How to Reprogram Your Brain for Success (ft. Derek Sivers)

Are you your own worst enemy? Ever think that your life would be so much easier if you could just change your mind about a couple things? Yeah, me too. In this inaugural episode, I am joined by my old friend Derek Sivers, the one person I know who is better at questioning beliefs and changing his mind than just about anyone… and a bona fide grandmaster at not giving a fuck. We dig into the most fundamental aspects of our psychology and happiness—our beliefs. We talk about how to change them, which ones should be changed and which ones should not, and the wide-ranging effects these beliefs have throughout our lives. I believe you will get a lot out of this podcast… see what I did there? I did the believe—eh, never mind. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction: The Man Who Gives Zero Fucks 02:04 Useful Not True: The Philosophy of Choosing Your Beliefs 03:40 The Psychopath Problem: Where Are the Limits? 06:58 The Kanye West Case Study: When Useful Beliefs Go Wrong 28:07 Changing Beliefs: The Journal Method 30:00 Evidence Accumulation and Quitting Smoking 32:11 Cognitive Flexibility: The Skill of Letting Go 17:24 Art, Fiction, and Useful Lies: Why Movies Feel More True Than Life 21:07 Religion: Judging by Usefulness Instead of Truth 37:22 Tragedy as Transformation: Congratulations on Your Breakup 40:50 The Last Third of Life: The Ultimate Procrastination Killer 42:57 The Meta Belief: Everything Is Negotiable 45:52 Fatherhood: The Priority That Changed Everything (and Nothing) 54:56 The Adaptability Problem: Molding Yourself Into a Pretzel 1:00:33 Fuck, Marry, Kill: Music, Writing, and Coding ⇨ 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?

  Are you your own worst enemy? Ever think that your life would be so much easier if you could just change your mind about a couple of things? Yeah, me too. That's why I reached out to my old friend Derek Sivers, the one person I know who is better at questioning beliefs and changing his mind than just about anyone I know. He's also a bona fide grandmaster at not giving a fuck. A former circus performer and professional musician, Derek went on to found several companies, including CD Baby, which he later sold for $22 million. He then gave most of that money away to charity. He has one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time, has written four books, and is currently working on his fifth, titled Useful Not True. In this episode, we're going to dig into the most fundamental aspects of our psychology and happiness: our beliefs.

• 0:43Mark Manson?

  We talk about how to change them, which ones should be changed and which ones maybe shouldn't, and the wide-ranging effects that these beliefs have throughout our lives. I believe that you're going to get a lot out of this episode. See what I did there? It was like, "It's an episode about beliefs," and I said, "I believe..." Whatever. Just roll the intro.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  20 million books sold, zero fucks given. It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 1:15Mark Manson?

  First of all, we've been friends for a long time, and so it's cool to just have my inaugural guest be a friend who I've known forever. But also, if I were to make a top 10 list of people I know who probably give the few as fucks... You are up there, sir. You are definitely on that list. You're pretty high on that list, I have to say. Always surprise me every time we hang out, and we never fail to have super interesting conversations. So, I am overjoyed to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on and being my guinea pig.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  I get that reference.

• 1:52Mark Manson?

  So I want to talk to you. You are currently working on a book at the moment about beliefs and this this concept of useful, not true.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  I noticed that it was underneath all of my life philosophies, but never explicitly stated, that I don't believe anything I say. I don't believe anything anyone else says. I think that everything I say is questionable. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I think it's right when I say it, but we don't know ourselves that well. We think we remember things in the past perfectly, but we don't. We think we know why we're doing things in life, but we don't really know. And we can talk about some colorful stories around that if you want. But then, because I believe the same thing about everybody else, I believe that

• 2:42Speaker 02

  we live in a mostly social world, unless you're a scientist. And so I just operate through life this way, choosing what beliefs serve me best. Meaning like, there are any ways, any particular ways you could look at things. One way just makes you sad and just makes you want to just stay in bed. Another way makes you jump up out of your chair and take action. Well, then I'll choose the way that makes me jump out of my chair. I'll choose the perspective that makes me take action. If it's a useful belief, I'll choose it because nothing's true anyway. I mean, except for some physical realities, almost nothing in our social world is true, meaning absolutely, necessarily, inarguably, objectively, repeatedly true. So I'm just choosing the beliefs that serve me best.

• 3:26Mark Manson?

  It's funny, actually, years and years ago, I wrote an article similar to this idea. And so many people challenged me on it that I got kind of sick of defending myself. And I think I eventually just took it out of my archive because I'm like, geez, people, all right. It seems to me that there's some sort of practical limit to this concept, right? So it's like, if I'm a couch potato, and I'm feeling lazy and depressed all the time, if I can manage to convince myself that I'm actually a successful person who's just a bad string of luck, that's a very useful thing to believe. And that will probably Really helped me get off the couch. So I'm with you there. I do think there's probably an extreme on the other end of the spectrum where like, let's say I'm a super ambitious corporate guy,

• 4:09Mark Manson?

  working a nine to five, and I'm climbing the corporate ladder. I start doing some pretty shitty things to people because I justify to myself that I'm superior and I'm more brilliant and I'm better and I deserve to be at the top. Now that is useful,

• 4:25Mark Manson?

  but it's, it's kind of a shitty thing to believe. It will definitely harm my relationships. It possibly might harm my, my happiness, depending on, I guess, how psychopathic I am. But there is a territory with this concept that I start to get uneasy or unsure of like where the limitations or boundaries of it are. Where would you say those limitations are in your opinion?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  I'll tell you, but then I also want to ask your advice. Because the thing that you just said has been the most common response, no offense. When I tell people that I'm writing this book, basically, in short, their question is, but what about psychopaths?

• 5:06Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  What about a politician believing they won the election that they actually lost? It's useful, not true for them to believe that they won? What about people that believe that their enemy on the other side of the fighting line is, is subhuman and should just all be exterminated like cockroaches? That's useful, but not true. So, so far, the best thing I could offer is to say that I'm sharing a tool like a driving instructor can teach you to drive a car, but doesn't have to keep addressing everybody. Now, remember, kids, don't drive into a crowd

• 5:51Speaker 02

  of people. Don't use this to murder.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Okay, does everybody teaching everything have to say, now, remember, don't use this for murder, don't be evil? But I feel that I should address this early. So so far, all I've got is basically a paragraph in the intro before the book begins saying, just to be clear, this is a book about you being the person you want to be. This is not a book about other people and whatever they do. So that's all I got so far.

• 6:19Mark Manson?

  I like noting it as a tool. And there are a lot of things within psychology or self-help that are like that. Like, goal-setting is a tool, right? Goal-setting is ethically neutral. Hitler had goals. Stalin had goals. He was really good at accomplishing them, too. Goals are very ethically neutral, and I think developing this mental skill of adopting beliefs around what's useful rather than true is also ethically neutral. You can see people who get very good at it and very bad. You can actually probably see that within a lot of the same people. You know, when I was, I was reading some of your excerpts that you've posted on your website last night, and the person that came to my mind was Kanye West. Have you seen the new documentary about him?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  No, I didn't even know there was one.

• 7:04Mark Manson?

