The (Not So) Subtle Art Of Mark Manson: The Truth About Self-Help, Transformation, & Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck

Mark Manson is a renowned author and cultural critic, known for “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”—a global phenomenon that has remained on the NYT bestseller list for an unprecedented 328 weeks. This conversation explores the paradox between genuine growth and modern self-help culture. We discuss Mark’s dramatic transformation, his contrarian views on personal development, why being intelligent often hinders change, and how the most effective solutions in life are typically the boring ones no one wants to hear about. In today’s metrics-driven landscape, he reveals how to navigate content creation with integrity. Mark is endlessly insightful. This one is profound and irreverently fun. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Nordic Track: Take 10% off any purchase of $999+ with code RICHROLL 👉nordictrack.com/rich-roll Squarespace: Use the offer code RichRoll to save 10% off your first purchase 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Calm: Get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription 👉calm.com/richroll. Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF boncharge.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Mark Manson?

  There's probably been more good advice shared on the internet in the past 15 years than the rest of human history combined. Even people who, by and large, have ridiculous positions and beliefs about most things will occasionally share a really good piece of information. So there's a mental struggle of sifting through all the information out there.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  What does effective self-help actually mean? How should we think about things like ambition, success, and happiness? Well, here to separate brilliance from bullshit is Mark Manson. Returning for a second appearance on the podcast, Mark is best known as the mega bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and is the host of the newly ascendant podcast of the same inescapable name.

• 1:55Mark Manson?

  When we're rewarded for believing something, our brain will find a way to believe it. Some new fangled seminar in a big theater with 5,000 people and some guru who's got some new method that's gonna like change this and that in your life overnight. All those things feel very special, but ultimately what works is very boring.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  Today, we take aim at the self-help industrial complex, the gurus that populate it, our respective perspectives as participants in this economy, and the various principles that govern our decisions as content creators. We also discuss Mark's health journey, the key role identity plays in the context of personal change, and tons more, as Mark would like to say, life advice that doesn't suck.

• 2:42Mark Manson?

  I believe a lot of dumb things in my life that got me here. Sometimes you gotta go through some of those dumb beliefs or like a weird phase, right? To kind of like learn the lesson and get to the right spot. Nobody's got it all figured out. And definitely don't listen to people who claim they're gonna save you and claim they have it all figured out, because those people never do.

• 3:05Rich Roll?

  It's good to see you. Thank you for doing this.

• 3:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  And I thought, as I shared with you a moment ago, like, I just wanna have fun.

• 3:11Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Fuck your books, fuck your backstory, you're a smart guy, let's just fuck around and have a good time.

• 3:18Mark Manson?

  I love it.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  Also, it's a low lift, you know?

• 3:21Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 3:21Rich Roll?

  And I've been accused of being a little too serious on my podcast, so a little levity.

• 3:25Mark Manson?

  We'll fix that.

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 3:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  We'll fix that right up. And part of the low lift aspect of it is, and I'm sure, I wanna, you know, I wanna talk to you about your podcast, is it's daunting when you have somebody coming on your show who's accomplished and has written books and you wanna be prepared. And the amount of like research and preparation, it's great, because I get to learn about these people and read their books, and I feel very nourished in that. But, you know, I've been doing this 12 years, like, it's a lot, right? It's a lot. And so, it's kind of nice to just sit with someone and it's like, I don't have to worry about that. And you've kind of contended with this a little bit in the shorter lifespan of what you've been doing.

• 4:05Mark Manson?

  So I feel like, I mean, to give listeners context, I've been podcasting for almost a year. It'll be a year in about six weeks. And yeah, the learning curve of interviewing. So the funny thing about that is that I often find that the interviews that I prepare less for end up being better in some ways, because there's more genuine curiosity. I don't feel like I'm trying to like construct the conversation as much. But I think so much of it too, just comes down to guest chemistry.

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  A lot of it is, because if you don't have the chemistry, like if you connect, it'll have its own flow and rhythm and you'll be fine. If you don't and you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting, then you have to kind of like resort to the preparation that you've put in. But this is something I'm playing with right now, because I think I've historically always prided myself on the amount of time that I invest in each person. And generally, it pays off. Like, it's good. And I think it's showing the guest respect. Like, they're coming and they're giving their time. And you're going to pay them back for that by rising up as much as you can to their level, and then sharing it with your audience. That's the bargain, right? But there's a cost to that, which

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  is, if you're so prepared, you're never going to be surprised. And when they tell the story they've told before, you've already heard it. So you're glazing over. And you're not really present. And so you're not responding. You're just sort of thinking about what's coming next, because you kind of anticipate what they're going to be saying. And so I do think it's better to be less prepared. And I think the pride that I put into my preparation was just a mask for insecurity and fear. Like, am I going to be able to be out on the tight rope without a net? And I've been doing this so long, and it's like, it always works out for better. I mean, they're not all home runs, but like, I should

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  be able to have enough confidence at this point that it's going to be okay.

• 6:03Mark Manson?

  We were talking before we went live about how competitive the podcast space has gotten, and how the stakes keep getting answered up, right? And if you think about it... I think research is the low hanging fruit conversation, right? When there's not many podcasts, then you can out research other podcasters and that's kind of your edge. But in this day and age in 2024, every big podcaster has a research team, has an assistant, has people summarizing.

• 6:32Rich Roll?

  I don't have those things.

• 6:33Mark Manson?

  Okay, well.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  That's more, that's more about my. Strike, strike that from your record. Yeah, but those are, but that, maybe I should though, because that speaks to my control issues more than anything else.

• 6:45Mark Manson?

  I read, I mean, I read every book, cover to cover. No, but I do think that is, that's something that anybody can do. It's really just a matter of putting the hours in. I think having flow, chemistry, reading the person in the moment, knowing how to direct the conversation somewhere new, get the guest talking about something that they haven't thought about before, nobody's asked them before. I think that's like, that's actually a rare skill. I think that's a much more difficult skill than, say, reading somebody's entire.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that. Well, I think what's interesting about your show, and you've kind of, you're in a, you're in a sort of reinvention of it already at this point, is that you're bringing everything that you do to the, first of all, like, why did you start a podcast? And, yeah, let's just start there.

• 7:38Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  Like, what led you to decide, like, okay, I'm gonna jump into the fray here into this crowded marketplace that's increasingly more and more competitive and harder and harder to stand out?

• 7:48Mark Manson?

  I will give you the short version, and if you want to go deeper on any part, I'm happy to. The short version is, the first seven years of my career, I was an internet guy. I was a blogger primarily, and actually dabbled in podcasts back in 2011, 2012. But everything I did back then, it was posting online, trying to build an audience, posting on social media, et cetera. I did that very well. I built an audience. I got a book deal. The book, which is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, came out in 2016, blew up beyond, I think, pretty much anybody's expectation, including my own. And I think when that happened, I. Accidentally started thinking I was an author. I was like, oh, well, this is the most successful thing I've ever done.

• 8:33Mark Manson?

  Therefore, this is just what I should do all the time. And so I wrote a bunch of books over the next four or five years. And I mean, I like writing, I like books. But in hindsight, I didn't love being an author. That wasn't what I initially started doing. And a few years ago, I got burnt out. I took some time off and I made an agreement with myself, which is I'm going to go back to work, but I'm going to pay very close attention to what's fun and what just kind of feels like an obligation in some shape or form. And I started doing that and what I realized was all the internet stuff felt fun. And all the author stuff felt like an obligation.

• 9:15Mark Manson?

  And I canceled a bunch of contracts. I gave a bunch of money back. And I decided, I'm like, I want to be an internet guy. Like, I love making content. I love the media business. I love building a team, scaling content. And a podcast is something that, you know, my team and I, we had talked about for five, six years. But it always just got put on the back burner because there's another book deal. Got to write another book, got to go out with Will Smith, got to write Will's book. You know, like, so when the table was cleared, it's like, okay, let's finally do the podcast. Because that's just, it's part of what I find fun.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  What I think is really fresh and interesting about your show is that you're bringing all of that kind of internet sensibility into the podcast space. You're doing it with a level of integrity that kind of belies the savviness of how the internet works. And it's this fine line that you walk between that, that kind of value-based nuance-associated advice that is kind of your trademark, but also is just truth, right? While also understanding and appreciating like what works on the internet.

• 10:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 10:31Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  And you seem to have struck a bargain that, that works. Like, you're not participating in the clickbait economy. You're doing the content the way that you want to do it. But it has that veneer or that sensibility. Like, it's all with the understanding of like, I know how to do this so that it, so that it traffics in the discourse of what's happening. And this is something that... I struggle with a lot. I probably have a reductive view of it because I think like, "Well, I'm doing this long-form stuff and it's complicated and it's nuanced and blah, blah, and the internet isn't interested in this. Like, if I want to grow, I have to go out and be, you know, a heterodox, you know, lunatic and, and create these insane

• 11:15Rich Roll?

  thumbnails and titles. And, you know, if I'm not going to do that, well, I just have to like, be at peace with the fact that like, it's not going to catch the wave of what the algorithm wants to share with people." But you've seemed to figure this out like the best of both worlds.

• 11:30Mark Manson?

  Eh, I don't know about that. I mean, I appreciate that. That's very kind of you to say. There's a balance, first of all, of how much do you chase the algorithm and how much do you really just try to stay completely true to what you want to put out? I always see those two things as, there's a Venn diagram, you know, there's the, what you want to make and then what the world wants to see. And I try to stay in the overlap of those two circles. And if you get out of one of those two circles for too long, then you're either going to be, you know, on an island by yourself, or you're going to turn into, you know, some inter-whatever crazy person has sabotaged their own career

• 12:13Mark Manson?

  lately. We all know the type. It is a fine line to walk. It's a little bit of a tight rope to walk. But, you know, I, I think I've benefited a lot from just, there's been a pent-up demand over a lot of years of people wanting something like this from me and it not being there. But I'll say too, you know, coming into this space, I also have the advantage of I've been on everybody's show. I'm friends with half the big podcasters in this space. And coming into it, I really am being conscious of like, I want to do it different, like reflect what made, you know, what people like about my writing. I want it to be reflected in the show itself as well. So- More casual, more laid back. It's actually something that we're trying to lean more into now.

• 12:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've noticed that. I've noticed that. You've sort of played around with having guests on while also understanding that your audience wants to hear from you and they want to get something out of it rather than, oh, it's going to be a long conversation with somebody I've heard of who wrote a book that I probably should read. Right? And you kind of flipped that equation. The way you position it and set it up, it's like, we're going to answer a question today. And to answer this question, I have this person here who's going to help us, but it's not necessarily the bright, hot, white spotlight on the guest in the way that these shows typically kind of

• 13:33Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  Orient it. And that works really well for you, I think.

• 13:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  And even now, you're kind of moving away from that, right? Like, I like the new, the new version of it. I think that that suits you really well.

• 13:45Mark Manson?

  Thanks. We've worked really hard on that the last few months. I think the idea now is that we're moving to more of a segment-based show. So there's that question each episode, right? Like that fundamental question, like, what's the fuck of the week? Like, what are you worrying about too much this week? Or what do you wish you cared more about this week? And then we've got a second segment called Brilliant or Bullshit, where we break down, debunk, bad studies, surveys, memes, you know, trends going on, or talk about maybe something that's brilliant that most people haven't heard of. And then we answer audience questions. And the idea is we're going to bring guests back soon. And the idea is instead of it being about like, you know, hey, Rich, you know, you just had a new book. Tell us about, you know, whatever you've been working on. It's, the guests can join us and do the segments with us.

• 14:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Mark Manson?

  So we've got predefined topics and segments and then they can

• 14:34Rich Roll?

  They pop in. They have to adhere to your format, basically. Yeah.

• 14:38Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  I like it. I like the one, not the most recent one you did, but the one right before that. About self-help, I think there's a lot that we could like unpack in that.

• 14:46Mark Manson?

  The self-help junkies, yes.

