Mastering Resilience, AI’s Unstoppable Rise, and Can We Truly Change?

Resilience isn’t just about gritting your teeth and enduring pain—it’s about managing the stories you tell yourself. In this episode, I break down why most people get resilience wrong and how mastering the “second arrow” is the real key to bouncing back. We dive into post-traumatic growth, why caring about something bigger than yourself makes you stronger, and how focusing on what you can control changes everything. We also talk about AI—how it’s not here to save or destroy humanity, but it is going to change everything. We look at how AI is already transforming creative and knowledge-based jobs, why you should be using it right now, and what you can do to stay ahead. Plus, we tackle the ultimate question: Can people change? That three-word question is lot more complex than it seems. Check it out. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Have You Felt the AGI? 00:03:31 The Fuck of the Week: What Resilience Really Is 00:07:09 The Problem With Mental Health Apps 00:10:40 Five Ways to Build Real Resilience 00:19:56 The Novelty Addiction and Showing Up for Small Things 00:24:06 Brilliant or Bullshit: Will AI Doom or Save Humanity? 00:29:42 AI as a New Medium: Interactive Novels and Beyond 00:32:38 How to Actually Use AI: The Quality Input Problem 00:38:06 The New Scarcity: Where Humans Still Matter 00:43:50 Reader Question: Can People Change? 00:46:36 The Prerequisites for Change and the Codependency Trap 00:51:18 What Actually Counts as Change? 00:55:50 Personal Changes and the Slow Grind ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

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

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Drew, have you felt the AGI yet?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  The AGI?

• 0:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and I don't mean Athletic Greens.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  You're adjusted gross income? That's where my mind went. God, I'm a fucking nerd. Oh, my God, that's right where my brain went.

• 0:14Mark Manson?

  Artificial general intelligence, AGI. You know-

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Have I felt it?

• 0:19Mark Manson?

  Have you felt it? Do you know, do you know what I'm referring to?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Is this a dirty joke you're setting up here? What is this?

• 0:25Mark Manson?

  No!

• 0:26Speaker 01

  If I felt AGI?

• 0:27Mark Manson?

  No, so-

• 0:31Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 0:32Mark Manson?

  I'm not referring to sex bots or, uh, yeah. So like, a year ago, there was all this speculation around OpenAI's like new chat model and that maybe, you know, there's like all this doomerism of like,

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:46Mark Manson?

  You know, are we gonna, is the AI gonna destroy the world or whatever? And there was like this brief period where a bunch of the founders and top researchers at OpenAI left around the same time. And around that time, like one of the top guys posted on Twitter, he said, he said, "Feel the AGI." And then he like mysteriously left the company.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08Mark Manson?

  And so there was all this speculation and like conspiracy theories that like OpenAI had invented artificial general intelligence.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Okay, yes.

• 1:17Mark Manson?

  And they were freaked out and they were like trying to hide it.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20Mark Manson?

  But it has since become a meme of like, as we all like use AI more and more. I felt the AGI like a month ago. And I couldn't tell you exactly when I was using it, but I was like using it, using AI for something. And I just kinda had this like sinking feeling in my chest of like, why do anything? Like this-

• 1:43Mark Manson?

  Like this thing, this thing is gonna soon be doing everything in the world-

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49Mark Manson?

  -of value. So, why try? Why even like, it was like this very-

• 1:57Mark Manson?

  It was this very dark and like existential despair, but it immediately flipped towards like, oh my God, I'm never gonna have to worry about anything again because the AGI is just gonna take care of me like the way I take care of my dog. Like, is any of this registering with you whatsoever?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:16Mark Manson?

  Oh my God, true.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean.

• 2:19Mark Manson?

  We have so much to catch, catch you up on.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  We do.

• 2:23Mark Manson?

  All right, maybe I'm, never mind.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  You're getting a little ahead of ourselves.

• 2:26Mark Manson?

  The listeners understand.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  You do, okay.

• 2:28Mark Manson?

  Some of them.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:29Mark Manson?

  If you felt the AGI, leave a comment.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Felt the AGI? I don't remember that.

• 2:34Mark Manson?

  If you have felt the AGI, leave a comment, tell us what it felt like.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Have you felt the AGI? So it's like that.

• 2:40Mark Manson?

  Deep inside you.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Like that feeling you get. That's what I was, that's what I thought you meant. And so now I'm trying to sort that out from what the fuck I'm actually trying to, supposed to think about this. I don't know. Okay.

• 2:51Mark Manson?

  What is this episode about?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Well, we're gonna talk about AGI later, but.

• 2:57Mark Manson?

  You got, you got a thing.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  You got a thing?

• 2:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you, you, you got some spittle.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 3:03Mark Manson?

  I can't take you anywhere.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I know. Mark, let's get into the fuck of the week. And then we'll talk.

• 3:08Mark Manson?

  We're gonna talk about resilience because you're gonna need it when you feel the AGI.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Is that where you were going with this? Okay, that was, all right, all right. God.

• 3:16Mark Manson?

  With the times.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Who's steering this ship?

• 3:17Mark Manson?

  It's 2025. It's 2025. If, if you have not felt the AGI, you're not using AI enough, people.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Andrew, roll the clip thing where we do the fuck of the week, please, please, please. We're doing it. Here we go.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:42Mark Manson?

  What are we doing?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  The fuck of the week is resilience. Um, I want to talk a little bit about what resilience really is, because I think there's some misconception about that.

• 3:51Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  And then how we can be more resilient in our lives, um, if there are concrete steps, um, maybe some models we can look at or anything like that. So, but to start it off, let's talk about what resilience is. Maybe a good way to do that is, what do you think most people get wrong about resilience?

• 4:07Mark Manson?

  I think what most people get wrong about resilience is that they think it's just about enduring pain. For an extended period of time. That is just it's

• 4:15Speaker 01

  That's not resilience?

• 4:16Mark Manson?

  It's pure suffering.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:18Mark Manson?

  I think a large part of resilience is actually kind of there's, there's a bit of a mental gymnastics that takes place of like reorienting how you understand the experience that you're having. So that you suffer less from it. So one thing that I talk about a lot is, is that there's this allegory from Buddhism called the two arrows. Right. And the Buddha said that every time you experience pain, you're, it's like getting shot by two different arrows. And the first arrow is the physical pain, you know, it's the arrow piercing your skin. But the second arrow is the narrative that we create around the first arrow. Right. So the first arrow is inevitable, but it's also temporary. But the second arrow, it's not inevitable.

• 5:01Mark Manson?

  We created ourselves and it's also not temporary. If we don't let it be, right? So it's like, we all have first arrows that happened to us years and years ago. Like pains, struggles that we went through, embarrassments, failures. And all of those momentary pains went away at some point. Most of us, at some point in our lives, created narratives around that pain. And told us stories about ourselves that enhanced, multiplied the pain and multiplied the suffering and made it more difficult to bounce back from it. Right. So I think what most people get wrong is they think resilience is more about sustaining the first arrow.

• 5:45Mark Manson?

  Like just knowing how to get shot and grit your teeth and deal with it. But really what resilience is, is managing the second arrow.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:51Mark Manson?

  Is not, not spinning up the, the stories that torture yourself. And managing those narratives and stories in a way that like, you don't make things harder on yourself. That you can actually like, maybe propel yourself forward using that pain.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And you wrote an article about, basically about post-traumatic growth a long time ago.