  It's called Genius. It's on Netflix. It is absolutely fascinating. I would absolutely check it out, potentially use him as an anecdote for your book. So basically, what happened, when Kanye was like 17 or 18 years old, and he was still unfamous, like, nobody knew who he was, he met this young filmmaker, a guy a few years older than him. And the filmmaker met him, and Kanye was immediately like, I'm gonna be the biggest rapper in the world, you should make a documentary about me. And the guy was like, okay, sure. And so he started following him around with like a little camcorder. This is back in like 2000, 1999, 2000. Followed him around with a camcorder for like three or four years. And sure enough, Kanye became the biggest rapper in the world, and he like caught the entire rise.

• 7:49Mark Manson?

  What's so remarkable about the footage is that you see this mindset. It seems to be inherent in Kanye's mind the entire time. Like, there's footage of him walking into record labels in radio stations with his demo disc, walking up to people and saying, I'm gonna be the biggest rapper in the world and they they just flat out laugh in his face. And he's like, oh, OK, yeah, you don't get it. All right, you're gonna regret this. And he like turns around and walks out. He's not deterred. He's not upset. He's not angry. Like, it's just this very fundamental belief. But what's interesting is the documentary then kind of jumps to to present day. Like, the filmmaker comes back into his life maybe five years ago. And you see how that mentality is hurting him.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Ah, brilliant.

• 8:35Mark Manson?

  And how Kanye just has this overwhelming confidence and belief. He's very untethered to reality at this point. He's been way too famous, way too rich. Everybody's kissing his ass. He's got yes men everywhere. Nobody's looking out for his interests and and he just has this overwhelming confidence to do this or record that. You can just see how it's getting him into trouble. It's almost like a fascinating case study of the the benefits and perils of overconfidence, I would say. So my second point, aside from I really like the tool thing. I think it only works if you're willing to change those beliefs. If you have a belief that's useful, but you're completely inflexible about it. It might help help you for a little while, but at some point it's gonna fuck you.

• 9:20Mark Manson?

  And so if you're not flexible in your beliefs and willing to check in on them and switch them out for new ones. Then maybe that's kind of where that threshold is where it's like it goes from helpful to unhelpful.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Oh, good stuff here. The example you used at the beginning of The Boss. I'd say that his beliefs were not useful because, you know, the difference between shallow happy and deep happy. Right? So shallow happy is eating the ice cream now. Deep happy is being proud of yourself for not eating the ice cream. That's just a dumb example, but that so on a shallow level.

• 9:57Mark Manson?

  We're all about the ice cream metaphors here.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  The boss might be short term happy, like, yeah, I'm just stomping on everybody, getting what I want. Look at me, I'm I'm crushing it. But.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  That's funny that you said that word. Like, I imagine like stomping on, like crushing everything around you. Crushing it, crushing everybody. Right, right. You could say like, this isn't working for you. You're, yeah, you're crushing everybody around you. You're, you're being bad. You're, you're making the world a worse place. And ultimately, you're making your future worse. You might be on a short-term selfish gain right now, but you're on a long-term downward path. Right? Quick aside, when people say, when you say useful not true, what do you mean? Useful? Yes. Because, yeah, somebody could use it for short-term evil. And I say, no, no, to me, useful, and I do define it at the beginning by saying, useful means generally being who you want to be.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It's something that helps you go where you want to go, ultimately be who you want to be. It's long-term, not short-term. So back to the point of changing the beliefs. I'm so glad you brought this up. Did you ever read the book? I think it was Marshall Goldsmith that wrote, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." Never read it. Great title, though. The book is written for CEOs, you know, built their way up to the top. So now they're the boss of people. And what he's saying is, this guy's been like a corporate consultant for years. And he's saying, from all that I've observed, the skills that it took you to get from, say, childhood or obscurity to being the boss of a big company

• 11:37Speaker 02

  were a different set of skills that you're going to need now as the boss. So you might have made it more about you on your way up. But once you're at the top, you need to make it about the people around you. A tiny example, he said, "Don't add two cents." That's the metaphor we use, especially like American slang. When somebody gives you an idea and they're like, you know, "Hey, Mark, I'm thinking about doing this podcast. What do you think?" And you say, "Well, here's my two cents." You know, make sure that you do it outside, right? And they go, "Oh, okay, do it outside, huh?" So now you've added your two cents. But when people are your employees, what you've just done is you've made that idea less theirs because you added your two cents. And because you're the boss, you're not just some random dude at a bar,

• 12:23Speaker 02

  they kind of have to include your two cents. Even if you just said, "Oh, make that shade of blue a little bit darker." Well, guess what? They're going to feel less ownership in that because you added your damn two cents. So that was one example where he says, on your way up, you had a certain set of skills. But what got you here won't get you there. And that's the only book I've ever heard talk about this.

• 12:45Mark Manson?

  It makes sense, though, that useful is a moving target. Right? It's like a useful belief for Kanye when nobody knows who he is is no longer useful when he's the biggest rapper in the world. What's useful when you're starting out at a company is no longer, not always, useful when you're the CEO. I do think a lot of this revolves around really just how you define useful. I think the ethical component of like, it can't be win-lose, it needs to be win-win or win-win-win. That strikes me as important. Like useful needs to cast a larger net than just simply like what makes Mark feel like a badass today. And it's funny, because I've always felt like, like I dipped my toe in the water on

• 13:30Mark Manson?

  this concept and I never jumped in, but I always felt like it's a deep pool. You can go very, very deep on this and there's gotta be so much value down there. But I don't know, I was busy writing articles with fuck in the title to

• 13:48Mark Manson?

  to explore.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Fucking useful or fucking true.

• 13:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah, useful or fucking true.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Wait, you know what? I just, this is a, I'm gonna change the subject a bit, but I've just been kind of like waiting to get this out. So you did this really sweet intro to me when you first hit record and said hello and we jumped right into things. I have to give a tiny reverse intro. You do not listen to all of these podcasts that I do when I'm the guest on other people's podcasts. I'm sure you haven't heard them all, but at least two or three times, people have asked, which writers do you admire? Who are your favorite writers? And I go, actually, I've really only got one. And I say Mark Manson, just hands down, I think is the best writer out there right now.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Because I really dig into the craft writing. There are other, many, many other people that have wonderful ideas. And goddamn, you have to scratch through a bunch of fucking verbiage and examples to get those little ideas, right? They're like, you know, the people with the metal detectors going through a bunch of stuff, looking for a few good coins on the beach. I read these 300-page books that have maybe, you know, 50 good sentences in them, but it's worth it to me. I read the book for those 50 good sentences. When I keep my notes, when I'm reading somebody else's book, what I do is I like to paraphrase. I put things, I take their ideas and I want to save those ideas, but I put them into better words.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Because fuck their words, all the damn words they give. I do this all the time. And I've done this with hundreds of books, basically every book that you can see on my website that I've ever read. If you go to my sive dot R S is my website and right there is you'll see the Derek's book list. So the last almost 400 books I've read that since I started taking notes in 2007. And every time when I would get to one of your books, I'd say, oh, that's a really good idea. I say, okay, I'm going to put this into better words. And you were the only writer out of the 400 something books I've read, the only person where I cannot change a single word to improve it. So there you go. Hands down, you are my favorite writer.

