Welcome back, everybody, to The Subtle Art of not giving up our
podcasts. I'm your host, Mark Manson.
I'm here with Drew Burnie. This is a special episode
because we are doing a little bit of a refresh of the show.
We're about 10 months in, not quite a year, and we've tried a
bunch of things. We've had a bunch of different
conversations. Drew and I have done episodes
together. We've had a bunch of different
types of guests. Some have gone well, some have
not gone so well. Some have been huge audience
favorites, some have not been audience favorites.
It's been very educating and interesting, like what is
resonated with people and what hasn't.
We've decided to, as, as any good creative does, double down
on what's working and forget what's not.
And so we're introducing a little bit more of a consistent
talk show format. Every week.
Drew and I are going to go through three different
segments. First one is what we're giving a
fuck about, what we're worrying about, anything that's going on
in the world that is causing us to stress or lose a little bit
of sleep. The second segment is brilliant
or bullshit where we will talk about studies, trends,
interventions, practices, things going viral online and talk
about whether it's brilliant or whether it's bullshit.
And then finally, we will be answering audience questions.
We will not always have guests. We will occasionally have guests
and when we have guests, we're not going to interview him
because we don't give a fuck. We're going to make them do the
format with us. We're going to make them share
what they give too many fucks about.
We're going to make them tell us if they think it's brilliant or
bullshit, and we're going to have them help us answer your
question. So this is the new show.
Welcome, everybody. We are on the forefront of
fuckology here at the Fuck Podcast and I'm excited to get
into this. This feels like, I feel almost
like the last year was like a beta test.
You know, it's like we tried all the stuff all the other shows
are trying. You know, there's a bunch of big
podcast in our space. You know, we, we, we gave
everything a little bit of a test drive.
We did the big long intro monologues.
We did the big famous guest. We did like all the fancy shit.
You know, at the end of the day, you kind of just learn that you
have to go back to being yourself.
Yes, we've learned a lot. We have.
I I feel like we have. Don't you?
Yeah, yeah. I mean.
We fucked up a lot. That we've learned a lot the
hard way, right? Just everything from like guest
bookings to, you know, prepping for an interview that like does
not go the way you expect to, you know, it.
It's giving me a lot. I will say this, it's giving me
a lot more respect for the prep and interview skills of
podcasters. Definitely.
It's definitely it's one of those things that looks simple
from the outside, but you can spend days reading somebody's
work and planning a conversation out and then they sit down in
front of you and it just goes completely off the rails in a
completely different direction than you than you expected.
So, so here we are. We are in a controlled, we're in
a safe space, Drew. We've created a safe space for
ourselves. It's the Subtle Art of Not
Giving a Fuck podcast with your host Mark Manson.
Let's kick off this inaugural refresh episode.
What? What are we giving too many
fucks about this week? Self improvement this week,
Mark. We we give a fuck.
OK? Do you want to start that over?
This one was yours though. This was when self improvement
kind of becomes religion and what you've seen out here in
West LA and that sort of thing. So how do you want to do that?
Well, introduce it. Well, that's what I'm saying
dude. This was.
Yours. This was.
Yours, Mark, this was. I'm supposed to introduce.
It well, well, yeah, the fuck of the week, right?
Oh the fuck of the week. OK, maybe I should have looked
at the outline before we started.
Maybe I gave 2 just one too many.
You. You came to me the other day,
you came to me the other day and you said one thing I've just
been like just been grinding on me lately is just how everyone
out here is obsessed with like self improvement in ways that
it, it creeps into their lives and, and it, and it affects
everyone around them. In some ways it's addiction, in
some ways it's culty. So just to give people some
context here, I now live in California.
One of the great things about California is people are like
super conscious and aware of making themselves better, making
the world better, which is great.
I love that intentionality. Just going to put it out there,
you know, it's, there's a lot of great stuff that goes on in this
part of the world, but there's this weird kind of junky culti
vibe here where it's almost like people don't know how to just
hang out, like. Just be.
Like, like, yeah, my wife and I, we constantly get these
invitations. You know, it'll be like, come
over for a Saturday brunch with our friends and we're going to
have mimosas and we're going to do this and we're going to do
guided meditations with our personal guru and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And it's like.
Put a gun in my mouth, God. It's like you had us at brunch
you didn't like, you didn't need to like introduce a, a whole
fucking ideology into our Saturday morning.
So like. That's set your intentions.
That's gotten a little bit tiresome and it, I think it
just, it particularly, it's bugging me a lot because I'm in
this industry and what I found out here too is that everybody
out here thinks that they assume that I must be into it.
They're like, well, he's like a self help author of course.
