3 Questions That Determine 99% of Your Happiness

We all overestimate how much you have to do to actually be happy. But what if I told you that achieving happiness is much simpler than you think? That’s right, the smallest lifestyle changes can have the most unexpected knock-on effects towards positive change. It’s actually quite incredible once you experience it. In today’s episode of the pod, we delve into the 3 of the most important questions that you can ask yourself in determining your own levels of happiness. These are questions worth asking. Make me happy by liking and reviewing the episode. Make someone else happy by sharing it with them. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Three Questions That Determine Happiness 00:00:39 Question 1: How Well Am I Treating My Body? 00:02:32 The Spiritual Side of Self-Discipline 00:03:02 Mark's Health Journey: From External to Internal Motivation 00:04:04 The Surprising Benefits of Quitting Alcohol 00:07:03 The Knock-On Effects: How Feeling Good Changes Everything 00:08:26 Question 2: Who Am I Spending My Time With and Why? 00:11:03 Don't Take Good Friends for Granted 00:13:16 The Loneliness Epidemic and the Harvard Study 00:15:19 The Hippies Were Right: It's All About Love 00:16:05 Question 3: What Am I Working On and Why? 00:16:55 Cal Newport's Insight: Get Good First, Passion Follows 00:18:43 The Secretary Who Loved Her Job for 60 Years 00:19:54 Why Your Hobby Should Stay a Hobby 00:22:28 Drew's Woodworking: A Case Study in Pure Passion 00:24:47 Mark's Profound Realization: I Love the Business, Not Just Writing 00:27:45 Grading Ourselves on the Three Questions 00:29:36 Mark's Social Life Challenge: Finding Community While Sober 00:31:04 California Sober and LA Party Culture 00:32:02 Wrap-Up and Newsletter Invitation ⇨ 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?

  So as you know, Drew, we post a lot of stuff on social media across all platforms. In 2023, there were probably close to 1,000 pieces of content that went out. The most viral piece of content was what we're going to talk about today. The thing that most people shared, most people clicked on, most people were interested in. And that is three questions that determine 99% of your happiness. What's funny about this post is that it doesn't actually give people any advice. It's more just like, hey, dumbass, focus on the simple things. There's a lot to investigate down there. And so we're going to spend this episode talking about why they're so important and helping people understand their own answers to those questions. Why don't we kick it off with how well am I treating my body and why?

• 0:43Mark Manson?

  Now, before people start freaking out and turning us off and thinking that they're about to get another lecture on how they need to go to the gym, all that shit. I do think it's important to zoom out from the typical conversation around health and just think of it in terms of like, how are you treating yourself? When you look into the research on happiness and wellbeing, it's actually quite shocking how much even a little bit of physical activity or a small change in nutrition or diet or a small improvement of sleep can have these drastic outcomes on people's psychology. For example, I saw a study recently that said that 30 minutes of exercise per day, and it doesn't even have to be strenuous exercise. You can just go outside and walk around the fucking block.

• 1:23Mark Manson?

  30 minutes of exercise a day can have just as much of an effect for people who are depressed as medication does. Now, that's absolutely mind blowing to me. All the prescription medication shit that you have to deal with insurance and fees and fucking pharmacists, you can just go outside and walk around the block. And statistically speaking, you have just as much of a chance of improving as you do if you deal with all that other medical bullshit. So the subject of physical health and fitness, I think, gets overrated in terms of trying to optimize and be in perfect health and have six pack abs for summer. I think it's vastly underrated for just basic happiness and wellbeing.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  We have all these side effects, I think, that really what they are, that people peddle as benefits, like the looking better, the feeling better, more energy, all of that kind of stuff. I think there's a deeper point to be made, though, too, with all of this as well. And that is, I hesitate to use the word, but there's like a spiritual side to physical health. Yes, I know. I'm not going to get all woo woo. I'm not going to get all woo woo.

• 2:26Mark Manson?

  Drew the scientist breaking out the S word.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  To me, spirituality is very practical. Self-discipline at its core is an emotional regulation process, right? And learning to do that, learning to regulate your emotions and aligning them with the actions you want to take in your life. That's to me is a very, it's very practical, but there's also a very spiritual side to it as well. And it's, it's this alignment of values and desire in your life with your emotions. That was kind of an unlock for me when it came to physical health and taking care of myself.

• 3:02Mark Manson?

