The 4 Stages of Life, Psychological Richness, and How Much Is Enough?

Drew, I'm noticing something as I get older, and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. So this morning, I was doom scrolling on social media, as you do, you know, hashtag morning routine. Right, right. One thing I've noticed, especially just the last couple years, is my tolerance for things that don't add value to my life or bring me down in some way is it's getting very, very slim. So this morning, I saw a bunch of stories about horrible things that people were saying and doing on various parts of the world. And my instant knee-jerk reaction was like, fuck those people, I don't care, and like close the app and go do something else. And 90% of the time, I feel like this is a good thing. It's actually the thing I preach to our audience. But then there's always like this morning, and occasionally, there's like this nine voice in the back of my head, and it's like, is this a form of entitlement? Right. Is this? It's a form of like, I just want to ignore anything that doesn't make me happy, let the world burn, who cares, I just want to feel good. Right. And I wrestle with this sometimes. And part of me, I'm like, is it I'm just getting older, and I'm much clearer on what I care about, and what I like, and what matters to me, and I'm willing to like suffer and struggle for those things? Or am I like, it seems most of the world, that I'm just. I'm just being slowly and gradually coddled by the technology that rules my life. Yeah. And my patience and attention span for things that don't interest me is becoming out of a fly. What say you? I mean, one of the drums you beat on is like the epidemic of entitlement. And so I think. I am not immune, apparently. Well, that's what, like, yeah, how do you delineate between what is just entitlement and what is choosing carefully? At what point is that? Is that just a, here, I don't want to feel uncomfortable in any way whatsoever, so I'm going to just design my life such that I don't have to think about these things. Yeah, I guess the solace that I take is that the things I do care about, I am willing to suffer for. It's just so hard to know, is this a thing I should give a shit about? You know, especially in this day and age, where it seems like everything is a fucking catastrophe and an ordeal all the time. But I believe today we're talking about. Getting that clarity as we grow older, if I'm not mistaken. That's right. Isn't this, this is, the fuck of the week's a throwback this week, is it not? It's a throwback. Okay. It's a throwback and a re-evaluation, I think, too. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. The fuck of the week, Mark. The four stages of life. Ah, yes. This is a classic throwback article. You wrote this one. Not too long after I started working with you, actually. I think a year or two after. And it quickly became kind of an instant Mark Manson classic, I think. Yeah. You talk about there are these four stages of life. We'll walk through them. Yeah. And you can explain them. But I want to know, too, have you changed your mind about this? How is your experience of this? Because this is probably almost 10 years ago that you wrote this. Right. It's like eight or 10 years ago that you wrote it. I know I've definitely felt a transition to a new stage of life. You talk about that. I did in the article, so we can get into that. So how about we just start it off. What are the four stages? How do you conceptualize them and how do we navigate through them? Sure. So I will preempt this by saying that this isn't something that was just pulled out of my ass. I went through this phase when I was pretty young. I got really into developmental psychology. And developmental psychology, it's the study of how people grow and age and mature. And there's not a whole lot of empirical stuff. Yeah. It's very hard to do research with that. Yeah, in developmental psychology. But there's a lot of very, very interesting theories and frameworks. And so I kind of had this phase in my life where I got really into all these different frameworks and models and ideas and stuff. And so this article is very much just like a really, really strong simplification of a lot of my thoughts. It's around all the reading I had done in that field. So stage one, I believe I call it the memetic stage or mimesis. Yeah, mimicry. Yeah, mimicry. So it's stage one is essentially like if you look at how children develop, they develop through mimicry by watching adults and people in their life say certain things, do certain actions. And then the child will try to replicate that and do it themselves. Anybody who's had a kid has like sees this all the fucking time. And knows how careful you have to be with what you say and do around a young child because they will start saying and doing it as well. But this is I think what people don't realize is that this tendency pretty much continues on through all of life. But I think a lot of people, particularly a lot of people who suffer as adults, it's because they never fully leave stage one. They've gone their entire life. They went to law school because all their friends went to law school. They moved to. To some city because their parents moved to that city. They took a job at a certain firm because their partner took a job at that firm. Like everything that they do, everything they're motivated to do, everything they care about doing is very much just based on what the people around them seem to want and seem to reward them for. And so stage one is mimicry. Ultimately, it is useful for learning how to embed yourself into society. That's why it's important. It's important for young people to develop through the stage in a healthy manner. But ultimately, it's unsatisfying. As an adult, you have a need to choose your own destiny and choose your own identity. And you can never fully do that if you're always relying on the people around you. So generally, people, the crisis that happens at the end of stage one is kind of this crisis of I've never done anything for myself. I've always lived for others. