Building Real Confidence, The Motivation Puzzle, and Understanding All Your “Parts”

Drew comes in hot today as we dig into the nitty gritty of confidence and motivation. We explore the counterintuitive idea that true confidence doesn't come from expecting success, but from being comfortable with failure. If you've ever struggled with self-doubt or felt demotivated despite external achievements, this episode might just change your perspective. We start by dissecting what I call the "Confidence Conundrum" and how it applies to various aspects of life, from business to relationships. Then, we challenge some long-held beliefs about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, discussing research that questions the idea that external rewards always undermine our natural interests. We wrap up with a thought-provoking exploration of Internal Family Systems theory and how understanding the different "parts" of our psyche can lead to greater self-integration. This is a grab bag episode that we had a lot of fun with, so I hope you enjoy it CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Drew Comes In Hot 00:01:29 The Confidence Conundrum Explained 00:04:02 Why External Success Doesn't Create Confidence 00:06:04 The Delusion Question: Startup Founders vs. High Earners 00:08:01 Why Affirmations and External Self-Improvement Fail 00:10:35 Being Comfortable With What You Lack 00:15:47 The Rejection Story: How Mark Met His Wife 00:18:51 The Route to Positivity Runs Through Negativity 00:20:07 Brilliant or Bullshit: The Motivation Puzzle 00:22:21 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation Defined 00:24:25 Philip Pokes Holes in Motivation Theory 00:28:47 The Laboratory Problem: Are We Measuring What We Think? 00:34:37 Rewards as Distractions, Not Demotivators 00:36:35 Two Different Activities: The Woodworking Example 00:38:32 The Takeaway: When External Rewards Change the Game 00:39:56 Question of the Week: Understanding Your Parts 00:41:01 How Parts Work: The Conservative Family vs. Sex Worker Example 00:43:26 Drew's Personal Experience: Anxious vs. Avoidant Parts 00:45:55 The Professional vs. Personal Self 00:47:05 Why Parts Work Finally Caught On 00:49:40 Wisdom of the Week: Ralph Waldo Emerson ⇨ 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mark.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I got a bone to pick with you.

• 0:03Mark Manson?

  Uh oh.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  I'm coming in hot today.

• 0:05Mark Manson?

  It's not my fault.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I'm coming in.

• 0:06Mark Manson?

  I didn't do it.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Okay, so lately.

• 0:10Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  I've been doing all this work, getting these episodes ready.

• 0:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  I do this, all this background research.

• 0:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  I come up with these ideas and then you come in here and you just shit all over them.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  You shit all over them, Mark.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  So I got a bone to pick with you. I'm coming in hot today.

• 0:27Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  I got copious notes.

• 0:29Mark Manson?

  Oh, boy.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I stayed up late last night going over this, got a good night's sleep, got up, got up early, went over these again.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  I'm coming, I'm coming at you.

• 0:38Mark Manson?

  Should I be intimidated? You seem confident, Drew.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  I'm very confident today. Good seg, Mark.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  These are three things I really want to talk about today. I've wanted to for a while.

• 0:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  And I'm ready. I'm coming in hot.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna argue with you when you push back on me today.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  My hair, I'm liking how my hair is looking. I'm confident today, Mark.

• 1:09Mark Manson?

  Drew is.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  I'm exuding confidence.

• 1:10Mark Manson?

  Drew is fucking locked in. I'm like suddenly unconfident because I think I got complacent on these. And I'm like, Drew's got it. I like glanced through the outline a couple of times. I'm like, I'm good. I've been talking about this shit for 20 years. All right. Let's see what happens.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Let's see what happens. All right. And that brings us to the fuck of the week, Mark.

• 1:31Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Which is confidence.

• 1:33Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Now, several years ago, you wrote this, this piece called the confidence conundrum.

• 1:37Mark Manson?

  Several is like 11 years ago.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Is it that long ago?

• 1:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah, we're old.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Okay, it was a while ago. All right, all right, all right. It's a fairly short article, though, so I wanted you to expand on some of the ideas.

• 1:48Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  First, we'll go through like what the conundrum is.

• 1:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Okay. And then I want, there's several points you make in this that are a little bit counterintuitive, and I think that we can wrap our heads around.

• 1:57Mark Manson?

  And yeah. You know, it's funny because this article never took off when we published it.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  It didn't, yeah.

• 2:03Mark Manson?

  But it's, I find myself. referencing it in reader questions, audience questions, fan questions, all the fucking time. It comes up so, so many times. And basically, basically, for people listening, the confidence conundrum is that confidence does not come from a, an expectation of success. It comes from a comfort with failure. And I think this is something that people misinterpret or, or get wrong or misassume about confidence. They think that they, to feel confident in doing something, they have to have complete assuredness that they're gonna do it successfully. Whereas, my argument is, what gives you confidence is being okay with the fact that you might not be successful.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. So that's the, the conundrum there, is that, like, how can you be confident if you're not confident about anything in the first place? Like, there's this, like, chicken and egg thing.

• 2:57Mark Manson?

  Right. And, and yeah, so this solves that kind of paradox that people get locked into of like, well, I'm not confident, so I fail at everything, but because I fail everything, I'm not confident at anything. And this resolves that paradox by saying, okay, yeah, you, you don't become confident that you're gonna succeed, you become confident with the, the act of failure. Because ultimately, the act of failure is, and we can get into this in like, more granular detail, but like, the act of failure is, is what makes you better at stuff. And so people, and then as you fail more often, you become more, you become more confident, because you are comfortable with those failures. But people misinterpret that as, oh, he's getting better at the thing, look how confident he is.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Right. Okay, okay.

• 3:38Mark Manson?

  They, they think it's the success that's driving the confidence, whereas actually, it's the repeated failures that drives it.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. All right. All right. So yeah, putting the cart before the horse just a little bit here. But that's okay. No, no, that's okay. That's where we're going. That's a good roadmap. There's a few observations you make about confidence that I think illustrates these points that you're already alluding to. One of them is that external achievements don't necessarily create confidence, like you just said. Why is that, though? Why is it, like, here's an example, okay? Like, Serena Williams, right? One of the greatest tennis players of all time.

