Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life | The Rich Roll Podcast

I think most people when they set goals or aims or have dreams, they orient it purely around the upside, the positive benefits.

They don't think about the costs or the challenges or the struggles that are going to come along with it.

Probably the most powerful reorientation for me in my life has been simply looking at the struggles that I actually enjoy having and the pain that I secretly enjoy.

Find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for.

On the one hand, life is short and take advantage of the time you have left.

But on the other hand, I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say past the age of 40 or 50, without realizing like they're decades.

This is the Mark Manson 2.0 stance on positive thinking.

It is January 2026.

Welcome to our global ritual of going about bettering ourselves in some positive way.

If you have struggled with this in the past, you are in the right place, I promise you.

Because today the master of no bullshit self-improvement advice, the anti-guru himself, Mark Manson, is here.

And he's going to help us dispel some self-help myths and set matters to rights when it comes to making real life change and sustaining it over time.

And basically our shared purpose today is to set all of you guys out there across the Internet, to set you up for success in the new year.

We're going to do it together.

So if you are new to the show, my name is Rich Roll.

And by dint of hosting this podcast for more than 13 years at this point, and also myself having navigated a series of personal life transformations, from alcoholism to middle-age malaise, I also happen to know a few things about the subject matter that we're going to get into.

Nothing in comparison to my very esteemed guest, of course.

So I think you guys are in good hands today, and I guess we're going to find out if this is going to work or not.

What do you think, Mark?

Either way, we'll learn something ourselves.

Yeah, so we have a different kind of format today.

Mark's been on the show twice before.

This is his third appearance, and I thought, like, we're not going to talk about his backstory.

We're going to get right into it.

Yeah.

The most effective and also the most fun way to do it is just to create this fishbowl full of questions that we have in front of us, crumpled up on note cards.

And we're going to take turns putting our grubby hands into it and pulling one out and reading it and seeing if we can answer it.

So are you game for that?

I'm ready.

Okay.

I do want to start out with one question in case it doesn't get pulled.

And I'm going to tee you up for this one.

And maybe I'll take the one after that.

But this question is, Mark, every year I set a New Year's resolution only to flame out by February.

Why is this happening to me, Mark?

And what do you suggest I do differently this year to avoid that?

Yes. literally is the perennial question.

This is the question that comes up over and over and over throughout our lives.

I generally, whenever I miss on a New Year's goal, I generally find one of two things is the case.

One is, I didn't set a good goal.

It's something I thought I wanted, but it actually when I started working on it, it didn't mean a whole lot to me.

It was, I think, for the sake of this podcast, we could call it a vanity goal, which we all fall prey to, vanity goals quite often.

And then I would say the second thing is a bit more tactical, which is that I didn't think through how to actually integrate the goal into my life effectively.

I think most of us at the starting line on January 1st were super excited.

We're really committed.

We're like, I'm going to make this change.

But we're primarily thinking about our enthusiasm and our willpower.

We're not thinking through like, oh, I have to pick up my kids from school five days a week.

And oh, I have this softball commitment on Thursday nights.

And what if my partner gets sick and my Sunday mornings aren't free anymore?

We don't think through all those second and third order effects and actually kind of plan for the time commitments and the energy commitments that we're going to have to make down the road.

So, when those moments, when the enthusiasm runs out, we have no plan in place and we go back to sitting on the couch.

Yeah.

Over-reliance on enthusiasm and short-lived temporary inspiration or motivation.

Yes.

But I think the bigger piece is when... right goal.

Um, I think that's a big one for a lot of people.

Like we're quick to set a goal, but we're often reactive in how we set it.

And we don't really spend the time to think through like, is this really the right goal?

Like, what am I trying to get out of this?

Or is it just a challenge that I haven't even really thought through?

That I'm actually not that wed to.

You know what I mean.

So I'm always encouraging people to like.

People will come to me I'm going to do an Ironman or I want to run a marathon.

It's like, okay, why?

It's cool, but I think there's – it's just like oh well, it's the obvious goal, or my friends are doing it, or there's some sort of flimsy relationship with whether it's vanity or some kind of external validation, or because your peer group – it's about your good standing in your peer group will latch on to something like that, only to find out, like this isn't – or even to go and achieve it and realize like well, this didn't really do anything for me, or it didn't deliver on whatever promise I thought it would, because I actually didn't really think it through.

And it doesn't necessarily align with the values in my life that I'm most earnestly trying to advance.

I think there's the goal itself, which is like the behavior or the result.

And then there's the feeling the goal gives you, right?

So like running a marathon.

And by the way, that is a failed January goal that I have had in the past is the marathon.

Looking back, the important thing for me wasn't the marathon.

It was I wanted to feel really fit.

I wanted to be the fittest I had ever been.

I wanted to be in really good shape.

And I think it can be useful to look at that feeling that the goal is ideally gonna deliver you to, because there are probably a lot of ways to get to that feeling.

Right, it doesn't have to be a marathon.

If you get clarity on what's animating that, then there's many different threads that you can pull to achieve that.

Yeah, you've talked about the abandoned, like it's okay to quit these things, you know what I mean?

And also, on top of that, the just being in the atmosphere where there's an expectation that you're supposed to set a goal.

You know, like you don't, you don't have to.

You don't have just because it's New Year's doesn't mean that you have to.

It's a it's a good time to do it because there's a lot of collective enthusiasm around these things.

But it doesn't mean that you have to, especially if you don't even know what a goal would be.

It's better to get clarity on that before you start marshalling resources, time and energy towards something, only to find out that you were climbing up the wrong tree.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

Did we cover that?

Yeah.

Anything else you want to say about that?

No, I think we'll hit plenty more in the coming... Should I do the honors?

Yeah, pick one.

Okay.

Let's see.

I'm going to go to the bottom.

What piece of self-improvement advice have you changed your mind about and why?

Are you asking me that?

Because I penned that up just for you.

I'll go first, but I'm curious to hear yours as well.

So funny story.

As you know, I often shit on the woo-woo positive thinking train that everybody in this industry.

This is your brand, Mark.

Yeah.

It's like, look, man, life's hard.

Things suck.

Let's be real about it.

But it was funny.

So my podcast Solved, we do these deep dives into one specific topic for four or five hours.

And we did an episode on resilience last fall.

And I think that episode was mentally challenging for me because I started digging up research that made me question some of my cool kid credentials in this industry.

The main one being some of the positive thinking stuff.

So, like one of the biggest things that the research shows is the number one factor for resilience or dealing with some sort of hardship or struggle or pain is self-efficacy.

And self-efficacy is basically the belief that you can handle whatever you're going through.

And so it came back to this positive self-talk and positive affirmation.

And I was reading these studies, and my research team gave me a summary of everything.

And I'm just sitting there with my head in my hands being like, no, guys, I can't be the one.

The Stuart Smalley look into the mirror and like, you know, I'm good enough and all of that, right?

Yeah.

And so I had a little bit of a mini crisis.

Yeah. of like, okay, I'm just going to have to eat humble pie when I get on the mic.

But it was actually very interesting because it is nuanced.

And I will say this, I always thought positive thinking is fine, it's nice and everything.

But what the resilience research showed me is that it's actually very context dependent.

So here's my current stance on it.

And I feel good about this stance.

This is the Mark Manson 2.0 stance on positive thinking.

So if you are not going through a whole lot, if you're just sitting on the couch scrolling on your phone, positive thinking is probably not serving you in that moment.

Telling yourself that you are amazing unique special, going to accomplish incredible things.

As you scroll to cat video, number 16 is probably not helping you in that moment.

I would still argue that that is potentially keeping you on that couch.

But the research overwhelmingly shows that when you are in the shit, when you are going through something hard, when you are mid-struggle or mid-challenge, that that positive thinking can be the difference between success and giving up.

And so I've acquiesced on that and changed my mind about it.

I'm curious to hear your perspective, having done all the ultramarathons and everything that you've done.

I'm curious to hear your perspective on both the positive thinking as part of resilience and then also what your answer to this question is.

Yeah, I mean I think in my experience, I mean I'm not wired for optimism and I have to act my way towards it.

So I'm a big believer in you know kind of mood follows action, like the way to kind of shift your perspective and alter your you know negative inner monologue is by doing things that contrast with whatever that negative story is.

And then over time, you know, that narrative starts to shift.

Um, but you know, I'm also somebody who was was sort of instilled with the power of positive thinking as a young person through a swim coach that I had.

So this is all, you know, kind of deeply embedded in me.

And so it doesn't surprise me that the science bears that out.

Although it is like cringy, you know what I mean?

It's like and I think I think it's important to contextualize it too, because what you're not saying is like just look in the mirror and like you know.

It's like that, that sort of self-help trope of like if you know, I know I can and I can and all of that like yeah, exactly.

You know, so that's only going to get you so far.

It's at some point you have to, you know, translate that into behavior, and then you, you know, then you can kind of create some momentum around that and become self-perpetuating.

But in terms of like a piece of advice that I've changed my mind about.

I mean, I guess there's a couple.

