How to Get Lucky in Life and Take Smarter Risks

Drew I've been in the dog house this week. Oh yeah, I sleep on the couch Not quite that bad, but it got close. Yeah, what do you do? So we shot a we shot a YouTube video. It'll probably come out into this year I've got a friend of mine owns a ghost town out in the middle of the desert and California and we went out there to shoot a video with him and we needed like a truck or an SUV or something and my wife has an SUV It's a Tesla Model X but it's technically an SUV, right? So I asked my wife the bar of the car. She loves the car She loves it. It's like her baby and I I asked the bar of it. She gets like really nervous. I'm like, I'll take good care of it. Don't worry Drive it out into the countryside take it on to a dirt road as soon as we turn off onto the dirt road within five minutes It gets a flat tire. Oh God. It turns out I didn't realize this it turns out that Tesla's way like a million pounds and The whole like sport utility vehicle. It's not really a sport utility vehicle You're not really supposed to think it off road. You're supposed to drive around that way and the thing is Tesla's have special tires. You can't Replace them anywhere. Mm-hmm. You have to wait for a Tesla truck to come get you I was about three hours outside of any major city and Worst of all the app immediately notifies the owner Via the phone so within five minutes my wife called me and was like what the hell did you do to my car? So the YouTube team we spent a half a day stranded in the California desert with a flat tire and They were all freaking out of like how are we gonna get home and my biggest concern was like my wife's gonna fucking murder me when I get back But I so I'm here. I'm alive, but yeah, it's a little it's a little touch and go in the man's and household Okay, right I I feel for you. Yeah, read the car next time. Yeah, that's the lesson. I didn't know that about Tesla So the SUV's yeah, public service announcer. Hey Elon Like if you advertise an SUV make sure it can fucking actually drive like an SUV I mean, I love the car, but holy shit. It was like literally five minutes ago That sucks. Yeah, it's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your holes Mark Manson Today, we're talking about risk and I guess that's That is in a nutshell my problem. I take too many risks. Yes, I just go for it You and I are different in this way and so I think we can get into some of that in this episode Yeah, talk about why and how we both approach it and I'm curious to know more about your your approach risk to but okay Yeah, yeah, but first first the fuck of the week. Okay, you and I were both recently reading Nate Silver's new book on the edge And there's this one part in there where he asked the question like if you were to live your life a thousand more times How likely would it turn out as good or as bad as the one you have right now? And so I think that's a great way to frame a Conversation around the role of luck in our lives and how much of a fuck we should give about luck How much we should attribute things to luck in our lives? How much we should appreciate luck or or disregard it as a force in our lives? How do you approach that? How do you think about good and bad luck in our lives? Luck is such a funny thing because I think so much of it hinges on how you actually define luck right like most people I think define luck as Fortuitous or unfortunate things that happen to them right so I'm driving off road I get a flat tire. Wow. That's bad luck. Is it though like There's another way to look at it Which is that everything has an associated risk with it no matter how safe Whatever you're doing is no matter how stable and consistent it is there's always A small outside risk that something could go wrong and similarly everything you do There's a small outside chance that something could go really really right. So I think it like people see luck is just this like I don't know like winning the lottery or something like that I think you can actually manipulate luck in your life. You can put yourself in situations where you increase the odds of good things happening Similarly, you can put yourself in situations where you increase the odds of bad things happening, right? So I think really the luck is just It's actually just risk management right and people who don't ever think about risk management They just kind of sit around and blame things on luck right right. It's interesting you bring that up I looked up some of the research around luck and I'm not sure about like the actual findings that they find about oh this is What luck is or isn't or how people can manipulate luck what I do like about the research though is they they have found a way to kind of frame the way people think about it and explain the way people think about it So whether the finding the actual findings of these studies are correct or not I really appreciate the way that Psychologists have have framed the just discussion around luck. Okay, so They find that there's people kind of tend to either think that luck is a Stable force in their lives. Yeah, right and and whatever happens to them like you were just saying whatever happens to them as a result of luck And then there's other people who just see it as more random and in chance which is more probably rational According to psychologists, I think that's a more rational