Mark Manson’s 3 Harsh Truths About Love EP 1485

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1:01Generally, that is the definition of a toxic relationship is a relationship where love is present, but respect and or trust is not. But the love kind of, it's almost like a drug. It's in a lot of ways, we psychologically behave with love the way addicts behave with their substance, which is we justify it. We delude ourselves. We lie to ourselves. And so we have to be very careful. Love can be an absolutely incredible thing. It's one of life's greatest experiences, but proceed with caution. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

1:38And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

1:55Mark, you are a three-time, number one New York Times bestselling author of one of the hit books, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***, as well as many other titles. You've sold over 20 million copies, been translated into more than, I think, 65 or 75 languages now, and you've reached number one in more than a dozen countries. You've got a film that you've put out that was worldwide released by Universal Pictures, and you've got so much more great content. Thank you, my man, for being here. Good to be back, sir. Very excited. I was just telling you earlier that you are looking healthier than ever before, happier, and healed and whole than ever before.

2:34And as the guy who taught us how to not care about certain things, but really care about the most important things, I'm so grateful that you are in a healthy, whole place for your life. Because I remember saying to you, it was like a few years ago, not the pink, but at the height of this book's popularity, probably had a lot going on all at once. You didn't look energetically as healthy as you are now. And I want to talk about that at some point in this conversation about how success is not always tied to happiness, health, peace, love and fulfillment of course but what i would love to talk about first is about love and relationships because you've been in a healthy happy relationship at least based on the video i watched of yours with your wife for seven plus years you've written a book about love and relationships you've written tons of articles about it um you've been single you've been in relationships in the past and now you're in a happy relationship and i wanted to ask you what is the thing that you believe most people get wrong about love and about happy conscious love i think the biggest mistake people make is they assume that love is always a good thing like love doesn't necessarily make your relationship happy it amplifies whatever emotion is already there So if it's an unhealthy relationship that's full of jealousy, envy, disrespect, the love will actually amplify that.

4:17It'll make the jealousy even worse. It'll make the disrespect more painful. If there's happiness, respect, trust, joy, the love will amplify that. So it's love by itself doesn't fix a relationship. It doesn't necessarily make the relationship good. It takes what's already there and multiplies it by 10. Wow. I've actually heard that about money, but I haven't heard that with love where you hear if someone gets more money, it amplifies who they are. Yeah. And I've never heard that about love. Yeah. I mean, people, I think a lot of it is just the romantic movies and stories. and you know we tend to glorify romance right we tend to glorify love but think about it like what are the most who are the people who hurt you the most in your life people you love it's the people you love the most right like it's and it's not just romantic partners it's parents siblings kids like it's brands yeah yeah the more you love somebody the more vulnerable you are uh because the more any sort of pain or disrespect or, um, antagonism, it just gets amplified.

5:26Interesting. Have you ever felt in a lot of pain in, in your current relationship with your wife? Have you felt like, of course, really? Yeah, of course. I mean, it it's, here's the thing, like, but you guys are happy. Yes. It's healthy, right? Yes. So it's pain and conflict is normal across all relationships i mean humans are just we're human right so we're gonna we're gonna pick fights and one day she's gonna be cranky or one day i'm gonna be stressed out and turn around and take it out on her like it's it's there's no such thing as a relationship that that you don't have bumps in the road or some sort of conflict what determines whether a relationship is healthy or not is how quickly you recover from those bumps or those conflicts and move on from it.

6:18You repair how quickly you repair the pain. Now, this is something I think is fascinating because I don't think there's a lot of relationships where someone in the relationship, you're kind of at equal levels financially, maybe notoriety or success, but then all of a sudden one person in a relationship gets this overwhelmingly amount of success and awareness the way you did you know not many people in the world experience that sure how did you navigate staying in a healthy happy relationship um or maybe you weren't able to for a period of time as you started to sell millions of copies of your book you're on all the press and everyone wants to talk about you and you're making more money than you ever had before yeah where it wasn't as equal both financially or success-wise?

