The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Mark Manson joins Matt & Abby for a thoughtful, honest conversation about modern self-help, personal responsibility, and what actually leads to a meaningful life. They talk marriage as a “long conversation,” the dangers of toxic positivity, dating apps, friendship, death, and how Mark’s thinking has evolved since writing The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. This episode is sponsored by Cash App, Audible, Square & Nutrafol. Cash App: Download Cash App Today: [https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/kssum24w #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Discounts and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.Audible: Go to https://Audible.com/MessyLove to start listening today.Square: Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/UNPLANNED! #squarepodNutrafol: Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code UNPLANNEDPOD Chapters: 00:00 - Mark Manson 03:12 - Disappointment Panda 06:45 - Titling The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck 13:00 - sponsor: CashApp 14:37 - Religious influence 19:15 - Dangers of self help 21:59 - How my views have changed 23:50 - Personal responsibility 26:34 - sponsor: audible 27:44 - Children and purpose 34:41 - Importance of community 39:45 - sponsor: square 41:40 - Three factors of friendship 46:33 - Quality of Life 53:15 - sponsor: Nutrafol 56:25 - Death 1:00:16 - Marriage: the Long Conversation 1:03:19 - The trap of dating apps 1:07:53 - Keeping score in marriage 1:13:18 - Launching a new self help app Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Happiness is overrated and purpose is underrated. And the thing about purpose is that it's often hard. This idea that you can be perfectly internally validated and never worry about what other people think about you. There's a word for somebody who doesn't care what other people think about it. It's called a psychopath. We don't want to be psychopath. A lot of people have replaced religion with politics, with economic pursuits and materialism.

I'm like the most pro-religion atheists there probably is. Because if you don't place it somewhere, you could very likely place it somewhere very destructive. The meaning of your life is what you make of it. That's intimidating. It's scary. Because if you make the wrong choices or you prioritize the wrong things, guess whose fault it is, right? Guess who's screwed up. Today on Unplanned, we sat down with Mark Manson, the New York Times best-selling author of the subtle art of not giving a freak.

That's actually the F word. Mark's book speaks straight to your heart as a human. It's very different than the typical self-help book. We talk about why making friends as an adult is so hard. The fastest way to find your purpose and so much more all on. on today's episode. Mark Manson, welcome to Unplant. I'm happy to be here.

I did not plan on it. We also have the disappointment panda in the room. Yeah, Matt. We need some explanation for the panda. He's making a rare appearance. He's kind of the mascot at the front of the office. I actually don't think he's ever been on a podcast before. No way.

This is his first podcast? Come here. Matt goes, how do you think our audience would think he had a giant panda join us? I was like, maybe if you just, like, introduced him. Oh, my God, he's huge. And the t-shirt is so tight. He's heavy. Yeah, yeah, he's a big boy.

No, he's, so in my book, Sutterler, not giving a fuck. He's, I create a superhero called Disappointment Panda, and his superpower is he tells people truth that they don't want to hear. Like, but they need to hear, right? Yeah. So it's like, yeah, the problem in all your relationships is you. Like, that's, he just goes door to door to like a, like, a. Bible salesman and like knocks on their door and just tells them like the really awful thing that they need to hear about themselves. I love the quote for your book. It's like the panic going to

someone's door and saying, hey, making more money isn't actually going to make you happier. It's not to make your kids like you either. Yeah. That's our boy. Which I mean, man, it's it's so, it's so convicting though because I put the a prompt into AI reading reading your book. I was like, I'm going to have AI do this disappointment panda thing to me. And it like, reading the response back was like, whoa. Like it just, it shook me. And the funny thing, too, was it essentially restated the title of your book in a way. It essentially told me to like stop caring about so much and focus on, yeah, like focus on less,

essentially is what it told me to do because I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do too much. I want to be the best at everything. And that's simply impossible. and I'm going to drive myself crazy and those around me crazy by trying to be the most efficient person in every aspect of my life. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

How did you come up with that idea of the disappointment panda? You know, it's really funny. So when I'm writing, I often have this situation where I'm like, okay, the idea is good, but this is boring. Like, and there was a section of the book where I was like, okay, like the content is good, but I'm just bored reading it. And so in those situations, I start asking myself, I'm like, how can we make this fun? Yeah. And often, you know, most authors, they'll like pull some historical story or example, right? Or like some quote Steve Jobs said one time.

And I had already done that in a bunch of other places in the book. And I was like, that's also boring. Like, like, let's just, I don't know, maybe it was the mood I was in, but I was like, let's get crazy. So I was like, what if I had a superhero? And they just like, they just were awful. So it was like the super hero nobody wanted to see coming down the street. And that's how he was born. And, you know, it's funny because when you're writing, sometimes you just, you just have a hunch and you like go with it.

And I'd say nine times out of ten, it ends up being terrible. Yeah. But then like one time out of ten it ends up being brilliant. And, you know, Disappointment Panda is probably the most cited. I mean, people, there are people with disappointment panda tattoos. No way. Yeah. That have, like, sent pictures to me.

And, you know, so it's, it's, um, he's definitely had stain power for sure. It's so, it's so descriptive. Like, you, you can't forget that panda with the too tight t-shirt, the tea on it. And the sombrero. The sombrero. Can't forget that. Yeah. Is that an added touch that you, you put in recently or?

Yeah. Well, no, it's, so in the book, like, the whole section, section of Disappointed Panda is just so unhinged and weird. that I was like, well, you know, what's the movie? Is it old school where they're like, you know, if you're going to go full or whatever? Why do I not know that movie? There's some saying like that from like an old welfare movie, but it was just like, okay, if we're going to go weird, like let's just go all the way. And so by the end of the section, I've got like this appointment panda sitting on a patio, watching the sunset sipping a margarita. I love it.

And I was like, obviously he's wearing a sombrero. Yeah. Because why not? And that's what pandas do, right? And it was just, I think I was just going for maximal what the fuck energy in that chapter. And I guess it worked. So something that I love about you from just like everything I've seen is you, you clearly are just like authentically yourself. You don't hold back.

You're not giving enough. And like, I'm pretty sure this is the first podcast. We'll probably just mute you saying that. We don't. We don't cuss out here. I guess I'll just be saying F and Frick if that's okay. Sure. I should have asked. I apologize. No, no, no, no. You don't need to change yourself for us. But like, that was a bold move to release a book.