belief system to have and those are kind of stable over time But they do also find too that you can create your own luck like you were just talking about you can't influence this Yeah, and they've kind of identified these four different ways that people Create luck and you've talked about this before you wrote about this a long time ago and it kind of matches up with what you found too But they find that creating a noticing chance opportunities in your life. So just engaging with chance. Yeah, it's a way to be lucky Making decisions by listening to intuition. I thought that was a really interesting one. Okay Which I think is kind of related to number one. You're just putting yourself in more the fuck does that mean? Like what how does that make you lucky? I think what they're saying is that it's it biases you towards Acting okay a little bit more if you're listening to your intuition. So that I agree. Yeah, I do too You're that's how I interpret that might be a generous interpretation. I don't know. Okay. I don't know I hear that I hear intuition and I start getting like wooboo spear crystal vibes and and that That triggers me. You think so? Triggers. There's no, I don't know. No crystal. I've ever bought it made me more lucky. So okay. Okay Well, this next one Maybe this is related to it too, but the third one is creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive Expectations so being an optimist and just that being becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right that so that is a thing 100% I don't know if that's luck though. It's it's the perception of luck. Again, this is these are talking about the perception the perception I imagine that if yeah, if you perceive yourself as being a lucky person you will probably notice more opportunities You will probably take advantage of more opportunities. So that that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, I guess when I've thought about this I've always thought in much more concrete terms like I always think of it as is just like how can I create more surface area For opportunities to happen, right? So a simple example is just meeting more people right like always say yes to meeting more people Not because you need more friends not because you want to be the coolest kid in school But simply because the more people you meet the more people you know the more you increase your odds of a very outsized positive interaction and Which is Quote getting lucky right another example is simply try new things like Always try new thing whenever you have an opportunity to try something new Always say yes. Just because you know 99 times out of 100 you'll be like oh well that was a thing and I'll probably never do it again But that one time out of 100 you'd be like wow, I can't believe I found this. This is incredible I'm so excited. I'm so glad I said yes to this opportunity and that can be absolutely life-changing. So it's it sees like I always think I mean, I'm probably getting ahead of a the docket here, but like There's so many things in life that have drastic upsides and varied load downsides, right? And like I try to orient my life around just constantly leaning into those things I think I've mentioned this before too is like if you do go out and you meet more people say yes to more social events There's always that you know, you say yes to it and that the day comes and you're like god damn it. Yeah, you go anyway And almost always it's like yeah, that was good sure and sometimes like that was fucking great. Yeah, sometimes it sucks Yeah, but even it's the outsize returns that you're talking about the the one time that it is good Like you know, maybe you meet somebody I talked about this in the kind of dating context before too. Yeah, I Go to social events with my friends all the time or whatever not because I'm like out to like meet New people to date or anything like that necessarily, but It does just up the odds of that happening correct right and and the one time it does work out you know Nine times out of 10 it doesn't yeah, I don't meet anybody that I'm attracted to or whatever going to date with whatever But the one time you do it's like oh, this is great. Yeah, and that's an outsize return that you got from all of those other Chants opportunities to engage with totally and then coming back to the kind of the question of like if you lived your life a thousand times Like how where on the totem pole would this one be? Yeah, what do you think of that? Well, I for you. I'm definitely towards the top of my totem pole I won the lottery in this in this mold in this version of the university But I think you can apply that thinking to all sorts of things. Okay, like It's if you go to a hundred parties 90 of them will be kind of lame and forgettable nine of them will be tons of fun and you have a great time with with some friends or meet some new friends and then one out of a hundred I don't know you you meet your wife, or you meet your best friend, or you make a huge business deal, or you get a new job, or whatever, and it's just completely life changing. So I think it's, you know, a lot of people, though, like go to a party, and they're like, well, this was lame, I'm never gonna do this again. And it's like, boy, I mean, look at the range of outcomes, and then like look at the distribution of potential results of each of those experiences. