The Backwards Law: How to Get More by Doing Less

There are certain areas in life where trying harder only makes things worse. Trying to prove how likable and confident you are only makes you feel more unlikable and less confident. Trying to make someone love you only makes you feel more unlovable. The solution to this conundrum is what’s known as “The Backwards Law”. Simply put, The Backwards law states that desiring a positive experience is itself a negative experience, while accepting a negative experience is a positive experience. In this episode, Drew and I talk about five areas of life where doing less can actually reap massive benefits. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 The Backwards Law: When Trying Makes Things Worse 00:02:00 Three Curves: How Effort and Reward Actually Work 00:06:02 Emotions: The Anxiety About Your Anxiety 00:10:15 Freedom: Why Commitment Sets You Free 00:11:08 Depth vs. Breadth: The Two Types of Freedom 00:19:07 Happiness Requires Struggle: Why Comfort Doesn't Work 00:23:37 Love: When It Becomes Dangerous 00:29:30 Respect: The Foundation of All Healthy Relationships 00:32:43 What Respect Actually Means: Time, Attention, and Equality 00:35:40 Why Internal States Don't Follow External Rules ⇨ 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

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

• 0:04Mark Manson?

  I was trying to think of something clever, but then I was like, that's not clever. Insert clever intro here, listeners. Pretend I said something very witty and funny. See, that's the funny thing, Drew, is the more you try to be witty and funny, the less witty and funny you are. Which is the topic of today's episode.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  I see where you know this.

• 0:24Mark Manson?

  The backwards law. See, that was witty and funny. I did it. I fucking did. As soon as I stopped trying, I did it.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Bro, do you even podcast like brawl? This is the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 0:42Mark Manson?

  We're gonna talk about the backwards law today. This is a classic, a favorite. Comes from my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It's been in a number of articles, YouTube videos, and it's actually, it's not my concept. Like, it's been around for a long. I mean, first of all, it's like a Buddhist concept. But beyond that, Alan Watts popularized it in the 60s. But essentially, the way I define the backwards law in The Subtle Art is I say that the desire for a positive experience is itself a negative experience. And the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience. And this creates this kind of paradoxical experience that we all have quite often of the more we try to make ourselves feel better, the more miserable we become.

• 1:26Mark Manson?

  And conversely, the more we kind of accept the unsavory circumstances of our lives, the more we come to terms with our shortcomings, our failings, our rejections, the more at peace we seem to be with them and the more confident and self-assured that we feel. So, we're gonna dive in. In this episode, we wanna kind of go deep and really understand why this happens. What's the psychological explanation for why this happens? What context does the backwards law apply to? What context does it not apply to? And essentially, how we can all just stop trying so hard. So where should we start, Drew?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so in an article on the backwards law, you outlined three different relationships, three different curves.

• 2:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Effort to reward curves.

• 2:12Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  So let's go through those first, because I think that frames this whole discussion in a really good way.

• 2:18Mark Manson?

  There's an old article on the site. I drew these beautiful MS Paint charts, which you could still see today.

• 2:26Mark Manson?

  But basically, there are three curves, and it's the relationship between effort and reward in like anything that we pursue in life. So the first one is kind of a linear relationship. The more effort you put into something, the more reward you get out of it. So this tends to apply to like very basic, menial, repetitive tasks. Like if you spend twice as much time cleaning the kitchen, the kitchen will likely get twice as clean. Basically, anything that doesn't require a whole lot of critical thinking, creative thinking, you have this very linear relationship between effort and reward. The second curve is a diminishing returns curve, which is you put in twice as much effort, you get twice as much reward, maybe the first hour, but the second hour, you only get 50% as much reward.

• 3:10Mark Manson?

