5 Ways to Be Self-Disciplined Without Making Yourself Miserable

We often think self-discipline requires massive action and a lot of pain and sacrifice—but the reality is a lot more boring. Today, we tackle some common misconceptions about self-discipline, arguing that real change comes from setting up your environment for success, not grinding through endless struggle. We explore the hidden dangers of romanticizing pain and why true self-discipline is more about boring consistency than epic feats of endurance. Hopefully, this episode challenges you to rethink how you approach your goals and habits. If you're ready to stop punishing yourself and start seeing real, lasting change, you won’t want to miss this. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:11 Self-discipline is not the same as willpower 00:09:45 Self-discipline does not involve shaming yourself 00:15:39 Self-discipline is about self correction, not perfection" 00:22:16 Self-discipline is boring 00:29:18 Self-discipline involves forging new identities" ⇨ 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.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Drew, it's taken so much willpower to be here right now.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Has it?

• 0:04Mark Manson?

  Do you know how many amazing video games there are on my Playstation at home?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I don't. Coming to hang out with me isn't enough? I don't be Elden Ring or Zelda.

• 0:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you're fine. It's okay, though. I'm disciplined. I'm an adult. I'm disciplined. I'm here. You know what I've discovered? So this is my most recent self-discipline discovery. And it relates to this podcast. It relates to podcasts in general. So for months and months and months, I had all this nagging housework that needed to be done. Like, you own a home. You know how it goes. Like, fucking gate latch breaks and blinds need to be replaced. And the screen is fucked up. Like, all these little things that I kept putting off. And I made a rule for myself, which is I can't listen to podcasts unless I'm doing housework.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:59Mark Manson?

  And magically, within like two weeks, all the house shit got done.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 1:04Mark Manson?

  So, there you go. There's a hack for you kids at home. Pair something you'd like and you don't like, and like, put them together, and voila.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:14Mark Manson?

  All right, end the show. You're welcome.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Device.

• 1:16Mark Manson?

  That's it. I'm going back to Elden Ring.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, I wanted to do this one because you've written about this before. You've written about self-discipline. But there's still, there's always this idea out there that we have to, self-discipline has to be really hard. You know, we need to punish ourselves in a way. It's difficult. We see all these people. We see David Goggins out there, you know, on Christmas morning at 5:00 AM, running. And, oh, that's what self-discipline is. And it's just, it's not that.

• 1:46Mark Manson?

  That's what psychotic discipline is.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I love David Goggins, but yeah, he's psycho.

• 1:52Mark Manson?

  Shout out David Goggins. God bless him. You know, this is the funny thing, is I think self-discipline is difficult, but like, it doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be hard or painful. I've actually found that discipline tends to actually be boring. It's almost like making something painful. Feel at least it's something like they'd people would rather something be painful than boring. So they just like convince themselves that they need to do something like they need to overdo it and do do something really painful. But the truth is, is if something's painful, it's not going to be sustainable and you're not, you're going to give up, you know, within a few days.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:32Mark Manson?

  In most cases.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cool. I have like five things here that are a little bit counterintuitive. Not really so much the hacks or the tricks to how to be more self disciplined or anything like that. But kind of the ideas that we have about self discipline and where we might be wrong about those. So I want to go through those.

• 2:47Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  And and we can kind of pick them apart. Okay.

• 2:49Mark Manson?

  Cool. I was hoping for hacks, but you know.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Well, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. You are not known as a very.

• 2:58Mark Manson?

  I'm not a hacky guy.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  A hacky guy. So I we're gonna we're gonna keep on brand with this.

• 3:03Mark Manson?

  If you want the correct iPhone app, you know, go listen to somebody else.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I never understood that. Anyway, anyway, I digress. This first one, though, is self discipline is not the same as willpower. What do you mean by that?

• 3:16Mark Manson?

  So this is actually super, super important. And this is like.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  It's foundational for sure.

• 3:20Mark Manson?

