Mark Manson's Blog, page 14
October 16, 2018
The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Guide to Solving Relationship Problems
Hello there, friend. What’s that I hear? You’re pissed off at someone? Someone is pissed off at you? You have a fight in your life and you don’t know what to do? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Whether it’s with your mom, your aunt, your best friend Stan, or maybe even the mailman, I’ve got the solution to all your relationship problems!
Below is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” for resolving your conflict. Yes, my friend, your conflict is an adventure. A rage-infused shit-festering adven...
September 13, 2018
Why Being an Asshole Can Be a Valuable Life Skill
Eighty years ago, researchers began one of the longest and most complicated projects to understand human behavior in history. It would take almost 50 years to complete. But their work would define an entire field of psychology.
It started with an idea: that people have different fundamental character traits and these character traits are inherited and stable throughout one’s life. It was the idea of personality.
The problem was that there were an infinite number of human behaviors, so how...
August 16, 2018
The One Rule for Life
Depending on your perspective, Immanuel Kant was either the most boring person on the planet or a productivity hacker’s wet dream. For over 40 years, he woke up every morning at 5:00 AM and wrote for exactly three hours. He would then lecture at the same university for exactly four hours. He followed that up with lunch at the same restaurant each day. Then, in the afternoon, he would go on an extended walk through the same park, on the same route, leaving and returning home at the exact same...
July 19, 2018
Stop Trying to Change Yourself
You can’t change yourself, so don’t even try. I know that’s not what the infomercials and self-help seminars tell you. But fuck it. They’re wrong. You can’t change. Like a thirsty man in a desert chasing a mirage, or a fat man peering into an empty fridge—there’s nothing there. So stop chasing it. Go do something else instead.
Why can’t you change yourself? Because the whole idea of change is an arbitrary construct. It’s something you just made up to make yourself feel good (or bad).
Yesterd...
June 7, 2018
Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards
There’s a part of Navy SEAL training called “drown-proofing” where they bind your hands behind your back, tie your feet together, and dump you into a 9-foot-deep pool.
Your job is to survive for five minutes.
Like most of SEAL training, the vast majority of cadets who attempt drown-proofing fail. Upon being tossed into the water, many of them panic and scream to be lifted back out. Some struggle until they slip underwater where they proceed to lose consciousness and have to be fished out and...
May 3, 2018
The Three Levels of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is like great sex: everyone thinks they have a ton of it, but in reality no one knows what the fuck they’re doing.
The fact is that the majority of our thoughts and actions are on autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our habits, routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives so we don’t have to stop and think about it every time we wipe our ass or start a car.
The problem is when we’re on autopilot for so long that we forget we’re on autopilot. B...
April 5, 2018
6 Things People Should Give Fewer Fucks About
You probably thought I was going to start this list off with something cute and cliche like, “Stop caring what people think about you,” right?
Well, fuck that. Let’s offend some people.
I think we should care less about mass shootings and terrorism.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t defend ourselves or that these events don’t matter or that gun violence in general isn’t an issue. I’m simply saying that our emotional and social reactions to mass shooting incidents ar...
6 Things People Should Stop Giving So Many Fucks About
You probably thought I was going to start this list off with something cute and cliche like, “Stop caring what people think about you,” right?
Well, fuck that. Let’s offend some people.
I think we should care less about mass shootings and terrorism.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t defend ourselves or that these events don’t matter or that gun violence in general isn’t an issue. I’m simply saying that our emotional and social reactions to mass shooting incidents ar...
March 1, 2018
How to Grow the Fuck Up: A Guide to Humans
When I was like four years old, despite my mother warning me not to, I put my finger on a hot stove. The stove was red and bright and shiny and I knew yummy food came from it, so the allure was irresistible.
That day I learned an important lesson: really hot things suck. They burn you. And you want to avoid touching them again.
Around the same time, I made another important discovery. The ice cream that my parents would treat me on occasion was stored in the freezer, on a shelf that could be...
January 25, 2018
How to Let Go: Learning to Deal with Loss
Recently, my wife and I passed by the spot of one of our first dates. For the next few minutes, we smiled and reminisced and rehashed a small happy sliver of our overall shared story. That date had been absolutely magical. One of those nights you dream about when you’re an awkward teenager, but as a young adult, you begin to assume it will just never happen.
And then it does. A night that you only get to experience maybe a couple times in your life, if you’re lucky.
And with that realization...
