Focus on YOURSELF and Stop CARING What People Think of You | Mark Manson

Our idea of what our self is is just another idea. A human being starts to really get empowered with themselves when they start to make sense to themselves. It's what I'm doing up here that's making me have that reaction. And if I'm the problem, I am also the solution. We actually can create our self. We can create our future by beginning to make new choices now. 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 they should be avoided. Um And the feeling brain kind of designates, you know, almost a 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 our self 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 that 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. One of the interesting aspects of what when people talk about awareness these days, what I feel is if they're mostly talking about is being aware of others. So, they're talking about how others speak and others listen and others behave. And real awareness is is actually starting to get aware of oneself. And and I think if you ask most people they'll say they are pretty aware. Um but you know, give me 10 minutes with them and they'll see how blind and deaf they've been, you know, like they just can't they just they aren't connected to their own wiring in many ways, you know. Do you have like a series of questions that you ask people to to help them see that they aren't as aware as they might think they are? Yeah, well, you know, basically I get people to just tell me about themselves, right? You'll you'll hear you'll hear the you'll hear and see the blind spots everywhere, aren't they? They're all over their conversations. So, when somebody talks, they're in fact speaking from the world that they're in. But people don't experience themselves as being in a world. We experience ourselves as being in the world. But you're not. You're in a very biased, a very kind of slanted, a very kind of weighted place in life. You're You're not interacting with life. You're interacting with you interacting with life. And that's a very that's a very kind of nuanced thing. And when you start to point to some of those things with people, you start to see like, well, well, how come this is something that you get hooked by or how come this is a strength of yours but also a weakness of yours? Um that's when people start to join the dots up for themselves. It's really not about telling people. It's really about asking the right kind of questions and engaging in the right kind of conversation with somebody that you you'll watch them. You'll see people joining the dots up for themselves like, "Oh my gosh, yeah, that that." And then my in my view, a human being starts to really get empowered with themselves when they start to make sense to themselves. Like your own actions, your own thoughts, your own emotional states, when all that starts to kind of logically click for you, to me those are the beginnings of of true awareness. The roles that we play, the dynamics that we got Here's that word again, familiar with, right, earliest in life that we maybe started repeating once we were toddler age and had peers, right? We become the helper at home and now we're the helper in our friend group or we're the the yes person, always saying yes, or the caretaker. We tend to be really repetitive in how we relate. And I'm of the belief that those earliest patterns, again, are just repeated in time. So, whether you do reading on attachment styles and you know that you're anxious or anxious avoidant, or you just observe your dynamics in relationships, the takeaway is always that which I did in childhood, that which was familiar, how do I feel bonded to people, how do I feel safe with people or not safe with people, become those patterns that I repeat over time. Awareness is key here, becoming aware. What are my relational patterns? Um how close do I feel to people? Are there emotions I bring into my relationships or do I keep this type of emotion out or all type of emotions out? Again, do I tend to play one particular role? Is there always a need or maybe all of my needs that go unmet in my relationships or do I feel comfortable expressing myself when I have a need, etc. Um and again, I believe that we're very patterned, all that lives in our sub- conscious. So, becoming aware and conscious allows us to over time begin to break some of those habits and patterns that don't serve me. Beginning to put up a boundary. Beginning to say no. Beginning to express my need when I have it. Is there a window of hyper malleability where the you could sort of reprogram the infant? Or is it like almost like an imprinting machine where it's like, nope, you had this heavy amount of stress in utero, that's imprinted and no matter what you do in the first 3 years, it's never going to undo that. It is imprinted uh in many ways biologically, which we could talk about. That the person is not even aware of. Imprinted in how their genes are turned on and off, imprinted in how their chromosomes function, imprinted in how their stress apparatus responds to the external environment. Um Imprinted in their cells, imprinted in inflammation in their bodies, and so on and so on. And the earlier it happens, and the more it happens, and the more temperamentally sensitive the child, the greater the effects. Having said that, it's never not reversible. It's never not approachable. Now, fact is, people can heal. People can um rewire themselves. People can um uh find a equilibrium, but the more it happened earlier, and the earlier it happened, the more difficult that work becomes, which brings me to my um epitaph that I've designed for my gravestone. You know what it's going to say? I don't know. What's it going to It's going to say it was a lot more work than I had anticipated. You know? That is a fair assessment. Um it's ongoing work. Like, I'm 77. It's ongoing work. And, you know, um when I don't take care of myself emotionally, when I don't do my yoga, when I don't get myself into the swimming pool or on the exercise bike, um when I take on too much in my life, it gets