Mark Manson’s 3 Harsh Truths About Love EP 1485

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Generally, that is the definition of a toxic relationship, is a relationship where love is present, but respect and or trust is not. But the love kind of, it's almost like a drug. It's in a lot of ways we psychologically behave with love the way addicts behave with their substance, which is we justify it, we delude ourselves, we lie to ourselves. And so we have to be very careful. Love can be an absolutely incredible thing. It's one of life's greatest experiences, but proceed with caution.

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Airwick essential mist diffuser. Always inviting. Mark, you are a three-time number one New York Time bestselling author of one of the hit books, the Subtle Art of Not Giving a, as well as many other titles. You've sold over 20 million copies, been translated into more than, I think, 65 or 75 languages now, and you've reached number one in more than a dozen countries. You've got a film that you've put out that was worldwide released by Universal Pictures, and you've got so much more great content. Thank you, my man, for being here.

Good to be back, sir.

Very excited. I was just telling you earlier that you are looking healthier than ever before, happier and healed and whole than ever before. And as the guy who taught us how to not care about certain things, but really care, but really care about the most important things.

Sure.

I'm so grateful that you are in a healthy whole place for your life because I remember saying to you, it was like a few years ago, not the pink, but at the height of this book's popularity probably and a lot going on all at once, you didn't look energetically as healthy as you are now.

No.

And I want to talk about that at some point in this conversation about how success is not always tied to happiness, health, peace, love, and fulfillment.

Of course.

But what I would love to talk about first is about love and relationships, because you've been in a healthy, happy relationship, at least based on the video I watched of yours with your wife. For seven plus years, you've written a book about love and relationships, you've written tons of articles about it, you've been single, you've been in relationships in the past, and now you're in a happy relationship. And I wanted to ask you, what is the thing that you believe most people get wrong about love and about happy, conscious love?

I think the biggest mistake people make is they assume that love is always a good thing. Like love doesn't necessarily make your relationship happy. It amplifies whatever emotion is already there. So if it's an unhealthy relationship that's full of jealousy, envy, disrespect, the love will actually amplify that. It'll make the jealousy even worse. It'll make the disrespect more painful. If there's happiness, respect, trust, joy, the love will amplify that. So it's love by itself doesn't fix a relationship. It doesn't necessarily make the relationship good. It takes what's already there and multiplies it by 10.

Wow. I've actually heard that about money, but I haven't heard that with love, where you hear if someone gets more money, it amplifies who they are. Yeah. But I've never heard that about love. Yeah.

I mean, people, I think a lot of it is just the romantic movies and stories. We tend to glorify romance, right? We tend to glorify love, but think about it. Who are the people who hurt you the most in your life?

People you love.

It's the people you love the most. That's right. And it's not just romantic partners. It's parents, siblings, kids.

Friends, yeah, yeah.

The more you love somebody, the more vulnerable you are. Because the more any sort of pain or disrespect or antagonism, it just gets amplified.

Interesting. Have you ever felt in a lot of pain in your current relationship with your wife? Have you felt like, of course? Really?

Yeah, of course. I mean, it's, here's the thing.

But you guys are happy. Yes. It's healthy, right?

Yeah, so it's pain and conflict is normal across all relationships. I mean, humans are just, we're human, right? So we're gonna pick fights and one day she's gonna be cranky or one day I'm gonna be stressed out and turn around and take it out on her. Like, it's, there's no such thing as a relationship that you don't have bumps in the road or some sort of conflict. What determines whether a relationship is healthy or not is How quickly you recover from those bumps or those conflicts and move on from it.

You repair, how quickly you repair the relationship.

Exactly.

The pain. Now this is something I think is fascinating because I don't think there's a lot of relationships where someone in the relationship, you're kind of at equal levels financially, maybe notoriety or success, but then all of a sudden one person in the relationship gets this overwhelmingly amount of success and awareness the way you did. You know, not many people in the world experience that.

Sure.

How did you navigate staying in a healthy, happy relationship? Or maybe you weren't able to for a period of time as you started to sell millions of copies of your book, you're on all the press and everyone wants to talk about you and you're making more money than you ever had before. Yeah. Where it wasn't as equal financially or success wise, how did you guys navigate love with you accelerating that?