Yeah. With the F word and the title, right? Like, I'm guessing when you release the subtle art of not giving a frick, sorry, I know that. But like when you release the book. We should apologize. Yeah, I'm apologizing to you. I'm like miss. In my studio, you drop the F-Bomb. But when you went to release that book, was there anyone in your life that was like, hey, Mark, are you sure you want to have the F-word

in your book title? Well, it's funny because it was actually, it was like a very contentious debate with the publishers. So when we were shopping, when my agent and I were shopping the book around, we basically shopped it with two titles. And we told them we're like,

we prefer the F-bomb title and and by that point you know I've been blogging for about four or five years and I had a bunch of articles go viral and we had seen that like the F-bomb just like it just kills everybody clicks on it so we kind of went to the publishers and we're like we think this is going to work here's some data yeah like we've seen this work we're pretty sure it's going to work but most of the publishers were like no no we're not going to touch that and it's actually funny in hindsight, the big concern at the time was that Walmart wouldn't carry it. That was like the big, that was the like, oh no, this is impossible. This is like 10 years ago. They're like, we don't want to upset Walmart, you know. That's funny. I wouldn't have expected. I don't

really think about Walmart for books. Right. Right. But I think at the time it was, you know, they were, Amazon was the biggest retailer in Walmart was the second biggest. So they're like, you know, probably 20, 30% of the market. And so a bunch of the publishers were like, like, this is just a no-go. And my editor at Harper Collins, who I eventually, I actually signed the deal with, like, he really fought for it. He was like, no, no, no, this is you. This is the book. This is the message. Like, we should, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword, so to speak. So it's funny because I actually wasn't that attached to it. Like, a lot of authors get very up in arms and possessive. You know, they think their baby is like perfect and beautiful and everybody should love thinking.

It's brilliant like they do. I was kind of like, look, there are plenty of good titles in the world. I don't need to have this one. But to my editor's credit, he actually really fought for it. And was like, no, it has to be in the title. I like that. Is it, did Walmart eventually cave and allow? It did.

It did. The funny thing is, too, is they came back to us maybe like a year later, six months a year later. And they're like, okay, we'll stock it. But you have to put a black box over the entire F word. So as if like censoring one letter wasn't good enough for them. They're like you have to censor the whole word and then we'll put it on the shelf. And so.

Because I'm guessing a lot of retailers like they probably wouldn't have displayed the book if you actually had the F word, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm guessing the publisher was pretty like pushed having the asterisk in the title. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's like pretty necessary.

I actually think there's laws around what you're allowed to like sell in certain places with the F word. There's, there's, there's, we really want to bring profanity in the podcast. There are actually

seven curse words that are not allowed. I think the, the, FCC regulates them. So you can't say them on TV. So it's like, let him rip.

Let them rip. We can, we'll mute it or whatever if we need to. You got him memorized. You got them memorized on the top of your head. I think it's,

I think it's, I think it's, coss cuckers, motherfucketer. That's four of them. I forget it the other three. Okay, well. We'll get back to you. Everybody will say, we'll get back to you on this.

Circling back. But you're not allowed, so you're not allowed to put it on broadcast television. You're not allowed to put it in like a newspaper or a magazine. And they're not allowed to put it on like a store shelf. So you have to censor it in some way. Either bleep it or like or block a letter out. But it was funny because Walmart was like, you know, oh no, censoring the you isn't enough for us. because we're Walmart.

So we're going to make you censor all four letters. And was cursing just a part of your life growing up? Or did you? Was there like a definitive moment where you were like, I'm going to curse now. I'm going to say the F word now. I'm no longer going to say Frick. I'm going to say the actual word. I just thought I've always talked this way.

Really? Yeah. Okay. Because I see, I grew up like in like Bible Belt, Missouri. So just now as a 27 year old father of two, I've started saying the F word. sometimes. Now that you're a father. I don't know. I still don't know how I feel about it. Yeah, now that I'm a father. That's what did it. Fatherhood.

Uncorked it. All those late nights changing diapers at 2 a.m. Yeah, there you go. Raised. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I also grew up in the Bible Belt, but I think for me it was, I was very rebellious. Okay. I didn't like where I grew up. So I was like, all you. And that's why you sold drugs in middle school. Is that right? Why I sold drugs in middle school. They're coming full circle.

How did your parents react, by the way? No, they grounded you. I read it in the book. They grounded you. My life ended, basically. Yeah. I mean, I was put on like house arrest, essentially. I think that was a good call.

I mean, to be fair, I mean, it was, it's interesting because looking back, my poor parents, by me. Like, sometimes, sometimes I go home for, like, Thanksgiving. And my mom is like, you know, I love your podcast, but do you really have to talk about your childhood so much? And she's like, we did our best with what we know. I'm like, I know, mom. I know. Like, so shout out to my mom. Shout out to mom.

She's a great mom. She loves me very much. She did her best. But, you know, no parent is perfect. Right. But like my parents' marriage was coming apart. And so, like, in hindsight, I can, as an adult, I can see what happened, which is, My parents' marriage was coming apart.

Obviously, when your marriage is coming apart, like, you don't have the energy to, like, stay super connected with your kids, right? Like, you're just in full survival mode. Yeah. Maintenance mode. So my brother and I, and then, of course, you know, it's like my brother and I kind of picked up on the tension

and the turbulence in the house, and we're not getting, like, mom, like, we're not being paid attention to. Like, it's, everything's uncomfortable. It's not, it's not. it's not a good home to be in emotionally. So you start lashing out as a kid, right? So you start, you've got to channel and direct that energy somewhere.

And so he and I both rebelled in our own ways. And for me, it was selling drugs in middle school and dropping F bombs, I guess. Thank you to Cash App for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. Have you ever known someone who has fallen for a scam? I do. Me. Many times I have fallen victim. to online scams. And you know what? I'm going to give myself a little credit. It's easy to do nowadays,

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and it was just like so insightful did you like grow up christian but then become buddhist essentially or was that just something that you like gained a lot of you know ideas and your belief systems from So I was raised Christian. I think around age like 13 or 14, I kind of, I just, I kind of stopped believing in it. But I got curious about a lot of other religions. And so then I got very curious about Buddhism and got, it was very into Buddhism. I'd say from like age 19 to 25. Okay.

Meditated a lot. We'd go on retreats and studied a lot of it. Buddhism has been very influential on me from like kind of an intellectual, philosophical point of view. It really wasn't until I was in my 30s. I started to really appreciate how much Christianity has been influential on me. Like, I think it took me until I was like 35 to start coming back around and noticing all of the, just like the seeds that came from church and came from Christianity and being exposed to it at such a,

such an early age. So those two are like very strong influences in my work. And it's funny because like I still take. Technically, like, consider myself an atheist. Although I joke on my podcast that I'm like the most pro-religion atheists there probably is. Like I... Why is that? Well, I think it's just, I think religion, it just serves a very useful and psychologically important function for people.

And it's, I think, atheists tend to underestimate how much faith they're putting in other things. Like, I honestly think, like, humans are just wired to have faith. faith in something. Yeah. And there's a good argument for directing that faith towards one of these kind of ancient mythological structures and sets of morals and practices with two thousand, you know, 3,000 years of history, 2,000 years of history. I think there's like a very strong argument for that. Because if you don't place it somewhere, you could very likely place it somewhere very destructive and harmful, right? So I think like a lot of people have replaced religion with politics. I think a lot of People have replaced religion with economic pursuits and materialism.

I think in my industry, a lot of people have replaced religion with self-help and, like, quote-unquote, like personal growth and spirituality and whatnot. And I just think it's like a lot of these other things, there are a lot of bad side effects. And a lot of them are kind of untested. And I think a lot of people kind of lose themselves in them. I actually have a lot of appreciation for what religion does, both, like, in terms of an individual's psychology and happiness, and also, like, the communities that it fosters for people. Like, because I just, that's the biggest thing that I miss when I think about my childhood is, like, I think about the community that my parents had around them. And I'm, frankly, I'm envious.