• 15:56Mark Manson?

  Your belief, Derek, may not be true, but it is certainly useful. At least it's quite useful for me. So thank you very much.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Nice deflection.

• 16:06Mark Manson?

  Naturally, I got on your website last night for the first time in a while and probably read through a dozen of your more recent musings. And there are so many times where I read your stuff and I'm like, I have had similar thoughts to that. You really have this, see, now we're just kissing each other's ass, but you, you have this incredible ability to capture a deeply complex concept in a, in a very simple metaphor or story. Like it's very elegant. It's almost like Aesop's fables. Like that's, that's kind of what it feels like to read a Derek Sivers post. You know, it's 400 words, a very simple story about you and your kid or something you did

• 16:50Mark Manson?

  in the music industry, and then it just lands and you're like, oh, I never thought about it that way. So. You're not too shabby yourself. Speaking of your posts, though, I wanted to bring something up because you did have a post that was, I believe it's an excerpt of the new book, that I really liked, and I think it's a really interesting concept to explore a little bit. You were talking about your kid and some of his friends, they were like playing a game, they were building pillow forts and all this stuff, and basically they were playing make believe. You used this as an example of how something could be untrue but useful.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:25Mark Manson?

  And you kind of used it as a jumping off point. It was one of those thoughts, it was like an initial domino that just spread and all these like further dominos. I ended up, I looked up a famous Picasso quote. He said, "Art is not truth, art is a lie that gives us truth."

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  And this got me thinking about the role of art.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck, that's, sorry, sorry, sorry. Hold on. I, uh, I'm not hearing your further sentences. I'm still digesting that one. Damn, that's good.

• 17:52Mark Manson?

  So it just got me thinking about the role of fantasy, metaphor, art, fiction. I think we've all experienced this to some extent. Like, if you think about like your favorite films, some of your favorite films, in many ways, they feel more,

• 18:11Mark Manson?

  I don't want to say true, but like more important or significant than a lot of the events in your own life. Like, when a movie like really hits you hard, it just got me thinking about like the role of art in human culture. It is almost an organizing force for true sentiments that we don't necessarily have. Like, they're intangible. We can't point to them in reality. So anyway, I just want to throw that out there.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  I wonder what the connection is with dreams, and I'll just preface to say I know nothing about what I'm about to say. But like-

• 18:48Mark Manson?

  Always love that on a podcast.

• 18:51Mark Manson?

  I have no idea what I'm talking about, but.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Dreams, don't they say that there's, there's a theory that the reason we dream is to process

• 19:02Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  unprocessed ideas. So in a way, I think what you're saying is that movies can do that in a way too, that it's tapping into something that maybe there's some feeling of loss that we haven't addressed in our past or something. And it's sitting there kind of unprocessed within us as we're going to work and playing a PlayStation and looking at a phone or whatever. And, and that a movie can go like vibrate that and kind of like bring it up and tap into this thing that's in you that needs to be addressed.

• 19:36Mark Manson?

  Well, if you think about it, the best art is very therapeutic. I feel like this is, it's somewhere around this. It's a piece of fiction. It's not true. It's a bunch of people on stage playing make believe, but depending on where you are in your life and the specific abstract concepts and ideas that are being played with, it can impact you in a way that feels way more true than say like sitting and talking to your parents or calling your ex-girlfriend or whatever.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is it that it also helps point out something in us that we wouldn't have noticed

• 20:12Speaker 02

  by ourselves?

• 20:13Mark Manson?

  Probably. It's situations and contexts that are basically impossible within our own lives.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:21Mark Manson?

  Or they are just exaggerated to such an extreme extent. Like you think about like The Godfather. It's about a mafia family and everybody fucking gets shot and dies. But at its core, it's a movie about family, the struggle of balancing commitment and love for your family versus your worldly goals and aspirations. I think everybody can relate to that on a certain level. So there's like something in the exaggeration of it that makes it feel.

• 20:49Mark Manson?

  Extremely impactful and true.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Ooh, and maybe they have to do that kind of exaggeration to call our attention to this specific thing. They can't just present a big, well-rounded life and expect you to go pluck out the meaning out of it. Have to zoom all the way in.

• 21:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and I think in a lot of ways, that is kind of the role, the role of art. I believe in that same article, you mentioned the role of religion, or it might have been in another interview.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that was that one. I mentioned it quickly at the end. Yeah. Instead of arguing that your religion is true, or arguing that someone else's religion is not true, and using that as your argument, again, just put that aside. Nothing's true anyway. Just think of it as, is it useful or not? Is this religion useful to you? Is this religion useful to somebody else? Well, then that's a better, better thing to judge it by.

• 21:37Mark Manson?

  A much better framework to judge it by. And I also think it's, it's probably a much easier argument to make. I mean, if you, if you really think about it, like the whole concept of objective truth is, is a pretty recent invention in terms of civilization. Like it's, it's only, I mean, I guess if you go back to the Greeks, but like for them, in terms of like mainstream culture, we've only really given a shit about what's capital T true the last couple hundred years. So

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:08Mark Manson?

  In some ways, it is a culture built on thousands of years of art and history and religion and is in many, many ways truer, I guess, than, you know, pulling out a measuring tape and saying, well, no, Jesus doesn't fit in that box. So not true.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Cause I was brought up with no religion at all. My parents didn't even mention it. I was 11 years old. The first time I met somebody that believed in God and I, I didn't know that anybody did. I thought it was like the Easter bunny. That was the environment I grew up in. So I'm coming at this totally naive. I'm learning about religion now at the age of 53. I read the Bible last year.

• 22:42Mark Manson?

  Oh, wow.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. But now I'm actually open to religion for the first time. Uh, I'm open to learning more about it. Whereas I used to just shut my ears and like, ah, I don't want to hear about stupid religion. It wasn't until like three or so years ago, somebody told me that all of these things in the Bible. Were not meant to be taken literally, that they were written in a time before science, when this was the way to communicate an idea, is to say, this thing happened, which didn't necessarily mean that you were supposed to actually believe that this thing happened, or whatever, but maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but that was moot, it was a way of communicating values and ideas. I went, oh, okay, well, then if we're not

• 23:28Speaker 02

  saying it's objectively, absolutely positively, inarguably true, well, then that's really interesting. And so that's why I was like, all right, now maybe I'm up for reading this famous book that's affected so much of Western civilization. So I read that book, page to page, like, read it carefully, every single page, and have you?

• 23:49Mark Manson?

  I mean, so I grew up quite religious. I grew up in Texas. So we have very opposite backgrounds in this regard. So yeah, I've read, I've gotten plenty of, plenty of Jesus throughout, throughout my life.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  But did you get interpreted, or did you, see, that's why I didn't want to hear anybody else's spin on it. I just wanted to read the original canon.

• 24:08Mark Manson?

  So first of all, no, I have not read the Bible as an adult. I went to, I grew up, my parents were very, very involved in a church and went to church multiple times a week, Bible study, and then I went to a private Christian high school. And so we took theology, we had chapel every day.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Whoa, okay, I had no idea.

