Drew, I'm noticing something as I get older, and I don't know if
it's a good thing or a bad thing.
OK, so this morning I was doomed scrolling on social media as you
do, you know, hashtag morning routine, right, Right.
One thing I've noticed, especially just the last couple
years is my tolerance for things that don't add value to my life
or or bring me down in some way is it's getting very, very slim. 00:00:27,920 So this morning I saw a bunch of
stories about horrible things that people were saying and
doing on various parts of the world.
And my instant knee jerk reaction was like fuck those
people. I don't care and like close the
app and go do something else. And 90% of the time I feel like
this is a good thing. It's actually the thing I preach
to our audience. But then there's always like
this morning and, and occasionally there's like this 9
voice in the back of my head and it's like, is this a form of
entitlement? Is this a form of like, of like,
I just want to ignore anything that doesn't make me happy, Let
the world burn, Who cares? I just want to feel good, right? 00:01:09,080 And I wrestle with this
sometimes. And I part of me, I'm like, is
it I'm just getting older and I'm much clearer on what I care
about and what I like and what matters to me.
And I'm willing to like suffer and struggle for those things.
Or am I, like it seemed most of the world, that I'm just being
slowly and gradually coddled by the technology that rules my
life and my patience and attention span for things that
don't interest me is becoming out of a family.
What say you? I mean, one of the drums you
beat on is like the epidemic of entitlement.
And so I. Am not immune apparently.
Well, that's what like, yeah, how how do you delineate between
what is just entitlement and what is choosing carefully?
At what point is that just that here?
I don't want to feel uncomfortable in any way
whatsoever. So I'm going to just design my
life such that I don't have to think about these things.
Yeah, I guess the solace that I take is that the things I do
care about, I am willing to suffer for.
It's just so hard to know, is this a thing I should give a
shit about? You know, especially in this day
and age where it seems like everything is a fucking
catastrophe and ordeal all the time.
But I believe today we're talking about getting that
clarity as we grow older, if I'm not mistaken.
That's right. Isn't this this is the fuck of
the weeks of throwback. It's a throwback.
It's a throwback and we re evaluation I think too, OK.
Yeah. OK.
It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your
host Mark Manson. The fuck of the week, Mark the
four stages of life. This is a, this is a classic
throwback article. You wrote this one not too long
after I started working with you, actually, I think a year or
two after and it, it quickly became kind of an instant Mark
Manson classic. I think you talk about there are
these 4 stages of life. We'll walk through them and you
can explain them, but I want to know too, have you changed your
mind about this? How, how is your experience of
this 'cause this is probably almost 10 years ago that you
wrote. This is like 8 or 10 years ago
that you wrote it. I know I've definitely felt a
transition to a new stage of life.
You talk about that in the article, so we can get into
that. So how about we just started
off? What are the four stages?
How did, how did, How do you
conceptualize them, and how do we navigate through them?
Sure. So I, I will pre empt this by
saying that this isn't something that was just pulled out of my
ass. One one of the I, I went through
this phase when I was pretty young.
I got really into developmental psychology and developmental
psychology. It, it's the study of how people
grow and age and mature. And there's not a whole lot of
empirical stuff. Yeah.
Very hard to do research. In developmental psychology
where there's a lot of very, very interesting theories and
frameworks. And so I, I kind of had this
phase in my life where I got really into all these different
frameworks and, and models and ideas and stuff.
And so this article is very much just like a really, really
strong simplification of a lot of my thoughts around all the
reading I had done in that in that field.
So Stage 1 I believe I call it the mimetic stage or mimesis.
Yeah, Mimicry. Yeah.
Mimicry, so it's stage 1 is essentially like if you look at
how children develop, they develop through mimicry by
watching adults and people in their life say certain things,
do certain actions, and then the child will try to replicate that
and do it themselves. Anybody who's had a kid has like
sees this all the fucking time and knows how careful you have
to be with what you say and do around a young child because
they will start saying and doing it as well.
But this is, I think what people don't realize is that this
tendency pretty much continues on through all of life.
But I think a lot of people, particularly a lot of people who
suffer as adults, it's because they never fully leave stage 1.
They've gone their entire life. They went to law school because
all their friends went to law school.
They moved to some city because their parents moved to that
city. They took a job at a certain
firm because their partner took a job at that firm.
Like everything that they do, everything they're motivated to
do, everything they care about doing is very much just based on
what the people around them seem to want and seem to reward them
for. And so stage 1 is mimicry.
