Hello everybody, Mark Manson here and today I have something very special and a little bit different for you. Back in November I did a speaking tour all across Australia. I spoke in seven different cities and spoke to almost 10,000 people, including at the famed Opera House. Now at the shows we recorded the live Q&A sessions and well we picked a handful of the best ones to share with you on the podcast today. So in today's episode we're going to be going through live Q&A and you're going to learn the best method to improve yourself while staying true to who you actually are. We're going to talk about why you can't find your purpose in life and what to do instead. We'll discuss the trade-offs that have an outsized return and how to navigate those and figure out what they are. We'll talk about turning in posture syndrome on its head and no longer letting it hold you back. I'll share what I think about Australia's ban on social media for kids. For those of you who don't know, Australia is forcing the social media platforms to create a kid's only section and I'm going to go over how to know if a relationship is the right one for you and of course what it really means to stop giving a fuck so you can start living the life you want. Shout out to all the Australians out there. I know a ton of you are listening right now. I appreciate you coming out for the events. Honestly it was the experience of a lifetime. It was a dream to speak in some of those venues. You as these are very well versed in the no fucks given philosophy. In fact, I have a YouTube video going up on Sunday, all about that. It's a vlog of the tour and also an investigation into why Australians just give zero fucks. So be sure to check that out. And in the meantime, if you want to send it into your questions, comments, love letters, trolling, hate mail, pictures of your cats, you can send them on the
[email protected] and I will make Drew read all of them. So we'll be back next week with a regularly scheduled podcast episode. In the meantime, here is the Australian Q&A. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host Mark Manson. We're just going to try to move through as many people as possible. So anybody who wants to ask anything, please come up to the mic. Do we have anybody any brave souls? How does one identify what truly matters in life to them when everything seems so important and overwhelming? Well, there's a quick way and a long way. The quick way is to almost die. And that's not a joke. Anybody here who has had a near-death experience through who has had somebody very close to them dies suddenly. Nothing shows you what matters in that moment more. The long way, I think, is the most reliable thing that I found is just process of elimination. You don't really know how much you value something until it's removed from your life because when it's in your life, you're not objective about it. You get attached to all the nice little perks and cute little hats you get to wear and people who pat you on the back. It's only when it's taken away from you or temporarily removed, this comes back to the experiment thing. When it's temporarily removed, then you can actually see, huh, yeah, I actually wasn't getting a whole lot out of that. And so, yeah, my advice to people is usually try removing things for periods of time and see how you respond and a lot of times it'll surprise you. Thank you. Hello. Hi. Significantly negative trait of all of us, I think most of us, is procrastination. Recently, a podcast you did with Brandon Novak, his mentor stated that procrastination is like masturbation, you're only fucking yourself. Why then? Most of us are aware of this, but yet we still continue to fuck ourselves. Oh, Brandon is so eloquent. Funny story about him is he came on my podcast and within no shit, within three minutes, he was taking his pants off. He came in, it was his hilarious. He came in, met my producer, Drew, and we were just kind of like having small talk and Drew was like, "Yeah, I'm from Nebraska." And Brandon's like, "Oh, dude, I gotta show you my tattoo about Nebraska." And he just started undoing his pants, totally butt ass naked. He had this tattoo on his upper thigh that said, "I got fucked in the ass in Nebraska and all I got was this tattoo." I'm not making any of that up. So procrastination is, so my take on procrastination is that it is primarily emotionally driven. And I think there's two ways to think about it. One is that any time our perception of a task feels overwhelming, and overwhelming can mean a lot of different things. They can mean difficult. It can mean extremely significant. It can mean risky. Basically, overwhelming in any sense of like, I guess, salience or importance. Our natural reaction is to kind of resist it and find reasons to like, you know, it's uncomfortable. And so we find excuses to put it off or pretend like it doesn't need to be done today. And I think, so what I've found in my life, the most effective way to combat procrastination is to simply lower the stakes on something, is to instead of sitting down and being like, "Okay, I need to write a 10-page article today, and this article is going to be published in this place and read by thousands. And if I start thinking about that, it's going to freak me out. Instead, I just sit down and I'm like, "Okay, let's write a good intro." And that's it. I don't think past that. And when you're able to bite-size things down into more manageable chunks, that sense of overwhelm dissipates and it becomes easier to do. And the other beautiful thing about it too is that once you do do the bite-size version, it gives you emotional momentum and you're able to like, continue on longer into the task. So that's the most effective thing I've ever found for myself. I guess a distant second would be to set up your environment in a way to kind of like create incentive and part of that might be like, try to make it a little bit fun, but ultimately it's just, I just lower the stakes until it stops being scary and overwhelming. And then I get to work. So I hope that helped. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. Hello. Sorry, I'm really nervous, but. I guess after you've been through something in your life that's been quite traumatizing, how can you actually stop the mindset that the world is out to get you instead of just pretending you don't give a fuck about it? Yeah, pretending is not good. It's exhausting for one, but it also like, I think it causes you to show up in the world, you know, censoring who you are. And that's never a good thing that that doesn't make things better. I think a huge part of this is collecting evidence that the world's not out to get you, right? Like find people in your life that are trustworthy, find places in your life that are safe, find people that you can share things with and be vulnerable with and expose yourself to and see that nothing horrible happens. Now to somebody who's been through a lot of trauma, that's much easier said than done, but that is the project. And it's a very long-term project. I think that's ultimately, that is the healing process, is like taking that part of yourself that somebody else hurt deeply and then having a relationship with a new person who doesn't hurt you in the same context and it helps you rebuild that trust in people in general and trust in the world in general. So that's the long-term solution. I don't have any short-term solutions, unfortunately, but it is possible and it does happen and it's a long road. But I would say stop pretending. You can give a fuck. Just tell people. You mentioned experiments. How long would you give an experiment before you sort of realized that it didn't work? It's a great question. The annoying answer is it depends on the experiment. So I think some things you can recognize quite quickly and others take a long time. To tie into the procrastination.