  Well, it's funny because I, so I had a similar experience as well. You know, the last few years I've been on a pretty intense health journey. And when I look back, like my motivations getting into it were a little bit superficial. I'd say it was 50%. I just had gotten really fat and out of shape and I was like, this can't go on. And then 50% of it was actually, there's a lot of health issues throughout my family history. And basically I, you know, I kind of woke up one day in my late 30s and was like, if I don't get this handled now, it's all downhill. And this might actually, these next few years might actually be my last chance to do this. So it was in many ways externally motivated, what you call the spiritual side of it, developing

• 3:44Mark Manson?

  the simple pleasure of taking care of yourself, experiencing the, the self-esteem that comes from it, the self-respect that comes from it, the pride. You know, that didn't really kick in until later. When I look back, the first year or two, it, it very much felt like just suffering through, oh God, I gotta like count my calories and skip dessert tonight and fuck, I probably shouldn't drink, but I really want to have a drink. Like it was just that internal struggle that I think most people experience. And it wasn't really until I, I got those things handled that I started realizing like, oh, there's this whole other thing on the other side of this that is really satisfying and, and actually quite profound. I think probably the, the simplest example is, is quitting alcohol. Like I really enjoy alcohol. I'm a very happy drunk, so.

• 4:30Mark Manson?

  It was one of my justifications for drinking so frequently was like, well, it just makes me happy. Like if I'm having fun, alcohol makes me have more fun. If I'm not having fun, alcohol makes me have fun. So, you know, how bad can it be? And one thing that really surprised me is that after I stopped drinking, the marginal benefits of sleeping better, exercising better, having more energy each morning, working, being more productive, being more present, like emotionally present. One of the things I underestimated is how much my alcohol caused my emotions to fluctuate even after drinking. Like if I drank a bunch on, say, Friday night, my emotions would be like up and down all over the place

• 5:11Mark Manson?

  for the next two or three days. And I really didn't realize that until I cut back drastically. And so the satisfaction that came from all those marginal benefits in every other area of my life, I underestimated how much of an effect that would have just on my general happiness and satisfaction with myself and with everything. So I guess the point here to people is it's easy to overestimate how much you have to do, especially if you're on social media all the time and you're seeing all these fitness ads and shit. Like you don't need to turn into a fitness model to experience the benefits of this stuff. It's actually trying to be a fitness model is probably, there's probably a massive diminishing returns at some point. When it comes to health and fitness, it's like an 80/20 thing.

• 5:53Mark Manson?

  If you just do the first 20%, you're going to get 80% of the benefit, both physically and emotionally. So I think just going from doing nothing to doing something, even if that something is really tiny, even if it's just, I only drink once a week and I go for a walk every day after lunch. Like those two things will actually probably increase your happiness more than most of the shit that is on your annual goals list. That's shocking to me, but I've found it to be true in my own life.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  You mentioned too, the presence that you get, and I think that's another kind of unexpected benefit. You have to be more mindful and present when you are really focusing on your health. And then there's kind of this knock on effect too, that you give the drinking example. And I know for me, when I stopped drinking too, it really made me focus on. Things like friendships, there's probably going to be people in your life who you thought were friends, well, they were really just your drinking buddies, right? Again, it kind of gets to that spiritual side of things where you have to take a hard look at your life then and be very present like you talked about. And I really think that's a big kind of unexpected benefit that comes about from it, too.

• 7:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there are knock on effects to these things. Like, it absolutely has a result on your social relationships. And that's just true, that's not even necessarily the behaviors. Like, if you start going to the gym all the time, yeah, that changes how you're using your time and you're going to see some people more often and other people less often. But just feeling good has knock on effects throughout your life. It makes you better at work. It makes you more likeable at children's birthday parties. You know, you get invited to more stuff. And then what you'll notice, too, is that the people in your life who are miserable will see that you're feeling better and they will start resenting you for it. What I've noticed in my own life, and I think a lot of people find in theirs as well, is

• 7:44Mark Manson?

  that when you start improving yourself, even just marginally, it kind of smokes out the toxic relationships in your life, the people who are there for the wrong reasons. Because it's basically, when the people who genuinely love you and support you, when they see you feeling better and doing better, they're on your team and they're going to be excited for you and they're going to cheer for you. The people who are there for the wrong reasons, which is some sort of sick, toxic cycle of validation, you're going to disrupt that toxic cycle of validation and they're going to start feeling insecure around you and they're going to get really upset and they're probably going to start resenting you for stuff. So, this is actually probably a good segue into one of the other questions, which is, who am I spending my time with and why? You know, we're talking here about toxic relationships.

