Pod Insights SOLVED with Mark Manson Advice To Avoid, The Dark Side of Therapy, and Taking Your Own Medicine About this episode You ever notice how some people can’t stand being told what to do—even when the advice is good? Yeah, that’s me. In this episode, Drew and I dig into why so many of us rebel against advice, why others chase it like their life depends on it, and whether all that “actionable advice” we’re constantly fed is actually helping anyone. Spoiler: I’m not a fan of cookie-cutter solutions, and I’ve got some opinions about the self-help industry’s obsession with telling people exactly what to do.
We also get into the bigger picture—how advice often misses the mark when it’s not tailored to someone’s unique situation, and how therapy culture might be trying to replace something deeper that’s missing in our lives. I’ll share why I don’t give rigid life hacks, the trouble with universal solutions, and the surprising reason why most breakthroughs aren’t about the advice at all. If you’re tired of “do this, don’t do that” advice, this one’s for you.
Enjoy.
CHAPTERS
Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction: The Compulsive Contrarian
00:02:30 The Problem with Actionable Advice
00:04:09 Why One-Size-Fits-All Advice Fails
00:06:44 Bad to Okay vs. Good to Great
00:09:05 All Advice Is Autobiographical
00:13:16 The Boring Truth About What Actually Works
00:16:50 Self-Help as Entertainment and Hobby
00:20:12 Therapy vs. Therapy Culture
00:24:26 Why Therapy Doesn't Scale
00:29:05 The New Morality of Self-Fulfillment
00:31:55 The Pendulum: Self-Indulgence to Self-Denial
00:35:46 Taking Your Own Medicine
00:39:30 The Materialism Trap
00:41:53 Wisdom of the Week: Advice Like Snow
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Mark Manson? Drew, I feel like I have this like chronic inability to do what people tell me to do. Like I just, anytime somebody suggests something for me to do, especially if they're like an authority figure, my immediate reaction is to do the opposite.
0:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, you are a little bit of a rebel. Would you call yourself a rebel? I don't know.
0:19 Mark Manson? A compulsive contrarian is actually something that I have, I've actually come to terms with.
0:24 Speaker 01 Okay.
0:25 Mark Manson? And communicated to some people in my life.
0:27 Speaker 01 How's that going for you, Mark?
0:28 Mark Manson? Uh.
0:29 Speaker 01 Let's see, it's okay, maybe.
0:30 Mark Manson? Yeah, it's, you know, when it pays off, it really pays off, right? Cause it's, if you, if you're contrarian and correct, that's when the huge payoffs come.
0:42 Speaker 01 Okay, yeah.
0:43 Mark Manson? But if you're contrarian and incorrect, you just look like an asshole.
0:46 Speaker 01 Right, right.
0:47 Mark Manson? And that happens quite a bit.
0:48 Speaker 01 And that happens just as much as, yeah, probably more so.
0:50 Mark Manson? Probably more so, yeah, yeah. What about you? Do you?
0:53 Speaker 01 I hate being told what to do too. I get.
0:55 Mark Manson? I've noticed, yeah.
0:57 Speaker 01 Well, well.
0:59 Speaker 01 Oh no, I'm the exception. Sorry, Mark. I love, I love taking your direction and you're always so logical and you're always, you're like, you have the best ideas ever. And so I don't question anything you tell me to do.
1:11 Mark Manson? Drew, I'm detecting a hint of inauthenticity in your voice.
1:14 Speaker 01 Well, trust your instincts on that one.
1:18 Speaker 02 It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
1:28 Mark Manson? Are you, but do you feel contrarian? Are you like?
1:30 Speaker 01 I don't know if I feel contrarian so much as just like when somebody tells me to do something. Oh, fuck you. I'm not doing that. So I guess that is contrarian in a way, but.
1:37 Mark Manson? Yes, a little bit. I don't know.
1:39 Speaker 01 There is just something about that though. You're just like, it could be the best advice ever and somebody tells you to do it and I'm just like.
1:45 Mark Manson? What is a situation where you got really good advice and you didn't take it? And why didn't you take it?
1:51 Speaker 01 Oh man, I feel like that's.
1:53 Mark Manson? Your whole life?
1:54 Speaker 01 My whole life.
1:55 Mark Manson? The story of your life.
1:56 Speaker 01 That has up to this very moment, actually.
1:59 Mark Manson? Cause I did that around health stuff all the time.
2:02 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
2:02 Mark Manson? All the time.
2:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:04 Mark Manson? Yeah. I mean, people, for years, people told me, they're like, you know, if you, I don't know. If you didn't order a drink at the beginning of dinner, then you wouldn't eat as much later. You know, like all this shit. And I'm just like, I'm fine. I'm fine.
2:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:18 Mark Manson? Sure enough, they were right about everything.
2:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, health stuff is a big one. I think that a lot of us, money too.
2:23 Mark Manson? Yeah.
2:23 Speaker 01 You know, the big ones like that, money, relationships, taking people, taking relationships for granted or anything like that. Yeah.
2:29 Mark Manson? Yeah.
2:30 Speaker 01 Those are common.
2:30 Mark Manson? I, it's funny because I, I think this is, this is a weird thing, you know? In the self-help industry, it is pretty much standard to include actionable advice.
2:41 Speaker 01 Right.
2:42 Mark Manson? In, in everything you do, right? Like, I remember when I was writing both of my books, uh, one of the first notes that came back from the publisher when I submitted my drafts. They were like, oh, you should put exercises and like bullet points for things to go do, people to go do.
2:55 Speaker 01 I remember this.
