The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck: Mark Manson | E111

Key Takeaways

i always felt like an outcast was bullied my big goal in life was like i want to be a best-selling author and then it happens and it really [ __ ] with me we're wired to want status we're wired to want to be beautiful and sexy and to want to impress others like that's never going to go away the question is is like what do you want once that is kind of removed from the equation you can always choose in every moment to see things in a way that that makes you feel better it's not easy it's actually really really hard but in that sense happiness can be a choice it's just a question of do you know how to access it [Music] mark manson the author of one of the best-selling self-development books of the decade the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] i read this book many many years ago and i learned so much from it so when they told me that mark manson was in london we got in touch with him quickly and i think this conversation is going to prove why he is one of the most wise honest open individuals i've ever met and one of the most remarkable things he says in this conversation was this smash hit book which has sold more than 10 million copies and i know you've seen everywhere when that became a success he lost orientation in his life mark's complete story the story you've probably never heard is immense he used to be a pickup artist he then became an entrepreneur which led him to become a blogger which led him to become an author and he draws on all of those experiences and one of the most self-aware ways i've ever seen on this podcast to deliver actionable insights to live a better life he's a guest that you requested time and time again and i'm so glad you did so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] mark take me back to austin texas in the 1980s-ish time when you were born oh god what was life what was life like for you i mean when i was really young it was it was nice you know so i grew i grew up i had a very kind of conventional suburban [Music] american childhood um especially when i was younger you know so um i had the house with the yard and all the kids on the street and you know playing soccer and or football or whatever um so so that was nice i think um where things started to kind of go off the rails so to speak um when you know when you start hitting that age 11 12 13 and you you start your brain develops a little more and you you start becoming a little bit more aware of um norms and and culture and people's expectations of you and things like that um i grew up in a very i grew up in the american south so i grew up very religious very conservative uh and i'm neither of those things so um starting around that time i started kind of feeling like an oddball you know i was really into art and music and uh books i read all the time and you know those values just weren't really respected a whole lot where i where i came from in fact they were viewed as suspects i was going to say on the playground that doesn't sound like it would be conducive with fitting in and yeah being part of the crew yeah and it's um yeah i mean it's a very it was a very conformist culture but then there's also there's a weird thing in the american south that um people are very sensitive to to kind of like you know you think you're better than me you think you're smarter you think you're smart you think you're like so good because you read this book and you know got an a on that test or whatever so there's like a weird like it's actually very toxic but like there's kind of a weird judgment that happens if you're not doing the same thing the same way as everybody else so yeah i i i started to kind of become like the nerd slash uh like loner kid um and this was the 90s so of course i wore like band t-shirts and and dressed in all black and like that's all back in now yeah i know right [Music] thank god i finally know what's going on again i'm old enough to know what's going on again um so yeah it was it was a weird adolescence it was uh it wasn't it wasn't a ton of fun um and i think by the time i was like 14 or 15 i was just like i gotta get out of here i gotta i like i gotta get to one of the coasts were you bullied in school a little bit a little bit um not like to a dramatic extent but um yeah definitely some like shitty experiences for sure did you have a lot of friends back then in school um no no i i had a handful of like very very close friends you know other other guys who were weirdos and loners and in the music and stuff like that and your parental dynamics they were your parents i read that they got divorced when you were around that age as well yeah yeah yeah i mean my parents are really good people but um i would describe it now as they were doing the best they could with what they knew but their knowledge wasn't uh i guess sufficient to be like fully functional emotionally you know they came from emotionally dysfunctional families so in their head like giving 100 like they're giving 100 but really they're 100 is actually kind of like you know 40 50 of what the family needed to like function well is that psychologically or financially do you mean like in terms of like affection care lessons it was primarily emotionally so like financially we were fine my my dad's always been like very successful um but it was it was it was mostly emotionally right so um i'm trying to think of an example here you know so like kind of this idea of you know my parents were the opposite of overbearing they were like probably two hands off right so it was like one of those things like if i had a big event at school or uh a big moment um or if like the girl i liked was mean to me or something you know it's like i could never go to my mom or dad like if i tried to go to my mom or dad and kind of like express these things they just kind of look at me like why are you telling me this you know so it was a very stoic and distant and i use the word stoic not in the not in stoicism but like very kind of cold and distant household like we didn't talk much and we definitely didn't talk about uh feelings or insecurities or stuff that me or my brother were