Mark Manson's Blog, page 21

How To Break Hearts and Risk Losing Everything

When I was young, any time my family got a new VCR or stereo, I would press every button, plug and unplug every cord and cable, just to see what everything did. With time, I learned how it all worked. And because I knew how it all worked, I was often the only person in the house who would use the stuff.

Like many millennial children, my parents looked on as if I were some sort of prodigy. To them, the fact that I could program the VCR without looking at the instruction manual made me the Secon...

No, You Can’t Have It All

I saw a story on Facebook the other day. Like most stories that get passed around Facebook, it’s probably only 38% true and written by a 16-year-old. But regardless, I found it cool, and at the very least, thought-provoking.

It was about a man named Mohammed El-Erian. Mohammed was the CEO of an uber $2 trillion bond fund called PIMCO and earned upwards of $100 million per year. In January, he unexpectedly resigned in order to spend more time with his 10-year-old daughter.

Now here’s the bad ne...

7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose

One day, when my brother was 18, he waltzed into the living room and proudly announced to my mother and I that one day he was going to be a senator. My mom probably gave him the “That’s nice, dear,” treatment while I’m sure I was distracted by a bowl of Cheerios or something.

But for fifteen years, this purpose informed all of my brother’s life decisions: what he studied in school, where he chose to live, who he connected with and even what he did with many of his vacations and weekends.

And n...

5 Life Lessons From 5 Years of Traveling the World

Almost five years ago today, my apartment lease expired, I shipped a few boxes to my mom’s house, packed a suitcase to (hopefully) last me a few months, and took off across the Atlantic. I had less than $1,000 in my bank account.

The first stop was Paris, where, still reeling from breaking up with my girlfriend, selling all of my possessions, and maintaining an online business that was hardly making any money, I proceeded to sulk and gripe my way through the streets of La Ville-Lumiére totally...

It’s Not All Your Parents’ Fault

Sigmund Freud was one of the fathers of modern psychology and the inventor of sit-on-the-couch-and-tell-me-about-your-feelings therapy. He also spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about penises.

Freud got a lot right. But Freud also got a lot wrong. Both of these statements are indisputable.

One of Freud’s big ideas was that parents play a defining role in shaping the personalities and emotional health of their children. It’s an idea that persists to this day.

Up until Freud, it was unde...

Artist as Entrepreneur

When I was in my early 20s and first starting out in internet business, I had grandiose dreams to revolutionize the music industry.

It’s been evident for a while now that the music industry is a complete mess. Everything is pirated. Record companies cling to dead business models. Nobody has a clue how to market new music. New bands and artists are priced out of being promoted. Justin Bieber exists.

Back then, I had the idea that musicians should start leveraging the internet and cut out the mid...

Your Next Big Life-Changing Breakthrough is Already Happening

Before Gandhi was Gandhi, he was just a lawyer. And apparently, not a very good lawyer. Then, in 1893, while taking a train in South Africa, he was asked to remove himself from the first-class cabin because of the color of his skin. He became outraged and refused. The train officials then threw him off the train and it was there, sitting in a cold, dark, empty train station, that Gandhi vowed to resist and fight for the rights of Indians everywhere. After using his philosophy of nonviolent pr...

Love is Not Enough

In 1967, John Lennon wrote a song called, “All You Need is Love.” He also beat both of his wives, abandoned one of his children, verbally abused his gay Jewish manager with homophobic and anti-semitic slurs, and once had a camera crew film him lying naked in his bed for an entire day.

Thirty-five years later, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails wrote a song called “Love is Not Enough.” Reznor, despite being famous for his shocking stage performances and his grotesque and disturbing videos, got c...

How We All Miss the Point on School Shootings

In 1998, a high school junior named Eric Harris from Colorado wanted to put on a performance, something for the world to remember him by. A little more than a year later, Eric and his best friend Dylan Klebold would place bombs all over their school — bombs large enough to collapse large chunks of the building and to kill the majority of the 2,000 students inside — and then wait outside with semi-automatic weapons to gun down any survivors before ending their own lives.

“It’ll be like the LA r...

The Four Engines that Accelerate Language and Life

Last fall, my girlfriend and I sat down to have a street food dinner in Bangkok. It was a tiny street stall with only a handful of plastic chairs and tables, so seating was cramped. Soon another foreigner came and sat down across from us and began to eat silently.

A few minutes pass and the foreigner sitting with us takes note of my girlfriend’s accent. He asks in Portuguese, “Você é brasileira?” (Are you Brazilian?) She says yes, and the three of us then initiate a conversation in Portuguese...