sake of purpose, you know, it's really just two circles. One is what do you enjoy doing and what are you good at and what is useful to other people? And you find the overlap of those two things and purpose starts to emerge as a natural byproduct of it in general. Where does service fit in for you in that equation? It's an aspect of like purpose. Yeah.

I would say service is that second circle and that Venn diagram. There is something, the two key components really seem to be, well, it's actually kind of three components, but like one is, what do I feel is unique about myself or like the opportunities that I've been given? Like what is something that I am in a position to do that most people are not? It's basically what's special about you? And then marrying that with the second component, which is how can I contribute to something greater than myself? So how do I take my gift, the thing that I'm, you know, whether it's a skill or a privilege or a knowledge base or just being in the right place at the right time, and then how do I leverage that to make the world a better place?

And it's like when you solve that equation, that's where purpose is. And we often talk about it and think about it in terms of like career and, you know, vocation and education and all this stuff. But, like, it, honestly, like, relationships are kind of the simplest way to accomplish it. Like, if you think about, again, parenthood, like, by definition, you are the most unique person. You are your children's only father, right? You are, by definition, they're the only person who can fulfill a role for those people. And then the act of parenting is giving yourself away.

And so it's probably rooted in that, I would say. I think our psychological mechanism for purpose probably comes out of parenthood, would be my guess. Well said. All right. Whose turn is it? I think it's mine. It's yours, go. How do I know if my goal is the right one?

Great question. Very important question. And should I keep it to myself or tell everyone? We covered the first part a little bit already. Yeah, I would just go back and retouch on, like, vanity goals, you know. Maybe don't take your first assumption of a goal at face value. Think a little bit deeper on, like, what's the feeling you're trying to get? What's the value underlying it?

Should you tell everybody? This is the age-old question. Yeah. I would say it depends why you're telling people. So I would say the wrong reason to tell people is, you want to be validated and a pat on the back for like, oh, good for you. You're trying to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is. If that's the primary motivation, then I believe the research actually shows that you're

probably less likely to follow through because really what you're motivated by is that validation. You're not motivated by the goal. And you're getting it without having done anything. So your brain is acclimating to the idea that the goal has already been achieved, which is going to undermine the will and the work that has to go into actually achieving it. Yeah. And you see this quite a bit. You know, it's like people will sign up for a class or a course or start studying Spanish or something.

And they go tell all their friends and all their friends are like, oh, my God, that's so cool. And then a month later they gave it up. I'd say the right reason to tell people about it is if the motivation is accountability. if it's like, hey, I really need to get this in order. Can you check in with me? Can you be my accountability, buddy? Can we work out together each month? Can you make sure I'm on track or whatever?

Like, that's the right reason to go tell people. Also, it's important to be selective about who those people are. You want people who are going to give you just the right amount of encouragement, but also the honest feedback that you need to make the whole accountability piece work, right? And so if you tell somebody who's just constantly, you know, trampling on your dreams

and telling you you're a piece of shit, maybe that's not the right person, nor is the cheerleader who's just going to tell you everything is awesome, you know? So you've got to be conscious of who the board of advisors is. But what about the piece of, like,

not telling anyone? Like, I'm of two minds on this, and I think it's particular to the type of goal. But I think there is something special about protecting it and being like, this is a very precious thing. And this is not something I'm just going to go around and tell everyone about, like, I'm going to tend to this and kind of treat it as sacred in that regard. But at the same time, if you're just operating in a vacuum and you have no accountability mechanism. At some point, your motivation or your self-will or whatever it is is going to falter and your left to your own devices in that regard. Yeah, I think it probably depends on the goal. Like, I'm just kind of scanning through my life.

And I think when it comes to, like, creative goals, I often keep them to myself. Whereas something like fitness goals, I generally go find somebody to keep somebody to keep. me accountable or try to create like a network for myself. Yeah. Or you have, you know, one or two accountability partners who are keeping track of what you're doing, but everyone else is not privy, no one else is privy to like what you're doing. Because I do think, you know, obviously the pursuit of a goal or, you know, trying to, you know, move your life in a more aspirational direction is an act.

of self-esteem. It's an esteem-building act, right? And if it's based upon external validation, those two things are at cross-purposes with each other. And I think when you really, like, you do treat it, this is my thing, I'm not telling anyone, and you're just quietly doing it. Yeah. Because we all want that external validation on some level, like on the spectrum, right? But when you honor that and you keep it quiet and you're just doing it for yourself, I think that that is a better way of engendering that internal, like, good feeling. of, like, real esteem. I think I agree with that.

It kind of feels like potentially plain goals on hard mode. Like, you probably get more of that esteem, but depending on the goal, I mean, you lose that accountability. I mean, I don't, like, I think it's more effective with creative goals. Like, if you're writing a book, like, you don't want to go around telling everyone. Your book idea. Yeah, what the idea is and all that. It's like, you're draining of its energy, you know? And, I mean, I think you really have to protect that.

Obviously, you need an editor or whoever else is like, hey, you know, you have stuff due. Like, you know, like, you need that. But, like, it's better if you're just keeping mute on the rest of it until it's done. Yeah. You know. I do like the idea of some things are keeping some things for yourself. I do think there's something, I don't know, my intuition is that. Yeah, there you go.

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And change. Are we going to go Jordan Peterson now? What do you mean by mean? Yeah. I think obviously behaviors change. And people's beliefs about themselves can change. I do think there are certain components of us that don't change that are pretty. And I mean, this is this is pretty borne out in the psychological research.

Like if you look at, if you look at personality psychology, like personality changes at a glacial pace throughout your life. And you can't really direct it. Like you can direct it a tiny bit, but like the effort reward is just so out of whack. So like if you're a deeply introverted person, you could spend a decade trying to make yourself extroverted. it's just not going to happen. There are certain things that are just kind of genetically baked in. So the way I look at this is that we all have our genetic and biological predispositions to certain behaviors or moods or positions.

