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i always felt like an outcast was bullied my big goal in life was like i want to be a best-selling author and
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then it happens and it really [ __ ] with me we're wired to
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want status we're wired to want to be beautiful and sexy and to want to impress others like that's never going
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to go away the question is is like what do you want once that is kind of removed from the equation you can always choose
00:00:23
in every moment to see things in a way that that makes you feel better it's not easy
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it's actually really really hard but in that sense happiness can be a choice it's just a question of do you know how
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to access it [Music]
00:00:43
mark manson the author of one of the best-selling self-development books of the decade the
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subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] i read this book many many years ago and i learned so much from it so when they
00:00:57
told me that mark manson was in london we got in touch with him quickly and i think this
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conversation is going to prove why he is one of the most wise honest open
00:01:08
individuals i've ever met and one of the most remarkable things he says in this conversation was this smash hit book
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which has sold more than 10 million copies and i know you've seen everywhere when that became a success
00:01:22
he lost orientation in his life mark's complete story the story you've probably never heard is immense he used to be a
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pickup artist he then became an entrepreneur which led him to become a blogger which led him to become an
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author and he draws on all of those experiences and one of the most self-aware ways i've ever seen on this
00:01:40
podcast to deliver actionable insights to live a better life he's a guest that
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you requested time and time again and i'm so glad you did so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the
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diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself
00:02:01
[Music]
00:02:06
mark take me back to austin texas in the 1980s-ish
00:02:14
time when you were born oh god what was life what was life like for you
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i mean when i was really young it was it was nice you know so i grew i grew up i had a
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very kind of conventional suburban [Music]
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american childhood um especially when i was younger you know so
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um i had the house with the yard and all the kids on the street and you know playing soccer and or football
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or whatever um so so that was nice i think um
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where things started to kind of go off the rails so to speak um when you know when you start hitting
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that age 11 12 13 and you you start your brain develops a little more and you you start becoming a little bit more aware
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of um norms and and culture and people's
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expectations of you and things like that um i grew up in a very i grew up in the american south
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so i grew up very religious very conservative uh and
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i'm neither of those things so um starting around that time i started kind
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of feeling like an oddball you know i was really into art and music and
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uh books i read all the time and you know those values just weren't
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really respected a whole lot where i where i came from in fact they were viewed as
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suspects i was going to say on the playground that doesn't sound like it would be conducive with fitting in and
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yeah being part of the crew yeah and it's um
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yeah i mean it's a very it was a very conformist culture but then there's also there's a weird thing in the american
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south that um people are very sensitive to to kind of
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like you know you think you're better than me you think you're smarter you think you're smart you think you're like so good because you read this book and
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you know got an a on that test or whatever so there's like a weird like it's actually very toxic but like there's kind of a weird judgment that
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happens if you're not doing the same thing the same way as everybody else
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so yeah i i i started to kind of become like the nerd slash uh like loner kid um
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and this was the 90s so of course i wore like band t-shirts and and
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dressed in all black and like that's all back in now yeah i know right [Music]
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thank god i finally know what's going on again i'm old enough to know what's going on
00:04:55
again um so yeah it was it was a weird adolescence it was uh it wasn't it
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wasn't a ton of fun um and i think by the time i was like 14 or 15 i was just like i gotta get out of
00:05:06
here i gotta i like i gotta get to one of the coasts were you bullied in school a little bit a little bit um not like
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to a dramatic extent but um yeah definitely some like
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shitty experiences for sure did you have a lot of friends back then in school um
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no no i i had a handful of like very very close friends you know other
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other guys who were weirdos and loners and in the music and stuff like that
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and your parental dynamics they were your parents i read that they got divorced when you were around that age
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as well yeah yeah yeah i mean my parents are really good people but um i would describe it now as
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they were doing the best they could with what they knew but their knowledge wasn't
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uh i guess sufficient to be like fully functional emotionally you know they
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came from emotionally dysfunctional families so in their head like giving 100
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like they're giving 100 but really they're 100 is actually kind of like you know 40 50 of what
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the family needed to like function well is that psychologically or financially do you mean like in terms of like
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affection care lessons it was primarily emotionally so like
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financially we were fine my my dad's always been like very successful um
00:06:34
but it was it was it was mostly emotionally right so um i'm trying to think of an example here you know so like kind of this idea
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of you know my parents were the opposite of
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overbearing they were like probably two hands off right so it was like one of those things like if i had a
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big event at school or uh a big moment um or if like the girl i liked
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was mean to me or something you know it's like i could never go to my mom or dad like if i tried to go to my mom or dad and kind of like
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express these things they just kind of look at me like why are you telling me this you know so
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it was a very stoic and distant and i use the word stoic not in the not in stoicism but
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like very kind of cold and distant household like we didn't talk much and we
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definitely didn't talk about uh feelings or insecurities or stuff that me or my
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brother were going through it was just kind of like i can relate to that yeah
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i never had i still think to this day well maybe actually in the last year but like my whole childhood my mum and dad
00:07:43
had no idea what i was doing with my life no idea who i was dating feeling nothing my dad like we didn't i don't
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think we had a conversation about anything to do with school feelings you know so you kind of like you're like
00:07:54
left to your own devices and the internet yeah to figure this stuff out which isn't the best source when you're
00:08:00
like it's like solving solving the problem with the same brain that got you into it is not always the best yeah
00:08:05
solution when you zoom out on that period of your life and you think what what kind of like good or bad
00:08:10
foundations were laid from the rest of my life what what are those lessons or foundations that were like for me it was
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like insecurity and i thought money would be everything and i thought validation from women would be
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everything so you know but i think if there's one thing my family got right when i was young it
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was money so i grew up in with wealth you know my my father owns a plastics business he's been very
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successful so i mean we we had the big house and the pool and the nice cars and
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everything and it was interesting actually because his business really started to take off
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probably when i was like eight or nine years old and so we went from kind of like a
00:08:54
i'd say like uh upper middle class when i was and then suddenly when i'm
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nine it's like everything gets upgraded you know we've got bmws we've got
00:09:06
uh you know we're flying first class like you know so we we get all the stuff
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right right and it it's interesting because that's pretty much exactly the time that my
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parents marriage unraveled and you know the family kind of fell apart
00:09:22
so i learned at a very young age that money doesn't solve it
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like whatever your problem is you know unless your problem is you're hungry like money's not gonna fix it so i was
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very blessed in that regard that i got to learn that lesson very early um so that that
00:09:42
you know we've all we've all got that that that hole in us that we try to fill with something um
00:09:48
and so money was never that for me for me it was more i think because i was i always felt like an outcast
00:09:55
um was bullied to a certain extent uh rejected by like every girl i ever
00:10:02
liked for me was much more social you know so it's like i had this desperate need to be liked
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um to be like the cool guy at the party
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to have all the girlfriends like that was my my big weakness so you go off to college
00:10:21
would you study how does that go for you in terms of social interactions so one of the best things i ever did you
00:10:27
know i i went i went to school in boston and boston's completely different culture and environment um
00:10:34
and it's it was wonderful for me because it it's suddenly it's like the things i care
00:10:39
about are now cared about by the people around me as well so it's like they like that you're
00:10:44
smart and they like that you've read all these books and they they like that you're into like cool music or like some
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obscure band so it was very socially transformative like i i went from kind of being like
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the weirdo nerdy guy to to like having tons of friends and
00:11:03
going to a bunch of parties and and having a really good social life and so for me that was wonderful it built a