Mimicry ultimately it is useful for learning how to embed
yourself into society. That's why it's important for
young people to develop through the stage in a healthy manner.
But ultimately it's unsatisfying.
As an adult, you, you have a need to choose your own destiny
and choose your own identity. And you can never fully do that
if you're always relying on the people around you.
So generally people, the crisis that happens at the end of stage
1 is kind of this crisis of I've never done anything for myself.
I've always lived for others. I don't know who I am, I don't
know what I want and I don't know how to find out.
And in in our space, in the self help world, we see a lot of
people at the stage 1 crisis and a lot of people who are hitting
it, you know, in their 20s, thirties, 40s, maybe even
fifties, right. So it and it it can cause and I
think the later it happens in your life like the more it
Spooks. You.
Yeah, definitely. So then stage 2 I called
exploration. And stage 2 is, is essentially
that project of figuring out who you are.
Like, OK, if I'm not just going to do all the things the people
around me tell me to do, I need to figure out what I actually
like and what I care about. And that involves
experimentation. It involves trying things and it
involves trying on different identities, joining different
groups, going to different places and experiencing all
sorts of different things. Stage 2 is extremely exciting.
It's a lot of fun. And generally, I think for most
people, this stage of life happens late adolescence and in
their 20s and maybe early 30s. This is when you travel around,
you take a bunch of different jobs, you meet a bunch of
different people, you date a bunch of different people.
And, and really the goal is to just find out like what seems to
work for you and what doesn't seem to work for you.
And the crisis of stage 2 eventually happens because
exploration has a diminishing returns to it, right?
Like the, if you've never traveled anywhere before, the
1st place you go is pretty profound and really exciting.
If you've been to 20 places, then the 21st is like, Oh yeah,
OK, this is another, just another place, right?
And it's the same thing with, with dating people, with going
to parties, with taking jobs, with, you know, different
hobbies, whatever it is, right? Like it's variety.
The, the, the curve of satisfaction to variety and
novelty is it plateaus pretty quickly for most people.
And so this raises the question, generally, most people hit a
place. The, the crisis point for stage
2 is, is when people hit this point of like, OK, I've done all
this shit. What do I actually care about?
Like what actually, what do I keep going back to what seems
really satisfying? What am I actually good at?
Who seems to be good for me in my life, right.
And then you have this. You need to make the decision to
commit to those things so that that's the first two stages.
Do you have any comments, any hang up?
Am I getting anything wrong? Here.
No, I think this is yeah. Am I nailing this?
You're you're nailing your own, your own ideas.
I feel like a gymnast who hasn't like trained in six years and
I'm like, yeah, still got it. Still got it.
The stage 2 crisis is so a lot of people will get stuck at it
if they have a bit of an addictive personality and they
guess or they really love novelty.
I very much got stuck at stage 2, like really struggled to get
out of stage 2 because I just love new shit so much.
I'm like, I love having trying new things and experiencing new
things. So the problem what most people,
what happens with people who get stuck, stuck in stage 2?
You know, we had Robert Green on recently.
We talked about Peter Pan syndrome.
I think Peter Pan syndrome is very much people stuck at stage
2. It's just they're, they're
having way too much fun partying and, and dating and, and doing
cool shit. And you know, so they're like
the 47 year old still taking Molly and, you know, dancing
until 5:00 in the morning and, and with a bunch of 25 year
olds. If you have, if you're wired in
a certain way, there really is a danger of just kind of getting
permanently stuck at stage 2. And the drawback of getting
stuck at stage 2 is because you never fully commit to anything.
You never really become excellent at something.
You never really go deep on anything.
You never become an expert in any area.
You don't become world class at a skill.
You don't, you don't build like really deep and intimacy or, or
a family with anybody. Everything is kind of, it's just
surface level. It's exciting, it's sexy.
But it you're playing in the shallow end of the pool.
Stage 3 is the commitment stage. It's once you've hit stage 3,
you've realized these are the things that I care about.
And usually by this point you're in your 30s or 40s and you've
had this realization of like, oh shit, I'm not going to be around
that long. Yeah, You know, unlike when
you're 20 where you're like, I've got my whole life ahead of
me. Like, fuck it, let's, you know,
let's go to Mexico this weekend. You know, when you're 38 or
something and you've got a kid and a job, you, you suddenly
have this realization of like, I've got like maybe 20 good
years left, right? So let's fucking use it.