going through it was just kind of like i can relate to that yeah i never had i still think to this day well maybe actually in the last year but like my whole childhood my mum and dad had no idea what i was doing with my life no idea who i was dating feeling nothing my dad like we didn't i don't think we had a conversation about anything to do with school feelings you know so you kind of like you're like left to your own devices and the internet yeah to figure this stuff out which isn't the best source when you're like it's like solving solving the problem with the same brain that got you into it is not always the best yeah solution when you zoom out on that period of your life and you think what what kind of like good or bad foundations were laid from the rest of my life what what are those lessons or foundations that were like for me it was like insecurity and i thought money would be everything and i thought validation from women would be everything so you know but i think if there's one thing my family got right when i was young it was money so i grew up in with wealth you know my my father owns a plastics business he's been very successful so i mean we we had the big house and the pool and the nice cars and everything and it was interesting actually because his business really started to take off probably when i was like eight or nine years old and so we went from kind of like a i'd say like uh upper middle class when i was and then suddenly when i'm nine it's like everything gets upgraded you know we've got bmws we've got uh you know we're flying first class like you know so we we get all the stuff right right and it it's interesting because that's pretty much exactly the time that my parents marriage unraveled and you know the family kind of fell apart so i learned at a very young age that money doesn't solve it like whatever your problem is you know unless your problem is you're hungry like money's not gonna fix it so i was very blessed in that regard that i got to learn that lesson very early um so that that you know we've all we've all got that that that hole in us that we try to fill with something um and so money was never that for me for me it was more i think because i was i always felt like an outcast um was bullied to a certain extent uh rejected by like every girl i ever liked for me was much more social you know so it's like i had this desperate need to be liked um to be like the cool guy at the party to have all the girlfriends like that was my my big weakness so you go off to college would you study how does that go for you in terms of social interactions so one of the best things i ever did you know i i went i went to school in boston and boston's completely different culture and environment um and it's it was wonderful for me because it it's suddenly it's like the things i care about are now cared about by the people around me as well so it's like they like that you're smart and they like that you've read all these books and they they like that you're into like cool music or like some obscure band so it was very socially transformative like i i went from kind of being like the weirdo nerdy guy to to like having tons of friends and going to a bunch of parties and and having a really good social life and so for me that was wonderful it built a lot of confidence but of course like any insecurity i overdid it um so i was that guy who was literally partying five six nights a week you know like for like year after year you know i was i was always at the party and did that compromise your academic ambitions or uh a little bit um you know i kind of i guess i didn't do this consciously but i kind of made the calculus in my head that like like the most important thing about college is that you is that you finish you know right it's like no job interview is actually gonna ask you what you got what grade you got on your history exam your second year uh all they care is that you you have you have the degree so in my head i'm like as long as i get the degree as long as like i'm safe in terms of like actually finishing um i'm okay so i i could kind of manage okay grades well you know drinking every night um so i i made it work and out of college your first job i i heard you described it as kind of nightmarish and like a finance jobby job that you didn't like so i've had i've had one real job uh in my life um i went into finance uh so i used to play a lot of poker in school and uh and all the guys i played poker with were gonna go into finance they wanted to work on wall street and do all this stuff and i was like cool like i'll do that you know that just seemed like kind of like the logical next step and um i i got hired at an investment bank in boston and i went to work and i remember it was like it was 10 a.m on the first day i was doing training it was 10 am on the first day i'd been there for like maybe two hours two and a half hours and i remember thinking to myself how long do i have to stay here before it's like okay to quit on the first day my first day and then my second thought was this is a really bad sign you know like if i'm having this thought on my first day this is a terrible sign so i lasted about six weeks wow that was your first and only yep job yeah i um yeah i mean i i the corporate world and i didn't really fit and and i've since learned that that particular company was kind of notorious in in the finance world for for having like a soul-destroying culture um but it was funny because i you know i was basically just like a a data monkey you know it was entry level so like i'm just punching numbers in the spreadsheets and stuff all day and uh and there's this kind of awkward gap in the u.s markets like there's like an hour to between when one market closes when like the s p closes and then the nasdaq closes like an hour hour and a half later and so you'd always have this like awkward hour where there was you're kind of just waiting around waiting for the next market to close so i'd bring books you know i'm i'm a book nerd so i'd sit there i'd have a stack of books on my desk and i'd sit there and i'd read books in that hour and uh i remember my boss came by and he's like you can't do that i was like what