7:09How did you guys navigate love with you accelerating that? It's funny. That really didn't put a whole lot of stress on the relationship. Really? And I think a lot of it... So what I've noticed, and this isn't limited to romantic partnerships. This is every relationship in life. And I don't know, maybe you've experienced some of this, but when you experience a lot of success, professionally, reputation, financially, whatever um the way the people around you react is very reflective of their relationship to their own wealth financial success fame whatever right so what i noticed is that people in my life who judged themselves by how much money they made suddenly got weird around me really whereas people who didn't judge themselves by how much money they made were totally they were happy for me they're totally cool with it not a big deal uh people who very much judged themselves by how famous they were how much attention they got got weird a little bit of jealousy a little bit of envy uh people who didn't give a about that you know they're like cool happy for you man yeah uh so with my wife we're very fortunate in that that was never honestly like she's an immigrant i think moving to the united states and and dealing with the culture shock and the the cultural differences and language barriers i think that's been a bigger challenge than simply you know my success she's just been incredibly supportive very happy for me um you know no no sort of like now i i think give myself a little bit of credit here because it's it's not just she hasn't just been amazing about it but also i didn't let it go to my head right like it's i think the other side of it is if i came home from a book tour or something and she's like hey can you take out the trash and i'm like do you know who i am like right this is beneath me like how dare you ask me to take out the garbage um you know i heard the relationship yeah that that also causes problems so i think it it requires both people to uh keep perspective about what it actually means knowing i mean experiencing what you've experienced now with the success and the money that has come you didn't have that before you got married right No.

9:46Would you have any different conversations or would you have, I don't know, set more ground rules or anything like that, knowing what you know now? or would you give anyone else advice or an opinion about, hey, if one of you is really driven in a relationship to go earn or create or be a famous artist or whatever, and that might happen in the future, here are some things you should talk about to be aware of those changes. What would you share? I think it would just, I think it's very important to have deep discussions about, and this is probably good for any marriage, like whether somebody's driven or not, this is probably healthy for every marriage is like, have some very deep and serious discussions of what money means to each person.

10:38Some people put a lot of their self-esteem into money. Some people don't. Some people are very conservative with money. Some people are not. Some people have a lot of moral beliefs around money, right? Like if you make too much money, you should give it all away or you're that means you're selfish or you know whatever uh some people don't have those sorts of moral beliefs tied with money so i think it's it's probably the most important thing is just get very very clear with your partner uh what are each other's beliefs around finances and wealth uh especially because you know the number one cause of divorce is financial differences isn't that crazy yeah so it doesn't matter how much you love someone but people get hurt or break up because of money.

11:26Yeah, I guess. So love, love isn't enough. It's not enough. I mean, I think in your video, which I want to link up where you talk about love and relationships with your wife, which I think is powerful. You mentioned how love is, I think, I think your wife said love is 50 % of the equation to making a, a happy relationship, a healthy relationship. And I think to preview is like 35 or 40 % or something. and then I think you mentioned values as being a big part and a few other things um do you remember what those were for you besides values and other things that make a healthy relationship my hierarchy for relationships and this is I mean people can find this in my books my courses like it's trust and respect are tied for number one yeah you can love somebody that I think and I most people have had an experience in their life where they've loved somebody very deeply, but they didn't trust them.

12:23And it doesn't work. It doesn't matter how much you try, how much effort you put in, how much you cry and argue and fight. It's like, if the trust isn't there, it doesn't work. And if the respect isn't there, it's not healthy. Two people can love each other, but if they don't respect each other, they're going to treat each other like yeah and they're gonna justify treating each other like or they're gonna justify tolerating being treated like by saying well i love them so much oh man and maybe it's my fault maybe i deserve this right and so and all i think most of us have been in that relationship before too and it doesn't have a few times yeah it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't end well it's it's rough and it's you know to me that's generally that is the definition of a toxic relationship right is where a relationship where love is present but respect and or trust is not and but the love kind of it's almost like a drug and like it's in a lot of ways we psychologically behave with love the way addicts behave with their substance right which is we justify it we delude ourselves we lie to ourselves.