• 6:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  How to grow from your pain or something along those lines. And the big point in that was just that it's not, it's not the, the pain or the trauma itself. That's the Even the thing to focus on or the thing that catalyzes change is what you do afterwards. And I think that's a big, we'll probably come back to that time and time again in this discussion. But that's a huge, huge point that I think a lot of people miss is that it's not, yeah, it's not the pain that makes you stronger or anything like that. It's what you do in reaction to it.

• 6:38Mark Manson?

  Right. It's the, it's the meaning that you attach to it. And there are certain types of meaning that you can attach to pain that can actually be leveraged to grow.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you, you did, you wrote this article too, on, on resilience as well. And conquering adversity and all this. And there was this fun little experiment you went through. I think this was the impetus for the article anyways, when you were testing all these like mental health apps.

• 7:04Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Can, do you want to go into that?

• 7:06Mark Manson?

  Sure. So this was probably four or five years ago. It was actually during the pandemic. So I briefly became really interested in, in potentially developing like some sort of mental health app or personal growth app. And so I was testing all the different apps on the market. And there are tons of them, like dozens and dozens and dozens. And so I was logging on to all of these. And it, I was just quickly intensely disappointed because every single one basically had the same functionality, which is it immediately validated whatever I said, you know? So if I got on and said, oh, what are you dealing with today? And I'm like, um, I'm a little bit anxious about this podcast, right? The first thing it would say is like, I know being anxious is very hard.

• 7:51Mark Manson?

  Is there anything else you'd like to tell me about your anxiety? And then, you know, I'd tell it something else. And like, I'm so sorry you're feeling that way. It's really hard being anxious, isn't it, Mark? Tell me more about your feelings. And it just went on and on and on. And it just became this like circle jerk of like, oh my God, tell me how you feel. It must be so hard to be you. You're so special. I wish you deserve so much better. And like, I found it so intensely unhelpful. And in some ways counterproductive because like, don't get me wrong. I understand that some people, when they're in a lot of pain. They do need their emotions validated to a certain extent. But very quickly, you need to get past that emotional validation and get into the second arrow.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:36Mark Manson?

  Get into the meaning of like, okay, what is it about this podcast that you feel anxious about? Do you think you're gonna fail at it? Do you think people are gonna laugh at you? Do you think you're underprepared? Do you think Drew is gonna be a meanie? Like, what is it that is intimidating you? Right? And then let's pick apart that narrative and see if there's any, any evidence for it or any truth behind it. Or if you're just kind of being irrational and like blowing things up in your head. There was none of that. It was all just like, oh, I'm so sorry. You feel bad. Here, here's a balloon image to make you feel better. It was beyond useless. It was, it was insulting to a certain extent.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Essentially, what you're saying, you don't build psychological resilience by feeling good all the time. You build psychological resilience by getting better at feeling bad.

• 9:23Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  You've said that in various ways throughout the years.

• 9:26Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And I think that's the, the main takeaway about what resilience really is. This is not, hey, how do I just feel better?

• 9:32Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Um, or, or how do I, yeah, remove that pain in the first arrow? You don't.

• 9:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  It's that second.

• 9:37Mark Manson?

  It's you alter your orientation to the pain.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Right?

• 9:40Mark Manson?

  It's like, understanding like, instead of being like, oh my God, it's the first arrow. This is horrible. Why does this happen to me? I don't deserve this. Right? Like, that's kind of our default reaction. It's instead looking at it and saying, oh, it's another first arrow. Well, I've dealt with lots of these before. I'm sure I can deal with this one. What can I learn from this first arrow? What, what mistakes that I made? How can I get better? It's asking good questions. It's being realistic about orienting yourself, like, understanding that a lot of life is random. Tragedy strikes everybody. You know, everybody screws up and fails at some point. There's nothing unique or special about your pain. There's no like pre, predestined.

• 10:21Mark Manson?

  Universe has decided you get to feel pain now. It's like, this is life, dude. Like, everybody's, everybody's struggling. Everybody's going through a lot. So, let's just try to be as, as clear-eyed and realistic as possible about that struggle. And figure out like, what are, what are some useful things that we can do in that moment?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Right. Well, what are some of those useful things, Mark? You had some, um, uh, some recommendations, a few tips to help you out. You actually had five, um, that I've gathered from various spots. So, one of those, the first one of those being, care about something greater than yourself.

• 10:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I, I personally think, and Arthur Brooks was on a while back, and he talked about this as well. It's like, you know, the optimal mental health kind of demands that we find something that we care about more than ourselves. And there are a few reasons for that. One is it just imbues kind of our entire lives with meaning. You know, and that, that could be raising a family. It could be a career. It could be a mission. It could be a, a social cause. It could, it could be a lot of things, but it's like, it could be a religion. Like, ultimately, you have to find something in your life that, that, that is so important that, that it deserves, uh, to outlast you. And, but the other benefit from that is that it, it helps ameliorate the downsides of life, right?

• 11:41Mark Manson?

  So, it's like, if you're just the center of everything in your life, as soon as something bad happens, man, you're gonna have a really hard time coping with that. But if you've got some higher mission or higher purpose that you're, you're aiming for and you're pushing for, when something goes wrong, that mission or purpose is gonna, is gonna keep everything oriented in the right direction, right? It's gonna, it's gonna pull you out of the muck. It's gonna be the rope that kind of pulls you out of the muck. Because it will force you, because it is more important than you and your feelings, it will force you to find ways to handle and deal with your feelings so that you can move on and continue to move forward.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Again, the research backs all that up too. If you are, uh, more religious, people tend to be a little bit more resilient. Or people who are attached to, uh, causes, big causes that are outside of themselves. That, that requires them, uh, some sort of sacrifice that they have to contribute. So, yeah, that's.

• 12:34Mark Manson?

  And by the way, like, anecdotally, I've noticed this just, uh...

• 12:41Mark Manson?

  You know, watching so many of my friends have kids.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:44Mark Manson?

  They just talking to them like this is this is anecdotally, this is probably the biggest shift I've seen in all the people that I've seen have kids. Is that they say they're like, for the first time in my life, there's something that is way more important than me, that I care about way more than myself. And I've I've I've talked to them and they've said like, yeah, it's kind of easier to deal with bullshit now because it's it's not about me.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very clarifying. Yeah.

• 13:08Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Like I now I always know, you know, what I need to do, why I need to get back up and try again. Right. And it's it's um, there's something powerful to that.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, that kind of gets right in the second one, too, which is focus on what you can control. And I'll just say upfront that research says if you have

• 13:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  more of an internal locus of control and like focus on the things you can't control, you're more resilient. Why do you think that is?

• 13:33Mark Manson?

  Well, this is the old stoic thing, right? It's it's um, you know, focus on what you can can control and then like let go of what you can't control. I I think there's just like a real practicality in that and that, um, you know, a huge amount of our well being is is driven through a sense of agency, like a feeling that like we have we are determining the outcomes in our lives. And so if you are constantly focusing on factors that you cannot influence or you cannot control, you're removing that sense of agency from yourself. Whereas when you are focusing on the things in front of you that you can control, you're amplifying that sense of agency. And so aside from it just improving mental well being like it's also just practical, right?

• 14:17Mark Manson?

  Because it's if you're constantly focusing on stuff that's outside of your control, then you're essentially wasting attention and energy, right? So you're going to get less done, you're going to be less influential, you're you're gonna make less progress, right? And progress also feels good. So aside from just the sense of agency, you also get a greater sense of progress and growth and feeling as though like your life's actually moving somewhere.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. This next one was inward optimism outward pessimism. And generally kind of you could kind of characterize this as negative visualization a little bit.