He would be, yeah. Of course he's going to be
totally into the like the guided meditation sound bath before he
eats his eggs at brunch. And I, I, you know, I'm like,
no, this is my job. Like I'm, I'm, I'm off the
clock. I don't want to be like thinking
about this stuff. So it's bugged me a little bit,
but I, I do think there's an interesting conversation around
here of like, when does self improvement become compulsion?
When does it turn into an addiction?
You know, it's, it's admirable to always want to improve
yourself, but it's also an affliction if you don't know how
to stop. Like sometimes the most like the
best thing you can do for yourself is nothing.
There's nothing, right? Yeah.
It's just enjoy who you are in the moment without any sort of
like, you know, production or or process or whatever.
So that's been like that's been grading on me lately.
Yeah, I don't know. Well, you know, we, we just did
an episode not too long ago on the backwards law, right?
And at what point does like it, trying to improve yourself only
highlight all of the things that are wrong with you?
And I think, yeah, right. The irony is I think at a
certain point it becomes a form of avoidance.
Yeah, you know, it's, it's like, it's like, well, if I, if I just
keep booking all these new like gurus and sound Baz and all this
shit, then it's like I I'm always being introduced into a
new modality. So I'm always learning a new
modality. So I'm not actually responsible
for changing anything in my life because I'm always like, there's
like this constant process of like learning the new thing
instead of just returning to your life and living and like
trying to integrate all the things you're learning into
actually like being a better person.
So yeah, I don't know the, the, it's a funny thing of like I
tend to write about self help or self improvement.
Like it's not an intervention. It's not like steroids.
It's not like like, oh, you went to the seminar and now you're
just going to get like 40% more Jack than you would have
otherwise. Self help is more like hygiene.
It's like it's boring, it's boring, it's dull, it's
repetitive. And if it does get too exciting,
it's actually probably not doing a whole lot.
And so you think a lot of these, like a lot of people who invite
you to do these things, they're trying to put on these like
little mini self help seminars themselves.
It almost feels like that. Yes, yeah, yeah, there's,
there's a ton of that here. There's a ton of that here.
And it's actually, and it, it even gets to the point where
it's like, you know, you'll go somewhere, you'll go to like a
dinner or something and they'll curate the conversation.
So like they'll put six people at a table and then the host
will break out like no cards. And like, they'll be like a
guided conversation of like everybody, everybody's going to
take turns and have 5 minutes where they talk about what
they're working on in their life right now.
And it's like, can we just talk about like the Netflix show
we're watching? You know, like, I don't know,
it's, I like some of that, some of that can be useful and good.
But it's just like when it's when it's a constant thing and
it never stops. Like when people don't know how
to socialize without that, then that's a problem.
Right. That's like alcohol, right?
They don't know how to socialize without alcohol.
It's it's like the addiction that you're talking about, that
part of it. Yeah, yeah.
So I think the the lesson here is just like being aware of when
the like the the drive to improve and change yourself is
is actually part of the problem. You read Michael Pollan's How to
Change Your Mind, right? Yeah.
You remember that part in there or that he he has this.
I can't kind of saying throughout it.
I think where he's like, I, I had to be very conscious of not
doing being, remember that. Like I'm trying to, I'm trying
to just be, but trying to just be, you know, like I feel like
this is like an extreme example of that.
People are like, I'm trying to be and live in the moment.
I'm trying so hard that I'm doing being.
You know what I mean? That's a that's a mind fuck in
its own, but yeah. There's some things that, that
it's, you only improve them by like letting go and not trying.
And, and I think a lot of like psychological based stuff is, is
similar to that. I don't know.
I, I sometimes I, I have a few theories around this.
You know, one of them is like, it's funny, I wrote about this a
little bit in my second book, Everything is fucked.
But like, now that I'm out here, I, I definitely feel it.
It feels like church. Oh, it is.
It feels like, no, it feels, it feels like, it's almost like a
religious thing. Like it's, it's like everybody
you know is into the same yoga, does the same meditations and,
and you know, takes the same ayahuasca.
And so they like get together every week and they like
practice rituals around it. That's church.
It's totally fucking church. But if you, if you tell, tell
them that, like if you say that, I don't know, it's it, it, I
think they don't conceptualize, they don't realize what they're
doing is actually quite religious and faith-based.
And I feel like if, if you said that, if you, if I express that
to them, they would probably take offense or get very
defensive about it. Maybe not, I don't know.
But so that's like that's one working theory is that it's it's
like a it's a church thing. We already talked about the
addiction thing. I also think that some of it is
just like it's a higher order way of coping with neuroticism.
So, you know, William James believe that it's, it's actually
impossible to solve addiction. You just replace one addiction
with others. And I think in in some of these
people's cases is like they're, they are like highly neurotic or
compulsive people. And if they're not compulsive
towards self improvement or like biohacking or meditation or
whatever, they would be very compulsive towards like very
destructive things. And so this is kind of like,
it's almost like this is the least worst.