And I think it's instead of trying to change those things, which I think a lot of people spend a lot of effort trying to change them, I think it's better to simply lean into them and try to find adaptive ways to live with them, right? So if you're an introvert, don't spend your life trying to be an extrovert. Try to find a very adaptive way to have a healthy social life as an introvert. If you're an addict, right, like you find other ways to channel that energy and other pursuits and other things that you can get really, into and really compulsive with, then to, like, just stop being, have that genetic predisposition. So that's where I'm at with it.

I believe the last time we were here, this was something... Did we talk about this last time? I think we disagreed about it. Oh, we did. Yeah, interesting. I have no idea what we talked about last time. That's funny. But I guess I would say this.

I mean, I agree with that. Like, you know, there are certain aspects of ourselves that are, you know, relatively immutable, you know. But there's all kinds of things that I think we, we underappreciate the extent to which we have agency to mutate them. Yes. And I think when somebody just flippantly says, well, people don't change, they're looking around and like, yeah, like somebody's behaving the same way they always have or whatever. But I think in part, that has to do with our relationship with our own inner potential and our lack of perspective. on the nature of change itself,

meaning we're projecting ourselves into the future in the version that we are in today. You know what I mean? It's like we don't account for the fact that we are going to be different people in the future or that we're capable of being somebody else. Like, obviously, the decisions that you make now are not the same ones you made when you were 20 years old.

Like, you're a different guy. Like, there are immutable aspects of you that are the same, but you couldn't have predicted then the perspective that you have on so many things that you have now, right? And by underappreciating that, we get in our own way in terms of how we think about our own capacity to change. And I think we also have this default mode to think that everything is permanent.

You know, we're very attached to the way that things are in the sense that, you know, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and I'm going to be the same guy. And there's a sense of things being static that I think is a survival mechanism that allows us to wake up and function. But the truth is, like, there's nothing in the universe

that isn't in constant motion all the time. Like, the universe is expanding and the subatomic particles are vibrating. Like, there is nothing. There is, like, the idea of anything being static is the core delusion, right? Yeah. And then it gets into the agency piece.

Like, so if you think of it that way, like change. is almost like fundamental to the universe. You know what I mean? And it's about our relationship with it. Like are we collaborating with it? Or are we allowing it to just have its way with us? It's funny because, I mean, you and I,

we tend to agree on most things. And it's, with this one, I feel like our biases are in different directions. I don't think we necessarily disagree very much about it in substance. But like, I think our biases are in different directions because it's, When I was younger, my issue, I think I had a little bit of a delusional belief about myself that I could change anything at any moment and be anybody and go anywhere and learn anything. Coming from the opposite end of that spectrum. And that bit me in the ass because it's like eventually I ran up against my own limitations and constraints and I didn't want to accept them.

And so it's, for me, it's been so interesting. It's been very transformative to realize, like, no, no, no, like what... You've been humbled in that regard. Whereas I've had experiences that, like, just amazed me that I didn't think were possible. So, yeah, we're coming at it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. But I guess one way I look at this, and I...

And this is... Part of this is my fault. Like, I think you're... You correctly identified, I think, like, how most people think about change. I think my perception of change is a little bit more. inside baseball, whereas, like, I think what a lot of people think of as transformation is really just allowing themselves to be themselves. Like, that's been my observation in this line of work, is that what most people, most

people come into this industry wanting to be a completely different person, and what they actually end up getting is like, oh, I get to be comfortable with who I am and live and I don't have to pretend or fake or distract myself anymore. And so when I see, like, people, quote-unquote, change, it's usually, like, that, if that makes sense? Yeah, like, dispelling the notion that you're going to become this completely other person, what it is in reality is stripping away the layer so that you can become more of who you've always been all along, right?

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Okay. Yeah. All right. But that was, no, I love that insight into,

are various biases. I think that that's spot on. Yeah. All right, pick one. Oh, yeah, my turn. I know what I need to do, but I just can't stop myself from procrastinating. Why?

How can I stop? All caps. Help. So it's funny. It's been interesting doing these solved episodes because, you know, some of them we do these deep dives. It's like you just get into all these fascinating rabbit holes and nooks and crannies and everything. And there's like just multiple dimensions to a concept.

And in other episodes, you get through like two or three hours of research and you're like, yeah, it's basically just this. And procrastination was one of those. We talked to, I think, the three top procrastination researchers in the world. And yeah, basically it's a lack of emotional regulation. Like, it is, at the end of the day, procrastination is a instinctive reaction to avoiding uncomfortable emotions. And for some people, that emotion is anxiety. For some people, it's shame or embarrassment. And then for some people, it's perfectionism or overwhelm feeling incapable.

And, but whatever it is, it's, you procrastinate. It's meeting a need. It's serving a purpose. Yes. It is a kind of a last-stitch effort to regulate an emotion that you are otherwise not being able to handle. And this is why, like, if you, you know, I remember when I was younger, I broke up with a girl I was dating, and I went to work the next day, and I got nothing done the entire day. And I remember my boss yelling at me, and I just wanted to be like, she left, man, she left. It's not my fault.

It's just, it's when you're an emotional wreck, like, you can't, this is why you can't really do other things. It's because you're so dysregulated that you're constantly defaulting to avoidance in any, avoidance and distraction in any way, shape, or form. Confronting the task at hand is so uncomfortable or laden with some fear that you'll literally do anything to avoid. it, no matter how destructive. Yeah. And it's funny because if you look at all the procrastination solutions, like all the hacks

and tools and stuff, there are all different ways of attacking this, right? So, probably the most reliable one, or the one that I use the most, is just take, like, whatever task is intimidating me, just make it as small as possible. I call it the minimum viable action. So

I'll use a book as an example. Like, let's say I'm freaking out over a book. I put it off for days. What I'll do is I'll sit down and just be like, okay, just write one paragraph. It doesn't even have to be a good paragraph. I don't even have to use it for the book. Just write one paragraph. When you shrink the task to a size that it no longer feels intimidating, it at least gets you in the chair and doing it. And then once you're doing it, there'll be a momentum to it and it makes everything else easier. Another version of this that a friend of mine who's a meditation teacher

will often tell his students is he says, you know, students will come to him and they're like, you know, I try to meditate for 10 minutes every morning and it's just, it's too hard, I can't do it. And he's like, okay, what amount of time feels easy? And they're like, well, I don't know. He's like, how about 10 seconds? And they're like, what?