13:36We rationalize decisions that we make that are completely irrational. Um, and so we have to be very careful. Like it's, it's love can be an absolutely incredible thing. It's one of life's greatest experiences. I think everybody should absolutely experience it, but proceed with caution. Right, right, right, right. Now you're, I mean, I'm having you share from personal experience obviously you're not like a love coach and this is not what you study full-time although you've done a lot of research around this you've done a lot of studies and written about this a lot but how much does your environment affect love yeah and how you feel and connect with your partner I'm speaking about personally with you and maybe the research you've done you were you were in a busy chaotic environment in New York city and now you're in a different environment you know uh in california yeah how does that change or does it change the connection you have with your partner i think it can love isn't something you simply sit and feel it's something you put into action right like you go on date nights together you um go out with friends together you visit each other's families you um go on a vacation together right like it's it's something you do sit and feel it but you also have to go live it you have to like kind of keep it's something you have to keep in motion by doing things together and so i think when the environment changes the nature of those activities you do together it can also change and it's been interesting actually moving to la from new york New York, there's so much to do all the time.

15:25So there's always, in a lot of ways, it's conducive to generating romance because there's always an adventure to go through that. Yeah, stimulus when you walk out the door. There's always a concert or a show or some great restaurant that's just opening. And so there's always this feeling of novelty and excitement. But there's also a lot of distraction, right? So if something's like brewing under the surface and people don't want to address it, you can find a lot of ways to keep your hands looking the other way, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's been interesting coming here to California and having a way more sedentary, well, I shouldn't say sedentary, but like calm lifestyle, domestic, I think is the right word.

16:18So there's less novelty and stimulation and there's also less distraction. I've noticed that since we've been here, things that come up, we tend to talk about it pretty much immediately just because we're sitting in our backyard and have nothing else to talk about. So in some ways that's fantastic because we're very aligned and on the same page, but at the same time you're kind of giving up some of that excitement and novelty and stimulation as well. Yeah, the serendipity of the adventure that's happening right now. You're planning and you have to drive somewhere as opposed to walk outside and take the subway or whatever.

16:59Yeah. Trust and respect, it sounds like, are big for you. I know you talk about values also. Sure. if you have, I mean, we're just speaking hypothetically here, but if you have trust and respect that is there, you got a lot of love. Values aren't really aligned. Maybe 30 to 50%, but you're not over 50 % on values. Is love, trust, and respect enough to sustain a long-term healthy relationship in your mind? I think that's a really good question and I think it depends. So I don't think you'll ever find two people that are 100 % aligned on values. Everybody is a little bit different, right? So, and you, I think you also want a little bit of diversity of values within the relationship.

17:51You want to have different standards for, for different things and different opinions about different issues. It just makes life way more interesting. There's probably a threshold or a breaking point somewhere, right? And it's, you know, one of the examples I've used in a book before is like, if somebody is a priest and the other person's a stripper, like it doesn't matter how in love they are with each other. It's never going to work, right? if people have very very fundamental belief differences and this kind of comes back to the money thing I think the handful of things that seem to come up all the time are differences of beliefs around money, differences of beliefs around religion and differences of beliefs kids or around kids and family and I think if you can probably survive not being aligned on one of those.

18:55But if you're not aligned on two or all of them, you're probably in trouble. You're probably just going to butt heads over and over again. Now, what if someone evolves their values over time, you know, five, 10, 15 years into the relationship? You know what? I actually don't have those beliefs and that lifestyle choice anymore. I'm going to try something different. Yeah. Do you think the love of the past, the history of the relationship can sustain if it's too much of a conflict around those lifestyle choices or beliefs? I think to a certain extent, first of all, everybody does evolve. Their values do evolve and change.

19:35Like, I think that's just natural to, to, to people. I think the challenge within relationships is, you know, generally when relationships start, when you commit to somebody, it's because there is some amount of alignment and it's working. But as the years go on, if you start to evolve in two different directions, that can cause a lot of strain. You often hear married couples that are getting divorced or people who have been together for a long time and are deciding to get divorced. They say like, we've become two different people or I don't recognize him or her anymore. And I think that that's a case of like, We were 10 years ago, we were completely aligned and we've both changed and evolved over the years.

20:22And my partner's gone this way and I've gone this way. And so now there's just this massive gap and we don't feel like we can bridge it anymore. We don't relate to each other. We don't understand each other. We don't agree on anything anymore. We don't do the same things for fun anymore. And that's, that's tough. And so I think part of the trick is to kind of intentionally evolve together is to be very conscious. And this is something that my wife and I try to pay attention to is that if I feel myself changing my mind about something very significant in my life, about my career, my beliefs around family, relationships with friends, I communicate that with her.

