The (Not So) Subtle Art Of Mark Manson: The Truth About Self-Help, Transformation, & Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck

Summary

Detailed Summary of "The (Not So) Subtle Art Of Mark Manson: The Truth About Self-Help, Transformation, & Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck"

Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, host Rich Roll engages in an in-depth conversation with Mark Manson, the bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck*. The discussion delves into the complexities of the self-help industry, effective personal development strategies, and Mark Manson's personal health and transformation journey. Released on January 6, 2025, this episode offers listeners valuable insights into navigating the vast landscape of self-improvement while maintaining authenticity and integrity.

Self-Help Industry: Brilliance Amidst Bullshit

Mark Manson opens the conversation by addressing the overwhelming influx of self-help advice available online, stating:

"There's probably been more good advice shared on the Internet in the past 15 years than the rest of human history combined." [03:34]

He emphasizes the mental challenge of distinguishing valuable information from the noise created by numerous gurus and contrarian voices. Manson critiques the Self Help Industrial Complex, highlighting how many self-help figures prioritize growth metrics over genuine improvement, leading to a proliferation of superficial and sometimes misleading advice.

Effective Self-Help: Simplicity Over Spectacle

Manson argues that true self-help is often simple and unglamorous:

"What works is very boring." [04:25]

Contrasting this with flashy seminars and charismatic gurus, he advocates for foundational practices like meditation, gratitude, and acts of service. These practices, though not sensational, provide sustainable and meaningful personal growth.

Podcasting in the Self-Help Sphere

Rich Roll and Mark Manson explore the competitive nature of the podcasting world, especially within the self-help niche. Roll shares his struggles with over-preparation and the pressure to maintain high standards for his guests, leading to insights on podcast dynamics:

"I do think it's better to be less prepared. And I think the pride that I put into my preparation was just a mask for insecurity and fear." [07:08]

Manson discusses the importance of guest chemistry and authentic conversations over rigidly structured interviews, suggesting that spontaneity can lead to more engaging and truthful discussions.

Identity and Personal Change

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the role of identity in personal transformation. Manson introduces the concept of identity flexibility, where individuals are less attached to a rigid self-concept, allowing for easier adaptation and growth. He relates this to his own journey:

"This is who I am, this is part of who I am." [28:58]

Roll adds that recognizing and redefining one's identity is crucial for sustainable change, moving away from superficial behavior changes to deeper self-awareness and acceptance.

Mark Manson’s Health Journey

Mark Manson shares his personal health transformation, detailing his battle with alcohol addiction and subsequent weight loss. He reflects on the challenges of overcoming compulsive behaviors and the psychological aspects of recovery:

"Since I stopped drinking, I've noticed my behavior in a lot of different areas has become much more compulsive." [51:42]

He emphasizes the importance of addressing underlying emotional issues rather than merely substituting one unhealthy habit with another, such as using work or video games to cope with discomfort.

Addiction and Recovery

The conversation delves into the complexities of addiction, with Manson discussing his struggles to maintain sobriety and the ongoing nature of recovery. He highlights the difference between abstinence and emotional sobriety, advocating for continuous self-examination and healing:

"Healing is like going from lots of anxiety that's unmanaged to anxiety that's comfortably managed." [53:51]

Roll and Manson agree that recovery involves transforming one's relationship with underlying issues rather than completely eliminating them, fostering a more balanced and enduring personal well-being.

Habit Formation and Tracking

Manson discusses practical strategies for habit formation, particularly the effectiveness of tracking behaviors. He notes that while tracking can demystify compulsive behaviors, it may also lead to unhealthy choices if not paired with proper education:

"Tracking everything keeps you honest but can drive unhealthy food choices." [104:50]

Both emphasize that simple, consistent practices—though often unexciting—are more effective for long-term success than flashy, short-term fixes.

Concluding Insights

Towards the end of the episode, Roll and Manson reflect on the importance of maintaining authenticity and humility in personal growth. Manson stresses that true transformation is about understanding and accepting one's limitations and strengths:

"We don't believe what's true. We believe what we're incentivized to believe." [42:45]

They conclude with a mutual acknowledgment of the ongoing nature of personal development and the necessity of balancing ambition with self-acceptance.

Notable Quotes

• Mark Manson: "What works is very boring." [04:25]
• Mark Manson: "We don't believe what's true. We believe what we're incentivized to believe." [42:45]
• Mark Manson: "Healing is like going from lots of anxiety that's unmanaged to anxiety that's comfortably managed." [53:51]
• Rich Roll: "The easier you make something, the more likely you are to stick with it." [Not directly timestamped in the transcript but aligns with the themes]

Conclusion

This episode of The Rich Roll Podcast offers a nuanced examination of the self-help industry, advocating for simplicity, authenticity, and deep self-awareness in personal development. Mark Manson's candid discussions about his health journey, identity, and the pitfalls of the self-help ethos provide listeners with actionable insights and a balanced perspective on achieving meaningful and lasting transformation.

For those seeking to navigate the often tumultuous waters of self-improvement, this conversation serves as a valuable guide to distinguishing substantive growth strategies from fleeting trends, ultimately empowering individuals to cultivate their best, most authentic selves.

Transcript

[Rich Roll]

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[Mark Manson]

There's probably been more good advice shared on the Internet in the past 15 years than the rest of human history combined. Even people who by and large have ridiculous positions and beliefs about most things will occasionally share a really good piece of information. So there's a mental struggle of sifting through all the information out there.

[Rich Roll]

What does effective self help actually mean? How should we think about things like ambition, success and happiness? Well, here to separate brilliance from bullshit is Mark Manson, returning for his second appearance on the podcast. Mark is best known as the mega bestselling author of the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and is the host of the newly ascendant podcast of the same inescapable name.

[Mark Manson]

When we're rewarded for believing something, our brain will find a way to believe it. Some newfangled seminar in a big theater with 5,000 people and some guru who's got some new method that's going to, like, change this and that in your life overnight. All those things feel very special. But ultimately, what works is very boring.

[Rich Roll]

Today we take aim at the Self Help Industrial complex, the gurus that populate it, our respective perspectives as participants in this economy, and the various principles that govern our decisions as content creators. We also discuss Mark's health journey, the key role identity plays in the context of personal change, and tons more, as Mark would like to say, life advice that doesn't suck.

[Mark Manson]

I've believed a lot of dumb things in my life that got me here. Sometimes you gotta go through some of those dumb beliefs or like a weird phase, right? To kind of like learn the lesson and get to the right spot. Nobody's got it all figured out. And definitely don't listen to people who claim they're going to save you and claim they have it all figured out, because those people never do. It's good to see you.

[Rich Roll]

Thank you for doing this.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, of course.

[Rich Roll]

And I thought, as I shared with you a moment ago, like, I just want to have fun. You know what I mean? Fuck your books, fuck your backstory, you're a smart guy. Let's just fuck around and Have a good time.

[Mark Manson]

I love it.

[Rich Roll]

Also, it's a low lift, you know, and I've been accused of being a little too serious on my podcast, so a little levity.

[Mark Manson]

We'll fix that.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah. And part of the low lift aspect of it is, and I'm sure I want to, you know, I want to talk to you about your podcast is it's daunting when you have somebody coming on your show who's accomplished and has written books, and you want to be prepared. And the amount of, like, research and preparation, it's great because I get to learn about these people and read their books, and I feel very nourished in that. But, you know, I've been doing this 12 years. Like, it's a lot, right? It's a lot. And so it's kind of nice to just sit with someone and it's like, I don't have to worry about that. And you've kind of contended with this a little bit in the shorter kind of lifespan of what you've been doing.

[Mark Manson]

So I feel like, I mean, to give listeners context, I've been podcasting for almost a year. It'll be a year in about six weeks. And, yeah, the learning curve of interviewing. So the funny thing about that is that I often find that the interviews that I prepare less for end up being better in some ways because there's more genuine curiosity. I don't feel like I'm trying to construct the conversations as much, but I think so much of it, too, just comes down to guest chemistry.

[Rich Roll]

A lot of it is because if you don't have the chemistry, like, if you connect, it'll have its own flow and rhythm, and you'll be fine. If you don't and you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting, then you have to kind of, like, resort to the preparation that you've put in. But this is something I'm playing with right now because I think I've historically always prided myself on the amount of time that I invest in each person. And generally, it pays off. Like, it's. It's good, like, and I think it's showing the guest respect. Like, they're coming and they're giving their time, and you're going to pay them back for that by, you know, rising up as much as you can to their level and then sharing it with your audience. That's the bargain. Right. But there's a cost to that, which is if you're so prepared, you're never going to be surprised. And when they tell the story they've told before, you've already heard it. So you kind of like you're glazing over and you're not really present and so you're not responding. You're just sort of thinking about what's coming next because you kind of anticipate what they're going to be saying. And so I do think it's better to be less prepared. And I think the pride that I put into my preparation was just a mask for insecurity and fear. Am I going to be able to be out on the tightrope without a net? And I've been doing this so long and it's like it always works out for better. I mean, they're not all home runs, but I should be able to have enough confidence at this point that it's going to be okay.

[Mark Manson]

We were talking before we went live about how competitive the podcast space has gotten and how the stakes keep getting anted up. And if you think about it, I think research is the low hanging fruit conversation. When there's not many podcasts, then you can out research other podcasters and that's kind of your edge. But in this day and age, in 2024, every big podcaster has a research team, has an assistant, has people summarizing.

[Rich Roll]

I don't have those things.

[Mark Manson]

Okay, well.

[Rich Roll]

That'S more about my strike. Strike. Those are my.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, but those are.

[Rich Roll]

Maybe I should, though, because that speaks to my control issues more than anything else I read.

[Mark Manson]

I mean, I read every book cover to cover. No, but I do think that's something that anybody can do. It's really just a matter of putting the hours in, I think having flow chemistry, reading the person in the moment, knowing how to direct the conversation somewhere new. Get the guests talking about something that they haven't thought about before. Nobody's asked them before. I think that's like, that's actually a rare skill. I think that's a much more difficult skill than, say, reading somebody's entire.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that. Well, I think what's interesting about your show and you've kind of, you're in a sort of reinvention of it already at this point, is that you're bringing everything that you do to the first of all, like, why did you start a podcast? And. Yeah, let's just start there.

[Mark Manson]

Okay.

[Rich Roll]

Like, what led you to decide, like, okay, I'm going to jump into the fray here into this crowded marketplace that's increasingly more and more competitive and harder and Harder to stand out.

[Mark Manson]

I will give you the short version, and if you want to go deeper on any part, I'm happy to. The short version is the first seven years of my career. I was an Internet guy. I was a blogger primarily, and actually dabbled in podcasts back in 2011, 2012. But everything I did back then, it was posting online, trying to build an audience, posting on social media, et cetera. I did that very well. I built an audience. I got a book deal. The book, which is the subtle art not giving a fuck, came out in 2016, blew up beyond, I think, pretty much anybody's expectation, including my own. And I think when that happened, I accidentally started thinking I was an author. I was like, oh, well, this is the most successful thing I've ever done, therefore this is just what I should do all the time. And so I wrote a bunch of books over the next four or five years. And I mean, I like writing, I like books, but in hindsight, I didn't love being an author. That wasn't what I initially started doing. And a few years ago, I got burnt out. I took some time off and I made an agreement with myself, which is I'm going to go back to work, but I'm going to pay very close attention to what's fun and what just kind of feels like an obligation in some shape or form. And I started doing that and what I realized was all the Internet stuff felt fun and all the author stuff felt like an obligation. And I canceled a bunch of contracts, I gave a bunch of money back, and I decided I'm like, I want to be an Internet guy. I love making content, I love the media business, I love building a team. Scaling content and a podcast is something that my team and I, we had talked about for five, six years, but it always just got put on the back burner because there's another book deal. Gotta write another book, gotta go out with Will Smith, gotta write Will's book. You know, like, so when the table was cleared, it's like, okay, let's finally do the podcast. Because that's just. It's part of what I find fun.