And he's like, yeah, meditate for 10 seconds every morning. Let me know how it goes. And he's like, sure enough, they sit down, they do 10 seconds, and they're like, well, I'm here. I might as well keep going. And so it's just, you can use that for almost anything. And then obviously, environment, controlling your environment is a huge part of it too.

Just like not allowing your brain escape hatches, putting the phone in the other room, blocking apps on your computer, you know, turning off the TV, whatever. The harder it is for your mind to escape, the more likely it is to actually, like, focus. and do what it needs to do. I think that a lot of the productivity hacks don't work

because they're basically treating the symptom without acknowledging the fear behind it. And the minimum viable act is getting at the fear piece. It's not because you're disorganized or you need to streamline your calendar or your to-do list. It's because you're fucking afraid of something. You know what I mean? And so just to take the case of,

you know, being a writer and the blank page, it's like you're afraid that you don't have anything you know, like worthy of saying or that you're a bad writer or whatever. You know, all of those things are just like the terror of like having to confront the blank page will compel you to procrastinate and defer and delay and avoid that work. But by saying like just scribble down a word in your journal or like, you know, do the free association warning pages or whatever to, you know, kind of get you into a rhythm is allowing you to, like, dose yourself with that fear, like, the minimum dose of that to realize, like, oh, it's not that bad. And then you kind of, like, move forward through that. But I think the important piece is recognizing the fact that you're doing the

perastination because it's doing something for you. And what is it doing for you? What's quelling your fear in some way? So, like, all right, well, let's get it another way of trying to, like, manage that fear that is moving you towards the thing that you're avoiding instead of away from it. Yeah. There's a bit of a muscle to it. I do think the more you just do things, the better you get at it. You know, it's like any. Well, because then you realize the fear is imagined. Well, and it's like any fear management. Like, you know, it's the first time you get up and speak in front of people. Like exposure therapy. Yeah, it's terrifying. But the hundredth time you do it, you don't really think about it. And it's, I think procrastination.

is not that different. Like, it's some, at a certain point, you just kind of build that muscle that you can get on with it. And then you have to put the lie to all the reasons, you know, that are cycling in your mind that are allowing you to rationalize it.

Like, I'll get to it later or, like, now it's not the right time. All of those things have to be kind of deconstructed to. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, all right, but we could go on. Let's move on here.

Uh-oh. When it comes to self-help gurus, Mark, who is the worst offender and why? Rich roll. With the caveat, look, if you don't want to name names, this is not about like calling out people if you don't want to. But like perhaps, you know, what are some red flags to look out for? You know, the idea of being like, how can we help people not fall prey to, you sir, you know, some crafty marketing techniques? Give people some discernment. I love the shameless engagement farming here.

It's like, let's get the gossip. Let's go viral on TikTok. It's actually a good question. Like, what are the red flags to look for? It's funny because I've just always thought so much in terms of actual people that I've never actually thought about. What is like the underlying principle? Listen, if you want to, if you want to like, name some names. Okay, so here's the biggest one.

And I'll call this one out by name because it is punching up. So, you know, I think Tony Robbins, he gives, there's a lot of value in what he does. He gives a lot of great advice. There are marketing practices that I think are a little bit ick, which is when you're dealing with a customer base of highly vulnerable people. And it's, they're very impressionable. And the reason they are buying from you is because they believe you have answers for them. I just think that there's a certain responsibility that comes with around like aggressive marketing that that should be honored and respected. Because marketing and sales done extremely well. Like if you, if you go take a marketing

in one-on-one class, like basically the first thing they teach you is that you, you, you're You find people's insecurity, you poke that insecurity, and then you tell them that your product is going to fix their insecurity, right? So whether it's a beauty product or, you know, clothing or a beer brand or whatever it is, you figure out where people's vulnerabilities are and then you position your product as the solution to that vulnerability. I just think when you're getting into the world of self-help, I have a very, very sensitive radar for people who poke those insecurities. These people are already vulnerable. They're already suffering. They're already in pain. And so if you come along and you just start like kind of like rubbing it in their face because you're about to sell a $6,000 coaching package to them, it just gives me like the hebi-jeebies.

The relationship you and I have with our audience is like there's nothing normal about this. It is a pariscial relationship. It's a very asymmetrical relationship. I think it very seriously that I have a responsibility to the people who follow me to be. honest and as authentic as possible and uphold my integrity to the best of my ability. And if I ever fail or flag in any way, like be open and honest about that. But I think part of that too is also just being transparent about the nature of this relationship. Right. So what bugs me sometimes is that there are a lot of people in this space who very intentionally play into that parasycial

relationship. You know, they want you to think that they're your friend. They want you to think that they're looking out for you, that they care about you, that they want to have a relationship with you or whatever. It's like they, again, they kind of lean into that vulnerability that happens in this space. I always try to be really frank with my audience. I'm just a dude who happened to read way too many books about this shit. Here are my struggles. Here are my concerns. Here my insecurities, I'm very passionate about doing this, so this is why I make this content, but let's be real here. I don't have all the answers. And I just think anybody who, if I don't see that attitude or disposition in their work, if the attitude and disposition is like,

you know, hey, friends, listen to me, I've got all the solutions for you. It just, to me, that's, I just wouldn't trust it. I would just put it that way. Yeah, I mean, 100% If somebody is presenting themselves with a demonstrable lack of humility, paired with like a high degree of certainty, you know, like that they are in possession of some answer that is going to solve your fundamental problem in some kind of savior complex kind of way, that's problematic to me. And it is despairing. Like, it's interesting because a lot of these people, you know, I think it's like there's, it's all gray. Like, you know, a lot of these people are helping people. Yeah. Some of them are helping them at great financial cost to the people they're helping. But I do bristle at the reductive kind of reasoning that goes into this. Like taking these highly, like, every answer that we've given today, like, it's like we're kind of like in this gray, murky, like, nuanced way of trying to make sense of like very complicated things when it comes to human behavior, right?

