WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.031 --> 00:00:23.453 Hello everybody, Mark Manson here, and today I have something very special and a little bit different for you. Back in November, I did a speaking tour all across Australia. I spoke in seven different cities and spoke to almost 10,000 people, including at the famed Opera House. Now at the shows, we recorded the live Q&A sessions, and well, we picked a handful of the best ones to share with you on the podcast today. So... 2 00:00:23.453 --> 00:00:47.045 In today's episode, we're going to be going through live Q&A and you're going to learn the best method to improve yourself while staying true to who you actually are. We're going to talk about why you can't find your purpose in life and what to do instead. We'll discuss the trade-offs that have an outsized return and how to navigate those and figure out what they are. We'll talk about turning imposter syndrome on its head and no longer letting it hold you back. 3 00:00:47.045 --> 00:01:07.565 I'll share what I think about Australia's ban on social media for kids. For those of you who don't know, Australia is forcing the social media platforms to create a kids-only section. And I'm going to go over how to know if a relationship is the right one for you. And of course, what it really means to stop giving a fuck so you can start living the life you want. 4 00:01:07.565 --> 00:01:29.063 Shout out to all the Australians out there. I know a ton of you are listening right now. I appreciate you coming out for the events. Honestly, it was the experience of a lifetime. It was a dream to speak in some of those venues. You Aussies are very well versed in the no fucks given philosophy. In fact, I have a YouTube video going up on Sunday all about that. It's a vlog of the tour and also an investigation into why Australians... 5 00:01:29.063 --> 00:01:55.388 Just give zero fucks. So be sure to check that out. And in the meantime, if you want to send in your questions, comments, love letters, trolling hate mail, pictures of your cats, you can send them the podcast at markmanson.net and I will make Drew read all of them. So we'll be back next week with a regularly scheduled podcast episode. In the meantime, here is the Australian Q&A. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. 6 00:01:59.827 --> 00:02:27.485 We're just going to try to move through as many people as possible. So anybody who wants to ask anything, please come up to the mic. Do we have anybody, any brave souls? How does one identify what truly matters in life to them when everything seems so important and overwhelming? Well, there's a quick way and a long way. The quick way is to almost die. 7 00:02:31.568 --> 00:03:00.188 And that's not a joke. Anybody here who has had a near-death experience or who has had somebody very close to them die suddenly, nothing shows you what matters in that moment more. The long way, I think, is the most reliable thing that I've found is just process of elimination. You don't really know how much you value something until it's removed from your life. 8 00:03:00.492 --> 00:03:28.083 Because when it's in your life, you're not objective about it. You get attached to all the nice little perks and cute little hats you get to wear and people who pat you on the back. It's only when it's taken away from you or temporarily removed, this comes back to the experiment thing, when it's temporarily removed, then you can actually see, huh, yeah, I actually wasn't getting a whole lot out of that. 9 00:03:28.403 --> 00:03:45.886 So yeah, my advice to people is usually try removing things for periods of time and see how you respond. And a lot of times it will surprise you. Thank you. Hello. 10 00:03:46.038 --> 00:04:10.709 Hi. A significantly negative trait of all of us, I think most of us, is procrastination. Recently, a podcast you did with Brandon Novak, his mentor stated that procrastination is like masturbation, you're only fucking yourself. Why then are most of us aware of this, but yet we still continue to fuck ourselves? 11 00:04:15.569 --> 00:04:26.420 Oh, Brandon is so eloquent. Funny story about him is he came on my podcast and within no shit, within three minutes, he was taking his pants off. 12 00:04:28.529 --> 00:04:56.947 He came in, it was hilarious. He came in, met my producer, Drew, and we were just kind of like having small talk, and Drew was like, yeah, I'm from Nebraska. And Brandon's like, oh, dude, I gotta show you my tattoo about Nebraska. And he just like started undoing his pants, totally butt ass naked, and he had this tattoo on his upper thigh that said, it said, I got fucked in the ass in Nebraska, and all I got was this tattoo. 13 00:04:59.258 --> 00:05:20.875 I'm not making any of that up. So procrastination is, it's, so my take on procrastination is that it is primarily emotionally driven. And I think there's two ways to think about it. One is that 14 00:05:21.955 --> 00:05:47.960 Anytime our perception of a task feels overwhelming, and overwhelming can mean a lot of different things. It can mean difficult. It can mean extremely significant. It can mean risky. Basically, overwhelming in any sense of, I guess, salience or importance. Our natural reaction is to kind of resist it. 15 00:05:48.162 --> 00:06:09.965 and find reasons to like, you know, it's uncomfortable. And so we find excuses to put it off or, you know, pretend like it doesn't need to be done today. And I think, so what I've found in my life, the most effective way to combat procrastination is to simply lower the stakes on something. 16 00:06:10.538 --> 00:06:33.978 is to, instead of sitting down and being like, okay, I need to write a 10-page article today, and this article is going to be published in this place and read by thousands, and if I start thinking about that, it's going to freak me out. Instead, I just sit down and I'm like, okay, let's write a good intro, and that's it. I don't think past that, 17 00:06:34.805 --> 00:06:44.305 And when you're able to bite-size things down into more manageable chunks, that sense of overwhelm 18 00:06:45.166 --> 00:07:11.693 dissipates and it becomes easier to do. And the other beautiful thing about it too is that once you do do the bite-sized version, it gives you emotional momentum and you're able to continue on longer into the task. So that's the most effective thing I've ever found for myself. I guess a distant second would be to set up your environment in a way to kind of create incentive 19 00:07:12.250 --> 00:07:27.202 And part of that might be like try to make it a little bit fun, but ultimately it's just I just lower the stakes until it stops being scary and overwhelming, and then I get to work. So I hope that helps. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. Hello. 