The Confidence Myth That Holds You Back | Mark Manson

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we're going to talk about a bunch of things that are perennial and urgent interest to me, like how to be more confident, how to spend less time comparing yourself to other people, and how selectively and wisely to give fewer fucks. My guest today is Mark Manson, author of several books, including the thunderously popular, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, one of the great book titles of all time. Fun fact, Mark's books have sold over 20 million copies, but he's not just a writer. He also has a great YouTube page where he makes these really high quality and very, very interesting videos, and he's got a podcast called Solved with Mark Manson. Mark Manson, thanks for coming on the show. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I was saying this beforehand. This is one of perhaps the worst acts of podcast host malpractice I've ever committed, that I've had this show for more than 10 years, and this is the first time you're on it? Better late than never. Okay. I appreciate your forgiveness. All right. Let me start with The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which again, is one of the best book titles ever. Thank you. It would be very easy to dismiss this as a kind of nihilistic sentiment, but that is not at all what you're pointing at here. Can you hold forth on what you really mean? Sure. I like the joke that The Subtle Art is, it's kind of a Trojan horse for a book about values. I wanted to write a book about values and people's prioritizations in life and how important those things are, but I kind of felt like nobody would actually go buy a book about values and prioritization. The whole not give a fuck language is just a way to smuggle that philosophy into kind of a fun, irreverent romp of a book. But really at its core, if you start reading the book in chapter one, one of the first things I point out is that there actually is no such thing as not giving a fuck. You have to care about something. And even if you attempt to care about nothing, that in and of itself is caring about something, right? So we're stuck in this cosmic loop of having to direct our attention and focus on something in our environment, no matter where we are or what the situation is. So then the question becomes, what is worth giving a fuck about? And that is the question that A, is I think perennially difficult and complicated. We all struggle with it. But I think also unique to our modern times, say the post internet age or the post social media age, I think it has become extremely complicated to figure out what should we give a fuck about what is actually worth our time and attention and what is not. I think this is probably the most difficult time to figure that out in human history. So the subtle art is to know what is worth not giving a fuck about so that you can focus on the things that are correct. And how, like just for yourself, you're extremely busy member of Homo sapiens. Like, so how, how do you decide what's worth focusing on and what's not? So the chief heuristic that I describe in the book is, is to not focus so much on the benefits that you want in your life, because that's kind of our default approach to everything in our life, right? It's like, what good feeling thing do I want? Do I want to make more money? Do I want to have more friends? Do I want to be more popular? Do I, uh, you know, want to fix up the house? Like what's the positive goal? And instead I asked people to focus on actually the problems and struggles that they were are willing to have and that they are actually secretly kind of enjoy having because everything in life involves a trade off, right? It's easy to want to be popular. It's easy to want to make more money. We all want those things. But the question is, what are we willing to give up for those things? Like that is actually the question that determines what our values are and who we are as individuals. It's almost this like negative way into the question of what is worth caring about. It's like, well, what is worth sacrificing for? What am I willing to be disliked for? You know, people ask me all the time, how do I stop caring what other people think? And my answer, my first answer is, is always, well, what are you willing to be disliked for? And if you can't answer that question easily, then that's a problem. Arthur Brooks, the great writer, and I think most recently of Harvard's Kennedy school, his little question is what would you die for? Right. And it's very clarifying. Yeah. And it's a very short list for, uh, for most people. And, and I think it's, I think it's the sort of thing that we all have to dig very deep and think, think very deeply about, um, to even find an answer to that. What's on your list. I mean, my wife is the first thing that comes to mind. I'm, I'm the, the things I'm waffling on or, or some, some of the, the other associations, do I have any beliefs I would die for? I'm like that, that I would have to sit with for a long time. I mean, I'd like to say yes, but you know, it would feel very heroic to say yes, but are there beliefs that you're willing to be disliked for? Oh yeah. I already am. I mean, like you, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm recording podcasts. I'm in videos every week. I'm posting stuff online all the time. So it's, it's, you know, you know, it, part of our job description is, uh, haters. So you and I are in, are in a position in that just through the act of our work, we are forced to think about what we're willing to be disliked for, like what stance we're willing to take or what beliefs are important enough to us to deal with, you know, the comment section that is kind of a clarifying filter. But I think if, if people, you know, going about their day to day life, it's probably not something they think about very often. Are there things that, you know, you shouldn't give a fuck about, but you do anyway, and it's therefore a struggle for you? Yeah. I, I think, you know, all of kind of the superficial materialistic things I struggle with at times, I think as everybody does, I generally think I'm on the right side of, of deprioritizing them. But I do think sometimes I, I have a tendency to be a workaholic and I have a tendency, I'm very competitive. So like when I have a goal or some sort of metric I'm trying to hit, I get extremely wrapped up in it sometimes to the point where it, where it backfires a little bit. What did it do to your brain to have a book that was that successful? I mean, I know there's this stat that you've sold more than 20 million copies. I would imagine 19.5 of those