Let's like really be conscious and invested in something very
meaningful. The power of the commitment
stage. I think it like stage 3 is, is
where you really excavate a lot of the meaning and purpose and
and joy out of life. It's also where a lot of maybe
the darkest struggles are because it's like, I mean, if if
you let's say you have marriage problems 11 years in and you've
got two kids and you've got a bunch of debt and you're just
like, I don't know if I can live with this person, but fuck, I'm
45 and I came all this way with them.
Like, what do I do? Like, it's the the crises at
stage 3 are very deep and very dark.
They're big. Yeah.
Because they are, they are proportional to the, the rewards
of Stage 3. I think the the crisis of Stage
3 ultimately probably hit. So now I'm Speaking of somebody
who has not been to stage 4, but I will describe stage 4I Imagine
the crisis of stage three hits when you simply age up enough to
realize that, like, my best days are behind me.
You know, probably the most important thing I did is behind
me. My best works behind me.
You know, if you have kids, the kids are grown up and they're
off on their own. And there's kind of this
realization of like, all right, I did the thing.
That was it. Yeah.
Now what? Right, right.
And I think this leads in the Stage 4, which I call legacy.
And the project of Stage 4 is really simply doing the work and
making sure to to stay connected and, and maintain the things
that are going to last after you're gone.
Essentially a huge part of that is family.
If you have your life's work, if you worked on A cause or
volunteered for something or really invested in a, in a
business or spent 30 years working on a certain project or,
or industry or something. Generally what you find with
with legacy people is that they, they want to stay connected to
whatever they gave their life to and they want to make sure it's
going to be OK, right. And at this point, I'm only
speaking hypothetically, just from what I understand from the
research and a lot of the, the psychological models that I've
read. But it, you know, interestingly,
elderly people tend to be the happiest people.
They tend to be the least anxious people.
They tend to be the most satisfied people in most
countries, not every country. I think a lot of that is just
that when you don't know who you are at stage one, that creates a
lot of stress. When you don't know what you
want at stage 2, that creates a lot of stress.
And when you know what you want but you don't know if you're
going to get it, that creates a lot of stress at stage 3.
I think stage 4 is just probably very much characterized by
acceptance by like, that was my life.
I loved parts of it. Could have done without some
other parts of it. I have my regrets.
Yeah, but All in all, it, I've had a good run and, you know,
I've got a decade or two left and, you know, maybe I got some
grandkids or I'm still like really involved in a community
or A cause and I'm just ready to ride it out and, and, and, and
make sure that, you know, people know I was here essentially.
So those are the four stages of life.
Yeah. I'm, by the way, I'm I, this is
one of my favorite things I've ever read or written.
One of my favorite things I've ever written.
And it's one of the few articles that's like just really stuck
with me over the years. And it's, it's also, it's a
reader. It never like went super viral
or anything, but it's, it's a reader favorite as well.
I still hear pretty frequently from from fans and readers that
they're like, man, I think about the four stages all the time.
Yeah, of all ages, people come back to it.
Yeah, definitely. You talk about these crises that
we have at each stage and it's, it's usually at some transition
point into the next stage. Can you talk a little bit about
like the pain that you've had to go through and some of these we,
we've touched on this before in some episodes, I think, but what
is the value of the pain that we have to these crises, right?
Like when you go from stage one of the mimicry to the self
discovery, the the pain of that, how, how does one navigate that? 00:15:56,400 What am I trying to ask?
What is my question here? It's it, it often is painful and
it, it involves a, it involves a change in identity.
And that's the painful part, I think for sure.
Can you talk a little bit more about that and the transitions
that you've had to deal with? And I can throw in some too.
But yeah, and so, I mean, the thing that makes the transition
so difficult is, is that essentially your your life
strategies that have worked for you up until this point stop
working, right. So if you're in stage 1 doing
everything that people told you to do, worked for 1520 years,
and then suddenly one day it stops working.
Yeah. And you're like, what the fuck?
I'm doing everything right. Why am I so miserable?
Why am I not succeeding? Why don't people like me?
And you have to reorient how you understand yourself in the
world, which is a very difficult process.
And you have to, you have to let go of some of the things that
you used to, used to give a fuck about.
Similarly with stage 2, I'm doing the same things I used to
do that were so fun and exciting, but it's not really
fun and exciting anymore. It's, it's just like more stuff. 00:17:04,359 I like you.
I feel like I'm on a treadmill. And so you'd like stop and re
evaluate the assumptions that are underlying all your
decisions and that that's just a very, very difficult thing to
do. And I think that pain is
necessary to propel you into the next phase.
