Mark Manson on why we should start saying no - Handpicked

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1:56Hey everyone, it's Jake and Damien here, and this is handpicked where we go back into the archives of the High Performance Podcast and pick out some of our most interesting guests and look at the most interesting parts of that conversation. So this time, Jake, it's you doing the heavy lifting here. So who have you chosen for us? I've gone back to our episode with Mark Manson, the author who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-U-C-K. And I just wanted to pick out two or three things in that conversation with him that I still think about now. Go on. So what's the first one? So the first one is especially relevant to you and I as parents, right?

2:32And I think all parents fall into this trap of praising our children constantly, telling them they're special, telling them that they're unique, telling them that they can do anything they want in this world. Mark has a different viewpoint. Should we listen to what he said? Go on. Like growing up, I was told I was special and unique and extraordinary and blah, blah, blah. And I hadn't done a fucking thing. you know so it's i think it's um and look i i've actually you know there is there is some research i have seen on this and i i believe what it says is that generally speaking you want to compliment your kids for effort not for necessarily like who they are like so you don't want to you don't want to tell them like oh you're so smart you're so talented you're so brilliant before they've done anything.

3:24You want them to do something and then say, you were so brilliant at that. You were so talented at that. So it's almost like you praise the action, not their identity. So there's Mark really, Damien, saying, and I think it's absolutely brilliant advice, that you should praise someone's effort, not someone's sort of natural ability. And I can understand that. You know, it's so easy to want to tell your children and even your friends sometimes and those around you that you love that they can do anything and they can be anything that they want. And I think especially when you're talking to young minds, you know, I've got a 10 and 8 year old.

4:03I think if you just tell them that they're great without reminding them that they're great for a reason or that they can do great things, I think you are actually setting them up for a fall. So often we speak on this podcast about resilience and the importance of resilience. you know Bear Grylls was the guy that said help your children to build their resilient muscle so when they leave school they can deal with knockbacks and setbacks well telling them that they are just going to be brilliant almost is the same as removing their resilience because they then assume great whatever I do regardless of effort or hard work or commitment or consistency or determination it'll all be fine because I'm naturally great it's really unhealthy and actually they need to understand from a young age that the more you put in the more you get out I think it's really important that we let people know that we're learning as much as the listener on this so what have you done differently then on the back of Mark's comment with Seb and Flo very very simple point out why things have gone well for them when they have gone well so Seb just started playing football in a football team this first season and really struggled for the first few games because he just had never played football before so the sort of the the stuff you take for granted like the natural positioning talking on the pitch you know being in the being in a place to find the ball he was really hiding he was always making sure there was someone between him and the football so he didn't have to get the football and it was only after he stopped doing those things that you instead of saying you're brilliant I was saying look at what you're now doing that is brilliant and then I actually started filming little clips I don't you know I don't want to come across like some crazy pushy parent but it was really helpful for him because he couldn't understand when I was saying oh you if you were in this position you definitely would have got the football he was like confused understandably so I was giving him more information by showing him a clip and saying you do that and see what happens then he would do that and remarkably he got the ball and good things happen it's the same with Florence and she plays a lot of hockey she does a lot of dancing I have to say she is constantly in a leotard in the kitchen stretching trying to do the splits doing her dance moves and stuff so then it becomes about when a good thing happens at her dance group pointing out the reason why that happened is because of all those extra hours that you've put into doing the practice in the rehearsal not going see i told you you were naturally talented because that's the wrong message so what's the next message that you took from mark's conversation with us the next message is about context and understanding that um even when great things happen to you you can feel like they're not great if you compare yourself to other people and other circumstances i think i should let mark manson tell the story i'm a big metal fan and dave mustaine is he was the first lead guitarist of metallica and he actually got kicked out of metallica um and be right before metallica recorded their first album now obviously that that's a terrible thing but dave mustaine was super interesting in that he got very pissed off and he said, I'm going to use this as fuel.

7:09He did all the things that we all talk about that you should do when you have a setback or a failure or whatever. He said, I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to make a better band. I'm going to sell more records. I'm going to sell more albums, do bigger tours, et cetera, et cetera. And so he created Megadeth. And I think to this day, he's sold 100 million records. He's tour, done stadium tours around the world. He's grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. He's one of the biggest rock musicians in history. The problem is the band that he was kicked out of is a group of even bigger rock musicians in history.

7:44And so there's this fascinating documentary, I think it happened in the early 2000s, where in an interview, he had tears in his eyes and he said, I still feel like a failure because I'm still the guy who got kicked out of Metallica. I'm not It doesn't matter how many records I sell. It doesn't matter how many stadiums I play to. I'm not Metallica. They've done more. They've sold more records. They've done bigger tours. And so I still feel like a failure. And to me, it's just such a fascinating demonstration that the way we define success for ourselves is so precarious. And you have to be really, really careful because Dave Mustaine is a great example of he defined success for himself in a way that was very helpful early in his career.

