Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life

Summary

The Rich Roll Podcast

Episode: Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life
Date: January 5, 2026
Guest: Mark Manson
Host: Rich Roll

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Overview

Rich Roll welcomes back bestselling author and self-help “anti-guru” Mark Manson for a deep, genuine, and often humorous discussion on personal development, the truth about change, and how to sidestep the self-help clichés that so often stall our progress. Ditching the typical guest backstory format, they answer listener questions “fishbowl” style—diving straight into nuanced, sometimes edgy conversations about why we sabotage ourselves, how to set (and stick with) meaningful goals, what self-improvement really means, and the dangers of easy answers and manifesting culture.

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Main Discussion Themes

1. Why We Fail at New Year’s Resolutions

[03:21–07:42]

• Vanity Goals:

  • Most annual resolutions fail not due to lack of willpower, but because the goals themselves are superficial, borrowed from others, or misaligned with our genuine values.
  • “I think for the sake of this podcast, we could call it a vanity goal, which we all fall prey to…” —Mark [03:40]

• Failure to Prepare for Obstacles:

  • People don’t account for the practical realities (“pick up my kids”, “softball on Thursday”) that will interfere with lofty ambitions.
  • “When those moments when the enthusiasm runs out, we have no plan in place and we go back to sitting on the couch.” —Mark [04:39]

• Clarity Over Conformity:

  • Setting goals is culturally prompted at New Year’s, but real change starts when you know what you deeply want, not when the calendar says it’s time.

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2. Positive Thinking: When Is It Useful?

[08:09–11:22]

• Nuanced View of Positivity:

  • Mark, known for his realism, concedes research shows self-efficacy (belief in handling challenges) is critical in resilience—positive thinking helps specifically during real adversity, not while “scrolling on your phone.”
  • “When you are in the shit… positive thinking can be the difference between success and giving up.” —Mark [10:26]
  • Positive thinking isn’t valuable as a couch-bound daydream but essential in the midst of struggle.

• Impact of Action on Mood:

  • Rich adds that forcing action, even when optimism is low, is key: “Mood follows action.”
  • Act first, the mental narrative follows.

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3. Procrastination and Self-Improvement Paradigms

[14:18–16:46]

• On Procrastination:

  • Rich now sees procrastination less as self-sabotage and more a way for the unconscious to process problems—akin to “recovery” in athletic training.
  • “The positive benefit of this is I’m empowering my unconscious mind to problem solve.” —Rich [14:39]

• Self-Improvement as a Treadmill:

  • The endless pursuit of a “better future self” can itself be a form of suffering—linked to attachment (from Buddhist philosophy).
  • Sometimes, self-betterment is more about holding things lightly and developing detachment from ego.

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4. Finding the Right Guiding Principle

[17:27–22:49]

• Enjoyable Suffering:

  • The key to lasting change: find struggles you’re willing to endure and even enjoy.
  • “Find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for.” —Mark [17:34]
  • Example: Mark enjoyed writing’s struggle, but not practicing music—so he became a writer.

• Practical Applications:

  • Choose exercise or lifestyle changes that feel playful or rewarding, not forced discipline.
  • “If you find the form of exercise that doesn’t feel like work, it just feels like play, then willpower is no longer part of the equation.” —Mark [21:49]

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5. Inner Monologue, Intuition, and Self-Talk

[27:00–33:25]

• Inner Voice Is Overrated:

  • Mark: treat your looping negative thoughts like a bratty sibling. You are not your thoughts.
  • “There’s no rhyme or reason to half the stuff that is said in your head. You don’t have to take it seriously.” —Mark [28:10]

• Intuition vs. Impulse:

  • Rich distinguishes between gut-level impulse (often mistaken for intuition) and the quieter, “best self” intuition, which requires maturity and self-awareness to hear.
  • “Intuition is your best self’s inner voice, but it’s so muted and kind of repressed…” —Rich [30:00]

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6. Passion, Purpose & Meaning—Separating the Myths

[33:51–40:47]

• Clear Distinctions:

  • Passion: intrinsic, fun, requires nothing in return.
  • Purpose: driven by duty or contribution, may not be fun.
  • Meaning emerges from sustained pursuit of the above.
  • “A passion is something you enjoy for its own sake… 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.” —Mark [35:10]

• Purpose as Service:

  • The intersection of “what you’re uniquely placed to do” and “what’s useful to others” is where most will find purpose.
  • “The meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose is to give it away.” —Picasso, quoted by Mark [38:00]

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7. Should You Share Your Goals?

[40:35–46:00]

• Don’t Seek Validation:

  • If you announce a goal for external validation, research suggests you’re less likely to pursue it.
  • Telling others for accountability, however, is usually effective—choose partners wisely.
  • “If the motivation is accountability... that’s the right reason to go tell people.” —Mark [41:40]
  • “If you want a board of advisors, make sure they’ll give you honest feedback, not just cheerleading or criticism.” —Rich [42:29]

• Creative Goals Often Need Privacy:

  • Mark finds it helpful to keep writing projects private to protect creative energy.

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8. Can People Really Change?

[49:55–56:46]

• Nature vs. Effort:

  • Some traits (e.g., introversion/extroversion) are enduring; fighting them is exhausting and inefficient.
  • “If you’re an introvert, don’t spend your life trying to be an extrovert. Try to find a way to have a healthy social life as an introvert.” —Mark [51:18]

• But We Underestimate Agency:

  • Rich: “Nothing in the universe is static…change is fundamental. Are you collaborating with it or letting it have its way with you?” [53:11]

• True Change Is Authenticity:

  • For most, “change” is stripping away conditioning to reveal their truer, more comfortable selves.