You know, I definitely hit a point.
I struggled to get out of phase two and I definitely hit a point
where I was like two things. One, I love novelty.
I'm just like a glutton for novelty.
But I was also a commitment phobe.
And I, I, I distinctly remember a period right around the time
I've been with my wife for a couple years and it was starting
to get clearer that, you know, dude, if you're ever going to
settle down, like this is probably the one you should
settle down with. And I struggled with that for a
year or two. And I just remember like going
in circles in my brain being like, well, I'm terrified to
settle down. But I also know if I don't
settle down, it's not going to be satisfying anymore, right?
So I'm probably going to be dissatisfied and, and and
anxious as fuck either way. I might as well lean into the
the stress and dissatisfaction that is, that is new, that is
like forces me to grow and be a better person rather than just
go back to all the parties and girls and shit that I was doing
before. So that was like a very kind of
calculated decision and it ended up paying off massively.
I mean, I'm well and meshed in stage 3 at this point.
We were joking at the top of the show about how I just like don't
even want to deal with three or four things that I deeply give a
fuck about. And it's at this point in my
life, anything that's not in one of those categories, like it's
very hard to get me to, to pay attention to them.
And sometimes I, I wonder if that's a bad thing.
But then I'm like, you know, I'm in my prime, like I'm going
super hard on the things I care about.
Like this is this is the time to do that, right?
Like I can, I can sit back and doom scroll TikTok and worry
about all the problem, you know, try to save the world when I'm
60 or something, right? Yeah, yeah, No, I very much like
this. This self discovery phase two,
the stage 2. I very much got kind of caught
in that as well. And part of the problem, I'm
like you, novelty is amazing and I'm just fascinated by
everything. And I couldn't, you know, I
couldn't just it. It was funny when we had Robert
Green on, he made this comment about there are people who might
think they're Poly mass, you know, they might think they're
Poly mass and they're good at it.
But are you? Are you a genius or are you just
confused? Yeah, yeah.
Turns out I was confused. I wasn't a genius.
So I totally get that. And it is very painful to be
like, oh, I got to let all of this other shit go.
I got. But you do.
You do get to the point where you're like you, you get to the
age where like, God damn, yeah, I got like time does go so fast. 00:19:58,240 That's the other thing.
You blink and you're you're 40, right?
And here, here's a little pet theory of mine that ties those
two things together. You know, when he was here, we
talked about Peter Pan syndrome and the extended adolescence,
which a lot of researchers have have acknowledged and noticed
that people are just waiting long.
They're waiting longer to to move out on their own.
They're waiting longer to start their careers.
They're waiting longer to get married.
They're waiting longer to date. They're waiting longer to have
sex. Like pretty much every marker of
adulthood has just been extending out over the past few
decades, often in cases like well into people's 30s.
And I personally think like, so if we apply the four stages of
life framework to the situation, the argument I make is that you
really can't get out of stage 2 until you feel like you've
exhausted all of your options, like in until you feel like
you've tried all the things you want to try.
Because if you don't try all the things you want to try and you
go into stage 3 without that, then you're all it's the whole
the rest of your life in stage 3, it's going to gnaw at you.
Like, what if I took that job? What if I actually did get back
with my ex? What would have happened?
Right? And I think in this day and age,
a, there's just more opportunities than ever before.
There's more stimulation than ever before.
But I also think young people are more aware than ever before
of how much opportunities in front of them.
And so I think it, it's like they are taking extended amounts
of time to try things and test themselves and see what they
like and see what they care about.
Now, I do think there is a, a negative side of this, which is
just that they're not getting out enough when they're kids and
they're not developing strong emotional skills or social
skills soon enough. But I do think there's some of
this is, is is reasonable, it's reasonable to wait.
Like if you, if you're a typical college graduate or university
graduate in a in a developed country in 2024, you have more
possibilities in front of you than any generation before you.
So it makes sense that you will take longer to make these major
commitments and settle down. You know, one of the reasons I
think this one does resonate with a lot of people, at least
why it resonates with me and I keep coming back to it, is
because it is at least gives you some kind of inkling about what
it's like to get older. I don't know if you've ever
tried to explain getting older to somebody like significantly
younger than you. It's almost.
It's impossible it. Probably is impossible.
It's so hard to get that across. And obviously you don't really
know what it's like to get older until you get older.
But this kind of give you gives you at least a little bit of a,
oh, OK, There's this whole mental shift that happens at
different stages and I think that's really useful for people. 00:22:45,600 I don't know.