  And then the next hour, you get 10% more reward. So basically, the more time, the more effort you put into it, the less the marginal reward is on each of those extra hours. And this tends to be true with creative work, any sort of problem solving work, anything that involves like very complicated decision making. I think this is purely because we have just limited bandwidth. Like if you're doing very difficult problem solving, you probably only have three to four hours of good problem solving juice in your brain on a given day. And once you use that juice up, you're kind of just spinning your tires. And then finally, we get the inverted curve. And this is where the backwards law kicks in. And this is where effort actually becomes negatively

• 3:55Mark Manson?

  associated with reward. And the most obvious example of this is trying to control what other people think about you. Like if you try to make people respect you, it actually makes them respect you less. If you try to make people trust you, it actually makes them distrust you. If you try to appear confident, you actually appear less confident. And this is just a very weird, crazy mindfuck of a situation. And the backwards law, it applies to the domain of internal emotional regulation. And to relationships. And I guess we'll dive into why those two things are true, but those are generally the domains that the backwards law applies to.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And I think you point out too, that when you try to apply the principles from one of these curves in a different area, it doesn't work out. And I think like Callan Newport, who has been on the show, he really works in the kind of domain of the diminishing returns, right? Creative work, knowledge work, that kind of thing. And he points out that, but we still have this very linear curve relationship with it. And we try to force in more, more hours to produce more work and stuff like that, where it doesn't work. And we'll see that with the backwards law too, I think.

• 5:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, that's a really good point, that these things don't transfer over. And we tend to, that's a big mistake that we tend to make. Knowledge workers tend to assume that knowledge work functions like blue collar work. Similarly, like often what you'll see is like people who do like a lot of, I guess, spiritual work or like they, you know, they get really in the meditation and psychedelics and they go on retreats and they, they make all these backwards law like discoveries of like, oh, the more you just let things go in life, you know, the better they get. And then tax season comes up and they're like, you know what, I'm just gonna let the universe take care of it. It's like, well, you know what, like Uncle Sam doesn't give a fuck what the universe has to say, you know, you have to turn in your taxes. So you don't want to take something that applies in the backwards law realm and try to apply it to, you know, an

• 5:54Mark Manson?

  Excel spreadsheet or your next creative meeting at work or whatever. Like it's, it's, you're gonna run into problems there as well.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Okay. So speaking of those, some of those backwards law realms, what are some of the examples of this? Some of the most important examples you've come across, I guess?

• 6:10Mark Manson?

  I think the first and probably the most, most universal experience around this is dealing with your own emotions, like trying to

• 6:21Mark Manson?

  Control how you feel. Like if you try to make yourself less anxious. Anybody who's struggled with anxiety knows that the first rule of anxiety is the more you try to get rid of anxiety, the more anxious you start feeling. Because you're anxious about your anxiety, right? Like you, you start like creating this meta anxiety about the fact that you're anxious. And then you realize that's going on and you develop even a higher level anxiety about the fact that you're making yourself anxious about being anxious. And like it's emotions tend to like compound on themselves in this way. It's similar like if you struggle a lot with anger, right? And you're like, God damn it, I should stop being angry all the time. Why, what the fuck is wrong with me? Like, oh shit. I'm getting angry again.

• 7:06Mark Manson?

  God, I'm such a loser. Why the fuck do I always get, ah, fuck, I'm doing it again. Like you, you get caught in these spirals around emotion. And the only way out is to simply leave the emotion alone. It's like, oh, I'm angry. That's okay. I'm gonna be angry now.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:23Mark Manson?

  And ironically, as soon as you accept that you're gonna be angry now, it starts dissipating and it starts, you know, you start to let it go. So I think the, the first and most crucial place that this happens is, is around emotions. And I think, you know, I, I would say meditation is probably the best backwards law practice because what meditation is, is simply training you to let go and accept whatever is happening in your experience. And I think generally people who meditate, the, the first benefit they really start experiencing is this kind of backwards law effect of letting their emotions go. Of like, oh, if I'm just okay with my anxiety,

• 8:07Mark Manson?

  it loses its power over me and it doesn't, it doesn't control me as much as it used to. And that's very liberating, right? So I would say that's the first and biggest one.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, I have a lot of therapist friends and they constantly tell me that this is one of the hardest things for them to get across to, to clients. And it's usually one of the biggest problems they have. And it's, they can see it right away when people come in. They're trying to control their emotions. They're trying to control some relationship that they can't control or something about the world that they can't control.

• 8:37Mark Manson?

  Other people's emotions.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  And they're like, their job, they're like, half of my job or more is just trying to get them to let go.

• 8:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And it's, it's really, really hard. So meditation helps, therapy helps, but it's even hard for therapists to, to get people to do this. And I don't know what that is.

• 8:52Mark Manson?