2:56 Mark Manson? After each chapter. And I was like, fuck no.
2:58 Speaker 01 No, no.
2:59 Mark Manson? Absolutely not.
3:00 Speaker 01 No.
3:01 Mark Manson? And I, I had to butt heads with them about it. And, um, my argument was always, no, the whole point of the book is that they're supposed to figure it out themselves, right? Like, the book helps them ask better questions, but then ultimately they have to go figure out what the answer is. But I do notice there is a endless, insatiable demand for basically just like, tell me what to do.
3:25 Speaker 01 Right.
3:26 Mark Manson? Type of, type of advice.
3:27 Speaker 01 And it's kind of, it's a little bit of a weird paradox that we're talking about. A lot of people don't like being told what to do. And then they seek out advice being like, just tell me what to do.
3:33 Mark Manson? Right.
3:34 Speaker 01 So that's a weird kind of place that people wind up in. And also, um, yeah. Then there's just this huge blob of advice and people just don't even know where to start.
3:46 Mark Manson? Yeah.
3:46 Speaker 01 So that's the fuck of the week this week is, uh,
3:48 Mark Manson? Actionable advice?
3:49 Speaker 01 Actionable advice. How much should we give a fuck about actionable advice in our lives? You are not one to get, dole out a lot of like, super specific.
3:58 Mark Manson? No.
3:58 Speaker 01 You know, do this morning routine. You should, especially don't like morning routines.
4:02 Mark Manson? Fuck that.
4:02 Speaker 01 Do this, don't do that. You, you're not like that at all. Why, what is that all about?
4:07 Mark Manson? I, a few reasons. One is, is our audience is so broad and diverse.
4:13 Speaker 01 Right.
4:14 Mark Manson? They come from all over the world. They're all ages, both, both, every gender.
4:18 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
4:19 Mark Manson? And I, I've always just felt really strange. I mean, there's so much conventional life advice that I tried and didn't work for me. That I'm very aware of the fact of how individual each person is and how you really can't. Make a good suggestion to somebody without like really getting to know them and understanding their situation and their personality and their childhood and all this other stuff. So that's the the main reason, truthfully. But I also do think there's like a deeper philosophical reason, which is, I personally find that a lot of people who struggle a lot in their lives emotionally and socially and otherwise, the fundamental issue is that they don't know how to take responsibility for themselves.
4:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
4:59 Mark Manson? They have spent their entire lives waiting for other people to tell them what to do, waiting for other people to tell them that they did a good job, or a bad job, or they're a good person, or a bad person. And when they come to personal development, they bring that same attitude of like, well, I I'm gonna buy this guy's book and pay him a bunch of money and he'll tell me what to do. And it's like, well, that's the mindset that got you here in the first place. So you have to let go of that mindset to get out of this place. So I I just honestly feel that like, if I ever gave very rigid, directed, actionable advice of like, go out and do these three things and your life will change forever, even if it works, which is doubtful.
5:40 Speaker 01 Right.
5:41 Mark Manson? In a lot of cases, it kind of robs the people of the the agency and the the identification of of the success. Because then if it works, it's like, oh, Mark Manson did it for me. Or like, I listened to Mark Manson and he fixed my life. They don't get to feel, I fixed my life, which is what they should feel.
6:00 Speaker 01 Right, right. It's very patronizing, a lot of times, when you're telling somebody, this is what you should do. I think the the larger point you're making, though, is that everybody's at a different place in their life. What works for me won't work for them. And we've seen that you you have this idea of like, people going from good or bad to okay and okay to great. We've talked about that before, too. Those are two different completely types of problems.
6:23 Mark Manson? Absolutely.
6:23 Speaker 01 Like, some things aren't, somebody who is like in a pretty good spot, just trying to get a little bit better, they're gonna be like, that's fucking stupid. Why would I do that? Hopefully, they do say that. That's great that they say that.
6:32 Mark Manson? So just a review for the audience really quick. The the two categories of people who look for life advice. There's the good, the great people, which is like, people who have their life together and they feel pretty good about things. But It could be better and they could get better. You know, maybe their relationships could be a little bit better. Or maybe they're they could be doing better at their job or or be more productive or whatever. That that's a huge percentage of the market and the audience. But then there's this other segment, which I think of as the bad, the OK. And so these are the people that are depressed. They're severely anxious. Their life is falling apart. They're grieving. They've gone through some sort of trauma and they're frankly, they're kind of a mess. And they're just they just want to feel OK again. They just want things to be fine.
7:17 Mark Manson? And what you find is that a lot of advice will be good for one of those groups and not the other. Right? So I could easily tell somebody, you know, you should be more honest with the people in your life. And that will improve your relationships. And like, maybe a person who's looking to go from good to great, that's a really useful piece of advice. But if you have somebody who has just dealt with a bunch of trauma and abuse and is surrounded by like, just really, really horrible people and needs to get away from those people, that actually might be terrible advice. Right. And you potentially put that person in danger by giving them that advice. Right?
7:59 Mark Manson? So I just try to be aware of like, all the potential counterfactuals of ways that this could be taken wrong. And and not just in like, the good, the great, or OK to good spectrum, or bad to OK spectrum. But like, also the just cross culturally, right? Like, there's there's like dating advice, right? Like, I get I get emails from people from like Pakistan and India and Syria. And they're like, well, you said this in this article. Should I go out and try that? And I'm like, I don't fucking know. Right. I've never dated in Pakistan before, so you know, take it with a grain of salt. So I just, I'm very wary of it.