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lot of confidence but of course like any insecurity i overdid it um so i was that guy who was
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literally partying five six nights a week
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you know like for like year after year you know i was i was always at the party
00:11:27
and did that compromise your academic ambitions or uh a little bit um
00:11:33
you know i kind of i guess i didn't do this consciously but i kind of made the calculus in my head that like
00:11:39
like the most important thing about college is that you is that you finish you know right it's
00:11:44
like no job interview is actually gonna ask you what you got what grade you got on
00:11:49
your history exam your second year uh all they care is that you you have
00:11:55
you have the degree so in my head i'm like as long as i get the degree as long as like i'm safe
00:12:00
in terms of like actually finishing um i'm okay so i i could kind of manage
00:12:07
okay grades well you know drinking every night um
00:12:13
so i i made it work and out of college your first job i i heard you described it as kind of
00:12:19
nightmarish and like a finance jobby job that you didn't like so i've had i've
00:12:25
had one real job uh in my life um i went into
00:12:30
finance uh so i used to play a lot of poker in school and
00:12:37
uh and all the guys i played poker with were gonna go into finance they wanted to work on wall street and do all this
00:12:42
stuff and i was like cool like i'll do that you know
00:12:47
that just seemed like kind of like the logical next step and um i i got hired at an investment
00:12:54
bank in boston and i went to work and i remember it was like
00:13:01
it was 10 a.m on the first day i was doing training it was 10 am on the first day i'd been there for like
00:13:06
maybe two hours two and a half hours and i remember thinking to myself how long do i have to stay here before
00:13:13
it's like okay to quit on the first day my first day and then
00:13:19
my second thought was this is a really bad sign you know like if i'm having this thought on my first
00:13:25
day this is a terrible sign so i lasted about six weeks wow that was your first
00:13:31
and only yep job yeah i um
00:13:37
yeah i mean i i the corporate world and i didn't really fit and and i've since
00:13:42
learned that that particular company was kind of notorious in in the finance world for for having like
00:13:49
a soul-destroying culture um but it was funny because i you know i was basically just like a
00:13:56
a data monkey you know it was entry level so like i'm just punching numbers in the spreadsheets and stuff all day
00:14:02
and uh and there's this kind of awkward gap in the u.s markets like there's like
00:14:09
an hour to between when one market closes when like the s p closes and then the nasdaq
00:14:15
closes like an hour hour and a half later and so you'd always have this like awkward hour where there was you're kind
00:14:20
of just waiting around waiting for the next market to close so i'd bring books you know i'm i'm a book nerd so i'd sit there i'd
00:14:28
have a stack of books on my desk and i'd sit there and i'd read books in that hour and uh i remember my boss came by
00:14:34
and he's like you can't do that i was like what do you mean i mean these are like finance books too right like
00:14:39
i'm like yeah and he's like you can't do that and i was i was like why not he's like you need to be working on something
00:14:45
i was like what there's nothing to work on like this is waiting for the market to close and he's like yeah but you can't you can't be
00:14:51
seen doing that like that's you gotta be keep yourself busy i was like what the [ __ ] man like
00:14:57
i remember too uh my first week there because i had messed around with like
00:15:03
some some computer coding and stuff in college and and i noticed that like a lot of the data entry that we were doing
00:15:09
you could easily program a script to do it automatically right it's like
00:15:15
probably an hour or two of my days like not even necessary and so i remember i went to my boss and
00:15:20
i was like i was like hey you realize like we can get a script to do this right like i could probably
00:15:26
you know spend a couple days figure out do some research and get it to work
00:15:32
and he was like no no go back and put your numbers in you know like he had no interest
00:15:38
whatsoever you know in my head i'm like i got this great idea my boss is gonna be so impressed i'm gonna like you know
00:15:44
get moved up or whatever and i i just got shot down and so it was just very clear like
00:15:50
um i don't know it just wasn't there's a cultural issue there isn't it because your boss has probably got that from
00:15:56
somewhere above where he doesn't really give a [ __ ] about optimizing the efficiency of this company he just cares about getting his check and then yeah it
00:16:02
probably trickles up the line yeah yeah and i remember kind of like the so one of one of the books i read at the
00:16:08
time was tim ferriss's four-hour work week and uh that book was life-changing for me but
00:16:16
it's funny i've always had a little bit i've always given tim a little bit of [ __ ] about it because
00:16:22
it was it was a bit of a double-edged sword because the four-hour work week makes it sound so easy
00:16:27
that it it kind of like i remember at the time i'm like wow this is i could do that like i'll do that next
00:16:34
week like why am i still here you know so it it's he made it sound so easy that it kind of gave me the courage to quit
00:16:41
um but then of course after i quit and i actually started to try to build a business online and realized how
00:16:47
insanely hard it is i became a little bit bitter of like damn you tim ferriss this is not easy like
00:16:53
i'm never gonna work four hours what was that business you tried to build after you quit
00:16:59
so i uh i originally tried to create some e-commerce businesses
00:17:05
and try to basically kind of your classic spammy
00:17:10
seo blogs with affiliate links and stuff like that and
00:17:16
it was it was really like the whole goal was like just get to 2k a month and then we're
00:17:22
going to argentina like that was that was the and then we're gonna party until our
00:17:28
like our face falls off and that that was the whole goal at the time i think it was 22 or 23. and um
00:17:35
and it's funny because back then this is like 2008 2009 back then uh
00:17:41
the way you got traffic to your like blogging was new and kind of like the big new thing and uh so if you wanted
00:17:47
traffic to your website to sell your stuff you needed the blog yeah and so i started my blogs
00:17:54
as a way to just get traffic to like sell this stuff and so one of the websites i i was doing was was a dating
00:18:01
advice and i was promoting a bunch of dating ebooks written by a bunch of people um and
00:18:09
and that that one started to take off that one started to develop like a really large audience and so after about
00:18:14
a year or two i realized i'm like i kind of suck at this e-commerce thing but the blogging is going really well so
00:18:21
and this kind of started your your journey into the pickup artistry world right so tell me about that because um
00:18:27
we before we started recording i shared a secret that i've never shared before which is that i also found myself
00:18:32
falling into the pickup artistry world when i was in my early 20s yep because of neil strauss
00:18:38
and then mystery and then every other book that i read and every other video and documentary and youtube video that i consumed and torrent that i downloaded
00:18:46
and forum that i scraped um but when i when i read that in your story i found
00:18:51
that really really fascinating because um i suspected the incentives and the appeal of that world were probably quite
00:18:58
similar to me in the sense of me being quite insecure and um seeking uh
00:19:03
well yeah seeking validation from women maybe yeah so tell me about your journey into pickup artistry
00:19:08
i took to it pretty pretty hard and pretty quickly i think it really scratched that
00:19:15
that itch uh that of that insecurity i had you know from my childhood um
00:19:22
you know looking back on on the pickup stuff it's really interesting and and it's funny because it's
00:19:30
over the years i've met so many talented and successful guys like when you told me that you were into it
00:19:36
i kind of i wasn't even surprised like i've met so many talented successful guys in the last five 10 years
00:19:42
who are like oh yeah i was i was i was i was in that [ __ ] too you know it's like we kind of like say it under our breath
00:19:47
and i think it it here's my theory about what what that whole thing
00:19:53
was and why it happened when i looked back in the 2000s
00:20:00
self-help and personal development was still very different back then like it wasn't socially acceptable
00:20:06
for men to kind of get into you know feelings and trauma and
00:20:14
and healing and recovery and all this stuff like it was still it was still something kind of shameful like your
00:20:19
your buddies would make fun of you for it if they found out that you were like if you went out and read um
00:20:26
you know like a louise hay book or uh you know like i'm okay you're okay like if like your buddy caught you with one
00:20:33
of those books in your bedroom he'd start ripping on you for it and and
00:20:38
there was something about making it about dating sex and dating that made it
00:20:44
socially okay like it's it's now it's like a cool thing to do but really what
00:20:50
it was it was just self-help in disguise like most of it you know for every pickup line or whatever there was like
00:20:57
there were there was really useful advice about uh you know social skills self-esteem uh
00:21:04
confidence um taking care of yourself you know hygiene
00:21:11
grooming you know and so there's like so much good life advice there and then but
00:21:16
there was also so much bad advice there too so it was this very mixed bag but i
00:21:22
think it was just a lot of guys like you and me who were
00:21:28
were damaged essentially and we're trying to to figure it out we're trying to kind of heal ourselves
00:21:34
but there was no other outlet available yeah um today it's it's okay i think
00:21:39
it's way more socially acceptable for guys to be like yeah i want to work on myself i want to like
00:21:45
you know it's cool now get in touch with my feelings yeah and be a mature person and and all this stuff yeah it's it's
00:21:50
like something people respect but back then it it was still taboo and
00:21:56
specifically at that age for a guy i'm speaking for myself here but i you
00:22:01
you're trying to figure out how to get laid it feels like this this this quest in which no one has ever provided you
00:22:07
with the blueprint or the road map and then someone whispers in your ear at some point that there's like a code yeah
00:22:15
like a simple solution to this complex problem yeah and and then you read it and you get into it and it appears to
00:22:21
work and you see men just like you having success in that because they've kind of learned the code or the the you
00:22:26
know they've been they've learned the instruction manual so it feels like it solves this tremendous problem but you're totally right it
00:22:32
actually helps you resolve a ton of things from the playground about self-esteem and yeah why did that guy always get the girls i didn't right like
00:22:38
the the natural and yeah and and then things just started to make sense and that made it really sticky and addictive
00:22:44
for me um but you did you have were you in a relationship around that time
00:22:51
uh i had a relationship yeah for for a couple years around that time and it ended badly
00:22:58
bad breakup uh so so my first relationship pre-pickup
00:23:04
right ended horribly she ended up cheating on me and leaving me for another guy and so that was part of
00:23:10
you know it was my first serious girlfriend first love and and it ended basically as badly as a
00:23:18
relationship can end so i was heartbroken i was also angry and so that kind of also
00:23:24
the pickup stuff really spoke to that of like this is why you had your heart broken um
00:23:30
this is what you need to do instead how did that impact you because we're talking here about like i think we're talking about feelings of like rejection
00:23:37
and self-worth because i remember my first relationship that ended really badly the
00:23:42
harm was all me telling myself that i'm not good enough and i'm a scumbag and i'm maybe not pretty enough or smart
00:23:49
enough or masculine enough yeah and that was all the harm it was inside here um yeah it's it's funny because i look
00:23:56
back on that episode of my life i i think if that happened to me today i would
00:24:03
i would handle it fine i mean i'd be upset obviously and hurt but i would handle it
00:24:08
fine i i agree with you you know for me when i look back my understanding of
00:24:15
relationships love and relationships at that time uh i call it the disney understanding you know it was
00:24:22
very naive it was uh you know prince charming on the white horse and you know the princess and you
00:24:29
live happily ever after right um it was actually a very unhealthy relationship
00:24:34
she and i were both very um just very
00:24:40
dysfunctional and immature and we treated each other poorly and but we
00:24:45
were in love and when you're that age and you're naive like you think love is the only thing that matters that
00:24:50
you're you you're willing to pretty much tolerate like any terrible treatment towards each
