Speaker 1: Oh boy, it's holiday time again. You know how that
Speaker 1: brings up all sorts of negative feelings for me. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not alone in that. Lots of people have negative
Speaker 1: feelings around the holiday, which is why we are doing
Speaker 1: a one you Feed community event that we are titling
Speaker 1: stressed by holiday expectations how to feel peace instead this season.
Speaker 1: Everybody is burdened by expectations during the holidays, whether that's
Speaker 1: other people's expectations of you or your expectations of the holidays.
Speaker 1: It's a struggle for all of us. So we are
Speaker 1: going to get together as a community and I'm going
Speaker 1: to teach a spiritual habit that will allow you to
Speaker 1: release these types of expectations and touch into a deeper
Speaker 1: feeling of wholeness, peace, steadiness, and presence ground yourself through
Speaker 1: a dose of genuine, nourishing connection with others in this
Speaker 1: wonderfully supportive community. Go to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Holiday to sign up for this free community event.
Speaker 1: That's when you feed dot net slash Holiday. In case
Speaker 1: you're just recently joining us or however long and you've
Speaker 1: been a listener of the show, you may not realize
Speaker 1: that we have over seven years of incredible episodes in
Speaker 1: our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've
Speaker 1: decided to hand pick one of our favorites that may
Speaker 1: be new to you, but if not, it definitely is
Speaker 1: worth another lesson. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with
Speaker 1: Mark Manson. It's far more pleasurable to sit on the
Speaker 1: couch and eat cheetahs and watch Baywatch we runs, but
Speaker 1: running a marathon it rings far more happiness and fulfillment.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great tinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Manson,
Speaker 1: author and personal development consultant. His writing is a different
Speaker 1: take on the self help genre. He calls it self
Speaker 1: help from a first person perspective. Mark has been published
Speaker 1: and quoted by CNN, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Yahoo News,
Speaker 1: The Sydney Morning Herald, in a variety of other publications.
Speaker 1: He is also the CEO and founder of Infinity Squared
Speaker 1: Media LLC. Hi, Mark, Welcome to the show. Hey Eric,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this
Speaker 1: conversation with you. Your writing is really a combination of Ay,
Speaker 1: it ties very closely to a lot of the things
Speaker 1: I think about um, so it's, you know, aligned with
Speaker 1: it philosophically. I think it's very well done and it's
Speaker 1: usually pretty funny, and that is a great combination when
Speaker 1: all those three can come together for me. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to this. But we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, in the work that
Speaker 1: I do, I write a lot about these kinds of subjects,
Speaker 1: so I kind of automatically interpreted. I've heard the parable before,
Speaker 1: but it's probably been ten or twelve years since I've
Speaker 1: heard it, But hearing it now, I immediately interpreted through
Speaker 1: kind of the lens of UM a lot of the
Speaker 1: way I frame things and talk about things in my
Speaker 1: own articles. UM. Basically, for me, what it always comes
Speaker 1: back to is is we are always choosing what to
Speaker 1: find important. And I think everybody realizes to a certain
Speaker 1: extent that everybody makes choices around, uh, around what they
Speaker 1: find important, But I don't think everybody realizes that they
Speaker 1: actually choose what they find important. And UM, the parable
Speaker 1: brings that up for me that it's it's a very
Speaker 1: subtle uh in level of awareness that I think it's
Speaker 1: very very important for people to get to, at least
Speaker 1: it was very important for me to get to personally,
Speaker 1: and and that being taken the time to really consider
Speaker 1: what you think is important, not just focusing on orienting
Speaker 1: around what you sort of think is important, but taking
Speaker 1: time to make sure that that what really is important
Speaker 1: to me question is answered right exactly. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: in my own life, there were times where I would
Speaker 1: dedicate years of time and energy and effort, uh, towards
Speaker 1: pursuing some goal let's say, um, building a business and
Speaker 1: making a lot of money, or being really popular and
Speaker 1: well accepted among my peers. And if you had asked
Speaker 1: me at the time in my feeding the good wolf