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, and this is kind of getting into another part of the research I dove into around this, which is counterfactual thinking. - Yes. - Okay. And what they find there's kind of two types of counterfactual thinking that they distinguish. One is upwards counterfactual thinking, which is imagining how a situation could've been better, and you have downward counterfactual thinking. Imagining how a situation could've been worse. - Yep. - And this may be realized, what they find is you can actually enhance your beliefs and luck, or your kind of perception of luck through downward counterfactual thinking. - Yes. - Right. - To always be worse. - Oh yeah, it could always be worse. It could always be worse. And this made me realize, this is like what, this, I think this is really what drives, I've talked before about like, how I'm a fairly naturally grateful person, gratitude just kind of comes naturally to me. That, I think that's a huge, huge part of why. - Yes. - 'Cause I'm always like, oh, this could've been so much worse. - And this is why I think so much of just happiness and mental health is having an imagination. It's being able to imagine alternate outcomes and various probabilities. I mean, it's funny, one of my favorite memes of all time is there's one where Bart Simpson is looking down, and he's like, man, this is the worst day of my life, and then Homer puts his arm around him. And he says, "No, son. This is the worst day of your life so far." (laughing) - 100%. - And I think about it all the time. Like you need them, I'm having a bad day or just like something goes wrong. And you know, it's like there's so many ways, things can be worse. Or even something like something as stupid as the Tesla, the flat tire, the flat tire in the desert. You know, it's, yeah, that sucks. Like it was a really shitty 48 hours dealing with that. But I mean, the fact that I have, first of all, I'm driving like an amazing car, shooting YouTube videos in a fucking ghost town. Like this is a pretty good situation to get a flat tire in. Like I'm pretty blessed that even like have the opportunity to get a flat tire in that situation. So it's like, again, zooming out, having that perspective. And I feel like I generally do a good job of that of like zooming out, re-contextualizing stuff, thinking about the counterfactuals. And I think that plays a huge part in my own mental stability and mental health. - Yeah, I think for me it's been, I don't know if I'm as good as zooming out as you are, but it's more just like I've had so many brushes with bad luck or close brushes with bad luck that it's so vivid. You know, I've talked about, I grew up pretty humble. And a lot of my friends, I mean, I've had friends who've died of overdoses. I've had friends who have drunk driving accidents, whatever. - Ended up in jail. - Ended up in jail. - That kind of thing, that could easily be me, you know? In a very slightly different universe, maybe not even that different of a universe. - Such a bad boy Drew. - That's not what I mean at all. But such a dangerous man. - No, no, no, not at all. My point is just that I saw it close enough to it that it's easy for me to imagine. I don't have to zoom out for, I get it, I get it, I get it. One thing I think about too, and if my wife was here, she would tell you this, 'cause I bang on this drum all the time at home, which is there is a fail rate in life. There's just a natural, like anything you do, anything you try to do, whether it is a project that work or like hiring contractors to fix something in your house to, you know, replacing a partner card. Like everything is gonna fail certain percentage of the time and it's always greater than zero. And ideally it's a small percentage of the time, but I tell my wife this all the time. I'm like, if you go to 10 doctors, just the law of averages is that at least two or three of them are gonna be terrible. That's just life, like that's life. It's anything you go to, any service that you deal with, any people you hire, like there's a fail rate to everything. Any product you buy, a certain percentage of them are just gonna suck and just fall apart and not work. And I get so much stability in my life by remembering that. That's like, oh, this is part of the deal, right? Like if you drive 100,000 miles, you're statistically, you are at some point, you're gonna be in an accident. At some point your car is gonna break down. And at some point you're, you know, something shitty is gonna happen. Like that's just life, that's part of it, right? And it's, it's always helped me to remember like, you're choosing that. Even when you don't remember it, you're choosing that. Yeah, by the way, can I say where like this really, I mean, I do think I'm like a little bit naturally predisposed to thinking like this, but the way this got drilled in my head, it was playing poker seriously for years. And it's, because poker, you can play the hand perfectly and still lose. And other times you can make the biggest mistake and just be a total idiot and win. And it's, so it forces you to think about chance and odds and risk and probabilities and understand. And like once you understand it within the context of cards and you understand like, okay, no hand is 100%, is gonna win 100% of the time. So you just play it as well as possible. You just play to increase your odds as much as