Speaker 1: It's far more pleasurable to sit on the couch and
Speaker 1: eat cheetahs and watch Baywatch we runs, but running a
Speaker 1: marathon it brings far more happiness and fulfillment. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Mark Manson, author and
Speaker 1: personal development consultant. His writing is a different take on
Speaker 1: the self help genre. He calls it self help from
Speaker 1: a first person perspective. Mark has been published and quoted
Speaker 1: by CNN, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Yahoo News, The Sydney
Speaker 1: Morning Herald and a variety of other publications. He is
Speaker 1: also the CEO and founder of Infinity Squared Media LLC.
Speaker 1: And here's the interview with Mark Manson. Hi Mark, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hey Eric, thanks for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to have this conversation with you. Your writing
Speaker 1: is really a combination of a It ties very closely
Speaker 1: to a lot of the things I think about um,
Speaker 1: so it's, you know, aligned with it philosophically. I think
Speaker 1: it's very well done and it's usually pretty funny, and
Speaker 1: that is a great combination when all those three can
Speaker 1: come together for me. So I'm looking forward to this.
Speaker 1: But we'll start like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well in the work that I do,
Speaker 1: I write a lot about these kinds of subjects, so
Speaker 1: 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 framed 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 and 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 of 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 choosing what
Speaker 1: 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 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 pursued
Speaker 1: doing these goals, we we when we're so focused on
Speaker 1: kind of achieving these goals or these these things that
Speaker 1: we hold important, we aren't aware of the sacrifices that
Speaker 1: are involved, the things that we have to give up.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that most people
Speaker 1: eventually learned the hard way is that everything requires giving
Speaker 1: something up in return. There's nothing nothing is free. Nothing
Speaker 1: is nothing comes uh freely through work. You you it's
Speaker 1: not just working for something. You have to be willing
Speaker 1: to to give up other um, other hopes and dreams
Speaker 1: and aspirations and time that you could be spending doing
Speaker 1: other things with 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 route 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 as
Speaker 1: simple as stating and this is what I choose to
Speaker 1: value 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 to um to
Speaker 1: not giving a fuck, and one is Um, I guess
Speaker 1: I've said it enough at this point. There's no reason
Speaker 1: to hold back now that the episode was going to explicit,
Speaker 1: So all right, listeners, if you don't want to hear
Speaker 1: it against fast forward thirty seconds. All right. You say
Speaker 1: to not give a funk about adversity, you must first
Speaker 1: give a funk about something more important than adversity. And
Speaker 1: then you also say, we all have a limited number
Speaker 1: of funds to give pay attention to where and who
Speaker 1: you give them too. Yes, I think what I talked
Speaker 1: about in the Art of Goals that I think there's
Speaker 1: this misconception that um people as we sometimes colloquially say,
Speaker 1: who do not give a fuck, um, who we perceive
Speaker 1: to be particularly bold or confident or resilient in some way.
Speaker 1: I think the perception is generally that these people are
Speaker 1: that way because they're not phased by problems, Like things
Speaker 1: just don't seem to bother them. Uh, they do what
Speaker 1: they want to do and they kind of disregard everything else.
Speaker 1: And I actually think this is a really really bad
Speaker 1: and almost dangerous misconception of what confidence is because people
Speaker 1: who behave that way, who just do what they want
Speaker 1: and are completely devoid of any sentiment for the way
Speaker 1: they're affecting the people around them, like this is actually
Speaker 1: it's very it's sociopathic behavior, and it's actually it's something
Speaker 1: that we don't really uh, we shouldn't be encouraging in people.
Speaker 1: And so I actually I struggled for a long time
Speaker 1: in my writing, how can I describe this in such
Speaker 1: a way that, uh, like, how can I describe what
Speaker 1: what's really going on, like what a confident person actually is,
Speaker 1: um in a really succinct way that there is also
Speaker 1: catchy and interesting. And for me, the conclusion I came
Speaker 1: to is is basically, people who are confident or resilient,
Speaker 1: it's not that they don't they don't care about the
Speaker 1: problems that they face or the struggles that they go through.
