886. Mark Manson on why personal growth can backfire

9 Jul 2026 · 1 h 12 min · 29 chapters

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In short

Mark Manson discusses why “fixing yourself” isn’t the goal; growth comes from accepting who you are, choosing what you care about, and stopping the energy-drain of denying uncomfortable truths. He also explains how self-help “breakthroughs” can be painful, why identity changes create relationship friction, and how creators must censor themselves as their audience grows. He uses his “Disappointment Panda” concept to argue that life always involves trading one set of problems for another.

Guests

Mark Manson (author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck; creator of the Purpose app; former dating coach; long-time self-development writer). Interviewer: Lindsay (Almost 30 Podcast host). Co-host mentioned: Krista.

Key claims

Accepting thoughts/traits (e.g., feeling like a “loser”) is required before changing them. Personal growth is “coming home” to yourself, not constant transformation. People lie to themselves to avoid scary possibilities. Creators shift from pure authenticity to business constraints and audience safety.

Notable examples

Manson’s viral sobriety video causing angry people in old photos to demand removal; comparing his “all gas no brakes” style with James Clear’s more cautious approach; his burnout after major success; “Disappointment Panda” as a humorous way to deliver bleak truths.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Introduction to Mark Manson

1:00 to 2:06

Hosts introduce Mark Manson and discuss his impact on self-help.

“For example, I found that in the US, 40 % of people who want mental health support don't have access to it.”

The Purpose App and AI Insights

2:06 to 4:48

Discussion on Mark's Purpose app and its benefits over traditional AI.

“Today, I'm really excited about this episode.”

Navigating Public Life as a Creator

4:48 to 10:48

Mark and hosts discuss the complexities of being a public figure.

“Make sure you're subscribed to the show anywhere you listen to pods.”

The Drive to Create and Its Challenges

10:48 to 14:00

Exploration of the intrinsic motivations and challenges faced by driven individuals.

“Like you used to see this with celebrities, right?”

Understanding Drive and Personal Growth

14:00 to 18:06

Exploration of what drives individuals and how personal growth varies between people.

“I'm more like you and so when people are like that I'm like fucking yeah.”

Understanding Drive and Personal Growth

18:08 to 19:17

Exploration of what drives individuals and how personal growth varies between people.

“Can we normalize needing support before we're completely overwhelmed?”

Understanding Drive and Personal Growth

19:18 to 20:16

Exploration of what drives individuals and how personal growth varies between people.

“Maybe you're making smarter financial decisions and you're doing all the right things, but your credit unfortunately feels like it hasn't quite caught up yet.”

Self-Acceptance and Personal Truth

20:38 to 25:07

Discussion on the importance of accepting one's true self and the journey towards authenticity.

“what are some other things that you've learned about yourself over this process that have just been like instrumental in helping you find peace in who you are?”

The Journey of Self-Discovery

25:08 to 28:00

Reflections on the lifelong process of discovering and accepting one's identity amidst societal pressures.

“I'm like, oh, I'm recognizing this thing.”

Journey Through Self-Help

28:00 to 29:05

Learn about Mark Manson's early experiences with self-help and his frustrations.

“So I got very much into self-help, personal development, probably 15, 16 years old and started getting really into it.”
Show all 29 chapters

Redefining Breakthroughs

29:05 to 30:27

Explore Manson's realization about the nature of breakthroughs in self-help.

Accepting Life's Struggles

30:27 to 31:40

Understand the importance of choosing what to care about and accepting struggles.

“And I started just doing a lot of reading around philosophy and psychology.”

The Energy of Acceptance

31:40 to 34:11

Discover how resolving internal contradictions can lead to liberation and energy.

“There's like a sense of liberation and freedom.”

Transforming Negative Thoughts

34:19 to 35:36

Discuss strategies for accepting and transforming negative self-perceptions.

“What would you think about, it's very easy for me to be like, oh, I really want to be successful.”

The Disappointment Panda

35:36 to 38:48

Hear about the iconic 'Disappointment Panda' concept from Manson's book.

“I was in high school and I was like, dude, even at that age, I was like, that's so bad.”

Creativity in Self-Help

38:48 to 42:05

Examine the innovative aspects of Manson's writing style and approach to self-help.

“What's interesting is like thinking about your success and it's like that's a portion of but attributes to why you're so successful.”

The Pain of Growth and Transformation

42:05 to 44:36

Growth is often painful and uncomfortable, contrary to self-help industry portrayals.

Identity Formation and Its Challenges

44:37 to 48:45

Exploring how childhood self-definition impacts adult identity and relationships.

“And I don't think people always really understand or see how awkward and uncomfortable and painful growth is and like how your relationships change, you know, like you have a lot of hard conversations.”

Understanding Happiness and Change

48:46 to 51:14

Happiness involves a lack of desire for change, influenced by personal philosophy.

The Role of AI in Mental Health

51:15 to 55:07

The impact of AI on mental health support and its accessibility challenges.

“And some of the philosophy was very interesting.”

AI's Surprising Advice on Relationships

55:08 to 56:01

Discussion on AI's responses to relationship issues and its implications.

“And quickly what I notice is that it's not great.”

AI and Relationship Counseling

56:01 to 59:09

Explore the implications of AI's advice on personal relationships.

“And they found in a shocking amount of cases that ChatGPT was like, you should get divorced.”

Introducing the Purpose App

59:10 to 1:01:15

Learn about the Purpose app designed to enhance accountability and self-reflection.

“So the app we called Purpose just because ultimately it's, the goal of it is to hold people accountable to live in alignment with what they say they want.”

Enhancing Relationships with AI

1:01:16 to 1:02:32

Discover how the Purpose app can help analyze and improve relationship dynamics.

“what sort of problems we typically have in relationships.”

Enhancing Relationships with AI

1:02:33 to 1:03:41

Discover how the Purpose app can help analyze and improve relationship dynamics.

“Summer is always a funny time because I want to enjoy the burgers at the barbecue.”

Redefining Goals for Success

1:04:24 to 1:10:02

Discuss the importance of setting meaningful goals and avoiding pitfalls.

The Pitfalls of Big Goals

1:10:02 to 1:11:39

Learn about the potential downsides of setting large goals and the importance of small incremental changes.

“So you don't like, I think a lot of times people do too hard on the goals and then they, because they want to self-sabotage themselves to fail.”

The Importance of Accountability in Goal Sharing

1:11:40 to 1:13:19

Understand how sharing goals can either help or hinder your progress based on the intent behind sharing.

“OK, I just got like I just got what I needed.”

Domain Name Struggles and Personal Branding

1:13:20 to 1:14:26

Hear a humorous take on the challenges of securing a personal domain name and the quirks of online identity.

“I have another friend, super, super, super successful woman.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:08I started realizing, I'm like, okay, this is a massive scale issue. So I was like, okay, that makes sense that there's just all this latent demand. This doesn't even get into the shame. There's a lot of people that probably secretly want help, but they're ashamed of going and getting it. I don't think people always really understand or see how awkward and uncomfortable and painful growth is and like how your relationships change. For people to really understand growth, can you like peel back the veil of what it really looks like to grow and evolve and change? A lot of your relationships are going to be based on that false identity that you've been carrying.

