"EVERYTHING You Think You Know About Yourself Is WRONG!" (How To Find Yourself) | Mark Manson

Ultimately, your concept of yourself is built out of the narratives that we create out of our experience. So, all of the experiences that I've had or all the experiences that you have, your idea of Tom is just this vast collection of narratives that you've constructed around your own experiences. And it's layer on top of layer on top of layer on top of layer, and your feeling brain has a certain valence for those experiences. And so, if you want to change how you feel about yourself, you have to start peeling back those layers of narrative and and start getting down into the deepest, earliest ones, because those are often the most impactful and influential. Well, you can't leave us with just that. So, how do we begin peeling back those layers, man? Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is the New York Times best-selling author of the international smash hit, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a [ __ ] His book, which many consider to be the generation-defining self-help book, sold millions of copies, was translated into 25 languages, and absolutely dominated the bestseller list for a staggering amount of time. It's also been at or near the top of Amazon's most read list continuously since the chart began, and it remains one of the most downloaded audiobooks of all time on Audible. He's also written for or been cited by some of the most prestigious outlets on the planet, including Time, CNN, BBC News, Business Insider, Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post, and many, many more. Additionally, he's published hundreds of blog articles, which are viewed by millions of people every month, making him one of the most visible and studied authors of our time. So, please help me in welcoming the founder and CEO of Infinity Squared Media, the author of the recent book Everything is [ __ ] a book about hope, Mark Manson. What's up, man? How you doing? Welcome to the show. That's a that's a nice intro. I should should have you do my my PR. I'd be happy to do it, man. Look, the stats are staggering. So, putting something like that together is pretty easy. Yeah. Um it's I'm sure that kind of thing really took you by surprise. But, what you've done with it in terms of really um giving some self-help that is very direct and just sort of says it like it is in a voice that I think people can relate to is is really amazing. And I'm super excited to have you here and Thanks. go into some of these topics. Yeah, it's good to be here. Especially the new book. Yep. Which I think is lovely. Everything is [ __ ] That's a nice title. Certainly catches your attention. The thing that I found most interesting is the talk about values and like how much values begin to inform your identity and basically your values are essentially who you are. Yes. Take us into that. What does it mean? And then how much malleability is there in values? Sure. So, my my focus in my work has always been value-focused. Um I feel like in the self-help and self-development world there's so much focus on success. You know, getting ahead in your career, starting a business, making more money, having better relationships, but nobody's actually standing back and defining what success is. Like, is our definition of success valuable or not? Um and I think especially in today's, you know, crazy internet world where we're exposed to everything, um deciding what we're choosing to define as success is is a more important question than ever before. Um So, that's kind of what got me started on the whole value question in general. And then when I started investigating it and doing a lot of research and writing about it, I started to discover that like basically, you know, if you think of like how how you define a person in general, um as humans we we tend to define people by their choices, by their actions. Um but then what motivates their actions? Well, often it's how they feel. And then what what motivates how they feel about certain things? And it's their perception of what's valuable and what's not. And so, that's kind of how I drilled down to to this idea that essentially what we are is just an aggregation of what we choose to value in this world. If I value money more than anything else, that will come to define me through my actions, my behaviors, what I invest my time and attention into. If I value family, um that will define who I am because everything else will flow from that. Yeah, the thing that I find interesting about values is people often act as if they are empirical truths, like money is valuable or family is valuable. And they don't realize that it was a choice often handed to them by the way they grew up, their parents, what their parents instilled in them. And so, stepping back and recognizing that all of this is a choice that you can consciously decide what you're going to value. Yeah. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the process works of deciding to value something. So, if somebody finds themselves in a place where they feel totally [ __ ] up, they don't like who they are, and they buy into this notion that okay, a lot of this is being driven by values, how do they actually change that? Yeah. It's funny because I'm not a huge fan of a lot of like kind of the typical self-help tropes, but the answer to this question I I think is kind of classic visualization, but it's not the visualization that we usually hear about. So, what I talk about in the book is that you Like let's say let's say I'm just really superficial and I value money more than anything. Like I've got like a fleet of yachts and it's it's all I care about, you know? Um And then something happens in my life and I realize that that's pretty superficial. I should like grow up a bit and you know, value something else. And it's not as simple as just deciding. Like we've all had that experience in our lives where we wish we cared about something that we don't or vice versa. We wish we didn't care about something that we do. And you can't just stop. Um And so the the process that I describe in the book is that essentially before you can commit to a new value, you kind of have to like try them on. Like like it's like going to a store and trying on a bunch of pairs of clothes. Um And the way you try on a new value is you need to sit down and and visualize. And you can even write it out if you want. But it's like let's say all I care about is my fleet of boats and uh and I want to try on a new value, um like charity or something. I have to sit down and start asking myself, what would it mean for my life? What would it mean for me as a person if I didn't value those boats anymore? Um And that's a very hard question. It it really it messes us up cuz we realize that a lot of our relationships would probably fall apart, a lot of our business commitments would probably fall apart. Um A lot of our understanding of ourselves would be shaken up or or questioned. And it's a very difficult thing to ask. Um And so, you know, most of the times when you see visualization taught in the self-help industry, it's like they take a guy who wants a fleet of boats and they say, "Visualize a fleet of boats. Now go get it." And it's like, "No, no, no." What you need to do is take a guy who wants a fleet of boats and say visualize not wanting a fleet of boats. What would that say about you? Who would you be if that thing you always desired was not your desire anymore? Yeah, that to me is really interesting and you went through a pretty cool moment like that where you said ultimately this all comes down to choices and for a long time in your life you just always assumed you were going to be a musician. That was like where you were headed and then choosing to do the writing instead and the the thing that really interested me in that was you said there was a period of mourning. Yeah. Why is there a period of mourning, you know, what's going on as we reshape ourselves? So my background is is a little bit Buddhist and I subscribe to the belief of of no self essentially that that our conception of who we are is just kind of this arbitrary imagined thing in our brain. And so I think of our relationship with ourselves as being as basically functioning the same way as like our relationship with another human being. Um so when something when you lose a part of yourself, so I spent pretty much all my my early life wanting to be a musician. That was my ambition, it was my hobby, my passion. It's how I spent all my time. And I went to music school and I just got the [ __ ] kicked out of me and I was like, oh, this is not going to work anymore. And the process of letting go of that value was was very much similar to like a breakup. Like it felt like losing a girlfriend or losing a friendship. Like this thing that gave all this meaning and emotion to my life was now unavailable to me. And whenever you you lose something like that, you go through the same emotional process which is that a prop that process of grieving or mourning because the same way you know, a breakup leaves you grieving this beautiful thing in your life that no longer exists, when you lose an important value or an important part of yourself, you also grieve this beautiful thing that defined your life and no longer defines it. Yeah, that I think is um it's such a critical thing to understand how your identity begins to get tied up in all of this. And I think a lot of this hinges on what you talked about right off the top, which is how we define success. So, how do you help people in that so that they don't succumb to a trap? Um I know you're the example that you gave in in one of your articles that was so hilarious, which is the being driven, being ambitious towards something without taking a moment to reflect in the morality of what you've decided to value. And you said, "Take Hitler, who's one of the most driven people and has had this tremendous impact, um but was a psychopath." So, walk us through like you you go pretty into like how we can sort of reason our way to really having a base understanding of what you talk about Kant and like morality at like a really deep level. Yeah. So, how do we begin to to get to a base level of like, "Okay, now I'm going to stack my belief system, my values on top of this base." Sure. Um just a little background on the Hitler thing for our viewers. You think you need to clarify? I don't understand. No, I've I've wanted for so long I've wanted I I had this idea with a friend we got drunk and went paintballing. And and I As you do. Yeah, where most my ideas come from. And uh and I was talking to him and I was like, "You know what would