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I want. And I don't know how to find out. And in our space, in the self-help world, we see a lot of people at the stage one crisis. And a lot of people who are hitting it, you know, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, maybe even 50s. So it can cause – and I think the later it happens in your life, like the more it spooks you. Yeah, definitely. So then stage two I called exploration. Mm-hmm. And stage two is assessment. It's essentially that project of figuring out who you are. Like, okay, if I'm not just going to do all the things the people around me tell me to do, I need to figure out what I actually like and what I care about. And that involves experimentation. It involves trying things. It involves trying on different identities, joining different groups, going to different places and experiencing all sorts of different things. Stage two is extremely exciting. It's a lot of fun. And generally, I think for most people, this stage of life happens late adolescence and in their 20s. This is when you travel around, you take a bunch of different jobs, you meet a bunch of different people, you date a bunch of different people. And really the goal is to just find out, like, what seems to work for you and what doesn't seem to work for you. And the crisis of stage two eventually happens because exploration has diminishing returns to it, right? Like, if you've never traveled anywhere before, the first place you go is pretty profound and really exciting. If you've been to 20 places, then the 21st is like, oh, yeah, okay, this is another, just another place, right? And it's the same thing with dating people, with going to parties, with taking jobs, with, you know, different hobbies, whatever it is, right? Like, it's variety, the curve of satisfaction to variety and novelty. Um, is it plateaus, uh, pretty quickly for most people. And so this raises the question, uh, generally most people hit a place. The, the crisis point for stage two is, is when people hit this point of like, okay, I've done all this shit. What do I actually care about? Like, what actually, what do I keep going back to? What seems really satisfying? Um, what am I actually good at? Who seems to be good for me in my life, right? Um. And then you have this, you need to make the decision to commit to those things. Um, so that's, that's the first two stages. Do you have any comments, any hang up? Am I getting anything wrong here? No, I think this is, yeah. Am I nailing this? You're, you're nailing your own, your own ideas. I feel like a gymnast who hasn't like trained in six years and I'm like, yeah, still got it. You still got it. Um. The stage two crisis is. So a lot of people will get stuck at it if they have a bit of an addictive personality and they, yes, or they really love novelty. Um, I very much got stuck at stage two, like really struggled to get out of stage two because I just love new shit so much. I'm like, I love having, trying new things and experiencing new things. So the problem, what most people, uh. What happens with people who get stuck, stuck in stage two, you know, we had Robert Greene on recently. We talked about Peter Pan syndrome. I think Peter Pan syndrome is very much people stuck at stage two. It's just there. They're having way too much fun partying and dating and doing cool shit and, you know, so they're like the 47-year-old still taking Molly and, you know, dancing until 5 in the morning and with a bunch of 25-year-olds. If you have – if you're wired in a certain way, there really is a danger of just kind of getting permanently stuck at stage two. And the drawback of getting stuck at stage two is because you never fully commit to anything, you never really become excellent at something. You never really go deep on anything. You never become an expert in any area. You don't become world-class at a skill. You don't build like really deep intimacy or a family with anybody. Everything is kind of – it's just surface level. It's exciting. It's sexy. But it – you're playing in the shallow end of the game. Stage three is the commitment stage. It's – once you've hit stage three, you've realized these are the things that I care about and usually by this point, you're in your 30s or 40s and you've had this realization of like, oh, shit, I'm not going to be around that long. You know, unlike when you're 20 where you're like, I've got my whole life ahead of me. Like, fuck it. Let's, you know, let's go to Mexico this weekend. You know, when you're 38. Or something and you've got a kid and a job, you suddenly have this realization of like, I've got like maybe 20 good years left, right? So let's fucking use it. Let's like really be conscious and invest it in something very meaningful. The power of the commitment stage, I think like stage