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9. Procrastination: Emotional Avoidance

[56:58–63:28]

• Emotional Roots:

  • Procrastination is emotional regulation; avoidance of shame, fear, or overwhelm.
  • “Procrastination is a last-ditch effort to regulate an emotion that you are otherwise not able to handle.” —Mark [58:18]

• Shrink the Task:

  • Minimum viable action: reduce tasks to the smallest, least threatening part to build momentum.

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10. Red Flags in the Self-Help Industry & Manifesting Culture

[64:10–95:41]

• Dangerous Gurus:

  • If a guru claims certain, universal answers or manipulates your insecurities for profit, be wary.
  • “If the attitude and disposition is like, ‘Hey, friends, I’ve got all the solutions for you…’I just wouldn’t trust it.” —Mark [66:28]
  • Most trustworthy experts update their views and admit when they’re wrong.

• On Manifesting:

  • Passive manifestation (“think hard and you’ll get it”) is delusional; active manifestation is just cognitive focus + taking action.
  • “The passive form of manifestation is just pure delusion and garbage…” —Mark [83:19]
  • The “magnetism” is about spotting opportunity, not altering the universe.
  • Rich: Open-mindedness to life’s mystery is valuable as long as it doesn’t slip into grandiose wishful thinking.

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11. Self-Sabotage and Identity

[74:44–78:03]

• Falling at the Finish Line:
  • Often a subconscious belief about “not deserving” success, or deep identification with one's current problem/struggle.
  • “The having of that problem can become your identity… by solving that problem, you lose that identity, which then freaks you out.” —Mark [75:15]

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12. People Pleasing

[70:12–74:43]

• Core Issue:

  • Chronic people pleasers don’t know what they value enough to risk disapproval.
  • “What are you willing to be disliked for?” —Mark [70:16]

• Identity as Pleaser:

  • It can become a source of pride (“I’m a good guy”)—but is ultimately self-denying.
  • Explore what intrinsic needs are being met and re-orient toward values over validation.

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13. Age and the Possibility of Change

[96:35–100:47]

• Never Too Late:

  • Mark shares the anecdote of a woman who learned piano at 62, played daily for 30 years—by her 90s, more experienced than most pros.
  • “We don’t think about the gap from 62 to 92 being the same as, you know, from 0 to 30.” —Mark [97:11]

• Underestimating Time and Agency:

  • The “I am who I am” mindset is a story; capable change is always possible.

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14. Do You Have to Suffer to Change?

[101:47–105:29]

• Pain as Lubricant:

  • Pain is not required, but is often the motivator.
  • “It is possible to do it pleasantly, but… we take the path of least resistance. We don’t make difficult decisions until we’re forced to.” —Mark [101:50]
  • Willingness to change often only arises when pain outweighs fear of change.

• Developing Pain Tolerance:

  • “Pain will find you. Life’s got plenty of pain planned for you, my friend.” —Mark [104:39]

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15. Parting Advice

[106:07–108:06]

• Mark’s Parting Thought:
  • Focus on values; identifying the “fucks you’re going to give” will underpin satisfaction more than any goal or external achievement.
• Rich’s Parting Thought:
  • Give yourself permission to explore joy and curiosity, not just achievement. “When you do that, certain things show up in your life…”

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Notable Quotes

Mark Manson [03:40]:
“We all fall prey to vanity goals quite often.”

Rich Roll [14:39]:
“The positive benefit is I’m empowering my unconscious mind to problem solve. …I kind of perceive [procrastination] now as recovery, as an athlete would.”

Mark Manson [17:34]:
“Find something that you are willing or even happy to suffer for.”

Mark Manson [28:10]:
“There’s no rhyme or reason to half the stuff that is said in your head. You don’t have to take it seriously.”

Rich Roll [53:11]:
“Nothing in the universe is static…change is fundamental. Are you collaborating with it or letting it have its way with you?”

Mark Manson [62:52]:
“Like any fear management… the first time is terrifying. But the hundredth time you do it, you don’t really think about it. …Procrastination is not that different.”

Mark Manson [66:28]:
“If the attitude and disposition is like, ‘Hey, friends, I’ve got all the solutions for you…’ I just wouldn’t trust it.”

Mark Manson [74:38]:
“That’s the trap of it, is that you get to feel there’s a moral satisfaction that comes with it. I’m like, I’m so helpful. I’m always there for people…”

Mark Manson [75:15]:
“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.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• New Year’s Resolution Psychology: [03:21–07:42]
• Changing Advice on Positive Thinking: [08:09–11:22]
• On Procrastination and Self-Improvement: [14:18–16:46]
• The Guiding Principle for Change: [17:27–22:49]
• Dealing with Negative Inner Monologue & Intuition: [27:00–33:25]
• Passion, Purpose, and Meaning: [33:51–40:47]
• Should You Announce Your Goals?: [40:35–46:00]
• The Limits and Possibilities of Change: [49:55–56:46]
• Procrastination Research & Solutions: [56:58–63:28]
• Self-Help Industry Red Flags & Manifestation: [64:10–95:41]
• People Pleasing and Authenticity: [70:12–74:43]
• Self-Sabotage and Identity Traps: [74:44–78:03]
• Change at Any Age: [96:35–100:47]
• Pain, Suffering, and Willingness: [101:47–105:29]
• Closing Insights: [106:07–108:06]

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Tone and Style

The conversation is candid, layered, often irreverent—Mark and Rich balance philosophical depth with everyday language and healthy skepticism for “easy answers.” Both are self-aware, poking fun at their own tendencies and the clichés of their respective industries while offering practical wisdom and sharing personal stories.

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Final Takeaway

Change isn’t about harnessing more willpower or finding the “right trick;” it’s about pursuing struggles you are willing to have, staying honest about your motivations, and orienting your goals around intrinsic values and real meaning. Set goals for yourself, but not for the likes, the validation, or the trend—clarity, courage, and curiosity are your real guides.

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Transcript

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

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. And 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, 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.

[Mark Manson]

What do you think, Mark? Either way, we'll learn something ourselves.

