Mark Manson's Blog, page 3

Pain Is Part of the Process

You’ve probably never heard of Kazimierz Dąbrowski.

He was a psychologist from the 1940s with a fascinating background. He studied with Freud’s contemporaries in Vienna, worked with mentally ill patients, participated in the Polish resistance during World War II, was captured and tortured in a prisoner of war camp, and lost many friends and family members in the process.1

These traumatic experiences shaped his study of pain and trauma, leading to groundbreaking insights that are still relevan...

How to Make Friends as an Adult

Romantic relationships get all the attention, but I’d argue that friendships are just as important—if not more so—for our health and happiness.

Just like with romantic relationships, creating fulfilling, lasting friendships as an adult can be really hard.

But… Why?

I mean, sure, there’s the logistical side of it. As we age, our lives get more complex and filled with responsibilities, making it harder to find the time and energy to forge new connections.

We also get set in our ways, making it dif...

4 Fascinating Psychological Theories That Explain Your Whole Life

Welcome, dear readers, to a mind-bending adventure into the labyrinth of the human psyche. We’re going to embark on an odyssey through the catacombs of cognition, the jungles of the subconscious, and a wild ride into the boundless depths of human behavior—with four psychological theories as our guide.

Because psychology isn’t just a series of dry, academic theories locked away in some dusty textbook, reserved for bespectacled professors in ivory towers. It’s an exploration into the enigmatic wor...

A Practical Guide to Modern Dating

So you’ve thrown yourself into the modern dating pool, eh? You brave, brave soul.

Look, I know meeting new people, going on dates, figuring out if you even like the person sitting across from you—it can all be confusing, frustrating, and just exhausting at times.

But before you start to despair, I want to challenge you to open up your mind a little.

Instead of trying to figure out all the things you need to do or say to go on more dates, I want you to start thinking about the kind of person you ...

Motivation: What It Is, How It Works, and Where to Find It

We all want to be motivated. We want to feel energized and excited about the things we do. We want to wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose and drive, ready to tackle the day ahead.

But the truth is, motivation is not always easy to come by.

We tell ourselves lies about what motivates us:

We believe that we need to feel passionate about something in order to be motivated.We think that motivation is something that comes from within us, that it is a natural part of our personality or c...

An Unconventional Guide to Happiness

Every day, we’re bombarded with messages telling us that we need to be happy all the time—and that, in order to be happy, we need the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect life. And we’re made to think that anything less than perfect happiness is a failure.

But the reality is that happiness is not a destination. It’s not something that we can achieve by ticking off a list of accomplishments or acquiring more and more possessions. Happiness cannot be found outside ourselves.

Rather, happi...

Why Growth Requires Struggle

I get a lot of reader questions about pain, trauma, challenge, and struggle. Most of these questions were some variation of, “Is there such a thing as being exposed to too much pain?” or “Are there situations where pain and struggle aren’t helpful but only hurtful?” or “What about trauma? Clearly trauma is a thing.”

These are all great questions. And in this article, I’m going to knock them all out with a deep dive into the psychology of pain, trauma, healing, and building resilience. In the wor...

How Much Pain Can You Take?

This is a Mindf*ck Monthly newsletter from October 10, 2022. Every month, I send out big ideas I’ve been chewing on in the hopes that it makes you less of a shitty person.

Let’s dive right in.

Last month’s email about trigger warnings was an unexpected hit. I can’t remember the last time I got such an overwhelmingly positive response from people about a subject.

But I also got a lot of questions about pain, trauma, challenge, and struggle. Most of these questions were some variation of, “Is ther...

Trigger Warning: Reality Hurts

This is a Mindf*ck Monthly newsletter from September 7, 2022. Every month, I send out big ideas I’ve been chewing on in the hopes that it makes you less of a shitty person.

Let’s dive right in.

Table of ContentsTrigger WarningsThe Verdict Is InDeath of “Safety-Ism”Trigger Warnings

Years ago, many readers wrote to me complaining that I didn’t include trigger warnings in my articles. This was 2014-15 or so. The trigger warning thing had become popular on university campuses and left-lean...

Are You Entertained—Or Addicted?

In David Foster Wallace’s classic novel, Infinite Jest, there’s a movie that is so entertaining that anyone who views even a small portion of it will give up all desire to do anything else in life in order to keep watching. Throughout the book, characters who see it give up family, friends, careers, even eating and sleeping, just to continue watching the film.

The overarching theme of Infinite Jest is that it’s possible, both as an individual and as a society, to be too entertained. And much of...