Cause I've noticed a lot of, I think there, there's a, for a
place that it has a reputation for being very laid back.
I actually find a lot of people out here in California are very
compulsive. Like there's a lot of
neuroticism. There's a lot of neuroticism and
but again, there's like a lack of self-awareness around it.
Like it's because the compulsion is around things that we
associate with relaxation, things like yoga, meditation,
spa treatments, beauty, nature. I think people assume that they
must be very relaxed and like low key.
But as somebody who's not from here coming out here, it strikes
me as a very neurotic place. So some of it strikes me as
like, and I part of this too, like this is where I identify
with it because it's like I, I think one of the things that I'm
learning the last couple years is that I'm a lot more addictive
or compulsive than I thought I was.
And, but when I'm here, my, my addictions and compulsions are
like quite healthy or fairly healthy.
Whereas if you put me in like New York City or Brazil or
wherever, I'll just like, fucking destroy myself, right?
Right. Well, and going back relatedly,
going back to the religion thing, what is what is self
improvement or self help if it's not like a form of religion in a
way, right. I mean, if you take a lot of the
mysticism out of the major religions, really looks a lot
like self help. I had a friend one time who like
made this observation. She went to church.
It had been a long time and she came out.
She's like that felt like a mini self help seminar because it is
very much prescriptive and this is how you should live your life
and all. That religion was, it was the
original self help, right? You know, it's like it used to
be if you had marriage problems, you went to a pastor, right?
It used to be if you had psychiatric issues, you got an
exorcism. You know, let's bring exorcisms
back. Fuck yes, let's make that a
thing. That would be pretty cool
actually. Play some metal music.
It would be awesome. I'm so in for an exorcism.
Wouldn't that be funny? Be like, you know, I should try
this. I should go to like, like the
next California dinner party I go to and everybody starts
talking about their shame and I'm going to be like, guys, you
know what? The next you know what the new
thing is. Exorcism.
Bring a priest in. Yeah, I found this great
Catholic priest. He's fucking.
He will. He will pull all the demons out
of you. It is life changing.
You guys need to check this out. I wonder if they would, if they
if they would bite. I I.
Kind of doubt it, but I don't know.
I don't know something. It's not very California.
It's Catholic. It is.
Really interesting that way if you do point out to somebody
that hey, this is like really kind of like religious behaviour
and or it mimics a lot of things about religion and they get very
defensive about it. Yes, that to me like I don't
know if someone. Well, and historically, when
I've brought this up in writing, it's a very polarizing thing for
sure. And The funny thing is, is I
think religious people recognize that.
Like so I've been invited on religious podcasts with pastors
and preachers and priests and stuff.
Which is insane if you. OK.
And, and, and they are 100% aware of that.
I've had conversations, you know, I've spoken in the Middle
East, I've had conversations with audiences and Muslims.
And they're like, yeah, everything you talk about, like
we're here. For it, there's a crazy number
of like, Muslims who come and say this is actually, you know,
this is all in the Koran. Yeah.
So I think religious people get that like self help is kind of
just the secularized version of religion where it's the secular
people who are like, Nah, no, this is scientific, right?
Right. Whereas if you actually go look
at the research, there's not a whole lot of science going on,
right? Yeah, and science itself can
turn into a religion pretty quickly too.
So that is true. That's a whole nother episode.
There's that. What else?
I think that's it for that. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Well, if, if any of you out
there know a good Catholic priest, I'm, I'm interested in
an exorcist who can, who can give me a good raid on an
exorcism. Maybe, maybe give me like, you
know, one of those cards when you get like 10 exorcisms, they
give you the 11th. Like at your local coffee shop
and like like. A punch card like the Jimmy
John's, you know, frequent, frequent sandwich card.
Yeah, Hit me up, Capri. I think on that note, we'll
we'll take a break. Support for the podcast comes
from Bond Charge, so you know how I've been on this whole
health and recovery journey lately?
Yeah, well, it turns out that getting older actually means
taking care of yourself. Who knew, right?
Well, in my quest to not feel like crap all the time, I
stumbled onto a few things that have actually helped and worked.
First up, there's the infrared PEMF mat.
It's a personal recharge station for your body, kind of like
laying on a warm bed of recovery, helping to reduce
stress and muscle tension without you having to lift a
finger. Then there are these blue light
blocking glasses. It turns out that blue light
from our screens can prevent us from sleeping at night and fuck
up our circadian rhythms. So you throw on the glasses an
hour or so before bed and suddenly you're not wide awake
at 2:00 AM doom scrolling through Instagram wondering why
your life is so damn hard. Sleep and recovery are important
and every little bit adds up. So head over to bondcharge.com
and use the code mark for 15% off your order.