  This is foundational. If you look at all the research on on discipline and behavior change and people who stick with new habits or new behaviors, willpower and self discipline are different things. And I think most people assume they're the same thing. Willpower is your short term emotional energy that you you leverage to do something that is difficult or unpleasant or or new or challenging, right? So it's like, you want to start a new gym habit. You don't really want to get off the couch, but you know, you should do it. And so it's like, it's that energy that you use to force yourself into doing something that you kind of don't already want to do, or you don't have the momentum to already do. Because that's how you start. I think people just assume that that's how it always is.

• 4:05Mark Manson?

  But the truth is, is that it shouldn't always feel like that, like willpower is limited. You run out of it. You get you get like a willpower fatigue after a certain amount of time. And so predictably, as most people listening to this have probably experienced, you give up. You get like five days in or a weekend or two weeks in and and you're just tired. You're like, I can't do this anymore. And you give up and you go back to your old behaviors and you go back to your old tendencies. So willpower is a it's a short term fix. It's like if you are.

• 4:39Mark Manson?

  Three months into a streak and you don't want to lose the streak. You summon the willpower to like get you through that that next day to keep the streak going. You never depend on willpower for behavior change or have it change overall in general. Ultimately, what self-discipline relies upon is you have to find a way to make things feel easier. Find a way to make them feel fun. Or manipulate your environment in such a way in that the behavior ends up being inevitable. So if it feels hard, you're doing it wrong.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And I think when people hear this one, sometimes they think that, oh, we shouldn't pay attention to willpower at all. That's not what you're saying.

• 5:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  It needs, you need it in certain situations.

• 5:25Mark Manson?

  It's a short-term tool and you will definitely need it, I think, early on. Any new or difficult behavior, like you're probably going to need it early on, but you can't rely on it long-term.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  What do you think though too about, I think you need to be very conscious with your willpower, especially early on though too. And instead of just like, okay, I just the willpower to get me up off the couch.

• 5:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Right. There's that, but then there's also the willpower to let me set up my environment.

• 5:49Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  While I have this willpower.

• 5:51Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Set up my environment in a way that's going to give me more success. I think that's where we often misplace our willpower.

• 5:59Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And we try to use it, we try to overuse it.

• 6:01Mark Manson?

  It's like the difference between having all the junk food in your fridge and trying to have the willpower to not eat it every single day for days and days and days. That's inevitably going to fail. Whereas you should instead use the willpower at the grocery store and not buy it in the first place. Cause then if it's not in the fridge, you don't need to use the willpower every single day to not eat it. Right. So it's finding those little leverage points that you just described is a hundred percent true.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Right. So using willpower kind of in the like one-time situations rather than repeated situations.

• 6:31Mark Manson?

  And this is, this is the funny thing about, about discipline or, or being disciplined in an area of your life. It's usually not about the thing you want to do. Like if you want to create an exercise habit, most people assume, okay, well, the effort, all my effort should go into, I need to get up and go to the gym three times a week. When actually, most of your effort should go into, okay, what activities are gonna be fun? Do I have friends who are doing anything, like, who are willing to do something with me? What sort of like, goals and, and, and metrics can I set for myself that will make this more interesting?

• 7:08Mark Manson?

  You know, is there a way I can, I can commit to something in advance? You know, sign up for a class or something and commit to X number of, of sessions? To, to make sure I go in the future, like, those are the things that you should actually be thinking about. Like, think about the things that are gonna make the thing easy, not put all your focus on just doing the thing as much as possible.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. If that's the closest to the hack I think we're gonna get.

• 7:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Really is just setting up your.

• 7:34Mark Manson?

  That is, that is the.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:36Mark Manson?

  The hack.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:37Mark Manson?