possible. And even if you play perfectly, you know, you only have a 75% chance to win or a 70% chance to win. So you're gonna lose 30% of the time. Like once that just gets like fully baked into your brain like that, you can't help but see it everywhere else in your life. And just start understanding like, oh yeah, every job I apply for, I can interview perfectly and I'm still not gonna get offers on x% of them. - Right. - That's just part of life, right? And it's one of the most useful tools I've picked up over the years. I know you mentioned Nate Silver. I know he's a former poker player. There's a great book by a poker pro named Annie Duke called Thinking in Betts, where she kind of explains this thinking and probabilities essentially. But it honestly, it's one of the most, I mean, I still love poker and I'm still glad I played. And even if I hadn't won a bunch of money playing poker, I would still be so grateful because it just like gave me this mental tool set to like approach everything in my life this way. - Yeah, yeah, I played a little bit of poker and there was one one game we played with some friends one night and we went for hours and hours and hours. The final hand, my buddy won on a pair of twos. (laughing) And he took everybody out for their happens. - And it happens. - It happens. - Yeah, well all right, we'll get a little bit more into the risk stuff in the next segment. - Okay. - So yeah, we'll be right back. (upbeat music) - War back. - All right, what's brilliant? What's bullshit? What are we debating today, Drew? - Well, on the theme of risk, still mark. Are we a bunch of chicken shits? - Probably. - Do you think so? - Yeah, I had a problem. - I don't even know, I don't even know what you're about to tell me the answer is yes. - Well, I'm thinking about luck and mitigating risk in our lives, it just got me to thinking, are we just not, do we not take enough risk in our lives? Is it brilliant or bullshit that we should take more risk in our life? Especially financially, socially, with our careers. - We'll set some context here. - Okay, I know you dug up some numbers. - Yeah, yeah. - And tell me, give us some context. - Yeah, so there was a study, this was like 2018, 2019. And it was a survey done to evaluate Americans' appetite for risk. And specifically around financial risk, career risk and social risk, those were kind of the three things. And probably unshocking way, most people tend to play it pretty safe. Something like 72% prioritized stability over risk in their financial dealings, as opposed to like going for higher returns with higher risk. The quantified financial risk tolerance and it was 4.9 out of 10 for the average person. So 5 out of 10, right in the middle people are right in the middle with that. Most people prefer job stability. Like 65% say they would take job stability over a less stable job that might be a little bit more fulfilling or fun or maybe has the chance of someday paying off more. - Sure. - Which I find interesting, 'cause so many people hate their jobs, but they're like, no, I wanna stable jobs. - Yeah, it's like 70% of the population hates their jobs. - Right, right, at least that. Living situation, 76% of people just don't even wanna move, which moving is a stressful event in your life, but still it's like, there could be a huge upside to that that we never think about. 66% say they just wanna stick to familiar friends rather than meeting new people. You were just talking about going out and meeting new people. - Yeah. - It's just basically what they found in this survey anyway. Only about a quarter of the people enjoy any sort of risk. - It actually actively enjoy risk taking that. - Yeah. - Just, I'm willing to accept some risk, but they act. enjoy risk taking. I would I would be willing to bet that that that is decreasing as time goes on as well. I know I would agree. Yeah, I know like Gen Z is famously very risk averse. I feel like as the population in general gets older, it becomes more risk averse. It does feel like people in general are more risk averse today than they were say 20, 30, 40 years ago. You know, it's hard to answer this because everybody, the optimal amount of risk you should have in your life is very much determined by the facts of your life, right? So somebody who's growing up in poverty in, I don't know, in Africa or something, like their risk equation is going to be much different than somebody who say has a boring desk job, but is comfortable in living in the suburbs of Chicago. For instance, you know, so it's like a lot of it depends on your personal talents, a lot of it depends on the job markets, the opportunities, a lot of it depends on just where you're at in your life. So it is really hard to say. I feel like I imagine that this is this measurement of like risk aversion. It is probably reflective of how stable and secure a society is. I imagine the more stable and secure a society, the less people are going to like the less incentive people have to take significant risks and it probably becomes much more just the freaks and psychopaths like me who like it. Right. Right. Right. Who end up taking it. So but the interesting thing here is that there's a little bit of like an equilibrium thing going on where the fewer people willing to take risks, the more reward there is for taking. Oh yeah. So it's the less people are willing to stick their neck out. Whoever