Like, I don't have that in my life. And most people I know our age don't have that in their lives, right? If you don't mind me asking, what have you replaced religion with in your life? Sorry, that was deep. That was like, I went right for it. It's a great question. It's a great question. The short answer is I think I've replaced it with philosophy.

I've spent most of my adult life reading and thinking about a lot of philosophy and thinking very deeply about what my ethics are and what principles I believe in and what beliefs I have about the universe. But like, I also recognize that I don't necessarily think they're, they're, they're, any better or worse than anybody else's, right? So it's, there may be a little bit more grounded and a little bit more, um,

like logically consistent and challenged, you know, because most of the philosophers, I'm a huge fan of their ideas have been around for centuries. But yeah. I think what philosophy lacks and that I definitely feel like I lack in my life is, um, is that social component,

that community. Ah, right? The ritual of it. Yeah. Um, the practice of it. Like the fact that you know,

like if you're taking communion on Easter, it's like people have been doing this for 2,000 years, right? The exact same thing that you're doing. There's a certain amount of like significance and meaning that comes with that that I don't think you can replicate with like a yoga seminar out in Malibu or, you know. 100% or even a philosophy course, right? Oh, yeah. Reading the classics.

Something you mentioned that surprised me and I would think would maybe surprise other. people listening to this podcast is you saying that there's some dangers potentially around like self-help and seeing that that's like what the topic of your book kind of fits in that category probably like Barnes & Noble it's under that section like I think that's surprising like I'm curious like what what do you think are some of the dangers around self-help and like that kind of phenomenon I do think there are a lot of drawbacks and it's funny because like subtle art was in many ways it was written as a counter argument to a lot of the self-help industry. Like I just,

I felt like there was a lot of bad assumptions and bad behavior going on in the market. And I was, and subtle art was very intentionally kind of a middle finger to it of like, guys, this is nonsense, right? This idea that you can just be happy all the time and, you know, everything's great and awesome. It's like,

no, life doesn't work that way. And in fact, if you try to, if you try to think that way, like you're just going to become this like delusional loony tune. who's completely detached from from reality or this idea that like you can be perfectly internally validated and never worry about what other people think about you like no there's a word for somebody who doesn't care what other people think about them it's called

a psychopath and we don't want to be psychopaths right you want it you should care what your partner thinks about you you should care what your kids think about you like it matters yeah so the question isn't how do you stop caring what people think about you the question is is like who do you care what they think about you and how are you like what are the reasons that you care right because there are good and bad reasons to compare yourself to others if you look at like a role model or a hero or something like it's like yeah you should compare yourself to that person because it's it's inspirational it's it encourages you to to become a better person like a lot of my work is is kind of just pointing out those counter arguments to people in terms of

specifically some of the damage that I see done. The simplest way to put it is that I would say that real happiness is not always pleasant. Real happiness is often difficult, challenging, and painful. And I think what this market promises self-help in general, it kind of, it gets like a drug dealer almost. It gets people hooked on constantly pleasant feelings, right? So it's like, if you do this practice, you'll always feel good. If you meditate this way, you always feel good.

If you just ignore all the people who don't like you, then you'll always feel good. It's actually really encouraging people to become very narcissistic and self-indulgent in the name of being happy or whatever. I often see people who spend a lot of time in this industry become very, very narcissistic in that way. And it's, yeah, it's not good. Since writing the book, it's almost been a decade, which is crazy. Has anything changed as far as the values you have? This question is actually very, like, appropriate because the 10th anniversary is coming up next year, and we're going to do a 10th anniversary edition. So part of that edition is I'm going to give the book a minor revision and kind of go through and decide if there's anything I want to keep or change or expand or whatever or rewrite.

And I haven't done that yet, but like I've kind of gone back and skim through the book. I mean, I will say this, like all the big ideas I stand behind. I still believe I wouldn't really change. any of the macro statements. Most of the stuff that I'm probably going to end up changing are going to be like very minor phrasing and line rewrites. And I just think there's probably better ways to express certain ideas or maybe certain things need a little bit more elaboration and other things maybe, you know,

maybe cut a couple lines out. So that's my expectation. But the short answer is no, I pretty much stand by everything. and especially the radical responsibility piece. Like it's, you know, coming back to what my faith is, right? So, like, the school of philosophy that I identify with is existentialism. And existentialism's, like, core precept is the meaning of your life is what you make of it. We all have a limited amount of time.

And in that limited amount of time, we all have to make choices of how we spend it. And you have no option in that. Like, even if you don't do anything, that is a choice that you're spending your time on not doing anything, right? So it's like at any given moment, you are constantly making a choice of, what to spend your time on, what to spend your attention on, what to put your, your intention behind. Whatever you choose, that is indicative of some sort of prioritization, right? So, you know, the fact that you guys are here, it, like, indicates that you, that this podcast is important to you, that it is a high priority for you, and so you organize other parts of your life around it.

And the fact that you are always making those choices, no matter what, no matter if good things happen to you, bad things happen to you, other people are nice to you, other people horrible to you, you are always making those choices in every single moment. Like what matters to you? What is your priority? There is a responsibility that comes with that. You guys could walk outside of the studio and God forbid, you know, it's like get hit by a car. And it's not your fault that that happens, but it's still your responsibility. You chose to be here. You chose to travel. You've got kids back home. You got to, like, you've got to get better. You got to recover. Like, it's in every moment you have that option to make a choice of what to pay attention to, how to react

to what's happened to you, what you're going to learn for it, what intentions you're going to have. And so there's just this permanent state of responsibility that we all live within. And that's intimidating. It's scary. Like, it's because if you make the wrong choices or you prioritize the wrong things, guess whose fault it is, right? Guess who screwed up. And people don't like to think about that. So we find ways to pretend that it's not our responsibility. We're like, oh, well, it's not my fault. Oh, no, it's, you know, it's the economy. Oh, it's the, that guy is, he's mean to me because he's jealous. Oh, she's an idiot, right? Like it's, we pretend that there are all these things controlling our lives outside of ourselves. And while we are influenced by things

outside of ourselves. It is always ultimately our responsibility to choose in every single moment what matters and what does not. I really resonate with your book. I really resonate with the values that you lay out in it. And something that honestly I didn't expect to happen in my 20s was becoming a dad. Like we just kind of got married young, had kids young. And at first it was like really hard. And I was like, what the frick did I do? This is this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But now it's become the best thing. in my life. Like, there's no, like last night, even though maybe it's a little annoying that I don't get the best sleep right now because my three-year-old is like wanting to sleep in our bedroom

and sometimes sleep in the bed with us because he just gets scared. It is so sweet when I like look over at my kid and he like just says to me and then I like, love you, dad. Like it's just like, it's turned me into, it just like melts my heart that I have this sweet little boy who looks up to me and thinks I'm a superhero, thinks I'm a superhero like the disappointment panda. Maybe a better superhero than disappointment panda. A little more compassionate than disappointment panda. And so, yeah, I guess the question I want to ask you, which if this is too personal, we can completely edit this out.

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And it's, it's interesting because I, I wanted kids for a while and, and we tried for a while. And it kind of didn't happen. And then we kind of reached this point where it's like, okay, if it's going to happen, it's going to be a lot of work.