That is BONCHA rge.com and use the code mark for 15% off your
future Wellness tech. Your future self is going to
thank you. All right, it's time for
brilliant or bullshit. What are we deeming brilliant or
bullshit and all of our infinite wisdom today?
Yeah, we're looking at experts and our experts any better than
us common folk at coming up with interventions that actually work
to help us change our lives. OK, OK.
I have a prediction. OK, OK, Well, there's a huge
study, a huge study done by a whole bunch of experts who came
up with a whole bunch of interventions and it turns out
that like common. This was for what?
What was the intervention? Oh yeah, sorry.
Like the the goal. Yeah, yeah.
The goal was to get people to go to the gym more.
Gotcha. So they got Yeah, there's giant
study. Psychologist get together like
we think we know how to get people to go to the gym.
So here's 50 some different ways that we could get people to go
to the gym. Let's test them all out.
And they had like 60,000 people in this study.
So it's a huge study. It's a lot, yeah, very, very
comprehensive. And it, it solves a lot of the
problems with like, you know, you compare one study to
another, that they have different sample sizes, They
have different outcomes, different whatever this is like
we're going to compare all of these huge giant study and
compare all these different ones all at the same time, get a nice
clean result. Well, it's not quite that simple
as you can imagine. So how'd they do?
Well, what they found was that experts were no better than lay
people at predicting which interventions were going to
work. So you just, you just feed these
to people, a man on the street and be like, is this going to
get people to go to the gym or yes or no?
They're just as good as the experts at predicting which ones
will. Work.
So is is this a case where the psychologists were because you
can frame this in two different ways.
Would you frame it as the psychologists were just as bad
as the average Joe at predicting what gets people to go to the
gym? Or is it that the average Joe
with his like folksy wisdom, common sense is just as good as
the expert? Like what was the hit rate on
the predictions here? Was it abysmal or was it just
kind of like everybody's like, Oh yeah, obviously that would
make somebody go to the gym? Well, the hit rate according to
the study, yeah, OK, the hit rate was about 45%, so just less
than half of the interventions worked.
Yeah, that's not very good. Right.
So a coin toss, right? Sure.
If you really dig into the data though, it's only like 4 of
these interventions worked out of the 50, I think it was 54
interventions that they tried. Wow, that's depressing, right?
So it was. Yeah, it was.
So, so basically, yeah, it's like the news gets worse, folks.
It does like not only do do like, almost none of the
interventions work, but experts were just as clueless as to
would the fact that none of them were as as lay people.
Were as lay people were, yeah. So everybody was bad basically.
OK, there's it wasn't like lay people were good and got you
experts were bad or anything like that.
Everybody was just bad at it. Yeah.
And also worse than a coin flip, Yes.
Much worse. Much worse.
So not only not only bad, but like you could literally just
flip a coin and you'd get better results.
More or less, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, there's, there's like these four things that they
found. Science.
I just love science. Well.
It's, it's what's crazy to me is that like they're billing this
as you know, oh, this, this mega study is great and we just how
we should do all these. And it is, it's, it's a very
well done study, but they, it's like they missed the lead
completely. They missed the actual take
away, which was, Oh my God, we're really bad at this.
And it was one of the one of the least researchers on this is
Angela Duckworth to like a, you know, a very well known person
in in behavioral intervention and psychology and still.
It blows my mind after, I mean, we are what, 150 years into the
field of psychology and we are, I mean, psychology was kind of a
quack science. Maybe it's first 60-70 years,
but I mean, we're, we're like at this point we're probably 60
years into like 60-70 years into like very serious, well funded
psychology programs and, and research and it, it, it blows my
mind. I mean, and it's not just
psychology either. Like you run into a similar
thing in like nutrition and sociology and.
All the so-called software. Terminology.
Yeah, like it's just like we still have no fucking idea what
why things happen, why people do things and don't do other
things. I'm curious, what were do you
know the 4 interventions that actually had a really strong
effect size? Yes, I got, I got them right
here. The, the one that worked the
best I think was bonuses after messing up.
So if the way they incentivize these people to go to the gym
was they would, I think they'd give them like an Amazon gift
card and they would add money to the to the gift card if they,
you know, showed up or whatever. If they messed up, if they
didn't go, they would give them a little bit of a bonus for
going the next time and correcting the behavior, which
I, I found very, very interesting.
Yeah. That is interesting, yeah.
Another one was just getting bigger incentive, simply.
That one's not a big surprise. Yeah, you get a bigger incentive
to go to the gym, that more people will go.
This was an interesting one too, information about what's normal.
So like telling people that the majority of Americans or
wherever you are exercise frequently and that the rate is
increasing. If you just tell people that
they're like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to follow this
trend, I guess, which was kind of interesting to me too, you
know, just just kind of that social, social pressure, social
pressure, social, social proof. Yeah, You want to be one of the
cool kids? Yeah, Going to the gym.