do you mean i mean these are like finance books too right like i'm like yeah and he's like you can't do that and i was i was like why not he's like you need to be working on something i was like what there's nothing to work on like this is waiting for the market to close and he's like yeah but you can't you can't be seen doing that like that's you gotta be keep yourself busy i was like what the [ __ ] man like i remember too uh my first week there because i had messed around with like some some computer coding and stuff in college and and i noticed that like a lot of the data entry that we were doing you could easily program a script to do it automatically right it's like probably an hour or two of my days like not even necessary and so i remember i went to my boss and i was like i was like hey you realize like we can get a script to do this right like i could probably you know spend a couple days figure out do some research and get it to work and he was like no no go back and put your numbers in you know like he had no interest whatsoever you know in my head i'm like i got this great idea my boss is gonna be so impressed i'm gonna like you know get moved up or whatever and i i just got shot down and so it was just very clear like um i don't know it just wasn't there's a cultural issue there isn't it because your boss has probably got that from somewhere above where he doesn't really give a [ __ ] about optimizing the efficiency of this company he just cares about getting his check and then yeah it probably trickles up the line yeah yeah and i remember kind of like the so one of one of the books i read at the time was tim ferriss's four-hour work week and uh that book was life-changing for me but it's funny i've always had a little bit i've always given tim a little bit of [ __ ] about it because it was it was a bit of a double-edged sword because the four-hour work week makes it sound so easy that it it kind of like i remember at the time i'm like wow this is i could do that like i'll do that next week like why am i still here you know so it it's he made it sound so easy that it kind of gave me the courage to quit um but then of course after i quit and i actually started to try to build a business online and realized how insanely hard it is i became a little bit bitter of like damn you tim ferriss this is not easy like i'm never gonna work four hours what was that business you tried to build after you quit so i uh i originally tried to create some e-commerce businesses and try to basically kind of your classic spammy seo blogs with affiliate links and stuff like that and it was it was really like the whole goal was like just get to 2k a month and then we're going to argentina like that was that was the and then we're gonna party until our like our face falls off and that that was the whole goal at the time i think it was 22 or 23. and um and it's funny because back then this is like 2008 2009 back then uh the way you got traffic to your like blogging was new and kind of like the big new thing and uh so if you wanted traffic to your website to sell your stuff you needed the blog yeah and so i started my blogs as a way to just get traffic to like sell this stuff and so one of the websites i i was doing was was a dating advice and i was promoting a bunch of dating ebooks written by a bunch of people um and and that that one started to take off that one started to develop like a really large audience and so after about a year or two i realized i'm like i kind of suck at this e-commerce thing but the blogging is going really well so and this kind of started your your journey into the pickup artistry world right so tell me about that because um we before we started recording i shared a secret that i've never shared before which is that i also found myself falling into the pickup artistry world when i was in my early 20s yep because of neil strauss and then mystery and then every other book that i read and every other video and documentary and youtube video that i consumed and torrent that i downloaded and forum that i scraped um but when i when i read that in your story i found that really really fascinating because um i suspected the incentives and the appeal of that world were probably quite similar to me in the sense of me being quite insecure and um seeking uh well yeah seeking validation from women maybe yeah so tell me about your journey into pickup artistry i took to it pretty pretty hard and pretty quickly i think it really scratched that that itch uh that of that insecurity i had you know from my childhood um you know looking back on on the pickup stuff it's really interesting and and it's funny because it's over the years i've met so many talented and successful guys like when you told me that you were into it i kind of i wasn't even surprised like i've met so many talented successful guys in the last five 10 years who are like oh yeah i was i was i was i was in that [ __ ] too you know it's like we kind of like say it under our breath and i think it it here's my theory about what what that whole thing was and why it happened when i looked back in the 2000s self-help and personal development was still very different back then like it wasn't socially acceptable for men to kind of get into you know feelings and trauma and and healing and recovery and all this stuff like it was still it was still something kind of shameful like your your buddies would make fun of you for it if they found out that you were like if you went out and read um you know like a louise hay book or uh you know like i'm okay you're okay like if like your buddy caught you with one of those books in your bedroom he'd start ripping on you for it and and there was something about making it about dating sex and dating that made it socially okay like it's it's now it's like a cool thing to do but really what it was it was just self-help in disguise like most of it you know for every pickup line or whatever there was like there were there was really useful advice about uh you know social skills self-esteem uh confidence um taking care of yourself you know hygiene grooming you know and so there's like so much good life advice there and then but there was also so much