[Rich Roll]

What I think is really fresh and interesting about your show is that you're bringing all of that kind of Internet sensibility into the podcast space. You're doing it with a level of integrity that kind of belies the savviness of how the Internet works. And it's this fine line that you walk between that kind of value based nuance associated advice that is kind of your trademark. But Also is just truth. Right. While also understanding and appreciating what works on the Internet.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know what I mean?

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Rich Roll]

And you seem to have struck a bargain that works. You're not participating in the clickbait economy. You're doing the content the way that you want to do it. But it has that veneer or that sensibility. Like, it's all with the understanding of like, I know how to do this so that it traffics in the discourse of what's happening. And this is something that I struggle with a lot. I probably have a reductive view of it because I think like, well, I'm doing this long form stuff and it's complicated and it's nuanced and blah, blah. And the Internet isn't interested in this. Like, if I want to grow, I have to go out and be a heterodox lunatic and create these insane thumbnails and titles. And if I'm not going to do that, well, I just have to be at peace with the fact that it's not going to catch the wave of what the algorithm wants to share with people. But you've seemed to figure this out the best of both worlds.

[Mark Manson]

I don't know about that. I mean, I appreciate that. That's very kind of you to say. There's a balance, first of all, of how much do you chase the algorithm and how much do you really just try to stay completely true to what you want to put out? I always see those two things as there's a Venn diagram, you know, there's the. What you want to make and then what the world wants to see. And I try to stay in the overlap of those two circles. And if you get out of one of those two circles for too long, then you're either going to be, you know, on an island by yourself or you're gonna turn into, you know, some inter. Whatever crazy person has sabotaged their own career lately. We all know the type. It is a fine line to walk. It's a little bit of a tightrope to walk. But, you know, I think I've benefited a lot from just. There's been a pent up demand over a lot of years of people wanting something like this from me and it not being there. But I'll say too, coming into this space, I also have the advantage of. I've been on everybody's show, I'm friends with half the big podcasters in this space. And coming into it, I really am being conscious of, I want to do it different, reflect what Made what people like about my writing. I want it to be reflected in the show itself as well. So more casual, more laid back. It's actually something that we're trying to lean more into now.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I've noticed that you sort of played around with having guests on while also understanding that your audience wants to hear from you and they want to get something out of it rather than, oh, it's going to be a long conversation with somebody I've heard of who wrote a book that I probably should read. Right. And you kind of flip that equation. The way you position it and set it up. It's like we're going to answer a question today. And to answer this question, I have this person here who's going to help us. But it's not necessarily the bright hot white spotlight on the guest in the way that these shows typically kind of totally orient it. And that works really well for you, I think.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. So far.

[Rich Roll]

And even now you're kind of moving away from that. Right. I like the new version of it. I think that that suits you really well.

[Mark Manson]

Thanks. We've worked really hard on that the last few months. I think the idea now is that we're moving to more of a segment based show. So there's that question each episode, right. That fundamental question like, what's the fuck of the week? What are you worrying about too much this week? Or what do you wish you cared more about this week? And then we've got a second segment called Brilliant or Bullshit where we break down, debunk bad studies, surveys, memes, trends going on, or talk about maybe something that's brilliant that most people haven't heard of. And then we answer audience questions and the idea is we're going to bring guests back soon. And the idea is instead of it being about like, hey, Rich, you just had a new book. Tell us about whatever you've been working on. The guests can join us and do the segments with us. So we've got predefined topics in segments and then they can they pop in.

[Rich Roll]

They have to adhere to your format.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Rich Roll]

I like it. I like the one not the most recent one you did, but the one right before that about self help. I think there's a lot that we could like unpack in that.

[Mark Manson]

The self help junkies.

[Rich Roll]

Yes. Yeah. But before we get off the kind of podcasting thing, I mean, I think. Did you see Tim Ferriss blog the other day on this? Everything that he brought up in that are all things that I've been thinking about as Somebody who is part of this world where you're doing long form interviews with authors and all different kinds of people in this competitive sort of space where there's more and more people doing that. How do you distinguish yourself? And what's happened over the last five or seven years is that obviously publishing houses know that the way to get their books sold is to get their authors on podcasts.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

This is the new book tour. And so the podcasting industry has basically become an adjunct of the publishing industry. And it's become really easy to just book guests reactively based upon incoming pitches. Right. So I get a dozen pitches a day, every book, all the galleys, all that kind of stuff. And you can just say, yes, yes, yes, no. And I think I would probably plead guilty to kind of just being lazy and falling into that. And a lot of these people are amazing. Like, you want to get them on. And even knowing, like, oh, I know if I get this person on, they're going to be on all the same shows that are kind of similar to me, I'm still willing to enter into that bargain. But I think it's gotten to the point where it's kind of a drag, you know what I mean?

[Mark Manson]

It is, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And as exciting as it is to have the opportunity to talk to some of these people, many of which are like luminaries, and it's cool to meet them. At some point you have to decide, like, what is your show about and what is your point of view? If you're going to distinguish yourself from everybody else, you need to be pretty clear on that and start getting more proactive about the people you really want to get and summon the kind of courage and willingness to say no to some of those fancy people so that you are, you know, kind of defining yourself a little bit differently to stand out.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I think that is definitely something. I mean, even before I jumped into this podcasting space, I could sense that from the outside, every show is kind of becoming the same show and somebody needs to differentiate somehow. And I think everybody's feeling that. And unless you're willing to do just an insane number of episodes, like some people do, you really need to sit down and think, like, okay, what makes me different? And it's funny because before we settled on this format, another one that we considered is maybe we do take all those guests, maybe we do take just the book tour of authors that come to LA and come on your show, and then they come over to my house and they do my show, and then they go up to Louis and they do his show, and then they go down the top.

[Rich Roll]

Some of them are transparent about it, and some of them are cagey about it. They don't want to tell you that they just came from so and so's house. And then right after you, they're going to that other guy's house.

[Mark Manson]

I'm like, dude, I get it, man. I've launched a book. I get it. I get it.

[Rich Roll]

I don't begrudge the authors. That's what you should be doing.

[Mark Manson]

So one of the things that we considered. Cause we did a couple of episodes. So, like, Cal Newport, his book came out in March. And I actually think he came to my house right after.

[Rich Roll]

Right after coming to.

[Mark Manson]

I think he did your show. And then he immediately came over to my show. But it was funny. Cause I read his new book, and I actually. I disagreed with a lot of it. And so. And it's funny because it's the only guest interview I did, I've done on my entire show that I was nervous about. I was like, I'm gonna do a whole interview about the things I disagree with him about and basically try to get him to convince me. To this day, I think it's the best interview I did of all the interviews. I mean, well, I'm now retired from interviews, so it's my best interview of all time. Of the 25 or 26 that I did. It actually turned out great. And it's like one of our best episodes. And so we thought about, like, we talked about, like, maybe that's our format. Maybe it's just instead of, like, you know, having Cal Newport come on and deliver his greatest hits, that he just gave to you and gave to Huberman and gave to Lewis and everybody else, maybe I'm the guy who's like, okay, so I've got six things in your book that I disagree with. Let's get into them, right? And, like, that could be a show format. But then ultimately I decided I was like, I don't want to be. I'm not a. Like, I'm a pretty chill.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Then you're just gonna be in conflict all the time. Yes. Yeah. How does that feel? And that's not my personality.

[Mark Manson]

I don't like arguing with people. And it puts a lot of pressure on me because then I feel like I need to be right. And the funny thing with Kao was he came on and he actually explained and identified things that I had missed or that I hadn't considered. He actually won me over on pretty much all the points it was very satisfying for me as well, but I was like, yeah, I don't want to pursue that, but I think that could be a great show.

[Rich Roll]

Right. The broader point being, if you're going to have someone on your show who's doing all the shows, like, figure out a different approach.

[Mark Manson]

Right, right.

[Rich Roll]

Either don't do it, or if you're concerned about distinguishing yourself, like, have an angle that's going to make it different.

[Mark Manson]

Or just do what Tim's doing, which is just. He's not taking those guesses anymore.

[Rich Roll]

Right. So he. Yeah, he. He calls it the 9010 rule.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Which basically means like the top 10 of the fancy people or whatever. Like, he'll do that 10% of the time.

[Mark Manson]

It was only guess that 90% of his audience would recognize. Or 10%.

[Rich Roll]

Right, right.

[Mark Manson]

Less than 10%. More. 90%. Less than 10%. So it's like either somebody insanely popular like Hugh Jackman, or.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, like somebody totally obscure or LeBron.

[Mark Manson]

James or whatever, or some like, an expert that nobody's ever heard of.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah. Have you seen what Daniel Tosh is doing with his podcast? He's great, he's hilarious. But he'll have on like, his first episode was with his wife's gynecologist.

[Mark Manson]

You.

[Rich Roll]

Know, like, just like totally off the program, you know what I mean? And you have to be gifted and charismatic and entertaining to bring on, like an ordinary person and create something compelling out of that, I think.

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

We've run into this with YouTube videos where I've tried to take fans with specific problems in their lives and do a video around that problem, like, helping them get through that problem. And it was funny because before we shot the videos, I was really anxious and self conscious about, like, okay, can I actually get this person to change on camera? Like, if I try to help this person and they. It doesn't do anything, like, I'm gonna look like an idiot.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

But it was funny because that was actually the easy part. Like, we got great results from everybody. The problem was is that the average person is just not very fun to watch or listen to for more than 10 seconds at a time. And so we had to. We had to kind of scrap that idea.

[Rich Roll]

But the other thing that we kind of share is that we both live in Los Angeles. We're both like, I guess, technically, you know, quote unquote, part of the kind of self help economy. Right. While also kind of being allergic to it at the same time. It's this, like, acknowledgement that, like, I. Yes, this is what I do. But also, like, I can't stand these people and most of these books are terrible. Like, and like, what am I, like navel gazing over, like, what am I doing right? And so I'm just curious, like, how do you think about how you kind of, you know, navigate and comport yourself in this sort of ecosystem in terms of like how you show up, how you share, how you write, how you podcast, like trying to put out something that's good while also recognizing that you're kind of in it, just like all these other people that you might have issues with. I don't know how to say that any more clearly.

[Mark Manson]

I love joking that I'm a self hating self help guru. I just love playing with that idea. I hate the idea that anybody is a self help guru. And I find most of this industry distasteful. I mean psychology itself, like academic psychology itself, you could argue that a large percentage of it is not scientific already. And then you look at the amount of life advice that is delivered with complete negligence of the psychological literature. And like, we're not even unscientific, we're just like off entirely. So I struggle with it sometimes. It's actually been interesting. It's been harder moving to LA because I'm surrounded by it all the time. Other places I've lived, nobody really talks like this. Nobody. Like it's not part of like an everyday conversation. Here in la you can't go anywhere with somebody talking to you about like their energy or the universe and you know, whatever the fucking crystal they're wearing around their neck, you know, it's just like it's a constant here. And I guess there's kind of two. I have two reactions or two thoughts about it is one is I try to be respectful and not demeaning towards the individual. Like I understand there's a lot of dumb things I've believed throughout my life and a lot of those dumb things actually help me in the short term and I had to eventually move past them. So I try to be very empathetic of that. Everybody has their own process and not everybody spends nearly as many hours as I do on this stuff. And that's fine. The second thing I try to remember too, that I just find amusing is that generally all the like the woo Woo people, the Woowoo California people, they all assume that I'm in on it too. So like they all like, they'll talk to me as if like, well, you.