• 4:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  She constantly, she would, she's been very open about, like, at the peak of my career, even, I was like, Nervous, anxious, not sure about myself.

• 4:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  That's an example of like this external confidence that or external success that didn't translate into confidence.

• 4:24Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Why is that? That's crazy.

• 4:26Mark Manson?

  I I love hearing stories of this.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:28Mark Manson?

  Uh, you know, the basketball player, Bill Russell, who is the most decorated, successful basketball player of all time, 13 championships. He vomited before every single game.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  That's insane.

• 4:39Mark Manson?

  Even after he had won 10 championships.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:42Mark Manson?

  And had been MVP like six times, he still vomited before every single NBA game he played. Out of nerves and just fear. I actually think success can make you less confident because the more successful you are, the more you have to lose, the more costly failure becomes.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 4:58Mark Manson?

  Which makes it more difficult to be comfortable with failure, right? People talk about imposter syndrome all the time. What is imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is experiencing a great level of success and feeling worse afterwards, right? Being more fearful after your your incredible success. And I think the reason that is is because once you have that great success, it actually calls into question whether it was a fluke. Did you get lucky? Are you going to be be able to replicate this? Are you going to be able to do it again?

• 5:30Mark Manson?

  And if you fail next time, it's going to be so much more costly and hurtful than it would have been before you had that success in the first place. So success can actually increase insecurity. Because it makes failure more expensive.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Right, right. Yeah, and you make that point that that confidence is rooted rooted in the perception of ourselves, not the external reality, like you were just saying.

• 5:51Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Basically, which I thought of this example of like, there is a real fine line there though, too, because you can have, let's say, a startup founder.

• 5:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Who, um, one of the ways they've become successful is through these repeated failures, but they don't lose their confidence along the way. But then you might have somebody else who's got like this high paying job, who is very insecure. Because they're afraid of losing that.

• 6:13Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Um, and but where is that line to like? How much of this is delusion? If you have that startup founder who's like, well, this failed. I'm going to go on the next one. Try something else.

• 6:22Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Whatever. I'm awesome. I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. Like, where is that line between delusion and actual, like, real confidence?

• 6:32Mark Manson?

  I think there is some useful delusion of just kind of irrationally believing that you're going to eventually figure it out and get it right.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 6:39Mark Manson?

  I think ultimately, like, when people talk about confidence, really what confidence is, is it's a trust that you are going to progress and get better. Right? So it's like, in my own entrepreneurial journey, I failed dozens and dozens and dozens of times. But what made it feel okay to me was just the fact that I knew that I was smart enough and honest enough with myself, that each failure is going to get me closer to my goal. So each, each product launch that failed, each book I wrote that nobody downloaded or bought, each article that bombed, like, every single time, I, I trusted my own ability to look at it and be like, okay, what could I have done better? What can I learn from this? How can I improve?

• 7:22Mark Manson?

  And because I was good at those things, or I eventually got good at those things, it gave me a confidence to weather more failures. Right? And then, once you're comfortable weathering the failures, you stop fearing failure, which actually gives you, other people perceive you as being confident.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Okay. Okay. Yeah. So it's, it's not necessarily a delusion. It's more just like a reality check, you're saying?

• 7:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it's, it's a trust of like, I, I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I trust eventually I'm going to figure it out.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:53Mark Manson?

  Like, I'm going to keep trying things and I'm going to keep learning and I'm going to keep getting better. And one day, I will find my way there.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Okay. Now, but you, you also point out some ways that, uh, that some common ways that we try to increase our confidence that aren't, that, that don't work very well.

• 8:08Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  One of those is through delusion.

• 8:10Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  So what about, um, you know, there's kind of like this, uh, there's a lot of like the affirmations, especially like affirmations that just are like blatantly, obviously not true, right? Just they're bullshit.

• 8:23Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  That's one way we do it. The other way you, you pointed out was, uh, focusing solely on external self-improvement.

• 8:29Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Can you elaborate on that one a little bit?

• 8:32Mark Manson?

  Okay. Well, let me start with the affirmation thing, right? So it's like a, a common piece of self-help advice. If you want to be more confident, you know, stand in the mirror and tell yourself like, I am beautiful, I am smart, I am brave, all these things. The problem with that is that as you Try to convince yourself that you have these external qualities. Essentially, you're trying to convince yourself that you're already at the finish line. And the more you convince yourself you're already at the finish line, the more costly failure becomes, right? It's like, well, I just spent three weeks looking in the mirror and telling myself how smart I am. So this next thing has to work. Otherwise, I've just been lying to myself, which creates a greater fear of failure, which creates more anxiety, which creates less confidence, right? Whereas I think the correct affirmation is, I'm going to figure it out.

• 9:17Mark Manson?

  I'm smart, I work hard, I don't give up. I'm honest about my failures. I can take feedback. I can stomach a little bit of embarrassment or rejection. Between all those things, I'm going to eventually get there, right? I think the external thing is that people just, they put too much weight on the external markers, right? Like, you could be, to use the Serena Williams example, right? Like, you could be the best tennis player in a tournament and not win the tournament. So if you are placing all of your satisfaction and all of your definition of success simply on, you know, winning the tournament or winning the match or whatever,

• 10:00Mark Manson?

  then you're potentially setting yourself up for, you're measuring yourself by something that's not 100% within your control. Ideally, you want to measure yourself by things that are 100% within your control because that is going to give you a more accurate sense of progress, improvement, progression, etc.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Okay, I got you, yeah. So, like, if you get somebody, like, you might think getting a six-pack abs, you know, or a six-figure income, whatever. Even after achieving those goals, though, you can still feel very insecure if you haven't addressed those deeper self-perception issues, which the self-perception issue is something like you just said, I think, would be within your control.

• 10:44Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And... I don't know, there is a little bit of, going back to the affirmations thing, there's a little bit of research around this where, yeah, if you're doing, especially like the external wants, I am beautiful, I am smart, I am loved by everybody outside, you know, those don't work very well. I think you're right there. The nuance there is the, if you look at things that are within your control and things that can actually be,

• 11:10Speaker 00

  can actually be verified, you know, around you, then that's, those can maybe, yeah, those can work, short term, probably, but yeah.