bad advice there too so it was this very mixed bag but i think it was just a lot of guys like you and me who were were damaged essentially and we're trying to to figure it out we're trying to kind of heal ourselves but there was no other outlet available yeah um today it's it's okay i think it's way more socially acceptable for guys to be like yeah i want to work on myself i want to like you know it's cool now get in touch with my feelings yeah and be a mature person and and all this stuff yeah it's it's like something people respect but back then it it was still taboo and specifically at that age for a guy i'm speaking for myself here but i you you're trying to figure out how to get laid it feels like this this this quest in which no one has ever provided you with the blueprint or the road map and then someone whispers in your ear at some point that there's like a code yeah like a simple solution to this complex problem yeah and and then you read it and you get into it and it appears to work and you see men just like you having success in that because they've kind of learned the code or the the you know they've been they've learned the instruction manual so it feels like it solves this tremendous problem but you're totally right it actually helps you resolve a ton of things from the playground about self-esteem and yeah why did that guy always get the girls i didn't right like the the natural and yeah and and then things just started to make sense and that made it really sticky and addictive for me um but you did you have were you in a relationship around that time uh i had a relationship yeah for for a couple years around that time and it ended badly bad breakup uh so so my first relationship pre-pickup right ended horribly she ended up cheating on me and leaving me for another guy and so that was part of you know it was my first serious girlfriend first love and and it ended basically as badly as a relationship can end so i was heartbroken i was also angry and so that kind of also the pickup stuff really spoke to that of like this is why you had your heart broken um this is what you need to do instead how did that impact you because we're talking here about like i think we're talking about feelings of like rejection and self-worth because i remember my first relationship that ended really badly the harm was all me telling myself that i'm not good enough and i'm a scumbag and i'm maybe not pretty enough or smart enough or masculine enough yeah and that was all the harm it was inside here um yeah it's it's funny because i look back on that episode of my life i i think if that happened to me today i would i would handle it fine i mean i'd be upset obviously and hurt but i would handle it fine i i agree with you you know for me when i look back my understanding of relationships love and relationships at that time uh i call it the disney understanding you know it was very naive it was uh you know prince charming on the white horse and you know the princess and you live happily ever after right um it was actually a very unhealthy relationship she and i were both very um just very dysfunctional and immature and we treated each other poorly and but we were in love and when you're that age and you're naive like you think love is the only thing that matters that you're you you're willing to pretty much tolerate like any terrible treatment towards each other because you're in love like it's the level figure it out right and so i think a lot of the pain for me it wasn't just her leaving like that was painful but it was also having that kind of disney understanding of love and relationships completely shattered like everything i because in my head i was like an amazing boyfriend and i did everything right you know so to have that blown up in my face um and and come that realization that like everything i thought was true is not and i have no idea what's true um like that's a really really hard place to be and so that that was probably at least 50 of the difficulty as well is just trying to like pick up the pieces and figure out like wait you know how what is love what is a relationship how are you supposed to be towards each other i have no clue but you have a clue now yeah yeah i mean well and pickup was helpful in that regard i mean pickup gave me a lot of bad again there was a lot of bad advice but there was a lot of good advice and i think it's look i i i think people who you know every once while you meet somebody who who like they marry their high school sweetheart you know they meet when they're 14 they get married and they live happily ever like that is it's very rare and people who if that happens to somebody it's a very fortunate thing i think for most of us what we have to do is is you you go through a number of relationships that just blow up in your face and you have to have them blow up in your face to understand what's healthy what's not what do you need as as a person and what do you not need and also how to give to others relationships require a skill set and you can't develop those skills like if you if you're if you come from a background like us like you don't grow up being taught that skill set like my parents didn't have that skill set either so you have to learn it through trial and error like you learn anything else it just so happens that the trial and error of romantic relationships is unbelievably painful yeah so what are those those um fundamental characteristics then of a good relationship i've heard you write about a few of them things like respect and yeah what are those things that you've come to learn now that you wish you knew then i think every you know every healthy relationship with somebody else it starts with a healthy relationship with yourself right so if you don't respect yourself uh and if you don't value your own thoughts and well-being and health you're never going to be able to set the boundaries you know you're just going to tolerate poor treatment from others because you're going to think it's justified so you know people tend to have it backwards they think like if i can just find a great relationship then i'll feel great about myself but that's just it's a recipe for disaster like you got to get