• 24:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I came out of it a little bit resentful and bitter. You know, I decided, I think, when I was probably 12 or 13, that I didn't believe any of it, that I was atheist. And I had a lot of resentment towards it for a while. And I remember back when kind of Sam Harris burst onto the scene, what was his book called? End of Faith. And Hitchens was doing his whole thing. I sympathized a lot with those positions. It's funny, though, because as I've gotten older, I've mellowed a lot about it. And I've actually, I think you and I have kind of very, in a very roundabout manner, arrived in kind of the same spot, in that the older I get, the more I appreciate some of the usefulness of religion, and

• 25:10Mark Manson?

  the usefulness of religion as a social organizer, and as a set of principles, that, yeah, people don't always follow it, but at least they aspire to, and at least they try, and at least they come together regularly and build a community around those principles that are, by and large, very good principles. So. I have a lot of respect for it now that I didn't have when I was younger, but I still don't believe in it.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Well, that's a perfect segue into when I said that there were two surprises for me. So first I read the Bible and then watched a whole bunch of little videos around it. And I wrote about it somewhere on my blog. If you search the word Bible on my blog, you'll read my tale of how I read it and my thoughts. And which translation you read makes a huge difference. And then I read a book called What Everyone Should Know About Islam. And that was really well written. It was a really good book that addressed in FAQ format, just the basics of like, here's a whole bunch of stuff about Islam that everybody seems to not understand. And just, it was a great way to just do the whole thing in FAQ format. Then I read a book about Judaism. I think it was called like Judaism for Dummies.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  So both Islam and Judaism made a lot of sense because they're like a top to bottom. Here's how you should live your life. I'd say that they actually made more sense to me than Christianity because both of them were like a complete how to live manual. This is what you should eat. This is how you should dress. This is how you should marry. This is how you should live your life. This is what you should do every day. This is how to live.

• 26:47Mark Manson?

  I was in college when nine 11 happened. And so I took a number of courses. I took one course on Islam. I took a course on Middle Eastern history. And what struck me about Islam, there is an elegance and a beauty to like the completeness of it. It really helped me understand, I think, a lot of the mentalities of that culture. Because in Christianity, there's kind of a lot of gaps. There's like, they really care about these things in this lane. But if you're over here, like they have nothing to say about it. Whereas Islam is like, there's kind of like a complete set. It was interesting because there's something very satisfying about that. I think there's just an innate thing in human nature that we want stability and predictability.

• 27:31Mark Manson?

  We want easily available answers. Once I had learned about all that, I understood the appeal, I think. And I sympathized a lot with that appeal. Let me, let me bring this back. And this actually loosely, my next question actually kind of loosely relates to religion. And that is changing a belief is it's one of those things that it's easy for to talk about, but particularly for like deep seated beliefs or beliefs that we've held for a long time, or maybe even beliefs that we don't have a ton of awareness around or, or understand why we believe something. It can often be very difficult to dislodge an unusable belief. Do you believe, do you believe that any belief can be changed or dislodged in, in two? If so, what, what do you think are like the most effective means of doing that?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  I journal a lot. I journal for hours and hours and hours, not every single day, but especially if I'm going through something or trying to reframe a belief or trying to process something that's really upsetting me, you know, whether it's a breakup or a major decision in life. I just spend so many hours in my journal, very deliberately walking through the different ways I could think of this thing, whether it's in the past or the future. And after I've been in brainstorming mode for, you know, what's another way I could think about it? Okay, that, oh, that one's really good. But what's another? I make myself keep going, right? It's like the brainstorming 101. Don't stop just because you had a good idea. Keep going, keep looking at other perspectives.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  So I'll keep looking at a bunch of different ways to think about something. And at a certain point, one feels like, ooh, ooh, this works. I'll, I'll find a belief that I can just tell like, oh, this hits me like this works for me. This is what I needed to believe. This is a good perspective I can use. And then I'll just start writing. It's like self-talk. If this, then what? Right? So if this belief, then what are the consequences of this belief? I just, I drown myself in that or, or I just immerse myself. I, I bathe myself in this way of thinking until I step away from my keyboard like, yeah, all right, this is it. You know, this is my new way of thinking about it.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  And then I try to go make something happen with that belief right way, whether it's a, just making a phone call to initiate something, signing up for something, walking out the door and doing something, talking to somebody, whatever it is that is the next step in that belief.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Being actuated in your life.

• 30:03Mark Manson?

  I like the idea of focusing less on the belief itself and focusing more on evidence accumulation. Because to your point earlier, almost everything in the world is debatable. You could argue almost anything. And so the question is, we have a limited amount of attention and focus. And so I guess the question is, is like, what are you going to spend your time and attention accumulating evidence for? You don't even necessarily need to like feel something to be true. But if you start focusing on the evidence that supports that belief, you can kind of find it. You know, it's interesting. I, I quit drinking last year. I originally quit for very superficial reasons, which was I'm trying to lose weight. I'll do 30 days, whatever.

• 30:48Mark Manson?

  As I stopped, it, it really became undeniable. Like the evidence started mounting, right? I feel better every morning. I'm sleeping better. I have more energy during the week. I'm losing weight. My workouts are better. Like everything starts compounding on top of it. But it's funny, what that really rings true. So I quit smoking in my twenties, when I think when I was 24, 25. Like most smokers, I really struggled to quit. And I remember the way I finally kicked it is I, I got religious about it. Like I, I reached a point where I kind of told myself, everything bad in my life, whether it's true or not, I'm going to blame it on smoking.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 31:25Mark Manson?

  You know, like money problems, girlfriend got mad at me, whatever. It's smoking's fault. And then my, my brain, I would find a reason it was smoking's fault. Stressed out at work, it's smoking's fault. Don't have enough money to fly home to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. It's smoking's fault. I spent too much on cigarettes. Like it just, it became this like one note song that I just kept playing in my head over and over. And I, I just developed like such a loathing for the habit that it really became a tailwind to quitting. Like it, it really made a big difference. I guess this does tie into religion, right? It's like finding something you want to believe and then making everything you experience affirm that, even if it isn't objectively true. This is kind of like the secret for smart people, like.

• 32:11Mark Manson?

  This raises a really interesting point, and this kind of ties into like the ability to let go of beliefs, because I truly believe this is a skill. And actually, I think psychologists have called this cognitive flexibility, that the ability to adopt, try on, adopt different beliefs or mindsets, and then when they stop working, take them off and change them out for something different. And I feel like this is something that you are extremely adept at. In fact, you actually wrote an entire book. I love this book, by the way. I know I've told you that. But How to Live: 27 Conflicting Answers and One Weird Conclusion. It's for people listening, it's a book about, it answers the question, how to live, but it's 27 completely different answers, and all of them make sense, which is the maddening

• 32:55Mark Manson?

  part. Reading it is, it's a very unique intellectual experience, because it, there's like this strange dissonance that starts happening, at least when I read it, there's a strange dissonance that starts happening in my brain of like, wait, all these things are true, yet they contradict each other. And like, my brain doesn't know what to do with it. It's very interesting. But anyway, you know, this ability to like, set down beliefs, pick them back up, be rigid if you need to be rigid with them for a while. Like, I think I'm at a place in my life, I probably need to be really rigid for a while with alcohol.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:31Mark Manson?