• 11:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, as you know, I'm not big on affirmations. I think it's, there's probably a way to make them work, but, I don't know, I think there's just as many ways to fuck them up too.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Sure, okay, cool. Well, okay. The next big point you make is that true confidence comes from being comfortable with what you lack. You've kind of already alluded to this a little bit. You give a few examples, like confident business people are comfortable with failure. You've already kind of touched on that. Socially confident people are comfortable with rejection.

• 11:44Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  And people confident in relationships are comfortable with vulnerability and getting hurt too. Those are the three kind of areas that you touch on.

• 11:52Mark Manson?

  I think those last two are super important because people struggle with that a lot. Like, it is part of human nature, it is part, it is just a natural fact that all of us are deficient in some shape or form in our personalities. Like there is something we are bad at.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:09Mark Manson?

  You know, whether it's, some of us are very bad at managing emotions, some are bad at planning, some are bad at empathizing, some, you know, like, we all have a thing that we kind of suck at. And that's just a fact of life. Like you can't, there's nobody on earth who's good at everything. And yet, in our social relationships or our relationship with the world, there's kind of this tacit assumption of like, I can't show my flaws or weaknesses. Like I have to pretend like I've got it all together and I'm supposed to be this great person who's always like there for everybody and that everybody's gonna like. And that is just a purely unrealistic goal or expectation. The fact of the matter is because you are a unique individual who has strengths and weaknesses, natural flaws and natural gifts.

• 12:57Mark Manson?

  You're gonna naturally turn some people off and you're naturally gonna turn some people on. And so the the goal, like a successful, quote unquote, successful social life, isn't having everybody like you. Cause that means you're just trying, you're basically getting very good at performing and faking for a wide variety of people. A successful social life is is being comfortable with that that natural assortment of people in the world. Right? It's like the ones that you kind of naturally turn off, or who that you don't vibe with, or that just don't understand you, or you're not gonna get along very well. Just moving on as quickly as possible and getting over the rejection, or the hurt, or maybe they said something bad about you, or whatever. It's like, that's life. It's just that there's always gonna be people in the world like that.

• 13:40Mark Manson?

  And it's, there's not necessarily anything wrong with you. There's not necessarily anything wrong with them. It's just a bad match. You you're not socially compatible. And so you you should move on as quickly as possible to the people who are. And even within a relationship, that is also true in certain areas of of whether it's a romantic partnership, or a family relationship, or whatever, like, it doesn't matter how much you love a person, how close you are with a person, whether it's your best friend, or your mom, or your your partner. There's gonna be some things about them that drive you fucking crazy, and there are gonna be some things about you that drive them fucking crazy. And you don't hide those things. You don't pretend like they're not there. You don't try to like fix them or change yourself or whatever.

• 14:23Mark Manson?

  It's just, that's part of the relationship is you understand like, hey, this is the 10% of my personality or your personality that just drives me up the wall. You know, we're both aware of that fact. We still accept each other despite that fact. You know, let's just try to navigate it effectively. Like, that's what actually creates a a comfortable relationship. I would say it, that's what generates a confidence within the relationship. If there's not a tolerance for those things in each person. Then that drives insecurity, which is a lack of confidence within the relationship, because then you're always terrified that you're gonna say the wrong thing, or that the conversation's gonna slip into territory that's not really allowed, or that you're gonna start being judged for something.

• 15:06Mark Manson?

  It's, you have to kind of get all the cards on the table, the good, the bad, and the ugly, in order to have that intimacy and that vulnerability, because that is ultimately what makes you feel confident being around another person.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. Yeah, and like the rejection thing specifically within relationships too, I think is a real important point you make. Like in Models, your dating book,

• 15:28Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  You talk about how it's used to sort people. But the ironic part about it too is the more comfortable you are with rejection.

• 15:35Mark Manson?

  The less you get rejected.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  The less you get sorted out, right? Like, I was thinking about this, and you've told this story before, so I'm comfortable bringing it up. But when you met your wife.

• 15:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  That's what happened.

• 15:43Mark Manson?

  She shot me down.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Can you, can you tell that story real quick?

• 15:45Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Because I think it's a great one that illustrates this point.

• 15:47Mark Manson?

  So when I first met my wife, she shot me down.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:50Mark Manson?

  Not like rudely or aggressively or anything, but like I tried to chatter up and she was just, you know, she's kind of giving those like one-word answers and looking around, and like clearly not interested.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 16:02Mark Manson?

  And by that point in my life, I had developed the maturity and the self-awareness to realize, this girl's not into me.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:10Mark Manson?

  Instead of wasting half my night trying to fight it or convince her to like me, I should just thank her, tell her to have a nice night, and move on to the next person, right? And so that's what I did. By that point, I developed the habit of doing that. So I, you know, I get two, three, four minutes into the conversation. She's clearly not into it. So I told her, I said, hey, it was great meeting you. I hope you have a really nice night. And I moved on. And it's ironic, because that really impressed her. Like, she was like, wow, he totally picked up on the fact that I wasn't interested, was okay with that fact, and then was still polite and wish-

• 16:47Speaker 00

  And respectful, yeah.

• 16:47Mark Manson?

  And respectful despite that fact. And that subcommunicates a lot of qualities in a person. That's, that's rare. Like, most people aren't comfortable or aware enough to do that.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Or confident enough to do that.

• 17:00Mark Manson?

  Or confident enough to do that, right? And so, uh, she said, she was like, yeah, as the night went on and she's, you know, other guys started talking to her, she was like, shit, I should have talked to that first guy.

• 17:13Mark Manson?

  And that, I mean, and that happens a lot. I mean, it's like, and I don't want, I don't want to get too sucked down the dating rabbit hole.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:20Mark Manson?