• 8:30Mark Manson?

  One thing that I notice consistently in people is that they tend to overestimate how cruel or mean the world is if just one or two people around them is particularly cruel or mean. So we did this video a couple of months ago where I flew out to Atlanta and spent a weekend with a fan and I was basically trying to help him like not give a fuck. And the process of that was taking him out in public and doing a lot of embarrassing shit, you know, wearing chicken suits, handing out Flat Earth flyers, just kind of showing that like, dude, nobody cares. Like, it doesn't matter. Nobody's gonna remember this. Just make it fun, you know, whatever. That video did really well. A lot of people watched it and people loved it. But there were quite a few people that commented saying, oh, you could never do this in my

• 9:15Mark Manson?

  town. People judge you so much here. And I actually got a lot of emails from people saying, you know, that video is great. And that's really cool that you did that for that guy. But, you know, I could never do that because the people here are really mean and they judge you for everything. And so I started replying and talking to a few of these viewers, asking them some questions. What I noticed is that it wasn't that they lived in this magical town where human psychology is somehow different and they judge you for everything. They had one or two people in their life that judged them for everything. Like, their parents judge them for everything. Their friends judge them for everything. And because their their parents or their friends are make up such a majority of their social interaction and social exposure, they had developed these assumptions that the entire

• 9:59Mark Manson?

  world must be like that. The entire world is going to punish you for saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or embarrassing yourself. I think having really unhealthy relationships warps your perception of the wider world to a greater extent. They're not even aware that that warping is happening.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  For whatever reason, throughout my adult life, I've never tolerated that very much. And the older I get, the less and less I tolerate it. And it's, it is like a magical kind of unlock. Like, there's somebody in your life who's just, whether it's toxic or they're very judgmental, or they just have a negative streak to them. For whatever reason, I've always just not, not attracted those people into my life necessarily. And I've gotten even more ruthless with it as I get older. So.

• 10:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I think that's, that's probably a nice litmus test for people. Kind of go through the people who are closest to you in your life and ask yourself, if I failed at something or embarrassed myself, how supportive would this person be? And I think any person that you come across that would not be supportive of you failing or embarrassing yourself in some way, you either need to cut them out of your life or seriously manage your exposure to them. Get some distance from them.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  The flip side, though, kind of is true there, too. Don't take the people in your life for granted who are very supportive of you.

• 11:09Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  That's something I've had to learn kind of the hard way a little bit. You know, I live in Colorado now and I have on and off for like the last 10 years. I've left twice and I've come back twice. And that second time I came back, I was like, okay, dude, this is like, this is a sign, right? And really what it was around was like my social relationships. I took my friend group for granted. Out here in all my travels and my exploring and experimentation and just wondering what else was out there. I kind of noticed that it's like, I'm looking for more. I was always looking for more. Until I realized I was like, actually, I don't need a whole lot more than just a solid group of of people around me that I can lean on.

• 11:46Mark Manson?

  I feel like this is something that that like just getting older kind of teaches you. You know, when you're young, you meet people so easily and so frequently. And a lot of that is just simply by nature of the controlled environment of school or university. Like you were just constantly in contact with so many people, people doing the same thing as you, interested in the same things as you. So I really do think that young people tend to take this for granted. They they just kind of assume that, you know, if you lose touch with one person, you're just going to meet somebody else. It's really not until you get older into your 30s and 40s that you start to realize that, first of all, it's never as easy to meet people as it is when you're young. Like, that's never coming back. And two, that you have to be really careful because it actually is hard to find somebody that you really gel with,

• 12:29Mark Manson?

  that you share values with, that you're mutually supportive with and build that history together. It takes a long time to build a really good friendship. And yeah, it's easy to take that for granted when you're young.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  There's so much emphasis on romantic relationships and they are important, obviously. But friends have a way of being more forgiving and accepting of your flaws.

• 12:48Mark Manson?

  This is true.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  A hundred percent true, right? Like,

• 12:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  You know, the little annoying things that will annoy your partner, your friends are just like, ah, yeah, that's just, that's Mark, that's Drew, whatever. They don't care. I can't overstate how important that is to me now.