millions were of the subtle art. Yeah. I think the human mind is, is really primed for kind of a slow compounding growth over time. Like whether you're adopting a new skill or becoming more confident, you know, starting a new career. I think the mind is kind of just default setting is that everything should get like five to 10% better every single year. And, and then when something comes along and it gets 10,000% better within six months, like something in your brain just kind of breaks. And I, I, I really struggled with, like for a while I struggled with the feeling of like, is this just luck? Like, do I deserve this? So there was this weird period of like imposter syndrome, I guess I would say of, of just like, okay, yeah, this, you know, I did a good thing, but it's like, I don't think I deserve all this. You know, of this concept, hedonic adaptation where we, something good, new and good happens in our life and we're super excited about it for 45 seconds. And then we just bake it into our baseline expectations. Right. And if you experience a career dip or some project you're working on, isn't going as well as you thought, like how do you handle that? Especially in light of what you went through. It was interesting. So I did a followup book called everything is fucked the book about hope and, and the whole process of doing that book, it was one of the hardest projects I think I've ever done in my life. And most of that is because the whole time I was doing it, I knew it was going to feel like a failure no matter what happened. I mean, it debuted at number one on the times list and then it quickly fell off. And I was like, well, it fell off after, you know, six weeks. So like it failed, which is absurd. It's like completely, this is, this is like such a champagne problem, but it coming back to just the, the brutal reality of the hedonic treadmill, you can objectively know that it's not true, but it still feels that way. You put your finger on something. I think that we all struggle with aside from the hedonic treadmill, which is expectations. Yeah. And yeah, like if it, it, it expectations can fuck up everything. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think the same concept can be applied to people's daily lives. Like for example, I've observed a number of couples like friends in my, in my life that they're struggling through, through the relationship. So they decide to get married and that, and then the marriage is this huge peak experience and they think that's going to fix it. Right. But then it just sets the expectations at this new level. And so they're even more disappointed afterwards. And then they're like, well, maybe we should buy a house together. That'll fix it. Right. And then it's the, then they go like, take out this huge mortgage and buy a house. And it's like, for three months, they're a static and everything's amazing. And they're decorating together. And then that becomes normal. And then the disappointment hits again. And it's even more painful that time. And then they're like, well, maybe we should have a kid. And then it's, you know, it's like, Oh boy, here we go with that. And it's a game that our brain plays with us consistently of like, if I just have X, then I'll be happy. If I just have Y, then I'll be happy. I think there's a very fundamental evolutionary reason for it. It's, it's what's kept our species striving and propagating for so long. But this is why I come back to that heuristic of like, okay, it's easy for us all to like, think of the thing that's we think is going to make us happy, but what are you willing to struggle for? What is the sacrifice you're willing to have in your life? Because that is actually the more accurate metric of what you should be doing. One of the most potent and persistent sources of suffering in my life is this constant or seemingly constant toppling forward into the next moment. Nothing that's happening right now quite does it for me. And so I'm just kind of reaching for that next thing over and over as my longtime meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to ask people, how many slices of pizza have you eaten? How many parties have you attended? How many promotions have you received? And are you done? Of course not. We are insatiable. And in this way, the pursuit of happiness can become the source of our unhappiness. 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Bianca did the readout on what she bought, a lot of kitchen stuff like platters, serving platters, and espresso cups. Basically, she's prepping for all of the hosting we are going to do throughout the holiday season. We love to host. It's something that makes us very happy, and it's much easier when you've got some great stuff that you've acquired through Wayfair.com. We love Wayfair, and Wayfair has something called Wayfair Verified, which helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. You can shop thousands of products across every style and every budget at Wayfair, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. Don't just take my word for it. Wayfair has more than 20 million verified five-star reviews. Lots of people out there use and love Wayfair. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This brings us to something I wanted to talk to you about. Before I say what that is, I want to set it up by mentioning or repeating what I mentioned in the intro, which is that you have a podcast called Solved with Mark Manson, and the conceit, which is really funny, is that instead of doing what I do, which is I probably, over the 10 years of this show, have done 40 episodes on every problem you can think of. You do one episode, it's super long, and you solve the problem, allegedly, in the episode. You've done one recently on social comparison. One of the things you mentioned, which I thought was really cool at the top of the episode, is that you learned that your podcast was not doing the numbers, was not reaching the audience you thought it was reaching, and then you started looking around at all these other schmoes who have podcasts and comparing yourselves to them. Before we talk about what you learned as an antidote to social comparison, can you tell that story? The whole concept behind Solved is that we take one topic, we go super deep, full research team spends four to six weeks researching it. My producer and I, we spend and two days prepping, and then a full day shooting it. Most episodes come out around four or five hours. And the goal is that it's like, it is the last podcast you should ever have to listen to on this topic. It's like, everything's in there. Every perspective, every piece of research, every historical anecdote or, you