It's like there's no binary here. There's no, like, distillation with the, you know, what's the number one thing that's gonna dub, bu, it doesn't matter, right? Like, it's all like, well, it depends for whom and when and what are the conditions and, you know, all of it, right? And anyone who dismisses all of that for some very convenient, reductive answer that they deliver with great certainty

and is available at great cost, you know, to the person who they're pretending to be friends with, Yeah, it's like maybe exercise a little discernment around what's actually going on. I think a much, probably a much better answer. I think a much shorter and better version of my answer would be how often do they change their mind and how often do they admit that they were wrong? That's a pretty good rubric. Yeah.

Which ones don't change their mind when presented with contrary evidence? because what you see is a lot of them double down. And yeah, I think those are good principles. All right. We managed to only say one name. We managed to only say one name. We don't have to go to the lowest common denominator. Oh, it's your turn.

Here, you pick one. I'll do this one. I realize I am a chronic people pleaser and have made most of my life's biggest decisions based on others' opinions and my need for their approval. How do I get over this to stop betraying myself and live more authentically? It's a classic problem. The question I always throw to the people pleasers is what are you willing to be disliked for? Find the thing that you're willing to be disliked for.

Like, what is something so important in your life that it's a hill you're willing to die on? And people pleasers have a ton of trouble answering that question. and I think the fact that they can't answer that question is kind of at the core of the issue. Obviously, people pleasing is born out of a kind of a chronic need for feeling adequate or okay. You've outsourced your sense of self and self-worth to an external person or something, like some achievement or whatever.

And I think most people pleasers, I think, They go about it in a way that's not realistic or practical, which is like, how do I just stop pleasing everybody? That's probably the hardest way to do it, which is to just stop people pleasing without replacing it, without any, you know, there's no other identity filling that void that the people pleasing is going to leave behind. And so I always encourage people to like, go find the thing that's going to fill the void. and then it will, the people-pleasing will stop. It will fall away as a consequence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the added thing, just from my own experience,

is a fairly chronic people-pleaser, is the idea that you don't know what that authentic person is. Like, if you spent your whole lot, like, let's say you grew up in a household where it was very important that you lived up to expectations or whatever, And so your behavior adapts to like a family unit in which you've got to please, like the parents, you don't know anything different, right? So you never even had the opportunity to connect with whatever is authentic to you. And then you go out in the world and you're seeking that in all these different ways because that validation is a proxy for, you know, love and self-esteem, right? So you have to earn these things as transactions.

And as a consequence, you don't develop the facility to provide that for yourself. And it becomes like this smokescreen or this veil that prevents you from even having any kind of like connection with who you are, right? Because that doesn't enter into the mental calculus around the decisions that you're making. And so to even begin to do that, you have to find a way to go inside. yourself enough so that you can identify something about yourself that you care about that might be in opposition to all of that energy you have around hiding it because it doesn't match up with what, you know, this set of expectations that you've decided is so important. Yeah.

Do you still feel like you're a people pleaser or do you feel like you've managed that? I mean, way, way less so, but like I'm wired for it, you know what I mean? So I can fall into it. I can, I'll catch myself being a bit of a chameleon and social situation. Like, I know how to adapt and, like, you know, kind of be the guy that I think people, you know, I can, I still have a time. I don't do it nearly the way that, to the extent that I used to, like, but I wouldn't say I'm completely cured of it. It's funny, because I, just from my hanging out with you, I never would have guessed. It's interesting.

The other piece to that, too, that keeps people. stuck in it is that you develop a bit of an identity around it that makes you feel good. Because if you're pleasing everyone in every situation, you're like, I'm so amenable to everybody. I'm such a good guy. I'm so cooperative. And you start to think of this as an asset and you're blind to the ways in which it's actually, you know, it's harming you. That's the trap of it is that you get to feel there's like a moral satisfaction that comes with it. I'm like, I'm so helpful. I'm always there for people, you know. Yeah, it's like this good guy, you know.

kind of persona that gets crafted around it. Yeah, for sure. All right. I'm pretty good at making progress towards my goals, but for some reason, every time I get close to achieving one, I find myself falling back to my old habits. What the fuck is going on?

Are you, are these fucks on the card? Are you adding them? No. They're on the card. I did that just for you. You keep getting all the fuck cards. So basically giving up at the last mile is the... Right. It's self-sabotage.

Yeah. I mean, the thing that's coming up for me is that there's probably some sense of, like, not deserving the result. There's, you know, there's something kind of messed up about having a particular problem in your life, the having of that problem can, in many ways, become your identity. And so by solving that problem, you lose that piece of your identity, which then freaks you out and scares you. And so you procrastinate solving that problem or find ways to avoid solving that problem to perpetuate your identity and sense of self. So, I mean, so much of this too, just, and I know last time we were here, we talked about my health journey and how that ended up being like so much deeper than just fucking counting calories and going to the gym. Like I had to confront a lot of identity level stuff, a lot of emotional stuff, a lot of like my relationships with people and food and social. life. And I think, like, I just feel like that happens with a lot of goals, is that it's at a certain

point to, like, really go far with it. There's some underlying architecture that you're, you have to look at and be like, does that still need to be there? Okay, and I'll pull it out, you know? Yeah. I mean, core to that is the idea that whatever you're doing, whatever behavior you're engaged in repeatedly is serving you in some way. It's doing some – there's a reason you're doing it, and it's meeting some need that you have. So you can walk around and say, I'm going to finally solve this problem, but right up until the point that you solve it, you know, like, if you don't solve it, it's because, like, you're not ready to give it up because – because you have no other way of meeting that need. You have to figured out, like, what that need is in a different way of filling it. So, for example, somebody's complaining because this other person is always coming to them and asking for money, you know, or whatever.