be amazing if if you did like a if you did like a Tim Ferriss style podcast with like a fake Hitler." And you're like, "So, Adolf, what's your morning routine? You know, like how do you rally the troops? How do you inspire millions of people?" And it it would just be this beautiful satire of kind of like like focusing on that point of like if so if you're not improving yourself for the right reasons, you could be damaging yourself. You know, the the why behind everything everything you try to improve or everything that you're driven towards is is more important than actually, you know, how far you get. So, for me it's it's I see a very direct connection between self-improvement and ethics. Um I think if you if you dig deep enough into these questions of of what growth means or what improvement means, you inevitably run into what is better, period. What is better or worse, period. What makes a better life. What makes humanity better. Um And so it it's my goal has always been I I never want to be that guy on stage who's like "This is what you should do. This is how you do it. Here's my five-step method, blah blah blah." You know, I I want to be the guy who who doesn't I don't want to give answers, I want to give better questions. I want to help people sort through these questions in themselves because ultimately the these questions around values are so personal. There's There's no way for me to answer any individual without inserting my values onto them. And when you do that, you rob them of the ability to choose what matters for themselves, choose their own meaning in their life. Um So, for me it's just it's all about just pointing people in the right direction, pointing out, you know, little hypocrisies or little like kind of paradoxes and and trying to steer them towards um finding their own answers. So, give me some of those better questions then. What should we be asking ourselves? Um Well, you know, the the the classic thing is always like, you know, write down a list of goals or whatever. I I I would go past that. I'd say, "Wha- you know, write down your goals and then ask yourself, 'Why do I want each of these goals? What would it mean in my life if I accomplish these goals?' Um similarly, you know, a common exercise is like write down things you're grateful for. Um ask yourself, 'Why are you grateful for them? What would happen to your life if you didn't have them? I mean that that's the crazy thing is that a lot of a lot of times the things we're most grateful for are actually the things that we're all [ __ ] up about. You know, it's like it's if you would ask me when I was um you know in one of like I I had a series of very dysfunctional relationships I was happy as a pig in [ __ ] in the middle of those, you know, I would be like, "Oh, my girlfriend is the most most beautiful thing and you know, and it's like no, dude, like you're I was a mess." Um and so we it's not just about questioning uh you know, the bad things in our life, you know, like why did this painful thing happen? You need to question the good things as well. Like why why does this feel good? Is it does it feel good for a good reason? Um because there are a lot of things that feel good that are actually hurting you. Mhm. Yeah, that's one of the things that I really want to dive into is so how do we begin to establish what we think is good? What does it mean to be better? Um and you come to this from an ethical place and I know that you don't want to like direct people too much and say believe this or whatever, but what are some jumping off points? Like is it to go read philosophy? You said that you approach life as a Buddhist, like how can people begin to build that framework for themselves? Cuz what what I'm really trying to get to is I feel like you have to have a base belief of some kind upon which things stack, but I don't think people think about that. And even just pointing them in a direction of of how to start begin defining that for themselves, I think would be super helpful. Yeah, so for me I found that I talk about Kant in the book. I was very inspired by Kant's moral philosophy. Basically he has this principle called the formula of humanity, which is essentially it's so simple, but it kind of explains everything. He says that always act in such a way that you never merely treat people a person as a means but always as an end. Um and what that means is like don't use people. You know, like anything you do uh the whole point of what you do what you do like the end goal of what you do should always be a person whether it's yourself or somebody else. So like if you're like kind of misleading somebody or or just saying something to somebody just to get them to like I don't know give you some money or you know, make them like you a little bit. Um you know, under that principle like that's that is not growth. That is not success. Um any basic stuff like lying, cheating, stealing like all of those are examples of using people as a means to some other end rather than treating the person as an end of in the of themselves. Um so I I when I came across that principle it just for me it kind of blew me back on just how universal and and powerful and useful it was. Um because in in you know, I spend a lot of time writing about dating and relationships and and I I was coming from a place where I you know, my philosophy