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by
Mark Manson
Read between
February 10 - February 10, 2023
if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.
That’s simply reality: if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.
your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have.
We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.
For many of us, our proudest achievements come in the face of the greatest adversity. Our pain often makes us stronger, more resilient, more grounded.
We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we’ve been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.
pain is part of the process. It’s important to feel it.
The problem was that my emotions defined my reality. Because it felt like people didn’t want to talk to me, I came to believe that people didn’t want to talk to me.
Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen.
I won’t lie: this is going to feel impossibly hard at first. But you can start simple. You’re going to feel as though you don’t know what to do. But we’ve discussed this: you don’t know anything. Even when you think you do, you really don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. So really, what is there to lose?
Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway.
Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.
Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Inspiration → Motivation → Action → Etc.
If we follow the “do something” principle, failure feels unimportant.
Do something. That “something” can be the smallest viable action toward something else. It can be anything.
Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it.
we need to reject something. Otherwise, we stand for nothing.
The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something.
Most elements of romantic love that we pursue—the dramatic and dizzyingly emotional displays of affection, the topsy-turvy ups and downs—aren’t healthy, genuine displays of love. In fact, they’re often just another form of entitlement playing out through people’s relationships.
Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.
People in a toxic relationship with poor or no boundaries will regularly avoid responsibility for their own problems and/or take responsibility for their partner’s problems.
People can’t solve your problems for you. And they shouldn’t try, because that won’t make you happy. You can’t solve other people’s problems for them either, because that likewise won’t make them happy.
The setting of proper boundaries doesn’t mean you can’t help or support your partner or be helped and supported yourself. You both should support each other. But only because you choose to support and be supported. Not because you feel obligated or entitled.
Ironically, when presented with emotionally healthy people to date, they usually feel bored or lack “chemistry” with them. They pass on emotionally healthy, secure individuals because the secure partner’s solid boundaries don’t feel “exciting” enough to stimulate the constant highs necessary in the entitled person.
If you make a sacrifice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to, not because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing so.
Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations.
People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, an argument, or getting hurt.
People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationship is not about controlling one another’s emotions, but rather about each partner supporting the other in their individual growth and in solving their own problems.
It’s not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about; it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives.
When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it.
Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man.
This is what’s so destructive about cheating. It’s not about the sex. It’s about the trust that has been destroyed as a result of the sex.
If people cheat, it’s because something other than the relationship is more important to them.
Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and it takes far longer to piece together again. If you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it’s impossible to restore. There are too many broken pieces, and too much dust.
Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting.
Now that I’m in my thirties, I can finally recognize that commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would otherwise never be available to me, no matter where I went or what I did.
that there is a freedom and liberation in commitment.
Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again?
And you have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up. That’s true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle—in everything.
if there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything;
but now I gave a fuck about something more important than my insecurities and my baggage.
Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.
all the meaning in our life is shaped by this innate desire to never truly die.
people’s immortality projects were actually the problem, not the solution; that rather than attempting to implement, often through lethal force, their conceptual self across the world, people should question their conceptual self and become more comfortable with the reality of their own death.
Our culture today confuses great attention and great success, assuming them to be the same thing. But they are not.
You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to.
there is nothing to be afraid of. Ever.
