Mark Manson's Blog, page 9

3 Reasons Why You Make Terrible Decisions (And How to Stop)

Everything you do in life is a trade-off. Anything you say, do, or pursue has a cost and a benefit. Those costs and benefits may not always be immediately apparent — sometimes the costs and benefits are dislocated in time, the benefit being immediate and the cost in the distant future. Sometimes the costs or benefits are subtle and psychological. But nonetheless, there is always a trade-off.

We like to believe that we can find a life of only pleasure and no pain, of only success and no failure,...

Maybe You Don’t Know What Love Is

We sit silently. My friend stares deeply into her empty glass, occasionally shuffling the ice around with her straw. “Wow,” she says. I sit and wait for her to say something else. What started out as a festive night somehow became a long, deep discussion about love, what it consists of, and how rare it actually is.

Finally, I say, “Wow, what?”

“I’m just thinking that I’ve never experienced that.”

“Well, maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet,” I say — the totally cliche thing that ever...

3 Terrible Reasons to Get Married (And 4 Really Good Ones)

Years ago, I thought of myself as someone who would probably never get married. I thought I was just “wired” for relationships that were fun but ultimately short-lived. I dated a lot, slept around, and always had an exit strategy.

Fast forward to today and as a happily married man, I’m honestly surprised by how easy it was for me to transition to a committed, life-long relationship. In fact, it feels damn good!

The truth is, while I did a lot of work on myself, a lot of it was just looking for ...

Why People Cheat in Relationships

I talk to a lot of people about their relationships. And a lot of these relationships are about as healthy as the Ebola virus: cold, distant, loveless, and flesh-eating.

I hear the stories about the heartbreak and loneliness, the lying and cheating, and the pain. Always the pain.

Inevitably, these conversations end with some form of the same question: “Why?” Why does he/she do this to me? Why does he/she not care anymore? Why won’t he/she change?

Tolstoy said that all happy relationships are th...

6 Signs You’re in a Toxic Relationship

There’s no class in high school on how to not be a shitty boyfriend or girlfriend. Sure, we get taught the biology of sex, the legal ins and outs of marriage, and maybe we read a few obscure love stories from the 19th century on how not to be an ass-face.

Without clear ideas from adults, what we’re left with is basically trial-and-error, and if you’re like most people, it’s mostly error.

Enter: a string of toxic relationships as we fumble through an already complex dating world.

One of the prob...

How to Make Sense of the Chaos and Uncertainty

It might seem impossible to make sense of a nation-wide racial revolt being dropped into the middle of a pandemic in a country that’s already seething with bitter cultural divides, but let’s try anyway.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get political here. Instead, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to walk you through how I go about processing extremely emotional and upsetting public events such as this. I think this is important because right now, due to social media and camera phones and 24/...

5 Ways to Build Resilience and Conquer Adversity

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing market research on mental health apps, downloading anything onto my phone related to relieving stress, anxiety, depression, and so on. I wanted to see what’s going on in that part of the industry and if maybe I wanted to drop a bunch of money into a sinkhole trying to make one myself. 

Most of the apps advertise themselves as “self-care” apps. They have cute and fancy names intentionally misspelled by one letter. They promise to reduce anxiety, alleviate depre...

Nobody Knows What Is Going On

Im reposting the Monday newsletter on the site because I believe its important. Its an effort to cut through a lot of the confusion and bullshit out there with regards to the current pandemic. Things have gotten contentious around the world with a lot of blaming, arguing, and finger-pointing going on. So, Id like to use this as an opportunity to dispel anyones sense of certainty about, well, anything.

Lets dive right in.

No one has any idea what the fuck is happening or what we should do...

What Love Is (And What it Isn’t)

We sit silently. My friend stares deeply into her empty glass, occasionally shuffling the ice around with her straw. Wow, she says. I sit and wait for her to say something else. What started out as a festive night somehow became a long, deep discussion about love, what it consists of, and how rare it actually is.

Finally, I say, Wow, what?

Im just thinking that Ive never experienced that.

Well, maybe you just havent met the right person yet, I say the totally cliche thing that every friend...

Surviving the Looming Mental Health Crisis

This morning I stayed in bed until nearly 11:30AM. Last night, I stayed up until 3 AM watching that mullet trainwreck of a documentary, Tiger King, on Netflix, allowing myself to be shocked and bamboozled into another episode, just one more episode

For the past two weeks, my sense of time and agency has completely gone out the window. Work usually gets done later rather than sooner, and sometimes never. My life now possesses a background ambiance of anxiety, whispering that somewhere,...