You know, you're going to have to do the whole harvest the eggs and IVF and all this stuff. And my wife took a look at it and she was like, honestly, this is a lot. you know, she's had health problems over the years, so she's just like, I don't know if I'm up for this. And I realized in that moment, I was like, you know, I could see a version of my life where I'm a dad and it's full of meaning and extremely exciting and interesting and challenging and has a lot of purpose to it.

But I can also see a version of my life without kids and I can see a ton of meaning, a ton of joy, a lot of interesting challenges, a lot of meaningful work. I realized I was like, I was kind of okay with it. kids are, what I have observed is that, you know, there's one of the chapters in subtle art is called happiness is overrated. And I think you could kind of summarize the chapter by saying that happiness is overrated and purpose is underrated, like a sense of meaning or a sense of like a reason to get up in the morning, I think is, is underrated. And the thing about purpose is that it's often unpleasant. It's often hard. You don't sleep well, right? Like, oh, God, your kids having a meltdown again.

And they're like throwing a tantrum and making a mess everywhere. And you're like, ah, this again, right? But it's, even though it's not pleasant, it's meaningful. And I think at the end of the day, people crave meaning more than they crave pleasure. And my observation is that kids are probably the fastest and most direct route to a sense of purpose. even though it's hard, even though there are many days where you're like, oh my God, I'd give anything to just like take off to Fiji or something and like have a week to myself. It's, there is that very intense sense of purpose and meaning that it's very hard to replicate anywhere else. Wow. That's actually really cool that you're saying that because I, like I've just experienced that in my own life.

Yeah. Like, I, not that I want my kid to be, in no way should they feel the weight of like, I've got to make sure my dad's mental health is okay because I'm like, I'm his reason to get up in the morning. But it really has been so good for me to be a dad, especially with like some personal things I've gone through over the past like two years. Right now I'm like getting off antidepressants. And it's like just the whole, the whole dad thing has really brought a purpose of meeting my life that I never thought I would have. That's very interesting, actually. You think those two things are directly related?

The antidepressants and the kids? No, okay, no, no. It wasn't because I had kids that I got on antidepressants. That was like a whole other thing completely outside of it. Oh, actually, yeah, yeah, actually. I feel like I, like right now, one of my purposes in my life is figuring out to be, like, I want to be the best version of myself so that my kids can look up to me. And like, I can be a leader for.

them and they, I don't want to make stupid decisions that might be like fun or exciting in the moment that are then going to like, I don't know, cause damage in life later that like then my kids could look at me and be like, oh yeah, my dad, like my, I hate my dad. He did this. I want to be a good person for my kids to look up to. It's interesting. Like most people assume that depression is kind of a lack of joy or happiness, but it's actually a lack of purpose, right? Oh, like it's 100%. And it's funny because when somebody's depressed, their friends in family are like, you know, let's go get pizza. Let's watch the game. You know, it's like very like kind of little superficial, but it's like really what that person's lacking is just like a deeper, like they need a

reason to get up. Right. It's just like, okay, what, show me something that matters. And so it's interesting that the, that those two things are kind of happening at the same time. The other thing, you know, we were talking earlier about like not caring what other people think. And probably the most common question I get at my events is like people will stand up and they're like, how do I stop giving what other people think. And my answer is always like, you can't. You are always going to care what other people think. The question is, is what do you care about more than what other people think, right? Like, what do you care about more than yourself being liked? What are you willing to be disliked for? And I think another thing that children do for a lot of people is, and maybe this is

true for you, but like, it's often the first thing in their life that they're like, this is more important than me. Like, I will be disliked for this. Right. Like I will, I will, I don't care what people think because I, like, I'm going to do what's right for my kids. I want to talk a little bit. This is kind of going back a little bit. But I think it was really humble of you to talk about how something you envy that your parents had, even though growing up, you're like, I didn't have like necessarily envy their marriage. Right. But you emmed the fact that they like had community and I listened to your podcast on making friends as an adult and it kind of it reminded me of that and I think that's a big conversation today because as you touched on your podcast like I feel like we're getting lonelier and lonelier as people. What's the statistics on it? Do you have it memorized? It's awful. I don't have it off the top of my mind, but it's like awful. Yeah. Like we're like getting lonelier and lonelier and it seems like I feel like a lot of people especially in our age group find themselves lonely maybe for like. some of the first times in their life because like you have all these institutions usually like elementary school middle school high school college and it was like kind of organized for you you can find yourself lonely in those things too but especially like once you're I feel like

college happens you're like dumped and you're like go and then you're all of a sudden maybe in a workplace where you're like not the same age as your co-workers or maybe you're working remotely a lot of you're working from home yeah and so um listening to that podcast was very interesting for me because I would describe you as very logical. Would you say that? Like, why do we do the thing? Why do we have friends? Like, what's the purpose of friendship?

Yeah. Because me, I would say I'm not logical. Matt, would you say that? Uh, I feel like, what do you mean by that? But you're putting on these, he's got like, Jared headlights right now? No, I'm inviting feedback right now. I feel like I go based on like feelings, right? Like, I'm like, oh, this just feels good.

And like, this feels, I don't know. But I feel like your intuition is good, though. Like, I always go to you. I'm like, Abby, what's your take? on this person we just met. And then she'll tell me like how she felt. No, really, I feel like you have a really good read of character. I think you have a good judge of character.

You really do. Thank you. But like a lot of your conversation is around like the purpose of friendship and like why as humans like we have friendship and like largely like a larger community. The like scientific question of why humans have friendships is really fascinating. Because a lot of species don't. A lot of species are not various like the their, everybody's a loner. They don't stay in groups or packs.

Or if they do, it's only families, right? So it's like the humans are quite unique in that we spend a very large percentage of our time with people. And we care very deeply about people who are not related to us. That's relatively rare in the animal kingdom. So when evolutionary biologists and psychologists looked at this, like it was actually quite a big conundrum. And without getting too nerdy into all the math, it really turns out that it's kind of funny. like physically we're, we're pretty mediocre in the animal kingdom. Like, we're most of the other apes and primates are much stronger than us. Most other mammals are faster than us. We don't really

climb very well. We can't run very well. Like, where our eyesight's not great, our sense of smell is not great. Really, the thing that we have is just we have really, really big brains. And those brains allow us to coordinate across lots of people to remember, you know, you did this for me. and so I'm going to do this for you, and you have this sort of reputation. So I'm going to talk to you a certain way and talk to you a different way because of your reputation. That's kind of our superpower in terms of the species. Why did we evolve that? Well, it's interesting because there's, if you think of an insurance company, like really what you're doing is you're pooling risk together.

Let's say you and I are in a tribe with 100 people and we want to go hunt an elephant. And if we catch the elephant, it's going to feed the entire tribe for like a week. But chances are really slim. Like, we're probably, like, 90% chance we're going to fail. Now, if it was just you and me, like, that would be a hugely risky endeavor. We run the risk of starving. We run the risk of our family starving. So you can't really, you don't really have the option to go do it.