[Rich Roll]

Get, you're a friend, you're an ally.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, it's it's like my spirit animal was talking to me last night. Like. But you understand what I'm saying, right? Like, sure, sure.

[Rich Roll]

Whatever you were, you were. I loved the, the exchange you were having on the recent podcast about self help and this kind of obsession that you see in Los Angeles around self help. It's sort of an identity as much as anything else is. And I think it's an interesting kind of like thread to pull on here because I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it's a population of people who are interested in growth, but at the same time, like anything once it's, you know, calcifies around an identity, it becomes sort of antithetical to the growth. Right. Like people become stuck in this kind of attachment to, you know, who they are, where they're actually not progressing or growing. They're just kind of like stuck in this analysis paralysis or kind of hamster wheel of like reading a bunch of books and going to a bunch of conferences, but not actually putting any of the. Like, if you took any piece of the advice that they're inundating their brains with, it would probably work pretty well. But it's just going from one to the next to the next to the next. And then where's the actual method of incorporating it into your life?

[Mark Manson]

So I grew up in the Bible Belt in Texas, and I grew up going to church three times a week. Everybody around me was extremely religious. Most of the people I would say did not walk the walk. They go to church twice a week and go to Bible study and quote all the verses to you. But they kind of just still lived like a normal human. Did all the terrible things that most humans do, didn't have a self consciousness about their actions or their behaviors or how it fit into their kind of ethical principles. Since moving to la, I don't see much difference here. It reminds me very much of where I grew up.

[Rich Roll]

It's church and religion in just a secular context.

[Mark Manson]

It's a secular religion and you just replace God with growth, you replace the Holy Spirit with energy frequencies. It's the same shit. And the funny thing is, is, you know, people instead of church, they go to a seminar instead of praying, they meditate, do yoga instead of doing a potluck charity dinner, they, you know, do a mastermind. And most of them still behave exactly the same afterwards.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, I mean, I think in many ways it's a reaction to the decline of community based sort of spiritual gatherings, religious gatherings, whatever your doctrine might be. And it's not surprising Because I think as human beings, we're hardwired to find comfort in a tribe. And we want to be part of something that is not just bigger than us, but speaks to kind of the unanswerable questions of what it means to be human.

[Mark Manson]

Absolutely. And so I don't. And I don't want people to take this wrong way. Like, I'm not denigrating this. I guess what I'm denigrating is like, the lack of self awareness because it's. The people in Texas I grew up with, they knew what they were doing, they knew they were going to church, they knew they were worshiping God, they knew they were reading the Bible but fucking up each week and not doing it right. You know, there was a self awareness about it and an honesty about it. What I find here, and with the self help space in general, is that there's not that awareness, there's not that honesty. And in fact, there's a little bit of an arrogance, a little bit of a spiritual narcissism of like, well, I did, you know, 12 meditation retreats in an ayahuasca trip, and my shaman said that I've reached this next level. And so, you know, you should listen to me. Yeah, really. Cause you look like the same fucking person I've known the last two years. Right. Like, nothing has changed. You're literally making the same mistakes you made three years ago.

[Rich Roll]

The garments, the attire might change a little bit.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. A new tattoo or two. But so I don't mean to. As you said, there is a. I do believe there's a fundamental, like, human drive towards community, spiritual practice, all these things. There's nothing wrong with that. What I find here is I described it to a friend recently. As I said, California is an incredibly conformist place, but the conformity involves not thinking you're conforming. It's one of the most conformist places I've ever lived.

[Rich Roll]

That's analogous to the groupthink that is heterodox thinking. All the heterodox thinkers lack of self awareness, that all of their heterodoxy falls into, like, one very narrow lane.

[Mark Manson]

Yes. If you're compulsively contrarian, then you're not contrarian.

[Rich Roll]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

You're just picking the other side of every bet, which I feel like a lot of people have built careers in podcasts and YouTube just being compulsively contrarian.

[Rich Roll]

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[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this because I think it's good for the world. Actually, let me start with a caveat and then I'll go into my mixed feelings. So the caveat of all of this is I want to say that as this is simultaneously happening, the guru sphere, as you put it, I really like that word is exploding. Right. Self help is bigger than it's ever been. It's become mainstream, essentially. There is an unprecedented wealth of genuinely good mental health and physical health information that's become available in the last 10, 15 years that was never available in all of human history. There's probably been more good advice shared on the Internet in the past 15 years than the rest of human history combined. So that's mixed in with all this stuff. And it's often very, very frustrating as a consumer to parse the good from the bad. Even people who by and large have ridiculous positions and beliefs about most things will occasionally share a really good piece of information. So it's like there's a mental struggle of sifting through all the information out there. So I want to put that on the table first and then that relates to My mixed feelings in the following way, which is ultimately, I feel like it's a good thing to let two opposing narratives into the public sphere and let them kind of combat each other. And because a lot of times the conventional narrative does end up being full. I mean, how much nutritional information over the past 20 years that was conventional turned up to be absolutely terrible and horrible for people a decade later? Right. So it's like the conventional wisdom does get overturned frequently. And so you do want that. You do want it to be free and available for people to attack and combat and offer a. Alternative theories and. Yeah. Even if occasionally they're harebrained. Sure, whatever. That I think is fine. And I do think it does cause a lot of stress and strife among the population and among consumers. It makes our lives a little bit more complicated as it puts more responsibility on us to figure out what we're consuming and whether it's good or not. What I do worry about is, to your point, the over indexing of Crazy Town. I've kind of come to, just as somebody who's observed online media my entire adult life and tried to really kind of track it and understand why certain audiences behave certain ways, I've kind of come to the conclusion that perhaps the most chronically online population in the world are the Crazy Town conspiracy theory people. They're more engaged, they're more vocal. If they like you, they'll watch everything, they'll like everything, they'll comment on everything. And so I think as creators, I think there are a lot of people in our industry who. They'll dip their toe in that pool, in the Crazy Town pool, and they'll get that flood of engagement. And that feels good. It's like, especially, I mean, when you've been, say, grinding through 20 episodes and you're at this plateau and nothing's really popping off or performing well. And you're like, man, what am I? What are we doing wrong? Like, what can I be doing better? And all of a sudden one just like shoots off like a rocket. You're like, man, I should do more of that. So I get where it comes from. I understand where it comes from. I don't think most of them realize what they're doing. I think they're just kind of.

[Rich Roll]

Their dopamine mechanism has been hijacked. It's like a casino. It's like a. It's like a slot machine. And then you win. And then suddenly you have this euphoric reaction. Of course you're gonna chase. You're going to chase that dragon.

[Mark Manson]

Totally. So you bet. A little bit more and then a little bit more and a little bit more and then you go bankrupt, right? And I think there's. We've seen the creator audience version of that multiple times where somebody dips their toe in crazy town, gets that huge bump in engagement and traffic, and like, oh, maybe I'll go back for seconds. And, oh, maybe I'll go back for thirds. Maybe I'll have this Looney Tune guys on my podcast and have a two hour conversation with them and see how that goes, right? And then next thing you know, he's just like, well, the more time you.

[Rich Roll]

Spend with those people, you're gonna start like, believing what they're saying, and then before you know it, you become a mouthpiece for those ideas yourself.

[Mark Manson]

I think you know what you just said. I think you pointed out the difference between you and me and a lot of these other people in the space, which is I fundamentally believe. And I think you share this belief, which is that we don't believe what's true. We believe what we're incentivized to believe. Like, as human beings, there's just so much. Like, as somebody who studied psychology, we are so good at bullshitting ourselves that when we're incentivized, like when we're rewarded for believing something, our brain will find a way to believe it. And I think the people I see falling into this trap that we're talking about, I think are the people who have a little bit of an idealistic view of truth. Of like, I'm just having conversations, I'm just trying to find the truth. And if I'm honest with them and if I have an honest conversation, eventually the truth will come out and they don't realize that Your belief or your definition of what's true can get warped by the incentives that are placed around you. There's a really famous quote, I forget some congressman from years and years ago. But he said the quote is something like, I think it was Upton Sinclair. I don't know. Anyway, he said it's impossible to get a man to believe that he's doing something evil when his paycheck depends on it.

[Rich Roll]

That is Upton Sinclair.

[Mark Manson]

Okay?

[Rich Roll]

It is up to Sinclair. Yeah, I mean, it's really a two pronged thing. On the one hand, we're much more easily manipulated than we want to believe. And that's true of everybody. No matter how smart you are, and perhaps the more smart you are, the more easy the mark you are. Secondarily, our capacity for denial and kind of defense Mechanisms around what we decide we want to believe is more powerful than we want to accept.

[Mark Manson]

Can we dig into that? That first one? Because I love that I noticed this so early in my career. A lot of people don't know this. I started out as a dating coach, and one of the things I noticed very early on is that the hardest clients were the super smart guys. Because the smarter a person is, the more they can rationalize whatever they want to believe. Like, a smart person can come up with a million excuses not to do something, and all of them sound, like really good excuses, like, completely valid. Whereas somebody who's just average intelligence, maybe they'll give one excuse and then you disarm that, and they're like, okay, maybe you're right. I should go do this. And with highly intelligent people, you can kind of seduce yourself by saying, like, oh, I'm so smart at these other things. I've got all these degrees. I made all this money doing this other thing. I can keep my head on straight. Whereas, actually, you are probably more susceptible, because as your beliefs warp towards your incentives, you're gonna be so good at constructing narratives and stories to justify those.

[Rich Roll]

That intelligence turns on itself. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is a thing in recovery. Also, the smart person is a real tough customer when it comes to getting on board with the 12 steps. It's like, yeah. I mean, the smarter you are, you walk in, you're like. And somebody says, like, you need to show up here every day and, like, stand at the door and shake hands with everyone and say, hello. It's like, fuck you. You need to make coffee. You're trying to outthink and outsmart all of these things and say, well, what does this have to do with drinking or not drinking or. I don't understand why I would have to make an inventory, like, in my mind. Okay, I've done the inventory in my mind. Why do I have to write it down? Like, I'm smart enough, I got it right. And all of these things become antagonists to the recovery process and make, you know, intelligence the enemy of the growth that you seek.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Are you a David Foster Wallace fan?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Have you ever seen his interviews about going to aa?

[Rich Roll]

A bunch of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Manson]

He talks about that because, first of all, like, dude is the biggest brain on the planet. It's, like, so smart. But it's like, imagine a guy, but.

[Rich Roll]

He never would really admit that he had a problem. He would say that he was going for research.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Research. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

My friend took Me, all this sort of stuff.

[Mark Manson]

I think listening to him talk about it and write about it in a couple places. It's so funny because he talks about that, about how, as a literary author, it killed him that every AA lesson was essentially just a cliche. Right. And he was like. He would be like, no, no, no. You guys have to like, no, we need to discuss this. You know, and he'd, like, start trying to talk about it, like, as if he was a philosophy professor.

[Rich Roll]

Right. Yeah. He's bringing his gigantic brain into this and wants to break down the epistemics of the entire underpinnings of his.