straight with yourself and then once you're straight with yourself that enables you to have that healthy relationship to be able to share it with somebody else so like that's paramount totally key like you got to get your own [ __ ] straight you got to like whatever baggage you got rummaging around up there whatever trauma you've got in your background you got to start working on it and then you need to be able to approach the relationship with a certain amount of vulnerability like you need to you know again most of us by default when we find that somebody that we're crazy about or who's crazy about us our our natural inclination is to start hiding all the ugly stuff they're like oh well if she doesn't know that like i did this or if if i really like kind of think that you know then she'll love me it's like no you have to come to the relationship completely open saying like hey here's my list of issues because we all got them um i'm working on them because you're working on yourself you know hopefully we can work on them together because obviously they're going to have their issues too and so just that open dialogue is kind of necessary to even get things started that's really where the trust and respect comes from because like you can't like if you're not sharing every aspect of yourself then you're never going to trust the other person like if you're always kind of hiding something you're never going to believe that they are they're actually loving you they're believing the thing you're portraying to them and so you're you're never going to trust it you're like oh well yeah they're into me now but it's because they don't know about this thing over here but if you just come 100 with everything on the table that's where that's where the trust is is you're able to start building the trust and actually you know start from a healthy place so what you said at the start the first point i i've i mean both points were perfect but the first point really it made me think about a million people i know that are in the mindset that if they can find a relationship it will help fix their problems but they are fundamentally like not ready for a relationship so they go through this like vicious negative reinforcing cycle of like they weren't ready for a relationship they got into one tolerated toxic treatment smashed their self-esteem even more which meant that they were even less ready for a relationship but meant that they wanted one more because they they wanted to fill the the crack in their self-esteem with a person and you see them on this this sort of like repeated rejection cycle of these toxic relationships and it's like going downwards because it's smashing their self-esteem more and more each time which is making them want a relationship more and more but making them less capable of having one and i watch it play out on social media i'm like jenny i'll make jenny stop i'm like oh she's got another boyfriend six months later i'm like oh no yeah yeah yeah and and but because social media what it's doing is jenny's waking up in the morning and she's seeing the car like kylie jenner looks happy on that yacht with trap like with her boyfriend and this so these happy people in front of me are happy because of their perfect relationships and it's that awful spiral so to say to someone work on yourself yeah it feels it's like well known it's the equivalent of like telling people who want to get a six-pack to like eat vegetables it's correct but it's the last thing anybody wants it it's like no no no no no give me the secret five-day workout routine you know it's like no there's there isn't one yeah um yeah it's interesting because these things they work there's like a they work in an upward cycle and in a downward cycle you know and you just described like the downward spiral uh and but it also works the other way around too because once you're working on yourself and like the work on yourself never ends right so like once you are working on yourself and you find somebody who's working on themselves and you're able to communicate about it then you make each other better yes which makes you feel even more confident and and more proud of yourself and and more uh more solid in who you are which then just enables you to work on yourself even more and so it creates an upward spiral as well like one way i told a friend a couple years ago because he was kind of having trouble he was like you know i just like you know our emotions blind us right so it's like getting in that new relationship like falling for that person like it feels so good and generally the way the way the brain works is like when something feels good we convince ourselves that it is good and when something feels bad we convince ourselves that it is bad so he was like yeah it just it feels so good that like i really think like that that yeah we are being honest and open and we are working on ourselves and and uh and i think it's healthy and then six months go by and it and i realized that it's completely toxic and a disaster and so i told him i said you know the the best way i can describe it is when you're in a an unhealthy relationship or a relationship that's not quite working right like you're you're not completely being open or on the same page it feels like pushing a boulder up a hill like like you're always pushing hard you know you feel like you need to always be pushing to like kind of keep things stable and in place whereas a healthy relationship it feels like pushing a rock down a hill you know it's like you just give a little bit bit of a tug and it just goes you know like you don't at some point it doesn't even feel like you're putting effort into it anymore i mean you are working on it but it's like every amount of effort that you put in is immediately being matched by the other person and so it's like you no longer you no longer feel like you're just fighting constantly to like keep things stable and you'll pick a partisan phase where you learnt these lessons um eventually you came out the other end as we all did yeah my girlfriend's listening now we all have come out well let it be known but eventually you come out of it and um you know you write you write about how you