20 00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:54.455 Sorry, I'm really nervous. I guess after you've been through something in your life that's been quite traumatizing, how can you actually stop the mindset that the world is out to get you instead of just pretending you don't give a fuck about it? Yeah, pretending is not good. 21 00:07:54.927 --> 00:08:21.809 It's exhausting for one, but it also, like, I think it causes you to show up in the world, you know, censoring who you are, and that's never a good thing. That doesn't make things better. I think a huge part of this is collecting evidence that the world's not out to get you, right? Like, find people 22 00:08:23.243 --> 00:08:51.053 in your life that are trustworthy, find places in your life that are safe, find people that you can share things with and be vulnerable with and expose yourself to and see that nothing horrible happens. Now to somebody who's been through a lot of trauma, that's much easier said than done, but that is the project. And it's a very long-term project 23 00:08:52.741 --> 00:09:17.125 I think that's ultimately, that is the healing process, is like taking that part of yourself that somebody else hurt deeply and then having a relationship with a new person who doesn't hurt you in the same context. And it helps you rebuild that trust in people in general and trust in the world in general. 24 00:09:18.745 --> 00:09:46.606 So that's the long-term solution. I don't have any short-term solutions, unfortunately. But it is possible, and it does happen, and it's a long road. But I would say stop pretending. You can give a fuck. Just tell people. You mentioned experiments. How long would you give an experiment before you sort of realized that it didn't work? 25 00:09:48.462 --> 00:10:11.783 It's a great question. The annoying answer is it depends on the experiment. So I think some things you can, you can recognize quite quickly and others take a long time to tie into the procrastination point though. I do think you should start any experiment with a short enough timeline that it doesn't feel intimidating. So I'll give you an example. Uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I 26 00:10:11.986 --> 00:10:27.443 drank pretty heavily basically my whole life. And I'm now sober. I haven't had a drink in two and a half years. It was not... Thank you. It was not intentional, right? 27 00:10:28.372 --> 00:10:56.688 It was during that health journey I talked about during the talk, I quit alcohol for 30 days just as an experiment. As like, well, I'm trying to get these last few kilos off. Like, let's give up the booze for a while. I had never done it before. And the 30 days was, my health coach, being honest now, I'm being transparent here. I did not decide to quit for 30 days. My health coach was like, 28 00:10:57.599 --> 00:11:14.288 you lazy piece of shit, you drink too much, I've been telling you this for two years, you should do 30 days without alcohol. And it was finally, I was like, okay, 30 days is doable. It's not that bad. And what happened was I did the 30 days, 29 00:11:14.643 --> 00:11:39.736 And when I got to the end of it, it went so well, it exceeded my expectations by far. There was all sorts of cognitive and emotional and just lifestyle benefits that were completely unanticipated that I was like, shit, I'm enjoying this train that I'm on. Like, let's do 90. And so then I did 90. And then actually at the end of the 90, I had a drink. 30 00:11:40.377 --> 00:12:05.943 which was an experiment of like, I wonder what it's gonna be like when I go back and have a drink again. And when I had the drink, I was like, wow, this is terrible. I feel awful. And so I gave up alcohol and I haven't had it since. But my point is that I think in general people are too rigid with their goals. 31 00:12:06.128 --> 00:12:34.057 People get way too attached to the 30 days or the 10 kilos or the certain amount of money they wanna make. What matters is the directionality and the information you're gaining by doing the thing. So anytime a goal stops serving you, anytime an experiment stops serving you, you don't feel like you're learning anything new and it's clear that you don't like this, 32 00:12:35.423 --> 00:13:02.575 Stop. Anytime you are learning something new, even if you don't really like it, as long as you're learning something new, you should keep going. And at some point, if it's making you miserable, then you should try to alter the experiment to try to find a way to not make yourself miserable. But the real thing, the real point of all this is just information, learning about yourself, understanding yourself. I know not drinking made me aware of so much shit in myself that, 33 00:13:03.790 --> 00:13:15.063 I never anticipated. And there's a lot of things like that. So yeah, that's the best answer I got. Thank you. 34 00:13:19.315 --> 00:13:48.256 I feel like it's a very common human thing, but the idea of not caring about what other people think or say about you, because every single time it feels like I want to live my own life and do what I want, there's always someone that I don't really talk to that has something to say about it. Yeah, people suck. Tell me about it. There was a thing I wrote a couple months ago. It was like, 35 00:13:49.927 --> 00:14:12.893 If you wouldn't ask them for advice, then why the fuck do you care about their criticism? And before you go, this is the sort of thing that will never, there'll never be a point in your life where people, like random people, don't judge you. That's just unfortunately a fact of life. 36 00:14:14.429 --> 00:14:40.315 The key is, and you will always care to a certain extent, the key is to care about something else much more. Right, when you have something that's so important that it's worth being disliked for, then you become unstoppable. Hi Mark, I'm a lawyer but I promise I'm not an asshole. 37 00:14:43.268 --> 00:15:06.910 You talked a lot about the idea of killing versions of ourselves and the examples you gave were more recently in your health kick but also when you were younger, sort of the idea of not being a musician anymore. In your career, do you find that people, there's a common thread of what people find the hardest thing to give up, whether that's a relationship or some sort of vice or something else? Yeah. Yeah. 38 00:15:07.315 --> 00:15:36.340 I think, I mean, you definitely nailed two of the big ones. So many people stay in bad relationships way too long. And I think a lot of it doesn't even have to do with the other person anymore. It's like they've long stopped liking or respecting the other person. It's just they don't know who they are outside of that relationship. And they're afraid to figure that out. And so they stay in longer. And they continue to justify it. Addiction is a big one because... 39 00:15:36.543 --> 00:16:00.134 As anybody who has gone through AA will tell you, addicts build their identity around their addiction. And so when you remove the addiction, then you have to start dealing with all these second and third order effects around their life and their lifestyle. I'd say career is another one. 40 00:16:02.513 --> 00:16:31.302 Coincidentally, I've met many lawyers who absolutely fucking hate their job, but they like the money. I said, why? I'm glad you like your job. But you've probably met them too. Like it's, you know, they like the money, they like the prestige, they like the corner office, like all the stuff that they've achieved. And it's extremely hard to give that up because if they give that up, then who are they, right? 