three is where you really excavate a lot of the meaning and purpose and joy out of life. Mm-hmm. It's also where a lot of maybe the darkest struggles are because it's like, I mean, if you – let's say you have marriage problems 11 years in and you've got two kids and you've got a bunch of debt and you're just like, I don't know if I can live with this person. But fuck, I'm 45 and I came all this way with them. Like, what do I do? Like, it's – the crises at stage three are very deep and very dark. They're big, yeah. Because they are proportional to the rewards. I think the crisis of stage three ultimately probably hit – so now I'm speaking as somebody who has not been to stage four, but I will describe stage four. I imagine the crisis of stage three hits when you simply age up enough to realize that like my best days are behind me. You know, probably the most important thing I did is behind me. My best work is behind me. You know, if you have kids, the kids are grown up and they're off on their own. And there's kind of this realization of like, all right, I did the thing. That was it, yeah. Now what? Right, right. And I think this leads into stage four, which I call legacy. And the project of stage four is really simply doing the work and making sure to stay connected and maintain the things that are going to last after you're gone, essentially. A huge part of that is family. If you have your life's work. If you worked on a cause or volunteered for something or really invested in a business or spent 30 years working on a certain project or industry or something. Generally, what you find with legacy people is that they want to stay connected to whatever they gave their life to. And they want to make sure it's going to be okay, right? And at this point, I'm only speaking hypothetically just from what I understand from the research and a lot of the psychological models that I've read. But, you know. Interestingly, elderly people tend to be the happiest people. They tend to be the least anxious people. They tend to be the most satisfied people in most countries, not every country. I think a lot of that is just that when you don't know who you are at stage one, that creates a lot of stress. When you don't know what you want at stage two, that creates a lot of stress. And when you know what you want, but you don't know if you're going to get it, that creates a lot of stress at stage three. I think stage four is just probably very much characterized by acceptance. By like, that was my life. I loved parts of it. Could have done without some other parts of it. Yeah, I have my regrets. Yeah, but all in all, I've had a good run. And, you know, I've got a decade or two left. And, you know, maybe I got some grandkids or I'm still like really involved in a community or a cause. And I'm just ready to ride it out and make sure that, you know. People know I was here, essentially. So those are the four stages of life. By the way, this is one of my favorite things I've ever read or written. One of my favorite things I've ever written. And it's one of the few articles that's like just really stuck with me over the years. And it's also, it's a reader. It never like went super viral or anything. No, no. But it's a reader favorite as well. I still hear pretty frequently from fans and readers. Yeah. That they're like, man, I think about the four stages. It's all the time. Yeah, of all ages, people come back to it. Yeah, definitely. You talk about these crises that we have at each stage. And it's usually at some transition point into the next stage. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about like the pain that you've had to go through in some of these? We've touched on this before in some episodes, I think. But what is the value of the pain that we have to these crises, right? Right. Like when you go from stage one, the mimicry to the self-discovery, the pain of that. How does one navigate that? What am I trying to ask? What is my question here? It often is painful and it involves a change in identity. And that's the painful part, I think. For sure. Can you talk a little bit more about that and the transitions that you've had to deal with? And I can throw in some too, but. Yeah. So, I mean, the thing that makes the transition so difficult is that essentially your life strategies that have worked, for you up until this point, stop working, right? So, if you're in stage one, doing everything that people told you to do worked for 15, 20 years. And then suddenly one day, it stops working. And you're like, what the fuck? I'm doing everything right. Why am I so miserable? Why am I not succeeding? Why don't people like me? And you have to reorient how you understand yourself in the world, which is a very difficult process. And you have to let go of some of the things that you used to do. That you used to give a fuck about. Similar to stage two, I'm doing the same things I used to do that were so fun and exciting. But it's not really fun and exciting anymore. It's just like more stuff. I feel like I'm on a treadmill. And so, you have to like stop and reevaluate the assumptions that are underlying all your decisions. And that's just a very, very difficult thing to do. And I think that pain is necessary to propel you into the next phase. You know, I definitely hit a point. I struggled to get out of phase two. And I definitely hit a point where I was like two things. One, I love novelty. I'm just like a glutton for novelty. But I was