Most people are trying to solve the wrong problem, optimizing for happiness when happiness isn’t actually a goal, it’s a byproduct.
Mark Manson argues that the entire self-help industry has been selling ephemeral highs: affirmations, visualizations, the relentless pursuit of feeling good. The research doesn’t support it, and more importantly, neither does lived experience.
About the speaker: Mark Manson is a three-time #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, as well as other titles, which have sold over 20 million copies, been translated into more than 65 languages, and reached number one in more than a dozen countries. In 2023, a feature film about Manson’s life and ideas was released worldwide by Universal Pictures.
Timestamps
00:00:34 Chapter 1: Becoming an emotionally healthy adult
00:05:15 Why you feel empty: The narcissism trap
00:09:13 How our worldview develops over time
00:18:16 Chapter 2: Developing a healthy sense of hope
00:20:30 Three complications of hope
00:29:56 Chapter 3: How to fix your life by changing your values
00:34:22 What does “not-giving-a-f*ck” look like?
00:37:06 Two techniques for figuring out your values
00:43:34 Manson’s law of avoidance
00:50:08 Chapter 4: Achieving the right kind of success
00:59:14 The real secret to success: Do something (even if it sucks)
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Transcript
Below is a transcript of the first five minutes of this video interview. This is a true verbatim transcript that captures the conversation exactly as it happened. If you’d like to read the full transcript while following along with the video, click here.
My name is Mark Manson. I am the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, as well as some other works. I’m a YouTuber, podcaster, and my work focuses primarily on the importance of values. This is Big Think, and today I’m going to be talking about how to grow into an emotionally mature adult, how to develop a healthy sense of hope, how to improve your life by changing your values, and how to find success through failure.
Chapter 1: Becoming an emotionally healthy adult
One of my spicier arguments is that I think happiness is greatly overrated in today’s age. I think people focus on it way too much. I think their focus on it backfires pretty consistently. But worst of all, I think people have started confusing comforts and highs for the same thing as happiness.
It’s interesting, if you look at the ancient world, Aristotle actually argued that there are two versions of happiness. There’s Hedonia, which is kind of pleasure, comforts, short-term satisfactions. And then there’s Eudaimonia, which is kind of a deeper purpose-driven, this is a meaningful way to live my life kind of feeling.
And I think the modern age has been very optimized to promote as much Hedonia as possible. Everything is designed to make us as comfortable as possible, to give us quick dopamine hits all the time, to make us feel good all the time, and to promise us really simple superficial happiness all the time.
But the problem is, is that what actually drives life satisfaction is that sense of Eudaimonia, that sense of my life was worth living, I have zero regrets, everything I’ve suffered or struggled through was worth the trouble.
One thing to keep in mind in all this is an idea that comes from Alan Watts that I call the backwards law. And basically the backwards law is that the more you chase a positive experience, that chasing in and of itself is a negative experience. And the more you accept a negative experience, the more that acceptance itself is a positive experience.
So you see this show up in all sorts of different areas of life, different ways. The more you try to impress people, the less impressive you're always gonna feel. The more beautiful that you want to be, the uglier you will constantly see yourself. The more money you want to make, the more you will feel too poor and inadequate, like you don’t have enough stuff. The more love you feel like you need, the more lonely and isolated you will feel. The more spiritually enlightened you want to become, the more self-centered and narcissistic you’ll likely end up being. The more you try to be happy all the time, the more easily you’ll be upset.
Whereas if you just accept that sometimes life is hard and shit goes wrong, the more happy and easygoing you’ll become.
So the significance of the backwards law is important because so much of what we’re exposed to on a day-to-day basis is kind of selling us these benefits of self-perception. “Hey, look at this. Buy this product. You’ll become more beautiful. You’ll become happier. This will solve your confidence issues. Hey, we can fix your health in 30 days or your money back.” You know, all of these things, they sound very enticing, but what you discover as you start to go down that road is that you actually increase the likelihood of your negative experiences because you are constantly chasing that positive.
So what I tell people is I say, instead of asking yourself, what’s going to make me happy? Ask yourself, what am I willing to struggle for? What are the problems I actually kind of like having in my life?
Sometimes when I give talks, I ask the audience, “what kind of masochist are you?” What’s the pain that you secretly enjoy that most other people don’t? Because it’s in that pain, that special relationship that you have with that struggle, that’s actually probably where most of the meaning and purpose in your life is going to be found. It’s going to be found in the struggles that you kind of relish having and in the challenges that you are most proud of overcoming.
And this comes back to that backwards law and that when you’re constantly chasing the positive experiences, you end up on this experience of like a treadmill and that every day and every moment you’re looking for the next hit, the next high to keep you going. Whereas when you find the negative experiences that you’re happy to accept, that you’re willing to embrace, that embracing of that negative experience is actually what’s going to generate a much longer and sustained positive experience.
Because this is the sneaky truth that most people don’t understand is that happiness is not something that you pursue and achieve in and of itself. It’s the natural side effect of finding something more meaningful and and purposeful in your life if you find something that feels important that’s worth giving a fuck about the happiness will happen on its own anyway.
Why you feel empty: The narcissism trap
I think another common affliction today is this idea that we are each special and unique and because we’re so special and unique we deserve special treatment special results a special place in the world. Ultimately, what this breeds is a sense of entitlement.
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