41 00:16:34.171 --> 00:16:56.750 Those are probably the biggest three, I would say, that you see the most often. So thank you. Thank you. Hi, Mark. Hello. I have a pretty straightforward question for your last one, which is, what is your best advice for a long-term successful marriage? LAUGHTER 42 00:17:02.656 --> 00:17:31.883 Fighting is gonna be inevitable. I think judgment is optional. And I think it's really, really important to understand both of those things. I find that like a lot of people either assume that they should never fight because they, if they do start fighting, then they start judging each other and say all sorts of mean things. And then a lot of people fight a lot and they think that sort of thing is normal. I think it's, 43 00:17:32.238 --> 00:17:56.453 Conflict is expected and it's necessary. In a lot of ways, it's actually good because it keeps both people aligned and aware of the other person's needs. And it also, if you have successful conflict, which is essentially what I'm talking about here, where the conflict is productive rather than destructive, 44 00:17:57.618 --> 00:18:23.470 it builds trust. You actually need conflict to build trust. Like you need to see the other person get pissed off at you and storm out or whatever and feel hurt and then resolve it and make up and things are actually better because that builds trust and then it like reinforces the fact of like, oh, this is okay, I'm safe with this person, you know, something terrible is not gonna happen. 45 00:18:23.639 --> 00:18:49.424 Like that's where the real intimacy comes from. So conflict's inevitable and necessary, but the judgment is not. And where conflict can easily turn toxic is when people stop making it about the thing, about the value difference, and they make it about the person. So, you know, instead of, you didn't load the dishwasher right, it's like you're a slobby, lazy person. 46 00:18:50.757 --> 00:18:58.300 Or, you know, you, instead of like, hey, I'd appreciate it if you had like better 47 00:18:58.722 --> 00:19:28.658 financial awareness. It's like, you're horrible with money and I can't trust you to have a credit card anymore. So it's doing the whole love the sinner, hate the sin type thing and speaking to each other in terms of values and needs and respecting the values and needs of each other without turning it personal and demeaning each other and turning it into a power struggle of who's scoring the most points against somebody else. 48 00:19:30.245 --> 00:19:44.167 I guess my whole answer here is just fight productively. Fight productively. Thank you. I have a relationship question. 49 00:19:44.723 --> 00:20:04.568 Lucky you. Yeah. Lucky them. Just share with this random collection of people. Yes. About three months ago, I met a woman. We've been getting on very well. And recently, because of some personal problems in her life, we hit a little bit of a roadblock. 50 00:20:04.568 --> 00:20:31.467 We've talked through what those problems were, and she's now asked if we can be friends for a number of weeks while she sorts through those personal problems with the idea or the hope and tension of coming back together as romantic partners. My question is, given what I've explained, do you think it's likely that we would come back together? LAUGHTER LAUGHTER 51 00:20:34.302 --> 00:20:58.417 It's Markstradamus over here. What was funny about any of that? My heart's on my sleeve here. No, no. Assholes. No. We, I think they're laughing at my lack of prediction abilities. They're not laughing at you. I'm sorry to hear that, first of all. 52 00:21:00.290 --> 00:21:28.268 It's hard for me to say. Without knowing detail. The tough thing about relationship issues is that so much of it really does boil down to the details, but it can definitely go either way. Neither direction would surprise me. So if I had to put odds on it, I would put it around 50-50. But let me say this. Okay. 53 00:21:29.686 --> 00:21:51.556 I think what's really important for you during this period is to simply let it play out. Because clearly it's like whatever's going on, it's about her, right? And if she comes back, then great, because that will validate and solidify all the things that you felt and all the potential that you see in this relationship. 54 00:21:51.556 --> 00:22:16.075 And if she doesn't come back, then it just means that it wasn't the right person for you. And it frees you to go find somebody else. So it's a win-win. So just don't try to control it. Let it happen. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Wow, a double clap. Looking at the U.S. elections. 55 00:22:17.408 --> 00:22:42.788 One of the outcomes of this is we are seeing bad behavior at the personal level being rewarded. Would you say society as a whole is no longer prizing civility but rewarding bad behavior? And why? It's a good question. 56 00:22:43.902 --> 00:22:59.208 The short answer is yes, I think it is rewarding bad behavior. The longer answer is I don't know if this is necessarily new. I think it's the bad behavior, the definition of the bad behavior, the type of bad behavior is shifted. 57 00:22:59.393 --> 00:23:24.301 One of the things I've noticed, and maybe people here have noticed the same thing, but there's all these documentaries that are coming out about the 90s and early 2000s, about different celebrities or political moments or whatever. And it's funny because every time I watch one, I'm like, people were such assholes. People were so mean. Just common in the discourse, TV shows, tabloids. 58 00:23:24.301 --> 00:23:53.191 Everything. Like people were really antisocial. And if you look at the music back then, it was very antisocial. It was very destructive. Drug use was glorified. You know, breaking, destroying hotel rooms was glorified. And so it's funny because it's like that bad behavior was rewarded back then. But because we grew up with it, it doesn't register. And now the bad behavior that we're not used to is being rewarded. 59 00:23:53.191 --> 00:24:02.523 And because we're not used to it, that's registering. And so I don't know, like ultimately bad behavior gets attention. 60 00:24:02.928 --> 00:24:30.670 the nature of media and pop culture is that it will always reward what gets attention. And so some form of bad behavior will always be rewarded to some degree or another. I think it's just a question of what is the bad behavior and what is the cost? It comes back to the trade-off thing. Is the cost here worth it or not? In terms of the election, I get the sense that this is like a thinly veiled Trump question. Which... 