It's a nation point though, I do think you should start any experiment with a short enough timeline that it doesn't feel intimidating. So I'll give you an example. I drank pretty heavily, basically my whole life, and I'm now sober, I haven't had a drink in two and a half years. It was not, thank you. It was not intentional, it was during that health journey I talked about during the talk. I quit alcohol for 30 days just as an experiment, as like, well, I'm trying to get these last few kilos off, like, let's give up the booze for a while. I had never done it before, and the 30 days was, my health coach, being honest now, being transparent here, I did not decide to quit for 30 days. My health coach was like, you lazy piece of shit, you drink too much, I've been telling you this for two years, you should do 30 days without alcohol, and it was finally, I was like, okay, 30 days is doable, it's not that bad. What happened was I did the 30 days, and when I got to the end of it, it went so well, it exceeded my expectations by far. There was all sorts of cognitive and emotional and just lifestyle benefits that I were completely unanticipated, that I was like, shit, I'm enjoying this train that I'm on. Let's do 90, and so then I did 90, and then actually at the end of the 90, I had a drink, which was an experiment, of like, I wonder what it's going to be like when I go back and have a drink again, and when I had the drink, I was like, wow, this is terrible. I feel awful, and so I gave up alcohol, I haven't had it since. My point is that I think in general, people are too rigid with their goals. People get way too attached to the 30 days, or the 10 kilos, or the certain amount of money they want to make. What matters is the directionality and the information you're gaining by doing the thing. Any time a goal stops serving you, any time an experiment stops serving you, you don't feel like you're learning anything new, and it's clear that you don't like this, stop. Anytime you are learning something new, even if you don't really like it, as long as you're learning something new, you should keep going. At some point, if it's making you miserable, then you should try to alter the experiment to try to find a way to not make yourself miserable. But the real point of all of this is just information, learning about yourself, understanding yourself. I know not drinking, like, made me aware of so much shit in myself that I never anticipated. And there's a lot of things like that, so yeah, that's the best answer I got. Thank you. I feel like it's a very common human thing, but the idea of not caring about what other people think or say about you, because every single time it feels like I want to live my own life and do what I want, there's always someone that I don't really talk to that has something to say about it. Yeah, people suck. Tell me about it. There was a thing I wrote a couple months ago. It was like, if you wouldn't ask them for advice, then why the fuck do you care about their criticism? And before you go, this is the sort of thing that will never be a point in your life where people like random people don't judge you. That's just, unfortunately, a fact of life. The key is, and you will always care to a certain extent, the key is to care about something else much more, right? And you have something that's so important that it's worth being disliked for, then you become unstoppable. I'm a lawyer, but I promised I'm not an asshole. You talked a lot about the idea of killing versions of ourselves, and the examples you gave were more recently in your health kit, but also when you were younger, sort of the idea of not being a musician anymore. In your career, do you find that people, there's a common thread of what people find the hardest thing to give up, whether that's a relationship or some sort of vice or something else? Yeah, I think, I mean, you definitely nailed two of the big ones. So many people stay in bad relationships way too long, and I think a lot of it doesn't even have to do with the other person anymore. It's like they've long stopped liking or respecting the other person. It's just they don't know who they are outside of that relationship, and they're afraid to figure that out, and so they stay in longer, and they continue to justify it. Addiction is a big one because, you know, as anybody who has gone through AA, we'll tell you, like, so like, addicts build their identity around their addiction, and so when you remove the addiction, then you have to start dealing with all these second and third-order effects around their life and their lifestyle. I'd say careers, another one, coincidentally, I've met many lawyers who absolutely fucking hate their job, but they like the money. I'm glad you like your job, but you've probably met them too, like, it's, you know, they like the money, they like the prestige, they like the corner office, like all the stuff that they've achieved, and it's extremely hard to give that up, because if they give that up then who are they, right? Those are probably the biggest three, I would say, that you see the most often, so thank you. [applause] Hi, Mark. Hello. Hello. I have a pretty straightforward question for you last one, which is, "What is your best advice for a long-term successful marriage?" Fighting is going to be inevitable. I think judgment is optional, and I think it's really, really important to understand both of those things. I find that, like, a lot of people either assume that they should never fight, because if they do start fighting then they start judging each other and say all sorts of mean things. And then a lot of people fight a lot, and they think that sort of thing is normal. I think its conflict is expected, and it's necessary, in a lot of ways it's actually good, because it keeps both people aligned and aware of the other person's needs. And it also, if you have successful