But if you have 100 people and let's say 90 of them are like picking berries, and eating shrubs or whatnot, and they're able to cover the food needs of everybody else, then that frees us up to go take a huge risk and go hunt a big elephant and try to find something that's going to have like this huge reward for the group. And so it's kind of this like risk reward calculation within human nature that is the reason that friendships emerge, right? Like it's if you are able to rely on a network of people who care about you and who you've done good things for and you and you trust that they're going to do good things for you, it allows

you to go take bigger risks in life. It allows you to like go start that company or move to that new place or ask out that person that you feel like is out of your league. Because it's like if you get shot down and fail, like you know there are people who are you're still going to get your needs met. In the prehistoric days, it was your physical needs that were still going to be bad. And these days it's your emotional and social needs are still going to be met. It's cliche, but like we are all stronger together. And there is like a very evolutionary and biological proof that the reason we are such a dominant species is because we are social and we are able to rely on each other and build

relationships with each other. So it's like friendship is an unequivocally universally good thing. It's like very much hardwired into our nature. We need friends. It's actually for our mental health and our psychological well-being in many ways it's more important than a romantic relationship. If you take a person who has a romantic relationship but no friends, they're probably going to have much worse health and psychological outcomes than a person who has plenty of friends and no romantic partner. The person with no romantic partner but plenty of friends

is actually probably going to be a very happy, well-adjusted human. The person with a romantic partner and zero friends is not. So it is like so fundamental to our nature. And I just think that gets lost these days. Like people don't, don't, like, I think we just take it for granted. And it's, it's been really interesting to, especially like the last three or four years, because friendship content was like never really a thing in my industry. Like people just, there wasn't much demand for it. But like since the pandemic, it's crazy. It's just like people, people are craving it. And people are showing up and they're like, how do I make a friend? How do I keep a friend? Right? Like, how do I meet more people? I don't like I have nothing to do. I don't know anybody and

It's it's kind of like a very very startling recent trend that is shown up. Yeah. I think it's a good thing too and like the practical application in like today's world like our tribes now like you kind of expanded on later on that podcast is the tip for tat thing. And so what does that look like in today's age? Like is it going first and being like hey like I'm going to show up. for you here or is it like how do people apply that now yeah they're like okay how do we start this this episode is brought to you by square your favorite neighborhood spots run on square i think as a parent we're constantly thinking of ways that we can kind of give our kids a little bit more responsibility independence and honestly household lemonade stand is kind of a staple in a child's life but think about how much more awesome it is with square yes exactly like think about you're seeing a bunch of kids selling lemonade and you're like, oh, I don't have cash on me. Who has cash? But you're like, I got my credit card. And then if they had a square thing, which a lot of kids do now,

like people are getting creative in doing this just like, you know, local restaurants, local coffee shops, all using Square. They could really rack in the lemonade sales. Honestly, I think we're going to use Square when our kids eventually get old enough to run a lemonade stand because then they can take credit card. Hopefully this summer. Square also recently launched a wave of innovative new tools to help local businesses run faster, smarter, and more profitably. A few new features are Square AI and Financial Suite. Square AI brings all your business data to your fingertips for deeper insights and faster decisions right from the Square dashboard. Just ask a question like, what were my top sellers last month, or which day of the week is slowest? You'll get instant

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That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash GO slash unplanned. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. The three factors of friendship are proximity, right? So it's like, are you easily accessible to each other? The second factor is how often you're exposed to them. It's just like pure exposure. How much time do you spend with this person?

And then the third factor is just shared interests, like some sort of shared interest or value. It doesn't even have to be that much. It could just simply be like we work together or we live on the same street. The biggest fact, like the most important of those really is that, that exposure. And if you think of you, you mentioned school, right? Like if you think about when we're growing up, school by its very nature, you are forced into proximity with hundreds of other kids, your exact same age, you have plenty of things in common, you're doing all the same thing at the same time. And then you see each other all day, every day for years. So it's like,

friendship is, it's almost inevitable in a school environment, which is great. Like kids should have. that. And we have that up through college and university, but then, like you said, you get dumped in the real world, and suddenly you are in this highly dynamic environment. Everybody's like running in a different direction, doing their own thing. And nobody's ever explained to you, like, how this is supposed to work, like how you're supposed to make a friend as an adult. And what complicates it even more is that the most common places that people used to make friends, which was church, workplace, and then community, like being neighbors. All three of those things have been like incredibly disrupted over the last 20 years, right?

So church attendance and religiosity is all-time low. Workplace. So I think there was a statistic, I think back in like the 1970s, the average job duration. Like if you took a job at a company, I think on average you would be at that company for nine years. Today, it's less than two years. It's like 18 months, right? So, so people are switching jobs every 18 months. So it's like by the time you even get to know your co-workers, you're like, you're going somewhere else and you're moving on. People change, people move and change cities more often than ever before. And then, of course, people are

working from home. So it's like you're not even seeing your co-workers, much less, like, getting to know them. So it is like all the traditional means of people having proximity and frequent exposure to other people are essentially like removed from our lives in the 2020s. So we just don't even have that that baked in repetition. And it's funny because kind of the conclusion

Drew and I came to on that episode is that I think people overestimate how much you have to have in common with somebody to be friends with them and they underestimate just how much exposure you have to have. Like if you have two people who are like really just like have some basic commonalities, Like we both like to watch football and play golf.

But you put us in the same room for 50 days in a row. We'll probably become friends. Whereas like, I think people these days, they're like, oh, no, they, like, we have to have everything in common and have the same beliefs and values and want to do the same things and be able to travel together and all this stuff. And it's like, no, most of that stuff actually doesn't even matter. Our friend group that we've essentially developed over the past year is really just built off of the, women that Abby works out with at the gym. And they all happen to work out at a gym where there's free child care. So all these moms can bring their kids.

And we all have kids the same age. And then the dads, we've all become friends too. So now we hang out. And then our kids started playing on a soccer team together. And so now we've kind of like entered this stage of life where, you know, in a way, I guess the moms first banded together. But like our kids friends, like our friends are the parents of our kids friends. Well, we kind of orchestrated that because they're two and three.

Yeah. But actually that episode had me thinking because you brought up how what can disrupt a friendship is if someone, like, you're going to say this so much better than me. But if someone, correct me if I'm wrong. It has like perceived higher success than the other person. It can go either way. Correct. And so I was like, then you talked about the things like whatever that's measured in. You gave the example of like someone that plays professional golf.

if someone makes it big, all of a sudden. And that was like how you deemed yourself successful at life. You can't hardly be friends with them at that point. And so it had me then like deep diving, like, what is it that we all are measuring as success that just happens to be aligned? But I think that's very interesting. And that's the other thing I think that complicates all of this, right? So if you think back to when you're in high school or college, everybody's on the same level. Yeah.

Like everybody's, you're the same age. You have no life experience. you're broke, your whole future's in front of you. So like, there's like zero status. You all have no money. Yeah, like there's no measurement going on. Like nobody's, nobody's decisions and choices are being worn on their sleeve. Like that's the thing that changes.