61 00:24:32.628 --> 00:25:00.286 This is my sixth time in Australia, and at this point I'm very used to explaining Trump to Australians. So here's what I would say, especially about this particular moment in time. If you want to understand why he's being rewarded, you have to understand that there's a very large part of the United States that has felt ignored, condescended to, overlooked, and... 62 00:25:00.623 --> 00:25:24.063 and demeaned rightfully or wrongfully. Like you could argue whether they're justified or not, but the point is they have felt that way for decades. And he has found a way to tap into that. And because he's tapped into that, they like it when he's mean. They like it when he's an asshole. And so he's rewarded for it. So I'm not... 63 00:25:25.278 --> 00:25:52.767 It sucks, but it is what it is. And I think it's, coming back to my point about being honest, I find that a lot of people in the United States particularly, I find that people on the left don't want to be honest about that. They want to find all these other reasons why he keeps winning. And they want all these other justifications that fits their preconceived notions. They don't want to see what's plainly there, 64 00:25:53.594 --> 00:26:06.402 He's tapped into a lot of anger that's existed in the country from multiple decades. And that's why he keeps getting rewarded for it. So that's my opinion. That's my take. Thank you. 65 00:26:12.258 --> 00:26:37.199 Hi, Mark. I want to talk about trade-offs because I sort of, I go to the gym and it's a trade-off and I love that trade-off. It's great. What are some trade-offs that are pretty awesome that people should do that aren't obvious? That's a great question. I do think health-related ones have like, 66 00:26:37.807 --> 00:26:46.598 just a lot of non-obvious upside, gym being one of them, exercise being one of them. It's funny, so... 67 00:26:46.717 --> 00:27:14.273 I stopped drinking two and a half years ago and it was completely unintentional. Um, it started as an experiment and initially it was just to lose weight. And I, I, you know, I drank a lot my entire life and I really, really enjoyed it. As I said, last time I was in Adelaide, I was shit faced pretty much the whole time. The wine here is so good guys. Seriously. Well done. Well done. Um, 68 00:27:16.214 --> 00:27:39.957 So I did a 30-day no alcohol thing, and it blew my mind, the cognitive benefits, the emotional benefits, the amount of energy I had. I got stronger in the gym without any extra effort. It just started compounding on all these things, and it really blew me away. I also think in terms of tradeoffs, I think this kind of ties into the relationship thing. 69 00:27:41.003 --> 00:28:02.468 I think in relationships, there are small things often have disproportionate benefits, right? So checking in with people with just a text message occasionally, like, disproportionately rewards you because it keeps you connected to that person and it, like, opens up social opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't have. 70 00:28:02.924 --> 00:28:23.495 I also think developing good habits around conversation skills, like asking good questions, like also has very disproportionate benefits. I honestly think like most of the good things that happen to us throughout life happens because of other people. And, you know, so the more you can connect yourself with other people, like the more you're going to benefit from that. So I guess... 71 00:28:24.389 --> 00:28:53.600 what I'm circling around here is it's actually the mundane stuff. It's the boring stuff that has a shocking amount of upside, but it's not sexy and it doesn't like, you know, get any clicks on Instagram. So people, people overlook it. And, but ultimately it is boring and mundane for a reason. It's because it's, it's what works. So thank you. 72 00:28:57.852 --> 00:29:23.722 So obviously your book is aimed at adults. I'm 38, I guess that would kind of maybe be the average age of people here. I don't know. I'm here tonight with my son's foster mum, which is a big deal for me to admit. And our caseworker is actually also in the audience. So we're an unlikely trio to be here tonight. My son is coming back into my care on the 22nd of November. 73 00:29:23.722 --> 00:29:50.671 And your work, along with the work of Gabor Matei, has been fundamental in me actually pulling my finger out and realising what the hell's going on. Now, if you were to put something together that was aimed at a lower age demographic, basically when my kid comes home, what of your stuff should I start integrating straightaway so that he does not fuck himself up or I don't fuck him up? 74 00:29:50.671 --> 00:30:19.038 Like, if you were going to write a kid's book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Crap, what would you fundamentally be putting into that? And big love to Sarah, his foster mum, and Phoebe, the caseworker who's in the audience tonight as well. Congratulations, by the way. That's amazing. How old is he? He is his six on the 30th of November, so he comes home a week before his birthday. Okay. 75 00:30:20.118 --> 00:30:35.120 So the age matters a lot because, you know, just the nature of child development, like they're literally not able to conceive of certain things until certain ages, right? So I generally tell people that... 76 00:30:36.065 --> 00:31:02.963 You know, my work is very identity-driven, values-driven, accommodating, figuring out pain, suffering, dealing with hardship, stuff like that. And most of that sort of stuff comes online in early adolescence to mid-adolescence. So when I get this question, I always tell people, teenagers, for sure, and I've even had teachers who are like, can I just, like, delete all the F-bombs and... 77 00:31:02.963 --> 00:31:13.358 you know, give this chapter to my students or whatever? I'm like, yeah, of course. So teenagers for sure. When you get younger than that, you know, the... 78 00:31:13.679 --> 00:31:42.637 kind of the project of a healthy child at each age range is a little bit different. You know, six to eight years old, honestly, the most important thing you can do is just support him emotionally and be present and be accepting and, you know, try to set hurdles in front of him that he can clear. And then the ones he doesn't clear, support him, you know, let him know it's okay and help, like, encourage him to try again. 79 00:31:42.637 --> 00:31:59.107 You know, that is probably your most important role for the next three to four years, is just be like a stable emotional force in his life and let him find his own life. 80 00:31:59.714 --> 00:32:25.145 G'day, Mark. A lot of people close to me suffer from imposter syndrome. From your experiences, how did you overcome imposter syndrome? And the second part of the question is, do you believe it is something you have to overcome yourself or as a support person or someone you're close with, can you be involved with their self-realisation of that? 81 00:32:26.495 --> 00:32:50.103 I think imposter syndrome you can definitely overcome. I think imposter syndrome is just a mismatch between expectation and reality. It's like my expectation of my own skill or worth is here and the world is telling me it's here, right? And that fucks with people just as much as the reverse fucks with them as well. 82 00:32:51.402 --> 00:33:13.492 In the case of imposter syndrome, I feel like it's simply remembering. It's two things. It's one, it's remembering what you're