The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Mark Manson Discuss What You Should Actually Give a F*** About

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan and Mark Manson (author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) talk about working to figure out your true priorities, the balancing act between independence and conformism, how it feels to be a bestselling author, and more.Mark Manson is a best-selling writer and blogger about living a balance, productive, and ultimately fulfilling life. He has written two New York Times best sellers, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope. Mark also publishes articles and videos about living better on his website, markmanson.net.This episode is brought to you by the Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199. This episode is also brought to you by Raycon, maker of affordable earbuds with incredibly high-quality sound. Raycon earbuds are half the price of more-expensive competitors and sound just as good. With six hours of battery time, seamless Bluetooth pairing, and a great-fitting design, Raycon earbuds are perfect for working out, travel, conference calls, and more. Get 15% off your order when you purchase Raycon earbuds now, just visit buyraycon.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Mark Manson:  Homepage: https://markmanson.net/Twitter: https://twitter.com/IAmMarkMansonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/markmansonFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Markmansonnet/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics.

We interview stowed philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Sort of probably not what you would expect, but I would say the thing that I get the most angry emails about that surprised me is angry notes from seemingly nice people who are very upset that I have dared to occasionally use profanity.

I've used the effort a couple times and obstacles away. A couple times the ego is the enemy. Actually, don't do it any time in the daily still at the book because there was some concerns from Christian bookstores, they just sort of asked if we could avoid it and it didn't end up being a sort of a conflict with a message or that happened. But anyways, occasionally I'll do it in an email or someone will read a book. Anyways, you get like long notes. Why did you do this? You know, it totally destroys your message. How could you, you know, what's wrong with you? Sometimes I point them to Epic Titus' little quote

that when we are upset, we have to realize our mind is complicit in the offense. Although I note the point, and as I've matured and gotten better as a writer, I've tried to curse, I've tried to not curse less, but only do it when it actually helps the point not sort of instinctively naturally. But when I do interviews or I'm talking to friends

that I sort of refer back to my regular in Northern California teenage boy self, all of which is to say, if you are one of those people, you will probably not like this episode. My conversation is with my friend Mark Manson author, the subtle art of not giving a fuck and everything is fucked a book about hope. He also has a great audible book, love is not enough,

which you can check out and a great blog where if he's written all sorts of essays over the years, he started at like me as an internet writer, much more successfully as an internet writer than myself, some incredibly viral blog posts over the years, there's done millions and millions of views. Anyway, Mark is a great guy, fascinating thinker, true philosophy nerd, I would say,

you could talk to him about Chopin Hauer or a Kant, or much more obscure philosophers whose names I won't embarrass myself trying to pronounce. Most of all, I think at the core of Marx, of those two books I mentioned from Marx, there is a strong thread of Zen Buddhism running through his works. Even though he's a very Western guy, there is that sense of Zen Buddhism, and I know that's what Marx practices, and we touch on that a little bit in the interview. It's great to talk to Marx, we talk about not just what success feels like, how you get it,

how somewhat anticlimactic it can be, but we talk about the true message of his books, which is not about not caring, but it's about what the Stokes talk about. It's about caring about the right things and, Mark asked me to blurb the subtle art when it came out. And that was what I said in my blurb. That's what stoic philosophy and philosophy is really about. It's thinking really hard about the things worth thinking about and finding out what things

are worth caring about. And that is the essence of the pursuit that we're all on. And that is also the recipe, the formula for a good and happy life. And so I hope you enjoy my conversation with Mark. I hope you are not too triggered by the curse words. And if you are, I gotta tell you, it's not very still. If you gotta get over it, you can't let a word. And these are just words. Offend you and make you so upset because they don't mean anything. And just relax, man. Just relax. I can't ever imagine hearing someone curse and being so mad that I need to send them an email about it. But you do you all do me, which is mostly going to involve me saying and thinking

whatever I want and you can do the same. So anyway, here's my interview with Mark Manson, enormously bestselling author, runaway bestselling author, incredible hit there with Suttler and everything this fuck has been a massive hit as well. It's a great guy, fellow metalhead and sort of a writing peer and friend and collaborator and great overall dude who I try to see every time I am in New York City. It's a great guy to share a stake with. So I hope that familiarity lends itself well to this conversation. So I thought we'd get all the fucks out of the way

at the beginning of the interview. One of the things that I, because we have mutual fans and mutual friends, and sometimes I see people get it wrong. Or correct me if I'm wrong, but the premise of the book, especially the first book, is not to give no fucks,

it's to give the right amount of fucks about the right fucking things. Exactly. I mean, it's impossible to not give a fuck. Like if you're alive, insintheate, unconscious, you have to care about something like that. It's just a fundamental state of being human. So there is no such thing as not giving a fuck.