8:40 Mark Manson? And I, to your point as well, I do find it a little bit patronizing and I. I think there's probably too much specific advice in this industry. I look at other people in the industry, I think they overdo it and I think they're a little bit overconfident in a lot of things they prescribe for people.
8:59 Speaker 01 It is a bit egotistical, yeah.
9:00 Mark Manson? Yeah, and so I try to counterbalance that.
9:04 Speaker 01 Okay, yeah. I heard the saying one time a few years back, and I thought it was great, is that all a device is autobiographical.
9:14 Speaker 01 So whenever you do hear advice from somebody else, obviously they're telling it to you through the lens of their own experience, obviously.
9:21 Mark Manson? Right.
9:22 Speaker 01 But that's not always super obvious in the moment. They think they understand the situation where they might not. You and other people, I think in this space that I've really come to kind of respect, in this realm anyway, have this kind of first draft is for me approach.
9:37 Mark Manson? Yes.
9:37 Speaker 01 Like the advice you come up with is like, this is, and you're very open about it. This is for me. This is first for me.
9:43 Mark Manson? This is how I fucked up.
9:44 Speaker 01 This is how I fucked up.
9:45 Mark Manson? And this is what worked.
9:46 Speaker 01 See if it works for you.
9:47 Mark Manson? Which if you think about it, right, like let's say you've got a problem in your life and you sit down with like your siblings or an old friend and you're like, I got this thing going on in my life. Or imagine it's the other way around. They sit down with you and they're like, Drew, I got this thing going on in my life.
10:05 Mark Manson? And they're looking for advice. How do you go about giving that advice to like, say, your brother or your high school buddy or a cousin or something? You don't sit there and you're like, well, I've got a four-step method and it solves, it solves your marital problems every single time. You never say that to people. What you say to people is like, well, I remember with my last relationship, I had a similar, like, I kind of felt similarly and this went wrong and that went wrong. And I tried this and that was really helpful, so maybe you should try that, but it might not work for you. Like, that's how most people in the real world give advice to each other and. So I don't understand why that doesn't apply commercially and professionally in this industry.
10:47 Speaker 01 I've got an idea why it's or why they've tried to do it that way anyway. And it's because they're trying to market. And so they're trying, like, they're trying to get everybody into their little silos.
10:57 Mark Manson? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's.
10:58 Speaker 01 You know, it strips us of our individuality at some point, right?
11:02 Mark Manson? It's not a sexy, it's not a sexy ad campaign to say like, uh, my four step method that may or may not work some of the time. Depending on what culture, background and gender you are.
11:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, right, right. That doesn't fit on a book cover.
11:15 Mark Manson? Yeah, that's not, that, that ad's not going to perform very well. Yeah, yeah. Do you think we should be doing more actionable advice?
11:21 Speaker 01 No, I don't.
11:22 Mark Manson? Should we finish every podcast with a?
11:24 Speaker 01 I, I have always, no, no. I mean, maybe we finish the podcast with a recap. Sure. Like, this is what we went over. But if, if we're going to sit here and say, okay, go out, try this, this and this. Now, there's, there's sometimes that's, that's fine. And like in the newsletter you put out, you're like, go out and try this.
11:38 Mark Manson? Sure.
11:39 Speaker 01 And see what happens. You're not saying this is gonna, you know?
11:42 Mark Manson? It's, this isn't going to solve all your problems. It's like, hey, we just talked about this thing. Here's the thing to try this week.
11:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, but no, I don't, I, one of the things I've always, that, one of the things that drew me to you initially was these are the principles under which I'm operating. Not the, this is the.
11:58 Mark Manson? The truth.
11:59 Speaker 01 Hyper.
11:59 Mark Manson? Yeah.
11:59 Speaker 01 Specific tactic, because every time I've gone down that rabbit hole, especially like in the productivity realm.
12:04 Mark Manson? Right.
12:04 Speaker 01 It's like, try this, you need to do it this way. And it just doesn't work for me.
12:08 Mark Manson? Yeah.
12:08 Speaker 01 We've talked before, like, you like to do this, which I think you're crazy. I like time boxing. It works for me, great. And, but what happened was I had to try a lot of different things on my own. So maybe, maybe there is some value out there to, yeah, there's some people who do it this way and they have very actionable advice. Sure.
12:24 Mark Manson? Yeah.
12:24 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Another, another way I've heard this put though before is like, if, you know, you sign up for, say you sign up for a business course of some kind. And we're going to, you're going to, they're going to lead you through how to start this business and you're going to be a bajillionaire at some point. If they have a, a method and a recipe for this, it cannot be that original. It just cannot be.
12:48 Mark Manson? Well, by definition, if there's a method or a recipe, then it's not unique or differentiated.
12:54 Speaker 01 Exactly.
12:54 Mark Manson? If it's not unique or differentiated, then it's not going to be a sustainable business.
12:58 Speaker 01 Same goes with any kind of advice, I think. It's like, well, if this, this is, this worked for. This segment of the population, or whatever it is.
13:05 Mark Manson? Which I I've also found that so like generally the only actionable advice I will ever give. It's stuff that is so there's like the the scientific evidence is just so overwhelming.
13:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:17 Mark Manson? That it it's right, and it ends up striking people as like banal and obvious, right? So it's like, get eight hours of sleep. Like, you want to know what actually works, people? Get eight hours of sleep every night. Go outside occasionally. Don't eat shit. And, you know, surround yourself with people who treat you well. Like, that that's actually kind of, that's like the.
13:39 Speaker 01 You're like ninety some percent of the way there.