00:24:56
other because you're in love like it's the level figure it out right and so i think a lot of the pain for me
00:25:04
it wasn't just her leaving like that was painful but it was also
00:25:09
having that kind of disney understanding of love and relationships completely shattered like everything i
00:25:15
because in my head i was like an amazing boyfriend and i did everything right you know so to have that blown up in my face
00:25:24
um and and come that realization that like everything i thought was true is not
00:25:30
and i have no idea what's true um like that's a really really hard place to be and so that that was
00:25:38
probably at least 50 of the difficulty as well is just trying to like pick up the pieces and figure out like wait
00:25:45
you know how what is love what is a relationship how are you supposed to be towards each other i have no clue
00:25:51
but you have a clue now yeah yeah i mean well and pickup was helpful in that regard i mean pickup gave me a
00:25:58
lot of bad again there was a lot of bad advice but
00:26:03
there was a lot of good advice and i think it's
00:26:09
look i i i think people who you know every once while you meet
00:26:15
somebody who who like they marry their high school sweetheart
00:26:20
you know they meet when they're 14 they get married and they live happily ever like that is
00:26:25
it's very rare and people who if that happens to somebody it's a very fortunate thing i think for most of us
00:26:31
what we have to do is is you you go through
00:26:37
a number of relationships that just blow up in your face and you have to have them blow up in your face to understand
00:26:46
what's healthy what's not what do you need as as a person and what do you not need and also how
00:26:53
to give to others relationships require a skill set and
00:26:59
you can't develop those skills like if you if you're if you come from a background like us like you don't grow up being taught that
00:27:04
skill set like my parents didn't have that skill set either so you have to learn it through trial and error like you learn anything else it just so
00:27:11
happens that the trial and error of romantic relationships is
00:27:17
unbelievably painful
00:27:24
yeah so what are those those um fundamental characteristics then of a good relationship i've heard you write
00:27:30
about a few of them things like respect and yeah what are those things that you've come to learn now that you wish you knew then i think
00:27:36
every you know every healthy relationship with somebody else it starts with a healthy relationship
00:27:42
with yourself right so if you don't respect yourself uh and if you don't value your own
00:27:50
thoughts and well-being and health you're never going to be able to set the boundaries you know you're just going to
00:27:56
tolerate poor treatment from others because you're going to think it's justified so you know people tend to have it
00:28:02
backwards they think like if i can just find a great relationship then i'll feel great about myself
00:28:07
but that's just it's a recipe for disaster like you got to get straight with yourself and then once you're
00:28:12
straight with yourself that enables you to have that healthy relationship to be able to share it with somebody else so
00:28:18
like that's paramount totally key like you got to get your own [ __ ] straight you got to like whatever
00:28:25
baggage you got rummaging around up there whatever trauma you've got in your background
00:28:30
you got to start working on it and then you need to be able to approach the relationship with a certain amount
00:28:36
of vulnerability like you need to you know again most of us by default
00:28:43
when we find that somebody that we're crazy about or who's crazy about us our our natural inclination is to start
00:28:49
hiding all the ugly stuff they're like oh well if she doesn't know that like i did this or if if i really like kind of
00:28:56
think that you know then she'll love me it's like no you have to
00:29:01
come to the relationship completely open saying like hey here's my list of issues because we all
00:29:07
got them um i'm working on them because you're working on yourself
00:29:12
you know hopefully we can work on them together because obviously they're going to have their issues too and so
00:29:17
just that open dialogue is kind of necessary to even get things started that's really where the trust
00:29:24
and respect comes from because like you can't like if you're not sharing
00:29:30
every aspect of yourself then you're never going to trust the other person like if you're always kind of hiding something
00:29:35
you're never going to believe that they are they're actually loving you they're believing the thing you're portraying to them and
00:29:41
so you're you're never going to trust it you're like oh well yeah they're into me now but it's because they don't know about this thing over here
00:29:47
but if you just come 100 with everything on the table
00:29:52
that's where that's where the trust is is you're able to start building the trust and actually
00:29:58
you know start from a healthy place so what you said at the start the first point i i've i mean both points were
00:30:04
perfect but the first point really it made me think about a million people i know that are in the mindset that if
00:30:10
they can find a relationship it will help fix their problems but they are fundamentally like not ready for a
00:30:15
relationship so they go through this like vicious negative reinforcing cycle of like they weren't ready for a relationship they got into one tolerated
00:30:22
toxic treatment smashed their self-esteem even more which meant that they were even less ready for a
00:30:27
relationship but meant that they wanted one more because they they wanted to fill the the crack in their self-esteem
00:30:33
with a person and you see them on this this sort of like repeated rejection
00:30:39
cycle of these toxic relationships and it's like going downwards because it's smashing their self-esteem more and more each time which is making them want a
00:30:45
relationship more and more but making them less capable of having one and i watch it play out on social media i'm
00:30:51
like jenny i'll make jenny stop i'm like oh she's got another boyfriend six months later i'm like oh no
00:30:57
yeah yeah yeah and and but because social media what it's doing is jenny's waking up in the morning and she's seeing the car like kylie jenner looks
00:31:04
happy on that yacht with trap like with her boyfriend and this so these happy people in front of me are happy because
00:31:10
of their perfect relationships and it's that awful spiral so to say to someone
00:31:15
work on yourself yeah it feels it's like well known it's the equivalent of like
00:31:22
telling people who want to get a six-pack to like eat vegetables
00:31:28
it's correct but it's the last thing anybody wants it it's like no no no no no give me the
00:31:34
secret five-day workout routine you know it's like no there's there isn't one yeah um
00:31:40
yeah it's interesting because these things they work there's like a
00:31:45
they work in an upward cycle and in a downward cycle you know and you just described like the downward spiral uh
00:31:51
and but it also works the other way around too because once you're working on yourself and like
00:31:57
the work on yourself never ends right so like once you are working on yourself and you find somebody who's working on
00:32:03
themselves and you're able to communicate about it then you make each other better yes
00:32:09
which makes you feel even more confident and and more proud of yourself and and more
00:32:14
uh more solid in who you are which then just enables you to work on yourself even more and so it creates an upward
00:32:20
spiral as well like one way i told a friend a couple years ago because he was kind of having trouble he
00:32:26
was like you know i just like you know our emotions blind us right so it's like
00:32:32
getting in that new relationship like falling for that person like it feels so good and generally the way the way the
00:32:38
brain works is like when something feels good we convince ourselves that it is good and when something feels bad we
00:32:43
convince ourselves that it is bad so he was like yeah it just it feels so good that like i really think like
00:32:49
that that yeah we are being honest and open and we are working on ourselves and and uh and i think it's healthy and then
00:32:57
six months go by and it and i realized that it's completely toxic and a disaster and so i told him i said you know the
00:33:03
the best way i can describe it is when you're in a an unhealthy relationship or a
00:33:09
relationship that's not quite working right like you're you're not completely being open or on the same page it feels
00:33:16
like pushing a boulder up a hill like like you're always pushing hard you know you feel like you
00:33:22
need to always be pushing to like kind of keep things stable and in place whereas
00:33:27
a healthy relationship it feels like pushing a rock down a hill you know it's like you just give a little bit bit of a
00:33:33
tug and it just goes you know like you don't at some point it
00:33:38
doesn't even feel like you're putting effort into it anymore i mean you are working on it but it's like
00:33:43
every amount of effort that you put in is immediately being matched by the other person and so it's like
00:33:50
you no longer you no longer feel like you're just fighting constantly to like keep things
00:33:56
stable and you'll pick a partisan phase where you learnt these lessons um eventually you came out the other end as we all did
00:34:03
yeah my girlfriend's listening now we all have come out well
00:34:08
let it be known but eventually you come out of it and um
00:34:14
you know you write you write about how you realize that wasn't a fulfilling long-term way to live yeah
00:34:22
just you know chasing women around nightclubs trying to pick them up and ultimately trying to sleep with them right yeah when you slept with a lot of
00:34:28
women at this point um and you uh you decided it wasn't the life for you no what i started to realize
00:34:36
you know and this realization happened on a number of dimensions around the same time you know because because the
00:34:42
business started doing well and i started traveling a lot you know there generally anything
00:34:49
so in in in subtle art i talk about i make a distinction between happiness and highs
00:34:54
and this distinction it was it was pretty profound for me because
00:35:00
we tend to we tend to mistake highs for happiness
00:35:06
right so uh meeting meeting an attractive person or
00:35:11
sleeping with an attractive person for the first time that's a high um making a bunch of money that's a high
00:35:17
uh having you know winning an award or an accolade or going to like some exotic vacation
00:35:23
putting on instagram getting a ton of likes like that's a high and highs are nice like we all we all love having
00:35:29
highs and and we we do need a certain amount of highs in our life but
00:35:34
highs are not happiness happiness is actually kind of the inversion of that in a lot
00:35:40
of ways happiness is oftentimes actually unpleasant you know happiness is
00:35:47
it's it's not the check that comes you know from the successful
00:35:52
product launch it's the work that goes into that product launch happiness is is the satisfaction
00:35:59
it's you know it's not like the peak the super romantic date happiness is
00:36:05
being able to like sit at home on the couch and not say anything and be completely satisfied like it's
00:36:10
happiness is is actually often very boring and so in my 20s you
00:36:16
know it started with women and parties and then it kind of went to business you know i wanted to grow a big successful
00:36:22
business and then i did that and i made a bunch of money and then i traveled around the world and i lived in all these crazy exotic places and
00:36:28
um and i started to realize that like the these are just highs and the thing about highs is that
00:36:35
the more you get the more you need to get that same feeling right so
00:36:41
if you've never left your home country before that first trip is like life-changing it's incredibly impactful
00:36:50
but if you've been to 50 countries going to the 51st you're just like ugh
00:36:55
yeah that flight sucked like you know like you're complaining about the taxi driver like
00:37:00
you know because it's you need that much more to get that same hit um and so
00:37:05
it becomes a very dangerous thing to to kind of put all of your focus on these things
00:37:11
because of that diminishing returns it takes more and more effort to kind of achieve that same sense of satisfaction
00:37:18
or or pleasure um so i really started asking myself like
00:37:25
you know what is what are the things that i'm willing to
00:37:30
give up what you also don't realize is that you're you're get you have to give up a lot for those highs so like if you
00:37:36
do want to party all the time and sleep with lots of people you're giving up the opportunity to have
00:37:42
a stable relationship with somebody for a long period of time you're giving up uh the comfort that comes with that or
00:37:48
the security that comes with that if you're traveling all the time and living all over the world like you're giving up the stability of a community of
00:37:55
uh knowing your neighbors of you know having
00:38:00
been able to see your friends consistently like there's all these subtle unsexy things that you're giving
00:38:06
up to chase the highs that you don't really realize you're giving them up until you've
00:38:12
given them up for a long time so i started to realize that and kind of like re like rethink my whole understanding of