It's funny that really didn't put a whole lot of stress on the relationship.

Really?

And I think a lot of it, so what I've noticed, and this isn't limited to romantic partnerships. This is every relationship in life. And I don't know, maybe you've experienced some of this, but like, When you experience a lot of success professionally, reputation, financially, whatever, the way the people around you react is very reflective of their relationship to their own wealth, financial success, fame, whatever. So what I noticed is that people in my life who judge themselves by how much money they made suddenly got weird around me.

Really?

Whereas people who didn't judge themselves by how much money they made, they were happy for me. They were totally cool with it, not a big deal. People who very much judged themselves by how famous they were, how much attention they got, got weird. A little bit of jealousy, a little bit of envy. People who didn't give a shit about that, they're like, Cool, Happy for you, man. So with my wife, we're very fortunate in that that was never, honestly, she's an immigrant. I think moving to the United States and dealing with the culture shock and the cultural differences and language barriers, I think that's been a bigger challenge than simply my success. She's just been incredibly supportive, very happy for me. You know, no sort of like... Now I think give myself a little bit of credit here because it's not just, she hasn't just been amazing about it, but also I didn't let it go to my head, right? Like, I think the other side of it is if I came home from a book tour or something and she's like, Hey, can you take out the trash? And I'm like, Do you know who I am?

Oh, right.

This is beneath me. How dare you ask me to take out the garbage?

You know, I hurt the relationship, yeah.

That also causes problems. So I think it requires both people to keep perspective about what it actually means.

Knowing, I mean, experiencing what you've experienced now with the success and the money that has come, you didn't have that before you got married, right? No. Would you have any different conversations or would you have, I don't know, set more ground rules or anything like that, knowing what you know now? Or would you give anyone else advice or an opinion about, hey, if one of you is really driven in a relationship to go earn or create or be a famous artist or whatever, and that might happen in the future, here are some things you should talk about to be aware of those changes? What would you share?

I think it would just, I think it's very important to have deep discussions about, and this is probably good for any marriage, like whether somebody's driven or not, this is probably healthy for every marriage, is like have some very deep and serious discussions of what money means to each person. Some people put a lot of their self-esteem into money. Some people don't. Some people are very conservative with money. Some people are not. Some people have a lot of moral beliefs around money, right? Like if you make too much money, you should give it all away, or that means you're selfish or whatever. Some people don't have those sorts of moral beliefs tied with money. So I think it's probably the most important thing is just get very, very clear with your partner What are each other's beliefs around finances and wealth? Especially because the number one cause of divorce is financial differences.

Isn't that crazy? So it doesn't matter how much you love someone, but people will get hurt or break up because of money.

Yeah, I guess.

So love isn't enough?

It's not enough.

I think in your video, which I want to link up where you talk about love and relationships with your wife, which I think is powerful. you mentioned how love is, I think, I think your wife said love is 50% of the equation to making a happy relationship, a healthy relationship. And I think for you it was like 35 or 40% or something. And then I think you mentioned values as being a big part and a few other things. Do you remember what those were for you besides values and other things that make a healthy relationship?

My hierarchy for relationships, and this is I mean, people can find this in my books, in my courses. Like, it's trust and respect are tied for number one. Yeah. You can love somebody to, I think, and I think most people have had an experience in their life where they've loved somebody very deeply, but they didn't trust them, and it doesn't work. It doesn't matter how much you try, how much effort you put in, how much you cry and argue and fight. It's like the trust isn't there. It doesn't work.

Yes.

And if the respect isn't there, it's not healthy. Two people can love each other, but if they don't respect each other, they're gonna treat each other like... Yeah. And they're gonna justify treating each other, or they're gonna justify tolerating being treated by saying, well, I love them so much.

Oh, man.

And maybe it's my fault. Maybe I deserve this. Right? And so, at all, I think most of us have been in that relationship before, too. And it doesn't... Yeah, it doesn't end well. It's rough. And it's, you know, to me, that's generally that is the definition of a toxic relationship.

Right.