And because you're a good guy, you always lend them money and they never pay you back, but they keep doing it and they're not grateful or whatever. And so there's a cycle here, right? And you'd like, I wish they would just stop doing this or whatever. But you keep engaging in this, why? You know, because something inside of you likes it this way. Maybe it gives you control over that person, or maybe it makes you feel superior to that person. Whatever it is, you're not going to solve the problem until you kind of identify that need that's being met and say, well, why do I need to feel like I need to be in control of this person? Like, what is that about?

Like, let's deconstruct that and get to the bottom of that. I'm about to walk into a minefield here. Let's see if I can not blow myself. up, but there is a certain feeling of righteousness that comes with being wronged by others. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the key piece. Yeah, and it's... Why is this walking into a minefield? Because some people, they adopt victimhood as an identity, and so they find ways to go

invited upon themselves, which is not the same thing as blaming the victim. It's just an observation that some people choose to inhabit to identify with that victimhood because it is serving, as you said, an emotional need for them. There is a certain level of moral righteousness and probably validation that they get social identity that they get from others that reinforces it. And we had a family friend who was in a very, I'll spare the gory details,

but in a very fucked up marriage. And I remember I was talking to my dad about him. We were just kind of having this conversation of like, why is he still in this marriage? you know, like, and I was pretty young at the time, you know, I was probably around 20 or something. And I remember saying to my dad, I was like, well, I don't know about you, but I just feel like, and this was metaphorical, by the way, it was not a physically abusive marriage. I said to my dad, I was like, I don't know about you, but if I got punched in the face enough times, I would probably get up and leave and go somewhere else. And he said, yeah, but there's a fine difference between getting punched in the face and walking into somebody's fist.

And it's, you know, I've known people over the years who will put themselves in a position. Like, you will see people who will intentionally put themselves in positions where they can have that. They'll create, yeah, they'll create the scenario. Yeah. Yeah. On the deservedness piece, though, like this idea, like, well, I self-sabotage because fundamentally deep down, I don't believe I deserve good things. Is that different, or is that just another version of the same thing?

Like, that gets to the internal monologue aspect of it. Yeah, they don't feel like the exact same thing to me, but I imagine there's a significant overlap there, right? Because it's, if you don't feel like you deserve nice things, but being wronged by others or being treated poorly by others is a way for you to get some of your emotional needs met. Like, that can be... You're looking for evidence to support that narrative

because then it allows you to inhabit an identity that makes you... Like, even if it feels bad, there's something about it that feels good. Yeah. Yeah, humans are weird. Yeah. But I have a course that is going to explain all of this, Mark.

Okay. Yeah. It's going to dispel all the weirdness. Oh, yeah, yeah. For $6,000 a month. Yeah. Well, that's just the top of the sales funnel. You know, there'll be plenty of emails that you're going to receive

that are going to upsell you on the VIP level of that. Yes, if you have been victimized, then you are perfect for rich rolls course. All right, you pick. What is the worst piece of advice commonly given by so-called self-improvement gurus? Oh, man, there's so many directions. to go on this one. Come on, this is like at the bullseye of your whole thing. No, I mean, it's, it's, the problem isn't, I can't think of one.

The problem is I'm at like a buffet of, of so many options. You know, my recent, my recent, my recent, uh, my recent boogaboo is, uh, is manifestation. It's, it's like, it's, it's, it's taken off a second time. It's gotten a second life. with Gen Z and TikTok. And it's, yeah, there are a lot of people in my life who are starting to talk about manifesting. I have people on my team who are like talking about manifesting. They're like, oh, yeah, we're going to manifest.

I'm like, guys. So drill down to how that's being defined. Okay. So manifestation, it originates from, I believe, the secret from Rhonda Burns' 2000 book. And basically the idea is that the universe, so whatever, like your thoughts are, so this is the official theory of manifestation, and then we can kind of get into the different interpretations and maybe why it quote unquote works and why it doesn't. So the official theory is that your thoughts create vibrations in the universe, and

vibrations in the universe attract similar vibrations. So if you want a brand new BMW, you should just think about a brand new BMW. all the time and then the universe will conspire that's usually the word that's used the universe will conspire

to bring a BMW to your life now the most egregious use of manifesting is like I would call it passive manifesting which is the person

sitting on the couch being like I want a BMW BMW and then sitting around for six months and wondering why they don't have a BMW whereas there's

a little bit more of an active manifestation, which is the understanding that you actually have to, like, do things, that you can't just sit around and wait for a car to show up in your driveway. You have to go out in the world and, like, try to move towards the thing that you want, and that only when you move towards it, does the universe conspired to give it to you. The passive form of manifestation is just pure delusion and garbage, and it just makes people feel good and special. I would say the active form of manifestation, there is something to it, but I also think it's just a little whacked out. Like, there's probably simpler ways to describe this.

So the active form of manifestation, like essentially what it is it's doing is that it's leveraging your cognitive biases to perceive and experience things in your environment. So you've probably had the experience where it's like you go years without thinking about. cars and then suddenly you want to buy a new car and suddenly you're noticing all of the new cars on the highway around you. You're self-selecting evidence in your environment to support this narrative. Totally. There's too much stimulation in the world for your brain to handle all of it. And so your brain uses a lot of tools and hacks to like choose what to pay attention to. And manifestation is basically a, you are leveraging those tools to focus on the thing that you want. So if you really want a raise at work and you decide that you're going to start manifesting a raise at work and you're going to think about it all the time and you're going to focus on it and you're going to take action towards it, you will start to notice opportunities that were probably always there, but you just didn't notice them because you weren't focused on them and you hadn't primed your perceptual biases to be predisposed towards them.