And so the question then becomes, what is fuck worthy? What deserves your fucks? And that's the ultimate question. That's like, what is valuable in life? What's not? Well, and I think that's what's so, I think people breeze right over it in the subtitle, but that it is a subtle art is, to me, the most operative part, obviously, that the effort gets

the attention because it's sort of right there and it's so unusual in a book title, but it's difficult to know what you should care about and it's difficult to know how much or how little you should care. And it's not a science, your book is not a prescription of like, here's 15 things to care about and here's 15 things not to care about. And actually, sometimes you have to care about this thing and sometimes you can't care about it at all. That's like the weird messed upness of it. Yeah, it's a moving target. You know, it's the things that are important to you when you're 20, probably shouldn't all be important to you

when you're 30 or when you're 40 and the things that are important to you when you're 40 probably shouldn't be as important to you when you're 60. Like it's, we evolve, we change and so it's not, it's not a thing you ever solve for yourself. You don't ever solve the value question for yourself. It's a question that you have to consistently keep asking over and over and over again, so that you can adjust. When I think it's, I think our profession brings that to the forefront too, in that different books by different authors

at different times have totally different sort of priorities or values or things to focus on. And so like when I talk to authors or people too, because I hear this in the startup world all the time too, like people have no idea what's actually important to them about this thing they just worked on for like two or three years or are spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on or quit their job to focus on.

You're like, so what does success look like to you? And they're like, well, it's like a little bit of this thing and some of this thing and then all of these other things as like they don't, they haven't actually done the work to say like, what is important to me and why am I doing it? Yeah, and one of the things that I talk about a lot in my books is that if you don't sit down

and consciously ask these questions of yourself and answer these questions for yourself, then you simply adopt other people's answers to these questions. So you kind of are default state when we don't think about these things is to just look around us and see what, you know, our friends and family care about and just assume that those are the important things and kind of act on them on autopilot. And that generally doesn't, that's not a good long-term strategy.

No, it's really bad. I mean, obviously, I know you're sort of a philosophy nerd and this is a philosophy podcast, but you essentially just described the life's work of Renas Gerard that we have medic desire, because we don't know what we want, we just want what other people want. And this locks us in this weird keeping up

with the Jones's arms race competition to win contests that we, to use your word, don't actually give a fuck about. Yeah, and it seems to be something that's very much kind of hardwired into us. It's one thing I tell people, one of the most common questions I get, and I'm sure you get it all the time too,

is people come to me and they say, like how do I stop carrying so much what other people think? And I'm like, actually you probably shouldn't stop carrying what other people think. There's a word for somebody who doesn't care what other people think. It's, there's a word for somebody who doesn't care what other people think and that word is psychopath. That's not the goal here.

The goal, it's not to stop carrying what other people think. We're always gonna be influenced by the people around us. But the goal is to strike that healthy balance between acknowledging and paying attention to the values of the people around us, the value of society around us, but then also developing that ability, maybe developing that circuit breaker of like, okay, this one thing is important enough that I'm willing to go against the grain or I'm willing to upset the people around me

and take a stand for it. A, I think that's a learned skill and B, it's very, very difficult to know when it's appropriate to do that and when it's not. No, and it's weird how timeless that struggle is, right? So in the ancient world, you have the cynics, Diogean is the cynic being the penultimate example, and he gives like no fox. He gives away all his possessions. He lives in a barrel. He dresses in rags. I mean, famously, he like masturbates whenever he feels like he's like an animal basically, right? Like he, he gives no care about society. And there is some like sort of almost brazen, something brazenly inspiring about that

because like he calls into question so many of the things that we care about that are maybe not that important. But obviously society could not function if we all live that way. And what's weird is that, and this is like a less explored thing because the Stokes have their own reputation.