  Uh, as an example, but like, like in professional settings as well, right? Like it's like, I think most people's natural tendency is they don't want to suggest anything, say in a meeting or to their boss or something that might get shot down because they're where they're like, oh, that's going to make me look bad and it's going to be embarrassing. But it's actually the people who are willing to make suggestions and put themselves in a place to occasionally get shot down and understanding that like, hey, you know, out of 10 of my ideas, probably five of them, at least five of them aren't very good, but I'll never know unless I voice them. Right? It's, those are the people that, that A, it's eventually they will have a great idea and they'll be rewarded for it. And B,

• 18:06Mark Manson?

  it's just human nature that you respect people who are willing to put their neck out. Right? Like it's, it's essentially the, your boss or the higher ups are going to be like, well, I, I really like that this person is willing to, to kind of fall on their face. It shows a lot of confidence. Right? It shows a lot of a willingness to grow, a willingness to improve, a willingness to hear feedback and get better. Like that's just another example of like, the more willing you are to be rejected in a, in a situation, over time, the less you will be rejected.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. That's kind of ties up your, your, uh, conclusion of this whole idea that you have, which is the route to positivity runs through.

• 18:42Mark Manson?

  Negative.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Negative.

• 18:43Mark Manson?

  Right. Which is the backwards law, right?

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:45Mark Manson?

  From Sartre. So it's the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience. Whereas simply pursuing the positive experience is itself a negative experience.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:58Mark Manson?

  Like trying to be liked by everyone all the time is fucking miserable and completely defeats the purpose, right?

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Takes up all of your mind space. Yeah.

• 19:06Mark Manson?

  Trying to be right about everything just is so intensely stressful and agonizing that it completely defeats the purpose. So, uh, it is.

• 19:19Mark Manson?

  You have to get comfortable with the failure. It's, it's not even that like, hey, getting comfortable with failure is good because it'll make you more confident. It's, it's like, you have to, or otherwise you're just gonna be a neurotic mess.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:31Mark Manson?

  Your entire life.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's no other way.

• 19:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Right. Well, cool. Okay.

• 19:34Mark Manson?

  You haven't disagreed with me yet.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Well, that's the warm up.

• 19:37Mark Manson?

  I'm waiting.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  We're coming.

• 19:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like, I'm coming out with your, your fists up.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  I was like. No, this one I actually agree with you on. So I'm, I handed that one to you. You're welcome.

• 19:47Mark Manson?

  Okay. So I guess the next segment is where you're gonna come in hot.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  But for now, go forth confidently and conquer.

• 19:54Mark Manson?

  You're looking at me like.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I've got crazy eyes today. You have three cups of coffee. I've been up since I was up early.

• 20:01Mark Manson?

  This is what happens when you sleep well.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  I know.

• 20:03Mark Manson?

  Oh, my God. You should go back to not sleeping well. All right, we'll be right back.

• 20:15Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back with Brilliant or Bullshit, and I feel like whatever I say, Drew's gonna come at me.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  I'm coming at you. Here we go. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark? All right, this is something I've been, actually, I found this a couple of years ago.

• 20:28Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  And I've been thinking about it a lot.

• 20:29Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  And I think I'm finally ready to talk to you about it and come at you about it.

• 20:35Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Knowing my luck, you're gonna agree with this one, and this is the only one you're ever gonna agree with. Anyway. Okay. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark? External rewards don't actually demotivate us to do the things we just naturally enjoy doing.

• 20:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah, we need to set context for this.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  You need to set some context for this?

• 20:53Mark Manson?

  Well, I mean, we should sum up.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:56Mark Manson?

  The, I guess, I don't wanna say traditional psychological research, but like, the, the, the research on motivation up until, I guess, now, like, kind of the, the consensus, I guess you would say, is that for boring, annoying tasks, like, I don't know, say, making widgets or filling out a spreadsheet or whatever, external rewards increase motivation.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:19Mark Manson?

  So it's the more you get paid for each widget, the more widgets you're gonna make. But for internally, quote unquote, internally motivated, or what psychologists call intrinsic motivation, like creative tasks, things that you care deeply about, things that you love.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  That you would just do for their own sake.

• 21:36Mark Manson?

  For the fun of it, or because you think it's important, or because it's a cause you believe in. External rewards will actually demotivate you. So it's like, if you're really passionate about saving the animals, saving the seals, and I show up and I'm like, hey, I'll give you $10,000 for every seal you save. It will actually demotivate you, and it will complicate your emotional relationship with, with saving the seals. And you'll, it'll, it'll make things more difficult for you.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:05Mark Manson?

  That's where the research is.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Right. It's called, it's called the undermining effect.

• 22:09Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Okay. So that your, your intrinsic, natural motivation to go do something is undermined by external rewards.

• 22:18Mark Manson?

  And just to be clear, because have I written about this, or?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  I'm not sure if you specifically have.

• 22:25Mark Manson?

  Because I have a story about, but you, you go ahead, because I, I feel like I'm, I'm gonna steal your thunder.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Let's, let's, okay, well, let's first start, just make sure we got the definitions right, okay? So we've already mentioned the words extrinsic and intrinsic.

• 22:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Okay, so intrinsic motivation is when you, again, you're just doing something for its own sake.

• 22:42Mark Manson?

  Because you love it, it's exciting.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Playing an instrument, painting, you're not doing it for any other reason.

• 22:46Mark Manson?

  Believe in it.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 22:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Whereas extrinsic motivation is you're doing it for some external incentive that you have.

• 22:52Mark Manson?

  You're getting a degree, or a pay raise, or approval from others.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Praise, right, anything like that, right? Okay, so this comes from what's called self-determination theory, not real important, but that's where it comes from. And we're often told that, oh yeah, you need to find those things that are intrinsically motivating. Find your passion.

• 23:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  If you work a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life, you know, like that kind of thing. Or teach your kids, you know, find out what your kids naturally like, and encourage them to keep doing that, without any external, you know, reward of any kind. This is what we're told. The assumption underlying all of that is, if you're not intrinsically motivated by something, there's something quote unquote, wrong with you, or the choices you've made up to that point, or whatever it is, right? Okay. Well, in fact, it goes even further, like we just said, is that these external rewards can undermine

• 23:39Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  your internal drives to to just do these things that you love and you enjoy.

• 23:44Mark Manson?

  Which anyone in a creative industry can relate to this because it's it's, you know, you you love music when you're playing in your bedroom, but all of a sudden you get a record deal and and there's like all sorts of money attached to performances and albums and

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:57Mark Manson?

  how many songs you write and all this stuff and it like kills the joy.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  And that that's what I want to talk about.