Speaker 1: It's just that they choose to care about something even more, uh,
Speaker 1: they choose two find something else more important. That article
Speaker 1: was was great um for a bunch of reasons. The
Speaker 1: fact that it has a picture of bunk Moreland from
Speaker 1: the wire, a picture of him sitting there saying bunk
Speaker 1: Moreland not giving a fox since two thousand and two
Speaker 1: was almost the best part of it, because that guy
Speaker 1: cracks me up. But I think what's really interesting about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of it is about you know, knowing
Speaker 1: what you control, what you can control, and what you
Speaker 1: can't control. And if you if you can't control something,
Speaker 1: then you know to use the language you're using. You know,
Speaker 1: giving a funk about something you can do nothing about
Speaker 1: is a complete waste of energy and takes away your
Speaker 1: ability to apply that energy to something that you do
Speaker 1: care about. It's like a very vulgar and fancy way
Speaker 1: of saying, why cry over spilt milk? Click? You can't
Speaker 1: Sometimes things in life just suck, Like even if you
Speaker 1: achieve a lot of things, like a lot of your
Speaker 1: goals and dreams, like, there's shitty aspects of even the
Speaker 1: best things in life. And so I think there there's
Speaker 1: a really hard and unpopular lesson in coming to the
Speaker 1: terms with that and accepting that. That is um spread
Speaker 1: throughout your writing, and I think probably in listening to
Speaker 1: this show it's spread throughout there also, which is that
Speaker 1: there aren't easy answers. There's not permanent happiness. There's not
Speaker 1: a point which you you achieve enough, or do enough,
Speaker 1: or learn enough, or grow spiritual enough that you're done
Speaker 1: and life doesn't isn't challenging, or isn't painful? That day
Speaker 1: is not coming Hue. And here's the rest of the
Speaker 1: interview with Mark Manson. You've got a lot of information
Speaker 1: about relationships, and one of the things that you talk about.
Speaker 1: You've got some characteristics of good relationships, bad relationships, some
Speaker 1: things to look for an a partner, some things to
Speaker 1: not look for an a partner. One of the oldest
Speaker 1: pieces of relationship advice is you and your partner should
Speaker 1: be best friends, but you look at it in the negative.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? Specifically with the friendship tests.
Speaker 1: You know, most people think, well, my my wife or
Speaker 1: my husband or my partner, Uh, they should be like
Speaker 1: my best friend. And oh they are like my best friend.
Speaker 1: I spend so much time with them, and we go
Speaker 1: see movies together, and we talk a lot, and you know,
Speaker 1: we buy each other gifts and whatever. Yeah, of course
Speaker 1: they're like my best friend. Those are all like the
Speaker 1: good things about a friendship. Nobody looks at the bad
Speaker 1: about a friendship and then ask themselves if their intimate
Speaker 1: relationship is actually a friendship but not so. Basically, what
Speaker 1: I say with the friendship test is ask yourself if
Speaker 1: you're having relationship problems, So you're having relationship problems with
Speaker 1: your your husband or your wife, basically ask yourself, would
Speaker 1: you tolerate the same behavior and your best friend? Um, So,
Speaker 1: if your husband is hanging up on you and refusing
Speaker 1: to take your calls for days at a time and
Speaker 1: calling you a bit, would you accept that behavior and
Speaker 1: your best friend? The answers usually know and um this
Speaker 1: usually it shocks people, and in fact it's it's really funny. Eric.
Speaker 1: I've gotten emails over the last year of people saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I decided to divorce my wife. Thanks, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, way to go, happy to help, Like I
Speaker 1: guess Mark Manson loves executioner. Yes, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where people if you can just get people to
Speaker 1: see things in a certain light, suddenly, Uh, what should
Speaker 1: have always been obvious, it becomes obvious. I think in
Speaker 1: romantic relationships, because there's so much emotional attachment involved, we're
Speaker 1: we're very biased about them, Like we're very clouded in
Speaker 1: our judgment about our own relationships. Um. And so one
Speaker 1: thing that I try to do, and a lot of
Speaker 1: my writing is give people like little logical like logic
Speaker 1: tweaks like that, um to kind of ranke them out
Speaker 1: of that cloud, because you know, most people when they
Speaker 1: go through relationship problems that they're so caught up in
Speaker 1: the well he said this, but then I did this
Speaker 1: and will and I'm not going to call him back
Speaker 1: because blah blah blah, and you you just need something
Speaker 1: that will pull them out of that um and get
Speaker 1: them to look at it objectively, just for a few seconds,
Speaker 1: uh so that they can make a better decision about
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Exactly. So one of the things on
Speaker 1: the show that we talked about a lot is positive thinking,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how it's not in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases the right tool for the job. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I asked people a lot, you know, when is
Speaker 1: it positive thinking? And when is it you know, being delusional?
Speaker 1: And um you you talk about that a lot. And
Speaker 1: you've got a great article railing against a book that
Speaker 1: I also have real challenges with, which is the secret?
Speaker 1: Tell me what what your problems are with that book?