One's very practical and one's super esoteric, but the practical one is around procrastination.

You know, there's all this science coming out right now about the benefits of procrastination.

And, you know, I'm somebody who, like, I think by and large, everybody's procrastinating too much.

But I know that when I sort of fall into a procrastination K-hole like it comes packed with guilt and shame and all this you know, kind of beating myself up sort of sort of stuff um, but i have shifted my perspective on it uh, and and i kind of perceive it now as, like i'm giving this is like the.

The sort of positive benefit of this is i'm empowering my unconscious mind to problem solve and i think there's a time and a place for procrastination, and so when i'm in those moments, I think of it like recovery, as an athlete would recovery.

And so I've changed my relationship with that.

The esoteric one has to do with the idea of self-improvement itself or self-betterment.

And the problem with this, at least from a more Eastern or Buddhist perspective, is that the notion of the self is the problem.

So if you're focusing on yourself and you have this attachment to your identity and that's what's propelling you towards this notion of a better future self, it's still gonna culminate in suffering because of the focus and the attachment to the self right.

And one of the things that's helped disabuse me of this and this is hardly something that i'm expert at at all, but i've been playing around with this is another thing that i've changed my mind on, which is the benefits of medically supervised psychedelics, which is something i was very against again, for a very long time.

You know somebody in recovery, and I've said this before, but the idea for somebody who is an addict in recovery, the idea that a very powerful mind-altering substance has all the answers that you've been looking for, that's an intoxicant in its own right and scares me.

But I had changed my mind over many years on that and I had an experience about a year ago with it that was truly transformative and allowed me to

To dip my toe into what it feels like when your identity dissolves and you have that experience of oneness that you hear about and a sort of death of the ego that I've found to be incredibly beneficial.

So, in the context of self-improvement or self-betterment or whatever term you want to call it, the betterment part or the improvement part is not the problem.

It's your relationship to yourself.

And so I found myself paying more attention to that and trying to figure out how I can be a little hold these things a little bit more loosely like, be in a place of more detached neutrality about, like how I define myself, I suppose.

And that liberates you to have a more curious, open mind about things that maybe you wouldn't You know have allowed yourself to explore, like the idea of positive thinking, or whatever you know, choose your, choose your idea.

Yeah, that's very well said.

I like that.

It's interesting too because, if you think about it, the whole notion of improvement is most of our measurements of quote unquote improvement is very arbitrary.

Like we're just making up goalposts and saying like I mean everything's neutral until you apply your perspective and put a label on it.

So are you better?

Is your, you know, are you not like, it depends on your perspective.

Yeah.

Which it would explain why self-improvement is often a bit of a psychological treadmill for people, where it's they're constantly chasing.

It's just an it's.

It's another way, way for them to chase another thing and not be present in their own lives and realize that all that, all the answers and happiness and everything that they're searching for, is actually available.

Yeah, all right, in the podcast, put that in your, put it, put that in your pipe and smoke it right.

I don't know how you're supposed to practice that in any kind of like practical way.

We just set up a whole podcast on self-improvement and then like, disabuse the audience.

Right.

Don't worry about any of it.

Anyway.

All right.

Let's move on then.

2026 goals.

Dissolution of self and elimination of any concept of improvement.

All right.

Here we go.

Mark, if you had to pick one key guiding principle to give me to achieve a fundamental positive life change and sustain it over time, what would that be?

It's really hard not to choose my main thing, which is find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for.

I think most people, when they set goals or aims or have dreams, they orient it purely around that the upside, the positive benefits.

They don't think about the costs or the challenges or the struggles that are going to come along with it.

And really I think probably the most powerful reorientation for me in my life has been simply looking at the things, looking at the struggles that I actually enjoy having and the pain that I kind of quietly, at the end of the day, secretly enjoy to a certain extent.

Uh, because i i just think that's you're going to get so much more mileage out of that and in a way that is actually very indicative of who you are as a person or like who.

Uh see, now i'm afraid to say things like that no, it's fine, forget about, forget that.

We did the last question, keep going okay, but it's much more.

It's much more indicative of like who you are as a person um, of like what you're willing to give up.

Um.

So I would say for me, if there was one key principle to give to somebody who was look for the things, look for the challenges and struggles that you enjoy having and that that energize you and enliven you.

So what would be an example of that?

Well, you know, the classic example that I use from my own life is uh, I went to music school and it quickly became apparent that there were maybe half a dozen people in my music school that were going to make it.

They were just on another level.

And when I spent time around them, it was clear that they would practice and play 10 12 hours a day.

And to them, it was as natural as breathing.

For me to practice for more than a couple hours.

It took a lot of willpower and planning and structure and And it was something that I would start resenting if I had to do it too many days in a row.

And so, after a certain number of months, I just had to swallow a painful fact, which is that I don't enjoy the cost of being a professional musician which is practicing and playing 10 12 hours a day.

Therefore, I am probably not going to be a musician.

On the flip side of that, my entire life I have really enjoyed – to me, even when I was in school, I was that obnoxious kid who would get on a forum online and write a 12-page post breaking down in minute detail why everybody else was wrong.

Yeah.

And why, no, the drummer of Tool was actually a better drummer than your favorite drummer.

And here are all my citations and here are the receipts.

And to me, that was like a fun Saturday afternoon.

I enjoy writing and rewriting, and rewriting a paragraph like six times in a row and making it slightly better each time.

It's not something I had to learn.

It's just something that it just It's something that most people is agony.

And for me, it is pleasant.

And so there's a reason that I became a writer.

Yeah.

You're flipping the equation upside down.

So let's say it's January 1 and everybody wants to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is, right?

Instead of thinking how amazing it's going to be when you can look in the mirror and those pants fit, or whatever it is.

Instead, consider how you're going to be able to tolerate those hunger pangs or prevent yourself from reaching for the ice cream or whatever.

Your proclivity is right.

To marinate in the harder parts of it rather than in the glory of having achieved it, as a way of, like stress testing whether you're up for this.

Yeah.

See what most people do is they just think about oh my God, I'm going to look great for summer.

You know, summer beach body or whatever.

They try to focus on that.

What they should be focusing on is, okay, I need the exercise.

I need the diet.

What exercise can I find that I actually enjoy?

Like, what's fun?

Is it taking – tennis lessons joining a run club is it crossfit you know there's a million different things that you could investigate and try and explore it's you don't need to have the perfect workout routine you just need to do something consistently and if you find the form of exercise that doesn't feel like work it just feels like play then then willpower is no longer part of the equation.

You can integrate it into your life in a way that's very satisfying and fun.

But yeah, people don't approach it that way.

They just kind of assume like okay, I have a goal and you have to suffer for your goals, so time to mentally prepare myself to suffer.

And instead it's just like no think about what is the form of Struggle or challenge that is actually fun for you in pursuing that goal.

Between the lines, implicit of what you're saying is the call to action really is to develop your Curiosity, you know, with a paired with a level of self-awareness, like if you're paying attention to where your your attention.

Naturally you know points to and And you can kind of track that.

You start to get a glimpse of like you know, because if you're just detached from yourself and you're just reacting to the world or whatever, you may be so disconnected from yourself that you don't even know what it is that you enjoy or what your preferences are.

I mean, when it gets to things like purpose and passion like these can be violent terms for people that make them feel guilty because it's like it's very loaded right and instead just like if you had a free day and you could do anything like what are you going to choose to do?

Or something like that, and try to extract from that little nuggets that could inform you know the direction that you want to move your life towards.

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I mean?

I think so, which is why, this year, I'm focusing on overcoming a few things that have burdened me for too long.

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Should I go?

Yeah, go.

I know that change is an action-based affair, but despite the changes I've made in the past, I still have looping negative thoughts about myself.

Can I change my internal monologue?

Do I need to?

How?

We talked a little bit about that already, but maybe put a finer point on that.

Yeah.

I personally believe that our inner voice and our intuition are overrated.

That's a hot take.

Yeah.

Again, it's kind of like the positive thinking.

It's very contextual.

I think.

For example, I think when it comes to decision-making.

Let's say you want to buy a house and you're looking between three different options.

You and your partner are weighing all sorts of different factors.

In that case then, I do think it's probably important to be able to listen to your gut, listen to your inner voice, see what doubts are coming up.

But in a lot of contexts— your inner voice is just this like yammering thing going on in the background.

And this is one of the things that you learn when you meditate a lot is that like there's, there's no rhyme or reason to like half the stuff that is said in your head and you don't have to take it seriously if you don't want to.

And so sometimes I, I just kind of like, sometimes I develop in a relationship with my inner monologue of like um, Like an obnoxious sibling or like a teenage child or something that is just being a brat sometimes.

And I'm just like, you know what?

I don't have to listen to this dude.

And it's not going to stop.

It's going to keep going.

But the difference is I get to decide what it means.

I get to decide how important and serious this voice is in my head.

And just because it's being said in my inner monologue doesn't mean it's true, doesn't mean it's important, doesn't mean it's real.