But the Stokes were kind of like formed in opposition to that idea. They were like, this guy's right about some things, but, and then again, to use your word, they're like, maybe there's something, maybe there's a more subtle version of this. And so for the Stokes, it was like, yeah, you should wear clothes and you should try to succeed at your job. And it is nice to have money or influence. They just try to have these things, I think, in perspective. So yeah, it wouldn't work if nobody cared about anything.

And you probably shouldn't be actively trying to care about nothing. I think it's just, it's like, as you said, it's like being consciously aware of what you care about and why you care about it. Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, I loved the story of Diogeny's when I learned it in university, and, but at the same time,

like that whole attitude, it strikes me as like a very, you know, you and I are both 90s kids. So it strikes me as like, you know, the Gough in high school school who like hates everything. But then you realize that like it takes a lot of effort to subvert every social norm, you know? And so I look at Diogenes and it's like, okay, yeah, he doesn't give a fuck.

On one level, he doesn't give a fuck about social pressures or anything. But on the other hand, it like, it actually takes a lot of conscious effort to continually subvert every expectation over and over, and that, in a sense, is actually giving a lot of facts about social pressure. And so it's this weird thing where you don't want to be on one end of the spectrum, you have like a pure conformist who only does things that the people around them will approve of.

And then on the other extreme, you have a pure non-conformist who by rejecting everything the people around them does, he's still dependent on the people around him just as much as the conformist is. Like there's still a lack of independent thought or independent valuation of experiences in life. Well, yeah, and then to borrow another philosophical concept

from one of the rival schools, what you just described is sort of the de-arrista-tilian mean between those two extremes, which is giving just the right amount of fox about the right things. Yeah, it's funny how these things never change. which is giving just the right amount of fox about the right things. Yeah, it's funny how these things never change. Yeah, no, no, it's like, you can't be an anti social crazy person

and at the same time, you can't be convinced that status and competition and what everyone else is doing is the most important thing in the world. Basically, you just have to be a normal, sentient person that has a little voice inside of them that they're in touch with. Yeah, and it's, I think again,

I think of it in terms of that circuit breaker situation of being very conscious of when to go in each direction. Like there are, you know, like this actually comes up a lot in like investing, you know, there are times where you should go with the crowd. And then there are times where you should complete. Because the crowd's right. Yeah, because it's, you know, 70, 80% of the time

the crowd's gonna be right. But there are, there are, you know, a minority of instances where you need to have both the insight and the emotional strength to consciously turn against the crowd and become contrarian. And it's very hard to know when that is. And then even if you know when it is,

it's very hard to actually like pull the trigger and do it. No, I think we talked about this last time. I saw you, but I feel like Malcolm Gladwell's newest book is all about this talking with strangers. It's sort of like, when do you default to convention, when do you violate convention, when do you listen to the voice, when do you ignore the voice?

And it's an extraordinarily difficult thing. And often as a society, we sort of lionize the people that went against the grain, but we zoom out. And what we, like, like, Bayzo said this about Peter Tiel during the election, and it's a tricky thing, but he goes, Contrarians are almost always wrong. And so if you're a Contrarian, and you're just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And you end up being right about some big things. Society will be like, how brilliant they are, and we conveniently forget that you were, you know, like out to lunch on like everything else

before and after this. Yeah, there's a survivorship bias, you know, it's like for every brilliant person, you know, like Peter Teal, you know, there's probably a thousand other people who were contrarian about something and just like fell on their face horribly. But we never hear about them. Speaking of outliers, so your first book comes out and it's just like all like you know just as big as a book can conceivably be and not be named like JK Rowling or Dan Brown or something, right? Yeah. And so you and I, and I did it in Ego, and you did it in Settle-R,

we were both talking about Dave Mistain, and you and I were just texting about him the other day, that the lead guitarist and founder of the band Megadeff, who previously had been in Metallica, and how what's fascinating about Mistain's life. And I don't know where he is now, but for many, many years, even though Megadeth was a huge band