Yeah, it's, it's also like, I think what people don't think
about is that your incentive shift with age.
Yeah, you know, because when, so when you're young, you know how
much time you have in front of you.
And so, you know, you have a lot of runway to like fuck up and
mess around. And it's, you know, if you do
something dumb when you're 21, it's probably, unless it's like
extreme, it's probably not going to have severe repercussions for
most of your life. Whereas when you're 40, first of
all, you're way more aware of the time you don't have.
You're also aware of all the time you wasted.
Yes, so, so, so you're much more sensitive to to falling into
certain traps and pitfalls of like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Last time I did something like this, it was like 18 months of
my life went down the drain. So I'm not doing that again.
So there's a certain amount of caution that comes with age, but
it's interesting, like if I had to try to explain aging to a
young person, I would just say like your fundamental
relationship with time completely changes.
Like it's not just your idea of like what is a law a a large
amount of time, but you just, you start to see what persists
and what doesn't. Because like when you're 20,
everything seems important. Anything that just make like
everything's exciting, everything's a disaster.
Everything is, you know, end of the world.
Everything seems really important.
The longer you live, the more data you collect of like what
actually matters in the long run.
And what you discover is that the vast majority of things do
not matter in the long run. And so you you quickly get, not
quickly, you slowly get significantly better at just
chilling out and being like, yeah, this sucks.
But in a year or two, I'm probably not going to, not even
going to remember it happened. So I'm going to, like, relax a
little bit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I totally see that.
And that's even then, though I don't think you can get here.
I understand that. But yeah, yeah, yeah, totally
agree. Cool, we will be right back.
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Brilliant bullshit this week, Mark.
Psychological richness. OK, I kind of, I teased this
idea a little bit in a previous episode, I think, and I think
you would agree that we over index on happiness.
We've talked about that before. I think we also over index on
meaning. So a lot of times when people
say, oh, it's not the happiness part, so I'm going to go look
for meaning instead. And there's pitfalls to that too
that I don't think we always consider.
There's some trade-offs and drawbacks to that.
I came across this. It's just in the last few years,
this idea has been kind of gaining traction within
psychology and it's called psychological richness.
Essentially what it is, is it's it's a focus on the interesting
in your life. It's finding interesting things
in your life, things that interest you personally and that
you can just kind of be in your own world with.
So it's a life characterized by a variety of interesting and
perspective changing experiences.
It involves curiosity, novelty, adventure, openness and
exploration, but also a complexity of experience and
events that challenge your own worldview.
So there's this book if you want to dive deeper into this.
It's called The Art of the Interesting by Lorraine Besser.
It just came out, I think in September.
She goes through why that kind of the pitfalls of happiness.
A lot of what you've talked about too.
Happiness is fleeting. It's not really a reliable
emotion. It's often a a a symptom of
living a good life, not the not the cause of it, but also with
meaning. We're really bad at at knowing
what's could be meaningful. We're really bad at this.
If then logic in our life. Well, if I only had this, then I
would be happy. I would be fulfilled.
I would find. That's the trick.
Or. All sorts of, right.
Whereas I think psychological richness, when you look at
things that are interesting or you look for things that are
interesting, it requires you to be very mindful, be very
present. You're not, it's not chasing
anything like you are when you're chasing happiness.
It's not you're not putting any expectations on yourself
necessarily. You're just saying what's
interesting me right now in this moment.
I think a lot of the people we've had on this podcast,
somebody like a Stephen Pressfield or Robert Green, I
think this is what they're getting at when they say, well,
like Stephen Pressfield is finding, basically finding your
life's purpose. And, and Robert Green talks,
talks about finding your life task.
It isn't about what makes you happy.
It's not about what makes you money.
It's not about even what's meaningful, it's what's
interesting to you and what's weird to you.
What do you think of this idea? I find it very vague and hand
WAVY. It is a little bit.
I think that's more the way I'm explaining it maybe.
This could be, I've not read the book so I don't.
I don't want to deride the author or or her theory, but let
me express the thought. You describing it that way
actually triggered a thought in my brain that I make sense to me
and at least is much more clear to me.
And maybe this is reflected in her work, or maybe, maybe it's
just something I'm making up right now.
But I think the same way the, you know, the, the best
investment portfolio is a diversified portfolio, right?
Like if you put all your money in stocks, you might have better
returns over the long run, but you're going to have a lot of
volatility and it's you, you get a puke every time there's a
recession and all all this stuff.