And I think, from all the time I spent meditating, that's probably one of the most important takeaways that I came away with is that your mind is just going to do things and it's not necessarily— almost never really under your control, or it's often not under your control, and then it's.

And just because it does things doesn't mean you have to necessarily identify with it or take it seriously.

I agree with that completely.

Uh, if we take um like who you are, you know the delusion of self.

You know, like let's just assume the self is a real thing right now.

Um, We are so entangled with our inner monologue that we don't realize that that's something very different, right?

Like it's what our brain is doing is just it's on this crazy autopilot.

And to the extent that we can create some distance between you know quote, unquote ourselves and that voice, it's always going to serve us.

And meditation is the most effective tool for that, in my experience, in time through taking action.

You can shift that inner monologue, but it happens as a consequence of things you're doing, not necessarily because you're directing your attention towards it.

But I think, by having a different kind of relationship with it, where you don't have to buy into what it's telling you, is the liberation that I think we're all looking for.

Because we just believe that, oh well, you're creating your own reality, because you're so bought in to what that voice is saying.

Where I would disagree with you a little bit is on the intuition piece, but maybe you'll agree with me after I explain it.

And I've come to appreciate this a little bit more than I used to, in no small part because of this neuroscientist, Joel Pearson, who came on the podcast, an Australian.

Okay.

Who's done a lot of work on this.

Super interesting guy.

I think that you know, intuition is a very real thing and I think it is your— best self's inner voice.

It's just so muted and, you know, kind of repressed, because it's quiet in comparison to like, the looping thoughts in your brain.

But I think it's confused with impulse.

You know, if you don't have a high degree of self-awareness and you're not kind of integrated in your body in a way where you have a conscious awareness of like, your emotions and your thoughts and you put a lot of work in, you're going to confuse your intuition.

For like, what you want to do, you know it's like well, my intuition is telling me, or my gut is telling me that i need to eat this or i need to call that guy back, or you know like, get into this argument but that's not really your intuition.

Your intuition is what's beneath all of that.

So you have to do I think you have to do quite a bit of work before you can actually trust your intuition.

And this is something I learned in just getting sober.

It's like everything I wanted to do was the wrong thing.

And it's like I had to for years check all my decisions with other people before I made them until I had gotten well enough where I was like.

Actually, I think I can now begin to start to trust what my –.

Quote-unquote intuition is telling me to do, because it had steered me wrong, because it had been hijacked by yeah, I like this distinction.

I agree with it and it's I Think it's a really useful distinction as well because I think it's probably worth digging into this a little bit Because it's it's because your higher self your intuition and your lower self your kind of impulsive self are both unconscious You know It's it's easy to mistake one for the other.

They can kind of get jumbled up.

And I think what I I'm probably biased towards this, just given my nature and the industry and everything.

But what I often see in the personal development space is you take people who are highly impulsive and you basically teach them that that that is the power of them.

That is their intuition.

Yeah.

That's the distinction that I'm trying to make.

Yeah.

But I agree a hundred percent with you that there is, there is um.

You know the higher order self is.

You know that is the um.

I think it's what Kahneman would call system two thinking.

And, and it's, there is a lot of wisdom and experience.

It's very much based on pattern matching across like a wide range of experience.

And, uh, But yeah, sometimes it can feel the same way as an impulse, and you have to be very wary.

All right, next question.

My turn, right?

Oh, we kind of talked about this.

I always hear people talk about things like passion and purpose or meaning and satisfaction, and I don't get it.

I don't have a passion, like quote-unquote, big quote, capital P, passion.

Mark, am I fucked?

Yeah.

I like how these questions are personalized for me.

Well, I think it's probably worth separating passion from purpose and meaning, because they are different.

They often get conflated, but I do think they're actually very different.

I would describe passion as something you enjoy or love doing for its own sake, that you're not interested in it to get other benefits.

It's just something that you inherently.

If you were alone on a desert island with a billion dollars, you would still do it, just for the simple sake of doing it.

I do think everybody has that somewhere in their life.

I think the challenge is usually people don't allow themselves to feel that.

They're so caught up in the conditionality of everything they do and everything they do is with the goal to achieve some other aim to get people to like them, or to get further in their career, or to win approval of these people, or whatever that they never give themselves the space to just explore.

What do I like to do for its own sake?

The purpose and meaning question is a little bit, I think, deeper and more complicated, in that the biggest difference between purpose and passion is that A passion is, by definition, something that is like fun and you are happy to be doing.

A purpose, you are many times not happy to be doing, but you feel a duty to do it anyway because it is so important to you.

A simple example would be, you know, raising a young kid.

Like, it's not fun for a lot of the time, but there's no point where you're like—

You drop the kid and walk away, right?

Purpose often has a component of an understanding that this is more important than how I feel.

And it's interesting because I think passion and purpose get conflated, because often people will find

When they're passionate about something, they become very good and committed to it.

And that commitment then starts to create a sense of purpose.

But they're not the same thing.

The purpose can exist without the passion and vice versa.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I think my spin on it would be that the word passion tends to trip people up because it has a uh kind of an extreme connotation to it.

Like it's sort of like I think it gets conflated with obsession.

You know like I'm passionate about this.

And I think if you lower the stakes on how you're defining passion and you're just like this is what I dig doing.

You know, I like going down to my workshop or whatever it is that you just naturally enjoy and you give yourself permission to explore that or indulge it and follow it wherever it may lead, rather than berate yourself because you feel like you should be doing something that's quote unquote, productive or what have you, and just allow yourself to have that experience and see where it may lead, then purpose is revealed in the doing of the passion thing.

You know what I mean?

You can't decide in advance, like, this is my purpose.

I think purpose is a byproduct of exploring your curiosities, whether you call them passions or whatnot.

And then meaning is like a consequence of that, right?

Like you, extract meaning from devoting yourself to something that you are enthusiastic about and suddenly discover purpose in.

So these things kind of like unfold in lockstep with each other.

Yeah.

Does that track with all the research that you've done?

I think so.

The purpose and meaning piece is really funny.

There's a great quote that I love.

It's funny.

So we just did an episode on purpose for Solved, and it was funny.

I did this whole section.

It was probably an hour long going through the history of Western philosophy around purpose.

Wow.

And there was a quote that I found that basically summed everything up.

And it actually came from Picasso.

And he said, the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose is to give it away.

And generally what you find is that there's a Venn diagram.

There's that Ikigai Venn diagram in Japan.

It's like four circles.

But I would say for the sake of purpose, it's really just two circles.

One is What do you enjoy doing and what are you good at and what is useful to other people?

And you find the overlap of those two things and purpose starts to emerge as a natural byproduct of it in general.

Where does service fit in for you in that equation?

It's an aspect of purpose.

Yeah, I would say service is that second circle in that Venn diagram.

There is something...

The two key components really seem to be, well, it's actually kind of three components.

But one is, what do I feel is unique about myself or the opportunities that I've been given?

What is something that I am in a position to do that most people are not?

It's basically, what's special about you?

And then marrying that with the second component, which is how can I contribute to something greater than myself?

So how do I take my gift, the thing that I'm, you know, whether it's a skill or a privilege, or a knowledge base, or just being in the right place at the right time.

And then how do I leverage that to make the world a better place?

And it's like, when you solve that equation, that's where purpose is.

And we often talk about it and think about it in terms of like, career and, you know, vocation and education and all this stuff.

But like it, honestly, like relationships are kind of the simplest way to accomplish it.

Like if you think about, again, parenthood, like by definition, you are the most unique person.

You are, you are your children's only father, right?

You are.

By definition, they're the only person who can fulfill a role for those uh, for those people.

And then the act of parenting is, uh, giving yourself away.

And so it's probably rooted in that, I would say.

I think our psychological mechanism for purpose probably comes out of parenthood, would be my guess.

Well said.

All right.

Whose turn is it?

I think it's mine.

It's yours.

Go.

How do I know if my goal is the right one?

Great question.

Yeah.

Very important question.

And should I keep it to myself or tell everyone?

We covered the first part a little bit already.

Yeah.

I would just go back and retouch on vanity goals.

Maybe don't take your first assumption of a goal at face value.

Think a little bit deeper on what's the feeling you're trying to get?

What's the value underlying it?

Should you tell everybody?

This is the age-old question.

Yeah would say it depends why you're telling people.

So I would say the wrong reason to tell people is you want to be validated and a pat on the back for like oh good for you, you're trying to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is.

If that's the primary motivation, then I believe the research actually shows that you're probably less likely to follow through, because really what you're motivated by is that validation.

You're not motivated.

And you're getting it without having done anything.

So your brain is acclimating to the idea that the goal has already been achieved, which is going to undermine the will and the work that has to go into actually achieving it.

Yeah, and you see this quite a bit.

It's like people will sign up for a class or a course or start studying Spanish or something and they go tell all their friends and all their friends are like, oh my God, that's so cool.

And then a month later, they gave it up.

I'd say the right reason to tell people about it is if the motivation is accountability.

If it's like, hey, I really need to get this in order.

Can you check in with me?

Can you be my accountability buddy?