activated. So, yes, it can be dealt with, and it can be healed, and it can be uh regulated, but it takes consciousness. It takes awareness. Self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time. So, you could even you you might even say like identity equals our our 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. Like, how do you help people out of something so gnarly that has a real reason to be upset about? That's incredibly difficult. And the end I think can apply here, you know, honoring the upset, honoring the part of you that does feel like you got the short end of the stick, or that it is unfair, or that is still wearing the consequences of our past, and making space for, you know, whatever it is that we want to see happen differently, or whatever it is that we imagine would would shift or change in our life if things were to be different. That end can go a long way. And I say that because I think for a very long time for in the beginning it's very hard for those of us who have been practicing that short end of the stick dialogue, that it's not fair. Um, just like all things, we can't vanish that overnight. Um, so for some of us it's just noticing when it's there, and unhooking the attention, not expecting your subconscious to just realize that, oh, that's not helpful anymore. Okay, Tom, I'll just leave you alone then. No worries. Whoops. Absolutely not. Your subconscious is going to probably offer you it's not fair narrative in every situation that you would otherwise have thought it's not fair. So don't anticipate that it's going to go away. What we have control over though is spending less time thinking it. So the first time you hear your your your mental, you know, rehearsal of it's not fair, instead of just doing whatever it is you typically do, going down the, you know, the the circle of the drain of it's not fair into all the things that aren't fair, we all have the thing we do with the first thought once it becomes that first thought, spending less time. So that allows us to then expand to make space for something new. But I share that first part um because I think some of us do magically expect it to vanish. We get upset when it doesn't. Um and then when it doesn't, we then spend too much time. So we can empower ourselves by acknowledging that it's there and then by removing our attention and building our muscle and refocusing it. Maybe here is where you offer yourself the refrain that you prefer to practice in that moment. Which you're not going to believe, let me add and on that. Do not expect to believe the new thought in that moment. Don't expect to go from it's not fair to it's totally fair. Of course you're not going to do that 180. Um though you can begin to practice something new. What is up, my friend? Tom Bilyeu here and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing. Achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called How to Build Ironclad Discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. And I think it will help people to do begin to connect those dots if they understand sort of what some of those dots are um using just your own story as an example, I think it would be super enlightening. Well, it was the first It was the first time in my life that I ever realized I had a perspective. And did you know you were struggling with something at that point? Um I like everybody else, you know, it was like, well, you know, it's tough to start a business and it's tough being married and, you know, all the same things that we had all kind of like making okay in our life, you know? And sometimes it goes too far like our, you know, our our relationships break down or businesses go down or but it seemed to me like I'm just wrestling with the same stuff as everybody else, you know? And and I'm working my tail off at that time in my life in a very specific thing that I thought would answer a lot of these questions that were kind of ruminating in my life, right? Like I really I really did believe that one day this was all going to turn out, right? Which was one of the illusions that I had to really confront that it was never permanent. life would automatically become what you wanted it to become? Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah, there'd be one day when all of this work I would wake up and the birds'd be singing, right? And that sun'd be shining and all is good in my world. And I realized that I'd never had that day in my life. Like I I'd been working towards it. I'd been trying to make this happen. But when you But, you know, that's perspective is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Like, what is your perspective? It's such a thin word to deal with this really kind of voluminous thing. It's just a It's a Your perspective is is in everything you hear, everything you see, everything you say, everything you experience, every feeling, every emotion. You know, all of it. That's your perspective. And it's hard to see it because you're in it. So, you can't really witness it. So, when I started to do work on myself, I And it And it was in a specific area, actually. It was in my relationship with my parents. Which at the time in my life I would have said was fine, right? It's okay. Yeah, it's fine. But I But I never realized that fine was [ __ ] you know? I thought fine was just fine. No one had ever said, "But why not amazing?" And once I started to dig down in that, then I could see, "Well, because of this and because of that and because of this and because of that." And it was the first time in my life that I'd ever really confronted that was just a point of view. Like my entire past is only a perspective. It's not it's not the actuality of my past. It's the past of the eyes and the ears of the person who was in it. But there was a lot of people in that past with their own eyes and ears, with a whole different takeaway from it than I had. But I lived like what I took away was now what is like the firm foundation under my feet. So I questioned everything. It was very unsettling at the beginning. To actually question what like the narrative. And I'd never