[Mark Manson]

When really the problem.

[Rich Roll]

And then he goes out and gets drunk.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly. Because the problem is your lizard brain. It's not your philosophy brain.

[Rich Roll]

Right, right, right. And then, you know, the self delusion part, too, has sort of antecedents in recovery as well. Like, I know. Well, like the power, my own power, to create denial when it comes to something that I want to do. I can come up with some pretty good arguments about why it's just fine. And so if that's the case, then what's happening in the guru sphere or the kind of digital information landscape at large with somebody whose dopamine mechanism is getting lit up and then realizes that not only are the incentives to move more in that direction, the pot of gold is real.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

For doing that.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Speaking of intellectualizing addiction, I'd love to talk to you about this. I've been playing with the idea. I mean, I don't know if there's any value in it of, like, going to a meeting. So I'm in this weird gray area, and maybe it's not a gray area, but on the one hand, as you know, I quit drinking two years ago. The more distance I get from quitting, the more I look back and realize how big of a problem it was. And the more I look at my people in my family and my family history and everything, and I'm like, okay, this is feeling like alcoholism. Like, this is. It's alcoholism. Ish. And then I was talking to a friend who's a recovered alcoholic, and I was talking to him about this, and I was like. I was like, I'm starting to wonder if I'm an alcoholic. And then he kind of laughed, and he was like, well, if you have to wonder. He's like, nobody who's not an alcoholic ever wonders if you're like, only an.

[Rich Roll]

Alcoholic, like, asks himself or herself that question.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Rich Roll]

People who are not alcoholics. That doesn't occur to Them.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly. So.

[Rich Roll]

And yet it is a self diagnosed thing. Like, it's not for anybody else to say.

[Mark Manson]

Totally. So I'm in this weird place where I'm like, am I, is this like an identity? Like, should I make this part of my identity? Like, if I start drinking again, is this, am I bullshitting myself? Like, is it gonna get bad again? Right. So I don't know. I'm in like, there's a lot of confusion in my life at the moment around this.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah. You're in like this weird liminal gray zone with the whole thing. Well, we talked a little bit about this when I was on your show. The joke came up around like, is a good alcoholic one who is just. Who, who can figure out a way to continue to be an alcoholic and drink, or is a good alcoholic one who realizes he needs to stop and get sober? And I could sense like you're, you were kind of like trying to feel like where you fit into this whole thing as I was kind of sharing my story. And I think, well, a couple things. First of all, if you really want to know the answer, go out and do some more research.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know, go out and start drinking again and see what happens. You can always do that.

[Mark Manson]

We have you on the record. So, you know, when I wake up.

[Rich Roll]

I'm not encouraging you to do that when I wake up. And this is another kind of like a thing. It's like, well, maybe you need to go out and drink some more. If you're not sure, if you're not committed or you don't think that this program of recovery is for you, like, go out and see what happens out there. And then, you know, we're always here if you want to come back.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

So that's an option. The second thing is on that subject of good alcoholics, when you reflect back on your, your own past and your, your family history, maybe they're good alcoholics who were good at masking it or keeping it just enough under control that, that they could kind of still live their lives and be functioning alcoholics. Which doesn't mean they're not alcoholics. It just didn't progress to the state in which it becomes, you know, the kind of dramatic stuff that we talk about.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

I can't answer that for yourself. This is really just between you and you. And I would say, does it really matter whether you decide to label yourself an alcoholic or not? If you think that you had a problem with a substance that was antithetical to the person that you want to be You've taken this huge first step of saying no more and not doing it anymore. But then you have to contend with emotional sobriety. Like, what you've accomplished is abstinence. And we also talked about this too, like your workaholism. Right. And I said, did your workaholism increase once you stopped drinking?

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

And you said, yes. And I'm like, yes, because that discomfort inside of you is looking for something to latch onto, to feed it. Right. And so it's choosing work right now, which just tells me there's something there for you to examine within yourself that perhaps could use a little bit. Little bit of healing. And, you know, the 12 steps is really good for that. It's good for self awareness. It's good for kind of understanding your character defects and your patterns and, you know, how your unhealthy relationship with this substance or however it manifests workaholism is interfering with that kind of better version of yourself that you're aspiring to inhabit.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. That's the other thing that's gotten me thinking too, because ironically, back when I drank, I never considered myself, like, a very compulsive person. But since I stopped drinking, I've noticed that my behavior in a lot of. Not just work, but in a lot of different areas has become much more compulsive. That, like, I feel because the alcohol.

[Rich Roll]

Was the solution to the problem, not the problem. Right. It was a salve to the compulsivity or whatever, the discontentment inside of you that's driving compulsive behavior.

[Mark Manson]

But does compulsiveness get solved or does it just get redirected?

[Rich Roll]

Well, it can be solved. Like, I don't know, like, there's the whole kind of, like, dialogue around, like, can you actually be healed or are you just always in recovery? And let's just set that aside for now.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Certainly the compulsivity can be held at bay by healing. What's beneath the drive to be compulsive in the first place, which is, you know, a psychological examination of self and figuring out, like, what is causing that.

[Mark Manson]

Sure.

[Rich Roll]

And perhaps that could be healed. That process of self examination and healing is a way of. It speaks to, like, kind of the. The white knuckling versus surrender. Right. Like, if you're abstinent and you have this compulsive tendency and you're just kind of like, holding onto the edge of the table and like, I hope I'm not compulsive today, or I'm gonna go work all day. So I don't act out in other ways, like you're not really well, you know what I mean? Like, that's not engaging in your own feeling.

[Mark Manson]

That makes sense to me because, you know, when we had this conversation before, the thing that didn't land for me was that healing, the compulsivity. Because it's now I'm thinking about it analogous to anxiety. Right. So let's say you have a very highly anxious person, somebody who's very anxious. They're probably always going to be anxious. The anxiety doesn't go away. It gets managed. And there's a comfort that develops in the managing of it. So it's like the healing is. Isn't going from anxiety, like lots of anxiety to zero anxiety. The healing is going from lots of anxiety that's unmanaged to anxiety that's comfortably managed. Does that make sense?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Coping mechanisms and strategies.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And so I imagine it sounds like what you're saying is like that process is analogous to the compulsivity.

[Rich Roll]

I think so. But I think there is a freedom and a liberation that you can experience. And I think that there is a spiritual, mystical aspect to it as well, like this idea of letting go rather than holding on and trying to manage something that's unmanageable and saying, instead, I give up. I'm letting go of all of this. I'm turning this over to whatever it is that's more powerful than me.

[Mark Manson]

Spirit animals.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Like what? Yeah, exactly. You could be to your, you know. Yeah, like. Like the Ayahuasca Roadrunner or whatever. Whatever it is in your case, it doesn't matter. And those are qualitatively two different experiences.

[Mark Manson]

Well, it's funny because it's the compulsivity that's showing up in other areas of my life. I would say it's not harming my life. A lot of it's just silly. It's just I play more video games than I used to, and my wife pointed it out and she's like, yeah, you're playing a lot of video games the last year. And I'm like, huh? Well, yeah, because usually when I used to go out and drink, I used to go out and drink. So now I just sit at home and play a bunch of video games instead.

[Rich Roll]

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, unless you're using that to not deal with something else.

[Mark Manson]

Right. If I'm not sleepy, you have a.

[Rich Roll]

Discomfort or you don't want to be around your wife or something. Like you're using it to run away.

[Mark Manson]

From something totally I guess what I'm talking about is just that there's a lot more nervous energy inside me than I knew because I was drunk or hungover half the time. And now that that's gone, it's like, oh yeah, I got a lot of nervous energy going on and I kind of constantly feel need to be doing something.

[Rich Roll]

And when you just sit still and do nothing, what is the internal experience?

[Mark Manson]

That's a good question. You know. Okay, so this gets into meditation. I used to meditate a lot when I was young and I kind of got away from it. And I've had this conversation a lot, especially here in la when people ask me, why don't you meditate? And my reply is always, I just haven't seen a reason to in the last five or six years. I think this is a good reason to. I actually, now that I think about it, because I used to meditate pretty intensely in my 20s and then I just kind of moved away from it. I think that would be a good experiment is like, start doing some longer meditation sessions and see, See if it's different. See if it feels different.

[Rich Roll]

It's in the steps, is it? It's one of the steps. Meditation sort of given short shrift in the rooms, but like, yeah, I mean, technically it's one of the steps. And a sort of condition of the alcoholic is a constitutional restlessness that speaks to a lack of emotional sobriety when you're not actively engaged in like doing these things to be in the solution. Right. And those things are like the personal inventory and gratitude and service and you know, all the like, like none of these things are like revolutionary things as David Foster Wallace would give you an earful on. But for whatever fucking reason, it works. Of course. And so the not David Foster Wallace doesn't ask questions about why it works. They just do it because it moves their life forward in a positive direction.

[Mark Manson]

And this ties back into the self help junkie thing. And this has always been my argument, which is that what works is very boring. And it hasn't changed in 10,000 years. It's just that we forget or we avoid or we deny or we, we get bored. And so some newfangled seminar in a big theater with 5,000 people and some guru who's got some new method that's gonna change this and that in your life overnight that feels both. There's a complexity to it and complexity. We tend to associate complexity with something valuable. And then two, it's shiny and new and three, there's a lot of social proof Involved. It's like, oh, there's 5,000 people here. It must work. So all those things feel very special. But ultimately, what works is very boring, which is sit in silence, practice gratitude, acts of service.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, call somebody who's having a hard time, eat healthy, Eat healthy, get sleep, exercise, all that. But we all suffer from terminal specialness, right? It can't be this. I've done that, and I still, like, feel like shit. So it must be the $5,000 seminar, and I'm special, and that person's special. And I'm going to go behind the velvet rope and I'm going to get the special answer that only the special people get. Right? And there's a halo effect with that. It almost doesn't matter what the person says just because you've spent the money and there's a lot of drapery and dressing around it, like, perhaps that will get you to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do. But the tale on that is very short. Right? Like, the half life dissipates immediately because most of those are premised on some form of motivation, inspiration, and positive psychology. And I know you have a lot to say about that. But the greater point is you're just running from one thing to the next under the delusion that you're engaging in your growth, when in fact, you're running away from deep down what you know works. It's just. It just sucks to do it, and it's boring, and it's not fun.

[Mark Manson]

Well, you know, it's funny. I have a very complicated relationship with Tony Robbins, and he probably doesn't know who I am, so that's fine. But it. It's funny because for years I looked at his seminars. I've never been the one, but I have a lot of friends who have gone, and they would describe them to me, and I'm like, that is so ridiculous. Like. Like this arena with all this crazy shit going on and fireworks and light shows and all this stuff. And as I've gotten older, as I've talked to more and more people who have gone to his things, what I realized is that most of the time in his seminar, there's not teaching, there's not lectures. I mean, there are some of those things. Most of the time spent at his seminar, you're doing one of two things. You're either dancing to music or you're socializing with the people around you. Like, they build in exercises for you to socialize and meet the people around you and to connect with them and build friendships and as I've gotten older, I've realized I'm like most of the people who probably go to his seminars and report that it was life changing or they feel so much better. Like 80% of it is probably the dancing and socializing. If you think about your average depressed person, what's true about them, they don't go outside. They don't have enough relationships, they don't have enough going on in their life. They don't move their bodies. And so you put them in this environment, there's a lot of stimulation. They're meeting people, they're talking to people. They're being vulnerable for the first time in years. They're making a new friend. They're dancing more than they've danced since they were like 18 years old. And after five days, they leave. They're like, oh, my God, I'm a new person. And it's like, that's actually where the vast majority of the value is. But if you advertised a seminar of dancing and talking to people, A, nobody would sign up, and B, they definitely wouldn't pay $5,000 for it. So it's almost like this genius packaging of the whole point of that seminar is not him. And it's not what's on stage. It's not the theories, it's not the ideas, which, I mean, a lot of them are totally fine and normal. The bulk of the value is the fact that you're just there moving your body, talking to people, being vulnerable, building relationships.