  I think it's really useful to understand that, you know, in, in, in my book, Everything is Fucked, I talk about the two brains. Like, for me, it was very helpful to understand that you don't have this unified brain in your head. You actually have multiple systems that are kind of layered on top of each other. And the emotional system and the rational system are, are two completely different systems. And they can look at each other and react to each other, but they don't control each other. Right? Like, you can be the smartest person in the world and understand all the intellectual reasons why you are completely safe and secure and that there's nothing to be worried about. But your emotional brain can still be freaking out in the background.

• 9:34Mark Manson?

  And there's nothing that's gonna necessarily change that or, or eliminate it permanently. Like, you can, the two brains can influence each other, but they can't control each other. And so I think what a lot of people struggle with is that realization that, you know, just because you know you shouldn't be angry, or you know you shouldn't be sad, doesn't mean you're gonna stop being angry or sad. Like, you don't get to decide what you're gonna feel. You're gonna feel what you're gonna feel. There's like an animal part within us that just feels whatever it feels. And as soon as you orient yourself towards responding to that, rather than trying to control it, you just end up being in a much better place. What's the next one?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Freedom. You've written before, the, the constant desire for more freedom ironically limits us in a number of ways. Similarly, it's by limiting ourselves, by choosing and committing to certain things in life, that we truly exercise our freedom.

• 10:28Mark Manson?

  I think this is the one, if there's one that like really confuses readers a lot, it's this one. I get a lot of questions around this one.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I was confused about this one for a very long time, too. So, yeah.

• 10:37Mark Manson?

  And, and I think a lot of people, especially if your conception of freedom is optionality and autonomy, then this makes no sense to you. You know, you're like, I have all the options in the world. How am I not free? And it's like, well, actually, it's just, it's, it's a different form of prison. But the way I eventually understood this is that I think that there's actually two forms of freedom and they are mutually exclusive. Okay. There is a breadth of freedom, which I would call like optionality. Okay. And then there is a depth of free experience, which I would call a freedom of distraction.

• 11:18Mark Manson?

  I used to optimize my life for a breadth of experience, a breadth of freedom. It's like I can go to any country I want to go. I can work or write anything I want to write. I can hang out with anybody I want to hang out with. And that's fun, like that optionality is very exciting and it leads to a lot of different opportunities. But the problem is, is that if you want to go deep on any one thing, by definition, you have to be willing to give up options. If I, well, for example, when I met my wife in Brazil, I was forced to make a decision of like, okay, I really like this woman. I'd like to kind of explore a relationship with her. But to do that, I have to give up the possibility of living in other places, of dating other people, of having other experiences, of going to other countries.

• 12:04Mark Manson?

  Like I have to stay here and spend time with her. And on the surface, that seems like a closing of freedom. Like I'm giving up freedom to spend time with this person. What I eventually discovered, after spending a few years with my wife, is that there's actually this very like subtle form of freedom that happens with a depth of experience, with a depth of commitment with something or someone. And that is essentially this, it's, there is a emotional freedom that I experience with my wife. I am able to be purely and completely myself with zero inhibition and with zero self censorship around her. And she's the only per, probably the only person in the world I feel that with.

• 12:46Mark Manson?

  And that is only earned through spending many, many, many years together. Similarly, there is a, a expertise and a knowledge base that I've developed in my career. Like theoretically, I'd love to be able to say like, oh, I could go do anything. I could start any sort of company and learn any skill. That may be true in the abstract, but the truth is, is at this point, I've spent almost two decades really investing. Most of my time and effort into a handful of skills, into a single business, into a single career and single brand. So like in many ways, my, my options are very limited. But in the same token, the skill set that I've developed, the expertise that I've developed, the relationships that I've built with my audience and with people in the industry.

• 13:32Mark Manson?

