Moment 48 - 3 Core Principles For A Better Life: Mark Manson

00:01One of the other things that I really loved when I was reading all of your work is this undercurrent of personal responsibility that runs through everything. And in our society, for whatever reason, people don't like that. Some people really don't like that idea of personal responsibility that you might be more so than you believe responsible for the circumstances of your life. Because for some people that shines, that turns the mirror on them and says you've got no one to blame sure it's not the government it's not this that this your uncle whatever it's the decisions you've made and for some people that's a motivating thing it's liberation it's oh i'm in control okay but it feels like some people would rather there be a puppet master to point to um yeah so what's your beliefs and thoughts on personal responsibility the importance of it and if you can as well um like why some people hate it i think uh uh, to me, responsibility is kind of like the, the core understanding. Like if, if there's no personal responsibility, nothing else is ever going to work or improve, you know, to improve anything, you have to believe you have some sort of power influence on it. And if you have some sort of power influence, you are responsible for that power and influence. So if you, if you just

01:18reject the idea that you're responsible for an area of your life, like it's like, I'm not responsible for my shitty relationships. It's all their fault. You're basically disempowering yourself from ever improving them because you're, you're rejecting the idea that you have any influence on them. I think, I think the reason or one reason why people really kind of bristle at the idea is I think we, we tend to mistake responsibility and fault, right? So if, if I, if I'm like a typical dumb American and walk, try to cross the street in London looking the wrong way and I get hit by a car, you know, it's not my fault that I got hit by a car, but it's still my responsibility. Like I still need to take, take control of my recovery. I need to like take care of my body. I need to decide, you know, what I'm going to do.

02:19there's a responsibility in every moment because in every moment we're choosing what to do, what to perceive, what to believe, what to focus on. Like that choice is happening every single moment. And because that is a choice, there's responsibility for that choice, right? I use the example in Subtle Art of like, if somebody left a newborn baby on your doorstep, it's not your fault that there's a baby on your doorstep but it sure shit is your responsibility like you have to do something like you can't you can't just shut the door and be like not my baby like it just doesn't work that way and so i think particularly people who have had a lot of bad things happen in their life and and those things are not their fault it's very very difficult for them to accept responsibility because, well, for a couple of reasons. One is it's once you accept responsibility, it means you have to do something. You have to change something. You have to change your perspective. You have to change your actions. You have to change your beliefs. And all of those things are very uncomfortable. But I think the other thing is that a lot of times people get very attached to their stories, right? So a terrible thing happens to them. It kind of fucks

03:43them up and that becomes their identity. Like that's how they get sympathy from other people. It's how, it's how other people know them. It's the basis of a lot of their relationships. And so they're actually afraid to let it go, right? Like it's, it's actually a scary thing to, to let go of that identity so yeah it's it's a hard thing to do but we all have to kind of go through that struggle it's really interesting it's uh yeah it's something that i see a lot in in our in our culture at the moment specifically with young people because i think instagram has um created more of a community for that kind of like i'm going to just be honest that kind of like self-pitying blame um and the algorithms are now kind of reinforcing that and you know you'll get more likes if you do the yes it's you know i i i heard it referred to as the victimhood olympics yes exactly yeah yeah which is like oh you win yeah like you you've had the worst shit happen here's your medal one of the kind of self-development you know tropes or like you know, piece of advice I hear often that's linked to that is that happiness is a choice.

04:56How do you feel about that phrase? Uh, I mean, I think it's fundamentally true. Obviously, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Um, but it kind of comes back to what I was saying. Like you, I think when people say that, what they're referring to is like in every moment you get to choose what to focus on. Right. So if a car hits me in the middle of the street here, I can either focus on how unlucky I am and how unfair this is and how it fucked up my press trip to the UK and all this stuff.

05:32Or I can focus on something else. I can focus on how fortunate I am to survive. How, you know, and I think this is where kind of like the positive thinking stuff was intended to refer to, you know, like classic self-help of like just think positive. Like this is what it was trying to say, but it kind of got distorted and turned into this weird delusional thing. But it's basically like, you know, in every single moment you are choosing how to see things.

06:02And so in that sense, you can always choose in every moment to see things in a way that makes you feel better. And it's not easy. It's actually really, really hard. But in that sense, happiness can be a choice. Like it's always within your power. There's no person on earth that the happiness has been removed from their brain. Like it's all in there. It's all in you. is just the question of do you know how to access it and will you access it will you choose to and one of the things that does feel like a choice linked to that is the expectations that we we choose for life and you write about how expectations can really be a curse of happiness yeah um how do we so why are expect are our expectations a potential curse and why are they dangerous and how do we set better expectations then well expectations are dangerous because uh you know i think there's a i forget who came up with it but i think it's there's this like old equation where it's like happiness equals reality minus expectations you know so if you have these like huge unreasonable expectations for yourself you're always going to be disappointed but then it's a double-edged sword because if you have like tiny expectations for yourself then you're not

07:16going to try to do anything. So like there, there's this weird balance where, I mean, I, I prefer kind of like more of the Buddhist take, which is like, just don't have expectations. Like just don't expect anything. Is that possible? No, but, but it's kind of like honesty, right? Like it's, it's, you, you never completely get there, but you should still try. And, um, it's, and it's particularly useful I find in, in, in managing anxiety, you know, because anxiety tends to come from, uh, just either irrational or outsized expectations, right? So it's like, you're about to go on stage and talk to a bunch of people and your expectation is like, I'm going to bomb. I'm going to look like a fool, like people are going to laugh at me.

08:05And it's because of that expectation that you start feeling a lot of anxiety, start feeling terrible. Whereas if you just kind of take the expectation of, of, you know, this is just another moment, you know, it's, it's going to happen. People are probably not going to remember it. Like it just is, it's going to be whatever it's going to be. Um, it can eliminate a lot of that. I do that with, with my book launches. Cause obviously like any author, I'm like, I probably was probably the same with you. Like you, you know, that when your book is coming out, like you're like crippled on the floor, like everybody's going to hate me.

08:38They're all going to laugh at me, you know, and it's, to me, it just helps to just remove any assumption of like what it's going to be, you know, don't assume it's going to do well, but don't assume it's going to do poorly. Like it's, it's going to do what it's going to do. And you're going to be fine either way.