realize that wasn't a fulfilling long-term way to live yeah just you know chasing women around nightclubs trying to pick them up and ultimately trying to sleep with them right yeah when you slept with a lot of women at this point um and you uh you decided it wasn't the life for you no what i started to realize you know and this realization happened on a number of dimensions around the same time you know because because the business started doing well and i started traveling a lot you know there generally anything so in in in subtle art i talk about i make a distinction between happiness and highs and this distinction it was it was pretty profound for me because we tend to we tend to mistake highs for happiness right so uh meeting meeting an attractive person or sleeping with an attractive person for the first time that's a high um making a bunch of money that's a high uh having you know winning an award or an accolade or going to like some exotic vacation putting on instagram getting a ton of likes like that's a high and highs are nice like we all we all love having highs and and we we do need a certain amount of highs in our life but highs are not happiness happiness is actually kind of the inversion of that in a lot of ways happiness is oftentimes actually unpleasant you know happiness is it's it's not the check that comes you know from the successful product launch it's the work that goes into that product launch happiness is is the satisfaction it's you know it's not like the peak the super romantic date happiness is being able to like sit at home on the couch and not say anything and be completely satisfied like it's happiness is is actually often very boring and so in my 20s you know it started with women and parties and then it kind of went to business you know i wanted to grow a big successful business and then i did that and i made a bunch of money and then i traveled around the world and i lived in all these crazy exotic places and um and i started to realize that like the these are just highs and the thing about highs is that the more you get the more you need to get that same feeling right so if you've never left your home country before that first trip is like life-changing it's incredibly impactful but if you've been to 50 countries going to the 51st you're just like ugh yeah that flight sucked like you know like you're complaining about the taxi driver like you know because it's you need that much more to get that same hit um and so it becomes a very dangerous thing to to kind of put all of your focus on these things because of that diminishing returns it takes more and more effort to kind of achieve that same sense of satisfaction or or pleasure um so i really started asking myself like you know what is what are the things that i'm willing to give up what you also don't realize is that you're you're get you have to give up a lot for those highs so like if you do want to party all the time and sleep with lots of people you're giving up the opportunity to have a stable relationship with somebody for a long period of time you're giving up uh the comfort that comes with that or the security that comes with that if you're traveling all the time and living all over the world like you're giving up the stability of a community of uh knowing your neighbors of you know having been able to see your friends consistently like there's all these subtle unsexy things that you're giving up to chase the highs that you don't really realize you're giving them up until you've given them up for a long time so i started to realize that and kind of like re like rethink my whole understanding of what happiness and success is in general so i'm i'm keen to get into the details there but again jumping ahead a little bit is that a well is that an easy thing to do because because when you've got that childhood force in you of like the insecurities and the social acceptance and that's always going to be in the in you know and it can rear its ugly head if you're if those kind of insecurities are somewhat triggered as even as an adult and it can say you know you need to fit in you need to get by that thing you need to travel you need to be more successful but then you've got this new set of like conscious values you're describing where you're saying well i value these things but then that little demon on your shoulder is saying by the [ __ ] lamborghini well i think a lot of it is you know i think a lot of value like changing your values and again i think i say this in subtle art like you can't just sit on the couch and think your way out of your values like you need to go live them and then have them fail you really and for me that that what that looked like you know going out and and kind of living this fantasy life of partying all around the world and hooking up with all these girls and then just having that fail me and realize that it's actually very empty and uh and and realize after a few years that you're you're literally not keeping in touch with you know all these people who you thought like oh my god we're gonna be friends forever and then three years go by and you realize you're not keeping in touch with any of these people and then you go on facebook and you see like that now they're married and they just had a kid and they're so happy and you're like [ __ ] i'm like still doing the same thing like i'm still drinking on a beach with the same people um for like the third year straight like something's not right here um in the case of money it's like i think sometimes people have to buy that lamborghini and realize it doesn't fix anything like it's fun for a week or a month or like you get to go show your friends or your parents or whatever and then they don't really care you're so you're so right in what you said earlier as well but linked to that point is like i remember buying the big house like seven bedroom house with a tennis court yeah out in the countryside the cost was i was now an hour and a half away from my friends they couldn't come anyway like yeah i was there for nine months before i was like i said to the landlord like please let me out and i moved into this like one bed right in the middle of the city because in fact i'd