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but before we get off the kind of podcasting thing, I mean, I think, did you see Tim Ferriss's blog the other day on this? Everything that he brought up in that are all things that I've been thinking about. As somebody who is part of this world where you're doing long-form interviews with authors and all different kinds of people, in this competitive sort of space where there's more and more people doing that, how do you distinguish yourself? And what's happened over the last, you know, five or seven years is that, obviously, publishing houses know that the way to get their books sold is to get their authors on podcasts. This is the new book tour. And so, the podcasting industry has basically become an adjunct of the publishing industry,

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  and it's become really easy to just book guests reactively based upon incoming pitches, right? So I get a dozen pitches a day, every book, all the galleys, all that kind of stuff. And you can just say, yes, yes, yes, no. And I think I would probably plead guilty to kind of just being lazy and falling into that. And a lot of these people are amazing, like, you want to get them on. And even knowing, like, oh, I know if I get this person on, they're going to be on all the same shows that are kind of similar to me, I'm still willing to enter into that bargain. But I think it's gotten to the point where it's kind of a drag, you know what I mean?

• 16:07Mark Manson?

  It is, yeah.

• 16:08Rich Roll?

  And as exciting as it is to have the opportunity to talk to some of these people, many of which are like luminaries, and it's cool to meet them, at some point, you have to decide, like, what is your show about and what is your point of view? If you're going to distinguish yourself from everybody else, you need to be pretty clear on that and start getting more proactive about the people you really want to get, and summon the kind of courage and willingness to say no to some of those fancy people, so that you are, you know, kind of defining yourself a little bit differently to stand out.

• 16:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I think that is... Definitely something, I mean, even before I jumped into this podcasting space, I could sense that from the outside. Every show is kind of becoming the same show and somebody needs to differentiate somehow. And I think everybody's feeling that. And unless you're willing to do like just an insane number of episodes, like some people do, you really need to sit down and think like, okay, what makes me different? And it's funny because before we settled on this format, another one that we considered is, you know, maybe we do take all those guests. Maybe we do take, you know, just the, the book tour of authors that come through, come to LA and come on your show and then they come over to my house and they do my show.

• 17:27Mark Manson?

  And then they go up to Louis and they do his show and then they go down to Tom.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Some of them are transparent about it and some of them are cagey about it. Like they don't want to tell you that they just came from so and so's house. And then right after you, they're going to that other guy's house.

• 17:39Mark Manson?

  I'm like, dude, I get it, man. I've launched a book. I get it. I get it.

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  I don't begrudge the authors. That's what you should be doing.

• 17:46Mark Manson?

  So one of the things that we considered, because we did a couple of episodes. So like Cal Newport, his book came out in March and I actually think he came to my house right after.

• 17:58Rich Roll?

  Like right after coming to.

• 17:59Mark Manson?

  I think he, I think he did your show and then he immediately came over and did my show. But it was funny because I read his new book and I actually, I disagreed with a lot of it. And so, and it's funny because it's the only, only guest interview I did, I've done on my entire show that I was nervous about. I was like, I'm going to do a whole interview about the things I disagree with him about. And, and basically try to get him to convince me. It's, I, to this day, I think it's the best interview I did of all the interviews. I mean, well, I'm not retired from interviews, so it's my best interview of all time of the 25 or 26 that I did. It, it actually turned out great and it's like one of our best episodes. And so we thought about, like, we talked about, like, maybe that's our format. Maybe it's just, instead of like, you know, having Cal Newport come on and deliver his

• 18:42Mark Manson?

  greatest hits that he just gave to you and gave to Huberman and gave to Louis and everybody else, maybe I'm the guy who's like, okay, so I've got six things in your book that I disagree with. Let's get into them, right? And then like, that could be a show format. But then ultimately I decided I was like, I don't want to be, I'm not a. Like I'm a pretty chill.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, then you're just gonna be in conflict all the time?

• 19:04Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how does that feel?

• 19:05Mark Manson?

  And that's not my personality. I don't like arguing with people and it puts a lot of pressure on me because then I feel like I need to be right.

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:11Mark Manson?

  And the funny thing with Cal was like, he came on and he actually like explained and identified, you know, things that I had missed or that I hadn't considered. He actually like won me over on pretty much all the points. It was very satisfying for me as well, but I was like, yeah, I don't want to pursue that. But I think that could be a great show.

• 19:29Rich Roll?

  Right. The broader point being if you're going to have someone on your show who's doing all the shows, like, figure out a different approach.

• 19:38Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  Right. Either don't do it, or if you're concerned about distinguishing yourself, like have an angle that's gonna make it different.

• 19:45Mark Manson?

  Or just do what Tim's doing, which is just, he's not taking those guests anymore.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  Right. So he, yeah, he calls it the 90/10 rule.

• 19:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  Which basically means like the top 10 of the fancy people or whatever, like he'll do that 10% of the time.

• 19:59Mark Manson?

  It was only guests that 90% of his audience would recognize or 10%.

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 20:05Mark Manson?

  Less than 10%.

• 20:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:06Mark Manson?

  More 90%, less than 10%.

• 20:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Mark Manson?

  So it's like either somebody insanely popular like Hugh Jackman or.

• 20:12Rich Roll?

  Or, yeah, like somebody totally obscure.

• 20:14Mark Manson?

  Or LeBron James or whatever, or some, like an expert that nobody's ever heard of.

• 20:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Have you seen what Daniel Tosh is doing with his podcast? He's great. He's hilarious, but he'll have on like, his first episode was with his wife's gynecologist.

• 20:28Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  You know, like just.

• 20:31Mark Manson?

  All right.

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  Like totally off the, the program, you know what I mean?

• 20:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  And you have to be gifted and charismatic and entertaining to bring on like an ordinary person and create something compelling out of that, I think.

• 20:44Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Mark Manson?

  We've run into this with YouTube videos where I've tried to take fans with specific problems in their lives and do a video around that problem, like helping them get through that problem. And it was funny because before we shot the videos, I was really anxious and self-conscious about like, okay, can I actually get this person to change on camera? Like if I try to help this person and they, it doesn't do anything, like I'm gonna look like an idiot.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Mark Manson?

  But it was funny because that was actually the easy part. Like we got great results from everybody. The problem was, is that the average person is just not very fun to watch or listen to for more than 10 seconds at a time.

• 21:24Mark Manson?

  And so we had to, we had to kind of scrap that idea. But um.

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  The other thing that, that we kind of share is that we both live in Los Angeles. We're both like, I guess technically, you know, quote unquote, part of the kind of self-help economy, right? While also kind of being allergic to it at the same time. It's this like acknowledgement that like I, yes, this is what I do, but also like I can't stand these people and most of these books are terrible. Like, and like, what am I, like naval gazing over like, what am I doing? Right? And so I'm just curious, like, how do you think about how you kind of, you know, navigate and comport yourself in this sort of ecosystem in terms of like, how you show up, how you

• 22:12Rich Roll?

  share, how you write, how you podcast, like trying to put out something that's good while also recognizing that, you know, you're, you're kind of in it, just like all these other people that you might, you might have issues with. I don't know how to say that any, anymore clearly.

• 22:29Mark Manson?

  I love joking that I'm, I'm a self-hating self-help guru. I just love playing with that idea. I hate the idea that anybody is like a self-help guru and I, and I find most of this industry distasteful. I mean, psychology itself, like academic psychology itself, you could argue that a large percentage of it is not scientific already. And then you look at the amount of life advice that is delivered with complete negligence of the psychological literature. And like, we're not even unscientific, we're just like off entirely. So I struggle with it sometimes. It's actually been interesting. It's been harder moving to LA because you're, I'm surrounded by it all the time.

• 23:12Mark Manson?

  Other places I've lived, nobody really talks like this, nobody like, it's not part of like an everyday conversation. Here in LA, you can't go anywhere with somebody talking to you about like their energy or the, the universe and, you know, whatever the fucking crystal they're wearing around their neck, you know, it's just like, it's, it's a constant here. And I guess there's kind of two, I have two reactions or two thoughts about it is one is, I try to be.

• 23:42Mark Manson?

  I try to be respectful and not demeaning towards the individual. Like, I understand there's a lot of dumb things I've believed throughout my life. And a lot of those dumb things actually helped me in the short term. And I had to eventually like move past them. So like, I try to be very empathetic of that. Like, everybody has their own process and, you know, not everybody like spends nearly as many hours as I do on this stuff. And it like, that's fine. The second thing I try to remember too, that I just find amusing is that generally all the like the woo woo people, the woo woo California people, they all assume that I'm in on it too. So like, they all like, they'll talk to me as if like, well, you get it.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  You're a friend.

• 24:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you get it. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's like my spirit animal was talking to me last night. And I'm like, but you, you understand what I'm saying, right? Like, sure. Sure, whatever.

• 24:34Rich Roll?

  You were, you were, uh, I, I loved the, uh, the exchange you were having on the recent podcast about self-help and this kind of obsession that you see in Los Angeles around self-help. It's sort of an identity as much as, as anything else is. And I think it's an interesting kind of like thread to pull on here because I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it's a population of people who are interested in growth. But at the same time, like anything, once it, you know, calcifies around an identity, it becomes sort of antithetical to the growth, right? Like, people become stuck in this kind of attachment to, you know, who they are,

• 25:18Rich Roll?

  where they're actually not progressing or growing. They're just kind of like stuck in this analysis paralysis or kind of hamster wheel of like, reading a bunch of books and going to a bunch of conferences, but not actually putting any of the, like, if you took any piece of the advice that they're inundating their, their brains with, it would probably work pretty well.

• 25:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Rich Roll?

  But it's just, it's just going from one to the next, to the next, to the next. And then where's the actual like method of incorporating it into your life?

• 25:51Mark Manson?

  So I grew up in the Bible Belt in Texas. And I grew up going to church three times a week. Everybody around me was extremely religious. Most of the people, I would say, did not. Walk the walk, you know, they go to church twice a week and go to Bible study and quote all the verses to you, but they kind of just still live like a normal human, like did all the terrible things that most humans do, uh, didn't, didn't have a self-consciousness about their actions or their behaviors or how it fit into their kind of ethical principles. Um, since moving to LA, I don't see much difference here. It reminds me very much of where I grew up.

• 26:28Rich Roll?

  It's church and religion and, and just a secular context.

• 26:32Mark Manson?

  It's a secular religion and you just replace God with growth. Um, you replace the Holy Spirit with energy frequencies. It's the same shit. And the funny thing is, is, you know, people, instead of church, they go to a seminar, um, instead of praying, they meditate, do yoga. Um, instead of doing a potluck charity dinner, they, you know, do a mastermind and most of them still behave exactly the same afterwards.

• 27:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I think in, in many ways it's a, it's a reaction to the decline of community-based, you know, sort of spiritual gatherings, religious gatherings, whatever your doctrine might be. Uh, and it's not surprising because I think as human beings, you know, we're, we're hardwired to, you know, find comfort in a tribe and we want to be part of something that's, that is not just bigger than us, but, you know, speaks to kind of the unanswerable questions of what it means to be human.

• 27:32Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. And, and so I don't, and I don't want people to take this wrong way. Like I'm not, I'm not denigrating this. I guess what I'm denigrating is like the lack of self-awareness because it's the people in Texas I grew up with, they knew what they were doing. They knew they were going to church. They knew they were worshiping God. They knew they were, you know, reading the Bible, but fucking up each week and not doing it right. You know, there was a self-awareness about it and an honesty about it. What I find here and with the self-help space in general is that there's not that awareness. There's not that honesty. And in fact, there's a little bit of an arrogance, a little bit of a spiritual narcissism of like, well, I did.

• 28:14Mark Manson?

  You know, 12 meditation retreats and an ayahuasca trip. And my shaman said that I've reached this next level. And so, you know, you should listen to me. Yeah, really?

• 28:26Mark Manson?

  Because you look like the same fucking person I've known in the last two years, right? Like, nothing has changed. You're literally making the same mistakes you made three years ago.

• 28:33Rich Roll?

  The garments, the attire might change a little bit.

• 28:36Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly. A new tattoo or two. But, um, so I don't mean to, as you said, there is a, I do believe there's a fundamental, like, human drive towards

• 28:48Mark Manson?

  community, spiritual practice, all these things. There's nothing wrong with that. What I find here is, I described it to a friend recently, as I said, that California is an incredibly conformist place, but the conformity involves not thinking you're conforming.

• 29:05Mark Manson?

  It's like, one of the most conformist places I've ever lived.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  That's analogous to the group think that is, like, heterodox thinking, right? Like, all the heterodox thinkers are, lack of self-awareness, that all of their heterodoxy falls into, like, one very narrow lane.

• 29:23Mark Manson?

  Yes. If you're compulsively contrarian, then you're not contrarian.

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:27Mark Manson?

  You're just picking the other side of every bet.

• 29:31Mark Manson?