Is a relationship where love is present, but respect and or trust is not. And, but the love kind of, it's almost like a drug. It's, in a lot of ways we psychologically behave with love the way addicts behave with their substance, which is we justify it, we delude ourselves, we lie to ourselves, we rationalize decisions that we make that are completely irrational. And so we have to be very careful. Love can be an absolutely incredible thing. It's one of life's greatest experiences. I think everybody should absolutely experience it. But, Proceed with caution.

Right, right, right, right. Now, I mean, I'm having you share from personal experience. Obviously, not like a love coach, and this is not what you study full time, although you've done a lot of research around this, and you've done a lot of studies and written about this a lot. But how much does your environment affect.

Love?

And how you feel and connect with your partner? I'm speaking about personally with you and maybe the research you've done. You were in a busy, chaotic environment in New York City, and now you're in a different environment, you know, in California.

Yeah.

How does that change? Or does it change the connection you have with your partner?

I think it can. Love isn't something you simply sit and feel. It's something you put into action, right? Like you go on date nights together, you. go out with friends together, you visit each other's families, you go on a vacation together, right? Like it's something you do sit and feel it, but you also have to go live it. You have to like kind of keep, it's something you have to keep in motion by doing things together. And so I think when the environment changes, the nature of those activities you do together can also change. And It's been interesting actually moving to LA from New York. New York, there's so much to do all the time. So there's always, in a lot of ways, it's conducive to generating romance, 'cause there's always an adventure to go on.

Yeah, stimulus when you walk out the door.

There's always a concert or a show or some great restaurant that's just opening. And so it's, there's always this feeling of novelty and excitement. But there's also a lot of distraction, right? So if something's like brewing under the surface and people don't wanna address it, you can find a lot of ways to keep your hands looking the other way, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So it's been interesting coming here to California and having way more sedentary... Well, I shouldn't say sedentary, but like calm lifestyle, domestic, I think is the right word.

Yeah, yeah.

There's, so there's less novelty and stimulation and there's also less distraction. Like there's, there's things I've noticed that since we've been here, things that come up, we tend to talk about it pretty much immediately just because we're like sitting in our backyard and have nothing else to talk about. So it's, and in some ways that's fantastic. because we're very aligned and on the same page. But at the same time, you're kind of giving up some of that excitement and novelty and stimulation.

Yeah, the serendipity of the adventure that's happening right now. You're planning and you have to drive somewhere as opposed to walk outside, subway or whatever. Yeah. Trust and respect, it sounds like, are big for you. I know you talk about values also.

Sure.

If you have, I mean, we're just speaking hypothetically here, But if you have trust and respect that is there, you got a lot of love. Yeah. Values aren't really aligned. Maybe 30 to 50%, but you're not over 50% on values. Is love, trust, and respect enough to sustain a long-term healthy relationship in your mind?

I think it's a really good question, and I think it depends. So I don't think you'll ever find two people that are 100% aligned on values. Everybody is a little bit different, right? So, and you, I think you also want a little bit of diversity of values within the relationship. You want to have different standards for different things and different opinions about different issues. It just makes life way more interesting. There's probably a threshold or a breaking point somewhere.

Right?

And it's, you know, one of the examples I've used in a book before is like, if somebody is a priest and the other person's a stripper, like it doesn't matter how in love they are with each other, it's never gonna work, right? If people have very, very fundamental belief differences, and this kind of comes back to the money thing, I think that the handful of things that seem to come up all the time are differences of beliefs around money, differences of beliefs.

Around.

Religion, and differences of beliefs around kids and family. And I think if you can probably survive not being aligned on one of those, but if you're not aligned on two or all of them, you're probably in trouble. You're probably just gonna butt heads over and over again.

Now, what if someone evolves their values over time, you know, 5, 10, 15 years into the relationship? You know what? I actually don't have those beliefs in that lifestyle choice anymore. I'm gonna try something different. Do you think the love of the past, the history of the relationship can sustain if it's too much of a conflict around those lifestyle choices or beliefs?

I think to a certain extent, first of all, everybody does evolve. Their values do evolve and change. Like, I think that's just natural to people. I think the challenge within relationships is, you know, generally when relationships start, when you commit to somebody, it's because there is some amount of alignment and it's working. But as the years go on, if you start to evolve in two different directions, that can cause a lot of strain. You know, you often hear married couples that are getting divorced or people who have been together for a long time and are deciding to get divorced. They say, like, you know, we've become two different people or, or we don't, I don't recognize him or her anymore. Right. And I think that that's a case of, like, we were 10 years ago, we were completely aligned and we've both changed and evolved over the years and My partner's gone this way and I've gone this way.

