Drew I I've been in the doghouse this week.
Oh yeah, sleeping on the couch. Not quite that bad, but it it
got close, yeah. What did you do?
So we shot a, we shot a YouTube
video. It'll probably come out into
this year. I've got a friend of mine owns a
ghost town out in the middle of the desert and California.
And we went out there to shoot a video with him and we needed
like a truck or an SUV or something.
And my wife has an SUV. It's a Tesla Model X, but it's
technically, technically an SUV, right?
So I asked my wife to borrow the car.
She loves the car. She loves it.
It's like her baby and I, I asked to borrow it.
She gets like really nervous. I'm like, I'll take good care of
it, don't worry. Drive it out into the
countryside, take it onto a dirt Rd.
As soon as we turn off onto the dirt Rd., within 5 minutes it
gets a flat. Tire.
Oh God. It turns out I didn't realize
this. It turns out that Tesla's weigh
like 1,000,000 lbs and the whole like sport utility vehicle, it's
not really a sport utility vehicle like you're not really
supposed to take it off road you're.
Supposed to drive around LA. And The thing is, Tesla's have
special tires. You can't replace them anywhere. 00:01:12,800 You have to wait for a Tesla
truck to come get you. I was about 3 hours outside of
any major city. And worst of all, the app
immediately notifies the owner via the phone.
So within 5 minutes, my wife called me and was like, what the
hell did you do to my car? So the YouTube team, we spent
half a day stranded in the California desert with a flat
tire and they were all freaking out of like, how are we going to
get home? And my biggest concern was like,
my wife's going to fucking murder me when I get back.
But I, so I'm here, I'm alive. But yeah, it's a little, it's a
little touch and go in the Manson household.
This week, I feel for you. Yeah, rent a car next time,
dumbass. That's that's the lesson I.
Didn't know that about Tesla's. So the SU.
PS Yeah, public service announcement.
Hey Elon, like if you advertise an SUV make sure it can fucking
actually drive like an SUVI. Mean I love the car but holy
shit it was like literally 5 minutes.
It got flat. That that sucks.
Yeah, it's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your
host Mark Manson. Today we're talking about risk.
And I guess that's that is in a nutshell, my problem.
I take too many risks. Yes, I just go for.
It you and I are different in this way.
And so I think we can get into some of that in this episode and
we'll talk about why and how we both approach it.
And I'm, I'm curious to know more about your, your approach
to risk too. But yeah, yeah.
But first, first the fuck of the week.
OK, You and I were both recently reading Nate Silver's new book
On the Edge. And there's this one part in
there where he asked the question, like, if you were to
live your life 1000 more times, how likely would it turn out as
good or as bad as the one you have right now?
And so I think that's a great way to frame a conversation
around the role of luck in our lives and how much of A fuck we
should give about luck, how much we should attribute things to
luck in our lives, how much we should appreciate luck or or
disregard it as a force in our lives.
How do you approach that? How do you think about good and
bad luck in our lives? Luck is such a funny thing
because I think so much of it hinges on how you actually
define luck, right? Right.
Like most people, I think define luck as fortuitous or
unfortunate things that happen to them, right?
So I'm driving off road, I get a flat tire.
Wow, that's bad luck. Is it though?
Like there's another way to look at it, which is that everything
has an associated risk with it. No matter how safe whatever
you're doing is, no matter how stable and consistent it is,
there's always a small outside risk that something could go
wrong. And similarly, everything you
do, there's a small outside chance that something could go
really, really right. So I, I think it like people see
luck is just this like, I don't know, like winning the lottery
or something like that. I think you can actually
manipulate luck in your life. You can put yourself in
situations where you increase the odds of good things
happening. Similarly, you can put yourself
in, in situations where you increase the odds of bad things
happening, right? So I think really luck is just,
it's actually just risk management, right?
And people who don't ever think about risk management, they just
kind of sit around and blame things on luck.
Right, right. It's interesting you bring that
up. I looked up some of the research
around luck and I'm not sure about like the actual findings
that they find about, oh, this is what luck is or isn't or how
people can manipulate luck. What I do like about the
research though, is they they have found a way to kind of
frame the way people think about it and explain the way people
think about it. So whether the finding, the
actual findings of these studies are correct or not, I really
appreciate the way that psychologists have have framed
the discussion around luck. So they find that there's people
kind of tend to either think that luck is a stable force in
their lives, right? And, and whatever happens to
them, like you were just saying, whatever happens to them is a, a
result of luck. And then there's other people
who just see it as more random and, and chance, which is more
probably rational according to psychologists.