00:38:20
what happiness and success is in general so i'm i'm keen to get into the details
00:38:26
there but again jumping ahead a little bit is that a well is that an easy thing to do
00:38:34
because because when you've got that childhood force in you of like the insecurities and the social acceptance
00:38:40
and that's always going to be in the in you know and it can rear its ugly head if you're if those kind of insecurities
00:38:45
are somewhat triggered as even as an adult and it can say you know you need to fit in you need to get by that thing you need to travel you need to be more
00:38:52
successful but then you've got this new set of like conscious values you're describing where you're saying well i
00:38:57
value these things but then that little demon on your shoulder is saying by the [ __ ] lamborghini
00:39:03
well i think a lot of it is you know i think a lot of value like
00:39:10
changing your values and again i think i say this in subtle art like you can't just sit on the couch
00:39:15
and think your way out of your values like you need to go live them and then have
00:39:21
them fail you really and for me that that what that looked like
00:39:26
you know going out and and kind of living this fantasy life of partying all
00:39:31
around the world and hooking up with all these girls and then just having that fail me and
00:39:37
realize that it's actually very empty and uh and and realize after a few years
00:39:42
that you're you're literally not keeping in touch with you know all these people who you thought like oh my god we're gonna be friends forever and then
00:39:49
three years go by and you realize you're not keeping in touch with any of these people and then you go on facebook and you see like
00:39:55
that now they're married and they just had a kid and they're so happy and you're like [ __ ] i'm like still doing the same thing like i'm still
00:40:02
drinking on a beach with the same people um for like the third year straight like
00:40:08
something's not right here um in the case of money it's like i think sometimes people have to buy that
00:40:13
lamborghini and realize it doesn't fix anything
00:40:21
like it's fun for a week or a month or like you get to go show your friends or your parents or whatever
00:40:28
and then they don't really care you're so you're so right in what you said earlier as well but linked to that point is like i remember buying the big house
00:40:34
like seven bedroom house with a tennis court yeah out in the countryside the cost was i was now an hour and a half
00:40:40
away from my friends they couldn't come anyway like yeah i was there for nine months before i was like i said to the
00:40:46
landlord like please let me out and i moved into this like one bed right in the middle of the city because in fact i'd exchanged like the status egos
00:40:54
i bought into the status and ego of having this big house but the cost was no one could come and see it yeah i was
00:41:00
lonely as [ __ ] it meant that my commute to work was three hours there and back it's like a terrible insecure decision
00:41:06
at 21 years old right so and then but i had to do it like like steve had to fight like taste that
00:41:12
himself and have it failed me as you say so yeah i know i'm jumping ahead again but will's got a great story in his book um
00:41:19
so for context you wrote will smith yeah brand new book called will yep um
00:41:24
so will will had a hit record when he was a senior in high school he was 17. and of course
00:41:31
he went out and bought like four different cars and a bunch of motorcycles bought a house and uh it was this great moment where he
00:41:38
he lined up all of his cars and motorcycles outside his new house and then invited his dad over and uh
00:41:44
his dad shows up and he's like yo what's up pops like what do you think you know and his dad's
00:41:50
like are these all yours and he's like yeah yeah yeah what do you think his dad goes
00:41:56
man what the [ __ ] are you doing you only got one ass what do you need four cars for
00:42:04
yes and sure enough like two years later he went broke you know exactly he spent all
00:42:09
his money yeah he spent all of his money and didn't pay taxes so that's a bad combination
00:42:17
damn you you really have you know and it's i always think this because i've read a lot of quotes and i've read a book and stuff and i always say in my
00:42:24
writing like my words will never overcome your insecurities yeah that thing that kid said to you when you were
00:42:30
seven years old or your dad said to you will always be a stronger force in your life than some 140 character quote that i say about how
00:42:36
you should be living your life right right go do the work right um and learn that for yourself
00:42:42
why should you drink fuel we're going into the fourth quarter of the year diets are dropping off we're becoming lazier and lazier and what tends to
00:42:49
happen when when our diets dip and we we start to become less compelled to go to the gym
00:42:55
is yeah we get out of shape we start to feel low energy we start to binge eat bad things and fuel is the antidote it's
00:43:03
nutritionally complete so you get everything you need for your diet in a drink you get your 20 grams of proteins
00:43:08
you're going to get your 26 vitamins and vitamins and minerals it's low sugar high in fiber it really
00:43:14
is the cure to a lot of the health issues that we see in our personal lives but in wider society if you've never
00:43:20
tried it all i'll ask you to do is give it a try and if you like me then you
00:43:26
will like the world berry ready to drink you'll like the mac and cheese which is just selling like absolutely crazy
00:43:32
unsurprisingly um you like the cinnamon and you like the banana flavor those are
00:43:38
my recommendations i know a lot of people love the chocolate flavor let me know try it get yourself healthy
00:43:45
and send me a message on instagram tag me on instagram as well on your stories if you do try it out because i sometimes
00:43:50
upload those tags and let me know which is your favorite flavor can't wait to hear from you one of the things you say is um that
00:43:56
your one rule for life is each person must never be treated only as a means to some other end but must also be treated
00:44:02
as an end to themselves yeah please tell me what that means
00:44:08
it's a little it's a little philosophical it actually comes from from the philosopher kant um
00:44:14
it basically means that like i think anything that is is
00:44:20
unethical or unhealthy it's because we're not we're treating
00:44:26
another person as a means to another end right so if you're kind of using somebody for their money
00:44:33
or if you're manipulating somebody to try to like get a job or a promotion or something
00:44:39
or if you're just straight up like stealing from somebody or lying to them like in all of those cases you're tr
00:44:45
you're valuing some external thing whether it's money or a car or prestige more than the
00:44:51
person themselves and i to me it's just kind of like
00:44:58
when i look at every useful piece of advice whether in
00:45:04
personal development or just how to be a good person you know how to be an ethical person it all comes
00:45:11
right back down to that rule like you everything you do it needs to be
00:45:16
ultimately for the betterment of yourself or others like making yourself
00:45:22
a better person and making other people better too and anytime you deviate from that
00:45:28
you're either going to get into ethical trouble or you're going to get into
00:45:36
toxic relationships like if i've got a car that i'm selling and i know that it's faulty yeah but i invite someone
00:45:42
over and i say this is the best car in the world please buy it it's unethical and you're you're using that person as a means to an end in a
00:45:49
personal development context it's like if you're dating somebody not really because you like them but because you
00:45:54
want to impress your friends then you're using that person as a means to some other end right and it's like
00:45:59
that relationship is going to go south really fast like it's going to get ugly so
00:46:05
it's not just ethical it's practical you know kant minute like said it in ethical terms but i just kind of realized that
00:46:11
it's like all good personal development advice is essentially the same thing it's like treat people well like put place people
00:46:18
before money before you know accolades before
00:46:24
attention or status like always put people first and uh
00:46:30
and everything else kind of takes care of itself and that's the long-term game right that's the the it's because in the
00:46:35
short term you might sell the car yeah but in the long term your reputational damage and your general sense of feeling
00:46:41
inside and yeah which which you see all the time in in internet businesses right like it's you
00:46:47
see kind of those sleazy sales letters that that are pushing a questionable
00:46:54
product and sure maybe they they have a big like five million dollar launch
00:46:59
but they've just completely destroyed you know eventually all those people who bought are gonna realize that the product is [ __ ] and they're never gonna
00:47:06
buy from you again and so you've yeah you made a bun millions of
00:47:11
dollars up front but you've completely destroyed your brand and you're gonna have to start over from scratch whereas
00:47:17
if you kind of start with the people in mind and you focus on the good product the
00:47:22
good relationship giving people good value you make less money up front but then those people stick with you
00:47:29
forever product after product after product um i was watching your conversation with
00:47:35
tom bill you and i found it really really interesting and important because one of
00:47:41
the things you talk about when we're talking about you know deciding what you want to do with your life whether it's a business or you want to be a pickup artist or whatever it is is this the
00:47:47
importance of asking the question why and in the society and culture we live in especially one that's so driven by comparison where your values are almost
00:47:54
being handed to you by instagram and the kardashians like this is how this is what you should value
00:47:59
like i almost i've almost felt i remember one day a kid came up to me after i did this like big talk on stage and he said i want to be a public
00:48:05
speaker and he was like 17. and you're thinking but you've got nothing
00:48:13
really what he's saying is like he doesn't want to be a public speaker he wants the admiration he thinks public speakers get probably because he's
00:48:20
insecure yeah and and so many kids including myself as a young
00:48:26
kid we don't actually know what we want we have no [ __ ] clue but what we probably want is not to be insecure and
00:48:32
heart of it and get laid of that as you've described takes us down a dark alley to the wrong place
00:48:38
usually a dead end as well so how do i figure out what what i actually want in my life
00:48:43
without it being kardashian noise or instagram like what does what do i want and how do i find out
00:48:49
i think so it's a tricky thing right because again i think you you kind of have to
00:48:56
get it wrong it's like the relationships you need to get a couple wrong before you know how to get it right and i think
00:49:01
it's the same in pursuing a career or or finding a purpose in life like you you need to get
00:49:06
it wrong a couple times because we're experts at tricking ourselves you
00:49:12
know it's like that kid he wants admiration right but if you ask them in his head he's
00:49:18
like no no i'm just really passionate about communicating with people i love people you know it's like
00:49:24
we all do that to ourselves we all like we find the admirable narrative to kind of explain
00:49:31
what were what we want in the world so i think you need to go through
00:49:36
you need to hit a couple dead ends you know it's like that kid he probably should go get on stage and
00:49:42
give the speeches and get the applause and then realize that the applause doesn't solve anything that he's he's
00:49:48
still just as insecure as he was before because then once once he does that then
00:49:53
he'll be ready to ask that question of like why do i want to do that like why am i really doing this
00:49:59
it's almost a question you have to earn in a lot of ways interesting you know and i feel like a lot of people they just want to start there
00:50:06
and it's like no no you have to like because look we're all like the kardashian thing right like
00:50:12
like the reason that stuff is so popular is because we're wired to value it we're wired to
00:50:19
want status we're wired to want to be beautiful and sexy and we're wired to want to impress others like that's never
00:50:25
going to go away the question is is like what do you want once that is kind of removed from the
00:50:31
equation but i think mentally to be able to remove it from the equation you have to
00:50:37
try to get some of it first and and and see that it doesn't work if that makes sense and what did you
00:50:43
come to learn for yourself um once you got that stuff you had the money you were you know had lots of um success in
00:50:51
the field yeah with uh pick artistry and you tried all of these things and you tried the cars and what did you come to
00:50:57
learn that you value well i had an interesting experience
00:51:02
in my career which we were joking about it before we went live was like i kind of had this realization so i started
00:51:09
the pickup stuff when i was like 21 22. and and then i started coaching and like
00:51:14
teaching dating advice um probably when i was like 23 24.
