The Rich Roll Podcast - Stop Compromising Yourself: Mark Manson On Hope, Human Dignity & The Perils of Comfort

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

One day not long ago, I awoke to a bright orange book ubiquitously displayed everywhere I looked. Provocatively titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, today's guest birthed a publishing sensation, custom tailored for click-bait embrace. The title also made the book easy to dismiss. In fact, freely admit to downright refusing to read it. But it just would not go away. Not only did it top the New York Times bestseller list, the book stayed there. 6 million plus copies later, it still rests at #4 — a full 149 weeks since its publication. So who is this Mark Manson guy? Realizing that my reflexive reaction was perhaps misplaced, I finally relented. And was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. To be sure, the book is both contrarian and confrontational. Chock-a-block with f-bombs. But it's also surprisingly refreshing, upending the tired tropes of self-help with an intractable glee. Grappling with real issues, I relished Mark's unique voice — depth meets grit with an infectious philosophical sensibility. Before he became a publishing juggernaut (his influence launching countless profanely titled copycat books), Mark began his writing career as a blogger. Sharing personal development advice that ‘doesn’t suck' (his words), he has amassed a devoted audience of 2 million monthly readers. Dissecting our dysfunctional cultural relationship with money, entertainment and the internet, Mark's latest chart-topper, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope is an equally compelling yet more mature follow up that deftly explores the perils of distraction, comfort and success. This is a conversation about what happens when you exceed your every ambition. What then? Today we explore the high-altitude, existential crisis visited upon a young man who eclipsed his wildest dreams by age 32. More specifically, we cover Mark’s backstory as a blogger. We dissect the method to his various forms of madness. We discuss the enormous unexpected success of his first book. And the pressures that accompanied his skyward trajectory. Ultimately, this is a dialog about our increasingly distracted world. It's about the soul erosion precipitated by too much comfort. And it's a sounding call to restore the foundation of human dignity. You can watch it all go down on YouTube. I really enjoyed my time with Mark — and left this conversation with great respect for his profoundly curious mind and finely honed insights on the human condition. Peace + Plants, Rich

Well, first of all, any sort of self-improvement by its very nature is going to be difficult. Like no self-improvement feels great. If it feels great, you're probably not actually changing very much. You know, any real change is by definition painful, stressful, difficult. And so if you're going to write very honestly about those subjects, one thing I discovered while I was blogging is you kind of have to like mix a little bit of honey into the medicine. And so that's where like the humor started, kind of the irreverent attitude, some of the stories. and you're telling some crazy story about this time you got drunk in college,

then having that difficult conversation about life purpose or whatever it may be, after that, it goes down much better for people. People are more open to it. The same way we need to challenge ourselves physically, I think we need to challenge ourselves intellectually. I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally. I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally. And I guess you could argue we even challenge ourselves spiritually. That's Mark Manson, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back.

Up top, quick note, I implore anyone listening who is struggling with their diet, please check out our Plant Power Meal Planner. Affordably priced, it's just $1.90 a week. It provides access to thousands of nutritious and delicious plant-based recipes that we're constantly updating. You get grocery lists, grocery delivery, and access to a team of experienced dietary coaches seven days a week. To learn more and to sign up, visit meals.richroll.com. Okay, how to preface this. how to preface this. Let's just say that one day I woke up and suddenly everywhere I looked, prominently positioned in every airport bookstore, ubiquitous in every bookseller window display, was this brightly colored orange book with the unmistakable title, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And I will freely admit that I

dismissed this book as sort of the ultimate clickbait. And I thought, I'm not biting. In fact, I downright refused to read it. But this book, it just wouldn't go away. Not only did it top the New York Times bestseller list, it stayed there, like forever. In fact, I just checked, it's still there. Six million plus copies later, sitting at number three, just below Ryan Holiday's number one rank, Stillness is the Key. Congrats, Ryan, by the way. A full 147 weeks since its publication, this book is still on the New York Times bestseller list. And that is a unicorn. And I just thought at the time, who is this Mark Manson guy?

And realizing that perhaps my resistance was a little misplaced maybe, that perhaps there was more going on here, I finally relented. And I have to say, I was pleasantly and quite surprised. Sure, it's contrarian. It tackles the tired tropes of personal development and it's chock-a-block with F-bombs, but it's also refreshing and kind of beautiful in its confrontational tone. It grapples with real issues, with real depth and grit, and this naked, raw, and unique philosophical voice and sensibility. So here we are. For the few unfamiliar with this author before he became a publishing juggernaut, his influence has launched countless profanely titled copycat wannabe books.

His influence has launched countless profanely titled copycat wannabe books. Mark began his career as a blogger where he still to this day shares personal development advice, which in his word, quote unquote, doesn't suck, with two million monthly readers. And you can find that at markmanson.net. His follow-up book to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is a book also aptly titled Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. And this is another chart topper which dissects our relationship with money, entertainment, and the internet

and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. And it's in my mind, equally compelling, even better, I think. It's a more mature work and this book comprises a decent portion of today's conversation. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long

time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you

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I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created

an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Mark.

So this is about a lot of things, but not the least of which is the existential crisis, the altitude sickness that is visited upon a person who eclipsed every ambition, achieved every goal, exceeded his wildest dreams by age 32. When that happens, what then? So that's one of the things we explore today. Specifically, we cover, of course, Mark's backstory as a blogger in his beginning years, the methods to his various forms of madness, the enormous unexpected success of his first book, and the unexpected pressures that accompanied that.

In other words, what happens when you have too much comfort, too much satisfaction, followed by a very interesting breakdown of social constructs and a really cool discourse on human dignity. I dig this one. I hope you do too. So without further ado, this is me and Mark Manson. So a little, before we even get into it, I got to ask you a little, a little birdie on the street told me that you're, you're working with Will Smith on, on, on his book, right? It literally is a birdie on the street because his house is like. Yeah. It's funny because he literally lives around the corner from here.

Although, you know what? I've never met him. I've actually, and I've never really seen him. I've seen him driving his car, but I've actually never interacted with him. He's never there. It's crazy. He's got this like incredible 400 acre property

or something. It's like Neverland Ranch down there. Oh yeah. It's an entire compound with multiple dwellings and like a lake and a full court basketball court. Yeah, they've got about a dozen people living there. Right. And, you know, family and childhood friends and stuff.

And he's never there. He's always on the road. He does some Instagram stories from there every once in a while. Yeah. So I know he's there from time to time. So you're working on a book with him. Yeah. Yeah.

So is it like a memoir or like a self-help? What's the angle? A little bit of both. Uh-huh. I would say it's a self-help book told through the lens of his life. Uh-huh. He just turned 50. He's gone through some midlife crisis type stuff the last five years or so.

His father passed away and um kids have grown up so he's kind of in a stage of his life where he wants to start giving back start opening opening up the kimono and being like hey this is who i am this is what my life is really about and uh this is what i've learned. So it's just, for me, it's like. It's gotta be crazy. It's the coolest project. I mean, he's so unbelievably charismatic. Yeah, he is. But what is it like when you're just chilling with him? Like, what is it about him that makes him so uniquely him? He's exactly the same. It's funny because all, you know, when I, when I come home, all my friends are like, oh man, what's he like? I'm like, dude, he's the fresh prince.

Full on. He is the fresh prince. Like that is just, that's not acting. Like that is who he is. You know, it's just fun, jubilant, witty. My sense is that he's one of those guys that has that thing. You know, Bill Clinton has it. There are certain very charismatic people that have it that know how to make everybody feel special.

Absolutely. What is that quality? I don't know. You know, it was interesting when I met him. So it's funny because celebrity books in the publishing world, this surprises people, but in the publishing world, celebrity books actually have a very bad reputation. Because every celebrity wants one, but none of them actually want to put in the 18 months of work to write it. They just want some ghostwriter to roll in and do it for them. They just want to put it on their shelf.

And they cost a lot of money. So the books tend to be bad. And the publishers pay. They usually lose a bunch of money. So the books tend to be bad and the publishers pay. They usually lose a bunch of money on it. So when I went into it, you know, everybody kind of told me, they're like, hey, you know, don't just do this because he's who he is. And I had a lot of stuff going on in my career too. So I was like, all right, you know, there needs to be a good book here. I can't, I'm not just going to sign on because I like men in black or whatever. Um, so I met him and one of the first questions I asked myself is, is, you know, what, what is truly unique about him?

Like what is different about him? Uh, like what, what is something that he could share with the world that most people can't? And I ended up telling him this the first time I met with him. As I said, like, you know, you're clearly smart. You're very successful. You're famous, obviously. But, you know, those things are all pretty common. Those things are all pretty common. What I told him is I said, spending three days with you, your emotional intelligence is off the charts, like absolutely off the charts.