• 14:49Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  But then there's also the inward optimism part of that. So what do you mean by that?

• 14:53Mark Manson?

  This came from a reader question like on a really early newsletter, like this was probably a newsletter in like 2016 or 2017. And it was. Asking me, should you be an optimist or a pessimist? Like, it's like pessimists are gonna be better prepared when things go wrong, but an optimist is gonna like have a higher expectation of success. So like, what is actually better? And it sent me down a research rabbit hole. And basically, the conclusion I came to is what's there is inward optimist, outward pessimist, which is that generally speaking, people who expect good performance from themselves, achieve better performance. The more you think yourself capable of doing something, the more likely you are to end up doing it. This kind of comes back to the agency thing.

• 15:36Mark Manson?

  But also, to the negative visualization point, people who mentally rehearse problems that could occur or things that could go wrong, the more prepared they are when things do go wrong, right? So, and I think if, and just kind of logically, if you think about it, if you think about the least effective people in the world, like, think about the least effective people you know in your life, right? Chances are, they drastically underestimate their own power and agency, right? They think they can't do anything when actually they can. And generally, they overestimate how the outside world should go, right?

• 16:17Mark Manson?

  They expect everything in their environment to work perfectly and go correctly, and for nothing to go wrong, and no inconveniences to happen, right? Both of those just lead to a lot of pain and suffering, right? So it's, if you flip those around, expect a lot from yourself, and then prepare for the worst with everybody else. And that seems to be the most effective orientation to have with the world. Yeah. But yeah, Tim Ferriss popularized that maybe like 10 or 12 years ago. And it's, yeah, it's super useful. And I think the way he says it is he's like, if you want to do something and you're afraid to do it, like mentally go through the worst possible outcome,

• 17:01Mark Manson?

  and like really write it out, like, okay, if this goes as bad as it possibly can. Here's how people are gonna react. Here's how my life is gonna change. Here, here are all of the things I'm gonna have to deal with, all the fallout that's gonna happen, all the lessons I'm gonna have to learn. And he said that like 95% of the time when you do this exercise, as you're writing, you realize you're like, this isn't that bad.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is when I started using just within the last few months to like worst case scenario, let's really think this through. I'm like, oh, I can do that. That's fine. I can handle that.

• 17:34Mark Manson?

  Actually, okay.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Oh, these people over here are gonna hate me if I do this?

• 17:37Mark Manson?

  I don't give a shit.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Cool. I'm glad they do, you know? Yeah, definitely, definitely. That's a, that's a good one. But this next one's kind of related to that too, then, the find your inner masochist. So you posted this on social media one time. You said, "The sick and twisted truth about human nature is that as much as we crave feeling good all the time, there's a small part of us that kind of likes the pain and the struggles. So embrace it."

• 17:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Hit me daddy.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Feel the AGI, Mark.

• 18:02Mark Manson?

  Feel the AGI, yeah, deep inside you. No, it's funny. Whenever I give talks, this is, this is always like a hit line, you know? It's like, I, I, I'm like up on stage and I call the audience a bunch of masochists and then I start, I tell them to like spank me.

• 18:19Mark Manson?

  If you can imagine, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'll, I'll do this in like a conference of like, you know, insurance brokers or something. And it's just like this awkward laughing that goes on in the audience.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Oh God, we don't have real jobs.

• 18:33Mark Manson?

  Spank me daddy.

• 18:37Mark Manson?

  So here's the thing, this is actually good because this ties together a few of the threads that we've talked about. So if you find some sort of higher mission or purpose in your life, something you truly believe is more important than yourself, something really interesting happens, which is that the struggles that start happening along the way, you kind of start relishing them a little bit. Like it's, it's, there's a, obviously you don't want that struggle, but like there's a weird kind of,

• 19:04Mark Manson?

  I've talked to other authors about this, about how like, like the struggle of writing a book is fucking real. Like it is mentally, one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. But like, when I hang out with other authors and we talk about writing a book, or like I hang out with an author and he's like, like really deep in the middle of a first draft and just hating his life. There's like this romanticism about it. It's just like, oh, man. Oh, yeah. I remember, man, back in 2019, I was like writing this book and oh, God, I was like, staying up till 2 a.m. I fucking like woke up middle of the night. Like it just, I think everybody's got something like that. Like that, like you kind of secretly really like it and, uh, and there's a lot of pride and identity around it, right?

• 19:46Mark Manson?

  Like, it's like, okay, yeah, I really suffered for, for what I achieved. And I think, you know, there's a little bit of a, you know, I look at, I look at like some of the, there's a little bit of like porn around stuff like Navy SEAL training.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:02Mark Manson?

  Special forces and, and stuff like that. And, and I think a lot of that is this, like it's, it's, there's this, a little bit of a masochism of, of like, you know, seeing how, seeing what you're made of, seeing how much you can endure. And knowing it's for a really, really good cause or purpose, like there, like that just hits a sweet spot in the human brain. That we secretly kind of relish it.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:28Mark Manson?

  And even when we're in the thick of it, you're like, yeah, I'm glad I kind of, I'm feeling this right now.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've, I've seen you, we've had people on the podcast who were like in the middle of writing a book or something like that. And you just perk right up. You're like, oh, yeah.

• 20:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Tell me right.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Mark Manson?

  Spank me daddy. How are you getting spanked? Tell me all about it.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Like, wait, you are? Oh.

• 20:49Mark Manson?

  It is. It's like a secret. I, I imagine it's similar. I don't know. I imagine it's similar with like military veterans or something, you know? It's like, just like trading stories. Yeah. Authors, they get this weird, you know, it's like, how's the draft going, dude? Like, oh man, I'm like, I've got this chapter eight and it's like, none of it's making sense. And like, fuck, I think I'm gonna have to rewrite the, the, the first part again. And like, and I'm just like, oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you, buddy. I hear you. You know, put your arm around him. It's like, I've been there, dude.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  You're like, you're comforting them, but you're actually like, oh, yeah.

• 21:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's also like a sick like, you know?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Well, okay. So. That gets into the last one, actually, too, which is never suffer alone. And actually, so this is, there's a, there's a social aspect to this. And in the research, one of the repeatedly, one of the findings they find repeatedly is that having social support is like, that's a bedrock of resilience. And I think that gets overlooked a lot, too. People are like, how can I be resilient? How can I conquer my adversity in this and that? It's like, well, you don't. You do it with other people.

• 21:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:51Mark Manson?

  And I think having the other people with you adds that sense of meaning and purpose as well. Right?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:56Mark Manson?

  Cause it's like, ultimately, we are social creatures and it's just having people who are on the same path and who are enduring the same pain and hardship that we're enduring. It like, it amplifies that sense of, of purpose and, and makes things that much easier. Maybe that's why I relish it with authors, too. You know, like it's just.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I'm sure it is.

• 22:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah. You know, it is like, I empathize with where they are. And I know that it's like, if I can just make them feel like they're not alone, then it like relieves a little bit of that burden for them.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I actually had this conversation like a year ago with a friend of mine, maybe it was like a family member, but I was in a period, I was in one of those periods with the business where I was just working like an insane person. And, um, and I was talking to somebody and they're like, you know, how are things going? I'm like, ah, I'm like, I'm working a lot, you know? It's been a lot. And, uh, and they're like, well, tell me about that, you know? And I started talking about it and like, yeah, I'm like working weekends and, you know, probably at least one evening each week and, you know, probably put in 70, 75 hours a week at least. And, um, you know, but it's temporary and we're scaling up and we're doing this. We're like launching a bunch of stuff. And, and it was funny because they started trying to give me like work-life balance advice.