good at and all the work you put into being good at it. And then I think the second thing is also, and this is kind of the mindset shift that I eventually got to, was like, okay, well, it's here now. 83 00:33:14.234 --> 00:33:35.986 you know, live up to it, right? If this is where the expectation is, then like work up to that new expectation. Don't sit around freaking out being like, oh my God, all these people expect all this stuff from me. It's like, no, fucking get to work, start practicing, get better, build the skills and like earn your way up to it. And, um, 84 00:33:38.213 --> 00:34:02.176 I found that useful. I don't know if that's going to necessarily work for everybody, but it's, you know, I think however you can close that gap between expectation and where you actually are, whether it's by lowering your own expectations or working your way up to those expectations, that will resolve the anxiety. So thank you. 85 00:34:03.492 --> 00:34:25.042 Hi Mark. Hello. On behalf of the room, thank you so much for these micro therapy sessions. I just wanted to say that. Do you have a litmus test to sense check when relationship trade-offs are leading you to settle for less than what you think you deserve? It's hard. This question is hard because there are so many people out there 86 00:34:26.054 --> 00:34:55.349 who think they deserve shit. And then there are a lot of people out there who think they deserve everything. And so I think a lot of it boils down to what do you think you deserve and how realistic is that? I think ultimately what you should expect is respect, trust, trust, trust, 87 00:34:55.568 --> 00:35:09.625 open communication, some shared values, generally enjoying your time with the other person. I think if your expectations start to exceed that drastically, then you're... 88 00:35:11.330 --> 00:35:38.650 you're setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak and failure. And I think if your expectations fail to meet that drastically, you're also setting yourself up for a lot of heartbreak and failures. So I guess that's the best way I can answer that. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Mark. I struggle with being overly empathetic to the point where it gets you in trouble. 89 00:35:39.005 --> 00:36:08.215 have a bad habit of just seeing the good in everyone, and most importantly giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. So if some asshole cuts you off, I don't get upset about it anymore. Maybe they're having the worst fucking day of their lives. Yeah. I'll let it go, those sort of things. But I find myself doing that with everything and everyone, um, which makes it very hard to sort of stand your ground and have a backbone, essentially. Yeah. 90 00:36:09.582 --> 00:36:33.140 And I feel like the one time I do sort of stand my ground, I get it so wrong and I've hurt the person's feelings. And yeah, if you had any advice on that sort of thing, if you can gauge the question out of that. I love this question because it's Oscar Wilde has this great quote where he says, everything in moderation, including moderation. 91 00:36:33.730 --> 00:37:01.473 It's funny because empathy is so important, but if all you do is empathize all the time, then you get walked over, right? So you need to be able to set boundaries and set limits and say no to people and disappoint people and occasionally hurt or upset people. But you don't wanna always hurt and upset people and always say no to people. So there's like, it's a very tricky thing, 92 00:37:03.717 --> 00:37:23.107 I would look at it like this. Standing up for yourself, it's a skill. And like all skills, you're really bad at it if you've never done it before. And so the first few times it's going to be very messy and clunky and you're probably going to be overly emotional and overreact and, you know, maybe upset the other person. 93 00:37:23.832 --> 00:37:43.340 As you do it more, you'll get better at it. And what I would say is that it's helpful to really establish for yourself beforehand the things that you will and will not tolerate in your life, absent of the person. Because it's like once the person's in your life, 94 00:37:43.694 --> 00:38:09.597 and they do the thing that you don't want to tolerate, well, you know them, and you kind of like them. And it's like, well, they don't mean it. Like, they're a good person, and maybe if I give them another chance, like all those things start entering your head, and, you know, it's a slippery slope. Whereas if you establish way beforehand what you do and do not tolerate in your life, that they're just rules you have for everybody, 95 00:38:09.901 --> 00:38:37.795 then when that person does show up and do those behaviors, it's already resolved. You already know. Sorry, you're gone. And the result of this is that you actually end up maybe cutting off people kind of quickly more often, but it prevents you a lot of headaches down the road. It's kind of like, you know, they always say in business, be slow to hire and fast to fire. Like, 96 00:38:38.217 --> 00:38:58.450 It's kind of like that for personal relationships too. Like you want to catch the behavior early, catch the red flag. And just once you see that first red flag, you know, in this day and age where you can meet so many people, it's like, yeah, I'm not gonna mess with that. So hopefully that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. 97 00:39:00.442 --> 00:39:25.400 Welcome, Mark, to Perth. Thank you. You might recently have heard that the Australian government are going to implement age restrictions on social media for children up to 16 years of age. I wonder what your thoughts are about how that will actually run in terms of a 16-year-old now that actually that's their social life and where that's going to head. 98 00:39:27.593 --> 00:39:38.123 I think it's great. By the way, I didn't know this until I landed in Sydney airport and I saw a big thing talking about like teenage Instagram or something like that. 99 00:39:38.849 --> 00:40:07.570 I think this is fantastic. A friend of mine, Jonathan Haidt, he's been spending the last five years researching this, accumulating all the research on it. He just put out an amazing book called The Anxious Generation. To me, the evidence of social media affecting young people below the age of, say, 15, 16, 14, 15, 16, like anything below that, it seems pretty... 100 00:40:08.212 --> 00:40:24.378 inarguable that it's a bad thing. I imagine it will be messy when they implement it. Like kids will find a way around it. And then, you know, it'll be, there'll be a lot of uncertainty and stuff. But I just think the long-term trend is that 101 00:40:25.424 --> 00:40:51.361 we should try to delay some of this stuff as long as possible. And so I do think, I think your government's doing the right thing. And they are, as far as I know, they're the first ones doing it. So good on you, Australia. Hi, I'm 16. What's your best piece of advice or wisdom that you could give me? Stay off social media. 