13:41 Mark Manson? Ninety percent of it. But that's not sexy. It's not exciting. It's not. People, people are always looking for the secret or the hack or the the shortcut. They don't really exist. Like, it's psychological well being and personal growth and stuff. It's it's generally boring things done very consistently. And that's not an exciting marketing.
14:04 Speaker 01 Right.
14:04 Mark Manson? Headline, right? A lot of people, what they do is they find like very fancy ways to package stuff. I should mention that I think a lot of kind of fancy actionable advice, quote unquote, works for people. Mainly just because of a placebo effect, right? So I think I've talked before on the podcast that like, my personal opinion is that most self help seminars. The.
14:27 Speaker 01 Oh.
14:27 Mark Manson? The perception of the the perception that people get that the seminar quote unquote worked is actually just the fact that they spent five days having very vulnerable conversations with the other attendees.
14:40 Speaker 01 Five days and five thousand dollars.
14:41 Mark Manson? Yeah, yeah, that's.
14:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:44 Mark Manson? That too. But seriously, I mean, if you take somebody who is socially isolated, somewhat depressed, feeling very lost in life, maybe isn't completely aware of their emotions, and you just put them in a room with some strangers who are in a similar position and give them a a context, an excuse.
15:00 Speaker 01 Right.
15:01 Mark Manson? To talk about their problems for five days.
15:05 Mark Manson? Yeah, of course, they're going to walk out of that room feeling much better and feeling like they had some sort of profound breakthrough or whatever. That's just human nature. When you sit down with people who are in a similar situation as you and you share yourself and you're vulnerable with them is very therapeutic. But the packaging and the context that gets people into that situation is, you know, it's all about the guru and the method and here's our like special five star upgraded premium seminar for VIPs only and blah, blah, blah. And it kind of tricks people into thinking that, oh, yeah, the guru and his five star VIP method fixed me. You know, I got, I was, I was saved. I was solved by whatever. And
15:48 Mark Manson? it's like, no, actually, you just needed to sit in a room and talk about your problems with five sympathetic people for five days or whatever.
15:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, which there's value to that.
15:57 Mark Manson? There's a ton of value to that. It's just, it's funny because it's almost, you know, my opinion on seminars like that is, is, is actually swung around. It's almost like a horseshoe theory. Like, I used to hate them so much because I'm like, this is, it's such bullshit. None of it's true. And now I'm like, ah, it's all bullshit. None of it's true. But it gets people to do the thing they need to do.
16:15 Speaker 01 Ah, okay.
16:16 Mark Manson? It's almost, you know, it's like a, it's like a Trojan horse.
16:20 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe there is, maybe.
16:23 Mark Manson? Maybe there's value to it.
16:24 Speaker 01 Maybe there's some value to some of that advice too. I mean, there is, obviously.
16:27 Mark Manson? Hey, Tony Robbins wouldn't still be doing what he's doing if there wasn't.
16:30 Speaker 01 But just the, I mean, if you sat down and just the sheer amount of, you know, the advice industry, which, you know, we're a part of, I get it. If you just tried everything, though, there, there can't be, somebody can't be sitting and listening to some of these podcasts that drone on and on for hours and hours about with very, very specific actionable advice and trying all of that. What is like, is that just a, is there entertainment value in it? I know that's part of it, I'm sure.
16:54 Mark Manson? There's definitely, there's definitely a entertainment value.
16:57 Speaker 01 It probably makes you feel like you're getting, doing something even too.
17:01 Mark Manson? Personal development, I have, I have found that personal development is a hobby for a lot of people.
17:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
17:08 Mark Manson? And, and I think a lot of them don't realize it's their hobby.
17:11 Speaker 01 I feel attacked now.
17:16 Mark Manson? Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's like, it's actually very good.
17:18 Speaker 01 There's there's worse things to do.
17:20 Mark Manson? Yeah, there are much, much worse things to, to have as a hobby, but I, I do think for a lot of people, it's a hobby. Like they, to them, it is fun and exciting to discover like new productivity tools or hacks or figure out a new meditation and, and get that sensation of discovering something new, trying it, feeling slightly different, you know, telling themselves that they just had an epiphany and, and moving on to the next thing. Like, that's a very fun.
17:47 Speaker 01 That is fun.
17:47 Mark Manson? Exciting experience. And it's harmless. There's nothing wrong with that. But like some hobbies, I do think it can become a little bit compulsive or, or even an addiction. Like I have absolutely run into people who are, there's, there's almost like this desperation for the next thing, the next, the next method, the next seminar, the next, you know, whatever profound experience. And that, that becomes a, yeah, that, that becomes treacherous.
18:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see this a lot in like the, the productivity space especially. There's, I remember I was trying to like come up with some sort of personal productivity system of mine and found, came across someone and they were like, they were three or four, I don't know, 10 iterations in. And they're like, this is my most advanced system yet. And it dawned on me, I was like, I don't want an advanced. I want something simple that I need to just.
18:40 Mark Manson? I don't want to think about this. Yeah.
18:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. So it can get.
18:42 Mark Manson? But there's some people, there are some people who are in, like, I've got a friend out here in LA and he, he loves optimization, like loves it. It is.
18:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:51 Mark Manson? Clearly.
18:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:53 Mark Manson? It's, it is his hobby. Like he, he got so excited once, he like figured out a way to program the light switches in his house to, uh, like, basically, uh, like he could, he could like gesture to his phone and it would like turn them on and off depending on what room. He was so excited about it. And he was like explaining this to me and he's like, yeah, I don't have to walk across the room and turn the light switch off. And, you know, I don't have to like open an app and wait for it to. I'm like, that's great, dude. Like, you just spent a week working like-
19:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, what did you do with those extra 10 seconds every day?