conflict, which is essentially what I'm talking about here, where the conflict is productive rather than destructive, it builds trust. You actually need conflict to build trust, like you need to see the other person get pissed off at you and storm out or whatever and feel hurt, and then resolve it and make up, and things are actually better, because that builds trust, and it reinforces the fact of like, this is okay, I'm safe with this person, something terrible is not going to happen. That's where real intimacy comes from. So conflict's inevitable and necessary, but the judgment is not, and where conflict can easily turn toxic is when people stop making it about the thing, about the value difference, and they make it about the person. So, instead of, you didn't load the dishwasher right, it's like, you're a sloppy, lazy person. Or, you know, instead of like, hey, I'd appreciate it if you had like better financial awareness. It's like, you're horrible with money, and I can't trust you to have a credit card anymore. So it's doing the whole, like, love this center, hate the sin type thing, and speaking to each other in terms of like, values and needs, and respecting the values and needs of each other without turning it personal and demeaning each other, and turning it into a power struggle of like, who's scoring the most points against somebody else. I guess my whole answer here is just, fight productively. I have a relationship question. Lucky you. Yeah. Lucky them. Just share with us random collection of people. Yes. And about three months ago, I met a woman. we've been getting on very well, and recently,
because of some personal problems in her life, we had a little bit of a roadblock. We've talked through what those problems were, and she's not asked if we can be friends for a number of weeks while she sorts through those personal problems with the idea of the hope and tension of coming back together as romantic partners. My question is, given what I've explained, do you think it's likely that we would come back together? (audience laughing) (audience laughing) - So, it's a marked redomas over here. - What was funny about any of that? (laughing) - My heart's on my sleeve here. - No, no, no, no. - No, I was. - No, no, no. - No, no, no. - I think they're laughing at my lack of prediction abilities. They're not laughing at you. I'm sorry to hear that, first of all. It's hard for me to say, like without knowing detail, the tough thing about relationship issues is that it's so much of it really does boil down to the details, but it can definitely go either way. Neither direction would surprise me. So, if I had to put odds on it, I would put it around 50/50. (audience laughing) But, let me say this. I think what's really important for you during this period is to simply let it play out, because clearly it's like whatever's going on, it's about her, right? And if she comes back, then great, because that will validate and solidify all the things that you felt and all the potential that you see in this relationship. And if she doesn't come back, then it just means that it wasn't the right person for you, and it frees you to go find somebody else. So, it's a win-win. So, just don't try to control it, let it happen. Perfect, thank you. Thank you. Wow, a double clap. - Looking at the US election. (audience laughing) - One of the outcomes of this is we are seeing bad behavior at the personal level being rewarded. Would you say society's a whole is no longer prizing civility, but rewarding bad behavior? And why? - It's a good question. The short answer is yes, I think it is rewarding bad behavior. The longer answer is, I don't know if this is necessarily new. I think it's the bad behavior, the definition of the bad behavior, the type of bad behavior is shifted. One of the things that I've noticed, and maybe people here have noticed the same thing, but there's all these documentaries that are coming out about the '90s and early 2000s, about different celebrities or political moments or whatever. And it's funny because every time I watch one, I'm like, people were such assholes. Like, people were so mean. Just common, like in the discourse, TV shows, tabloids, everything, like people were really anti-social. And if you look at the music back then, it was very anti-social, it was very destructive. Drug use was glorified, breaking, destroying hotel rooms was glorified. And so it's funny because it's like that bad behavior was rewarded back then, but because we grew up with it, we don't, it doesn't register. And now the bad behavior that we're not used to is being rewarded, and because we're not used to it, that's registering. And so I don't know, like ultimately, bad behavior gets attention. And the nature of media and pop culture is that it will always reward what gets attention. And so some form of bad behavior will always be rewarded to some degree or another. I think it's just a question of what is the bad behavior and what is the cost? Like comes back to the trade-off thing. Is the cost here worth it or not? In terms of the election, I get the sense that this is like a thinly veiled Trump question, (audience laughing) which, this is my sixth time in Australia. And at this point, I'm very used to get, like explaining Trump to Australians. So here's what I would say, especially about this particular moment in time. If you wanna understand why he's being rewarded, you have to understand that there's a very large part of the United States that has felt ignored, condescended to, overlooked, and demeaned. Rightfully or wrongfully, like you could argue whether they're justified or not, but the point is they have felt that way for decades. And he has found a way to tap into that. And because he's tapped into that, they like it when he's mean. They like it when he's an asshole. And so he's rewarded for it. So I'm not, it sucks, but it is what it is. And I