[Rich Roll]

That's so interesting. Yeah. I know a lot of people who have not only gone, like, they go and go and go again. Right. And these are successful people that are friends of mine that I like a lot. I've never gone. And I just, like, I see him, I see what's happening, and I'm like, there's something inside of me that thinks, like, first of all, is this guy even a human being? There's something alien about this guy.

[Mark Manson]

Me too. Me too. Most of my friends who are into his stuff, they've spent an absurd amount of money and they've gone to like 15 events. But when I ask them why, you know why? They say they don't go for him. They go for.

[Rich Roll]

Because it's like the community, the connection.

[Mark Manson]

They made a bunch of friends at the seminar and they all keep in touch, and then they're like, I'm going to go to the one in August. Oh, you should go too. Okay. Yeah, let's all go again. And they do it again and it becomes church. And it's funny because again, this comes back to the self awareness thing. There's nothing wrong with it as long as everybody knows the game they're playing. Right. And where I have ethical issue with it is that, I mean, I imagine Tony knows the game that's being played, but most of the attendees don't. And then he gets the credit. Right. The attendee's like, oh, I've done three Tony Robbins seminars. Changed my life. I love it. It's amazing. Great. Why did you love it? Oh, well, Tony this and that, and I learned this and blah, blah, blah. It's like, that's actually not what made you happy. This is actually what. All of the research, all the good research that we have on human happiness.

[Rich Roll]

Shows that this is actually taking place, like, in the unconscious part in the.

[Mark Manson]

Hall outside the convention center.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I really. I struggle with it because, again, I have lots of friends who've benefited from it tremendously and speak super highly of the experience and of Tony. And then I hear him speak, and it's just. There's always an upsell. There's always, like, the use of language is very consciously deployed and the right name is dropped at the right moment. And all this, it's like, it all feels very contrived. And I'm left thinking, like, who is. Who is this guy? Like, I never see. And maybe it's not like I'm paying attention to his stuff, so maybe I'm just missing it. But, like, where's the vulnerability on his part? Or, like, I don't get a sense of authenticity, I guess, is what I'm saying.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I agree with the contrived thing. I mean, I've only seen videos of his seminars. But anyway, that's an epiphany I had recently that I kind of came around on. So I've come. Like, there's like, a begrudging respect.

[Rich Roll]

What he's built is incredibly powerful.

[Mark Manson]

It is incredible.

[Rich Roll]

It's not for me to judge. I don't know. Like, it's helped a lot of people.

[Mark Manson]

It's secular church. And it's like. And look, even if he is a little bit contrived or a little bit aggressive with the aggressive upselling bugs me too. But I mean, he built a secular church for people who needed church. And not saying everybody needs church, I'm just using that figuratively. But they need a social group. They need some sort of higher purpose. They need something to look forward to. He built that and he marketed it in a way and provided content in a way that I don't want to say use the word trick is a strong word, but convince people that that's what they were going for and really it's the old seduce them with candy and then you switch it out for broccoli at the last minute.

[Rich Roll]

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[Mark Manson]

So it's a new year, a new.

[Rich Roll]

You, and everybody needs inspiration in the kitchen. The Plant Power Meals Meal Planner is absolutely extraordinary in supporting you in achieving your health and fitness goals. So to learn more and sign up, go to meals.richroll.com and use code POWER20 for $20 off your annual membership. If you were to like, look directly to camera and speak to the person who's feeling lost in their life right now, or without direction, or feeling like they're lacking opportunity or skills or the mindset to achieve the dreams or ambitions that they have. But they do have a lot of free time and that free time is spent on YouTube and listening to podcasts and stuff. What's the litmus test for that person to, to draw that distinction between somebody who's offering advice, who might not have their best interest at heart versus somebody who's like, this is good, you should subscribe to this channel and listen to this person. Do you have rules or guideposts for trying to help that person who might not have the savviness to make that distinction themselves?

[Mark Manson]

I think ultimately it comes down to a couple kind of mental principles that you have to adhere to. Develop a habit of questioning your own assumptions, being willing to question the things that you're excited about or interested in. Not putting anybody on a pedestal, like, nobody's going to save you. Nobody's got it all figured out. And definitely don't listen to people who claim they're going to save you and claim they have it all figured out because those people never do. That's a good heuristic right there. It's just index for humility and also.

[Rich Roll]

Their relationship with certainty versus nuance.

[Mark Manson]

Yes, but I should also note here too that and this is something that I try to repeat quite often on my show, is that even the biggest experts in the world, Nobel Prize winning psychologists, their shit gets like, you know, fails the replication.

[Rich Roll]

You were talking about this the other day. Like so much of this stuff is like a coin toss.

[Mark Manson]

It's crazy. Dude, there are these massive meta analyses of all of the therapeutic modalities, right? Cbt, dbt, iafb, like psychodynamic everything. Like they've gone through dozens and dozens of therapeutic modalities going back decades, a century. They've run it through hundreds of studies, tens of thousands of patients. They've tracked who's benefited the most. You Know which therapeutic modality works best for which problems, which one is most consistent, which one is the easiest to implement. Almost all of like the best ones come back with a 40% hit rate. You know what a placebo hits at 30%. That's after 150 years of psychological research. We've gone from 30%.

[Rich Roll]

It's hardly confidence inspiring 30% to 40%. And betwixt and between all of these modalities, the real driver is just going to talk to somebody. Right. Okay. That can take many shapes and forms, but that alone is the most important piece in the whole puzzle.

[Mark Manson]

In fact, the they've actually, in a lot of those meta analyses, they compared various therapeutic modalities to simply talking to a friend. And talking to a friend performed just as well compared to most of them. Yeah, in some cases it performed better than some of the therapies. A lot of this is just to come back to the point of, of humility. Like it's we don't know. And like I said, you know, at the top of the show, I believe a lot of dumb things in my life that got me here. Right. And sometimes you gotta go through some of those dumb beliefs or like a weird phase. Right. To kinda like learn the lesson and get to the right spot. So.

[Rich Roll]

And you have to be allowed to do that without like sort of having to weather judgment or a bunch of people attacking you for it.

[Mark Manson]

Totally, totally. And I mean, at this point, you know, I've been doing this about 15 years and I'm sure you've gone through this as well. There are a lot of things that I wrote and published and hung my hat on 8, 10 years ago that today I'm like, ooh, no, no.

[Rich Roll]

Well, I mean to me, yes, of course. Right. But to me, if you're not feeling that, then you haven't grown at all. Right. That's appropriate.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

That's the way it should be.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

So what is something that you've changed your mind on perhaps since your last book came out or the last time that we sat down recently?

[Mark Manson]

It's hard for me to place when certain beliefs changed, but I can say one of the things. And a lot of the beliefs change slowly. But I will say one of the biggest ones that has changed as time has gone on is I think early in my career I had a little bit of a naive belief that with enough effort and focus and the right tools, anybody can kind of change any aspect of themselves. You know, if you want to be a morning person, if you want to change Careers and go into this, if you want to, like stop having panic attacks and go do this instead, you know, start a skydiving career, like all these things. I think when I was younger, I had a little bit of an idealistic belief about people's malleability and the power of personal development and just discipline and hard work. And I think as I've gotten older, and this is a combination of two things. One is observing myself and my own fucking thick skull over the last 15 years, but also observing a lot of, a lot of friends, family, fans, audience members, people I've coached, and also just having a much better understanding of the scientific literature. A very significant portion of our personalities is genetic and it's baked in and it's a fact. And to me, this is actually a very liberating thing because I think a lot of people don't like hearing this. They don't like hearing, like, oh, if you're an anxious person at 18, you're probably going to be an anxious person for the rest of your life. Not always, but very likely they don't like hearing that. But coming back to the surrender point you were making earlier, to me this is actually liberating because I think when you believe that anything about yourself can and should be changed and made better, there's an immense amount of pressure you put on yourself. And then when you fail to make that change, or when you don't get the progress you're looking for, you really beat yourself up. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You just levy all kinds of self judgment on yourself.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly. And I have found this realization a little bit freeing in the way of, like, this is who I am, this is part of who I am. Right. It's like the same way some people are born athletic or unathletic or with really great eyesight or terrible eyesight, or with big feet or small feet, or they can jump high or they can't jump high. It's like some people are born anxious and they're unanxious. All of the things that are considered, I guess, bad. Let's take anxiety, stick with anxiety as an example. This industry writ large has just decided anxiety is bad, you shouldn't be anxious. We should find ways to make you stop being anxious. Well, anxious people, they notice problems sooner, they notice details better. They're much more conscientious about their environment. They can be much more observant of the people around them. Like, there's a lot of benefits that come with high conscientiousness and neuroticism, which is associated with anxiety. That we don't think about, we don't talk about.

[Rich Roll]

Well, it's a survival mechanism like hypervigilance that is born out of probably being reared in a household or an environment that had aspects of it that were unsafe, that demanded that you be paying attention and that you kind of be in a state of fight or flight at all times for your own survival. It's just that later on in life you don't need that defense mechanism anymore. It's hardwired into you. And so the question then becomes like, if it's chronic, yes, it's good, it has its advantages. You are going to do all the things that you just said, but in a chronic state it's going to impair your health and it's going to derail you in all kinds of different ways. So how can you not just manage it, but kind of unravel it and create new kind of neural pathways by going into that, you know, whether it's ifs or like some other. There's all kinds of modalities for doing that. Right. A variety of them. There is a way to maybe not completely graduate from that state, but to.

[Mark Manson]

You can soften the edges and you can definitely, yeah, if it's a chronic thing that is debilitating in some way, you can definitely bring it back from that. You can soften it, but it's never going to go away. There's a certain amount of who you are. Like there's like a center of gravity, right. Or there's like a gravitational level. Right. Like you can push it a little bit away. You know, you can make marginal differences, but you're never going to go from like being a highly anxious person to just a non anxious person. Like that just. It's very rare.

[Rich Roll]

But I think your ability to navigate personal change is improved when you kind of take ownership of your kind of default state. Right. Like this is who I am and this is what I have to work with, right. I'm not going to change my eye color or suddenly get drafted into the NBA out of the blue, but I can stop drinking, I can lose £40, I could do all these other things. So I think it goes both ways. I hear what you're saying, but I also think people don't really acknowledge that there is more latitude than they might imagine in other areas of their life.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, 100%. So it's like. And it almost comes down to which audience you're speaking to. Right. I think the self help industry as a whole probably overestimates how much could be changed and how much should be changed. Right. And I think the non self help audience probably underestimates how much can be changed and how much should be changed. It's interesting. I heard a quote from a psychiatrist once who said that somebody asked him about overdiagnoses, medication being overdiagnosed and he said it's, this is going to sound paradoxical, but the population is simultaneously over diagnosed and under diagnosed. And what he meant was, he said overall there is, if you take the population of people who actually have a condition, they are underdiagnosed. But if you take the overall population of everybody, they are over diagnosed. And that's because the majority of people who are taking a medication, they're taking it for something they probably shouldn't be taking it for. But the people who actually need the medication and not enough of them are taking it.