• 24:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Is that actually true or not? Is that bullshit or is it brilliant? You want to get your, should we get your take first and then I'm gonna come in and shit all over it? Maybe I'll shit all over it today.

• 24:12Mark Manson?

  I'm skeptical.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:14Mark Manson?

  I actually don't know.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:16Mark Manson?

  So it's funny story about this.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  All right.

• 24:18Mark Manson?

  And this this might be stealing your thunder.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  No, no, no, go ahead.

• 24:21Mark Manson?

  But but it it's not me stealing. It's actually Philip.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Okay. Philip makes his podcast debut. All right.

• 24:28Mark Manson?

  Philip makes his podcast. So for listeners, Philip, Philip has been working with me longer than you. The only person who's worked for me longer than you have.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:37Mark Manson?

  Philip's worked for me for 12 and a half years.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:40Mark Manson?

  And he handles all the tech side of everything, but he also has a master's degree in psychology and he's an insanely smart person. He's also absurdly logical and rational.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Yes, he is. He's Dr. Spock, man.

• 24:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah, he is Dr. Spock. So I remember this is ages ago. I you might not have even, you probably you had to have been working for me at this point. But anyway, this was ages ago and I don't remember if it was an article or a chapter in one of my books, but I wrote I wrote a whole thing about this.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 25:10Mark Manson?

  I I wrote a whole piece about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and I basically like the piece basically just said what we'd talked about.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:17Mark Manson?

  It was like all the self determination theory and all this stuff. And I I I vividly remember Philip.

• 25:25Mark Manson?

  Sitting there and poking holes in it.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  As he does.

• 25:29Mark Manson?

  Endlessly, like, he's done this a number of times over the years, but I remember specifically with this one. He pokes so many fucking holes, like, he was like, well, what is extrinsic? Like, like, what if you aren't aware that you love it because of the approval you're getting?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Oh, damn him, we're not gonna be able to argue about this.

• 25:46Mark Manson?

  I knew.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I was so excited to just shit all over this.

• 25:51Mark Manson?

  Okay, okay, keep going. I knew he was gonna steal your thunder.

• 25:56Mark Manson?

  You know, he kept coming up with all these counter examples, you know, he's like, he's like, well, how do you know if it's actually, if you're actually intrinsically motivated? You know, or like, how do you define an external reward? How do you separate that from your internal feelings because those two things happen simultaneously? Like, anyway, he just like went to town on this and it actually reached a point where I didn't publish the thing.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:16Mark Manson?

  Like, he tore, he like poked enough holes in it that I'm like, ah, I don't know if I should publish this anymore. And I remember at the time, it like pissed me off. I'm like, god damn it, Philip, like, this was, this was a really good article on motivation. Why are you messing up my shit?

• 26:32Mark Manson?

  But I, I think he had a point.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:34Mark Manson?

  And, and I don't, it's funny because I think over the years, I've returned to this theory a couple, a handful of times. It's, it's one of those psych theories, it's very elegant, it explains things very, you know, like the musician example I just gave, like, it, it, it's like a just, a just so story that like describes something that we see often. But, yeah, my brain always goes back to Philip and I'm like, yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  It's almost a little too perfect is what it is.

• 27:01Mark Manson?

  It is a little bit too.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  A little too clean.

• 27:03Mark Manson?

  So I'm actually, I'm agnostic on this one. I, I feel like it's the sort of thing, like, there's probably something there, but it's probably incomplete. It's probably just too cutely packaged and perfect and.

• 27:15Mark Manson?

  Explains everything, you know, with no.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:19Mark Manson?

  Psychology is messy.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah, all of these things are really messy. So anyway, I'm curious to hear your critique. I feel like you were, you were, you were expecting me to like, support this and you were gonna come in.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  I didn't know for sure, but I was like, I think you're gonna find something in here and maybe you still will. I don't know.

• 27:36Mark Manson?

  I mean, I, I generally like the, I like the theory, but I also, I don't wholeheartedly buy it.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, and I think that's, I think that's kind of where I land too. The thing that was really interesting to me though, was, you know, the self determination theory, it kind of came out like seven, in the seventies, it was.

• 27:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Starting to become bigger.

• 27:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Ever since then, back in the seventies, there were people like critiquing it.

• 27:59Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Specifically around this undermining effect.

• 28:02Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  There were, there was a small group of people who like pointed out all, a lot of what like Philip pointed out here.

• 28:09Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  But also, um, they didn't stop and they still are to this day. They're like, okay, this is like a pretty well established, pretty well accepted theory that has these major problems with it.

• 28:19Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  And there was this guy, Stephen Reese, he's since passed away, but he was one of the, the lead kind of researchers, kind of leading the charge against this whole undermining effect. And he pointed out some things that I thought were just, there were, I, he had some astute observations around this. One of them was that just the behavioral measures we use to, like the gold standard for this is what's called the free choice persistence paradigm. That's, you know, psychologists love to make up stupid names like this.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Essentially what they do is that they'll bring people into a laboratory setting. So first of all, you're bringing them into a laboratory setting. All right.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  They sit them down and they give them some novel task, like a puzzle or a game or something that's supposed to be fun. They just inherently think it's fun. And they're, they just kind of like, let them go, like do whatever. And they're measuring how much time they spend on these.

• 29:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  That is supposedly their baseline intrinsic motivation around it. Then they introduce some manipulation where they either say, okay, now I want you to play this puzzle or game and I'm going to give you a reward for it, or they don't give you a reward.

• 29:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Two groups, right? No reward versus reward. Then.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  They say, okay, experiment's over, but they leave the gamer, the puzzle with the person. The researcher leaves the room, but there's like a two-way mirror or something.

• 29:28Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  How much time do they still play with it? And then whatever change they've had from the first experience they had, then the reward, then the next experience with this gamer puzzle, that's supposed to be some measure of intrinsic motivation. Okay.

• 29:41Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  That was like the gold standard and is still used in a lot of the research today. Okay. First of all, is that really intrinsic motivation? Is that really, are they internally motivated to? Like you bring them into a lab.