and has a lot of great music, would be a rock star, a new and enormous success by Animetric, was sort of deeply unhappy and bitter because he's comparing himself to other people. I'm just curious like in with the success you had in that book, were you able to feel that that's what it was or were you comparing yourself, were you walking in, you're like, why am I in the number two spot in the airport book store? Like, do you know what I mean? Does the mind let you be happy? Or was there a part of you that was questioning

and criticizing and wanting more? It's, it always wants more. I mean, it, I mean, there was a lot of joy, especially early on, you know? And I think what I discovered is, is stuff like this, it has a lot more to do with trajectory than like kind of absolute position, you know? So I noticed that,

because when the book came out, it started out at like six or seven or eight on the New York Times list. And like I was elated. I went out and I celebrated with friends and called my parents and all this stuff. And it slowly climbed up in every kind of increment of that climb was a new level of excitement and joy.

But then at some point that trajectory has to turn the other way. Or there's noise it bounces up and down and you know, you put bad sales week or bad sales month. And so sure enough, you know, within a few months some of that stuff set in, you know, I'd walk into an airport and see it was like number four. And I'd be like, this is bullshit.

Like they should put this on the front table. What the fuck are they fake it? And you have to just, you have to catch yourself in those moments. And I guess this is the important thing too, is it's not only catching yourself in those negative moments of, I guess, the irrational negative thoughts,

but also catching yourself in those irrational positive moments as well. I think one of the things I did a good job in terms of handling the success of subtle art was, was not taking either my positive self-talk or my negative self-talk too seriously. There are moments when you experience a trajectory like that where you start telling yourself, you're like, man,

I am the next JK Rowling. I am the next Stephen King. People just don't know it yet. And you have to sit yourself down and be like, all right, let's talk. This is not going to end well if you keep saying this to yourself. It's a very surreal, kind of wild experience. And then in between all of that, in between trying to navigate all your bullshit self-talk,

you're also just trying to appreciate this experience and understand like, hey, this, this most likely, this is never going to happen again in your career. So enjoy it. It's weird because there's an element of it that's a little bit empty too. You know what I mean? Like, anti-climactic. Like, I remember when obstacle hit number one,

which like my books have been successful, but what's been weird for my books is that they've always sold consistently, and they've gotten a lot of critical sort of, they've gotten some critical success. They haven't gotten other kinds of critical success, but they've gotten sort of recognition from interesting influential people. And then they've sold well, but the sort of bestseller recognition has always been delayed or a bit weird.

Like, it took obstacle five years to hit number one, took nine books to even make it on the New York Times list. And then the weirder one was, even though my books have sold consistently, since they've come out, I've never really had a run on the list. Like, the most I've ever done would be like one or two weeks in a row.

And weirdly, like, the Daily Stoic has been sort of on the Wall Street Journalist like since March. So, anyways, like what was weird about each one of those things is they're sort of conspicuously lacking, and so you feel like, oh, it would be nice to have that. And then you get it, and you're like, oh, you know what I mean? Like, literally, you just say, oh, it does, oh, you know what I mean? Like literally, you just say, oh, it does, like, nobody throws you a parade. You know, it doesn't magically fix your relationship

with your parents or your self-esteem. You just feel the same and then almost like a little bit disappointed that you don't feel the way you thought you would feel when you got this thing. It feels very abstract. And I think it's part of it too, is just the nature of the medium that we're in. So I've always kind of thought of it.

Like, if you're a musician and you hit it big, you've got like a sold out arena to go to. You've got 10,000 screaming fans who were singing a song with you. You know, like they're right in front of you. You can see them. You can hear them. You know, if you're an actor who hits it big in movies or television, like suddenly you start getting stopped on the street every single day. You have people screaming and asking for autographs. When you're an author that hits it big, it's just like your name in a newspaper. And nothing happens.