And then this last one was really interesting too.
There was a, a framing, the choice of a gain or a loss.
So they gave they either they told people they could either
choose you can start out with this much money and you'll lose
as you failed to go as you failed to go, or you start out
with nothing and you gain either one of those.
As long as you just gave the person the choice on that and
they picked which one they wanted, that actually had a a
noticeable effect on that as a significant effect on that on on
gym attendance. So it didn't matter.
What if it was? Which direction?
Didn't matter. It's just they had a choice.
And I, I thought about this too and I'm like, which one of those
would I choose? I would choose the give me all
the money up front and then I I want to see it.
I think I would too. I would go that way.
I think I would too. I think that would, that's more,
you know, the loss aversion and everything.
I think that's more painful. Yeah, but I just.
So a whole lot of bullshit here. Well I this is a really well
done study. I just think what they learned
from it was. Bullshit.
Well, it's the, The irony here is I think the study itself is
brilliant, but what the study shows is that there's a lot of
bullshit. Like we still don't know what
the fuck we're doing. And like we've talked about this
before on the podcast. Like I remember, I think 5 or 6
years ago, I got really curious of which modalities of therapy
were the most effective for patients.
And there's all these meta analysis, like hundreds and
hundreds of studies with thousands and 10s of thousands
of, of patients who've been tracked and all this stuff.
And when you really, when you crunch all the data together
over the past like 30-40 years and you look at all the
modalities of therapy, they basically all work roughly the
same. And it's, they're all slightly
better than a placebo, right? Like marginally better than a
placebo. And so like that's none of them.
I think none of them have a hit rate over 50%, which is like,
again, in a field that's 150 years old and, you know, just a
tradition from Sigmund Freud, the fucking Doctor Phil, like we
can't bat over 50% is still mind boggling to me.
So this this kind of reminds me of that of just like everybody's
kind of throwing shit at a wall and some people are able to
throw nicer looking shit. And so they get, you know, they
get tenure and they get a best selling book and yeah, yeah, you
know, like ATV show. But it's like ultimately I I do
have to say the more the older I get and the more it well
researched and informed I am about this field, like the more
I come to respect just like ancient timeless wisdom shit
that's been around for 2003 thousand years.
Like because of clearly that has that must have some value,
otherwise it wouldn't have survived for so long.
Whereas a lot of a lot of the stuff, you know, I've been in
this industry long enough now to see a lot of quote UN quote true
psycho psychological findings be proven and disproven.
So yeah, this is just another another reason to stay
skeptical. Yeah.
Well, there there was kind of a a parallel in this study with
the the interventions that you're talking about.
The there they had kind of two control groups in this, which is
this is kind of interesting and and relevant.
The the original control group, they just gave them an Amazon
card and and filled it up said here you go go nuts.
That was it their baseline group, though, they gave them an
Amazon card, Amazon gift card and sent them reminders to go
work out and I think like a planner or something like that,
that and that's that was their baseline.
Just doing that alone was significantly better than the
control group. So, so any intervention
whatsoever basically is, is effective.
And this is one of the reasons why I think they're some of
their conclusions were a little bit bullshit was because they
were comparing all these interventions to that original
control group. When really what they should
have been doing, which is this is what Spencer Green pointed
out on on Twitter, what they should have been doing was
comparing it to the baseline, because we know that any
intervention works. Literally just like a text
message. A text message said go to the
gym. That like had a significant
increase in getting people to go.
Yeah, not even incentivizing them.
It's just yeah, there was no incentive.
They they, I mean, they got the Amazon card just for like
participation. They didn't they didn't get
extra incentive. So this is where.
I can't help but bring it back to self help our industry like
where people are spending 10s of thousands of dollars coaching
seminars, training like all sorts of accountability systems
and. And at best, that's an
incremental, yeah, you're like 1%.
That's taking, you know, it's the 80, the, the, the thing that
drives 80% of the result is like getting a text message and like
buying a planner, right? And it's like all that other
stuff takes you from 80 to 90% or something.
I it goes back to it's being boring, it goes back to, you
know, you don't need these like mini interventions or huge
interventions at at any stage. It just goes back to being
boring and consistent. It really makes me wonder how
much of the monetary value that is being spent in this industry
is is actually being spent. This comes back to the dinner
party thing, right? Like it's actually being spent
on something that makes you feel special, right?
You know, it feels really special.
Having a high end coach checking in on you is like made a
personalized plan and it's like, got all these systems for you
set up and it's going to like go stand in the gym with you and
like watch your forum and everything.
And like that, there's an emotional satisfaction that
comes with that, you know, that maybe that's actually what
you're mostly paying for. I don't.
Know yeah, yeah. Well, then it just comes back to
like these days I'm just like, if it works for you, go.