And so, yeah, it will probably increase the odds that you get a raise at work. And then when you get the raise, you get to say, I manifested it. And you get to take all the credit, which is fine, I guess. But it's just kind of a silly way to, like, perceive action, like, foot goals and taking action. It's kind of this, like, cosmological explanation for just being focused on an objective in life. So I just don't understand the cosmological explanation and what's appealing about it. And then it's, you get into these, like, crazy discussions with people where they're like, well, I manifested it.

The universe gave it to me. And I'm like, okay, well, how did it give it to you? And they're like, well, it responded to my vibes. And I'm like, okay, well, what were the vibes? Can you describe them? You know, it's just like, there's no there there. I get it. This is fascinating.

So I want to, no, like, I want to, like, explore this a little bit more. deeply, because I would, I agree with you 100%, A, on the passive, sedentary, you know, kind of idea of manifestation. And I would also agree with you on this active form of manifestation in, in its sort of transactional sense. I think where I would maybe disagree with you, and this is probably because like I veer a little more like woo than you do, you know, admittedly. I think there is something to the fact. Well, first of all, with respect to that transactional, like I manifested it, like the eye in there is like there's so much ego in that.

Like as if you have this much control over the universe, you know what I mean? There is value in appreciating the mystery of your life unfolding. naturally in a way that that serves you when you have like aligned your actions with your values and you are making decisions based upon, you know, that authentic intuition, and you are kind of right-minded and right and, you know, right-acting that when you're inhabiting kind of that that more actualized version of yourself, like life is better and, you know, outcomes are better and you can break that down into its practical pieces and say, well, yeah, because you're making to say, of course, like, things are going to work out a little bit better when you're doing

that. But in my experience, and maybe this is my self-selecting mind, and this is informed by, like, being in the community of recovery for a long time, like, I've just seen lives transformed in the most like magical, unimaginable ways that don't make any practical sense. And so I do think part of the humility piece, it's like I'm not doing anything, but I'm aligned, you know, I'm kind of aligned with, you know, whatever you want to call it, like the mysteries of the universal energies or whatever, such that life just kind of, you're in this allowance space where you're allowing your life to like move in a certain direction and you're open to experiences. And like things will

kind of like come to you like you you're you're you're now emitting kind of a magnetic field that you didn't have before and things that you were trying to grasp or like going after are like kind of you're you're inviting them into your experience you had me up to magnetic field but i'm not i'm just using that as a metaphor you know what i mean like like you are attracting you know like okay so a very practical version of that is to say water rises to its own level so if you're you're out there and you're trying to find, you know, a girlfriend or a boyfriend and you're chasing after this idealized person, like, if you're not adequately self-actualized, you have nothing to give this person.

So this person is not going to be interested in you. But when you put in the work and you rise the level in your glass to hire such that it's on parity with that person, then you have something to give and that person will be more open or drawn to you, you know what I mean? And so playing that out, you know, in every context of your life, there is something to be said for that. And can you put a finger on what exactly that is? Like, I just think life's more fun when I'm like open to the mystery of what might be going on. Because I think there is hubris in the idea that we can distill all these things down to psychological principles.

Yeah. Because reality is quite a bit more than what we're filtering through our limited senses. I agree with that. Okay. How does that land for you, buddy? So Captain Unfun coming in. Come on. No, first of all, I think you made a really good point, which is that the cosmological explanation of all this stuff, and this not just manifestation, but energy and the universe and all this stuff.

I do think you nailed an important observation, which is that it generates an illusion of control. that there is something predictable and controllable and certain about the universe that I can like... Yeah, and it quells our profound fear of uncertainty. Yeah, so I think that's one piece of it, which is fine. I don't, like, I understand that. It's the funny, the attraction... I would say this.

The thing is, you're not attracting the things into your life. You're noticing the things in your life, but it feels like you're attracted. them. So the first person's subjective experience is like suddenly all these things that used to not be in my life are now showing up in my life. So it feels like you're attracting them when really what's happening is, and I'll use your dating example, right? So it's like when you're a dysfunctional fuck up, you probably meet a lot of very good potential partners, but they don't strike you as good potential partners because you're so dysfunctional. It just doesn't even

register to you that you could have a relationship with them. But then when you get your self, you know, figured out and grow and self-actualize, suddenly it seems, it appears as if all of these other great potential partners have suddenly shown up into your life. Well, they were there all along. It's just that back before, you never noticed them because you were primed to notice the other, the dysfunctional potential partners. So it's like the feeling is that you're attracting it into your world. But it's funny because this, this like bleeds into, I think I've been thinking a lot more about lately, about how this is the role, this language, you know, vibes, energy, manifesting, the universe, energy, like all this stuff. It's kind of playing a little

bit of a role of, like, that religion used to play. And that it's, and it's not even that it's creating, like, a theology or anything. Like, it's not, because I would say, like, when I have this conversation with a lot of my woo-woo friends, like, they're not that invested in it. They're like, it's just a word, man. I just like saying it. But I do think it's, there's a utility in the language. It does feel useful for a lot of people. Like it's, it's easy for people to just think in terms of like, okay, I want this thing in my life. I'm going to manifest it. I'm going to focus really hard on it. And then, and then I'm going to attract it into my life through the universe, right? And it's, that's going to feel true. And even if it's not objectively true,

that's fine. And that part of it, I'm kind of, like, I'm on board with it. That's great. I think for the average person, awesome. Cool. No problem. There's a linguistic utility to it. Where I start to get, like, start to roll my eyes is when you start to get this, like, these weird cosmological explanations for, you know, why the universe is going to deliver you that Ferrari that you always dreamed about or or well this is the other piece that I didn't quite get to and that's why I use the word transactional in your kind of active tense version of this it's not that you get the Ferrari or you get the thing that you are like trying to quote unquote manifest yeah it's that you get what you need and and what you need is never the Ferrari and it's only after you know in the in the

aftermath of that that you realize like oh that's what I really wanted or that's what that's what life needed in that moment, you think you're chasing this one thing, but it's not the thing. You don't get to know where the way that it unfolds and the direction that it leads you, but it generally tends to lead you in a direction better than had you commandeered the controls and tried to drive it with yourself will. So I agree with that. Do you think the average manifesting influencer on TikTok could agree? Like, is that?

