The Truth About Success | Mark Manson

0:00How's the new place? Get your Wi-Fi figured out? I got T-Mobile 5G home internet and I'm loving it. It's the fastest 5G home internet. My old provider was so slow. Mine is slow. And only 35 bucks a month. Do I need to try this? Try it for 15 days. Love it or get your money back. I love it already. There are over 250 reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours and check availability at T-Mobile.com slash home internet. that this is according to oculus b test intelligence data second half of 2025 all rights reserved redeem money back guarantee within 30 days of cancellation hi my name is lewis house and welcome to the daily motivation show what is the thing that you've learned the most since the rise of your success through books and everything you've done I think early in my career, I was so driven and just set on, like I had some really moonshot goals in my head and I was just so set on them and so driven to achieve them that I never really stopped and asked myself like, what after that?

1:04Like, you know, let's say you get there. Now what? Then what? Thought never even crossed my mind. I think there was just kind of this implicit assumption that like, once I get there, everything's going to be gravy. So why worry about it? And the irony is that a huge part of that book is saying exactly the opposite of that, which is you never get away from problems in life. You just upgrade your problems, right? It's like success isn't the elimination of problems. Success is just getting better problems. So once my career really took off and I hit a bunch of those moonshot goals that I had dreamed about, I looked around and I still had problems.

1:46In fact, I had like bigger problems. In a lot of ways, bigger problems. And that just messed with me. Really? Yeah, it just, it really messed with me. How did it make you feel or what did it tell you about life? What did it teach you? It's not so much that I like believe things beforehand that weren't true. It's just there were things that I didn't account for or think about. And one of those two was that the higher on the mountain you get, the larger the stakes are. right so it's like if nobody knows who your name is and you post an article online and people hate it nobody cares yeah three people so yeah yeah you just delete the account open a new one start over right like nobody will ever know you know it's if you've you've sold 10 million books and you post an article online and people don't like it like suddenly there's repercussions to that did you ever experience that i've never been like canceled right uh but get some criticism or negative feedback.

2:42Yeah, I definitely had some pieces. Really? Oh yeah, that got a lot of blowback, especially back in 2020. Really? Like what was the topic or? It's funny because now in hindsight, I can recognize it. Like everybody was just so... Hypersensitive. Oh my God. Everything. Like you could say anything and it wouldn't have anything to do with politics or vaccines or COVID. Nothing. Like it had nothing to do with it. And people find a way to construe it and be like, oh, you're one of those and like blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so there were a few moments like in that period that I just got ravaged by a percentage of my audience.

3:23Right. Maybe just because I got lumped in with some sort of cause or political group or ideology or whatever, and they assumed that I was part of that and they just went to town on me. How does that make you feel, though, once you're at that level of success? Oh, it sucks. I can honestly say writing newsletters in 2020 is the least fun my job has ever been. I remember talking to my team and it was like writing a newsletter every week in 2020. It was like, it's like being in a boxing ring and getting knocked down and like getting up and knowing you're about to get knocked out again. Wow. Because it's just, it felt like you couldn't say anything that you just wouldn't get ripped apart for.

4:02I think this is one of the things that most people don't understand about having, you know, a goal be achieved on some level greater than where you're at. Let's say you don't really have that much or no one follows you. Not that many people know about you, except for your inner circle of friends and family. And then all of a sudden, a thousand times more people are aware of you. A million times more people are aware of you within a period of a year, a couple of years. And it grows. I don't think people understand that there is a whole different level of pressure that can come with that. There's a lot of privilege and opportunities and amazing things, but it's like people don't know that you have to deal with a different type of pressure.

4:38Yes. Can anyone get away from that pressure with having some type of success? I don't think so. By definition, success is doing something extraordinarily rare, something that 99.99 % of other people either haven't done or can't do. Right. Right. And once you've kind of reached that level of uniqueness, there's a lot of expectation that's put on you. You have an audience of millions now, so you're supposed to say something more empathetic or interesting or intelligent or whatever. The other thing that happens to you, and I think this is particularly inherent with our line of work, which is having audiences, is that when your audience is relatively small, like let's say a thousand people or even 10 ,000 people, that's usually it's going to be a pretty homogenous group, right?

5:26Like when I started my career, I specifically wrote dating advice for young men. And so my first 10 ,000 people in my audience, it was all 24 year old guys in their twenties. Like it's so it's, you know, what's going to piss them off and you know, what's not. And once you reach kind of the level where we're at, where, where it's your audience audience is measured in millions, there's such a massive amount of diversity that it kind of feels like there's landmines everywhere. I can see by the look on your face, you, you relate to what I'm saying. You have to be cautious about what you're putting out there.

6:01Totally. Jokes that in your head are completely innocuous. Right, right. Like didn't even thought for two seconds about it. You know, there's somebody somewhere in some country that you've never even been to or thought of that is like extremely offended. And you get that email and you're like, Oh, all right. I'll make that joke again. You know? And I always feel a little awkward like getting into this subject because it's i never want to look like you know the whining right oh woe is me yeah the whining million number one york time best seller like it like it's i wouldn't trade anything like i wouldn't go back again if i could go back to myself say six months before everything blew up or took off what would you have said or what do you wish you would have known to prepare yourself.

6:47I wish I would have known, or what I would say to myself is like, you need to start thinking about contingency plan. You know, it's like, what if this thing does 10x your expectations? What if you do hit that moonshot in your 32? Then what? What are you going to do? Right? Think about the expectations that are going to be put on you. Think about the pressures that are going to be put on you.

7:16I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

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8:47Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

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