1:43So as soon as you shed that false identity, a friend or a family member or a partner shows up and is like, what the fuck you changed? What happened to you?

2:06Welcome to Almost 30 Podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. It's Lindsay. And Krista. And we're here. And we're here. For you. Today, I'm really excited about this episode. I got to sit down with Mark Manson in Los Angeles, someone I've looked up to, known about for quite some time. And I just was surprised and delighted. Like, knew he would be cool, but we had the best time during our conversation. It just felt so natural and organic. And I feel like it's maybe a different side and a different conversation that he's had. So I'm really excited for the Almost 30 audience to be able to listen.

2:36Yeah, we were just chatting about kind of his legacy in this space and how he like really was kind of a pioneer on like a lot of concepts. I feel like today we're like, oh, yeah, we live by that now. I think one of the biggest ones is in, you know, his original book that just blew up and still is such a mainstay today. the subtle art of not giving a fuck is that humans are always going to care about something, but you have to decide what you're going to care about. And you have to be selective about how many fucks that you give about stuff. It was interesting because during our conversation, we talked about subtle art.

3:10And what was so fascinating was there's a lot of concepts that are not as new that he talks about, but he is such an interesting writer and thinker. Like the way that he writes and thinks is so outside of the box, so unique, so creative. And it gave me this reminder and inspiration of creators and artists today because I think with ChatGPT and AI that it can feel kind of overwhelming as far as creativity goes but the reason why his work has been so profound is because he's so incredibly creative but speaking of AI in this conversation we actually talked about his app so he created an app and it's called the Purpose app and the Purpose app is cool because it takes something that a lot of people are already doing with chat GPT or Claude, which is processing their feelings or emotions or almost using it as like a therapist.

3:58And the purpose app is so much more clear. It's so much more helpful. It's so much better of a guide than chat GPT or Claude. And so purpose really allows people to achieve their goals, to work through things, to navigate advice and things they're going through in life on the app. And I've been using it. It's actually really, really cool excited for almost 30 to listen our community and family and excited for any new people to join us on the show um again this was mark manson you can find mark manson pretty much anywhere the book that made him really famous was the subtle art of not giving a fuck he has his youtube he has his podcast and then he has the purpose app which is really an ai support and tool that is much more able to guide you than a clot or a chat yeah amazing awesome mark i'm excited for this one.

4:48Thank you all for listening. Make sure you're subscribed to the show anywhere you listen to pods. And also it would mean so much to us if you subscribed on YouTube. So this is a place where you could watch the podcast, Krista and I in the flesh with our guests. I just feel like you pick up on so much more when you're watching video, the nuance and the conversation, the energy, and you just, I have a totally different experience when I'm watching video podcasts. So please subscribe to us there. And we're on all socials at almost 30 podcasts on Instagram and TikTok. I'm at Lindsay Simzig on Instagram.

5:21And I'm at it's Krista. Enjoy this one. We'll see you on the other side. Bye. As someone that's been in the space for as long as you have been, and I mean that in like a respectful way, because some of these people will say that to me. I'm like, excuse me. But how do you like take that? Because you started with like pure intention, authenticity expressing and explaining like showing up in this way of like genuine curiosity for feeling better living better growing and then now it's like everything is sort of hard to place as real or not yeah it's a business i mean that's the short answer it's like i think at a certain point because yes you do come with very pure genuine intentions and and i still have genuine intentions but there was a certain inflection point around a certain amount of audience certain amount of money we were like this is a business yeah and um ultimately i need to make sure that i'm doing the right thing like the relationship with the audience changes a little bit yeah it's no longer like there are things that are true and authentic about myself that like i wouldn't necessarily make content about now because it like i reach so many people and it could be potentially harmful or hurtful or construed in the wrong way or misinterpreted by certain certain people that uh that you're just like okay yeah no you can't really make that content anymore or like we were talking about earlier there are certain things that like i'm like no no i need to keep that for myself because that could actually complicate my personal life now if i did like i don't know if this has happened to you yet but it like one of the things that starts happening is is you start you know you'll casually tell a personal story and all of a sudden like somebody you went to high school with that was in that story reaches out and they're like what the fuck man like you know i what if it's your mom that was my immediate family they're like oh i get my mom calls me like like three times a year wasn't that bad yeah she's like it was we did our best with what we know it's so funny one christmas she sits me down she goes am i a narcissist yeah i i definitely find myself apologizing my mom a lot but it was funny like i did um i did a youtube video a couple years ago on uh on on drinking on my just my experience with drinking and um and getting sober and um and in it i had a bunch of old photos of like me at parties in college and these people people i didn't like people i didn't even know in the photos reaching out with angry because the video went viral it got millions of views and so i started getting all these emails from people in in the photos in the video people i didn't remember i didn't even know at the time but they're in the background or whatever hold in like a a red solo cup yeah of course light and and they're like you got to airbrush me out you got to take that down they're like really mad and uh so it's it's i know the relationship shifts and it changes and um and i i think about to me it's kind of a venn diagram of like you know i try to hold on to what i care deeply about and what feels very important to me and and then i also the the other circle in the venn diagram is kind of like okay what's good for business yeah like what's good for the audience yeah and and then i just try to live in that overlap yeah i do think even people that aren't creators as their business are kind of grappling with the internet and AI and where things are going and like what is precious what is mine what is someone else's so I do think it's like kind of a collective thing now because we are so public and exposed online to think about what we share and what we don't share what we're open about and what we don't and I think it's been interesting to kind of navigate in this world of what is mine and what is to be shared when I talked to like Gen Z young Gen Zers you know kids who are like 20.

9:16What do the kids say? They don't care. They're like the idea of like privacy doesn't even really register. Whereas I think for like my generation it was like a very Huge. Our parents? Oh my god. Oh and then our parents were like don't even get online. So I don't know. There is a weird question around like what do you own? What do you have a right to? What do you give up? And I think that like the answer is different for everybody but it's hard to know. I think I had no clue what I was getting into. Yeah back when I started I was 24 when I started I had no idea what I was not no prefrontal cortex And had no idea like the long-term repercussions.

9:58Yeah of just like being very public about my life being a public figure and being public facing It's turned out great and like I think I'm very well adapted to it Like my personality seems to deal with it. Well But I have a number of friends who are on the other side of that, who are like, I hate being recognized. Every time I go in public, I feel like I'm being watched. It's like I'm anxious all the time. I'm like really worried about like somebody is going to see me or like I'm going to be in a restaurant. I'm going to get mad at the waiter and the waiter is going to be a fan and they're going to go get online and talk all this shit about me.

10:38You know, so it's it's it's I get it. I don't, yeah, I don't worry about that stuff, but like I can see like certain personalities, I think. And it's funny too, because it's like you see like it's kind of the same old story just remixed in a new way. Like you used to see this with celebrities, right? It's like some people handle their celebrities very well. And then some celebrities just go completely off the rails and self implode. And I think the same is true with like with Internet personalities. some it's like i've seen with internet personalities or people it's like they're just creating art or doing what they love and for and a bunch of people just ended up liking it and then it made them like a public figure yeah you know what i mean it made them be someone but it's actually not natural to their nature to have that like there's someone called emma chamberlain and she's like you know her and she's not necessarily like the most social it's interesting because i've actually seen that be um a superpower for some creators to not be as social and kind of create this universe or world that people can step in and people can be in but they're not so close to their audience or other people that it kind of makes them step outside of it so they continue to be a character in other people's reality does that make sense yeah but even thinking about you know your journey of like figuring out what your relationship was to the audience and what you're sharing what you're not sharing was there anything that you shared that you're like, oh.

