19 Raw Lessons You Might Need To Learn Again - Mark Manson (4K)

Mark Manson 0:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:03 What you laughing at, Mark?

Mark Manson 0:06 Your, your business idea, it was just incredible. I'm-

Chris Williamson 0:08 Oh, thank you.

Mark Manson 0:09 Yeah, I'm still thinking about it.

Chris Williamson 0:10 It's, I'm unable to speak about my million, billion-dollar idea yet.

Mark Manson 0:14 (laughs) Yeah, it's w- is that because you don't want anybody to steal it, or because yo- you would never be allowed to speak again?

Chris Williamson 0:20 Uh, it's a combination of both.

Mark Manson 0:21 Okay.

Chris Williamson 0:22 But look, uh-

Mark Manson 0:24 The world will wait.

Chris Williamson 0:25 The world is gonna have to wait.

Mark Manson 0:26 Yeah, and then it-

Chris Williamson 0:26 But when it happens, it's gonna know about it. And Andrew Huberman is as well.

Mark Manson 0:29 Yes. For sure.

Chris Williamson 0:31 All right. Controversial opinion.

Mark Manson 0:34 Okay.

Chris Williamson 0:35 People would need less therapy if they tolerated fewer assholes.

Mark Manson 0:38 (laughs) Yeah, I think... What, so I hear, I hear problems from a lot of people. I get a lot of emails. Um, and I have for a long, for almost 20 years now. And, uh, it's amazing to me how often people will, will email me or message me about some issue that's going on in their life, and really, it just comes down to, like, somebody in your life is a dick. And yet instead of just being like, "You know what? I'm not gonna hang out with a dick anymore," and gonna try to change their dickishness. I'm gonna try to, to manipulate it or control it or convince them or h- have them see the light and understand their own dickitude. And it's, it's just, like, such a losing battle, and of course they always, you know, the, the, the email that comes in is, like eight pages long and it has a full biography of every, every party involved. And I'm just like, "Well, what?" Maybe just, like, don't call them back. Like, is it that hard? Um, so I, I, I just... And, and, and when you, when... This doesn't even get into the therapy culture thing, you know, like w- especially when you get on Instagram and you start seeing all these posts about, you know, like, uh, um, you know, "If they don't, if they don't appreciate you at your worst, then they don't deserve you at your best," and all... You know, it's like, life's hard. People don't get along. Like, some people are, are disagreeable and some people are going through shit, and they'll say mean things to you, and... Like, at a certain point, you just, there's a skill set of deciding what is acceptable and what's not acceptable in your life.

Chris Williamson 2:12 Mm.

Mark Manson 2:12 And you can either develop that skill set or you can just continue to be subjected to the whims and the asshole-nish of, of the people around you.

Chris Williamson 2:22 What do you think are the contributing skills of that skill set?

Mark Manson 2:27 So I think, I think one reason people get stuck in this is, like, uh, one is just a scarcity mindset around relationships, right? So you often hear scarcity mindset around, like, business and money and all this stuff, and all that stuff is true, but, like, a lot of people have a scarcity mindset around relationships. They think like, "Oh, if I stop hanging out with half my friends, then I'm just never gonna have friends again," where it's like, no, there's an abundance of people in the world, and the way life works is that when somebody exits your life, generally, somebody new will show up in due time to, to kinda fill that role. Um, so I think that's one. I think two is just, like, the courage to speak up or the s- the courage to stand up for yourself. Uh, a lot of people don't feel, um... I don't know what the word is, like that they have permission to, like, express what they feel or express that they feel that they've, they've been disrespected. Um, and I, I also think that a lot of people develop some sort of, like, uh, codependent emotional attachment to, to people around them, right? They, they've, they've, their self-esteem is lodged in the minds and mentalities of others, and so-

Chris Williamson 3:36 If you're not okay, I'm not okay.

Mark Manson 3:38 Exactly. And so the idea of, like, excising you from my life is, is literally like psychological suicide.

Chris Williamson 3:45 I'm killing myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Manson 3:46 Exactly. So it's just not even an option that occurs to them. Um, so yeah. It's like, it's such a simple thing, yet so many people struggle so deeply with it, which, I mean, I sometimes joke with my team that, like, my whole job is just, uh, uh, telling people obvious things, uh, in a way that, like, doesn't feel so difficult, because, like most life problems are actually extremely simple and basic, you know?

Chris Williamson 4:12 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 4:12 It's like, uh, "H- how do you, how do you break up with somebody?" It's like, "Well, you just say, like, 'I, I don't wanna be with you anymore,'" but, like, that is so emotionally hard-

Chris Williamson 4:22 Hmm.

Mark Manson 4:22 ... and painful.

Chris Williamson 4:23 Hmm.

Mark Manson 4:23 And... You know, most, most of these life issues, uh, that I deal with or that, that I write about, it's just, it's extremely simple actions that are laden with so much emotional... attachments and-

Chris Williamson 4:36 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 4:36 ... and neuroticism around it.

Chris Williamson 4:38 It clouds your ability to see just how simple the problem is.

Mark Manson 4:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:42 I think, uh, with the breaking up with someone thing, h- how many times in history, what, what percentage of breakups have used the sentence, "I just don't want to be with you anymore?" That sounds so fucking unsophisticated.

Mark Manson 4:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:57 It sounds so shallow. It sounds flippant.

Mark Manson 5:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:01 Uh, it's blase. Um, it, it's, it's, uh, not very empathetic. Um, i- if you are, uh, I- if you've got even a fucking hint of scarcity mindset or uncertainty about your future and you say to somebody, "I just don't want to be with you anymore," there's this fear of karmic retribution.

Mark Manson 5:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:18 You're like, "Oh, the universe is gonna come and get me. I didn't have... It wasn't because b- b- the... I worked until my health fucking fell apart and then, and then Mum, I needed to g- help my mother with her th-" I, you know, you need this-

Mark Manson 5:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:30 ... cosmic weight of justification, as opposed to your offering of love is simply just not what I want now.

Mark Manson 5:41 Well, i- th- the irony here too is that generally people who are in bad relationships or, like, unhealthy relationships, one of the reasons they're unhealthy is that there's a running scorecard that's going on. So there's this, like, running tally in each person's head of like, "Well, I did this thing for you, and I did this other thing for you, and you never did this thing for me, and when I was here, like, you weren't, you weren't there to support me," and, like, th- there's just, like, a scoreboard that's always being calculated.

Chris Williamson 6:06 Hmm.

Mark Manson 6:06 And...... what those people don't realize is that it's the scoreboard itself that is the problem. It's not-

Chris Williamson 6:12 Hmm.

Mark Manson 6:12 ... that one person is, like, quote unquote winning or losing. And so I think when it comes time to, like, somebody's, like, wants to break up or wants to end a friendship or, you know, stop speaking to a family member or whatever, they're thinking of it in terms of the scoreboard. They're like, "Well, I just need to show this person that my score... Like, I'm winning the scoreboard right now, and if they un-"

Chris Williamson 6:34 Because I'm justified in my departure.

Mark Manson 6:35 Exactly. So if they understand that, then they'll, they'll understand why I'm, like, not gonna be their friend anymore. And it's like, well, no, dude, like, the scoreboard's actually the problem in the fir-... Like, the fact that you feel a need to keep score in the first place means it's a shitty friendship.

Chris Williamson 6:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I am also concerned about the, uh, therapy language culture.

Mark Manson 6:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:56 The self-pathologization-

Mark Manson 6:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:59 ... on Instagram that somebody wasn't mean to you, they were narcissistic, that this wasn't a bad experience, it's caused you trauma, that you're not sad, you've got depression. Uh, and in other ways, you think, well, fuck me, it wasn't that long ago that men and maybe women, too, were just totally in fucking denial-

Mark Manson 7:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:19 ... of any mental health issues, so it, it seems like we're incapable of sitting in some nice gray area of good balance in the middle that we can just go from, "No, no, everything's fine." Or, you know, "We'll work until I get PTSD," or, uh, even the most sort of micro displeasure is a, a huge supernova event.

Mark Manson 7:39 Yeah. I, I actually... I forget where I read it, but I read, uh... It was actually in a research paper, um, where a psychologist at the APA was talking about how he believed that simultaneously people were both, uh, underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. And, and the way he explained it is he was like, there's a population of, say, people with depression and anxiety, and within that population of people with, uh, depression and anxiety, not enough of them are being diagnosed. Like the majority of them are not diagnosed.

Chris Williamson 8:13 Hmm.

Mark Manson 8:14 But then if you look at the circle of people who are being diagnosed-

Chris Williamson 8:17 Many of them do not have depression and anxiety. (laughs)

Mark Manson 8:19 Exactly. (laughs) Exactly.

Chris Williamson 8:20 (laughs)

Mark Manson 8:20 So there's just like-

Chris Williamson 8:21 (laughs)

Mark Manson 8:21 ... there's, like, this Venn diagram of, like, people who are diagnosed and people who actually have the thing, and there's only a little bit of overlap going on between them.

Chris Williamson 8:27 Wow.

Mark Manson 8:28 It's-

Chris Williamson 8:28 Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, dude, I, uh, I think the courage to say to yourself, "My needs or my wants are legitimate-"

Mark Manson 8:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:41 ... is a oddly skill set, 'cause we would think... We're often told about how people aren't that pro-social. They often put themselves ahead of others.

Mark Manson 8:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:49 And in some ways, in certain situations, perhaps to strangers, uh, uh, perhaps to people that we can't see or don't see in certain ways, um, you know, we can cut in line of s- s- somebody at a traffic junction or we can, uh, you know, be- get more creative with our taxes than we should do or, you know... Obviously, not something that I do. Um...

Mark Manson 9:11 (laughs) Cut that.

Chris Williamson 9:13 Yeah, the- well the I-

Mark Manson 9:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:14 ... the- I- I am, I am under the scrutiny of the IRS now, but you know. Uh-

Mark Manson 9:19 You know, we could talk... I've been there. Uh, we could talk about that.

Chris Williamson 9:21 Oh.

Mark Manson 9:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:22 Well, okay, I need to know about this. What happened?

Mark Manson 9:24 Oh, I've been audited three times, yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:26 You've been audited. So that means that some guy with a pencil and a-

Mark Manson 9:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:30 ... a pad and paper comes in and looks at every receipt, every everything?