00:51:20
and i got to like my late 20s and i it suddenly it started to dawn on me that
00:51:25
like this is cool now but in like five years it's gonna be really
00:51:32
creepy you know like it's it's one thing to be a 25 year old who's like taking a bunch of dudes out to like talk to girls
00:51:39
in a club it's very different to be like a 35 year old guy who's taken out a bunch of dudes to talk
00:51:45
to 20 year old girls at a club like it's just it's a much different look and i also just realized i'm like i don't want
00:51:50
to do this forever like this is fun but like i this is actually not fulfilling in any way whatsoever like i need to
00:51:56
find what my next thing is going to be and during that period when i was
00:52:02
doing all the dating relationship advice i started to realize especially like a
00:52:08
lot of a lot of clients a lot of guys who hired me you know i take them out to the bar and we talk to some girls or whatever
00:52:14
but after a year or two i realized like what these guys really need is a therapist [Music]
00:52:21
you know it's it's their problem you know they're good guys like they're they're smart they're they're like
00:52:27
they've got a good job um they're sure they're a little bit nervous talking to a girl but like who
00:52:33
isn't what really what their most of their problems were is like very deep-seated
00:52:38
insecurities emotional issues and they hadn't dealt with it yet and so
00:52:44
the last couple of years i did that job i would kind of just take the guys to
00:52:49
the bar as an excuse and then sit down with them and be like okay let's like what's really going on
00:52:55
in your life you know like like let's get into why do you feel so
00:53:01
insufficient or or unworthy of you know dating her or talking to her or
00:53:06
whatever and so i kind of realized that like you know what i should be writing about is this stuff
00:53:13
you know the the like the the three best first dates or like
00:53:18
how to get her to reply to your text every time like i was writing stuff like that back then because it got traffic
00:53:24
and it it it would get sales but i'm like that's not what people actually need that's not what they need to hear what
00:53:30
they need to hear is kind of this deeper stuff about self-esteem and self-worth and vulnerability and
00:53:37
and so i i made that decision to pivot into that to stop being the dating coach
00:53:42
and and and actually start writing about personal development and emotional health because that's something i knew i
00:53:49
could be proud of and and i could do for the rest of my life you know you you can be a 50 year old uh talking about
00:53:56
those things and it's still like something you can hang your hat on like but i never would have gotten there if i
00:54:02
hadn't done the dating coach stuff if i hadn't kind of been obsessed with the like yeah let's go to the club and like
00:54:08
try to get laid like you that's the entry point right and then you find the deeper stuff along the way
00:54:15
and that's your that's your sort of now your professional um value i guess the one of the things you
00:54:21
value professionally but in terms of like holistically when you look at your whole life one of the things where
00:54:26
the values at the heart of mark that allow him to be
00:54:31
you know fulfilled stable and uh yes states
00:54:36
sus like the sustainable values that you think can last you because of these values i will be
00:54:43
somewhat you know content and fulfilled for the next 30 40 years holistically gotcha
00:54:48
so i mean the answer is going to sound really banal but like um but it's true
00:54:53
uh you know i think probably the biggest one for me is is honesty and not just honesty
00:55:01
you know with the with the people in my life like honesty is a standard that i hold kind of everybody all my friends and everybody i
00:55:08
work with too but it's also something i hold myself to uh being honest with myself
00:55:14
i think generosity is is one that i've discovered again it's one of those things that when
00:55:20
you do make all the money like you do make a butt load of money you learn that it's so much more fun to
00:55:27
spend it on other people than it is yourself like it feels so much better and and it means a lot more like it's
00:55:35
it creates those really powerful moments that you you do remember for the rest of your life whereas the lamborghini you
00:55:41
forget about [Music] 22 seats right yeah
00:55:48
um community is an interesting one that you talk about often having a community something that i
00:55:53
disregarded when i was pursuing just becoming rich myself was yes connection and it wasn't it was actually
00:55:59
i think a ted talk i saw where the ted talk was was telling me that men who have been in a relationship and had
00:56:05
strong relationships live longer are healthier are happier and i was thinking what you know like because it was a
00:56:10
counter narrative to my like just be be rich you know yeah thing yeah i mean community was one that i
00:56:18
had to kind of like begrudgingly accept same yeah um
00:56:24
because i always have been such a loner right and and and it i think living abroad for for so long it
00:56:31
kind of forced me to accept my own loneliness you know and and
00:56:36
recognize and i was i started achieving a lot of great things in my business and having all
00:56:42
these great experiences and then realizing that like nobody i really cared about was around me when it was happening and so it felt
00:56:49
to a certain degree it felt kind of pointless so i moved back to the states and and settled down and
00:56:56
and one of you know one of my goals when i moved back to the u.s was like i want to have a stable group of
00:57:02
friends who are kind of on the same path as me and it's yeah it's one of the best things i did
00:57:09
honestly you referenced honesty a second ago which i find really um another really
00:57:15
interesting one it's uh so when you said honesty what i understood was um being
00:57:20
honest about who i am what i feel what i think what i'm passionate about and
00:57:26
um stubbornly and unnegotiably protecting
00:57:32
my right to be my true self in life and um
00:57:37
that again it allows a lot of the the toxic insecure stuff to fall away and just wear what you want be who you are
00:57:43
etc etc um how important has that been for you in terms of just like being your true self every day of your life and
00:57:50
um is there any tips or tricks you have for especially someone like you who's in
00:57:56
high demand and there's lots of people asking you to do lots of things and be lots of things and yeah how do you
00:58:01
defend that above all honesty first of all you can't be your true self without honesty like if you're
00:58:07
not being honest with yourself and about what you want and what you care about you're not being your true self like
00:58:13
you're you're deluding yourself and you know a huge cornerstone of my work in general is just
00:58:19
all the ways we delude ourselves because we delude ourselves in a lot of different ways so to me it's it's a
00:58:24
constant work in progress it's it's um it's almost like a mental habit that you build uh one you know one of the tools
00:58:31
is what you mentioned earlier is like constantly asking why you know it's like why why am i taking this job why am i
00:58:38
saying yes to the speaking opportunity why do i want to write email newsletters or why do i
00:58:44
want to build my instagram following like really why you know and try on different answers like always try
00:58:51
on the answer you don't want to hear and see how it feels see if it feels true or not
00:58:57
kind of coming back to the community point when you do find some some like-minded
00:59:02
people like people who are also kind of dedicated to honesty and being being self-aware
00:59:08
they can be great sounding boards i mean my wife is always the first one
00:59:13
to tell me when i'm full of [ __ ] which is great you know obviously i
00:59:18
don't like hearing it in the moment sometimes but you know sometimes i'll tell her something and she'll be like
00:59:25
are you sure about you sure about that you know she'll kind of like start challenging me challenging
00:59:30
me on it and um you know and i've learned to
00:59:36
to to um to take that well and and take it seriously um so that's kind of the first part is
00:59:42
like it's something you you continue to cultivate throughout your life um your second question was was about
00:59:49
bringing that honesty kind of into the world especially dealing in business dealings and
00:59:56
people who ask things and it's hard like it's interesting because
01:00:03
i wrote about this in a newsletter once it's like when you're starting out you you kind of have to say yes to everything like it's like you're
01:00:08
desperate for opportunity and so you're just always saying yes yes yes and then a weird like
01:00:14
transition happens at some point where you you have to start saying no to people um or else you're just gonna lose
01:00:21
your mind um because there's just way more opportunities than you can ever handle and so you have to like learning
01:00:27
to say no gracefully i think is a very important skill
01:00:34
uh in business and in life like being able to like let people down and
01:00:40
in the business context actually in the personal context as well i what i've kind of found to be like the
01:00:46
easiest way to do it is i kind of create rules for myself uh
01:00:52
and i don't know what it is but when you tell people i have a rule and this is why i'm saying no
01:01:00
they take it really well like they actually respect it you know so it's like if somebody comes to me and they're
01:01:05
like hey i've got this event this like charity event uh it's gonna happen this month you know
01:01:11
would really love if you're able to like do a video for us or come out or whatever and it's like you know i really
01:01:16
don't want to do it if i'm just like hey sorry but no you know like
01:01:22
then it starts to feel really weird and emotional and possible yeah they if exactly it feels personal yeah i think
01:01:28
that's what it is um because and they started they're like oh no but like we really want you and like the
01:01:35
kids are gonna love it and blah blah and then you start you're like god i'm a horrible person and yeah you know and
01:01:40
they're like they're kind of thinking i'm like wow mark manson's an [ __ ] yeah yeah and but if i go to them and i'm like look
01:01:46
like my rule is i do four events a year i'm already booked i'm sorry then it was the principle that let them
01:01:52
down as opposed to the you know you yeah exactly and they're like oh man i should have emailed sooner