questioned the narrative, like truly questioned it because I'd never seen it. Cuz to me it was the truth. And that's the problem. People spend their adult life overcoming a truth that they made up. Cuz every single moment, as you know, sets you up for the next moment. And you string these moments together and guess what? You have your life until we get to that incredible deathbed. We never know when that's coming. So, every single moment is an opportunity for us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. And so I just try and play the game. If I'm miserable, if I'm upset, if I'm angry, if I'm cranky, it is my responsibility because it's based on what I'm thinking or believing in that moment. It's not the outside world causing me to feel this. It's what I'm doing up here that's making me have that reaction. And if I'm the problem, I am also the solution. So, how do you in your own life begin to unwind that? So, you I I'm assuming you literally walk yourself through that. So, you realize, "Okay, I'm the problem. I know this." Yes. Um is it visualization? Is it framing? Is it saying, "I'm going to take a new perspective on this that's winding me up?" Yeah. It it literally is like, "Lighten up, girl. You're fine. Like, do you have a roof over your head right now? Yes, then things are damn good. Is there some food in the fridge? You're probably luckier than millions of people on the planet right now. Is there running water in the kitchen and in the bathroom? Yes, again, you're better off than probably a billion people or more." So, that little reframe helps me. And then, in the moment, again, it sounds so simple, but I think we're all searching for these really complex things and we don't need them. If you can catch yourself arguing with reality in the moment and realize that's not a wise thing to do, you can then back yourself up and go, "Okay, that didn't turn out right. So, what am I going to do about it? Am I going to be miserable in this moment and let this ruin my night? Or am I going to send off the email to say, 'Hey, when's that work going to come?' And let's readjust our communication plans so this doesn't happen again." But, the argument and the irritation is not necessary to get a new result. To what extent do you see that we're sort of creating our own reality and how do we develop the wisdom to navigate that well? Yeah. So, there's a there's a lot there's a lot um about that that we that seems so uh unreal to us when you think, "I create my own reality, okay?" And because, you know, you reach out, you touch the table, right? It's not like you're imagining some holograph or something, right? But, but you are it you are creating your own experience of being alive, and your actions are coming very much coming from your experiences. So, when I talked about you're both a matrix and you're the rebels, um all of us, all human beings, are constantly setting up the game uh setting up the game subconsciously. So, you're setting up the game of relationships, you're setting up the game of finances, you're setting up the game of your body, you're setting up And so, you're kind of following predictable pathways. And then and but you're also struggling with some of these things, right? Like for instance, I'll give you a really simple example. If I'm somebody who struggle with money, and I know that saving money is really good for me, why would I spend my last 100 bucks at the mall? Like, why would I do that? Right? Until you start to consider, well, maybe what I'm doing is I'm setting up the struggle. Maybe that's the game for me subconsciously. But if you take that same principle with your body, with your love life, with your career, see how you fundamentally relate to yourself is very deep, very profound. But you're so wrapped up in the surface issues of your life, you can't really see what's driving it all. Like, how come I turned out this way? If you get set If you set aside the kind psychological explanations, how come I turned out this way? And where am I headed? Where's this going for me? How does this keep unfolding for me? And the surprising thing for a lot of people is, whatever you're struggling with today, until you finally understand what's driving you'll continue to wrestle with that until you die. 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. 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. Like again, it's the Buddhist thing. It's like the self's an illusion. It's an arbitrary construct that you've spun up uh 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 and how 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 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? How did you give yourself permission to to really let go and be that quirky person even in the face of the potential rejection? Yeah, so uh it wasn't an easy road and I didn't get there overnight. Um so, I was raised Catholic even though I'm not particularly religious now. I consider myself more spiritual, but I went to Seton Hall University and I actually used to work for the church. So, when I was about 23, I was still in this mode of whenever I'd hit a crisis, I'd ask God for some guidance. And the way I did it in those days would I would write in my journal. And so, I remember writing in my journal at those at that time and just saying like, why can't I figure this out? Like, I so believe in my coaching business and I also had all of these other ideas of things I wanted to do like hip-hop, dance, fitness, writing. I was so enthralled with marketing and business. But, traditional wisdom was all about focusing in. It was all about choosing one thing, dominating a niche. And every time I tried to follow that traditional advice, I felt like I was cutting off a limb. And so, in that pleading in my journal and writing, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Why can't I fit in? Why can't I follow all the traditional ideas of what it means to be successful? I got to a point where I just said, [ __ ] it. I can't do this. I can't. I was failing. I was miserable and I said, if I'm not going to be able to fit into this traditional