know, wisdom tradition will at least touch upon it. So the funny thing is, is when we launched, we had an incredibly strong launch last year, and the first three or four episodes did amazingly well. We hit all sorts of charts, and Spotify was really kind to us and kind of gave us a push on their platform. And we had a couple of clips go viral. So it was like, everything seemed amazing. And then I think it was like, maybe three or four months in, Spotify like pushed an update to their platform saying that, basically saying, oh, sorry guys, it turns out we were counting some things wrong. And then that new update came online, and it turned out that like a third of the people were listening that we thought were. So it was, I remember coming into the office and my producer was just sitting there staring at the computer screen with this like dead face, just like absolutely miserable. And he was just like, why are we doing this? This is horrible. But I mean, it comes back to the hedonic treadmill thing. But that was our intro to the social comparison episode. And to remind everybody that we are not immune of these things as well, like these are, and this is something that I like to hit on on my show, and we've already shared here, but it's like, I don't think any of this stuff actually, like the irony of the name Solved is that none of this stuff actually gets solved. Like you never solve social comparison ever. You just get better at it. You never solve your confidence issues. You just get better at it. You learn how to manage it over time. Yes, this is why I like the title 10% Happier. It's just like marginal improvement over time. But so what did you learn about why social comparison is such a nagging problem for humans? It is very much a baked in part of our hardware. So if you look at just the way that we evolved over millions of years, we evolved in small bands and tribes and really status comparison served a very, very important social function, but also like a function of survival, right? Like if you and I are in a prehistoric tribe together, it's important for us to know who is the best hunter, who is the best fisherman, who is the best at organizing and rallying all the tribe to like fight against the neighboring tribe who's trying to take all of our resources. Like these are all life and death things. So if you are extremely good at something that promotes the tribe's survival, you deserve that status and you deserve special treatment and you deserve to be looked up to because it's just, it helps everybody survive in that environment. The flip side of that is that we all have these kind of, researchers call them sociometers. So these like, these almost like gauges inside of our heads where we're constantly subconsciously evaluating our status compared to the people around us. And what's fascinating is that it is completely contextual and relative. So if you take somebody, and there's plenty of research on this, if you take somebody who say is making a million dollars a year and they live in a neighborhood where everybody else is making $100,000 a year, they're gonna feel really good about themselves. And if you take that person who's making a million dollars a year and then you put them in a neighborhood where they live around people who are making $10 million a year, they're gonna feel really crummy about themselves. And this happens to all of us all the time. We're in one room where we're really competent, we feel really good about our skills, we have tons of relationships, and we feel really good about our status among the people around us. And then we go to a completely different room in another side of town where we have no idea what we're doing, we have no skillset, we have no relationships, and what do we feel? Insecurity, self-doubt, we kinda wanna shrink, we wanna back up into the corner, become a wallflower. This is all instinctual. We all have it, it's very natural, it evolved within us to promote survival and replication. And it's not something you ever get rid of and it's also something you don't want to get rid of because it is important to know what you're good at compared to others and what you're not so good at compared to others. That is a useful thing to know. Where the problem starts is the self-judgment and the judgment of others around very arbitrary status metrics. That's where we all get into trouble. The old comparison is the thief of joy thing. Yeah, just as you said, you can be making the same income but depending on which neighborhood you live in, all of a sudden you're enjoying that income way less or way more. And it's a great way to just kinda fuck your life if you can't appreciate what you have because you're measuring it against somebody else. One of the things you say that I thought was really interesting is a common complaint right now is that social comparison has been put on steroids by social media, which I think is true. I think you and I would both agree is true but you make the subtle, to be a little cute point, that the For You page, in other words, the move from the version of social media where we're following our friends and seeing a curated version of our friends' lives to a more entertainment-based social media where we're scrolling and the algorithm is just feeding us stuff it knows that we will like has actually taken some of the sting out of that. It has. I think it's replaced it with a different problem. An interesting thing happened with social media about five years ago. It was innovated by TikTok. So TikTok's big innovation was it didn't just show you people you followed, it showed you any piece of content it thought you would enjoy. And that turned out to be extremely effective. People spent way more time on TikTok than other platforms. So the other platforms adopted it. So now social media is less social and it's more media. It's more just, imagine a TV, like when we were young we would sit at home after school and flip TV channels kind of mindlessly until we found something that caught our attention. Now it's a TV that flips the channels for us. It's like, this is what you're gonna like next and this is what you're gonna like next and this is what you're gonna like next. So the benefit of that is that you kind of do remove a lot of that highlight reel, seeing everybody's life, their highlight reels and making the false assumption that that's their day-to-day life. A lot of that gets removed, but what the new problem that creates is that everybody kind of lives inside their own epistemic bubble. Like everybody's information diet just becomes extremely siloed. And you can have two people who are good friends in the real world but they believe completely