21:08I'm like, hey, I'm starting to move in this direction. Really? So that just so she can be aware and adapt, you know, and just understand like, okay, that's kind of where he's at. Huh. Is there an example you can share on this in the last few years maybe? So the two most significant ones that have happened have been around. First one was my career. When we moved to LA, I took six months off. I was completely burnt out. Yeah. Um, and it's, I really had this period of just, I'm not having fun anymore. I need to take some time off, figure myself out and really decide like, okay, what's this next phase of my career going to look like?

21:52What's the next decade of Mark Manson's career look like? And so I communicated that to her. I'm like, Hey, I'm not going to be speaking, not going to be traveling. I'm going to be at home a lot. Uh, you're probably going to see me on the couch playing video games. you know this is kind of what i'm going through right now right and and i'm probably going to come out of that different with different priorities different metrics of how i'm going to make decisions um money might be different right like suddenly that huge speaking gig in dubai that i would have taken a year ago to cash that fat check now i'm not going to take it and we're not going to get that fat check right so it's it's you it's important to communicate those things that she understands like hey i'm at this pivot point my career and i'm probably going to start going to different directions just so that she knows and like isn't shocked right when i don't take the speaking gig and do that um on the other front this dies in the health thing she was actually really good she was a good influence on me she so my wife has a couple autoimmune conditions and they really started she's been aware of them for a long time but you know as things happen as you get older uh things you could get away with he can't anymore yeah in your 20s it's like you know you gotta pay attention and focus on them you start coming up on 40 and it's just like they level you and she was starting to get leveled by him and so starting right around the the time of the pandemic she she got very very serious about health and i at that time i had been overweight for a while my lifestyle was very unhealthy i was traveling five six months a year i was drinking three four nights a week um eating like crap eating junk food their desserts all the time and and i was aware of that but it just you know on that totem pole of priorities it was pretty low the priority list uh but she got super serious about it and and she really did because she she didn't have a choice like it was was affecting her health yeah yeah like i mean she it was to the point where she could barely function throughout the day wow if she wasn't being very very intentional about what she was eating she was feeling sick yeah yeah and so she started kind of going on this journey and really cleaning up her diet and getting her health in order and I started kind of becoming the beneficiary of that because she does most of the cooking.

24:26So I'm starting to eat healthy a lot more often. We're not going out as much, not drinking as much and I'm starting to feel better. And I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm waking up bright eyed, bushy tail feeling pretty good. Right. Uh, and it it's, you know, and she and I were in communication about that and she was very clear, like, this is, I need to make this a top priority in my life and I'm going to become that person who like doesn't eat dairy doesn't eat gluten like doesn't eat sugar and I was like oh this is oh god this is gonna suck like my life's gonna get so boring and actually the opposite happened is that it's I've kind of followed her on that um she's been a very positive influence in that way in that I started to notice benefits and I said, you know, my health has been pretty terrible the last five years.

25:19I'm getting up in my thirties. Like I'm not bouncing back the way I used to 10 years ago. Maybe I just hop on, on this train with her. Right. And see where it goes. And, and that's, that's a big part of what happened. And, um, and so now health has kind of become a big priority in my life. Yeah, man. It's interesting because when I saw you, it was a month ago or something at VidCon, I recognized you, but I didn't recognize you. It was like, oh, there's Mark, but you don't look like Mark. You know what I mean? I was like, what? Who are you? You know what I mean? Maybe I haven't seen you in years, but I'd seen your content online.

25:59I'd seen your YouTube videos, but I mean, you just look like a new human being. And your aura, your energy is vibrant and healthy. Yeah. And even just looking back at some of your old videos before getting on this interview, I was like, man, you look a little rough around the edges. I mean, I've been there too at different times in my life. You know what I mean? I've been there as well. It's not like I've always the, you know, perfect health, but it's amazing when we make health a value and you have a partner who's all on board with you. My girlfriend's the same way. We're like all on board on it.