  Which I feel like a lot of people have built careers in podcasts and YouTube, just being compulsively contrarian.

• 29:47Rich Roll?

  We're in like, uh, like this guru sphere, right? Particularly in the self-help, you know, world, where there are outsized personalities out there who are commandeering, like, very large audiences and a significant mind share

• 30:04Rich Roll?

  amongst, you know, a vast population of people who are probably genuinely looking for good advice and guidance at some period in their life in which they need it.

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Back to like, kind of what YouTube and the internet rewards. It rewards hot takes, contrarianism, heterodox thinking, certainty, conviction, you know, charisma, all of these things, none of which necessarily are related to truth, veracity, and, you know, good advice, right? So you, as somebody who I know thinks about like, how do I provide good advice and do it with integrity? You're out there not competing, but you know, you're in a world in which, you know, those other people are out there, for better or worse.

• 30:50Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  Who are motivated not by values necessarily, but more and more by metrics like growth. And, you know, with growth, that means platforming people who might be not the best people to platform, under the rubric of like, just asking questions and all of that kind of thing. Like, you know, let me tell you what they don't want you to know, and, you know, everything you've ever been told is a lie. And, you know, this is like, what works, right?

• 31:19Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  And I don't know if it's a willful blindness, or a lack of self-awareness, or maybe just a, I don't give a fuck. Like, it doesn't matter, as long as I'm growing, and more and more people are paying attention to me.

• 31:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I have mixed feelings about this, because I think it's good for the world. Actually, let me start with a caveat, and then I'll go into my mixed feelings. So the caveat of all of this is, I want to say that as this is simultaneously having the guru sphere, as you put it, I really like that word, is exploding, right? Self-help is bigger than it's ever been. It's become mainstream, essentially. There is an unprecedented wealth of genuinely good mental health and physical health information that's been, become available in the last 10, 15 years, that was... Never available in all of human history.

• 32:15Mark Manson?

  Like, there's probably been more good advice shared on the internet in the past 15 years than the rest of human history combined. So that's mixed in with all this stuff. And it's often very, very frustrating to, as a consumer, to parse the good from the bad. Even people who, by and large, have ridiculous positions and beliefs about most things will occasionally share a really good piece of information. So it's like, there's a mental struggle of sifting through all the information out there. So I want to put that on the table first. And then that relates to my mixed feelings in the following way, which is, ultimately,

• 32:55Mark Manson?

  I feel like it's a good thing to let two opposing narratives into the public sphere and let them kind of combat each other. And because a lot of times, the conventional narrative does end up being false. I mean, how much nutritional information over the past 20 years, you know, that was conventional turned up to be absolutely terrible and horrible for people, you know, a decade later, right? So it's like, the conventional wisdom does get overturned frequently, and so you do want that, you do want it to be free and available for people to attack and combat and offer alternative theories. And yeah, even occasionally they're harebrained, you know, sure, whatever. That, I think, is fine.

• 33:39Mark Manson?

  And I do think it does cause a lot of stress and strife among the population and among consumers. It makes our lives a little bit more complicated, as it puts more responsibility on us to figure out what we're consuming and whether it's good or not. What I do worry about is, to your point, the over-indexing of crazy town, let's call it. I've kind of come to, just as somebody who's observed online media my entire adult life and tried to like, really kind of track it and understand why certain audiences behave certain ways, I've kind of come to the conclusion that perhaps the most chronically online population in the world are the crazy town conspiracy theory people. They're more engaged, they're more vocal.

• 34:23Mark Manson?

  If they like you, they'll watch everything, they'll like everything, they'll comment on everything. And so I think, as creators, I think there are a lot of people in our industry who, you know, they'll dip their toe in that pool. In the crazy town pool and they'll get that flood of engagement. And that feels good. It's like, especially, I mean, when you've been, say grinding through 20 episodes and you're at this plateau and like nothing's really popping off or performing well. And you're like, man, what am I? What are we doing wrong? Like, what can I be doing better? And all of a sudden, one just like shoots off like a rocket. You're like, man, I should do more of that. So I get where it comes from. I understand where it comes from. I don't think most of them realize what they're doing.

• 35:07Mark Manson?

  I think they're just kind of.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  Their dopamine mechanism has been hijacked. It's like a, it's like a casino. It's like a, you know, it's like a slot machine and then you win. And then suddenly you have this euphoric reaction. Of course, you're gonna chase, you're gonna chase that dragon.

• 35:23Mark Manson?

  Totally. So you bet a little bit more and then a little bit more and a little bit more. And then you go bankrupt, right? And then I think there's, we've seen the creator audience version of that multiple times where somebody dips their toe in crazy town, gets that huge bump in engagement and traffic. They're like, oh, maybe I'll go back for seconds. And oh, maybe I'll go back for thrurs. Maybe I'll have this Looney Tune guys on my podcast and have a two hour conversation with them and see how that goes, right? And then the next thing you know, he's just like.

• 35:49Rich Roll?

  Well, the more time you spend with those people, you're gonna start like believing, you know, what they're saying. And then before you know it, you become a mouthpiece for those ideas yourself.

• 35:59Mark Manson?

  I think, you know, what you just said, I think you pointed out the difference between you and me and a lot of these other people in the space, which is I fundamentally believe, and I think, I, I think you share this belief, which is that we don't believe what's true. We believe what we're incentivized to believe. Like as human beings, there's just so much, like as somebody who's studied psychology, we are so good at bullshitting ourselves that when we're incentivized. Like when we're rewarded for believing something, our brain will find a way to believe it. And I think the people I see falling into this trap that we're talking about, I think are the people who have a little bit of an idealistic view of truth of like, I'm just

• 36:44Mark Manson?

  having conversations, I'm just trying to find the truth. And if I'm honest with them, and if I have an honest conversation, eventually the truth will come out. And they don't realize that your belief or your definition of what's true can get warped by the incentives that are placed around you. There's a really famous quote, I forget, some congressman from years and years ago, but he said it's, the quote is something like, I think it was Upton Sinclair, I don't know. Anyway, he said, "It's impossible to get a man to believe that he's doing something evil when his paycheck depends on it."

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Right, that is Upton Sinclair.

• 37:19Mark Manson?

  Okay, it is Upton Sinclair.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's really a two-pronged thing. On the one hand, we're, we're much more easily manipulated than, than we want to believe. And that's true of everybody, no matter how smart you are. And perhaps the more smart you are, the more easy the mark you are.

• 37:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  Secondarily, our capacity for denial and kind of defense mechanisms around what we decide we want to believe is more powerful than we want to accept.

• 37:44Mark Manson?

  Can we dig into that, that first one? Cause I love that. I noticed this so early in my career, a lot of people don't know this, I started out as a dating coach. And one of, one of the things I noticed very early on is that the hardest clients were the super smart guys. Because the smarter person is, the more they can rationalize whatever they want to believe. Like a smart person can come up with a million excuses not to do something, and all of them sound like really good excuses, like completely valid. Whereas like somebody who's just average intelligence, maybe they'll give one excuse and then you like disarm that and they're like, okay, maybe you're right, I should go do this, you know? And with highly intelligent people, there's, you can kind of seduce yourself by saying

• 38:29Mark Manson?

  like, wow, I'm so smart at these other things. I've got, I've got all these degrees, I like made all this money doing this other thing. I can keep my head on straight. Where, whereas actually, you are probably more susceptible because...

• 38:41Mark Manson?

  As your beliefs warp towards your incentives, you're gonna be so good at constructing narratives and stories to justify those.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that intelligence turns on itself.

• 38:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, this is a thing in recovery also. Like, the smart person is a real tough customer when it comes to getting on board with the 12 steps. It's like, yeah, I mean, the smarter you are, you walk in, you're like, and somebody says like, you need to show up here every day and like, stand at the door and shake hands with everyone and say hello. It's like, fuck you. You need to make coffee. You're trying to outthink and outsmart all of these things and say, well, what does this have to do with, you know, drinking or not drinking or, you know, I don't understand why I would have to make an inventory. Like, in my mind, okay, I've done the inventory in my mind. Why do I have to write it down? Like, I'm smart enough. I got it, right?

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  And all of these things become antagonists to the recovery process and make, you know, intelligence the enemy of the growth that you seek.

• 39:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Are you David Foster Wallace fan?

• 39:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Have you ever seen his interviews about going to AA?

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  A bunch of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:48Mark Manson?

  He talks about that. Because first of all, like, dude has the biggest brain on the planet. It's like, so smart, but it's like, imagine a guy-

• 39:54Rich Roll?

  But he never would really admit that he had a problem. He would say that he was going for research.

• 39:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

• 40:01Rich Roll?

  Research, yeah. My friends took me, you know, all this sort of stuff.

• 40:05Mark Manson?

  I think, um, listening to him talk about it and write about it in a couple of places, it's so funny because he talks about that, about how, as a literary author, it killed him that every AA lesson was essentially just a cliche, right? Like, and he was like, he would be like, no, no, no, you guys, you guys have to like, no, we need to discuss this, you know, he'd like, start trying to talk about it like, as if he was a philosophy professor.

• 40:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, he's bringing his gigantic brain into this and wants to break down the epistemics of the entire, you know, underpinnings of this.

• 40:37Mark Manson?

  The problem is-

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  And then, and then he goes out and gets drunk.

• 40:39Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Because the problem is your lizard brain. It's not your, it's not your, you know, philosophy brain.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. And then, you know, the, the self-delusion part too, has sort of antecedents in recovery as well. Like, I know well, like, the power, my own power to create denial. When it comes to something that I want to do, you know, I can come up with some pretty good arguments about why it's just fine.

• 41:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:04Rich Roll?

  You know, and so, if that's the case, then what's happening in, you know, the guru sphere or the kind of- You know, digital information landscape at large with somebody whose dopamine mechanism is getting lit up and then realizes that not only are the incentives to move more in that direction, like the pot of gold is real.

• 41:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  For doing that.

• 41:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Speaking of intellectualizing addiction, I'd love to talk to you about this. I've been playing with the idea, I mean, I don't know if there's any value in it of like going to a meeting. So I'm in this weird gray area and maybe it's not a gray area, but on the one hand, as you know, I quit drinking two years ago. The more distance I get from quitting, the more I look back and realize how big of a problem it was. And the more I look at my people in my family and my family history and I'm like, okay, this is like, this is feeling like alcoholism. Like this is, it's alcoholism mish.

• 42:11Mark Manson?

  And then I was talking to a friend who's a recovered alcoholic and I was talking to him about this and I was like, I was like, I'm starting to wonder if I'm an alcoholic. And then he kind of laughed and he was like, well, if you have to wonder.

• 42:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Mark Manson?

  He was like, nobody who's not an alcoholic ever wonders.

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  Only an alcoholic like asks himself or herself that question.

• 42:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:30Rich Roll?

  People who are not alcoholics, that doesn't occur to them.

• 42:32Mark Manson?

  Exactly. So.

• 42:34Rich Roll?

  And yet it is a self diagnosed thing. Like it's not for anybody else to say.

• 42:39Mark Manson?

  Totally. So I'm in this weird place where I'm like, am I, is this like an identity? Like, should I make this part of my identity? Like, if I start drinking again, is this, am I bullshitting myself? Like, is it going to get bad again? Right? So I don't know. I'm in like, there's a lot of confusion in my life at the moment around this.

• 43:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You're in like this weird liminal gray zone with the whole thing. Well, we talked a little bit about this when I was on your show. The joke came up around like, is a good alcoholic, one who is just, who can figure out a way to continue to be an alcoholic and drink? Or is a good alcoholic, one who realizes he needs to stop?

• 43:19Mark Manson?

  Right, right.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  And get sober. And I could sense like you're, you were kind of like trying to feel like where you fit into this whole thing.

• 43:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Rich Roll?

  As I was kind of sharing my story. And I think, well, a couple of things. First of all, if you really want to know the answer, go out and do some more research.

• 43:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Rich Roll?

  You know, go out and start drinking again and see what happens.

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  You can always do that.

• 43:41Mark Manson?

  We have you on the record.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:43Mark Manson?

  So, you know, when I wake up.

• 43:44Rich Roll?

  I'm not encouraging you to do that.

• 43:45Mark Manson?

  When I wake up in a ditch.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  But like, and this is another kind of like a thing. It's like, well, maybe you need to go out and drink some more. If you're not sure, if you're not committed, or you don't think that this program of recovery is for you, like, go out and see what happens out there. And then, you know, we're always here if you want to come back.