different things because the information and the media that they've been consuming is just completely different, has no relation to each other. The other thing I'll say, kind of coming back to the point that social comparison isn't something you get rid of and it is actually something that is useful. The point I like to make a lot, which is lost on most people, is that there is such a thing as good social comparison. So if you think about role models you've had in your life, that is a form of social comparison. If you think about a hero you've had or somebody who's really inspired you to do something great, that's a form of social comparison. If you think about a family member, a mentor, who's like taught you things, that's a form of social comparison, right? It's not that we should stop comparing ourselves to others, it's we should find good reasons to compare ourselves to good people. And where people suffer is they are usually comparing themselves to people that are not worth comparing themselves to and they're comparing themselves for bad reasons, for very superficial, unimportant reasons. Like money or fame. Totally. Now we're gonna come back to a refrain in this show and in your work. I believe you said in the episode that really for you, one of the things that cuts through noxious social comparison is remembering what you care about, what you're about values again. Say more about how that works. Well, it comes back to that line, if you're not aware of what you're willing to be disliked for, then you're going to kind of just default to whatever you think is gonna make you liked by the most people. And the stuff that's gonna make you liked by the most people is generally the most superficial, emptiest things, right? Money, materialistic things, beauty, wealth, whatever. When you find something that you're willing to be disliked for, then it allows you to let go of those more superficial comparisons. Because again, those superficial comparisons, they're always there. There's never gonna be a point in your life where you stop completely caring about money or stop completely caring about your appearance or whether people think you're attractive or not. What changes is that you find things that are more important. And once you find the more important things, it's like the volume knob on those other comparisons just gets turned way, way down. Yeah, there's a quote, and I don't know if it's from you or from somebody who you were quoting in the episode, but the best way to stop worrying about what other people think of you is to have something more important than what other people think of you. Yes, yes. And that ultimately is a question of values. What do you recommend to people in terms of figuring out what your values are? So I think there's a few ways to approach it. Part of the problem is that a lot of us, we spend our whole life kind of just defaulting to what we think the people around us will like. There's never an opening for us to learn anything about ourselves. So quite literally, we don't know ourselves because everything we've cared about has just been a proxy because other people care about it. So I think the first thing is to give yourself that space, whether it's time or a specific hobby or setting aside a trip for yourself to just go explore things that you like to do for no other reason than you like to do them and figure out what you care about when absent of any sort of pressure or stimulation from the outside world. And I think once you create that space, what you start to notice is that there are certain curiosities or certain desires that start to show up naturally on their own again and again, certain preferences, certain priorities. And I think those are the things that you then have to make an effort to pursue consciously. And the funny thing about values, we talked about this in our values episode, is that it's not like you find one thing you care about and then that's it, you're set. You're like, awesome, nailed it, got it figured out. It's values, they're kind of always in this tension with one another, right? Because there's trade-offs between everything in life. And your time is always scarce and your attention is scarce. So spending more time with your family is always gonna come at a cost of spending time doing something else. And spending more time at work is gonna come at a cost of social life and family and physical health or whatever. So the more you prioritize any one thing, you are, by definition, deprioritizing other things. And so I think when you create that space and you eliminate certain things from your life as an experiment, you kind of learn what you actually really miss and what you don't miss at all. So you, we've been using the word values. You also did an episode on purpose. Yes. And those strike me as, if not synonymous, very, very similar. They're related. So I think purpose, there's more of an action element to it. The best way I like to describe it is that purpose is a sense that your time was spent well. Right, so when people say, I wanna find my purpose or I wanna feel more purpose in my life, like, what does that actually mean? Like, what is having more purpose in your life? I think it is the sense that you have spent your time well and that time is spent well based on what you care about, what you prioritize. Like, if you're spending all your time doing stuff that doesn't matter to you, then you're gonna feel like your life has very little purpose. Whereas if you spend your time doing something that does feel very meaningful and valuable to you, then you're gonna feel a great sense of purpose. Right, so you could come to see what your values are, but not actually figure out what your purpose is or live in your purpose. Right. So, and that delta would create a lot of unhappiness. Yes, purpose is kind of what happens when your values make contact with the real world. Got it, got it. And if memory serves, what you recommended in that episode in terms of figuring out what your purpose is is similar to what you recommended just now in terms of figuring out what your values are, giving yourself space to run experiments and to tap into your own innate curiosity about what turns you on. Yeah, yeah, and with purpose, it's really interesting. So one part of it is that there's something that you feel like you are uniquely positioned or capable of doing that most other people are not. There's something specific about your skills, your experience, your talents, your situation that most other people don't have. And then finding where that can contribute to something that is valuable and meaningful for other people. Like that's, if you can find that Venn diagram, if you can find