Like nothing changes. Eventually a big check shows up, which is really nice, but like other than that, it's, you kind of just keep going about your daily life. So it's a very, it's a very strange, just a strange experience overall. And you know, I'm super grateful for it and super proud of it, but it's, I'm kind of like you were, where one of my big conclusions, you know, I this, I would say I just came out of like a,

I mean, my books are still selling very well, but I, you know, 2017 through 2019 was pretty insane for me. And coming out of that wave, one of my conclusions is, oh, that's kind of overrated. You know, like when I look at like the next 10 years of my career, I think that kind of conventional critical success or about hitting bestseller lists and stuff like that. Like that's actually come down a notch on my value hierarchy or my prioritization list. And so what goes higher?

Like for me, it's been this realization that I actually don't like putting out books and I actually don't like them selling, I mean, I like selling them well, I like them selling well, but like the recognition, the validation, actually isn't what makes me feel happy, what makes me feel happy is making the books.

And so that's been, that was actually an important realization for me, because one of the things I've been told by editors, agents, et cetera is like, hey, if you put out less books, your books would sell more copies and they'd have more room to do what they do. And it's like, oh, okay, that advice makes a lot of sense. But if I, if because of the experiences I've had, what I figured out is actually just like the process of making books, why would I trade the thing I like doing to be more successful at the thing that

I've actually found isn't that important to me? Yeah, and I've always thought that. I think I've told you that at some point. It's like, man, let people miss you. You know, it's like there's a Ryan Holiday book coming out like every six months. Like, let them miss you for a while. But I totally get it. It makes sense to me. Was going back to work on the next book, helpful at all. And as far as like, because obviously you weren't dealing with disappointment because there's the opposite of disappointment.

Sure. But was, and I know you had a different book that you sort of kicked your ass for a little bit, and now that's like an audio book, right? But was getting your, or going back into the grind of it, was that helpful as far as restoring your sanity, or at least preventing you from losing your sanity in the elation of all that success.

It was, so the second book, which is everything is fucked, a book about hope. I mean, it was, it was very helpful and it was also incredibly painful for different reasons than the first one. You know, subtle art, I was very naive. It was my first book with a big publisher. It was, there weren't really any expectations. It was mainly just a bunch of ideas I had been kind of cultivating on my website over the past few years that I was really passionate about and excited about.

You know, my aspiration was like, oh, I hope I hit a bestseller list one day. You know, like it kind of didn't go further. Right. The problem with the second book is, is everybody came into it with, you know, now the bar is in the stratosphere. And, you know, everybody, like it's,

it's, the bare minimum now is like debuted in at number one. Like if you don't debut at number one, like it's, the book is like gonna be seen as a failure by publishers and- It's not so- It's more of a thing. It's not so- It's more of a thing.

Yeah, and I still hadn't really totally, I mean, looking back, I wasn't aware of this at the time, but like looking back, I still hadn't like, emotionally processed the success. You know, it's one of my big discoveries from that experience was that a very sudden burst of success or good things in your life can actually be just as disorienting and mess you up emotionally

as like a burst of negative of like pain or loss or whatever, you know? And because it just it completely takes your normal everyday life and like flips it upside down. So even though it's a great thing that's happening to you, you're like, oh shit, like all this stuff that I thought was true or necessary in my life is like no longer true or necessary. Like what? So anyway. So anyway. So I mean, even basic stuff, it affects relationships.

Sure. It's friends, I would say 90% of friends and family respond very positively, but some people get super weird about it. Some people are jealous, some people get insecure, they start kind of projecting things on to you, like thinking, you know, it's like that old friend that like you used to be able like tease and mess around with, like now suddenly you tease and mess around with

them, they're like, they're not laughing, like they see it in a different way. The money is, I mean, although it's, it's great, like I would never complain about getting a bunch of money, but it messes with you and it calls into questions a lot of priorities. I think when you're financially limited, it's very easy to know what to give a fuck about. It's very easy to know what your priorities are. Suddenly when you're just like millions of dollars are dumped on you, it's kind of like,

you know, the guardrails are taken off. Like if you want to go make a bunch of really stupid decisions, nobody's going to stop you. Like there's nothing there to stop you anymore. And then again, or you know, just, you could do whatever you want. Totally. Totally. Yeah, I mean, you could just blow it on, you know, take us six month vacation and go blow all your money in Monte Carlo or, you know, whatever. Right.