  And this is where like, I, so, I mean, it's, we're, we're kinda teasing and making fun of, like, I always think of it like the, the, you know, like, the, kinda the Tim Ferriss stuff, or the Huberman stuff, like, those guys, like, they love to get into the nitty gritty of like, okay, like, what kinda pen do you use? And like, what's your favorite to-do list app? You know, and like, I hear that stuff and I'm just like, who cares? But I think what they're getting at is, is they're trying to find how other people have manipulated their environments and what they've used. You know, it's like, because it's ultimately, like, there are a lot of options for apps on a phone, or, you know, for different workout equipment, or whatever, and it's like, if somebody likes one over another,

• 8:21Mark Manson?

  you should go with the one you like, because that's gonna make it easier to do. Like, if there's a certain type of,

• 8:28Mark Manson?

  if there's a certain piece of software that's more enjoyable to program in, you should use that piece of software, because the fact you enjoy it more, it's gonna be less friction, it's gonna be easier to do it more often, you're gonna, you know, stick to your goals, you're gonna be more productive. So, there is something to it, but it's like, those are, in my opinion, those are, those are the marginal adjustments. They're not, they're not the thing, it's like, I think where people get mixed up is they, they, you know, they're like, oh, if I buy this pen, then, then I'll like, finally sit down and write the book that I've wanted to write the last five years. And it's like, no, the pen's not gonna make you write the book.

• 9:03Mark Manson?

  The pen will just make it slightly more enjoyable.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I I think so many people use the apps and the hacks and the tricks and whatever to cover up the underlying problem too. And I think that's the risk. I I think you're right. I think what they're trying to do is really say, hey, you know, this is where you can leverage your environment in a way. But what it ends up doing for a lot of people is, oh, this is going to fix my procrastination problem or whatever it is.

• 9:28Mark Manson?

  Right. It becomes it becomes another form of avoidance, right? Where it's like, it's like, well, I can't start yet because I don't have the perfect apps. You know, so I need to do more research on the perfect apps, then I can start. And it's like, no, you're just, it's just a more complex form of procrastination.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  No, for sure, for sure. Okay, this next one, uh, this is, this is a good one and hits pretty close to home. Self-discipline does not involve shaming yourself. This is one I really had to come to terms with the last couple of years, I think, yeah.

• 9:57Mark Manson?

  It it doesn't have to.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  It sure can, yeah.

• 10:00Mark Manson?

  It sure can. I think there's a tendency, I'm curious to hear what your your experience is with this. I've never struggled with this side of it. I tend to be good at not shaming myself for things. Um, but like, we have a tendency in general to associate moral judgments with with discipline, for for better or worse. Like, I think it's it's logical that we tend to see very disciplined people as

• 10:26Mark Manson?

  good people. There's something really admirable or respectable about them. But I think we run into trouble if we attach too much moral judgment on people who fail to be disciplined because we all have areas of our life that were like very, we struggle with compulsion, addiction, obsession, bad habits. Maybe we grew up in an environment with like, you know, terrible options around us. And so, you know, we've, life's very complicated. And so I think there's a tendency to like, associate moral failures with somebody who can't control their weight, or somebody who can't get work done on time, or somebody who shows up late for stuff. Like, it's,

• 11:05Mark Manson?

  it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person. It's just like, this happens to be the area that you are struggling with managing your own behaviors. So the danger is that when you make those moral judgments about yourself. Again, it's it's one of those, it's like willpower. It's a short term thing like you feel really bad in the moment. And so that can be very motivating in the short term, but you're basically training your brain to just feel bad about yourself all the time. And so in the long run, you just develop this identity of never feeling good enough for anything. Does that map to experience?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, 100% it is. Yeah. And just, you know, over the last few years where I've been much more conscious about my health and early on in that process, it very much was, oh, god damn it, I ate that dessert or I missed that workout. We'll get to this here in a minute, but there's a, there's kind of a self correcting way that you can handle that. But what happens is if you beat yourself up, that's just, it's another form of emotional drag.

• 12:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  And really is a self reinforcing downward spiral. Because yeah, if you eat that piece of cake, now you think, well, I'm just a piece of shit fat kid. And so why, why bother with the self discipline in the first place?

• 12:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And you can go down that spiral very, very, very quickly or start missing, I missed two workouts. Well, I'm just a lazy fuck. So I'm just gonna stay on the couch anyway.

• 12:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  And I think that that's a real dangerous spot to be in. If you're, if you're not very aware of it and you're, you're more, I don't know, if you're just probably me, you know, like I've talked about, I'm a perfectionist.