Once you hit 30 or 40, everybody's decisions are now being worn on their sleeve. Like, you can see how things turned out for them. And if you are somebody who cares a lot about something, like let's say you are somebody who wants to make a lot of money. And suddenly some of the guys you went to high school with are. making more than you, like, that gets weird. And, and there starts to be like this weird jealousy or feeling or, you know, or it's, and it can be about anything. Like it's, it can be, you know, one person, in the episode, I used golf, but like, it could be like somebody who, um, you know,

really wanted to want to have a bunch of kids and then didn't have kids, right? And then it's like their best friend has a bunch of kids. And it now it gets weird because it's, everybody measures themselves with an internal yardstick. And so if you start seeing yourself fall behind on that yardstick to the people around you, you get insecure. And that starts complicating everything. Have you- Almost like a fourth factor? Yeah. From the people that you've spoken to about purpose and life, have you noticed more of a common trend in life satisfaction with people having friends or people that, like you said

earlier, are parents? Because you said something about how having kids brings, you know, a purpose and meaning to life for a lot of people. So in psychology, the psychological literature itself, psychologists measure quality of life on three different metrics. So the first one is basically just a consistent sentiment. Like, how are you feeling day to day? Are you generally happy? Do you feel good or like things going well? It's very short term. It's kind of like more, it's mostly pleasure, right? Yeah. Like, are you happy today? Scale from one to 10? And you're like, yeah, I had pizza and watched a good movie. Like, sure, I'm a nine, you know? And it's that's kind of the most superficial metric and it's interesting because a lot of happiness

research quote unquote is based on that very um short term sentiment based metric um so so there's like some famous research that says that actually kids make people miserable and it's well yeah because they measured them on that like short term like how are you feeling today i was scoffer one to 10 right and it's like well i i slept three hours last night and the baby's crying again so i'm a three yeah Thank you very much. If you see that viral chaparone clip from her on, call her daddy where she's like, all my friends with kids are miserable.

Yes. Yep. So, I mean, it's true. Like, I mean, you guys know it's like that first year is hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's that metric, right? And then there's a second metric, which is life satisfaction. Generally, the question they ask in the surveys is, on a scale from 1 to 10,

with 10 being the best possible life you can imagine for yourself, like, where are you right now? Most people say around a seven. That's kind of like a medium term metric just because generally, like, if somebody's asking you, you know, how good is your life in general? How good do you feel about your decisions? Chances are you're mostly thinking about probably the last five or ten years and maybe the next five years. I understand that is a long time, but like it can get much larger. So the third metric is that's the purpose and median metric. So it's like, Do you feel like how much purpose or meaning do you feel like you have in your life? Generally, the best way to think about that is like if you died, how much do you feel like

you're leaving to the world? Like how much of an impact do you think you've had on the world, the universe? That's so deep. What legacy are you leaving, right? And that's why kids are so powerful, right? Because it's like even if something happens to you, you know that they're going to live on and that you've like major imprint on them and they're going to go on and do things that you can't even imagine and that's just like such a deep level of meaning and profundity that like you can't really match that

with um it's a completely different scale or measurement right so it's it's funny generally you ask about parents versus friendships yeah so parents uh generally they score low on those first the first metric for sure. They're like, I need sleep. And oh my God, if my six-year-old doesn't stop talking about dinosaurs, I'm going to like jump out of a window. But if you ask them about purpose, they're like, no, I feel a lot of purpose and meaning. Like it's, no, I feel like, I feel like everyday matters. Whereas if you ask somebody, say, with a lot of friends or a really fun social life, generally

they'll score much higher on those first two measures, right? So they're like, yeah, I'm having a great time. I just had this great trip, you know, went surfing with my friends. And they may even score, you know, they generally score higher on life satisfaction as well. But, you know, purpose and meaning is a deeper, longer term thing that it's really hard to access, I think. It's like very few things get at it. I really think it's like career, family, religion. And like, the list isn't much longer than that.

as someone that is not having kids and, you know, probably at this point won't be having kids from what we talked about, how do you fill in that gap in your life? Where do you drive that purpose and meaning that a lot of people get from having children from in your own life? For me, it's very much my career. I find my work extremely meaningful and I find a lot of purpose in it. And when it was clear that we weren't going to have kids, like, I kind of looked at my life and I'm like, all right, I was just, just given a massive amount of time over the next 18 years, right? Because it's, there's all this time that most people are going to be spending, raising kids, time and energy that like, I'm going to have that for myself, right? So I ask myself, I'm like, what is meaningful that I can invest this into? That legacy question. Like, what can I leave behind that's going to be impactful? And for me, like, the simplest answer is work. So I mean, I'm already, I've always, I've always

who's been a little bit of a workaholic, but like, I mean, it's, it's been much more conscious the last few years of like, hey, I've got a great thing going and I have, I'm like in a very privileged and fortunate position to have this platform and have this audience and have this skill set and this knowledge. And so I'm just going to work my ass off to make the most of it and try to like leave the world a better place. If you could sum it all up, is that the legacy you want to leave is just leaving this world whenever you die, whenever that happens, you want to leave it better than you found it? Is that kind of how you'd sum it up? Yeah, in a nutshell. Thank you to Nutraful for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. It is the new year. We are making a lot of promises

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to your friends. That's really sweet. I truly, truly believe in it. I think you're a sweetheart. Nutraful's hair growth supplements are peer-reviewed, NSF certified for sport and clinically tested to measure improvements in growth, quality, and strength. See, thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutraful. For a limited time, Nutraful is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter promo code unplanned pod. Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code, unplanned pod. That's Nudraful.com promo code unplanned pod. Have you ever seen someone die? That was a really weird question. You talk about death a lot,

which I think is cool. Like, it's a scary topic, but like, dude, I was, it was super late at night. I was actually listening to your book on Audible. And I, like, had this random thought pop into my head of I kind of want to like experience seeing like me I don't know if it's like an old person or a family friend or what but like I want to experience one's final moments like as weird as that is because I feel like you'd give so much perspective and I don't know I hope that I'm not alone when I die one day that would be really sad to be like literally by yourself in a hospital room no one's there and you're like all right peace out world like I don't know have Have you ever, is that something that you want to experience or have experienced?

These things that Matt Howard. You talk about death a lot, right? I do talk about death a lot. I think it's the first line in the trailer for the movie. Yes. Says you're going to die. Yes. Well, it's been, so I think one of the things that is maybe a little bit unique in my life,

I think I was exposed to a lot of death inadvertently, like at a young age. So I lost all of my grandparents by the time I was 14 or 15. I had two classmates die in high school. I had one of my closest friends die first year of college. And that one I was there. By the time I was 20, I'd basically been around or had like five or six people I like really cared about. Holy cow. Who had died.

Which, you know, when you're young, like, you don't realize these things are not normal. Yeah. But it I think it did make me think about this a lot a lot more especially a lot more than most young people I think also part of what drew me to Buddhism is that Buddhism is very they talk very bluntly about death quite a bit There like there is no afterlife in Buddhism so you know it is it's in Buddhism life is just an illusion And actually death is like kind of it like a cessation of the illusion right and in Buddhism Buddhism, they say that meditation is you are practicing how to die by relinquishing all of your thoughts and all of your attachments. Whoa. I've never heard that before. Yeah, it's pretty intense.