around relationships was always like the thing that screws relationships up is treating people as a means is being transactional in your relationships. Um and so when I found that Kant stuff I was like damn, this dude gets it. Yeah, no. It it is very interesting and if you had to Um and and look, you've urged people not to take you too seriously and so I ask this question knowing that but like um if you had to define success in a sentence Sure. um how would you define it? Oof. I for me success means um creating a life and creating a world with better problems. That's interesting. That reminds me of a quote of yours. I'm going to paraphrase, but um if you want purpose in your life, the most important thing you need to do is answer honestly the following question. What is your favorite flavor of [ __ ] sandwich? Which I thought was absolutely phenomenal. That is the absolute right question. But what do you mean by that? Uh it's basically anything you pursue. Like our mind plays this little trick on us, which is uh when we want something, our our our brain only shows us the good side of it. It doesn't show the sacri- the sacrifice required for it. Um and everything, every experience you have in life, there is a [ __ ] sandwich part of it. You know, there's there's everything has its associated problems. Um but our brain doesn't think about that when we're pursuing it. And so uh for me, like one of the most powerful heuristics is to simply, instead of thinking about what benefits I want uh in my life, I I try to think about what problems do I want in my life. Um you know, it something as simple as like, you know, people might see this show and they're like, "Oh damn, I wish I had a badass show like that on YouTube." You know, it's like they don't understand like there's a whole crew here, there's logistics, there's like waivers you got to get like clear through lawyers and all all sorts of crap. And it's like those are the problems you chose. You know, those are the problems that you wanted to have. Um and that's why it's a successful show. It's not just because it's like, "Oh damn, show would be awesome." You know, like it's easy to just want something. So. Yeah, your whole concept around struggle, I think is really powerful. Um you talk really interestingly about emotions in the book. You go into the um Newton's uh emotional laws. I thought they were really interesting. Why is it so important, especially as it relates to willpower, to understand your emotions, to leverage them? Um but at the same time, when you talk about emotions, there's an inherent sense of like, don't always trust your emotions. So, untangle this emotional knot for us. Emotions are are are messy for a lot of reasons. But but one of the the key things that I talk about is I use I use this analogy of a car. If your consciousness is a car, um, you have two brains in it. You have a feeling brain and a thinking brain. And most people's assumption is that the thinking brain is the responsible one driving, and the feeling brain is like the bratty little kid in the passenger seat screaming and pointing at stuff out the window, and it's like it's the job of your thinking brain to like keep two hands on the wheel and be like, "Shut up. Shut up. I'm trying to drive here, you know?" And it's as a culture, we look at anybody who fails to control their impulses or their emotions, um, as somebody as somebody who's just fundamentally failing to drive their own car. Um, we see it as a failure of willpower and discipline. But the truth is, if you if you dig into all the psychological literature, it's the feeling brain is actually driving the car. And he's a little bit crazy. He's like I I compare him to like an angry boyfriend who refuses to stop for directions. Like he just wants to go wherever he wants to go, and he's not going to listen to anything. And the thinking brain is actually in the passenger seat. Like our conscious mind is a passenger in our own behavior who has deluded himself into thinking that he's driving, even though he's not. And what I talk about is that that the power of the thinking brain is that we get to draw the map. The thinking brain gets to decide what what the lay of the land is. So, even though we don't totally have control over, uh, what's pushing us forward, our actions, our emotions, all those things, we do have control over the meaning and the interpretation of those actions and emotions. And so, what I talk about is that to develop a real sense of control in your life, to feel that feel a sense of self-discipline, it's not about beating your emotions in the into submission because that that just causes greater neuroticism and compulsion. The trick is is that you got to get the two brains to talk to each other. Um and and it's hard because they speak different languages, you know, so it's instead of like just trying to get your feeling brain to shut up, you need to ask your feeling brain, well, how does this make you feel? You know, it's like, oh, how how does waking up at 5:00 a.m. and going to the gym feel? The feeling brain's be like, oh, that feels awful. Like, why would you ever do that? And and then the thinking brain needs to be like, okay, okay, that's okay, you know, I hear you. Um but why does it feel bad? You know, what about 6:00 a.m.? Feeling brain's like, well, that's not as bad. You