If you put all your money in bonds, then you're, you know,
you're probably, you're going to get very undersized returns, you
know, so it's like the best portfolio is allocation of
stocks and allocation of bonds and allocation of real estate.
That way you, you all the, the pros and cons of each one can
offset each other and you don't, you don't like live with the
downside of each one. I feel like the same is probably
true with life richness like what you're describing.
When I think about this, it's like you don't only want to
pursue happiness because then you just become a hedonist and
you you end up on this treadmill of just always trying to do the
next thing that's going to be fun or exciting or make you feel
good and that's not good. That's a lot of downsides.
You also don't just want to pursue what's meaningful because
then you, there's a bunch of reasons. 1 is that you, you
essentially end up in a life of just perpetual sacrifice and
challenge and struggle. Also, it's not clear how much
impact you can have on certain things.
And so maybe you invest a bunch of time and energy and sacrifice
into something and it doesn't work out.
And then you just feel like you wasted 10 years of your life.
So it's there's like very high upside and very low downside to
just investing in meaning. Not to mention if everything you
do is to index for meaning meaningfulness, that kind of
makes everything meaningless. Like not there's no like
contrast, right? So here's my hair brain theory,
a diversified life pursuit portfolio.
You should have something meaningful in your life that you
pursue. You should have something that's
just fun and joyful in your life that you pursue.
You should also just have something that's like stupid and
egotistical and and hedonistic that you pursue, right?
Like that's, that's a piece of the puzzle as well.
You don't ever want to like go all in on any of those things.
You want to have them balanced in a nice proportion that suits
your personality. Well, Like I noticed this.
I went through many years. So I was a huge gamer when I was
young. I gave up video games in my 20s
because I was like all aboard the productivity, self help
training. I was also building a business,
so I didn't have any fucking time.
Yeah, I also didn't have any money.
So all those things, all those reasons contributed.
I didn't play video games for about 8 or 9 years.
And then when I came back to gaming, I had a little bit of a
love hate relationship with it. I like there was a little bit of
like a guilt or a shame or like a self loathing.
I'm like, oh man, I just spent like all day Saturday playing
the new Zelda. Like, what am I doing with my
life? I could have, I could be doing
something productive. I could have been hanging out
with a friend. I could have been at the gym.
I could have been doing all these things.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that I'm like, the
optimal amount of video games in my life is not zero.
And as long as it's below a certain amount, it, it
noticeably makes my life better. It noticeably makes it better.
There's something about just having this frivolous,
meaningless, purely pleasurable and and sometimes interesting or
challenging pursuit that has no stakes attached to it whatsoever
that like balances out everything else that like when I
come back to my work and I have like, let's say I have a really
big decision to make in the business, it like reemphasizes
the importance of that decision and like, you know, don't, don't
take this moment for granted and like really pay attention to it. 00:32:52,200 You know, similarly, it's like
when I do go go hang out with a bunch of friends or my wife, you
know, it's like, OK, now I get to be social like this.
It's this is, this is a joy because I, I haven't been social
in the last couple days, right. So anyway, a little bit of a, a
cooked up harebrained theory. I don't know if that reflects
what she talks about. That's how I think of it.
Or like that's where I've landed at this point in my life.
And I don't know, maybe I should write a book about that, the
diversified happiness portfolio. I mean that it is the the the
researchers along with Lorraine Besser and there's other
researchers in psychology, but that's what they're saying is
that this is now, this is a part that's been neglected.
So happiness is important. They're not saying it's not
meaning and purpose is important, of course.
And now this other component they think to a good life.
And they're also saying there could be more.
We don't know, but we're just finding that this is a component
that we think needs to be talked about.
More yeah, I I forgot the curiosity thing, but yeah,
that's a that's a huge part of it as well.
Yeah, yeah, I I do think. So let me, let me, let me, let
me read you off some of the things that they've uncovered so
far anyway. Engaging in new and buried
experiences, travelling to foreign places or just
unfamiliar places, reading books or having conversations that
challenge your perspective, learning new skills and trying
new things and embracing spontaneity and playfulness.
Those are a few of the things that they've they associate with
psychological richness. It sounds like kind of just
intellectual stimulation. Yeah, I think that's a lot of
it. And there's a big emphasis on
mindfulness around what you find interesting and stimulating
rather than what's what's told to you.
Like this will make you happy. This was, this is how you find
meaning. This is more about like this is
a personal go within, have some solitude, figure this out.