And it's crazy too. So the Buddhist center that I studied at when I was in college, one of my meditation teachers, her specialty, I forget what it's called, but there's like a certain name for it. But her specialty is like she like helps people die so she would go to hospitals and like offer her services like you know of like basically go to the whatever the part of the hospital is where people are where people are dying and she would go from patient to patient and essentially offer services say like hey I specialize like you know I can help you peacefully go and like be at peace with it and there are all sorts of like meditations and chance and stuff that she would do with people you know like thought exercises like help them relinquish, like let go and like be okay with it.

So it's like hardcore. Yeah. No, that's scary. You know, like my brain right now is like fighting between like thinking intellectually about this and then like the deep fear that I think I and probably so many other people have of like death is a really freaking scary thing. Yeah. I mean, she was hardcore.

I remember when she told me about it, I was like, I have so much respect for you. holy crap like anybody who can do that and like I mean it's just like a voluntary service right like you know she just go to go to the hospital on a Wednesday night and be like all right who's dying let me go let me go hold her hand she would volunteer to do that yeah it's a sacred thing in in like Buddhist theology that like that passing from this life it's like a very special moment and and obviously it's scary and like everybody recognizes that it's really scary and so there's, you know, in that world, there's a lot of value and importance and just, like, helping people through the process.

That got, like, really deep. Thank you for sharing that. So maybe we, maybe we, like, don't talk about something. Yeah, I was going to talk about marriage. Yeah, can we talk about marriage? You're a married guy. You love... Death and marriage.

You seem to love being married. Speaking of death. Let's rewind a little bit. I was chatting. I was chatting to some people on your team and they seem to think that like you have a really happy, healthy marriage. No, this is a really cool. You should know this. They were like saying that you and your wife have like one of the sweetest marriages that they've witnessed.

That's cute. So that's a really high compliment. Yeah. And I saw on one of your like most popular reels is about marriage being a long conversation. Yeah. Like finding a good partner has like can you talk about that a little bit? That's a, so there's a great quote from Nietzsche who ironically was never married. Are many philosophers married?

A lot of them were not. Yeah, I kind of feel like they weren't. Yeah. They're in their thoughts a lot. Does that make being married hard because you're like a philosopher and yeah, I don't know. I mean, you're probably hard to be around. You're probably hard to be around. If you're that smart and that philosophical, just like analyzing everything all the time, I could see how you'd be annoying to be around.

But yeah, no, Nietzsche has this amazing quote where he said that he said marriage is a long conversation. So be sure that you're marrying somebody you want to you'll never get tired of talking to And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that because it's pretty much like almost anything You want or like or desire in a partner It's probably temporary to some extent, right? It's like everything Comes and goes People are there's going to be good times. There's going to be bad times. There's going to be hard times. There's going to be easy times. There's going to be like times where things are going super well for your partner and bad for you and times that things are

going great for you and bad for your partner there's going to be health problems psychological problems aging problems family problems social problems like all this stuff is going to happen and what i take his quote to mean is just that like as long as you inherently in love the communication you have with each other then nothing else matters you can you can kind of ride the way of anything that happens, anything that comes and goes. And it's really, I think at the core of like a good marriage is, is a really, really strong friendship, just a genuine satisfaction of being together and just talking to each other.

Because as long as you have that communication, like everything else is kind of figure outable, I think. I think on one of your clips you mentioned dating apps and how like a lot of them, are maybe counterproductive to like what people want to do because it's like these filters that you're putting on aren't long term going to suit you when it comes to like finding that like lifelong friendship that marriage requires and um did you meet your wife on a dating yet or how did it still work it's really funny because uh we met so we met in 2012 tender came out like six months later okay and it was funny because when tender came out like it was such an exciting thing like it never existed before right? So it's like, it was just this new novel thing and all of our friends were using it and they're like, oh my God, this is crazy. I'm getting so many dates. And I remember when my wife and I were dating and we kind of joked, we're like, do you want to take like a month break so we can like try this Tinder thing like? We used to joke about it. And now, I mean, within a few years,

we're like, oh my God, thank God we met before the apps were around because it's just, it's so hard out there now. And it's it, I think they've, they've actually been very counterproductive. And I think the reason why is, I don't think people actually have an accurate sense of what is going to make them happy with a partner. In fact, I know people don't have an accurate sense. And I also like, there's research that backs this up. Like if you, if you actually take people's criteria for what they want in a partner and give it to them, like they're not, it's not predictive at all of like how much you actually gel with the person or how attracted you end up being to the person. We don't know our own types. We don't. We really don't because so much of it is happening unconsciously. It's happening at an emotional level and so much of it is just like it's very intangible. It's like a chemistry that you can't really describe. You just feel it when it's there. And I just know this too from my own experience. I don't know about when you guys met, but like there are multiple girls that I dated or like girlfriends that I had that when I first met him, I was just like, eh. You know, but then it's like you spend more time with them. You hang out with them and you're like, oh, she's kind of cute. And like, and then you see her again. You're like, and then you see her again. You're like, you're like, you know,

like, okay, yeah, no, that's, I'm actually, I'm kind of into her, right? And it like, it like grows and evolves over time. Like, when I think about my girlfriend from, from college, like, I never would have picked her on a dating app. We had a great two, three year relationship. She was, like, hugely impactful on my life. Never would have picked her on a dating app. And it's funny, too, because when, when my wife and I met, she, she initially shot me down. It's, it's something to that, I feel like. There really is. There really is. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I thought you should know that compliment from your team. That is very nice. Because, you know, they see you guys probably a lot.

And not necessarily in romantic environments and work. But so that's really sweet. My wife's awesome. And, yeah, feel very good about my marriage. What's been something about marriage that you've learned recently or something that kind of surprised you? It's a good question. You know, marriage has this reputation that things get dull and repetitive. And I think when we were younger or maybe when we had just.

gotten married. We were a little bit worried about that. We're like, no, we're never like, we're going to keep things fun and interesting. We're going to do cool things together and all this. And it's funny because like now we're in our 40s and it has gotten kind of dull and repetitive, but we're still happy. Like that's the funny thing is, is she and I talk sometimes. We're like, we've become kind of boring, but like we're just as happy as we always were. That's really sweet. And in a way, it's even better, right? Because it's like, okay, if I can still be happy, like, literally just sitting on the couch all day with her, reading a book, like, awesome. Who needs to go to Mexico or like go to a concert or whatever?

You talked about this, but like love versus romance. I feel like there's like an application here too. Yeah. And it's interesting, too. This came up when we were doing our podcast episode on happiness. I thought it was really interesting that happiness is very cultural. Like it's different cultures have kind of a different perspective. or definition of it.

One of the things that came up was that, generally speaking, Western cultures associate happiness with excitement and, like, peak experiences. You know, if you kind of ask an American or a European, like, what's a really happy moment from the last year, they're probably going to say something like, oh, I went to this amazing show or... Disney. Yeah, yeah, I went to Disney World or I, you know, my best friend surprised me with, you know, a party or whatever.

in eastern cultures it's they associate happiness with peace and calm so if you ask like somebody from china or japan like what is the happiest moment recently you know it's it's probably going to be like oh i i woke up on a saturday morning and and uh you know knitted for four hours like and it was very it was beautiful outside you know it's like it's something serene and calm and i i feel like there's something to that with romance as well like i think the western notion of romance is like, it's like very dramatic and it's very exciting, so much passion and all this stuff. But like my experience with my wife is that actually like real deep love is, it's peaceful. It's just, and it's kind of dull.