I think that's a more rational belief system to have.
And those are kind of stable over time.
But they do also find too that you can't create your own luck
like you were just talking about.
You can't influence this. And they've kind of identified
these four different ways that people create luck.
And you've talked about this before, you wrote about this a
long time ago, and it kind of matches up with what you found
too. But they find that creating and
noticing chance opportunities in your life.
So just engaging with chance is a way to be lucky, making
decisions by listening to intuition.
I thought that was a really interesting one.
OK, which I think it's kind of related to number one, you're
just putting yourself in more? What the fuck does that mean?
What do you mean? What do you mean?
Well, I like what? How does that make you lucky?
I, I think what they're saying is that it's, it, it biases you
towards acting a little bit more if you're listening to your
intuition, so. That, I agree, makes.
You lucky I I do too. That's how I interpret.
That might be a generous interpretation.
I don't know. I don't know.
I hear that I hear intuition and I start getting like woo woo
spirit crystal virus and and that that.
Triggers me. You think so?
Triggers. There's no, I don't know, no
crystal I've ever bought made me more lucky so.
OK OK well this next one maybe this is related to too, but the
third one is creating self fulfilling prophecies via
positive expectations. So being an optimist and just
that being becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
Right, that. So that is a thing 100%.
I don't know if that's luck though.
It's it's a perception of luck. Again, this is these are
psychologists talking about this perception.
The perception I I imagine that if, yeah, if you perceive
yourself as being a lucky person, you will probably notice
more opportunities, you will probably take advantage of more
opportunities. So that, that makes sense.
OK. Yeah, I, I guess when I've
thought about this, I've always thought of a much more concrete
terms. Like, I always think of it as as
just like, how can I create more surface area for opportunities
to happen, right. So a simple example is just
meeting more people, right? Like always say yes to meeting
more people, not because you need more friends, not because
you want to be the coolest kid in school, but simply because
the more people you meet and the more people you know, the more
you increase your odds of a very outsized positive interaction.
And which is quote UN quote, getting lucky, right.
Another example is simply trying new things, like always trying
new things. Whenever you have an opportunity
to try something new, always say yes just because you know, 99
times out of 100, you'll be like, Oh, well, that was a thing
and I'll probably never do it again.
But that one time out of 100, you'd be like, wow, I can't
believe I found this. This is incredible.
I'm so excited. I'm so glad I said yes to this
opportunity. And that can be absolutely life
changing. So it's, it's these, like I
always say, I mean, I'm probably getting ahead of the docket
here, but like there's so many things in life that have drastic
upsides and very low downsides, right?
And like, I try to Orient my life around just constantly
leaning into those things. I, I think I've mentioned this
before too, like if you do go out and you meet more people,
say yes to more social events. There's always that, you know,
you say yes to it and the the day comes and you're like, God
damn it, you go anyway. And almost always it's like,
yeah, that was good. And sometimes like that was
fucking great. Sometimes it sucks.
Yeah. But even it's the outsize
returns that you're talking about the the one time that it
is good. Like, you know, you maybe you
meet somebody. I I talked about this in the
kind of dating context before too.
Like I go to social events with my friends all the time or
whatever. Not because I'm like, out to
like meet new people to date or anything like that necessarily,
but it does just up the odds of that happening.
Correct, Right, right. And, and the one time it does
work out, you know, 9 times out of 10, it doesn't, you know, I
don't meet anybody that I'm attracted to or whatever, go on
a date with whatever. But the one time you do, it's
like, oh, this is great. Yeah.
And that's an outsized return that you got from all of those
other chance opportunities you're engaged with.
Totally. And then coming back to the kind
of the the question of like, if you lived your life 1000 times,
like how, how, where on the totem pole would this one be?
Yeah. What do you think of that?
Well, for you, I'm definitely towards the top of my totem
pole. I won the lottery in this, in
this, in this version of the universe.
But I think you can apply that thinking to all sorts of things,
right? Like it, it's if you go to 100
parties, 90 of them will be kind of lame and forgettable.
Nine of them will be tons of fun and you'll have a great time
with, with some friends or meet some new friends.
And then one out of 100, I don't know, you meet your wife or you
meet your best friend or you make a huge business deal or you
get a new job or whatever. And it's just completely life
changing. So I, I think it's, you know, a
lot of people, they'll like go to a party and they're like,
well, this was lame. I'm never going to do this
again. And it's like, hey, boy.
I mean, look at the range of outcomes and then like, look at
the distribution of, of potential results of each of
those experiences. Yeah.