Mark Manson 9:34 W- okay, so, uh, it's the, uh, principally, yes. Uh, in practicality, no. Um, see, when I got audited, just a little backstory on my career, uh, I had hit... For people listening, I had a hit book. It went absolutely supernova. You know, so my income basically, like, 100Xed in, like, two or three years, which obviously tripped some red flags at the IRS. Uh-

Chris Williamson 10:00 What'd they think you were doing?

Mark Manson 10:01 I don't know. I... Like, well, and then there's all the... You get into all this weird stuff about, like, uh, you know, territories, right? Like, so it's like royalties are taxed differently in different states.

Chris Williamson 10:10 Oh, how many books did you sell in the United Arab Emirates? And, and how much was in Hawaii versus-

Mark Manson 10:15 Exa- Texas.

Chris Williamson 10:16 ... f- Idaho?

Mark Manson 10:16 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 10:16 Yeah.

Mark Manson 10:17 So it's- it's like... There's a lot of bullshit like that. But, um... So when the- the initial audits came in, I was absolutely terrified, right? 'Cause it's like, "This is my worst nightmare. Um, this is gonna be awful." And then after the first call with the IRS agent, I remembered something, like, very fortuitous, which was that, uh, government employees have no fucking clue what they're doing.

Chris Williamson 10:39 (laughs)

Mark Manson 10:39 And (laughs) so, so the- the- the audit, like-

Chris Williamson 10:45 I- just for anybody else that's still listening from the IRS, so all of the people from the IRS, I don't think that at all.

Mark Manson 10:50 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:51 That was a sentence that Mark said. I think that you're perfectly competent-

Mark Manson 10:54 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:54 ... and really should, should apply your resources, your very well-resourced resources, uh, outside of this room.

Mark Manson 11:01 Yeah. Uh, I must've just gotten the one bad one.

Chris Williamson 11:03 Yep.

Mark Manson 11:03 I'm sure.

Chris Williamson 11:04 Yep.

Mark Manson 11:04 I'm sure.

Chris Williamson 11:04 Yep.

Mark Manson 11:04 But, um, yeah, they didn't look at anything. And actually, hilariously, the error, the, uh... They found an error that my old CPA made and it worked in my favor. So I actually profited from my IRS audits.

Chris Williamson 11:18 All three of them?

Mark Manson 11:18 All three of them.

Chris Williamson 11:19 Wow.

Mark Manson 11:19 I made, like, almost 200K from my IRS audits.

Chris Williamson 11:23 Let's fucking go. Thank you, IRS.

Mark Manson 11:24 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:25 Wow. Actually, maybe I should be audited.

Mark Manson 11:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:26 Um-

Mark Manson 11:27 Audit me more. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:28 Yeah. Um,

Chris Williamson 11:29 okay, but we do things, uh, to people that we don't know. Um, we often put ourselves ahead of them.

Mark Manson 11:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:35 However, it seems like with the people who should have our best interests at heart-

Mark Manson 11:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:41 ... and people with whom we have given the most of ourselves, invested our time, our energy, um, it's very difficult to put ourselves first.

Mark Manson 11:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:52 Uh, we often subjugate our needs in place of somebody else. I'm not going to upset them-

Mark Manson 11:58 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:59 ... because, uh, if, if I upset them, that something.

Mark Manson 12:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:02 Th- the- the- what they- the fucking sentence, the syntax stops there.

Mark Manson 12:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:06 Just falls off a cliff. If I upset them, then catastrophe, disaster-

Mark Manson 12:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:10 ... something bad will occur.

Mark Manson 12:11 Yeah. I mean, it- it's a little bit paradoxical.And there, there's a cliché, and it's a cliché for a reason 'cause it's true, which is, um, you know, it's the old put on your own oxygen mask first before you try to help somebody else. And I mean, relationships fundamentally function that way, where it's like you have to have a healthy relationship with yourself and your own self-worth before you're able to really kinda contribute and give-

Chris Williamson 12:36 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 12:36 ... in a healthy way to anybody else. And the true is, uh, the same is true vice versa. So like, if you grow up in an environment with two parents who are emotionally dysfunctional, right? They're, they're gonna be deriving their self-worth and validation from you or from somebody else. And so, they're not gonna give you, like, the nurturing and support and everything that you need to grow up and be healthy yourself and learn how to put your own mask on yourself. So, it becomes kind of this, this chain reaction that goes down through generations. And, um, and it's weird because it's like if you're talking to somebody who's, like, never had an oxygen mask on in their life, and you try to explain to them, like, what an oxy- like, why they need an oxygen mask. Like, they don't understand what you're talking about.

Chris Williamson 13:15 What do you mean? I look after myself.

Mark Manson 13:16 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 13:16 What does that mean?

Mark Manson 13:17 Yeah. It's like, it- it- you're almost, like, speaking a different language. But... And it, and it is paradoxical when you tell people to, like, put yourself first, because that sounds completely antithetical to, like, what a healthy-

Chris Williamson 13:29 Good.

Mark Manson 13:29 ... loving relationship looks like from the outside. But like, from the outside, a healthy relationship is like two people who are voluntarily giving themselves to each other, like, consistently and perpetually. But on the inside, what a healthy relationship feels like is, like, you are satisfied with yourself. And because you're satisfied with yourself, your cup is overflowing, and so you're happy to, like, just hand off-

Chris Williamson 13:54 I literally used this analogy with, uh, two girls, one Bible the other day, which was, you don't serve people from your cup. You serve them from the saucer that overflows around your cup.

Mark Manson 14:03 Ah, nice. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:04 Um, and it's true.

Mark Manson 14:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:05 Like, it... I mean, look, that's not necessarily, uh, uh, true all the time. You can have a half-full cup and be like, "Yo, let's take it down to a quarter, please have some."

Mark Manson 14:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:16 But it's not good.

Mark Manson 14:17 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:17 It's not a good strategy.

Mark Manson 14:18 No. And it's... Yeah. It- it- it backfires. I mean, I'll give you a tangible example. So, um, uh, my wife and I, we have a friend, um, and she's... Biological clock's ticking, right? She wants to find a husband. Great woman, super smart, you know, beautiful, everything, but she really wants to find a husband. And like, it's actually- she's starting to panic. And so, what she's doing is she's, like, adapting her entire life to, like, finding a husband.

Chris Williamson 14:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 14:48 Like, it's like, she's gotten rid of her hobbies, and now she's like, she's going to the gym all the time, and she's like, just-

Chris Williamson 14:54 Improv classes and salsa dancing.

Mark Manson 14:56 I- i- it's like everything is optimized to, like, find Mr. Right. And as a result, she's kind of killed her own personality. Like, she has no more interest for herself.

Chris Williamson 15:05 Yeah.

Mark Manson 15:05 She has no free time for herself. She has no... She's not doing anything for herself anymore. And ironically, it's like, she's meeting tons of guys, and obviously, it's not going anywhere. Why? Because she has no fucking personality. Her cup's not overflowing.

Chris Williamson 15:18 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 15:19 She's trying to give everything away all the time.

Chris Williamson 15:20 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 15:20 And you see this... I mean, it happens on both genders, but, um, it's- it's like a self-defeating... It- it's just a paradoxical thing.

Chris Williamson 15:30 Yeah.

Mark Manson 15:30 It's like the more you, you cultivate yourself, the, the more you'll kind of become magnetic towards others.

Chris Williamson 15:36 I love the insight. In order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

Mark Manson 15:40 Yeah, you have to have a life in the first place. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 15:41 Or else, it's the same reason that comedians who get successful start only talking about airports and dinners and backstage.

Mark Manson 15:51 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:51 Because that's all you know.

Mark Manson 15:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:53 You don't, you don't do... Whitney Cummings told me this story, it's so fucking good. So, she's in the writer's room in chief boss bitch mode, maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, something, and she's just, you know, million plates spinning all at once-

Mark Manson 16:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:06 ... classic sort of, "I- I'm gonna do it myself" woman. And, uh, they're in the writer's room for some sitcom thing that she's working on, and they say, "It's a Saturday morning, where is she?" Talking about whatever this next scene is. And someone went, "She's at a baby shower." And Whit- it was like, "No one goes to a baby shower on a Saturday. Fucking stupid idea." They're like, "Ah, whoo, okay. Well, um, where else is she?" Said, "Oh, she's at a wine tasting." She's like, "No one goes to a wine tasting." They're like, "No, Whitney, you don't go to wine tastings."

Mark Manson 16:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:33 "And you don't go to baby showers."

Mark Manson 16:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:35 That's precisely what normal people do.

Mark Manson 16:37 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:38 And you can't see that. And I suppose it does show up in that way as well. You don't want to just be interested in the other person. You want to be interesting yourself.

Mark Manson 16:50 Yourself.

Chris Williamson 16:50 And most people get the balance wrong in one way or the other.

Mark Manson 16:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:53 They're way too self-focused, they're way too other focused.

Mark Manson 16:56 Right.

Chris Williamson 16:56 And... Because it's difficult. It's- it's difficult to have that-

Mark Manson 16:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:59 ... that tolerance between the two.

Mark Manson 17:01 I wonder if that's why, like, celebrities date each other. Because like, they have no life.

Chris Williamson 17:06 Oh, we can bond over our mutual non-lives.

Mark Manson 17:08 (laughs) Exactly.

Chris Williamson 17:10 Yeah.

Mark Manson 17:10 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 17:10 All right, next one.

Mark Manson 17:11 Yeah.

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Chris Williamson 18:13 checkout. Personal growth is the process of learning to lie to ourselves less.

Mark Manson 18:17 Mm-hmm.... yeah, I think, you know, the- these- these simple truths that because they are so simple, we... but painful, we find ways to avoid them and deny them and pretend that they're not there. And... like, if you just take the self-worth piece, right? Like, it's... it's hard to accept that you're just not standing up for yourself, that you don't feel like you deserve respect or trust or time or attention. That's a very painful thing to sit with. So, you make up all sorts of stories and narratives and bullshit. You know, it's like, "Oh, well, women are all like this, and it's the fucking phones, and well, the political thing, and, you know, schools these days." Like, it's whatever- whatever your- your like little pet thing is, you just start stacking these narratives on top of each other just to hide that like simple fact that like... like, yeah, you don't feel like you deserve it. And, um... and so I- I... what I tend to find both with myself and with a lot of the people I talk to is- is that, you know... especially, you know, coming from self-help, which is the world that I'm, I guess, technically a part of, um, everything's marketed as, you know, here's the secret. Oh, if you just come to this seminar and learn these three things, then you're gonna like fix all your bullshit. And I just find it... it's never about learning something. It's about like unlearning things.