Like it's very, it's simple. It's very, very simple. Like on the people, if people could see us from the outside, they'd be like, wow, those two are boring. But like, when on the inside, like, we're just, we're just happy. It's just very satisfying. That, like, togetherness. How do you avoid the trap of keeping score in your marriage? The scorecard, yeah, one of the, one of the, something I've been writing about for a long time.

The scorecard in any relationship is just death. Like, a simple way to put it is that, like, if you, if you're keeping score in a relationship, you're both going to lose, right? Like you just have to understand that the score doesn't matter. And over a long enough period of time, it's going to even out. Right. And there's going to be days and months and years where like one of you's not showing up as well as the other. And it doesn't matter. Like, because there's going to be another time where the other person is not showing up for a day or month or a year.

So it's really like that that isn't the say like let yourself be taken advantage of. it just means like don't hold on the things. Don't, don't like, don't use things as a way to bludgeon your partner, right? It's like if he screwed up last month, like don't hold that over him when the next argument happens or vice versa. As soon as you start introducing a power dynamic into a relationship like that, like it is, it is the opposite of intimacy. Like intimacy in many ways is just it's the opposite of a power struggle. Yeah, because it's almost like you're viewing yourself. was like two individuals whereas like if you're not keeping scores like us as a unit accomplish

this yeah yeah versus like I did this and you did this yeah yeah you can either play on the same team or play against each other so it's it's always make sure you're on I have a friend a friend of mine uh she described it as like make sure you're on the same side of the net right so it's like you can play tennis as doubles or you can play tennis against each other like make sure you're on the same side of the net when you're fighting before you got married did you guys date for a certain amount of years or how long did you wait to, I don't know if you like waited to move in together until you got married. Like how did you navigate all of that? We dated for three and a half years. Well, no, four years. No, four and a half years. I think I proposed to her after three and a half.

Okay. We met, so she's Brazilian. I met her in Brazil. That's so dope. And it's been a few months there. We dated. I left. We kept in touch. She visited me. I went and visited her. And then about six months later, I was like, oh, my God, I think I need to move to Brazil. Did you move to Brazil? It did move to Brazil. No way. Yeah. So I lived there for two years. She moved in probably about after a year, year and a half. So the big thing was we wanted to travel the world together. Like back then I was, you know, my business was online. So I was. You know, my business was online. So I was. was like, it was pretty, I was pretty flexible. I could like go live in different places and travel quite a bit. So that's kind of what made it possible. Nice. But it was also clear, like, I couldn't stay there forever. Beasas expire and all sorts of stuff. And, and also I didn't want to live in Brazil forever. So we kind of agreed that we would, we would travel together at a certain point.

She would take a sabbatical from her job and we would do like a little round the world trip. And she was very practical and smart. And she was like, you know, If we're going to travel the world together, we should probably live together first before we travel. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's actually really smart. So the second year that I was in Brazil, she moved in. And honestly, like, it was pretty seamless. It wasn't a huge deal. Honestly, the big thing for me personally, like, I had a huge hang up about proposing.

I was, like, super nervous about it and had a lot of resistance and anxiety around it. it wasn't entirely rational like it was i don't know i think it comes back to being too philosophical like i was just like analyzing it too much yeah and uh and it was funny because we had been together for almost four years she definitely wanted to get married and it was like dropping lots of hints and uh and my parents also wanted like they were like dude when are you gonna put a fucking ring on it and and i was just agonizing i'm like oh i don't know if it's she like how do i know and is she really the one and all this stuff. I remember I was talking to my dad and my stepmom one night,

and they were kind of getting on my case about not proposing. And I said exactly that. I'm like, you know, I love her. Everything's great. We're happy together. But like, how do I know I'm going to want to be with her for the rest of my life? And my stepmom just, like, looked at me. Like, I was just the biggest idiot she had ever seen in her life.

And she was like, Mark Manson, I've been with your dad for 27 years. I still don't know if I'm not. I want to be with him for the rest of my life. She's like, just by the ring. It's the intention. Like, stop being an idiot. I was like, okay, yeah, that's actually, there's a lot of wisdom. There's a lot of wisdom.

That's awesome. You have just launched an app. So to back up and kind of set context for this, I was supposed to write another book this year and I was going to. And what I noticed starting last year is like everybody in my life was like going to chat G.B.T. to like get advice and ask life questions. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. Like, let me play around with it. And so I started messing with it. And like, it's okay. Like sometimes it does well. But like, as you guys probably know, the problem with chat

GPT is it just kisses your ass all the time. It's like you could say anything to it. And it's like, oh, that's brilliant. Oh my God. That's amazing. What a great question. You know, I could go to it and I'm like, hey, I'm the queen of France. Like, how do I rule my kingdom? And it's like, oh, look at you. Good for you. Let's talk about your kingdom. There's no, like, tethering to reality. And I think when it comes to actually pushing yourself and learning and growing, you need people who are going to call you out, who are going to, like, point out like, hey, like, that might be a bad assumption or have you thought about it this way?

Or have you noticed that you say this, but your behavior is not matching that? What's up with that, right? Like, you need somebody to kind of compassionately push you and challenge you. I kind of became, like, obsessed with this problem. And I eventually met my co-founder who's built a number of AI companies and talked to them about it. And we're like, yeah, this needs to exist. Because it's literally hundreds of millions of people are going to chat GPT. They're asking for life advice.

They're probably not getting great life advice. Right. So it's like if people are going to do this, there should be something on the market that is actually designed for this use case. Yeah. And so that's why we created the app. It's called Purpose. It has a free trial. And the onboarding assessment.

it like basically gives you like a personality report. My goal with it is that it like reads your soul in like five minutes and it's it's pretty spooky. Gotten tons of emails from people that are like, it's crazy how fast it pointed this out to me. It's like totally saw through all of my BS and pinpointed what my issue is like within minutes. So it is, I think AI when it's leveraged really well can be extremely powerful. And that's been the goal and basically the goal is to just have that. that tool available for as many people as possible.

That's really cool. Yeah. I'm excited to see how it like changes over the years. I mean, yeah, I've even, even just using like a non-niche AI like that, it's already been helpful for me. So I'm excited to try out purpose and kind of see what it like discovery. Like how it read my soul. Did disappointment panda have anything to do with the purpose, the purpose tap?

It's definitely, his spirit is definitely in it. It's funny, too, because some of my fans have, like, messaged me and they're like, oh, this is like disappointment. It's funny. It can be a little harsh sometimes, but it's, I do think it is, ultimately the goal of it is to tell you the things that you need to hear but don't necessarily want to hear and point out some gaps and blind spots in each of us because we all have them. I love it. I love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for your time. everyone go check out Mark's new app purpose i think it's available now right it's available now purpose

purpose dot app uh and then i'm everywhere so solve podcast episodes every week and then we have or almost every week and then go mark manson dot net that newsletter i'm on i'm on everywhere good for you man that's that's awesome well i clearly your your work is impacting so many people clearly it's it's yeah it's it's meaningful to millions people out there so thank you for what you're doing um And this was a great conversation. Yeah, thanks for sitting down with us. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Mark.