• 23:11Mark Manson?

  And I was like, they got like two minutes into it. I'm like, Actually, I don't want this.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  I'm fine.

• 23:17Mark Manson?

  Don't get me wrong, I'm suffering, but I really like suffering this way. Like, this is, this is, I'm happy with this stress in my life. And, uh, and I, I also know it's temporary, so I'm like, willing to make this trade off for a short period of time. So I suppose that's another way to look at, at the resilience equation is like, if you can, if it's possible to view the struggle in your life as a trade off for something greater, whether it's in the future or for somebody else that you care about, or from, for some cause that you care about, as long as it feels like there's a good trade off happening, then you'll be okay with it.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Mark Manson?

  You'll endure it.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Okay, that's all I got for this section, I think.

• 23:58Mark Manson?

  Thank you for listening to my presentation. We'll be right back after these messages.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And Mark will make you feel the AGI.

• 24:06Mark Manson?

  Bend over.

• 24:15Mark Manson?

  We are back with the AGI.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  We are, and that is what we're talking about. We're talking about AI. And a little bit different for the brilliant or bullshit this week, but, um, is one of these statements brilliant and one of them bullshit? Or we can debate, AI will doom humanity or AI will save humanity?

• 24:33Mark Manson?

  Neither.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:34Mark Manson?

  Neither.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Let's get into what's brilliant and bullshit about this.

• 24:37Mark Manson?

  Well, I'm glad we're coming back to this because we talked about AI a few months ago.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  December, yeah.

• 24:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah, a few months ago.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  It was really around creativity was what the, it kind of centered around.

• 24:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it was about how it was gonna affect our industry.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Right, but I mean, that was December and in AI age, that was eons ago.

• 24:52Mark Manson?

  It's already changed.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Two months ago, three months ago.

• 24:55Mark Manson?

  So much, yeah. And I will say, just, just in the last month, I've probably used, I mean, I've been using AI most of the day, every day.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:05Mark Manson?

  In the last month.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  I have been, I've been using it every day and I've been using it more and more.

• 25:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, same.

• 25:10Mark Manson?

  Is it gonna doom humanity? No, is it gonna save humanity? No, things never turn out as bad as you think they're gonna turn out. They never end up as good as you hope.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:19Mark Manson?

  They'll end up, you know, so it's. And humans are always going to human, right? So it's like, as soon as, if AGI, like, let's imagine that some super AI like solved every human problem in existence, three minutes later, we'd be dissatisfied and like want something that the AI can't provide for us because that's just how we're built. Right. That's human nature. So I was telling a friend about this. This is one thing I'm starting to notice, like, to kind of walk through the AI, my personal AI timeline, you know, ChatGPT came out end of 23. And it felt like a cool party trick. Yeah. Like, it was like, okay, this is fun. I can have it write poetry or whatever. But it was like, any, anytime I tried to get it to do serious work, it was pretty mediocre.

• 26:04Mark Manson?

  Right. And then GPT-4 came and there were some uses. It was okay for brainstorming some stuff and, you know, occasionally it could like point you in the right direction, maybe give you an idea or something. But still, like, a very, you know, basic tool. At some point in the last three months, it feels like it turned a corner and now it just feels absolutely indispensable. For the first time, like I said, I felt the AGI about a month ago. Right. It's like, really, just in the last few weeks, it feels like, okay, this does feel like it's going to kind of take over everything.

• 26:42Mark Manson?

  Like, it's going to integrate into every aspect of our lives and disrupt and displace a huge amount of what most people spend their time doing, probably the most since like the internet in the 90s. I was telling a friend recently, I said, you know, I've, I've lived, I've now lived through, I guess, four technological revolutions. And I said, the thing that feels different about this one is like, the more I use it, the more I feel like I should be using it. Oh. Like, I remember when, when mobile came around, like iPhones were super cool. But

• 27:21Speaker 01

  You're like, God, I should be doing something else.

• 27:23Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:25Mark Manson?

  And it was the same with the internet.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:27Mark Manson?

  And it was the same with social media.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:29Mark Manson?

  And like, this is the first time that like, when I'm, when I'm not using AI, I'm like, I should just be doing this with the AI. Like, like, it'd be so much easier and faster and more efficient. I've actually, like, I've hit the point with, with nonfiction books. Like, I think books might be cooked, dude. I'd say the last, like, five to 10 nonfiction books I've, I've read, I've gotten really impatient partway through. And it took me a while to realize that it's like, I'm so accustomed to just chatting with a knowledge base.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:01Mark Manson?

  And having the answer, like, immediately delivered to me with all sorts of links and references and being able to like, like, I start reading a nonfiction book and I get two chapters in and I'm like, this is really slow. Like, I wish I'd just get to what I want to know. And so I'm already feeling my brain being trained that way.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Mark Manson?

  And I, like, and when I think about it, like, as the knowledge, like, the data sets get better and as the user experience gets better,

• 28:26Mark Manson?

  I could really see books feeling as though they're like, just a clunky, inefficient can, like, medium for information transfer. And that freaks me out as an author a little bit, right?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  The other thing, I don't know if you've messed around with, like, uh, these, like, AI companion apps at all?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I haven't really, no. I know you have, but.

• 28:46Mark Manson?

  They're strange.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:48Mark Manson?

  But it took me a while to kind of under, like, I, I've been using them just because I want to understand them. Like, apparently, like, the, the, the usage rate, like, the people who use them, they, like, use them an absurd amount, especially young people, like, Gen Zers.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:00Mark Manson?

  Like, the usage rates are through the roof. And it's, like, very reminiscent, if you look at the data on, like, how much they use them or, like, the usage per session, it's very reminiscent of, like, social media in the early days, like, Facebook, right, when it came out. So I've been, like, messing around with those. And they have a bad rap because I think the, the super early adopters were just like creepy horny dudes who wanted to, like, sext with an AI girlfriend. And there's definitely that, if, if that's your thing. If you want to go feel that AGI, you can go feel it.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  That's where, where technology always starts out, too.

• 29:35Mark Manson?

  Exactly, too. Porn is always the first thing in any, any medium. But. What like if you actually go mess around with it. So like one of the, one of the, the most popular companion apps, I think called Character AI. In one of the most popular like conversations, it's just called Hogwarts. And it basically just drops you into a Harry Potter fanfiction. It says like, you're a new student at Hogwarts. This is your first day.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:01Mark Manson?

  And you can write, it'll give you like, you know, part of the story and then you get to add whatever you want to it. And then it'll like, it'll keep adapting to your version of the story.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  That's kind of cool.

• 30:11Mark Manson?

  So it's like an interactive novel.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:14Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's like.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  It's like a choose your own adventure, but like real time.

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  Real time. And it's like infinite decision trees.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that's pretty cool. I love choose your own adventure back in the day.

• 30:23Mark Manson?

  It's sick. It's so cool.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 30:26Mark Manson?