where to point your talents and specific experiences in history towards something that is useful and meaningful for others, like purpose naturally emerges as a result. One of the practical techniques that you recommended for figuring out your purpose is to do a time audit. Yeah. What is that? So a time audit is to, at the end of a day, take like a week, and at the end of each day, sit down for like 10, 20 minutes and actually map in how you spent each hour of that day. Like what you were actually doing. Not what you were supposed to be doing, but like. What you are actually doing, you know, we all know you were at work for eight hours, but like, you know Were you browsing Instagram? Were you texting with your friend? Were you did you take a two-hour lunch like actually color in what you spent the time doing and then go through and and rate from one to ten How how meaningful that activity felt to you what ends up emerging is that you find that there's probably one or two things that are not very meaningful to you that are eating up a lot more time than you expected and The things that are meaningful to you. You're like, wow, I barely spent any time this week doing that I think that would be a powerful source of data no question This time of year, you know what I love over shirts I think that's the technical term for them these kind of heavy Shirts that are like part sweater part shirt and you can wear them over another shirt or as I'm doing right now over a t-shirt You know who makes and sells great over shirts quince our longtime sponsor I was on quince.com the other day and I bought the over shirt that I'm wearing right now It's a handsome shirt that I love and it will be a go-to for me And I literally just came in the mail right before I walked into my studio to record this ad So I'm very excited about it quince focuses on high quality staples made with premium materials like a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere 14 karat gold and Italian leather all timeless versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become Favorites long after the holidays their cashmere sweaters start at just $60 and the lineup doesn't stop there premium down jackets wool outerwear and cashmere accessories everything you and your loved ones need to stay warm and look put together all season long and when it comes to gifting given that The holiday season is now pretty much upon us quince has much more than clothing They also have fine jewelry leather bags hotel quality bedding chef grade cookware and five-star luggage Basically plenty of ways to find something special for everybody on your list Give the gift of quality this holiday season download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK and when quince asks where you heard about them Please let them know it was us 10% happier. 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Wear your best life with aura Everybody's talking about AI agents these days and on this show we generally resist the hype But here's a version of an AI agent that really does make sense to me It's an agent built around one specific job in your business done the way you would actually do it like answering the same five questions every new client asks or sorting incoming requests and Sending them to the right person Today's sponsor base 44 lets you build exactly that base 44 is an AI Platform where you describe what you need in your own words Like what it should know who it should talk to what should happen next and then you get a working build That could be a client portal or some sort of internal tool Or an AI agent that you want to build from scratch or all of them working together in one place The database login backend and hosting are all already handled and it's not a demo It's the real thing and it's yours to use change and keep building as the work changes I have spent a decent amount of time talking to base 44 is AI and it is quite responsive and simple to use even for A dummy like me go to base 44.com slash happier and sign up through our link to get 30% off the builder plan for your First year, that's base 44.com slash happier There's one more solved episode I want to ask you about and then I want to ask you about this big new project You've launched. Okay The final solved episode I want to ask you about is confidence I'm very curious to get to the punchline like how do you get more confidence? But let me start with a definitional question. Like what is confidence and how is it different from say self-esteem? I love this episode because it is I just I have like a soft spot in my heart for contrarian takes and It's interesting going into each solved episode because Occasionally we find that okay Yeah the conventional wisdom is kind of dead on and it's a lot of the advice is what you would expect sometimes you find that there's Like a lot of nuance and you know, it depends that's usually the case then every once in a while You dig really deep into something and you're like, oh This people should not really care about this This is the wrong question and confidence is one of those really it is I shouldn't care about being cop It is the wrong question interest it is the wrong question and Interestingly, one of the things that we uncovered when we did the episode is that for most of human history confidence was actually a pejorative term Oh, so for example the term con man comes from the term confidence man, which People used to use as an insult. It was it was essentially The the word that was used in the 18th and 19th century for somebody who was a fraud or a scamster They were a confidence man it only switched in the mid 20th century and a lot of it traced back to Norman Vincent Peale, but The the guy who wrote the power of positive. Yes. Yes who happened to be Trump's personal pastor. Yes, which explains a lot So confidence it is the way Peale described it is he said that Basically, he said you need to feel good about what you're about to do in order to do it well, and I think this this assumption suits our intuition quite a bit right because if you think about All the things that make you anxious or all the things that you're insecure about You don't want to do them. And so you imagine that if I just felt better about it, I would be able to do it Well by the 1970s and 1980s, they found pretty consistently that no, actually that's not the case at all like Making you feel good about doing something Doesn't actually make you perform any better And in many cases it just kind of deludes you into thinking you did a good job Even though you didn't the way confidence actually works confidence is not the input of good action It is the output of good action confidence is Built