Both in terms of that charisma that you were just talking about, his ability to just intuitively read and recognize how people are feeling and, get them feeling good in a very quick and efficient way. But also just things he's gone through in his life, like just a lot of hardship and trauma and stuff that he bounced back harder and faster than pretty much anybody I've ever met from stuff that happened to him. And I told him, I said, that's one in a million, you know? And I think that's what the book should be. Yeah. It's interesting to watch over the last year, how he has embraced social media

and become like this crazy, you know, wizard of self-improvement and motivation, you know? Like you see certain big time personalities dabble in it, but he just went full on. He went all in. He went full on. I know his trainer a little bit and his trainer was telling me that

the idea really is to shift your thinking. Like instead of I'm a movie star who does social media to just say like, I'm a movie star who does social media, to just say, I'm a social media person who occasionally does movies. And he really kind of embodied that ethos and then just exploded. It's crazy. The funny thing about him too is he's the only... Everybody rags on social media these days. Everybody kind of gripes about it. He's the only person who is like like what's everybody talking about social media is great and at one point i thought i'm like yeah well because everybody watches you like yeah you you have no fomo because you're doing the coolest shit on social media so and

he's just putting out a positive he is lifting message he's having a blast and i think you know he spent so much of his career hiding himself because that's what you did when you were a celebrity in the 90s. Like you didn't want them. No, you want a little mystery. And the paparazzi is following you around and tabloids are publishing stuff about you all the time. And so he spent so much of his adult life hiding himself from the world. And it's I think he feels like now he's like, oh, I get to finally show people like what I'm about. Yeah. That's cool. Have you interacted with Jaden at all? Yeah. He's the best. Yeah. Jaden, he's, he is, he's the sweetest guy. One of the most impressive young

people that I've ever met. Like I've known him for a very long time. He's friends with my sons and he used to come over here and jam. So I've known him for years. And you see him at the grocery store, right? Like he's out and about. And every time that I interact with that kid, he is 100% present. He looks you right in the eye. He's incredibly polite and gracious and interested. And he's out in the world, like doing incredible things that no one else is doing yeah and he's he's genuinely kind i mean that that was another thing and i hate to say it kind of surprised me like you go in you're like all right celebrity kids like you expect them to be and they you know and like they got a lot of wacky press like him and his sister for being a little

nutty but like my experience with them is nothing short of like you know i always leave feeling good yeah interaction i'm all three of his kids i'm hugely impressed by them um very smart very kind very good young people um and it's and yeah they've got their quirks and you know mistakes and stuff that they've done. But I look at it, I'm like, man, if I grew up like that, I wouldn't turn out that well. No, I mean, 99 times out of 100, it's some dilettante who isn't motivated to do anything, which is kind of part of the thesis of your latest book, right? So let's set the stage a little bit. I mean, you write this first book,

the subtle art of not giving a fuck and it just becomes this, you know, like unbelievable phenomenon where you sold like 8 million copies at this point, something like that. Like I can't even comprehend that. I can't even. So like, let's walk through, I wanna like inch up to the kind of existential crisis that

you faced in the aftermath of this. But prior to this, you're like this blogger, you're kind of a four-hour workweek experiment in motion. You're putting out stuff into the world and you write some blog posts that explode and that leads to this book. Yeah. But my sense or my understanding is that you're somebody who just prided yourself on putting out good writing and kind of incrementally, gradually, organically growing your audience. Yes. And then you stumble into, you know, this phenomenon that nobody could have ever predicted. So elaborate. You know, it, I always feel weird telling this story because it, you know, the last thing

anybody wants to hear is, you know, a boohoo, poor best a River. But it really messed with me because I guess since I started writing seriously in my mid-20s, my dream was I want to have a book deal. I want to have a bestseller. I want to be on the Times list. I want to tour the country. It was kind of this checklist of life goals in my head. And in my mind, it was like, okay, I'm going to, like, this is what I'm going to work towards over my adult. Like, this is my life's work. This is what I'm going to be working on until I'm like 60.

And subtle art just knocked all those out in like two months. Right. And so it's, which is amazing. But on the other hand. So it was an instantaneous thing when it happened. I don't remember at the time. It took a few months to take off. It had a decent launch.

It debuted on the times list, but then it fell off. And then about three months later, it came back. What do you attribute that to? Like did something specific happen? I think it took that long for word of mouth to kick in. Yeah, the groundswell took a minute. And then it was right around that time to the holidays were kicking in.

So, and it does great on the holidays. People, it's a good gift book. So it just, just started this ascent. And the whole time I'm like watching it, I'm like, well, this is crazy. This is crazy. But every month I'm like, okay, well, this is going to end soon. This is my little 15 minutes. Enjoy it.

And now we're about three years in and it's still number one this week. That's so crazy. It's been number one in like 14 different countries. I think I have number one and number two right now in like four different countries right now. I mean, it's just silly. It is. It's reached a point where I'm like, I tell people, I'm like, you know, I'll take credit for the first million. You know, I worked my ass off for 10 years. I came up with a great title, wrote a great book. Like, I'll take credit for the first million. You know, the other seven or eight, like, I don't know what's going on. Well, it's a book that, I mean, first of all,

the cover's bright orange, you can't miss it. And the title is gonna grab anybody. It has a kind of pop culture aesthetic about it. And I will freely admit that when it came online and I first saw it, I was like, this fucking guy with this fucking book. This is a bullshit book, right? This is a bullshit book, you know, this is a bullshit book. Right? And the truth is, is that you're this ardent,

well-read student of literature and history and philosophy. And when you start to read the book, it tells a very different story from, you know, my knee jerk sense when you look at the cover. And it's funny, because I would imagine that people are always saying to you, it's easy to just think, oh, this is a book about how to be an asshole, basically. But it's really a book about trying to help people drill down on what their values are so that they

can be discerning about what they care about and not care about. I think one thing that I learned over the years of blogging is that, well, first of all, any sort of self-improvement by its very nature is going to be difficult. Like no self-improvement feels great. You know, it's like, if it feels great, you're probably not actually changing very much. Like people on Instagram who are posting quotes

that just make you feel good about what you're already doing. Yeah, it's like, oh my God, life-changing. Hashtag life-changing. And three days later, they're doing the same shit. Any real change is by definition painful, stressful, difficult. And so if you're going to write very honestly about those subjects, one thing I discovered while I was blogging is you kind of have to like mix a little bit of honey into the medicine. And so that's where like the humor started, kind of the irreverent attitude, some of the stories started to come out. Because I just noticed that if you're dropping F-bombs

and you're telling some crazy story about this time you got drunk in college, then having that difficult conversation about life purpose or whatever it may be after that, it goes down much better for people. People are more open to it. Whereas if you just launch straight into what are you doing with your life? Why do you hate yourself? It's nobody wants. Well, you have to be able to create an emotional connection, right? And this is like philosophy for millennials on some level.

Like it's written for that audience very, you know, intentionally, but you know, if you can tell that story and whoever's reading it goes, oh, I see myself in that. Now I'm in, When you deliver the medicine, they're in a place to be able to like receive it. Exactly, exactly. And I think that same shock value that causes a lot of people to write me off,

I've actually, I've written about it on my blog. Like I argue that there is value to that, that it is, if you can shock people a little bit, they lower their defenses and they're willing, if you can shock people a little bit, they lower their defenses and they're more willing to maybe hear something, hear an idea or a suggestion that they wouldn't normally be open to. So there's definitely a method to the madness and it was very much crafted over many, many years of writing online. It's one of those things where in the publishing world, I'm like this star new author. And I'm like, dude, I've been doing this for 12

years. Yeah. Well, that's the case. Yeah. The overnight success. Yeah. The 12-year overnight success. Yeah. Right. But it had to be completely disorienting when this happened. Yeah. I mean, it sounds crazy, but I woke up and I'm like, I don't know what to do. It's like, okay, that checklist in my head of what I was going to be working on until I was 60, everything was checked off. So I'm like, all right. And then you got money pouring in. I'm like, all right, I guess, I don't know.

Here you are. You've done everything that you ever aspired to do and you're as successful as you could have ever possibly imagined being. And you have the means to make choices about your life. Like you're basically sitting in this position that everybody works so hard to get to, right? Yeah. And let's, you know,

paint the picture of the truth of what it's like to actually achieve your dreams. Yeah. I mean, there's pride for what you've created, obviously. Absolutely. There's a lot of pride and there's a lot of gratitude, but there's also, I mean, it's like getting slammed into a midlife crisis at 60 miles an hour. Because what you just said is true. I hit everything I ever aspired to do, and I was 32. So I'm like, crap, I still have to do something for the next 50 years. And figuring out what that next thing to do with your life is difficult. to do with your life is difficult.

And then on top of that, I guess just the nature, I guess, of having a successful creative career is the incentives don't line up exact. So most people, if you're, like, let's say you're a successful executive at a company, you get paid for being there. You, your pay is proportional to how much you show up how often you show up and how much value you add to that company when you're a writer i mean i i was sitting around in 2017 i'm like well i could go back on tour and promote the book for a month uh or i could just sit around and play zelda and i'm gonna sell the exact same amount of copies. So, so I'm just going to sit around and play video games. And, um, and that's fun for a month or two, but it, it, it eventually

this kind of, uh, did you make a bunch of crazy purchases? No, that's the other thing. Like I'm a really Spartan dude. Um, honest to God, truth, my big purchase was I bought a Nintendo Switch. You could have like traveled the world. You probably had already been traveling. I've already traveled. Yeah, you've already done that. I took the wife to Paris. We did a bunch of like fancy restaurants and stuff.

And we did a nice birthday trip. So, I mean, there were some little things there. But I mean, I was already living the life I wanted. So I quite honestly didn't know what to do with myself. And so the end result was this very strange situation because I kind of went through this lost, depressed period in my early 20s of, like, I have no idea what to do. I'm broke. I have no opportunities in front of me. That whole loss of purpose that a lot of people experience, I went through that. And here I am on the complete opposite situation. I've achieved everything I wanted, got a buttload of money,

tons of opportunities, but I feel exactly the same. Like I've got this weird depression going on. But you're well-read enough to know to have like predicted that, right? Like we're all told, look, you know, money's great, but it's not gonna change. You know, it's going to make you happy.

Like all these platitudes about success and money. But then when you experienced it, was your experience surprising to you or different than what you might have imagined? I think what surprised me is that it felt exactly the same as it did when I had nothing. I thought it was going to feel, I knew it'd be weird and disorienting,

but I thought it would feel different. And I should note that it's like I see now why people self-destruct when they experience success that quickly. It's funny to bring Will back into it. I talked to him about this and he said that, he said Quincy Jones used to call it altitude sickness. about this. And he said that, he said, Quincy Jones used to call it altitude sickness. He said, if people experience success too quickly, they get sick and pass out and fall down the mountain. Right. And I get it. It's crazy. How did Will avoid that? I mean, he was pretty young.

Yeah. I think for Will, it happened, first of all all he was 17 so i i don't think he ever and he started rapping when he was like 13 so i i don't think he ever everything was always on this kind of trajectory um but i think it happened to him oh i say gradually but you know i actually i think he went through a period, he got famous and rich and then blew it all. And so he had that valley. Oh, he did. For a couple years.

Yeah, in the late 80s. Yeah, he owed the IRS like 1.6 million or something. Like, he made like 6 million bucks when he was 18 and then blew through all of it. And then his next album flopped and so he had this this like two-year period before the fresh prince show uh i didn't know that yeah that he was like in a pretty dark spot so i think he went through that in a very like more extreme right so you're what 32 when this happens yeah you're on the couch. And at some point you have to just realize like,

hey, I'm a writer and this is what I do, right? Like divorce yourself from this attachment or idea that like, hey, I've peaked. Yeah. I'll never be this good again. Yeah. And try to fall in love with what it was that got you started in the first place. Totally. Yeah, the other interesting thing about success like that is that it introduces all sorts of new pressures.