19:28 Mark Manson? You just saved yourself five seconds a day. But it's clear, like, it just, it makes them happy. Like, it makes them really, really happy. And that's, that's cool. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. I, I, I think it's, it's, it's fine to recognize that it, it can be kind of a glorified hobby. And then it's also fine to recognize that there's nothing wrong with that. I, I think where I worry about people is when they, they kind of drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak.
19:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:52 Mark Manson? They get religious about it.
19:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:53 Mark Manson? They're like, well, well, you know, I shouldn't have to walk across the room and turn my light switch off. That's fucked up. We need to fix this. I'm like, alright.
20:00 Speaker 01 And it can definitely get there very, very quickly.
20:01 Mark Manson? Yeah.
20:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:02 Mark Manson? Yeah. Cool. Alright. We'll be right back.
20:12 Mark Manson? Alright, we're back. Brilliant or bullshit this week, Drew?
20:15 Speaker 01 Yes.
20:16 Mark Manson? I'm excited about this one.
20:17 Speaker 01 You are. You, you came to me with this one very excited. Mark, we're talking brilliant or bullshit. There's this idea of going to therapy versus engaging in therapy culture.
20:31 Mark Manson? Yes. So this was a piece, uh, there's a, a writer, a great writer on Substack named Freddie DeBoer. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. He had a piece called Selfishness and Therapy Culture. We'll link it in the description and the notes. I love this because as longtime regular listeners of the pod know, this is a, this is a topic that has come up periodically over the past year.
20:53 Speaker 01 Right.
20:53 Mark Manson? Has therapy gone too far? There is a lot of new research coming out saying that particularly among young people, therapeutic interventions are starting to backfire a little bit. We're definitely seeing a lot of issues around schools and just kind of an over-medicalizing, over, like, diagnosing of any small issue that goes on with a young person. Abigail Schreer came on the podcast. She wrote a book called Bad Therapy, which very aggressively made the argument that therapy is backfiring and causing more problems than it's solving. She was a bit controversial.
21:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, that triggered some people.
21:32 Mark Manson? Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny because when she was on, I, I really do wish I pushed back a little bit more when she was here because- My sense then and my sense since then was that like she's on the something.
21:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:47 Mark Manson? There's clearly something here, but I don't know what it is. And it does seem, it did seem a little bit like she was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cause it's like we, at this point, we do have a hundred plus years of empirical data showing that therapy is good for people, like therapy is helpful.
22:03 Speaker 01 Right.
22:05 Mark Manson? Then I found this piece by Freddie de Gour, and to me, he like explained it perfectly with a very simple dichotomy. He essentially, what he says is, he says, there's therapy, which is the classic.
22:18 Mark Manson? You go sit down in a small room with a therapist in private and it's all confidential and you get to share your issues and talk through them and et cetera, et cetera. And that is, that is a very beneficial thing. But then there's therapy culture, which is when the language in the ethos of therapy starts to pervade social spaces, particularly schools, work organizations, politics. And that can actually be extremely toxic and backfire quite a bit. And as soon as I saw him explain that, I'm like, that makes sense. Because when it's just you in private, one-on-one with a therapist, it's great. Be vulnerable, you know? Consider yourself a victim.
23:03 Mark Manson? Think about your shortcomings. Really push yourself like lean into your fragility and think about your emotions and express your fears and all these things. That's great because it is in a, it's a cordoned off environment. It's a safe space. It's, it's designed for that. When you put that in public, you start creating all sorts of twisted social incentives. Like when you start socially rewarding people for identifying themselves as victims or feeling victimized, when you build into educational systems or workplace systems, the protection of people's feelings, preventative measures of anybody being offended at any
23:46 Mark Manson? time, this stuff backfires horribly. Like it, it just, it creates an even more toxic environment and seems to diminish people's mental health even further. And so I think the key distinction here is. Individuals in private versus social groups in public. And the same concepts, the same therapeutic concepts, the same, the exact same principles that make therapy so effective in private are the same principles that make it toxic in public.
24:15 Speaker 01 Right.
24:16 Mark Manson? And anyway, I love this. I thought it was brilliant. I put it on the docket because I was like, this, this just solved so many, so many questions for me.
24:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:25 Mark Manson? I'm curious what you think.
24:26 Speaker 01 But yeah, I think what you're saying, therapy doesn't scale well, right?
24:30 Mark Manson? Yes.
24:31 Speaker 01 That's a good way to put it.
24:32 Mark Manson? That is a perfect way to condense it into a single sentence.
24:34 Speaker 01 And the, the, I mean, the thing is, you and I are old enough to remember when, nobody talked about going to therapy.
24:40 Mark Manson? Yeah.
24:41 Speaker 01 Right.
24:41 Mark Manson? It was, when we were kids, it was weird and especially where we grew up.
24:45 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. That's right. Yeah. That, that should be acknowledged too. And now I think it's better, the, the goal was to de-stigmatize that, right? And which I think was a very noble and good goal and should still be a goal.
24:56 Mark Manson? Right.
24:56 Speaker 01 And there has been a lot of, I think we've made great strides along those lines.
25:01 Mark Manson? Yes.
25:01 Speaker 01 The problem is, is that like, and when every conversation starts with, well, my therapist says, that's when the therapy culture starts creeping in. And now, one point that Abigail Schreier did make that I thought was pretty, it was insightful, is when you're starting to insert a therapist into your,
25:20 Mark Manson? Yes.