01:01:59
he wants to do it but the principal said yeah but it's but it's true it's like
01:02:04
i'm not lying it's just i create a rule for myself you know another thing another rule uh
01:02:11
and it was a really popular article i did is is is a uh if it's not a [ __ ] yes it's a no and
01:02:16
so what i've learned is that a lot of times turning people down i'll say like look i have a rule for myself
01:02:22
you know i if i'm gonna do something i need to be a [ __ ] yes about it like i need to be all
01:02:27
in and 100 like dedicated to it and i said i'm not feeling that with this i wouldn't be
01:02:33
able to give it my full energy and attention that and and it deserves that so i'm gonna say no
01:02:39
you know and so when you put it that way they're like huh good guy mark manson like looking
01:02:44
out for me you know uh so it's there's like um
01:02:50
i think there's there's some some tactic they're like good and bad ways to say no to people um
01:02:56
one of the other things that i really loved when i was reading all of your work is this undercurrent of personal
01:03:01
responsibility yeah that runs through everything and in our society for whatever reason people don't like that
01:03:08
some people yeah really don't like that idea of personal responsibility that you might be
01:03:13
more so than you believe responsible for the circumstances of your life because for some people that shines that turns
01:03:19
the mirror on them and says you've got no one to blame sure it's not the government it's not this that this your
01:03:24
uncle whatever it's the decisions you've made and for some people that's a motivating thing it's liberation it's oh
01:03:30
i'm in control okay but it feels like some people would rather there be a puppet master to point
01:03:35
to um yeah so what's your beliefs and thoughts on personal responsibility the importance
01:03:40
of it and if you can as well um like why some people hate it
01:03:47
i think uh to me responsibility is kind of like the
01:03:52
the core understand like if if there's no
01:03:57
personal responsibility nothing else is ever gonna work or improve you know to improve anything you have to
01:04:04
believe you have some sort of power influence on it and if you have some sort of power influence you're responsible for that power and
01:04:11
influence so if you if you just reject the idea that you're responsible for an area of your life like if it's like i'm
01:04:16
not responsible for my shitty relationships it's all their fault you're basically disempowering yourself
01:04:23
from ever improving them because you're you're rejecting the idea that you have any influence on them
01:04:28
i think i think the reason or one reason why people
01:04:34
really kind of bristle at the idea is i think we we tend to mistake
01:04:40
responsibility and fault right so if if i if i'm like a typical dumb american and
01:04:48
walk right across the street in london looking the wrong way and i get hit by a car you know it's not
01:04:54
my fault that i got hit by a car but it's still my responsibility like i
01:05:01
still need to take take control of my recovery i need to like
01:05:06
take care of my body i need to decide you know what i'm going to do
01:05:13
there's a per there's a responsibility in every moment because in every moment we're choosing
01:05:18
what to do [Music] what to perceive what to believe what to focus on like that choice is
01:05:25
happening every single moment and because that is a choice
01:05:30
there's responsibility for that choice right um i use the example in subtle art of like
01:05:37
if somebody left a newborn baby on your doorstep it's not your fault that there's a baby
01:05:43
on your doorstep but it sure [ __ ] is your responsibility like you have to do something
01:05:48
yeah you can't just shut the door and be like not my baby like it just doesn't work that way and
01:05:54
so i think particularly people who have had a lot of bad things happen in their life
01:06:00
and and those things are not their fault it's very very difficult for them to to
01:06:05
accept responsibility because well for a couple reasons one is
01:06:12
it's once you accept responsibility it means you have to do something you have to change something you have to
01:06:18
change your perspective you have to change your actions you have to change your beliefs and
01:06:23
all of those things are very uncomfortable but i i think the other thing is that a lot of times people get very attached to
01:06:31
their stories right so a terrible thing happens to them
01:06:36
it kind of [ __ ] them up and that becomes their identity like that's how they get sympathy from other
01:06:42
people it's how it's how other people know them it's the basis of a lot of their
01:06:49
relationships and so they're actually afraid to let it go right like it's it's actually a scary thing
01:06:55
to to let go of that identity so yeah it's it's a hard thing to do but
01:07:01
we all have to kind of go through that struggle it's really interesting it's a yeah
01:07:07
it's something that i see a lot in in our in our culture at the moment specifically with young people because i think instagram has
01:07:14
um created more of a community for that kind of like i'm going to just be honest that kind of like self-pitying and blame
01:07:21
um and the algorithms are now kind of reinforcing that and you know you'll get more likes if you do the yes it's you
01:07:28
know i i i heard it referred to as the victimhood olympics yes exactly yeah
01:07:34
yeah which is like oh you win you've had the worst [ __ ] happening
01:07:39
here's your medal one of the kind of self-development you know tropes or like you know piece
01:07:46
of advice i hear often that's linked to that is that happiness is a choice how do you feel about that phrase
01:07:52
uh i mean i think it's fundamentally true obviously i think it's a little more complicated than that um
01:08:01
but it kind of comes back to what i was saying like you i think when people say that what
01:08:06
they're referring to is like in every moment you get to choose what to focus on right so
01:08:12
if a car hits me in the middle of the street here i can either focus on how unlucky i am
01:08:18
and how unfair this is and how it [ __ ] up my press trip to
01:08:23
the uk you know and all this stuff you know or i can focus on something else i can focus on
01:08:31
you know how fortunate i am to survive how you know and i think this is where kind of like the the positive thinking
01:08:38
stuff was intended to refer to you know like classic self-help of like just think positive
01:08:44
like this is what it what it was trying to say but it kind of got distorted and turned into this weird delusional thing
01:08:50
but it's basically like you know in every single moment you are choosing how to see things and so in that sense you
01:08:57
can always choose in every moment to see things in a way that that makes you feel better
01:09:04
and it's not easy it's actually really really hard but in that sense happiness
01:09:09
can be a choice like it's it's always within your power there's no person on earth that the happiness has
01:09:15
been removed from their brain like it's it's all in there it's all in you it's just a question of
01:09:22
do you know how to access it and will you access it will you choose to and one of the things that does feel
01:09:28
like a choice link to that is the expectations that we we choose for life and you write about how expectations can
01:09:35
really be a a curse of happiness yeah um
01:09:40
how do we so why are expect are our expectations a potential curse and why are they dangerous and how do we set
01:09:47
better expectations then well expectations are dangerous because uh you know i think there's a i forget
01:09:53
who came up with it but i think it's there's this like old equation where it's like happiness equals reality minus
01:10:00
expectations you know so if you have these like huge unreasonable expectations for yourself you're always
01:10:05
going to be disappointed but then it's a double-edged sword because if you have like tiny expectations for yourself then you're not going to try to do anything
01:10:11
so like there there's this weird balance where i mean i i prefer kind of like more the
01:10:17
buddhist take which is like just don't have expectations like just don't expect anything is that possible
01:10:23
no but but it's kind of like honesty right like it's it's you
01:10:29
you never completely get there but you should still try and um
01:10:35
it's and it's particularly useful i find in in managing anxiety you know because
01:10:40
anxiety tends to come from uh
01:10:46
just either irrational or outsized expectations right so it's like you're about to go on stage and talk to a bunch
01:10:52
of people and your expectation is like i'm gonna bomb i'm gonna look like a fool like people gonna laugh at me and
01:10:59
it's because of that expectation that you start feeling a lot of anxiety start feeling terrible whereas if you just
01:11:05
kind of take the expectation of of you know this is just another
01:11:10
moment you know it's it's going to happen people are probably not going to remember it like it just is it's going to be
01:11:16
whatever it's going to be um it can eliminate a lot of that i do that with with my book launches because
01:11:22
obviously like any author i'm like i probably was probably the same with you like you know that when your book is
01:11:28
coming out like you're like crippled on the floor like everybody's gonna hate me they're all gonna laugh at me you know
01:11:33
and it's to me it just helps to just remove any assumption of like what it's gonna be
01:11:40
you know don't assume it's gonna do well but don't assume it's gonna do poorly like it's it's gonna do what it's gonna do and you're gonna be fine either way
01:11:47
so even though you know that do you still feel of course
01:11:55
of course like you never the anxiety never goes away but it gets managed right
01:12:01
do you suffer with anxiety uh yeah for sure and how long have you suffered with it for
01:12:06
i mean sounds forever i mean i am human yeah so there's it's kind of like a i see it
01:12:12
well i see it as a spectrum almost there's like on one end of it it might be and i'm if
01:12:17
i sound super naive here it's because i am like um there might be nervousness before you know pre
01:12:23
pre-performance anxiety and then there's like the daily struggle with anxiety which can be like debilitating
01:12:30
yeah i guess yeah i think the way most people look at emotions they look at emotions in terms
01:12:37
of intensity and i think that's not the right way to look at it like it's
01:12:42