[Rich Roll]

So it's like, yeah, no, I get it.

[Mark Manson]

It all comes down to who goes to the psychiatrist.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I mean, there's another kind of parallel in this mental health context, which is there's never been more awareness of mental health and that's such a good thing. Like we're acknowledging all of these kind of conditions and how they impact us in variety of ways and that gives us the ability to heal and grow and live more expandedly. Right. At the same time, there's an identity attachment to a lot of these diagnoses that are then kind of used or weaponized to say, well, I can't do that because I have this thing. Right. Or the world needs to accommodate me and I don't need to like try to address this because that's the responsibility of everybody else 100%.

[Mark Manson]

So I think this is a really good, important distinction and I'm glad you brought it up because it's the underlying thing might not be able to be changed, but your attitude, beliefs and behaviors around it can absolutely be changed. So it's like maybe the fundamental anxiety is not going to be changed, but your reaction to it, your beliefs about it, your narratives that you tell yourself about it, those can absolutely be changed. And that by itself can make it totally livable. Right. So I think there's a lot more of that. Like that's actually kind of the healthy version of self help. But it's not a sexy thing. It's not. Nobody wants to hear that. I get emails from people who will say something like, you know, I'm in med school and I hate all the coursework and I can't focus and I don't want to study, but I really want to be a doctor. What should I do? I'm like, you don't want to be a doctor.

[Rich Roll]

You actually don't want to be a doctor.

[Mark Manson]

You don't want to be a doctor.

[Rich Roll]

You're trying to convince yourself that you want something that you don't actually want.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly. And they're like, well, no, but maybe if I study more and I just try harder, and if I learn some productivity tips, then maybe I'll start liking it. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand.

[Rich Roll]

They like the idea of being a doctor.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

But they don't actually like what being a doctor is.

[Mark Manson]

And so that's a very practical example of just like, this is who you are. You are a person who doesn't like studying medicine, so therefore, you should probably not be a doctor.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, we kind of talked about this when I was on your show. This idea of willingness. Like, what are you willing to do right, to achieve your goal? And if you're not willing to do it, maybe it's not the right goal for you. And there's this trope around willingness that I think creates a lot of confusion, which is like, well, just be willing to be willing or something. And it's like, what is willingness? Like, you can't compel anyone else or yourself to be willing to do something that you don't actually. It's like asking somebody to want something that they don't actually want. Right. Willingness is like. It's like a gift from God. Like, if you're graced with some willingness to suddenly do something you ordinarily wouldn't want to do. Where does that come from? It's internally driven. I don't know where it comes from, but it's not something that you can just summon out of, like, grit or discipline.

[Mark Manson]

I associate it with giving up. Like, what are you willing to give up? Like, a willingness to do something means you're okay with the costs and sacrifices involved. And I think this idea that you should just be willing to do anything for your goal, essentially what you're saying is you're willing to give up everything for your goal. And I think there's very few things in life that you will feel that way about or that you should feel that way about. Like, some goals, you shouldn't be willing to give up everything. So, I don't know. It's funny. I gave a little spiel about David Goggins on my show a month ago, and we posted a little short. It was funny because all the Goggins fanboys Came after me. First of all, I love David Goggins. I'm, like, huge fucking fan, that dude. The amount of times I've been in the gym and heard his voice in my head when I'm getting that last.

[Rich Roll]

Rep in, he's gonna carry the boats.

[Mark Manson]

He was gonna carry the boats. I love that he exists, and I love what he does. And I think he's just. He's an amazing influence. But I also, from an intellectual point of view, I find him fascinating because there are millions of people like myself who admire the hell out of him. Yet I watch him, I'm like, I would never in a million years fucking live like that. Like, that is insane to me. Like, the dude's running on broken feet and, like.

[Rich Roll]

But he always. To his credit, he always says, like, don't do what I'm doing. He's very quick to, like, tell people not to emulate him.

[Mark Manson]

So I'm bringing this back to the willingness thing because I find his story interesting, and I find his mindset interesting because it's the lengths that he's gone to do, the things that he's done. You have to be willing to give up everything. You literally have to be willing to give up everything. And if you read his books and learn his story, he did hit a point in his life where he kind of had nothing. So, fuck it. I might as well give up everything for this goal. And I feel like he's just kind of stuck in that mode because I look at my life when I was young, I had nothing. And when I started my first business, I was like, I've got nothing. So I will literally give up everything. I started working 16 hours a day. I broke up with my girlfriend. I moved in with my mom. I literally gave up everything. No social life, nothing. And then I built the business I wanted, but that was easy because I didn't have anything. I look at my life now, I start trying to process this. Now I've got a mortgage, I've got a wife. I've got, you know, aging parents. I've got a great group of friends. I've got, like, very comfortable. I have assets. I have, like, a really nice life. There's actually a lot of shit I don't want to give up anymore, you know?

[Rich Roll]

Well, this is the dilemma of success. And I think at the crux of this is this idea that it's, listen, willingness, surrender, all of these things. It's easier when you have nothing to lose and you have nothing going on, right? Like, what's the big deal? With surrender, like, you got, like, you're going to go back to the homeless shelter. Like, it's like, you know what I mean? Like, what are we actually wagering here?

[Mark Manson]

Right?

[Rich Roll]

And then as a result of that willingness that you demonstrated and that. That depth of surrender where you just let go of, like, every idea you thought would serve you and, you know, allowed yourself to be guided in a new and different way. It's that energy and that sensibility and that commitment that delivered you to this place of success. But what happens, and I suffer from this, is that when you arrive there, then you convince yourself that it was you all along. You're in the driver's seat, you're in control. And it's once again like, self will run riot. So the self will run riot is what created all the problems that led to me losing everything and having to surrender in the first place. And you get amnesia when you become successful because the ego starts to. To have free reign again and convinces you that you're a genius or whatever it is. Right. And so it becomes more difficult then to be in that place of surrender because now you have a lot to wager. Right. Like, letting go is a much trickier feat because you're like, I don't want to let go. Everything's really good.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

And this is, like, where I'm at right now. Like, I have to remember, like, what got me here, and what got me here wasn't my ego or anything else. It was, like, being in that state. And when I start to take it back, that's, like, when it all begins to, like, crumble and go away anyway.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

So the more you hold onto it, the less likely you are to be able to sustain it anyway. And it's not yours to hold on to anyway. And everything's shifting and changing always.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Do you worry about that in the context of audience?

[Rich Roll]

I try not to.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I'm an athlete. I'm competitive. Like, I look at this stuff and I'm like, that fucking guy. And, like, why is this happening? And, you know, like, you know, and like, how come this. Like, I can, you know, I can be that person very easily.

[Mark Manson]

Sure.

[Rich Roll]

And so I try to, like, immunize myself from. From all of that because I have no control over it. The only thing I have control over is, like, what's coming out of my mouth right now.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

And everything else is none of my business, but it is my business. Right. This is, like, how I'm paying my bills. And obviously, the better everything does, then the more people I Can hire. And the more, you know, like, you know, all that kind of stuff that comes with living in the modern world.

[Mark Manson]

Have you knowingly said something on air and put it out that you knew was gonna lose audience? Like, what was.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Manson]

How was that process for you?

[Rich Roll]

That was uncomfortable. Like, I struggle with, like, giving too many fucks about what other people think, and I want people to like me. I'm a people pleaser by nature, and I'm not trying to, like, stir up controversy or put content out that's going to be divisive. I want to put out content that's helpful and is evergreen. But I've put out some stuff that I knew, like, oh, well, this is going to be polarizing, and it's going to definitely lead to a bunch of people walking away from me. But I had conviction over my value values around it, and I feel fine about it. It's fine. I don't care about that.

[Mark Manson]

I would say those have been the hardest points in my career. It's only happened a few times. The last time was actually with COVID I wrote a number of things about it super early on, like, late February, early March, like, hey, this is a thing. Get ready, blah, blah, blah. And people were like, dude, you're the give a fuck. Why are you right? I'm like, because this is coming and nobody's talking about it. I was, like, losing my mind.

[Rich Roll]

So you were early in that, I.

[Mark Manson]

Think my first newsletter.

[Rich Roll]

Well, you went like. So hold on a second. You came to my house in 2000. Oh, that was the year before 2019. Yeah, yeah. Because then you went to Australia, and I was like, you weren't in Australia when it started. Okay.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, no, no. But yeah, that was. That was one time.

[Rich Roll]

By the way, you're a big deal here in Australia. You're. It's a whole other level, bro. It's insane. Yeah, they love you in Australia.

[Mark Manson]

I'm excited.

[Rich Roll]

I think I even texted you on it because I went there a couple months after you went there, and it's just like, every bookstore was just an entire Wal of your books and language. It's just, like, insane.

[Mark Manson]

Couldn't get away from it. I'm actually going back plug for my speaking tour. I lied. I said I wasn't gonna plug anything, and I said I had nothing to promote. I actually. Now that you bring it up, Rich, I have a speaking tour in Australia in November. I'm gonna be speaking at the Opera House. So that gives you an idea. I can barely fill a Small nightclub here in the States. But I go down there and they give me the fucking Opera House.

[Rich Roll]

So it's pretty fucking good there, isn't it?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I love it.

[Rich Roll]

I love it.

[Mark Manson]

So, yeah, November 4th.

[Rich Roll]

Okay. November 4th, Sydney on markmanson.net for tickets. That's cool. The Opera House. Have you done that before?

[Mark Manson]

No.

[Rich Roll]

That's pretty cool.

[Mark Manson]

No, I actually, I quit speaking a couple years ago. You know, back to that whole, if it's not fun, I'm not gonna do it. And then my publicist down there reached out and she was like, you know, we were thinking about putting together another tour for you. Your book's still number one everywhere. Yeah, I was like, okay. And then she mentioned the Opera House and I was like, ugh.

[Rich Roll]

Your book is still number one there.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, as of like six months ago. Four months ago.

[Rich Roll]

God, that's so crazy, dude.

[Mark Manson]

It's stupid.

[Rich Roll]

Is it just an abstraction for you at this point?

[Mark Manson]

I mean, yeah, I don't even know. It's still on the Times list. It's like 328 weeks or something this weekend.

[Rich Roll]

It's still on the first one. Subtle. Subtle Art is still on the New York Times bestseller.

[Mark Manson]

It's six and a half years. If you add up all the time it's been on the list, it's like six and a half years.

[Rich Roll]

Wow.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. I don't know, honestly, at this point, I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's a good book, but I think it's probably. It's similar, like winning the lottery or something. I look at it, obviously, I think it's a really good book. I don't think it's that much better than say, your other average best selling self help book. But just the result, the magnitude of the result is just like so vast. It's so insane.

[Rich Roll]

James Clear is having a similar experience right now. Right? You guys got on the phone and talked about your shared experience with this. I mean, how many years has Atomic Habits been up there?

[Mark Manson]

I think he's at like 250 weeks or something. So his book came out. It's really interesting, actually. His book came out almost exactly two after.

[Rich Roll]

Years, Right?

[Mark Manson]

Two years after. And then if you kind of look at the trajectories, they're pretty similar. His took a little bit longer to blow up, but I think it blew up even harder than mine. I think he just hit 10 million copies. I haven't talked to him in a while, but it's interesting because one of the last conversations I had with him was when Atomic Habits was going insane. And he had just had his second kid and he was writing the follow up and he was super stressed and he's doing all this speaking and stuff. And he asked me a really good question, which was very smart of him. He said, because like I said, I'm kind of two years ahead on the same train.