[Rich Roll]

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. And 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.

[Mark Manson]

I'm ready.

[Rich Roll]

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?

[Mark Manson]

This 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. 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, we're super excited, we're really committed. We're like, I'm gonna 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 gonna 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.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, over reliance on enthusiasm and short lived temporary inspiration or motivation.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

But I think the bigger piece is what you led with, which is setting the right goal. I think that's a big one for a lot of people. 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, is this really the right goal? 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 gonna do an Ironman or I wanna run a marathon. It's like, okay, like, why? You know, like, it's cool, but I think there's, you know, it's just like, oh, well, it's the obvious goal, or like, 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, like, it's. It's about, like, your good standing in your peer group, will latch onto 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.

[Mark Manson]

You know, 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.

[Rich Roll]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

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, it's. 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, because there are probably a lot of ways to get to that feeling.

[Rich Roll]

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 abandon, like, it's okay to quit these things. You know what I mean? And also, on top of that, just being in the atmosphere where there's an expectation that you're supposed to set a goal, you don't have to. Just because it's New Year's doesn't mean that you have to. 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 marshaling resources, time and energy towards something, only to find out that you were climbing up the wrong tree.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, for sure.

[Rich Roll]

All right. Did we cover that?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Anything else you want to say about that.

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, pick one.

[Mark Manson]

Okay, let's see. I'm gonna go to the bottom. What piece of self improvement advice have you changed your mind about? And why.

[Rich Roll]

Are you asking me that? Cause I pinned that up just for you.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

This is your brand, Martin.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. It's like, look, man, life's hard, things suck. Let's just. 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 that episode, 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 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 like reading these studies and I was like, 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.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And so I had a little bit of a mini crisis of like, okay, I'm just gonna 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 there was. Positive thinking is fine. Like, 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 kind of just sitting on the couch scrolling on your phone, positive thinking is probably not serving you in that moment. Right? Like telling yourself that you are amazing, unique, special, going to accomplish incredible things, you know, 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. It can be the difference between success and giving up. And so I've acquiesced on that and changed my mind about it. And I'm actually now 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.

[Rich Roll]

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. 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 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 sort of self help trope of like, if, you know, I know I can and I can and all of that people like, exactly. You know, that's only going to get you so far. At some point you have to translate that into behavior and then you can kind of create some momentum around that and become self perpetuating. But in terms of 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. There's all this science coming out right now about the benefits of procrastination. And I'm somebody who, 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 kind of beating myself up sort of stuff. But I have shifted my perspective on it. And I kind of perceive it now as like I'm giving. This is like 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 going to culminate in suffering because of the focus and the attachment to the self. Right? And one of the. But 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 for a very long time, you know, as somebody in recovery, and I've said this before, but you know, the idea for somebody who is, you know, who is an addict in recovery, the idea that like a very powerful mind altering substance has 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.

[Mark Manson]

Me.

[Rich Roll]

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 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 how I define myself, I suppose. And that liberates you to have a more curious, open mind about things that maybe you wouldn't have allowed yourself to explore, like the idea of positive Thinking or whatever. Choose your idea.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, everything's neutral until you apply your perspective and put a label on it. So are you better? Are you not? Like, it depends on your perspective, which.

[Mark Manson]

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 another way for them to chase another thing and not be present.

[Rich Roll]

In their own lives and realize that all the answers and happiness and everything that they're searching for is actually available.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, all right.

[Rich Roll]

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

I would say we just set up a whole podcast on self improvement and then like, disabuse the audience of don't.

[Rich Roll]

Worry about any of it anyway. All right, move on then.

[Mark Manson]

20, 26 goals. Dissolution of self and elimination of any concept of improvement.

[Rich Roll]

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?

[Mark Manson]

I mean, it's really hard not to choose my kind of. 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 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, because I just think that's. You're gonna 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. See, now I'm afraid to say things like that.

[Rich Roll]

No, it's fine. Forget that we did the last question. Keep going. Okay.

[Mark Manson]

But it's much more indicative of who you are as a person, of what you're willing to give up. So I would say for me, if there was one key principle to give to somebody, it was look for the things. Look for the challenges and struggles that you enjoy having and that. That energize you and enliven you.

[Rich Roll]

So what would be an example of that?

[Mark Manson]

Well, the classic example I use from my own life is I went to music school and it quickly became apparent that there were maybe half a dozen people in my music school that were gonna 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 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 and why, no, the drummer of Tool was actually a better drummer than your favorite drummer and hear all my citations and hear the receipts. And to me, that was like a fun Saturday afternoon. I enjoy writing and rewriting and rewriting a paragraph 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.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, you're flipping the equation upside down. So let's say it's January 1st and everybody wants to lose 10 pounds or whatever it is, right. Instead of thinking how amazing it's gonna be when you can look in the mirror and those pants fit or whatever it is, instead consider how you're gonna be 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 stress testing whether you're up for this.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. See, what most people do is they just think about, oh my God, I'm gonna look great for summer, summer, beach, body, or whatever. They try to focus on that. What they should be focusing on is, okay, I Need to exercise, I need to 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? There's a million different things that you could investigate and try and explore. 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 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, okay, I have a goal and you have to suffer for your goal. So time to mentally prepare myself to suffer. And instead it's just like, no, think about what is the, what is the form of struggle or challenge that is actually fun for you in pursuing that goal.