Speaker 1: from the bad wolf, I would have said, obviously, I'm
Speaker 1: feeding the good wolf like I'm trying to be a
Speaker 1: great guy. I'm trying to be successful. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: looking back at those periods, I don't think I was
Speaker 1: like the yardstick. I was using them to measure Uh,
Speaker 1: myself was not the right one. I wasn't choose mean
Speaker 1: what to find important very well. Um, so for me, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for me, it it And and if you read
Speaker 1: through my archive This comes up over and over and
Speaker 1: over again because it's been so crucial in my own
Speaker 1: my own development. But it's looking at what I'm choosing
Speaker 1: to find important and then asking myself whether that should
Speaker 1: actually be important or not right. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that you you spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: about is is opportunity cost is the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: when we choose something, there are other things that we
Speaker 1: can't choose, which is something that I think I certainly
Speaker 1: wrestled with I still do occasionally. Right, there's just so
Speaker 1: many things to do, but you're you're very um straight
Speaker 1: to the point on that about making those choices and
Speaker 1: then sticking with them. So talk to me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about opportunity cost. So I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of tendency to think, uh these days, people
Speaker 1: who are very goal oriented or gold driven, um, you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of have this vision in their mind of Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the perfect work situation that I want to achieve,
Speaker 1: and this is the perfect uh family or love life
Speaker 1: situation I want to achieve, and this is the social
Speaker 1: life situation I want to achieve. And we all kind
Speaker 1: of have this vision for ourselves and when we're pursuing
Speaker 1: these goals we we when we're so focused on kind
Speaker 1: of achieving these goals or these these things that we
Speaker 1: hold important, we aren't aware of the sacrifices that are involved,
Speaker 1: the things that we have to give up. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that most people eventually learned
Speaker 1: the hard way is that everything requires giving something up
Speaker 1: in return. There's nothing nothing is free. Nothing is nothing
Speaker 1: comes uh freely through work. You you it's not just
Speaker 1: working for something. You have to be willing to to
Speaker 1: give up other um, other hopes and dreams and aspirations
Speaker 1: and in time that you could be spending doing other
Speaker 1: things with the other people. Um. And that that's a
Speaker 1: really hard pill to swallow, I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, especially kind of when you're um, super ambitious
Speaker 1: or maybe young and starry eyed and you know, I
Speaker 1: think the world can be your oyster. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a rude awakening when you
Speaker 1: wake up at thirty and you realize that there's all
Speaker 1: these things that you wanted to do, but it it
Speaker 1: there's no practical way you're ever going to be able
Speaker 1: to do them. Yeah, I mean, you talk about that
Speaker 1: most people look at it as a work life balance
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm always too busy. And then you say,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to read it because I think
Speaker 1: it's you say it very well. But what if the
Speaker 1: answer isn't to do more? What if the answer is
Speaker 1: to want less. What if the solution is simply accepting
Speaker 1: our bounded potential, our unfortunate tendency as humans to inhabit
Speaker 1: only one place in space and time. What if we
Speaker 1: recognize our life's inevitable limitations and then prioritize what we
Speaker 1: care about based on those limitations. What if it's a
Speaker 1: simple a stadium, this is what I choose to value
Speaker 1: more than everything else, and then living with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm a writer, Eric, Because that's like
Speaker 1: ten times better than than what I just said. Now,
Speaker 1: I I totally get it. Um. I first was introduced
Speaker 1: to you with a post that I don't know what
Speaker 1: your most popular post ever is, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess this was one of them, which was the subtle
Speaker 1: art of not giving a fuck? That is the most
Speaker 1: popular one. Yeah, I was. I was going to say
Speaker 1: it's a you know, it's done certainly in a humorous style.