• 44:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 44:03Rich Roll?

  So that's an option. The second thing is, on that subject of good alcoholics, when you reflect back on your, your own past and your, your family history, maybe they're good alcoholics who are good at masking it or keeping it just enough under control that, that they could kind of still live their lives and be functioning alcoholics, which doesn't mean they're not alcoholics. It just didn't progress to the state in which it becomes, you know, the kind of dramatic stuff that we talk about.

• 44:33Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  I can't answer that for yourself.

• 44:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  This is really just between you and you. And I would say, does it really matter whether you decide to label yourself an alcoholic or not? If you think that you had a problem with a substance that was antithetical to the person that you want to be, you've taken this huge first step of saying, no more, and not doing it anymore. But then, you have to contend with emotional sobriety. Like, what you've accomplished is abstinence.

• 45:03Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 45:03Rich Roll?

  And we also talked about this too, like, your workaholism, right? And I said, I said, did your workaholism increase once you stopped drinking?

• 45:10Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  And you said, yes. And I'm like, yes, because that, that discomfort inside of you is looking for something to latch on to, to feed it, right? And so it's choosing work right now, which just tells me, there's something there for you to examine within yourself that perhaps could use a little bit, little bit of healing. And, you know, the 12 steps is really good for that. It's good for self-awareness. It's good for kind of understanding your character defects and your patterns and, you know, how your unhealthy relationship with this substance, or however it manifests, workaholism, is interfering with that kind of better version of yourself that you're aspiring to inhabit.

• 45:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, that, that's the other thing that's gotten me thinking too, because ironically, back when I drank. I never considered myself like a very compulsive person. But since I stopped drinking, I've noticed that my behavior in a lot of, not just work, but in a lot of different areas has become much more compulsive. That like I feel-

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Because the alcohol was the solution-

• 46:16Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  -to the problem, not the problem, right? It was a salve to the compulsivity or whatever, the discontentment inside of you that's driving compulsive behavior.

• 46:27Mark Manson?

  But does compulsiveness get solved or does it just get redirected?

• 46:33Rich Roll?

  Well, it can be solved. Like, I don't know, like, there's the whole kind of like dialogue around like, can you actually be healed or are you just always in recovery? And let's just set that aside for now.

• 46:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Rich Roll?

  Certainly, the compulsivity can be, can be held at bay by healing what's beneath the drive to be compulsive in the first place, which is, you know, a psychological examination of self and figuring out like what is causing that.

• 47:06Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  And perhaps that could be healed. That process of, of self-examination and, and healing is a way of, it speaks to like kind of the, the white knuckling versus surrender, right? Like, if you're abstinent and you have this compulsive tendency and you're just kind of like holding on to the edge of the table and like, I hope I'm not compulsive today or I'm gonna go work all day so I don't act out in other ways. Like, you're not really well, you know what I mean?

• 47:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  Like, that's not engaging in your own healing.

• 47:37Mark Manson?

  That, that makes sense to me because, you know, when we had this conversation before, the thing that didn't land for me was that healing the compulsivity, because it's, now, I'm thinking about analogous to like anxiety, right? So like, if you, let's say you have a very highly anxious person. Somebody who's very anxious, they're probably always going to be anxious. Like, the anxiety doesn't go away, it gets managed and there's a comfort that develops in the managing of it, you know? So it's like, the healing is, isn't going from anxiety, like lots of anxiety to zero anxiety, it, the healing is going from-

• 48:17Mark Manson?

  Lots of anxiety that's unmanaged to anxiety that's comfortably managed. Does that make sense?

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, coping mechanisms and strategies.

• 48:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and so I imagine it sounds like what you're saying is like that process is analogous to the compulsivity.

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  I think so, but I think there is, there is a freedom and a liberation that you can experience. And I think that there is a spiritual mystical aspect to it as well, like this idea of letting go rather than holding on and trying to manage something that's unmanageable and saying, instead, I give up, I'm letting go of all of this, I'm turning this over to whatever it is that's more powerful than me.

• 49:03Mark Manson?

  Spirit animals.

• 49:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. You could be to your, you know, yeah, like, like the ayahuasca Road Runner or whatever it is in your case, it doesn't matter.

• 49:12Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  And those are qualitatively two different experiences.

• 49:17Mark Manson?

  Well, it's funny because it's the compulsivity that's showing up in other areas of my life. I would say it's not harming my life. It's a lot of it's just like silly. Like, it's just like, like I play more video games than I used to. And, and my wife pointed it out. And she's like, yeah, you're playing a lot of video games like the last year. And I'm like, huh. Well, yeah, because usually when I used to go out and drink, like, I used to go out and drink. So now I just sit at home and play, play a bunch of video games instead.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  So it's. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that unless you're using that to not deal with something else.

• 49:51Mark Manson?

  Right. If I'm not sleeping.

• 49:52Rich Roll?

  You're like, you don't want to, you have a discomfort or like, you don't want to be around your wife or, you know, something like you're running, you're using it to run away from something.

• 49:59Mark Manson?

  Totally. I guess what I'm talking about is just that there's a lot more nervous energy inside me than I knew because I was drunk or hungover half the time. And now that that's gone, it's like, oh, yeah, I got a lot of nervous energy going on and like, I kind of like constantly feel need to be doing something and.

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  And when you just sit still and do nothing, what is the internal experience?

• 50:26Mark Manson?

  That's a good question. You know, okay, so this gets into meditation. I used to meditate a lot when I was young and I kind of got away from it. And I've had this conversation a lot, especially here in LA, when people ask me, why don't you meditate? And I, my reply is always, I just. Haven't seen a reason to in the last five or six years. I think this is a good reason to. I actually, now that I think about it, because I used to, I used to meditate pretty intensely in my twenties. And then I just kind of moved away from it. I think that would be a good experiment is like, start doing like some longer meditation sessions. And see, see if it's different, see if it feels different.

• 51:07Rich Roll?

  It's in the steps.

• 51:09Mark Manson?

  Is it?

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  It's one of the steps.

• 51:11Mark Manson?

  Meditation.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  Sort of given short shrift in the rooms, but like, yeah, I mean, technically it's one of the steps. And a sort of condition of the alcoholic is a constitutional restlessness.

• 51:26Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  That speaks to a lack of emotional sobriety when you're not actively engaged in like, doing these things to be in the solution. Right? And those things are like the personal inventory and gratitude and service and, you know, all the like, like none of these things are like revolutionary things as, as, as David Foster Wallace would, would give you an earful on. But for whatever fucking reason it works.

• 51:53Mark Manson?

  Of course.

• 51:54Rich Roll?

  And so the not David Foster Wallace doesn't ask questions about why it works. They just do it because it moves their, it moves their life forward in a positive direction.

• 52:04Mark Manson?

  And this ties back into the self-help junkie thing. And this has always been my argument, which is that what works is very boring and it hasn't changed in 10,000 years. It's just that we forget or we avoid or we deny or we, we get bored. And so some new fangled seminar in a big theater with 5,000 people and some guru who's got some new method that's going to like, change this and that in your life overnight. That feels both, there's a complexity to it and complexity, we tend to associate complexity with something valuable. And then two, it's shiny and new. And three, there's a lot of like social proof involved, you know, it's like, oh, there's 5,000 people here, it must work.

• 52:48Mark Manson?

  So all those things feel very special. But ultimately, what works is very boring, which is

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:55Mark Manson?

  Sit in silence, have, practice gratitude, acts of service.

• 52:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, call somebody who's having a hard time.

• 53:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  Eat healthy, exercise. Eat healthy, get sleep, exercise, all of that. But, but we all suffer from, you know, terminal specialness, right? It can't be this.

• 53:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  I've done that and I still like, feel like shit. So it must be the $5,000 seminar. And I'm special and that person's special. And I'm going to go behind the velvet rope and I'm going to get the special answer that only the special people get, right? And there's a halo effect with that. It almost doesn't matter what the person says, just because you've spent the money and there's a lot of

• 53:32Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 53:33Rich Roll?

  drapery and dressing around it. Like perhaps that will get you to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do. But the tale on that is very short, right? Like the half-life, you know, dissipates immediately because most of those are premised on some form of motivation, inspiration and positive psychology.

• 53:51Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 53:51Rich Roll?

  And I know you have a lot to say about that. But the grayer point is you're just running from one thing to the next, under the delusion that you're engaging in your growth, when in fact, you're running away from deep down what you know works. It's just, it just sucks to do it and it's boring and it's not fun.

• 54:11Mark Manson?

  Well, you know, it's funny, I have a very complicated relationship with Tony Robbins and he probably doesn't know who I am, so that's fine. But it, it's funny because for years I looked at his seminars. I've never been to one, but I have a lot of friends who have gone and they would describe them to me and I'm like, that is so ridiculous. Like, you know, this arena with all this like crazy shit going on and fireworks and light shows and all this stuff. And as I've gotten older, as I've talked to more and more people who have like gone to his things, what I realized is that most of the time in his seminar, it's not, there's not teaching, there's not lectures. I mean, there are some of those things.

• 54:54Mark Manson?

  Most of the time spent at his seminar, you're, you're doing one of two things. You're either dancing to music or you're socializing with the people around you. Like they build in exercises for you to socialize and meet the people around you and to connect with them and build friendships.

• 55:12Mark Manson?

  And as I've gotten older, I've realized I'm like, most of the people who probably go to his seminars and report that it was life-changing, or they feel so much better, like 80% of it is probably the dancing and socializing. Like, if you think about your average depressed person, what's true about them? They don't go outside, they don't have enough relationships, they don't have enough going on in their life, they don't move their bodies. And so you put them in this environment, there's a lot of stimulation, they're meeting people, they're talking to people, they're being vulnerable for the first time in years, they're making a new friend, they're dancing more than they've danced since they were like 18 years old. And after five days, they leave, they're like, "Oh my God, I'm a new person."

• 55:55Mark Manson?

  And it's like, that's actually where the vast majority of the value is. But if you advertised a seminar of dancing and talking to people, A, nobody would sign up, and B, they definitely wouldn't pay $5,000 for it. So it's almost like this genius packaging of... The whole point of that seminar is not him, and it's not what's on stage. It's not the theories, it's not the ideas, which, I mean, a lot of them are totally fine and normal. The bulk of the value is the fact that you're just there, moving your body, talking to people, being vulnerable, building relationships.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  That's so interesting. Yeah, I know a lot of people who have not only gone, like, they go and go and go again, right? And these are successful people that are friends of mine that I like a lot. I've never gone, and I just, like, I see him, I see what's happening, and I'm like, I just... There's something inside of me that thinks like, first of all, is this guy even a human being? Like, there's something like alien about this guy.

• 57:01Mark Manson?

  Me too, me too. Like, most of my friends who are into his stuff, they've gone, they've like spent an absurd amount of money, and they've gone to like 15 events. But when I ask them why, you know why they say that? They don't go for him. They go for...

• 57:13Rich Roll?

  The community, the connection.

• 57:15Mark Manson?

  They made a bunch of friends at the seminar, and they all keep in touch. And they're like, "I'm gonna go to the one in August." "Oh, you should go too." "Okay, yeah, let's all go again," you know, and they do it again. And it's, it becomes church. And it's funny because, again, this comes back to the self-awareness thing. There's nothing wrong with it, as long as everybody knows the game they're playing, right? Where I have ethical issue with it is that, I mean, I imagine Tony knows the game that's being played, but most of the attendees don't, and then he gets the credit, right? You know, the attendee's like, "Oh, I've done three Tony Robbins seminars, changed my life, I love it, it's amazing." Great, why did you love it? "Oh, well, you know, Tony this and that, and I learned this and blah, blah, blah." It's like, nah, that's actually not what made you happy.

• 57:58Mark Manson?

  Like, this is actually what, like, all of the research, all the good research that we have on human happiness, shows that this is actually what made you happy.

• 58:06Rich Roll?

  Was taking place, like, in the unconscious part of the experience.

• 58:09Mark Manson?

  In the hall outside the, you know, outside the convention center.

• 58:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I really, I struggle with it because I, again, like, I have lots of friends who've benefited from it tremendously and speak super highly of the experience and of Tony. And then I hear him speak, and it's just, there's always an upsell, there's always, like, the, the use of language is very consciously deployed, and the right name is dropped at the right moment and all this, it's like, it all feels very contrived, and I'm left thinking, like, who is, who is this guy? Like, I never see, and maybe, it's not like I'm paying attention to his stuff, so maybe I'm just missing it, but like, where's the vulnerability on his part? Or, like, I don't get a sense of authenticity, I guess, is what I'm saying.

