We all want to get better in life, but what if trying to get
better actually makes us feel worse?
The topic of today's episode is an interesting one, and it's
actually brought up by you, the listeners.
We sourced questions from you all, and we picked up a few that
all fell under a similar theme. What do you do when trying to
improve your life makes you feel worse?
In the past I've written about this concept and I call it the
self improvement paradox, and it shows up in all sorts of
different situations. Our first reader question is
going to ask about situations where we feel try hard, or where
the harder we try to do something the worse at it we
seem to get. The next question dives into how
people use goal setting as a way to maybe avoid their problems
rather than actually solve their problems.
And the last question comes at me a little bit and challenges
my take on self esteem and at how I present it in the subtle
art of not giving a fuck. And I hate to say it Drew, but I
think this reader has a point. I think I might have been wrong
about something. I know that's never happened
before in the history of my career, but today might be the
first time. Reminder to you all.
If you want to submit questions, go to markmanson.net/questions.
Send in an audio or short video of your question and if it's
good enough. If Drew deems it worthy of my
attention, we might just answer it on a podcast.
So let's get into it. Wait, are you allowed to say
fuck in your podcast intro? Oh fuck, I just did.
This is the subtle art of Not Giving a fuck podcast with your
host Mark Manson. All right, the first question
comes from a listener named James, and he is concerned about
being try hard. Oh hi Mark.
So my question to you and the pod has to do with the topic of
self improvement. A big thing I see holding people
back from improving themselves, for example, in the arena of
social skills is this belief that doing so is try hard.
Like by deciding to improve themselves they're admitting
defeat as if they're not good enough as they are.
So what do you say to the people who see conscious self
improvement as an admission of personal inadequacy?
Like, what's the reframe here? Thanks.
This is a really good question, Drew, because as I've noted
before, especially with the backwards law stuff there, there
does seem to be a sub genre of personal development that the
harder you try at it, seemingly the worse you get.
Where I've identified that this tends to happen is around social
or emotional issues. You know, if you're trying to be
liked by a bunch of people, that's going to cause you to
behave in ways that makes you less likable.
If you're trying to be happy all the time, you're going to think
and be preoccupied in such ways that you are less likely to be
happy all the time. And so I do think this is a
legitimate concern. Although the sense I get from
the way James phrases it is that the core issue here is actually
a lot of times ego, right? Like if we're constantly worried
about coming across as somebody who is is desperate to be good
at something or or admitting that they're bad at something,
we're essentially going to just prevent ourselves from changing
in the 1st place. I mean this kind of comes back
to personal development. One O 1, which is the number one
reason that people don't ultimately change or grow is
because their ego prevents them from admitting that they need to
change and grow. And I think that ego stems from
a preoccupation of of how they may appear to others, or
admitting that either fallible or flawed or have a problem in
the first place. Yeah, you see this in a lot of
different areas. And especially, like, I think
you've noted before, you know, when you were giving dating
advice to men and stuff like that, like, oh God, if you would
admit that you were terrible with women, you couldn't, you
couldn't get any man to admit that, right, that.
'D be an interesting experiment, actually.
It's just have dudes go into a bar and be like I'm terrible
with girls. What's your name?
See how that turns? Out there's worse pickup lines.
Yeah, yeah, there are worse pickup lines, that's for sure.
But yeah, I think a lot of the resistance that people have is
around social stigma. You know, I know that I run into
this a lot with men in therapy. You know, a lot of men don't
like to admit that they go to therapy or that they want to go
to therapy. I know that I went to therapy
throughout much of my 20s, and I didn't really tell anybody about
it. I think I wrote an article about
it at one point. But everybody in my personal
life there was like not a peep. It was lip sealed.
So I I understand there is this weird resistance to trying to
improve certain areas of your life, your dating life, your
social skills, your sex life. It's taboo.
It's there's a weird social judgement that can be attached
with it. Separate from that, I think
there's also a backwards law issue, which is that if you try
to control the outcome too much of AA social or emotional
problem, you actually remove yourself from it.
Paradoxically, sometimes the best way to improve at something
is to stop trying to improve at it, right?