also a commitment phobe. And I distinctly remember a period right around the time I'd been with my wife for a couple years. And it was starting to get clear that, you know, dude, if you're ever going to settle down like this is probably the one you should settle down with. And I struggled with that for a year or two. And I just remember like going in circles in my brain being like, well, I'm terrified to settle down. But I also know if I don't settle down, it's not going to be satisfying anymore. Right? So, I'm probably going to be dissatisfied and anxious as fuck either way. I might as well lean into the stress and dissatisfaction that is new. That is like forces me to. Grow and be a better person rather than just go back to all the parties and girls and shit that I was doing before. So, that was like a very kind of calculated decision. And it ended up paying off massively. I mean, I'm well enmeshed in stage three at this point. We were joking at the top of the show about how I just like don't even want to deal with three or four things that I deeply give a fuck about. And it's at this point in my life, anything that's not in one of those categories, like it's very hard to get me to. Pay attention to them. And sometimes I wonder if that's a bad thing. But then I'm like, you know, I'm in my prime. Like, I'm going super hard on the things I care about. Like, this is the time to do that. Right? Like, I can sit back and doom scroll TikTok and worry about all the problems. You know, try to save the world when I'm 60 or something. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I very much like this self-discovery phase too. The stage two, I very much got kind of caught in that as well. And part of the problem, I'm like, you know. Your novelty is amazing. And I'm just fascinated by everything. Yeah. And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't just. It was funny when we had Robert Green on. He made this comment about there are people who might think they're polymaths, you know. They might think they're polymaths and they're good. But are you a genius or are you just confused? Yeah. Yeah. Turns out I was confused. I wasn't a genius. So I totally get that. And it is very painful to be like, oh, I got to let all of this other shit go. I got to. But you do. You do get to the point. You get to the point where you're like, you get to the age where you're like, God damn. Yeah. Like time does go so fast. That's the other thing. You blink and you're 40. And here's a little pet theory of mine that ties those two things together. You know, when he was here, we talked about Peter Pan syndrome and the extended adolescence, which a lot of researchers have acknowledged and noticed that people are just waiting longer. They're waiting longer to move out on their own. They're waiting longer to start their careers. They're waiting longer to get married. They're waiting longer to date. They're waiting longer to have sex. Like, pretty much every marker of adulthood has just been extending out over the past few decades, often in cases like well into people's 30s. And I personally think, like, so if we apply the four stages of life framework to the situation, the argument I make is that you really can't get out of stage two until you feel like you've exhausted all of your options. Like, until you feel like you've tried all the things you want to try. Because if you don't try all the things you want to try and you go into stage three without that, then you're all – it's the whole – the rest of your life in stage three, it's going to gnaw at you. Like, well, what if I took that job? What if I actually did get back with my ex? What would have happened, right? And I think in this day and age, A, there's just more opportunities than ever before. There's more stimulation than ever before. But I also think young people are more aware than ever before of. Like, how much opportunity is in front of them. And so I think it's like they are taking extended amounts of time to try things and test themselves and see what they like and see what they care about. Now, I do think there is a negative side of this, which is just that they're not getting out enough when they're kids and they're not developing strong emotional skills or social skills soon enough. But I do think there's – some of this is reasonable. It's reasonable to wait. Like, if you – if you're – If you're a typical college graduate or university graduate in a developed country in 2024, you have more possibilities in front of you than any generation before you. So it makes sense that you will take longer to make these major commitments and settle down. You know, one of the reasons I think this one does resonate with a lot of people, at least why it resonates with me and I keep coming back to it, is because it is – it at least gives you some kind of inkling about what it's like to get older. Yeah. I don't know if you've – I don't know if you've ever tried to explain getting older to somebody, like, significantly younger than you. It's almost – it's impossible almost. It probably is impossible. It's so hard to get that across. And obviously, you don't really know what it's like to get older until you get older. But this kind of gives you at least a little bit of a, oh, OK, there's this whole mental shift that happens at different stages. And I think that's really useful for people. I don't know. Yeah. It's also, like, I think what people don't think about is that your