Chris Williamson 19:57 Mm.

Mark Manson 19:57 It's about like unwinding the bullshit you've told yourself.

Chris Williamson 20:02 There's a idea I spoke about with Naval which was, uh, cultivated selfishness.

Mark Manson 20:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 20:08 Or, uh, like holistic and, um, self-prioritization.

Mark Manson 20:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:13 But there's also another one of cultivated stupidity-

Mark Manson 20:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:16 ... which is many of the problems are you going... It- it's the story of the alchemist, right?

Mark Manson 20:23 Yep.

Chris Williamson 20:23 You- you go around the houses to come back to the place that you were at the very start.

Mark Manson 20:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:28 And to realize, huh, the issue was that I had assholes in my life-

Mark Manson 20:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:33 ... and I just needed to stop talking to them. The issue was that I just didn't love my partner that much anymore-

Mark Manson 20:37 Yep.

Chris Williamson 20:37 ... and I needed to break up with them. The issue was that I wasn't that fired up at my job. And so many of these are to do with quitting-

Mark Manson 20:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:44 ... right? They're to do with letting go.

Mark Manson 20:45 Yep.

Chris Williamson 20:45 Very few of them has a bit to- to do with change. I- in- in taking on something new, typically, or letting go of something else. I- I don't like the town or country that I live in, and I need to just have the bravery to make the change-

Mark Manson 20:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:58 ... and go somewhere else. Um, and you have lied to yourself and tried to justify and obfuscate as a way to escape from the difficult decision, and you've started to layer all of these different compensatory mechanisms on top and stories that you've told yourself. And now you have to dig down through them all-

Mark Manson 21:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:20 ... and go, okay, was it this thing? Was it- was it- was it the self-worth? It was therapy, I must go to therapy.

Mark Manson 21:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:25 I must find out why I have this attachment style. And it's like, no, you just don't fucking love your partner that much anymore.

Mark Manson 21:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:31 And you used to, and you feel guilty.

Mark Manson 21:35 Also y- you start to see kind of these compulsive patterns show up in people because it's like... So like a narrative I had for a long time, right? Was just, uh, I- I lived as a nomad for about seven and a half years, and, uh, I kind of... I started to get in my head. When I started living in all these different countries, I started getting it in my head that there's like an optimal place to live. And the only thing that that created for me was a desire to constantly be somewhere else.

Chris Williamson 22:05 Dissatisfaction.

Mark Manson 22:06 Yeah. No matter where I was, it was like, something's not optimal. I should be somewhere else. And it really started to wear on me after a certain amount of time. And really like all that was underneath all of that was just simply a- a fear of committing to a place and a community.

Chris Williamson 22:23 Mm.

Mark Manson 22:23 Like, that was there the entire time. It's just like this fear of like... I was in my 20s. It was time to be a grownup, time to be an adult, you know? Time to set roots and like pick a path in life. And looking back now as an older man, like, I can understand that I didn't have the courage to do that yet, and so I created all this narrative around like, well, I gotta go find, like, the optimal place before I set down and... But to find the place, I really gotta enmesh in the culture. And so I should probably study some languages, and you know, I should probably split my time between th- these three different continents, maybe a year each, and maybe pick the five best countries per continent, and like let me start researching all that. You know? And it's like there goes like four years of my life. And, uh, don't get me wrong, I had a great time. I learned a ton of stuff, but like a lot of it was driven by this avoidance of a very simple truth of like I wasn't ready to grow up. And as long as I'm on the road and like always booking a plane to somewhere else, I don't really have to grow up. The thing you said, uh, you said something earlier, uh, uh, strategic selfishness or-

Chris Williamson 23:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah, cultivated selfishness.

Mark Manson 23:32 Cultivated selfishness.

Chris Williamson 23:33 Yeah.

Mark Manson 23:33 So it reminded me of this. Have you heard of this concept strategic incompetence?

Chris Williamson 23:37 No.

Mark Manson 23:39 I love this. Um, so it's like all the married guys listening will relate to this.

Chris Williamson 23:44 Mm.

Mark Manson 23:45 Uh, so I'm a terrible cook and, uh, one of the-

Chris Williamson 23:49 You look like someone that would be a good cook.

Mark Manson 23:51 No, I'm awful.

Chris Williamson 23:51 You have the hair of a good cook.

Mark Manson 23:53 Oh, thank you.

Chris Williamson 23:53 Yeah. Yes, chef.

Mark Manson 23:54 (laughs) I don't know, I don't know. Yes, chef. I don't know-

Chris Williamson 23:56 Yes, chef.

Mark Manson 23:56 ... what that means.

Chris Williamson 23:57 Yeah.

Mark Manson 23:57 But (laughs) I'll take it.

Chris Williamson 23:58 Uh, no, I could just see you in one of those white-

Mark Manson 24:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:00 ... like high neck things, like a- another 50 pounds on you, you'd be great.

Mark Manson 24:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 24:05 You're too thin now.

Mark Manson 24:06 I- I am too thin.

Chris Williamson 24:07 Fat Mark Manson would have been fine.

Mark Manson 24:08 I know, I know.

Chris Williamson 24:08 Thin Mark Manson's-

Mark Manson 24:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:09 ... a fucking shit cook.

Mark Manson 24:10 I know. Yeah, you're right.

Chris Williamson 24:11 Okay.

Mark Manson 24:11 You're right. Uh, that- that ship has sailed.

Chris Williamson 24:13 Yeah.

Mark Manson 24:13 Um, the... Okay, so one of the reasons I am a bad cook is, uh, uh, my wife's an amazing cook. And so if I ever start to become competent at cooking, it means that I will have to start doing some of the cooking. And so-It is better for me to just continue being bad at cooking so that I don't ever have to take responsibility for that in my house. Peop- people in relationships do this all the time. Like, you just, you, you, your partner's good at one thing-

Chris Williamson 24:43 Iron the clothes incorrectly on purpose, put a lot of creases in it.

Mark Manson 24:45 Exactly. And especially, uh, especially men-

Chris Williamson 24:48 Around the house.

Mark Manson 24:49 ... who are particularly, who are particularly bad about it. Um, but it's like everybody does it. People do it at work too. It's like, it's like, "Oh, can you go, uh, fax these 20 papers or whatever?" And people are like, "Oh, I've never used a fax machine before," when it's like, it's easy, you could figure it out. But like, you wanna be dumb 'cause it-

Chris Williamson 25:04 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 25:05 ... it, it alleviates responsibility. Um, I love this concept because I think people do it in all sorts of different areas of their life, right? Like, people, people can be strategically incompetent at certain things because they don't wanna deal with some of these harsh truths. Like, they don't wanna deal with their self-worth issues, so they're like, they remain dumb in their relationships. Like, it, it actually incentivizes them to continue to, like, be ignorant and clueless in the people that they associate with.

Chris Williamson 25:39 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 25:39 Right? They, um... I'll give you another example. Like, I, uh... Well, you referred to Fat Mark. I was fat for a long time. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:51 Dude, you've got to own it.

Mark Manson 25:53 I do.

Chris Williamson 25:53 You have to own it.

Mark Manson 25:54 Dude, you wanna hear the fun... You'll appreciate this. So, uh, when I went on Tim Ferriss's show, um, I, like, mentioned, I was like, "Oh yeah, I, I, I'm like, I've been on a health journey. I used to have, like, a lot of health issues." And he, like, of course he got into this. He's like, "Well, have you tried this new therapy?" And he, like, starts explaining, like, all these, like-

Chris Williamson 26:10 You've got electrodes strapped to your head.

Mark Manson 26:12 Yeah, exactly. He's like, "If you, if you vibrate the muscle with the electrodes-

Chris Williamson 26:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Manson 26:16 ... and like, and put the, your foot behind your head and all this stuff."

Chris Williamson 26:18 (laughs)

Mark Manson 26:18 And he, like, goes on this whole three-minute spiel, and he's like, he's like, "I don't know, does any of that resonate with you?" And I was like, "Dude, I was just fat." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:27 (laughs)

Mark Manson 26:30 I was just like, "I was fat as fuck, I just needed to stop drinking." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:36 Yep. Yep, yep.

Mark Manson 26:37 Um, but to, to the health journey point, um, I was really unhealthy for a long time, and I was really overweight and really out of shape. And it was even when it was clear that it was a problem, um, I kind of had... I developed, like, a weird sort of, like, pride or identity around it, because it's like, you know, everybody in this space is, is all about optimization and, you know, you gotta, like, get up at 6:00 AM and, like-

Chris Williamson 27:06 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 27:06 ... stare at the fucking sun and, and, you know-

Chris Williamson 27:09 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 27:10 ... do 18 sit-ups and, like, do whatever your, like, morning routine is. And I just had this pride of like, "Yeah, I'm not that guy."

Chris Williamson 27:16 Yeah.

Mark Manson 27:17 You know? Like, I, I'm, I, I actually relish in the fact that I have no idea what your morning routine should be. And, uh, and the truth is, is that, that that was just like, that was a strategic incompetence because I didn't wanna deal with my shit.

Chris Williamson 27:35 Yeah.

Mark Manson 27:35 I didn't wanna deal with the fact that I-

Chris Williamson 27:36 Very interesting.

Mark Manson 27:37 ... I ate too much and I drank too much.

Chris Williamson 27:39 That's cool. I, uh... There was a great, um, insight from a guy called Alexander Date Psych, uh, who is ostensibly an evolutionary psychology and, uh, dating, uh, researcher, I suppose.

Mark Manson 27:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:55 But he has some fucking fantastic takes. Uh, and he was talking about how people that are black sheeps-

Mark Manson 28:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:02 ... are still sheeps. Being a black sheep is still being a sheep. It's funny how many people think they are non-conformist when they are really just strict ideological adherence to a niche dogma. It's kind of like a cult member thinking they are non-conformist because their cult is small. They are actually highly conformist, real NPCs if you will. They're just conforming to a fringe. So, being a black sheep is still being a sheep-

Mark Manson 28:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:24 ... basically. And, uh, it's crazy how many people think I'm not one of those followers of whatever the mainstream thinks. That's for the fucking NPCs sheeple. And you go, "Yeah, dude, you're even worse. You're being puppeted by the inverse-

Mark Manson 28:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:39 ... of what those people are doing." Um, so similar to the-

Mark Manson 28:42 It's like hipsters.