and accumulated by building evidence that you are capable of handling something So it's the more you speak in front of a group of people The more confident you become that you're able to speak in front of a group of people because you have Accumulated a lot of evidence that you're able to do it now obviously this does not solve the problem of people who are like super anxious and freaking out before doing something and so The conclusion of the episode is that it's not confidence that people actually need it's courage hmm and courage it turns out is it's a completely different thing to develop and It requires a Progressive desensitization a practice of Being able to confront difficult things Being able to manage failure. Well Being able to get back up after a setback Like these are all kind of mental muscles that we have to build and practice and once we build that courage muscle Confidence just starts happening as a as a side effect of being able to successfully do the actions we want to do so we should build courage and An emergent property will be confidence. Correct? It reminds me of I think it was John Wayne who said Courage is being afraid but saddling up. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, and I talked about I I'm a extremely Extremely anxious person and I have a son who's quite anxious and we talk about this a lot which is you know courage is being afraid and doing it anyway, and and But you that doesn't mean Going you said selective and systematic desensitization. So it's like going in a stepwise manner to build The courage there by the confidence to do things over time Yes, so in the the episode So this was primarily discovered by a famous psychologist named Bandura and he did a series of experiments at Stanford where he took people who are incredibly afraid of snakes like intense snake phobias and He brought them into a room with a window into another room and the other room was full of snakes And of course they freaked out they screamed they wanted to leave all this stuff He kept them there until they were finally kind of calmed down and they were comfortable at least being in the next room Okay Next step open the door All the people they start freaking out. They're like, oh my god close the door. I can't handle it's too much blah blah blah blah blah A few minutes go by they calm down. They realize it's okay Next step. Why don't you step into the next room? Of course panic freak out on and on it goes long story short Within a single day it took like eight or ten hours But within a single day he got each of these people with snake phobias to actually hold snakes and Interestingly afterwards he followed up with them six or eight weeks later and And asked them how they felt and whether they were still as afraid of snakes or not And they were still a little afraid but definitely much less afraid But a lot of them started reporting all these other kind of side benefits in their lives They realized that like actually they were speaking up more at work and they were you know, taking more accountability in fights with their partner and and able to like have difficult conversations a little bit better and So what Bender noticed is that there was something about competence developing competence that Gave people the evidence I can do hard things. I can handle difficult situations I can I can bounce back from being under pressure and that that Doesn't it starts being domain specific, but then it bleeds into the other areas of your life Totally by that it seems at least related to the concept of having a growth mindset like that you are Capable of change. In fact looked at through a Buddhist lens. You are constituted by change you are nothing but a process it also reminds me of the fact that the in if you look at all of The the research into habit change the number one advice is always start small Yeah, because what you want to do is put some wins on the board and then you start to gain Confidence. Yeah, you start to and and and probably more importantly you said you start to develop a New identity. Yeah, I'm the type of person who exercises even if it's a run around the block I'm the type of person who meditates even if it's only one minute of meditation Yeah, all of these things this building of courage and competence Seems like I think your point is let's aim for that and the confidence will come as a consequence But if you aim for confidence, it's kind of starting at the wrong end yes, and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble so you asked about self-esteem earlier and part of the offshoot of kind of Peel's assumption was the self-esteem movement in the 60s and 70s and the self-esteem movement was built off the idea that if we just make people feel really good about themselves, they will do good things and This emerged from they did a bunch of research. They found that generally Students who perform better in school tended to feel really good about themselves Kid people who are more successful professionally, they felt really good about themselves, you know on and on and on they looked at all these different measurements and people generally had a very positive self-image the problem is is that they were missing the cause and effect there like the It turns out in hindsight the student that did extremely well and went to Harvard They felt good about themselves because they did extremely well and went to Harvard It's not the feeling good about themselves that that that caused that it was the effect and The the thing that kind of blew this up in the 90s psychologist by the name of Roy Barmeister Was actually tasked to do kind of a large meta-analysis of self-esteem research because I mean the self-esteem research and Practices it was instituted into our education policy. Everybody gets trophy. Yes, exactly like it's in the in the 80s 70s and 80s it was like Education systems were actively teaching the teachers how to give their students self-esteem. It's your generator. You're a millennial I'm a Gen X we were we were you know I went to a camp where they literally taught us how to box as a way to deal with our conflicts Unlike them with the Millennials. Yeah, we got it never I definitely got it. Yeah, you did Yeah, so Barmeister. He started he kind of took all the data and ran a bunch of research himself and Came back and he said Yeah, it turns out there's nothing there. Not only does it turn out that there's nothing there But it turns out that there's potentially a lot of negative side effects of having a high self narcissism Exactly. So for example, he went to maximum security prisons and started measuring the self-esteem of violent criminals And it turned out the more violent the