• 12:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  That doesn't help.

• 12:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Um, but there is a lot of like moral, I wage a lot of moral judgments on myself. And I've gotten way better at that, though. And if I would have stuck with that, there's just no way, if I would have stuck with that mindset, there's just no way I would have been able to.

• 12:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  To stick with anything.

• 12:53Mark Manson?

  It's funny because I've always been on the opposite end of the spectrum. And it's also been a problem.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:59Mark Manson?

  Which is that I would eat the cake and I wouldn't judge myself. I'd be like, I kind of deserve cake today. And I was very good at justifying bad behavior and not judging myself for it.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:11Mark Manson?

  And so it created the opposite problem of just like, I always deserve some cake. So I kept eating cake. I think this is one of those things. There's like a real fine balance between judgment and forgive, self forgiveness, self judgment and self forgiveness. Let's put it this way. I think the optimal amount of judgment is not zero. I think there is some judgment is, is certainly healthy.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:32Mark Manson?

  What strikes me as, as more important is

• 13:36Mark Manson?

  How you package the judgment and how you respond to the judgment. So I think to me, like what a healthy form of self judgment would look like is like, hey, I fucked up. I ate that cake. You know, I'm trying to lose weight. I've got these goals. I fucked up. I shouldn't have done that. And I'm a little bit disappointed that I did that. But that's okay. I'm going to use this disappointment and remember the next time I'm in this situation to not do this. I'm going to remember how I felt in this moment. To me, that's kind of like a healthy. That's a healthy form of judgment and a healthy reaction to the judgment. It's not, you're judging that the be, first of all, you're judging the behavior and not yourself as a person.

• 14:16Mark Manson?

  And second of all, you're leveraging the feelings of disappointment and anger and embarrassment to to correct future actions. I think the unhealthy version of that is, wow, I just ate a piece of cake. I'm such a piece of shit. I never stick to my goals. I never get it right. I never, oh, my God, like, why even try in the first place? And and that's like, that's, that's when you go to a really dark place, I think.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. That self discipline is about self correction, not perfection.

• 14:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Right? I think so many times we get, we think that self discipline, what it means is perfection. We eat the perfect diet. We hit the workout every time. We do exactly what we're going to say every time. That's not at all what it is. Actually, self discipline, the definition is contained in the word itself. That discipline is, when you discipline someone, you you correct their behavior.

• 15:05Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It's a self correction. So self discipline is self correction.

• 15:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  So it's not about perfection. It's about, it's about correcting when you do get off, right?

• 15:15Mark Manson?

  I just had a weird thought.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 15:18Mark Manson?

  About about Goggins. So, and let me preface this by saying like, I fucking love David Goggins. Like, he's just, he's like the mascot. Like, I want to make him like the mascot of our industry. But, but I would argue he's not healthy. Like, in terms of, like, he's not optimal, right? Like, he's talked about, like, his knees are all fucked up. His bones are fucked up. Like, he's got all sorts of joint issues. He's had, like, tons of surgeries.

• 15:50Mark Manson?

  I believe he's had lots of relationship and marriage problem like he's clearly not a balanced guy, which is fine, like, you know, who is balanced.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:00Mark Manson?

  But I'm going to use him as an example of how like that inaccurate definition of discipline is actually not discipline, right? Like, discipline is what you just said. It's like correcting the suboptimal things in our lives to make our lives better. Whereas just like developing the ability to put yourself through painful shit over and over and over again.

• 16:29Mark Manson?

  By your definition, that's technically not discipline. You could argue that that's another form of compulsion or another form of being out of control.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:39Mark Manson?

  Like, I don't know Goggins, but he strikes me as somebody who compulsively exercises. Like, I don't think he knows how to stop.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:49Mark Manson?