know, and it would feel nice to work out, I guess. You know, and so you it becomes this like negotiation between the two sides of yourself. And and there are a lot of like kind of mental tricks to coax, to like kind of work with your emotions, to leverage your emotions, and get get the feeling brain pointed in the direction you want it, rather than just fighting it for your entire life. Yeah, I love that. I want to go farther on that. So, going back to the [ __ ] sandwich, the whole idea of like, what are the things that you actually want to struggle with? Yeah. Um how do we like think of willpower in terms of aligning with the the things that are hard that you enjoy? And I think that your own example of I thought I wanted to be a musician, but writing was the thing that made me lose track of time. Like, I I feel like that does a great job of addressing this. Yeah, I think there are things in our lives where we don't even I I think the things that we tend to be passionate about, we don't even realize we're passionate about them because they seem so normal and obvious to us. So, for instance, to use to use the music and the the writing example, I remember when I was in in music school, I was practicing I played guitar. So, I was practicing like 6 hours a day, just beating my head against the wall trying to learn all these different songs and stuff. And I just I hated it it was a grind and it it felt like a a job I was supposed to do. And I remember actually right before I quit, I uh there was a there was a kid in the program who was like, you know, he was an all-star. Like he everybody knew he was going to make it, you know? Um and it's funny today I think he has two or three Grammys. But um so, like I found him in the cafeteria and I sat down with him and I'm like, "Oh, man, like I don't know. Like how do you Can you give me some advice, man?" He's like, "Yeah, sure. What's going on?" I'm like, just how do you practice this much? Like I'm practicing like 6 hours a day, you know, how much are you practicing? He's like, "Yeah, 6 hours a day." And I'm like, "But yeah, but how do you like stay motivated? How do you like what's your warm-up like, you know? Like how do you how do you schedule your practice time?" And he's just looking at me like I'm speaking Klingon. Like he's he's like, "What are you talking about? Like I just practice. Like I always practice. Like what?" It didn't even compute for him. And then I was like, "Okay, I should probably quit." Um So, jump ahead like 5, 6 years, I had started blogging and I would go to these like internet marketing conferences and stuff. And people would start coming up to me and they're like, "Oh, man, I love your blog, man. Like your articles they're they're like 10, 20 pages long. You're posting like multiple each week." And I'm like, "Yeah, thanks." They're like, "Man, it's incredible." So, uh you know, what's your writing regimen like? Like, how many How do you get yourself motivated? You know, he starts asking me all these questions, and I'm like looking at him like, "What are you talking about? Like, I just write." You know, I just sit down and write. You know, I don't even have to think about it. And uh and it kind of like rung a bell in my head of like, "Wait a second. Like, that's that's that's something. That's like a that's a signal that there's something special about this." Because for whatever reason, what seems to cause other people a lot of stress and pain comes easily to me. And what causes me a lot of stress and pain, you know, came easily to to the guy who did make it through music school. Um and so I realized that it's it's not about like grit or willpower or just like wanting it enough. It it's a lot of it, too, is just we're all masochists a little bit. You know, like we all there's some pain in the world that we all it gets us off a little bit. And I found mine. And uh and so yeah, I just you just you just keep hitting that [ __ ] Like, you just keep going. And um I think people when they're when you're so focused on pleasure and and pleasant rewards, you don't actually get to that question. You don't actually get to like, yeah, what's what's that pain that like actually kind of gets me going, you know? And cuz we all have it, and that's that's that's the sweet spot when you can find it. Yeah, that's really interesting. I love how much you um sort of orbit around emotions and how people can really get in connection with what, using my own language, would be sort of the neurochemical reality of what you're doing. Um walk us through the the three um Newton's three laws of emotions. I found these to be really, really interesting, speaking of gravitational pull. I've always found Newton's life super fascinating because not only was he like one of the smartest guys ever, but when you read about his life, like he was a total head case. Like had a very traumatic childhood, suffered a lot of abuse, and just was very antisocial and emotionally dysfunctional his entire life. Um and so I thought it would be really cool to kind of use him and his life as an example to demonstrate a lot of these topics that we're talking about, you know, in terms of uh identity, growth, self-discipline, etc. And so I took his three laws of motion and I I basically just created emotional analogs of those. So the first one was uh um for every action there's