It's like you stop trying to be happy, then that's actually when
you become happy. If you stop trying to make
somebody like you, that's actually when they start liking
you. And I think it's just it's
useful to be aware of those contacts and try to be aware of
when you're being quote UN quote, try hard.
But also don't let the stigma of being try hard at something stop
you from trying. Yeah, that was actually one
thing I was going to ask you about was how do you think this
applies? You know, your idea of going
from bad to OK and OK to great is there.
Is there a time and a place to be?
Try hard and to experiment. Like say you are somebody who's
just terrible in social situations and you want to
improve that. And so you go out and you try
the new conversation topics or styles of humor, or you talk to
people you wouldn't normally talk to.
That's going to come off as try hard and it's probably going to
suck and be painful to some extent, this kind of pain period
you've talked about before, but you're also going to learn a lot
if you take the right attitude towards it.
So do you think there are situations in which being try
hard is OK? I think it is.
It's definitely better than doing nothing at all.
And I do think there are situations where you kind of
have to go through a try hard phase to learn how to stop being
try hard. There's this popular two by two
grid where it says any skill that you want to develop, you
start at unconscious on competence.
Basically, you're bad at it, and you don't even realize how bad
at it you are. Step 2 is conscious
incompetence, which is you start to understand all the ways
you're bad at something. Step three is conscious
competence, which is you get good at it, but you still have
to, like, really think about it and focus on it.
And then Step 4 is unconscious competence.
And I think in particular when it comes to like social skills
or social graces, people just kind of expect you to be at Step
4 all the time. And if you're not at Step 4, if
you're not a naturally charismatic and social person,
you need to go through that painful process of like, OK,
being bad at it, but being conscious of what you're working
on. And then once you do that for a
while, you can kind of figure out where you're trying too hard
or where you're you're coming on too strong.
Maybe you're being needy, looking for reactions from
people you can back off a little bit.
Eventually you find that right balance and you're unconscious
competence. You have good social skills, but
it still takes a lot of effort and focus, which can still be a
little bit try hard. But then from there you move
into unconscious competence. So it's I think in a lot of
context, being try hard is just a necessary step to not being
terrible at something like I'd rather be try hard than just not
try at all. OK.
What is it between the like the social and emotional things that
we try to improve and there's like a stigma around that versus
other things. So you're going to build a
business or get in shape or whatever.
People don't judge you so much for that.
What is it in particular, do you think that is the difference
between those two and the stigma related to them?
It's a really good question. I The only thing that comes to
mind is that it is things that are more emotional in nature.
We tend to judge harsher. So like, let's say I decide to
sell a bunch of T-shirts or something and nobody buys them.
Nobody really cares. So nobody's going to be like, oh
man, Mark's, so try hard. It's like, who?
Whatever. Doesn't matter.
Whereas if I come on here one day and just make a complete ass
out of myself, let's say I just there's a we have a 45 minute
podcast episode that is literally just nothing but me,
begging to be liked and sobbing into the microphone and crying
about how nobody appreciates me. Stay tuned, everybody.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Next time on the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast.
The emotional nature of that is jarring.
It makes people uncomfortable and I think people, anything
that makes people emotionally uncomfortable, they tend to
judge much more harshly. And so if we're interacting with
somebody who is extremely insecure and being driven by
that insecurity, it makes us feel that insecurity a little
bit. And we like we want to get away
from that. OK.
Yeah. And possibly 2 spotlights our
own insecurities as well, so. Yeah, I think this is also a
reason why insecure people tend to attract each other, right?
So it's it's like the only person that a try hard insecure
person is going to appeal to is another try hard insecure
person. And they're going to be like, Oh
my God, we're like we're soul mates.
And then that's just how relationships go wrong.
James also gets extra credit for being the first one to reference
the room he started out with the oh hi Mark, I don't know if you
caught that. The the what reference the what
the? The The movie, The room.
You know the room, don't you? Do you not know the movie?
The room. I don't know, man.
Do you not know it's considered to be one of the worst movies
ever made? Oh, hi, Mark.
Are you serious? You don't know The Room.
I you know what this is like, This is like the third or fourth
time somebody has tried to bring up this reference with me every
single time. They are just as disappointed as
you are right now. Oh.