  Or at least it strikes from the outside. He strikes me as somebody who doesn't know how to stop. And so I think anything in your life, whether it's, you know, eating cake or smoking crack or exercising or working or, you know, partying, sex, drugs, whatever. If you feel like you can't stop and you have all these narratives around stopping that like you're a piece of shit if you don't do it and you're a failure and oh my God, you'll never amount to anything, like, that's not healthy. It's just like, we're used to compulsive behaviors being like very clearly and obviously unhealthy.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:29Mark Manson?

  Whereas if you replace it with something that on the surface is very healthy and admirable, which is like running ultra marathons and fucking like doing insane workouts every day.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  I think it kind of slips by people that like, that actually isn't discipline either, even though maybe from the outside it looks like it is.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Well, is it, I mean, is self discipline just trading addictions? One addiction for a better addiction? We've talked about this before, Rich Roll we had on. Is that what it is? Are you leveraging? Because I think you're right. I think David Goggins is a compulsive guy just personality wise.

• 18:04Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  He's talked before, he was overweight. He had issues with food and alcohol and everything like that. And then he turned his compulsion into becoming an ABCO and ultra marathon runner. Is that, is that what self-discipline is? Is it leveraging your, your

• 18:21Mark Manson?

  Your addictive tendencies?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Addictions, yeah.

• 18:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like finding one, finding healthier outlets. I honestly, I don't know.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:29Mark Manson?

  I really don't know. I do know that like, I have definitely had a, I don't know if I would call myself like an alcoholic or an addict, but like I've had very addictive relationship with both food and alcohol in my life. And I, one of the most effective things I have found is replacing those compulsive behaviors with better compulsive behaviors, with healthier compulsive behaviors. So like, I definitely don't, that was one of the first things, when we had Rich on, he like asked me, he was like, when you stopped drinking, did you find yourself doing other things compulsively? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I definitely did.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:09Mark Manson?

  Uh, I started working more, I started exercising more, started running a ton, like things, it definitely changed. So I don't know, like maybe that, maybe, maybe, uh, different people have kind of a, a set point of addictive energy in their lives. And if your set point is extremely high, you have to be very, very careful like where you direct that, that energy, because wherever you direct it, you're probably gonna have very compulsive tendencies. Whereas some people have, have like a very low addictive set point and they can be more lax about it.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:44Mark Manson?

  You know?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Okay, well then this next one.

• 19:46Mark Manson?

  That's a harebrained theory, by the way. I have no

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I like it, no, I like it.

• 19:50Mark Manson?

  I just pulled that out of my ass.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:52Mark Manson?

  Right here, right here. So not giving a fuck podcast exclusive.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I could, I could entertain that one.

• 19:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  There you go, I could entertain that one.

• 20:01Mark Manson?

  You heard it here first, folks.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  This next one might, well, I don't know, it might challenge that one a little bit though too, is, which is real self-discipline isn't painful, it's boring, the boring part. If it's an addiction, is it, is it boring, you know? I don't know, that's maybe reaching a little bit.

• 20:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Again, I think people think, oh, there's that willpower again, we gotta grit through this and just fucking grind.

• 20:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  That's not really self-discipline either, though.

• 20:25Mark Manson?

  Well, I think that, so I think it's boring.

• 20:29Mark Manson?

  This kind of comes back to is like, how do you actually change your behavior? And I would argue that you know, you've changed your behavior when you don't notice you're doing it anymore. When it just, you just do it unconsciously without having to think about it, which I guess by some definitions, you would call that boring. When it doesn't, when it's not a thing, like it's just like, oh, it's eight AM. I, you know, I do my workout class or, you know, I, oh, it's Saturday afternoon. I call my parents like it's when it just becomes such a natural part of your reality that you don't have to think about it. And you don't, it doesn't require any extra energy or anything. Yeah, then it just becomes a mundane part of your life.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:09Mark Manson?

  I guess, you know, I don't know if it's, it's not, not, I don't know if saying it's not painful is necessarily true. And I don't know if saying it's boring is like the most accurate way to describe it, but it's more like, you know, you've become disciplined with something where it's like, it doesn't even register on your radar as like a thing.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think early on, especially people will, will look at the painful part of it and say, oh, this must be super valuable, maybe, and, and kind of romanticize the pain.