Can we work out together each month?

Can you make sure I'm on track or whatever?

That's the right reason to go tell people.

Also, it's important to be selective about who those people are.

You want people who are going to give you just the right amount of encouragement, but also the honest feedback that you need to make the whole accountability piece work right.

If you tell somebody who's just constantly trampling on your dreams and telling you you're a piece of shit, maybe that's not the right person, nor is the cheerleader who's just going to tell you everything is awesome.

So you've got to be conscious of who the board of advisors is.

But what about the piece of not telling anyone?

I'm of two minds on this, and I think it's particular to the type of goal.

But I think there is something special about protecting it and being like this is a very precious thing, and this is not something I'm just going to go around and tell everyone about.

I'm going to tend to this and kind of treat it as sacred in that regard.

But, at the same time, if you're just operating in a vacuum and you have no accountability mechanism, at some point your motivation or your self will, or whatever it is, is gonna falter and you're left to your own devices.

In that regard,

Yeah, I think it probably depends on the goal.

Like I'm just kind of scanning through my life.

And I think when it comes to like creative goals, I often keep them to myself.

Whereas something like fitness goals, I generally go find somebody to keep me accountable or try to create a network for myself.

Or you have one or two accountability partners who are keeping track of what you're doing, but no one else is privy to what you're doing.

Because I do think Obviously, the pursuit of a goal or trying to move your life in a more aspirational direction is an act of self-esteem.

It's an esteem-building act, right?

If it's based upon external validation, those two things are at cross purposes with each other.

And I think when you really like, you do treat it as this is my thing.

I'm not telling anyone and you're just quietly doing it.

Yeah.

Because we all want that external validation on some level, like on the spectrum, right?

But when you honor that and you keep it quiet and you're just doing it for yourself, I think that that is a better way of engendering that internal like good feeling of of, like real esteem.

I think i agree with that.

I do it kind of feels like potentially playing goals on hard mode like you probably get more of that esteem, but depending on the goal, i mean you lose.

Yeah, i mean i don't this like i think it's more effective with creative goals, like if you're writing a book, like you don't want to go around telling everyone your book idea yeah, what the idea is and all that.

It's like you're draining of its energy, you know, and i mean i think you really have to protect that obviously you need an editor.

Whoever else is like hey, you know you have stuff due, like you know, like you need that, but like it's better if you're just keeping mute on the rest of it until it's done.

Yeah, you know, i i do like the idea of some things are keeping some things for yourself.

I do think there's something i don't know.

My intuition is that there you go.

And your intuition is reliable because you've done a lot of work.

At least you've read a lot about is that there's something healthy about that.

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True or false?

People don't change.

Oh, this is a spicy one.

First of all, it depends what you mean by people and change.

Are we going to go Jordan Peterson now?

What do you mean by mean?

I think, obviously, behaviors change.

And people's beliefs about themselves can change.

I do think there are certain components of us that don't change.

This is pretty borne out in the psychological research.

If you look at personality psychology, personality changes at a glacial pace throughout your life and you can't really direct it.

You can direct it a tiny bit, but the effort-reward is just so out of whack.

If you're a deeply introverted person, you could spend a decade trying to make yourself extroverted.

It's just not going to happen.

There are certain things that are just genetically baked in.

The way I look at this is that we all have our genetic and biological predispositions to certain behaviors or moods or positions.

And I think it's instead of trying to change those things, which I think a lot of people spend a lot of effort trying to change them, I think it's better to simply lean into them and try to find adaptive ways to live with them, right?

So if you're an introvert, don't spend your life trying to be an extrovert.

Try to find a very adaptive way to have a healthy social life as an introvert.

If you're an addict, you find other ways to channel that energy and other pursuits and other things that you can get really into and really compulsive with, than to just stop being have that genetic predisposition.

So that's where I'm at with it.

I believe the last time we were here, this was something... Did we talk about this last time?

I think we disagreed about it.

Oh, we did.

Yeah, interesting.

I have no idea what we talked about last time.

That's funny.

But I guess I would say this.

I mean, I agree with that.

There are certain aspects of ourself that are relatively immutable.

Yeah.

But there's all kinds of things that I think we underappreciate the extent to which we have agency to mutate them.

Yes.

And I think when somebody just flippantly says well, people don't change, they're looking around and like yeah, like somebody's behaving the same way they always have, or whatever.

But I think in part that has to do with our relationship with our own inner potential and and our lack of perspective on the nature of change itself, meaning we're projecting ourselves into the future in the version that we are in today.

You know what i mean.

It's like we don't account for the fact that we are going to be different people in the future or that we're capable of being somebody else.

Like obviously the decisions that you make now are not the same ones you made when you were 20 years old.

Like you're a different guy.

Like There are immutable aspects of you that are the same, but you couldn't have predicted then the perspective that you have on so many things that you have now.

Right,

And by underappreciating that, we get in our own way in terms of how we think about our own capacity to change.

And I think we also have this default mode. to think that everything is permanent.

We're very attached to the way that things are, in the sense that I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I'm gonna be the same guy static, yeah.

That, i think, is a survival, you know, mechanism that allows us to wake up and function.

But the truth is like there's nothing in the universe that isn't in constant motion all the time, like the universe is expanding and the subatomic particles are vibrating.

Like there is nothing there is.

Like the idea of anything being static is is the core delusion right, yeah?

And then it gets into the agency piece like so, if you think of it that way, like change Is almost like fundamental to the universe.

You know what I mean?

And it's about our relationship with it.

Like, are we collaborating with it or are we allowing it to just have its way with us?

It's funny because, I mean, you and I, we tend to agree on most things and it's.

With this one, I feel like our biases are in different directions.

I don't think we necessarily disagree very much about it in substance, but I think our biases are in different directions.

When I was younger, my issue, I think I had a little bit of a delusional belief about myself that I could change anything at any moment and be anybody and go anywhere and learn anything.

Coming from the opposite end of that spectrum.

Yeah.

And that and that bit me in the ass because it's like eventually I ran up against my own limitations and constraints and I didn't want to accept them.

And so it's for me, it's been so interesting.

It's been very transformative to realize like, no, no, no.

Like what?

You've been humbled in that regard.

Yes.

Whereas I've had experiences that just amazed me, that I didn't think were possible.

So yeah, we're coming at it.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

But I guess one way I look at this, and part of this is my fault.

I think you correctly identified, I think, how most people think about change.

I think my perception of change is a little bit more inside baseball perspective.

Whereas I think what a lot of people think of as transformation is really just allowing themselves to be themselves.

That's been my observation in this line of work is that what most people come into this industry wanting to be a completely different person and what they actually end up getting is like Oh, I get to be comfortable with who I am and live, and I don't have to pretend or fake or distract myself anymore.

And so when I see like people quote unquote change, it's usually like that.

If that makes sense.

Yeah.

Like dispelling the notion that you're going to become this completely other person.

What it is in reality is stripping away the layers so that you can become more of who you've always been all along.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I agree with that.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

That was the nod.

I love that, um, insight into our, our various biases.

I think that that's spot on.

Yeah.

All right.

Pick one.

Oh yeah.

My turn.

I know what I need to do, but I just can't stop myself from procrastinating.

Why?

How can I stop all caps help?

So it's funny.

We.

It's been interesting doing these solved episodes because you know some of them.

We do these deep dives.

And it's like you just get into all these fascinating rabbit holes and nooks and crannies and everything.

And there's like just multiple dimensions to a concept.

And in other episodes you get through like two or three hours of research and you're like yeah, it's basically just this.

And procrastination was one of those.

Uh, we talked to, I think, the three top procrastination researchers in the world and uh yeah, basically it's, it's a lack of emotional regulation.

Like it's it is.

At the end of the day, procrastination is a instinctive reaction to avoiding uncomfortable emotions.

And for some people that emotion is anxiety.

For some people it's shame or embarrassment.

And then for some people it's, uh, you know, perfectionism or overwhelm feeling incapable.

And, um, but whatever it is, it's, you procrastinate meeting a need.

It's serving a purpose.

Yes.

It's.

It is a kind of a last ditch effort to regulate an emotion that you are otherwise not being able to handle.

And this is why like, if you, you know, like I remember when I was younger uh, I broke up with a girl I was dating and I went to work the next day and I got nothing done the entire day.

And I remember my boss yelling at me and I just wanted to be like, she left, man.

She left.

It's not my fault.

It's when you're an emotional wreck.

This is why you can't really do other things is because you're so dysregulated that you're.

You are constantly defaulting to avoidance in any avoidance and distraction in any way, shape or form.

Confronting the task at hand is so uncomfortable or laden with some fear that you'll literally do anything to avoid it.

Yeah.

No matter how destructive.

Yeah.

And it's funny because if you look at like all the procrastination techniques solutions, like all the hacks and tools and stuff, there are all different ways of attacking this right.

So probably the most reliable one, or the one that i use the most, is just take like, whatever task is intimidating me, just make it as small as possible.

I call it the minimum viable action.

So i'll use a book as an example.