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And so now there's just this massive gap and we don't feel like we can bridge it anymore. We don't relate to each other. We don't understand each other. We don't agree on anything anymore. We don't do the same things for fun anymore. And that's, that's tough. And so I think part of the trick is to kind of intentionally evolve together is to be very conscious. And this is something that my wife and I try to pay attention to is that if I feel myself changing my mind about something very significant in my life, about my career, my beliefs around family, relationships with friends, I communicate that with her. I'm like, Hey, I'm starting to move in this direction. Really? So that just as so she can be aware and adapt. you know, and just understand, like, okay, that's kind of where he's at.

Huh. Is there an example you can share around this in the last few years, maybe?

So the two most significant ones that have happened have been around. First one was my career. When we moved to LA, I took six months off. I was completely burnt out.

Yeah.

And it's. I really had this period of just. I'm not having fun anymore. I need to take some time off, figure myself out, and really decide like, okay, what's this next phase of my career gonna look like? What's the next decade of Mark Manson's career look like? And so I communicated that to her. I'm like, Hey, I'm not gonna be speaking, not gonna be traveling, I'm gonna be at home a lot. You're probably gonna see me on the couch playing video games. You know, this is kind of what I'm going through right now.

Right?

And I'm probably going to come out of that different with different priorities, different metrics of how I'm going to make decisions. Money might be different, right? Like suddenly that huge speaking gig in Dubai that I would have taken a year ago to cash that fat check, now I'm not going to take it and we're not going to get that fat check, right? So it's, it's, It's important to communicate those things that she understands, like, Hey, I'm at this pivot point in my career, and I'm probably gonna start going in a different direction. Just so that she knows and isn't shocked when I don't take the speaking gig and do that. On the other front, this ties into the health thing, she was actually really good. She was a good influence on me. So my wife has a couple autoimmune conditions. And they really started... She's been aware of them for a long time, but, you know, as things happen, as you get older, things you could get away with.

He can't anymore.

Yeah, your twenties, it's like, you know, it hits me.

You gotta pay attention and focus on them.

You start coming up on 40 and it's just like they level you. And she was starting to get leveled by him. And so starting right around the time of the pandemic, she got very, very serious about health. And I, at that time, I had been overweight for a while. My lifestyle was very unhealthy. I was traveling five, six months a year. I was drinking three, four nights a week, eating like crap, eating junk food, their desserts all the time. And I was aware of that, but it just, you know, on that totem pole of priorities, it was pretty low on the priority list. But she got super serious about it and she really did because she didn't have a choice.

It was affecting her health.

Yeah. It was to the point where she could barely function throughout the day if she wasn't being very, very intentional about what she was eating.

She was feeling sick.

Yeah. And so she started kind of going on this journey and really cleaning up her diet and getting her health in order. and I started kind of becoming the beneficiary of that because she does most of the cooking. So I'm starting to eat healthy a lot more often. We're not going out as much, not drinking as much. And I'm starting to feel better. And I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm waking up bright-eyed bushy-tailed, feeling pretty good.

Right.

And it, it's, you know, and she and I were in communication about that, and she was very clear, like, this is. I need to make this a top priority in my life. And I'm gonna become that person who like doesn't eat dairy, doesn't eat gluten, like doesn't eat sugar. And I was like, oh, this is, oh, God, this is gonna suck. Like, this is, my life's gonna get so boring. And actually the opposite happened is that it's, I've kind of followed her on that. Um, she's been a very positive influence in that way in that I started to notice benefits and I said, you know, my health has been pretty terrible the last five years. I'm getting up in my 30s. Like, I'm not bouncing back the way I used to 10 years ago. Maybe I just hop on, on this train with her. Right. And see where it goes. And, and that's, that's a big part of what happened. And, and so now health has become a big priority in my life.