• 21:42Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Where over a long period of time, the pain, like you're, I think what you're getting at, the pain actually doesn't necessarily diminish, but it just, you see it differently.

• 21:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Well, so, okay, that's a really good point because the pain can be like very, the pain can be seductive. You know, we were talking about this on a, on a previous episode. Like, so I did CrossFit years ago, like 2017, 2018. And it was funny because I was very, I was much less experienced with exercise at the time. And I kind of had this like romantic view of like, the harder your workout, the better it is, the better you're doing. And so I would, I would go to this CrossFit gym and I would just put like, I would literally work out so hard that I, I couldn't get up off the floor afterwards. And at the time I'm like, man, I'm fucking killing it. I'm crushing it.

• 22:33Mark Manson?

  And it, the truth is that it's a little bit of a red herring, like it, it's one of those things like it feels more valuable because you sacrifice more. When actually it's not. It's actually not more disciplined. It's not more valuable. Like you, I was using a lot of willpower. And the irony is that those workouts exhausted me so much that it like I never developed a consistent habit. I never developed better.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Too tired for the next workout.

• 23:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:02Mark Manson?

  Or I was so tired, I would like go out and just like pig out on a massive meal, have a bunch of drinks, you know? Cause I'm like, well, I had this killer workout today. Like might as well order a second dessert, you know, like. And that's the interesting thing too, is that in a lot of the research about willpower, like willpower being finite. You know, they, they find that, uh, you know, there's a relationship between like blood glucose levels and, and feelings of willpower. So like.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 23:32Mark Manson?

  On a, on a literal biological basis, it's like, if your body is sapped of energy physically, you will have less mental. I mean, and everybody's experience, everybody's like, everybody knows that when you're hungry, you make

• 23:45Mark Manson?

  worse decisions or like you, you're, you're like less disciplined or you have less willpower. So anyway.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that, that was, that was my point though, is that the, the romanticizing of the, this has to be a painful, momentous thing. I want to make a big change and therefore I need to have, um, I need to feel that.

• 24:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And pain is a good way to feel that. And actually what it is, is more about the boring consistency.

• 24:08Mark Manson?

  Like the consistency. Yes.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  I'm doing CrossFit now and we've talked about this before too, but I, I've really, early on, it was definitely like that. It was definitely like, oh, these big workouts. I'm so exhausted. I can't go to another workout for three days.

• 24:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And I figured out very quickly that was not sustainable. So I'm reducing my weights. I, I usually don't do the recommended weight or the recommended intensity, just because I know I need a little bit of gas in the tank for the next one.

• 24:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And that's been, that's been a huge one for me too.

• 24:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I think there's something that like. Because, and maybe this comes back to how we just romanticize the change we want in our lives itself, right? Like, so we kind of convince ourselves, we have a tendency to convince ourselves, like, oh, if I could just, you know, get a raise, everything would be so much better. If I could just buy a house, everything would be so much better. Or if I could just lose, you know, 10, 20 pounds, everything would be so much better. And so there's, there's all this emotional investment on the, the outcome of the change that we want. And because there's so much emotional investment in that, we assume that the sacrifice must be proportional to that emotional investment. So it's like, okay, you know, my life's gonna be so much better if I

• 25:15Mark Manson?

  lose 20 pounds. Therefore, I'm, I gotta be ready to like, give up so much and like, suffer and, and go through the shit. When it's like, actually, if you just fucking, like, cut a few things out of your breakfast and go for a walk every day for six months, you'll probably get there. And it wasn't painful at all. And you didn't have to suffer that much. And it wasn't a huge sacrifice.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  But it's boring and nobody makes YouTube videos about that.

• 25:40Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Exactly. Nobody listens to a podcast about, uh, you know, uh, having one fewer pancakes and going for a walk after lunch.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  That's just a cautionary tale.

• 25:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah, just throwing that out there.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so this last one, which I think is kind of the final boss. Let me see if you agree with this, but self-discipline involves forging new identities. And this one gets a little scary.

• 26:03Mark Manson?