[Rich Roll]

Between the lines, implicit in what you're saying is the call to action really is to develop your curiosity paired with a level of self awareness. If you're paying attention to where your attention naturally points to and you can kind of track that, you start to get a glimpse of like, you know what it. 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, these can be violent terms for people that make them feel guilty because it's very loaded, right? And instead, just like if you had a free day and you could do anything, what are you gonna choose to do? Or something like that and, and try to extract from that little nuggets that could inform, you know, the direction that you want to move your life towards. If you've enjoyed my conversations with microbiome master Dr. B, then you know that a happy gut means a happy body and a happy body means a happier life. But to get there, you need a ritual. And mine starts with seeds. Dso1 here's the thing about probiotics, most of them do not survive your stomach acid. But the thing about seed is that it has this really smart capsule in capsule system that actually protects 24 probiotic strains so that when they arrive in the colon, they're intact and they can actually perform their intended job. And that job is to improve your gut health, which we know from Dr. B. B is essential to just so many bodily functions. Seeds DS01 Daily Symbiotic is a 2 in 1 meaning that it's both a probiotic and a prebiotic, formulated with 24 clinically and scientifically studied strains that support whole body benefits, gut health, healthy regularity, skin health, heart health, gut barrier integrity, all in just two capsules a day. I've been taking DSO1 daily for, I. I don't know, several years now, and what I notice most is better digestion, steady energy, feeling lighter after meals, and 92% of members recommended DS01 to somebody they know, which tells you it works. So go to seed.comrichroll and use code richroll20 for 20% off your first month of DSO1. That's seed.comrichroll with code richroll20 this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year does not require a new you, but don't you deserve to be a better and less burdened you? 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, preventing me from becoming the better version of my family and my friends and my peers deserve past childhood stuff. Perfectionism, overwhelm and the anxiety it produces. These are the kind of things that I bring up in therapy because I can't release and heal things without the willingness to embrace an outside perspective. So yes, I am a big fan of therapy and I'm a big fan of BetterHelp because it makes therapy more accessible. Their therapists are fully licensed and work according to a strict code of conduct. They do the matching work for you through a questionnaire and with over 12 years of experience, they typically get it right the first time and you can switch therapists at any time to find the right fit. BetterHelp has served over 5 million people globally with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] richroll that's betterhelp.com richroll.

[Mark Manson]

Should I go?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, go.

[Mark Manson]

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?

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

That's a hot take.

[Mark Manson]

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 yammering thing going on in the background. And this is one of the things that you learn when you meditate a lot, is that 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 just kind of like. Sometimes I develop a relationship with my inner monologue of, like, an obnoxious sibling that. 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 gonna stop. It's gonna 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 gonna do things. And it's not necessarily. It's almost never really under your control or it's often not under your control. And then it's. Just because it does things doesn't mean you have to necessarily identify with it or take it seriously.

[Rich Roll]

I agree with that completely. If we take, like, who you are, the delusion of self, like, let's just assume the self is a real thing. 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 gonna serve us. And meditation is the most effective tool for that. In 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 who's done a lot of work on this super interesting guy. I think that intuition is a very real thing, and I think it is your best self's inner voice. It's just so muted and kind of repressed because it's quiet in comparison to the looping thoughts in your brain. But I think it's confused with impulse. 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 your emotions and your thoughts and you. You put a lot of work in, you're going to confuse your intuition for, like, what you want to do. And I was 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 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. Like everything I wanted to do was the wrong thing, you know, and it was like I had to for years check all my decisions with other people before I made them until I had, you know, gotten well enough where I was like, actually, I can kind of. I think I can now begin to start to trust, like, what my quote unquote intuition is telling me to do because it had steered me wrong, because it had been hijacked by.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I like this distinction. I agree with it. And I think it's a really useful distinction as well, because. And I think it's probably worth digging into this a little bit because it's because your higher self, your intuition and your lower self, your kind of impulsive self, are both unconscious. 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.

[Rich Roll]

You empower them to.

[Mark Manson]

That is their intuition, be more impulsive.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I agree 100% with you that there is. There is. You know, the higher order self is. You know, that is the. I think it's what Kahneman would call system two thinking. And there is a lot of wisdom and experience. It's very much based on pattern matching across a wide range of experience. But, yeah, sometimes it can feel the same way as an impulse, and you have to be very wary.

[Rich Roll]

All right, next question. My turn. Right. 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?

[Mark Manson]

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. Passion is. 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 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 raising a young kid. 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. So 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.

[Rich Roll]

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 kind of an extreme connotation to it. Like, it's sort of like. I think it gets conflated with obsession. You know, it's like a passion. 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, 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. Does that track with all the research that you've done?

[Mark Manson]

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. 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 of. 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.

[Rich Roll]

Where does service fit in for you in that equation? It's an aspect of purpose.

[Mark Manson]

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 like the opportunities that I've been given. Like, 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. 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 vocation and education and all this stuff, but honestly, relationships are kind of the simplest way to accomplish it. Like, if you think about, again, parenthood, by definition you are the most unique person. You are your children's only father. Right. You are, by definition, they're the only person who can fulfill a role for those people. And then the act of parenting is giving yourself away. And so it's probably rooted in. In that, I would say, I think our psychological mechanism for purpose probably comes out of parenthood. Would be my guess.

[Rich Roll]

Well said. All right, whose turn is it?

[Mark Manson]

I think it's mine.

[Rich Roll]

It's yours. Go.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

Part a little bit already?

[Mark Manson]

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?

[Rich Roll]

This is the age old question.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I 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 ten 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.

[Rich Roll]

You're not motivated and you're getting it without having done anything. So your brain is, is acclimating to the idea that the goal has already been achieved, which is gonna undermine the will and the work that has to go into actually achieving it.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

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. And so 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 got to be conscious of who the board of advisors is. But what about the piece of like, not telling anyone? Like, 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 gonna go around and tell everyone about. Like, I'm gonna 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 going to falter and you're left to your own devices in that regard.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I think it probably depends on the goal. I'm just kind of scanning through my life and I think when it comes to 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.

[Rich Roll]

Or you have one or two accountability partners who are keeping track of what you're doing, but everyone else is not privy. 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. And if it's based upon external validation, those two things are at cross purposes with each other. And I think when you really, you do treat it as this is my thing, I'm not telling anyone. And you're just quietly doing it 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 good feeling of real esteem.