think it's coming back to my point about being honest. I find that a lot of people in the United States, particularly, I find that people on the left don't wanna be honest about that. They wanna find all these other reasons why he keeps winning. And they want all these other justifications that fits their preconceived notions. They don't wanna see like what's plainly there, that he's tapped into a lot of anger that's existed in the country from multiple decades. And that's why he keeps getting rewarded for it. So that's my opinion, that's my take. Thank you. (audience applauds) - Hi Mark, I wanna talk about trade-offs because I sort of, I go to the gym and it's a trade-off. And I love that trade-off, it's great. What are some trade-offs that are pretty awesome that people should do that aren't obvious? - That's a great question. I do think health-related ones have like just a lot of non-arbitous upside. Gym being one of 'em exercise being one of 'em. I, it's funny. So I stopped drinking two and a half years ago and it was completely unintentional. It started as an experiment. And initially it was just the lose weight. And I, you know, I drank a lot my entire life and I really, really enjoyed it. As I said, last time I was in Adelaide, I was shit-faced pretty much the whole time. The wine here is so good, guys. Seriously, well done, well done. So I did a 30-day no alcohol thing and it like blew my mind, the cognitive benefits, the emotional benefits, like the amount of energy I had. I got stronger in the gym without any extra effort. Like it just started compounding on all these things and it really blew me away. I also think in terms of trade-offs, I think this kind of ties into the relationship thing. I think in relationships, there are small things often have disproportionate benefits, right? So checking in with people, which is the text message occasionally, like disproportionately rewards you because it keeps you connected that person and it like opens up social opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't have. And I also think developing good habits around conversation skills, like asking good questions, like also has a very disproportionate benefits. I honestly think like most of the good things that happen to us throughout life happens because of other people. And so the more you can connect yourself with other people, like the more you're gonna benefit from that. So I guess what I'm circling around here is it's actually the mundane stuff. It's the boring stuff that has a shocking amount of upside. But it's not sexy and it doesn't like, you know, get any clicks on Instagram. So people overlook it. And but ultimately, it is boring and mundane for a reason. It's because it's what works. So thank you. (audience applauds) - So obviously your book is aimed at adults. 38, I guess that would kind of maybe be the average age of people here, I don't know. I'm here tonight with my son's foster mum, which is a big deal for me to admit. And our case worker is actually also in the audience. So we're an unlikely trio to be here tonight. My son is coming back into my care on the 22nd of November. And your work, along with the work of Gabor Mate, has been fundamental in me actually pulling my finger out and realizing what the hell's going on. Now, if you were to put something together that was aimed at a lower age demographic, basically when my kid comes home, what of your stuff should I start integrating straight away? So he does not fuck himself up or I don't fuck him up. Like if you were gonna write a kid's book, the satellite of not giving a crap, what would you fundamentally be putting into that? and big love to Sarah and his foster mother.
and Phoebe, the caseworker, who's in the audience tonight as well. (audience applauds) - Congratulations, by the way, that's amazing. How old is he? - He is his six on the 30th of November, so he comes home a week before his birthday. - Okay, so the age matters a lot, because, you know, just the nature of child development, like they're literally not able to conceive of certain things until certain ages, right? So, I generally tell people that, you know, my work is very identity-driven, values-driven, accommodating, figuring out pain, suffering, dealing with hardships, stuff like that, and most of that sort of stuff comes online in early adolescence to mid-adolescence. So, when I get this question, I always tell people teenagers for sure, and I've even had teachers who are like, can I just like delete all the F-bombs and, you know, give this chapter to my students or whatever, and I'm like, yeah, of course. So, teenagers for sure, when you get younger than that, you know, the kind of the project of a healthy child at each age range is a little bit different. You know, six to eight years old, honestly, the most important thing you can do is just support him emotionally and be present and be accepting and, you know, try to set hurdles in front of him that he can clear, and then the ones he doesn't clear support him, you know, let him know it's okay and encourage him to try again. You know, that is probably your most important role for the next three to four years. It's just be like a stable emotional force in his life and let him find his own life. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, thank you very much. - Thank you, Mark. A lot of people close to me suffer from imposter syndrome from your experiences. How did you overcome imposter syndrome? And the second part of the question is, do you believe it is something you have to overcome yourself or as a support person or someone you close with, can you be involved with then self-realization of that? - I think imposter syndrome you can definitely overcome. You know, I think imposter syndrome is just a mismatch between expectation and reality. It's like my expectation of my own skill or worth is here and the world is telling me it's here, right? And that fucks with people just as much as the reverse fucks with them as well. In the case of imposter syndrome, I feel like it's simply remembering it's two things. It's one, it's remembering what you're good at and all the work you put into being good at it. And then I think the second thing is also, and this is kind of the mindset shift that I eventually got to was like, okay, well it's here now, so live up to it, right? If this is where the expectation is, then like work up to that new expectation. Don't sit around freaking out being like, oh my God, all these people expect all this stuff from me. It's like, no, fucking get the work, start practicing, get better, build the skills, and like earn your way up to it. And I found that useful. I don't know if that's gonna necessarily work for everybody, but it's, I think however you can close that gap between expectation and where you actually are, whether it's by lowering your own expectations or working your way up to those expectations, that will resolve the anxiety. Thank you. - Okay, hi, Mark. - Hello. - On behalf of the room, thank you so much for these micro therapy sessions. I'm just going to say that. Do you have a litmus test to sense check when relationship trade-offs are leading you to settle for less than what you think you deserve? - It's hard, this question is hard, because there are so many people out there who think they deserve shit. And then there are a lot of people out there who think they deserve everything. And so I think a lot of it boils down to what do you think you deserve and how realistic is that? I think ultimately what you should expect is respect, trust, open communication, some shared values, generally enjoying your time with the other person. I think if your expectations start to exceed that drastically, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak and failure. And I think if your expectations fail to meet that drastically, you're also setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak and failures. So I guess that's the best way I can answer that. Thank you. (audience applauding) - Hi Mark. I struggle with being overly empathetic to the point where it gets you in trouble, have a bad habit of just seeing the good and everyone. And most importantly, giving everyone the benefit of the day out, so some asshole cuts you off. I don't get upset about him or maybe they're having the worst fucking day of their lives. I'll let it go, those sort of things. But I find myself doing that with everything and everyone, which makes it very hard to sort of stand your ground and have a backbone, essentially. And I feel like the one time I do sort of stand my ground. I get it so wrong that I've hurt the person's feelings and yeah, if you had any advice on that sort of thing, if you can gauge the question out of that. (audience laughing) - I love this question because it's Oscar Wilde as this great quote where he says, "Everything in moderation, including moderation." It's funny because empathy is so important, but if all you do is empathize all the time, then you get walked over, right? So you need to be able to set boundaries and set limits and say no to people and disappoint people and occasionally hurt or upset people, but you don't wanna always hurt and upset people and always say no to people. So there's like, it's a very tricky thing, but I would look at it like this, standing up for yourself, it's a skill. And like all skills, you're really bad at it if you've never done it before. And so the first few times it's gonna be very messy and clunky and you're probably gonna be overly emotional and overreact and maybe upset the other person. It's, as you do it more, you'll get better at it. And what I would say is that it's helpful to really establish for yourself beforehand the things that you will and will not tolerate in your life. Absent of the person, 'cause it's like, once the person's in your life and they do the thing that you don't wanna tolerate, well, you know them and you kinda like them and it's like, well, they don't mean it. Like, they're a good person and maybe if I give them another chance, like all those things start entering your head and, you know, it's a slippery slope. Whereas if you establish way beforehand what you do and do not tolerate in your life, that there are just rules you have for everybody, then when that person does show up and do those behaviors, it's already resolved. You already know, sorry, you're gone. And the results of this is that you actually end up maybe cutting off people kind of quickly more often but it prevents you a lot of headaches down the road. It's kinda like, you know, they always say in business, be slow to higher and fast to fire. Like, it's kinda like that for personal relationships too. Like you wanna catch the behavior early, catch the red flag and just once you see that first red flag, you know, in this day and age when you can meet so many people, like, yeah, I'm not gonna mess with that. So hopefully that's helpful. - Thank you. - Thank you. (audience applauding) - Welcome, Mark, to Perth. - Thank you. - You might recently have heard that the Australian government are going to implement age restrictions on social media for children up to 16 years of age. I wonder what your thoughts are about how that will actually run in terms of a 16-year-old now that actually that's their social life and where that's gonna hit? - I think it's great. By the way, I didn't know this until I landed in Sydney Airport and I saw a big thing talking about like teenage Instagram or something like that. I think this is fantastic. A friend of mine, Jonathan Height, he's been spending the last five years researching this, accumulating like all of the research on it. He just put out an amazing book called The Anxious Generation. To me, the evidence of social media affecting young people below all of us.