Like, let's say, i'm freaking out over a book, i put it off for days.

You know what i'll do is i'll sit down and just be like okay, just write one paragraph.

Doesn't even have to be a good paragraph.

I don't even have to use it for the book.

Just write one paragraph.

When you shrink the task to a size that it no longer feels intimidating, it at least gets you in the chair and doing it.

And then once you're doing it, there'll be a momentum to it and it makes everything else easier.

Another version of this that a friend of mine who's a meditation teacher will often tell his students is he says you know, Students will come to him and they're like you know, I try to meditate for 10 minutes every morning and it's just, it's too hard.

I can't do it.

And he's like, OK, what what amount of time feels easy?

And they're like, well, I don't know.

Like he's like, how about 10 seconds?

And they're like, what?

And he's like, yeah, meditate for 10 seconds every morning.

Let me know how it goes.

And he's like, sure enough, they sit down, they do 10 seconds and they're like, well, I'm here.

I might as well keep going.

And so it's just.

You can use that for almost anything.

And then obviously environment, controlling your environment is a huge part of it too.

Just like not allowing your brain escape hatches, putting the phone in the other room, blocking apps on your computer, you know, turning off the TV, whatever.

The harder it is for your mind to escape, the more likely it is to actually like focus and do what it needs to do.

I think that a lot of the productivity hacks don't work because they're basically treating the symptom without acknowledging the fear behind it.

And the minimum viable act is getting at the fear piece.

It's not because you're disorganized or you need to streamline your calendar or your, and so just to take the case of you know being a writer and the blank page, it's like you're.

You're afraid that you don't have anything you know like worthy of saying, or that you're a bad writer or whatever.

You know, all of those things are just like the terror of like having to confront the blank page will compel you to procrastinate and defer and delay and avoid that work.

But by saying like, just scribble down a word in your journal or like you know, do the free association warning pages or whatever to kind of get you into a rhythm, is allowing you to like dose yourself with that fear, like the minimum dose of that, to realize like oh, it's not that bad.

And then you kind of like move forward through that.

But I think the important piece is recognizing the fact that you're doing the procrastination because it's doing something for you And what is it doing for you?

What's quelling your fear in some way?

So like, all right well, let's get it another way of trying to manage that fear that is moving you towards the thing that you're avoiding, instead of away from it.

Yeah.

There's a bit of a muscle to it.

Like, I do think the more you just do things... the better you get at it.

You know, it's like any... Well, because then you realize the fear is imagined.

Well, and it's like any fear management.

Like, you know, it's the first time you get up and speak in front of people.

Like exposure therapy.

Yeah, it's terrifying.

But the hundredth time you do it, you don't really think about it.

And I think procrastination is not that different.

Like, at a certain point, you just kind of build that muscle that you can get on with it.

And then you have to put the lie to all the reasons you know that are cycling in your mind, that are allowing you to rationalize it like i'll get to it later or like now it's not the right time.

All of those things have to be kind of deconstructed too.

Yeah yeah anyway, all right, but we could, we could go on here.

Oh, when it comes to self-help gurus mark, who is the worst offender and why?

Oh oh, With the caveat – look, if you don't want to name names, this is not about calling out people if you don't want to.

But perhaps what are some red flags to look out for?

The idea being like how can we help people not fall prey to some crafty marketing techniques and give people some discernment anyway?

I love the shameless engagement farming here.

It's like, let's get the gossip.

Let's go viral on TikTok.

It's actually a good question.

What are the red flags to look for?

It's funny because I've just always thought so much in terms of actual people that I've never actually thought about what is the underlying principle of Listen.

If you want to like – Name some names.

Okay.

So here's the biggest one.

And I'll call this one out by name because it is punching up.

So, you know, I think Tony Robbins, he gives – there's a lot of value in what he does.

He gives a lot of great advice.

There are marketing practices that I think are a little bit ick, which is –

When you're dealing with a customer base of highly vulnerable people and they're very impressionable and the reason they are buying from you is because they believe you have answers for them.

I just think that there's a certain responsibility that comes around aggressive marketing that should be honored and respected, like marketing and sales done extremely well.

Like if you, if you go take a marketing one-on-one class like, basically the first thing they teach you is that you find, you find people's insecurity, you poke that insecurity and then you tell them that your product is going to fix their insecurity.

Right.

So, whether it's a beauty product or, um you know uh, clothing or a beer brand or whatever it is, um you, you figure out where people's vulnerabilities are and then you Position your product as the solution to that vulnerability.

I just think when you're getting into the world of self-help, I have a very, very sensitive radar for people who poke those insecurities like these.

People are already vulnerable.

They're already suffering.

They're already in pain.

And so if you come along and you just start like kind of like rubbing it in their face because you're about to sell a six thousand dollar coaching package to them,

It just gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The relationship you and I have with our audience, there's nothing normal about this.

It is a parasocial relationship.

It's a very asymmetrical relationship.

I take it very seriously that I have a responsibility to the people who follow me to be honest and as authentic as possible and uphold my integrity to the best of my ability.

And if I ever fail or flag in any way, like be open and honest about that.

But I think part of that too is also just being transparent about the nature of this relationship, right.

So what bugs me sometimes is that there are a lot of people in this space who very intentionally play into that parasocial relationship.

You know, they want you to think that they're your friend.

They want you to think that Um, they're looking out for you, that they care about you, that they want you, they want to have a relationship with you, or whatever.

It's like they, they, again, they kind of lean into that vulnerability that happens in this space.

I always try to be really frank with my audience of like I'm just a dude who happened to read way too many books about this shit.

Here are my struggles.

Here are my concerns.

Here are my insecurities.

Um, i'm very passionate about doing this, so this is why i make this content.

But like, let's be real here, like i don't have all the answers and i just think anybody who, if i, if i don't see that attitude or disposition in their work, if the attitude and disposition is like you know hey friends, listen to me, i've got all the solutions for you it just to me, that's um, I just wouldn't trust it.

I'll just put it that way.

Yeah.

I mean, a hundred percent.

If somebody is presenting themselves with a demonstrable lack of humility paired with like, a high degree of certainty, you know, like that they are in possession of some answer that is going to solve your fundamental problem in some kind of savior, complex kind of way.

Um,

That's that's problematic to me.

And it is despairing.

Like it's interesting because a lot of these people you know, I think it's like there's, it's all gray.

Like, you know, a lot of these people are helping people.

Yeah.

Some of them are helping them at great financial cost to the people they're helping.

But I do bristle at the reductive kind of reasoning that goes into this, like taking these highly, like.

Every answer that we've given today like it's, like we're kind of like in this gray murky, like nuanced way of trying to make sense of like very complicated things when it comes to human behavior, right.

It's like there's no binary here.

There's no like distillation with the.

You know what's the number one thing that's going to.

It doesn't matter, right.

Like it's all like well, it depends for whom and when and what are the conditions, and you know all of it right, and anyone who dismisses all of that for some very convenient reductive answer that they deliver with great certainty uh, and is available at great cost, you know, to the person who they're pretending to be friends with yeah, it's like, maybe exercise a little discernment around what's actually going on.

I think a much, probably a much better answer of, i think A much shorter and better version of my answer would be how often do they change their mind and how often do they admit that they were wrong?

That's a pretty good rubric.

Yeah.

Which ones don't change their mind when presented with contrary evidence?

Because what you see is a lot of them double down and…

Yeah, I think those are good principles.

All right.

We managed to only say one name.

We don't have to go to the lowest common denominator.

Oh, it's your turn.

Here, you pick one.

I'll do this one.

I realize I am a chronic people pleaser and have made most of my life's biggest decisions based on others' opinions and my need for their approval.

How do I get over this to stop betraying myself and live more authentically?

Classic problem the question I always throw to to to the people pleasers is What are you willing to be disliked for?

Find the thing that you're willing to be disliked for, like.

What is something so important in your life that?

It's a hill you're willing to die on, and people pleasers have a ton of trouble answering that question and And I think the fact that they can't answer that question is kind of at the core of the issue

Obviously, people-pleasing is born out of kind of a chronic need for feeling adequate or okay.

You've outsourced your sense of self and self-worth to an external person or something like some achievement or whatever.

And I think—

Most people pleasers.

I think they go about it in a way that's not realistic or practical, which is like how do I just stop pleasing everybody?

That's probably the hardest way to do it, which is to just stop people pleasing without replacing it.

There's no other identity filling that void that the people pleasing is going to leave behind.

And so I always encourage people to go find the thing that's going to fill the void and, And then it will.

The people, pleasing will stop.

It will fall away as a consequence.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the added thing, just from my own experience as a fairly chronic people pleaser is the idea that you don't know what that authentic person is.

Like if you spent your whole life like, let's say, you grew up in a household where it was very important that you lived up to expectations or whatever.

And so your behavior adapts to like a family unit in which you've got to please like the parents.

You don't know anything different, right?

So you never even had the opportunity to connect with whatever is authentic to you.

And then you go out in the world and you're seeking that in all these different ways because that validation is a proxy for, you know, love and self-esteem right.

