Transcript
Mark Manson (0:00)
If you've ever wondered when to keep going and when to stop, it comes down to a counterintuitive truth about creativity and suffering.
Chris Do (0:10)
Isn't it weird how sometimes the hardest answer is the most simple one that's right in front of you, but you just don't see it for whatever reason.
Mark Manson (0:16)
It was right here in front of my nose for five years, and I was looking over here. My name is Mark Manson, and you are listening to the future. Future.
Chris Do (0:36)
Okay, Mark, I'm going to start off this way. I think I heard you say this or you wrote in your book, the avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering.
Mark Manson (0:44)
Yes.
Chris Do (0:45)
Can you expand on that?
Mark Manson (0:46)
I think the avoidance of any emotion. There's something weird in our psychology in that, like, anytime we resist an emotion, we unintentionally amplify that emotion. So anybody who suffers from anxiety has had the experience of, like, the worst thing you can do when you feel anxious is to stop trying to feel anxious, because that just makes you feel more anxious. You start becoming anxious about the fact that you're anxious. It's the same thing for anger. If you start trying to prevent your anger, you become angry that you're angry, and so you get this weird kind of, like, feedback loop that happens. Trying to eliminate any sort of struggle or pain or suffering in your life ultimately becomes its own form of struggle, pain, or suffering. Because now you're. You're constantly censoring and limiting yourself to prevent yourself from ever potentially having an experience that might be uncomfortable. And that in and of itself is uncomfortable. To me, this. This is kind of like the core thing I got from Buddhism is just that suffering's ever present, so you might as well embrace it and accept it. And I guess from more of, like, an existential point of view or philosophical point of view, like, find the suffering that feels worth having, that feels meaningful, that feels like it's adding value in some way.
Chris Do (2:05)
On the topic of suffering, it's just choosing what we care passionately about to suffer through. If we kind of zoom out and look at your arc, how have you chosen the different forms of suffering that you're taking on? I'd like to kind of hear from your perspective how it's evolved over time.
Mark Manson (2:22)
Yeah, I think there's kind of two classifications of that. Like, I don't want to call it enjoyable suffering because suffering is not enjoyable, but, like, I guess I'll call it worthwhile suffering. Right. And I'd say one bucket is. It's the things that you are kind of just predisposed to do. And what's interesting about that bucket is that we tend to be very bad at noticing it. So I'll give you an example. Like, I originally wanted to be a musician and I went to music school and it was, I mean, to this day, one of the hardest things I've ever done. Like, music school is no joke. They really put you through the wringer. And it's because it's just such an insanely competitive industry. I think all the arts are like that. So I was in music school and I remember I was at a point I played guitar and I was practicing probably five, five, six hours a day. It was reaching the point where I was starting to get tendonitis in my wrist. My fingers were hurting. I had like calluses and bruises and stuff. And I was so burnt out and sick of my instrument that just like the thought of playing my guitar for another hour, it just made me want to puke. And I remember I went into my lessons one day and I started playing a song that I'd been working on and my teacher stopped me like 10 seconds in and he was like, stop, stop, stop. He said, you know what your problem is? You don't practice enough. And it was heartbreaking. It was in that moment, I'm like, I'm not cut out for this. And I started thinking there was a guy in my program who it was kind of clear to everybody. Like he was, if anybody was going to make it, this guy was going to make it. And I remember talking to him once and I was trying to, like, I was asking him a bunch of questions around practicing and he, I was like, what's your routine? Like, how do you warm up in the morning? How do you approach each song? And he just kind of looked at me like, what are you talking about? Like, I just practice, I just play, dude. Like, I just, I wake up, I start playing, I eat, I go to bed. Like, I don't really think about it beyond that. And it took me a long time to realize there's a follow up story to this, which is that when I started blogging, I really took a lot of pride in that. I would write 5, 10, 20 page articles and publish them, sometimes multiple times a week. And I started when my blog started to blow up, I started getting invited to some of these conferences, some Internet marketing and blogging conferences. And it was funny because people started cornering me in the hallway and they're like, how do you write so much? I was like, what are you talking about? They're like, what's your routine? Like, you know, do you warm up? You know, I'm like, no, dude. I just. I wake up, I start writing, you know, and clicked for me that there is a certain suffering in writing that I'm predisposed to. Rereading a paragraph five or six times and rewriting it and polishing it and over and over and over again. Like, that is agonizing for most people. And for whatever reason, I just seem kind of naturally disposed to enjoy that. And I look back at the music school experience, and it's like most of being a musician is just practicing. And I hated that it was a form of suffering that I was not predisposed to, and I did not find any sort of higher meaning in it. And so I just suffered through it. It just felt like torture. Whereas that guy in my program, he was predisposed to it. It didn't strike him as, like, some sort of sacrifice, right? So I think there's part of it is, like, looking for that thing that most people think is really hard, but for whatever reason, you kind of don't mind it. Like, what's the shit sandwich you don't mind eating? Because that's probably, like, your secret superpower.