Man, that is disappointing. Oh.
Maybe. Maybe that.
Maybe that's my homework this week is I need to go watch the
room and and finally understand this reference that people keep
trying to foist upon me. It's so bad, you would love it.
You're you're being try hard right now, Drew.
I don't get the reference. All right.
It's reaching. All right, We'll just go with
it. We've got a great juxtaposition
of questions here. James's question is very
representative of people who are, like, afraid to try to
improve themselves. They probably err too far on the
side of complacency. The next question comes from
Abby, and she asked the flip side of that where is there such
a thing as trying too hard to improve yourself?
So let's listen to that. If I was to ask you one
question, it would be this. Where is the middle ground
between accepting that you're fucked up and also not being OK
with fear convincing you to be comfortable?
Because to me it seems like this weird teeter totter between the
two. Where is the middle ground?
Where do I continue to grow but also still challenge myself and
then also calm down and enjoy the present?
Like it's really sometimes really infuriating for someone
like me who's very goal driven and wants to constantly hit new
goals to be OK with all of it. So what is the answer?
All right, Mark, can I can I tack my question?
Go for it. I have an example.
I tend to be pretty hard on myself, and I judge myself
especially for things like not following through on things,
quitting too early, giving up too early, that sort of thing.
I use that to kind of push myself.
But it can also be very damaging, obviously too.
But recently, and I kind of stopped and I thought, wait a
second, is that, is that actually true?
Do I not follow through all the time?
Do I give up too early? Has that actually been true?
Can I find examples where this hasn't been true?
I did find some solid examples in my life where that was
actually true, and it refuted this whole idea of me not being
able to follow through on things.
And so first of all, you know, I I feel like I found that
balance. So do you think there is like a
balance you have to find between this?
But second two, do you think that all of those years of me
feeling inadequate and using that as motivation to go out and
accomplish all of these things, do you think that was, I don't
know, necessary or is there a better way to go about that or I
don't know? How do you see that?
I definitely think there's a better way to go about it.
I, you know, I think what Abby is asking, and kind of what
you're asking as well, is when you're constantly driving
yourself to do something, where is there a room for self
acceptance? Where is there a room for, like,
you know what, I don't need to accomplish this to feel good
about myself. I'm not a loser if I fail at
this goal. I'm not, There's nothing wrong
with me if I'm not able to do all the things that I want to
do. And I think this this question
of balance between self acceptance and self improvement
is really, really important because on the surface, they are
contradictory. Like, by definition, to try to
improve yourself requires acknowledging something that
you're not good enough at, like something is flawed or
incomplete or suboptimal. And the definition of self
acceptance is recognizing that you don't necessarily have to
improve anything to be OK to be happy, to be loved.
You know, whatever verb you want to throw in there.
You know my approach to this situation, one of the most
profound things I ever heard. I was on a meditation retreat
when I was in college, and the Zen master said you are perfect
as you are and you can always be better.
And that blew my fucking mind and has stuck with me ever
since. It's one of those classic Zen
paradoxes that if you dig into it enough, it it you find a lot
of profound truth. And the way I've come to
interpret this is that you need both.
If you only have, you are perfect, as you are, that
generally leads to complacency and narcissism.
By the way, if you if you already think you're fucking
amazing at everything you do, you're probably a narcissist.
And if you are always focusing on I can always be better, well
then you. You probably drive yourself into
a lot of insecure, hyperactive, overachieving, perfectionist
type stuff, and neither of those places are are healthy on their
own. But when you put them together
of like, I'm perfect as I am, but I can also be better,
there's some sort of balance that happens and I think
generally people start on one side of that spectrum or the
other. There are people who are
probably a little bit too complacent and a little bit too
accepting of their circumstances.
Maybe they don't even think they're accepting of their
circumstances. Like they they just blame
everybody else for their problems.
So they in a sense, they are kind of accepting their
circumstances. And then there are people who
are constantly feel like they need to do something, change
something, achieve something, accomplish something to, I
guess, prove their own value to themselves.