Like, so you have to earn these things as transactions.

And as a consequence, you don't develop the facility to provide that for yourself.

And it becomes like this, this smoke screen or this, this veil that prevents you from even having any kind of like connection with who you are right, because that doesn't enter into the mental calculus around the decisions that you're making.

And so to even begin to do that, you have to find a way to go inside yourself enough so that you can identify something about yourself that you care about, that might be in opposition to all of that energy you have around hiding it, because it doesn't match up with what you know, this set of expectations that you've decided is so important.

Yeah.

Do you still feel like you're a people pleaser, or do you feel like you've?

I mean way, way less so, but like I'm wired, I'm wired for it.

You know what I mean?

So I can, I can fall into it.

I can, I'll catch myself. being a bit of a chameleon and social situation.

Like I know how to adapt and like you know kind of be the guy that I think people you know, like I can, I can I still have.

I don't do it nearly the way that to the extent that I used to like, but I wouldn't say I'm completely cured of it.

It's funny because I, just from my hanging out with you, I never would have guessed.

It's interesting.

The other piece to that too, that keeps people stuck in it, is that you develop a bit of an identity around it that makes you feel good.

Because if you're pleasing everyone in every situation, you're like, I'm so amenable to everybody.

I'm such a good guy.

I'm so cooperative.

And you start to think of this as an asset and you're blind to the ways in which it's actually harming you.

That's the trap of it, is that you get to feel...

There's like a moral satisfaction that comes with it.

I'm like, I'm so helpful.

I'm always there for people, you know?

Yeah, it's like this good guy, you know, kind of persona that gets crafted around it.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

I'm pretty good at making progress towards my goals, but for some reason, every time I get close to achieving one, I find myself falling back to my old habits.

What the fuck is going on?

Are these fucks on the card or are you adding them?

No, they're on the card.

I did that just for you, Mark.

You keep getting all the fuck cards.

So basically giving up at the last mile is the... Right, it's self-sabotage.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing that's coming up for me is that there's probably some sense of not deserving the result.

There's something kind of messed up about having a particular problem in your life.

The having of that problem can, in many ways, become your identity.

And so, by solving that problem, you lose that piece of your identity which then freaks you out and scares you.

And so you procrastinate solving that problem or find ways to avoid solving that problem to perpetuate your identity and sense of self.

Yeah.

I mean so much of this too just, and I know last time we were here we talked about my health journey and how that ended up being like so much deeper than just fucking counting calories and going to the gym.

Like I had to confront a lot of identity level stuff, a lot of emotional stuff, a lot of like my relationships with people and food and social life.

And I think, like I just feel like that happens with a lot of goals is is that It's at a certain point to like really go far with it.

There's some underlying.

Architecture that you're you have to look at and be like, does that still need to be there?

OK, now pull it out, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, core to that is the idea that whatever you're doing, whatever behavior you're engaged in repeatedly, is serving you in some way.

It's doing some, there's a reason you're doing it and it's it's meeting some need that you have.

So you can walk around and say i'm going to finally solve this problem.

But right up until the point that you solve it, you know like, if you don't solve it, it's because like, you're not ready to give it up because, because you have no other way of meeting that need.

You haven't figured out like what that need is in a different way of, of, of filling it.

So, for example, somebody is complaining uh because uh, this other person is always, always coming to them asking for money, you know, or whatever.

And and Because you're a good guy, you always lend them money and they never pay you back, but they keep doing it and they're not grateful or whatever.

And so there's a cycle here, right?

And you'd be like, I wish they would just stop doing this or whatever.

But you keep engaging in this.

Why?

Because something inside of you likes it this way.

Maybe it gives you control over that person, or maybe it makes you feel superior to that person.

Whatever it is, you're not going to solve the problem until you kind of identify that need that's being met and say well, why do I need to feel like I need to be in control of this person?

Like, what is that about?

Like, let's deconstruct that and get to the bottom of that.

I'm about to walk into a minefield here.

Let's see if I can not blow myself up.

But There is a certain feeling of righteousness that comes with being wronged by others.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the key piece.

Yeah.

Why is this walking into a minefield?

Because some people they adopt victimhood as an identity and so they find ways to go and bite it upon themselves, which is not the same thing as blaming the victim.

It's just an observation that some people choose to inhabit to identify with that victimhood because it is serving, as you said, an emotional need for them.

There is a certain level of moral righteousness and probably validation that they get, social identity, that they get from others.

That reinforces it.

And we had a family friend who was in a very I'll spare the gory details but in a very fucked up marriage.

And I remember I was talking to my dad about him.

We were just kind of having this conversation of like, why is he still in this marriage?

And I was pretty young at the time.

I was probably around 20 or something.

And I remember saying to my dad I was like well, I don't know about you, but I just feel like and this was metaphorical, by the way it was not a physically abusive marriage.

I said to my dad I was like I don't know about you, but if I got punched in the face enough times I would probably get up and leave and go somewhere else.

And he said yeah, but there's a fine difference between getting punched in the face and walking into somebody's fist.

And it's you know.

I've known people over the years who will put themselves in a position like you will see, people who will intentionally put themselves in positions where they can have that.

They'll create, yeah, they'll create the scenario.

Yeah.

On the deservedness piece, though this idea like well, I self-sabotage because fundamentally deep down I don't believe I deserve good things.

Is that different, or is that just another version of the same thing?

That gets to the internal monologue aspect of it.

Yeah.

They don't feel like the exact same thing to me, but I imagine there's a significant overlap there, right?

Because it's you don't feel like you deserve nice things and but you know being wronged by others or being treated poorly by others is a way for you to get some of your emotional needs met, like that can be.

You're looking for evidence to support that narrative because then it allows you to inhabit an identity that makes you like.

Even if it feels bad, there's something about it that feels good yeah.

Yeah, humans are weird.

I have a course that is going to explain all of this, Mark.

It's going to dispel all the weirdness.

For $6,000 a month.

Well, that's just the top of the sales funnel.

There will be plenty of emails that you're going to receive that are going to upsell you on the VIP level of that.

Yes, if you have been victimized, then you are perfect for Rich Roll's course.

All right, you pick.

What is the worst piece of advice commonly given by so-called self-improvement gurus?

Oh, man, there's so many directions to go on this one.

Come on, this is like at the bullseye of your whole thing.

No, I mean, the problem isn't I can't think of one.

The problem is I'm at like a buffet of so many options.

You know, my recent... my recent boogaboo is, uh, is manifestation.

It's, it's like, it's, it's re it's taken off a second time.

It's gotten a second life with Gen Z and Tik TOK.

Um, and it's, yeah, it just, there are a lot of people in my, my, my life who are starting to talk about manifesting and, I got people on my team who are like talking about manifesting and they're like, oh yeah, we're going to manifest.

I'm like, guys.

So drill down to how that's being defined.

Okay.

So manifestation, it originates from, I believe, The Secret from Rhonda Byrne's 2000 book.

And basically the idea is that the universe.

So, whatever your thoughts are, so this is the official theory of manifestation right.

And then we can kind of get into the different interpretations and maybe why it quote-unquote works and why it doesn't.

So the official theory is that your thoughts create vibrations in the universe, and vibrations in the universe attract thoughts similar vibrations.

So if you want a brand new BMW, you should just think about a brand new BMW all the time, and then the universe will conspire—that's usually the word that's used—the universe will conspire to bring a BMW to your life.

Now, the most egregious use of manifesting is, like I would call it, passive manifesting, which is, you know, the person sitting on the couch being like I want a BMW and then sitting around for six months and wondering why they don't have a BMW.

Whereas there's a little bit more of an active manifestation, which is the understanding that you actually have to like, do things, that you can't just sit around and wait for a car to show up in your driveway.

You have to go out in the world and like, try to move towards the thing that you want and that only when you move towards it does the universe conspire to give it to you.

The passive form of manifestation is just pure delusion and garbage, and it just makes people feel good and special.

I would say the active form of manifestation, there is something to it, but I also think it's just it's just a little whacked out like there's probably simpler ways to describe this so the the the active form of manifestation like essentially what it is it's doing is is that it's uh leveraging your cognitive biases to perceive and experience things in your environment so you've probably had the experience where it's like you go years without thinking about cars and then suddenly you want to buy a new car and suddenly you're noticing all of the new cars on the highway around you.

You're self selecting evidence in your environment to support this narrative.

Totally.

There's too much stimulation in the world for your brain to handle all of it.

And so your brain uses a lot of tools and hacks to like choose what to pay attention to.

And manifestation is basically a.

You are leveraging those tools.

Focus on the thing that you want.

So if you really want to raise at work and you decide that you're gonna start manifesting arrays at work, you're gonna think about it all the time and you're gonna focus on it, you're gonna take action towards it.

You will start to notice opportunities that were probably always there, but you just didn't notice them because you weren't focused on them and you hadn't primed your perceptual biases to be predisposed towards them.

And so I

Yeah, it will probably increase the odds that you get a raise at work.

And then when you get the raise, you get to say, I manifested it.