[Rich Roll]

You're one of the only guys who could give him grounded advice on this.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And so he asked me, he was like, if you could go back two years ago, what would you do differently? And I was like, I would say two things. I'd say no to a lot more stuff. And then two is, I would have spent more time on the second book. I wouldn't.

[Rich Roll]

Because I think I remember you sharing that you had to rush certain aspects of it.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Honestly, I think looking back, I think there was a little bit of a imposter syndrome going on. The velocity and the magnitude of the book's success was just so outside the realm of, again, anybody's expectations that there was a big piece of me that was just like, this is a fluke. This isn't gonna last. Right. So let's ride this wave while it's here.

[Rich Roll]

Which motivates you to say yes to everything because you think you're having your 15 minutes or whatever.

[Mark Manson]

So it result in like a scarcity mentality. And I started, yeah, I just started saying yes to too much stuff. And I mean, the other thing too is like, the level of opportunities that show up are so much sexier. Like, it's easy to say no to opportunities that aren't really opportunities, but then it's like when things show up and they're like really sexy and exciting, it's really hard to say no. You know, it's like when a TV producer shows up and he's like, I want to do a scripted series based on your life, you know, I want you involved. And I'm like, hey, you know, like, how do you say no to that? Right. Especially when you're like a 30 year old dickhead who hasn't done anything. So there was just a lot of stuff like that that I think I had to learn the hard way that it's A, there's not. Most of the time there's no there there. It's just kind of empty calories. And then B, you know, I think I lost sight of, of my own values and what I cared about and what got me into this business in the first place, like what I love doing and the things I wanted to work on. And my own ideas and my own. The things that I was excited about. So I lost track of that for a couple years. And I'm proud of the second book. I think it's a really great book. There are a lot of things, I think, that are actually better about the second book than the first one. But in hindsight, I wish I had taken way more time with it and. And told people to fuck off a little bit more.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And maybe appreciated that you actually had more leverage than maybe you thought that you had given what had happened to, like, slow it down a little bit.

[Mark Manson]

Totally. That has been a lesson as well, of like, you know, there's this transition that comes in, I think, every career. You know, early in your career, you have to say yes to everything. And then there's an awkward transition at some point where you have to start learning how to say no. What I didn't realize is that you skipped the awkward.

[Rich Roll]

You went right from the no.

[Mark Manson]

What I didn't realize is that there's another level above you where it's. Because in Internet world blogland, I'd gotten really good at saying no to some random dude is launching his podcast, wants me to be episode one, and I'm like, eh, right?

[Rich Roll]

That's different from jump on my private jet and fly to Staad and hang out at this whatever with the. These people that you have heard of.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So I'd learn that lesson all over again. And yeah. Just becoming more aware of my own leverage. Just kind of standing up for myself, being like, yeah, I don't want to do that.

[Rich Roll]

Speaking of standing up for yourself, you've been on this health journey in addition to quitting drinking. You lost £40. Or is it more now?

[Mark Manson]

If you go from like, peak. My wife's Brazilian, so we call it peak gordo. If you go from peak gordo to now, or the lowest I got, which was maybe beginning of this year, it was almost 60. It was about £55. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Wow.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And the drinking was a huge part of that. It was a huge part of that. But it's honestly, this comes back to the compulsive conversation. Right. Like, I learned in that process that I had a much more compulsive relationship with food than I thought I did.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, we don't realize. I think this is a human thing, like the extent to which we use food to medicate our emotional state. And it's only like when you've, okay, I'm not drinking anymore. Now I have a greater hyper awareness of how I Try to tampen my moods through various different things. And so suddenly you're like, like, I would have never thought that food and emotion had anything to do with each other until after I was sober for a while, many years into sobriety, and realized like, oh, I'm just using food in the same way. And it wasn't until I got super fat that I even thought about looking at that.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, that was honestly the hardest part. The exercise, the habits and everything. I mean, that's hard. Don't get me wrong. Like, you know, getting on a, Hiring a trainer and showing up every week and, and doing the thing that's hard and it takes work, but eventually you build those habits. You find the thing that works for you, you find the thing that you enjoy, you find your workout buddy or your coach or whatever. Those things can all be kind of figured out within a few months and you can be on your way. And I guess that kind of got me through the first phase, maybe say the first 20, 25 pounds. But then I kind of got stuck and started having some rebounds would put a bunch of weight back on really quickly. And yeah, it forced me to take a really hard look at the psychological side. My relationship with food, the emotions I was numbing. For me, it was a lot. I had a lot of social and identity issues, both with alcohol and food. You know, it was a huge part of my social life. Both were a huge part of my social life. Both. I kind of saw myself as the guy who's up for anything. Like, yeah, I'll eat Thai, Indian, like five star restaurant, you know, street food, whatever. I'm up for anything. You know, I'm easy. I like everything. Like, it's like I was. I kind of saw myself as that person. And it was the same with the drinking. It's like any party I'm up for, I'll be the first one there. I'll be the last one to leave. I'll dance all night. Yeah, you wanna do shots? I'll do a shot with you. Like, I was always that guy and I didn't realize I was that guy. I didn't realize that that was like an identity that I had built at some point in my life and that I had to like kill that part of myself. It's like, you're not that guy anymore.

[Rich Roll]

But that only came up once you hit that plateau after £25 and started rubber banding a little bit and realizing like, oh, if I really wanna do this, there's a bigger play here, which is like my whole identity of who I am.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, this was like, year three. So if you. You know, I've tracked my weight now for six years, and if you look at the chart, it's kind of like this downward wave. It's kind of like when the stock market's crashing. Like, you know, it's. It goes down, and then there's like, boop. It bumps back up, and then it goes down again, and it bumps back up. So it's been a really long process. But, yeah, the psychological stuff was the toughest. And then I guess kind of the third phase, because then that. That I dropped probably another 15, 20 pounds. But even after that, even after I lost 40 pounds, I was still. I was still like, I think 27, 28% body fat. And I was stuck. And I'm like, okay, I've got the right habits. I got, you know, I'm like, I'm not drinking anymore. I'm traveling way less. I'm sleeping better. You know, I'm doing all the things. What the hell? And it was at that point I went and got a bunch of blood work done. And it. Then I saw the damage, like, the.

[Rich Roll]

Autopsy, your ldl and your apob and all that kind of stuff.

[Mark Manson]

My hormones were all fucked up. Like, it was ugly, you know. Got a good functional medicine doctor, started working with a clinic, like, changed a bunch of stuff, like, cut. You cut even more out of the diet, and like, got. Now the blood works good. So.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And it's taken years.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, six years.

[Rich Roll]

Like, all good things. Five to six years.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

There's no shortcuts.

[Mark Manson]

And it's still a struggle sometimes.

[Rich Roll]

What was the hardest sort of food thing that you had to overcome?

[Mark Manson]

Burgers, man.

[Rich Roll]

Burgers are good.

[Mark Manson]

Oh, my God, I love a burger. Honestly, the sweets is. It's not. Not. I'm not a huge sweets guy.

[Rich Roll]

Me neither.

[Mark Manson]

I can pass. I can pass it.

[Rich Roll]

Greasy stuff.

[Mark Manson]

Oh, my God. A good burger, dude.

[Rich Roll]

So as somebody who's, like, so steeped in psychology and human behavior and, you know, you've studied all this stuff, you've written about it, like, what were the tools that you found most effective or perhaps least effective in your, like, quiver of all this stuff that you've been kind of simmering in for decades that was beneficial or perhaps not beneficial along this way? Cause you're really. You're putting it to the test, basically. You're trying to, like, walk your talk in a really hard way where you're very challenged.

[Mark Manson]

That's a great question. I almost wish there was, like, a list And I would like give out like one to five star ratings for each tactic.

[Rich Roll]

This is a future video.

[Mark Manson]

Maybe each technique or tactic or whatever. If I was to do that. The five star thing is just tracking. Not just tracking, but gamifying it a little bit. First of all, just the tracking one of the most impactful things. And again, this comes back to the most impactful things are usually boring and they're things that are not sexy and people don't like hearing them. But tracking every piece of food weight every morning, every rep, every workout, how many steps, everything, track all of it, all the time. What happens is when you're compulsive with food, like all compulsivity, you bullshit yourself, you lie to yourself, you make up stories, you're like, oh, well, I worked really hard this morning, so I deserve this burger. Or I had a great workout, so, yeah, I can have a little bit of cake tonight or whatever. And it's not that many calories. When you track everything, you're like, okay.

[Rich Roll]

First of all, that workout, no getting around it.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, that workout sucks. Yeah, that workout was terrible. Second of all, yeah, that cake was 800 calories. So you're bullshitting yourself on both sides. So that was massively impactful because it's the only thing that keeps you honest and probably the least valuable thing. There was a period there where kind of, I think initially discovering the compulsivity, there was a little bit of this, like, what's the emotion? Driving. And it was useful to identify the emotion. But then I tried to go to the next layer, which is like, okay, well, let's. There's some sort of wound or something going on and talk to some people about that. And they're like, well, tell us about your child. Got all this shit about what mom cooked and what she didn't cook and all this stuff. And anyway, after a couple months, I'm like, this is completely pointless.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, there's no bottom to that rabbit hole.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

And at some point it's like, what's, what's moving me forward?

[Mark Manson]

And it's like, whether it's the burger, whether I crave the burger because mom never made burgers or because she brought McDonald's, like, it doesn't matter.

[Rich Roll]

The point is the burger's off the menu.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Rich Roll]

So what are we going to put in place?

[Mark Manson]

It doesn't matter. So. But yeah, it's honestly the keeping you honest with yourself and being conscious too related, you know, not everybody has to go, have you done a glucose monitor?

[Rich Roll]

I have, yeah.

[Mark Manson]

So that was interesting just in noticing, like, how different foods affect me differently. And it was interesting. My wife and I, we did it at the same time and it was like we'd both eat the same thing.

[Rich Roll]

And then she would have a different.

[Mark Manson]

Completely different reaction.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, it's super interesting to do that. I also noticed like, what happens when I eat too late during like what my levels are like throughout the night when I'm asleep. Which is why I think it's important to pair that with a lot of education. Because the gamification aspect of it incentivizes you to keep that thing flat all the time. Which then in order to keep it flat, you have to eat high fatty foods and all these other things that actually aren't good for you. So it can drive unhealthy food choices. But I think just wear it for 10 days or 14 days and just like, wow, look at that. You just see things that, because it's not intuitive, you know, you wouldn't know that this is happening.

[Mark Manson]

And the interesting thing for me too was days that I would feel lethargic or that I would need a nap, have an afternoon crash or whatever. It helped me connect a lot of.

[Rich Roll]

Dots that way of like, you're wearing a garment too.

[Mark Manson]

I am wearing a garment.

[Rich Roll]

This is all real.

[Mark Manson]

It's crazy.

[Rich Roll]

You're wearing a garment. Like when you came to my house in 2019, I was like, I would not have imagined you wearing a garment.