OK. And this is this is kind of
getting into another part of the research I dove into around
this, which is counterfactual thinking.
Yes, OK. And what they find, there's kind
of two types of counterfactual thinking that they distinguish 1
is up upwards counterfactual thinking, which is imagining how
a situation could have been better.
And you have downward counterfactual thinking,
imagining how a situation could have been worse.
And this made me realize what they find is you can actually
enhance your your beliefs in luck or your kind of perception
of luck through downward counterfactual.
Thinking it could always be. Worse.
Yeah, It could always be worse. It could always be worse.
And this made me realize this is like what this, I think this is
really what drives I've talked before about like how I'm a
fairly naturally grateful person and gratitude just kind of comes
naturally to me that I think that's a huge, huge part of why
because I'm always like, oh, this could have been so much
worse. Well, and I, I, This is why I, I
think so much of, of just happiness and mental health is,
is, is, it's having an imagination, it's being able to
imagine alternate outcomes and, and various probabilities.
I mean, it's, it, it's funny. One of my favorite memes of all
time is, is there's, there's one where Bart Simpson is looking
down and he's like, he's like, man, this is the worst day of my
life. And then Homer puts his arm
around him and he says, no, son, this is the worst day of your
life so far. 100 percent, 100%, all the time.
Like you need them. I'm having a bad day.
Or just like something goes wrong.
You know, it, it's like there's so many ways things can be
worse. Or even something like something
as stupid as the Tesla, the flat tire, the flat tire in the
desert. You know, it's yeah, that sucks. 00:12:17,000 Like it was a really shitty,
sure, 48 hours dealing with that.
But I mean, the fact that have, first of all, I'm driving like
an amazing car, shooting YouTube videos in a, in a fucking ghost
town. Like this is a pretty good, good
situation to get a flat tire in. Like I'm pretty blessed to even
like have the opportunity to get a flat tire in that situation.
So it's like, again, zooming out and having that perspective and,
and I feel like I, I generally do a good job of that of like
zooming out, recontextualizing stuff, thinking about the
counterfactuals and it, it, I think that plays a huge part in
my own like mental stability and mental mental health.
Yeah, I, I think for me, it's been, I, I don't know if I'm as
good as zooming out as you are, but it's more just like I've had
so many brushes with, with bad luck or close brushes with bad
luck that it just, it's, it's so vivid.
You know, I've talked about I, I grew up pretty humble and a lot
of my friends, I mean, I've had friends who've died of
overdoses. I've had friends who have, you
know, drunk driving, accidents, whatever.
Ended up in jail. And all sorts of things, that
kind of thing that could have easily been me, you know, in a
very slightly different universe, maybe not even that
different of a universe. Such a bad boy, Drew.
That's not what I mean at all, but.
Such a dangerous man. No, my no, no, no, not at all.
My point is just that I, I, I saw it, I was close enough to it
that it's easy for me to imagine.
I don't have to zoom out for. I get it, I get it, I get it.
One thing I think about too, and if my wife was here, she would
tell you this because I bang on this drum all the time at home,
which is there is a fail rate in life.
There's just a natural like anything you do, anything you
try to do, whether it is a, a project at work or like hiring
contractors to fix something in your house to, you know,
replacing a part in your car, like everything is going to fail
a certain percentage of the time.
And it's always greater than 0. And it ideally it's a small
percentage of the time. But I, I, I tell my wife this
all the time. I'm like, if you go to 10
doctors, just the law of averages is that at least two or
three of them are going to be terrible.
That's just life. Like that's life.
It's anything you go to any, any service that you deal with, any
people you hire, like there's all, there's a fail rate to
everything. Any product you buy, a certain
percentage of them are just going to suck and just fall
apart and not work. And, and I get so much stability
in my life by remembering that, that it's like, oh, this is part
of the deal, right? Like if you, if you drive
100,000 miles, you're, you're statistically, you are at some
point you're going to be in an accident.
At some point your car is going to break down.
And at some point you're, you know, something shitty is going
to happen. Like that's just, that's just
life. That's part of it, right?
And it's, it's always helped me to remember like you're choosing
that even when you don't remember it, you're choosing
that. By the way, can I say where like
this really? I mean, I do think I'm like a
little bit naturally predisposed to, to thinking like this.
But the, the way this got drilled in my head, it was
playing poker seriously for years.
And it's because poker, you can play the hand perfectly and
still lose. And other times you can make the
biggest mistake and just be a total idiot and when And it's so
it forces you to think about chance and odds and risk and
probabilities and understand. And like once you understand it
within the context of cards and you understand like, OK, no hand
is 100% is going to win 100% of the time.