And again, you know, the money thing enters into professional relationships and friendships and family. And so it was just a very weird and disorienting time. And it kind of, it took me, I'd say it took me a good year or a year and a half to kind of like just mentally and emotionally catch up to that and like get feel like I was standing on solid ground again like I knew what I was doing. And in the meantime, you know, it's everybody around me is like pushing me super hard to get another book out, you know, because obviously it's when Settle Art is number one everywhere, a follow up is going to do amazing. It's going to make

a shitload of money for everybody. So everybody is like pushing me super hard to get this next book out. So there was a lot of, and I didn't really know how to deal, you know, I'm, I, I started blogging in 2008. I've never had a day job. I've never had a boss. And suddenly I'm like, I've got all these contracts. I've got like meetings with CEOs of publishing companies and, and they're like telling me I have to do X, Y, and Z in a certain amount of time or else my contract's gonna be void and all this stuff. And I'm just, I'm kinda freaking out.

I don't know what to do about it. So in that sense, the second book was far more painful and difficult than anything else I've done. On the other hand, I think what I kinda figured out as I was writing it is, look, nothing I do, I always come back in, you and I are both metal fans. So I always come back to the music analog. It's like when a band has a huge album,

it's kind of a no-win situation. Because if they put out an album that sounds exactly like their hit album, their last hit album, then people are gonna be like, ah, they're just mail it in, they're like caching the checks. Like, they're not, you know, they're not coming up with anything new. But if they try to do something completely different,

then everybody gets mad because they're not playing the same old stuff. And so in a weird way, having such a huge hit like that, you're kind of no matter what you do next, you're gonna disappoint people. And at some point, I just talked about that. Yeah, it's some exactly. At some point, I just had to accept that.

And as soon as I accepted that and realized like, all right, do you just write the book you want to write? That was very therapeutic for me. I remember seeing you, I don't remember when it was in that window, but yeah, you seemed to almost sort of catatonic. Like you were just exhausted. And it wasn't from like work.

It was exhausted from the sort of, just the cognitive load of it all. And I do remember it was actually helpful to me because like, you know, we go back to this point about comparing yourself, you often think you want what someone else has, but we kind of don't do ourselves favors. It actually looking at that thing. And there's a great quote about how like the mediocre person convinces themselves that the spectacular person is unhappy or that the powerful person is unhappy.

But you kind of always think you want the next rung, but you don't actually know what it's like. And it may well be that the rung that you're on or that there's a sweet spot that you want to get at. And I always think it's interesting, like everybody in politics wants to be president when being president might be the worst job. And actually the best job is this job. You know, like there's a, we don't do a good job figuring out exactly actually what we want. And looking, you know, you can's a, we don't do a good job figuring out exactly actually what we want and looking, you know, you can look at the picture of the president four years ago when they get

elected and then four years later and you're like, oh, hey, maybe actually this thing has some costs as well as benefits. Yeah. And I also think we tend to be very short-sighted. We're very focused on the social markers of success or achievement today, without thinking very hard of what they're going to look like 10, 20 years from now. One thing I did during that period that was very relieving to me was I would go back to stories for examples of, there's just so many examples of authors throughout history who nobody knew who they were

when they were published. Nathaniel Hawthorne was like, nobody bought Scarlet Letter and there's a bunch of other famous books that they didn't become popular until the person had been dead for 100 years. And then there's tons of of other famous books that they didn't become popular until the person have been dead for 100 years. And then there's tons of other examples of people who were of books that were massive when they came out. And within 10 years, they're out of print. And so I kind of relieved myself of realizing that it's like over the long run, 30 years from now,

50 years from now, like 100 years from now. I actually don't know what success looks like, you know, for 2017 to 2018, you know, if that's the window, okay, yeah, I nailed it. Like, I was pretty close to the top of the mountain there. But like, when I stand back and look at my entire career, my entire life, say, you know, this entire century, I have no idea what's gonna happen. And so, like accepting that uncertainty and that kind of like vast relativity of what success is, was very calming for me. It helped me just let go.