  And so I've actually hit this realization just in the last few days of like, A, this feels like a new medium. Like it feels like a new form of entertainment entirely. It's not like a better version of books or a better version of movies. It's, it's like a, just a completely. It's a new category all on of its own. But then I also look at it and I'm like, fuck man, like, why read a novel when you can be in the novel?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 30:52Mark Manson?

  You know?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And it's a personalized novel.

• 30:54Mark Manson?

  It's personalized. So it's like, you can take it any direct, like if you don't like a character.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Kill him.

• 30:59Mark Manson?

  You can get rid of him.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Mark Manson?

  You'd be like, I don't want to talk to that guy anymore. I want to hang out with this character.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:04Mark Manson?

  And then it completely, you and I could like technically like do this, the same AI novel and have completely different storylines.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. This, that's wild. Okay.

• 31:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It is going to disrupt and change everything on a scale that like, I think the internet's probably the only, only comparable thing.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. The, you, you talked about like the rate of adoption of these things too, which is insane. So I think there's kind of, there's a few different kind of groups of people who see that. Some people just aren't even using it right now. I can, I have a whole bunch of stats here. I'm not going to go through them all, but like, there's a lot of people who still aren't using them, but the adoption, it's the, a lot of people are using them.

• 31:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Really coming around. Then there's people who used them early on and they thought they sucked and they just haven't went back yet. I think that's a mistake probably.

• 31:45Mark Manson?

  Totally. If you're one of those people, you should get back on and start messing with it.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Which you made that point in the last time we talked about AI on here was actually what you said, if you're not using it, you're dumb is what you said. That was, that was a

• 31:57Mark Manson?

  Me insult my audience, that would never happen.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  That didn't overwhelm with some people.

• 32:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah, surprise, surprise.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, I, I think, I do want to talk about though too, what the average person can do right now.

• 32:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  What's going to prepare us best for this, this crazy world that you, you're, I think you're, you're more into it than anybody I know. You've, you've dove into AI more than anybody ever. I use it all the time, but I feel like I'm still surface level. Very much so. Um, so if there's somebody out there who, I don't know, doesn't really even understand it, or they use it a little bit and they're like, yeah, it's kind of fun or whatever, but they just, they'll see it as a toy. They see it as social media, you know, the new version of whatever, or whatever. What, what do you think we need to be doing right now?

• 32:38Mark Manson?

  I think the best thing you can do is just set aside, take like a Saturday morning or something, block off three hours and just make yourself play around with it.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:49Mark Manson?

  It is a slow burn.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 32:51Mark Manson?

  Like you do kind of have to learn how to use it. And it took me a long time to realize as well is that like you get, the quality of the output is directly proportional to quality of input.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Which is just like a relationship you have with anybody else.

• 33:04Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  You have to treat it like that.

• 33:06Mark Manson?

  So like, if you just show up and you're like, uh, give me a new workout routine, it'll give you the most bland, blase.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like it's going to be useless. You could be like, wow, this sucks. Why would anybody use this? But if you go to it and you're like, look, I'm a 40 year old male, uh, I have a history of lower back injuries. Um, these are my PR weights. These are, this is how much I weigh. These are my goals for the year. This is my schedule. This is how much time I have. This is roughly how much protein I'm eating. Can you design a four day split workout routine that changes every quarter, uh, to keep things novel? And will increase, ideally increase my PRs by, uh,

• 33:47Mark Manson?

  10 to 12% over the course of the next year. It will give you the most fucking incredible output. It will like, and it will break everything down for you and you can ask it for details. You can be like, well, why did you, why did you pick front squats instead of back squats? Or like, what was the reasoning for, uh, you know, adding, uh, having this day off instead of that day off? And it'll explain it to you. It's like having a really great fitness coach just right in front of you. And so it's, it's a combination of like, A, being really creative with what you ask it. Cause it literally can talk to you about anything. And then B, giving it really good inputs. Like take the extra time to prompt it well, and like really give it specific details.

• 34:29Mark Manson?

  One thing you can do, and you suspect that the prompt's not great, you can actually ask it, what can I do to improve my prompt so that you give me better information? And it will tell you what you should have asked it. Yeah. Which is crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Like I asked it, I, I, I asked it. Really feeling the AGI there. Seriously. No. So I asked it a bunch of questions, uh, about, uh, social media strategy a couple of weeks ago. And it like gave me some pretty, some pretty boring, like it was like, kind of what a generic, like any, anything that you would see on Twitter or Instagram, like that kind of advice.

• 35:09Mark Manson?

  And I was like, well, this isn't very useful. And then so I asked it, I was like, uh, I was like, okay, well, what should I be asking you that I'm not? And it like gave me this list of 12 different things. And it was like, well, tell me about your audience. What, what are the demographics? Tell me about you. Like how, what's your relationship like with them? What platforms are you primarily focused on? Oh, wow. Like, what are you converting them to? Like where are you trying to promote a podcast? Are you trying to promote a YouTube video or do you want them on your newsletter? Like, it was like having a, hiring a business consultant. It was crazy. So, uh, that would be my recommendation to anybody. Like, think about whatever.

• 35:46Mark Manson?

  Whatever, what's the area in your life that like, you know, I gave the workout example like that, that workout example is, is a prompt, I gave it like just a couple of days ago.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:59Mark Manson?

  Think about the thing in your life that you want to improve or that you want to work on, but you just like, you haven't had the time to like really dig into it or do the research or go talk to somebody or like whatever. And just like, take a couple hours on a Saturday morning and just, just go hard with chat GPT on it and you will be shocked how far you'll get.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you've kind of, you've made a bull case there.

• 36:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Somebody's going to listen to that though. And they're going to say, okay, Mark, so you just said that writers, personal trainers, you know, uh, social media consultants.

• 36:35Mark Manson?

  Consultants, yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  They're not going to be needed. Uh, so there's going to be people out there saying, well, what the fuck am I going to do then? How, how am I going to pay for all these models, AI models in the first place if I'm not going to have a job? You posted, you've been very open with the rest of the team about the AI that you use and everything like that. And you say, okay, I need you guys to start using this. You posted this announcement and immediately one of the reactions was, that was a great post, Mark. Um, I thought you were going to end it with, you're all fired. Which, and that is like, I mean, part of it is whenever a new technology comes along, society freaks out and say, well, what are humans going to be needed for? It's like, if you don't need humans to shovel the shit anymore, like what are we useful for? Well, we found something else to be useful for.

• 37:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  What are we going to be useful for if AI takes all the creativity, uh, the creative jobs or the, the knowledge jobs? Cause that's what it's going after right now too. It's not going after the, the, the blue collar jobs really right now.

• 37:31Mark Manson?

  Your plumber's fine.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Or, or the people who are doing real high end coding or anything like that. It's not going after that. What are the rest of us supposed to do?

• 37:39Mark Manson?

  I personally believe that like scarcity never disappears. It just gets displaced. Right. So it's like anytime a technology is invented that solves scarcity in one place, it creates scarcity somewhere else. And so what I've been asking myself is like, where is the new scarcity? Right? So if essentially knowledge is, is, is universal and immediate, like if everybody in the world has access to all of human knowledge. More or less instantaneously. Knowledge is no longer the scarcity, which is great. It's all it like, that's a massive unlock for humanity. But then it forces the question, where is the new scarcity? And I have a lot of ideas on this.

• 38:23Mark Manson?