Right.

And you get to take all the credit, which is fine, I guess.

But it's just kind of a silly way to perceive action, like goals and taking action.

It's kind of this cosmological explanation for just being focused on an objective in life.

So I just don't understand the cosmological explanation and what's appealing about it.

And then you get into these crazy discussions with people where they're like, well, I manifested it.

The universe gave it to me.

And I'm like, okay, well, how did it give it to you?

And they're like, well, it responded to my vibes.

And I'm like, okay, well, what what were the vibes?

Can you describe them?

You know, it's just like, there's no there there.

I get it.

This is fascinating.

So I want to know, like I want to, I want to like explore this a little bit more deeply, because I would I agree with you a hundred percent a on the passive sedentary, you know kind of idea of manifestation.

And I would also agree with you on this active form of manifestation and in its sort of transactional sense.

I think, where I would maybe disagree with you, and this is probably because I veer a little more like woo than you do, you know.

Admittedly,

I think there is something to the fact.

Well, first of all, with respect to that transactional, like I manifested it, like the I in there is, like There's so much ego in that, as if you have this much control over the universe.

You know what I mean?

There is value in appreciating the mystery of your life unfolding naturally in a way that serves you, when you have aligned your actions with your values and and you are making decisions based upon that authentic intuition and you are kind of right-minded and right-acting.

That when you're inhabiting kind of that more actualized version of yourself, like life is better and you know outcomes are better.

And you can break that down into its practical pieces and say well yeah, because you're making a sale.

Of course, like things are going to work out a little bit better when you're doing that.

But in my experience –

And maybe this is my self-selecting mind.

And this is informed by like being in the community of recovery for a long time.

Like I've just seen, lives transformed in the most like magical, unimaginable ways that don't make any practical sense.

And so I do think part of the humility piece, it's like I'm not doing anything, but I'm aligned, you know, I'm kind of aligned with know whatever you want to call it like the mysteries of the the universal energies or whatever such that life just kind of you're in this allowance space where you're allowing your life to like move in a certain direction and you're open to experiences and like things will kind of like come to you like you you have you're you're now emitting kind of a magnetic field that you didn't have before And things that you were trying to grasp or like going after are like kind of you're you're inviting them into your experience.

You had me up to magnetic field.

But I'm not I'm just using that as a metaphor.

You know what I mean?

Like, like.

You are attracting, you know like, OK.

So a very practical version of that is to say, water rises to its own level.

So if you're out there and you're trying to find, you know, a girlfriend or a boyfriend and you're chasing after this idealized person, like if you're not adequately self-actualized, you have nothing to give this person.

So this person is not going to be interested in you.

But when you put in the work and you rise the level in your glass to hire such that it's on parity with that person, then you have something to give and that person will be more open or drawn to you.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And so playing that out in every context of your life, there is something to be said for that.

And can you put a finger on what exactly that is?

I just think life's more fun when I'm open to the mystery of what might be going on, because I think there is hubris in the idea that we can distill all these things down to psychological principles, because reality is quite a bit more than what we're filtering through our limited senses.

I agree with that.

Okay.

How does that land for you, buddy?

Captain unfun coming in.

No, first of all, I think you made a really good point, which is that the cosmological explanation of all this stuff—and it's not just manifestation, but energy and the universe and all this stuff—I do think you nailed an important observation, which is that it generates an illusion of control.

That there is something predictable and controllable— and uh certain about the universe that i can like yeah and it quells our our profound fear of uncertainty yeah uh so i think that's one piece of it which is fine i don't like i understand that it's the funny the the attraction i would say this the thing is you're not attracting the things into your life you're noticing the things in your life and but it feels like you're attracting them So the first person subjective experience is like suddenly all these things that used to not be in my life are now showing up in my life.

So it feels like you're attracting them, when really what's happening is and I'll use your dating example right.

So it's like when you're a dysfunctional fuck up, you probably meet a lot of very good potential partners, but they don't strike you as good potential partners because you're so dysfunctional it just doesn't even register to you that you could have a relationship with them.

But then when you get yourself figured out and grow and self-actualize, suddenly it seems.

It appears as if all of these other great potential partners have suddenly shown up into your life.

Well, they were there all along.

It's just that back before you never noticed them because you were primed to notice the dysfunctional potential partners.

So it's like the feeling is that you're attracting it into your world.

But it's funny because this, this like bleeds into.

I think i've been thinking a lot more about lately, about how this is the role, this language, you know vibes energy, manifesting the universe uh energy, like all this stuff.

It's kind of playing a a little bit of a role of like that religion used to play, and then it's and it's not even that it's creating like a theology or anything like.

It's not Because I would say, when I have this conversation with a lot of my woo-woo friends, they're not that invested in it.

They're like, it's just a word, man.

I just like saying it.

But I do think there's a utility in the language.

It does feel useful for a lot of people.

It's easy for people to just think in terms of like, okay, I want this thing in my life.

I'm going to manifest it.

I'm going to focus really hard on it.

And then I'm going to attract it into my life through the universe, right?

And that's going to feel true.

And even if it's not objectively true, that's fine.

And that part of it, I'm on board with it.

That's great.

I think for the average person, awesome.

Cool.

No problem.

There's a linguistic utility to it.

Where I start to roll my eyes is when you start to get these weird cosmological explanations for why the universe is going to deliver you that Ferrari that you always dreamed about.

Well, this is the other piece that I didn't quite get to, and that's why I use the word transactional in your kind of active tense version of this.

It's not that you get the Ferrari or you get the thing that you are like.

Trying to quote, unquote manifest.

It's that you get what you need.

And what you need is never the Ferrari.

And it's only after you know, in the aftermath of that, that you realize like oh, that's what I really wanted.

Or that's what my life needed in that moment.

You think you're chasing this one thing.

But it's not the thing.

You don't get to know the way that it unfolds and the direction that it leads you.

But it generally tends to lead you in a direction better than had you commandeered the controls and tried to drive it with your self-will.

So I agree with that.

Do you think the average – manifesting influencer on TikTok agree?

Like, is that?

No, no, no.

So this is the distinction that I'm making.

Like I'm saying, I agree with you completely in the way that you've laid this out.

I'm just saying that, irrespective of all of that Like whether –, like we get caught up in words that like – you know what I mean.

So it's like there is something going on here.

You know what I mean?

And I think, when you are in alignment like however you want to define that, whether you call that self-actualization or just making sure that your actions are measuring up with your values

Like it does, you know, propel your life in a way like with and you do it with humility and you're not trying to control outcomes and you're more in a space of allowing, like your life kind of moves forward in a direction that might be anticipated but ultimately is much better for you in ways that you can't didactically distill down into some kind of satisfying explanation.

I see what you're saying.

And yeah, I agree.

I think we're on the same page with the power of intention and being explicit about what you want in your life.

Like, I agree that there's a ton of power behind that.

And it can feel, when you are experiencing it, it can feel magical.

And maybe it is.

God damn it, Rich.

You don't have to be Captain Bummer.

This is a safe space, Mark.

This is a safe space.

I can be fun here.

I can come and be fun.

No, but I do think there's a lot of, If there's, linguistic utility to help people set those intentions and live out those intentions with it.

Awesome, great.

Where I get off the ship is when you get some of these cosmic explanations.

Um, let's see, i feel like you should read this for a very specific reason.

Okay, i'll like let you do this one next, just because it contains a certain word.

Okay, you seem to want to say out loud okay, it's too late for me.

I am who i am at this point.

Prove me wrong.

Prove you wrong.

Basically, the trope.

Like you know, that ship has sailed for me.

Like maybe 10 years ago, I could have made this change.

But like you know, I'm just, I mean it gets into the.

You know people don't change idea, I guess in the first person aspect of it.

But you know, I think you know somebody who's older than you, like there is, you know, a sense that you get to a certain point and you're like yeah.

Either you just live, you're like, well, I'm just going to ride this out.

You know what I mean?

Like, is this really worth looking at?

Even if I could change it, like, what am I really getting out of this?

I can understand the sentiment.

I just think people's perception or understanding of time is just very warped and inaccurate.

So my favorite story around this, which I've told in a few places in my content.

So a really dear friend of mine in Brazil said His grandfather passed away and his grandmother, I think, was 62 when it happened.

And she obviously was depressed and grieving and going through a hard time.

And her entire life, she always wanted to play piano.

And she decided, confronted with her partner's mortality, she said you know what, screw it, I'm going to take piano lessons.

So she started playing piano for the first time at 62.

And she loved it.

And she kept playing and playing.

And she was playing all day, every day.

She was doing lessons every day.

And months went by, and her family started to think that something was wrong.

Like, Nana, hey, it's time to put the piano away.

We understand you're sad, but you got to get back in the world.

But she kept playing.

And He said that by the time she lived well into her 90s and he said that by the time she was in her 90s in a retirement home, she would go sit down at the piano in the retirement home and she would play Beethoven and Mozart and Rachmaninoff and all these incredible pieces.

And everybody was convinced that she used to be a professional stage pianist.

Wow.