the age of say 15, 16, 14, 15, 16, like anything below that, it seems pretty inarguable that it's a bad thing. I imagine it will be messy when they implement it, like kids will find a way around it and then you know, it will be, there will be a lot of uncertainty and stuff, but I just think the long-term trend is that we should try to delay some of this stuff as long as possible. And so I do think, I think your government is doing the right thing and they are, as far as I know, they're the first ones doing it. So, good on you, Australia. Hi, I'm Sixth Stain. What's your best piece of advice or wisdom that you could give me? Stay off social media. I was like, I'll lay up. No, no, no, no, I'm going to answer, I'm going to answer. Thank you. This is too good, I couldn't pass it up. Advice for young people. So, what I generally tell teenagers is the whole point of this period of your life is to really figure out who you are, what you like, what you don't like, who you like, who you don't like, what sort of people you want to associate with. And this is going to be a process of a lot of experimentation. My experience is that a lot of people your age and even much older up to kids and unique kids and kids in the early 20s, there's this immense pressure that they put on themselves. And some of that pressure comes from school, it comes from universities, it comes from parents, whatever, that you should have a path figured out. And I think that's unrealistic. I think it's very rare for anyone your age to know who they are, who they're going to be, and what they're going to do. And so, as you go through this process of experimenting, trying on new identities, trying new activities, exploring different groups of people, exploring aspects of yourself, it's going to be a roller coaster ride, there's going to be a lot of great moments and a lot of dark moments. Just understand that that is all normal and part of the process and there's nothing wrong with you, you're doing it, that's exactly what you should be doing and take your time with it. Thank you so much. Hi, so, I think I do the trade off part quite a lot where I'm holding the positive and negative, but it's potentially to the point where it's actually too much and I suffer from that analysis paralysis problem. I was just wondering your thoughts on that kind of extreme and how, if you have any recommendations, how you would deal with them. It's a good problem in that you've trained yourself to be able to measure those things. This is where the, you know, this is where the pain hack comes in, because my guess is like where you're getting stuck is you're purely looking at it in terms of like, you know, does this benefit outweigh the cost? But if you find the cost that you actually kind of secretly relish, like costs aren't to be avoided, it's to find the cost that you feel like you gain by giving up if that makes sense. So I think it's, if you look at it in those terms, you could probably help. I'm guessing there's probably a lot of perfectionism around this as well of like, let's optimize, like, what's the most benefit I can get for like each unit of effort and all this stuff. Yeah. I like to say that being optimal is suboptimal. That trying to optimize everything actually prevents you from important experiences of screwing up and, you know, messing around and learning things about yourself. So try to keep that in mind as well. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Mark. So I'm 15 years old and I find myself caring about people's opinion at school too much and I was wondering what your advice for me would be to stop caring about the popular guys' opinions as much. Yeah. By show of hands, how many people struggled with the same thing when you were 15? I think that is literally everybody in this room. I'm going to give you a few answers here. This is very normal at your age. You should care what people around you think. This is the time of your life that you're really discovering your social relationships and how to get along with people and how to build relationships with people and so this is part of that process is like caring a little bit too much. So there's, I guess, the first point here and all of the raised hands proved it is that there's absolutely nothing abnormal about this struggle that you're going through and it will naturally get better as you get older. So that's part one. Part two is, you know, kids your age can kind of suck, like they can be very judgmental and that's hard to deal with a lot of the time. The best advice I can give is you're never going to stop caring what people think but you can, the trick is to find something more important than what people think. Like ask yourself what is so important in my life that I'm willing to be disliked for it because once you start finding those things then you kind of become unstoppable. Like it just stops mattering. It's not that it doesn't hurt and it's not that it doesn't bother you. It's just that it stops mattering that it hurts and that it bothers you. If that makes sense. Yeah. Good luck man. Thanks very much. You'll make it. Hey Mark, with the whole spectrum of artificial intelligence being making us think less and taking over the world, what's your view on a way of thinking that we can use to be more relevant in this future that's evolving before us? I love this question. I'm thinking a lot about this question because I mean I think AI is going to eat a lot of my industry. Right? Like it's, if you go to chat GPT now and you ask it to give you advice in the style of Mark Manson, it's hilariously bad. If you ever want to use yourself try it. The one day it won't be. Right? And so it's, I've been thinking quite a bit the last year or two about this. I like the idea that anytime scarcity is removed in one area, it's added in another. And so what AI does is it removes scarcity around a, access to information but also be like the personalization of information. Basically it just makes, it makes information so automatic and fluid and seamless that I think information itself, which in my case would be like advice itself, is going to become a commodity and essentially free. So then the question is what becomes more scarce? I think it's human connection. I think it's emotional connection. I think it's in-person things like this will become more scarce and more valuable. People will start to perceive them as more valuable in the next 10 years because all the, this whole talk could probably in five years, there's probably some AI that could just generate this for you and probably deliver it to you in my voice. But actually being here in the room together, laughing together, making jokes together, whatever, that can't be replicated. So I definitely see that. I think and I hope people are going to start putting more of a premium on that as we go forward. Yeah, great. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Mark. You had a slide, evil people don't think they are, they think other people are. And then you made a throw away line that might be true in the opposite with good. My question for you, which has been on my mind for the last few days, is some of the nicest people I know that do the best in the world can't seem to access that feeling about themselves. So it's almost like they're a conduit for good, but none gets stuck on them on the way through. And I'd like to know what you think about this phenomenon. I think it's a.