12:01Not really. I'm pretty, like, I'm an open book where I've had to learn to censor myself is either around things that maybe aren't in the audience's best interest or is potentially complicating, like, people in my life. Yeah, of course, of course. But again, I think I'm just kind of wired, okay? Yeah. There's an interesting counter example of this, and I actually admire the hell out of him for choosing this. So I'm old friends with James Clear, the guy who wrote Atomic Habits. It's funny because he and I started blogging around the same time. We actually became friends as bloggers and then we both got book deals around the same time.

12:43I was kind of like maybe a year or two ahead on the same trajectory or path as him. His book came out a year or two after mine. Mine became a huge bestseller. His became a huge bestseller. and so we were each kind of confronted with a lot of the same experiences and and uh opportunities around the same time and but we have very different personalities and so my personality i'm just yours is better yeah clearly clearly but i'm kind of like my personality i'm just all gas no brakes like i just yeah i i'm very risk on i i'm the i don't give a fuck right it's like yeah fuck it let's do it let's see what happens right and that has its advantages and it also has its disadvantages is James is a much more conscientious he's the type of guy who like takes a step back and he like really thinks hard about like okay what do I want what am I what am I optimizing for and like before I make any major decisions and it was interesting because when Atomic Habits like really went supernova he had all these things that he was you know all these different opportunities on the table in front of him and and once he realized the book was just selling that many copies he was like you know what i'm just gonna go be a dad dude and respect so he's he hasn't done video he doesn't do social he sends one newsletter a week he does a bunch of corporate speaking gigs and stuff which because they just pay insane and he just hangs out with his kids and so like i look at that and i'm like i admire the hell out of that that's not how i'm wired but like I respect the discipline and the like the self-awareness to just be like this is what I'm going to do.

14:24Totally. I'm more like you and so when people are like that I'm like fucking yeah. I'm like that's the goal. Have you heard of um the book called Driven by Douglas Brackman? No. So in the book called Driven it basically talks about how when people are like what you're describing that are more driven they actually there's genetic differences in someone that is driven and never satisfied. And they actually, there's different like brain chemistry where you're more hardwired to respond to dopamine than other people like that. There's actually like marked physiological and biological differences in people that are really driven and people that kind of can't stop.

14:58And it's been helpful for me to kind of land in that because I've always felt like I should be doing it differently. You know what I mean? And like, I should be, I should want less or I should be okay. Like James, like, like I admire that cause that would never be me, but there's a part of me that's like maybe that should be me you know like would that be nice like if you do that how did you learn to just kind of understand yourself so deeply where you're like no I'm all gas no brakes like this is how I am this is how he is like it's a good example of two different types of personalities did you ever have a moment where you're like I should be more like this person for sure yeah and I even tried uh so I got burnt out so subtle or not giving a fuck came out 2016 became massive 2017 had a whole bunch of opportunities so I did over the next four years I did two books and a movie and completely burnt myself out a world speaking tour like all this stuff so in 2021 I was like you know maybe I should maybe I should hit the brakes right should take some time off take a sabbatical and uh it was so hard it was so hard the more I sat around and just tried to enjoy life the more I was like I should be doing something and uh it was actually really interesting because i mean the conclusion i've come to is is uh you really everybody's built different and like the optimal life for me is going to be different than what it is for you it's going to be different than what it is for james and what it is for whoever else is listening to this uh and i i feel like so much of personal growth it's not really about changing yourself it's it's either discovering or embracing who you already are right and so for me there was like this resistance for a lot of years of like i'm a workaholic i i burn myself out i go too hard i have no chill mode i'm like i say yes to too many things and sure a lot of those things are problems in certain contexts and on the margins but like it was very liberating at a certain point just to realize that i'm one of those people i'm like i need to be working on something like if i'm not working on something i'm miserable and that's okay like because working on like if you're a person who loves working on stuff then that's actually a great problem to have because then you get to go do really useful and interesting things all the time uh so i've just like very much embraced that and uh and i've actually been much more paradoxically much more at peace since i did and just accept well it's almost like well you're pressing the gas but you're also pressing the brakes because you're like i shouldn't be doing this you know there's something i should be doing something else yes and when you can just kind of let that go and i've had to do that with like my desire for success like i would just be like i want to be successful but then i'd be like i'm driving myself crazy because i want to be successful you know what i mean like i feel like i hate that i want to be successful and then i do this work called internal family systems.

17:50It's a psychotherapy technique. And in it, they call that polarization. It's like when you have a desire, but then you have like a judgment of the desire. And that polarization just takes so much energy from you. That's where the suffering is. Yeah, the suffering, exactly, where you're in judgment of like your true desires of your path. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Can we normalize needing support before we're completely overwhelmed? I think so many of us wait until we're at our breaking point to ask for help when support doesn't have to be a last resort. BetterHelp's 2026 state of stigma report surveyed 2 ,000 Americans and revealed that 85 % of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74 % say society discourages people from doing so.

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20:04So something you're already paying for can actually work in your favor. I also love that there's a credit check to apply and you can track your progress right inside the super.com app. Start building your credit the easy way. Go to super.com credit right now to see how super plus can help you boost your credit score. That's super.com super.com credit. Credit building features are available to super plus members. Impact on your credit score may vary. Super.com cannot control factors outside their services that may impact your credit. Visit super.com for more details. So understanding that you're super driven and you like to work, what are some other things that you've learned about yourself over this process that have just been like instrumental in helping you find peace in who you are?

20:47It's a good question. I definitely like a big thing for me is, and this is more on the personal side, but like, I I think I underestimated for a long time how compulsive I can be I was very cavalier about I guess just my lifestyle it was a very unhealthy lifestyle so a lot of drinking a lot of partying a lot of traveling and it was I was very functional so in my head it was I'm like I'm fine but looking back it was you know once i stopped drinking and i slowed down and i stopped partying and i started traveling much less i realized i'm like wow i was just i was out of control and i was kind of like deluding myself into thinking you know just because i could wake up hung over in a hotel room and get some stuff done and uh you know not my my life wasn't a catastrophe it didn't mean that I was actually behaving the way I wanted to be.

21:53Yeah, totally. Or being the person I wanted to be. And it's ironic. It was like when I stopped drinking, I started noticing that I was like very compulsive in all these areas of my life that I hadn't noticed before. And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I am a bit of a compulsive person. Maybe I do need to like chill out and look at what I want, my impulses and my decisions a little bit more carefully. And again, that's just a, it's not so much of like changing. It's actually the opposite of changing in many ways. It's like recognizing what you already are and accepting it and just being like, you know, for most of my adult life, I was kidding myself.