an equal and opposite emotional reaction. And this is basically just the idea that every emotion is simply a a response to to either pain or the absence of pain. Um so when you remove pain from life, a positive emotion emerges in reaction. And if And if you add pain into life, a negative emotion uh emerges. Um the second one So the second one, if I remember right, was Our self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time. So you could even you you might even say like identity equals our our uh emotions over time. So basically, let's say something traumatic happens in your childhood. Um that that pain early on in your life causes a lot of negative emotions. And one of the things that I talk about is that anytime we feel an emotion, it compels us to to do what I call equalizing, which is um like if I'm angry at you, I'm going to continue to be angry at you until I either get, you know, retaliate or you apologize. Like something needs to happen to make that anger go away. There needs to be some sort of like equalization between us. And if there is no equalization, that anger just kind of simmers and sits there um forever. And one of the reasons why childhood traumas are so debilitating for people is that essentially these extremely painful experiences occur to our feeling brains while our thinking brains are still undeveloped and don't know how to explain or create meaning around that pain. So, let's say something really painful happened to me now, I'd be like, "Oh, well, you know, he meant well and you know, [ __ ] happens or whatever." But if I'm like a 5-year-old, my explanation for it only gets as far as like, "I'm a bad I'm a bad boy. I'm a bad person and the world hates me." You know, like that's and that will stick um because it doesn't get equalized and it'll stick for the rest of my life. And the problem is is that we forget that that painful thing happened. So, we just kind of go through life with this uh feeling of inferiority and and pain that lingers that we can't really put an explanation to or explain away. Um and so the process of therapy is basically unraveling a lot of our experiences until we get back to that original experience. And with our adult thinking brain, we can now put meaning to that pain that is helpful to us essentially. Um so that's the second law is that our identity is is the sum of our emotions over time. Um and then the third law is uh our identity will continue to be our identity until new experience acts against us. So, to use the music school example, um I was a musician. I would introduce myself as a musician. And then I got to second semester of music school and um and had my ass handed to me. And suddenly, I'm like, "Oh, [ __ ] I'm not a musician anymore." You know? And now I have to go around and it's like, I'm not a musician. I don't know what I am. But it it required There was some new contrary experience that was required to create that shift within me. And and this is why identity change by definition needs to be painful and uncomfortable. Because if it's not painful or uncomfortable, nothing's changing. Nothing's shifting. There might be a perception of a change, but ultimately the only way our values change is that life knocks us on our ass a little bit and causes us to question everything we understand. Yeah, the whole process of um losing an identity, mourning that, trying to find or create a new sense of self, I think is one very misunderstood and two really really critical. You talk about people breaking away and quote-unquote finding themselves in a moment of crisis. Walk us through that and I'd love to hear if that's what you were doing. You're so well-traveled. 60 plus countries, speak three languages. Was that a part of that redefinition for you? Were you seeking experience? Like how do you advise people who are They don't know. I don't know if I'm a writer. I don't know if I'm a musician. I don't know what [ __ ] sandwich I enjoy. Like, you know, how do you help people through that process? I think there's an exploration phase. Um Because it's it's if you have this identity, you have this perception of who you are and then suddenly that's yanked away from you. There's kind of just this void there. Um and so I think there needs to be an exploration to find basically find your [ __ ] sandwich essentially. And uh Um and you it's it takes time. It takes patience. And I think there probably the most helpful thing you can do is just be okay with not knowing. Let's talk about building resilience. You said something early that I found really interesting, which is that you have a relationship with yourself the way that you have with somebody else. Yeah. Which is really fascinating. Tell me about that. Like, what do you mean by that? And and then like the whole notion of I forget the exact word you used, but you said I approach this like a Buddhist, the self is an illusion. I don't think you said that, but it was like it made me feel that way. Yes, yes, yes. I said it's an arbitrary construct, which yeah, illusion. Um I think uh So, our relationship with ourselves, like essentially what self-esteem is or self-worth is Basically, let me back up for a second. The feeling brain So, the thinking brain thinks in terms of like logic, cause and effect, correlations, things like that. The feeling brain thinks in terms of importance. Um