26:35And it's amazing how the relationship I feel like is also healthier. Doesn't mean it's perfect and there's not disagreements or challenges, but when you both have health as a priority, it's incredible feeling. What have been the benefits you've seen of her starting this health journey and you aligning to it? Yeah. Like with the relationship, not just your body and your health. I mean, it's been so important. first of all, it just makes it so much easier for both of us. Yeah. Right. Like I'm, if she's not ordering desserts, then that's one, that's one more temptation. I don't have to fight off.

27:15Right. You know? And, and it's the same for her as well. It's like, if I'm not like buying, ordering bottles of wine, you know, every weekend, like she doesn't have to sit there and ask herself, Oh, do I want one too? Right. So it, it, you really do kind of compound each other's success in that regard. Uh, And I think that's probably true with a lot of lifestyle habits, but it's, it's also just, I don't know, we just so much more energy. Yes. Like just more vitality. It's funny because our idea in, you know, when we lived in New York, our idea of quality time together was going to a happy hour, having a bunch of drinks, maybe going to a show or something, staying out to like 12 or one.

28:01now our idea of quality time is like going on a hike at like eight in the morning exactly man it's a great great feeling yeah and it's um it's different but it's like it's not it's not any less significant it's it's less exciting but it's it's long term it's more meaningful yeah more fulfilling yeah yeah more sustainable absolutely more sustainable way more sustainable yeah um i guess it would be challenging if someone was like you know i'm gonna start being vegan and the other person's me and then it's like okay that's a different type of lifestyle but it's just hard you gotta learn how to evolve with the person it sounds like yeah or at least accommodate each other accommodate yeah except yeah not make wrong not judge it's like all right you're vegan now like i'll i'll figure it out yeah yeah exactly who knows in the next year she may become vegan.

28:55You never know, being out in LA. What is the thing that you've learned the most since the rise of your success through books and everything you've done? What is the thing you used to believe was true before or at the height of those things rising that you don't necessarily agree with now? Was there a value or belief or a thought that maybe you even taught in the book or in a blog or something where you're like, this is the way where you're like, you know what? Maybe it's not the way. Yeah. You know, what's funny. It's, it's actually kind of the reverse of that, which is. So first of all, the answer to your question is 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 what after that like 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 gonna 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 and so once my career really took off and i hit a bunch but a bunch of those moonshot goals that i had dreamed about i looked around i still had problems in fact i had like bigger problems in a lot of ways bigger problems and and that just messed with me really yeah i just it really it really messed with me um how did they make you feel or what did they tell you about life what did it teach you i think again it's it's it's not so it's not so much that i like believe things beforehand that weren't true it's just there were there were things that i didn't account for or think about and one of those two was that the the higher on the mountain you get the 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 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 People don't like it.

31:37Like suddenly there's repercussions to that. Did you ever experience that? Uh, I definitely had like some controversy. I've never been like canceled. Right. Uh, but. You had some criticism or negative feedback. Yeah. 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. People. It's funny. Cause now in hindsight, I can recognize it. Like everybody was just so hypersensitive. Oh my God. Everything. People off. Like you could say anything and it was, it wouldn't have anything that you were wrong. Wouldn't have anything to do with politics or vaccines or COVID and nothing like nothing to do with it.

32:20And people find a way to construe it and be like, oh, you're one of those. And like, blah, blah, blah. Um, yeah. Yeah. So there were, there were a few moments like in that period that I just got ravaged by a percentage of my audience. Right. Mainly 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. It sucks, man. I mean, it just, it is, I can honestly say writing, newsletters in 2020 is the least fun my job has ever been wow because it was and i remember talking to my team and it was like man i writing 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.

33:28I think this is one of the things that most people don't understand about having 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's 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.

34:06Yes. And can anyone get away from that pressure with having some type of success? I don't think so. Because I mean, it's by definition, success is doing something extraordinarily rare something that 99.99 % of other people either haven't done or can't do right and once you've kind of reached that level of uniqueness it's there there's a lot of expectation that's put on you um like it's you have an audience of millions now. So you, 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, when you have a, 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?