No, no, no. So this is the distinction that I'm. making. Like I'm saying, I agree with you completely in the way that you've laid this out. I'm just saying that irrespective of all of that, like, whether, like, we get caught up in words that, like, you know what I mean? So it's like, there is something going on here. You know what I mean? And I think when you are in alignment, like, however you want to define that, when you call that self-actualization or just making sure that your actions are measuring up with your values, like, it does, you know, propel your life in a way, like with, and you do it with humility.

and you're not trying to control outcomes and you're more in a space of allowing, like your life kind of moves in a direction that might be anticipated, but ultimately is much better for you in ways that you can't didactically distill down into some kind of like satisfying explanation. I see what you're saying.

And yeah, I agree. Like the, I think we're on the same page with the power of intention and... being explicit about what you want in your life. Like, I agree that there's a ton of power behind that. And it can feel, when you are experiencing it, it can feel magical. And maybe it is. Come on.

God damn it, Rich. You don't have to be Captain Bummer. This is a safe space, Mark. This is a safe space. I can be fun here. I can come and be fun. No, but it's, I do think there's a lot of, you know, if there's linguistic utility to help people set those intentions and live out those intentions

with it. Awesome, great. You know, where I get off the ship is like when you get some of these cosmic explanations. Understood. I understood, dude. All right. Is it your turn? It's my turn. All right. Let's see. I feel like you should read

this for a very specific reason. Okay. So I'll like let you do this one next just because it contains a certain word. Okay. You seem to want to say out loud. Okay. It's too late for me. I am who I am at this point.

Prove me wrong. Prove you wrong. Basically, the trope like, you know, that ship is sailed for me. Like maybe 10 years ago, I could have made this change. But, like, you know, I'm just, I mean, it gets into the, you know, people don't change idea, I guess, on some, in the first person aspect of it. but, you know, I think, you know, somebody who's older than you, like, there is, you know, a sense that you get to a certain point and you're like, yeah, either you just live, you're like, well, I'm just going to ride this out. You know what I mean? Like, is this really worth looking at? Even if I could change it, like, what am I really getting out of this? Yeah. I can understand the sentiment. I just think people, people's perception or understanding of time is just very warped and inaccurate. So my favorite story around this, which I've told, and in a few places in my content. So a really dear friend of mine in Brazil,

his grandfather passed away, and his grandmother, I think, was 62 when it happened. And she obviously was depressed and grieving and going through a hard time. And her entire life, she always wanted to play piano. And she decided, you know, confronted with her partner's mortality, she said, you know what, screw it, I'm going to take piano lessons. So she started playing piano for the first.

first time at 62, and she loved it. And she kept playing and playing. And she was playing all day, every day. She was doing lessons every day. And months went by. And her family started to think that something was wrong. Like, Nana, hey, it's time to put the piano away. Like, we understand you're sad, but like you got to get back in the world. And but she kept playing. And he said that by the time, she lived well into her 90s, and he said that by the time she was in her 90s in a retirement home, she would go sit down at the piano in the retirement home, and she would play Beethoven and Mozart and Rachmaninoff and all these incredible pieces. And everybody was convinced that she had used to be a professional stage pianist. Wow. And she said that

I started when I was 62. And she played for 30 years every day, right? So it's, we don't think about the gap from 62 to 92 being the same as, you know, from zero to 30. And the funny thing is, is that she had been playing longer than most professional stage pianists by that point. So it's, on the one hand, life is short, right, and take advantage of the time you have left. But on the other hand, it's, I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say, past the age of 40 or 50. without realizing, like, dude, there are decades.

You can do a lot in it. It's the Warren Buffett quote, right? People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. It's, like, I think that's very true. Like, the human animal is not a very good predictive machine. You know, we think we have a good sense of, like, how things are going to play out.

Actually, the evidence is we're pretty terrible at that, right? Yeah. But I think what's additionally beautiful about that story is it dispels like that notion that, you know, we have no neural plasticity left at that age. Like, we can't learn new things. And that's really quite beautiful. Yeah.

The point is, it's not too late. Do we need to underscore that? Yeah, I mean, obviously. I mean, look. Obviously. Yeah. I think that there is always time. And to the extent that you think you're, like,

the story of your life has already been told, and you're just going to slide into your third act or whatever it is. Like, it's just an insane delusion. And we have a lot more agency over these things than we think we have. And we're also far more capable in ways that I don't think that we're really consciously aware of. I'll say, too, that I often get emails from older folks. Like, it's, they're not a large contingent of my audience, but they're surprisingly vocal. Like, I get a lot of emails from people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

They got time on their hands to, like, watch YouTube videos and make comments and stuff. Yeah, and email me about it. But it's funny because, I mean, I love seeing them, but it's, you know, that the font is like size 32 and, and, uh, but it, they're so sweet. And they're always like, I'm 73. I wish I had found this 50 years ago. You know, it's like, I just started getting my shit together three years ago. And it's just really cool. And so I, I see it all the time. I see a lot of, a lot of people in the later stages of life, like, you know, taking ownership and initiative. And it's, yeah, it's never too late. How do people commonly fuck up when it comes to setting a goal and working towards achieving it? I think we already answered that. I think I gave that to you just because it had the word fuck. Let's choose a different one. Were you worried that I was like, oh, I got the fuck one again?