• 58:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I agree with the contrived thing. I mean, I've only seen videos of his seminars, but, um, anyway, that's an epiphany I had recently, that I kind of came around on, so I've come, I've come, like, there's like a begrudging respect.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  What he's built is incredibly powerful.

• 59:13Mark Manson?

  It is incredible.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  It's not for me to judge, I don't know, like, it's, it's helped a lot of people.

• 59:16Mark Manson?

  It's secular church, and it's like, and look, even if he is a little bit contrived or a little bit aggressive with the, like, the aggressive upselling bugs me too, but, I mean, he built a secular church for people who needed church, and, not saying everybody needs church, I'm just, like, using that figuratively, but, like, need, they need a social group, they need, you know, some sort of higher purpose, they need something to look forward to, you know, he built that, and he, like, marketed it in a way, and provided content in a way that, I don't want to say use the word, trick is a strong word, but, like, convinced people that that's what they were going for, and really, you know, it's the old, like, you-

• 1:00:01Mark Manson?

  Seduce them with candy and then you switch it out for broccoli in the last minute.

• 1:00:13Rich Roll?

  If you were to like, look directly to camera and speak to the person who's feeling lost in their life right now, or without direction, or feeling like they're lacking opportunity, or skills, or the mindset to achieve the dreams or ambitions that they have. But they do have like, a lot of free time, and that free time is spent on YouTube and listening to podcasts and stuff. Like, what's the litmus test for that person to draw that distinction between somebody who's offering advice, who might not have their best interest at heart, versus somebody who's like, this is good, you should subscribe

• 1:00:55Rich Roll?

  to this channel and listen to this person. Like, do you have like, sort of rules or guideposts for trying to help that person who might not have the savviness to make that distinction themselves?

• 1:01:08Mark Manson?

  I think ultimately, it comes down to a couple kind of mental principles that you have to adhere to. Develop a habit of questioning your own assumptions, being willing to question the things that you're excited about or interested in. Not putting anybody on a pedestal, like, nobody's gonna save you, nobody's got it all figured out. And definitely, don't listen to people who claim they're gonna save you, and claim they have it all figured out, because those people never do. That's a good heuristic right there. It's just, is like, index for humility.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  And also, their relationship with like, certainty versus like, nuance.

• 1:01:50Mark Manson?

  Yes. But I should also note here, too, that like, and this is something that I try to repeat quite often on my show, is that even the biggest experts in the world, like Nobel Prize winning psychologists.

• 1:02:04Mark Manson?

  Their shit gets like, you know, fails to replication.

• 1:02:08Rich Roll?

  Right. You were talking about this the other day. Like, so much of this stuff is like a coin toss.

• 1:02:13Mark Manson?

  It's crazy, dude. There are these massive meta-analyses of all of the therapeutic modalities, right? CBT, DBT, IFRB, like psychodynamic, everything. Like, they've gone through dozens and dozens of therapeutic modalities, going back decades, a century. They've run it through hundreds of studies, tens of thousands of patients. They've tracked who's benefited the most, you know? Which therapeutic modality works best for which problems? Which one is most consistent? Which one is the easiest to implement? Almost all of, like, the best ones come back with a 40% hit rate. You know what a placebo hits at? 30%.

• 1:02:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:56Mark Manson?

  That's after 150 years of psychological research. We've gone from 30%.

• 1:03:03Rich Roll?

  It's hardly confidence inspiring.

• 1:03:04Mark Manson?

  30% to 40%. So it's...

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  Well, and, and, and betwixt and between all of these modalities, the real driver is just going to talk to somebody, right? Like, okay, that can take many shapes and forms, but, but, but that alone is the most important piece in the whole puzzle.

• 1:03:21Mark Manson?

  In fact, they've actually, in a lot of those meta-analyses, they compared various therapeutic modalities to simply talking to a friend. And talking to a friend performed just as well.

• 1:03:34Rich Roll?

  Is that true?

• 1:03:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah. In some cases, it performed better than some of the therapies. Like, a lot of this is just to come back to the point of like, uh, of humility. Like, it's, we don't know. And like I said, you know, at the top of the show, I believe a lot of dumb things in my life that got me here, right? And sometimes you gotta go through some of those dumb beliefs or like a weird phase, right? To kind of like learn the lesson and get to the right spot.

• 1:04:07Rich Roll?

  And you have to be allowed to do that without, without like, sort of having to weather judgment or a bunch of people attacking you for it.

• 1:04:14Mark Manson?

  Totally, totally. And I mean, at this point, you know, I've been doing this about 15 years. And I'm sure you've gone through this as well. Like it's, there are a lot of things that I wrote and published and like hung my hat on eight, 10 years ago that like today, I'm like, ooh, no, no.

• 1:04:32Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, to me, yes, of course, right? But to me, like, if you're not feeling that, then you haven't grown at all, right? Like you should, that's, that's appropriate.

• 1:04:40Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:41Rich Roll?

  It's the way it should be.

• 1:04:42Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  So what is something that you've changed your mind on perhaps since your last, your last book came out or the last time that we sat down?

• 1:04:52Mark Manson?

  Recently, it's hard for me to like place when certain beliefs changed, but um, I can say one of the things, and a lot of the beliefs change slowly, but I will say one of the biggest ones that has changed as time has gone on is I think early in my career,

• 1:05:13Mark Manson?

  I had a little bit of a naive belief that with enough effort and focus and the right tools, anybody can kind of change any aspect of themselves, you know? If you wanna be a morning person, if you wanna change careers and go into this, if you wanna like stop having panic attacks and go do this and say, you know, start a skydiving career, like all these things.

• 1:05:36Mark Manson?

  I think when I was younger, I had a little bit of an idealistic belief about people's malleability and the power of personal development and, uh, and just discipline and hard work. And I think as I've gotten older, and this is a combination of two things. One is observing myself and my own fucking thick skull over the last 15 years, but also observing a lot of, a lot of friends, family, fans, audience members, people I've coached, and also just having a much better understanding of the scientific literature.

• 1:06:10Mark Manson?

  A very significant portion of our personalities is genetic and it's baked in. And it's a fact, and to me, this is actually a very liberating thing because I think, like a lot of people don't like hearing this, you know? They, they don't like hearing like, oh, if you're an anxious person at 18, you're probably going to be an anxious person for the rest of your life. Not always, but very likely. They don't like hearing that. But coming back to the surrender point you were making earlier, to me, this is actually liberating because it's, I think, when you believe that anything about yourself can and should be changed and made better, there's an immense amount of pressure you put on yourself. And then when you fail to make that change, or when you don't get the progress you're looking for,

• 1:06:55Mark Manson?

  you really beat yourself up about it.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you just levy all kinds of self judgment on yourself.

• 1:06:59Mark Manson?

  Exactly. And I have found this realization a little bit freeing in the way of like, this is who I am. This is part of who I am. Right? It's like, the same way some people are born athletic, or unathletic, or with really great eyesight, or terrible eyesight, or, you know, with big feet, or small feet, or they can jump high, or they can't jump high. You know, it's like, some people are born anxious and they're unanxious. And all of the things that are like, considered, I guess, bad, you know, like, let's take anxiety, stick with anxiety as an example. You know, we've kind of, this industry writ large has just decided, anxiety's bad. You shouldn't be anxious. We should find ways to make you stop being anxious.

• 1:07:40Mark Manson?

  Well, anxious people, they notice problems sooner. They notice details better. They're much more conscientious about their environment. They can be much more observant of the people around them. Like, there's a lot of benefits that come with high conscientiousness and neuroticism, which is associated with anxiety, that like, we don't think about, we don't talk about.

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a survival mechanism, like, hypervigilance that is born out of probably, you know, being reared in a household or an environment that had aspects of it that were unsafe, that demanded that you be paying attention, and that you kind of be in a state of fight or flight at all times for your own survival. It's just that... Later on in life, you don't need that defense mechanism anymore. It's hardwired into you. And so the question then becomes, like, if it's chronic, yes, it's good. It has its advantages. You are going to do all the things that you just said, but in a chronic state, it's going to impair your health and it's going to derail you in all kinds of different ways. So how can you not just manage it, but kind of unravel it and create new kind of neural

• 1:08:46Rich Roll?

  pathways by going into that, whether it's IFS or like some other? There's all kinds of modalities for doing that, right? A variety of them. There is a way to maybe not completely graduate from that state, but to...

• 1:09:00Mark Manson?

  You can soften the edges and you can definitely, yeah, if it's a chronic thing that is debilitating in some way, you can definitely bring it back from that. You can soften it, but it's never going to go away. There's a certain amount of who you are, like, there's like a center of gravity, right? Or there's like a gravitational level, right? Like, you can push it a little bit away, you know? You can make marginal differences, but you're never going to go from like being a highly anxious person to just a non-anxious person. Like, that just, it's very rare.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  But I think your ability to navigate personal change is improved when you kind of take ownership of your kind of default state, right? Like, this is who I am and this is what I have to work with, right? I'm not going to change my eye color or, you know, suddenly get drafted into the NBA out of the blue, but I can stop drinking, I can lose 40 pounds, I can do all these other things. So I think, I think it goes both ways. Like, I hear what you're saying, but I also think people don't really acknowledge that there is more latitude than they might imagine in other areas of their life.

• 1:10:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah, 100%. So it's like, and this, it almost comes down to like which audience you're speaking to, right? Like, if, I think the self-help industry as a whole probably overestimates how much could be changed and how much should be changed, right? And I think the non-self-help audience probably underestimates how much can be changed and how much should be changed. It's interesting, I heard a quote from a psychiatrist once who said that somebody asked him about overdiagnoses, medication being overdiagnosed, and he said, you know, it's... This is gonna sound paradoxical, but the population is simultaneously over diagnosed and under diagnosed. And what he meant was, he said, overall, there is, if you take the population of people

• 1:10:51Mark Manson?

  who actually have a condition, they are under diagnosed. But if you take the overall population of everybody, they are over diagnosed. And that's because the majority of people who are taking a medication, they're taking it for something that they probably shouldn't be taking it for. But the people who actually need the medication, not enough of them are taking it. So it's like, yeah.

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  No, I get it.

• 1:11:11Mark Manson?

  It all comes down to who goes to psychiatry.

• 1:11:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, there's another kind of parallel in this mental health context, which is, there's never been more awareness of mental health. And that's such a good thing, like, we're acknowledging all of these kind of conditions and how they impact us in variety of ways. And that gives us the ability to heal and grow and live more expandedly, right? At the same time, there's an identity attachment to a lot of these diagnoses that are then kind of used or weaponized to say, well, I can't do that because I have this thing.

• 1:11:47Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 1:11:48Rich Roll?

  Right? Or, the world needs to accommodate me, and I don't need to, like, try to address this because that's the responsibility of everybody else.

• 1:11:57Mark Manson?

  100%. So I think this is a really good, important distinction. I'm glad you brought it up. Because it's, the underlying thing might not be able to be changed, but your attitude, beliefs, and behaviors around it can absolutely be changed. So it's like, maybe, the fundamental anxiety is not gonna be changed, but your reaction to it, your beliefs about it, your narratives that you tell yourself about it, those can absolutely be changed. And that, by itself, can make it totally livable.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:28Mark Manson?

  Right? So, I think there's a lot more of that. Like, that's actually kind of the healthy... Version of self-help, but it's not a sexy thing. It's not, nobody wants to hear that. I get emails from people who, uh, who will say something like, you know, "I'm in med school and I, I hate all the coursework and I can't focus and I don't want to study, "but I really want to be a doctor. "What should I do?" I'm like, "You don't want to be a doctor."

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  You actually don't want to be a doctor.

• 1:12:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you don't want to be a doctor.

• 1:12:58Rich Roll?

  You're trying to convince yourself that you want something that you don't actually want.

• 1:13:02Mark Manson?

  Exactly, and they're like, "Well, no, but maybe if I study more and I like just try harder "and if I learn some productivity tips, you know, then maybe I'll start liking it." And I'm like, "No, no, no, you don't understand."

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  They like the idea of being a doctor.

• 1:13:15Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:13:16Rich Roll?

  But they don't actually like what being a doctor is.