  I do think, I do think human connection, in-person human connection is going to go up in value quite a bit. I think we're probably entering a world where most like anytime we have to do anything involving any sort of creativity or information whatsoever, we're going to be on a screen. I mean, we already are to a certain extent, but I think it's only going to be more so. And, and I think it's just the, the in-person sense of community and connection is the premium is going to put on that is going to go through the roof. And so if you just think about things like, I don't know, clubs, yoga classes,

• 39:05Mark Manson?

  fitness groups, you know, basically anything, you know, events, concerts, anything, any excuse to get people in a room together, doing the same thing at the same time. That's the new scarcity because everything's, everything's going to be available everywhere for everybody, except for being next to another human being. Like that is the only thing that's not going to be scaled infinitely for everybody. But like, I don't know, there, there are, there's a lot of debate within like AI researchers of, of, you know, how creative can they get? Like right now, they're just kind of reshuffling and regurgitating human information. And so any, any apparent creativity is just an illusion created by like just remixing

• 39:49Mark Manson?

  previous human information. So I, I don't know. I don't know.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  So what do you think, what should people be most concerned with? I think like, what's the, what is the biggest danger for the average person?

• 40:03Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  It's just, and we're not talking about like AI coming and, you know, taking over the world and enslaving us or anything unnecessary like that. But within, you know, the near to medium term future.

• 40:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  What should be our biggest concern around it?

• 40:14Mark Manson?

  The biggest concern should be not being aware of it. Like if you are, I'd say if you're.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Sleeping on it.

• 40:20Mark Manson?

  If you're, unless you are at the end of your career, like I'd say anybody under fifty-five or sixty, like you gotta be using this stuff, because it is, it will eventually come for your industry.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:33Mark Manson?

  It's coming for ours first.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:35Mark Manson?

  But it's gonna come for everybody's at some point. And so, at least if you're aware of what it is, how to use it, you'll have a fighting chance.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:43Mark Manson?

  Essentially, like, or you'll, you'll know how to adapt. Like, I think what will happen in a lot of industries, and I do think this will happen in ours as well, is that like, AI is not gonna replace you and me. What it'll do is it'll make you and me much more effective, right? It'll make us, it'll make it easier to scale ourselves, right? So it's like, instead of taking three days to produce, uh, you know, a podcast outline and a script, it, it will take thirty minutes.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Mark Manson?

  Right? And so, we could potentially produce, um, ten times more podcasts with the same amount of time and effort.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:16Mark Manson?

  And it, it's just because it's people who know how to use it well, are gonna be ten times more effective. So, if you have ten, ten engineers, in an AI world, it's the best engineer is just gonna, they're just gonna let the nine worst ones go.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of those, just an example of this, I think it was just the other day, you came to me and you, you had some research project.

• 41:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And you showed me the output of this.

• 41:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Something like forty-two sources, something like that.

• 41:45Mark Manson?

  Deep research, yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  It was deep research, okay. It's forty-two resources, or something along those lines, forty-some resources. Uh, it gave you a bias score for each one of them.

• 41:53Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Uh, it gave you a summary of each one of them, kind of the quality of that research, all of this. You told me it took eight minutes.

• 42:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I, I took one look at that, and I told you, that would take me a week working on it full-time.

• 42:05Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  So, if, yeah, if you're sleeping on this.

• 42:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  You know, you hired me ten years ago, a little over ten years ago now. You wouldn't have hired me back then. I don't think my job.

• 42:13Mark Manson?

  No.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  You would, I would.

• 42:15Mark Manson?

  No.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Wouldn't have been necessary.

• 42:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, no context for listeners. I hired Drew as my first research assistant 10 years ago. Former PhD student in neuroscience. And yeah, OpenAI Deep Research gave me a research summary as good as, no offense, anything.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:30Mark Manson?

  Anything you've produced.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I saw it and I'm just like, I.

• 42:32Mark Manson?

  Anything you've produced in eight minutes.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:35Mark Manson?

  And yeah, it's insane. And it's like every month, there's something new like that.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that what I walked away from though, from that conversation we had about that was not to like freak the fuck out. Like I think a lot of people are right now. It's more to understand that, oh, this frees me up. I gotta figure something else out new, which is what we have to do every single time.

• 42:56Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  We have a big technological intervention.

• 42:58Mark Manson?

  Feel the AGI.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  AGI, deep, deep inside you. And we will get there.

• 43:04Mark Manson?

  The deep research inside you. All right, on that note.

• 43:08Mark Manson?

  We'll be right back.

• 43:16Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back. What I want to know, Drew, is when is an AI going to be able to like sit in this hot fucking room and shoot for me?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  I, I mean, at the rate things are going.

• 43:27Mark Manson?

  I, I've got a very comfy bed.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:30Mark Manson?

  That, uh, needs me to be in it.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  You'd go crazy. You would go insane.

• 43:35Mark Manson?

  I would.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  That wouldn't help at all.

• 43:38Mark Manson?

  That's true.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:39Mark Manson?

  It is true.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  That is, we're gonna have to figure out what to do with it. Anyway, anyway. Uh, the questions this week, question, this one comes from Naomi. Uh, it's a three word question, Mark.

• 43:48Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Can people change?

• 43:51Mark Manson?

  The perennial question.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously we're sitting here.

• 43:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Uh, opining on all of these different.

• 43:59Mark Manson?

  You know what I love too, is that 90% of the time, the person who asks this. Has nothing to do with themselves. It's because there's some shithead in their life.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Oh, I hadn't thought about that.

• 44:10Mark Manson?

  That they love and care about.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I hadn't thought about that.

• 44:12Mark Manson?

  And have like run their run out of patience and they're just like, is there any point in still trying? This is, it's a simple question. It's there's, it's a, it's a very deep and complex answer.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Literally thousands of years of philosophy and, and science going into this. Yeah.

• 44:28Mark Manson?

  My personal view is that it will, first of all, it define, it depends on how you define a person. So there are certain things that generally don't change, right? There are certain kind of inherent personality traits.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:40Mark Manson?

  That don't really change. They'll change a little bit over the course of your entire life, but like on a day to day, month to month, year to year basis, they, they don't really shift a whole lot. So like, if you are a very detail oriented person, um, there is probably not a world where you are not a detail oriented person. If you are a, an extremely extroverted person, there's probably not a world where you're not an extroverted person. Um, there's, there's a handful of personality traits that seem to be just kind of baked into us. Uh, through some combination of genetics and, and upbringing, uh, that by the time we're an adult, that's just kind of who we are. And we have certain tendencies and proclivities and preferences that just don't really go away. So there's that, there's like that component of it.

• 45:25Mark Manson?

  That said, our beliefs can change, our attitudes can change, our behavior, sure as shit can change. Our thoughts and ideas can change, right? So it really depends on what you mean by a person. So there are a number of things about them that are probably not going to shift, but those things are not determinate. Right? Like I can be a very detail oriented person, or I can be like a morning person. That, that's a preference. That's like a predisposition towards something. There are some people who are predisposed towards, uh, addictive behaviors. There are some people who are predisposed towards antisocial behaviors. There are some people who are predisposed towards being very altruistic and selfless.

• 46:09Mark Manson?

  But those are predispositions. Those are not, those don't determine your thoughts, beliefs and behavior. The thoughts, beliefs and behavior can always be shifted. They can always change. A sub version of this question or sub question, that is another version of this question that's maybe even more important is can a person change if they don't want to change?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Yeah.

• 46:30Mark Manson?

  To that, I would say no.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  That's a more interesting question too.

• 46:33Mark Manson?