22:35I was like pretending that I wasn't this impulsive person who probably said yes a little bit too quickly and too often. And now I'm like, okay, that is the person I am. So let's adapt appropriately. That's so fascinating because it's like I've heard that before of like accepting who you are is like the unlock. And, you know, Carl Rogers, like the father of therapy, talks about the paradox of transformation. To transform something, you must first accept it. But it's so interesting hearing you talk about it because I'm like learning it differently and thinking about it even in my own work of like I was in the corporate world for a while.

23:16And it's like I was just lying to myself in that I was like I'm such a creative person. I'm such a leader. So it was like in this corporate world identity, like it was like I was pretending to be someone that I wasn't the entire time. And it's almost like if I could have stopped pretending, it's almost like releasing and letting go of the fake identities allows the real ones to come and be seen. and I think sometimes we focus so much on like being the things that we are where we can just release the things that we're not yeah and I I think a lot of this takes a certain amount of life experience just yeah right like if you think back to when you were a teenager what every teenager does is what do you do you try on a bunch of identities totally every year I was different yeah like and half of them are embarrassing you have no idea like you're just not mine though oh you were the cool you were the cool girl my pencil skirt and pumps year was sick i was pto president year that was like sick but um but you have to go through this phase you have to like try on all these different identities to realize like okay that that one doesn't really fit this one fits a little bit i like some aspects of it but it's like not totally me and like this one's okay but i don't like the people that i associate with or whatever it's like this experimentation phase and i feel like that experimentation phase actually drags out into adulthood like it never really stops it just slows down and you get you you you approach and get much closer to who you actually are as you go and it um and i and i do feel to the carl rogers point that like what most of us experience is like a transformative change really is actually just that experience of coming home to yourself of realizing like oh i've been faking this for 20 years and I don't have to or oh I've been in denial about this about myself for 10 years and I don't have to be anymore telling yourself the truth is so huge like creating a safe internal space for you to have safety of the truth and I think when I allowed myself to always tell myself the truth and then because what was happening where I wouldn't tell myself the truth for so long is because then I'd be like I have to change it I have to do this it's like being able to be in process of the truth.

25:32I'm like, oh, I'm recognizing this thing. I'm doing this thing. I'm drinking too much or I'm, you know, being out of integrity. I'm distracted, whatever. And it'll be like, okay, that's my truth. And then I'd be like, okay, we can sit with that truth before like having to immediately change. Why do you think people lie to themselves? Like, why do you think people are in denial? Like, what do you think is happening? Because so many people are and it's keeping them from a life of purpose and love and relationships and the one that they want. They're scared. You know, we're all scared. sometimes it's because of something in our past bad that has happened to us and so we've kind of built these layers of narratives on top of it to hide it um other times it's it's just a fear of what could potentially happen or might happen that we don't um want to think about or accept right you know we don't want to imagine a world where certain people we care about don't care about us or we don't want to imagine a world where we don't have financial security or whatever it is So instead of considering those really scary prospects, we make up stories about ourselves and buy into them.

26:41Oh, that's interesting. It's almost like to protect the outside instead of the into. Were you always somewhat like, when did you land on, I have to accept this? Because I think a lot of people seek to change most of the growth. I think that was my whole thing until maybe three, four years ago. where I was like, oh, I need to accept it. Were you trying to change for a long time a lot of aspects of yourself? Yes. What was that like? I have a very vivid and powerful imagination. I think it's why I'm a good writer. But a side effect of that is that I'm particularly good at deluding myself. And I got very, so a little background story.

27:28I grew up in a – this is where I apologize to my mom preemptively. Sorry, mom, if you're listening. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, and nobody was happy. And so I – and it was weird because it was very – And they weren't happy because of you. Clearly. It was all my fault. I know why they weren't happy.

27:54But it was a situation where it was like materially everything was fine. It was like very upper middle class, waspy, suburb, you know, everything on the surface was like great, but nobody's happy. Nobody's fine. So I got very much into self-help, personal development, probably 15, 16 years old and started getting really into it. Started reading a bunch of Tony Robbins books and started meditating when I was like 17 and got really into Buddhism. And I was all in. I mean, I was just all gas, no breaks. Right. So it was, you know, I started going to seminars when I was in college and and it really felt like I was having all these breakthroughs and transformations and I was a new person every other every other week, you know.

28:40And but meanwhile, as time went on, it was at some point you can't ignore that, like the patterns are the same. You know, it's like it's the same, the same, the same problem just with a different outfit. on you're like i had a breakthrough this week yeah exactly and so this went on for a number of years and um and i just it felt like i was actually kind of spinning my tires like stuck in place yeah and i would say by the time i got to like my mid-20s i was pretty frustrated and uh fed up with the whole thing i kind of became very cynical about it um and i i guess somewhere around that time it's you know around that time I started writing online I started building an audience I started initially I kind of fell into an early career as a dating relationship coach for young men primarily and I think I just started become a little bit more self-aware as I was like having to deal with other people's problems or try to coach people through their stuff it gave me a lot of perspective on stuff i had gone through and maybe as i watched other people convince themselves that they just transform but then go on and do the exact same behaviors that they did before it kind of made me start looking at myself and being like huh i i've been down that road um and so yeah i i kind of went through this period of of becoming very i guess critical and looking, I'm like, okay, well, if all this self-help stuff is like generally pointing people in the right direction, but it's like not, the breakthroughs aren't really breakthroughs, then like what is the actual breakthrough?

30:27Like what is the actual change? And I started just doing a lot of reading around philosophy and psychology. and um and i guess kind of the answer was like what i ended up landing on b is what became the subtle art of not giving a fuck which is that it's like look it's ultimately you have to choose what you care about and whatever you care about there's going to be a set of subset of problems associated with that doesn't matter there's like no goal or achievement in life that does not have some associated suckage with it and it's you can't avoid that so you might as well pick the thing that has the sacrifice or the struggle that you like you actually kind of enjoy or is like invigorating to be a part of um and then a certain amount of that too is is just being a little bit realistic of like look you don't necessarily have to change all the time you don't have to have breakthroughs all the time like it's life is supposed to be hard you're you're always going to have insecurities you're always going to struggle you're always going to doubt certain aspects of yourself like there's nothing abnormal about that so maybe it's maybe the problem isn't those things maybe the problem is that you're trying to get rid of them and um and so that that's kind of become the basis of my work ever since but um i completely forgot what your initial question was but we know we were on the journey it was perfect because i asked what made you get there because you were in the self-development space and a lot oftentimes it's like about changing and fixing yourself yeah but just accepting yourself is kind of like soft yeah you know there's like a softness to it well and there's this fear too of like well if i accept if i accept myself then like yes then nothing i'm not gonna achieve or do anything i'm just gonna be stuck in this shit hole that i'm in right now yeah whereas and so it is it is very paradoxical that it's uh and i believe the carl rogers quote is is that it's once i accept myself then i'm able to change um i i would say that it's i think you described it well and that it's the the internal contradiction of i am this way i don't want to be this way one way to think about it is like that internal contradiction like just saps up so much yes mental and emotional energy yes um that as soon as you resolve that internal contradiction it's it's like you get this like it's like taking a shot of espresso every day.

32:58You just get all this energy. There's like a sense of liberation and freedom. But that's not apparent to somebody who's living in that contradiction. It feels like one side has to win.