is willing to stick their neck out is going to get all the benefit from it. So you think that the reward curve is shifting too because you were just saying that if fewer people are taking risks. Yeah. I mean, it's there's Chris Williams and has this rant that he went on a while back where he just talked about how it's easier than ever. Like the bar is lower than it's ever been. And I think to a great extent, our technology has made us very complacent. It's become very easy to just numb yourself and distract yourself and become complacent with whatever your life situation is. And so it's like reached a point where it's like if you if you just try like if you just get relatively okay shape and go out and be somewhat social and take some of your time and educate yourself and read some books and maybe take an online course or something like you're already ahead of like 70% of the population which is fucking nuts. Like there's just so much complacency in the developed world at the moment. And so on the one hand, you know, there's a lot of kind of whining and hand ringing about, you know, mental health and things are so hard and everything's so stressful and we're all anxious. But it's like if you actually look at people who are going out and doing things, it feels like there's fewer than ever before. I heard something recently they were saying that, you know, every generation there's kind of this like this new influx of entrepreneurs and founders in Silicon Valley, every 10 or 15 years. And I heard that it's like Gen Z's just not showing up. There's like fewer. There's like nobody showing up and starting new companies and everybody's just kind of like, okay, well, where'd everybody go? Like where are the founders? Where are the entrepreneurs? Where are the people who are just like willing to take crazy moonshots and and see what happens, right? And again, it's like the fewer people that there are willing to do that, the more the people who are willing are going to win for when they do it, just because there's going to be less competition and there's going to be more returns. So this question, you know, where's if you go somewhere on the world where everybody's taken a ton of risks, then it's probably more logical to chill out and seek out stability. So it's a thing that's in flux. It's a, you know, there's like a population equilibrium thing going on. So how do you approach risk now? Then do you, how analytical are you about it? That's one question I have for you. Like how I know a lot of a lot of people who I know take risks are pretty good at least coming up with a number in their head. Like, oh, there's probably a 30% chance this is going to work. Yeah. I'll take that risk. Like whether they're right or wrong. Sure. That's just kind of how they think. I feel like you do that some, how analytical do you get with your risk taking and how much of it, how much of his intuition mark. Very little is intuition. Okay. I mean, I do listen. I mean, obviously I do have a bias when I analyze a tough decision and I'll be aware of that bias. It's like, okay, that's probably what most people would call their intuition. It's like, my gut is pushing me in this direction. I try to keep that in mind because I actually try to argue against that and see if I can, right? So I look at it, I look at it, there's, I look at it in two, two different ways. There's an analytical side and then there's kind of a qualitative side. So the analytical side is really simple. It's like, you know, if it involves money in any way, let's sit down and start writing numbers down. Okay. Like what's the upside? What's the downside? What what are the, what's the distribution of, you know, what's the percent chance that this is going to work out? What's the percent chance that it's going to fail? What's the percent chance that it's like somewhere in the middle and and try to get some sort of rough calculation of an expected value out of that. On the other hand, that that side, you know, do a pros and cons list, do a, you know, risk reward list, like those things are all useful. And I think that's just kind of all that goes without saying. I actually think the qualitative side is way more important because that tends to dictate much more. So what I mean by qualitative is that I look at, I look at what are the intangible costs and benefits of doing something very good at that or not doing something, right? Like so some people might look at like, I have a stable job. It's very dependable. I can probably have it for a long time. Let me just stick with this. On paper, that's probably an easy calculation for them to make and justify. But then you have to start adding the intangible stuff in too, which is like, okay, well, you're going to have a lack of novelty in your life. If you have a boss or a coworker, you don't really like, you're going to be stuck with them for a long time. If you have a job that you don't find a lot of meaning or purpose in, that's something you're going to have to deal. You're going to have to go find that somewhere else. So there's like all these other little qualitative things. Like if you have friends who, you know, like if your job is going to, you know, your job is it going to eventually make you move to another city, but you have like a great your friends and family are in the current city. Like that's another thing to consider. So there's a lot