• 1:13:18Mark Manson?

  And so that's a very practical example of just like, "This is who you are. "You are a person who doesn't like studying medicine. "So therefore, you should probably not be a doctor."

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We kind of talked about this when I was on your show, this idea of, of like willingness, "Like what are you willing to do, right, to achieve your goal? "And if you're not willing to do it, maybe it's not the right goal for you."

• 1:13:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  And there's this trope around willingness that I think creates a lot of confusion, "Which is like, "Well, just be willing to be willing," or something, you know, like, "And it's like, what is willingness? "Like you can't compel anyone else or yourself to be willing to do something "that you don't actually..." It's like asking somebody to want something that they don't actually want, right? Willingness is like, it's like a gift from God. Like if, if, if you're graced with some willingness to suddenly do something "you ordinarily wouldn't want to do, where does that come from? "It's internally driven. "I don't know where it comes from, but it's not something that you can just summon "out of, out of like grit or discipline."

• 1:14:26Mark Manson?

  I associate it with giving up. Like what are you willing to give up? Like a willingness to do something means you're okay with the costs and sacrifices involved. And I think- This idea that you should just be willing to do anything for your goal.

• 1:14:46Mark Manson?

  Essentially, what you're saying is you're willing to give up everything for your goal. And I think there's very few things in life that you will feel that way about, or that you should feel that way about. Like, some goals, you shouldn't be willing to give up everything. So, I don't know. It's funny, I had a little, I gave a little spiel about David Goggins on my show a month ago, and we like posted a little short. It was funny, because all the Goggins fanboys came after me. First of all, I love David Goggins. I'm like, huge fucking fan. That dude, like, the amount of times I've been in the gym, and like, heard his voice in my head, when I'm like, getting that last rep.

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  Who's gonna carry the boat?

• 1:15:25Mark Manson?

  Who's gonna carry the boat? You know, I, I, I love that he exists, and I love what he does, and I think he's just, he's an amazing influence. But I also, from an intellectual point of view, I find him fascinating, because there are millions of people like myself, who admire the hell out of him. Yet, I watch him, I'm like, I would never in a million years fucking live like that. Like, that is insane to me. Like, the dude's like running on like, broken feet, and like.

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  But he always, to his credit, he always says, like, "Don't do what I'm doing."

• 1:15:56Mark Manson?

  No, yeah.

• 1:15:56Rich Roll?

  You know, he's, he's very quick to like, tell people not to emulate him.

• 1:16:01Mark Manson?

  So, I'm bringing this back to the willingness thing. Because I find his story interesting, and I find his mindset interesting, because it's, the lengths that he's gone to, to, to do the things that he's done, you have to be willing to give up everything. Like, you literally have to be willing to give up everything. And, and if you like, read his books and learn his story, he did hit a point in his life where he kinda had nothing. So, fuck it, I might as well give up everything for this goal. And I, I feel like he's just kinda like, stuck in that mode. Because like, I look at my life, right? Like, when I was young, I had nothing. And when I started my first business, I was like... I've got nothing, so I will literally give up everything.

• 1:16:43Mark Manson?

  I started working 16 hours a day, broke up with my girlfriend, I moved in with my mom. Like, I literally gave up everything, no social life, nothing. And then I built the business I wanted, but that was easy because I didn't have anything. I look at my life now, like, I start, like, trying to process this now. Got a mortgage, I've got a wife, I've got, you know, aging parents, I've got a great group of friends, I've got, like, very comfortable, I have assets, I have, like, a really nice life. There's actually a lot of shit I don't want to give up anymore, you know?

• 1:17:13Rich Roll?

  Well, this is the dilemma of success, and I think at the crux of this is this idea that it's, it's, listen, willingness, surrender, all of these things, it's easier when you have nothing to lose and you have nothing going on, right? Like, what's the big deal with surrender? Like, you got, like, you're gonna go back to the homeless shelter? Like, it's like, you know what I mean? Like, what are we actually wagering here, right? And then, as a result of that willingness that you demonstrated and that, that depth of surrender where you just let go of, like, every idea you thought would serve you and, you know, allowed yourself to be guided in a new and different way.

• 1:17:53Rich Roll?

  It's that energy and that sensibility and that commitment that delivered you to this place of success. But what happens, and I suffer from this, is that when you arrive there, then you convince yourself that it was you all along, you're in the driver's seat, you're in control, and it's, once again, like, self-will-run riot. So, the self-will-run riot is what created all the problems that led to me losing everything and having to surrender in the first place. And you get amnesia when you become successful because the ego starts to, you know, have free rein again, you know, and convinces you that you're a genius or whatever it is, right? And so, it becomes more difficult then to be in that place of surrender because now

• 1:18:38Rich Roll?

  you have a lot to wager, right? Like, letting go is a much trickier feat because you're like, I don't want to let go. Like, everything's really good, right?

• 1:18:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  And this is, like, where I'm at right now, like... I have to remember like what got me here and what got me here wasn't my ego or anything else. It was like being in that state. And when I start to take it back, that's like when it all begins to like crumble and go away anyway.

• 1:19:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  So the more you hold on to it, the less likely you are to be able to sustain it anyway. And it's not yours to hold on to. Anyway, and everything's shifting and changing always.

• 1:19:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Do you worry about that in the context of audience?

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  I try not to.

• 1:19:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Rich Roll?

  I'm an athlete. I'm competitive. Like I look at the stuff and I'm like, that fucking guy. And like, why is this happening? And you're like, you know, and like, how come this? Like, I can, you know, I can be that person very easily.

• 1:19:38Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:19:38Rich Roll?

  And so I try to like immunize myself from, from all of that because I have no control over it. The only thing I have control over is like, what's coming out of my mouth right now.

• 1:19:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Rich Roll?

  And everything else is none of my business. But it is my business, right? This is like how I'm paying my bills. And obviously, the better everything does, then the, the more people I can hire and the more, you know, like, you know, all that kind of stuff that, that comes with living in the modern world.

• 1:20:04Mark Manson?

  Have you knowingly said something on air and put it out that you knew was gonna lose audience? Like what was?

• 1:20:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 1:20:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:14Mark Manson?

  How was that process for you?

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  That was uncomfortable. Like I, I struggle with like giving too many fucks about what other people think. And, and I want people to like me. I'm a people pleaser by nature. And I'm not trying to like stir up controversy or put content out that's going to be divisive. I want to put out content that's helpful and is evergreen. But I've put out some stuff that I knew like, oh, well, this is gonna, this is gonna be polarizing. And it's gonna, it's going to definitely lead to a bunch of people like walking away from me. But I, I had conviction over, you know, my values around it. And I feel fine about it. It's fine.

• 1:20:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  You know, I don't care about that.

• 1:20:55Mark Manson?

  I would say those have been the hardest points in my career. It's only happened a few times. The last time was actually with COVID. I wrote a number of things about it, super early on, like late February, early March. Like, hey, this is a thing, like, get ready, blah, blah, blah. And people were like, dude, you're the give a fuck. Like, why are you right? I'm like, cause it's, this is coming and nobody's talking about it. I was like, losing my mind.

• 1:21:18Rich Roll?

  So you were early in that.

• 1:21:19Mark Manson?

  I think my first news.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Well, you went like, so hold on a second. You came to my house in 2000. Oh, that was the year before, 2019. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause then you went to Australia and I was like, you weren't in Australia when it started. Okay, yeah.

• 1:21:32Mark Manson?

  But yeah, that was, that was one time.

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  By the way, you're a big deal here in Australia. You're, it's a whole other level, bro. It's insane.

• 1:21:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  They love you in Australia.

• 1:21:43Mark Manson?

  I'm excited.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  I think I even texted you when it, cause I went there a couple of months after you went there. And it's just like, every bookstore was just an entire wall of your books. And like, it's just like insane.

• 1:21:52Mark Manson?

  Couldn't get away from it. I'm actually going back, plug for my speaking tour. I lied, I said I wasn't gonna plug anything. I said I have nothing to promote. I actually, now that you bring it up, Rich, I, I have a speaking tour in Australia in November. I'm gonna be speaking at the Opera House. So that gives you an idea. I can barely fill, you know, a, a small nightclub here in, in the States. But I go down there and they give me the fucking Opera House, so.

• 1:22:16Rich Roll?

  It's pretty fucking good there, isn't it?

• 1:22:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I love it. I love it. So, yeah. Uh, November 4th.

• 1:22:22Rich Roll?

  Okay, November 4th.

• 1:22:23Mark Manson?

  Sydney, Australia.

• 1:22:24Rich Roll?

  MarkManson.net for tickets. That's cool, the Opera House. That, did you, have you done that before?

• 1:22:29Mark Manson?

  No.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:22:30Mark Manson?

  No, I actually, I quit speaking a couple of years ago. You know, back to the whole, if it's not fun, I'm not gonna do it. And then my publicist down there reached out and she was like, you know, we were thinking about putting together another tour for you. Your book's still number one everywhere.

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Mark Manson?

  I was like, okay. And then she mentioned the Opera House and I was like, ugh.

• 1:22:49Rich Roll?

  Your book is still number one there.

• 1:22:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah, as of like six months ago, you know, four months.

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  God, that's so crazy, dude.

• 1:22:55Mark Manson?

  It's stupid.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Is it just an abstraction for you at this point? I mean.

• 1:22:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I don't even know. It's still on the Times list. It's like 328 weeks or something. Still, it's this week. It's still on.

• 1:23:07Rich Roll?

  The first one, subtle, subtle art is still on the New York Times bestseller list.

• 1:23:12Mark Manson?

  It's, it's six and a half years. If you add up all, all the time it's been on the list, it's like six and a half years.

• 1:23:17Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:23:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I don't know. Like, honestly, at this point. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think it's a good book.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Mark Manson?

  But like, I think it's probably, it's similar like winning the lottery or something like I, I look at it, obviously, I think it's a really good book. I don't think it's that much better than, say, you know, your other average bestselling self-help book, but just the, the, the result, the magnitude of the result is just like so va- like so insane.

• 1:23:46Rich Roll?

  James Clear is having a similar experience right now, right? Have you guys gotten on the phone and talked about your, your shared experience with this? I mean, his, but how long, how many years has, has Atomic Habits been up there?

• 1:23:57Mark Manson?

  I think he's at like 250 weeks or something. So his book came out, it's really interesting, actually. His book came out almost exactly

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  It was after yours, right?

• 1:24:04Mark Manson?

  Two years after.

• 1:24:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Mark Manson?

  And then if you kind of look at the trajectories, they're pretty similar. His, his took a little bit longer to blow up, but I think it blew up even harder than mine. I think he just hit 10 million copies. Um, I haven't talked to him in a while, but it's interesting because one of the last conversations I had with him was when Atomic Habits was going insane and he had just had his second kid and he was writing the follow-up and he was like super stressed and he's doing all this speaking and stuff. And he asked me, he asked me a really good question. It was very smart of him. He said, uh, because like I said, I'm like kind of two years ahead on the same train.

• 1:24:40Rich Roll?

  You're like one of the only guys who could like give him grounded advice on this.

• 1:24:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And so he asked me, he was like, if you could go back two years ago, what would you do differently? And I was like, I would say two things. I'd say no to a lot more stuff. And then two is I would have spent more time on the second book. I would have, I wouldn't.

• 1:25:01Rich Roll?

  Because I think, I remember you sharing that you, you had to brush certain aspects of it.

• 1:25:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Honestly, I think, looking back, I think there was a little bit of a

• 1:25:13Mark Manson?

  Imposter syndrome going on, you know, the velocity and the magnitude of the book's success was just like so outside the realm of, again, anybody's expectations that there was a, there was a big piece of me that was just like, this is a fluke. Like this is, this isn't gonna last, right? So let's, let's just, let's ride this wave while it's here.

• 1:25:36Rich Roll?

  Which motivates you to say yes to everything because you think like you're having your 15 minutes or whatever.

• 1:25:41Mark Manson?