35:11Like 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. Dudes in their 20s. So it's, you know, what's going to 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 is measured in millions, there's such a massive amount of diversity that that it kind of feels like there's landmines everywhere. Right? It's like... Oh, man, that's a good analogy. Yeah, it's good. I can see by the look on your face you relate to what I'm saying. You have to be cautious about what you're putting out there.

35:56Totally. Jokes that in your head are completely innocuous. Right, right. Didn't even thought for two seconds about it. There's somebody somewhere in some country that you've never even been to were thought of that is like extremely offended and you get that email and you're like oh all right so we'll make that joke again you know and it's um so i this isn't i always feel a little awkward like getting into this subject because it's i never want to look like uh you know the whining right oh woe is me yeah the whining million number one your time best seller like like it's i wouldn't trade anything like i wouldn't go back but it's it's um 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 i would i 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 what if this thing does 10x your expectations what if you do hit that moonshot in your 32 like then what what are you gonna do right and what think about the expectations that are gonna be put on you think about the pressures that are gonna be put on you um again like didn't think about it until it happened but a book publisher treats you very very differently uh when you've sold millions of books than when you haven't sold a thing right like when you haven't sold a thing it's funny because when you talk to authors authors kind of universally complain like my publisher doesn't do anything they barely respond to my emails and it's like yeah because you haven't done anything for them well once you've done something for them and they care a lot well that introduces its own series of problems which is like every word you write every chapter you send to them is like scrutinized and nitpicked and like well we actually don't like this chapter why don't you go rewrite it and it's it's um so it is the stakes rise proportional to the success and i think there's this assumption that when you are um at the bottom of the mountain and there are very low stakes and failure doesn't cost you very much there's this assumption it's like well if i get to the top everything's gonna be great uh i can do whatever i want i don't have to worry about any like repercussions because i'll be rich and famous whatever and it's like actually it's it's a lot of ways it's the reverse it's like you what you once you have tons of stuff to lose you start questioning everything you do and you start wondering if every decision is gonna like you know be the wrong decision you think that being more successful would give you more self-confidence yeah but for a lot of people it actually diminishes their self-confidence, after a period of time, they start to second guess the next moves, right?

38:49Can I be as successful? What if I lose it? I need to be careful about what I say now. Whereas before, people were willing to take more risks when they didn't have anything to lose, right? They were like, let me try this thing and this thing and I wouldn't hit. Okay, let's try another thing. How does someone prepare themselves for success to keep their self-confidence and expand it, not in tim their light yeah i mean honestly the thing that ultimately worked for me is to just kind of maintain that bottom of the mountain mindset and in a lot of ways you know there's like a famous cliche about you know there's you get to the top of the mountain you realize there's a taller mountain behind it you know and so it's like figuring out what that taller mountain is right and like and a lot of times you you just invent it like you just pick something out of You're like, you know what?

39:39Like I'll make this my mountain. Right. And it's, but it's, it's finding that so that you can, because there's a certain amount of, uh, freedom and maneuverability that comes with, um, seeing yourself as a beginner, seeing yourself as somebody who like doesn't have anything to lose or doesn't have all the answers. And, and for me, it's been psychologically very, very beneficial to find a way to keep that and not put all of my identity and self-worth into that because if I did that, then I'd be terrified to get out of bed in the morning. So when you were saying that, for those just listening, you're pointing at the book, putting your self-worth and identity into the success of the book, right?

40:25What should we put our identity and self-worth into if it's not into our accomplishments, our career or our wealth yeah uh it's a great question i personally believe that the you should treat your identity or your self-worth uh the same way you treat a good investment portfolio which is you diversify it across a lot of things that are not correlated to one another uh so the same way you know you want to split up your money between stocks and bonds and cash and real estate, because those things don't always move in the same direction at the same time. You want to put your self-esteem in things that aren't going to go north or south at the same time.

41:10That's interesting. Yeah. For someone listening or watching, what does that look like in a day-to-day life? For me, those categories, I do think it's very important. You should have a lot of your self-esteem tied up in your career and accomplishments. I think good. That's healthy. That's good. Like your skill sets, the things you're learning and developing and the impact you're making. You spend half your waking hours working on something. So you should care about that something and you should take some amount of pride in it. Like, I think that's healthy. But, you know, with that, I would put relationships, um, both family and friendships.