It's a very stoic exercise. I mean, that's my favorite part of meditations. More Marcus is like, he's like, who's ever heard of Vespasian? And that's like three emperors before him, you know? And he's like, he's thinking about, he's like, who remembers all these names and places? And I think, I think what he's doing there is not saying, oh, this is meaningless. I think he's trying to check himself against the fact that everywhere he goes, people are telling him he's amazing. And he's having those same meetings and dealing with those same crowds that you're talking about.

You know what I mean? Like it's precisely when you're on the way up that you want to remind yourself, like, this is not real. And this evens out over time. And you've got to chill out or you're going to spin off the planet. Yeah, for sure.

Last question for you, because I think you and I are pretty aligned politically center right. I don't want to say libertarian, but just sort of like historically aware of what things mean. I don't think we're going through the world sort of rose colored glasses. We don't need to talk about specific politicians, but I'd be curious like one of the things I've struggled with. I would say the last six months more than anything. You know, you have this kind of idea of who you're writing for, who the audience is, or who's

on the other side of this thing you're putting all this work into. And then it feels like since the pandemic and then definitely since the protests about police brutality that the mask has slipped a little bit, that you've seen like that the people have revealed themselves a little bit like we posted this video on Daily Stove today about justice, which is like, not an argument, whether that's a course, don't virtue. I mean, it's one of the four. And like, the comments were horrendous, you know? Like, just like, it's not like,

I disagree about X, Y, or Z, but like, like, are you experiencing that with your audience? Where it's not just like, hey, we have a political disagreement, but there seems to be a percentage of people who are almost reveling in awfulness as a deliberate political, social identity. It's worse than nihilism, because nihilist just

doesn't care. These people are like, it's not just like, hey, police brutality is a complicated issue. It's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna find a way to like make this person who was the victim of a horrible senseless death into like the, somehow twisted that they deserve it. For example, do you get what I'm saying?

Like how are you reacting with that as a creator with art? I mean, it helps the laugh. I mean, I'm just sitting here listening to you. I mean, it's easy for me to laugh. I mean, I get my own share of stuff like that, but it's easy for me to laugh at yours. Cause I'm just sitting here thinking like, what is like, cynical, lib tart now?

Like, cause it's like, everything is bit politicized to the point that we're like polling philosophers out of like 2000 years ago would be like, because it's like everything has been politicized to the point that we're like polling philosophers out of like 2000 years ago would be like, well, you know, it's, it's just, it's silly. I will say that, I mean, this, so first of all, as you and I both know, you know, we're prominent on, we put our work on the internet, we're very prominent on the internet. Part of the job description is that you just hear from awful people on a weekly, daily, weekly basis. That's just par for the course.

I definitely noticed since the beginning of the pandemic, actually, it's interesting. I'd say the first two to three weeks, people were actually much more understanding. I think it was because it was such a new thing and everybody was so afraid. People were, I actually noticed people were actually much more understanding. I think it was because it was such a new thing and everybody was so afraid. People were, I actually noticed people were very grateful and gracious to each other for a short period of time

and I was briefly hopeful, but I'd say maybe three weeks into the pandemic, it just took a hard turn. And I've noticed that the angry, hyperbolic, trolley comments and emails have been significantly higher than usual. And I've noticed that it seems to be irrespective of what I post about or write about. I wrote, you know, my newsletter last week was a newsletter about a concept in psychology called Post-traumatic growth.

And it's, to me, it's a... Yeah, I don't know the way. Yeah, it's a hugely important topic. You know, everybody's heard of PTSD, but people don't realize that, you know, people who go through traumatic experiences less than 30% of them develop PTSD symptoms. Whereas, over 70% end up six months later say that they actually benefited from their traumatic experience. So they experienced some degree of what's considered post-traumatic growth.

And so I wrote an email about that. And man, I got, and like everything I'm like linking to all of the research papers, all the citations, like it's all there in the email. And man, I just, I got screamed at by like two dozen people. People emailing me saying like, I was molested as a kid and don't tell me this was a good thing that happened. I'm like, Jesus Christ, man.

Like, this is not even close to what I was saying, but okay. So the conclusion I've come to is, I think people are just very on, which end this year. I mean, 2020 has been rough for everybody, whether it's the pandemic, the protests, the political situation in the US.