You were worried that I was fucked up right? Yeah. Okay. I was trying to people please you. Do I have to be in pain to make a change? How important is it that I suffer? I think that's a good one. That is a good one.

That is a good one. You don't have to be in pain. You will just often be in pain when you make a change. It is possible to do it pleasantly, but it is not. And look, I mean, it's just human nature is that you take the path of least resist So in a lot of cases, we don't ask ourselves the hard questions or make the difficult decisions until we're forced to, and we're usually forced to when something extremely difficult is happened or is happening.

So it is not that you have to be in pain to change yourself. It's just that pain is often a nice lubricant to change. Yeah. It's interesting that these choices are always available to us. us. And yet, you know, we just were so reluctant to grab them and do anything with them until we're in enough pain to make fear of what's on the other side of that change tolerable enough. You know what I mean? Like, the pain has to exceed the fear of the different thing, right? The real value of the pain is that it instigates willing to.

where before there was none. And without willingness, you're not going to do anything. And willingness is a very weird kind of impulse. Because I know people say like, oh, be willing to be willing. But that's like asking somebody to want something that they don't want. Like, you know what I mean? Like you can't, you can't like, you can't just like make a decision to be willing. Yeah.

It's almost like something that visits you. Like now I'm going to get a little woo again. You know what I mean? But like, you can't just conjure it, you know, in your mind. Like, you have to have some kind of experience that incites it in you or, like, allows it to express itself. And it's the willingness that gets you to do the thing you've never done before. Yeah. Which is why you can't get other people to change that don't want to do. You can't make another person willing.

You know what I mean? You can't, it's difficult to conjure it in yourself, and you certainly can't compel it in another human being. But pain has a unique way. of breathing life into that willingness impulse. Yeah. A related question to this one that I get often, and it's always from really young people. They always say, well, if that's true,

does that mean that I need to go find more pain in my life so I can change? And my answer is always, don't worry, it will find you. Pain will find you. Life's got plenty of pain planned for you, my friend. Don't worry about it. And, you know, engaging. in discomfort is necessary to the meaningful life that you aspire to have and that currently alludes

you. Yeah. Right. So developing a capacity for some degree of pain tolerance is a necessary life skill. Yeah. I see doing hard things as kind of practice for those moments. Yeah. I mean, basically this boils down to, you know, just get over yourself. Right. I don't know. We've come full circle. Like, yeah, look, the good news is, you know, you can change. The bad news is you're going to have to deal with pain. So just like be in acceptance of that. And instead of recoiling from it, like, what would happen if you move towards it? Yeah.

Well said. All right. I think, did we do it? Did we do it? I think we should, I think we can end this with maybe a final parting thought each on just the, like, how to frame this, this, this, period of, you know, of the year for people, like, what do you want to leave people with so that they're kind of reflecting on their relationship with change in a new and different way that is perhaps empowering and not, like, you know, Captain Bummer?

I could just see it. It's like Rich Roll episode 942, Captain Bummer. Are you kidding? This, this, I don't know about you, dude. This podcast is fire. going to do good, man. I have a good feeling about this. Go ahead. I mean, for me, it's always, it always comes back to values. Like, that's, you know, what are the fucks you're going to give? Because it's, it's ultimately, like, the things that you're choosing to care about are, they are either going to reinforce or undermine everything else that you try to do in your life. And I think it's the values-based questions are the harder questions to ask and to answer, but you get way, way, way, way more mileage and satisfaction out of

them than simply like, you know, what cool stuff do I want or want to do? Just to reiterate what I said a minute ago, like, I do think that we're all capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe. And, you know, my parting message would really be like, give yourself permission to, you know, explore that thing that you've deferred in your life that brings you joy. And it doesn't have to be in the context of a goal. Sometimes those things can be a little bit violent and maybe make it a joyous experience. of just, whether it's learning how to play the piano or whatever the thing is, that brings a little bit more joy

and life into your daily experience and allow yourself or make space for your life so that you can pursue it, not without any necessary agenda, but purely for the sake of doing the thing. And in my experience, when you do that, certain things show up in your life life and like whatever path this is going to take will begin to reveal itself and there's I think there's something beautiful about that that is more transcendent than like I'm going to

lose this weight or I'm going to you know like participate in this race or whatever your version of the typical like prototypical New Year's resolution is for sure all right do we do good yeah I think I think we did it all right do we do it in the meantime check out all Mark's stuff the solved podcast. I love the new format tweak. I know it was a risk to do that, but I think you're killing it. I think this is like a real service

that you're providing. Thank you. Is there anything else you want to let people know about or where do you want to direct them? So free newsletter, twice a week, markmanson.net slash newsletter.

And we just launched a new app. It is an AI that calls you on your bullshit. Check it out. It's at purpose. dot app. Great way to start out your new year. So if you need a kick in the ass, an AI, that will actually disagree with you. Mark told me a little bit about this before we started the podcast.

I didn't realize it would be, it's already available or it will be available by the time this comes out. That's pretty exciting. I look forward to checking it out. All right, ma'am. Thank you. This was actually really fun. It's a pleasure.

As always. Cool, man. All right. Peace. All right, everybody. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I really do hope that you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed

today, visit today's episode page at richroll.com, where you will find the entire podcast archive, as well as my books, Finding Ultra, the voicing change series, and the Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is free, actually. All you've got to do is subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. and leave a review or drop a comment. Sharing your show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome as well and extremely helpful.

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please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show is produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, along with associate producer Desmond Lowe. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music, as always, was created all the way back in 2012 by my stepson's Tyler and Trapper Piot, along with her cousin, Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support, and I'll see you back here soon. Peace, plants.