  There's a certain degree of freedom that I have, a creative freedom that I have that most people don't. That has been earned and fought for over many, many years, hammering on the same thing over and over again. So Jaco Willink has this thing that discipline is freedom. And I remember when I first saw that, I was like, the fuck is this guy talking about? But like I, over the years, I've like, I've realized the wisdom in that, in that the discipline that it takes to have a healthy body gives you the freedom to do whatever you want without pain or without limitation, right? Like it's the discipline of studying and reading lots of books

• 14:14Mark Manson?

  gives you the intellectual freedom to understand issues from multiple perspectives. The discipline that it takes to build a, a career in a single space over multiple decades gives you the freedom to influence the world and create things in the world that you, there was no other way that you ever would have been able to influence or create anything. So that's a very long-winded explanation of depth versus breadth of freedom. And I think when you're young and things are sexy and exciting and shiny and like you've never, you're kind of starting at a, a ground level on everything. Breath of freedom is very exciting, but I think the, the project

• 14:58Mark Manson?

  through adulthood is giving up your breadth, your optionality and going deep on a few things in your life. And, and really experiencing that depth of freedom and free experience.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so many threads to pull on there, but one thing I'll highlight, and you, you said it, but I want to highlight because I think it's really important is that commitment frees you from distraction.

• 15:20Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Like that's kind of the, the takeaway from that. And your example of committing to one person, for example, like, you know, I'm a single guy right now.

• 15:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  And I see this, now I see this, I'm like, I'm getting older, you know? When you're younger, you're like, yeah, I want tons of options and this and that. And now I'm getting older and I'm like, I don't, I don't have time for this shit. Like, you know, you, you said this before with that you have a wife, you, you are happy in your relationship, everything like that. You don't have to worry about this shit.

• 15:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  You know, or I'm like, how, who has, do you know how fucking busy I am? Who has time for this shit?

• 15:54Mark Manson?

  Dude, I, you know how I explain this to my single guy friends sometimes is, and it's funny because I, like, I tru- this was a very powerful experience when I got engaged. It happened when I proposed. It didn't happen with the, with the wedding. It happened when I proposed. You know how like when you leave Photoshop open on your laptop in the background and just everything gets 10% slower?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:15Mark Manson?

  You know, because it's just eating up RAM or whatever. And like, you know, your, your web browser is not loading and you're, you're like, oh, that's so fucked. Why is everything so slow? And then like, you know, six hours later, you realize Photoshop was open in the background with like 20 images and you close Photoshop and everything gets faster. I feel like my entire adult, like post puberty life, I had Photoshop open in the background of my brain. And, and except the Photoshop in my brain was called, where's the hot girl and does she like me?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:44Mark Manson?

  And.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  It's eating up all your RAM.

• 16:46Mark Manson?

  It's just eating up tons of RAM all the time. Like every room I walk into, it's like, oh, where's the hot girl? Does she like me? And it's very unconscious, right? And as soon as I got engaged, it's like that window closed and it freed up all this RAM. And it just, I had all this energy and attention, like this abundance of energy and attention to dedicate to things that I actually give a shit about. And that actually matter in my life. And it was, it was actually a very powerful experience to just like, and again, come back to the freedom thing, a freeing experience to like walk into a room and not give a shit.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I don't care.

• 17:23Mark Manson?

  Who's in it? If they're single, if they're not, if they like me, if there's a ketchup stain on my shirt. Like, I don't fucking care. It doesn't matter, right? I can, I can focus on the thing that actually matters.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, I, I've just seen this in other areas though, too, just my, my deep desire for independence.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  You know, when you try so hard at it, you find, you get to a point where you're like, I'm just lost. I don't, you don't have, you didn't commit to a place, you didn't commit to people, you didn't commit to really anything. And you don't, you don't end up free or you end up lost.

• 17:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  It is.

• 17:53Mark Manson?

  In my twenties, I very much had that life, that bon vivant lifestyle of just like, I'm just gonna go wherever I want and I'm gonna party all the time and I'm gonna be creative and. Date a bunch of people and like, that's great. That's great for a period of time. But now that I'm 40, I know a few people that are still in that. And they're like late 30s, early 40s, and they never left it. And they seem lost. Like it's, it's, they seem, there's an angst or frustration about them of the fact that they haven't found anything. They either haven't found something that they're able to go deep on, or they have been too scared to go deep on something. If you never go deep on something, like that's where all of the long-term meaning and purpose in life is.

• 18:37Mark Manson?