  Just because, yeah, I'm coming off of 20 years of drinking a lot. So I probably need two, three, four years of being pretty rigid about it, and then I can probably ease off. There are some people who have to be rigid for the rest of their lives. They can't have another drop the rest of their lives, because it just spins everything out of control. So part of me wonders, I do think there is, there is a skill aspect of this. I also think there's a bit of a talent aspect of it as well. Like, I think there are people who are just kind of innately born with a knack for letting beliefs go and being uncertain about stuff sometimes. And there are some people that just like, that really, really

• 34:13Mark Manson?

  doesn't sit well with them, and they struggle to do that. I don't know if you, you look like you disagree.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  That's a classic, not true and not useful thing, to blame too much on innate.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Seals, everybody pulls out the same dumb example of basketball players. Well, you know, if you're five foot two, you just can't be in the NBA. Okay, great, you found one example. Saying that either you have it or you don't. You're just good or you're not. You're just born with it or you're just never going to be born with it and that's it. To me, that's one of those not useful beliefs. You're just choosing something unless you're, unless useful to you is defined by your tranquility. Because what you really want is to just sit on the couch for the rest of your life and do nothing. Then great, you've found a useful belief that will help you do nothing. But I think for most of us, you've got to try to catch yourself. I think of it as holding the beliefs at arm's length. And to see that there are different ones that you can choose.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  I think that whole idea starts with thinking that you might be wrong. That just because everything in your instincts are telling you that this is so. If you can believe I might be wrong, that's the first step. Then you can say, if I was wrong, then, or if I might be wrong, what other way could I be thinking about this? Whether that's innate in some people, who knows? But I do think it's something that everybody can develop. Like, everybody can learn to sing, even if you've got an annoying speaking voice. And I think everybody can learn cognitive flexibility and holding beliefs at arm's length.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  And adopting one that works for you and putting it aside when it's not.

• 35:58Mark Manson?

  I agree with you. And I also agree that it's not useful and not true to believe so. And, and just a quick response to the NBA example. Yeah, people always say that. They're like, oh, if you're five foot two, you'll never play in the NBA. Yeah, but you could still be a fucking good basketball player. You don't need to be in the NBA, but like, nobody's in the NBA. So I think the useful and true belief that is related to this is that you can always improve at any skill. No matter what, no matter what sort of disadvantage you're at.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  I'd still say that that's useful, but not true. Like, you can always improve. It's like.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  If there's any counterargument, then it's not absolutely, inarguably, objectively true. And it's like, but hey, but it's really useful to believe that. But that's a, that's a classic one, too. I'm sorry, that's, that's cool to catch yourself in these things that even though I'm writing this book, I still catch myself saying things, whether it's New Zealand is a great place to live, or I just can't do such and such. I go, ooh, ooh, I just did it, didn't I? I'm saying something that's not true as if it's true.

• 36:58Mark Manson?

  So to the point about being willing to be wrong, or questioning if you're wrong. I think this is why people often experience the most

• 37:09Mark Manson?

  change, identity change after tragic experiences or, or extreme negative experiences in their life. You know, they lose a job, or a relationship ends, or they have a falling out with a family member. Those sorts of experiences tend to precipitate very large identity shifts because you take something very, very dear and personal to somebody, you pull it out from under them. Basically, something that they either took for granted or assumed was true and was always going to be there. You, you take it away from them and then it kind of forces them into that mindset of, I thought this was a sure thing, but clearly it wasn't. So what else in my life do I think is a sure thing? It might not be. And they start asking questions. Do I actually like my friends? Do I really want to live in this city?

• 37:54Mark Manson?

  Do I want to go here or there? It's interesting in that hardship makes this process easier in some ways, I think. Or at least creates opportunities, probably creates more opportunities to ask these questions. Whereas I think success, you can often, when everything's going right, you can kind of delude yourself into, you know, you don't want to fuck up the gravy train. So you don't start asking if, if you're headed, headed in the right direction or not.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Louis CK said that when his marriage broke up, he was devastated at first. And then Andrew Dice Clay was talking with him in the parking lot outside a comedy club and said, and you know, he said, hey, you might, why do you look so glum? And he said, I'm, it looks like my marriage is done. He goes, oh, congratulations. And he said, what do you mean, congratulations? And he, and he said, nobody ever leaves a good marriage. I went, ooh. And he said, that idea just bowled me over. I've thought about that ever since, that nobody ever leaves a good marriage. Nobody ever leaves a good relationship.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Or a great relationship. So really, anytime somebody has a breakup, you should be saying congratulations to them. And by the thing that you just said, which I think is so insightful and wonderful, that whenever somebody has some kind of terrible tragedy in their life, my parents just died. Wow, congratulations. Fuck you, man. Oh, my God, you're about to have an amazing transformative experience. You're going to be letting go of some habits that you've been doing that weren't rewarding. You're going to be letting go of some people in your life, right? Coming up, you're going to be taking on some new things that you were putting off before. Like, there are a lot of things you're about to change for the better in your life because of this.

• 39:44Mark Manson?

  Death is always a tricky one because I do think most people experience some sort of growth after somebody close to them dies. But then there's always this awkward, almost guilt of like, well, I don't want to be happy that they died, even though good things happened as a result of their death. I think that's a very common experience among people.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  I think we should all see a New Orleans funeral where they celebrate people's deaths. New Orleans Cultural Funeral is to play sad music at first while they're carrying the coffin on the shoulders. And at a certain point, somebody in the band knows when to do it.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  And it's like, it turns into a celebration of that person's life. So it's nice to remember that even a funeral, which we think of like objectively, well, you know, now there's one thing that's entirely negative. There's nothing positive about a death. But you can just see the death, whether you're religious or not, and you believe that they run to a better place, or you just want to say, this is a great moment to acknowledge how wonderful this person's life was.

• 40:50Mark Manson?

  Speaking of parents who are going to die, you have a kid and...

• 40:55Speaker 02

  He has a parent that's going to die. I'm in the last third of my life. Oh, Mark, that's a useful belief for me right now, by the way. Not necessarily true, I'm in the last third of my life. That helps me make a lot of decisions.

• 41:06Mark Manson?

  So how has that affected you?

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I, that is the procrastination killer. Um, I love it. I love how it simplifies things. I love how it makes me evaluate what new things to take on, or whether I should be wrapping up some things. Like, maybe some things deserve to be wrapped up, and some things need to be opened up. And, but most of all, it's a procrastination killer. I really like this idea. It's a, it's exciting, positive idea to me that I'm in the last third of my life.

• 41:39Mark Manson?