Yeah, man. Yeah. It's interesting because when I when I saw you, like, it was a month ago or something, or at VidCon, I recognized you, but I didn't recognize you. Yeah. It was like, oh, there's Mark, but I. You don't look like Mark. You know what I mean? It was like, I was like, who are you? You know what I mean? Maybe I haven't seen you in years, but. But I'd seen your content online. You know, I've seen your YouTube videos, but, man, you just look like a new human being.

Yeah.

And you're. your aura, your energy is vibrant and healthy. And even just looking back at some of your old videos before getting on this interview, I was like, man, you look a little rough around the edges. I mean, I've been there too at different times in my life. You know what I mean? I've been there as well. It's not like I've always the, you know, perfect health. But it's amazing when we make health of value and you have a partner who's all on board with you. My girlfriend is the same way. We're like all on board on it. And it's amazing how the relationship, I feel like, is also healthier. Doesn't mean it's perfect and there's not disagreements or challenges, but when you both have health as a priority, it's incredible feeling.

Yeah.

What have been the benefits you've seen of her starting this health journey and you aligning to it?

Yeah.

Like with the relationship, not just your body and your health.

It's, I mean, It's been so important. First of all, it just makes it so much easier for both of us.

Yeah, right?

Like, I'm, if she's not ordering desserts, then that's one, that's one more temptation I don't have to fight off, right?

You know?

And, and it's the same for her as well. It's like, if I'm not like buying, ordering bottles of wine, you know, every weekend, like she doesn't have to sit there and ask herself, oh, do I want one too? Right? So, it, it, you really do kind of compound each other's success in that regard. And I think that's probably true with a lot of lifestyle habits, but it's, it's also just, I don't know, we just so much more energy.

Yes.

Like, just more Vitality. It's funny because our idea in, you know, when we lived in New York, our idea of quality time together was Going to a happy hour, having a bunch of drinks, maybe going to a show or something, staying out to like 12 or 1. Now our idea of quality time is like going on a hike at like 8 in the morning.

Exactly, man. It's a great feeling.

Yeah, and it's different, but it's not any less significant. It's less exciting, but it's long term, it's more meaningful.

Yeah. More fulfilling.

Yeah. Yeah.

More sustainable.

Absolutely.

More sustainable. Way more sustainable.

Yeah.

I guess it would be challenging if someone was like, you know, I'm gonna start being vegan, and another person's me. And then it's like, okay, that's a different type of Lifestyle, but it's just hard. You gotta learn how to evolve with the person.

It sounds like. Yeah. Or at least accommodate each other.

Accommodating.

Yeah.

Except. Not make wrong, not judge.

It's like, all right, you're vegan now. I'll figure it out.

Yeah, exactly.

Who knows?

In the next year, she may become vegan. You never know. Being out in LA. What is the thing that you've learned the most since the rise of your success through books and everything you've done? What is the thing you used to believe was true before or at the height of those things rising that you don't necessarily agree with now? Was there a value or belief or a thought that maybe you even taught in a book or in a blog or something where you're like, this is the way, where you're like, you know what? Maybe it's not the way. Yeah.

You know what's funny? It's actually kind of the reverse of that, which is... So first of all, the answer to your question is, I think early in my career, I was so driven and just set on, like, I had some really moonshot goals in my head, and I was just so set on them and so driven to achieve them that I never really stopped and asked myself, like, what? What after that? Like, you know, let's say you get there.

Now what?

Then what? The thought never even crossed my mind. I think there was just kind of this implicit assumption that, like, Once I get there, everything's gonna be gravy, so why worry about it? And the irony is that a huge part of that book is saying exactly the opposite of that, which is you never get away from problems in life. You just upgrade your problems, right? It's like success isn't the elimination of problems. Success is just getting better problems. And so once My career really took off and I hit a bunch of those moonshot goals that I had dreamed about. I looked around and I still had problems. In fact, I had bigger problems, in a lot of ways, bigger problems. And that just messed with me.

Really?

Yeah, it really messed with me.

How did they make you feel or what did they tell you about life? What did they teach you?

I think, Again, it's not so much that I believed things beforehand that weren't true. It's just there were things that I didn't account for or think about. And one of those two was that the higher on the mountain you get, the larger the stakes are. So it's like if nobody knows who your name is and you post an article online and people hate it, Nobody cares.

Yeah, three people.