exchanged like the status egos i bought into the status and ego of having this big house but the cost was no one could come and see it yeah i was lonely as [ __ ] it meant that my commute to work was three hours there and back it's like a terrible insecure decision at 21 years old right so and then but i had to do it like like steve had to fight like taste that himself and have it failed me as you say so yeah i know i'm jumping ahead again but will's got a great story in his book um so for context you wrote will smith yeah brand new book called will yep um so will will had a hit record when he was a senior in high school he was 17. and of course he went out and bought like four different cars and a bunch of motorcycles bought a house and uh it was this great moment where he he lined up all of his cars and motorcycles outside his new house and then invited his dad over and uh his dad shows up and he's like yo what's up pops like what do you think you know and his dad's like are these all yours and he's like yeah yeah yeah what do you think his dad goes man what the [ __ ] are you doing you only got one ass what do you need four cars for yes and sure enough like two years later he went broke you know exactly he spent all his money yeah he spent all of his money and didn't pay taxes so that's a bad combination damn you you really have you know and it's i always think this because i've read a lot of quotes and i've read a book and stuff and i always say in my writing like my words will never overcome your insecurities yeah that thing that kid said to you when you were seven years old or your dad said to you will always be a stronger force in your life than some 140 character quote that i say about how you should be living your life right right go do the work right um and learn that for yourself why should you drink fuel we're going into the fourth quarter of the year diets are dropping off we're becoming lazier and lazier and what tends to happen when when our diets dip and we we start to become less compelled to go to the gym is yeah we get out of shape we start to feel low energy we start to binge eat bad things and fuel is the antidote it's nutritionally complete so you get everything you need for your diet in a drink you get your 20 grams of proteins you're going to get your 26 vitamins and vitamins and minerals it's low sugar high in fiber it really is the cure to a lot of the health issues that we see in our personal lives but in wider society if you've never tried it all i'll ask you to do is give it a try and if you like me then you will like the world berry ready to drink you'll like the mac and cheese which is just selling like absolutely crazy unsurprisingly um you like the cinnamon and you like the banana flavor those are my recommendations i know a lot of people love the chocolate flavor let me know try it get yourself healthy and send me a message on instagram tag me on instagram as well on your stories if you do try it out because i sometimes upload those tags and let me know which is your favorite flavor can't wait to hear from you one of the things you say is um that your one rule for life is each person must never be treated only as a means to some other end but must also be treated as an end to themselves yeah please tell me what that means it's a little it's a little philosophical it actually comes from from the philosopher kant um it basically means that like i think anything that is is unethical or unhealthy it's because we're not we're treating another person as a means to another end right so if you're kind of using somebody for their money or if you're manipulating somebody to try to like get a job or a promotion or something or if you're just straight up like stealing from somebody or lying to them like in all of those cases you're tr you're valuing some external thing whether it's money or a car or prestige more than the person themselves and i to me it's just kind of like when i look at every useful piece of advice whether in personal development or just how to be a good person you know how to be an ethical person it all comes right back down to that rule like you everything you do it needs to be ultimately for the betterment of yourself or others like making yourself a better person and making other people better too and anytime you deviate from that you're either going to get into ethical trouble or you're going to get into toxic relationships like if i've got a car that i'm selling and i know that it's faulty yeah but i invite someone over and i say this is the best car in the world please buy it it's unethical and you're you're using that person as a means to an end in a personal development context it's like if you're dating somebody not really because you like them but because you want to impress your friends then you're using that person as a means to some other end right and it's like that relationship is going to go south really fast like it's going to get ugly so it's not just ethical it's practical you know kant minute like said it in ethical terms but i just kind of realized that it's like all good personal development advice is essentially the same thing it's like treat people well like put place people before money before you know accolades before attention or status like always put people first and uh and everything else kind of takes care of itself and that's the long-term game right that's the the it's because in the short term you might sell the car yeah but in the long term your reputational damage and your general sense of feeling inside and yeah which which you see all the time in in internet businesses right like it's you see kind of those sleazy sales letters that that are pushing a questionable product and sure maybe they they have a big like five million dollar launch but they've just completely destroyed you know eventually all those people who bought are gonna realize that the product is [ __ ] and they're never gonna buy from you again and so you've yeah you made a bun millions of dollars up front but you've completely destroyed your brand and you're gonna have to start over from scratch whereas if you kind of start with the people in mind and you focus on the good product the good