33:16I've become a little bit of a supplement skeptic lately, not because I don't believe in them, but because I started asking, is my body actually absorbing any of this? That's what I find so fascinating about the absorption company they're focused on solving the biggest problem in supplements low absorption most supplements absorb at less than 16 meaning a lot of what we're taking never actually gets utilized by the body i've been using their magnesium which supports things like sleep stress regulation and recovery and most magnesium absorbs really really poorly but theirs absorbs eight times better.

33:53I've also been taking their berberine because most berberine absorbs at less than 1 % and theirs was designed to deliver significantly better bioavailability to support metabolism, blood sugar, and craving support. Start taking supplements your body can actually absorb. Go to absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for up to 35 % off your first order. That's absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for 35 % off your first order. What would you think about, it's very easy for me to be like, oh, I really want to be successful. And I'm like, it's annoying. But then I'm like, that's good.

34:33You know, like the rewards are good. But what about when people feel like I'm a loser and then they don't want to accept that they feel like a loser? Like what about the negative things about people that they think about? Like how do they accept those things? Like how do you think they would transform those negative thoughts? I think, again, the only way to transform those negative thoughts is to accept that you have them. If you try to deny that you feel like you're a loser, then you're never going to be able to address the fact that you feel like a loser, and it's going to persist. I think once you accept that that thought is there, you can start investigating, like, why is it there?

35:10Where did that come from? Loser by what metric? How are you measuring what losing is? And by the way, people can have the same problem thinking they're a winner, right? There are a lot of people out there who think they're winners and they are definitely not. So true. Here's something so, I'll never forget this. I'm from Ohio. Yeah. So small town in Ohio. I'll never forget going to school one day. There was like a Taco Bell by my house and it said Taco Bell now hiring winners only. I was in high school and I was like, dude, even at that age, I was like, that's so bad. So amazing. Like the people that are just like the winner's mindset only.

35:54Subtle Art was such a huge like culture shifting book and phenomenon. Is there one section or part that people always reference that are like, yo, this was like huge. Like is there one thing that people always come to you with? People love the Disappointment Panda section. Explain that to us. it's funny because there was a part in chapter two where i was trying to make some of these points about how a lot of the stuff that i just said to you right that it's like uh life is just kind of a struggling is inevitable right it's like the the resolution of one problem really just introduces another problem so when you change something in your life it's not that you're getting rid of problems you're actually just exchanging one set of problems for a new set of problems and hopefully that new set of problems is a better set that's what a better life is it's just better problems uh we were talking about um you know having a neighbor and having your amazon packages delivered to the wrong hopefully they're not listening the wrong house like that's a problem i mean i don't know your backstory but that's a problem that i imagine like 15 years ago you'd be like that'd be a great problem totally like oh my god if i had if i had a nice house in la and like my amazon package i know dude yeah like it's but it's but today you're like god fucking amazon fucking neighbor and but that's just life that's like all of life is that way so i was like i had this section the way it was written it was it was quite a downer i was like this just sounds so bleak but it's not it's really guys stay with me yeah i'm like i'm like it's really not bleak but like it just sat on the page it just sounded so hopeless yeah despondent and i was like okay we got we have to find a way to like liven this up and make this fun and uh and i don't i don't even know where it came from but it was um superhero movies were big at the time and so i was just like if i could invent a super a superhero uh initially it was just like i want a superhero that tells people truths that they don't want to hear wow um and then i was like okay cool this character can deliver those bleak yeah those bleak truths that nobody wants to hear and i was like well let's we should make this funny wow let's make it a panda yeah and let's give him a sombrero why because cuz just cuz yeah like who he needs a sombrero and uh oh we're gonna drink margaritas as he tells us this and um and so i wrote this whole section out it's like very weird and wild and crazy and and people love it um the the the craziest thing is is people i've at this point i've probably seen a half a dozen disappointment panda tattoos like people will come to my events and stuff and or like send me pictures of like a disappointment panda tattoo and it's surreal.

38:51Very surreal. It's really surreal, yeah. Wow, that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of pressure to take on. What's interesting is like thinking about your success and it's like that's a portion of but attributes to why you're so successful. I will say being pregnant again has made me even more intentional about the choices I'm making. I've done a few episodes on this. I found myself reading labels more closely, investing in higher quality. products and asking what do I actually trust enough to use every single day? My standards have definitely gotten higher. That's one of the reasons ritual has remained part of my routine.

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40:50I've been using their magnesium, which supports things like sleep, stress regulation, and recovery. And most magnesium absorbs really, really poorly, but theirs absorbs eight times better. I've also been taking their berberine, because most berberine absorbs at less than 1%. And theirs was designed to deliver significantly better bioavailability to support metabolism, blood sugar, and craving support. Start taking supplements your body can actually absorb. Go to absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for up to 35 % off your first order. That's absorbmore.com and enter almost 30 at checkout for 35 % off your first order.

41:34successful it's like there's this one concept okay they're not gonna take it this way let's make it fun let's make it interesting let's make it creative let's personify the piano like it's like people don't realize the creative artistry and like the uniqueness of like your voice in things and i think sometimes people think it's easier than what it is but that was very new and innovative it was just very new and interesting and no one else was doing it and that's why it hit so much i don't know if that's a question but it's just a reflection it's um oh i appreciate that because it's it's funny as you can imagine one of the most common criticisms i get is just people being like oh this guy just ripped off whatever he just puts fuck in front of like really obvious advice and uh you know is you know is just trying to be clever or whatever but it is I think what I realized pretty early on in my career is that one of my big issues with the self-help industry is that they things would be marketed as this kind of euphoric like oh jumping for joy it's gonna be like a dance party as your life has changed and even yeah even at a relatively young age I I realize I'm like that's not realistic at all like generally speaking any sort of breakthrough or transformation is is generally like extremely painful and difficult and you're you go through periods of of doubt and self-questioning and and it's there's a lot of emotions that come up and so it's not a lot of these things are not fun things to think about and but the things that we need to think about are not fun to think about like you asked me earlier like why do why are people in denial it's because they it's not fun to think about yeah like it's like it's just let's just pretend everything's fine like why do we need to think about this stuff so what i found is that if you can put funny jokes profanity interesting stories if you can kind of package a lot of this stuff you know it's it becomes the sugar that makes the medicine go down um and so it's and it interestingly like i do get criticized for the profanity a lot but it it is absolutely true there's something about the shock value in an f-bomb um that it lets things land yeah in a certain way whereas like if i and i even wrote a whole article about this about like why i use profanity and i gave examples of like here's a piece of advice without profanity and it just sounds like the most blase generic therapy speak and then i'm like okay now here is it here it is with a bunch of profanity laden into it and it landed it's like emotionally land it hits like it's like a slap there's an urgency yeah an urgency added when you're like wake up and you're like wake the fuck up you're like you know you're like get that it adds a little cortisol to like everything that you're doing um yeah one of the things you know just mentioning the pain of the process and like that discomfort of it and i think people would see you and they're like the success and all that you have.

44:38And I don't think people always really understand or see how awkward and uncomfortable and painful growth is and like how your relationships change, you know, like you have a lot of hard conversations. Like for people to really understand growth, can you like peel back the veil of like what it really looks like to grow and evolve and change? It all starts with your conception of yourself, right? Like we all, from a very young age in childhood, you start, self-definition begins, right? And it starts with your parents. So if your parents tell you you're a good boy or a good girl or you're so smart or you're so talented or you're so athletic.