So you just play it as well as possible.
You just play to increase your odds as much as possible.
And even if you play perfectly, you know you only have a 75%
chance to win or a 70% chance to win.
So you're going to lose 30% of the time.
Like once that just gets like fully baked into your brain like
that, you can't help but see it everywhere else in your life and
just start understanding. Like, Oh yeah, every job I apply
for, I can interview perfectly and I'm still not going to get
offers on X percent of them. That's just part of life, right? 00:16:40,080 And it's, it's one of the most
useful tools I've picked up over the years.
I know you mentioned Nate Silver.
I know he's former poker player. There's a great book by a poker
pro named Annie Duke called Thinking in Bets where she kind
of explains this, this thinking in probabilities essentially.
But it honestly, it's one of the most, I mean, I still love poker
and I'm still glad I played. But even if I even if I hadn't
won a bunch of money playing poker, I would still be so
grateful because it just like gave me this mental tool set to
like approach everything in my life this way.
Yeah, yeah. When I I, I played a little bit
of poker and there was one, one game we played with some friends
one night and we went for hours and hours and hours.
The final hand, my buddy won on a pair of twos and he took
everybody out. But it happens and it happens.
It happens. Yeah.
Well, alright, we'll get a little bit more into the risk
stuff in the in the next segment, OK.
So yeah. We'll be right back.
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What's brilliant? What's bullshit?
What are what are we debating today, Drew?
Well, on the theme of risk still, Mark, are we a bunch of
chicken shits? Probably.
Do you think so? Yeah.
Probably. I don't even know.
I don't even know what you're about to tell me.
The answer is yes. I I in thinking about luck and
and mitigating risk in our lives, I just got me to
thinking, are we just not? Do we not take enough risk in
our lives? Is it brilliant or bullshit that
we should take more risk in our life, especially financially,
socially with our careers? Well, set, set some context
here. OK.
I know you've you've dug up some numbers.
Yeah, Yeah. And tell me.
OK, give us some context. Yeah.
So there was a study, this was like 2018-2019 and it was a
survey done to evaluate Americans appetite for risk and
specifically around financial risk, career risk and social
risk for those were kind of the three things.
And probably unshockingly, most people tend to play it pretty
safe. Something like 72% prioritize
stability over risk in their and their financial dealings as
opposed to like going for high returns with higher risk.
They quantified financial risk tolerance and was 4.9 out of 10
for the average person. SO55 out of 10.
You know, right in the middle. People are are right in the
middle with that. Most people prefer job
stability, like 65. Five percent say they would take
job stability over a a less stable job that might be a
little bit more fulfilling or fun or maybe has a chance of
someday paying off more, which I find interesting because so many
people hate their jobs, but they're like, no, I want a
stable job. Still, yeah, it's like 70% of
the population hates their. Jobs, right, right.
At least that living situation, 76% of people just don't even
want to move, which moving is a stressful event in your life.
But still, it's like there could be a huge upside to that that we
never think about. 66% say they just want to stick to familiar
friends rather than meeting new people.
You were just talking about going out and meeting new
people. I it's just basically what they
found in this survey anyway. Only about 1/4 of the people
enjoy any sort of risk, actually actively enjoy risk taking.
Not just, you know, I'm willing to accept some risk, but they
actively enjoy risk taking. I would I would be willing to
bet that that that is decreasing as time goes on as well.
I know. I would agree.
Yeah, I know. Like Gen.
Z is famously very risk averse. I feel like as the population in
general gets older, it becomes more risk averse.
It does feel like people in general are more risk averse
today than they were say 20-30, forty years ago.
You know, it's hard to answer this because everybody, the
optimal amount of risk you should have in your life is very
much determined by this, the facts of your life, right?
So somebody who's growing up in poverty in, I don't know, in
Africa or something like their risk equation is going to be
much different than somebody who say, has a, a boring desk job
but is comfortable and living in the suburbs of Chicago, for
instance. You know, So it's like a lot of
it depends on your personal talents.
A lot of it depends on the job markets, the opportunities, a
lot of it depends on just where you're at in your life.
So it is really hard to say. I feel like I imagine that this
is this measurement of like risk aversion.
It, it is probably reflective of how stable and secure a society
is. I imagine the more stable and
secure a society, the the less people are going to like, the
less incentive people have to take significant risks and it,
and it probably becomes much more just the freaks and
psychopaths like me who like it right, right.