You know, so now the publisher wants. Right. Yeah, the publisher wanted subtle art, not giving a fuck for teens and subtle art. We can do this forever, right? Yeah. fuck for teens and settle our notes. We can just do this forever, right? Yeah. And let's just, you know,

note that now there's this just proliferation of books that have covers that look very similar to this with the word fuck on them. I mean, please help us put this to sleep. You know what I'm starting to tell you? This is going to sound so arrogant, but I've started saying this because I'm so sick of it. I started telling people, I'm like, yeah, everybody thinks if they put fuck on the cover,

it's going to be a bestseller. What they're missing is that you have to put Mark Manson on the cover. Oh, dude. Wow. Okay. There might have to be some words in between the cover and the back page that make sense. Yeah. I mean, I was pretty diplomatic about it,

but at this point there's like 12 or 15 other books that are- You must laugh when you walk through a bookstore or a bookstore or at an airport and you see books that look just like your- It's, yeah. I mean, you have to, right? Right. So how did that go down when you tell the publisher, like, I'm not going to, you know, just do like, it's not going to be chicken soup for the soul, you know, with 5,000 versions of the same book? I mean, they were fine with that, but it's interesting because, like, there's kind of an irony in the, and I'm sure this is true with every creative field. Like when you're the unknown guy, they're actually very casual with you. They're like, hey, man, if you need another few months with that draft, like take your time. You know, we're here to help. And you're like, oh, thanks, guys.

I really appreciate that. When you're a big bestseller, they're like, what the fuck? Where's the next book? We got to make money. We got to keep the lights on. Like, you know, no, no, we won't edit it. It's okay. We'll put it out.

You know? And so you actually have to, it becomes much more combative because strangely the incentives of the author and the incentives of the publisher are no longer aligned. The publisher, you know, it's, they're just, they just want to cash in as quickly as possible because they've got, you know, investors and calls with Wall Street and stuff. Whereas an author, you're like, wait, I need to protect my brand. I need to make sure I'm still doing this 10 years from now. And so the second time around, it was way more combative.

And they were trying to push me into a lot of different ideas that I didn't really want to go into. They were pushing me on timeline. They wanted to put this thing out like six months before it came out. I had to fight for, you know, Subtle Art went through, I think, four or five rounds of revision. Initially, they only wanted to do one with the new book. I had to fight for like three more.

I mean, I basically had to sit on it. I basically had to be like, guys, we're not putting this out until it's good. Well, you're the guy who allows all these other authors to write books because most books don't make money. It's the, you know, it's the one in 20 or one in, I don't know, whatever the ratio is, but you are the guy who's keeping the lights on. So that you're the bankable element here. So it doesn't surprise me that the pressure would come down. I know it's just- You shoulder the responsibility for all the other authors who got fairly decent advances

that they'll never earn out of. Right. And I've told my agent, I'm like, you would think that they would work with me. Yeah, like let's make sure this is good if we want to you know try to catch lightning in a bottle again because it's like guys i want to put up put out a follow-up soon too like you know it's good for me too but like you know let's get on the same page here so

it was um it's disheartening it makes you realize or you know think that it really is just about marketing and branding and not about quality of content. And it's, I think one thing that helped me a lot, you know, so initially like the first six months or so, I was constantly pissed at them. And eventually what helped me understand is that, you know, you essentially, you have this building full of people who love books, who make their living selling books. And they do pretty much everything except actually write the book. And so anytime you have a group of people whose livelihood is based on like doing this one thing, they'll start to convince themselves that that one thing is actually what moves. And authors do the same thing. They're like, oh, well, my brilliant

work, if the publisher didn't mess it up, like mess it up, I would have sold five times more copies. So we're all – they've got their biases. I have my biases. And so I think it's just important to – the communication just needs to be good. And sadly, the industry, at least the publishing industry, and from what I've heard, it's true in film and music as well. It's like the communication is awful. You know, it's very sneaky and kind of they do things behind your back and try to like, they'll say one thing to your face. But, you know, meanwhile, the marketing team is doing something completely different.

And it just feels icky. It just feels really bad. I mean, I haven't had crazy publishing success. My books have done well. So I don't have that kind of direct experience. But I do know that there are a lot of myths that people believe when they write a book that the publisher is going to do certain things. It's not until you go through it that you realize that it's basically all on you, you know, like you really, and it's like, wait, what are you doing again? Like, you know,

you're printing the book. Yeah, I got that. But, you know, especially when it comes to the marketing stuff. And I heard you talking to somebody where you, even despite all this crazy success, you were still having to kind of, you know, organize a lot of your own press. The first time around. And you never did like mainstream stuff still. Eight million books without like, you know, spending five days in a row on the Today Show or whatever.

Yeah, it's crazy. And it's weird. What's weird too is that it's a distinctly American thing. So I've been on TV in Brazil. I've been on TV in Australia. It's because of the title? I think so. Yeah.

And I think the other thing too, I mean, we were talking about Ryan Holiday before we sat down. But I've talked to Ryan about this a lot too. I think the media in the US has this weird prejudice against internet people. So if you built your platform online, they pretend you don't exist until they can't. It's impossible for them to pretend anymore. And then once they stop pretending, it's this very condescending like, oh, well, a lot of people read him, but we don't know why. Right. You know, that type of thing.

That's very true. And it's so interesting to watch that. I mean, even if you, like, take Joe Rogan, for example. Oh, yeah. The guy is a behemoth. It's a juggernaut. You know, it's like, if you're, you know, a young male between 18 and, you know, I don't know, 36 or something like that. He just might be the most important person and, you know, media figure in your life.

And he's getting just millions and millions and millions of downloads and views on every single show that he does. And he's doing, you know, four or five shows a week. Yeah. Widely, almost completely ignored by mainstream media, unless there's some controversy that forces them to grapple with him.

But it's such an interesting phenomenon that there's two worlds that are existing that, you know, the mainstream media just, you know, refuses to recognize this growing reality. And it's, what's bizarre too, is that it's, I mean, it makes sense, I guess, but I forget what article it was, but like the New York Times mentioned him in an article recently, and they like totally brushed him off. They're like, oh yeah, this fringe YouTuber, Joe Rogan, that some people listen to or whatever.

His audience is larger than like hits on network television. Yeah, I was telling my wife, I'm like, if you gave me the option of like doing Joe, Joe show or doing like six, having six profiles in the New York times over the next month. Yeah. I would do Joe show. It doesn't even compare.

Yeah. It's not even close. Yeah. And I think that's why they have that at like, they don't, they don't get it. They're like, like we're the New York times.

Why don't people take us as seriously as this guy on YouTube? And it's like, well, maybe you should try to understand. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how that unfolds over the next couple of years because it's changing, but it's interesting that you would think it would be changing more quickly. Yeah. And again, what's weird to me is I don't get this sense in Canada and Australia. When I go to Canada, I'm going to Australia tonight, actually. And it's, I mean, I'm loaded all the morning TV shows. I'm doing all the biggest newspapers. Like they do glowing profiles and the interviews are good. Like it's not, it's not this.

The two minute, two second thing. It's not this bullshit, like soundbite thing where you know once it gets published you don't even recognize half the stuff they quote you on um it's it's like they grapple with the the philosophical content of of my work and they take it seriously and so i don't yeah i don't know what it is All right, so 32, you're having this existential crisis, you know, pre-midlife crisis, quarter-life crisis, or whatever it is. And hindsight's 20-20, but looking through the rearview mirror, like your second book is baked into this experience. Totally.

All you have to do is read your first book and go on this search for, you know, what are your values and the path forward becomes crystal clear. Like, did it, I mean, how long did it take for that to dawn on you that this needs to be the next book that you're going to write? It was, it was an awkward experience because there were a lot of, so I, so I signed on to do, to do more books with Harper and, and I was just under this immense, uh, both pressure from them, but also pressure from myself of just like, God, how do I live up to this thing? How do I follow this up? Um, all this stuff you said about comparisons of like, you know, oh my God, did I peak at 32? Like that sucks. Um,

and so I had a lot of kind of therapeutic conversations with friends and family. And they just look at me and they're like, dude, stop giving a fuck. You know, like- Take your own medicine, bro. Take your own advice. And I'm like, oh God, this is so embarrassing.

Yeah. Well, it speaks to how hard it is to actually implement the wisdom. It's really hard. There's the intellect. And you talk about this in the new book, the difference between the thinking and the feeling brain. Sure. Like intellectually, yeah, I can grok that. I know what you're talking about. But then actually practicing it moment to moment to moment as you're experiencing feelings that you've never encountered before, that's a whole different ball of wax yeah yeah it's and it's in it's intense because it is you know the i guess the experiences i was going through it that that time were so extreme um and so vastly different

than anything i'd ever encountered before um but it's funny, eventually, like what I came back to, I mean, it sounds cliche, but I had to remember like why I write. And I've always written, writing has always been my own little kind of public form of therapy. And everything I write, it's because it's stuff that I'm dealing with myself. And by writing about it, it helps me kind of process and understand my own values and worldview. And so I had a few book ideas that I started on and I'm like, oh, this will be a huge hit. Or the publisher would be like, hey, maybe you should do that. I'm like, all right, I'll try to do that. And it just wasn't going anywhere. And, and I was becoming more aware of all this stuff that we're talking about around the same time. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I need to go back to what I've always done, which is just take whatever I'm freaking out about at this moment

and write it out. Was there an impediment to that? Because you felt like this is such a privileged problem that people aren't going to be able to relate to it? Or is it just getting behind, like if you go past that and just get to the truth of it, which is the struggle for identity, you know, essentially that we can all relate to. Well, I, so there's everything we've been talking about is kind of one thread. So there's everything we've been talking about is kind of one thread. There's a second thread that went into this book, which is around the same time a lot of people, a lot of academics were publishing books about like Steven Pinker's books and Jonathan Haidt's books. They're publishing all these books about how basically from every material metric, like the world is great right now. Like it's, we're safer and healthier and there's less conflict and violence and crime