[Mark Manson]

I think I agree with that. It kind of feels like potentially playing goals on hard mode, you probably get more of that esteem, but depending on the goal, I mean, you lose that account.

[Rich Roll]

I think it's more effective with creative goals. Like if you're writing a book, 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 it of its energy, you know what I mean? I think you really have to protect that. Obviously you need an editor or whoever else is like, hey, you have stuff due, you need that. But it's better if you're just keeping mute on the rest of it until it's done.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

And your intuition is reliable because you've done a lot of work, at least you've read a lot about this, is.

[Mark Manson]

That there's something healthy about that.

[Rich Roll]

All right, So this time of year, every January, it's like there's this spell that gets cast and suddenly everybody is motivated to take their health seriously again. And naturally, supplements become part of that conversation. But the belly of the beast is that the supplement industry is a low trust category. It's just such an under regulated industry, rife with low grade ingredients, cross contamination and populated by all kinds of grifters that see you as an easy mark. And shockingly, companies aren't even required to disclose everything that's on the label. So once something becomes popular, the market floods and quality invariably always takes a hit. At the same time, I do believe in responsible supplementation, which is why Momentous is the brand that I use and decided to partner up with. So basically, Jeff Byers, the CEO and co founder of Momentous and his team took a look at how this industry operates and decided to do the exact opposite. Instead of racing to market, they built what they call the the momentous standard, which is this commitment to doing things the right way, even when it's harder. Meaning that trust and transparency are basically the entire mission statement and ethos of this company. Every product is made with the highest quality ingredients available. There's no fillers, no artificial sweeteners, and every single product is third party tested, NSF certified for sport or informed sports certified, which means means it's tested for contaminants, heavy metals, banned substances, and verified for label accuracy. So what's on the label is exactly what's in the product. If you are going to invest in supplements this year, invest in ones that you can actually trust. Head over to livemomentous.com richroll and use the code richroll for up to 35% off your first order. The thing about health tracking is that we're now so inundated with data, most of which is surface level only, sourced from all different kinds of devices, all without actually understanding what's happening underneath. Sleep scores, step counts, heart rate. But what does it really mean and what are we supposed to do with it? Well, WHOOP answers these questions by giving you a complete picture of your health, from how you sleep to how you recover, to how you're aging. And now with WHOOP Advanced Labs, they're bringing together over 65 key biomarkers like cholesterol, vitamin D and cortisol. With more than a hundred thousand daily health data points. When you schedule a lab test, you won't just get numbers, you'll get clarity on what's really happening inside your body, as well as next steps to improve your health. And what I love about all of this is that now, finally, everything I need to know about what is going on inside my body is consolidated in one single place. Which allows WHOOP to provide me with the right guidance, which I need right now. Because due to my recent back surgery, let's just say I'm not exactly in peak condition. So getting a comprehensive picture plus a plan on how to rebuild my body is pretty priceless. Every test is reviewed by a clinician and instead of just raw results, you get a personalized plan that tells you exactly which habits from sleep to supplements are going to improve your specific markers. Go to join.whoop.com roll for one month free of Whoop. That's join.wH-O-Oop.com roll true or false? People don't change.

[Mark Manson]

Oh, this is a spicy one. First of all, it depends what you mean by people and change.

[Rich Roll]

Are we gonna go? Jordan Peterson now, what do you mean by mean?

[Mark Manson]

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 that are pretty. And I mean 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. So 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's certain things that are just kind of genetically baked in. So 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, Right. 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.

[Rich Roll]

Did we talk about this last time?

[Mark Manson]

I think we disagreed about it.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, we did? Yeah. Interesting. I have no idea what we talked about last time.

[Mark Manson]

That's funny.

[Rich Roll]

But I guess I would say this. I mean, I agree with that. Like, you know, there are certain aspects of ourself that are, you know, relatively immutable.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know, but there's all kinds of things that I think we under appreciate the extent to which we have agency to mutate them.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

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 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. You're a different guy. 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. 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 going to wake up tomorrow morning and I'm going to be the same guy. And there's a sense of things being static that I think is a survival mechanism that allows us to wake up and function. But the truth is, there's nothing in the universe that isn't in constant motion all the time. The universe is expanding and the subatomic particles are vibrating. There is nothing. The idea of anything being static is the core delusion. Right. And then it gets into the agency piece. So if you think of it that way, 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?

[Mark Manson]

It's funny. Cause, 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, like, I think our biases are in different directions. Cause it's. 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.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Coming from the opposite end of that spectrum.

[Mark Manson]

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?

[Rich Roll]

You've been humbled in that regard. 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.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. But I guess one way I look at this, and part of this is my fault. I think you're. You correctly identified. I think how most people think about change. I think my perception of change is a little bit more inside baseball. 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 people, quote, unquote, change, it's usually like that. If that makes sense.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Like dispelling the notion that you're gonna 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.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.

[Mark Manson]

Okay. Yeah. All right.

[Rich Roll]

But that was. No, I love that insight into our various biases. I think that that's spot on.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

All right, pick one.

[Mark Manson]

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. It's been interesting doing these solved episodes because 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 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. We talked to, I think, the three top procrastination researchers in the world. And, yeah, basically, it's a lack of emotional regulation like 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, you know, perfectionism or overwhelm, feeling incapable. But whatever it Is it's you procrastinating.

[Rich Roll]

It'S meeting a need, it's serving a purpose.

[Mark Manson]

Yes. 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 if you, you know, I remember when I was younger, 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 just, it's when you're an emotional wreck, like you can't. This is why you can't really do other things, is cause you're so dysregulated that you are constantly defaulting to avoidance, avoidance and distraction in any way, shape or form.