Who end up taking it. So, but the the interesting
thing here is that there there's a little bit of like a, an
equilibrium thing going on where the fewer people willing to take
risks, the more reward there is for taking them.
Oh yeah. So it's the less people are
willing to stick their neck out. Whoever is willing to stick
their neck out is going to get all the benefit from it.
So you think that the the reward curve is is shifting too,
because you were just saying that if if fewer people are
taking. Yeah, I mean, it's, there's a,
you know, Chris Williamson has this rant that he went on a
while back where, where you just talk about how it's easier than
ever, like the bar is lower than it's ever been.
And I think to a great extent our our technology has made us
very complacent. It's become very easy to just
numb yourself and distract yourself and become complacent
with whatever your life situation is.
And so it, it's, it's like reached a point where it's like
if you, if you just try, like if you just get in relatively OK
shape and go out and be somewhat social and take some of your
time and, and educate yourself and read some books and maybe
take an online course or something.
Like you're already ahead of like 70% of the population,
which is fucking nuts. Like there's just so much
complacency in the developed world at the moment.
And so on the one hand it, you know, there's a lot of kind of
whining and hand wringing about, you know, oh, mental health and
things are so hard and everything's so stressful and
we're all anxious. But it's like if you actually
look at at people who are going out and doing things, it, it
feels like there's fewer than ever before.
I heard something recently they were saying that, you know,
every generation there's kind of this like this new influx of
entrepreneurs and founders in Silicon Valley every 10 or 15
years. And I heard that it it's like
Gen. Z is just not showing up.
There's like, there's like nobody showing up and starting
new companies. And everybody's just kind of
like, OK, well, where'd everybody go?
Like, where are the founders? Where are the entrepreneurs?
We're the people who are just like willing to take crazy moon
shots and, and see what happens, right?
And again, it's like the fewer people that there are willing to
do that, the more the people who are willing are going to win for
when they do it just because there's going to be less
competition and there's going to be more returns.
So this question, you know, where is, if you go somewhere in
the world where everybody's taking a ton of risks, then it's
probably more logical to, to chill out, right, and seek out
stability. So it, it's a thing that's in
flux. It's a, you know, there's like a
population equilibrium thing going on, I think.
So, so how, how do you approach risk now then do you, how, how
analytical are you about it? That's one question I have for
you. Like how I, I know a lot of a
lot of people who I know who take risks are pretty good at at
least coming up with a number in their head like, oh, there's
probably a 30% chance this is going to work and I'll take that
risk. Like whether they're right or
wrong, that's just kind of how they think.
I I feel like you do that some how analytical do you get with
your risk taking and how much of it, how much of his intuition
Mark? Very little is intuition.
I mean, I, I do listen. I mean, obviously I do have a
bias when I analyze a tough decision and, and I'll, I'll be
aware of that bias where it's like, OK, that's probably what
most people would call their intuition.
It's like my gut is pushing me in this direction.
I try to keep that in mind because I actually try to argue
against that and see if I can right.
So I look at it, I'd look at it there's, I look at it in two,
two different ways. There's an analytical side and
then there's kind of a qualitative side.
So the analytical side is really simple.
It's like, you know, if, if it involves money in any way, let's
sit down and start writing numbers down, right?
Like what's the upside? What's the downside?
What, what are the, what's the distribution of, you know,
what's the percent chance that this is going to work out?
What's the percent chance it's going to fail?
What's the percent chance that it's like somewhere in the
middle and, and try to get some sort of rough calculation of an
expected value out of that. On the other hand, that that
side, you know, do a pros and cons list, do a, you know, risk
reward list, like those things are all useful.
And I think that's just kind of all that goes without saying.
I actually think the qualitative side is way more important
because that tends to dictate much more.
So what I mean by qualitative is that I I look at, I look at what
are the intangible costs and benefits of doing.
Something, yeah, you're very good at.
That or not doing something right like so some people might
look at like I have a stable job, it's very dependable, I can
probably have it for a long time.
Let me just stick with this on paper, that's probably an easy
calculation for them to make and justify.
But then you have to start adding the intangible stuff in
too, which is like, OK, well, you're going to have a lack of
novelty in your life. If you have a boss or a Co
worker you don't really like, you're going to be stuck with
them for a long time. If you have a job that you don't
find a lot of meaning or purpose in, that's something you're
going to have to deal with. You're going to have to go find
that somewhere else. So there's like all these other
little qualitative things like if you have friends who you
know, like if your job is going to, you know, your job isn't
going to eventually make you move to another city, but you
have like a great, your friends and family are in the current
city. Like that's another thing to
consider. So there's a lot of stuff like
that to look at, like how is this going to affect some of my
emotional needs, some of my needs for for meaning and
purpose? What's like the long term
qualitative experience? But probably the most important
thing I look at is what benefits do I get if this fails?