• 13:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting, too. I think this is an important point, particularly today, given the the great amount of loneliness that's happening in our culture. The more social isolation is going up drastically, people are reporting feelings of loneliness. When I was doing research for Everything is Fucked, one of the most shocking stats that I came across was back in the 1980s, they asked people, how many people do you have in your life that you would trust with a personal secret? And the median answer was three people. They asked that same question again, and the median answer was zero. The majority of people said that they had zero people in their life that they would trust with a personal secret. And I just think, again, when you look at mental health data, you look at the things that drive personal happiness, personal wellbeing,

• 13:46Mark Manson?

  like having solid relationships in your life is arguably the number one factor, period. You know, there's a, there's a really famous study that's become known as the Harvard Study, but for a long time it was, I believe, the Valant Study. But it's the the longest running psychological study in history. They started it with a bunch of seniors at Harvard in, I believe, the 1930s. And they surveyed them and tracked them throughout their entire lives. So it's been running for over 80 years now. And I think in the 1990s, George Valant, the the original architect of the study, wrote a book about the results. Like, at that point, they had about 60 years of data and and results that they could analyze. And he said, I could sum up 60 years of data with one word, love. Basically, people who had solid relationships in their lives,

• 14:31Mark Manson?

  they were happier, they were more productive, they were more successful, they lived longer, they had fewer addictions, fewer problems, they got arrested less often. Valant measured a bunch of other things as well. He measured, you know, how wealthy their families were. He measured how much money they made, what professions they went into. None of this stuff mattered, or if it mattered, it just paled in comparison to the quality of relationship. So I think this is low key, maybe the most important subject of our time. You know, we just had David Brooks on the pod. He is a political journalist who has basically dropped everything to write about this subject because he has become convinced that this is tearing apart the fabric of Western civilization.

• 15:12Mark Manson?

  So I don't think we can overstate how important this is and how important it is to to get it right.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  The fucking hippies were right.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  That just kills some people, I'm sure. The fucking hippies were right. It's all about love. There is a resistance to that, especially like in, in America where we live, you know, so status driven in so many areas that just saying, oh, what you need is love, right? You just need more love in your life. And it's like, fuck off, you dumb hippie.

• 15:41Mark Manson?

  I got, I got work to do. I got car payments. The hippies may have been right about relationships, Drew, but let's talk about something that the uppies were right about. Their, their conservative parents were right about, and that is work, what you've been working on and why. I think the biggest misconception about work is that you have to find what you're passionate about. You know, there's that, that cliche. It's like, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life or whatever. That's bullshit. Take it as somebody who has their dream job and has had it most of his adult life. There's probably like 30% of the time I'm like, fuck, man, this sucks. I wish I didn't have to do this. But that's just life. It's like, there's

• 16:26Mark Manson?

  a certain percentage of any job that is just gonna suck. And there's a certain percentage of workdays that are just always gonna suck. But I want to talk about this question of what are you working on and why are you working on it? Because if the solution isn't to simply find your passion and do what you're passionate about, then what is it? And I think the best summary or answer I've ever seen to this is in Calvin Newport's book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. I love that book because it turns so much of the conventional wisdom about work and work satisfaction on its head. Basically, Cal argues, based on all the psychological research that we have around this, that it's not about finding work that you love doing. It's about getting good at something. And then as you get good at it, you will start to love it. So it's, you

• 17:08Mark Manson?

  don't find your passion and then get good at it. It's you get good at something and then you become passionate about it. And I think the reason this happens is that fundamentally, humans have a very deep need to feel competent or feel valuable. And nothing makes you feel more valuable than doing something really well and doing something that is Admired or appreciated by other people, you know, whether that's writing a book or racing a car or making a piece of furniture out of wood or fixing the plumbing of an old lady's house. Like when you become excellent at something and you are rewarded both socially and financially for that thing, you fall in love with it. Newport's argument is that young people should spend less time worrying about what

• 17:51Mark Manson?

  they love because let's be honest, what the fuck do you know about what you love when you're young? And instead spend more time focusing on what am I talented at? What can I get good at? What do I have an advantage at? Because once you develop the skills and the knowledge, you will become very satisfied with your work and that work will feel very meaningful.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  The way he kind of frames it too is the craftsman mindset versus the passion mindset. The craftsman mindset is what can I offer the world? And the passion mindset is what is the world going to offer me? What, what do I get from the world? And that one for me was a really important framework and shift in mindset as well.