of stuff like that to look at. Like how is this going to affect some of my emotional needs, some of my needs for for meaning and purpose. What's like the long term qualitative experience. But probably the most important thing I look at is what benefits do I get if this fails? And I think this is the biggest thing that people overlook is there are a lot of things that if you fail at it, you still end up way ahead. Yeah. For example, starting like when I, I remember when I was starting my online business, my first online business, it was in the middle of the 0809 crash. You couldn't get a job anywhere. I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, okay, I can start this online business. If it works great, I'm going to have a career and I'm going to run my own business. It will be amazing. If it doesn't work, what happens? Well, I'll be broke. I'm already broke. I'll be 25 with no job experience. And I was only 23 with no job experience. So that's basically no difference. But I'll learn a bunch of really useful skills. I'll learn web design. I'll learn copywriting. I'll learn sales. I'll understand marketing. I'll understand web development. I'll learn about e-commerce. Like, fuck, I could probably go get a really good job with those skills, right? So the actual, the failure at that moment in time in my life and in the labor market, the failure was actually better than going out and submitting another 100 job applications to a bunch of places I didn't really want to work at. So to me, as soon as I realized that, I'm like, this is such a no-brainer. I'm like, I'm an idiot if I don't do this. And I think there are a lot of things in life like that. Like, you are even failing at it. You will learn so much. You will develop skills. You will meet certain people that you'll end up way ahead than if you didn't try it all. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of how I think of it too. I don't put, I think you are better at the analytical side, the more hard numbers side of it. But what you said there about, you find the no-brainers that are no-brainers to you, as well. I've told this story before too, but coming to work for you too, everybody thought I was crazy and I was like, this is a no-brainer, guys. I knew that academia for me, sitting in an office writing grants for the rest of my life, I'm man. That's what it started to seem like to me, you know? It wasn't the actual, there's a reality in that space that I was not comfortable with. And it's like, if nothing else, this at least gets me off of that track and gets me pointed in a different direction. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to think about too is there are certain things that, like, the upside is so vastly high compared to the downside that you would also see. - Yeah, there are so many asymmetries of risk and people don't stop long enough to think about that. The most simple example that I give all the time is if you're at a party or a dinner or something and you see an attractive stranger, what is the risk of, what is the risk reward of talking to that attractive stranger? What is the very best thing that can happen and what is the very worst thing that can happen? The very best thing that can happen in that moment is that you meet your future spouse or partner or whatever or even just a partner for a few years but they change your life, they influence you, you have this great like incredible life and riching experience together. That's the upside, that's massive. The downside is maybe you embarrass yourself for a few minutes or look like an asshole in front of a few people. - If you got a brain that works like mine, Mark, I'm gonna be crying and myself to sleep the next two weeks, but yeah, I mean, I see what I see here. I get your point. (laughing) It's even that, even that, even that. That is so mini fuel compared to the upside, right? And the truth of the matter is that like 99% of the time you're gonna end up somewhere in the middle. It's gonna be, it's probably gonna be a nothing burger if you talk to them. But it's, again, there's so many things in life like that. Like it's, you know, starting the business was similar to that. I remember when I was writing subtle art, it was a very similar thing, it was a similar choice of, you know, the upside of writing this book is extremely high. The downside of writing this book is I have a book that sold okay or I can like tell people I'm an author or I became a much better writer. I built relationships in the publishing industry. I built credibility for myself. Like the downsides of writing a book are just, you give up two years of your time, essentially. And so again, it was a no-brainer. So to speak. You came to me when you were writing the book and that's what you said, you're like, this is either gonna set me up for decades to come or we just move on to the next one. - Yeah, or we just try the next project. - Okay. - And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. - And you know, we, this business is, you know, it's a hits business, right? Like I mean, as you've seen, it's, you put out 50 pieces of content, 40 don't really do a whole lot. Nine do really well and then one is just like, you know, basically drives most of your results for the entire year and it makes all the work for the other 49 that didn't work out. - Yeah. - Worth it. And so it's another, there's a distribution