For it, yeah, whatever. Just do it.
Yeah, fine. Whatever spirit crystals.
Yeah, just be happy. Whatever.
Yeah, yeah. Who am I to say?
That'll be maybe that's the slogan of our podcast.
Be happy, Whatever. On brand.
It reminds me, it reminds me. I saw there was like there was a
viral quote of Keanu Reeves a while ago and he said he's like,
I've reached the stage of my life where I don't, I just don't
want to argue with people anymore.
He said. If you say 1 + 1 = 5, that's
great, man. I hope you're happy.
I saw that. I saw that is wise.
Very wise. All right, We'll be back after
this. This episode is brought to you
by Shopify. Imagine selling everything from
gourmet coffee blends to designer dog collars, right from
your living room to the entire world.
Shopify isn't just a platform, it's a gateway to global retail,
bridging in person sales with an unstoppable e-commerce presence.
You can even tap in the social media marketplaces like TikTok,
Facebook and Instagram. Shopify is stuffed with industry
leading tools that are so user friendly, you won't need to
learn any new skills in design or coding to take full control
of your business and brand. And hey, if you ever ever hit a
snag, Shopify's 24/7 support team is there to back you up,
making your path to success as smooth as possible.
And Shopify can grow and scale with you.
Whether you're starting small or dreaming big, Shopify empowers
you with the tools that you need to take your business to the
next level. It's not just about selling,
it's about creating something great and watching it grow.
It's time to get serious about your business.
So start a Shopify trial today for just $1.00 for your first
month. Go to shopify.com/I DGAF.
That means I don't give a fuck. IDGAF shopify.com, go get it.
What are you waiting for? This episode is brought to you
by Merrick Health. Staying healthy isn't just about
hitting the gym and devouring pounds of kale.
That's why I turned to Merrick Health to take my health to the
next level. Merrick Health is like a
superhero sidekick you didn't know you need.
Or at least I didn't. Or actually, you know what?
Fuck the sidekick part. It's more like a health Batman.
It shows you things that you didn't know you needed in the
1st place. Forget the basic check UPS where
the doc barely looks at your results unless you're
practically dead. Telehealth service is all about
optimization. They tested me for stuff that I
didn't even know existed and came up with a list of
personalized recommendations that was about 20 pages long,
specifically catered to my body, my genetics, and my situation.
They are a huge part of why I'm in the best shape of my life at
40 years old. So if you're ready to level up,
sign up for Merrick's Optimization Package.
For a top notch lab assessment, in depth reports, video chats
with specialists, and a super easy setup, head over to
merrickhealth.com/I DGAF. Use the promo code IDGAF at
checkout stands for I Don't Give a Fuck and you'll get 10% off.
All right, we're back. What have we heard from the
audience? Yeah, I got a couple of
questions here. This one's from John, who
submitted this on YouTube. And yes, is there any popular
life advice that consistently doesn't work for you or has
failed you in important situations?
Yeah. That's a great question, John.
So when I was younger, I tried a lot of the classic.
Yeah. Self help shit.
You went to some seminars. And went to some seminars, had a
great time, you know, back-to-back to that the
original point had a great fucking time didn't really
change a whole lot. You know, the, the stuff that
never really worked for me was the affirmations and the
positive thinking. And I think it's just like I
always knew I was lying to myself.
Like the fact that I felt like I had to tell myself something
like that something was actually good or that I'm great, I'm
smart, I'm I'm brilliant, I'm attractive.
All this stuff like the fact that I felt the need to say
those things to myself would just remind me that I was lying
to myself. And so I actually found that
that stuff made me feel worse and it actually made me more
stressed and anxious than than less.
And it's funny because when I was young and immature, I, I, I
was like, well, clearly I'm doing something wrong because,
you know, all these great famous people on Oprah, like say this
is how you do it. And and it just, it never really
sat right with me. And then I, as I got older, I
started to realize like, oh, maybe those people on Oprah like
don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Back to the point of experts not knowing what, what actually
works or not. So yeah, that that would be the
main one. That's the main one that comes
to my mind. Is there one for you?
I've talked before about the gratitude thing that doesn't.
That's not really good. I've also just kind of had mixed
results with meditation. I don't think it's as cracked up
as it is. It's all that's cracked up to
be, really. I've found, yeah, sometimes in
some situations, it can kind of call my mind.
You used to meditate a lot and you don't really anymore, right?
Yeah. What have you found with
meditation? I think there's some research
coming out too that's like, yeah, for some people it's
really not that great. You know, there's this pattern
with research and you and I've talked about this before of like
when something's new and it's and it's a small sample size and
it's like people like really tough cases.
Almost everything looks great. And then as soon as you expand
that sample size and get like a lot of people from kind of the
normal population into the sample, the effectiveness of
almost everything kind of goes away.