  And if you never find a way to get there, then eventually you, you feel kind of trapped on this like dopamine treadmill of like, oh, gotta find the new, the new thing, the new scene, the new party, the new place, the new person. Person, yeah. And, and it never ends. It's just, you just start changing them out one for the other endlessly, until you finally find something. Next one, happiness. Which this ties in quite well to that. As you know, my, my, a fundamental piece of my philosophy is that happiness requires some degree of struggle. It requires struggle because I think ultimately to feel happy with our lives, we need to feel like we're overcoming something,

• 19:19Mark Manson?

  or we are growing in some way. And I think growth by definition requires surmounting some sort of discomfort or, or problem. Yet I think the way most people, the instinctual way that most people try to be happy is by removing discomfort, removing struggle and removing problems. They, they basically try to be as comfortable as possible and try to live in their default setting as much as possible. It's like a torturous facet of human psychology that, again, it comes back to the two brains, like that, what the animal brain wants is like, no, no, no, just sit on the couch, man. Just like, just open another bag of Cheetos. Like, it's gonna be fine. It's all pleasure seeking.

• 20:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like what's on Netflix, dude? Like it's, you know, don't think about it too much. Whereas we have this higher level brain inside of ourselves, this higher level system that

• 20:14Mark Manson?

  Needs progress, it needs growth, it needs novelty, it needs understanding. And if you're not satisfying that part of your brain, you know, ultimately, like, that's where like real despondence and despair starts to set in.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, so much of just modern culture in society is is set up against us on this one, I think.

• 20:35Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  It's just convenience, pleasure sold as packaged as happiness.

• 20:40Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Right. And it's so easy to fall into that right now. And so the default is just is indulging in that.

• 20:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And I don't know, like, if that's a product of like capitalism gone wild, or whatever it is, I don't know. But it's something you have to deal with on a very deep level, I think, to be able to open yourself up to a lot of other these

• 21:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  others of these two.

• 21:08Mark Manson?

  I think it's because ultimately, it's our animal brain that makes buying decisions, you know, and marketers understand that. This is one reason why I feel like everybody should just be understand basic marketing and sales, like 101. Mainly for the site, like to give yourself to arm your defenses against the ways you're being influenced by media and advertising. Like, it's any marketing course you take, the first thing they teach you is find what people are dissatisfied with and promise them that you're going to fix it for them. Promise them that they're going to be comfortable, they're going to be safe, that life's going to be easy, that they're going to be happy. They just buy this product like that's that is basically what marketing's function is.

• 21:52Mark Manson?

  And this is the problem is that is that a bad thing? Well, yeah, if the product's bad, yeah, it is a bad thing. Right? Like, if you're marketing cigarettes, telling people this is going to make them happy, or if you like, look at beer commercials, you know, it's, yeah, that's probably a bad use of marketing. But if the product's really good, right? Like, if you're selling a treadmill, or if you're selling, you know, vegetables, okay, you actually want that marketing, like, you need marketing. So I, I, I've come to the conclusion that, first of all, marketing isn't necessarily good and bad, it's a tool.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:30Mark Manson?

  And and it depends on what it's being used for. Capitalism, you can hate on capitalism, but capitalism is simply the most accurate reflections of human desires.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:41Mark Manson?

  Serve back to us. If we didn't want to buy this shit, we wouldn't buy it. If we didn't crave it, they wouldn't sell it to us. Like, nobody would make a product for it, right? So, yeah, there are definitely problems and it leads to problems, but it's, we don't, we're never going to grow as a society and develop as a society psychologically unless we're like forced to deal with these things.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:05Mark Manson?

  Like, if you just made a law saying like, okay, you can never sell anything bad for anybody ever again, I don't think that's really gonna make anything better.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:12Mark Manson?

  It's probably gonna make things worse.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  No, I'm not anti-capitalist.

• 23:14Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  I'm just, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm pro individual agency. I guess you should say, yeah, yeah.

• 23:20Mark Manson?

  I mean, you can be anti-capitalist, Drew, I'll just stop paying you.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right?

• 23:25Mark Manson?

  You can just-

• 23:26Speaker 01

  That would change my tune very quickly if that were the case. No. I get it. I'm not anti-capitalist. I totally get this. Okay, let's keep moving.

• 23:35Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, the big one, Mark, love.

• 23:37Mark Manson?

  Oh. You know what's funny? Okay, so the love thing, Rolling Stone published this long piece, it's like 55 pages, about P. Diddy.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Where the hell are you going with this?

• 23:52Mark Manson?

  And it's interesting because, I mean, P. Diddy's in all sorts of trouble. I mean, it turns out that he's like just this fucking serial abuser and madman and extremely violent, potentially murderer, you know?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:06Mark Manson?