it thinks in terms of values. So, some things are very valuable and worthy of our of being pursued and other things are very very not valuable. And they're you they should be avoided. Um And the feeling brain kind of designates you know, almost a value score for everything, every experience, every potential experience that we we can consider. Including ourselves. So, our idea of what our self is is just another idea. The same way um you know, being living in New York is an idea and I there is a certain value I place on that and that that idea has logical connections to all sorts of things that who I am as Mark Manson is simply a constructed idea in my mind. And as a constructed idea, my feeling brain has either positive or negative valuations and feelings for for Mark Manson. Um when people have a low valuation of themselves, when they have when their feeling brain thinks that their identity is not valuable and and have negative emotions about it, uh we call that low self-esteem. And when our the idea of ourself had our feeling brain has a high valuation of it and has positive feelings for it, we call that high self-esteem. And so a lot of like therapeutic work for many decades was kind of almost obsessed of like just trying to get people people's this relationship between your feeling brain and your conception of your identity to get it to get them needle to move from negative to positive. Um cuz there are all sorts of, you know, positive repercussions of that. Um but ultimately the your your concept of yourself is built out of um the narratives that we create out of our experience. So all of the experiences that I've had or all the experiences that you have, you know, your idea of Tom is just this vast collection of uh narratives that you've constructed around your own experiences. And it's layer on top of layer on top of layer on top of layer and your feeling brain has a certain you know, valence for those experiences. Um and so if you want to change how you feel about yourself, you have to start peeling back those layers of narrative. And and start getting down into the deepest earliest ones because those are often the most impactful and influential. Well, you can't leave us with just that. So how do we begin peeling back those layers, man? Like I'm so with you on that and the way that people construct their sense of self and beliefs and values and it's like this just crazy rats nest of Sure. unidentified, unexplained beliefs, feelings, reactions, long-held wounds that have never been dealt with from your childhood. I mean, it's But but that act of peeling that stuff back, I think is also an act of rewriting. Yes. So, it's like, ah, I've identified this narrative. Now, what narrative do I change it to? And so, going back to your your driving analogy, you've got this thinking brain whose job is to basically rewrite the map of a past experience. Yeah. How do you help people take control of that? Do you have thoughts around how they can take control of that? Are there like I I would say I have a very strong thesis about whatever you rewrite, like the guiding principle should not be a guiding principle of objective truth cuz I think people are atrocious at figuring out what is actually objectively true. Sure. So, if you could, that would be amazing, but since you can't, focus entirely on what's empowering. So, using your language, what moves the needle to something positive. Yeah. Do you have a guiding principle that you tell people to utilize when thinking about that rewriting process? I think so, everybody's a little bit different. And and this is how I see like therapy, meditation, journaling, like a lot of these therapeutic practices, like I see them they're all different versions of what you just said. It's like peeling that layer back, looking at it, being like, huh, maybe that's not true. What what if this idea was true instead? Like trying on new uh narratives and and and stories that define ourselves. Um so, everybody, you know, everybody kind of has their own you know, practice that will resonate with them more. Um but it's in terms of like how to actually go about it. I think the first step is to just decide that you don't actually know who you are. Again, it's the Buddhist thing. It's like the self is an illusion. It's an arbitrary construct that you've spun up over the course of your life. And so it's just this thing. It's just this idea. It's a subjective uh it's a subjective idea and it can be anything you want. Now, you don't That doesn't mean you necessarily like want to become delusional and decide that you're Spider-Man and and you're going to be president of Ukraine. Like it's You want to be You want to be tethered to reality, but also understand that you don't Like you said, you never know for certain who you actually are. You don't actually know what's true. You don't know if you're a good person or bad person. You don't know if you're a musician or an author. I could label my label myself anything. So, I think when we we start to realize that at how uh kind of lose that certainty about who we are what we think we know about ourselves, that kind of like it starts to loosen the glue of that that ball that ball of yarn of stories that we've told ourselves. Um and once that glue is loosened, you can more easily pull pull threads out. And and start to see