[Rich Roll]

Confronting the task at hand is so uncomfortable or laden with some fear that you'll literally do anything to avoid it, no matter how destructive.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And it's funny cause because if you look at all the procrastination solutions, like all the hacks and tools and stuff, there are all different ways of attacking this. Probably the most reliable one or the one that I use the most is just take 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. Let's say I'm freaking out over a book. I put it off for days. 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 students will come to him and they're like, I try to meditate for 10 minutes every morning and it's too hard, I can't do it. And he's like, okay, what amount of time feels easy? And they're like, well, I don't know. 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, turning off the tv, whatever. The harder it is for your mind to escape, the more likely it is to actually focus and do what it needs to do.

[Rich Roll]

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 to do list. It's because you're fucking afraid of something. You know what I mean? And so just to take the case of being a writer and the blank page, it's like you're afraid that you don't have anything worthy of saying or that you're a bad writer or whatever. All of those things are just like the terror of having to confront the blank page will compel you to procrastinate and defer and delay and avoid that work. But by saying, just scribble down a word in your journal or do the free association morning pages or whatever, to kind of get you into a rhythm is allowing you to 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 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.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, there's a bit of a muscle to it. I do think the more you just do things, the better you get at it. It's like any.

[Rich Roll]

Well, because then you realize the fear is imagined.

[Mark Manson]

Well, it's like any fear management. It's the first time you get up and speak in front of people, like exposure therapy. 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, it's some. At a certain point, you just kind of build that muscle that you can get on with it.

[Rich Roll]

And then you have to put the lie to all the reasons that are cycling in your mind that are allowing you to rationalize it. Like, I'll get to it later or like now's not the right time. All of those things have to be kind of deconstructed too.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Anyway, all right, but we could go and move this way along here. Uh oh. When it comes to self help gurus, Mark, who is the worst offender and why? Rich roll with the caveat. Look, if you don't want to name names, this is not about rich roll calling out people if you don't want to. But like perhaps, you know, what are, what are some red flags to look out for with, you know, the idea being like, how can we help people not fall prey? You, sir, you know, some crafty marketing techniques. Give people some discernment. Anyway.

[Mark Manson]

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, like 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 like the underlying principle.

[Rich Roll]

Listen, if you wanna like just name some names.

[Mark Manson]

Okay, so here's the biggest one and I'll call this one out by name. Cause it is punching up. So, you know, I think Tony Robbins, 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 with around aggressive marketing that that should be honored and respected because marketing and sales done extremely well. If you go take a marketing one on one class, basically the first thing they teach you is that you find people's insecurity, you poke that insecurity, and then you tell them that your product is gonna fix their insecurity, right? So whether it's a beauty product or clothing or a beer brand or whatever it is, 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. These people are already vulnerable. They're already suffering. They're already in pain. And so if you come along and you just start kind of rubbing it in their face because you're about to sell a $6,000 coaching package to them, it just gives me the heebie jeebies. The relationship you and I have with our audiences, 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, 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. They want you to think that they're your friend. They want you to think that 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, 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. I'm very passionate about doing this. So this is why I make this content. But let's be real here. I don't have all the answers. And I just think anybody who. If I don't see that attitude or disposition in their work, if the attitude and disposition is like, hey, friends, listen to me. I've got all the solutions for you. It just. To me, that's. I just wouldn't trust it. I'll just put it that way.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I mean, 100%, if somebody is presenting themselves with a demonstrable lack of humility paired with 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, that's problematic to me, and it is despairing. It's interesting because a lot of these people, I think it's all gray. A lot of these people are helping people. 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 every Answer that we've given today is like, we're kind of like in this gray, murky, nuanced way of trying to make sense of very complicated things when it comes to human behavior.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

It's like there's no binary here. There's no distillation with the. What's the number one thing that's gonna da ba ba. It doesn't matter. Right. It's. It's all like, well, it depends for whom and when and what are the conditions and all of it. Right. And anyone who dismisses all of that for some very convenient, reductive answer that they deliver with great certainty and is available at great cost 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.

[Mark Manson]

I think probably a much better answer. I think a much shorter and better version of my answer would be.

[Rich Roll]

How.

[Mark Manson]

Often do they change their mind and how often do they admit that they were wrong?

[Rich Roll]

That's a pretty good rubric.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

All right.

[Mark Manson]

We managed to only say one name.

[Rich Roll]

We've missed on that.

[Mark Manson]

We managed to only say one name.

[Rich Roll]

Have to go to the lowest common denominator. Oh, it's your turn here. You pick one. I'll do this one.

[Mark Manson]

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? It's a classic problem. The question I always throw to the people pleasers is what are you willing to be disliked for? Find the thing that you're willing to be disliked for. 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 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, well, you've outsourced your.

[Rich Roll]

Sense of self and self worth to an external person or something, like some achievement or whatever.

[Mark Manson]

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. Without any. There's no other identity filling that void that the people pleasing is gonna leave behind. And so I always encourage people to go find the thing that's gonna fill the void and then the people pleasing will stop.

[Rich Roll]

It will fall away as a consequence. 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. If you spent your whole life, 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 a family unit in which you've got to please 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 love and self esteem. Right. 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 smokescreen or this veil that prevents you from even having any kind of 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 this set of expectations that you've decided is so important.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Do you still feel like you're a people pleaser or do you feel like you've.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, way less so. But like I'm wired for it, you know what I mean? So I can fall into it. I can. I'll catch myself being a bit of a chameleon in social situations. Like, I know how to adapt and like, you know, kind of be the guy that I think people, you know, I still have a. I don't do it nearly the way that. To the extent that I used to. But I wouldn't say I'm completely cured of it.

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

That'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. It's harming you.

[Mark Manson]

That's the trap of it, is that you get to feel there's a moral satisfaction that comes with it. I'm like, I'm so helpful. I'm always there for people.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, for sure.

[Rich Roll]

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 you.

[Mark Manson]

Are these fucks on the card or.

[Rich Roll]

Are you adding them?