  What would you say are the most impactful belief changes you've made, say, in the last 10 years?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  So, ran across a tiny little article where a woman said, "We are all temporarily abled." And I don't know much about the, I don't know anything about the author, but I got the feeling that she's physically disabled in some way. And she said, "Let's not forget that all of us are only temporarily abled." At some point, every single one of you reading this is going to become disabled in some way, whether it's the final five minutes of your life, or the final half of your life, or maybe it's tomorrow. So, like most of us, I procrastinate exercise. I know I should be exercising more. That one idea that we are temporarily abled, that gets me out of my chair immediately. All of the other ideas of why I should be exercising don't work as much on me.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yesterday, it was a blue sunny day. I had tons of work to do. I was like, "Right, I'm stopping this right now. I am temporarily abled, damn it. I'm doing this while I can." Even lifting weights. So like, right here next to me, like, three feet to my left outside this recording booth is a squat rack. And I go to it when I remember how lucky I am that I can lift these weights right now. Because someday soon in the future, I'm in the final third of my life. Someday soon in the future, I won't be able to lift these weights. So fuck yeah, I'm lifting them now.

• 42:59Mark Manson?

  What, what would you say are the most useful beliefs, period?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Probably the meta-belief that you can choose your perspective.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Everything can be seen from multiple perspectives. You can choose any perspective that you want, and you are already choosing a perspective. The one that feels true to you is already a choice that maybe your environment, your parents, the place you live helped shape that choice for you instead of you choosing it deliberately. But that everything's negotiable. Somebody says, "Mark, you can't sell 10 million copies of "Vogue." That's ridiculous. Nobody sells 10 million copies. And you're like, "I think I can."

• 43:43Speaker 02

  The people that left at Kanye. There's a way that people will tell you, "That's just not true. You're a 17-year-old kid from Chicago. There's no way you're going to be the world's biggest rapper. You've got to face reality." That's just, you don't have powerful connections in the music industry. You don't have famous parents in Hollywood. You're not going to make it. You need to just accept that. And people say these things like they're true. But there are so many things like that in life, for all of us, even the more mundane examples of what... You're in your late 50s. You can't learn French now. These things come up all the time. They don't even have to be all self-helpy. They can even be as simple as, "Look at you. Why would that girl ever be attracted to you?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  You're no good at math. You were never good at math in school. You can't learn computer programming." I'm sorry, I'm picking all of these "you can't do this, you can't do that" ones. I'm sure there are others that my brain's just not going there right now.

• 44:40Mark Manson?

  You could put them all in a bucket and just label the bucket "Anything is Possible."

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, OK, so that's a good meta-belief, that anything is possible. Americans come to that belief more easily than other people, but...

• 44:50Mark Manson?

  Yes, it's a very cultural belief for us. I would kind of add as a corollary or like a sister belief of that is that improvement is always possible. So this kind of ties back into the genetic thing, which is, you can always get better, always.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  I just reread... A book called You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen. It was written in the 70s and I read it in the late 80s. Oh my God, I read that book so many times in the 90s and I just rebought it and reread it. And it's so good because I forgot how meta he gets about saying, "Look, this is really important. You need to understand that everything in life is negotiable. Everything that people tell you is written in stone is not." And that was so beautiful. I didn't really remember that he got that meta, but I think it's such an important lesson.

• 45:42Mark Manson?

  So I started asking you about fatherhood earlier.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:47Mark Manson?

  What's interesting, though, is that whenever I hang out with you in person, it's very clear how much you prioritize your kid in terms of time, attention, care, how much thought you put into it. It's very admirable, but it's funny because it's your public facing identity. You never really go there. And so I guess my first question is, why is that? Just out of curiosity, really. And then two, would you say fatherhood has deeply affected any beliefs of yours or changed your worldview in any way?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Okay, so the reason I didn't talk about it much, I'm starting two more, is a shallow reason. You've noticed that there are some subjects, if you talk about them online to the general anonymous public, the kind of, the quality of conversation that's going to come from this. Or you're just going to get a bunch of dumb, emotional, reactionary, stupid, gut-level lizard brain comments.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Even though I wrote a post saying, here's how I read the Bible. Like, if you decide to do this, here's my tips. I got no less than 50 different questions over the next month going, all asking the same thing, which is, well, tell us your thoughts on the Bible. Please, give us a post. And I'm like, nope, I will not be doing that. Absolutely not, because the kind of conversations that would spark are not the conversations I want to have. I have no interest in starting that. So I felt that with parenting, that it's like, oh, God. Everybody's got, everybody with a kid, or God, everybody even without a kid, has their fucking opinion. And I'm like, I just don't want to have those conversations. So I'm like, no, this is, this is my offline life. This is my personal life. I'm not going to bring that into the public.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  But then I wrote one little post in 2015, taking the angle that I felt OK taking, which is to say, I have this kid. I do a lot of things for him, but ultimately, I'm doing these things for me. These things benefit me. So I wrote that one post, and a lot of people liked it, and the comments were nice.

• 48:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  They were not evil. So then I felt kind of confident to do a couple more posts about it. But I don't want to be a parenting blogger. I think that would be really off putting, because I know that before I had a kid, I didn't have a kid till I was 42 and thought I was never going to. So anytime somebody started talking about, let me tell you about my kids. Again, my ears would just shut off, like, I don't, I can't relate. I don't want to hear about your kids. I don't want to make that my main subject, but I am bringing it up a little more now. It also just seemed morally wrong for me to force a kid online without his permission, to take a baby that doesn't understand what online is and just put them online and show them to the world and even telling the world their name. That just felt morally wrong.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  So I felt like, um, he'll put himself online when he wants to. And until then, I'll just speak about him abstractly from my point of view, like, how this, how having a kid has affected me or something like that. So I am talking about it more, but that's why I didn't.

• 49:01Mark Manson?

  Fair enough. Totally, totally respect that. It's funny, too. I remember, I was at a party once. And I forget how it came up, but there was a woman, I was talking to a woman, she had a teenager. She was having trouble with him and she kept asking me for advice and I kept saying like, well, I don't have a kid. I like preempted everything I said with, well, I don't have a kid. And finally, after three or four times, she told me, she was like, stop saying that. She said, I'm asking you for a reason because if I ask other parents, I won't get an honest answer. I'll get.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Ooh. The answer that makes them feel morally supported and makes them feel like a good person.

• 49:35Mark Manson?

  Exactly. She said, I only ask for parenting advice from people who don't have kids because they're objective about it.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Wow. Smart. You had a second half to that question, which is like how it's changed me. And honestly, my answer is a bit surprising that it really hasn't. The most common answer people say is, oh my God, having a kid changes everything. Suddenly you're not the middle of the world anymore. It's like, life is about someone besides you. I'm like, I went through that already before I had a kid. It's like, to me, starting CD Baby was like that. When I started CD Baby, I was 29 years old, I was the center of the universe. And then I had this little hobby that was to help musicians. And suddenly, my life shift happened there, which was for the next 10 years of my life, I made them my everything. I was like, you know what? I don't matter anymore.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And they're just like, well, don't you want to try to make the company as profitable as possible? I was like, nope, I want the musicians to have it all. I don't need anything for, this is about them, not me. It's like, let's do an article about you. I was like, no, please turn your attention over here. This is not about me. I am just here to support these musicians. I did that for 10 years and that's where that mindset shift happened to me. That's where I became not the center of the universe. So having a kid didn't change that for me, but that's the usual answer you'll hear from people.