very real thing. I think it makes sense to me that probably the most positively impactful people in the world are maybe not necessarily happy or emotionally functional themselves. If you imagine somebody who exhibits, like, goes to such extremes to give value to people or see the best in people or provide service for people, it makes sense to me that there's probably some neuroticism that's driving some of that. And so you get kind of this paradoxical thing where, you know, the best people aren't necessarily the happiest and vice versa. This is one of many reasons that I often talk about why happiness is overrated. You can be, there are a lot of pieces of shit that are very happy with themselves. So, I definitely think it is a legit phenomenon. You see this a lot to not to say that business people are necessarily good people, but you see it in like, you know, genius artists or genius entrepreneurs, CEOs, they're driven by some dark shit and it's in a weird way it becomes their gift to the world. So, it is paradoxical. I think it is a thing I don't know what else to make of it, but I'm with you. Yeah. I just got really nervous. So, as somebody in their like late-ish 30s who's searching for purpose and has been forever, how do you actually go about finding your purpose? So, this is a good opportunity to get real about purpose, right? Part of my talk was that most of our struggles is just having unrealistic expectations or perceptions of what we're actually doing. And I think purpose is one of those things that I think people set unrealistic expectations for. So, a few things. One is, I don't think anybody has one singular purpose. Like, there's not, it's very rare and that you're ever going to find like one thing of like, oh, this is what adds purpose to my life. There's probably a mixture of things or like a portfolio of things that bring purpose to your life. The second thing is is that it's, I don't like the word find because it implies that it's like hidden somewhere out there and I have to like go digging through a bunch of shit to find it. Purpose is made. Purpose is then the byproduct of sacrificing for something that feels important. And so the question is really just what seems important? If you can find the thing that seems important, then you can start sacrificing for it and that sacrificing for it will give you a sense of purpose and meaning and direction in your life. And I think the reason this is such a salient topic these days is for the exact reason that I finished the talk, which is just we are bombarded with so many seemingly important things that it's really hard to focus on one long enough to sacrifice for it. And so I would say start by eliminating things, run experiments. What if I stop doing this thing for a month? What if I stop hanging out with that person for a month? What if I stop doing this thing at work? What happens? Do I miss it? Or am I actually happier without it? And you'll start discovering which things are actually adding a lot to your life and which are not. And as you go through that process, you'll start to whittle it down and you'll find those two or three things that feel more important than everything else. And then you'll have the space to actually start committing and making the sacrifice for it. Is that helpful? Yeah. Thank you. Cool. Thanks. Hi Mark. Your World War Three survivor number three really resonated with me and I'm sorry I forgot his name. Sorry. John Polsroot. Yes. John Paul Shah. So it's the part that you mentioned about him finding comfort in the prison. And I relayed that to my life and about how through support I've created what I could see in your, when you described that as a prison for loved ones by support and caring. And at what point does support and caring become a prison and you're holding people you love from back from thriving? How do you draw that line? I would say it becomes a prison when it is a form of escape. And that is a very real thing. So I mean there's a concept known as codependence which is you could think of it as almost as an addiction to other people's problems. Because as long as you're fixing other people's problems you don't have to think about your own. And I think like all addictions it's a blurry line. It's a difficult definition. It's hard to like all addictions you rationalize it and you find reasons why it's justified and why it's not such a big deal and why it's actually a good thing. So it is hard. It's very, it's a hard and very nebulous thing to like tie down. I would say that again I'm going to come back to the experiment with giving things up. So for a codependent person who feels this constant obligation to support others and be there for others run an experiment of hey for the next two weeks or for the next month or for the next week I'm not going to support this person. And if that's going to disrupt the relationship then maybe talk to them about it and be like look I feel like I'm being codependent and I think it's really important for my own health to see if I can stand on my own and have a little bit of distance but run that experiment with different people in your life and you'll learn something about yourself and you'll learn like what you'll find is that the healthy relationships they'll understand. They'll be happy for you actually because the healthy the healthy people in your life probably already know that this is what you need. It's the unhealthy relationships that will get very upset. Thank you. Hi I'm Alyssa I think there's probably a lot of us in this room, mid-30s. I've got an okay job in mining. I'm on comfortable money but just feeling like there's like a bigger life meant for me. I've had a crack. Starting a side business I rent out these mini pink caravans and I'm like yes the arrows that get shot at me for this I can enjoy these like this is okay I can handle this. I loved the thing that you said about experimenting like just have constant experiments until you get you find something that works to stay committed. My question is after experiment after experiment, experiment, failure, failure, failure what advice do you have to keep overcoming all the little failures to keep pushing until you find the way that works? I think well first of all the string of failures never stops is just the failures get better and I think recognizing that progress is important it's hard to sometimes as a somebody who also is an entrepreneur who drives himself very hard it's sometimes I go a long time without like stopping and smelling the roses and being like wait I've come a long way holy shit so I think it's a good practice to remember that but if the failures are feeling overwhelming again this is what I love about the experiment thing is that you can modulate the experiments to make success easier so I'll give you an example as nothing to do with business I was talking to a good friend of mine is a meditation teacher and I was talking to him once and I was like you know it's funny because like when I lose track of my meditation practice it's like 15 sitting for 15 minutes just like feels like an eternity whereas when I'm meditating regularly 15 minutes feels like nothing but I was like I don't know it gets skewed in my head so how do I get over the fat and he was like so sit for 15 seconds