  Yes. So, sub-question B, can a person change if they don't believe they can change? I would also say, probably not. So, there's like a few prerequisites, a few beliefs or mindsets that are like prerequisites to change as well, that like, like if you don't want to change, and if you don't believe you can change, then, nothing else, arguments, environment, incentives, nudging, like, none of that other stuff is really probably gonna matter a whole lot. And then I guess there's a third sub-question, which is like, can someone change because another person made them change? And to that, I would also say no.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  You think that's what they're actually asking?

• 47:19Mark Manson?

  Potentially.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 47:21Mark Manson?

  I've just noticed-

• 47:22Speaker 01

  You've found that it's a tendency for people.

• 47:23Mark Manson?

  I've just noticed that over the years, I mean, there are-

• 47:25Speaker 01

  I hadn't thought of that.

• 47:26Mark Manson?

  Occasionally, I will run into people who are like, can a person ever change? And they're referring to themselves because they've been-

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Trying so hard.

• 47:33Mark Manson?

  They're struggling, and they've been in a bad spot for a long time, and they're feeling kind of hopeless. But like, in my experience, nine times out of 10, it's somebody who, there's, it's either a partner, or a family member, or a child, who like, they've just, they're like, at their wits' end.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  I want you to change.

• 47:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they're at, they've tried everything, they don't know what else to do. And the tricky thing about those situations too, is that it's like, often, it's our best attempts to help a person change, or make a person change, is like subtly enabling their ability to not change.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Right, you get those codependent relationships that, yeah.

• 48:08Mark Manson?

  Totally. Because there is a certain, like, ultimately, for a person to change, there needs to be, it needs to feel, it needs to feel like a good trade-off to change, right? You'll never change if it feels like a bad trade-off. Like, I'm not gonna become a new type of person, if I feel like the new person is worse off than my current version of myself, right? And so, what often happens is, when, when a partner, or a family member, or a caregiver, is constantly trying to fix things in the person's life, or like, help them figure their shit out, they're suddenly, they are subtly reinforcing to that person-

• 48:51Mark Manson?

  Well, if you change, you're gonna lose all these perks and benefits that I'm giving you. Like, you're not gonna be able to stay here for free anymore, and I'm not gonna like, drive you to work anymore. I'm not gonna like, help you deal with your, you know, whatever anymore. And, uh, and so unconsciously, that like, removes incentive for the person to change. So it's a tricky, it's a very tricky thing. If you have somebody in your life who you really wish they would change, there's, it's, there's a very subtle dance that has to take place. Like, if you're supporting them, you have to make sure that you're supporting them because they want to change themselves and they believe they can change themselves. And if they don't believe those things, or if they don't want to change,

• 49:34Mark Manson?

  then your attempt to convince them to change, or support them in change, it's very, very likely it's gonna backfire and make things worse.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the guests we've had on here who have struggled with addiction, I think would tell you something very similar, both on the codependency side, but also on the side of the recognizing that trade-off you were talking about.

• 49:54Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  That like, they needed that rock bottom, they needed to find that rock bottom to see that trade-off. And so you can't, I think it was Novak, Brandon Novak, who said, you know, I wouldn't have wanted anybody to rob me of that process.

• 50:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  You know, and that's that process of finding rock bottom.

• 50:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Which is painful to watch from the outside.

• 50:11Mark Manson?

  I remember reading Rich Roll's book, and one of the things that impressed me the most was his parents.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 50:18Mark Manson?

  When he was like, deep in his throes with alcoholism, and had just gone to jail and all this stuff, he like, went to his parents' house or something, and they shut the door on him. And they said, "Don't come back till you're sober."

• 50:29Speaker 01

  That's gotta be the hardest thing to do as a parent.

• 50:31Mark Manson?

  I can't even imagine. Like, I remember reading that.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  I was caved.

• 50:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I remember reading that, and I was like, "God damn."

• 50:37Speaker 01

  That's some cold shit.

• 50:38Mark Manson?

  Props to his parents, man. Like, really props to his parents. That like, that's, that's incredible, because I think most, most family members are not able to do that.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right. And that's why you see all the enabling and the codependency and the, yeah.

• 50:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah, totally.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. You latched on to the word people in those three. I latched on to the word change. Like, what do you, what do you actually call it?

• 50:59Mark Manson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  What is the definition of change? So that's why the simple question has all these little rabbit holes you can go down. And I thought, well, what do you mean by change? There's, there's behavioral change.

• 51:09Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  There's, can you change your personality? You kind of, you alluded to that as well. Can you change your identity? Like, I'm a loser. You know, can you change that thinking? And then, you know, there's all this like around things like self-actualization, you know, that the, the humanist came up with. We appear to have this drive towards change.

• 51:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  And that we're seeking it, but is it actually? What constitutes change in any of that? Because a behavioral change, if this, the environment changes and you didn't do anything about it, but yet you changed your behavior around that, is that change? Is that real change? Is that the kind of change you're talking about? I mean, you've changed your behavior, sure.

• 51:44Mark Manson?

  This is a really good question because I run into this, especially with like the woo-woo crowd out here in LA. There's so many people I know out here who, you know, they do all the, their spiritual journey stuff and retreats and seminars and have a shaman and a guru and yeah, psychedelic, you know, the whole nine yards. And every time I see them, they like swear on their life.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  This is something else I was gonna ask you about.

• 52:08Mark Manson?

  They have like, they're completely transformed. They're like, oh my God, Mark, you wouldn't believe, I went to Costa Rica and I did this whole like shaman thing. And like, I'm a completely transformed person. And then I ask them like, okay, cool. Well, like, how's life going? How's business going? How's, you know, your relationship going? And it's all the same shit.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Same shit, different day.

• 52:26Mark Manson?

  It's all the same shit. And I'm like, okay, so what changed?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:29Mark Manson?

  You know? And I think that it's a really, it's a really interesting question because, and maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but like my bias is that if you, if your behaviors are the same, I don't think you really changed. Like you, it's kind of like putting lipstick on a pig, right? Like, you don't, you could see your life differently, but if your behaviors are the same and the problems are the same, then in, in my mind, you haven't really changed. So I guess my definition of change would be. Behavioral driven.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Behavioral, yeah.

• 53:09Mark Manson?

  Or I would actually say it's problem driven. So like it'd be one thing if, if, and this has happened a couple of times. Like some of these people like they'll come back from their like whatever, whatever retreat. And they'll be like, you know, I thought this was a problem in my life, but now I've, I actually see that it's not, you know, or that I've changed my perspective or I, I've shifted my values and I'm okay like, you know, with whatever. So if the pro, if the perception of a problem has shifted, then I would say that is a change. Right? So if the behavior around a problem changes or the perspective around a problem changes, I would say that's a change.

• 53:51Mark Manson?

  But yeah, if, if neither of those things have changed, then.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'd be hard pressed to say you've really changed if it's one of those two things. Your mind, your mind hasn't changed or your behavior hasn't changed or both.

• 54:00Mark Manson?

  Well, and, and I think this is, this also ties into, cause I think what a lot of those people experience, and this, this is actually, this is a common knock on therapy as well, is that what has probably changed is their perception of themselves.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Right?

• 54:13Mark Manson?

  Right. So it's like, I could go to a therapist, you know, this, so this, this used to be the, the big criticism of like, uh, like Freudian therapy, right? It's like, you can go to a therapist and you can like learn all this crazy shit about your childhood and all this, how your, your mom was actually kind of a terrible person and all this stuff.