than ever in world history. Meanwhile, you see all these mental health issues escalating. And so I was doing, I was just out of curiosity, I was reading a lot of those books and digging into a lot of that research. And at some point I kind of put two and two together. I'm like, there's something about this, you know, one of my favorite quotes, I think it's actually in subtle art is that it's like, if you, um, if you remove, uh, if you remove all, all problems from your life, that your mind will

immediately set out to find new ones um i think it was uh jose marti or somebody said that um but it's i always liked that quote and i was like that always kind of made sense but i you know all these things kind of came together i'm like wow there's something about too much comfort or satisfaction um that seems to make us anxious and a little bit like our perceptions of reality get skewed a little bit. And then you take from that, like everything, you know, basically our whole world is built around,

our whole economy is built around providing comfort and convenience and satisfaction to people. And so I got on this kind of interesting kick of like, you know, maybe the issue is success. Maybe the issue is hope. Like maybe it's too many of our dreams have come true. I mean, and that's not to downplay like the legit issues that are going on today. It's just to say that, you know, when you're sitting in a nice air conditioned room with like 500 Netflix shows, and you can have 20 different cuisines delivered to you

from like a press of a button, suddenly all these questions about identity and purpose, and you know, what is the meaning of my life, and what value am I adding to the world? Like these all, they actually become very difficult questions. Yeah. Much harder than, say, if you're, you know, poor or, you know, living out on a farm somewhere. Right. In that case, your mind is occupied by meeting your needs.

It's simple, yeah. They become very pressing, but when those needs are met and you have clean water and a roof over your head and you have all the modern conveniences that we've acclimated ourselves to, then what? Yeah. And I think we're also kind of reaching a saturation point. point. I think as a culture, I know when I was growing up, there was kind of this unspoken cultural assumption of like, we need to fill our whole day with stimulation, whether it's entertainment or learning something or like creating value. It's like every minute you're awake, there should be like some sort of stimulation going on. And I think in the last five or 10 years, we hit this point of like stimulation saturation.

It's like, okay, we are constantly stimulated. We are overflowing with stimulation. And it's actually, it complicates our understanding of ourselves. It doesn't clarify it at all. Yeah. You were talking about what our economy is built on. I mean, our economy is fundamentally premised on marketing and advertising. And you talk about this in the book, this shift in advertising from basically explaining why a product, you know, what the benefits of owning a product are to appealing to our emotional bodies

and trying to trigger our fears and our insecurities. And when your needs are met, now we're fast forward to an era where we're bombarded with messages that are telling us our lives will be better if we have this, or you're not enough because you don't have that. And it creates this future tripping mindset

that prevents us from being present in the moment, that consistently forces us to spin out over what our future might be or how we compare to our fellow man. And ultimately is this colossal distraction from what is truly important in life. Yeah. And it's, I think, I originally had a whole chapter on this. I kind of regret, I mean, so this is one of the things that like kind of rushing the book out, I think maybe harmed it a little bit, but there's a section, I think I have maybe like three or four pages about it towards the end of the book

about loneliness, kind of the rise in loneliness and the loss of community. I originally had a whole chapter, but the chapter kind of sucked. And instead of having time to like hash it out and fix it, I just took like the three or four pages that were good and crammed it into the chapter before. And, um, but it's funny cause the, the, you know, I've been doing this, this speaking tour around the US and Canada the last couple of months, and I'm meeting a lot of people in person and answering their questions. And the more time I'm like talking about all these issues, the more convinced I am that the, the loneliness issue is maybe the paramount one. Because I think what we don't realize is that the more options and stimulation

that we have in front of us, the less willing we are to compromise what we want to be with somebody else. So it's like if I want to watch Netflix and you want to go to a concert, it's like, well, fuck you. I'm going to watch Netflix, you know? Like, you know, whereas- Or if you, you want to watch two different shows, you can sit in the same room and- And both watch them. Or it's like, if I want to check my email and you want to watch a show, you know, it's like-

So even when you're with other people, when your face is planted into a screen, you're still alone. Yeah, exactly. And I mentioned, you know, there's a famous book that came out about 15 years ago called Bowling Alone. And I talk about it a little bit in the new book, but it's what he taught. Basically, it's called Bowling Alone because more people than ever before are bowling, but there are fewer bowling leagues than there have ever been. And he kind of goes – he goes all the way across society and everything from like PTA groups to church groups to political activism. Like it's just fewer people are coming together into groups and communities. Everybody's trying to do everything themselves.

And he blames entertainment. He says that it's, you know, the more options there are to be entertained, the more accustomed we become to just, I guess, feeling entitled to do what we want and not be impeded upon by other people. But that causes relationships to break down. And so I think we've got a bunch of lonely people who aren't getting that face-to-face exposure to the world, who don't feel like they're a part of a community or have significant relationships in their lives, yet they're constantly being engaged through social media and just the conventional media about like political issues, group issues, social identity issues. And it's so easy for them to respond, you know? So it's, I think the combination of those two things, you see this outrage culture that's emerged where everybody's just pissed off and feels victimized all the time. Yeah. And the more you engage with that, the more calcified you become in your

belief systems, the more resistant you are to being open to other ideas and the more difficult it becomes to actually change or be open-minded about another way to think and live. Yeah, totally. So how does this dovetail? You have this kind of counterintuitive, arguably paradoxical ideas around hope. Yeah. So how does all of this like dovetail into this thesis that you've come up with about how we think about and practice hope? So I make the argument that hope is necessary. Like we all need some form of hope. We all need to believe that the future can be better

than it is today. That's what gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. My argument is that our visions of hope can potentially be destructive because everything that you hope for, it's by definition, you hope for it on faith. Like you never know, you know, it's like I had, I believed on faith that having a bestselling book would make my life better. I didn't actually know that.

It's just something I chose to believe and it motivated me for many years. So we all develop these kind of faith-based belief systems around what we hope for in the future. It could be religious, it could be non-religious. And my argument is that because these belief systems that we tie so much of our personal meaning into are, at the end of the day, kind of arbitrary. Like we need to defend them against people.

We need to, we protect our hope. And if people try to contradict what we hope for, you know, they're the enemy and we attack them. And so there's this kind of like shadow to hope that never gets discussed, this destructive potential of hope. And so essentially, I mean, the book is really just, A, be very, very careful what you hope for. as our society and technology and everything accelerates our ability to fulfill our hopes, that might not necessarily be a good thing because it's the having hope that sustains us.

When we achieve what we hope for, we actually lose our hope, which is what happened to me. Right. And so in a very paradoxical way, it's giving people, and when I say giving people what they want, what I mean is kind of like, I mean that on more of a superficial level, like fulfilling people's desires can actually kind of erode away at our ability to feel as though we have meaningful lives. It depends in some respect, though, like how good your life is, right? Like if you're, like you use the example of this guy, Wilto Pilecki, the Polish dude who's like, you know, basically submits himself to Auschwitz. I mean, his life is just an endless stream of horrors. And hope is what sustains this guy.

But to use your example, when we're all in air-conditioned homes and our needs are met and we can postmates everything and we're watching Netflix, hope then gets kind of tweaked into, I would almost characterize it as, it gets run through this machine that turns it into fear, like fear of losing what we have. Yeah. And an insecurity about how we measure up to other people. Totally. Yeah. It's one of the paradoxical things I talk about is that the worse things are, the easier it is to hope for something. And the more value that hope holds.

Exactly. So it's like if war breaks out and God forbid, West Coast is being bombed, it's like you and I suddenly know exactly what we're waking up in the morning for. But it's like when everything's just fucking great and we're just chilling, drinking some tea, like looking at the mountain, you know, it's like, what do I hope for?

You know, there's whole seminars and there's a billion dollar industry on basically like helping people figure out what the hell they should hope for. And like that is a very privileged position. That's actually, that's a criticism that the book has received. They're like, oh, this is just hashtag first world problem. And I'm like, yeah, that's actually that's a criticism that the book has received they're like oh this is just hashtag first world and i'm like yeah that's the point like the point is that you know first world creates a lot of you know people get upset over a lot of like trifling problems and like that itself is a problem yeah you know how do we become aware of that in ourselves and manage that in ourselves and not like do something stupid? The easy sell from a marketing perspective is to convince people that their lives are going to be better if they have a bunch of money and they can sit on the couch and go on these vacations and, you know, make all of these choices. And, you know, that triggers something instinctually in all of us

that looks very good. It's a much harder sell to tell people, listen, forget about all the life hacks, forget about the air conditioning. You'll actually be a much happier person if you're forced to confront yourself, to grapple with your character defects, if you're compelled to confront yourself, to grapple with your character defects, if you're compelled to put yourself

in uncomfortable situations and expand the outer edges of your comfort zone and to like fucking do hard shit. Yes, absolutely. People don't wanna hear that, even though time and time again, especially in the podcast world, people are constantly talking about the value

of this and how this is really the path to finding purpose and meaning and ultimately fulfillment in your life. Yeah. Yeah. The argument I make towards the end of the book is that the same way our body needs a certain amount of stress and hardship to grow, get stronger, get more resilient. I think our minds need the same thing. We need mental challenges. You know, it's like, if you feel like, you know, if you feel like, like I told my wife, I'm like, you know, it's at some point in the next year, I want to go like stay in a roach infested hostel somewhere like I did 10 years ago, you know, just so that I don't-

You're such an elitist. I don't lose myself, you know, cause it's, now that I have money, I'm enjoying luxury, but it's a trap, you know? Like it's, because your mind adjusts and suddenly you get to this point where you're like, well, this is bullshit. These aren't feather pillows.

Like, you know, you call the front desk. You're like, I demand this type of pillow. And, you know, it's like you don't want to be that guy. So I think there's, you know, the same way we need to challenge ourselves physically, I think we need to challenge ourselves intellectually. I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally. And I guess you could argue to challenge ourselves intellectually. I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally. And I guess you could argue we even challenge ourselves spiritually. Well, with success, the difference becomes

that you have to invite those challenges into your life in a proactive way versus just swatting them away like flies when you're in the shit and just trying to figure your life out. Totally. And this is why I actually think the fitness analogy is perfect for this. Cause it's like, if you're, if you're working on a ranch somewhere and somebody's like, hey man, what's your workout routine? Like they're going to look at you like you're crazy.