He's like, "You could do that, right?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I can." And he's like, "Great." And then once you do it for 15 seconds, do it for 30. And then once you do it for 30, do it for 60. And he's like, "Before you know it, you'll be at 15, 15 minutes." And I love that principle, 'cause I think you can take it and apply it. Like whenever you feel emotionally like you need a win, you just move the goal post up and be easier on yourself. 'Cause then that shows you the progress you're making. - Thank you. - Yep. (audience applauding) - Hi Mark, I have a question in terms of someone who for most of my adult life has lived in a very self-centered kind of ignorant, peachy life is fun sort of bubble that's quite recently been burst 'cause you wake up to the state of the world. And I'm not, I know I'm not gonna get back to that because like now I know what's going on and it's so depressing. And I feel like do you have any advice how to not let, it's basically like gotten to the point where every day is mundane and it feels like why bother doing the everyday stuff when all of this shit's happening in the world and it just feels really unimportant and just kind of getting to a space where like, I don't know, you find value in everyday life again. - Sure. So I'm glad you asked this. No, no, I'm really glad you asked this because I feel like there's a lot of people in your place and it's not a good place to be. Here's an experiment to run. Stop for 30 days, stop looking at any news. And instead, and then whatever your particular thing you're worried about, go find two or three history books about it. Two things will happen. One is you'll realize you don't, without the news, you'll realize you're not missing anything. Second thing you'll realize when you read the history books, this is the best it's ever been. I find hope in that. Yes, there's a lot of shitty stuff in the world. The world is still a mess but things have gotten so much better, so much better and they're continuing to get better each generation slowly but surely agonizingly. It's not always linear. There's sometimes there's like little regressions or detours, but the grand arc of history is very much in the right direction and holding that perspective, I think, is really, really important. The other piece of advice I would give is look for a local cause to get involved in. Channel that energy here in Perth or Western Australia. I think the nature of online media and social media, I almost think we're too globally aware these days. Like too much of our attention is consumed by these horrific things that are happening 10,000, 20,000 miles away that literally have nothing to do with us. And meanwhile, it's like art schools are fucked up. There's like homelessness going on. Like all these local problems that we're oblivious to because they're not sexy and they're not showing up on news feeds and people aren't like screaming about them on television or whatever. So I think in general, we're over-indexed globally and under-indexed locally. You can affect a lot of things here in your community. You can make a difference for people. You can see the positive change happen in front of your eyes. And that will mean everything. Thanks. (audience applauds) - Hi, Mark. Before I had my daughter, I worked in the area of grief and loss supporting young people living with cancer here in WA. I have a friend that's recently lost her husband to cancer and is now a single parent. And they say, well, it's true that there's only two things showing life that we're born and we're gonna die. Yet as a society, we struggle to talk about death, grief, and loss. And I just wondered what your perspective is on that and what do you think we can do better? - Oh. A question close to my heart. It's people who have read the last chapter of subtle art, no. I lost a friend very close to me when I was young and it ended up being one of the most impactful experiences of my life. I am a big proponent of the idea of mental worry, of consciously sitting and thinking about your own death, the death of loved ones, the mortality of everybody around you. Simply because it's all of these questions of what you value, what's worth pursuing, what's gonna give you purpose, death clarifies those things. Like when you're in a cancer ward, holy shit. It is crystal clear, the two or three things that matter and all the bullshit that doesn't. And so I think and I hope that there are ways to tap into that clarity without having to end up in a cancer ward that there are exercises that we can do with ourselves, thought experiments. Just, you know, I mean, sometimes I didn't do it today, but sometimes when I'm on a plane, I imagine it crashing. I'm not joking. I actually do. And I sometimes imagine, okay, if the plane's going down, what would my thought about my life be at the moment? And obviously like that's not a fun thing to think about, but I do think it's valuable because it forces me to really consider am I on the right path? Am I doing the things that matter? Have I been good to the people I love? It's good to ask those questions. And if that's what it takes to like get that question in your head, so be it. So thank you for asking this. This is, I believe very strongly in this. Thank you. (audience applauds) Thank you, Perse. It's been lovely. You've been an amazing audience. And I hope to be back one day, hopefully soon. So thank you again. Good night, everybody. (audience applauds)
PodcastTranscript AI