  A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And it's like, and again, I think this is like, this comes back to the boring thing because you, it, when, when a new behavior doesn't even register on your radar as like a thing, it's because your identity has shifted and that new behavior is now part of how you see yourself. And ultimately, like, that's where you want to get. Like, if you want to, if you want to exercise regularly and be, be physically healthy. You have to be a person who exercises regularly. Like, it's not just enough to do the thing. You have to be the person who does things like that. And that requires shifting how you see yourself, how you think of yourself, how you relate to yourself.

• 26:47Mark Manson?

  And ultimately, that's gonna have repercussions on how you relate with others. This is why people often have the experience of when they go through a significant life change, it sometimes fucks up some of their friendships. Because what happens is like, it turns out, you know, you decided to stop drinking. And to do that, you had to become a person who stops drinking, or become a person who doesn't drink. And it turns out that some of your friendships were very much based on drinking together. And so like, your friends have identities around, I'm the type of person who drinks with my buddies. And so when your identity shifts, it throws those relationships into disarray and causes a lot of tension. And in some cases, you lose the friendships and relationships.

• 27:32Mark Manson?

  In some cases, it causes drama and people get pissed off at you. So I think this is at the core of like, that common experience of like, when you change, some people don't come along with you. And it's not because they're bad people or you did anything wrong. It's just like, you're a different person. By definition, you are a different person. You see yourself differently, you do different things. And therefore, you're not gonna relate to the people in your life in the same way that you did before.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Right. I think this is also an argument for why, not an argument, but this is why change can take so long too. Because when you are aiming for like, an identity change, that doesn't happen overnight.

• 28:12Mark Manson?

  No.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Right? And I think, for me anyway, that really was like, oh, okay, this is gonna take a long time. This might take a year to really get into this and really, really change my mind around that. That helped me say, that helped me kind of push through those times where I didn't wanna do it. Where it's like, okay, this is an identity change. This is, I'm becoming a different person. I don't know, for whatever reason, for me, I was like, okay, that made it so I wasn't so impatient all the time.

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  What do you think of that?

• 28:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Because you you went through identity changes in your life, you know, like you went from, you know, young kind of party boy, right?

• 28:49Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  And that was a painful experience to go through when you changed that identity, right?

• 28:54Mark Manson?

  I think, yeah, it it's the behavior, it's very clear and obvious. It's like you're either doing the thing or you're not doing the thing.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 29:04Mark Manson?

  You know? Whereas the identity, it's the it is a very gradual, long term thing. And there's an emotional process with that, too, right? So it's like, early on, there's an excitement. Then there's maybe a little bit of tension and stress. Maybe you like backtrack a little bit or you like relapse. And also, there's like a period of grief, I think, because to become a new person, you have to let go of who you used to be. Like, you kind of have to let the old person die. And the same way you would grieve a friend, I think you have to grieve the former version of yourself. And so there's a little bit of a sadness that comes with it of like, wow, I'm never gonna be that guy again. Like, I feel that sometimes, too, like when I think about kind of my previous identities.

• 29:49Mark Manson?

  I I definitely with the party thing, like, I struggled with that a lot because I really, really enjoyed that phase of my life. And then when I hit a hit a point where I stopped enjoying it, I just became very sad. And it's it's not that I like, wanted to go back to it because it's like I didn't I didn't enjoy it anymore. It it just kind of like, it's that realization of like, I'm never gonna be that again. And and it was a great time and I really enjoyed it, but like, it's gone now.

• 30:19Mark Manson?

  Kind of like thinking about your childhood sometimes, right? Like, it's like, sometimes, I don't know if you do this, but like, sometimes I'll get like really nostalgic for something from my childhood. And then like, I get kind of sad because I'm like, wow, I'm never gonna be young again.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Or like you go back home and it's different and you're like, oh, this isn't the same.

• 30:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  It's sad, there's a sadness to it.