  Exactly. So it resulted in like a scarcity mentality and I started, um, yeah, I just started saying yes to too much stuff. And I mean, the other thing too is, is like the level of opportunities that show up are so much sexier. Like it's easy to say no to opportunities that aren't really opportunities, but then it's like when things show up and they're like really sexy and exciting, uh, it's really hard to say no, you know, it's like when a TV producer shows up and he's like, I want to do a scripted series like based on your life, you know, like I want you involved. And I'm like, hey, you know, like, how do you say no to that, right? Especially when you're like a 30 year old dickhead who

• 1:26:22Mark Manson?

  hasn't done anything. So it's, there was just a lot of stuff like that, that I think I had to learn the hard way that it's, it's A, there's not, most of the time there's no there, there. It's just kind of empty calories. And then B, um, you know, I think I lost sight of, of my own values and what I cared about and what got me into this business in the first place, like what I love doing and the things I wanted to work on and, you know, my own ideas and my own, you know, the things that I was excited about. So I lost track of that for a couple of years and I'm proud of the second book. I think it's a really great book. There are a lot of things I think that are actually better about the second book than the first one. But, um, in hindsight, I wish I had taken

• 1:27:07Mark Manson?

  way more time with it and told people to fuck off a little bit more.

• 1:27:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And maybe appreciated that you actually had more leverage than maybe you thought that you had, given what had happened to like slow it down a little bit.

• 1:27:18Mark Manson?

  Totally. That has been a lesson as well of like,

• 1:27:23Mark Manson?

  You know, there's this transition that comes in, I think, every career. You know, early in your career, you have to say yes to everything. And then there's an awkward transition at some point where you have to start learning how to say no. What I didn't realize is that

• 1:27:37Rich Roll?

  You skipped the awkward. You went right from the

• 1:27:40Mark Manson?

  No, what I didn't realize is that there's another level above you where, you know, it's, it's cause like in internet world, like blog land, I'd gotten really good at saying no to, you know, you know, this, some random dude is launching his podcast, wants me to be episode one. I'm like, eh.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  Right. That's different from like, jump on my private jet and fly to Stade and like, hang out at this whatever with these people that you have heard of.

• 1:28:05Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly, exactly.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Mark Manson?

  So I'd like learn that lesson all over again. And, and yeah, just being, becoming more aware of my own leverage. Yeah. Just kind of standing up for myself, being like, yeah, I don't want to do that.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  Speaking of standing up for yourself, you've been on this health journey. In addition to quitting drinking, you lost 40 pounds or is it more now?

• 1:28:31Mark Manson?

  If you go from like peak, my wife, my wife's Brazilian, so we call it peak Gordo. If you go from peak Gordo to now, or the lowest I got, which was maybe beginning of this year. It's almost 60, it's about 55 pounds. Yeah.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:28:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And the drinking was a huge part of that. It was a huge part of that, but it's honestly, this comes back to the compulsive conversation, right? Like, I learned in that process that I had a much more compulsive relationship with food than I thought I did.

• 1:29:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We don't realize, I think this is a human thing, like the extent to which we use food to like, medicate our emotional state. And it's only like when you, okay, I'm not drinking anymore. I'm now I have, I have like a greater hyper awareness of like, how I try to, you know, tamper my moods through various different things. And so suddenly you're like, I would have never thought that food and emotion had anything to do with each other until after I was sober for a while, many years into sobriety and realized like, oh, I'm just using food in the same way. And it wasn't until I got super fat that I even Thought about looking at that.

• 1:29:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah, that was honestly the hardest part. The exercise, the habits and everything. I mean, that's hard. Don't get me wrong, like, you know, getting on a hiring a trainer and showing up every week and doing the thing like, that's hard and it takes work. And but eventually you build those habits. You find the thing that works for you. You find the thing that you enjoy. You find the your workout buddy or your your coach or whatever. Like those things can all be kind of figured out within a few months and you can be on your way. And I guess that kind of got me through the first phase, like the maybe say the first 20, 25 pounds. But then I kind of got stuck and started having some rebounds.

• 1:30:22Mark Manson?

  You know, would put a bunch of weight back on really quickly. And, and yeah, it forced me to take really hard to look at the psychological side. My relationship with food, the emotions I was numbing. For me, it was a lot. I had a lot of social and identity issues in this, both with alcohol and food. You know, it was a huge part of my social life. Both were a huge part of my social life. Both I kind of saw myself as the guy who's up for anything. Like, yeah, I'll eat Thai, Indian, like five star restaurant, you know, street food, whatever. I'm up for anything, you know? I'm I'm easy. I'm I like everything. Like, it's like I was, I kind of saw myself as that person. And it was the same with the drinking.

• 1:31:07Mark Manson?

  It's like any party I'm up for, I'll be the first one there. I'll be the last one to leave. I'll dance all night. Yeah, you want to do shots? I'll do a shot with you. Like, I was always that guy. And I didn't realize I was that guy. I didn't realize that that was like an identity that I had built at some point in my life. And that I had to like, kill that part of myself. It's like, you're not that guy anymore.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  But that only came up once you hit that plateau after 25 pounds and started rubber banding a little bit and realizing like, oh, if I really want to do this.

• 1:31:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Rich Roll?

  There's a there's a bigger play here, which is like my whole identity of who I am.

• 1:31:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah, this was like year three. So, um, you know, if you. You know, I've tracked my weight now for six years. And if you look at the chart, you know, it's kind of like this downward wave. You know, it's kind of like when the stock market's crashing, like, you know, it's, it goes down and then there's like, boop, it bumps back up and then it goes down again and it bumps back up.

• 1:32:03Mark Manson?

  So it's been a really long process. But yeah, the psychological stuff was the toughest. And then I guess kind of the third phase. Cause then that, that I dropped probably another 15, 20 pounds. But even after that, even after I lost 40 pounds, I was still, I was still like, I think 27, 28% body fat and I was stuck. And I'm like, okay, I got the right habits. I got, you know, I'm like, I'm not drinking anymore. I've traveling way less. I'm sleeping better. You know, I'm doing all the things. What the hell? And it was at that point, I went and got a bunch of blood work done and then I saw the damage. Like the autopsy.

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  Your LDL and your AOB and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:32:46Mark Manson?

  My hormones were all fucked up. Like, it was ugly, you know? Got a good functional medicine doctor, started working with a clinic, like,

• 1:32:54Mark Manson?

  changed a bunch of stuff, like, cut, you've cut even more out of the diet. And like, now the blood work's good.

• 1:33:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's taken years.

• 1:33:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah, six, five to six years.

• 1:33:05Rich Roll?

  Like all good things.

• 1:33:06Mark Manson?

  Five to six years, yeah.

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  There's no shortcuts.

• 1:33:09Mark Manson?

  And it's still, I struggle sometimes.

• 1:33:13Rich Roll?

  What was the hardest sort of food thing that you had to overcome?

• 1:33:18Mark Manson?

  Burgers, man.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  Burgers are good.

• 1:33:20Mark Manson?

  Oh my God, I love a burger. Honestly, the sweets is, it's not, I'm not a huge sweets guy.

• 1:33:26Rich Roll?

  Me neither.

• 1:33:27Mark Manson?

  I can pass, I can pass it.

• 1:33:28Rich Roll?

  It's greasy stuff.

• 1:33:29Mark Manson?

  Oh my God, a good burger, dude.

• 1:33:33Rich Roll?

  So as somebody who's like so steeped in psychology and human behavior and, you know, you've studied all this stuff, you've written about it, like, what were the tools that you found most effective or perhaps least effective in your like quiver of all this stuff that you've been kind of simmering in for decades that was beneficial or perhaps not beneficial along this way? Cause you're really, you're putting it to the test, basically. You're trying to like walk your talk.

• 1:34:02Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:34:03Rich Roll?

  In a really hard way where you're very challenged.

• 1:34:06Mark Manson?

  I, that's a great question. I almost wish there was like a list and I would like give out like one of the five star ratings for each.

• 1:34:13Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. This is a future video, maybe.

• 1:34:16Mark Manson?

  Each technique or tactic or whatever. Um, if I was to do that, the, the five star thing is just tracking, not just tracking, but gamifying it a little bit. Um, first of all, just the, the, the tracking, one of the most impactful things. And again, this comes back to like, the most impactful things are usually boring and they're the things that are not sexy and people don't like hearing them, but like tracking every piece of food, every weight, every morning, every rep, every workout, how many steps, everything, track all of it, all the time. What happens is, you know, when you're compulsive with food, like all compulsivity, you, you bullshit yourself, you lie to yourself, you make up stories, you're like, ah, well, I,

• 1:34:57Mark Manson?

  I worked really hard this morning, so I deserve this, this burger or, uh, like, you know, I, I had a great workout, so yeah, I can have a little bit of cake tonight or whatever. And it, you know, it's not that many calories. When you track everything, you're like, okay, first of all, that workout.

• 1:35:12Rich Roll?

  No, no getting around it.

• 1:35:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah, that workout sucked. Yeah, that workout was terrible. You know, second of all, yeah, that cake was 800 calories. So, you know, you're bullshitting yourself on both sides, you know? So that was massively, massively impactful because it's the only thing that keeps you honest. And probably the least valuable thing, you know, I had a period, there was a period there where, um, kind of, I think initially discovering the compulsivity, there was a little bit of this, like, like what's the emotion driving, you know? And that was, it was useful to identify the emotion, but then I tried to go to the next layer, which is like, okay, well, let's say there's like some sort of wound or something going on and, you know, talk to some people about that. And they're like, well, tell us about your child. You got all this shit about like what mom cooked and what she didn't cook and all this stuff.

• 1:35:58Mark Manson?

  Anyway, after like a couple of months, I'm like, this is completely pointless.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that, there's no bottom to that rabbit hole.

• 1:36:04Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:05Rich Roll?

  And at some point it's like, what's, what's moving me forward?

• 1:36:07Mark Manson?

  And it's like whether it's the burger, whether I crave the burger because mom never made burgers or because she brought McDonald's, like it doesn't matter.

• 1:36:16Rich Roll?

  The point is, the burger's off the menu.

• 1:36:18Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:19Rich Roll?

  So what are we going to put in place?

• 1:36:21Mark Manson?

  It doesn't fucking matter. So, but yeah, it's honestly the keeping you honest with yourself. Uh, and being conscious too.

• 1:36:32Mark Manson?

  Related, you know, not everybody has to go, have you done a glucose monitor?

• 1:36:36Rich Roll?

  I have, yeah.

• 1:36:37Mark Manson?

  So that, that was interesting, just in noticing like how different foods affect me differently. And it was interesting, my wife and I, we did it at the same time and it was like, we'd both eat the same thing and then.

• 1:36:47Rich Roll?

  She would have a different.

• 1:36:49Mark Manson?

  Completely different reaction.

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's super interesting to do that. I also noticed like what happens when I eat too late during like what, what's my levels are like throughout the night when I'm asleep, which is wild. I think it's important to pair that with a lot of education because the gamification aspect of it incentivizes you to like, keep that thing flat all the time, which isn't, which then in order to keep it flat, you have to eat like high fatty foods and all these other things that actually aren't good for you. So it can drive unhealthy food choices. But I think just wear it for like 10 days or 14 days and just like, wow, look at that. Like you just, you just see things that, cause it's not intuitive, you know, you, you wouldn't know that this is happening.

• 1:37:31Mark Manson?

  And the interesting thing for me too was days that I would feel lethargic or that I would need a nap, have an afternoon crash or whatever. It helped me connect a lot of dots in that way.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  You're wearing a garment too.

• 1:37:46Mark Manson?

  I am wearing a garment.

• 1:37:49Rich Roll?

  This is all real. It's crazy you're wearing a garment.

• 1:37:52Mark Manson?

  I know.

• 1:37:53Rich Roll?

  When you came to my house in 2019, I was like, I would not have imagined you wearing a garment.

• 1:37:57Mark Manson?

  No, no, that was me. That was probably close to my peak weight. I was a big boy.

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  I mean, I wouldn't say you look like an entirely different person because your hair is different and stuff like that, but like you look better, man. Your skin looks better. Obviously your weight and all that kind of stuff, but you just look, you come across like you're more comfortable in your own skin.

• 1:38:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah. A lot of it is just being healthier. Like it, it pisses me off. Like this is, this is one, I think this is, if there is anything that I've really fucked up in my adult life in terms of this self, personal development and everything. Like I've always been really good. From a very young age, I was very interested in relationships. I read tons of books and I got into psychology and I started going to therapy when I was like 20 and I did meditation retreats. Like I've been all over all this stuff, like the mental and the emotional side of it. I've been all over it.

• 1:38:47Mark Manson?

