Mark Manson's Blog, page 12
October 1, 2019
Pornography Can Ruin Your Sex Life
A couple of years ago, I stumbled across some research and articles about pornography and the negative effects it could be having on men and their sex lives. I found it interesting, but never gave it too much thought after that. Then sometime last year I stumbled across this video:
It caught my attention because not only had I struggled with sexual anxiety and bouts of being unable to perform in the past, but I had also talked to a lot of men who struggled with the same issues, men often in...
August 23, 2019
Attachment Theory
If you’ve ever putzed around the internet, looking for why your relationships might all be screwed up (and screwed up in the same ways, I might add), then you’ve probably come across Attachment Theory.
Attachment Theory is an area of psychology that describes the nature of emotional attachment between humans. It begins as children with our attachment to our parents. The nature of this attachment, and how well it’s fostered and cared for, will then influence the nature of our attachment to r...
August 14, 2019
5 Relationship Books Everyone Should Read
Here’s something you may or may not expect: I drown in fucking emails. I know everyone says that. Everyone gripes about their overflowing inbox. But I’m serious here. Every time I log in, I’m like a kid in a pool who forgot he’s wearing a floaty: it’s just pure panic. I get up to 1,000 emails per week. And that’s not counting spam. That’s 1,000 relevant emails that need to at least be acknowledged.
Roughly half of those 1,000 emails are from readers. Reader email comes in all sorts of varie...
Your Honest-to-God Guide to STDs
Updated: August, 2019
Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re scared by the idea of catching some sort of STD. Or at least you have been in the past. That night you got drunk and didn’t have a condom but went for it anyway. Or maybe you hooked up with someone who had a reputation for sleeping with every third person in the phone book.
Perhaps you freaked out and rushed to get tested the next morning. Maybe you started Googling around frantically to convince yourself that you’re OK, only...
August 13, 2019
Vulnerability: The Key to Better Relationships
Maybe you’re one of those people who cringes when they hear the world “vulnerability.” Maybe the very thought of being more vulnerable nauseates you, conjuring up images of holding hands around the campfire while you cry over how your best friend doesn’t love you like you love him, or whatever.
Well, I’m here to tell you that vulnerability is far simpler, more mundane, and yet way more powerful than all of the preconceived, wishy-washy notions you might have.
Humor me for a moment—read thro...
August 5, 2019
6 Healthy Relationship Habits Most People Think Are Toxic
A while back I wrote a post titled 6 Toxic Habits that Most People Think Are Normal. In the months since I published it, the article has attracted a ton of comments–and you know it’s hit a nerve when big, grown-up websites who get paid to post smart grown-up things ask if they can copy/paste it, ostensibly to make a bunch of advertising money off people acting like assholes in their comment sections.
(I know, I’m such a sellout.)
But I think it’s helped a lot of people. Since writing it, I’ve...
July 11, 2019
No, You Can’t Make a Person Change
We’ve all had that one person—that one person in our lives that we always find ourselves saying, “If only they would…” Month after month, year after year—we love them, we care about them, we worry for them, but when we turn off the light or hang up the phone, we think to ourselves, “If only they would…”
Maybe it’s a family member. Maybe they’re depressed. Heartbroken. Despondent. Maybe they don’t believe in themselves. And every time you see them, you try to fill them with love and confidenc...
July 1, 2019
5 Mindsets that Create Success
Here are five stories from five different people that reveal the mindsets of the most successful among us.
1. You Always Have a ChoiceUrsula Burns was raised by her single mother in the projects of New York in the 1960s and ‘70s. Back in those days, she was born with three strikes against her: she was black, poor, and female. Life would be hard.
Her mother scrimped and saved and worked extra jobs just to provide for Ursula and her siblings, but more importantly she constantly reminded them...
June 27, 2019
The Attention Diet
In the time it took me to outline this article I checked Twitter three times and my email twice. I responded to four emails. I checked Slack once and sent text messages to two people. I went down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos once, costing me about 30 minutes of productivity, and I probably checked my books’ ranks on Amazon upwards of 3,172 times.
In what should have been 20 minutes of work, I compulsively interrupted myself at least nine times. What’s more, the cost of these interruptions...
May 14, 2019
#FakeFreedom
The following is an excerpt from my new book Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope. You can order it on Amazon or get a signed copy from Barnes and Noble. You can order internationally from a list of vendors here.
It must be an odd time to be a super-successful businessperson. On the one hand, business is better than ever. There’s more wealth in the world than ever before, profits are breaking all-time highs, productivity and growth are doing great. Yet, meanwhile, income inequality is skyr...