Yeah. And if you're working on a ranch, you're probably not the guy who's going to go sign up for the Spartan race. Cause you don't need that in your life. That's not missing from your daily experience. Exactly. And so it's, you know, the people who sign up for the Spartan race. Yeah. Because you don't need that in your life. That's not missing from your daily experience. Exactly. And so it's, you know, the people who sign up for the Spartan race are a bunch of like. There are people who are working in cubicles who are too sedentary and not,

and aren't stressing their physical. And they're educated and comfortable and yeah. And it's, so they have to go seek that out. And I think we're gonna have to develop some sort of regimen for ourselves of doing the same thing intellectually and emotionally. Yeah. Well, no one gets out of life alive, right?

We're all gonna die here. And I believe that the universe puts in front of you what it is that you need to see and work on the most. So with your success, it was, an argument could be made that this mirror came up in front of you, you were forced to grapple with this existential crisis and probably some character defects that you really had to look at that maybe if you're just in survival mode and you're a

blogger, like that's not pertinent. Yeah. But when these other problems get resolved, you get new problems. And this is something you talk about all the time. It's like, life is not about getting rid of your problems. It's like trying to get better problems. Exactly. Exactly. And it, and it, again, I had to eat my own, what's that saying? Eat your own chow or eat your own shit. Well, you could say shit. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's, you're absolutely right. And it's one, I think one of the things that was very uncomfortable about the success of the first book is that it did show me that my values weren't so aligned as well as I thought they were. That I probably did put too much emphasis on, say, commercial success or popularity. And that that was what ended up, once I got it, that's kind of what messed me up.

You couldn't be told that that wasn't gonna fill that hole. You had to experience that for yourself in order to really connect with it. Yeah, and I think honestly in my mind, if you had told me back then that I cared too much about, I'd be like, no, I don't really care. No, I'm fine.

But it's, then you experience it and you're like, oh, refreshing your mentions on Twitter. And then you're like, oh, I'm full of shit. Otherwise I wouldn't be like this right now. So let's talk about the, the fallacy of the pursuit of happiness. Sure. Elaborate your turn to talk. Sure. Elaborate. Your turn to talk. You know, the argument I've always made is that happiness is a byproduct of working on the right things, choosing the good struggles. The problem with happiness is that it's kind of like a mirage.

The more you run towards it, the further away it gets from you. And it's the fact that you're running towards it that pushes it further away from you. It's like trying to meditate. Yeah, right. The more you try, the further away you are from actually doing the thing. Exactly. Yeah, right. Aristotle defined two forms of happiness. There's kind of like a pleasurable hedonistic happiness, and then there's a more like meaningful fulfillment happiness. And so the pleasurable happiness is like, sweet, I've got like a nice fruity drink, and it's a beautiful day, and I want to go surfing or whatever.

And basically, it's just being able to indulge on your desires. to indulge on your desires whereas the the more the fulfillment the more meaningful happiness is about uh it's about purpose it's about you know okay today sucks not feeling good but i'm on the path i want to be on and i think our culture has lost that sense of, like, if you look at what happiness meant hundreds of years ago, it usually meant that fulfillment thing. You know, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the right to pursue happiness, like, it's basically the right to pursue your life purpose. What that's gotten, I think, through consumer culture and marketing and advertising, what that has been distorted into is you have a right to feel good. Yeah. You have a right to have your desires indulged. And,

and we don't, we don't. And it's funny. I forget who, well, even if I remembered, I wouldn't call him out, but I didn't,

I did a podcast interview a couple months ago and whoever it was, was like, it's like, yeah, but don't we all deserve to be happy i'm like fuck you why do you deserve to be happy you know like it's who says you deserve to be happy like it doesn't you don't deserve anything you know like if you want to feel something uh if you want to have some experience like you got to go out and get it you got to like

do you you got to like find some sort of meaningful struggle that that earns it for you you can't just sit in a room be like i deserve to be happy you know so anyway that's my rant i got you yeah yeah so it was kind of all over the place but no i like it uh how does that mesh with with uh the fact that will smith has a movie called the pursuit of happiness you know we talked about that with him you know it's funny though you know How does that mesh with the fact that Will Smith has a movie called The Pursuit of Happiness? Have you talked about that with him? You know what's funny though? You know, it's so funny.

So a few people brought that up. And so we're working on this. I went back and watched all these movies. And it's funny, like that, when that movie came out, I thought it was just kind of a conventional movie about like a success story, like a homeless guy down on his luck who like got this great job and turned things around. What's fascinating, if you go back and like really pay attention to it. The movie holds up.

It really holds. I think it's his best movie. He thinks it's his best movie. There's some dark stuff that's happening on the periphery of that movie, like the homeless shelters, the churches turning people away. It's actually a very deep commentary on the American dream. And he told me a really interesting story. It's going to be in the book. He said that when they were trying to figure out who they wanted to direct the movie, Will, I forget the name of the, he's an Italian guy.

But Will had seen this Italian, some movie by this Italian guy, really liked it. And was like, hey, let's talk to this Italian guy. And so the Italian guy comes out, comes to California, like doesn't even speak English. this Italian guy. And so the Italian guy comes out, comes to California, like doesn't even speak English and is like stumbling his way through like some awful pitch.

And Will's team is just like, they're shaking their head. They're like, yeah, there's no way. And Will's like kind of skeptical. And he said that the director could tell it wasn't going well. And finally he said, like, look, Will, can I say one thing?

He said, whatever you do, he's like, I can kind of tell I'm not going to get the job, but like, whatever you do, don't let an American direct this movie. And Will was like, why is that? And he said, because you can't, Americans can't see what the American dream actually is. Like a de Tocqueville, it's a de Tocqueville kind of take.

Totally. Right. And so when you watch it, it is actually a very nuanced commentary on what rags to riches actually is. And what it is, what kind of society like we've kind of constructed that creates narratives like that. And for every person like Chris Gardner, there's like 200 sitting in the homeless shelter, you know, probably today. So it's like, it's a, that's a bit of a tangent, but it's a really like, everybody should go back and watch it. Yeah, I'm going to go back and watch it. So he got the gig though.

Oh, totally. Like as soon as he said that, Will's like, all right, and watch it. Yeah, I'm gonna go back and watch it. So he got the gig though. Oh, totally. Like as soon as he said that, Will's like, all right, you got it. All right, so in terms of like turning our attention to decision-making, like how can we, you know, make better decisions about, you know, how we're moving forward and how we're evaluating our values, et cetera,

you go into this deep dive on the difference between the thinking mind and the, you know, the thinking brain and the feeling brain and the illusion that we think we're all making logical choices when in fact we're just, you know, we're just at the behest of, you know, a chaotic emotional, you know, light storm going on between our ears. Yeah, it's, there's an interesting history of kind of understanding this aspect of ourselves. So to, to just summarize it really quickly, I used, I have an extent, an extended metaphor in the book of you have a thinking brain and a feeling brain. And if your consciousness is a car, most people assume that it's our thinking

brain that's driving. And our feeling brain is kind of like this loud, obnoxious kid in the passenger seat that you're like, shut up, shut up. It's like always yelling at you, you know, wants to go get candy and wants to do whatever. But the truth is, if you dive into the research, like the truth is that actually the feeling brain is driving and the thinking brain is the navigator. The thinking brain is the one drawing the maps. And so there's two ways that can go. The first way is that, and I compare the feeling brain to like an abusive,

bullheaded boyfriend or husband who who refuses to ask for directions, refuses to change their, you know, whatever. So it's like, there's two ways this can go. Your thinking brain can either draw the maps that the feeling brain wants to see to justify where the feeling brain wants to go, or you can draw the maps in such a way to kind of negotiate with the feeling brain of like, no, this is the best way to go.

The first way is kind of our default state. You know, we all, if we're tired, if we're not, we have like very low self-awareness, if we're not very educated, we tend to just draw the map that our feeling brain wants to see. It takes a lot of conscious effort, takes some willpower, takes a little bit developing a skill of self-awareness to be able to consistently draw the maps that kind of negotiate with our feeling brain

to get it to drive in the right direction. So because of this, I make the argument that all these questions about, you know, habits and self-discipline and willpower and procrastination, all these things, all these things that, you know, there's a million productivity blogs that have all these systems and all this shit. I'm you, if you can't get yourself to work out consistently, that is not, it's not your plan. It's not, you know, that you don't have the right workout. It's not that you don't have like the right trainer. It's, it's an emotional problem. There's some, you don't go because it doesn't feel good. And so the real question is, is how do you, how do you convince yourself,

how do you find a way to make working out feel good? How do you find a way to make eating healthy feel good? How do you find a way to make being honest feel good? Like these, these are all fundamentally emotionally based questions. And so we have to find emotional answers, which sucks because emotional answers are hard and they're individual. You know, there's no book out there that's going to be able to like, you know, here's how to solve it forever. And there's certain people that like

in that context of self-will and discipline and people that struggle to like wake up at a certain time or go to the gym, like certain people are more, you know, short-term reward focused and other people value, you know, the long-term payoff of like a certain kind of practice. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's differences in how people are wired fundamentally, but I think it is true.

Like if you look at Jocko Willink, who's like posting a photo every day of him waking up at 4.30. Yeah, right. And a lot of people, like it's inspiring, but it's also shame provoking. And a lot of people that just can't get there or maybe do it once or twice and then fall off the bandwagon and say, I'll never be like Jocko. But that's doing something for Jocko that aligns with his core values about the kind of person that he wants to be. And that may not be you.