• 18:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And what I like, and I think Newport talks about this in the book as well, is that even with that mindset of what can I offer the world? You don't necessarily start there, but you develop into that. Like I remember he uses an example in the book of a secretary at his university who had worked there for like 60 years or something. And he interviewed her for the book and she said that she loved her job. She was extremely passionate about it and that she felt very important and valuable. And when he asked her why, she said, well, I've been here for 60 years. I know everything about this office. I know everything that's ever happened here and I'm the only person who knows that. And so everybody here relies on me, you know? Maybe I'm not the dean or the president or on a board, but like all of those people need me here because they can't do their jobs without me.

• 19:10Mark Manson?

  You know, the, the human mind has this amazing ability to rationalize whatever it wants. And I think there's a very deep desire. Whenever we like something, we want it to be meaningful and significant in the world. And so if you fall in love with being a secretary at a midsize university, your mind will find justifications of why that's super important and meaningful. And let's be honest, every job is ultimately important and meaningful in some way. Otherwise you wouldn't be getting paid for it. Start with the utility. Start with what's practical. And this is, this is what the, the. Pippies parents got right. Start with practical. Start with, start with what makes you a buck. Get really good at that. Get rewarded for it. And then all of the feelings of passion and meaningfulness and satisfaction will come with it.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  So you've mentioned a couple of times, you know, the finding something that you get rewarded for socially, financially, that sort of thing. You also mentioned in the article, screw finding your passion. You said, who says you need to make money doing what you love? Since when does everyone feel entitled to love every fucking second of their job? Really, what is so wrong with working an okay, normal job with some cool people that you like and then pursuing your passion in your free time on the side? What is so wrong with that, Mark?

• 20:18Mark Manson?

  Nothing. That's what most people fucking do. They're

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Right, but there's

• 20:25Mark Manson?

  There are things called hobbies and it's fine that they remain hobbies. It's funny because I remember when I wrote that article, that line got so many responses because so many people were like, yes, yes, this is my life. There's nothing wrong with it. This works. It's perfectly fine for me. I think that is a really, really important point on two dimensions. One is just, look, if everybody worked the job that they were passionate about, then, you know, we would all be, I don't know, making video games or eating cake for a living. It's just not practical. It's not gonna happen.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:56Mark Manson?

  But two, I think people also, and I see this a lot, you know, as a writer, a creator, somebody who makes a lot of content, I see this happen a lot in, in my industry, which is that people don't realize that when you turn a hobby into a job, it changes your relationship to it. We talked a few weeks ago about intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. And a lot of people underestimate the effect of taking something that you are intrinsically motivated to do, creating some work of art, a hobby, passion project, and adding external motivating factors to it, deriving your paycheck from it. It changes your relationship to it. And for a lot of people, it kind of ruins the fun. I find myself having this conversation with a lot of young people who have just found success,

• 21:40Mark Manson?

  be it on YouTube or podcasting or writing, where, you know, they're a few years in and they just had their big success and they're making a bunch of money and they realize they're like, how do I keep it fun? How do I keep that spontaneity and that creativity? Like now there's stakes. Now there's consequences if I fuck up. And so I guess the point is, is that in a lot of cases, sometimes a hobby is actually optimal as a hobby.

• 22:04Mark Manson?

  Just because you love something doesn't mean you should try to make money from it. I think you should be very thoughtful and careful when making that decision.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  I'm especially fortunate because my day job, I do get a lot of like satisfaction out of the work we do. It aligns with my values. I feel like I'm having an impact, all that kind of stuff.

• 22:21Mark Manson?

  Amazing boss.

• 22:28Mark Manson?

  Anyway, hey, who said that? That was really weird.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  I also though, too, um, I have this kind of weird quirky little hobby that I have, which is woodworking. And some people probably are tired of me talking about this, but um,

• 22:43Mark Manson?

  There's gonna be a riot.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Fucking love it, Mark. I fucking love putting two pieces of wood together and seeing something I just, I fucking love it. And it's, it's just like, for one, it aligns with two of my really like biggest core values that I have creativity and learning. Like every piece I make, I always learn something new. I have to design something. Um, it's visual. It's, it's very different from what I do for my day job, which is get away, I get away from the screens. I'm moving all this kind of stuff. I fucking love it and I can't really explain it either. Like I'm like, I don't know why putting, you know, like I was kind of a creative kid growing up. I wanted to be, I wanted to go to art school at one point, all this kind of stuff, whatever. But I never like woodworking and building things never really crossed my mind until I kind of stumbled upon it.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Most of the money you've sent, you've sent me, I've, I've just plowed into expensive tools and I can't even park in my garage right now because I've, you know, that's,

• 23:36Mark Manson?