And I think for the latter people, the trick is to teach
yourself, as it sounds like you have recently, teach yourself to
be fine with not accomplishing everything, not necessarily
achieving everything, maybe occasionally not even having a
goal. And for the former people, the
challenges is to get them to push themselves into you know,
it's what we talked about with the first question is
acknowledging like, hey, I'm kind of screwed up, I need to
improve, I need to do this, let's get it done.
I also think ultimately the you know what matters most is the
motivation behind each one. Are you accepting yourself
because you're avoiding the problems in your life?
Well then that's probably a kind of a toxic self acceptance.
Are you constantly trying to improve yourself or achieve
things or chase after goals because you're running away from
a bunch of emotional shit that you don't want to deal with?
Well then that's probably a toxic form of self improvement.
I think ideally these you need. Not only do you want to have
both, but they need to be motivated by the right thing.
You know, the self acceptance really needs to be motivated by,
hey, I'm a flawed human being and that's fine.
And I'm still a great person and I've still done a lot of great
things and I still like myself. And the pursuit of self
improvement also needs to be motivated by the right thing.
It it can't be motivated by well if I just do this then people
will respect me. Or if I if I just accomplish
that then I can be happy because that never works, that you're
kind of just digging the hole even further.
Strangely this this really turns into a a discussion of self
esteem. Not only do you need both self
acceptance and self improvement, but there needs to be a healthy
self esteem underlying both of them.
Otherwise, both will will fuck you up in various ways.
Well, I would just say that I think the balance that I found
was very much the the things that I could point to as
evidence for actually being OK with myself and following
through on those things. Those things were things that
were important to me. And a lot of the things that
don't follow through on were like you just mentioned I was,
you know, trying to prove myself to other people or whatever it
was. And and the the balance and the
acceptance that I found was I'm OK not having done those things
and impressing other people or proving myself to other people.
I'm OK with that. The the things I have
accomplished feel good to me and and that's where I found it
anyway. Yeah, I mean I would say the
final boss for you is probably being OK without accomplishing
things that are even important to you, like really fucking
something up significant and then learning to be OK with
that. Like the the self forgiveness.
That's the final form of this, this beast that you're
confronting. It's a tall mountain to climb
for me. You know, I've always been very
driven and done a lot of goals, but my toxicity was more on the
self acceptance side. I've definitely wrestled with a
compensatory narcissism throughout my life, kind of
convincing myself my shit doesn't stink.
And I think that's why my work is so focused on failure, being
wrong, being rejected. Because when I was young, my
brain just kind of filtered those things out of my reality
to protect itself. It is very therapeutic for me to
remind myself of those things, whereas as you said, you you
you've self flagellate even when probably nothing is even wrong
in the first place. Yeah.
And do you think it like, is it OK to use those kinds of
examples? Where where I'm at right now
anyway, is that like I'm using that as evidence?
I'm I'm proud of the things that I've done and that's that's good
to me. I think that's somewhat healthy,
right? Like I like you said, you
shouldn't be thinking your shit doesn't stink if you haven't
done anything right like so. There's a balance there too now. 00:19:15,360 You know, so a big component of
self esteem is simply accumulating evidence that you
have done good and valuable things in the world.
That said, I do think there's also a component of it which I
think sometimes is referred to as self compassion, which is
accepting and and loving yourself even in the moments
where you haven't done anything good, where you have actually
failed and screwed up. I think that's a component
that's also needs to be there as well.
But that one is super hard looking back and and kind of
noting all the good things you've done throughout your
life. I think that's a really good
exercise and it's important. But I think the harder exercise
is looking at at the low points and the failures and and being
like that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that. 00:19:56,200 I'm OK.
I think that's yeah, that's what I kind of came to was that I
there's a lot more of those examples actually just because
you know just statistics, you know probabilities, you're going
to try a lot of things and most of them aren't going to work out
and that's what I think I I. Became more accepting of like,
yeah. This ties in pretty well with
the third question here, which is about self esteem, and it's
actually a criticism of my take on self esteem and the subtle
art of not giving a fuck. So this is Amy.
Let's listen in. Hi, my name is Amy Jenkins.
I just got the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving Enough and
have a couple of questions. In chapter three you give an
example of a man you called Jimmy who you imply had problems
because his self esteem was too high.