Speaker 1: I think you use the that word as many times
Speaker 1: as you can fit into it, so it's very entertaining,
Speaker 1: but it is also incredibly insightful. And you basically talk
Speaker 1: about UM A couple of subtleties to not giving a fuck,
Speaker 1: and one is UM. I guess I've said it enough
Speaker 1: at this point. There's no reason to hold back now
Speaker 1: that the episode was going to explicit, So all right, listeners,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to hear it against fast forward
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. All right. You say, to not give a
Speaker 1: funk about adversity, you must first give the funk about
Speaker 1: something more important than adversity. And then you also say,
Speaker 1: we all have a limited number of funds to give
Speaker 1: pay attention to where and who you give them too. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think what I talked about in the article is
Speaker 1: that I think there's this misconception that UM people, as
Speaker 1: we sometimes colloquially say, who do not give a fuck,
Speaker 1: who we perceive to be particularly bold or confident or
Speaker 1: resilient in some way. I think the perception is generally
Speaker 1: that these people are that way because they're not phased
Speaker 1: by problems, Like things just don't seem to bother them. Uh,
Speaker 1: they do what they want to do, and they kind
Speaker 1: of disregard everything else. And I actually think this is
Speaker 1: a really really bad and almost dangerous misconception of what
Speaker 1: confidence is because people who behave that way, who just
Speaker 1: do what they want and are completely the woid of
Speaker 1: any sentiment for the way they're affecting the people around them,
Speaker 1: Like this is actually it's very it's sociopathic behavior, and
Speaker 1: it's actually it's something that we don't really uh, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be encouraging in people. And so I actually I
Speaker 1: struggled for a long time in my writing, how can
Speaker 1: I describe this in such a way that, uh, like,
Speaker 1: how can I describe what what's really going on, like
Speaker 1: what a confident person actually is, um in a really
Speaker 1: succinct way that there is also catchy and interesting. And
Speaker 1: for me, the conclusion I came to is is basically,
Speaker 1: people who are confident or resilient, it's not that they
Speaker 1: don't they don't care about the problems that they face
Speaker 1: or the struggles that they go through. It's just that
Speaker 1: they choose to care about something even more, uh, they
Speaker 1: choose two find something else more important. That article was
Speaker 1: was great um for a bunch of reasons. The fact
Speaker 1: that It has a picture of bunk Moreland from the wire,
Speaker 1: a picture of him sitting there saying bunk Moreland not
Speaker 1: giving a fun since two thousand and two was almost
Speaker 1: the best part of it, because that guy cracks me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think what's really interesting about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of it is about, you know, knowing what you control,
Speaker 1: what you can control, and what you can't control, and
Speaker 1: if you if you can't control something, then you know
Speaker 1: to use the language you're using. You know, giving a
Speaker 1: funk about something you can do nothing about is a
Speaker 1: complete waste of energy and takes away your ability to
Speaker 1: apply that energy to something that you do care about.
Speaker 1: It's like a very vulgar and fancy way of saying,
Speaker 1: why cry over spilt milk? Click? You can't Sometimes things
Speaker 1: in life just suck, Like even if you achieve a
Speaker 1: lot of things, like a lot of your goals and dreams, like,
Speaker 1: there's shitty aspects of even the best things in life.
Speaker 1: And so I think there there's a really hard and
Speaker 1: unpopular lesson in coming to terms with that and accepting
Speaker 1: that that is um spread throughout your writing, and I
Speaker 1: think probably in listening to this show, it's spread throughout
Speaker 1: there also, which is that there aren't easy answers. There's
Speaker 1: not permanent happiness. There's not a point which you you
Speaker 1: achieve enough or do enough, or learn enough or grow
Speaker 1: spiritual enough that you're done and life doesn't isn't challenging,
Speaker 1: or isn't painful, that day is not coming. You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of information about relationships, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that you talk about, You've got some characteristics of
Speaker 1: good relationships, bad relationships, and things to look for in
Speaker 1: a partner, some things to not look for in a partner.
Speaker 1: One of the oldest pieces of relationship advice is you
Speaker 1: and your partners should be best friends, but you look
Speaker 1: at it in the negative. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Specifically with the friendship tests. You know, most people think, well,
Speaker 1: my my wife or my husband or my partner, Uh,
Speaker 1: they should be like my best friend. And oh they
Speaker 1: are like my best friend. I spend so much time
Speaker 1: with them, and we go see movies together, and we
Speaker 1: talk a lot, and you know, we buy each other
Speaker 1: gifts and whatever. Yeah, of course they're like my best friend.