• 29:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  You sit them down and say, here's a game. What the hell are they supposed to do?

• 29:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Right?

• 29:59Mark Manson?

  You're sitting, you're in an empty room by yourself.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  They're just bored or they want to please the researcher. They want to be a good participant and so they play it a lot or they don't play it a lot. And then the reward comes in, all this stuff like, I don't think we're actually measuring what we think we're measuring here in that paradigm at least.

• 30:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  So that's one of the problems that he points out.

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:17Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, another one too, is like a lot of times the results from these studies, they interpret them in a very circular way. Like if they have a child, they bring a child in and they have the child draw and then they reward the child.

• 30:30Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Um, or just if they, if they don't reward the child and he continues to draw, they say, oh, that's intrinsic motivation.

• 30:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  If they reward the child and they draw even more, they're like, oh, extrinsic motivation is now taken over. So it's like heads I win, tails you lose.

• 30:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Right?

• 30:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of that going on with this too. Those two, okay, fine. So those are like experimental designs, which Reese argues this is like, you know, uh, the undermining effect is actually just an artifact of these studies, the way we're doing these studies.

• 31:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  But the two bigger ones that I really think, um, kind of drive it home are, are one, he thinks that these rewards are just distractions, especially these one-time rewards.

• 31:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  They don't translate very well to the real world.

• 31:12Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Right? You're just giving somebody a reward in a one-time setting where in the real world was like, we have salaries or grades if you're in school or there's these long-term.

• 31:23Mark Manson?

  That's very true.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Incentives.

• 31:24Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  And that has a completely different dynamic, he argues. And it's not very well studied how those work, but the few that do suggest there is no. undermining effect in these long-term situations.

• 31:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I would agree with that as well.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:37Mark Manson?

  You know, I I'm trying to think like, I'm trying to think about my own personal experience. Like, as somebody who is paid externally, like, I have large external incentives on my, quote unquote, intrinsic, my creative work, essentially, like, things that I would do, like, I would write and make videos and stuff for fun, even if nobody paid me, right? So I'm just trying to think about my experience with it. I don't necessarily believe that extrinsic rewards interfere with intrinsic motivation. Like, that's not, that has not always been the case in my experience. Like, there have been, there have been a number of cases in my career where I was extremely

• 32:19Mark Manson?

  excited to do something, and I got paid a lot for it, or rewarded a lot for it, and it, it was just a bonus. It was like, this is, this took an amazing thing, and it made it even better, right?

• 32:31Speaker 00

  That's one of the points Reese makes, too.

• 32:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Is that when you interview people and just ask them.

• 32:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Like, that kind of flies in the face of the whole thing.

• 32:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it surprises me, nobody, like, just rounded up, like, a hundred or 200 creative people, or like, find, find, like, a bunch of artists, find a bunch of people who work for, like, NGOs, volunteer for nonprofits and stuff. You know, find people, I don't know, people who spend time at church, like, just interview them.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:56Mark Manson?

  And just give them a classic, kind of, old-school questionnaire of like, you know, this is, did these situations interfere with your motivation at all? What I have experienced is that where things get dicey, because a huge part of, I guess, being motivated in your creative work is there, there is, you are, in many ways, following your own emotions. Like, it is, the thing that makes writing satisfying is writing the thing that feels very important, that like, it like scratches my emotional itch, right? So like, that is what is satisfying about writing.

• 33:37Mark Manson?

  But if somebody shows up and offers me a shitload of money, that is very exciting. But I have nothing that I, I really want to write about that I'm not like emotionally like I, I don't, that intrinsic motivation is missing. Then the extrinsic motivation can create a lot of dissonance.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:57Mark Manson?

  Like then it becomes very difficult because it's like, well, I feel like I should find something in the right, but I don't have anything that I want to write, but I really should write it because I want this reward, but then that reward's kind of making me feel bad because it's making me feel bad about not being excited about the thing I'm writing for. And so like, that's when you start getting this like tumble dry of emotions going inside yourself.

• 34:22Mark Manson?

  And I, I think what I have found in my own experience is just getting really good at saying no to those external rewards when they don't align with the internal rewards.

• 34:33Mark Manson?

  Like that's the important skill that you have to develop.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Reese, actually that, that kind of jives with one of the, one of the theories he has about these external rewards is that they're not undermining intrinsic motivation. They're just distractions.

• 34:47Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  From what you're actually going after. That's like hit one of his big points is that we can't separate from like, especially like in that lab setting or really any setting, but especially in the lab setting, if you come in and somebody is, let's say they are just playing this game because they like it.

• 35:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  And then you introduce this reward, say, hey, if you play this game and you do really well, you get a reward for it.

• 35:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Now you're like, you've taken the focus off the game and it's now on the reward. It's not, it's not that it's undermining your motivation. It's that you're just distracted from it. It's causing maybe performance anxiety.

• 35:15Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  That sort of thing where it's not actually decreasing your, your motivation for something that you like.

• 35:21Mark Manson?

  And this is where we can bring confidence back into it, right?

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:25Mark Manson?

  Where it's like, if I'm just playing a puzzle game because I enjoy puzzle games.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  You don't care if you fail.

• 35:31Mark Manson?

  You don't care if you fail. And so you, you, there's no question. There's no, like you feel good about it. You feel very confident and you're the plane of the puzzle game. But if somebody shows up and says like, hey, if you solve this faster than the other 10 participants in the experiment, I'll give you a hundred bucks. Now suddenly it's like. Now I'm being measured against other people. Now I'm competing with other people. Now I have to think about failure. Failure has a cost to it. I start becoming insecure. I start getting nervous and anxious and suddenly the game's not exciting anymore. Right? So you can see the mechanism that causes it. But yeah, I mean, I agree with you. It's far more complicated.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  This, okay, Reese points this out too. He's like, he goes deeper than just the under. I mean, in fact, he thinks the whole intrinsic extrinsic thing is just total bullshit.

• 36:17Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Okay. And one of the things is, is that there's a lot of motivations that don't fit neatly into these two little categories. Motivation is way more complicated than just these two intrinsic and extrinsic thing.

• 36:27Mark Manson?

  Right. So what should, what should the listeners take away from this?

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Well, okay.