• 54:33Mark Manson?

  But then you still have to go back to your life and all the problems and dysfunction in your life, it's like still there, nothing's changed, you haven't done anything differently. Right? And so like, that was always the big criticism of like that old school Freudian stuff. And I think there's a little bit of that in the self-help world, you know? It's like people will go, they'll go like do some sort of, do a bunch of psychedelics and lay around and.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, meditation.

• 54:56Mark Manson?

  Meditation, whatever, and they'll get some sort of insight into themselves and like a greater understanding of like, oh, this is why I'm this way, or like, this is why I always feel like this, maybe I should chill out. But, and I think that insight to them feels like a profound change. When really, it's just a change of self-knowledge or self-perspective. And I guess by my definition of change, if the problems are the same and the behavior is the same, then like, nothing really changed.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, yeah. What do you think you've changed in your life? And you can't say your health stuff because we already know about that. That was gonna be too easy for you. What do you think you've changed? I can give you an example of mine, too. I'll just give you a quick example of one I thought of.

• 55:38Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  I've become much less reactive in my relationships, especially.

• 55:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Things that used to set me off, I've been able to like be more mindful and catch myself.

• 55:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Be like, okay, what's the best reaction here? Things that come up now that would have just like set me off earlier. I've been able to really like, really step back and be like, okay, what's the best for the relationship here? Not what's the best for my little ego boost that I need or anything like that. I really do think I've been able to do that. And that's just been within the last couple of years, honestly, last few years, that I've gotten a lot better about that sort of things. To me, that feels like a big change.

• 56:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  And I think it's also reflected outwardly as well.

• 56:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So has that caused you to behave differently in your relationships?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, yes. Oh, I mean, yeah, I feel just so much more like secure in my relationships now, too, that whether it's friends, romantic, whatever.

• 56:23Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Where I can kind of step back and instead of being so judgmental.

• 56:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Like, I really had to work on that, though.

• 56:29Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I felt like that was a change for me. And it's, it seems minor in the moments, but then you step back and you're like, oh, that changed the whole trajectory of a relationship. Or that, you know, I look back on moments that I had where a relationship fell apart or something, and I point to certain moments and I'm like, oh, if I would have just handled that differently, it probably would have, the whole relationship could have gone different.

• 56:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 56:50Mark Manson?

  I think, this is probably a good insight, is that I think at some point in the last five years, I had the insight that like, I have a novelty addiction in my brain. And that has driven most of my bad decisions throughout my life. It's driven a lot of good decisions as well, but it's most of the poor decisions that I've made over the, over the years, or problems that I've created for myself over the years. It's been driven by that constant need for novelty and that constant dissatisfaction from it. And so, it, that realization, that realization by itself, I did not change. But that realization sparked change by me being much more conscientious about like...

• 57:36Mark Manson?

  Taking fewer trips, saying no to more business opportunities, focusing more on showing up for friends, you know, being more consistent in like my community and the people I know and like, you know, it's, it's, it's a conversation like my wife and I have been having a lot the past two years because I think she and I are just both kind of bad at it. It's like, show up for the little things. It's the stuff you're really good at. It's like, show up for the little things. Like, they add up and they really matter. And those are the things that old Mark would be like, well, that's boring. Like, that's not novel. So, you know, let me know when there's a wedding or something, because then I'll make time.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:14Mark Manson?

  But then it's like, I've got like some cool trip, or I'm gonna go do this thing in Dubai or something, you know, and like, and I wouldn't be there. And I think it took enough, like, I had to age enough to like, pay the price for that. You know, you, you have to go through enough of life and, and go through enough years to see the accumulation of all those small decisions and realize that like, oh, okay, I actually kind of fucked myself here. And then like, a lot of the problems that I'm experiencing today, it's a result of like, lots and lots of small, bad decisions over the, the course of the last five or 10 years. And so, I'd say the last two years has really been me trying to correct that. And I'm trying to be like, way more conscious and focused on where I spend my time,

• 58:59Mark Manson?

  both in terms of people and then also in terms of like endeavors or hobbies or whatever. And, um, and yeah, it's like, sometimes I get sucked back a little into the novelty vortex. You know, I can like, feel, I'll like-

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Well, you're, you're never gonna change that.

• 59:16Mark Manson?

  Exactly. That's so, that's a perfect example. Like, that, that desire for novelty, it's never gonna go away. I'm always gonna have that. What changes is my ability to manage it, right? It's like, the, the behavior that it produces.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:30Mark Manson?

  The output that happens in terms of like, my behavior and my beliefs and, and my commitments. So, that's probably been the biggest one.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's kind of where I've landed on all this too, is that those are, there probably are things that aren't gonna change, or at least not change very much about you. But the way those are expressed-

• 59:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  -can be changed. It's kind of like, how do you channel your introversion or extroversion, or your novelty-seeking versus your comfort-seeking?

• 59:54Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Like, those can be changed.

• 59:57Mark Manson?

  And, and I think so many people get mixed up because they try to change the- Disposition, like they try to change their personality.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  I want to be a new person.

• 1:00:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they're like, I don't want to be an introvert anymore. Or I don't want to be an anxious person anymore. Or I don't want to, you know, need so much of a routine anymore. And it's like, sorry, but like, if that's how you've always been, you're probably always going to be that way. Like, it's funny, and it's like, I think people resist that idea. But I have actually found that like, if you can kind of stay at point, like, I've had conversations with people before where like, they've kind of come to me and they're like, man, I'm an anxious mess. I'm really having a lot of problems. Like, how do I deal with this? And I'm like, well, you know, tell me about, tell me about it. How, you know, how did this start? How did, well, it turns out they've always been an anxious mess their entire life. And they're just like, I'm sick of it. I don't want to be this way anymore. And I'm like, well, I got bad news for you. Like, you're an anxious person. That's just life.

• 1:00:51Mark Manson?

  Like, everybody's got a thing, you know? Some people struggle with anger. Some people struggle with depression. Some people, like, I'm a depressive person. I fall into depression, I think, much easier than most people. My wife is a very anxious person. She worries about stuff much more than most people. You were saying that you, you get triggered and fly off the handle. Like, you know, some people get angrier much easier than some, like, we've all got our thing. And it's like, you don't change the thing, you change the reaction to the thing.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, yeah, that can be very, it's a slow process.

• 1:01:27Mark Manson?

  It is a slow process.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  I think the other thing about change, you have to just be willing to accept and sign up for is the, just the slow grinding nature of it.

• 1:01:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  What else are you gonna do though, too? You know, like, that's, that's life.

• 1:01:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Mark Manson?

  All right. I would ask for the wisdom of the week, but the last time you gave us that.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I don't have any dirty jokes.

• 1:01:48Mark Manson?

  You don't, no more Willie Nelson jokes?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  I don't know. No Willie Nelson jokes. All right, wisdom of the week from Maya Angelou.

• 1:01:56Mark Manson?

  I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it. That sums up a lot from today. Well, the AGI has penetrated us all this episode. Until next week, please like and subscribe to the episode before we all lose our jobs. And, and sign up, sign up for the weekly newsletter, which is not written by AI. That's true. It is a, every Monday I send out one idea, one question and one exercise to help you have your next breakthrough. It's at markmanson.net/newsletter. Feel free to email us questions@[email protected]. And I guess we'll be back next week. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney.

• 1:02:40Mark Manson?

  Edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choyes, our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.