You further blame high self esteem on participation
certificates and grade inflation.
I think your logic is flawed and drawing a line from high self
esteem to producing people like Jimmy.
I think your angle is wrong. It sounds like you are blaming
high self esteem and I really think you want to or should
blame the overreaction from places like schools and making
harmful decisions. I contend that there are many
more people with devastating low self esteem.
They deserve to know they are a worthy human being and that it
is a mental health issue that can be treated.
The researchers in the 70s should be praised for their
findings. Researchers and mental health
professionals 40 years later still stand behind that.
So I have two questions. One, would you be willing to dig
into the research to either back up or revise your assertions
that grade inflation and participation certificates cost
too much? Sofa.
Self esteem, which then 'cause people like Jimmy to exist?
And two, would you be willing to consider making it clear in
future writings and address past publications that highest self
esteem is a critical element of good health?
Thanks. Amy coming in hot.
Coming out here. Just throwing bombs.
The first thing I'll say about this is, so one of the things
that I think readers love about my books is that I have this
kind of flippant and ridiculous tone.
You know, there's a lot of humour there's a lot of sarcasm. 00:22:11,640 I'm I'm a little bit over the
top and I think readers really appreciate that.
But the problem is, is that when you when you come upon a subject
like self esteem that is very nuanced, the nuance gets lost.
And and this is actually something I mean Drew, you and I
have talked about this for years with all my articles and
newsletters and books and everything.
Like there's a trade off between entertaining and informing.
Every author is somewhere on that continuum.
And I I'm definitely probably more on the entertainment side
than a lot of authors, especially academic authors.
And that's fine, we all have our own roles to play.
All that said, I think Amy has a point.
I did play a little bit fast and loose with the self esteem stuff
in Chapter 3 of Subtle Art. So I I'd like to use the next
few minutes to kind of breakdown my actual position with a little
bit more nuance. Explain the research a little
bit better and and I guess clarify my position beyond, you
know, some snarky jokes about participation trophies and a
story about my old friend Jimmy. So self esteem was a term coined
by Nathaniel Brandon I think in the late 50s or early 60s.
And I I think the original definition of self esteem is
really solid and really, really important, which is basically
self esteem is a very deep and nuanced concept of essentially
the quality of a person's relationship with them.
Self and the quality of your relationship with yourself is
going to have a massive impact on everything you do and every
other relationship you have in life.
The problem is, how do you measure that relationship with
yourself? What you often find in
psychology is that psychologists will come up with a really good
concept or construct and then they'll proceed to measure it
like fucking shit. Like it gets so watered down in
their surveys and in various studies that it kind of becomes
like a caricature of itself. And the problem is, is that
early on psychologists came up with a lot of inventories and
surveys that were very surface level.
There's always a question of how accurately does the data
collected map to the concept as it was originally conceived, and
in my opinion, it was not. It did not map very well.
Psychology eventually figured this out.
In fact, in I think in the late 90s or early 2000s, a famous
psychologist named Roy Baumeister did some pretty
significant studies where he actually went to maximum
security prisons and measured the self esteem among the
inmates there. And not only did he find that
inmates of maximum security prisons had high levels of self
esteem, but the the most violent and horrible criminals tended to
have the highest levels of anybody.
So this raised a lot of questions like are we measuring
self esteem or are we measuring narcissism?
And actually, what is the difference between self esteem
and narcissism? That's actually a very nuanced
and difficult question to answer.
So I do think the the self esteem question and the
measurement of it has gotten better over the past couple
decades. I still think it's an important
concept and has significant effects on people's mental
health and and and happiness, but the the way it has been
measured and implemented throughout history is spotty at
best. Now now in subtle art, I
actually make the point that the best way to measure self esteem
is not asking how people feel about the good things about
themselves. The most accurate way to measure
it is to ask people how they feel about the bad parts about
themselves. Somebody with a high self esteem
will look at the worst aspects of themselves and they will say,
you know what, I'm not so great at this and I screwed up here
and there. That's OK.
I'm a good person. I tried my best.
I'm going to do better next time, yadda yadda.