[Mark Manson]

No, no, that was me. That was probably close to my peak weight. I was a big boy.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say you look like an entirely different person because your hair is different and stuff like that, but like, you look better, man. Your skin looks better, obviously your weight and all that kind of stuff, but you just look, you come across like you're more comfortable in your own skin.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, a lot of it is just being healthier. Like the, it, it pisses me off. This is one, I think this is. If there is anything that I've really fucked up in my adult life in terms of this self personal development and everything, I've always been really good. From a very young age. I was very interested in relationships and I read tons of books and I got into psychology and I started going to therapy when I was 20 and I did meditation retreats. I've been all over all this stuff. The mental and the emotional side of it. I've been all over it. The physical side, I was always a wreck. And when I was young, like most young people who have terrible physical habits, I Poo pooed it. I would hear podcasts of people being like, well, you need to do this every morning, and blah, blah, blah, this is gonna increase your mood. And I was like, ah, fuck that shit. I was out drinking till 4, and I'm up at 8 and I'm grinding and I'm working and I feel fine. And there was a little bit of a defiance in me. And that works when you're 27 and have an insane metabolism. But when I got to 37, it started having chest pains, waking up cold sweats in the middle of the night, just going off the rails, health wise. I was like, okay, maybe I should look into this. And then now that I've done it, I'm like, oh, my God. I feel so much better all the time. I have so much energy. I'm so much happy here. Why didn't anybody tell me?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah, why didn't anybody tell me?

[Mark Manson]

Right? Where were you, Rich?

[Rich Roll]

Your authority issue is part. That's part of the problem. You know, it's like, it's. It's these things that, you know, can be superpowers also become our greatest enemies. You know what I mean? And I don't know why it's wired that way, but it is. Yeah. It's like these things that propel us, you know, in this great direction. And then we become kind of overly enamored with that as a strategy, and we become blind to kind of. Because everything. There's two sides to all of these things always.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. The best thing about somebody is also the worst thing, usually. And that's definitely true in my case. I hate being told what to do. And most of my success can be due to that, and most of my failures can be due to that.

[Rich Roll]

Right. That's the way it goes. Right. It's sort of like, you know, I mean, somebody like, you know, like, take lance Armstrong, like 7 Tour de France titles. Also all of this other, you know, egregious behavior on their. Well, why couldn't you just, like, win the titles without the. It's like, no, these things cannot be. They don't happen without each other. You know, I want to end on some thoughts around, like, the nature of human habit change. I spend a lot of time thinking about this, and I'm always curious, like, again, like, you're just marinating in this stuff. So when you think about somebody who can successfully make a change, maybe they just hear the information and they're like, great, got it. And then they go do it and they improve their lives versus the person who struggles and struggles and struggles. And I know there's no easy answer to this. It's not a reductive thing, but do you have any kind of thoughts on what differentiates those two people? Why can some people change and other people find it so difficult?

[Mark Manson]

That's a great question. I have found. I'm going to make up a term here. I have found that some people seem to have identity flexibility, which what I mean by that is some people seem to just naturally, for whatever reason, whether it's they grew up that way or they're born that way, or they learned it at some point in their life, they define themselves very loosely and they're comfortable with that looseness. Like, they don't get super attached to how they see themselves. And I've noticed that a lot of other people are very attached to how they see themselves and their identity is very rigid. They're like, well, this is who I am. This is how I've always been. And, you know, I can't change it. You can't tell me to change it. You know, whatever. I've just noticed that people with that identity flexibility, it's much easier for them to kind of remove the Lego block from their identity and replace it with a different one. There's not as much friction for them. There's not as much psychological. I mean, there's psychological fallout for everybody, but there's less for them. And there's like a little bit of an alacrity to it. And I actually. I mean, this is the biggest thing that I personally took from all my years studying Buddhism is the central theme of Buddhism is that the identity doesn't exist.

[Rich Roll]

It's all an illusion.

[Mark Manson]

It's all made up. It's all just. You're just. You put these Lego blocks here and called it yourself, and you can take those blocks away or get rid of them at any time. You just forgot how or never learned how. And so. So that's my observation.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, that's really insightful. And I think that's right. And it makes me think about what drives somebody to be so attached to how they see themselves in the world, and what allows somebody to kind of be flexible and hold loosely to that. And what is behind attachment other than fear? Like, we attach onto things to give us a sense of control and safety. So somebody who doesn't have that kind of fear is probably somebody who's more likely to kind of like, let go and be in that allowing space.

[Mark Manson]

I would say that. That's one reason. I would say it's Our identity attachments probably were created to fulfill our needs, and one of those needs is survival. So, like, probably the most rigid attachments are. Are trauma related in some way. It's like a defense mechanism, the trauma. And so you're just terrified of removing that piece of your identity because then everything's gonna go wrong again. But, like, I would say that there's a lot of identity attachments that are perfectly. You know, it's like I'm very attached to my identity as a husband to my wife, you know, and I probably should be. Right. Like, I shouldn't be able to just throw that away at any time. So I like some identity attachment is good and healthy, but again, I think it's just the flexibility or how glued together everything is. It's good to not hold on to those things too tightly.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And do you think that that is teachable, like the letting go or the unclutching of these things that we hold onto in that way?

[Mark Manson]

I do. I do think it's teachable. I do think it's a skill. I think serious meditation Buddhism, you know, not the silly five minute app, you know, those are fine. You know, the app meditations are fine, but like serious introspection and meditation, I think it gets at that. I think really, really good therapy gets at that. I think journaling can get at that. I think it's a skill that can be developed. But I also think, like most skills, some people have a talent. Like, there are some people who have a talent for it. I will throw this in here too. I've seen people who are so good at it that it causes them problems.

[Rich Roll]

Because they're just floating in the wind all the time from one thing to the next.

[Mark Manson]

They're a new person without any kind of ballast. They're a new person every other month.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

It's like whoever they're dating at the time.

[Rich Roll]

Right. Well, it's the spectrum. Right. On both sides of these things. I mean, in truth. Yes. Like, of course, your identity as a husband and a father, like, you want to hold on to that, but in reality, you know, back to this Buddhist idea. Our identity is just a story.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

It's a story we tell ourselves. And for the most part, it's a story that was constructed unconsciously. We didn't even participate participate in the construction of it. It just sort of occurred. And it's basically an assemblage of memories of experiences that our brain selects without our agency and decides these are important.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

And it's like, why is it choosing These, like, you've had billions of experiences and memories, and. And the brain is selecting these things and then creating a through line to create a narrative. Right. And we're convinced that that narrative is the definition of who we are. And it's intractable.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

When in truth, we could pick another memory, or we could say, why? Or we could take that memory and put it to the test and say, is that really true? Do we have other experiences that would challenge that? And I think it's sort of like tracking with diet and fitness. And that's journaling, but that's like journaling intentionally. Like, let's deconstruct this story. Is there a possibility that there's another story that's maybe more true or equally true? And not for nothing, our memories are highly unreliable.

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Rich Roll]

They're just prisms of things that happen that, for the most part, are so loosely related to any kind of objective truth.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And it's to bring it back to the. I guess my story. It took years of struggling with food and alcohol to even realize that I had that story of, like, oh, I'm the fun party guy. Oh, I'm up for any dinner or after party or whatever. Oh, yeah, I'll do shots with you. Like, I created that story probably in adolescence as a way to get social approval. Like, that was one way for me. I noticed that I could drink more than most people and handle my liquor, and I could eat more than most people and, like, feel fine. And that made me easy to be around and fun to be around. And so I did more of it. And that story got written, and I didn't even realize it got written. And then when I was 40, I had to be like, oh, fuck, I got this story. Like, I can't be the dinner party guy anymore. Like, I gotta be something else. And then, you know, so you remove it. And then to me, there's a little bit of pain and grief with removing it. Like, you miss it. Kind of like you miss an old friend. But then the hard part is, like, finding what can you put in its place. What's the new story I can write so that I can have friends again.

[Rich Roll]

Right. Well, what I would say, yeah, I don't think it's like a vacuum that needs to be filled. I think it's more like the way that Richard Schwartz at Internal Family Systems would look at it, which is like, this is one facet of your identity that developed when you were very young as a way of kind of feeling connected to other people in the world. And now you can give it a name, like, hey, Party guy Charlie. You were awesome. Thank you. You really helped me make friends, and we had a lot of good times together, but I'm cool with people now. I can go out and have fun, and I get to decide when I want to do that, and people seem to like me, and. And so, you know, you can settle down.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I don't need you to, like. Like, I realize, like, you're there and I love you, you know, but, like, you can kind of, like, ride in the back seat for a while and. And, like, honor that part of who you are without, like, shame or guilt or judgment and just say, like, I've. You know, I've grown out of it. Like, I don't need. I realized you were trying to protect me. You had my best interest at heart. But, like, now I have a different, you know, part of me that. That serves that in a way that's healthier.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Another way that I think about it sometimes, too, is our stories are strategies. And Party Guy Mark was my strategy to get my social needs met. And now Party Guy Mark is gone, so I need a new strategy. That doesn't necessarily mean I need to find a new identity. It's just, like, I need to find other things to do with people that doesn't involve drinking and gets you to.

[Rich Roll]

Stop playing video games.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe play football. Few.

[Rich Roll]

Are you good with? Like, I have a sense. Like, my instinct is that, you know, something else that we share is, like, I can be pretty reclusive.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Rich Roll]

You know, like, I'm at home. I come here, I go back home. This is my social life outside of my family, and it's very nourishing. Like, even though, like, we've done three pot, like, other than these three podcasts and, like, one dinner party that we were at together, that is a sum total of our relationship. But, like, I feel like you're a friend, and I think even, like, after that dinner, it was like, hey, let's hang out, and then. And I was well intended in that. But, like, did I call you?

[Mark Manson]

No.

[Rich Roll]

Did you call me?

[Mark Manson]

No.

[Rich Roll]

We never did anything together, you know? Like, I suck at that.

[Mark Manson]

I don't know if you rely on your wife for social life, but I definitely do.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, I do. But I think I'm at an age now where I need to be much more proactive about my friendships, so I've been. Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. We're in the same boat, dude. We're in the same boat.

[Rich Roll]

He could be accountability buddies. Like, let's hang out out of obligation as opposed to. Hey, Rich. I have to go see Rich.

[Mark Manson]

Our scheduled social time is coming up.

[Rich Roll]

We have a play date.

[Mark Manson]

Can we bring a microphone?

[Rich Roll]

Ah, fuck.

[Mark Manson]

All right.

[Rich Roll]

All right. This is unraveling. I need to. To end this, man.

[Mark Manson]

So our play date episode is. Is rapid.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Okay.

[Mark Manson]

Thank you for listening to our.

[Rich Roll]

We'll just bring. We'll bring microphones, but we won't attach them to a recorder. Just so we feel safe.

[Mark Manson]

We'll just. We'll just walk around the Venice boardwalk with, like, unattached sure. Mics. Oh, boy.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, man. Yeah, well, maybe I need to go back to that therapist who used to.

[Mark Manson]

Be in your building.

[Rich Roll]

All right, we're ending this. Thanks, buddy. That was awesome.

[Mark Manson]

Thanks, dude.

[Rich Roll]

Appreciate it. Cheers. Markmanson.net, the Subtle Art of not giving a Fuck podcast on YouTube and all the places, right?

[Mark Manson]

Yep.

[Rich Roll]

Cool. Peace out.

[Mark Manson]

All right, thanks.

[Rich Roll]

Cheers. This episode was brought to you today by NordicTrack and iFit, head on over to NordicTrack.com richroll to experience personalized fitness. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode [e-mail] where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra Voicing, Change and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power meal [e-mail] if you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com sponsors and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any [e-mail] Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camelo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley for copywriting and what website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace plants.

[Mark Manson]

Namaste.

[Rich Roll]

It.