And I think this is the biggest thing that people overlook is
there are a lot of things that if you fail at it, you still end
up way ahead. For example, starting like when
I, I remember when I was starting my online business, my
first online business, it was in the middle of the O8O9 crash.
You couldn't get a job anywhere. I remember thinking to myself,
I'm like, OK, I can start this online business.
If it works great. I'm going to have a career and
I'm going to run my own business and it'll be amazing.
If it doesn't work, what happens?
Well, I'll be broke. I'm already broke.
I'll be 25 with no job experience and I was only 23
with no job experience. So that's basically no
difference. But I'll learn a bunch of really
useful skills. I'll learn web design, I'll
learn copywriting, I'll learn sales, I'll understand
marketing, I'll understand web development.
I'll learn about e-commerce like talk.
I could probably go get a really good job with those skills,
right. So the actual, the failure at
that moment in time in, in my life and and in the labor
market, the failure was actually better than going out and
submitting another hundred job applications to a bunch of
places I didn't really want to work at, right.
So to me, like as soon as I realized that I'm like, this is
such a no brainer. I'm like, I'm, I'm an idiot if I
don't do this. And I think there are a lot of
things in life like that, like you are even failing at it.
You will learn so much, you will develop skills, you will meet
certain people that you'll end up way ahead than if you didn't
try it all. Yeah, yeah.
That, that's kind of how I think of it too.
I don't put I I think you are better at the analytical side
that the the more hard number side of it.
But what you said there about you, you find the no brainers
that are no brainers to you, especially.
You know what I mean? Like like I've told this story
before too, but coming to work for you too.
Everybody thought I was crazy and I was like, this is a no
brainer, guys. I knew that academia for me
sitting in an office writing grants for the rest of my life.
I man, that's what it started to to seem like to me.
You know, it wasn't the actual there's a reality in that, that
space that I was not comfortable with.
And I was like, if nothing else, this at least gets me off of
that track and gets me pointed in a different direction.
So, yeah, the other thing to think about too is is there are
certain things that like the upside is so vastly high
compared to the downside that you would also use symmetry not
to do it. Like, yeah, there are so many
asymmetries of risk and people don't stop long enough to think
about that. The most simple example that I
give all the time is if you're at a party or a dinner or
something and you see an attractive stranger, what is the
risk of what's the, what is the risk reward of talking to that
attractive stranger? What is the very best thing that
can happen? And what is the very worst thing
that could happen? The very best thing that can
happen in that moment is that you meet your future spouse or
partner or whatever and it or, or even just a partner for a few
years, but they change your life.
They influence you. You have this great like
incredible life enriching experience together.
That's the upside. That's massive.
The downside is maybe you embarrass yourself for a few
minutes or look like an asshole in front of a few people.
But if you got a brain that works like mine, Mark, I'm going
to be crying and my myself to sleep for the next two weeks.
But yeah, go I mean, I see what I see your I get your point.
I. Mean even that even that even
that, like that is, that is so minuscule compared to the
upside, right. And, and, and, and the truth of
the matter is that like 99% of the time you're going to end up
somewhere in the middle. It's, it's going to be, it's
probably going to be a nothing burger.
If, if you talk to them, but it's like it's, it's, there's
so, again, there's so many things in life like that, like
it, it's, you know, starting the business was similar to that.
I remember when I was when I was writing subtle art, it was a
very similar thing. It was a, it was a similar
choice of, you know, the upside of writing this book is
extremely high. The downside of writing this
book is I have a book that sold OK or I can like tell people I'm
an author or I became a much better writer.
I built relationships in the publishing industry.
I built credibility for myself. Like the downsides of writing a
book are just you give up two years of your time essentially.
And and so it again, it was a no brainer, so to speak.
You came, you came to me when you were writing the book and
that's what you said. You're like, this is either
going to, you know, set me up for decades to come or we just
move on to the next. One, yeah, or we just try the
next project. And I was like, yeah, that's
that makes. A lot of sense and you know, we,
we this business is it, you know, it's a hits business,
right. Like I mean as you've seen it's
you put out 50 pieces of content, 40 don't really do a
whole lot, 9 do really well and then one is just like.
You. Know basically drives most of
your results for the entire year and.
Right, and it makes all the the work for the other 49 that
didn't work out worth it. Yeah.