8:31He was like, oh, those guys kicked me out of their band. Fuck those guys. I'm going to be bigger and better and more successful than them. And that helped him get started and it helped him sell a bunch of records and everything. But jump ahead 20 years and that definition of success became a prison for him and it prevented him from appreciating anything that he had accomplished, from enjoying any of the successes that he had had to me it's just it's it's just a really fascinating uh cautionary tale of be be careful how you're measuring yourself dave mustane what a brilliant story that is i know and i think that when you have it to the level of metallica and mega death right two incredible bands that had incredible success then it leaves you with no questions he's talking about an elite musician and i guarantee you that there are footballers and business leaders and entertainers and formula one drivers and golfers all around the world living in a state of unhappiness because they're seeing other people achieve more than them let's just get it absolutely right once and for all there will always be someone who is achieving more than you are achieving that is fine it's about you finding your own version of high performance and comparing your own success to other people's is never good i mean what i often say now and the way that that changed my thinking is i will sometimes see someone do something really cool and think bloody hell i wish i'd done that but then i remind myself that there's someone else somewhere in the world that i haven't even seen doing something way cooler than the person i've just seen do something cool right so if if we knew what everyone was doing we would all constantly feel in a state of underwhelm and it's really unhealthy for us brilliant so have you got one more example of it because i remember when we had this conversation with mark that you were loving it you were buzzing afterwards in our reflections yes um i'm just trying to work out which one i should go with i mean there was a great conversation we had about him being at his most down and depressed after the biggest success of his life which was his book he spoke to us about the psychological power of being at the bottom of the mountain not the top and the fact that he's learned to enjoy the climb rather than the view at the top, which again is really good for people.

10:49But I would probably go back to when we had a conversation about him writing Will Smith's book with Will Smith. He said he needed to take time out. It was then a really big test for him that this incredible offer came along. And actually, he spoke about freedom when he discussed Will Smith's book. I'll let him explain in more detail, but you're about to hear Mark Manson explain why actually it felt great to write someone else's book rather than his own. I think that book was actually one of the only things that kept me sane through that period because it wasn't about me. It was almost a relief to work on that book because I didn't have to come up with the ideas.

11:28I didn't have to go through the insecurity and self-doubt of like, oh, people get to judge me for this, whatever. It's like, oh, it's him. Nobody's getting... If people think he's an idiot for doing this, it's not my problem. So his book was a little bit of a respite in that way. But yeah, it does take a lot of courage. And I think it does require... There's something kind of paradoxical. And this happens not just with work. It happens in human relationships. It happens in a lot of areas of life. Whereas as soon as you're willing to lose something, people want to give it to you. People respect you more.

12:08They're more accommodating. And so it's this weird thing where like, as soon as you're like, you know what? I'm willing to let this go. I'm willing to lose this. Not only do you kind of liberate yourself, but the people who are leaning on you to perform are often like, oh shit, I don't want to lose this guy. I remember that clip really clearly. So what was it that resonated with you on that one, Jake? I think it was the bit he mentioned at the end there about the fact that he didn't have to do it. And if you're willing to not do something, inadvertently you get more. And I'm a really bad person at this.

12:50Like, I hate letting people down. I'm a bit like you, a real people pleaser. I say yes to absolutely everything. And then when I'm in the middle of doing that thing, I'm thinking, why the bloody hell did I say yes to this? It's the last thing that I need. And I think I do it out of a fear of the fact that I'm self-employed. there's probably a little underlying thing about what if the phone doesn't ring tomorrow or therefore ring ever again so i better say yes to everything and actually sometimes saying no having standards having boundaries having a red line for something actually doesn't make you uh less attractive to someone it makes you more attractive to someone it means that they come to you with a different offer or a better offer or they come back for more so sometimes the best thing you can say to someone is i'm too busy or i've got too much on my plate or that doesn't work for me at the moment but you know what keep on asking and eventually we might find the thing that i'm able to say yes to so is that part of the reason then by this summer you put a boundary in place of you were taking some definitive time off and allowing yourself to recharge yeah 100 like if i allowed my brain to make the decisions i would work 24 7 so I have to sort of not let my brain do that and I have to let my heart lead which is what really matters and what actually really matters is Florence and Sebastian I read somewhere that really changed the game for me which is by the time your child hits 12 years old you spend 75 % of the time you will ever spend with them because you know you have five or six years till they leave home and even then they're out an awful lot more than they are when they're a little baby and then they're gone and how often do you see you know your parents once a month once every couple of months maybe once every couple of weeks if you're lucky but it's nothing like the intensity of when they're little so the fact that Florence is going to be 12 in a year I've had 75 percent of the time I'm going to spend with her kind of heartbreaking but also really good because it reminds you to make the right decision I've loved this Jake because I think this series of handpicked where we go back through it just reminds us of some of the key lessons that we've been lucky enough to hear firsthand but equally I think it's also powerful for people listening to realize that we're on a journey as well we've not got the answers but we're taking the lessons and trying to implement them in our own lives for sure and if you've heard this little conversation and you want to hear the full episode just search for Mark Manson on the High Performance Podcast and remember there are well over 200 other episodes to choose from and all of them will bring some kind of value to you thanks mate thanks mate loved it Thank you.

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