Chris Williamson 28:43 Correct. Yeah. "Oh, I, I need to dr- I, I don't need to care about fashion."

Mark Manson 28:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:47 It's like, purposefully not caring about fashion is a fucking fashion.

Mark Manson 28:51 Is caring about fashion, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 28:51 Yes, precisely. Just the reverse. You're not even doing it right.

Mark Manson 28:54 Yes.

Chris Williamson 28:54 You're doing it r- the opposite. Um, another one that's similar to that is deliberate deoptimization.

Mark Manson 28:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:59 So, uh, picking the small areas of your life in which you're going to try and optimize-

Mark Manson 29:04 Yes.

Chris Williamson 29:04 ... and letting the rest of them go. And this is sort of the curse of the perennial insecure overachiever that, "Well, I need to get my health perfect, but I need to have the right number of credit cards to maximize my flight points, because I can get a little bit more if I, if I sign up for three AmExs at once, it means that Delta gives you the thing and then..." But I mean, it's gonna take me five days to set everything up, and then there'll be a load of forms and the forms were wrong, but, you know, once I've done that... So, picking, okay, what are the areas that really matter to me? I'm gonna optimize in those. And the rest of them, just letting them fall away, because the stress of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than the imperfections will.

Mark Manson 29:40 Totally.

Chris Williamson 29:41 And will take up so much fucking time that... I mean, you could literally do... You could spend your entire day biohacking-

Mark Manson 29:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:48 ... in order to extend your life, and in the process of trying to extend your life, completely fucking waste your life.

Mark Manson 29:54 Yeah, exactly. I mean, it, it... If you live an extra 50 years, but you spend 70 years optimizing spreadsheets to live those 50 years, like, you're actually net negative.

Chris Williamson 30:04 Correct.

Mark Manson 30:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 30:04 You fucked it.

Chris Williamson 30:05 Uh, all right. Confidence and fear both require believing in something that hasn't happened yet.

Mark Manson 30:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:10 At a certain point, you have to consider that you're choosing to be afraid.

Mark Manson 30:16 This ties into the layers of stories, right? Like, I mean, uh, th- a lot... This kinda comes from... I take a lot of... A lot of my influence comes from Buddhism, and-... just the core precept of Buddhism, other than life is suffering, is just, like, e- not knowing. Like, you don't know anything. And, uh, being, like, developing a certain level of comfort in that and being, still being able to function despite it. Um... And again, I think this, this comes back to, to the narrative thing. Like, our, our brain is, is, we're, our brain is a prediction machine, and as, its predictions come in forms of stories about what's gonna happen. Is it gonna be a good thing? Is it gonna be a bad thing?

Chris Williamson 31:04 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 31:04 Is it gonna go well? And it's gonna do it whether you, like, you can't stop it. That's just what the brain does. But you don't necessarily have to believe it. You can watch those stories come and go. You can train your brain to watch those stories come and go, right, and without necessarily identifying or attaching to them. And I just think, A, most people aren't aware of that, and then B, even if they are aware of it, they, like, th- it's easy to lose track of what stories or narratives you're buying into, or the fact that you can even, like, kinda choose to find more helpful stories-

Chris Williamson 31:43 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 31:43 ... to buy into, if you want. Um... So yeah. It's, it's, it's just another one of those, like... George O- Orwell's got this great quote of, like, seeing what, what's in front of one's nose takes a constant effort. Like, it's often much easier to see what's here than what's here.

Chris Williamson 32:00 (laughs)

Mark Manson 32:00 And, uh, I love that metaphor, just because it's all of this stuff that I write, that i- i- it's like, that's what it is. It's right here, but because it's here, like, I don't see it.

Chris Williamson 32:10 You can't see it.

Mark Manson 32:11 I'm focusing on you, right?

Chris Williamson 32:12 Mm...

Mark Manson 32:13 And, um... It's, uh... it's constant.

Chris Williamson 32:19 I wonder whether the, "At some point, you have to admit that you're choosing to be afraid," I wonder whether... part of that is that we're so identified with our thoughts that it- it's th- the... It's more real to us than reality-

Mark Manson 32:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:34 ... because reality's final touch point before we actually understand it is our thoughts.

Mark Manson 32:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:40 Right? We, we filter it through our brains before we then start to tell ourselves the story of whatever that is, and then the story's molested by the filter as well.

Mark Manson 32:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:48 Um, so yeah. Confidence and fear both require believing in something that hasn't happened yet. Okay, so we have, um, a- an upward aiming trajectory and a downward aiming trajectory. You could say sort of abundance mindset, scarcity mindset-

Mark Manson 33:00 Sure.

Chris Williamson 33:00 ... o- optimist, pessimist, whatever. Um... And if you assume that you can choose to be confident, so, "I, I can choose to believe that this is going to go well," so okay, are you also choosing to believe that it's going to go badly in that case?

Mark Manson 33:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:15 Uh, it's like a, it's, you know, the fundamental attribution error?

Mark Manson 33:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a confidence equivalent-

Mark Manson 33:21 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:21 ... of the fundamental attribution error.

Mark Manson 33:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:23 I, I had this really great insight. You know, anybody that's been to therapy for a while immediately starts looking at their parents, and you start to think, "Okay, well fucking, wh- why, why am I like this? And this thing happened because of that, and that's because of them," and so on and so forth. Much of the time, people are happy to lay their shortcomings, their avoidant attachment, and their rampant wh- e- fucking over-sexualization of themselves and others and their need for external validation, happy to lay all of that at the feet of their upbringing.

Mark Manson 33:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:54 Very rarely do they lay their strengths at the feet of their upbringing.

Mark Manson 33:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:57 You know?

Mark Manson 33:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:57 It's like, "Yeah, but what about your confidence and your resilience? And what about the fact that you're, you know, you work really well in solitude?"

Mark Manson 34:02 No, that was-

Chris Williamson 34:02 He said, "No, no, no, that was weak of me."

Mark Manson 34:03 "That was me, that was me." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:04 "I self-authored, I self-authored my strengths, but my weaknesses were imposed on me."

Mark Manson 34:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:09 And it's kind of an internal equivalent of that here when it's, "Okay, well why are you choosing fear and not confident..." Oh, I mean, there's many ways, right? You, you g- k- it's not all fucking-

Mark Manson 34:17 There's-

Chris Williamson 34:18 ... "You are insufficient, and this is your problem," and blah, blah, blah.

Mark Manson 34:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:20 We've got negativity bi- fucking rampant negativity bias. But, the choice is there.

Mark Manson 34:24 There, there's, there e- there's also an element of the strategic incompetence here too, right? Like, it's, it's, let's say I choose to fear coming on this podcast, right? I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm going on Modern Wisdom. Th- he's gonna bring the big lights."

Chris Williamson 34:38 Don't say it like that. (laughs)

Mark Manson 34:39 "He's gonna bring the big lights this time."

Chris Williamson 34:41 (laughs) Yeah, there's the big lights.

Mark Manson 34:41 "I'm, I'm so nervous."

Chris Williamson 34:42 Yeah, yeah.

Mark Manson 34:42 And, uh, you know, like, that gets me sympathy from people.

Chris Williamson 34:45 Mm...

Mark Manson 34:45 That gives me, it's a way to, like, uh-

Chris Williamson 34:48 Lower expectations.

Mark Manson 34:49 ... lower expectations for myself. Maybe it's a way to kinda brag to certain people. You know, maybe after I do the show, I'm like, "Oh my God, I bombed. This is, like, going so horribly." And then, like, I get to go home and, like, get more sympathy and validation from people and...

Chris Williamson 35:02 And then positive reinforcement went, "Dude, you went so well."

Mark Manson 35:05 "Oh my God, you're amazing." Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:06 "You have such, you have such high standards for yourself."

Mark Manson 35:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:08 Do you know what it is, Mark? Your problem, your problem is, like, you're amazing and you don't even see it.

Mark Manson 35:12 Tell, more. Tell me more.

Chris Williamson 35:13 Like, you're, you just have such high standards for yourself.

Mark Manson 35:16 This is, this is getting good.

Chris Williamson 35:17 Yeah, I know.

Mark Manson 35:17 This, now, now we're getting to the real...

Chris Williamson 35:18 I can't do it, I can't do it in a Latino accent, I'm afraid.

Mark Manson 35:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:20 Sorry.

Mark Manson 35:21 This is, now we're getting to it.

Chris Williamson 35:22 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mark Manson 35:23 Uh, but yeah, you, you know what I'm, y- you see what I'm saying though. Like, it's, it's, fear, like, there is social value in fear, just in that it, like, it generates attention and awareness for yourself. And, um, and I think some people almost get, like, uh... Sometimes I think, like, like, people who have anxiety, it's, it's almost like a fear addiction. It's like the, uh, uh this, like, compulsive validation-seeking that happens through always being worried about something.

Chris Williamson 35:53 Mm...

Mark Manson 35:53 And, um, something's always going wrong. There's always a fire to put out. It's, it's a, it is a consistent way to draw attention to yourself, draw reassurance to yourself, bring validation to yourself. Um, and so I, I do think it's, like, people...... there are very subtle incentives around people to, like, choose the fear narrative-

Chris Williamson 36:16 Yeah.

Mark Manson 36:17 ... that maybe they aren't aware of.

Chris Williamson 36:18 This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. If you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help. It automatically cools down or warms up each side of your bed up to 20 degrees. It's got integrated sensors to track your sleep time, your sleep phases, your HRV, your snoring and your heart rate with 99% accuracy, and it'll even start cooling or heating your bed for you an hour before bedtime, which is why Eight Sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to one hour every night. Sleep isn't just about how long you rest, but how well your body stays in its optimal temperature range throughout the night, and Eight Sleep has absolutely perfected this. And when I'm on the road, like I am right now, it feels fucking medieval to not be sleeping on a cooled mattress topper. Best of all, they've got a 30-day sleep trial, so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights and if you don't like it, they will give you your money back and they ship internationally. Right now, you can get $350 off by going to the link in the description below or heading to EightSleep.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's E-I-G-H-T Sleep.com/modernwisdom, and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. I had a great conversation with this guy, Dr. Russell Cannady, he's the anxiety MD. Doctor guy, specialized in anxiety. He's, uh, equally, uh, bottom-up as well as top-down, which I really love. So he's, "Okay, what's happening in the nervous system?" Mm-hmm. "Can we do some breath work?" "Can we get you to fucking meditate and chill out a little bit?" And, "What's a story you're telling yourself? Do you need CBT? Do you need ACT therapy?" Blah, blah, blah.