incentives shift with age. Yeah. You know, because when – so when you're young, you know how much time you have in front of you. And so you know you have a lot of runway to, like, fuck up and mess around. And it's, you know, if you do something dumb when you're 21, it's probably – unless it's, like, extreme, it's probably not going to have severe repercussions for most of your life. Whereas when you're 40, first of all, you're way more aware of the time you don't have. You're also aware of all the time you wasted. Yes. Yes. So you're much more sensitive to falling into certain traps and pitfalls of, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Last time I did something like this, it was, like, 18 months of my life went down the drain. So I'm not doing that again. So there's a certain amount of caution that comes with age. But it's interesting, like, if I had to try to explain aging to a young person, I would just say, like, your fundamental relationship with time completely changes. Yes. Like, it's – Not just your idea of, like, what is a large amount of time, but you just – you start to see what persists and what doesn't. Because, like, when you're 20, everything seems important. Anything that just makes – like, everything's exciting, everything's a disaster, everything is, you know, end of the world. Everything seems really important. The longer you live, the more data you collect of, like, what actually matters. What actually matters in the long run. And what you discover is that the vast majority of things do not matter in the long run. And so you quickly get – not quickly. You slowly get significantly better at just chilling out and being like, yeah, this sucks. But in a year or two, I'm probably not even going to remember it happened. So I'm going to, like, relax a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I totally see that. And that's – even then, though, I don't think – I don't think you can get a young person to understand that. But, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally agree. Cool. We will be right back. Brilliant or bullshit this week, Mark? Okay. Psychological richness. Okay. Okay. I kind of – I teased this idea a little bit in a previous episode. I think – and I think you would agree that we over-index on happiness. We've talked about that before. Yes. I think we also over-index on meaning. So a lot of times when people say, oh, it's not the happiness part, so I'm going to go look for meaning instead. And there's pitfalls to that, too, that I don't think we always consider. There's some trade-offs and drawbacks to that. Right. I came across this just in the last few years. This idea has been kind of gaining traction within psychology, and it's called psychological richness. Essentially what it is is it's a focus on the interesting in your life. It's finding interesting things in your life, things that interest you personally, and that you can just kind of be in your own world with. So it's a life characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences. It involves curiosity, novelty, adventure, openness, and exploration, but also a complexity of experience and events that challenge your own worldview. So there's this book. If you want to dive deeper into this, it's called The Art of the Interesting by Lorraine Besser. It just came out, I think, in September. She goes through. She goes through why the kind of the pitfalls of happiness, a lot of what you've talked about, too, happiness is fleeting. It's not really a reliable emotion. It's often a symptom of living a good life, not the cause of it. But also with meaning, we're really bad at knowing what could be meaningful. We're really bad at this if-then logic in our life. Well, if I only had this, then I would be happy. I would be fulfilled. I would find all sorts of – That's the trick our brain plays on us. Right. Yeah. Whereas I think psychologically – The psychological richness, when you look at things that are interesting or you look for things that are interesting, it requires you to be very mindful, be very present. Right. You're not – it's not chasing anything like you are when you're chasing happiness. Okay. It's not – you're not putting any expectations on yourself necessarily. You're just saying, what's interesting me right now in this moment? I think a lot of the people we've had on this podcast, somebody like a Steven Pressfield or Robert Green, I think this is what they're getting at when they say – well, like Steven Pressfield is finding – Basically, finding your life's purpose and Robert Green talks about finding your life task. Right. It isn't about what makes you happy. It's not about what makes you money. It's not about even what's meaningful. It's what's interesting to you and what's weird to you. What do you think of this idea? I find it very vague and hand-wavy. It is a little bit. I think that's more the way I'm explaining it maybe. This could be. I have not read the book. Right, right. So I don't want to deride the author or her theory. Right. Right. But I think it's a very vague and hand-wavy. Let me express the thought you describing it that way actually triggered a thought in my brain that makes sense to me and at least is much more clear to me and maybe this is reflected in her work or maybe it's just something I'm making up right now. But I think the same way the best investment portfolio is a diversified portfolio, right? Like if you put all your money in stocks, you might