And I think meditation's another story of that.
I I found it really impact impactful when I was young.
I, but I mean, I think a lot of that was, you know, our, I was
diagnosed with ADHDI found it very effective for like helping
me focus. I also just kind of had this
period where like I, I, you know, when I was younger, I
really got into Eastern philosophy, Buddhism,
psychedelics, basically all the shit that's popular now.
You know, like I, I hate to be the guy who was like, I did it
before it was cool, but I was really into that stuff.
And so I remember like I, I found that meditation was like
intense meditation for multiple hours was kind of the only thing
that gave me the same sensation that some of my more profound
psychedelic experiences have gave me.
I've since learned and understood that what was
happening is that, you know, both psychedelics and intense
meditation deactivate what's called the default mode network,
which is essentially your ego. And there are pros and cons to
that. I think it is useful to
deactivate or as Ken Wilber would say, transcend your ego.
Like see that you are not necessarily limited to your ego,
that there there is a certain connectedness between you and
the universe around you. I think there's a lot of
profundity in that. But I don't know, it kind of
felt like I hit a point by like my mid 20s where I'm like, OK, I
get it. Like the ego's just kind of this
made-up thing, like there's a story in my head of like who or
what Mark is. And I, I don't have to
necessarily believe that story at any given time, especially if
it's hurting me. Once you learn that lesson or
once I learn that lesson, I, I, I kind of struggled to see a
reason to like just keep fucking sitting on a mat for hours and
hours every week Like I don't. Yeah.
And I think that that goes for you've, you've said this about
other things as well, like the point of any self improvement is
to. Stop doing more.
You stop. Doing that, and there's a lot of
people who think, but I know meditation, you can always find
another level and I'm sure there is.
I'm sure there's different things you can find.
But you know, this like with gratitude with me, it's like for
one, like when I did it, at first I was like, OK, yeah,
there's some benefit to this. But then I found that I was
actually a very grateful person to begin with.
So maybe there was some value in that.
I guess maybe it wasn't a total loss for me, you know, but I was
a grateful enough person that I didn't need it.
And so I just don't, I don't have like a gratitude practice.
If you're an ingrateful, ungrateful ingrate.
If you're an ungrateful person, Jesus Christ.
An ingrate who's. Ungrate who's ungrateful and
there's nothing great about you. You maybe need to practice it a
little bit, right? Well, I.
I think, you know, we all have natural strengths and natural
weaknesses, so it makes sense that like certain tools are
going to be more effective than others.
One thing that that I, I started to run into with the meditation
thing that like kind of left the bad taste in my mouth is like
once you get a, once, you know, once you get a certain depth
into meditation and that whole world, you know, you start going
to a lot of retreats and you start meeting Zen masters and
gurus and all this stuff. I started to notice that like
the people who are really hardcore into it.
And it's ironic because the whole basis of Buddhism is non
attachment. I started to feel like the
people who are like really deep into that world were quite
attached to achieving non attachment.
Right. Yeah.
And I, I don't know, it just felt like a little bit
contradictory. And I think at the end of the
day, like you, you have to go live your life like you can't.
For me personally, I found that at a certain point, sitting for
hours and hours and hours in a quiet room was like just kind of
another form of avoidance of, of dealing with life.
And that's not to say that that's true for everybody, but
I, I found that true for myself. And so I don't know, meditation,
I dabble in it. Like, I still kind of go back
and forth. Like I'll go through phases
where I do it a bunch again. And, and I, it feels good.
And, you know, I do think my brain is probably optimal on A
at least a small amount of meditation, but it's not really
a priority, Yeah, these days. OK, well you, you said one thing
earlier that I want to bring up because I think there might be
some subtext in this question about it.
You said, you know, like if something didn't work for you,
while Oprah must be wrong or these people must be wrong,
right? Oprah's definitely wrong.
I I think, I think what happens is a lot of times people have
the opposite reaction of that. I think that's not a very common
reaction. Yeah, I think people say, oh,
there's something wrong with me if this isn't working.
Totally right, that's the default.
Reaction. That's the default reaction and
it's for whatever reason your brain works like, no, that, that
maybe maybe you're an asshole about these kind of things or
something. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I've definitely been like, maybe it's like my my
anti authority streak or something.
I don't know. But it it's my initial when I
was very young, my initial reaction was like, oh, I'm doing
it wrong, right, OK. And I think it I had to get
older to realize that. Wait, wait, wait a second.
Who says like this Zen Master knows what he's talking about,
right? But that, that is the, that is
the danger of I think this industry in general, or like
anything around this industry, is that whenever you're dealing
with vulnerable people, like whenever you're dealing with
somebody who is say, in a depressive episode or somebody
who's deeply insecure or somebody who's dealing with
trauma, their natural default tendency is to blame themselves
for any sort of disappointment or failure.