Mark Manson 37:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:40 So I wrote this little essay that I'm gonna read to you about it after this week. Um, "I've been thinking about impediments to happiness, and I can see two obvious roadblocks. First is wanting things to be different. Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something. If you want the world to be different, your happiness is held hostage until that change occurs. Sometimes this is an actual change you need to make, to leave an unhappy relationship, change from an unfilling cr- fulfilling career, complete a difficult conversation, and we will often remain in years of misery to avoid a few minutes of pain. The second roadblock," this is the one that's related, "is uncertainty. Humans never genuinely pursue happiness. They only pursue relief from uncertainty."

Mark Manson 38:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:25 "Happiness emerges momentarily as a byproduct whenever uncertainty briefly disappears. If you feel like you can't predict the future, you will default to fear and worry and rumination. Your mindscape will eclipse reality's landscape. Worrying about the thing you can't predict usually involves a nightmare fantasy, which is way worse than what could happen in reality. However, this imagined reality briefly collapses the chaos of the world into certainty, and this is how much humans abhor not knowing how the future will unfold. We would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable. Sometimes these situations overlap. A family member gets an uncertain medical diagnosis and we can't be with them. We argue with our partner while we're apart, and we don't know how they're feeling overnight. We try to mend a broken friendship with a letter and haven't yet got a reply. So if you're feeling unhappy, look to where you're uncertain and where you want things to be different first." But it's that humans abhor n- not knowing how the um, future will unfold so much that we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable, because it collapses the set of, "Huh, well, at least I know what it..." I mean, it's terrible-

Mark Manson 39:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 39:33 ... but it's not unknown.

Mark Manson 39:34 Right.

Chris Williamson 39:34 And that's how much we don't like things that are unknown.

Mark Manson 39:36 Which i- if you zoom out from, like, an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense, right? Because it's, we're not evolutionary optimized to be happy. We're evolutionary optimized to be predictive and adaptable to our environment.

Chris Williamson 39:48 Yeah, effective, yeah.

Mark Manson 39:49 Right? So, it's, happiness is actually just a lever in our brain that our biology is pushing and pulling-

Chris Williamson 39:57 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 39:58 ... to get us to do the right things or worry about the right things. Um, it's just our biology's not used to, you know, watching 2,000 TikToks a day.

Chris Williamson 40:07 "Eventually you'll realize that it's better to be disliked for who you are than liked for who you are not. Then everything will change."

Mark Manson 40:13 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I... (laughs) The... Being liked for who you're not is not being liked, right? Even if you get people to like the performance that you're putting on, you never get the s- you never get the satisfaction of being liked. You'll... Because it's not you, it's the performance. And it actually backfires because it just reinforces that you have to perform more.

Chris Williamson 40:46 You're not good enough.

Mark Manson 40:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:47 You're not acceptable.

Mark Manson 40:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:50 I think this was the fundamental ... Ah, there was many-

Mark Manson 40:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:54 ... but I think that this is one of the fundamental issues with the pick-up artist movement-

Mark Manson 40:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:57 ... the way that it came about. Uh, that what it taught men who were struggling with women was that, "Hey, you can be really effective with women."

Mark Manson 41:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:05 "You just need to not be yourself. You just need to be..." (laughs)

Mark Manson 41:09 I s- dude, I saw this firsthand so many times.

Chris Williamson 41:11 Yeah, I remember.

Mark Manson 41:11 Like, I- I saw-

Chris Williamson 41:12 People don't know that you wrote Models, dude. The best, still the best-

Mark Manson 41:15 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 41:15 ... at dating advice books for men. Everyone should go and get it on Audible, and go back in 2000 f- 14 that came out?

Mark Manson 41:21 '13.

Chris Williamson 41:22 '13. Fuck, 12 years-

Mark Manson 41:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:24 ... dude.

Mark Manson 41:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:24 That's insa- that's ... If you're a guy who wants to improve, I would say, um, uh, Mate: Be The Guy Women Want, uh-

Mark Manson 41:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:32 ... Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max.

Mark Manson 41:33 Yep.

Chris Williamson 41:33 And Models by you. The two th- they were the two fucking, the two-car garage of-

Mark Manson 41:38 Thanks, man. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:39 Yeah, yeah, it's like...

Mark Manson 41:40 Um, yeah, I used to coach those guys. And it was funny because i- it's, I saw it all the time. You know, guys, they, they'd learn the lines, they'd practice the techniques-

Chris Williamson 41:49 "Did you see the midget fight outside?"

Mark Manson 41:50 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, exactly. "Who lies more?" Um, but it, and a lot of them, they would start getting laid, and then they, they would get la- Like, you would take these kind of awkward nerds who had never had a girlfriend, never hooked up, they'd learn all these tactics and stuff, they'd start getting laid all the time, and they'd actually feel worse about themselves. They'd actually get more depressed. And, and it was exactly this. It's like they're not...... the fact that they had to learn a performance to get a woman to like them just reinforced how unlikable they were.

Chris Williamson 42:23 You're not good enough.

Mark Manson 42:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:24 Yeah. I, the, eventually you'll realize it's better to be disliked for who you are than liked for who you are not. It took me a 15-minute TEDx talk to say that.

Mark Manson 42:34 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:35 Uh, (laughs) I did, I'm not kidding.

Mark Manson 42:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:36 I did an entire 15-minute TEDx talk. It took fucking months.

Mark Manson 42:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:40 It took so long. Um, but yeah, I had this, I had this insight doing a club promo that toward the end of my 20s I'd achieved success in a lot of the ways that society tells a young man that he should be successful. Similar to c- no, massively dissimilar to yourself.

Mark Manson 42:54 Right.

Chris Williamson 42:54 You got, uh, notoriety, um, you have sort of social access, women, and, like, a little bit of money and stuff, and you're comfortable and people know who you are and all the rest of it. I was like, "Fuck, like, why does none of this success really, like, uh, feel real?"

Mark Manson 43:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:09 And I realized that a persona can't receive love, it can only receive praise.

Mark Manson 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:15 You know, it's- it's saying, "Hey, well done, um, Gladiator, not well done Russell Crowe."

Mark Manson 43:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:21 "Well done, Thor, not well done Chris Hemsworth."

Mark Manson 43:23 Right.

Chris Williamson 43:23 There's this sense that, you know, if you're not being who you truly are, all of your successes will feel hollow 'cause people aren't in love with you, they're just applauding the role that you play.

Mark Manson 43:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:33 And y- you're always, at best, th- the closest that you get is being one degree removed from your successes.

Mark Manson 43:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:40 And much of the time, you're four, five, six, seven degrees removed from it, 'cause it's, "Okay, I, Chris, must work out what him, Mark, wants me to say when he s-" hey, what do you think about the new Avengers movie?" It's like, "Uh, uh, uh, reverse engineer what do I know about what Mark likes about the Avengers movies and the franchise and what do I think that he's predicted? I think it's good? Yeah, it is good. Yes, it is good. I knew it was good." You know?

Mark Manson 44:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:03 And there's always this performance that you have on, which again, just reinforces you cannot be you. Which is, it's also exhausting. It's a, it's like such a draining mental exercise. This is why I, I, I hate, I hate networking. I'm like, I'm a terrible networker. And, and I think part of it is I feel like I have to do that a little bit. Like, I don't naturally... See, this is why I don't have guests on my podcast anymore, 'cause I'm not, like- Keeping on top of them.

Mark Manson 44:29 I don't really care. Like, I'm not, I'm not super curious about, like, "Oh, I wonder what that guy across the room is like?" Like, that is just not me.

Chris Williamson 44:36 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 44:36 I'm, I'm like very low-key, introverted, um, don't need to, like, be everybody's friend. And I, I still feel that sometimes in professional contexts where it's like, okay, I'm in a room. I'm like, this is totally one of those rooms where I should be walking around, like, shaking everybody's hand, introducing myself, and I'm just like, "Ugh." And it's exhausting. It's, like, so fucking exhausting. Um, so yeah. I can't imagine living like that. Like, it's okay when it's just, like, this one sliver of my life that I only occupy briefly, you know, um, each year, but-

Chris Williamson 45:08 To never switch it off when you get home.

Mark Manson 45:09 ... if you're going through your whole life that way, and especially, yeah, if you're that way with your partner, if you're that way with your, your friends-

Chris Williamson 45:18 (laughs)

Mark Manson 45:18 ... it's just, it seems like such a miserable way to live.

Chris Williamson 45:21 It's the reason for, uh, how would you say? Front loading being yourself in the extreme as early in a relationship as you think that person can tolerate.

Mark Manson 45:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:34 Uh, that's very carefully chosen words we used. (laughs)

Mark Manson 45:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:37 Um, I had, look, I, dude, I- I- I was, uh, single last year for the first time in a long time, and certainly s- for the first time being this version of me.

Mark Manson 45:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:45 And, um, I had a, (laughs) I had a strategy of, uh, an intellectual shit test.

Mark Manson 45:51 Okay.

Chris Williamson 45:51 Um, which was kind of like-

Mark Manson 45:53 You told them your business idea? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:56 Yes! Yes! I knew that you'd keep it in your mind. Everyone's gonna be like, "What's his billion-dollar idea?"

Mark Manson 46:01 Oh.

Chris Williamson 46:01 Like, you don't get to find out.

Mark Manson 46:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:02 Um, it's, if you imagine, uh, negging, but instead of insulting a girl, uh, sending them Psychology Today articles and seeing if they say something interesting in response.

Mark Manson 46:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:14 Uh, and it was, look, this is something that's interesting to me. Human nature's, uh, one of the th- like, if you're gonna get into a relationship with me-

Mark Manson 46:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:21 ... I'm gonna send you lots of articles from Substack, okay?