• 36:33Mark Manson?

  Don't listen to bullshit motivation research?

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Well, let me, let me, okay. We talked in an early episode one time, I don't know if you remember this, but we talked about, you know, I love woodworking and I just do it. That's an intrinsically, according to self determination theory, it would be an intrinsically motivated thing that I do.

• 36:50Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  And we talked about like, oh, you know, I could make a YouTube, you know, channel for all this and do all this. What you pointed out in that episode was, you said, that's a completely different activity. It's not that, that like the money and the YouTube and the attention or anything like that would undermine my motivation to do woodworking. It's that it's a completely different activity.

• 37:12Mark Manson?

  Correct.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  It's not woodworking anymore. It's content creation.

• 37:14Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Again, that goes back to the distraction thing. The tragedy of all of this is, is that for years I bought into the self determination thing. And I'm like, anytime I noticed that I was like, oh, I'm going to go do something and I realized I was doing it for, you know, what external, like money or praise from outside or whatever. I'm like, I don't want to do that because that's not, then I'm not going to like it anymore.

• 37:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Like, that's some over intellectualizing bullshit, first of all.

• 37:38Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  That I did, but. I think there's a way that you can kind of have both, maybe?

• 37:46Mark Manson?

  I do think, I mean, obviously I'm biased because I said that, but like,

• 37:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:50Mark Manson?

  I do think the best way to think about it is that it is two different activities. Like doing a puzzle for the fun of it versus doing a puzzle competitively for a cash prize.

• 37:59Speaker 00

  It's just not even the same thing.

• 38:00Mark Manson?

  Those are two different activities, right? Playing music in your basement, writing a song for fun on a Friday night, and writing a song for thousands of people to listen to and get paid for. Those are two completely different activities. And, and again, in my career, it's like writing a random blog post and posting it on Facebook for your friends and family to see, and writing a well researched article that hundreds of thousands of people are going to read and judge and criticize and send you hate mail and all this stuff. Those are two completely different experiences. And I have noticed, you know, in this industry, I can't tell you how many YouTubers and podcasters and writers and bloggers and everything that I meet, and it's, I think it's same across

• 38:44Mark Manson?

  all creative fields where it's, they love the creative activity itself. They hate everything that comes around.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Everything around it, yeah.

• 38:51Mark Manson?

  Right. And so it's like, they love filming videos on their iPhone with their friends in high school. They fucking hate running a YouTube channel.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:00Mark Manson?

  And they're two different things. I'm fortunate that I happen to love both, like both versions of the activity are very fun for me.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:08Mark Manson?

  But not, it's not fun for everybody. And so I guess that is something that should, people should consider at home is that when you introduce the external rewards, it's not that it de-motivates you, it's that it changes the nature of the activity and you might not like the new version of the activity. And that's okay.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:29Mark Manson?

  Cool. I'm glad we figured that out. And we didn't fight.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  Didn't fight about it.

• 39:33Mark Manson?

  We didn't fight. One day we will fight, Drew. One day, and it will be a glorious day.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Drama is good for engagement, you know? We need, we need a little of that.

• 39:40Mark Manson?

  We should, we should make up some controversies. Just invent, you know, it's just invent some scandals. We'll be right back.

• 39:56Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back. Time for the question of the week.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Um, yes, we do. We have a question from Tim, who submitted this one on YouTube. And this is something I've really wanted to talk about too for a long time. So I'm glad he brought it up. Thank you, Tim. What are your thoughts about the idea that the human psyche is made up of parts?

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Are there any parts of yourself that still feel dangerous, unexplored, difficult to accept, et cetera? So yeah, this comes from Internal Family Systems, which, you know, Richard Schwartz came up with this back in the 80s. The idea is that they're, the, the human psyche is made up of all of these different parts like Tim was just referring to in his question. And that were made up of multiple personalities. We have different, quote unquote, parts that have different motives, different desires. And all of them serve some function to help us navigate the world in some way. The problem that happens when these parts don't work well together, okay? So they, they, they quote unquote, fight with each other, or they're so, they don't even communicate with each other.

• 41:01Mark Manson?

  I'll give like a really crude example. So I think everybody intuitively has had the experience of like, you're kind of a different person at work than you are, say, at home. And you're, you're probably different with your partner than you are with your parents. And you're different with your parents than you are with your siblings. And you're different with your siblings than you are with your best friends. And like, we've all got these kind of slightly different variations of our personalities. So parts work is kind of treating each of those aspects of yourself as like a separate part in your head. And if there's a huge discrepancy between them, like, let's say, for instance, your family is super conservative evangelical Christian,

• 41:41Mark Manson?

  and you are a sex worker, then your professional self and your family self are going to clash dramatically. Like, they are operating on completely different value systems. They have different perspectives of the world. They don't play well together. Like, there's a contradiction between them. And so you'll experience a lot of... Dissonance and struggles and tension and probably have a lot of anxiety and all sorts of issues going on in your life. So that's an extreme example. I think the theory of IFS is that this plays out in much more subtle ways of like, you know, if there's a, a, a childhood version of you that like feels very neglected or shameful about something and in your adult version of you like needs to be confident in that in a similar area,

• 42:25Mark Manson?

  then like those, it's going to hold you back and it's going to create a lot of like internal conflict within yourself.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Right. Yes. Yeah, that's, that's the gist of it. That's kind of a simplified version of it, but really I think it captures it too. And there's different, there's like the types of parts that we have. Well, for one, there's like the centering self that you have that's supposed to be able to lead all the parts. Uh, but then there's what they call managers, firefighters and exiles. We don't have to get too far into this, but these, these parts can either work well together or not work well together. And part of the therapeutic process is getting those parts to work together. Just kind of like what, what you said too. I think, um, for me anyway, the, the, one of the big insights was this idea of that integration and getting these parts to work together rather than just like if I did feel like I was getting pulled in different directions or whatever. Why is that? And you look down and there's usually two parts that are like, hey, I want this