have – You might have better returns over the long run but you're going to have a lot of volatility and you're going to puke every time there's a recession and all this stuff. If you put all your money in bonds, then you're probably – you're going to get very undersized returns. So it's like the best portfolio is allocation of stocks and allocation of bonds and allocation of real estate. That way you – all the pros and cons of each one can offset each other. Right. And you don't like live with the downside of each one. I feel like the same is probably true with life richness. Right. Right. You're describing. When I think about this, it's like you don't only want to pursue happiness because then you just become a hedonist and you end up on this treadmill of just always trying to do the next thing that's going to be fun or exciting or make you feel good and that's not good. That has a lot of downsides. You also don't just want to pursue what's meaningful because then you – well, there's a bunch of reasons. One is that you essentially end up in a life of just perpetual sacrifice and challenge and struggle. So it's not clear how much impact you can have on certain things. And so maybe you invest a bunch of time and energy and sacrifice into something and it doesn't work out and then you just feel like you wasted 10 years of your life. So it's – there's like very high upside and very low downside to just investing in meaning. Not to mention if everything you do is to index for meaning – meaningfulness, that kind of makes everything meaningless. Like not – there's no like contrast. Right. So here's my harebrained. Here's my theory. OK. A diversified life pursuit portfolio. You should – have something meaningful in your life that you pursue. You should have something that's just fun and joyful in your life that you pursue. You should also just have something that's like stupid and egotistical and hedonistic that you pursue, right? Like that's a piece of the puzzle as well. You don't ever want to like go all in on any of those things. You want to have them balanced in a nice proportion that suits your personality well. Like I noticed this, I went through many years. So I was a huge gamer when I was young. I gave up video games in my 20s because I was like all aboard the productivity self-help train. I was also building a business, so I didn't have any fucking time. I also didn't have any money. So all those things, all those reasons contributed. I didn't play video games for about eight or nine years. And then when I came back to gaming, I had a little bit of a love-hate relationship with it. There was a little bit of like a guilt or a shame or like a self-loathing. I'm like, oh man, I just spent like all day Saturday. Like playing the new Zelda. Like what am I doing with my life? I could be doing something productive. I could have been hanging out with a friend. I could have been at the gym. I could have been doing all these things. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I'm like, the optimal amount of video games in my life is not zero. And as long as it's below a certain amount, it noticeably makes my life better. It noticeably makes it better. There's something about just having this frivolous, meaningless, purely pleasurable, and sometimes interesting or challenging perspective. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do something that has no stakes attached to it whatsoever that like balances out everything else. That like when I come back to my work and I have like, let's say I have a really big decision to make in the business, it like reemphasizes the importance of that decision. And like, you know, don't take this moment for granted and like really pay attention to it. You know, similarly, it's like when I do go hang out with a bunch of friends or my wife, you know, it's like, okay, now I get to be social. Like it's, it's, this is, this is a joy because I, I haven't been social in the last couple of days. Right. So anyway, a little bit of a, a cooked up harebrained theory. I don't know if that reflects what she talks about. That's how I think of it. Or like, that's where I've landed at this point in my life. And I don't know, maybe I should write a book about that. The diversified happiness portfolio. I mean, that it is the, the, the researchers along with Lorraine Besser and there's other researchers in psychology. That's what they're saying is that this is now, this is a part that's been neglected. So yeah, happiness is important. They're not saying it's not. Of course. Meaning and purpose is important. Of course. And now this other component they think to a good life. And they're also saying there could be more, we don't know, but we're just finding that this is a component that we think needs to be talked about more. Yeah. I forgot the curiosity thing, but yeah, that's a, that's a huge part of it as well. Yeah. Yeah. I do think. So let me, let me, let me, let me read you off some of the things that they've uncovered so far anyway, engaging in new and varied experiences, traveling to foreign places, or just unfamiliar places. Sure. Reading books or having conversations that challenge your perspective, learning new skills and trying new things and embracing spontaneity and playfulness. Those are a few of the things that they've, they associate with psychological richness. It sounds like kind of just intellectual stimulation. Yeah. I think that's a lot of it. And there's a big emphasis