45:24What did yours tell you? Mine always told me I was smart. Oh, okay. I think mine did too. Yeah. I don't know if mine told me anything. my parents were always very positive verbally which was one thing they did well i think um but you you kind of start this self-definition which is really just like the base layer of identity of like oh i am a separate person and i have separate traits about me um and those things that get added this is why childhood trauma is so uh just so influential is because anything that gets in at that ground level, everything else gets built on top of it and interpreted through it.

46:10So by the time you're a teenager, you're starting to pay attention to your social groups and what other kids are doing and what the broader culture is into, pop culture, what the popular music is. And like we talked about earlier, you're trying on identities. You're trying on different things. You're like, well, what if I dress this way? What if I listen to this music? What if I hang out with these kids? who am I? What does that say about me? And like really what the whole project of being an adolescent is is to form some sort of coherent identity. Like understand who you are in the world. The problem is is that it's you're young like the world is very messy and when you're young you don't have a whole lot of experiences and most of those experiences are extremely superficial.

46:58So like the identity that you kind of cobble together as an adolescent is generally a very superficial surface level identity um and there's not a whole lot of depth to it and so what the experience as an adult is is often is is often watching that identity that you formed for yourself at either as a child or an adolescent watching it fail in the real world repeatedly and then having to sit down and and usually with a therapist or a good friend or a coach or whoever and really ask like okay where why is this going wrong like where am i messing up here oh wait i i've thought that i'm this way i've been acting my whole life this way or i've been approaching all my relationships with this assumption or defining love or success with these metrics maybe i shouldn't do that maybe i should try something else and then kind of forcing yourself even though it doesn't feel natural or normal forcing yourself to live out those different metrics or those different understandings of who you are what success is or what love it what love is all of those things i just described that happened in adulthood every single one of like watching your identity fail evaluating why it failed really analyzing the underlying beliefs and and questioning those beliefs and then forcing yourself to adopt new ones or at least like go experiment in in the world with new ones all of those things are are uncomfortable and and unpleasant and often associated with difficult emotions negative emotions and then part of the problem too is that a lot of your relationships are going to be based on that false identity that you've been carrying so as soon as you shed that false identity a friend or a family member or a partner shows up and is like what the fuck you changed what happened to you what this isn't working this isn't right right and so it's it introduces a lot of friction and complication into a lot of the relationships around you and if those relationships are weak they'll probably fall apart mm-hmm and you'll just lose them if they're stronger or if the person in your wife is is is stronger in their identity and genuinely loves and cares about you like they'll they'll figure out how to adapt with you but um but if you don't have those strong relationships in your life then it can be pretty jarring to to to lose them and again i think that's another reason why a lot of people stay stuck is they're like well my identity is the person who's always available to help so if i stop helping are these people going to stick around are they still going to like me are they still going to want to be friends with me and that's just too scary to face so it's like okay i'm just gonna keep being the helper and and just push just push keep stuffing just keep pushing the pain down further just keep overeating all night stuffing all day yeah that's the thing is a lot of the identities are helpful yeah or they're they're really good identities from like a societal thing they're helpers they're like people pleasers they don't have boundaries and they're really supportive of that process would you say that at this point in your life are you the happiest you've ever been I think so oh that's great yeah I think so what does that like feel like for you in your day-to-day life and your mental uh what's the experience of being happy or peaceful for you to me it happiness is the lack of a desire for change it's um like don't get me wrong there are a lot of things in my life that like I have a lot of goals and there are things I'm working towards but I mean if you came to me so it's uh one of my favorite philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche he has this concept of the eternal recurrence and he basically he defined happiness as if the gods came to you and said you have to live this day every day for eternity what would your response be and mine would be cool like I'm in right um but there there have been many points in my life where I'm like no that sounds off that sounds like hell right and uh and Nietzsche like for him that was the definition of heaven and hell is that if you had to relive this part of your life for eternity um how does that prospect and he said that you should it's your responsibility to live your life in such a way that you would be willing to live it interesting who else are your teachers like that Nietzsche who else do you love uh i love nietzsche um i i was buddhism was very influential on me when i was younger um i think it was it was very helpful for me to um so i was diagnosed with adhd i think a lot of the personality yeah for sure the wiring that we've talked about is is downstream of that um I think Buddhism was just very therapeutic for me, like forcing me to come to terms with my own attention and focus.

52:07And some of the philosophy was very interesting.

52:13It's funny because my work is very technically it's it's what would be called existentialist. I didn't really arrive at it. Like I didn't like read existentialist philosophers and be like, that's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of more of after the fact. I'm like, oh, this is all the stuff I talk about. Isn't it always like a question and a question? Or what's existentialism? What's the basis of it? Existentialism is. We don't know. It starts very bleak. So it starts with like life has no inherent meaning. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have to create it. Yeah. And the way you create it is by owning your own choices.

52:46So taking responsibility for everything in your life. And John Ball Sartre, he said that what happens is that the burden of living with the outcomes of your choices is so intimidating for most people that we try to find ways to avoid oh interesting choosing our own lives um and so we find ways to uh well no i couldn't do that because yeah she said i shouldn't do it yeah like no people will get mad at me so i can't do it so it's like we find ways to like give our responsibility away to others because the the burden of freedom is so terrifying yeah wow think about religion you know like karma and the spiritual world and all of that i'm so excited to talk to you about the purpose app because we're you know it's like thinking about ai and it's interesting because you know a lot of the research that came out of chachi bt talked about that majority of people in meta actually was like the majority of people use it for therapy yeah and use it to process things first landing on that like how do you what do you perceive about that fact

53:58um it shocked me at first so this is back before we created the app it shocked me as at first and then i did some research and i guess i didn't appreciate how undersupplied mental health and personal growth is that's interesting um there's some pretty jarring statistics for example i found that uh in the u.s 40 of people who want mental health support therapist counselor coach don't have access to it either because of finances or location they're in like some rural part of wherever and like they just can't have they don't have access to it um and if you figure that's the u.s than the rest of the world it's probably way way higher um i think in the uk there was a study that for there's like such a shortage of therapists um that it's for every every client that has a therapist there's 10 people that want a therapist but can't find one like all the therapists are just booked up so i started realizing i'm like okay this is a massive scale issue like and in clear so i was like okay that makes sense that there's just all this latent demand this doesn't even get into like the shame of you know there's a lot of people that probably secretly want help but they're ashamed of going and getting it and um so the next thing i looked at is i was like okay well let me actually get on chat gbt and start yeah let me get help burying my soul to it my wife is mad at me again you're like garage doors broken it's broken my garage doors and ChatGPT is like, oh, sorry, man.

55:41You're totally good. You're going to do great.

55:47And quickly what I notice is that it's not great. It's not always bad. And there are ways you can improve if you prompt it well and if you kind of feed it some of your information and stuff. You can get better results from it. But my guess is that 99 % of people are just going to vanilla ChatGPT and saying like my wife's mad at me what should i do and um and if you come to it that way like at this point ai is just very famous for being a suck up a yes man it just tells you whatever you want to hear it's like wives be like that sometimes exactly it's like no she doesn't appreciate you seems like a pattern of a problem she has yeah there was um there was even one study that I think that found, they went and tested a bunch of, so they went to ChatGPT with a bunch of marital problems.