102 00:40:53.386 --> 00:41:20.470 That was like a layup. No, no, no, no. I'm going to answer. I'm going to answer. Thank you. This is too good. I couldn't pass it up. Advice for young people. So what I generally tell teenagers is the whole point of this period of your life is 103 00:41:21.601 --> 00:41:49.664 is to really figure out who you are, what you like, what you don't like, who you like, who you don't like, what sort of people you want to associate with. And this is gonna be a process of a lot of experimentation. My experience is that a lot of people your age, and even much older, up to kids in uni kids and kids in their early 20s, there's this immense pressure that they put on themselves 104 00:41:50.474 --> 00:42:09.172 And some of that pressure comes from school, it comes from universities, it comes from parents, whatever, that you should have a path figured out. And I think that's unrealistic. I think it's very rare for anyone your age to know who they are, who they're going to be, and what they're going to do. And so... 105 00:42:11.804 --> 00:42:40.357 As you go through this process of experimenting, trying on new identities, trying new activities, exploring different groups of people, exploring aspects of yourself, it's gonna be a rollercoaster ride. There's gonna be a lot of great moments and a lot of dark moments. Just understand that that is all normal and part of the process, and there's nothing wrong with you. You're doing it. That's exactly what you should be doing. And take your time with it. Thank you so much. 106 00:42:46.988 --> 00:43:16.402 Hi, so I think I do the trade-off part quite a lot where I'm holding the positive and negative, but it's potentially to the point where it's actually too much and I suffer from that analysis paralysis problem. I was just wondering your thoughts on that kind of extreme and how, if you have any recommendations, how you would deal with it. Hmm. It's a good problem in that you're like, you've trained yourself to be able to measure those things 107 00:43:17.380 --> 00:43:42.811 This is where the pain hack comes in. Because my guess is where you're getting stuck is you're purely looking at it in terms of, does this benefit outweigh the cost? But if you find the cost that you actually secretly relish, costs aren't to be avoided. It's to find the cost that 108 00:43:44.667 --> 00:44:13.996 you feel like you gain by giving up, if that makes sense. So I think if you look at it in those terms, it could probably help. I'm guessing there's probably a lot of perfectionism around this as well, of like, let's optimize, like what's the most benefit I can get for like each unit of effort and all this stuff. Oh yes. Yeah. I like to say that, 109 00:44:15.700 --> 00:44:35.309 being optimal is suboptimal, that trying to optimize everything actually prevents you from important experiences of screwing up and, you know, messing around and learning things about yourself. So try to keep that in mind as well. Thank you. Thank you. 110 00:44:41.435 --> 00:45:02.731 Hi, Mark. So I'm 15 years old and I find myself caring about people's opinion at school too much. And I was wondering what your advice for me would be to stop caring about the popular guy's opinions as much. Yeah. 111 00:45:07.557 --> 00:45:32.566 By show of hands, how many people struggled with the same thing when you were 15? I think that is literally everybody in this room. I'm going to give you a few answers here. This is very normal at your age. You should care what people around you think. This is the time of your life that you're... 112 00:45:32.971 --> 00:46:01.287 really discovering your social relationships and how to get along with people and how to build relationships with people. And so this is part of that process, is like caring a little bit too much. So there's, I guess the first point here, and all the raised hands proved it, is that there's absolutely nothing abnormal about this struggle that you're going through. And it will naturally get better as you get older. So that's part one. Part two is... 113 00:46:02.063 --> 00:46:20.440 You know, kids your age can kind of suck. Like, they can be very judgmental. And that's hard to deal with a lot of the time. The best advice I can give is you're never going to stop caring what people think, but you can... 114 00:46:21.588 --> 00:46:50.174 The trick is to find something more important than what people think. Like, ask yourself, what is so important in my life that I'm willing to be disliked for it? Because once you start finding those things, then you kind of become unstoppable. Like, it just stops mattering. It's not that it doesn't hurt and it's not that it doesn't bother you, it's just that it stops mattering that it hurts and that it bothers you, if that makes sense. 115 00:46:51.389 --> 00:47:18.659 Good luck, man. Thanks very much. You'll make it. Hey, Mark. With the whole spectrum of artificial intelligence being making us think less and taking over the world, what's your view on a way of thinking that we can use to be more relevant in this future that's evolving before us? I love this question. 116 00:47:20.060 --> 00:47:44.883 I'm thinking a lot about this question because, I mean, I think AI is gonna eat a lot of my industry, right? Like it's, if you go to ChatGPT now and you ask it to give you advice in the style of Mark Manson, it's hilariously bad. If you ever wanna amuse yourself, try it. But one day it won't be, right? 117 00:47:45.878 --> 00:48:13.351 And so I've been thinking quite a bit the last year or two about this. I like the idea that anytime scarcity is removed in one area, it's added in another. And so what AI does is it removes scarcity around, A, access to information, but also B, like the personalization of information. Basically, it just makes information so automatic and fluid and seamless. 118 00:48:13.655 --> 00:48:35.491 that I think information itself, which in my case would be like advice itself, is going to become a commodity and essentially free. So then the question is, what becomes more scarce? I think it's human connection. I think it's emotional connection. 119 00:48:36.065 --> 00:49:04.432 I think it's in-person things like this will become more scarce and more valuable. People will start to perceive them as more valuable in the next 10 years. Because all the, this whole talk could probably, in five years, there's probably some AI that could just generate this for you and probably deliver it to you in my voice. But actually being here in the room together, laughing together, making jokes together, whatever, 120 00:49:05.022 --> 00:49:18.590 that can't be replicated. So I definitely see that, I think and I hope people are gonna start putting more of a premium on that as we go forward. Yeah, great, thank you. 121 00:49:23.703 --> 00:49:42.535 Hi, Mark. You had a slide, evil people don't think they are, they think other people are. And then you made a throwaway line that might be true in the opposite with good. My question for you, which has been on my mind for the last few days, is some of the nicest people I know... 122 00:49:42.535 --> 00:50:10.902 that do the best in the world can't seem to access that feeling about themselves. So it's almost like they're a conduit for good, but none gets stuck on them on the way through. And I'd like to know what you think about this phenomenon. I think it's a very real thing. I think it makes sense to me that probably the most positively impactful people in the world... 