Speaker 1: In under thirty minutes and with less than fifteen sent
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 ocllusional 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 frustrations,
Speaker 1: how to empower them to uh take responsibility and and
Speaker 1: overcome those challenges or maybe even just live better with
Speaker 1: those challenges, Um, it basically teaches them how to detach
Speaker 1: from reality and delude themselves into believing something that doesn't exist. Um.
Speaker 1: And I just I think that's a horrible, horrible way
Speaker 1: to go about it because and yeah, sure it does
Speaker 1: make some people happier, and it does work out for
Speaker 1: some people. I don't deny that. I just I think
Speaker 1: if you apply that strategy to everything, like, you can
Speaker 1: really run into some some really questionable and I mean
Speaker 1: morally questionable issues. You know. So for instance, like Let's
Speaker 1: say I'm I'm a single guy, and I go on
Speaker 1: a date with a woman and she doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of interest in me, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't call me back. But I read the secret and
Speaker 1: I decided that, hey, you know, if I just dream
Speaker 1: 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 girlfriend, or I deserve to
Speaker 1: have this sort of happiness, I think that kind of
Speaker 1: short circuits people's moral judgment. Um they start becoming okay
Speaker 1: with like lying in the marketing, or they start becoming
Speaker 1: okay with uh, you know, doing like creepy and shady
Speaker 1: things with people that are around, and so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's I I think I I understand why, uh it
Speaker 1: benefits some people. But the argument that I make is
Speaker 1: essentially that it's a short term benefit at a long
Speaker 1: 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: an 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 they're 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 approach
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 wanted.
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've attracted? And so it's I just I get hung
Speaker 1: up on it too. Yeahs. I often say that you
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You
Speaker 1: 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 in principle UM. And basically the big discovery I
Speaker 1: found 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 and being like, well, crap, where's my inspiration?
Speaker 1: Like why am I not? Why don't I feel inspired
Speaker 1: to 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 significant thing, because
Speaker 1: the idea is that by doing that small and insignificant action,
Speaker 1: it's going to create kind of a snowball effect of
Speaker 1: of generating inspiration and further action. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that it always try and encourage
Speaker 1: people to be biased towards action for you know, a
Speaker 1: 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 than 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 gonna happen. Happiness is not
Speaker 1: the same as pleasure. What do you mean there? One
Speaker 1: example I use till straight this often is if you
Speaker 1: imagine somebody running a marathon and nearly killing themselves to say,
Speaker 1: break a three hour marathon, something they've been training for
Speaker 1: for years. There's nothing pleasurable about that experience. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: far more pleasurable to sit on the couch and eat
Speaker 1: cheetahs and watch Baywatch. We run, 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 stressful. 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, we're 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 I think true happiness is derived from
Speaker 1: a meaning of an experience. It's it's it's derived from again,
Speaker 1: what importance we ascribed to a certain experience. I think generally,
Speaker 1: when you look at people who are always struggling to
Speaker 1: be happy in their life, um, the issue isn't pleasure.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's ironic that generally people who struggle the
Speaker 1: most with happy happiness in their life, they tend to
Speaker 1: have a very pleasurable life. They have a comfortable home,
Speaker 1: and they have all sorts of diversions, you know, like
Speaker 1: video games and television and movies and stuff. They sleep
Speaker 1: in a comfortable bed. Um, they don't have to worry about,
Speaker 1: you know, any sort of like kind of existential things.
Speaker 1: What they lack is meaning. What they lack is a
Speaker 1: sense of importance, a sense that like anything they do matters. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I guess this kind of comes full circle
Speaker 1: back to the wolf thing and that, uh, they haven't
Speaker 1: yet learned to choose what's important in their life, or
Speaker 1: perhaps they choose chose pleasure and comfort to be the
Speaker 1: most important thing in their life, which, in my opinion
Speaker 1: is a is a pretty shitty choice. It backfires on people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how I think all of us know that
Speaker 1: on some level, and yet how hard it is to
Speaker 1: step away from that. I think it's because pleasure works
Speaker 1: for a little bit, right, It has its it has
Speaker 1: its moments um where it is pleasurable. I think that
Speaker 1: where I you know, where I run into trouble or
Speaker 1: places of my life where I've struggled is when it's
Speaker 1: the only source of happiness for me. Like, if I'm
Speaker 1: not having a pleasurable experience of some sort, there's no
Speaker 1: happiness if I'm not eating something that's good or and
Speaker 1: that's kind of an ugly place to be in and
Speaker 1: then taken to its extreme, it leads to um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's insatiable, right, And I've been that down that
Speaker 1: road with with drugs and different things of there's there's
Speaker 1: just not enough of it. There's never enough to satiate you.