Speaker 1: Those are all like the good things about a friendship.
Speaker 1: Nobody looks at the bad about a friendship and then
Speaker 1: ask themselves if their intimate relationship is actually a friendship
Speaker 1: but not so. Basically, what I say with the friendship
Speaker 1: test is ask yourself if you're having relationship problems, that
Speaker 1: you're having relationship problems with your your husband or your wife. Basically,
Speaker 1: ask yourself, would you tolerate the same behavior and your
Speaker 1: best friend. Um, So, if your husband is hanging up
Speaker 1: on you and refusing to take your calls for days
Speaker 1: at a time and calling you a bit, would you
Speaker 1: accept that behavior and your best friend? The answers usually
Speaker 1: no and um. This Usually it shocks people, and in
Speaker 1: fact it's it's really funny. Eric. I've gotten emails over
Speaker 1: the last year of people saying, hey, I decided to
Speaker 1: divorce my wife. Thanks, and I like, all right, way
Speaker 1: to go, happy to help, Like I guess Mark Manson
Speaker 1: loves executioner. Yes, it's one of those things where people
Speaker 1: if you can just get people to see things in
Speaker 1: a certain light, suddenly, uh, what should have always been
Speaker 1: obvious it becomes obvious. I think in romantic relationships, because
Speaker 1: there's so much emotional attachment involved, we're we're very biased
Speaker 1: about them, like we're very clouded in our judgment about
Speaker 1: our own relationships. Um. And so one thing that I
Speaker 1: try to do and a lot of my writing is
Speaker 1: give people like little logical like logic tweaks like that,
Speaker 1: UM to kind of break them out of that cloud.
Speaker 1: Because you know, most people when they go through relationship
Speaker 1: problems that they're so caught up in the well he
Speaker 1: said this, but then I did this and will and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to call him back because blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and you you just need something that will pull them
Speaker 1: out of that um and get them to look at
Speaker 1: it objectively, just for a few seconds, uh, so that
Speaker 1: they can make a better decision about what they're doing exactly.
Speaker 1: So one of the things on the show that I
Speaker 1: talked about a lot is positive thinking, and we talked
Speaker 1: about how it's not in a lot of cases the
Speaker 1: right tool for the job, you know. I mean I
Speaker 1: asked people a lot, you know, when is it positive thinking?
Speaker 1: And when is it you know, being delusional? And um,
Speaker 1: you you talk about that a lot. And You've got
Speaker 1: a great article railing and against a book that I
Speaker 1: also have real challenges with, which is the secret? Tell
Speaker 1: me what what your problems are with that book? In
Speaker 1: under thirty minutes, and with less than fifteen I'm saying
Speaker 1: it was just I was just gonna say, can I
Speaker 1: keep saying fuck? Because because you might just unload. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the thing about the secret is it's easy.