And so it's, it's another, there's a distribution of that,
right. So it's, it's you in in, in a
sense you had to do those other 49 to get to that 50th 1:00.
You can't just only do the 50th 1:00.
I think that's one of the biggest takeaways I've had from
working with you. 2 is that like trying two or three times?
That's not that's not risk taking trying 100 times.
OK, now we're talking that we're we're getting there at least.
Yeah. So just just taking the at bats,
that's where it is. Yeah, and it's again, it comes
back to poker, right? Like you can, you can sit down
for a single session in poker and get get dealt amazing cards
and lose money the entire night every single time, you know, and
but it's you have to realize that it's it's you have to sit
down and play 100 thousands of hands over many, many, many,
many nights for that to even out and you to come out ahead.
Like you can still be making good decisions.
But you're like I I simply have to play for hundreds of hours to
for this to for this luck to even out right.
So. Yeah, Kenny Rogers was right.
What did he say you? Got to know when to hold him, no
one to fold him. Wow, no one to walk around, it's
deep. We we better, we better.
Cut this. Yeah.
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It's Question Time. It is Question Time.
What do the people want to know? Well, it's Jace, or that's the
username. I'm guessing it's just Jace from
YouTube wants to know. How do you accept the fact that
life is going to hurt no matter what you do?
I understand that there are things you can control to
alleviate your suffering, but how do you cope with the fact
that some terrible things just happen?
I love it's such a dark. Question.
It is such a fucking dark note. This this this reader is is is a
fan after my own heart is like, how do you tolerate that
everything causes suffering. It's so metal to me.
This comes back to the fail rate then and again.
I think this is something that people we don't think about it
because it's uncomfortable. Like again, if you zoom out,
right, like let's not just talk about, you know, dentists and
contractors or car parts, zoom out.
Everybody you know is going to die at some point.
Most of the people you know, most of the people you care
about in your life will die at some point during your life.
And if and the only people that's not true for are the
people who are going to die first.
So you know, it, it's these sorts of tragedies.
I mean, statistically speaking, I think it's like a third of the
population contracts cancer at some point.
Like 10% of the population will get in a serious physical
accident at some point. These things are normal and we
like to pretend they're not. We like to pretend that they're
this a great misfortune. But over a long enough period of
time, over a large enough sample size, almost all of us are going
to have some sort of dramatic, calamitous event in our lives.
And that's just a fact. And so when I hear a question
like that, like, how do you deal with it, I think I don't think
you do. Like, I think you just accept
it. That's just you.
You stare it in the face, you stare it head on.
You don't try to avoid it. You don't try to look away.
That is part of the deal. You get to live.
You get to do all these cool things.
You get to, you know, fucking ride the Ferris wheel and eat
great food and have sex and joke with your friends and
everything. But part of that bargain is you
have to have a tragedy every once in a while.
That's just how life goes. And you, you take, you take, you
have to take both together. You don't get to have all the
joyous moments without the tragedy.
And you don't get to have all you know, you don't have the
tragedy without the joyous moments.
So to me, this is, you know, the Buddhist in me is like, just
stare it in the face, man. Like don't fucking look away.
Like this is life. This is what you're doing here.
Yeah, I've even found too, that like when things are going well,
I always try to remind myself I'm like, OK, you know, the
shoe, the other shoe is going to drop at some point.
And that doesn't help. It doesn't help because you're
right. You just have to accept that
because when things are going great and you're like, OK,
prepare myself. Something's around the corner.
Not like in a pessimistic negative way, just like, look,
enjoy this while it lasts. It's going to end.
It's all going to end one day. And yet when those things, it
still just sucks. You know, and it sucks.
It it, it never won't suck and you shouldn't try to make it not
suck like you should grieve and be sad and be upset when these
things happen. Is there anything to that like
that grieving process, do you think?
You know, they they talk about the whole grief process.
Even that doesn't. I don't know that doesn't.
Work well, it's funny because if you, if you talk to grief
counselors, they say like, the worst thing you can do is just
try to avoid the process, right? Right.
Like try to avoid the emotions that you're feeling.
Try to avoid the reality of what's happened.
The second worst thing you can do is probably try to hurry
through them. Yes, you know, so it's just,
it's just the process like you said, you just have to face it.
Yeah, I, I, I think again, having that context,
understanding that that this is also part of life and this is
also part of what makes life rich.