  So here's a question, here's a question for you. What do you think would happen if you started getting paid for woodworking?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  For all the reasons you've already listed out, I've been very hesitant around that because I'm like, that's not why I'm doing that. I've actually sat down and I thought about, okay, I can make a YouTube channel. I've learned so much working with you about, you know, online content and marketing and copyrighting and all this kind of stuff. I was like, oh, I could, you know, totally fit this into that. And when I sit down and think about it, I'm like, yeah, but that's, that's a content business. That's not me doing something that I want to do for the sake of just doing it.

• 24:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Maybe someday I'll make a business out of it. I don't know, Mark. Maybe when you finally decide to take up gardening like you've always wanted to or whatever, and you call it quits here. Maybe I'll be a woodworker too. Maybe you'll be the gardener and I'll be the woodworker.

• 24:20Mark Manson?

  My, my secret passion has, has been exposed. Gardening.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:26Mark Manson?

  Yes. It's interesting, the point you said about it turning into a content business and then the content business is a different thing.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  It's a different beast altogether.

• 24:34Mark Manson?

  It is. It's a different activity and it's, but it's interesting because I had a realization relatively recently that was very profound for me related to this. It was kind of the other way around though, which is that, as you know, I got very burnt out a couple of years ago and took a lot of time off and really questioned what I want to do with the rest of my life, period. Do I even want to keep doing this? And the profound realization that I came to was that I had always assumed that I was passionate about writing and the content business was just a means to scale the writing and get paid for it. What I realized is that actually what I'm passionate about is the content business and writing was actually the means to build the content business.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Interesting. Okay.

• 25:17Mark Manson?

  And I might even be a better writer than I am a businessman. I probably am a better writer than I am a businessman, but I love.

• 25:32Mark Manson?

  No comment. I love building the business. I love scaling content. I love looking at analytics. I love thinking about brands and marketing. That realization was really, really important for me because I think the success of my books was so substantial that I just kind of tacitly assumed like, oh, I'm a writer. This is what I'm meant to do. I'll have my team run all the business stuff and it slowly made me miserable. So coming back to the business side of things, it feels like play, like I'm having fun. That's been an interesting reversal of that. And I think when I look at, it's interesting too, because I'm friends with a lot of people with very large content businesses. And when I hang out with them,

• 26:13Mark Manson?

  what I realized is that anybody who has built millions of followers and is making a bunch of money and has, you know, a bunch of social media stuff going on, it's because they love it. None of that happens on accident. There's nobody who's like, you know, I've always wanted to make a movie. Let me go get 10 million YouTube followers first. You have to love YouTube. You have to love making the content, testing the content, getting feedback on the content. If you don't love that, you don't. Stick it out.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  I think people have noticed that switch in you too. I know I certainly have over the last year or two, Mark. I've, I've seen you work hard.

• 26:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  I've seen you work this hard before too. I've, I've never seen you work this hard and have this much fun. And I think there's a huge lesson in that for a lot of people.

• 26:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's been eye opening for myself too. I think I, I had a couple of stretches last year that I worked like a month, a little more than a month without a day off. And

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:05Mark Manson?

  As you said, I've done that before, but in the past, I was used to feeling extremely drained and burnt out and like, oh my God, I need a vacation. And last year I didn't feel that. Part of that is this realization around like what I'm actually passionate about. Part of it too, is the physical stuff. I'm not drinking. I'm sleeping well every night. I'm exercising every day. That adds up. It makes a huge difference.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  And you've got a really good community out there in LA now.

• 27:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Right?

• 27:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, there are a lot of people doing the same thing as me out here, which is cool. I knew a lot of authors in New York, but I didn't know many creators. Whereas here in LA, it's kind of the opposite. It's, it's

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:42Mark Manson?

  There are tons of creators out here, but they're not a ton of authors. A fun thing to do would be for you and I to grade ourselves on each of these three questions. And then maybe just throw out how we plan to improve whatever we're weakest at. Why don't you go first?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So for me, how well am I treating my body? I give myself like a six or a seven there, I would say. Who am I spending my time with and why? I give myself probably a nine on that one. I feel really good about that. And what am I working on and why? I would say an eight or a nine as well for that.

• 28:12Mark Manson?