Speaker 1: It's easy to rip on the secret. But um, what
Speaker 1: it says is not really anything new. I mean what
Speaker 1: it says has been around for um hundreds of years
Speaker 1: at this point, which is it's basically i ollusional positivity,
Speaker 1: similar to what you call it. And it's it's basically
Speaker 1: it's teaching people. It's basically taking miserable people like people
Speaker 1: who have real challenges and frustrations in their lives, and
Speaker 1: instead of teaching them how to solve those challenges and
Speaker 1: frustration and how to empower them to uh take responsibility
Speaker 1: and and overcome those challenges or maybe even just live
Speaker 1: better with those challenges, um, it basically teaches them how
Speaker 1: to detach from reality and delude themselves into believing something
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. Um. And I just I think that's
Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible way to go about it because and yeah,
Speaker 1: sure it does make some people happier, and it does
Speaker 1: work out for some people. I don't deny that. I
Speaker 1: just I think if you apply that strategy to everything, Like,
Speaker 1: you can really run into some some really questionable and
Speaker 1: I mean morally questionable issues, you know. So for instance,
Speaker 1: like let's say I'm I'm a single guy, and I
Speaker 1: go on a date with a woman and she doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, have a lot of interest in me, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't call me back. But I read the secret
Speaker 1: and I decided that, hey, you know, if I just
Speaker 1: dream about being with this woman and keep pursuing that dream,
Speaker 1: then I'll make that a reality. And you can it's
Speaker 1: very easy to connect the dots there to see how
Speaker 1: that could be taken by somebody to to mean that
Speaker 1: they should start harassing a person or uh, start doing
Speaker 1: some really shady and creepy stuff. I think I think
Speaker 1: you actually see this a lot more in the business world, Um,
Speaker 1: I've run into a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly internet entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: who kind of buy into the same thinking of of
Speaker 1: of you know, if I if I just dream about
Speaker 1: you know, having my my online income and doing this
Speaker 1: or that, uh, then it will come true and I
Speaker 1: deserve this. And as soon as you enter into that
Speaker 1: world of like I deserve to make this money or
Speaker 1: I deserve to have this a friend or I deserve
Speaker 1: to have this sort of happiness. I think that kind
Speaker 1: of short circuits people's moral judgment. Um, they start becoming
Speaker 1: okay with like lying in the marketing, or they start
Speaker 1: becoming okay with uh, you know, doing like creepy and
Speaker 1: shady things with people that are around, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's I I think I I understand why, uh
Speaker 1: it benefits some people. But the argument that I make
Speaker 1: is essentially that it's a short term benefit at a
Speaker 1: long term cost. It removes people's ability to make proper judgments. Um,
Speaker 1: And basically it removes their ability to interpret reality in
Speaker 1: a in an accurate way, which is always harmful in
Speaker 1: the long run. Right, Yeah, I mean I agree. I
Speaker 1: think there is, um, there is something to that idea.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that there are some results to uh,
Speaker 1: the law of attraction. But I don't think there because
Speaker 1: the reason people think they are. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a magic thing. But I think if you generally approached
Speaker 1: the world with a little bit more positivity and a
Speaker 1: little bit more openness, better things are going to happen
Speaker 1: to you. Um. But I agree with you that idea
Speaker 1: of you know, never allowing negative you know, you can't
Speaker 1: have negative thoughts about things. If you have negative thoughts
Speaker 1: about things, then you're not gonna get what you want
Speaker 1: to be sort of like going, well, I'm just never
Speaker 1: I'm I'm never gonna get cancer, so I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: get to the doctor, even if you've got lots of
Speaker 1: symptoms of it, and just going well, I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't have it. I'm not going to get it, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because if I think about having it, then I'm attracting
Speaker 1: it to myself. The other dubious, uh moral problem with that,
Speaker 1: which you have a great video on your post about
Speaker 1: it that features Dave Chappelle basically uh talking about the
Speaker 1: same thing. Is this idea that then if people who
Speaker 1: are in really bad circumstances, you know, did they attract that?
Speaker 1: You know, did did the starving? You know, all these
Speaker 1: refugees right now, you know, to use a timely crisis
Speaker 1: trying to find a safe haven. Is is that what
Speaker 1: they have attracted? And it's I just I get hung
Speaker 1: up on it too. Yeah. Absolutely. I often say that
Speaker 1: you sometimes you can't think your way into right action.
Speaker 1: You have to act your way into right thinking. And um,
Speaker 1: you actually have something similar where you say action isn't
Speaker 1: just the effective motivation but also the cause of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I call this and I actually I really like
Speaker 1: that you have to act in the right action I
Speaker 1: call my version of that. I call it to do
Speaker 1: something principle UM. And basically the big discovery I found
Speaker 1: in my own life, which is that I found that,
Speaker 1: you know, most people, like most people, I would always
Speaker 1: wait for an inspiration to occur to me before I
Speaker 1: took action. And like most people, I would kind of
Speaker 1: sit around being like, well, crap, where's my inspiration? Like
Speaker 1: why am I not? Why don't I feel inspired to
Speaker 1: pursue anything or do anything? Like what's my life purpose?