[Mark Manson]

No, they're on the card.

[Rich Roll]

I did that just for you.

[Mark Manson]

You keep getting all the fuck cards. So basically giving up at the last mile is the right.

[Rich Roll]

It's self sabotage.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. I mean, the thing that's coming up for me is that there's probably some sense of, like, not deserving the result. There's, you know, 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. So, 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 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 that it's at a certain point to, like, really go far with it. There's some underlying architecture that you have to look at and be like, does that still need to be there?

[Rich Roll]

Okay.

[Mark Manson]

No. Pull it out.

[Rich Roll]

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 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, if you don't solve it, it's because you're not ready to give it up because you have no other way of meeting that need. You haven't figured out what that need is and a different way of filling it. So, for example, somebody's complaining because this other person is always coming to them and asking for money or whatever. 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're 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? Let's deconstruct that and get to the bottom of that.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And. Yeah, that's the key piece.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And it's.

[Rich Roll]

Why is this walking into a minefield?

[Mark Manson]

Cause some people, they adopt victimhood as an identity and so they find ways to go invite 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, 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? You know, like. And I was pretty young at the time, you know, 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, 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.

[Rich Roll]

That they'll create. Yeah, they'll create the scenario.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

On the deservedness piece though, like 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? Like that gets to the internal monologue aspect of it?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, they don't feel like the exact same thing to me, but I imagine there's a significant overlap there.

[Rich Roll]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

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.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah. Humans are weird.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

Okay.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. It's going to dispel all the weirdness.

[Mark Manson]

Oh, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Yes.

[Mark Manson]

For $6,000 a month.

[Rich Roll]

Well, that's just the top of the sales funnel. You know, there'll be plenty of emails that you're going to receive that are going to upsell you on the VIP level of this. Yes.

[Mark Manson]

If you have been victimized, then you are perfect for rich roll scores.

[Rich Roll]

All right, you pick.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

No, I mean, the problem is. And I can't think of one. The problem is I'm at a buffet of so many options. You know, my recent boogaboo is manifestation. It's like it's react. It's taken off a second time. It's gotten a second life with Gen Z and TikTok and it's. Yeah, it just. There are a lot of people in my life who are starting to talk about manifesting. I got people on my team who are like talking about manifesting. They're like, oh, yeah, we're gonna manifest.

[Rich Roll]

I'm like, guys, so drill down to how that's being defined.

[Mark Manson]

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, like your thoughts are. So this is the official theory of manifestation. And then we can kind of get into the different interpretations and maybe why it 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 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, I would call it passive manifesting, which is 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 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 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 a little whacked out. There's probably simpler ways to describe this. So the active form of manifestation, essentially what it is it's doing is, is that it's 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.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

There's too much stimulation in the world for your brain to handle all of it. And so your brain uses a lot of of tools and hacks to choose what to pay attention to. And manifestation is basically you are leveraging those tools to focus on the thing that you want. So if you really want a raise at work and you decide that you're going to start manifesting A raise at work. And you're going to think about it all the time and you're going to focus on it and you're going to 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 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 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.

[Rich Roll]

I get it, I get it. This is fascinating. So I want to know like, I want to like explore this a little bit more deeply because I agree with you 100% 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 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. Admittedly. I think there is something to the fact. Well, first of all, with respect to that transactional I manifested it. The I in the is like, 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 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, life is better and outcomes are better. And you can break that down into its practical pieces and say, well yeah, because you're making a say. Of course things are gonna 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, you know, whatever you want to call it, like the mysteries of the universal energies or whatever, such that life just kind of, you're in this allowance space where you're allowing your life to move in a certain direction and you're open to experiences and things will kind of come to you. 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 inviting them into your experience.

[Mark Manson]

You had me up to magnetic field.

[Rich Roll]

But I'm just using that as a metaphor, you know what I mean? Like, like you are attracting. Okay, 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 a girlfriend or a boyfriend and you're chasing after this idealized person, 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 a level in your glass to higher 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? 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.

[Mark Manson]

I agree with that.

[Rich Roll]

Okay, how does that land for you, buddy?

[Mark Manson]

Captain Unfun coming in.

[Rich Roll]

Come on.

[Mark Manson]

No, I. 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 certain about the universe that I can.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And it quells our profound fear of uncertainty.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. So I think that's one piece of it, which is fine. I understand that it's the funny, the attract. I would say this. The thing is you're not attracting the things into your life. You're noticing the things in your life, 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 cause this bleeds into a thing I've been thinking a lot more about lately. About how this is the role, this language, you know, vibes, energy manifesting the universe, energy, like all this stuff. It's kind of playing a little bit of a role of like that religion used to play. And it's not even that it's creating like a theology or anything. Like it's not. Cause I would say like when I have this conversation with a lot of my Woo woo friends, like, like 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. Like it's easy for people to just think in terms of like, okay, I want this thing in my life, I'm gonna manifest it, I'm gonna focus really hard on it and then I'm gonna attract it into my life through the universe. Right. And, and that's gonna feel true. And even if it's not objectively true, that's fine. And that part of it, I'm kinda like, 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 get like, start to roll my eyes is when you start to get this like these weird cosmological explanations for why the universe is gonna deliver you that Ferrari that you always dreamed about.

[Rich Roll]

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 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, 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.

[Mark Manson]

So I agree with that. Do you think the average manifesting influencer on TikTok agree, like is that.

[Rich Roll]

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, 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, when you call that self actualization or, or just making sure that your actions are measuring up with your values, it does propel your life in a way and you do it with humility and you're not trying to control outcomes and you're more in a space of allowing your life kind of moves in a direction that might be anticipated but ultimately is much better for you in ways that, that you can't didactically distill down into some kind of satisfying explanation.

[Mark Manson]

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. I agree that there's a ton of power behind that and it can feel. When you are experiencing it, it can feel magical.