criminal the higher the self-esteem. Yes, you know and in the episode My producer and I we spent a lot of time kind of digging into kind of the psychological biases and and all the ways that we we kind of misattribute our own skill and and our own abilities to explain why why Pursuing confidence can can get you in the trouble. But you know, the short version is that we just don't really have an accurate view of ourselves most of the time and And so the only way to have an accurate view of yourself is to actually go do the thing and see what happens and so that's why the only healthy version of confidence is is The end product of the action not not the input of it. Well said very helpful actually Real progress starts with action as the executive director of the Honnold Foundation Emily Tightsworth works to expand access to solar energy in communities around around the world, supporting locally led projects that bring reliable power, greater independence and opportunity where it is needed most. On the podcast Planet Visionaries, professional climber and Honnold Foundation founder, Alex Honnold, goes beyond the headlines with Emily to explore practical solutions for a more equitable future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. I've mentioned before that I have an 11 year old son who's obsessed with sports cards. And he and I were talking the other day about the fact that this hobby has been a great way for him to learn about the value of money because he saves up to buy the cards he wants. He also is developing a keen eye for which cards are good investments and might increase in value over time. For all parents out there with teenagers, we know you're already trying to keep a million things under control and given how important it is to teach your children about the value of money, I'm very happy that Cash App is a sponsor of this show. 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I did not mention this in the intro because, as I told you before we started rolling, there are some pretty negative feelings about AI these days. It's weird because a lot of people are using it even though they say they hate it. And I'll just be open before anybody starts to get mad at me. I have all of your same concerns about AI, but I do use it. You have launched, to call it a chatbot, is that accurate? Yeah, we call it an AI mentor, but there is other functionality, but the main functionality is chat. And it's called Purpose AI. Yes. And the cool thing about Purpose AI is it's not sycophantic. It actually talks to you the way a good friend would talk to you, which is it will tell you the truth without being a dick about it. Yes, correct. So just say more about the project. So I'll kind of talk about where it came from and make my case to maybe the more skeptical listeners. The first thing, when ChatGBT came out, everybody was using it. I started to become very surprised and startled by how many people in my personal life were telling me that they were going to ChatGBT with deep personal issues. Yeah, I do it. Yeah, and kind of using it as a therapist or a coach. Yes. And so I went and I tried it out. And sure enough, it can give you a lot of great information. It can also make some stuff up. A million percent. And it also kisses your ass. Yes. Right, so it's- Yes, yeah. I kind of like that part a little bit. I mean, yeah, hey, we all need it sometimes. But it's, I mean, it's to the point, like I joke around with my co-founder that it's like you could rob a bank and be in a high-speed police chase and ask ChatGBT, how do I get away from the police? And ChatGBT would be like, wow, you're so brave. Yes. That must be really hard for you. Exactly. Although it does have all of this language. It does, it's trying not to get sued a lot. Like if I ask it certain questions, it's always like talk to your doctor or et cetera, et cetera. That's because they have been sued a lot, but. Fair enough. So I started to observe this. And one of the things that I have been keenly aware of being in this industry for almost 20 years now is that there is a shocking lack of accessibility to good life advice, to good mental health care, to good coaching and mentoring. There's some pretty harrowing statistics around this that for every, I believe it's for every therapist or counselor who's working, there are 48 people who want access to a therapist or a counselor, but either don't have access to one or don't have the means to afford one. So it's a market that the demand vastly outstrips the supply. So this idea, I mean, you see it in a few places that AI is gonna put doctors and therapists and coaches out of business. I think there's absolutely no way because first of all, there's just not enough doctors and coaches and therapists and counselors in the world for all the people who need one. So that's point number one. And then point number two is another tension or struggle that I've felt for a long time in this industry is that generally the things that work best don't scale very well, and the things that scale really well don't work the best, right? So you and I have both written books. You and I both do podcasts. They're great, right? They're very helpful. I've read a lot of books that are helpful. I've listened to a lot of podcasts that are helpful, but, you know, they move the needle a little. Like it's very rare that, you know, something, a podcast episode is gonna take you from zero to 10 on an issue in your life. Whereas if you do sit down and spend a lot of time with a really good coach or counselor or whoever it is, within a few months, you can move the needle a lot. But that doesn't scale. And it's, not to mention, it's hard to find someone who's really a good fit for you and all that. So I started to see the opportunity of how AI could supplement the overwhelming demand in the market and give access to people who normally wouldn't have access to good advice. There is research on AI-driven life advice. It is net positive. It is good, by and large. It is not as good as a good therapist or a good coach, but it is still good, and it does have a positive effect. And we've already seen from our users that it's had a drastic positive effect on people's lives. And the fact that it's always there, it's always available. You know, you wake up at 2 a.m. freaking out about something, you can't call your therapist, right? But you can talk to an AI, and it's gonna be awake. It's gonna have the exact same quality of answer it would at 2 p.m. It's not gonna judge you. It's not gonna scold you for, you know, losing sleep. So I do think there is a role that it can play in this industry, and I am excited for the potential of it. Okay, so that's my