Speaker 1: And eventually, at some point something clicked and I realized
Speaker 1: that inspiration doesn't just cause action, it's also the effect
Speaker 1: of action. So what I started to notice is that
Speaker 1: even by doing something that I don't particularly like or
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly good at, this would generate some sort
Speaker 1: of like emotional reaction in me. You know, I would
Speaker 1: go out and try something new and do horribly at it,
Speaker 1: and I would be like wait a second, like I
Speaker 1: can get good at this, and next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I'm spending weeks like getting good at this new thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but that never would have happened if I hadn't just
Speaker 1: like blindly gone out and done something. So I called
Speaker 1: to do something principle because it's essentially, when in doubt,
Speaker 1: you just shut up and do something. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what it is you it could be anything, it
Speaker 1: could be seemingly the most silly and and significant thing,
Speaker 1: because the idea is that by doing that small and
Speaker 1: insignificant action, it's going to create kind of a snowball
Speaker 1: effect of of generating inspiration and further action. I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more. I mean, I think that I always try
Speaker 1: and encourage people to be biased towards action, for you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of reasons that you just listed there. I mean,
Speaker 1: one is, obviously, the momentum just builds on itself. If
Speaker 1: you can get moving, you can make a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of progress. And the other one
Speaker 1: is a lot of times we're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: something that's a ways down the path, and sometimes if
Speaker 1: you just take five steps down the path, you can
Speaker 1: see further down the path then you could five steps before,
Speaker 1: and so you're in a much better place if you
Speaker 1: just start moving. But if you sit there kind of
Speaker 1: staring down the path hoping to be able to see
Speaker 1: around the corner, it's not going to happen. Happiness is
Speaker 1: not the same as pleasure. What do you mean there?
Speaker 1: One example I used to straight this often is if
Speaker 1: you imagine somebody running a marathon and nearly killing themselves
Speaker 1: to say, break a three hour marathon, something they've been
Speaker 1: training for for years. There's nothing pleasurable about that experience. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's far more pleasurable to sit on the couch and
Speaker 1: eat cheetahs and watch Baywatch reruns. But running a marathon
Speaker 1: it brings far more happiness and fulfillment. It's a great
Speaker 1: life achievement. And I think a lot of people mistake
Speaker 1: happiness for pleasure, happiness for feeling good. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times happiness, UM doesn't actually feel good. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's painful or distressful. UM. I think back to
Speaker 1: some of the happiest times in my life, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them involved, you know, working twelve hours a
Speaker 1: day on some project that I really really cared about
Speaker 1: and thought was really important and wanted to do a
Speaker 1: good job at. UM. Some of the happiest days of
Speaker 1: my life were staying up until five in the morning
Speaker 1: three days in a row with a bunch of friends.
Speaker 1: Just because something it feels good doesn't mean it is good.
Speaker 1: And something just because something feels bad doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: is bad. And and I think I true happiness is
Speaker 1: derived from a meaning of an experience. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: derived from again, what importance we ascribed to a certain experience.
Speaker 1: I think generally, when you look at people who are
Speaker 1: always struggling to be happy in their life, um, the
Speaker 1: issue isn't pleasure. In fact, it's ironic that generally people
Speaker 1: who struggle the most with happy happiness in their life,
Speaker 1: they tend to have a very pleasurable life. They have
Speaker 1: a comfortable home, and they have all sorts of diversions,
Speaker 1: you know, like video games and television and movies and stuff.
Speaker 1: They sleep in a comfortable bed. Um, they don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about, you know, any sort of like kind
Speaker 1: of existential things. What they lack is meaning. What they
Speaker 1: lack is a sense of importance, a sense that like
Speaker 1: anything they do matters. Um. And so I guess this
Speaker 1: kind of comes full circle back to the wolf thing,
Speaker 1: and that, uh, they haven't yet learned to choose what's
Speaker 1: important in their life, or perhaps they choose chose pleasure
Speaker 1: and comfort to be the most important thing in their life, which,
Speaker 1: in my opinion is a is a pretty shitty choice.