  What's the plan to get the treat your body better? Your body's a temple, Drew.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  My body is a temple, obviously.

• 28:19Mark Manson?

  Stop, stop pouring shit and alcohol on your temple.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Well, that's a good thing. I don't drink. Um, I got a pretty good diet. I think the exercise thing is a more consistent exercise routine is what I need to focus on for sure. And I have a few things in the works for that. I have some friends who do CrossFit who have keep hounding me like CrossFit people do.

• 28:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  And I'll probably go in with them.

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  And sleep.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Mark Manson?

  And sleep.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  And, and the sleep thing. That sleep thing is a big one for me.

• 28:43Mark Manson?

  Your 24 goal. Yep, absolutely. Yep, we have not forgotten. The audience does not forget, Drew. For me, I would say, how am I treating my body? I would, I would say it's like at like a nine. Yeah. It was my big goal last year. I feel like I really got it dialed in. What am I working on and why? I dare I give myself a 10? I don't know. I just, I feel fucking great about what we're doing right now and I wouldn't change anything. And I also don't see how to make it any better. The, who am I spending time with and why? That I would give myself, I'm gonna give myself a six. It's not bad, but it's not good either. So I think there are three

• 29:22Mark Manson?

  factors in this. One is moving to a new city, moving to LA. To be frank, I have not put in as much time and energy into making new friends as I probably should have. I think another part of that is just getting older. I'm at that age where A, it's just hard to meet people. B, when you do meet somebody you really like, they've got a career, they've got, a lot of times they have kids, if they're married, you know, my wife's gotta like their wife, you know, it, it gets complicated. It's hard. It's not, it's definitely not as easy to like pick up friends as it used to be. And then I think the third factor is, you know, I've basically stopped drinking and partying. And as you mentioned before, a lot of the people I used to enjoy hanging out with,

• 30:04Mark Manson?

  like now I'm like, wait, I kind of don't enjoy hanging out with these people anymore. I don't really know if I've found who I like to hang out with yet. Sober. Drinking was such an integral part of my social life for my entire adult life and my entire teenage life. I mean, basically since I was like 15, drinking or some sort of substance was a major factor in my, my social life. I'm still trying to figure out like, what is my social life as a sober person? What do I do with people? Where do I hang out? What do we talk about?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:40Mark Manson?

  So I would give myself a six on the, on the social front, but I would like to see that get better in this year. I'm going to work on it.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  I don't know, living in Colorado, there's obviously like a big like beer, you know, culture out here and whatever, but it's usually kind of coupled with another activity. So I found it pretty easy out here. Like we still go hiking and skiing and everything like that. I just don't drink when everybody else is drinking. I'm fine with that.

• 31:02Mark Manson?

  It's funny because in LA, there are a lot of people who don't drink in LA, but I actually heard this term a few weeks ago and I loved it. I was at a party and I wasn't drinking and somebody said like, oh, are you sober? And I said, yeah, I don't drink. And then he said like, are you sober or California sober? Meaning there's a lot of people who are sober in California who take psychedelics, MDMA, microdose a bunch of stuff, ketamine, and some people who take it very frequently. And so it's actually very funny to hear people who are like, yeah, I'm sober. And last week I microdose this and this week I'm taking this and next week I'm going to go to this party and take a bunch of ecstasy. I'm like, no, no, I'm completely sober. So that's actually the challenge here is like you'll go to a party and most people aren't drinking, but half the people are like fucking microdosing

• 31:46Mark Manson?

  shrooms and on MDMA and finding the next level of their Tetris enlightenment or whatever. And I'm like, all right, dude, I'm going to go home.

• 31:57Mark Manson?

  Have fun with that.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 32:01Mark Manson?

  All right. That's a wrap. Hopefully this discussion will help you ask and answer these questions for yourself. As always, please like and subscribe to the podcast, leave a review. We're relatively new podcast. And so any likes, subscriptions, reviews, it helps us make better episodes, get better guests. Also sign up for the newsletter. It's at markmanson.net/newsletter. I send out an email every Monday morning with a few ideas for the week, a couple of questions for you to ask yourself and one exercise or challenge for you to accomplish that week. And then I share breakthroughs that other people have had from the previous week. We're building a really cool community on the newsletter. So check that out. Until next time, enjoy what you're doing. Enjoy the people you're with. Don't treat your body like shit. I'm Mark Manson. This is Drew Bernie. We'll talk

• 32:46Mark Manson?

  to you next time.