  Who's kind of somehow flown under the radar or been enabled for decades, given his like stature in the music industry. But it's interesting because in the article, it consistently juxtaposes, like, all the quotes from him about all this stuff that's coming out, he, he keeps talking about love. He's like, "I'm all about love. I just want love. Like, everybody knows I'm just trying to give the love." And even his albums are like called love. Like, everything has love in the title. And it's interesting because all of the instances, this also ties into the control thing, but it's like trying to make people love him. Like, there are people in his life that I guess he loved, and then they didn't love him back, and then he just can't handle it. And he, he like does this

• 24:51Mark Manson?

  heinous shit. And I think- Love can be dangerous because if we overestimate it and if we assume that it's this like cosmic force that, you know, destiny is bringing us together and, you know, I love this person. So it means that we have to be together and we, we have to be happy together. You can start using that to justify some heinous fucking shit. Like you can use that to rationalize absolutely terrible behavior towards the person that you supposedly love, right? And you see this all the time from P Diddy all the way down to like the most deadbeat abuser anywhere you go. In their head, they're like, everything they do is justified through love.

• 25:35Mark Manson?

  They're like, well, I, you know, I didn't want to do this, but you made me do it and I'm doing it because I love you. And it's just this, it's this fucked up, toxic version of, it's not even a toxic version of love. It's a toxic interpretation of love. It's a toxic like, it's like, I love this person. I can't control them, which means they can hurt me. So I'm going to do everything I can in my power to prevent them from hurting me and I'm going to convince myself it's for their own good. It's for, you know, it's for the relationship or whatever. And so it's, love is where things can get very nasty.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Mark Manson?

  And you can't control how people feel about you, even if you do love each other. I've got plenty of articles. I've got a book about this. I've got videos about this. Like even if two people love each other, sometimes just because two people love each other doesn't mean they're good for each other. Like you can love somebody who is a bad fit for you, who actually makes your life worse. And it's not even because they're a bad person. It's just a complete incompatibility of personalities or lifestyles or worldviews. And it's if you overestimate love or if you try to control love, then it's not hard to find justifications for doing some really, really awful shit.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And not only that, but you said to, you've written before that the more we try to make others love and accept us, the less they will. And more importantly, the less we will love and accept ourselves.

• 26:57Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And I think that last part, you know, when you're, when you're trying to make somebody else love you, what you're really doing, you're trying to change yourself, which is another kind of backwards law thing too.

• 27:06Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Right? And so you have backwards law inception here, basically. But you end up, you end up not liking yourself too. I'm sure P Diddy, he can't like himself.

• 27:14Mark Manson?

  It's, it's like, I mean, I hope he doesn't. Yeah, it's yeah, it's really interesting because I think people who tend to try to make others love them. They do it because they they feel like a deep hole within themselves.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:28Mark Manson?

  There's a deep lack of love for themselves. But the fact that they end up forcing other people to love them. It just reinforces that internal belief that they're unlovable.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:40Mark Manson?

  Right? Because it's like, if you're lovable, then you don't have to make people love you. If you're a lovable person who has an abundance of love in their life. You don't have to like fucking lock people in hotel rooms and, you know, call them at three, three o'clock in the morning.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Is that the shit he was doing?

• 27:57Mark Manson?

  Oh dude, he did. It's like the tip of the iceberg.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  I haven't read this yet.

• 28:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, no, it's it's pretty disgusting, the stuff that he was doing.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Well, what about, okay, but you have to be careful with this one too, because I think this illustrates you have to be careful with this with all of these. Is you can't be like feigning disinterest in someone. Now, there's like that terrible dating advice where it's like, oh, act disinterested or whatever, and all that. You can't be feigning disinterest for someone and, you know, expect them to actually end up, wind up loving you or liking you in any way.

• 28:26Mark Manson?

  Feigning disinterest only works on people who don't see themselves as lovable, so.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And not only that, but you're, yeah, and you're trying hard. Like, you're, you're still trying.

• 28:34Mark Manson?

  You can't, yeah, you you can't fake any of this stuff. Because again, if you, so, okay. If you are faking disinterest in somebody to make them like you more, all you're doing is reinforcing to yourself again that you're not allowed to be who you are.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:49Mark Manson?