I mean, it's like no matter where you are in the world or what you're doing, it's a rough year emotionally. And so I've just taken that, you know, people tend to when they're afraid, when they're angry, when they're uncertain, they lash out emotionally. And I've just kind of accepted that one of those, you know, some people are just choosing the lash out at me for whatever reason. Like I happen to be the thing that triggers them that day.

And so I, seeing it that way makes it easier for me. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but at least it helps me see it as like, these are not necessarily like horrible people with horrible character. You know, they're just, you know, maybe they lost their job and the, you know, these are not necessarily like horrible people with horrible character. They're just, maybe they lost their job and things like the mayor of their cities,

a moron and making a bunch of stupid decisions this year and they're just so fed up with everything that they get online and post horrible things. We don't know. No, that's a really good way to think about it. The other thing I've taken about it, I've taken from it, I'm wondering what you think is like, it's a really good reminder of why you can't write for the audience and you have to write for yourself. Because you know, it just, it was like both sort of depressing and then also freeing. It's like, I've been so stressing about every word, every thing that I've ever done,

assuming that the audience is way, way up here. And then you realize, there's a significant percentage of the people who apparently can't even read because I didn't say whatever it is that they're up. I said the opposite of what they're upset about and they're still upset about it. And so why have I been killing myself over sweating these granular details that clearly nobody is noticing

but me? So it's kind of like, in that sense, it's been freeing. But it's also, I think it is a little depressing to just see people. I don't know, you're right, it's not their character, but people are revealing that there is a baseness and a harshness and a cruelty not far beneath the surface and they're not afraid to reveal it. Yeah, and it's, you know, I take the,

I have a very pessimistic, Hobbsian view of human nature, which is that we all have that base and cruel part of our nature and that we're never very far from it. And, you know, I think one of the unfortunate things of the internet is that it removes a lot of the unfortunate things of the internet is that it removes a lot of the social constraints

for people lashing out like that. The anonymity of the internet makes it much, removes the consequences of being a total asshole sometimes. And then the other thing I try to remember too is that you and I, because I get the same thing, it's really hilarious actually. Like there are some weeks that I go into my inbox and I will get, there'll be one email from somebody on the left accusing me of being like a fascist pig and all this stuff. And in like three emails later, there's, there's an email from somebody on the right accusing

me of being like a communist and, you know, just sit that I'm gonna be sending people to the gulags and I'm like, where's this coming from? I didn't even write anything political. Like, how is this happening? You know, and I think one thing that I've had to get used to in this 2020 is definitely really making me get used to it is that people just project ideas on the public figures. It's a simple word like justice that the context that the word justice has been used

in so much in the past two months has come from Black Lives Matter and a segment of Black Lives Matter has very radical leftist views. And so people just make that association. They get worked up emotionally and they don't actually think through it, they're just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you're ruining society.

And they fire off the email because there's no repercussion from it. So. there's nothing, there's no repercussion from it. So. Now, and so, so, so is not to close on the most depressing note, I think one of the things that I'm trying to practice, and I'll give you lots of words, it marks really says this idea goes, you don't have to have an opinion about this.

And that's something I've been trying to practice is like, I don't have to respond. I don't even have to register whether this makes me angry or sad or whatever. I can just see it. And I think this is what meditation is about. You see it. And then you just let it go right on by.

Yeah. There's a, you know, it's in Buddhism, there's a huge focus on kind of the liberation of not knowing things. And I think our default state is that we are terrified to not know things because it means we don't have control. But, you know, through the practice of meditation and some of the Buddhist philosophy, I definitely subscribe this idea that there is a freedom in not knowing things. And I think it's harder than ever, probably, to think that you don't know something today. Because we're just flooded with information today.

And generally, the information that gets shared the most is the information that is spoken or written with the most confidence. And generally, the people who speak are right with the most confidence are the people who don't know a damn thing at all. So it's a tough time, I think. And I definitely agree that we all need to practice stepping back and just accept that. We have no idea what's happening. We don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Like, we really don't know. It's, we have no idea what's happening. We don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Like we really don't know. It's, we have no idea. Now, I think that's the perfect place to close. Mark, you're the best. Thank you so much. Thanks, man. It was fun. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you

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