  The physical side, I was always a wreck. And I, and when I was young, like most young people who have terrible physical habits, I poo-pooed it. You know, I would hear podcasts of people being like, well, you need to do this every morning and blah, blah, blah. It, this is, this is gonna increase your mood. And I was like, ah, fuck that shit. I was out drinking till four and I'm up at eight and I'm grinding and I'm working and I feel fine. And there was a little bit of like a defiance in me. And that works when you're 27 and have an insane metabolism. But, uh, when I got to 37, it started having chest pains, you know? Waking up, cold sweats in the middle of the night, you know, like just going off the rails health-wise.

• 1:39:32Mark Manson?

  I was like, okay, maybe I should look into this. And then now that I've done it, I'm like, oh my God, I feel so much better all the time. I have so much energy, I'm so much happier. Why didn't anybody tell me?

• 1:39:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Why didn't anybody tell me?

• 1:39:45Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:39:46Rich Roll?

  Where were you rich? Well, it's your authority issue is part, it's part of the problem. You know, it's like, it's, it's these things that, you know, can be, superpowers also become our greatest enemies. You know what I mean? And I don't know why it's wired that way, but it is.

• 1:39:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:00Rich Roll?

  It's like these things that propel us, you know, in this great direction and then we become kind of overly enamored with that as a strategy. And we become blind to kind of, cause everything, there's, there's two sides to all of these things always.

• 1:40:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah. The best thing about somebody is also the worst thing, usually. And that's definitely true in my case.

• 1:40:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Mark Manson?

  I, I'm, I hate being told what to do, so. And that's, that's, most of my success can be due to that and most of my failures can be due to that as well.

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  Right. It's, that's the way it goes, right? It's sort of like, uh, you know, I mean, somebody like, you know, like take Lance Armstrong, like seven Tour de France titles, also all of this other, you know, egregious behavior on there. So why couldn't you just like win the titles without the thi-? It's like, no. They, these things cannot be, they go, they don't happen without each other.

• 1:40:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Rich Roll?

  You know? I want to end on, uh, on some thoughts around like, The nature of human habit change. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I'm always curious like, again, like you're just marinating in this stuff. So when you think about somebody who can successfully make a change, maybe they just hear the information and they're like, great, got it. And then they go do it and they improve their lives versus the person who struggles and struggles and struggles. And I know there's no easy answer to this. It's not a reductive thing, but do you have any kind of thoughts on what differentiates those two people? Why can some people change and other people find it so difficult?

• 1:41:33Mark Manson?

  That's a great question. I have found, I'm gonna make up a term here. I've found that some people seem to have identity flexibility, which what I mean by that is, is some people seem to just naturally, for whatever reason, whether it's they grew up that way, or they're born that way, or they learned it at some point in their life. They define themselves very loosely and they're comfortable with that looseness. Like they don't, they don't get super attached to how they see themselves. And I've noticed that a lot of other people are very attached to how they see themselves and their identity is very rigid. They're like, well, this is who I am.

• 1:42:17Mark Manson?

  This is how I've always been and, you know, I can't change it. You can't tell me to change it, you know, whatever. I've just noticed that people with that identity flexibility, it's much easier for them to kind of remove the Lego block from their, their identity and replace it with a different one. There's not as much friction for them. There's not as much psychological, I mean, there's psychological fallout for everybody, but there's less for them and there's like a little bit of an alacrity to it. And I actually, I mean, this is the biggest thing that I personally took from all my years studying Buddhism is, is, you know, the central theme of Buddhism is that the

• 1:42:57Mark Manson?

  The identity doesn't exist.

• 1:42:58Rich Roll?

  It's all an illusion.

• 1:42:59Mark Manson?

  It's all made up. It's all just, you're just, you put these Lego blocks here and called it yourself. And you can take those blocks away or get rid of them at any time. You just forgot how or never learned how. And so that's my observation.

• 1:43:15Rich Roll?

  That's really insightful, and I think that's right. And it makes me think about what drives somebody to be so attached to how they see themselves in the world and what allows somebody to kind of be flexible and hold loosely to that. And what is behind attachment other than fear? Like, we attach onto things to give us a sense of control and safety, right? So somebody who, you know, doesn't have that kind of fear is probably somebody who's more likely to kind of like let go and be in that allowing space.

• 1:43:50Mark Manson?

  I would say that that's one reason. It's, I would say it's our identity attachments probably were created to fulfill our needs. And one of those needs is survival. So like, probably the most rigid attachments are trauma-related in some way. It's like a defense mechanism, the trauma, and so you're just terrified of removing that piece of your identity because then everything's going to go wrong again. But like, I would say that there's a lot of identity attachments that are perfectly, you know, it's like, I'm very attached to my identity as a husband to my wife, you know? And I probably should be, right? Like, I shouldn't be able to just throw that away at any time.

• 1:44:29Mark Manson?

  So I, like, some identity attachment is good and, and healthy, but again, I think it's just the, the flexibility or how glued together everything is. It's good to not hold on to those things too tightly.

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And do you think that that is teachable? Like, the, the letting go or the unclutching of these things that we hold on to in that way?

• 1:44:58Mark Manson?

  I do.

• 1:45:01Mark Manson?

  I do think it's teachable. I do think it's a skill. I think serious meditation slash Buddhism, you know, not the silly five-minute app, you know, those are fine, you know, the app meditations are fine, but like serious introspection and meditation, I think it gets at that. I think really, really good therapy gets at that. I think journaling can get at that. I think it's a skill that can be developed, but I also think like, like most skills, some people have a talent, like there are, there are some people who have a talent for it.

• 1:45:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:35Mark Manson?

  I'll throw this in here, too. I've seen people who are so good at it that it causes them problems.

• 1:45:41Rich Roll?

  Because they're just like floating in the wind all the time?

• 1:45:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Rich Roll?

  From one thing to the next.

• 1:45:45Mark Manson?

  They're a new person.

• 1:45:46Rich Roll?

  Without any kind of ballast.

• 1:45:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Mark Manson?

  They're a new person every other month.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:52Mark Manson?

  It's like whoever they're dating at the time.

• 1:45:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it's the spectrum, right? On both sides of these things. I mean, in truth, yes, like, of course, your identity as a husband and a father, like, you want to hold on to that. But in reality, you know, back to this Buddhist idea, our identity is just a story.

• 1:46:09Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:46:09Rich Roll?

  It's a story we tell ourselves. And for the most part, it's a story that was constructed unconsciously. We didn't even participate in the construction of it. It just sort of occurred. And it's basically an assemblage of memories of experiences that our brain selects without our agency and decides these are important.

• 1:46:30Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:46:33Rich Roll?

  And it's like, why is it choosing these? Like, you've had billions of experiences and memories, and, and the brain is selecting these things and then creating a through line to create a narrative.

• 1:46:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  Right? And, and we're convinced that that narrative is the definition of who we are, and it's intractable.

• 1:46:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:46:50Rich Roll?

  When in truth, we could pick another memory, or we could say, why, or we could take that memory and put it to the test and say, is that really true? Do we have other experiences that would challenge that? Like, and I think it's sort of like tracking with, you know, diet and fitness, like, maybe, and that's journaling, but that's like journaling intentionally, like, let's deconstruct this story. Is there, is there a possibility that there's another story that's, that's maybe more true or equally true? And not for nothing, like, our memories are highly unreliable.

• 1:47:20Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  They're just like prisms of, like, things that happen that, like, for the most part, are so loosely related to any kind of, like, objective truth.

• 1:47:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it's To bring it back to the, I guess, my story. It took years of struggling with food and alcohol to even realize that I had that story of like, oh, I'm the fun party guy. Oh, I'm up for any dinner or after-party or whatever. Oh, yeah, I'll do shots with you. Like, I created that story probably in adolescence as a way to get social approval. Like, that was one way for me. I noticed that I could drink more than most people and handle my liquor, and I could eat more than most people and, like, feel fine. And that made me easy to be around and fun to be around. And so I did more of it.

• 1:48:11Mark Manson?

  And that story got written, and I didn't even realize it got written. And then when I was 40, I had to be like, oh, fuck, I got this story. Like, I can't, I can't be the dinner party guy anymore. Like, I gotta be something else. And then, you know, so you remove it, and then, to me, there's a little bit of pain and grief with removing it. Like, you, you miss it, kinda like you miss an old friend. But then, the hard part is like finding, what's, what can you put, put in its place? You know? Like, what, what's the new story I can write so that I can have friends again?

• 1:48:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, what I would say, yeah, I don't think it's like a, it's like a vacuum that needs to be filled. I think, I think it's more like the way that Richard Schwartz at Internal Family Systems would look at it, which is like, uh, this is one facet of your identity that developed when you were very young as a way of, you know, kind of feeling connected to other people in the world. And now you can see, you can give it a name like, hey, party guy Charlie.

• 1:49:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Rich Roll?

  Right? You were awesome. Like, thank you. Like, you, you really helped me make friends, and we had a lot of good times together. But like, I'm cool with people now. Like, I can go out and have fun, and I get to decide when I want to do that, and people seem to like me. And, and so, you know, you can settle down.

• 1:49:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Rich Roll?

  I don't need you to like, like, I realize, like, you're there, and I love you, you know? But like, you can kinda like ride in the backseat for a while and, and like, honor that part of who you are without like shame or guilt or judgment, and just say like, I've, you know, I've grown out of it. Like, I don't need, I realize you were trying to protect me. You had my best interest at heart, but like, now I have a different, you know, part of me that serves that in a way that's healthier.

• 1:49:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Another way that I think about it sometimes, too, is Our stories are strategies. And, you know, Party Guy Mark was my strategy to get my social needs met. And now Party Guy Mark is gone, so I need a new strategy. That doesn't necessarily mean I need to like, find a new identity. It's just like, I need to find other things to do with people. That doesn't involve drinking.

• 1:50:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And gets you to stop playing video games.

• 1:50:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, maybe play a few.

• 1:50:26Rich Roll?

  Are you good with, like, I have a sense, like, my instinct is that, you know, something else that we share is like, I can be pretty reclusive.

• 1:50:33Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:50:33Rich Roll?

  You know, like, I'm at home, I come here, I go back home.

• 1:50:38Rich Roll?

  This is my social life, outside of my family.

• 1:50:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Rich Roll?

  And it's very nourishing, like, even though, like, we've done three podcasts, like, other than these three podcasts and like, one dinner party that we were at together, that is a sum total of our relationship.

• 1:50:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Rich Roll?

  But like, I feel like you're a friend, and I think, even like, after that dinner, it was like, hey, let's hang out, and then, and I was well-intended in that, but like, did I call you?

• 1:51:02Mark Manson?

  No.

• 1:51:03Rich Roll?

  Did you call me? No, we never did anything together. You know, like, I suck at that.

• 1:51:06Mark Manson?

  I don't know if you rely on your wife for social life, but I definitely do.

• 1:51:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do, but I think I'm at an age now where I need to be much more proactive about my friendships.

• 1:51:17Mark Manson?

  So I've been, yeah.

• 1:51:20Mark Manson?

  We're in the same boat, dude. We're in the same boat.

• 1:51:23Rich Roll?

  We could be accountability buddies.

• 1:51:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Like, let's hang out out of obligation, as opposed to, I have to go see more.

• 1:51:32Mark Manson?

  Rich, our scheduled social time is coming up.

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  We have a playdate.

• 1:51:38Mark Manson?

  Can we bring a microphone?

• 1:51:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Mark Manson?

  Ah, fuck, alright.

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  Alright, this is unraveling, I think we need to end this, man.

• 1:51:45Mark Manson?

  So our playdate episode is wrapping.

• 1:51:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:51:50Mark Manson?

  Thank you for everybody for listening to our social hour.

• 1:51:52Rich Roll?

  We'll just bring, we'll bring microphones, but we won't attach them to our recorder, just so we feel safe.

• 1:51:57Mark Manson?

  We'll just, we'll just walk around the Venice boardwalk with like, unattached Sherm mics.

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, man. Yeah. Maybe I need to go back to that therapist you used to be in your building. Alright, we're ending this. Thanks, buddy, that was awesome.

• 1:52:11Mark Manson?

  Thanks, dude.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it, cheers. MarkManson.net, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast on YouTube and all the places, right?

• 1:52:19Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:52:19Rich Roll?

  Cool. Peace out.

• 1:52:21Mark Manson?

  Alright, thanks.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors,

• 1:53:17Rich Roll?

  who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis.

• 1:54:00Rich Roll?

  And thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

• 1:54:15Mark Manson?

  Namaste.