  Because you're unlovable.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:50Mark Manson?

  You have to fake and pretend to be this other person because that's the only way people are gonna love you. Which just makes you feel less lovable, right? So it's like you're, you are setting the terms for, even if it quote unquote works and the person dates you and sleeps with you and wants to be with you. You are setting the the the terms on which you're building the relationship is, I can't be myself. I have to pretend to be this other person or thing. And anytime you are starting a relationship off on the assumption that you are somebody who you're not, like, it's not gonna end well.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:23Mark Manson?

  Like, things are not gonna go well.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Right, well, that's a really good segue here to the next one, which is respect.

• 29:29Mark Manson?

  Oof. Yes, I have come to the conclusion after 15 years of just reading and researching and dealing with people's relationship problems, I've come to the conclusion that respect is actually more important. Love is great, but you can, there's all sorts of dangers and traps and pitfalls that come along with love. If respect is there, it's going to be a positive relationship, no matter what. Like, respect is the fundamental basis of any positive relationship. Sure, even relationships that don't work out. Like, you could date somebody for a year, never fall in love with them, but as long as you respect each other and continue to respect each other afterwards, you'll always

• 30:11Mark Manson?

  look back and be like, that was a good relationship. I learned something, I had good experiences, I, you know, developed affection for somebody. Like, it's, there's always something good to take from it. It's when respect is lost that things get very toxic and abusive and manipulative. So, respect is super important, but it's, again, it's because it's an internal state, you can't fake it. It falls under the umbrella of the backwards law. So, the more you try to make people respect you, it's the act of trying to make them respect you that makes you, makes them disrespect you. Right? Like, if I threaten you to make you respect me, you're just going to respect me less because you're like, man, this guy just has to like resort to threats to get what he wants. Like, what a piece of shit,

• 30:55Mark Manson?

  you know? Whereas if you don't demand respect and you just act with respect, then people will naturally want to respect you. It's a classic case of like, give the thing that you want to receive. And you, you won't get it back from everybody, but that's fine. The people you don't get it back from, you just don't hang out with them again.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Right, right. Well, there's a lot of situations where you can't too. I had a former girlfriend who had a superior at work who was just awful and just was a very angry person and was obviously demanding respect from everybody like that. And it wasn't very long till she just said out loud, she's like, I just don't respect them.

• 31:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  And she couldn't get away from them, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah, but you do, you see that, like, especially like, I think in work relationships, you have a boss or a manager of some sort who's just an

• 31:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  insufferable asshole. And you're just like, I

• 31:46Mark Manson?

  I wonder what that's like.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  lack

• 31:51Mark Manson?

  It's true, though. I mean, it's one of those dynamics, right? Where like that, that boss probably felt this insecurity to demand respect from everybody under him because he didn't respect himself. He didn't have confidence in his own experiences and expertise and views. And so he like demanded validation from the people under him. But by demanding that validation and trying to manipulate them into giving it, they didn't respect him, which then makes him feel worse about himself, which then makes him demand it even more. So you get into these toxic cycles of where the bad behavior just reinforces the bad feeling behind the behavior, which then reinforces the bad behavior. It's just like a shit spiral all the way down the toilet.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, so respect is a foundational thing for healthy relationships, like you said, but it can also be pretty fuzzy, too. What, what does it mean to you to respect someone?

• 32:43Mark Manson?

  I, okay, this is a great question.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  We're just throwing this around, we're throwing respect around.

• 32:48Mark Manson?

  I've thought about this a lot and I think it comes down to value. It's, do you value the person's time, experience and opinions? Or not even opinions, I'd say viewpoints, like perspectives, right? Like.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Right, because you could disagree with them.

• 33:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Still respect them.

• 33:08Mark Manson?

  But you can still respect them. And it doesn't even have to be like, you don't even have to admire them. Like people, I think people conflate respect with admiration.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:17Mark Manson?

  Like you don't have to admire them. You, respect is simply that this person's experiences, perspectives and, and time is, is valuable. It's worth something. It's not, even if, if I don't want it, or if I don't agree with it, or if I don't really care about it, like it is inherently valuable in and of itself. And, and it's worth listening to, it's worth paying attention to. I think this is where the time component comes in. Like, respect really seems to be.

• 33:48Mark Manson?