123 00:50:11.729 --> 00:50:33.582 are maybe not necessarily happy or emotionally functional themselves. Like if you imagine somebody who exhibits, like goes to such extremes to give value to people or see the best in people or provide service for people, 124 00:50:34.898 --> 00:51:04.058 it makes sense to me that there's probably some neuroticism that's driving some of that. And so you get kind of this paradoxical thing where the best people aren't necessarily the happiest and vice versa. This is one of many reasons that I often talk about why happiness is overrated. There are a lot of pieces of shit that are very happy with themselves. LAUGHTER 125 00:51:06.556 --> 00:51:34.349 So I definitely think it is a legit phenomenon. You see this a lot too, not to say that business people are necessarily good people, but you see it in like, you know, genius artists or genius entrepreneurs, CEOs, like they have like, they're driven by some dark shit and it's in a weird way, it becomes their gift to the world. 126 00:51:35.716 --> 00:52:04.657 So it is paradoxical. I think it is a thing. I don't know what else to make of it, but I'm with you. Thank you. Yeah. APPLAUSE I just got really nervous. LAUGHTER So as somebody in their, like, late-ish 30s who's searching for purpose and has been forever, how do you actually go about finding your purpose? Mm-hmm. 127 00:52:06.580 --> 00:52:32.416 So this is a good opportunity to get real about purpose, right? Part of my talk was that most of our struggles is just having unrealistic expectations or perceptions of what we're actually doing. And I think purpose is one of those things that I think people set unrealistic expectations for. So 128 00:52:34.981 --> 00:52:56.682 A few things. One is I don't think anybody has one singular purpose. Like there's not, it's very rare and that you're ever gonna find like one thing of like, oh, this is what adds purpose to my life. There's probably a mixture of things or like a portfolio of things that bring purpose to your life. The second thing is, is that it's, I don't like, 129 00:52:56.935 --> 00:53:25.758 the word find, because it implies that it's like hidden somewhere out there and I have to like go digging through a bunch of shit to find it. Purpose is made. Purpose is the byproduct of sacrificing for something that feels important. And so the question is really just what seems important. If you can find the thing that seems important, then you can start sacrificing for it. 130 00:53:26.551 --> 00:53:54.850 And that sacrificing for it will give you a sense of purpose and meaning and direction in your life. And I think the reason this is such a salient topic these days is for the exact reason that I finished the talk, which is just we are bombarded with so many seemingly important things that it's really hard to focus on one long enough to sacrifice for it. And so I would say start by eliminating things. 131 00:53:55.357 --> 00:54:12.569 Run experiments. What if I stop doing this thing for a month? What if I stop hanging out with that person for a month? What if I stop doing this thing at work? What happens? Do I miss it? Or am I actually happier without it? And 132 00:54:13.362 --> 00:54:36.312 you'll start discovering which things are actually adding a lot to your life and which are not. And as you go through that process, you'll start to whittle it down, and you'll find those two or three things that feel more important than everything else, and then you'll have the space to actually start committing and making the sacrifice for it. Is that helpful? Yeah, thank you. Cool. Thanks. Thanks. 133 00:54:41.678 --> 00:55:06.417 Hi, Mark. Your World War III survivor number three really resonated with me and I'm sorry I forgot his name. Sorry. Jean-Paul, sorry. Yes, Jean-Paul Shaw. So it's the part that you mentioned about him finding comfort in the prison and I relayed that to my life and about how 134 00:55:06.417 --> 00:55:31.493 Through support, I've created what I could see in your, when you described that as a prison for loved ones by support and caring. And at what point does support and caring become a prison and you're holding people you love back from thriving? How do you draw that line? It's a great question. 135 00:55:32.978 --> 00:55:59.219 I would say it becomes a prison when it is a form of escape. And that is a very real thing. So, I mean, there's a concept known as codependence, which is you could think of it as almost as an addiction to other people's problems. Because as long as you're fixing other people's problems, you don't have to think about your own. And... 136 00:56:01.092 --> 00:56:30.758 I think like all addictions, it's a blurry line. It's a difficult definition. It's hard to, like all addictions, you rationalize it and you find reasons why it's justified and why it's not such a big deal and why it's actually a good thing. So it is hard. It's a hardened, very nebulous thing to tie down. I would say that 137 00:56:32.783 --> 00:56:58.180 Again, I'm gonna come back to the experiment with giving things up. So for a codependent person who feels this constant obligation to support others and be there for others, run an experiment of, hey, for the next two weeks or for the next month or for the next week, I'm not gonna support this person. 138 00:56:58.923 --> 00:57:26.513 And if that's going to disrupt the relationship, then maybe talk to them about it and be like, look, I feel like I'm being codependent. And I think it's really important for my own health to see if I can stand on my own and have a little bit of distance. But run that experiment with different people in your life. And you'll learn something about yourself. And you'll learn, like, what you'll find is that the healthy relationships, they'll understand. 139 00:57:28.893 --> 00:57:40.992 They'll be happy for you, actually. Because the healthy people in your life probably already know that this is what you need. It's the unhealthy relationships that will get very upset. 140 00:57:47.202 --> 00:58:11.603 Hi, I'm Alyssa. I think there's probably a lot of us in this room, mid-30s, got an okay job in mining, I'm on comfortable money, but just feeling like there's a bigger life meant for me. I've had a crack, starting a side business, I rent out these mini pink caravans and I'm like, yes, the arrows that get shot at me for this, I can enjoy these, this is okay, I can handle this. 141 00:58:11.603 --> 00:58:39.110 I loved the thing that you said about experimenting, like just have constant experiments until you find something that works to stay committed. My question is after experiment, after experiment, after experiment, failure, failure, failure, what advice do you have to keep overcoming all the little failures to keep pushing until you find the way that works? I think... 