Mark Manson 46:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:23 And I'm gonna, uh, expect at some point over the next week for us to have a chat about one of the things that I've sent you-

Mark Manson 46:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:30 ... that's re- hopefully remotely interesting to you. And if that doesn't, uh, it's a relatively innocuous but pretty good front end, like, filter for, uh, maybe I'm not gonna be reading articles at the same velocity that I am now in 10 years time, but I imagine I'm still gonna be intellectually curious.

Mark Manson 46:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:48 And this is a good rough-hewn roo- rubric. And, like, a cute, "Oh, isn't this interesting? Do you see that article about how Taylor Swift's changed?" Blah blah blah whatever the fuck. Like, that's interesting.

Mark Manson 46:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:56 So I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna do that." And, uh, it, uh, I think an older version of me, or a younger version of me-

Mark Manson 47:02 Sure.

Chris Williamson 47:02 ... um, would have been, "Huh. Well, that's not, that doesn't necessarily fit what a cool guy would do. Like, are you, you, you're really gonna send this article about like the mating habits of zebras and how it's different to horses and the fact that that's like really interesting because of the different environment they grew up?" And some bullshit. It's like, uh, yeah actually. That's actually a really, really good thing to do. Um, the story that it reinforces in yourself is, "I am allowed to be me."

Mark Manson 47:30 Who you are.

Chris Williamson 47:30 "I'm allowed to be more me-"

Mark Manson 47:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:32 ... sometimes than I even..." Especially if you can tune it up at the start-

Mark Manson 47:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:36 ... and push yourself beyond your comfort zone, 'cause you go, "Ha, I'm future-proofed for, like, I wouldn't have usually done this for two years."

Mark Manson 47:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:42 And, you know, I've got myself to-

Mark Manson 47:44 It's funny, it's funny you brought up models 'cause like I'm remembering now, you know, one of the central points in that book, which at the time was controversial, uh, was that as a man you shouldn't, you're not optimizing to get laid as many times as possible. You're optimizing to be happy with women. Like, that's the whole point of this.

Chris Williamson 48:04 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 48:04 Like, whether you get laid, whether you, you s- you date and sleep with one woman or 100, what matters is your happiness. It's not like...

Chris Williamson 48:12 Mm-hmm. You can get to that end point.

Mark Manson 48:14 It's not the body count, right?

Chris Williamson 48:16 Yes.

Mark Manson 48:16 And, like, what you just described is, I- I'm just having flashbacks of when I was in that industry. Like, I would say things like that. I'm like, "Yeah, dude. Send him zebra articles." You know? Like, 'cause then that's gonna show you if she's the type of girl that you're gonna enjoy being with. And-... you know, guys would be like, "Well, pfft, good luck getting laid with zebra articles," you know, and, th- they'd look down on it.

Chris Williamson 48:36 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 48:36 They'd call you fucking beta and pussy and all that stuff.

Chris Williamson 48:38 Yeah. Hang on. So you're, you're prepared to sacrifice something that you know that you do want-

Mark Manson 48:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:43 ... for something that you think that you do want-

Mark Manson 48:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:45 ... with someone who doesn't actually want you because you can't be you in order to get the thing that you think that you want?

Mark Manson 48:50 I don't, I didn't follow all that, but yeah, sure. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:53 Sick.

Mark Manson 48:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:55 All right.

Mark Manson 48:56 Wait, wait. Okay, go ahead.

Chris Williamson 48:57 No, you go ahead.

Mark Manson 48:58 No, I was, uh, I had, I, I was gonna tell a story. Um-

Chris Williamson 49:00 Tell a story.

Mark Manson 49:02 So, the night I met my wife, um, I met her at, uh, 3:00 in the morning in a nightclub in Brazil. And within five minutes, I somehow ended up in a conversation about Russian grammar and how it was different from romance language grammar. And she actually sat there and listened the whole time-

Chris Williamson 49:24 Dude.

Mark Manson 49:25 ... and she was like asking ques- she was like curious about it.

Chris Williamson 49:27 Yeah.

Mark Manson 49:27 And I remember, I remember that moment, I was like, "Holy shit, she's still here." Like... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:34 (laughs)

Mark Manson 49:36 And I was like, "Wow, we're gonna get along really well."

Chris Williamson 49:39 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 49:39 You know? And, um, but yeah, it's funny. It's like one of the first conversations she and I had.

Chris Williamson 49:45 Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of guys want to date a Brazilian.

Mark Manson 49:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:49 Uh, I'm not convinced that they would've zeroed in on Russian grammar and romance language as-

Mark Manson 49:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:55 ... their way into their heart. But look, I mean, you were the guy that wrote the book, so...

Mark Manson 49:59 Yeah. Whatever works, right?

Chris Williamson 50:00 Before we continue, you've probably heard me talk about LMNT before, and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started every morning with LMNT. LMNT contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no gluten or artificial ingredients, or any other BS. It plays a huge role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating appetite, and curbing cravings. That's why it's used by everyone from Dr. Andrew Huberman to Dr. Mike Israetel, Olympic athletes and FBI sniper teams, and me. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water tastes like a beautiful salty, sweet, orangey nectar, and there's a no questions asked refund policy. And you don't even need to return the box if you don't like it. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. And, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to DrinkLMNT.com/ModernWisdom. That's DrinkLMNT.com/ModernWisdom.

Chris Williamson 51:02 Sorry to break it to you, but it's impossible for someone who destroys your mental health to be the love of your life. Obsessing over someone isn't love. It's fear disguised as affection. Unhealthy love often feels exciting, dramatic and profound, but hurts us in the long run. Healthy love often feels dull, peaceful and repetitive, but it heals us in the long run.

Mark Manson 51:22 Yeah, I think fundamentally, people mistake intensity of emotion for positivity of emotion. Um... They ride the roller coaster of a dramatic and toxic relationship, and they... The highs are so high and the lows are so low and they, they just think that, "Well, this is part of it, right?" 'Cause it's, they're experiencing both extremes. It's like by far the most emotional experience they've ever had around anything in their life. And so, they, they assume, "Oh, okay, well, this must be what it is," but it's not that. It's actually you... there shouldn't be this, like, insane oscillation between the highs and lows.

Chris Williamson 52:03 Hmm.

Mark Manson 52:04 Um, there, of course, are highs and lows with every relationship, like that's natural, but-

Chris Williamson 52:11 Not daily.

Mark Manson 52:11 ... it's what you want, what you wanna optimize is like, you know, the average baseline, right, that you return to. Um, so yeah, I just, uh, I see that all the time. People, people, people mistake the intensity of the emotion for... or the intensity of the relationship for being a positive relationship.

Chris Williamson 52:34 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 52:34 And, uh, I think part of this happens because just like the way our psychology is, is, is that the more intense the emotion, the stronger the story and narrative and, and meaning that we, like, place on that experience. When, if you think about it, like there are all sorts of emotionally intense experiences you can have that actually don't mean anything at all, right? Like, I can jump out of a plane. That's gonna be a very emotionally intense experience. It doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Chris Williamson 53:01 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 53:03 I can date a woman who drives me absolutely fucking insane and then that, have the best makeup sex of my life. And just like the airplane, convince myself that it means something, but it actually doesn't really mean anything. Like what... It took me way too long to figure out that, like, what actually means something is the quality of time spent together in the dull moments. Like, what's the, what's the, the delta between your baseline and your happiness? Like, what is your level of happiness during the dull moments when like nothing's happening, when you're just sitting around eating breakfast, you know, reading emails? Are you happy in that moment? Like, that's what you should be measuring.

Chris Williamson 53:50 Because that's what life's made up of.

Mark Manson 53:51 That's the vast majority of life.

Chris Williamson 53:53 Yeah. Life is made up of breakfast at the kitchen counter-

Mark Manson 53:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:56 ... yeah.

Mark Manson 53:56 Checking emails.

Chris Williamson 53:57 Um, it's interesting to think about, okay, there's emotionally intense situations that don't mean anything.

Mark Manson 54:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:07 And I imagine that there's also emotionally mundane situations that mean a lot.

Mark Manson 54:11 That mean everything.

Chris Williamson 54:12 Yeah. So, the level of peace in your mind as your head hits the pillow at night-

Mark Manson 54:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:16 ... never gonna probably appear in a gratitude... It's b- not even gonna appear in a gratitude journal, because it's just such... It's, uh, uh, so obvious. Again, it's there.

Mark Manson 54:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:24 It's like, "I slept okay."

Mark Manson 54:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:25 You know, because I, I wasn't worrying about something. It's like, huh, well, fucking there's a lot of people on the planet that wish that they could have that.

Mark Manson 54:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:33 There we are. The, so peace, optimizing for peace. You know, not sexy. What about, uh, obsessing over someone isn't love? It's fear disguised as affection.

Mark Manson 54:41 (laughs) Yeah, because obsession is, is, is driven by a fear of loss. You know, you're- when you're obsessing over somebody or, uh, ruminating over somebody, you're not, you're not actually loving that person. You're trying to prevent loss of that person, and those are two very different things. Um, love is very... Loving is, it's unconditional. It's done... Like, I don't do things for my wife to, like, prevent her from leaving me. That's not the intention. You know, it's like, I don't buy her flowers 'cause I'm like, "Well, I better do this otherwise she might leave me." Like that's, that's not love. Love is you do something for her, expecting nothing in return, just for the simple reason that you want them to be happy. And again, I think it's another, it's another area that people, like, mistake. Because they feel s- uh, such an intensity and... Because they feel such an intensity of the emotion, and that emotion is directed towards a person and keeping that person as close to them as possible, they assume, "Well this is, this must be what love is, right?" This is, I'm clearly, I'm in love with this person because all day and night all I think about is, like, how do I keep them as close to me as possible?

Chris Williamson 55:59 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 56:00 And that's not love, that's fear.

Chris Williamson 56:02 There's a good insight from, uh, Visakan Varasmi. He says, it's c- I think he c- calls it the divorce paradox, which is, um, why do people who from the outside seemingly have a perfect relationship, why do they end up breaking up? And it's because as a s- society, we haven't fully internalized the lesson that it is not the highs but the lows-

Mark Manson 56:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:22 ... and how you manage them that make or break relationships.

Mark Manson 56:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:25 And outwardly, it's rare that you see two people arguing. They'll put the face on, they're having a good time at the wedding or at the, the, the dinner or whatever it might be. Uh, but then when they go home, they're fucking shouting and screaming and calling each other names-

Mark Manson 56:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:40 ... and sleeping in separate rooms. Uh, well you don't see that. And how well do they deal with those bad times? So it's how you deal with bad times that are a better predictor-

Mark Manson 56:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:48 ... than... Uh, very few, um, I would guess most marriages fail because of a surplus of poor rupture and repair as opposed to a scarcity of super intense high experiences.