56:42Oh, gosh. And they found in a shocking amount of cases that ChatGPT was like, you should get divorced.

56:53Dude. Yeah. So it's... I think it is going to impact relationship breakups quite a bit. For sure. For sure. But it's at the same time, so as I, like I love AI. I use it all the time. I'm very, very pro AI. Obviously, I'm pro AI. And even back then, I was using it all the time. So I'm like, there's so much potential here, right? Like if the AI had proper context and if it was proper. Because the problem is things like ChatGPT or Gemini, they're not designed. This ties back in perfectly with what we were talking about. Like growth requires challenge. It requires struggle. It requires thinking about things that are not pleasant to think about.

57:30If you think about like what AIs are designed to do, they're designed to be pleasant. They're designed to give you what you want. They're designed to make you feel good when you use them. It's like they're called assistants for a reason. What does an assistant do? It always tells you, yes, boss, whatever you want, boss. No matter how, no, you could ask for the craziest, mostly rational thing and an assistant's going to say, all right, I'll go get it. You know? I have to show you this account called Husk IRL. Okay. And this guy talks to chat. He's like, chat, if I was to rob a bank, what should I do?

58:02And chat's like, how do you want to rob the bank? He's like, really cool. and he's like, all right, so you're going to walk in, you're going to wear a jacket, you're going to come in really, and like chat will like literally like teach him how to rob a bank, like teach him how to like scam his office. Like it is like tell it, like it is insane what chat will do. Like the bank one was like four minutes of it, like chat being like, and you're going to leave and no one's going to know. It's freaky. Yeah. So I started looking at this and I was like, okay, clearly people are going to use this or they want this.

58:34So it was like, we should at least try to put something good on the market. So my first goal was like, okay, how can we get an AI to actually challenge you and point out blind spots, right? Because I think that's kind of the first step. Like if the AI's primary purpose is to point out the inconsistencies and the contradictions in your own perception of yourself or like the way you're approaching life, like that's where the most value is going to be found. So we started building it around that. So the app we called Purpose just because ultimately it's, the goal of it is to hold people accountable to live in alignment with what they say they want.

59:25Because I think that's, all of us say we want certain things, but then our behavior deviates from that. Or we say we care about certain things, but we don't actually, that's not actually reflected in our choices. And so the app is designed and optimized to evaluate what you want or what you say you want, evaluate what you care about, and then talk to you and be like, well, that's interesting because you said you value this, but you say you value your family, but you've been at the office a lot of Saturdays now, right? What's up with that? We should talk about that. And it's been great. I've had a number of incredible insights from it just in the process of developing it.

1:00:07And we launched it to my audience about a month ago. And so far, the response has been really, really good. Yeah, I just downloaded it. And you go through the prompts. And you kind of explain where you're at in your life. And you answer the questions, which was really, really good. And I think it is nice to have a little bit of checking. Because it's, I don't know. I don't want to be AI scared. But it is really interesting how, I think, when you're using something like ChatGPT, it's making you more insular. and I like that the Purpose app was like kind of encouraging you to have conversations.

1:00:38Like it's more relational. Like there's the relationship part too. Like how are your relationships doing? And it's like the reason why processing with chat is okay, but you have to like go do the next step of the conversation, the action, the thing. And I think it kind of keeps you caught in that loop of like pacifying that immediate discomfort and keeping you there. What was the, I didn't get to it yet, but what's the relationship section of the app? Like what is that? So the relationship section, it's actually coming out this month. It's one of the cool things that we get to do, and this is another thing that you can't really do with ChatGPT, is there's all sorts of psychological frameworks for how each of us behave in relationships, what sort of problems we typically have in relationships.

1:01:27A lot of people have probably heard of attachment theory, or there's different intimacy types, love languages, all this stuff. So what you can do is you can actually kind of build a questionnaire around a lot of these frameworks and the AI is trained and knowledgeable on all the research. So it's like when you go through the questionnaire, it has an understanding of like, okay, so this is your relationship type. This is how you prefer, this is how you experience love. This is how you experience intimacy. This is how you communicate. This is how you deal with conflict. And then you, at some point, we want to make it so you can add your partner's info as well.

1:02:08And then that way it can have a clear understanding of like, okay, this is probably where your relationships mess up usually. This is probably the mistake that you consistently make. This is probably why your past relationships didn't work out. Here are some patterns to look out for. and then it can like help walk you through how to fix those and improve those. Wow. What was one of the learnings from it that you were like, oh, that's, I didn't see that. Summer is always a funny time because I want to enjoy the burgers at the barbecue. I don't know about you, the breakfast bagel before a beach day.

1:02:45That's my thing. The pasta salad at a friend's house. But I also want to make choices that support how I want to feel. I realize I don't do well with the all or nothing approach anymore. That's just not me. That's why I've been loving hero bread. I was honestly shocked by how soft and fluffy and delicious everything is that they make. There's no stiff cardboard texture, just the bread, buns, tortillas, and bagels you actually crave. I've been using their tortillas for easy lunch wraps for myself, for my son. They're bagels when I need something quick and satisfying in the morning. And nutritionally, it's such an easy swap.

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1:04:06Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Right now is your last chance to shop up to 50 % off site-wide plus huge savings during the 4th of July sale at blinds.com. So I worked very, very closely with how the AI communicates with you, kind of like it's... LLM? Well, what it's optimizing for, like what its approach is, the language it uses the way it attacks problems or whatever and my goal with it was i was like i want this ai to go as deep as possible as quickly as possible and and i wanted to do it with as little information as possible and it's uh it does that it it's like pretty shocking actually sometimes it was really funny i was talking to it i was actually testing it because we did an update like a month or two ago and i was testing no no i was testing it so when i test it um i will i will i'll do i'll run like a bunch of like we call them avatars but we'll like run a bunch of like common problems you know like a single mom you know who's overwhelmed and uh and a guy who's uh uh suffers from anxiety or whatever and so i will like test it with avatars but then i'll i'll always test it with like a few of my own things that i'm struggling with and so I was testing it with work-life balance because I was working too much at the time and uh I was just like yeah I this is a recurring problem in my adult life I keep coming back to it and the AI was like well you know why do you think you keep coming like why do you think it's recurring what is it that like feels appealing about it and I said well I think it's I think it's it's safe in a way because um you know there are plenty of things you can distract yourself with that uh you know people will judge you for or they'll question but nobody really it's like very admirable if you're always working right it's like that guy works so hard it's too bad he couldn't come to my party but he works so hard he's like a great guy so um i was like i think it's in that sense like it feels okay and then the the ai immediately said you know what's interesting you described working too much as safe what are you safe from wow and i was like that's between me and me all right ai holy shit i never thought about that wow dude you're like you're like delete delete turn up never mind honestly bury it bury it wow um but we've had i mean it was at the it was funny the i sent when we were doing a beta test I sent it to my wife and then she messaged me like 30 minutes later and she's like I'm sobbing I was like I was like is it a good sob and she's like yeah but it's a little intense I was like okay she's like I've actually never felt so seen

1:07:17that is cool I'm excited it's like the user experiences is great and yeah I think it's good to have like a I want to say safer but just more purposeful thoughtful way to engage with it if people and especially I know a lot of our our people are doing it um last question since it's like a little earlier in the year like what is one thing you'd say to someone that has goals for this year like how should they approach them how should they think about them how do you think about goals I personally think goals are a little overrated um I think that's that's not to say you shouldn't have them i do think it's good to have them but i think a lot of people goals are tricky and that if you set them poorly or if you set bad goals they can i think they can lead you more astray than um than just not setting any um and i think people tend to set really bad ones i think they tend to overestimate how much they need to accomplish to make themselves happy um i think they are unrealistic in terms of what it's going to take to get there i think they uh they often don't set goals that are easily measurable or manageable and so i and then the biggest thing that i think people don't think about is they don't think about the why behind the goal like what is the purpose behind the goal right so it's it's because if you have if you set goals with poor intentions then the motivation is not going to lie you might be motivated for a day or two but you're not going to be motivated in month two, month three, month four.