notion of success, why don't I throw out the whole notion together and just do what I really want to do? At that point I was about 25 and I said to myself, you know, you've always wanted to dance, you've never taken a dance class in your life. The only experience that I had was like moonwalking across my mom's kitchen linoleum floor to Thriller with like my white socks on when I was like 7 years old. And I always loved dance, but I had never had any experience or training. And so at that point I was living in a tiny studio apartment in New York City and I said, you know, I should just go take a dance class. Like, wow, what a novel idea. But Tom, I have to tell you, I tortured myself about that idea for years. Like I thought about it, I fantasized about it, but I never gave myself permission to do it because it didn't fit in to being a successful life coach or being a successful person on Wall Street or being a successful person in magazines. I had such narrow ideas of who I could be. And so when I threw out everything and just said, I'm just going to do this my own way, I took my very first dance class at Broadway Dance Center. I had the dorkiest outfit on. I remember standing outside class and, you know, the class before was finishing up and my jaw just hit the ground because everyone in there was so talented, they were so good, I was so like intimidated and I felt this panic come over me. Cut to me going into the class, hiding in the back, getting down on the floor to start the warm-up and the music came on. About 7 seconds in I started sobbing uncontrollably. I had no idea what was wrong, what was going on. I was so thankful that the music was so loud and I had long hair that I could cover my face. And once I finally kind of started moving, I realized my body was saying, yes, this is who you are. This is part of who you're meant to be. And so you asked the question, like how did I get there? It was because I tried so hard doing everything everyone else told me I should do and when that didn't work, I just had to go off and bust out on my own. And it was through that experimentation and moving my body and tapping into the wisdom of this vessel that everything started to move. A lot of what we're we're kind of hooked by as an adult is from whatever we took away from our childhood, right? So, in my second book I talked about this like what are the elements that you took away? What have you built your life upon? Of all the things that you could have taken, what did you take? Right? And so, when you question that with somebody and somebody says, you know, like my mother was controlling. Okay? Which is a descriptive term of things you saw. Okay? When I say my mother was controlling, that's not just a a phrase. I'm knowing a world that exists now between her and I. Right? And in this world that I'm in with her is not my perspective. I'm actually watching her do things that confirm what I've come to believe. I mean, I completely ignored all the other stuff, but I want to focus on that [ __ ] right? Cuz this to me is the big deal. And so, when I say to somebody, but what if your mom isn't controlling? And they say, "Well, she is." And I say, "I know, but what if she's not? What if you just let go of the notion that she's controlling?" Well, I I'm not going to let go of that. Why? She's ruined my life. I say, "No, you've ruined your own life." And then people start to fight for the narrative. Why? Because they've built their life upon it and they've told other people about it and they've got a consensus around them. And so, they've filled their life with these people that are like, "Yeah, your mother's controlling." And you're like, "Yeah, that's right, she is." And then when I go into my relationship as an adult, this person's not going to control me. And even if that person is controlling me or not controlling me, I'm going to point to all the ways that I think they are. And then IT'S LIKE I'VE MARRIED MY MOTHER. NO. You're indulging your perspective. And you never get to see anyone beyond your own perspective. And that's very confronting for someone because if you've spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years there's a carnage, there might be divorces, there might be bankruptcies built on the illusion of control. And and then it's like then you start to see like I've I haven't been interacting with life, I've been interacting with my my my view of it, my judgment of it, my opinion of it. And that's sometimes really challenging for somebody to stomach. So, how do we create ourself? Yeah, and this this is interesting cuz for me this really turned um a belief that I had internalized um for quite some time on its head. And for a very long time, I think like a lot of us, I didn't believe that there was much creation that was possible. I thought that, you know, whatever genetics we were born with, whatever circumstances we were born into, pretty much that would unfold and that would become our path in life. Um with many things outside of our control. Um this was, you know, evidenced in the field for a very long time when we used to believe in genetic determinism. That idea that whatever it was we were given, that we don't really change, we don't grow, we don't evolve. Our genes are our destiny. And now we understand differently. We actually know that we operate with our choices. Meaning, what I have genes, right, that load the gun. Um and then the things I'm doing each and every day determine how I am in life. I even believe that things such as personality, these patterned ways of being, this is exactly what you and I have been talking about. We could call that our genetic personality or we could really look at that as a conditioned way of being. So, when I began to realize that, wait a minute, things aren't as set in stone, I began to entertain many new conversations with myself of possibility of change. And I now believe that we actually can create ourselves. We can create our future by beginning to make new choices now. 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 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.