everybody feels anxiety it doesn't matter like the most confident person on the planet feels anxiety it's what's
01:12:47
different between somebody who seems very confident and somebody who seems to debilitated is that the person
01:12:54
who seems confident is managing their anxiety very well they're they're channeling the anxiety
01:12:59
very effectively into their actions and behaviors whereas the person who's debilitated by it is not
01:13:06
so in that sense i see managing emotions it's like a skill
01:13:11
right and and and i think this we all kind of know this like we all we all know somebody who's like very good
01:13:17
at managing their anger or somebody who's very good at managing their anxiety and we all
01:13:23
probably know somebody who's very bad at managing their anger somebody who's very bad at managing their anxiety or managing their sadness
01:13:29
and so i think it's you know so we each kind of have like a natural talent for some emotions and not others
01:13:36
and so it's something we kind of have to learn like you you learn to
01:13:41
feel the anxiety and then use that energy you know
01:13:46
kind of adopt the right mindsets and beliefs around it and then use that energy in a way that's effective
01:13:52
you write about you know how especially in everything is [ __ ] a book about hope
01:13:58
how mental health ailments are somewhat increasing in the world it appears it appears
01:14:05
some people say that it's because we're like you know diagnosed over diagnosis yeah or whatever but um i would assert
01:14:11
if i was to be to guess and based on the information that i've seen and i'm a big um
01:14:17
heavily involved in a company called a tie life sciences which is in the psychedelic space so we look at schizophrenia and depression and anxiety
01:14:23
um it does appear to be increasing people do appear to be getting more anxious and my general belief which is
01:14:29
not backed by anything is that how could we not be in a world that where there's so much stimulation yeah if you go back
01:14:34
to you know our tribal tribal roots versus today it's just constant so anxiety and thinking about the future
01:14:40
and depression and these things are probably increasing um you talk about how
01:14:45
a lack of something to strive for is at the root cause of a lot of this and how as life has got more
01:14:53
comfortable um we've got into trouble yeah
01:14:59
there's you know so a lot of that book revolved around kind of this interesting paradox like there seems to be a very very subtle
01:15:07
trade-off between comfort and meaning
01:15:12
and kind of a very simple example is like if you imagine
01:15:18
if you remember like back like 100 years ago right like most of the population is living on
01:15:24
farms there's wars going on all the time there's diseases all the time it's very
01:15:29
easy to know what to hope for it's very easy to know what gives your life meaning like you got to get the food
01:15:35
harvested for next season like you got to feed you know your eight kids or whatever
01:15:40
whatever it is or you got to survive the war and so these kind of existential questions of
01:15:47
like what is my purpose and like what am i here to do and am i using my talents
01:15:52
the most effectively like these don't even enter into the equation like it's just pure survival
01:15:58
and it's kind of what i was referring to either like earlier that that that why question is almost a privilege
01:16:04
like you you almost earn it right and i think our society has become so affluent and
01:16:10
comfortable that we're starting at that why question
01:16:15
right so it's it's if you're a young person today you've grown up with this incredible technology you have access
01:16:22
to all of the information in the world um you're more educated than anybody in
01:16:28
human history you if you are fortunate enough to go to university like you're going to have
01:16:33
tons and tons of career opportunities and job opportunities so this question of like who am i
01:16:39
why am i why am i here on earth what am i meant to do is this the best use of my time like
01:16:45
these are really [ __ ] hard questions to answer and we're hitting people with
01:16:50
them when they're like 16 17. so it to me it makes sense like it and
01:16:56
to me it's like it's a very silent cost of our affluence and comfort mm-hmm
01:17:04
makes perfect sense to me just in my own life i think one of the most um dis i've talked about this before one of
01:17:10
the most destabilizing disorientating moments of my life was when i was i had financial freedom yeah and in fact it
01:17:17
was on the day where someone offered me financial freedom so it was when someone offered to buy my company and i talk about this i go home and i'm sat here
01:17:24
and then i'm thinking but then what like i'm going to give up my like because i was i was trying to i was trying to make
01:17:30
it yeah survive like and someone comes along and says we'll give you x tens of millions
01:17:35
and you know i'm 25 and i'm thinking but then what am i going to do with my life and i'm trading off my purpose for this
01:17:41
big pile of cash which isn't going to give me purpose so um that i had a bit of an existential crisis
01:17:47
there um figuring out what what my actual why was and i didn't think it was much i felt like life was
01:17:53
much easier before that when my clear maslovian objectives were
01:17:58
like food water shelter not self-actualization yeah that's a really crazy thing that when you make people
01:18:04
comfortable and free you give them an essential crisis
01:18:09
yeah yeah you like trade physical hardship for
01:18:15
emotional mental hardship and uh and obviously i think most of us would choose the emotional mental
01:18:21
hardship over the physical hardship uh but it's funny i mean i had a very similar experience after subtle art took
01:18:27
off um you know i had massive royalty checks start coming in and
01:18:34
you know for like 10 years before that my big goal in life was like i want to
01:18:39
be a bestselling author i want to like i want to be one of the most popular authors and bloggers in the world you
01:18:44
know and then it happens and all this money shows up and
01:18:50
it really [ __ ] with me and it's funny because i've talked about this in a few interviews and
01:18:56
um and it usually like they have no idea what i'm talking like it's one of those
01:19:01
things like you feel like such an ass for saying it talking about it because it's people just like yeah
01:19:07
yeah [ __ ] you like yeah yeah like i'll take that problem any day but it's true but it's um anti-climax
01:19:14
miserable yeah i just honestly i just kind of sat on the couch and played a lot of video games because i'm like well what now
01:19:20
like any book i write is not gonna you know so that's not super exciting um
01:19:29
all like grinding on my internet business which i had been doing for seven or eight years
01:19:35
up to that point it's like suddenly like i've got more money than i ever expected so it's like
01:19:40
okay i don't need to grind that hard anymore um so what do i do like what
01:19:45
what am i really doing again it comes back to like earning that why like i really had to ask like
01:19:51
what am i really doing this for like i obviously i i believe in the message of the book and everything but
01:19:58
again like like you you kind of alluded to like when you're coming up
01:20:03
it's it's very exciting and it's very it's very easy to know what you're gunning
01:20:10
for like you've got the north star yeah orientation and you've got nothing to lose right you know it's like
01:20:17
it's like business fails whatever like i was i started broke i'll be broke again like you know like let's
01:20:23
make it happen but then once you get there and you're like [ __ ] i got
01:20:29
an i've got contracts i've got an agent i've got an audience i've got a team
01:20:35
suddenly like it's there's a lot to lose and it's in it and it
01:20:41
and it becomes uh it becomes a lot harder to know like what are you gunning for you know like what are you
01:20:48
what's the next mountaintop is that a low moment for you psychologically strangely yeah yeah i i actually the
01:20:56
the year after subtle art came out was probably the most depressed i've been
01:21:01
since i was a teenager um and yeah it's
01:21:06
you know there were a few people in my life that i could talk to about it and and and understood um but so here's the
01:21:12
funny thing again you feel like such an ass like it's like you're literally experiencing
01:21:19
the most success of your entire career and you feel so aimless and lost and i remember
01:21:24
the first person i came across i've got a friend in new york who was the co-founder of a unicorn startup
01:21:30
and uh and i remember he was the first person i mentioned it to and he was like well
01:21:35
yeah of course you know and he's like every every founder has this like it happens all the time
01:21:42
um and then the the other group of people that i found that understood uh i did some podcasts with uh
01:21:49
some famous comedians and and every single one of them was like of course dude like every comedian who gets their first special
01:21:56
they're like the year after is like the worst year of their life i completely get it i struggled with
01:22:02
understanding why am i ungrateful but that's really fascinating i don't
01:22:08
think it's not something that i i knew about you but it's of course if i'd really thought about it i would have
01:22:14
been able to guess that that wouldn't have been yeah it's i think part of it too is the
01:22:20
velocity of success yeah um i think if it
01:22:25
if it had happened more gradually because like my online business right
01:22:30
like my online business basically grew like 10 20 a year
01:22:36
for like eight years straight so it ended up being a making a lot of money
01:22:41
but it was each year was like 20 better than the last year so it's like my mind
01:22:47
had time to adjust but then this comes along and suddenly suddenly you're like
01:22:52
you know 500 exam or 200 x in whatever you were at before
01:22:59
and uh and like your brain just can't keep up like it's how did you
01:23:05
like recalibrate and come out the other end and how did you kind of readjust your thinking to say okay we're gonna strive for things now we know that it
01:23:11
might not reach the meteoric success of this but there's another you know set of foundations that way
01:23:18
it's funny um so the the the next book everything is [ __ ] was very much motivated by all this you
01:23:25
know so so it's the core thesis that we just talked about everything is [ __ ] is like what is it about
01:23:31
being comfortable and affluent that like [ __ ] with you oh yeah makes us so like neurotic you know uh