like, "Oh, well, yeah, that's that's definitely not um you know, that's probably not the most helpful narrative that I could create for myself." So, I guess I guess that would be the second step. You know, first step, lose the certainty. Second step is to actually like pull on some of these threads and then um and then question, you know, what if that wasn't true? Like what if What if music school didn't kick my ass? What if I just What if I just didn't try hard enough, you know? Like could be true. What would that mean about me? It's useful to sit down and think think through those things because it's by doing that enough that you you start to stumble upon epiphanies and and like big realizations about what you've been telling yourself your whole life. We have to understand that our identities are are not logically constructed. They are emotionally constructed and they are emotionally constructed based on our feelings and they are they have an inertia to them. To bring it back to the Newton's laws, our identities have an inertia to them that uh is extremely difficult to stop or reverse. Um and you you definitely can't do it just through logical arguments or you know, punishing somebody. So, how the hell do we put ourselves in those difficult situations? Like how do we seek them out? I think uh I think it's it's it's just a healthy habit to develop the desire to challenge yourself in in every sense, physically, mentally, emotionally. Um you know, one thing I definitely started trying to do um especially recently given like the political climate that's been going on is I seek out articles and news sources that I disagree with. Um because I I see the the bubbles that everybody's in and and the tribal lines that everybody's drawing and I am I'm horrified by it, but I also want to try my best to not succumb to that myself and so um yeah, I read sources, I read books of things I disagree with and and it's and it changes me. It it really does. It it softens me. Um sometimes I'll finish the book and I'm like, well, I still don't agree with them, but damn, I respect them now. Like that's a smart person. Um and so that like that's one way I do it intellectually. Uh but I think it's you know, that carries over into all areas of life. I mean, it's as simple as um you know, if you go to the gym, it's like challenge yourself to do something new. Take a class that you know, like my wife just at the age of 37 decided she want to learn how to swim. And she's like mortified of it, you know? But I'm like, hell yeah, go do it, you know? Like that's because it's not just about swimming. It's it's about just developing that consistent habit of like stepping into your discomfort. I love that. Who was Who was it that you you quoted them? They said either to their daughter or niece. It was a famous writer, I think, um that the whole idea of getting better at life is about surrounding yourself with people that disagree with you or don't think like you think. Yeah, I'm putting you on the spot here, but I thought I thought that was such an interesting idea about getting yourself around disconfirmation, getting yourself around people that shake you out of your cognitive biases. I think that's really powerful. Man, I I really think in this book you're onto some of the most fundamental and important things that a human being can do to change who they are. I think it is super powerful and way extraordinary. I've no doubt that the um author hat author identity is a good identity for you. Um where can people find you? Where can they get the book? So, website is markmanson.net. There's hundreds of articles there. Um encourage people to check it out. Uh book is available everywhere. Um every store you can imagine, it should be there. So, go check it out. Um and I will be doing a speaking tour um across US, Canada, and hopefully Australia and UK. Um so, you can learn about that. Go to either go to my Facebook page, which is facebook.com/markmanson.net or markmanson.net/book-tour. Nice. All right. What's the impact that you want to have on the world? I want to expand and I basically I just want to challenge people. I want to challenge people to find new perspectives and to to keep I I think if you look at what human progress is, it's ultimately rooted in the the search and the the discovery and the testing of new perspectives and and taking the same experience and rewriting the meaning around it. And so, I see my work very much as training brains to do that better. I like that a lot. My man, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was absolutely extraordinary. Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Brother, that was amazing. Thank you. Good [ __ ] What's up Impactivist? If you want to acquire new skills or improve the ones you already have, then you're going to love this. As you know, a huge part of my life is about acquiring skills that have utility and exist in service of something greater than myself and that is why I highly recommend Skillshare. 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And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. I want to influence them. I want to get inside your skin, inside your brain, and alter how you look at the world. I think this changing your perspective and how you look and socialize and deal with people will radically alter so many aspects in your life.