142 00:58:41.371 --> 00:59:08.354 Well, first of all, the string of failures never stops, it's just the failures get better. And I think recognizing that progress is important. It's hard to sometimes. As somebody who also is an entrepreneur who drives himself very hard, sometimes I go a long time without like, 143 00:59:08.843 --> 00:59:35.202 stopping and smelling the roses and being like, wait, I've come a long way. Holy shit. So I think it's a good practice to remember that. But if the failures are feeling overwhelming, again, this is what I love about the experiment thing is that you can modulate the experiments to make success easier. So I'll give you an example that has nothing to do with business. Okay. 144 00:59:35.557 --> 01:00:04.987 I was talking to a good friend of mine, he's a meditation teacher, and I was talking to him once, and I was like, you know, it's funny, because when I lose track of my meditation practice, it's like sitting for 15 minutes just feels like an eternity, whereas when I'm meditating regularly, 15 minutes feels like nothing. But I was like, I don't know, it gets skewed in my head, so how do I get over the fact, and he was like, so sit for 15 seconds. He's like, you could do that, right? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I can. And he's like, 145 01:00:05.290 --> 01:00:32.560 Great. And then once you do it for 15 seconds, do it for 30. And then once you do it for 30, do it for 60. And he's like, before you know it, you'll be at 15, 15 minutes. And I love that principle because I think you can take it and apply it. Like whenever you feel emotionally like you need a win, you just move the goalposts up and be easier on yourself because then that shows you the progress you're making. Thank you. Yeah. 146 01:00:36.813 --> 01:00:57.535 Hi Mark, I have a question in terms of someone who for most of my adult life has lived in a very self-centered, kind of ignorant, peachy, life is fun sort of bubble that's quite recently been burst because you wake up to the state of the world. 147 01:00:58.244 --> 01:01:27.758 I'm not, I know I'm not gonna get back to that because like now I know what's going on and it's so depressing. And I feel like, do you have any advice how to not let, it's basically like gotten to the point where every day is mundane and it feels like, why bother doing the everyday stuff when all of this shit's happening in the world and it just feels really unimportant and just kind of getting to a space where like, 148 01:01:28.298 --> 01:01:55.130 I don't know, you find value in everyday life again. Sure. I'm glad you asked this. No, no, I'm really glad you asked this because I feel like there's a lot of people in your place and it's not a good place to be. Here's an experiment to run. Stop for 30 days, stop looking at any news. 149 01:01:58.808 --> 01:02:26.855 And instead, and then whatever your particular thing you're worried about, go find two or three history books about it. Two things will happen. One is you'll realize you don't, without the news, you'll realize you're not missing anything. Second thing you'll realize when you read the history books, this is the best it's ever been. 150 01:02:30.314 --> 01:02:57.179 I find hope in that. Yes, there's a lot of shitty stuff in the world. The world is still a mess. But things have gotten so much better, so much better. And they're continuing to get better each generation, slowly but surely, agonizingly. It's not always linear. There's sometimes there's like little regressions or detours. 151 01:02:57.382 --> 01:03:18.121 But the grand arc of history is very much in the right direction. And holding that perspective, I think, is really, really important. The other piece of advice I would give is look for a local cause to get involved in. Channel that energy quickly. 152 01:03:19.792 --> 01:03:46.505 here in Perth or Western Australia, I think the nature of online media and social media, I almost think we're too globally aware these days. Like too much of our attention is consumed by these horrific things that are happening 10,000, 20,000 miles away that literally have nothing to do with us. And meanwhile, it's like our schools are fucked up. There's like... 153 01:03:46.792 --> 01:04:16.070 homelessness going on, like all these local problems that we're oblivious to because they're not sexy and they're not showing up on news feeds and people aren't like screaming about them on television or whatever. So I think in general, we are over-indexed globally and under-indexed locally. You can affect a lot of things here in your community. You can make a difference for people. You can see the positive change happen in front of your eyes. 154 01:04:16.559 --> 01:04:39.948 And that will mean everything. Thanks. Hi, Mark. Before I had my daughter, I worked in the area of grief and loss, supporting young people living with cancer here in WA. I have a friend that's recently lost her husband to cancer and is now a single parent. 155 01:04:40.403 --> 01:05:08.264 And they say, well, it's true that there's only two things show in life, that we're born and we're going to die. Yet as a society, we struggle to talk about death, grief and loss. And I just wondered what your perspective is on that and what do you think we can do better? Oh, a question close to my heart. As people who have read books, 156 01:05:09.682 --> 01:05:32.463 The last chapter of Subtle Art, no. I lost a friend very close to me when I was young and it ended up being one of the most impactful experiences of my life. I am a big proponent of the idea of memento mori, of consciously sitting and thinking about your own death, the death of loved ones, 157 01:05:33.458 --> 01:05:57.893 the mortality of everybody around you, simply because it's all of these questions of what you value, what's worth pursuing, what's going to give you purpose. Death clarifies those things. Like when you're in a cancer ward, holy shit, it is crystal clear the two or three things that matter and all the bullshit that doesn't. And so I... 158 01:05:59.851 --> 01:06:24.134 I think and I hope that there are ways to tap into that clarity without having to end up in a cancer ward. That there are exercises that we can do with ourselves, thought experiments, just, you know. I mean, sometimes, I didn't do it today, but sometimes when I'm on a plane, I imagine it crashing. I'm not joking, I actually do. 159 01:06:25.045 --> 01:06:51.337 And I sometimes imagine, okay, if the plane's going down, what would my thought about my life be at the moment? And obviously, like, that's not a fun thing to think about, but I do think it's valuable because it forces me to really consider, am I on the right path? Am I doing the things that matter? Have I been good to the people I love? 160 01:06:52.568 --> 01:07:21.323 it's good to ask those questions. And if that's what it takes to like, get that question in your head, so be it. So thank you for asking this. This is, I believe very strongly in this. Thank you. Thank you, Purse. It's been lovely. You've been an amazing audience and I hope to be back one day, hopefully soon. So thank you again. Good night, everybody.