So I, I'm having a very mixed reaction here, which is like I
think the content of what they're saying is probably true. 00:34:47,400 And I, I also don't find it that
profound or surprised, like, especially if you're kind of a
brainy person, like generally intellectual stimulation or
intellectual pursuits are just naturally going to make you
happy anyway. Like that's, that's where you're
going to have fun anyway. So like to me, that's not super
earth shattering. I'm like, yeah, OK, that makes
sense. I'm calling bullshit on the
packaging here. Like this, this definitely
feels, this reeks to me. And this happens in psychology
quite a bit where it's, it's like we did some studies and we
found the thing that's pretty obvious, but let's put a
interesting name on it. OK.
And, and, and invent a theory about it, right.
And it reminds me sometimes every once in a while, like, you
know, in some of these like science and psychology
publications, like I'll see a new study pops up and I'll, I'll
like, I'll read through the study and the results.
And it's, it's just like the most common sense thing in the
world. And, and always in my head to
myself, I'll, I'll always say I was like breaking news.
Scientists discover what everybody already knew.
Yeah, Yeah, I saw one recently like that about like, oh, here's
like breaking news. Relationships can be really
hard. Like this is what?
They're shocking shit. Oh my God, who knew?
I want to call bullshit on this one, but it's not because it's
wrong. It's just because it's like,
yeah, pursuing your interest is cool.
It like it's fun, it feels good. It feels purposeful, meaningful. 00:36:11,080 I don't know if it's the whole
thing, like, yeah, I don't. Know, I'm not even sure if it's
your interest though, is what they're saying.
It's it's just something you might find interesting.
I think it's more it's they're trying to get people to be a
little bit more present. We could just be sitting here in
this room by ourselves right now, and I think they would
argue there's something fascinating you could find
sitting here by yourself. I hate to break it to you, we
are sitting in this room by ourselves right now.
Think about think about what I mean, though, is you go through
your life and you just interact with all these people and
they're kind of faceless and nameless.
There's something fascinating and weird and interesting about
every single person you could come across.
And I think there's a lot of there's a lot to be like.
You can live a much deeper, richer life without spending any
money, without spending years developing some skill that's
going to provide a lot of meaning or security or whatever
it is for you and your family. You can just.
You can just be. This is OK.
I see now I'm making fun of myself.
Now God can just. Be this one's.
Bullshit. Like again, I don't disagree
with anything you're saying. I don't disagree with anything
the papers say. I'm just like this is very hand
WAVY and like oh. I agree Like let's.
Have a psychologically rich life today.
Alright, look at me. Just like, OK, define rich life. 00:37:35,080 And it's like, well, you just
got to be, you got to just find the depth in the things that
you're doing already. It's like, OK, well what the
fuck does that mean? Like if anyone out there thinks
this sounds interesting, go read the book.
Yeah, yeah, go read the end of. Jesus Christ.
Sorry, Mana. Yeah, you're right.
Hey, I just got to call. It like I see it.
I I like it. It did not go as planned.
We'll be right back. You've probably heard of, seen,
or read this book. I'm Mark Manson, the author of
said book. After it became a New York Times
bestseller, I wanted to do something else that wasn't just
writing another book, so I launched your next breakthrough. 00:38:15,160 It's a free e-mail newsletter
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All right, we're back. What?
What questions do we have? This week mark, I have a very
simple question that. I like simple ones.
Yeah, I don't think there's. I don't want to think hard.
There's not a simple answer to it though, don't think.
God damn it. All right.
How much is enough? How much is enough?
That's it.
That's the question. I I'm, I'm like the first thing
that comes to my mind is that great line from Matt.
Have you seen Mad Men? Yeah.
So then yeah, that there's an amazing, there's so many amazing
lines in Mad Men, but there's this amazing moment where Don
Draper says, I think somebody asked him like, what is
happiness? And.
And he says it's the moment before you need more happiness,
right. Yeah, that's so good.
What's? Enough.
What's enough? It's the moment before you need
more essentially. I don't know.
I mean, enough is is something that you ultimately have to
decide for yourself. But I also think it's something
that we're probably not biologically or neurologically
predisposed to to want or accept.
I mean, you could argue that like a huge percentage of the
entire religion of Buddhism is based on the practice of trying
to have enough in each and every moment.
And I, I would argue that the vast majority of Buddhist
practitioners and meditators never totally get to that place. 00:39:55,560 So yeah, I don't know.
I, I feel like it is just part of our evolutionary nature to
always go back to being mildly dissatisfied with whatever our
situation is. And, and if our situation's
amazing, it's going to make us look like fucking brats.