relationship giving people good value you make less money up front but then those people stick with you forever product after product after product um i was watching your conversation with tom bill you and i found it really really interesting and important because one of the things you talk about when we're talking about you know deciding what you want to do with your life whether it's a business or you want to be a pickup artist or whatever it is is this the importance of asking the question why and in the society and culture we live in especially one that's so driven by comparison where your values are almost being handed to you by instagram and the kardashians like this is how this is what you should value like i almost i've almost felt i remember one day a kid came up to me after i did this like big talk on stage and he said i want to be a public speaker and he was like 17. and you're thinking but you've got nothing really what he's saying is like he doesn't want to be a public speaker he wants the admiration he thinks public speakers get probably because he's insecure yeah and and so many kids including myself as a young kid we don't actually know what we want we have no [ __ ] clue but what we probably want is not to be insecure and heart of it and get laid of that as you've described takes us down a dark alley to the wrong place usually a dead end as well so how do i figure out what what i actually want in my life without it being kardashian noise or instagram like what does what do i want and how do i find out i think so it's a tricky thing right because again i think you you kind of have to get it wrong it's like the relationships you need to get a couple wrong before you know how to get it right and i think it's the same in pursuing a career or or finding a purpose in life like you you need to get it wrong a couple times because we're experts at tricking ourselves you know it's like that kid he wants admiration right but if you ask them in his head he's like no no i'm just really passionate about communicating with people i love people you know it's like we all do that to ourselves we all like we find the admirable narrative to kind of explain what were what we want in the world so i think you need to go through you need to hit a couple dead ends you know it's like that kid he probably should go get on stage and give the speeches and get the applause and then realize that the applause doesn't solve anything that he's he's still just as insecure as he was before because then once once he does that then he'll be ready to ask that question of like why do i want to do that like why am i really doing this it's almost a question you have to earn in a lot of ways interesting you know and i feel like a lot of people they just want to start there and it's like no no you have to like because look we're all like the kardashian thing right like like the reason that stuff is so popular is because we're wired to value it we're wired to want status we're wired to want to be beautiful and sexy and we're wired to want to impress others like that's never going to go away the question is is like what do you want once that is kind of removed from the equation but i think mentally to be able to remove it from the equation you have to try to get some of it first and and and see that it doesn't work if that makes sense and what did you come to learn for yourself um once you got that stuff you had the money you were you know had lots of um success in the field yeah with uh pick artistry and you tried all of these things and you tried the cars and what did you come to learn that you value well i had an interesting experience in my career which we were joking about it before we went live was like i kind of had this realization so i started the pickup stuff when i was like 21 22. and and then i started coaching and like teaching dating advice um probably when i was like 23 24. and i got to like my late 20s and i it suddenly it started to dawn on me that like this is cool now but in like five years it's gonna be really creepy you know like it's it's one thing to be a 25 year old who's like taking a bunch of dudes out to like talk to girls in a club it's very different to be like a 35 year old guy who's taken out a bunch of dudes to talk to 20 year old girls at a club like it's just it's a much different look and i also just realized i'm like i don't want to do this forever like this is fun but like i this is actually not fulfilling in any way whatsoever like i need to find what my next thing is going to be and during that period when i was doing all the dating relationship advice i started to realize especially like a lot of a lot of clients a lot of guys who hired me you know i take them out to the bar and we talk to some girls or whatever but after a year or two i realized like what these guys really need is a therapist [Music] you know it's it's their problem you know they're good guys like they're they're smart they're they're like they've got a good job um they're sure they're a little bit nervous talking to a girl but like who isn't what really what their most of their problems were is like very deep-seated insecurities emotional issues and they hadn't dealt with it yet and so the last couple of years i did that job i would kind of just take the guys to the bar as an excuse and then sit down with them and be like okay let's like what's really going on in your life you know like like let's get into why do you feel so insufficient or or unworthy of you know dating her or talking to her or whatever and so i kind of realized that like you know what i should be writing about is this stuff you know the the like the the three best first dates or like how to get her to reply to your text every time like i was writing stuff like that back then because it got traffic and it it it would get sales but i'm like that's not what people actually need that's not what they need to hear what they need to hear is kind of this deeper stuff about self-esteem and self-worth and vulnerability and and so i i made that decision to pivot into that to stop being the dating coach and and and actually start writing about personal development and emotional health because that's s