And you know, it is kind of the calamitous moments, the tragic
moments that remind us what what matters it they remind us to be
grateful for what we have, to take care of the people who are
still with us. I think it's important to kind
of see there's like a sad beauty and a lot of these events and
experiences. There's a lot of good that can
be pulled out of them, that can be rung out of them through the
grieving process. And and so it's again, I think,
and I come back to it's if you've been fortunate enough to
survive a bunch of difficult situations, you learn that.
You learn that, yeah, that was awful.
I never want to do that again, but I'm a better person for it.
And it's reminded me to be better to the the people I care
about in my life because of it. Right.
But if you've never had any any of those experiences, then it
just, it just seems horrible and awful and you want to avoid it
as much as possible. Right, Yeah.
And we've talked a lot about post traumatic growth and the
podcast you've written about it. The point thereto isn't that, as
you just mentioned, it's not that these traumatic events or
the awful things that happened to us are good.
They're not in any way. It's all about the process
they're after. And it isn't, it isn't even, I
don't think it's like seeing these things in a positive light
or changing the way you see trauma or awful things that
happen to people. It's more just like, yeah, this
is a part of life and accepting that and and finding a way to
you, like you said, stare in the face, accept it and be like this
is what it is and this is what I'm dealing with and taking
responsibility. For Yeah, I, there's two things,
right? There's the event itself, and
then there's the narrative you and the meaning you create
around the event, you know, and the, the event itself will
always be horrible and tragic and, and painful, but the, the,
the meaning and the narrative you wrap around it can be quite
positive. Yes, the the two arrows of
Buddhism, the two arrows of pain.
That's the initial pain and the interpretation of the pain.
Yes, you can, You can derive a lot of power and meaning from
tragic events. And I think the developing, the
ability to do that is, is one of the most useful things.
And, and again, I, you know, I bring it back to the discussion
of risk. You know, that the risk
aversion, I think a lot of it is because people don't feel
equipped to do that. So they're like, well, if I fail
at this, then my life's over. And it's like, well, no, no,
it's not actually. You're you'll you'll actually
learn a lot from that failure, and you'll probably become
stronger and more resilient and more resourceful.
And so, yeah, what's the downside again?
Yeah, you know, But if you don't feel equipped to do that when
things go wrong, then you'll just avoid things going wrong as
much as possible. Yeah, yeah.
You know, the age-old question, why do good things happen to bad
people? Is that the right question even? 00:44:04,160 I've always wondered about that. 00:44:05,280 I'm like that, you know, because
what we're talking about is that.
Yeah, just terrible things, Will.
Happen. Wait, did you just say why do
good things happen to bad people?
I probably did. You meant what I know Why do bad
things happen to good people? And you know why do good things
happen to? People, why do good things
happen to bad people? That's the other side of the
question. That's actually look at I was
being profound and you didn't even.
Know it. That is that That is a stumper
right there. Yeah.
Why do good things happen to bad people?
I mean, both good and bad things happen, both good and bad
people, right? You know, things just happen.
There it's we, we like to imagine that there's like a
divine justice that is just partitioning perfectly, like,
you know, only good experiences for the good people and only bad
experience. Now life is really complicated.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know if that helps, but. Yeah, sorry, Jase, no.
Again, again, because I go back to it, I was just like, even you
can, you can do all of this and you can say, and a lot of
people, a lot of the questions we get are how do I just feel
better about this? And it's like, wow, I don't know
if you do. This is what we do here, right?
Like this whole industry is full of people promising to make you
feel better about bad things. And, and sorry, I'm not that
guy. Like bad things, like they're
always going to be things in your life that make you feel bad
dude. Sorry, but you'll get better at
it. That's a super cheery note.
We should end up. Yeah.
Thanks, Mark. It's got dark.
Pretty fast. Why do good things happen to
bad? People, why do good things
happen to bad people? I have no.
Idea. Yeah, All right, well, Drew
didn't prepare a wisdom of the week.
I'm quickly, I'm pulling this one out of my ass, but here you
go. The Shakespeare line from
Hamlet. He says nothing is good or bad.
It is our thinking that makes it.
So yes, thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe.
If you want to submit a question, you can e-mail us at
podcast at markmanson.net. And if you what else, what else
do they want to do? What else do we want them to do? 00:46:08,400 Sign up for the newsletter.
Yeah, I would just sign up for the newsletter.
Yeah, go sign up for the newsletter, I said.
We send out we send out a couple pieces of advice every Monday
morning, and then we share other readers breakthroughs from the
previous week. The newsletter is called Your
Next Breakthrough. Yeah, I think.
That's it. I think that's.
It all right, we'll be back next week.
Thank you, everybody. Bye, guys.
The Subtle Art I'm Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. 00:46:36,960 Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.