  About the willingness to pay attention and give, give attention and focus to some, to someone. Like the fact that you're listening to them, you're hearing them, you're acknowledging what they're saying, even if you don't agree with it, even if you don't care, care about it. The fact that you're taking that time of your attention and focus, that is subcommunicating respect. I think ultimately that every human has a need for that to like feel like they're being seen, that they're worth paying attention to and that you don't necessarily see yourself as better than them in, in, in any way.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that really clarifies it because it shows you how in order to get respect, you first have to give it.

• 34:31Mark Manson?

  You have to give it.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  That all has to be there before you can receive any of that.

• 34:34Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:34Mark Manson?

  And that's true with all, like the three most important things in relationships that I, I always talk about is, is respect, trust and love. And that is true with all three of those.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:43Mark Manson?

  You, you, if you want to receive respect, you have to respect people. If you want to receive trust, you have to trust people. And if you want to receive love, you have to love people. And those things are all like, they're related to each other, but they're all slightly different. I think respect is, is the willingness to see your, each other as equals and to make space for the other person's experiences. And trust is the willingness to, uh, believe that they're gonna do in the future, the things that they say they're gonna do. Or that the things that they say are true about their past or you believe that they're true about their past. And then I believe love is, um, is just, it, it's like a, an empathy and a compassion

• 35:29Mark Manson?

  for how they feel. Like you don't convince people to give you those things. You get good at giving those things and it will naturally sort the right people into your life.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so. Mark, what is it about the backwards law, though, Mark? What is it about these things, confidence, love, trust, all of these things? Why do, why does the backwards law work for those and not some of these other things?

• 35:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you know, when you're trying to optimize things outside of you, there's a very clear cause and effect relationship. Like, if I'm trying to improve my mile time, like, I can measure the mile times, and I can see the progression, and I can test my leg strength, and test my VO2, and like, see the progression that happens bit by bit as I get faster. If I'm just trying to improve my confidence, there's no way to measure that. And in fact, when you start trying to measure it, you make it more convoluted and more difficult. And that's because you're trying, the cause and effect are happening within the same entity, which is the mind. The fact that you are trying to initiate a cause is, is moving the effect.

• 36:38Mark Manson?

  Like, it's, it's like putting a carrot in front of a donkey. Like, all this stuff is like that happiness, confidence, like, the more, the faster you walk towards it, the faster it gets away from you. And I think, understanding that these internal states, they don't function the same way. There's this fetish that is, especially in the personal development world, there's, there's a little bit of a fetish of measurement, optimization, hacking, different things. And, and we like to think, like, the same way you can hack your college admissions, or the same way you can optimize your morning routine, or your writing sessions, like, you should be able to hack your happiness and optimize your feelings of confidence. And the, the fact of the matter is, the simple act of trying to hack your happiness

• 37:23Mark Manson?

  is gonna make you feel less happy. Because you're basically telling your brain, you're not happy enough. You should be happier. And that's, that's a shitty thing to feel. You know, and trying to optimize your confidence is just gonna make you more insecure that you're not optimizing effectively, which is gonna make you feel less confident. So, it's a, you know, it's the snake eating its own tail. I really think this is where the eastern philosophy really shines. They really nailed this stuff. 2000 years ago and we're all still benefiting from it today. So yeah, I think it's, it really is a separate domain. There's a different law of physics in this domain and you have different rules apply.

• 38:04Mark Manson?

  And it just so happens that those rules end up being almost completely inverted from the external world. And I think the sooner we can understand that and be at peace with it, not try to control it, not try to like change it or optimize it, the better off we end up being.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You mentioned the snake eating its own tail. You also have a good metaphor of the dog chasing its own tail where a dog realizes, you know, if it can do twice as many tricks, it can get twice as many treats.

• 38:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  If it can look for twice as many balls, it'll find twice as many balls. And then it realizes, oh, there's my tail if I try really hard.

• 38:37Mark Manson?

  If I just run in circles twice as fast, I'll catch twice as many tails. I was like, no.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  You'll never catch your tail and that sums it up, I think.

• 38:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah. All right. Well, for a podcast that we don't try on, that was pretty good.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  There we go. I told you podcasting backwards.

• 38:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah. See, we just, you know, stop trying. That's the secret. All right. I don't know how to end this.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Some things just end.