Like I could, I'm a very disciplined person. If I wanted to wake up at 4.30 every day, I could. I did it all through high school. But I value my, you know, I want eight hours of sleep and I'm actually more productive and I'm a better human being when I get that. So that's a value that exceeds the value of getting up and taking a picture of my watch every morning to share on social media. And that's a value that exceeds the value of getting up and taking a picture of my watch

every morning to share on social media. And that works for me. But I think the challenge for people is to find, first of all, yes, you have to grapple with your emotional demons and figure out what makes you tick and what you need to redress in order for you to basically align your thinking brain, your thinking mind, and your feeling brain in a way that they're, you know, sort of charging, you know, down the super highway in unison with each other. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I actually, I use Jocko as an example

in the book, because the 430 thing's perfect. I think he said in his book that the reason he started doing it, he did it in Iraq, because it made him feel like he was getting an advantage over his enemy um it's serving something that that works for him and it makes him feel good exactly and that narrative he brought that narrative home and it still works for him but i think you raise a really good point which is and i don't think this gets discussed enough i guess in the the personal development industry is is that it's there's it's okay like if you try jacko's thing i mean i i would hate it i already know like i i i hate getting up early um and i used to beat

myself up about that you know it's like oh well you know, Beethoven got up at 5 a.m. I should be up at 5, you know, and it's like I would try that. And I'm like, wow, I just feel awful. Like, I don't like this. And eventually you have to arrive at a point where it's like, okay, that's okay. You know, you don't need to be like Jocko or Tony Robbins or Bill Clinton or like whoever, whoever it is. You don't need to feel bad about yourself because you're not either. or Tony Robbins or Bill Clinton or like whoever, whoever it is. You don't need to feel bad about yourself

because you're not either. We're all wired very individually. But the caveat, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you. The caveat I would say is Jocko's core principle of discipline equals freedom still reigns true. Absolutely. You've got to find a different discipline that gives you that sense of freedom.

It may not be waking up at 4.30 in the morning, but I truly, I believe in that edict. And I think you do too. I mean, you talk about it in this book. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think it's, ultimately there's a central principle of health and growth, I think, that needs to drive everything. You know, some people are early morning people. Some people are not early morning people. You know, our circadian rhythms are different and our brains kind of operate at different hours differently. And I think it's just the ultimate principle should be just understanding what works for you what optimizes your time on this planet um and what what habits and disciplines as you said you know can you implement that that that optimize you essentially um that should be the question not like oh shit well i didn't

i guess i i'm just bad at this, you know? Right. Because I can't get up early. So if you're somebody who's feeling brain is going haywire all the time and you struggle with discipline and trying to adopt practices that you know your thinking brain, you know, wants you to adopt in order to be a more fulfilled person on a healthier trajectory for yourself? Like what is the path towards grappling with those emotional barriers or whatever it is inside of you that's preventing you from making those changes? The way I put it is that the thinking brain and the feeling brain need to learn to speak to each other.

And the problem is, is that they speak different languages. And so people who tend to be more thinking brain, you know, caught up in their thinking brain all the time, they're very bad at listening to their emotions. And so one aspect of that conversation is you need to train yourself to become more aware of your emotions.

Like what are you, like when you feel that resistance about exercising or when you feel that like deep urge to like eat a chocolate cake or whatever it is, you know, ask yourself like what are you feeling at that moment? Is it anxiety? Is it fear? Is it fear? Is it desperation? You know, like really try to pay attention to your body so that your thinking brain can start deciphering what your feeling brain is telling it. And then it's got to go the other way around too, is that you have to, if the thinking brain kind of draws up

a potential new narrative or reality, your feeling brain will try it on for size. So you can enter into kind of this funny little negotiation with yourself of like, okay, going to the gym feels really intimidating right now. You know, what if I just go outside and walk for 30 minutes instead? Like that's still exercise, That's still better than nothing.

You know, like, and you listen to your feeling brain. You're like, oh yeah, that doesn't feel so bad. So you go outside and you walk for 30 minutes. And then at least you get to, you know, your feeling brain gets that feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishment. And the next time, you know, you do that a few times and then suddenly the gym doesn't feel so intimidating. You know, and this plays out for all sorts of different things.

I mean, essentially that conversation of thinking brain and feeling brain, trying on new narratives, seeing how it feels, that is what therapy is. So in other words, to kind of break this down, your thinking brain says to your feeling brain, all right, dude, like I'm tired of being fat. Like it's time to get in gear here. We're

going to go to the gym every day. And the feeling brain has a freak out. So they're not communicating effectively. That negotiation, you know, quickly leads to an impasse. So, all right, let's step it down. All right. How can I, how can I, you know, get the feeling brain to do something that is uncomfortable for the feeling brain, but not overwhelming, that is blowing out all the circuits. So you can like stair step into it. The other thing that happens a lot too is that, so people, and this happens on January 1st every year, people are like, all right, this is it.

This is the year I'm gonna do it. You know, and then they wake up that first day and they are pumped. They're so excited. And then by day four, you know, they're like, oh God, this again? Yeah, I'm not so sure about this. So they lose that enthusiasm. And the reason they stopped going is because they lose that enthusiasm.

So the goal of the thinking brain is to find ways to keep that enthusiasm going. The reason accountability works, the reason like going with a friend works, hiring a trainer, it's because the social pressure basically pushes your feeling brain into enjoying it. You know, it's like, maybe I don't enjoy going by myself, but my best friend's going to come with me and that's going to be fun. So yeah, let's do it together. It's so annoying though, that we can't, like, we know we're going to be happier once we're, we've lost that 30 pounds or we cross the finish line at that marathon. And yet we can't, it's really inadequate to try to leverage that in order to get us to do the thing we need to do today to work ourselves towards that.

It's too abstract. You know, you're thinking, or your feeling brain doesn't understand past or future. That's why trauma still fucks with us. You know, it's like something happened 20 years ago. My feeling brain doesn't understand that that was 20 years ago. My feeling brain still hurts now. And it's the same thing with the future. You can list 80 different reasons why adopting a certain habit is going to benefit you. At the end, you're going to live longer.

You're going to have more money, like whatever. Feeling brain doesn't understand that. Feeling brain understands now. Right. Feeling brain doesn't understand that. Feeling brain understands now. Right. Which is gonna lead us into this terrain of talking about the present moment.

But before we do that, how does this feeling brain, thinking brain, battle this ongoing thing, dovetail into these three laws of emotion? Oh, man. Oh, man. I kind of went crazy with the emotion thing. You know, I've always wanted to write a book. I've always wanted to like really just lay out kind of the chain links between our experiences, how experiences lead to emotions, how emotions lead to our values,

and then how our values lead to our identities or our sense of like who we are. And so the first few chapters of the book are my attempt to do that. So the laws of emotion are, it's kind of, it's a fun play on Newton's laws of motion. You know, first one is every action has an equal and opposite emotional reaction. Second one, I'm going to mess these up. Worth is the sum of our emotions over time. Yeah. Yeah. Third one is your identity stays your identity until a new experience acts against it.

Yeah. So basically our values are ultimately derived from our emotional experiences. Something super simple. It's like if growing up your dad always took you to the baseball game, you're light and you, and it was like the highlight of your childhood, you're likely going to value baseball throughout most of your life. That's true of all of our experiences. Everything that we find important in our lives, it has made us feel good at some point in the past.

And generally the extent that we value it is proportional to how good it made us feel. Or I think a probably more accurate way of putting it is the extent that it met our needs. So kind of like with the visions of hope, it's like once we find something in our life that we find valuable, we think is important, we hold on to that. We protect it. It's like, I am a baseball fan. I go to games. I am like, my dad and I did this, blah, blah, blah. This is who I am, right? This is the- This is the story that you're telling yourself and other people about who you are.

Exactly. It's the story you're telling yourself and it's the story you're sharing with the world. And it's how you understand yourself. Now, let's say that, you know know you find out that uh your favorite baseball team was uh you know crooked and run by the mafia and they were like not they were every all the games were rigged and it just crushes you like absolutely crushes you so that experience that contrary experience to what you value you know you love baseball and then you find out it's all a lie. Like your devastation is proportional to how much you valued it. And so that kind of identity crisis that occurs where it's like, well, I thought I loved this thing, but it screwed me over. And now I don't know who I am anymore. The pain of that fall is proportional to how high you held it up right pedestal um and so eventually you have to find something else that you value to replace that to you just to to

keep to to keep your identity um some sort of cohesive identity going and so it's it's very much the same way that you know uh physical objects move through the world in very predictable ways. I think emotionally our understanding of ourselves moves through the world in a very predictable way. And so it's useful to understand how that happens, but I also think it's very useful to understand how arbitrary that is. to understand that how arbitrary that is. That my love for baseball, if I had been born in France, would have been a love for soccer. Or if I had been born with different genetics, it would have been, I would have a different cultural

affinity or ethnic affinity. So all these things in our lives that we see is like, this is who I am. They are ultimately a product of our experiences and which are then a product, largely a product of the environment that we grew up in. Yeah, and I think it's interesting how we're selective

about those experiences. There's something in our unconscious mind that identifies certain things, probably because of their emotional valence, that then become the cornerstones in that story, where when you really deconstruct it, like it's an illusion because it's a continuum of billions of experiences that we've had.

And for some reason, there are certain ones that pop up that we then craft this whole sense of who we are around. And I think just looking at that and being honest with ourselves about that helps us deconstruct that. But I'm interested in this model, which I agree with you completely, but how does this model hold up in our post you know, I agree with you completely, but how does this model hold up in our post fact fake news world where, you know, when we're told our baseball team was just a bunch of crooks

and there's all these newspaper articles about it, we, instead of allowing that to seep in and forcing us to find new identity, we just refute it and dig in even deeper, right? And I think that this is what we're seeing. This is endemic to our culture right now across the board. Absolutely. And it's freezing us in this space that is moving us away, and you get into this in the later part

of the book, moving us away from all of the freedom that we aspire to have in our life and that we espouse in the way that we, you know, aspire to have in our life and that we espouse in our, you know, in the way that we live. Yeah. I think it's a couple of things. I think one thing is that right now our media or not just media, but like the way information travels in our society is very much based on attention. So it's the most factual thing is not what travels the furthest. In fact, studies are showing that it's actually the bigger the lie, the more it travels. Right, what's that adage?

Like a lie goes around the world 100,000 times before the truth can get out of the gate or whatever. Something like that. Yeah. And yeah, so in terms of virality and everything, like the research is bearing that out. So the problem is, is that everything is based on attention. Everything is based on if I can get enough clicks, then I can make a bunch of money and whatever. get enough clicks that I can make a bunch of money and whatever.