Speaker 1: It backfires on people. Yeah, it's amazing how I think
Speaker 1: all of us know that on some level, and yet
Speaker 1: how hard it is to step away from that. I
Speaker 1: think it's because pleasure works for a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: It has its it has its moments um where it
Speaker 1: is pleasurable. I think that where I, you know, where
Speaker 1: I run into trouble or places of my life where
Speaker 1: I've struggled is when it's the only source of happiness
Speaker 1: for me. Like if I'm not having a pleasurable experience
Speaker 1: of some sort, there's no happiness. If I'm not eating
Speaker 1: something that's good or and that's kind of an ugly
Speaker 1: place to be in and then taken to its extreme,
Speaker 1: it leads to um, you know, it's it's insatiable, right,
Speaker 1: And I've been that down that road with with drugs
Speaker 1: and different things of there's there's just not enough of it.
Speaker 1: There's never enough to satiate you. An example I I
Speaker 1: use sometimes as well as Yeah, like a cocaine addict
Speaker 1: has plenty of pleasure going on. You know, that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that you would trade trade places with him.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that you say about
Speaker 1: happiness is that you say it's the perpetual pursuit of
Speaker 1: fulfilling our ideal selves, which grants us happiness. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by pursuing our ideal selves? It's solving problems, um,
Speaker 1: in our lives. It's it's having some sort of ah
Speaker 1: goal or or ambition to look forward to. UM. I
Speaker 1: think people you see this a lot with people who
Speaker 1: have like midlife crises. Um. You know, they get to
Speaker 1: be thirty five, forty years old, and they've got the house,
Speaker 1: they've got the dog, they've got the kids. Um, they've
Speaker 1: got the nice job, they're taking vacations to where they
Speaker 1: wanted to vacations, and they fall into this like really
Speaker 1: sort of like existential malaise because there's a real sadness
Speaker 1: that comes with achieving all of your dreams, because then
Speaker 1: you you don't know what to look forward to anymore. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I very specifically in that sentence that you read,
Speaker 1: the perpetual pursuit of your ideal self, like pursuit is
Speaker 1: I think the most important word there. It's it's like
Speaker 1: that old Buddhist cliche, you know, the journey is more
Speaker 1: important than the destination or whatever it says. Um. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's happiness comes from this constant feeling of improvement,
Speaker 1: from this constant feeling of solving problems. And if you
Speaker 1: ever run into a point in your life where you
Speaker 1: either a I feel like you can't solve your problems,
Speaker 1: then that's going to make you miserable. But be if
Speaker 1: you also feel like you don't have any problems in
Speaker 1: your life, I think that also brings a certain kind
Speaker 1: of depression or misery as well. I think there's there's
Speaker 1: this need to always have feel as there is something
Speaker 1: more important to be striving for, just always needing to
Speaker 1: be growing or challenge to the next thing. Basically yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I think as we go through our life,
Speaker 1: the nature of that growth or challenge changes a lot,
Speaker 1: you know. So when you're young, a lot of it
Speaker 1: is determined by, uh, figuring out what you're good at,
Speaker 1: figuring out what kind of people are going to be
Speaker 1: close to in your life, figuring out um, you know,
Speaker 1: making a lot of important some of the first major
Speaker 1: decisions with your life. I think as you get older,
Speaker 1: some of those challenges change. You know, maybe they become
Speaker 1: more about um, being a good parent, or being a
Speaker 1: good friend, or being a good partner, UM, about achieving
Speaker 1: some sort of stability, long term stability, making sure your
Speaker 1: future is secure, your children's futures secure. So these things
Speaker 1: evolved as as time goes on, and you see them
Speaker 1: play out and people in different stages of their life.