Mark Manson 57:04 Totally.

Chris Williamson 57:04 You're insufficiently exciting to me is maybe there, but less than you are too low to me-

Mark Manson 57:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:12 ... you are too much of a drag.

Mark Manson 57:13 Absolutely. And, uh, one thing I'm... Told, I tell friends all the time, which is a really annoying thing to tell a friend (laughs) in a, like a new relationship, but like whenever I talk to people who are in a new relationship and they're like, you know, honeymoon period, really falling for the person, I always tell 'em, I'm like, "That all sounds great."

Chris Williamson 57:31 (laughs)

Mark Manson 57:31 "But let me know when you've had your first fight." Like, you really don't know what it's made of until you've had your first real fight about something, because all the good stuff, I don't wanna say it's easy to find, it... But it is relatively, it's not scarce. Like, you can find somebody who you have a lot of fun with.

Chris Williamson 57:50 You enjoy being happy? Hey, me too.

Mark Manson 57:52 Yeah. It's like, "Oh, you like the, the thing? I like the thing too. Let's do the thing together." Like, th- that's, that's not that complicated. Uh, what's complicated is when, uh, all of her childhood issues come up and get triggered because of the thing that you said because you've got this blind spot in your life that you've, haven't dealt with, and then you start really going at it. And it's really the, the quality, like you said, the rupture and repair, the quality of the fighting. Like how... All commu- like communication always breaks down to a certain extent during fights, but it's like how deeply does it break down? Does it get nasty? Does it get personal? And then similarly, how quickly do you recover from it? And do you, do you recover from it or do you hold it against each other? Do you, do you start the scoreboard?

Chris Williamson 58:38 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 58:39 You know, it's like, okay, it's one-zero.

Chris Williamson 58:41 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 58:41 Right? If the scoreboard's there, you, it's over. It's just a matter of time.

Chris Williamson 58:46 I don't care how smart or beautiful they are, how many companies they started or degrees they have. They're insecure and they have no fucking clue what they're doing either. If you're feeling like you have no idea what you're doing is the price of entry to achieving your dream.

Mark Manson 58:59 (laughs) I feel, I feel like this just, like, undermines your entire podcast. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:06 I have never claimed to have any idea about what it is that I'm doing. My guests may have done.

Mark Manson 59:11 Yes. Um-

Chris Williamson 59:12 You included.

Mark Manson 59:16 No, no. But yeah. I mean, I, I think it's, it's a, a... So my, my, a fr- a good friend of mine had a really funny story around this. Uh, so really good friend of mine back in New York, startup guy, super smart. Um, startup founder, had an exit, did really well. Went to work for a VC, did really well at the VC, and then eventually got brought in by, uh, like one, say one of the 20 or 30 biggest companies in the world to advise and help mana- Like, they're doing, like, an internal incubator, um, and basically they wanted him to come in and kind of, like, advise their, their projects or whatever. So, you know, and this guy's like 30, right? So he's, like, climbed the mountain, climbed the next mountain, and now he's, like, being brought into, like, one of the biggest companies in the world, literally household name, and he's supposed to be in charge of, like, all these, like, special projects and new innovations and stuff. And I remember he came back, I, like, had dinner with him when he got back to town and I was like, "Dude, how was it?" (laughs) And he just looked at me and he's like, he's like, "I just had this realization, like, it's fucking idiots all the way down." Like n- I f- I always thought one day I'm gonna walk in a room and there's... It's like, okay, these are the people that know what's going on. These are the people who, like, have the plan and have figured it out and these are the lords of the universe and they're, like, secretly, like, pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes and, uh, and the rest of us are just trying to keep up. And he was like, "Yeah, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing." Like it's, he's like-... it's a disaster. It's a complete and utter disaster. (laughs) And he's like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do, but they're paying me a ton of, a ton of money." So, um, I always loved that story, and I love that phrase, "It's idiots all the way down." Um, and I, I include us in that. Like, I, I, I think it's, it's we're all just like chipping away at our own idiocy-

Chris Williamson 1:01:13 Yeah.

Mark Manson 1:01:13 ... slowly but surely.

Chris Williamson 1:01:14 And publicly. But that, I do think that there is a, there's a fair trade to be made, and certainly one that I've made, even more perhaps than you as somebody who's actually written legitimate books. Um, you can trade expertise for relatability.

Mark Manson 1:01:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:29 Uh, and I think if you say, "Hey, I don't know what's going on, and in my not knowing of what's going on, you can feel better in your not knowing of what's going on."

Mark Manson 1:01:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:39 You know, that is probably one of the most common threads across 900 and fucking 50 episodes or whatever we've done of this show, which is, "I'm unsure about this thing, but I'm gonna try and find out from someone who might know a tiny little bit more than me-"

Mark Manson 1:01:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:54 "... and we're gonna work it out together of, hmm." Six months later, I finally arrive at a realization that's something approximating, like, accuracy-

Mark Manson 1:02:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 "Huh, well, that's cool. Well, we'll hold onto that one thing, and we'll get another one and get another one." George Mack, one of my fav- uh, favorite friends and favorite writers, he's got this essay, Adults Don't Exist: "Steve Jobs delayed nine months of medical treatment of pancreatic cancer to try a carrot juice diet and acupuncture."

Mark Manson 1:02:21 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:02:22 "Mozart overspent his income, lived miserably in mountains of debt, and regularly wrote letters to friends begging for money. Friedrich Nietzsche lost his virginity in a brothel and caught syphilis. He only saw his work sell 300 copies in his lifetime. Martin Luther King had extramarital affairs with over 40 different women, including spending his nast, nas, last night alive with two women and physically attacking another. Isaac Newton spent 30 years of his life writing one million words on the pseudoscience of alchemisy (sic) , alchemy, hidden for years by his heirs because they were too embarrassed to publish it... Don't put any adult on a pedestal. Kill your gurus. Or, a more useful belief, the adults aren't going to save you. They don't even exist."

Mark Manson 1:03:01 (laughs) I love that.

Chris Williamson 1:03:02 Yeah.

Mark Manson 1:03:02 That's awesome.

Chris Williamson 1:03:02 He realized when, uh, his friends that he went to university with who were the most degen, uh, uh, uh, larry, th- they couldn't hold, th- they couldn't get up on time, they weren't handing their assignments in, went to go and be teachers. Uh, holy fuck.

Mark Manson 1:03:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 That means, oh, that means that my teachers-

Mark Manson 1:03:23 My teachers were-

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 ... were that-

Mark Manson 1:03:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:26 ... idiot from sc- oh, okay.

Mark Manson 1:03:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:29 Like, the adults literally do not exist.

Mark Manson 1:03:31 It's idiots all the way down. It, I do wanna hit on this, though. So one, one of the things that has been, like, concerning me lately... So I agree with you, by the way. I think one of the things that is good about what you do, what I do, what the, kind of like all the w- alternative media, or whatever you wanna call it, is that there is a little bit more of an openness of uncertainty-

Chris Williamson 1:03:58 I don't have it all figured out.

Mark Manson 1:03:59 ... yeah, lack of expertise, whatever. Yet the end result seems to be producing a public of greater uninformed certainty, right? So we've gone from a media and information environment that was very much built on certainty and expertise and credentials and authority and all that shit, and now we've gone to a much more decentralized information ecosystem and media system, where people are very open about like, "Well, I don't have all the answers, but, like, let's try to figure this out." And yet the public just seems, like, more certain about dumb shit than ever.

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 Hmm. That's interesting. There's a great idea called knowingness.

Mark Manson 1:04:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:43 Um, lots of the issues of the modern world are laid at the feet of misinformation.

Mark Manson 1:04:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:48 And the claim is basically this person believes the wrong things because they've consumed the wrong stuff.

Mark Manson 1:04:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:54 And if only we could get them to consume the right stuff-

Mark Manson 1:04:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:57 ... we could update their beliefs. And you go, "Huh," well, I mean, that's a, would be a, would be a pretty fair assessment, if that's the problem. But if the problem is knowingness, knowingness being a lack of curiosity around what is true in place of a dogmatic belief about what you already know, so it's believing that you know the answer to the question before the question's already been asked-

Mark Manson 1:05:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:16 ... that is a prophylactic against any new information, regardless of whether it's mis or dis or mal or correct or whatever.

Mark Manson 1:05:25 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:25 And the challenge that you have is to try and get, uh, uh, or the, I guess, the reason, or the way that you know that this is true is precisely what you're pointing at, which is everybody acts as if the fact have already been settled-

Mark Manson 1:05:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:42 ... while no one can agree on what the facts are. Like, we say, people say, "Well, we know how much humans are contributing to climate change. We know this for a fact," on both sides-

Mark Manson 1:05:53 Sure.

Chris Williamson 1:05:54 ... while both sides don't agree with each other.

Mark Manson 1:05:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:56 And it's the same as kind of a religion question, which is every religion acts as if theirs is correct whilst not agreeing with all of the others.

Mark Manson 1:06:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:03 It's like, well, this can't all be correct, like, none of these, like, it, it, it can't, everybody can't be right here.

Mark Manson 1:06:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:08 At best, one of you can be right.

Mark Manson 1:06:10 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:10 And the same thing goes with the sort of knowingness question.

Mark Manson 1:06:13 Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's an- and it's the more, the greater diversity of information that people are exposed to, the more contradictions arise, and the more that the contradictions arise, the more people just kinda default to their whatever feels-

Chris Williamson 1:06:28 Hmm.

Mark Manson 1:06:28 ... right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:29 Well, I, there's-

Mark Manson 1:06:29 Because-

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 S- s- so, yeah, confident, uh, or, yeah, uh, uninformed certainty, it's certainly part of it. But I also see, um, the black sheep equivalent of that, which is sort of, uh, like, nihilistic despondency. Like, "Well, you know, we can't trust anything anymore."

Mark Manson 1:06:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 "Who even knows what facts are?" Uh, and that you can't trust the news and you can't trust, you can't even trust your neighbor next door on what they're saying. Um, and I wonder whether that is...... that there's maybe a, a bunch of different reactions to an overwhelm of information.