of that, right? So it's, in a sense, you had to do those other 49 to get to that 50th one. You can't just only do the 50th one. - I think that's one of the biggest takeaways I've had I'm working with you too, is that like trying two or three times, that's not, that's not risk-taking. Trying 100 times, okay, now we're talking. - Yeah. - We're getting there, at least, yeah. So just, just, taking the at-bats, that's where it is. - Yeah, and it's, again, it comes back to poker, right? Like you can, you can sit down for a single session in poker and get dealt amazing cards and lose money the entire night. - Every single time, yeah. - But you have to realize that it's, you have to sit down and play 100,000s of hands over many, many, many, many, many nights for that to even out and you to come out ahead. Like you can still be making good decisions, but you're like, I simply have to play for hundreds of hours to, for this, for this luck to even out, right? So, yeah. - Kenny Rogers was right. - What did he say? - Got to know when to hold him. - No one told him. - Wow. - No one know how to do it. - That's deep, we better, we better cut this. - We better get ready to go, go to an ad, hurry, quick. - This is, this is, devolving fast. - We'll be right back. (upbeat music) - All right, we're back. It's a question time. - It is a question time. - What do the people want to know? - Well, it's Jace, that's the username. I'm guessing it's just Jace from YouTube wants to know. How do you accept the fact that life is going to hurt no matter what you do? I understand that there are things you can control to alleviate your suffering, but how do you cope with the fact that some terrible things just happen? - I love, this is such a dark question. - It is such a fucking dark question. - We're ending on a dark note. - This reader is a fan after my own heart. It's like, how do you tolerate that everything causes suffering? It's so metal. To me, this comes back to the fail rate then. And again, I think this is something that people, we don't think about it because it's uncomfortable. Again, if you zoom out, right? Let's not just talk about dentists and contractors or car parts, zoom out. Everybody you know is going to die at some point. Most of the people you know, most of the people you care about in your life will die at some point during your life. And the only people that's not true for are the people who are going to die first. So, these sorts of tragedies, statistically speaking, I think it's like a third of the population contracts cancer at some point, like 10% of the population will get in a serious physical accident at some point. These things are normal. And we like to pretend they're not. We like to pretend that they're a greatness fortune. But over a long enough period of time, over a large enough sample size, almost all of us are going to have some sort of dramatic calamitous event in our lives. And that's just a fact. And so when I hear a question like that, like how do you deal with it? I think, I don't think you do it. Like I think you just accept it. That's just, you stare it in the face. You stare it head on. You don't try to avoid it. You don't try to look away. That is part of the deal. You get to live, you get to do all these cool things. You get to, you know, fucking ride the Ferris wheel and eat great food and have sex and joke with your friends and everything. But part of that bargain is you have to have a tragedy every once in a while. That's just how life goes. And you take, you have to take both together. You don't get to have all the joyous moments without the tragedy. And you don't get to have all, you know, you don't have the tragedy without the joyous moment. So to me, this is, you know, the Buddhist in me is like, just stare it in the face. Like don't fucking look away. Like this is life. This is what you're doing here. Yeah, I've even found two that like when things are going well, I always try to remind myself of like, okay, you know, the other shoe's gonna drop at some point. Yeah. And that doesn't help. (laughing) It doesn't help because you're right, you just have to accept that because when things are going great and you're like, okay, prepare myself, something's around the corner, not like in a pessimistic, negative way. Just like, look, enjoy this while it lasts. Yeah. It's gonna end. It's all gonna end one day. And yet when those things, it's still just sucks. You know, yeah, it sucks and it sucks. It never won't suck. And you shouldn't try to make it not suck. Like you should grieve and be sad and be upset when these things happen. Is there anything to that, like that grieving process? Do you think, you know, they talk about the whole grief process? Even that doesn't, I don't know, that doesn't work for us. Well, it's funny because if you talk to grief counselors, they say like the worst thing you can do is just try to avoid the process, right? Like try to avoid the emotions that you're feeling, try to avoid the reality of what's happened. The second worst thing you can do is probably try to hurry through them. Yes. So it's just the process. Like you just have to face it. Yeah. I think, again, having that context, understanding that this is also part of life and this is also part of what makes life rich. And, you know, it is kind of the calamitous moments, the tragic moments that remind us what matters. They