Speaker 1: But UM, I think what matters is that there's always
Speaker 1: something there that you feel is more important than yourself
Speaker 1: UM or your current self rather UM, something that you're
Speaker 1: always working towards. Excellent, And we're getting near the end
Speaker 1: of time. But I'd like to quickly ask you. You
Speaker 1: wrote a very long article about Ken Wilbur. Um, first,
Speaker 1: could you tell us who Ken Wilbur is. I joke
Speaker 1: in the article is sad Ken Wilbur is the smartest
Speaker 1: man you've never heard of. Um, So, Ken was a
Speaker 1: American intellectual slash or I shouldn't say was he is.
Speaker 1: He stopped writing, but he's still alive. Um. He is
Speaker 1: an American intellectual slash philosopher slash kind of mystic. You know.
Speaker 1: He he really gets the spirituality, particularly Eastern spirituality. UM.
Speaker 1: And his whole deal is that, starting in the eighties,
Speaker 1: he decided that he wanted to try to integrate all
Speaker 1: fields of human knowledge into like one unifying theory. Um.
Speaker 1: And that sounds kind of crazy. But when you read him,
Speaker 1: even if you don't really think he did it, um,
Speaker 1: and I actually kind of don't think he did it,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing what he did. UM. Like what he
Speaker 1: comes up with his grand theory of everything, which by
Speaker 1: the nineties came together and was pretty solidified. Ah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. And the breath of his knowledge is incredible.
Speaker 1: And his ability to tie seemingly completely unrelated fields of knowledge. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. So he'll have chapters in his books that
Speaker 1: will discuss UH spiritual states of in Hinduism and tie
Speaker 1: that into Freudian psychology and relate that to UH nineteenth
Speaker 1: century industrial development. You know. And it's like he does
Speaker 1: it in a way that makes sense. Um. I I
Speaker 1: read all of his books in my early twenties, UM,
Speaker 1: And I I just felt myself getting smarter the more
Speaker 1: I read them. I read a bunch of his work also,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you the things he says. You're
Speaker 1: just sort of staggered by this seems so incredibly smart. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and you feel smarter. Um. You you came
Speaker 1: to a point with it. It sounds similar to the
Speaker 1: point that I did. After I read it all, I
Speaker 1: was sort of like, now what, Like I wasn't quite
Speaker 1: sure how a lot of it applied in life. Be
Speaker 1: on like you talk about in certain cases, um, feeling
Speaker 1: like people who have this mindset are smarter than other people.
Speaker 1: But you go on to talk about kind of what
Speaker 1: happened to him and some lessons that you drew from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I basically the big lessons I drew from him is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter how how smart you are or
Speaker 1: how evolved your thinking is like that nobody's immune. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're all humans at the end of the day, and
Speaker 1: we're all biased and we're all flawed, um, and we
Speaker 1: all kind of cave to these natural tendencies to form
Speaker 1: these in groups who judge themselves as superior to to
Speaker 1: the out groups. And um, even when the people are
Speaker 1: extremely well meaning and compassionate and worldly like, these things
Speaker 1: happen and unintentionally they're there human nature. And for me
Speaker 1: watching him and going through my experience, you know, I
Speaker 1: I had the same experience, which is I read all
Speaker 1: of his book, so I was blown away, and I
Speaker 1: had this huge excitement of like, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: let's change the world or whatever, and there was just
Speaker 1: no application of it at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of theorizing. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of armchair this is how humanity is and
Speaker 1: unfortunately or fortunately you know, life and humanity is experienced,
Speaker 1: you know, in our data day actions, and um I
Speaker 1: just found that as interesting as his ideas and theories were,
Speaker 1: they didn't really inform or change my life in any
Speaker 1: significant way. And when I look at his career, I
Speaker 1: feel like his big downfall was choosing to believe that
Speaker 1: they could exactly Well, Mark, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk. It's been a pleasure. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy your writing. We'll have links in the show
Speaker 1: notes to where people can find you and read more
Speaker 1: of your stuff. Thanks Eric, it was a pleasure being here. Okay,
Speaker 1: take care, all right. Thank you. If what you just
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