Speaker 1: An example I I use sometimes as well as Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a cocaine addict has plenty of pleasure going on.
Speaker 1: You know that doesn't necessarily mean that you would trade
Speaker 1: trade places with him. You know what are the things
Speaker 1: that you say about happiness? Is that you say it's
Speaker 1: the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves, which grants
Speaker 1: us happiness. What do you mean by pursuing our ideal selves?
Speaker 1: It's solving problems um in our lives. It's it's having
Speaker 1: some sort of ah goal or or ambition to look
Speaker 1: forward to. UM. I think people you see this a
Speaker 1: lot with people who have like midlife crises. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they get to be thirty five, forty years old, and
Speaker 1: they've got the house, they've got the dog, they've got
Speaker 1: the kids. Um, they've got the nice job, they're taking
Speaker 1: vacations to where they wanted to vacations, and they fall
Speaker 1: into this like really sort of like existential malaise because
Speaker 1: there's a real sadness that comes with achieving all of
Speaker 1: your dreams, because then you you don't know what to
Speaker 1: look forward to anymore. UM. I think I very specifically
Speaker 1: in that sentence that you read, the perpetual pursuit of
Speaker 1: your ideal self, like pursuit is I think the most
Speaker 1: important word there. It's it's like that old Buddhist cliche,
Speaker 1: you know, the journey is more important than the destination
Speaker 1: or whatever it says. UM. I think it's it's happiness
Speaker 1: comes from this constant feeling of improvement, from this constant
Speaker 1: feeling of solving problems. And if you ever run into
Speaker 1: a point in your life where you either a I
Speaker 1: feel like you can't solve your problems, then that's going
Speaker 1: to make you sable. But be if you also feel
Speaker 1: like you don't have any problems in your life, I
Speaker 1: think that also brings a certain kind of depression or
Speaker 1: misery as well. I think there's there's this need to
Speaker 1: always have I feel as there's something more important to
Speaker 1: be striving for, just always needing to be growing or
Speaker 1: challenged to the next thing. Basically, yeah, and and I
Speaker 1: think as we go through our life, the nature of
Speaker 1: that growth or challenge changes a lot, you know. So
Speaker 1: when you're young, a lot of it is determined by, uh,
Speaker 1: figuring out what you're good at, figuring out what kind
Speaker 1: of people are going to be close to in your life,
Speaker 1: figuring out, um, you know, making a lot of important
Speaker 1: some of the first major decisions with your life. I
Speaker 1: think as you get older, some of those challenges change,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they become more about UM, being a
Speaker 1: good parent, or being a good friend or being a
Speaker 1: good partner. UM, about achieving some sort of stability, long
Speaker 1: term stability, making sure your future is secure, your children's
Speaker 1: futures secure. So these things evolved as as time goes on,
Speaker 1: and you see them play out and people in different
Speaker 1: stages of their life. But UM, I think what matters
Speaker 1: is that there's always something there that you feel is
Speaker 1: more important than yourself UM or your current self rather UM,
Speaker 1: something that you're always working towards. Excellent, And we're getting
Speaker 1: near the end of time. But I'd like to quickly
Speaker 1: ask you. You wrote a very long article about Ken Wilbur. Um, First,
Speaker 1: could you tell us who Ken Wilbur is. I I
Speaker 1: joke in the article I said, Ken Wilburg is the
Speaker 1: smartest man you've never heard of. UM. So, Ken was
Speaker 1: a 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 a 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 breadth 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 beyond
Speaker 1: like you talked about in certain cases, um, feeling like
Speaker 1: 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: his books and I was blown away and I had
Speaker 1: this huge excitement of like, all right, you know, let's
Speaker 1: change the world or whatever, and there was just no
Speaker 1: application of it at the end of the day. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of theorizing. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of armchair this is how humanity is and unfortunately
Speaker 1: or fortunately, you know, life and humanity is experienced, you know,
Speaker 1: in our data day actions, and um I just found
Speaker 1: that as interesting as his ideas and theories were, they
Speaker 1: didn't really inform or change my life in any significant way.
Speaker 1: And when I look at his career, I feel like
Speaker 1: his big downfall was choosing to believe that they could exactly. Well, Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to talk.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure. I really enjoy your writing. We'll
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes to where people can
Speaker 1: find you and read more of your stuff. Thanks Eric,
Speaker 1: it was a pleasure being here. Okay, take care all right,
Speaker 1: Thank you, right by bye m M. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Mark Manson and this podcast at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash Mark