1:08:45So I think it's really more about just getting very clear on what you want and then kind of working backwards what you want, why you want it, and then work backwards in a more realistic way of like, okay, how can I kind of build a system in my life that makes this goal inevitable? Like people overestimate willpower. They overestimate motivation. Willpower is not really a thing. Like it's just, it's better to set up your environment to make it so you don't even need willpower in the first place. So a simple example, right? It's like everybody wants to lose weight. Everybody's like, I want to have like beach body for summer.

1:09:30And then they think that they're just going to like brute force with pure will. Yeah. Right? And it's like, well, why don't you just set up the system so that you don't even have an option anymore? You know, like pre-plan your meals, get your groceries delivered. Get accountability with the trainer. Yeah, get the trainer set up months in advance. And also not do so much. Yes. I think people go in there like, all right, trainer four times a week, or do this, and then they'll do their meal plan and all that stuff. It's like, how about do two things? Yeah. So you don't like, I think a lot of times people do too hard on the goals and then they, because they want to self-sabotage themselves to fail.

1:10:08And then that's a part of their identity to always fail. Yeah. And so it's like just the loop of like making incremental small goals that you can change and kind of shift and expand your identity into until you can be at the goal where it's like an actual goal that you can reach. Yeah. I think I do that for myself. I think the other thing too is that it's fun and sexy to have big juicy goals. You get the dopamine. You do. You get that dopamine. Because you get all excited. Totally. You tell a bunch of people. It's not fun and sexy to actually make those small changes slowly over a long period of time.

1:10:44It's actually very boring. Totally. There's nobody clapping as you're doing it. So, yeah, I think people are optimizing for the wrong thing. I remember being in Ohio and hearing people be like, oh, they said these big goals. and I would see that happen where I'm like, oh, they're getting like this reassurance or this like recognition, but they haven't done anything yet. And I remember in my like little brain, I was like, why is everyone excited about that? Like, I was like, what's everyone like doing? Yeah, there's actually research on sharing goals can backfire in a lot of ways. I don't share goals, do you?

1:11:23It depends. Yeah. It depends, well, what the research shows is it depends why you're sharing it, right? So if you're sharing it for like emotional support and validation, it actually decreases the likelihood that you do it because it's you already get the validation of doing it. Right. So it's like if I get to tell you this amazing thing I'm going to do this year and you're like, that's amazing. You're so cool. I'm like, wow. OK, I just got like I just got what I needed. Yeah, I don't need to do it now. Whereas if you share it to somebody in a way that you want them to hold you accountable. then it actually increases.

1:12:00That's why I don't want people asking me about them. I don't want people to be like, how's that goal? I'm like, leave me alone. You should mind your own business. Your goal should be minding your own business. So people can download the Purpose app now. Yeah. Vintage. I've been trying to get that. That's vintage. I've been trying to get.com for 15 years. Who is.com? Let's get them. Please, if you can. anybody out there if you can get markmanson.com i will pay you a lot of money handsomely so there's a guy named mark manson an old man in florida named mark manson who's owned it since 1999 never had a website and squatter he's has squatted it but you can't take it from him because he's like okay so the this is inside baseball but um if you're trying to get a domain of your own name you can trademark your name and then you can legally take it from somebody yes um but you can only do it if it's actually your name and the only way you can't do it is if the person who owns it it's also their actual their real name so the guy who owns it is named mark manson he's never had a website and the one broker who managed to get a hold of him um he came back and he said that he wanted half a million dollars for it and i was like i love old people sometimes go fuck yourself of old people.

1:13:19So I am.net. Wow. You're like.net till the day. Yeah. Mark Manson. Until he kicks the bucket. This is so random. I have another friend, super, super, super successful woman. Another woman of the same name kind of took her thing and she's like, you have to owe me $3 million to get like the trade. And I'm like, I think people have a real weird understanding of like our world. Yeah. Where it's like, I'm flattered a little bit. Dude, it's not that hard to just send people to a.net. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's not that shameful. It's not helping me that much. I just love that he was like$500 million.

1:13:54He's like, let's get him. It's like he wasn't even serious about that. No, no. I'm going to go to markvanson.com now and just see what's up. Go harass. I wish I knew where he was. You probably would have people. I mean, everyone that had the tat would be like showing up. The first order of business. This is the disappointing panda gang. Give us the dot com or else. Honestly, give our boy. and they'll be like, give us the dot com shirts. Okay, guys, I hope you enjoyed this one. You guys know where to find Mark and the Purpose app in the App Store now. I'll see you soon. Love you. Bye. Thank you so much, Mark.

1:14:27Again, I really loved our conversation. I had so much fun. So grateful you could come in. You can find Mark Manson pretty much everywhere. Mark Manson dot net. Mark Manson on YouTube. Mark Manson on Instagram. And there's the Purpose app and the Solved podcast. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. again if you loved this episode please share with a friend it's always a great conversation starter a way to connect with people that you love um and we have two new episodes every single week so make sure you're subscribed and please subscribe on youtube means the world all right we love you love you see you next time

From the publisher

The breakthrough you've been chasing isn't becoming someone new—it’s finally accepting who you already are.

Bestselling author Mark Manson joins Krista for an honest conversation about why real personal growth isn't about fixing yourself. They explore burnout, ambition, identity, and why constantly chasing the next breakthrough may be the very thing keeping you stuck.

Mark shares the mindset shifts that transformed his life, from letting go of perfectionism to redefining success on his own terms. If you're ready to stop fighting yourself and start living with more peace, purpose, and authenticity, listen up!

We also talk about:

Why accepting yourself is the key to lasting transformation

The hidden downside of success + building a public platform

How burnout forced Mark to redefine ambition + productivity

The surprising story behind the iconic Disappointment Panda

Why every new level of success comes with a new set of problems

How childhood identities shape the way we navigate adulthood

The fear of changing when relationships depend on the old version of you

Why people lie to themselves—and how denial keeps us stuck

Mark's journey from self-help obsession to self-acceptance

Philosophies that shaped Mark's work, including Buddhism, existentialism, and Carl Rogers

Resources:

Instagram: @markmanson

LinkedIn: @markmanson

Twitter: @markmanson

YouTube: @IAmMarkManson

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