And if our situation is really shitty, it's going to keep us
sane and functional in a really shitty situation.
But we we, that just seems to be the way the mind works is mild
dissatisfaction most of the time.
Right. Yeah, there was there was
stories in Steve Jobs biography, I think it was owned by Walter
Isaacson anyway, where he's talking with people and people
come to him and they're like, well, OK, we're going to do
this, but we don't know if it's going to make this is probably
going to make more money, but I kind of want to do this.
And Steve would stop them and be like, This is why I'm friends
with you. You don't need more money.
Now Steve was, he was obviously
consummately never satisfied with anything, obviously.
But money was not something he was one to 1.
So I think when somebody asks, you know what's enough?
It's like enough of what, first of all.
That's the that's the actually the more important question.
Enough of what? Because what I would argue that
there's some things in life that there shouldn't be enough,
right? Like.
When I love and peace. Man, you are really.
I'm dude, I'm leaning into this. You're full.
I'm gonna. Turn into Did you smoke some
weed before you came? In no, but you know, we should,
we should, you know, we can drop some acid one of these times and
really get into this. Yeah, that would be an episode.
What was I saying? Oh, what is enough?
Right. I mean, like, what is enough?
Enough of what poverty alleviation?
What is enough peace in the world?
Like, you know what, what is enough lack of violence?
Like it there's, there's always going to be, you'll always want
more of some things. And I would argue like as a
creative person or an artist or somebody who builds something
like I don't, I kind of don't want to ever write something
that I think is enough because then I'm not getting better
anymore, right. Like I don't ever want to write
a book that I'm like, yeah, that's fine.
That was good enough. I don't need to write another
one. Yeah.
Like I always want to feel like, no, no, no, I could do better.
So. I'm a little bit of satisfied
with myself. Yes.
Always the the crazy thing about that, though, is that you I I
agree. And that's how you've operated.
The crazy thing is you like the whole failing in public thing.
Then that's that's just becomes part of the process too, right?
There's no, yeah, there's you're never going to write something
or create something that everybody's happy with.
You're never going to be satisfied with it on your own
enough, but you still put it out there anyway.
That's that's. So the, I think this raises a
really good important point, which is that the kind of
default psychological state of never having enough or there
never being enough, it can cut both ways.
It can torture you. Like if you are the, the guy
with $10 million who's fucking depressed because he doesn't
have $100 million, like clearly that sense of not enough is, is
harming you. But it can also help you like if
you look at people like Steve Jobs or, you know, brilliant
artists or musicians or people who've done amazing things,
they're generally people with a a very strong personality of
nothing is ever good enough. Yeah, they're tortured by it.
They're tortured by it and it causes them to do great things
and become excellent masters at certain skills or or practices.
So I think it can cut both ways. I think it's just you have to be
very selective of where you apply it.
Like I think I'm very good at. I definitely have a, a nothing
is good enough attitude within the business, within my content,
with my writing, with our yeah, shock.
I'm sure you are surprised by this, that nothing is ever good
enough ever. Everything can always be better. 00:43:52,800 And, and it, it does torture me
sometimes. Like it doesn't.
Oh, and no matter how good something is, I, I, I can look
at it and, and within 10 seconds see like 6 things wrong with it. 00:44:04,720 And, but I'm OK with that.
Like that is giving me a, a, a great career and it's built a
great product. And, you know, hundreds of
thousands of people are listening to this right now and,
and they're enjoying it because of that, because I have that
right. Whereas if I had that, like, I
don't know, say in, in finances or, you know, how drunk I got
last weekend or, you know, there's all sorts of destructive
vectors that this, this tendency can exist on.
And so I think you just have to be like very, very careful that
you learn how to cut it off there.
Learn how to be satisfied and settle in certain areas of your
life. And then be very conscious of
the areas in your life that you're not going to settle and
that you're not going to be satisfied and that you are going
to push yourself. Yeah, yeah.
We solved it. I think.
We're we solved? That one enough.
Enough. Yeah, we did.
Yeah, that answer was good enough.
Got a real good. Wisdom of the week to tie this
one up. Cool.
It's by the great Toni Morrison. And she said, at some point in
life, the world's beauty becomes enough.
I like that. Love Tony too.
Yeah, not for me. It could be more beautiful.
See you next week. Everybody subscribe.
Boy, on that note, we're out of here.
The Subtle Art I'm Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Mishimura. 00:45:32,040 Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.