remind us to be grateful for what we have, to take care of the people who are still with us. I think it's important to kind of see there's like a sad beauty and a lot of these events and experiences. There's a lot of good that can be pulled out of them, that can be rung out of them through the grieving process. And so it's, again, I think, and I come back to it's, if you've been fortunate enough to survive a bunch of difficult situations, you learn that. You learn that. Yeah, that was awful. I never wanna do that again, but I'm a better person for it. And it's reminded me to be better to the people I care about in my life because of it. Right. But if you've never had any of those experiences, then it just, it just seems horrible and awful and you wanna avoid it as much as possible. Right. Yeah, and we've talked a lot about post-traumatic growth and the podcast you've written about it. The point there too isn't that, as you just mentioned, it's not that these traumatic events or the awful things that happen to us are good. They're not in any way. It's all about the process thereafter. And it is and it is and it is. even, I don't think it's like seeing these things in a positive light or changing the way you see trauma or awful things that happen to people. It's more just like, yeah, this is a part of life and accepting that and finding a way to, like you said, stare it in the face accept it and be like, this is what it is. And this is what I'm dealing with and taking responsibility for. Yeah. There's two things, right? There's the event itself. And then there's the narrative in the meaning you create around the event, you know, and the event itself will always be horrible and tragic and painful. But the meaning and the narrative you wrap around it can be quite positive. It's the two arrows of Buddhism, the two arrows of pain, the initial pain and the interpretation of the pain. Yes. You can derive a lot of power and meaning from tragic events. And I think developing the ability to do that is one of the most useful things. And again, I bring it back to the discussion of risk, you know, that the risk of version, I think a lot of it is because people don't feel equipped to do that. So they're like, well, if I fail at this, then my life's over. And it's like, well, no, no, it's not actually your, you'll, you'll actually learn a lot from that failure and you'll probably become stronger and more resilient and more resourceful. And so, yeah, what's the downside again? Yeah. You know, but if you don't feel equipped to do that when things go wrong, then you'll just avoid things going wrong as much as possible. Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, the angel question, why do good things happen to bad people? Is that the right question, even? I've always wondered about that. I'm like that. You know, because what we're talking about is that, yeah, just terrible things will happen. Wait, did you just say why do good things happen to bad people? I probably did. You meant what I know. Why do bad things happen to good people? And yeah, no, why do good things happen to bad people? Why do things happen to bad people? That's the other side of the question. That's actually, like I was being profound and you didn't even know it. Oh, that is, that is a stumper right there. Yeah. Why do good things happen to bad people? I mean, both good and bad things happen, both good and bad people, you know, things just happen. It's, we like to imagine that there's like a divine justice that is just partitioning perfectly, like, you know, only good experiences for the good people, right? Only bad experience. No, life is really complicated. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that helps, but yeah. Sorry, Jay, again, again, because I go back to it, I'm just like, even you can, you can do all of this and you can say, and a lot of people, a lot of the questions we get are, how do I just feel better about this? And it's like, wow, I don't know if you do. This is what we do here, right? Like, this whole industry is full of people promising to make you feel better about bad things. And sorry, I'm not that guy. Like bad things. They're always going to be things in your life that make you feel bad, dude. Sorry. But you'll get better at it. That's a super cheery note. We shouldn't know that. Yeah. It's got dark. Pretty fast. Why do good things happen to bad? I have no idea. Yeah. All right. Well, Drew didn't prepare a wisdom of the week. I'm a quickly, I pulling this one out of my ass, but here you go. The Shakespeare line from Hamlet, he says, nothing is good or bad. It is our thinking that makes it so. Yes. Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe. If you want to submit a question, you can email us at [email protected] and if you, what else, what else do they want to do? What else do we want them to do? Sign up for the newsletter. Yeah. I was just signing up for the newsletter. Go sign up for the newsletter. We send out, we send out a couple of pieces of advice every Monday morning and then we share other readers breakthroughs from the previous week. The newsletter is called your next breakthrough. Yeah. I think that's it. I think that's it. All right. We'll be back next week. Thank you, everybody. Bye, guys. The subtle art I'm not getting a podcast is produced by Drew Burning. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.