The problem with that is that let's say, let's say that I, so keep, keep this ridiculous baseball analogy going. Let's say that I'm like a intrepid reporter who spent six months of my life digging into this huge baseball scandal and it's going to bring the sport to its knees. Are you going to pick a team here? Yeah.

Yeah. Let's say the Yankees. Oh, okay. You know, it's like I'm investigating the Yankees and I find just corruption at every level, you know, and the players are throwing the games and, you know, the reps are in on it and yada, yada, yada. And I published this huge like 40-page investigative piece. This is like a Ronan Farrow. Yeah, exactly.

Yorker expose. Exactly. And it doesn't matter how right I am because as soon as that gets published and it gets all the attention and all the clicks, it's such a big incentive for anybody to come out and contradict me because they're going to siphon off like half of those clicks. So this is why like anything you see at my talks, I use nutrition as an example.

It's like, if you like Google, like, how do I lose weight? You know, you'll go to one article and it's like, oh, you just cut out fat. And then it's like, no, no, no, that's a lie. Cut out carbs. And then it's like, no, no, no, carbs are good. No, no, you got to cut out meat, you know? And it's like, everything is just trying to contradict each other because the easiest way to grab attention is to contradict whatever currently has attention. And so when you play this out for years and years and years where it's like

everything that is is grabbing attention gets immediately contradicted by something else that you enter into this this post-truth reality where it's like well just pick a side you know whatever you and and when it comes down to pick a side it's the feeling brain just goes well it's like well it becomes all feeling yeah it's like i like- It becomes all feeling, right? Yeah, it's like, I like baseball, so this- Or I love the Yankees. Yeah, I love the Yankees. And so this guy, Mark Manson's full of shit and it's all set up

and the media is just trying to corrupt sports because they want to like, whatever, you know? And it's because it all appears the same when everything is just contradiction. Right, it's like when you're watching a new show and there's 10 people, you know, in those little boxes and they're all shouting. And the inference is that their opinions are all of equal value. Yes. Yeah.

And that's a really good example because that's been going on for decades now. for decades now you know like they'll bring on like a climate scientist and they'll bring on some fringe right-wing loon who thinks it's all a hoax and they'll put them side by side wait and let them debate each other and it and it's um and so if you're a viewer you're like all right i'll just pick a side you know because it's it's in the structure of the media environment is is that it's it's in their favor to always keep things. It's like Vegas. You always want to keep things equal on both sides. You know, like that's where the most money is.

The problem is, is when you're talking about information and truth and, you know, politics and things like that, it has a very corrosive effect on our society. So let's telescope that out then from the micro example of the Yankees or the news program to, you know, governments and democracy and how we live essentially. You know, like the structures that drive,

you know, how we live day to day. So once everything becomes contradiction, we start losing faith in all these social structures that we depend on. Yeah. And one of the things I talk about early on in the book is that, you know, and this is something that Harari popularized with sapiens. But it's like all these social structures are based on faith. They are based on like, democracy is a faith-based construct of like,

we all just agree. Yeah, money, corporations. Yeah. All of these are illusions that we've made a social contract to believe in. Exactly. And so when you start contradicting everything, those illusions start breaking down.

And so you get situations like today where, you know, where it's like fundamental branches of government that we all depend on. You know, it's like, oh, now it's the deep state and they're trying to like, you know, subvert everything. Or on the left, you know, it's like every, now it's, now you've got fascists in power, you know? And so it's, it's, it's these constant kind of extreme messages of like, oh, we have to tear the whole thing down. And this, this kind of comes full circle back to my original point of like, things are great and everybody's freaking out because it's none of the problems that we have today. And yes, we have a lot of problems, but none of the problems we have today are problems that we haven't had in the past, that we haven't dealt with in the past. And yet the level of despair, anxiety, and depression has never been higher. Right. And politically speaking, you have large groups on

both the right and the left who are ready to just tear everything down. Say, you know what, let's start over. And like that, that is the danger. Like that's the bigger danger. Like what's going on? Like Congress has been gridlocked before. You know, we've had, you know, we've had all sorts of corruption and breakdowns

in different parts of the government before. Like the system is designed to compensate and kind of hold itself together. The only thing that can bring it down is when a critical mass of people are like, no, it's all bullshit. Right, and that's being weaponized right now. Yeah.

You know, there are vested interests who are very savvy and are swaying public opinion by using the levers of technology to tilt the scales. And that becomes something unprecedented in history and rather terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. It's a strange time. It's a very strange time. Meanwhile, technology continues to advance. We're seeing innovation at a rate that we've never seen before. Yeah. And this gets into a related subject that you talk about in the book,

which is how these innovations, which we're all welcoming into our lives and signing up for and excited about and can't wait for the new iteration of, and yet they're all fueling, they're really just fueling diversion, which is reducing the freedoms that we think that we're enjoying and should be increasing. Yeah.

So this kind of ties into Jocko's thing about freedom equals discipline or discipline equals freedom. It's one of the, I guess, more profound conclusions. And I say profound for me. I don't know if anybody else cares, but for me personally, one of the more profound conclusions I came to the last four or five years is this realization that freedom isn't necessarily having more stuff or more options or being able to do more things. What real freedom is, is the ability to choose my commitments, to choose the people I want to be with, to choose the information I want to engage with, to choose the work I want to spend my life pursuing. And I make the argument in the book that this proliferation of options, that essentially we're mistaking options for freedom.

And options are great. When you have no options, options are great. They increase freedom. But once you have options, once the options get to the point, like way, way, way past the point that you're ever going to be able to choose from them. You're just continually scrolling down Netflix and it just keeps going. Yeah. It's, it's the old, there's that joke on Saturday night live. Like the goal is just, by the time you're done scrolling, they've now added new shows. It just becomes a perpetual habit trail.

It feels like we're getting there. But absolutely. You know, it's the classic like 500 channels on TV is nothing on. And it's the proliferation of options has psychological effects on us. It makes, there's a thing called paradox of choice, which, you know, if you give people an option between two types of cereal, you know, you pick one and you're like, all right, I got the better cereal. You're satisfied with it. If you give people not a choice between 20 types of cereal, um, on paper, that sounds like a better deal. But actually what happens is, is people, first of all, they like get really anxious and, and obsessive and are worried that they're gonna pick the wrong one. And then once they pick it, they're less satisfied with whatever they picked

because they're actually thinking more about the 19 that they gave up. That they didn't pick, yeah. And that ultimately leads to, that's the root of FOMO, I guess, on some level. And it just makes people feel despairing. Like they're always missing out and they can't make the right choice.

It's disorienting. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So let's get into this idea of finding the solution in the present moment. Okay. Yeah, so hope is about the future. These stories we tell ourselves about who we are

are rooted in the past. These are things that are fueling all of these conditions that we're seeing, the epidemic of loneliness and depression and anxiety and all of this. It all goes back to the ancient wisdom. Gotta be here in the now, man. Yeah. Right?

Nothing new under the sun. Yeah, like, did you invent this idea? Yeah, I came up with the present moment. Thank you. Right. It really is incredible. You know, so I, my background, you know, and people who read subtle art would probably figure this out. But, like, my background is background is like a Buddhist background.

I see you've got the statue and the beads on it. I've got all the new age trappings here to distract you. But I was- I've got the Amor Fate. Oh, well, yeah. Which we can talk about in a minute. Absolutely. But go ahead.

Yeah, I'm going there actually. So my background's a little bit Buddhist. I spent a lot of my college years and 20s like engaging with it and practicing meditation and really getting into it. And so it's funny, I'm kind of, I got on this big Western philosophy kick after Subtle Art came out.

And I had read some stuff in college, but some of it was interesting and some of it was completely indecipherable. But I guess at some point in the last 15 years, my brain is like developed the attention span and patience to actually like wade through Kant and Nietzsche. And so I was reading a lot of Western philosophy and I was really finding it inspiring in a lot of ways. And it's crazy because it all just comes back to the same principles. And Nietzsche, I talk about Nietzsche in the book. Nietzsche was, he's considered the first postmodernist, which is because he basically showed up and he was like, look, any human system, because it was conceived of by humans, is going to be inherently flawed and faulty and it's never going to last.

Anything, anything you can conceive of, it's going to fail at some point. And so ultimately the conclusion that he arrived upon is you just need to learn to love the failure. He called it amor fati, love your fate. Just understand that everything's – and what's amazing too is that he was – people in Europe weren't aware of the Buddhist stuff at this time. And so they're kind of arriving at this independently in their own way. And then it's the same as saying, stop resisting what is and embrace the now. Absolutely.

And be in surrender and acceptance. Yep, absolutely. And then Kant, it was a similar thing. Kant actually tried to do what Nietzsche said was impossible, which is to find some sort of universal moral principle of like, okay, this is the one thing that we should all value above all else. And he really struggled with it. And I think he only, he came up with, he called them categorical imperatives. And I think he only came up with three and they've been torn to shreds ever since by a lot of really smart people.

And two of them in particular, but there is a third one, which I thought I think holds up the best out of the three, which is what he called this formula of humanity, which is essentially never treat an individual, a conscious individual as a means always as an end, which is kind of a fancy philosophical way of saying, the highest value, the thing we should value

more than anything else is always the dignity of each human being. And if you subscribe to any sort of religion or ideology or relationship or passion that ever forces you to treat another individual as a means, does not respect their inherent dignity as a human being, then that is a moral failure. Yeah. You describe it as stop living a transactional life. Yeah. Right. To live a transactional life is to treat another individual or a situation as a means to an end, which

immediately gets you into the future. You're plotting and planning. Yes. You're, you know, you're trying to create a machination that's going to get you to this other place at some unspecified future time, as opposed to living in the moment, treating somebody as an end in and of itself, which is another way of saying, just be present with who you are. Yes. And who that person is.