Whereas a person with low self esteem is either going to have
absolutely horrible relationship with the worst aspects of
themselves or if they're narcissistic, they are not even
going to acknowledge that they have any bad aspects of
themselves at all. So to me, that's a much more
effective way of measuring and approaching the concept.
And there have been some researchers in the last 10 years
who have who have taken that approach towards self esteem and
and in my opinion it's it's a much better way to go about it.
So while Amy is correct that I did kind of just shit all over
self esteem without giving it a nuanced treatment, I do stand by
the conclusion I made in the book.
I I don't know. I think though too, from the
research, since Roy Baumaster did all that stuff in the late
90s, early 2000s, there's been more research.
Obviously it's better research. Longitudinal stuff.
What they've also found though too is that the the effect sizes
that self esteem has on all these outcomes.
So the impact it has on whatever outcome you're measuring is
fairly small, usually in the 8 to 10% range.
And it's about exactly the same as a lot of other measures that
we've looked at too. So things like self efficacy,
positive emotions, your attachment, security, whether or
not you have a growth mindset, all of these things are about
about equal and contributing to a lot of these life outcomes.
You know, whether it's school, work, income, all of that stuff,
they're all about the same. So I think not only is is kind
of these the participation trophy trope a little bit
overblown, I think self esteem itself might be a little bit
overblown too. Yeah.
And that wouldn't surprise me because and I guess this would
be the second criticism I have. And again this kind of got lost
in the book because the book really glossed over it but self
esteem really took a hold of policy makers in the 70s and 80s
in a way that no no other psychological concept had in the
past. And and I kind of think maybe
maybe growth mindset has took the same a similar hold in
education. But you know, self esteem really
was everywhere and it was pitched by a lot of consultants
and psychologists at the time as a little bit of a cure all for a
lot of society's ills. And it seemed like an easy
implementable solution I guess to a lot of policy makers and
politicians and so they bought into it wholesale.
So it's just a classic case of something being oversold.
It is important, it matters and it is a good concept and it's
absolutely should be studied and we should work to improve our
self esteem as much as possible. But I just think it was oversold
a little bit and to to Amy's point, that psychologists still
research it today and take it stand by it today, that's
absolutely true. There are also a lot of
psychologists who think it's overblown bullshit and are very
critical of it. So like many things in in
science, it is debated. There's new data coming in all
the time. It's complicated, and obviously
when you're writing a fuck book you don't necessarily get into
the nuances of that debate. Well, I think too, though, Mark,
part of the overblown nature of self esteem is probably an
artifact of the the fact that in the United States we kind of
obsess over feeling good about ourselves too, right.
And so I think I got a lot of air time because of that.
Like, policy makers probably grabbed on to that in the 70s
and 80s because it's like, yeah, of course we want to feel great
about ourselves, so let's just run with it, right?
Yeah, that makes sense. But I do want to bring this back
around to to the the two previous questions because I do
think self esteem is actually incredibly relevant for both of
those. And it kind of solves the
paradox of self improvement, right, which is somebody with
high self esteem or somebody who who is forgiving of their own
flaws or tolerant of their own mistakes.
They are going to be much more willing to appear, try hard or,
you know, screw up in front of other people.
And somebody with high self esteem is also not going to
compulsively push themselves to accomplish goal after goal after
goal. They're going to be a little bit
more accommodating of like, you know what, I set this goal.
I got halfway there. That's still good.
I think it's fine. I do think self esteem is a
critical component of these questions of how do we choose to
measure ourselves? Do we choose to measure
ourselves by our successes or do we choose to measure ourselves
by our mistakes and embarrassments?
And the truth of the matter is, I don't know how much we should
measure ourselves by any of those things.
I think there's at a certain point, there's like a
fundamental value to yourself that you have to find and
acknowledge and live with. That is what makes every other
pursuit a little bit easier. So the self improvement paradox. 00:30:43,160 You are perfect as you are and
you can always be better. Ultimately, you have to be OK
with yourself under both conditions.
That's the way that's the way out of it.
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me how handsome I am because man, my ego needs it.
I'm. I'm sick of being try hard, man. 00:31:14,560 Just just lay it all out there
for me. Let me let me lap it up Till
next time folks.