And she said that I started when I was 62. she played for 30 years every day, right?

So we don't think about the gap from 62 to 92 being the same as from 0 to 30.

And the funny thing is that she had been playing longer than most professional stage pianists by that point.

So on the one hand, life is short, right?

And take advantage of the time you have left.

But on the other hand, I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say past the age of 40 or 50 um, without realizing like dude, they're decades, like they're, you can do a lot in it.

It's the warren buffett quote right people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

It's like.

I think that's very true.

Like the human, animal is not a very good predictive machine, We think we have a good sense of how things are going to play out.

Actually, the evidence is we're pretty terrible at that, right?

Yeah.

But I think what's additionally beautiful about that story is it dispels that notion that we have no neuroplasticity left at that age.

We can't learn new things, and that's really quite beautiful.

Yeah.

The point is, it's not too late.

Do we need to underscore that?

Yeah.

I mean, obviously.

I mean, look.

Obviously.

Yeah.

I think that there is always time.

And to the extent that you think you're like the story of your life has already been told and you're just going to slide into your third act or whatever it is like, is just an insane delusion.

And we have a lot more agency over these things than we think we have.

And we're also far more capable in ways that I don't think that we're really consciously aware of.

I'll say too, that I often get emails from older folks.

Like it's, They're not a large contingent of my audience, but they're surprisingly vocal.

Like, I get a lot of emails from people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

They got time on their hands to, like, watch YouTube videos and make comments and stuff.

Yeah, and email me about it.

But it's funny because, I mean, I love seeing them, but, you know, the font is, like, size 32.

But it's... they're so sweet and they're always like, I'm 73.

I wish I had found this 50 years ago.

You know, it's like I just started getting my shit together three years ago and it's just really cool.

And so I, I see it all the time.

I see a lot of, a lot of people in the later stages of life, like you know, taking ownership and initiative and it's yeah, it's never too late.

How do people commonly fuck up when it comes to setting a goal and working towards achieving it?

I think we already answered that.

I think I gave that to you just because it had the word fuck in it.

It was a different one.

Were you worried that I was— I was like, oh, I got the fuck one again?

You were worried that I was fucked a prime?

Yeah.

Okay.

I was trying to people-please you.

Do I have to be in pain to make a change?

How important is it that I suffer?

I think that's a good one to be our last one.

That is a good one.

You don't have to be in pain.

You will just often be in pain when you make a change.

It is possible to do it pleasantly, but it is not – and look, I mean, it's just human nature.

Is that you –?

You take the path of least resistance, right?

So in a lot of cases we don't ask ourselves the hard questions or make the difficult decisions until we're forced to.

And we're usually forced to when something extremely difficult has happened or is happening.

So it's not that you have to be in pain to change yourself.

It's just that pain is often a nice lubricant to change.

Yeah.

It's interesting that these choices are always available to us and yet we just were so reluctant to grab them and do anything with them until we're in enough pain to make fear of what's on the other side of that change tolerable enough.

You know what I mean?

The pain has to exceed the fear of the different thing, right?

Yeah.

The real value of the pain is that it instigates willingness where before there was none.

And without willingness, you're not gonna do anything.

And willingness is a very weird kind of impulse, because I know people say oh, be willing to be willing, but that's like asking somebody to want something that they don't want.

You know what I mean?

You can't just make a decision to be willing.

It's almost like something that visits you, like now I'm going to get a little woo again.

You know what I mean.

But you can't just conjure it in your mind.

You have to have some kind of experience that incites it in you or allows it to express itself, and it's the willingness that gets you to do the thing you've never done before yeah, which is why you can't get other people to change that don't want to.

You can't make another person willing.

You know what i mean.

You can't.

It's difficult to conjure it in yourself and you certainly can't compel it in another human being, but pain has a unique way of of breathing life into that willingness impulse.

Yeah, A related question to this, one that I get often, and it's always from really young people.

They always say well, if that's true, does that mean that I need to go find more pain in my life so I can change?

And my answer is always, don't worry, it will find you.

Pain will find you.

Life's got plenty of pain planned for you, my friend.

Don't worry about it.

And you know engaging in discomfort is necessary to the meaningful life that you aspire to have and that currently eludes you.

Right.

So developing a capacity for some degree of pain tolerance is a necessary life skill.

Yeah.

I see doing hard things as kind of practice for those moments.

Yeah.

I mean, basically this boils down to, you know, just get over yourself.

I don't know.

We've come full circle.

Like, yeah, look, the good news is, you know, you can change.

The bad news is you're going to have to deal with pain.

So just like be in acceptance of that.

And instead of recoiling from it, like what would happen if you move towards it?

Yeah.

Well said.

All right.

I think, did we do it?

Did we do it?

I think we should, I think we can end this with maybe a final parting thought.

Okay.

Each on, um, How to frame this period of the year for people.

What do you want to leave people with, so that they're kind of reflecting on their relationship with change in a new and different way that is perhaps empowering and not like Captain Bomer?

Yeah.

Uh, I could, I could just see it.

It's like ritual episode nine 42 captain bummer.

Are you kidding?

This, this, I don't know about you do this podcast is fire.

I have a good feeling about this.

Go ahead.

I mean, for me, it's always, it always comes back to values.

Like that's, you know, what are the fucks you're going to give?

Cause it's it's ultimately like the things that you're choosing to care about are.

They are either going to reinforce or undermine everything else that you try to do in your life.

And I think it's the values based questions are the harder questions to ask and to answer.

But you get way way, way more mileage and satisfaction out of them than simply like.

You know what cool stuff do I want or want to do?

Just to reiterate what I said a minute ago I do think that we're all capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.

And my parting message would really be give yourself permission to explore that thing that you've deferred in your life, that brings you joy.

And it doesn't have to be in the context of a goal.

Sometimes those things can be a little bit violent and maybe make it a joyous experience of of just whether it's learning how to play the piano or whatever the thing is that brings a little bit more joy and life into your daily experience and allow yourself or make space for your life so that you can pursue it, not without any necessary agenda, but

Purely for the sake of doing the thing.

And, in my experience, when you do that, like you know, certain things show up in your life and, like whatever path this is going to take, will begin to reveal itself.

And there's.

I think there's something beautiful about that that is more transcendent than like, I'm going to lose this weight or I'm going to, you know like, participate in this race or whatever.

Your version of the typical, like prototypical New Year's resolution is.

For sure.

All right.

Did we do good?

Yeah, I think we did it.

Did we do it?

In the meantime, check out all Mark's stuff, the Solved podcast.

I love the new format tweak.

I know it was a risk to do that, but I think you're killing it.

I think this is like a real service that you're providing.

Thank you.

Is there anything else you want to let people know about, or where do you want to direct them?

So free newsletter twice a week, markmansonnet slash newsletter and we just launched a new app.

It is an AI that calls you on your bullshit.

Check it out.

It's at purpose.app.

Great way to start out your new year.

So if you need a kick in the ass, an AI that will actually disagree with you.

Mark told me a little bit about this before we started the podcast.

I didn't realize it's already available or it will be available by the time this comes out.

That's pretty exciting.

I look forward to checking it out.

All right, man.

Thank you.

This was actually really fun.

It's a pleasure as always.

Cool, man.

All right.

Peace.

All right, everybody.

That's it for today.

Thank you so much for listening.

I really do hope that you enjoyed the and resources related to everything discussed today.

Visit today's episode page at richrollcom, where you will find the entire podcast archive, as well as my books Finding Ultra, The Voicing Change Series and The Plant Power Way.

If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is free, actually.

All you gotta do is subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review or drop a comment.

Sharing your show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome as well, and extremely helpful.

So thank you in advance for that.

In addition, I'd like to thank all of our amazing sponsors, without whom this show just would not be possible or, at least you know, not free.

To check out all their amazing product offerings and listener discounts, head to richrollcom slash sponsors.

And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richrollcom.

Today's show is produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, along with associate producer Desmond Lowe.

The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake.

Content management by Shana Savoy.

Copywriting by Ben Pryor.

And, of course, our theme music, as always, was created all the way back in 2012 by my stepsons Tyler and Trapper Pyatt, along with their cousin Harry Mathis.

Appreciate the love, love the support, and I'll see you back here soon.

Peace.

[Mark Manson and Rich Roll: Rethinking Goals, Resilience, and the Reality of Change]-[Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life]

📋 Summary

Introduction: Beyond Positive Thinking

The Trap of Vanity Goals

Resilience and the "Mark Manson 2.0" Stance

The Myth of Procrastination and Self-Improvement

Purpose, Passion, and the Self

The Reality of Change

Conclusion: The Necessity of Pain

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Mark Manson and Rich Roll: Rethinking Goals, Resilience, and the Reality of Change]-[Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life]

📋 Summary

Introduction: Beyond Positive Thinking

The Trap of Vanity Goals

Resilience and the "Mark Manson 2.0" Stance

The Myth of Procrastination and Self-Improvement

Purpose, Passion, and the Self

The Reality of Change

Conclusion: The Necessity of Pain

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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