And I don't know, I just, I, I think, I think that's it.
It's really important for. Practitioners, leaders, thought
leaders, authors, speakers, whatever, to be very conscious
of that and like understand that like whatever you're pitching or
selling isn't going to work for everybody.
Everybody's different. And so if it doesn't work for
somebody, there's nothing wrong with them and there's nothing
wrong with you. It's just like, it's just not a,
it's just not the right fit. Like I, I don't, I just don't
think that message gets broadcast enough.
Like there's nothing mystical or magical about life, self help or
personal development advice. It's, it's like any other
industry. Like there's, there's like
dentists and nutritionists that you know are going to be great
for you and terrible for me and vice versa.
And like this. Why would this be any different?
Yeah, yeah. So I, I, it goes back to what we
said earlier. It's like if you find something
that works for you, good for you.
Yeah, do it. Be happy, whatever.
Not for sure. OK, I got one more question.
Yeah, this is from Arthur, also came from YouTube.
He's got a question that knowing that most of us won't reach the
level of success that we see other people have, especially
online, like money there, you know, Youtubers, that kind of
thing. How do we reconcile this fact
with our ambitions? I don't want to give up on my
ambition, but I also don't want to be unhappy for not fulfilling
it. I think it's this is a case of
like just being careful of how you define success for yourself.
Like it you don't just because you see somebody online and you
maybe look up to that person or envy that person a little bit
like that, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is
success. I think what often gets lost and
this kind of comes back to like the, the central point of Subtle
Art is that it's easy to see somebody online or on TV or in
the movies or something and be like, oh, that's success.
I want that. When really you're just seeing
the best aspect of that of that person's life.
You're not seeing all of the cost, the sacrifice, the
neuroticism, the insecurity, the obsession, the unhealthiness
that went into achieving that thing.
So I'm a strong believer that if you are going to desire what
somebody else has, you need to also desire the cost and
sacrifice that were required to, to get what that person has.
So I would say just think about that.
Like don't think about, oh, I wish I had as much money as, you
know, this dude on Twitter. Ask yourself, do you wish you
work as long and hard as this guy on Twitter?
Do you think, do you wish you had as the same dysfunctional
relationships that this guy on Twitter has had?
Like there's like so many examples of like insanely
successful people who are on their like, fourth or fifth
marriage, right? So yeah, that that stuff needs
to factor into the equation. And I would say that to any
young person is like, because we all want to have like, it's good
to have role models. It's good to have people that
you kind of aspire to to be, but like you need to pick the full
picture. You can't just like you can't
just pick the best, you know, the highlight reel and be like,
I just want to have the highlight reel.
I don't want to like actually give up anything.
Right, right. Yeah.
And I mean this part of his question, I don't want to give
up on my ambition, but I don't want to be unhappy not
fulfilling it. I think what you said right away
was, well, how are you defining success, right?
That's that's the issue. It's not that you're not
succeeding, it's that you have this definition of success.
Yes, and it's you might feel like you might be disappointed
in yourself for not achieving that definition of success when
the definition was the problem, right?
You this comes back to your point.
It's like you're not the problem.
The definition was the problem. You chose a bad definition.
And so even you, you chose a definition that this is not
realistic or does not suit your, your talents, your strengths,
your personality, your values, your values, what actually makes
you happy, your relationships. And so you need to like
recalibrate your definition of success.
You know the way that's phrased too.
It's like, I would, I would like fuck ambition, like just focus
on being slightly better than you were last month or last
year, You know, like it's nice to have like some kind of long
term vision or goal in your head of like, oh, this, this would be
really cool to be here in 10 years.
But like that shouldn't be the thing getting you up in the
morning. The thing that should be getting
you up in the morning is like, OK, how do I do better than I
did last week? What can I get better at this
week? You know, take it in like
smaller increments because it's it's harder to fuck up small
increments. It's very easy to fuck up like a
10 year vision. Right.
And it just, it, it grounds you a lot more if you're looking
right in front of you, right? Instead you get lost in these
big goals and they seem insurmountable, focusing on,
just like you said, improving from yesterday.
Yeah, for sure. Well, that's it for this
episode. Tell us what you think about the
new format. Like I said, Drew and I will
will be doing this every week. We'll have guests come in and
out join us for this format. If you have questions that you
want answered on the show, please submit them to us.
You can submit them to us in the comments on YouTube or you can
e-mail us at podcast at markmanson.net.
So yeah, please like, follow, subscribe to the show, let us
know what you think, leave a review and we'll be back next
week. What is the wisdom of the week?
This comes from Tyler Durden. Yes.
Self improvement is masturbation now.
Self destruction. That's it.
We'll see you next week. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a
Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie.
It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will. See you next week.