defense. I rest my case. I'm not the one who's skeptical. I'm just channeling those who are skeptical in the audience. There is one thing I'm skeptical about, though it's more from a business perspective. Okay. Why would I download Purpose AI rather than just keep my subscription to Claude or Chachapiti and just advise it to not be sycophantic? A couple reasons. One, I mean, they have gotten better, the main models. They have gotten less sycophantic over time. I'd say the biggest thing that we do that is different than what they do, I mean, first of all, our product is specifically catered for this use case. So all the prompting, all the systems, the databases, everything is like specifically designed for this. The other thing that we do is that when you sign up, you're taken through an onboarding process. And what that onboarding process is doing is that it is doing a personality assessment and getting an understanding of who you are at like at a psychological level. We get your top three values and we give you the Schwartz values evaluation. And so we pull your top three values and then we give you a big five assessment. So we get your big five personality and we have like an attachment quiz so we can figure out your attachment type. With that, all of those things kind of fed into the model, it will know how to give you personalized advice based on combining that with your unique situation, it can give you much more personalized advice that is actually credible towards who you are psychographically than say just a generic model that you asked for help with your groceries and what the weather's gonna be tomorrow and all that. Final question, we do this little segment, it's called What's Good? I'm curious, is there a book, movie, little life hack, anything that you would recommend that's top of mind for you? It's funny that we were just talking about AI. One of my favorite things to do recently, my wife and I, we went online and we found, I think it was the New York Times list of 100 greatest films ever. And we just marked down all of the films that at least one of us had not seen. And so we have this list of like 50 movies. We watch one or two a week, so here's the hack. Watch something, like we watched David Lynch's Mulholland Drive recently. Total mind fuck, like great movie but also you get to the end and you're like, what did I just watch? Like what happened? So here's my favorite thing. Go on Claude or ChatGBT and prompt it and say, you are an expert movie critic. I want you to give me a full analysis of Mulholland Drive. Give me the backstory, how did it go into production? What was David Lynch's creative process? What were the interesting things that happened during production? What was the critical reception at the time? How has it aged? What's the cultural impact it's had? And it gives you the best 10, 20 page report. It is so fascinating. You learn so many like interesting tidbits and like creative decisions that happened and total accidents that happened on set that were left in the movie that ended up being brilliant. And it's just created like such a fun intellectual experience for my wife and I. It's like one of our favorite things to do on the weekend. That's so great. I love it. And funny, it's funny because my what's good is actually quite similar. I actually was looking through the New York Times list of 100 best films of the 21st century the other day and listing the ones. I've been giving my son a cinematic education. He's almost 12 and rejects almost everything I say, but has actually been very open to this. And he's like, daddy, like, what's the next movie we should see? So I was harvesting from that list movies that I think he could watch. But anyway, one of the movies we watched recently that I'm gonna recommend now that it wasn't on that list is we've been on a space jag. We saw Project Hail Mary a couple months ago when it came out. And he was turning, he kept turning to me during the movies like, daddy, this is the best movie ever, right? This is amazing. And so we went and watched like Interstellar and all these other space movies, some of them good, some of them bad. One we watched recently that I kind of had a positive memory of, but forgot how good it is. And maybe it's because the star is so controversial and easy to dismiss. There's a Tom Cruise movie called Edge of Tomorrow. Have you ever seen it? Oh, I don't like, I think back when it came out, I don't. It's like 10 years old. And it's basically the best version. It's not explicitly a video game movie, but it's kind of the best version of the spirit of a video game taken into a movie because it's about this guy who dies and gets a new life every time and like starts over in the game. And it's extremely well done. And I'm not, I have a lot of mixed feelings about Tom Cruise. I covered Scientology when I was a reporter. And so like, yeah, I had a lot of interactions with the church and, but he's great in the movie. Emily Blunt's great in the movie and my son loved it. So if you're looking for a space movie, Edge of Tomorrow. Nice. This has been a total pleasure. Like I said, can I fucking believe it's taken this long to have you on the show? I mean, but I'm better late than never and it's so cool to meet you. So thank you for your time. And I just want to remind everybody before I let you go of all the stuff that you're doing that people should check out. His first book was called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He's got a YouTube channel where he makes all sorts of cool videos on that YouTube channel and on any podcast platform, you can get his podcast, which is called Solved with Mark Manson. And if you don't hate AI, he's got Purpose AI available in any app store. How'd I do? Did I list everything? Amazing, thank you. All right, Mark Manson, thank you. Thank you very much for watching and or listening today. Really appreciate it. If you want to hook me up, and I know podcast hosts ask for this all the time, but there's a reason why we ask for it because it's genuinely helpful. If you want to hook me and my team up, follow us and like us and rate us and review us on whatever platform you're consuming the show right now. Share with your friends, follow us on social media. It all genuinely helps us grow. Now onto the credits. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Cashmere, David Hart, and Hayden Broome. Post-production is handled by the great folks over at Greenhorn Creative, and Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band, Islands, wrote our theme. Thank you for listening, deuces. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. 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