[Rich Roll]

And maybe it is. Come on.

[Mark Manson]

God damn it, Rich.

[Rich Roll]

You don't have to be Captain Bummer. This is a safe space, Marc.

[Mark Manson]

I can be fun here. I can come and be fun. No, but I do think there's a lot of, you know, if there's linguistic utility to help people set those intentions and live out those intentions with it. Awesome. Great. You know where I get off the ship is, like, when you get some of these. These cosmic explanations. Understood things.

[Rich Roll]

Understood, dude. All right, is it your turn?

[Mark Manson]

I think it's my turn.

[Rich Roll]

All right, let's see. I feel like you should read this for a very specific reason. Okay, I'll let you do this one next. Just because it contains a certain word that you seem to want to say out loud, but I'll do. It's too late for me. I am who I am at this point. Prove me wrong.

[Mark Manson]

Prove you wrong.

[Rich Roll]

Basically, the trope, like, that ship is sailed for me. Maybe 10 years ago, I could have made this change. But, I mean, it gets into the people don't change idea, I guess, in the first person aspect of it. But I think somebody who's older than you, there is 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 gonna 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?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, 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, 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 gotta 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. 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, and she played for 30 years every day. Right. So we don't think about the gap from 62 to 92 being the same as, you know, from 0 to 30. And the funny thing is, is that she had been playing longer than most professional stage pianists by that point. So it's. On the one hand, life is short.

[Rich Roll]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

And take advantage of the time you have left. But on the other hand, it's. I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say, past the age of 40 or 50 without realizing, like, dude, they're decades. You can do a lot in it. It's the Warren Buffett quote.

[Rich Roll]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. I think that's very true.

[Rich Roll]

The human animal is not a very good predictive machine. We think we have a good sense of how things are gonna play out. Actually, the evidence is we were pretty terrible at that. Right. Yeah. But I think what's additionally beautiful about that story is it dispels like that notion that we have no neural plasticity left at that age. We can't learn new things. And that's really quite beautiful.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

The point is, it's not too late. Do we need to underscore that?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I mean, obviously.

[Rich Roll]

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 gonna sl into your third act or whatever it is. It's 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.

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And email me about it. But it's funny. Cause, I mean, I love seeing them. But the font is like size 32, but they're so sweet. And they're always like, I'm 73. I wish I had found this 50 years ago. It's like, I just started getting my shit together three years ago, and it's just really cool. So 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?

[Rich Roll]

I think we already answered that. I think I gave that to you just because it had the word fuck in it. As soon as you pick one, pick a different one.

[Mark Manson]

Were you worried that I was.

[Rich Roll]

I was like, oh, I got the fuck one again.

[Mark Manson]

You were worried that I was fucked the prior year.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, Okay. I was trying to people, please you.

[Mark Manson]

Do I have to be in pain to make a change? How important is it that I suffer?

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

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 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.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. It's interesting that these choices are always available to us, and yet we just. We're 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. 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, like, oh, be willing to be willing, but that's like asking somebody to want something that they don't want. You know what I. You can't just make a decision to be willing. It's almost like something that visits you. Like, now I'm gonna 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, 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? 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 breathing life into that willingness impulse.

[Mark Manson]

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.

[Rich Roll]

Pain will find you.

[Mark Manson]

Life's got plenty of pain planned for you, my friend. Don't worry about it.

[Rich Roll]

And engaging in discomfort is necessary to the meaningful life that you aspire to have and that currently eludes you. Right. So. So developing a capacity for some degree of pain tolerance is a necessary life skill.

[Mark Manson]

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

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

I don't know. We've come full circle.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Look, the good news is you can change. The bad news is you're gonna have to deal with that's just like. So just like, be in acceptance of that and instead of recoiling from it, like, what would happen if you move towards it.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Well said.

[Rich Roll]

All right. I think. Did we do it?

[Mark Manson]

Did we do it?

[Rich Roll]

I think we should. I think we can end this with maybe a final parting thought each on just the, like, how to frame this period of, you know, of the year for people. Like, 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, you know, Captain Bummer.

[Mark Manson]

I could just see it. It's like rich roll. Episode 942, Captain Bummer.

[Rich Roll]

Are you kidding?

[Mark Manson]

This. This.

[Rich Roll]

I don't know about you, dude. This podcast is fire. You're gonna do good, man. I have a good feeling about this. Go ahead.

[Mark Manson]

I mean, for me, it always comes back to values. Like, that's. What are the fucks you're gonna give? Because it's ultimately 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. 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?

[Rich Roll]

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 like, 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 just, you know, whether it's, you know, learning how to play the piano or whatever. The thing is that, you know, 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, certain things show up in your life and whatever path this is going to take will begin to reveal itself. And I think there's something beautiful about that that is more transcendent than, I'm going to lose this weight or I'm going to participate in this race or whatever your version of the typical prototypical New Year's resolution is for sure. All right. Did we do good?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I think we did it.

[Rich Roll]

All right.

[Mark Manson]

Did we do it?

[Rich Roll]

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.

[Mark Manson]

Thank you.

[Rich Roll]

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

[Mark Manson]

So, free newsletter twice a week. Markmanson.net 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.

[Rich Roll]

Mark told me a little bit about this before we started the podcast. I didn't realize it would be. It's already available or it will be available by the time this.

[Mark Manson]

By the time this comes out.

[Rich Roll]

That's pretty exciting. I look forward to checking it out. All right, man.

[Mark Manson]

Thank you.

[Rich Roll]

This was. This was actually really fun.

[Mark Manson]

Pleasure as always.

[Rich Roll]

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 conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit today's episode [e-mail] where you will find the entire 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 got to 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 richroll.com 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@rich roll.com today's show the show is produced and engineered by Jason Cameiolo 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 Prior, 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 her cousin Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support, and I'll see you back here soon. Peace plan.