• 50:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  For me, the, the thing that you said, like hanging out in person and what a big deal he is for me. I tend to have one top priority in life.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  For years at a time. So from the age of 14 to 29, my top priority was my music. I was just all about the music. If you were to try to talk to me from the age of 14 to 29, I would not talk about anything but music. If you were to tell me about this interesting book you read, I had no interest. You wanted to try to talk to me about anything else, I had no interest. All I wanted to talk about was music and pretty much just my music. That's all I cared about. And then at 29, when CD Baby happened, that's when that shift happened to me and it became all about creating this thing that was supporting musicians. And so from 29 to 39, for like 10 years of my life, all I cared about was CD Baby. My music was out of the question, done, gone. You tried to talk to me about anything

• 51:49Speaker 02

  else, I didn't want to talk philosophy. My head was down and focused on this thing for 10 years. And then, okay, yeah, then I sold the company and I had a few years of being a little bit adrift, kind of floating in space and not sharing what I'm doing. And then at 42, I had a kid and even that was reluctant. I had decided I did not want kids. My ex and I had agreed, no kids. And then, oops, she got pregnant and I was furious. I was like, how could you do this to me? We had agreed, you can't just decide that I'm going to have a kid. That's not for you to decide. She said, it's not for you to decide not to, you know. But ah, fuck, fuck. I was like, oh, man, this is terrible. This is like I've been wrongly sentenced to jail now for 18 years. That's really how it felt,

• 52:32Speaker 02

  thoroughly. And somewhere along the way, when she was like four months pregnant, I just resigned to the fact, like, all right, fuck, I'm gonna have a kid. And I started reading some baby books. It was really the book, Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina, gets full credit for getting me interested in being a dad. He's a neuroscientist at University of Washington and talks about babies and childhood brain development from a scientific point of view and what we've learned and why you should not let them see any screens at all before the age of two and why you should make sure, like he said, if you could take nothing else out of this book, the most important point that all of our research has shown, and again, I like that he's saying this not as his opinion,

• 53:14Speaker 02

  but saying, look, we've just, we've done all these tests and these are, this is the objective data that the tests are showing. The most important thing you can do is to help your kid feel safe. If your kid feels safe, your kid will thrive. But it just got me excited. So then- When he was born, I was like, OK, this is, this is interesting. This is fun now. And that, at the age of 42, is when he just, I just notice in hindsight now, top priority. Everything else is secondary. Money, career, me, everything, my plans, my dreams, all of that is secondary to him. But it's not that different from when everything was secondary to my music or everything was secondary to my company.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  It's just, this is my top priority now and will be. I mean, he's 11 now, so there will be a time soon when he's more into his friends than he's into me and he just won't need me around so much. And then it'll be time for my priorities to shift again in a few years.

• 54:12Mark Manson?

  Are you excited about that?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'm actually, here we are. We're late 2023. I'm just starting to feel it this year. He's just having more and more friends that he likes to spend more and more time with. And I just started feeling the, like, me coming back. And it's really nice. In fact, even when you were here a couple of years ago and you and I were walking in the forest, I told you probably that I was planning on having two more kids.

• 54:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  That's gone now.

• 54:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  I'm really, I'm really enjoying that that's, I feel like my time of making my kids my top priority in life is coming to a slow and happy ending. It's really nice to feel my own priorities coming back.

• 54:55Mark Manson?

  That's great. I got two more things before we wrap up. The first, so one of my favorite concepts that I love, it's like my hammer and everything's a nail. I try to apply it to everything, is this idea that the best thing about something or someone is also usually the worst thing. My question for you, what is the thing about you that you think is likely both the best thing and the worst thing about you? Probably leads to a lot of your successes, but it also causes a lot of, a lot of the problems in your life.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  What do you think it might be?

• 55:30Mark Manson?

  One of the things that's very notable about you is this cerebral ability to kind of interchange beliefs and ideas and identities. Like, most people struggle with that. Most people, it's, it's a very emotionally draining difficult, or it's either cognitively difficult, like, it's exhausting for them, or it's very emotionally draining to, like, let something from their life go, let an identity go, and try to bring something new in. Like, it's, it can be very exhausting. I feel like you have a, an alacrity with that, that most people don't. I could see that being an issue with interpersonal relationships, because friends,

• 56:11Mark Manson?

  family, partners, they like stability. They don't like having to adapt to a new you all the fucking time. And, and, and having to get to know, you know, new Derek, or, you know, whatever, whatever the, the thing is that you're passionate about. That would be my guess, just from knowing you. I don't know if that feels accurate to you.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Right on. I love that. Yeah. You've noticed the thing that when you use somebody's last name, you're talking about the public figure, right? So, I did have just a moment just now to go like, how cool Mark Manson is telling me what my problem is. It's kind of cool. See, I don't use that hammer a lot. Strength is your weakness thing. So I hadn't thought about this, but my flexibility has another negative side effect that I, it's probably actually my next post. In fact, I was gonna post it yesterday. I'll probably post it tomorrow, so it'll be out by the time this is aired, is the downside of molding yourself

• 57:17Speaker 02

  to be what other people need you to be. I'm strong. I'm flexible. I can handle it. I'm resilient. Somebody needs me to curl into a ball? I can curl into a ball. Somebody needs me to brace myself and lift them high in the air? I can lift them high in the air. Somebody needs me to flatten out and be invisible? I can flatten out and be invisible. Look at me. I can do all of these things. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the challenge of being another way. But then the problem is, sometimes I do that to be with somebody I want to be with. And then after a few years, or months, I'd be like, "Okay, this is really hurting my back now, twisting myself into this position that you asked me to be in, and I can do it, but it kinda sucks."

• 58:02Speaker 02

  And I go, and I shake it off, and I go back to being myself, which is not who they want me to be. They wanted me to be that, you know, curled into a ball.

• 58:13Mark Manson?

  That's super interesting, actually. I mean, I imagine that a lot of people, this isn't to say that you are codependent, but there's kind of a codependent role that often happens in unhealthy relationships, where there's one person who's just giving, giving, giving, and there's one person who's kind of taking, taking. And I could see how, if you're just a person who's just very naturally adaptable, both mentally and emotionally, you could almost kind of paint yourself into a corner by, week by week, being like, "Well, they seem to need this thing to be happy, so, and that's pretty easy for me to do, so I guess I'll do that." And then the next week, it's something else, and next week, it's something else. And you get eight months in, and you're like, "Wait a second."

• 58:56Mark Manson?

  I'm like, "I'm a pretzel over here." And I, like, "I can't move."

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, that's been my romantic relationship pattern in the past. And that is the weakest slice of pie in the pie chart. If, right, you've heard that metaphor, right? You know, you've got the eight different aspects of your life. Let's cut them into slices of pie. You know, which one is the strongest, which one is the weakest? If they're unaligned, you've got a wobbly wheel, right? Like, that's an old self-helpy, who knows, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People kind of metaphor. And yeah, probably looking back at my life, the romantic relationships has always been the weakest, and probably because of the things. So that was kind of cool that you called that out and nailed it. I was gonna say that the, If we took a totally different angle, I think independence. I think-

• 59:46Mark Manson?