And be unconditional in your actions. You know, treat everything. Did that one get torn down? Cause that one holds up pretty well. I have not seen any convincing destruction of it. And it's, what's amazing too is that it, the same principle is really at the heart of pretty much every major religion. I think it's just, it's all the institutional stuff on, you

know, so it's like the teachings of Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha, like it's all like, you know, Buddha's like cause no suffering. Jesus is like, love your neighbor. You know, it's, it's like, it's all the same stuff. Um, it's just all these cultural institutions get built on top of it that then start treating people as means to ends. But it's, you know, that transactional thing is, that is where the destructive side of hope emerges. Because you get people who are like, well, violence is wrong, but I'm pretty sure this guy's a Nazi, so I'm gonna beat the fuck out of him. You know, and it's like, that's where evil starts. That's, at least that's what Kant said.

That's where evil starts. Because you are, the basis of your actions is no longer the inherent human dignity of each individual. The ends don't justify the means. Yes. If the means are other people, never. Right, so to extend that into a thought experiment, if you could go back in time

and like murder Hitler when he was a baby, like how does that play out, right? That's where it gets sticky. But I understand your point, which is essentially, you know, listen, how other people are living their lives really is none of your business. It's not for you to take their inventory and be in judgment of them. Let's cast that, you know, turn that mirror around and look at yourself. Let's focus on being the best person that you can be. And when you enter into every situation, if you can be present and if you can try to identify the shared divinity between you and that other person and hold that person in their highest regard and just be in allowing, that that is actually a much better plan for life. Yeah. I mean, I think as individuals, absolutely. I think

part of where it gets sticky is that the nature of politics is very transactional. Like I think we've kind of built a transactional system just because we understand how selfish and prejudiced humans are. Like I think think that's, that is really the genius of democracy is that people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison realized how shitty people are and are like, okay. Well, that's why we're a democratic republic and not a pure democracy. Absolutely. I think that's a, you know, a stop on that a little bit. But it's, I think what I love about that Kant's principle, because, you know, I spend basically half, the first half of the book explaining like

how all of our hopes and values are created. And then at the very end, I have the Nietzsche chapter, which just tears everything down. And so you're actually left with like a little bit of a bleak situation. And I get a lot of emails from people like, dude, I just finished the first part of your book. Like, this is a downer, man. I'm like, keep going. It's okay. Keep going. You know, and I think the beauty of Kant's principle is that it's the only thing I've really found that doesn't, you don't need an ideology

or a belief system or any sort of like structure, institutional structure to practice it. You don't need anything in your environment to be correct. You know, you don't need, it's true for every individual. It's true no matter what situation you're in, you know, and it's always, it can always you're in you know and it's always it can always be practiced in the present moment as you said like it's no matter how much you fuck people over in the past no matter how much you want to fuck people over in the future

in this moment you can treat people unconditionally as an ends and not just a means the irony in that is that when you do do that all the things that you're kind of aspiring to manifest in your life are actually more likely to occur. You know what I mean? Like if you go into every situation in a transactional mindset, like I'm going to, you know, like take, you know, oh, I'm going to this marketing conference. I'm going to meet all these people and they're all going to help me and this is going to make my career. And you're in there just, you know, trying to get stuff from people. Nobody wants to meet you.

Nobody likes that guy, you know? But if you just show up full of heart and they remember like, wow, I really like talking to that person. Like, how can I, I want that person in my life. Like you're more likely to create a social circle that's conducive to the things that you're trying to do. Which, and it's funny, I just now put this together, but that explains the backwards law I talk about in subtle art.

You know, this idea that the more you let go, the more you have. Yeah. That's been so true in my own life. And I've seen it operative in so many people. Oh, absolutely. And it's so counterintuitive. It really is. And it really, it requires you to live in faith.

Like, because you have to just believe, I mean, you have to let go of all of that conditioning and programming in order to inhabit that space. And it's a constant, you have to constantly remind yourself too, because we'll all default back into those, you know, ways that we've always behaved. Yeah. All right. So let's marshal in the robots. Our only hope. Yeah, I know. So talk about like a, a counterintuitive

way to kind of close this book down too. Like there's a lot of talk about AI. We're afraid of AI. Is AI a good thing? We've got people like Elon Musk and some very smart people out there waving a very cautionary tale about what this is going to usher in. We need to have these conversations about what we're doing and have stops and controls.

You take a very different tack in this whole thing. I again find myself, I think, standing kind of alone here. So there's two camps with AI. I think you call them kind of the utopians, which think that AI is going to create this amazing place where humans can just chill out at the beach forever. As we've just explored over the last couple hours, this is not going to happen. As we've just explored over the last couple hours, you're not going to transcend your feeling brain, no matter even if you're uploaded to the cloud. Yeah. who I think very rightly recognize that as soon as we create something that is some sort of super intelligent entity

that outstrips all of our intelligence, we're going to be out of control because it's going to be able to outsmart us, manipulate us, whatever. So I often describe my work as pessimistic self-help. You know, one thing I say a lot when I do interviews or go on TV is, you know, I say most self-help is very idealistic about human nature. You know, they believe we can do anything. We can, if you believe it, you can go do it.

You just need to think positive and all this stuff. I don't like any of that shit. I've spent enough time with psych research to understand that humans are, we're inherently flawed, selfish, somewhat shitty creatures. And we don't treat ourselves well. We don't treat other people well. So my work has always been, instead of like, Hey, you can do anything you want. My work has always been, let's just try to be a little less shitty.

Um, let's, let's be aware of how flawed we are and work on those flaws. So bringing that back to the AI thing, I'm a pessimist about human nature. And so, yes, I do think we're going to lose control to AI, but no, I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think they're going to wipe us out. Like why, that's like being like, well, you know, horses aren't productive anymore, so we're going to kill all the horses.

Like why, there's no reason to do that, you know? So humans are going to be fine. We're just going to be like the horses in the AI society. You know, it's like, oh, it'd be fun. Hey, won't it be fun to get, to get rich, to go do that thing. Right. But what if we're not the horses, we're the ants. That too. But I mean, what's wrong with that? Well, it just means that, that we just means that we're so insignificant to the AI that our wellbeing doesn't even factor

into whatever decision is being made about the future of the planet. Yeah. And we could be eradicated without a second thought. But that's true. Maybe we should be, I don't know. But that's true already. I mean, like we could be eradicated at any moment, you know, asteroid hits or whatever.

I just, I don't see, I don't see the problem with it. And I think, you know, given how, I think it's far more likely we're going to blow ourselves up than AI is. Well, I think it's a timing thing, right? Like it's gonna take longer for AI to advance to the point where it becomes sophisticated enough to do that. We're more likely to blow ourselves up in the short term. I think in the long term,

I think we're more likely to fall prey to the whimsical or maybe not the algorithmical desires of artificial intelligence that we have created. Yeah. But it's, and I mentioned that, so I finished the book with a kind of a cheeky list of hopes that I have. And one of them is, is that we don't blow ourselves up before the AI can develop enough to like, you know, take the gun away from the baby. I can develop enough to like, you know, take the gun away from the baby. Yeah. But if, to challenge you a little bit,

your whole thesis here is that we've arrived at this place in culture where our needs are met, and this is creating this existential crisis and all these mental health disorders. But won't AI just exacerbate that? It's gonna fill all these other needs so that we literally become like the guys in the wheelchairs in Wall-E. Like we never have to do anything. Not necessarily. I mean, we take dogs for walks, you know? It's like, why won't the AI take us for

a walk? Like I talk, I've got this like- Well, the AI could walk the dog. But what I'm saying is like- Or we're going to all have robot dogs. I have this kind of like fun sci-fi moment in the last chapter about this where I say like, yeah, we'll all be in like some virtual reality cloud where the AI has constructed some game that we're all engaged in that keeps us occupied and that we all enjoy. The ultimate distraction. Yeah. And then we become batteries like in the Matrix. Sure, why not? You're like, sign me up?

Yeah, like dude, what's wrong with the matrix, man? All right, well, when that happens and then you have your next existential crisis, then you will have the material for the follow-up book about why this was all a really bad idea. All right, well. I think that's a good place to land it, yeah. I think that's a good place to land it, yeah.

James Altucher called this book the Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning for the next generation. And I see why he said that. I think there's a lot to that. It's a bold statement. It's really bold, but you have sold a lot of books. So bold, it makes me uncomfortable. Well, I guess we'll know if the robots don't kill us

in a hundred years, then we can revisit this and see whether it holds up. But I love the books. I love the work that you're doing. I think you're doing some deep thinking about issues that are really important and affect all of us. So keep doing it, my friend.

Thanks for coming by. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. Peace. Good times for even more on Mark check out the show notes on the episode page

at richroll.com let him know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts with him directly on Twitter at I am Mark Manson and you can follow him

on Instagram at plainly put Mark Manson also don't forget to pick up a copy of his latest book, Everything is F'd, Everything is Fucked,

a book about hope. And of course, check out his wildly successful The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, a counterintuitive approach. If you haven't done so already, most of you probably have already read that book. If you'd like to support our work here on the podcast, subscribe, rate, and comment on the show on Apple Podcasts.

That really helps new people discover the show. Tell your friends about your favorite episode or maybe this episode. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, to Spotify, to Google Podcasts. And you can support us financially on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I appreciate my team that helps put on this show every week. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, and show notes. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for video and editing the show for YouTube,

as well as the short clips we share across social media. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships. And the music by Annalema. Appreciate the love, you guys. I will see you back here shortly with a great conversation and a very special performance from musicians Rodrigo and Gabriela.

This one's a little bit different. We're trying a little bit of a new format. It's very exciting. I think you guys are going to really dig it. They are amazing people. So let me take you out with a short clip. Until then, remember, there is still hope despite everything being effed. Peace. We knew we wanted just to play guitar. And at some point after quitting the band,

and we was like, well, it doesn't matter if we're playing a coffee or background music. And for us to stick to our guns when we left Tixstap and went to Dublin, that was kind of the same goal. So like we're not going to do anything else but playing music. And we quickly realized that we had to play on the streets and it was the best experience ever yeah well but i must say that adding to the redefinition of success the experience with the band was quite intense because instead of focusing on music and stuff we were focusing on how can we play here how can we do this, and that drained us.

That's why we said, no, we can't quit music. And as a matter of fact, now we're going to embrace music, and that's how we said, okay, whatever, we can go and play in anybody's wedding, anywhere else, background music, whatever. But for us us every single note is going to have a meaning. Thank you.