25:20 Speaker 01 Into, between you and somebody else, or between you and society, or between you and any other group or person, that's kind of when it becomes a little bit more of a problem. If we keep it small scale, like I said, it doesn't scale well.
25:32 Mark Manson? Yes.
25:33 Speaker 01 And so, yeah, the whole thing around de-stigmatize, de-stigmatization is important. But what we're finding is that there's a lot of unintended consequences about that too.
25:44 Mark Manson? A hundred percent.
25:44 Speaker 01 When we try to scale it.
25:45 Mark Manson? And to your point of like what Abigail brought up, like I, I do think what she points to, which is accurate, is that Within therapy culture, there's a tendency to overestimate the powers of therapists. Like to kind of almost assume they're superhuman of like, well, this kid's having trouble at school, let's bring his therapist to school and have his therapist sit in with all the parent teacher conferences and check in with him after class. Well, it's like a therapist is just a person. Right. There's like, there's no, there's nothing magical about a clinical psychology degree that like makes you able to like snap your fingers and, and resolve people's problems. Most of the value, and we've talked about this before, but if you look at the meta-analyses
26:29 Mark Manson? around therapy, the 80 20 of therapy is just the fact that you're in a quiet, safe space, talking to a person who is listening sympathetically to. Right. And it's, there's nothing, there's no magical method. This actually ties in very well with the self-help thing. There's no magical method. There's no magical advice that they're going to give. There's no like actionable steps that they're gonna like, they're people. They're people who are trained to listen, sympathize and offer, you know, a useful word of advice or two. And, and that's it. Like they're very, they're limited. And I think within therapy culture, they get a little bit, I don't want to say deified, but they're, they're almost like, they're looked at as authority figures. Right. Of like, you know, well, Timmy's having trouble at school, you know, let's get his
27:14 Mark Manson? therapist involved and let's listen to what the therapist thinks should happen. And well, the therapist says he shouldn't be talking to his parents anymore. Like now, now you're getting fucked up, right? Right. And I have seen personally in my life, like I've had people in my life who perhaps put, gave their therapist way too much credit and power and their therapist steered them in some pretty fucked up directions and they went that way, right? And it's like, it comes back to the actionable advice thing. I think any good therapist understands their own limitations and isn't going to stick their neck out very often with actionable advice. The other thing I loved about the, the Freddie DeBord piece, and this part, it might be bullshit, but it was fun for me to think about.
28:00 Mark Manson? He made the suggestion that therapy culture, for many people, therapy culture is filling the void that the lack of religiosity.
28:09 Speaker 01 Okay, yeah, he was gonna ask me about that.
28:11 Mark Manson? Yeah, and he, he went so far as to make the argument that, that therapy culture presents a fully formed morality that replaces kind of the classic Western Christian morality and essentially exalts one's feelings and feeling protected and safe at all times over every other consideration, no matter what. And he points out that the, the logical conclusion of this is that you basically turn everybody into like little narcissists who think that the world should rearrange itself to please them all the time. And he's probably overstating the case, but as somebody who really loves to think about
28:51 Mark Manson? just the craving for meaning and purpose and some coherent worldview for people to latch on to, I found it very fascinating to think about.
29:01 Speaker 01 He could be overstating it, sure. There's this fantastic book. It's one of, it's, it's this book that just blew my fucking mind when I read it. It's called Soul, Self and Society. It's by Edward, it's either Edward Rubin or Edwin Rubin, I'm forgetting.
29:14 Mark Manson? I remember you, you recommended that to me like three times.
29:16 Speaker 01 Years ago.
29:17 Mark Manson? And I bought it and I never read it.
29:18 Speaker 01 You never read it. Okay. So, so he talks about-
29:21 Mark Manson? On my shelf somewhere.
29:22 Speaker 01 In, in Western civilization, there's been three big moralities that have occurred throughout Western civilization. The first one was a morality of honor, a culture of honor, basically. This is when you have kind of smaller scale societies and you're kind of, that's-
29:36 Mark Manson? Yeah.
29:37 Speaker 01 Honor is kind of what regulates behavior between groups. Then came Christianity and religion and philosophy in general, actually. And we had this moral code and it was the, the moral code of salvation. What do you call it? So your life was basically set up around getting salvation, getting into heaven, that sort of thing. Over the last 150 to 200 years, it's now become the morality of self fulfillment. And I think this is the latest kind of iteration of this morality of self fulfillment.
30:11 Mark Manson? Interesting.
30:12 Speaker 01 And self, you can call it self actualization, self fulfillment. Basically, the, the, the underlying tenet of this morality, though, is that everyone deserves to live to their fullest potential, or at least have the opportunity to live to their fullest potential.
30:27 Mark Manson? Yeah.
30:28 Speaker 01 And I think therapy culture is kind of like an, almost an aberration of that.
30:32 Mark Manson? Sure.
30:32 Speaker 01 Taking it so far as to put up everybody's, everybody's feelings are valid. Everybody's, your experience is valid, no matter what, always will be, never, there's no exceptions to that whatsoever, and nobody can tell you different. And everybody who tries to is an abuser of some kind, and they're trying to rob you of power. And, you know, throughout history, there has been, you know, people have tried to rob people of their, their self fulfillment, sure.
30:57 Mark Manson? Of course.
30:57 Speaker 01 But this is like the latest kind of iteration of it, and every moral code has contradictions and problems and everything like that, but.
31:06 Mark Manson? Well, it's, yeah, it's one of the, I actually.
31:08 Speaker 01 It's a fantastic book, you should read it.
31:11 Mark Manson? I wrote about this in Everything is Fucked, how, you know, no matter what you put as the most important thing, kind of philosophically, you'll pay the price for it.
31:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:22 Mark Manson? Like, everything has a dark side to it, everything has a cost, everything, everything has just like a flaw, or, or as you said, a contradiction to it. This is a bit of a harebrained theory. There's probably a book around.
31:34 Speaker 01 That's what we come for.
31:34 Mark Manson? Yeah, I know. This is what the podcast has become, Mark's Harebrained Theories. There's probably a book about this somewhere, but it's just something that I've observed, you know, and I think the board talks about this a little bit, like the, the baby boomer generation had this, really brought this ethos of, of if it feels good.
31:50 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:51 Mark Manson? Do it, right? What feels good is right. And. Previous to that, if you look at kind of the silent generation and the early 20th century and the 19th century, you kind of had this Victorian period of self-denial, of, you know, don't show your emotions, you know, sit up straight, shut up, don't talk, don't complain, you know, just get your job done. You go back a couple more generations before that, like late 18th century, and you read about like the courts before the French Revolution and all the intrigues that were going on in Europe during that time. It's like people were all fucking each other, like smoking, like doing, drinking all the time. Like the amount of alcohol consumption that was going on was just like
32:34 Mark Manson? absolutely preposterous. So part of me has wondered that maybe if you imagine there's a scale, and on one side of the scale is self-denial, and on the other side of the scale is self-indulgence, or you could call it self fulfillment, perhaps our ethic as a society kind of ping-pongs back and forth across generations. So each generation becomes a little bit more self-indulgent until it starts causing real social problems.
33:01 Speaker 01 Such a problem, yeah.
33:01 Mark Manson? And then there's a backlash, and the ethos starts to become more about self-denial and self-discipline and more rigid. And then that starts to cause problems, and then it starts pinging back in the in the self-indulgent direction again. And I kind of feel like if you look at all the generations going back to the boomers, like every generation since the 60s is celebrating more self-indulgence than the previous one. And I feel like that's just starting to change.
33:30 Speaker 01 We've flipped the ship.
33:32 Mark Manson? Just in the last five years, it's starting to go the other way, where people are starting to realize, especially with all the technology and social media and everything, people are really starting to realize and appreciate the power of self-denial.
33:45 Speaker 01 Self-restraint.
33:46 Mark Manson? Restraint, discipline, being conscious of what you're doing, not indulging in things. You know, we're seeing drug use is dropping, drinking is dropping.
33:57 Mark Manson? Even things like teen pregnancy and sex out of wedlock, those things are dropping. Divorce rate is dropping and kind of this old school conservative ethos of like, you know, take care of yourself, go to bed on time, be productive, don't complain. Like, all these things are coming back with the younger generations now. And so part of me just wonders like, okay, maybe we hit the breaking point somewhere around like 2010, 2015, we kind of like hit the breaking point of like, okay, everything's way too self indulgent. Like, we need to start pushing back on this and maybe the future generations will become more rigid again.
34:34 Speaker 01 The way I've heard it put before about like the Victorian era, the Victorian era, they, they would talk about death all the time, but never talked about sex. And now we're talking about sex all the time and never about death.
34:45 Mark Manson? That's really interesting. That's super interesting. Yeah.
34:48 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I don't know. I, I think there might be something to that. And I'm sure there is kind of a scale that we ping pong back and forth between self indulgence and self discipline. But I don't know. It's, it's really interesting to think about.
35:01 Mark Manson? Yeah. I, I can't help, you know, when we, we had Sadia Khan on a while back and the, I think the way I introduced her was I was like, she basically gives dating advice that your grandmother would give.
35:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:12 Mark Manson? And somehow that feels revolutionary. And I've started to notice that in more places. Like a lot of the productivity advice is just stuff that grandma would have told you, right? Like a lot of the health advice is stuff like eat whole foods, don't buy stuff in packages, don't drink too much. Like that's shit your grandmother could have told you, right? Yeah. Part of me just wonders if we're just, if we're doing a little flashback. Stick with us. We'll be back.
35:46 Mark Manson? All right, we're back. What questions were we asked this week, Drew?
35:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, um, we're riding the advice train still too. This one comes from YouTube. When have you fallen short of taking your own advice?
35:57 Mark Manson? Oh my God, all the time. Can I tell you guys, like, real talk now? Writing a bestselling self-help book. That's yeah.
36:06 Speaker 01 Worst thing that ever happened to you, huh?
36:08 Mark Manson? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. It's never been the same. No, uh, uh, one of the the downsides, there are not many, but one of one of the few downsides is that anytime you fuck up, one of the things you wrote about, somebody in your life is gonna let you down. Like, all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I've been talking to somebody like my wife or a friend or a family member, and they'll just kind of look at me and they're like, "Maybe you shouldn't give so many fucks about this." And I'm like, "Damn it."
36:39 Speaker 01 Why do you do that?
36:40 Mark Manson? Yeah. So, yeah, no, it's, to come back to to the point from earlier, like, I write this stuff because it's what I need.
36:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:50 Mark Manson? It's it's it's a side benefit that the audience finds value in it, too. But ultimately, it's like, it's written because I needed it. I have a tendency to get involved in too many things, and I constantly need to be reminded, "What do you actually give a fuck about? What are you gonna focus on? What are you gonna commit to?" I I have shiny object syndrome, right? So i- it's so much of the basis of everything I write about, everything I care about, everything I preach. It starts because I'm I'm usually fucking it up myself. And I definitely have not mastered it. And I probably won't ever master it.
37:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. So but so what are some of the common ones, though, that you consistently find yourself falling short on? I'm sure there's a few of those, yeah?
37:39 Mark Manson? I tend to be unfocused. I tend to get too excited with new things. And so I struggle with like focusing and going all in on one thing. That that is something that recurs pretty regularly. I definitely, you know, there's a whole section in the book about metrics and how you measure success and be careful how you measure success because they can come back and bite you in the ass. And they're like, no matter how you choose to measure it, it will come back and bite you in the ass.
38:07 Mark Manson? Ironically, that bit me in the ass after the book's success because kind of unwittingly, I, I think I attached a lot of my definition of success to how that book did. And so afterwards, it left me feeling kind of lost and aimless and not knowing what to do with myself. So I went through a kind of a weird period for a year or two, like not,
38:31 Mark Manson? yeah, just feeling lost essentially. As I've mentioned before, I struggle a lot with commitment. Or early in my life, I struggled a ton with commitment. Recently, I've gotten much better about it. Struggled with health stuff. Like, like a lot of the stuff I've been writing and talking about the past couple of years about how boring is what works and you know, it's, it's about doing things consistently and it's, it's about simplicity and, and how, how easily is something going to be to, to, to do, even when you don't feel like doing it. Like a lot of that just comes from my own health journey of, of my own inability to change my behavior and stick with things and, and how I had to learn how to like
39:12 Mark Manson? distill things down and simplify them and make them like, and get comfortable with how boring and mundane they were. So, yeah, it never ends. It never ends. It's, uh, yeah. I, I don't even know if there's anything I feel like I've like nailed completely.
39:27 Speaker 01 Definitely a hundred percent. Yeah.
39:28 Mark Manson? Yeah.
39:28 Speaker 01 One of, one of them for me, um, that I was thinking of, and this comes up all the time for me, is like the materialism equals happiness, like consumption and happiness. Maybe part of that's I'm sure living in America, you know, where it's all around us. But I, so many times where I will plan out some big purchase or even small purchases or something like that. And I realized later, I'm like, oh, I'm thinking this is going to make me happy somehow.
39:53 Mark Manson? I'm doing it again.
39:54 Speaker 01 Still disappointed when it doesn't, you know, that's a big one for me. I find that, um, it's pretty pervasive in my life.
39:59 Mark Manson? Yeah.
40:00 Speaker 01 And I used to be such a staunch minimalist too. Part of it is when you go like, you go buy a house or you settle into an apartment or whatever for a longer period of time. And you start liking those kind of comforts around you.
40:11 Mark Manson? Yeah, it's, yeah, no, the, the home thing is, is legit. I mean, luxury is funny. It, it's actually really funny. So there was a New York magazine did a profile on me and the journalist, uh, was actually a really interesting guy and he and I kind of hit it off and we've kept in touch a little bit and, uh, He, I forgot how it came up, but one time I asked him, I said, like, what's, what's like the favorite piece you've ever done? And he said that he got to do a piece once where basically he got to try a bunch of rich people's stuff, like luxury stuff.
40:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:45 Mark Manson? And then he had, the, the article was writing whether it was worth the money or not. So he got to go drive like a, you know, a million dollar McLaren car or whatever. And then he like slept on like a hundred thousand dollar bed and ate at like all the three star Michelin restaurants in New York, like did all this crazy luxurious shit. And then, and then actually wrote about the experiences like kind of an average guy and saying, was this really a thousand times better than the normal thing? Or is it just kind of like, you know, an ego jerk off thing?
41:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:16 Mark Manson? And I always thought that was really fascinating. And I remember I asked him, I was like, what was worth it? And he was like, I love cars, so the car was pretty insane. And then he said, the bed, he was like, yeah, the bed, the bed is like sleeping on a cloud. But yeah, everything else he was kind of like, what's the point?
41:32 Speaker 01 Yeah. Oh, don't, don't get me wrong, there's ways to spend your money that, that can definitely, and they're out even on material things that can definitely improve your life and make you.
41:40 Mark Manson? So some things, yes, some things are worth money, but I, to your point of like, this is gonna change things.
41:46 Speaker 01 Right.
41:46 Mark Manson? Yeah, they don't.
41:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:48 Mark Manson? They don't. In some cases, they just cause more problems.
41:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:53 Mark Manson? On that note, what's the wisdom of the week? What is our non-academic wisdom of the week?
41:57 Speaker 01 Non-academic wisdom of the week, yes. This comes fittingly, it comes from an 18th century English poet and philosopher named Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And he said, advice is like snow. The softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
42:13 Mark Manson? Ooh, very poetic.
42:15 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:17 Mark Manson? Very nice.
42:17 Speaker 01 Be soft handed with the advice.
42:18 Mark Manson? Yeah, very soft. Well, that's it for our show this week, a very soft show, like snow. I'm feeling like so.
42:27 Speaker 01 Hope it sinks into your mind, yes.
42:28 Mark Manson? Yeah, I'm feeling so like wafty and, and light, lith. Is that a word, lith?
42:35 Speaker 01 Lith?
42:35 Mark Manson? I don't know, is that a word?
42:36 Speaker 01 Lith?
42:37 Mark Manson? I feel like.
42:38 Speaker 01 L I T H?
42:39 Mark Manson? Yeah.
42:39 Speaker 01 Lith?
42:40 Mark Manson? Yeah. Isn't that a word? Fuck if I know, the list? We're gonna check the dictionary and get back to you next week.
42:50 Mark Manson? I'm a writer, by the way. Be sure to like and subscribe and we will see you next week.
42:58 Mark Manson? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burning. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choys, our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
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