  I could see that as well.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, my-

• 59:48Mark Manson?

  I could totally see that.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Always choosing like the self-reliance-

• 59:51Mark Manson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Independence is mostly a strength, but it has some downside side effects. At any time, things get tough in some kind of relationship, my feeling to the core, I was gonna say my first reaction, but no, it's my first, second, and last reaction, and all the ones in between are like, "No, fuck it. I don't need this. I'm thoroughly happy on my own. So, I'm outta here." And it's sincere. And, um, and it actually has made me happy. But then, you know, you look and I have a long, long friendships, but the romantic relationships.

• 1:00:23Mark Manson?

  Last segment, and this is, this one I'm really excited about, cuz-

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  I didn't know we had segments. Cool.

• 1:00:28Mark Manson?

  Well, I mean, we're trying to, we're trying to build a show here, Derek, so-

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Oh, alright.

• 1:00:33Mark Manson?

  We're gonna have theme music, we're gonna have like, uh, the Chyron come up on the screen. It's gonna be great.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Do you have a band? Is there gonna be a band?

• 1:00:40Mark Manson?

  Do you wanna be the band? You can reboot the music career.

• 1:00:46Mark Manson?

  No, we're gonna do a segment called Fuck, Marry, Kill, which, are you familiar with this game?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Remind me, I mean, yes, kind of, but remind me the rules here.

• 1:00:53Mark Manson?

  Traditionally, it's, give you three people, and you have to choose which one do you fuck, which one do you marry, which one do you kill?

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:02Mark Manson?

  But we'll, we'll start easy, okay? So, fuck, marry, kill. Prince, David Bowie, John Lennon.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  I am, or was, a huge, huge, huge Prince fan. I mean, that was my number one dude. My own music was imitating Prince. Prince was by far my major musical hero. But I heard what a fucking asshole he is. Like, really over the top. What the fuck?

• 1:01:25Mark Manson?

  Would never marry that guy.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So let's, so would he be in the kill category?

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  No. Okay, so, all right. So I don't even know what it would be to fuck Prince. But, okay, I'll just, I'm gonna put him in there. Now, John Lennon, like, he wasn't a massive talent. I think him getting killed was necessary for him to be a legend, for him to forever have a place in people's hearts as the one that died too young and kept him special. And so I guess I'm gonna have to marry David Bowie, which I guess there are worse things. I always use David Bowie as an example. I contrast him with AC/DC. For the metaphorical example of people who are just happy doing the same thing in their life and they really have no interest in being anything else than they are.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  They developed at a certain point in their teens or early twenties, and that's it. They're just gonna stay right there for the rest of their life until they die. That, to me, I call that AC/DC. Yeah, because musically, David Bowie kept pushing himself, kept doing different personas and get celebrated for it and say, and leave it behind. Bob Dylan did that more in the 60s, 70s. Paul Simon kept doing that. Madonna used to do that. I really admire people that keep pushing themselves to change, maybe because of the thing that you said before. So, yeah, marry and David Bowie, there we go. Okay.

• 1:02:44Mark Manson?

  Nice. All right, next one. Fuck, marry, kill. Music, writing, coding.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  Music, writing, coding. Yeah, that's my trifecta, isn't it? What does it mean metaphorically for you to fuck something in this game? I'm just curious, what's your association with that?

• 1:03:06Mark Manson?

  The hard-hitting questions are coming out. I think in my mind, when it comes to, like, abstract activities like this, to me, marry means you can do it for the rest of your life. You do it every day for the rest of your life. Fuck probably means every once in a while, like, once a year, you can kind of binge on it.

• 1:03:29Mark Manson?

  And then kill, kill obviously means you can never do it again.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  All right, good. I'm glad you said that. I think my brain was going other places. So, okay, so music, oof, I mean, that does kind of work as a rest of your life thing. Flash in the pan, I did it intensely for 15 years. It was like, if you were to just dissect my brain, it was just every single neuron was just doing nothing but music. I thought about nothing but music. I did nothing but music for 15 years, 15 very formative years, age 14 to 29. Nothing but music. I have already killed it in my life. I even, just a few years ago, bought a guitar and had it sitting there in the room as I was writing and kept looking at it like, ah, I should play.

• 1:04:16Mark Manson?

  I do the same thing. Like every, every three or four years, I'm like, I should get a guitar. I should start practicing again. I should learn some songs. And then I will literally play for 30 minutes and then put it away and not touch it again for a year.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Oh, that's nice to hear. Okay, we didn't talk about this in the, when you were here. Okay, that's, that's nice to hear. Yeah. Cause yeah, about 30 minutes, it's like, it's kind of fond of like the old muscle memory. Like, oh, look, I'm still good.

• 1:04:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  And so what?

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  And it's just not my aspiration anymore. And some people are so dumbfounded by that. Like, how could you not?

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  But that's just a different values. I mean, I, my younger self would have said the same thing. Like, what has gone wrong with you? That you were, that you don't care about music anymore?

• 1:05:04Mark Manson?

  This is a commonality you and I have never really talked about, which is funny because it is so formative for both of us. But I was reading or listening to one of your interviews last night and you were saying how when you started CD Baby, your justification for it was kind of, I'll do this for a while and it'll pay the bills. And then what I really want to do is have the freedom to do my music full time. And you kind of kept that story going in the early years. And I had the exact same thing. Like I, I started my first online business because I was like, well, if I can just get this making a couple thousand a month, then I can really do the music thing. And then of course, you know, you end up working 14 hours a day for five years and

• 1:05:48Mark Manson?

  the guitar just collects dust in the corner. But I, what surprised me is that I didn't, I stopped wanting to do it. It never came back.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, it's a drive. I feel like in a way that it was like, almost like a, um, a problem I was figuring out for 15 years. Not, that's not a perfect description, but it's,

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  I was on the pursuit of the craft. I wanted to be great at this thing. I was driving every single hour of every day to be the best writer, performer, uh, recording artist, just everything. I was just on this drive to, to constantly get better every day. And then at a certain point, it's just, it's not your drive anymore. To get back to the question, fuck, marry, kill. I'm, I have killed music. Programming by your definition is something to fuck because it could be a craft for life. It's on the verge of that for me. But for now, I think its role in my life is going to be something that I, glad I know how to do, glad I know how to fuck. And I'm going to occasionally do it when I need to solve a problem and

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  use the leverage of technology. But writing is the one that I've chosen to marry.

• 1:06:57Mark Manson?

  Beautiful. Derek, it's a pleasure, dude.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Happy to be your-

• 1:07:01Mark Manson?

  I don't know how to wrap this up. We never talked about how to wrap this up. How are we wrapping this up?

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  You could do the-

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, do the thing that musicians do sometimes where they leave in the intro, like, you know, the James Brown, they catch him before they hit record. He goes like, how's my levels, Ron? Oh, good. All right. Let's count it off.

• 1:07:19Mark Manson?

  I don't know what the fuck we're doing. Like and subscribe and all that shit. I don't know. Whatever.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Don't forget to smash that like button, everybody.

• 1:07:26Mark Manson?

  That's the like button, bro.