Mark Manson 1:07:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:02 Uh, one of them being you kind of intellectually reverse engineer the biases you wanted to be true all along.

Mark Manson 1:07:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:11 Uh, but on another side, you just throw your hands up and say, "I don't even, like, I can't even trust anything anymore."

Mark Manson 1:07:16 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:07:16 "Like, no."

Mark Manson 1:07:17 Yeah, there's definitely an asymmetry around trust. Warren Buffett's got that great quote where he says it, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to, to ruin it."

Chris Williamson 1:07:25 Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 1:07:25 And, and I think the same is true with trust. It's like, an institution can spend decades building up a certain amount of reliability and then just ruin it in a single day. And I think the more we're exposed to everything, um, the more we're exposed to, like, the flaws in everything.

Chris Williamson 1:07:45 This episode is brought to you by Nomatic. Summer is here and travel season is in full swing. But let's be honest, your backpack was probably built for a school field trip, not international adventures, which is where Nomatic comes in. I've been able to travel the world with this bag right here because it's designed by people who actually understand the chaos of being on the move. Everything has its place and no space goes unused. It's compact enough to fit under the seat, but somehow fits everything that you need when you're on the go. And if you're still on the fence, their products will last you literally a lifetime, with a lifetime guarantee. So this is the final backpack that you'll ever need to buy, and you can return or exchange any product within 30 days for any reason. So you can buy a new bag, put your possessions in it for a full month, and if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. And they ship internationally. Right now, you can get a 20% discount and see everything that I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com/modernwisdom. That's nomadic.com/modernwisdom. Related to that on the independent media system thing, and also the trade between expertise, uh, and relatability, I have a theory that we don't admire people who appear perfect. We admire the people who are imperfect and are comfortable with it.

Mark Manson 1:08:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:57 And, uh, uh, Dr. Robert Glover, who wrote No More Mr. Nice Guy, he's got the, the three essences of a masculine man, uh, which usually would be the sort of thing that makes my fucking toes curl but this one's actually really good.

Mark Manson 1:09:08 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:09:08 And he says, um, "A man who's comfortable in his own skin-"

Mark Manson 1:09:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:12 "... who knows where he's going, and is having fun while he's going there." And you go, okay, well, the comfortable in your own skin thing, okay, uh, someone who is imperfect and comfortable with it.

Mark Manson 1:09:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:21 Right? 'Cause it's very difficult to be comfortable in your own skin. No one believes that they're, well, very few people believe that they're perfect.

Mark Manson 1:09:26 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:09:27 So given that you probably are imperfect and know it, but are comfortable with it, you think, "Aha! This person's relatable and reliable."

Mark Manson 1:09:34 Right. It's another paradoxical kind of relationship dynamic in that we actually admire people who are comfortable with their own flaws. Like, we don't ad- like, think about the, if you think about a person who's, like, just trying to cover for their own flaws and act like they're not there or pretend like it's not their fault, uh, generally, like, we don't like those people. Those people are very annoying. And if you think about the people you do find very endearing, it's the people who are quirky, weird, you know, kinda off sometimes.

Chris Williamson 1:10:06 Why do you think that is?

Mark Manson 1:10:07 But they own it. Um, I actually think it comes back to the trust thing. I think it's like if I see somebody who's a little bit weird but, like, owns it, and is like, "Yeah, I just got this... I'm just kind of an oddball," like, I feel that I can trust them, um, that they're not gonna bullshit me or try to be something they're not. Uh, whereas somebody who's just trying to look perfect all the time, uh, you actually don't trust them. It's like a yes-man, right? Like, you know, it, it, it's... the irony of a yes-man is that it's somebody who always agrees with you on everything is, like, the last person you can actually go to for advice.

Chris Williamson 1:10:43 If I can't trust you, it's no, I can't trust you, yes.

Mark Manson 1:10:45 Exactly. So, I, yeah, I do think the, the flaw, like, the, uh, the confidence that comes with one's own flaws and imperfections, like, it, it ultimately does boil down to a trust thing, which is ultimately, like, why authenticity is sexy, is because you feel like you can trust the person.

Chris Williamson 1:11:03 Yeah, I mean, there's an, uh, a, an idea, again, from George, he's so fucking good, he just did this High Agency essay, everyone should go and see, uh, highagency.com, his essay's available on there, it's fucking sick. But this one, uh, non-fungible tokens, NFTs-

Mark Manson 1:11:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:16 ... there was a big boom or whatever in 2021 when everyone had COVID money and didn't know what to do with it, uh, he's got this idea of non-fungible people.

Mark Manson 1:11:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:11:23 And that's basically the same as what you're talking about here. He uses his mum as an example and his mum f- fucking hates fighting, like, can't bear physical altercations.

Mark Manson 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:11:33 And apparently (laughs) she was on the phone with George's brother, he's like 20 or something, he's some young guy, and y- the- she's driving in the car on her own, and she sees two young boys fighting by the side of the road. So she stops the car in the middle of the street and gets out and sort of fucking, uh, uh, Arthur Shelby them or Tommy Shelby them and she's like, "No fucking fighting. No fucking fight-" like, she's got these two apa- but the son is still on the phone like, "Mum, Mum, what?" And she's like, "Uh, there's two people fighting, I must get out and I must stop it." It's like, middle of the street, got out, like, two people she doesn't know, like, totally didn't need to get... could have got punched, could have, y- like, anything. Gets back in the car, tells the son. And George made this point that at her funeral, nobody's going to talk about how she was always on time-

Mark Manson 1:12:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:22 ... or, you know, the quality of the pasta al dente that she cooked or whatever. But she was the sort of woman that stopped a car in the middle of the street to stop people from fighting.

Mark Manson 1:12:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:30 And, uh, it's just a beautiful... that's a non-fungible person.

Mark Manson 1:12:34 It, it's interesting to think about, like, what are the stories, you know, go- bleh. It's interesting to think what are the stories that are gonna be told at your funeral? Because, yeah, it's never... I mean, obviously there's stories of, like, you being very charitable or loving or whatever, but, like, people always find quirky shit like that. Like, they find the, the, the NFT version of-

Chris Williamson 1:12:53 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 1:12:53 ... whoever you were.

Chris Williamson 1:12:54 Yeah. In what areas were you non-fungible?

Mark Manson 1:12:56 Yeah. Like-

Chris Williamson 1:12:57 You know?

Mark Manson 1:12:57 Yeah, well, yeah, well, where were you an oddball? What's the inside joke that everybody at the funeral service is gonna laugh and understand?

Chris Williamson 1:13:02 (laughs) Yeah, dude, do you remember when he-... dot, dot, dot.

Mark Manson 1:13:05 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:13:05 Oh, he did that to you too?

Mark Manson 1:13:06 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:13:07 Yeah, I know, I know. Didn't we love him?

Mark Manson 1:13:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:09 Like, he was so great.

Mark Manson 1:13:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:10 Uh, "If you aren't naturally tired at night and excited in the morning, then you probably haven't found something meaningful to work on. You are not stressed from doing too much, you are stressed from doing too little of what you care about."

Mark Manson 1:13:25 So, this, this is a drum that I bang on endlessly, uh, to the productivity crowd and, and I, I feel like it just gets ignored, but I think emotion is the most important productivity system. Um, there's a lot of, and I think the reason it gets discounted is because there is a lot of cheesy, clichéd advice around, like, "Oh, if you do what you love, you never work a day of your life," you know, like bullshit like that. Uh, i- it's, passion is practical. Like, when you deeply care about something you're doing, you're gonna work on it longer, you're gonna think harder about the problems, you're gonna take feedback better, you're gonna be more resilient, you're gonna be willing to stay up at night, get up early on a Saturday or whatever. Like, emotion is, it is actually the highest leverage system within yourself towards whatever your productivity goals are. And I just feel like so much productivity advice is disembodied. It's like, you know, the, the hustle culture bullshit of just, like, grind-

Chris Williamson 1:14:35 Ignore how you feel.

Mark Manson 1:14:35 ... just grind, grind, grind, and then yeah, it's like, oh, you know, stop being a bitch, like, you know, sleep when you're dead, date when you're dead, like whatever. Go make a billion dollars. It, it's, what is it for? Like, if it's not for something, like, if you're not doing all this work for some greater cause, then, then what the, what the fuck are you doing it? Like, you might as well just hang out at the beach and play video games, like, 'cause, 'cause why not? You know?

Chris Williamson 1:15:04 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Manson 1:15:05 Like, there, there's a cert-, there's a nihilism in all, in the productivity space right now that, like, it really bothers me. And, um, it, 'cause A, I, I don't think it's healthy, but B, I also think it's, like, just bad advice. Like, the best advice is find something you really fucking love and care about-

Chris Williamson 1:15:25 Mm.

Mark Manson 1:15:26 ... and give yourself to it. Um, Bukowski's got this great line, he says, "Find what you love and let it kill you." And I just f- there's, like, so much beauty in that because when you find a craft or a trade or, or a skill that, like, you deeply, deeply care about, or a mission that you deeply, deeply care about, you are willing, you become willing to trade yourself for that mission. And, and you are liter- like, when you trade your time, you are literally trading your life for something, so what are you gonna trade it for? And what is the point of trade, of making that trade? Some, get a billion dollars? You know, get, get 100 million followers? Like, w- whoopie, whoopie fucking doo. Like, what does that mean, you know? So, I continue to bang that drum, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:16:23 Hopelessly.

Mark Manson 1:16:24 Hopelessly, yes. (laughs) But I don't, I don't get a, I don't get invited to the, to, uh, you know, the same, uh, uh, th- biohacking conferences that, uh, uh, m- my contemporaries do, so.

Chris Williamson 1:16:36 Uh, Joe Hudson's got this wonderful line, he says, "Enjoyment is efficiency."

Mark Manson 1:16:40 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:16:41 Uh, that he looks at however much enjoyment I get out of doing a thing is just a direct correlate with how efficient I was at doing it. That the more that I enjoy something, the more efficient I'm gonna be.

Mark Manson 1:16:51 Dude, people, i- and it's double-sided as well, right? Like, the better you get at something, the more you fall in love with it. And the more you love something, the more patience you're gonna have to get good at it. And so it's just, like, to me, it's, like, the most obvious entry point, but I think a lot of people develop kind of, like, fucked up relationships with productivity and work. Um, and I