01:23:38
and it's because i was going through that so that it's like i've always written the books that i
01:23:43
need to read um and so everything is [ __ ] was exactly kind of what i needed to read there's a
01:23:50
lot of like just subtle mental adjustments you know again like realizing that i can say no to a lot of
01:23:55
this stuff like it took me like a year or two to realize like i don't have to accept all these speaking gigs like you
01:24:00
know i'm tired i'm like i'm exhausted like i don't have to say yes i don't need the money like you could start
01:24:06
saying no to this stuff um you know that it took a while for that to sink in and then and then kind
01:24:12
of finding another why you know like i i think for me it was
01:24:19
it was uh you know so much of my identity
01:24:25
and i i actually didn't realize this until the pandemic um but like so much of my identity was kind of
01:24:32
wrapped up in like being the upstart internet blogger
01:24:37
who's kind of like you know overcoming you know somehow overcomes the odds and becomes
01:24:43
this huge best-selling author like a big part of my identity was wrapped up in that and i realized that that holding on
01:24:50
to that was not helpful it was actually kind of that was a big part of what was making
01:24:56
me miserable and so letting go of that and just kind of accepting like
01:25:01
okay i'm an author now but you know maybe i won't be forever or
01:25:07
yeah i'm an internet entrepreneur but maybe i won't be forever like you know it doesn't you're not your label exactly
01:25:14
like i i can go do anything that i want like i'm not like beholden to this
01:25:20
narrow lane that i lived in for so long um and so kind of coming to that realization was it was actually
01:25:26
very very helpful so two points there then you talked about finding your new why
01:25:32
coming out of that and the other point was about learning to say no let's start first then with learning how to say no
01:25:38
you're in a phase of your life now where you're between projects yep right um you've been working very hard for a long
01:25:43
period of time as you said before we start recording six years and so so how do you fall so six years
01:25:49
of working very very hard your projects have been ticked off obviously you're in the uk on your press run will's books coming out which you've
01:25:55
just written so how does how do you approach switching off and that phase of being in between
01:26:02
work you know in a culture and amongst a narrative where you should always be climbing and working or yeah for some
01:26:08
reason that feels like it's connected to our sense of worth right in society if we're we're not working we're not
01:26:13
striving yeah i i think so the kind of that that hustle culture
01:26:20
right like i think there is value in that like i'm extremely grateful that i
01:26:25
did learn the work really really hard like ridiculously hard i think that's a very valuable life skill and
01:26:33
for people who are young or starting out or starting their business like i think it's incredibly valuable to learn that and
01:26:40
and to cultivate that but i think kind of what i've discovered the last year or two is like there's a lot of value in also learning how to
01:26:47
find the off switch because it's very easy to kind of become
01:26:52
compulsive about work and and also develop kind of a
01:26:58
this irrational belief that like if you stop it's all going to disappear you know it's like oh if i take a week off
01:27:04
like all the traffic's going to go away and the book sales are going to stop and it's completely irrational but like it's
01:27:12
when you're caught up in that that constant hustling and striving like that that's what it feels like
01:27:18
to me it's it's i i finally hit a point about midway through this year that i had no major project like the wheel book
01:27:25
was done i just did a documentary in new zealand like that like all the shooting for that was done
01:27:31
and then my next book isn't due to harper for another year or two and originally i was going to start
01:27:37
writing that immediately but then i took a couple weeks off and i'm like oh my god this is so good like
01:27:43
this is so good and so i decided to kind of just take the rest of the year off um
01:27:50
from any major project and and and just kind of basically work kind of part-time and manage my my online team and
01:27:56
um and it's been wonderful like it's and it's the world doesn't collapse and it's
01:28:03
it's been so recharging for me not just like in terms of energy but
01:28:08
creativity um and then also kind of this identity piece that i was referring to like it's only by getting distance from
01:28:15
something that you're able to disidentify from it like you know when if you're working on something 12 hours a day you're gonna identify with it like
01:28:22
it's impossible not to but then when you pull back you're actually able to sit there and kind of ask yourself like do i
01:28:28
want to be an author forever do i want to have an internet business forever uh
01:28:33
do i want to go you know do i want to start doing more celebrity memoirs do i want to
01:28:39
try to work in film like what do i want to do like what's the next why and i
01:28:44
think this is like a really important point that doesn't get talked about enough is that like you're wha like
01:28:49
there's not this this predetermined why out there that
01:28:54
just exists forever like your why is always changing you know my why when i was 25 was get laid make money and get
01:29:02
laid and uh you know and then my why in in my 30s was was you know become a big author
01:29:08
and super successful and get a lot of attention and accolades and and i'm realizing that like my why in my 40s is
01:29:15
probably going to be something else and that's not only is that okay but that's actually exciting now
01:29:21
i don't know i don't know um suspicions i really i really so here's the thing
01:29:28
after subtle art i i kind of lost my why but i freaked out like it it terrified
01:29:34
me um because i think i was still in that mindset of like this could go away at any moment
01:29:41
and you know and now i'm at a place where i'm like no no like i'm good
01:29:48
you know it helps that the book is still selling really well you know four or five years later the wheel book is doing super well you know so it's like i'm
01:29:54
good like this phase of my career is solidified and as soon as i kind of like became
01:30:02
confident in that the why question went from being scary to just exciting it's like i get to go
01:30:08
play like i can just screw around like i can spend a week just like screwing around
01:30:14
with crypto and like nobody could tell me not to like it's it's and
01:30:20
it's like is this a thing i don't know maybe it will be maybe it won't you know or i can um i can screw around with like
01:30:28
with a screenplay i feel like i'm like a kid in a sandbox you know so interesting that you've got to that point where you
01:30:34
can have freedom without a sense of meaninglessness yeah whereas
01:30:40
which is really interesting and maybe that's because you have got some projects in the future you do have
01:30:45
a book coming up i do have another book yeah um but i'm trying to understand what what what's got you to the place
01:30:51
where you can now have the freedom without it being disorientating and i think the thing that changed
01:30:58
honestly is the confidence that i can do it again
01:31:04
you know it's i think one of my deep-seated fears when subtle art blew up was like this is a
01:31:10
fluke i got lucky so as a result of that so much of my motivation was like don't
01:31:16
lose it right like keep fighting keep posting online keep
01:31:21
writing newsletters keep the books coming like promote the [ __ ] out of them you know we don't want
01:31:27
to lose this and then i think i i kind of hit a point where i'm like
01:31:33
i don't need to fight for it anymore like it it's it's not going to go away you know i earned it it's going to stick
01:31:38
around i don't need the fight for this forever this is going and so and then once that
01:31:44
happened yeah i just it stopped being about trying to hold on to what i have and it
01:31:50
became much more of just like oh there's a freedom here you know and i could go do some amazing
01:31:56
stuff especially now i have resources and connections and all this stuff like i like
01:32:01
there are a lot of great opportunities that could happen in front of me and so now it now it's it's actually just excitement
01:32:08
um yeah so we just have a tradition the previous guest leaves a question for the
01:32:14
next guest okay our last guest wrote for you yeah what is your favorite quote
01:32:20
my favorite quote is from david foster wallace he said you'll stop worrying so much what other people think of you when
01:32:27
you realize how seldom they do it's kind of dark but also liberating
01:32:33
and it requires an explanation because it's so interlinked what we've been talking about thank you so much for your time today your books have been i'm so
01:32:40
refreshing in this space because they're so real they're so um multifaceted and nuanced and they
01:32:46
present a different perspective on self-help and personal development which is not often um
01:32:52
uh not often conveyed in a lot of the books that i've read so your book i think was just so your the subtle art book was such a smash hit because it was
01:33:00
so um refreshingly uniquely um challenging in so many fundamental
01:33:06
ways and your next book is actually my favorite your book after that about hope and about meaning was so
01:33:11
from the the narratives that we share was so on the money for me because it
01:33:16
answered a lot of those fundamental questions about meaning and the need for struggle which again people in our
01:33:21
society don't appreciate the need for struggle the work you're doing is amazing and your new book with will um
01:33:27
is is more of the same and i can't wait to to get stuck into that book as well thank you for for your time today
01:33:32
honestly you're one of the people in my life that i genuinely were so excited about meeting because because of those um common narratives and yeah you're
01:33:39
doing a real service to our society so thank you thank you appreciate that thanks quick one can you do me a favor if
01:33:45
you're listening to this and hit the subscribe button the follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast me and my team use that as an
01:33:52
indication of whether the episode is good or not based on how many new followers and subscribers we get thank
01:33:57
you so much
01:34:03
[Music] you