• 30:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  I I think, though, too, we it should be a slow process, though. I this identity change, I I don't want anybody to think that that can happen overnight. I mean, it can happen overnight, I guess. You could just decide to be somebody different. That's I've I've tried to do this before, though, where I've tried to make big change in my life and do it kind of all at once. And there's a big identity change around it that needs to occur. And usually what ends up happening, you know, like I've, I don't know, I've sold everything I've owned a couple of times at least. And just kind of like moved and got new friends. And that's happened in my life a couple of times. And you get a couple of months into that and you're like, oh, shit. I've, you know, I didn't think of all these other trade offs.

• 31:17Mark Manson?

  I've made a mistake.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I've made a mistake. There's certain things that I that I value that I didn't realize I valued and I gave that up.

• 31:24Mark Manson?

  I'm act.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  So I think it should be slow.

• 31:26Mark Manson?

  Yes, I'm actually thinking about like, you know, because there's a lot of promises in our industry of like, you know, you can be a new person like, you know, after a weekend retreat or whatever. And you also run into people who claim that, right? Like you run into people are like, oh, my God, it was life changing. I'm a totally new person now. I have always been very skeptical of those people. And to me, to me, that feels like another form of avoidance.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:53Mark Manson?

  Is that like? If you have managed to delude yourself that you've become a completely different person in like 48 hours.

• 32:03Mark Manson?

  It's likely because you're like, I don't know. You're avoiding or running away from something like that's just my gut instinct on that.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yes. I've been there.

• 32:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I have too.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:17Mark Manson?

  The exception might be, I don't know, like psychedelics.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 32:23Mark Manson?

  Like that.

• 32:25Mark Manson?

  Things can happen very, very quick with psychedelics.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Even then, though, I'm not sure because I I I get what you're saying. I've been thinking lately too about the ways I've changed in the last, you know, 10, 20 years, whatever. And

• 32:41Speaker 01

  I at the end of each one of these little thought experiments, I usually come to, I'm like, I'm not sure if anybody would notice that.

• 32:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  But me, you know, it's like more of an internal change. It feels like an internal change where I have more of a, I feel calmer. Some people, some people in my life who've known me for a long time.

• 32:55Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've calmed down quite a bit.

• 32:56Mark Manson?

  Well, sure. But that's the thing too, when I, when I run into these people who like, they're like, oh, I went to this retreat and it was incredible. I'm a completely new person and like. Then I'll hang out with them and they'll behave in the exact same way.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 33:09Mark Manson?

  They used to behave and I'm like, oh, okay. So they feel that they're a different person, but like ultimately their behaviors haven't changed.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:18Mark Manson?

  And their prior values and priorities haven't changed significantly. So are you really a different person? I guess this comes back to like, you know, ultimately you are what you do repeatedly.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  That's how you achieve identity change, you think, right? It's not, it's not the other way around. It's like, you're not here, I'm going to change my identity and then all of a sudden I'm going to start doing different things. I think that's what people think psychedelics will do is that it will change my identity and then I will.

• 33:42Mark Manson?

  Yes, if I just believed.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  You need to change your behavior first and then the identity follows.

• 33:46Mark Manson?

  Absolutely, a hundred percent. It's, yeah, it's, you don't just believe your way into being a new person. That's called delusion.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 33:54Mark Manson?

  Right, like I can believe I'm president of the United States. That's not going to make me president of the United States.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:59Mark Manson?

  I do think social validation plays a role, like ultimately.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, we didn't get into that.

• 34:03Mark Manson?

  We are a social species and it's like, it is, we do care what, how people see us. And so, you know, again, if you're going to be a person who doesn't drink, I think it's very important to go to a bar with some people and be the person who doesn't drink, right? Like that's, that's a validation of the behavior with how you see yourself.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Right, that's all I got, Mark. I think, uh, yeah, I think we did that one.

• 34:31Mark Manson?

  Well, we were, you know, this, this episode itself was a paragon of discipline and rigor.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Two shining examples sitting right in front of you.

• 34:42Mark Manson?

  We followed the outline, we nailed the talking points, we made the jokes. I would say overall it was a successful episode.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Like and subscribe, please.

• 34:54Mark Manson?

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