on mindfulness around what you find interesting and stimulating rather than what's, what's told to you, like, this will make you happy. This was, this is how you find meaning. This is more about like, this is a personal go within, have some solitude, figure this out. Okay. So I'm having a very mixed reaction here, which is like, I think the content of what they're saying is probably true. And I also don't find it that profound or surprised, like, especially if you're kind of a brainy person, like generally intellectual stimulation or intellectual pursuits are just naturally going to make you happy anyway. Like that's, that's where you're going to have fun anyway. So like, to me, that's not super earth shattering. I'm like, yeah, okay. That makes sense. I'm calling bullshit on the packaging here. Like this, this definitely feels, this reeks to me, and this happens in psychology quite a bit where it's, it's like, we did some studies and we found the thing that's pretty obvious, but let's put an interesting name on it and invent a theory about it. Right. And it reminds me sometimes every once in a while, like, you know, in some of these like science and psychology publications, like I'll see a new study pops up and I'll like, I'll read through the study and the results. And it's, it's just like the most common sense thing in the world. Yeah. And, uh, and always in my head to myself, I'll, I'll always say, uh, I was like breaking news, scientists discover what everybody already knew. Yeah. I saw one recently like that about like, Oh, here's like breaking news. Relationships can be really hard. Like, yeah. Oh my God. Who, who knew? I want to call bullshit on this one, but it's not because it's wrong. It's just because it's like, yeah. Pursuing your interest is cool. It like, it's fun. It feels good. It feels purposeful, meaningful. I don't know if it's the whole thing. Like, yeah, I don't know. I'm not even sure if it's your interest though, is what they're saying. It's, it's just something you might find interesting. I think it's more, uh, it's, they're trying to get people to be a little bit more present. We could just be sitting here in this room by ourselves right now. And I think they would argue. There's something fascinating you could find true sitting here by yourself. I hate to break it to you. We are sitting in this room. Think about, think about what I mean though, is you go through your life and you just interact with all these people and they're kind of faceless and nameless. There's something fascinating and weird and interesting about every single person you could come across. And I think there's a lot of, there's a lot to be like, you can live a much deeper, richer life without spending any money. Yeah. Without spending years developing some skill. Yes. That's going to provide a lot of meaning or security or whatever it is for you and your family. You can just, you can just be, this is okay. I see now. I'm making fun of myself now. God damn it. You can just be, man. This one's bullshit. I, like, again, I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I don't disagree with anything the paper is saying. I'm just like, this is very hand wavy and like, ooh. I agree. Like, Let's have a, a psychologically rich life today. Fuck's sake. All right. You got me. I tried. I'm just like, okay, define rich life. And it's like, well, you just gotta be, you gotta just find the depth in the things that you're doing already. It's like, okay, well, what the fuck does that mean? Look, if anyone out there thinks this sounds interesting, go read the book. Yeah, yeah. Go read the, end up. Jesus Christ. Sorry, man. No, you're right. Hey, I just gotta call it like I see it. I, oh, I like it. All right. That did not go as planned. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. What, what questions do we have this week? Mark, I have a very simple question. Oh, good. I like simple ones. Yeah. I'm tired, dude. I don't want to think hard. There's not a simple answer to it, though. Oh, shit. Don't think. God damn it. All right. How much is enough? How much is enough? How much is enough? That's it. That's the question. I, I'm, I'm like, the first thing that comes to my mind is that great line from Mad, have you seen Mad Men? Yeah. So. Love Mad Men, yeah. Yeah, that, there's an amazing, there's so many amazing lines in Mad Men, but there's this amazing moment where Don Draper says, uh, uh, I think somebody asked him, like, what is happiness? And, and he says, it's the moment before you need more happiness. Right, yeah. That's, that's so good. What's enough? What's enough? It's the moment before you need more. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I mean, enough. Is, is something that you ultimately have to decide for yourself, but I also think it's something that we're probably not biologically or neurologically predisposed to, to want or accept. I mean, you could argue that, like, a huge percentage of the entire religion of Buddhism is based on the practice of trying to have enough in each and every moment. Um, and I, I would argue that the vast majority of Buddhist practitioners. And meditators never totally get to that place. So, yeah, I don't know. I, I feel like it is just part of our evolutionary nature to always go back to being mildly dissatisfied with whatever our situation is. And, and if our situation's amazing, it's going to make us look like fucking brats. And if our situation's really shitty, it's going to keep us sane and functional in a really shitty situation. Um, but we, we, that just seems to be the way. The mind works is mild dissatisfaction most of the time. Right. Yeah, there was, um, there was stories in Steve jobs, uh, uh, biography. I think it was a little by Walter Isaacson anyway, um, where he's talking with people and people come to him and they're like, well, okay, we're going to do this, but we don't know if it's going to make, this is probably going to make more money, but I kind of want to do this. And Steve would stop them and be like, this is why I'm friends with you. You don't need more money. Yeah, you don't need more money. Now, Steve was always, he was obviously. It constantly never satisfied with anything, obviously, but money was not something he was, uh, one to one. So I think when somebody asks, you know, what's enough, it's like enough of what, first of all, that's the, that's the, actually the more important question, enough of what, because I would argue that there's some things in life that there shouldn't be enough. Right. Like when I love and peace, man, you are really, I'm dude, I'm leaning into this. You're full hippie today. I'm going to turn into old hippie. Did you smoke some weed before you came in? No, but you know, we should, we should, we should. You know, we could drop some acid one of these times and really get into this. Yeah. That would be an episode. Uh, what was I saying? Oh, what is enough? Yeah. Right. I mean, like what is enough? enough of what yeah poverty at least alleviation what is enough peace in the world like you know what what is enough lack of violence like it there's there's always gonna be you'll always want more of some things and i would argue like um as a creative person or an artist or somebody who builds something like i don't i kind of don't want to ever write something that i think is enough because then i'm not getting better anymore right like i don't ever want to write a book that i'm like yeah that's fine that was good enough i don't need to write another one yeah like i always want to feel like no no i could do better so i'm a little bit dissatisfied with myself yes always the the crazy thing about that though is that you i i agree and that's how you've operated the crazy thing is you like the whole failing in public thing then that's that's just becomes part of the process too right there's no yeah there's you're never going to write something or create something that everybody's happy with yeah you're never going to be satisfied with it on your own enough but you still put it out there anyway that's that's so the i think this raises a really good uh important point which is that um the kind of default psychological state of never having enough or there never being enough it can cut both ways it can torture you like if you are the the guy with 10 million dollars who's fucking depressed because he doesn't have 100 million dollars like clearly that sense of not enough is is harming you but it can also help you like if you look at people like steve jobs or uh you know brilliant artists or musicians or people who have done amazing things they're generally people with a very strong personality of nothing is ever good enough yeah they're tortured by it they're tortured by it and it causes them to do great things and become excellent masters at certain skills or or practices so i think it can cut both ways i think it's just you have to be very selective of where you apply it like i think i'm very good at i definitely have a nothing is good enough attitude within the business yeah within my content with my writing no with our video shock i'm sure you are surprised by this uh that nothing is ever good enough ever everything can always be better and and it it does torture me sometimes like it doesn't oh and no matter how good something is yeah i i i can look at it and and within 10 seconds see like six things wrong with it yeah and um but i'm okay with that like that is given me a a great career and it's built a great product and you know hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this right now and and they're enjoying it because of that because i have that right whereas if i had that like i don't know say in in finances or uh you know how drunk i got last weekend or you know there's all sorts of destructive vectors that this this tendency can exist on and so i think you just have to be like very very careful that you learn how to cut it off there learn how to be satisfied and settle in certain areas of your life and then be very conscious of the areas in your life that you're not going to settle on that you're not not going to be satisfied and then you are going to push yourself yeah yeah we solved it i think i think we solved that one enough enough yeah we did yeah that answer was good enough um got a real good wisdom of the week to tie this one up i think we're going to cool uh it's by the great tony morrison and she said at some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough i like that i love tony too yeah not for me it could be more beautiful see you next week everybody on that note we're out of here the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast is produced by drew bernie it's edited by andrew nishimura jessica choice our videographer and sound engineer thank you for listening and we will see you next week you you andrew nishimura jessica choice our videographer and sound engineer you