• 43:15Speaker 00

  and hey, I want this. You know, that, that, that kind of thing happens a lot. One of the, like an example I'll use from my own personal experience was that this was, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, I, for the longest time, just assumed I was an avoidant, uh, attachment style, you know, that I would just want, wanted to keep people at arm's distance all the time. When I sat down and actually thought about it though, I'm actually quite anxious too, in a lot of ways as well. Those are two different parts of me. And it wasn't just that they were anxious and avoidant in, uh, like close relationships necessarily. There's, they actually, there was other parts of my life too, that these different parts would take over in certain situations, right? It's like the avoidant with like, if I needed to just like get shit done and ignore everything else outside

• 44:00Speaker 00

  of that, that kind of avoidant part was more like, just like grind it out, super logical, get it done. Whereas the anxious part was more like. It kind of has more of a creative need for it to be happy, I guess, or and it's sensitive. And it's more, it's a little more needy, too. These two parts fucking hated each other with me like the like the avoidant part was like, dude, like sack up, like, come on, right? Quit being such a baby. You don't need all these things. And then the other kind of like more anxious side was like, actually, no, hey, you're kind of being a dick here and being insensitive. It was a lot of the the work I did around that was like getting those two parts to work together a little bit better.

• 44:43Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Being like this part needs to take over for a little while. Let it.

• 44:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Like that, that kind of thing was very, very valuable to me. And then the whole integration thing that I was mentioning, that started to make more sense to me. Integrating means getting those parts to work together more.

• 44:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  So back to the whole, does it fit your personality thing? For me, I needed that because I didn't feel very integrated. I felt all over the place. Like, if you're somebody who feels like that, I think parts work is a great thing to get into. You can't, it does get weird. Like you said, there's some weird shit that they get into.

• 45:13Mark Manson?

  It's a rabbit hole for sure. I've found like, I'm remembering now, I was like, coaching a woman years ago. And it was funny because she was professionally extremely successful, but her relationships, her romantic relationships were a fucking disaster. And I remember talking to her once, she had a really hard time with boundaries, like just could not stand up for herself, could not give feedback or criticize or anything. And and it kept like, just screwing her over again and again and again. And finally, I remember being on a call with her and I was like, I was like, look, you're really professionally successful. Like, you clearly have to give feedback and critical feedback and say no to people

• 45:57Mark Manson?

  and establish boundaries in the workplace and with your time and everything. And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm amazing at that. And I was like, OK, so. Imagine work mode you, what would she say to this guy? Like, imagine he's a client or a coworker and he's behaving this way. What would she say to him? And she was like, oh, that's easy. And I was like, then just do that. And it was like a real lightbulb moment for her. She was like, wow, I do have this in me. Like, I do know how to do this.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  But those two parts were so separated.

• 46:28Mark Manson?

  They were so, they were two completely different worlds that she existed in. Like, and they, they never collided. And, uh, and so I, I, I sometimes think about, like, I've noticed that about myself. Like, there's certain aspects of me that, like, I'm very good in a professional context, but in a personal context, I'm not, or vice versa. Like, I'm very good, I'm very good at saying no to people in, like, a personal context, but like, I sometimes struggle with it in a, in a professional context. And, and it's, uh, so I, I've found, I've found some mileage in thinking about those things.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:01Mark Manson?

  And, and trying to, like, apply, you know, take a skill set from one context and try to apply it into another.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of value in that, I think. The, the interesting thing too is, is that this, this whole IFS and parts work thing, it's really only caught on the last, like, 10 to 15 years. 2006, when you first encountered it, that was probably like, right when, right before it kind of started to get a little more mainstream.

• 47:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Richard Schwartz was, like, laughed off the stage from, like, the 80s up until, like, the 2000s. Nobody, nobody, everybody thought this was complete bullshit. And now it's like, all the therapists I know are like, oh, I want to incorporate this into my practice.

• 47:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  And so.

• 47:40Mark Manson?

  I, I just, it's funny, because I, sometimes I feel like, this is definitely getting off onto a tangent, but like, I sometimes feel like, a lot of psychology or a lot of this work is simply finding ways to package things in a way that people are able to receive them. It's not that you're, like, inventing anything or discovering anything.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  No, yeah.

• 48:01Mark Manson?

  You're just finding new packaging so that it lands with people.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:06Mark Manson?

  And if IFS is a really, they've, like, parts work, right? Like, it's so intuitive, people kind of, everybody's kind of experienced that they have, like, different aspects of themselves. And so, maybe, like, labeling those aspects of yourself, kind of formalizing it into a little bit of a system, and then... Approaching it in terms of like integration, getting those different parts of yourself to talk to each other and, and, and work together instead of against each other. You know, if I can see why that's appealing. It's, there's something elegant about it. And I, I don't underestimate the importance of elegance.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:43Mark Manson?

  In terms of helping people.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:46Mark Manson?

  A well stated theory that people understand intuitively is very, very valuable in this field.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  And Schwartz would agree with you that it's, none of this is new too. He, he said, you know, he's brought that already brought young. He brought from young, he's Buddhism.

• 49:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  I think you could also argue too, like this whole self-led philosophy and the parts in general are kind of a little bit Freudian as well, which Young and Freud were, you know, on parallel tracks for a little while at least.

• 49:14Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  So yeah, it's nothing new, but the packaging is new.

• 49:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  And I think the packaging is very helpful. It's packaged for a way that like the masses can kind of access it.

• 49:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  For sure. And I think that's, yeah, I think there's a lot of value around that. So if it's something that sounds interesting to you.

• 49:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  I'd say go for it.

• 49:29Mark Manson?

  Go for it.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Look into it.

• 49:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:31Mark Manson?

  Sure. Any wisdom for the week?

• 49:32Speaker 00

  We do have a wisdom for the week, Mark. This one comes from Ralph motherfucking Waldo Emerson.

• 49:38Mark Manson?

  Oh, my man.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 49:40Mark Manson?

  I love this guy.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  And it kind of ties all of this together that we've been talking about today. It's to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

• 49:49Mark Manson?

  Hear, hear. All right. Well, we will be back next week. Be sure to like and subscribe. And if you want to get on the newsletter, I send out three free pieces of advice every Monday morning. Go to marknathan.net/newsletter and we will see you next week.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  See you guys.

• 50:06Mark Manson?

  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burning, edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choyes, our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.