You just delete the account, open a new one, start over. Nobody will ever know. If you sold 10 million books and you post an article online and people don't like it, suddenly there's repercussions to that.

Did you ever experience that?

I definitely had some controversy. I've never been canceled, right?

But- Get some criticism or negative feedback.

Yeah, I definitely had some pieces that- Really? Oh yeah, they got a lot of blowback, especially back in 2020.

Really? Like what was the topic or- Two.

People- It's funny, 'cause now in hindsight, I can recognize it, like everybody was just so hypersensitive. Oh my God, everything people off. Like you could say anything and it wouldn't have anything that- Yeah, it wouldn't have been wrong. Wouldn't have anything to do with politics or vaccines or COVID. Nothing, like, it have nothing to do with it. And people find a way to construe it and be like, oh, you're one of those. And like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so there were a few moments, like, in that period that I just got ravaged by a percentage of my audience. Mainly just 'cause I got lumped in with some sort of cause or political group or ideology or whatever, and they assumed that I was part of that and they just went to town on me.

How does that make you feel, though, once you're at that level of success?

It sucks. It sucks, man. I mean, it just, it is, I can honestly say writing newsletters in 2020 is the least fun my job has ever been. Wow. Because it was, and I remember talking to my team and it was like, man, I, writing, writing a newsletter every week in 2020 was like, it's like being in a boxing ring and getting knocked down and like getting up and knowing you're about to get knocked out again.

Wow.

Because it's just, it felt like you couldn't say anything that you just wouldn't get ripped apart for.

I think this is one of the things that most people don't understand about having, you know, a goal be achieved on some level greater than where you're at. Let's say you don't really have that much or no one follows you, not that many people know about you, except for your inner circle of friends and family. And then all of a sudden, a thousand times more people are aware of you. A million times more people are aware of you within a period of a year, a couple of years, and it grows. I don't think people understand that there's a whole different level of pressure that can come with it. There's a lot of privilege and opportunities and amazing things, but it's like people don't know that you have to deal with a different type of pressure.

Yes.

And can anyone get away from that pressure with having some type of success?

I don't think so, because I mean, it's by definition success is doing something extraordinarily rare, something that 99.99% of other people either haven't done or can't do, right? And once you've kind of reached that level of, uniqueness, there's a lot of expectation that's put on you. Like, you have an audience of millions now, so you're supposed to say something more empathetic or interesting or intelligent or whatever. The other thing that happens too, and I think this is particularly inherent with our line of work, which is having audiences is that when your audience is relatively small, like let's say 1,000 people or even 10,000 people, that's usually it's going to be a pretty homogenous group, right? When I started my career, I specifically wrote dating advice for young men. And so my first 10,000 people in my audience, it was all 24-year-old guys or whatever. Dudes in their 20s. And so it's, you know what's going to piss them off and you know what's not. And, Once you reach kind of the level where we're at, where your audience is measured in millions, there's such a massive amount of diversity that it kind of feels like there's landmines everywhere. Right. Right. Like it's like, oh, man, that's a good analogy.

Yeah, it's good.

I can see by the look on your face you relate to what I'm saying.

You have to be cautious about what you're putting out there.

Totally. Jokes that in your head are completely innocuous.

Right, right.

Like, didn't even thought for two seconds about it. You know, there's somebody somewhere in some country that you've never even been to or thought of that is, like, extremely offended. And you get that email and you're like, oh, all right, we'll make that joke again, you know? And it's so I. This isn't. I always feel a little awkward, like, getting into this subject because it's. I never want to look like. You know, the whining. Right.

Oh, what was me?

Yeah, the whining million.

The number one New York Times bestseller.

Like, it's, I wouldn't trade anything. Like, I wouldn't go back. But it's, again, if I could go back to myself, say, six months before everything blew up or took off, what.

Would you have said, or what do you wish you would have known to prepare yourself?

I wish, I would have known or what I would say to myself is like, you need to start thinking about contingency plan. You know, it's like, what if this thing does 10x your expectations? What if you do hit that moonshot and you're 32? Like, then what? What are you going to do? Right. And what think about the expectations that are going to be put on you. Think about the pressures that are going to be put on you. Again, didn't think about it until it happened, but a book publisher treats you very, very differently when you've sold millions of books than when you haven't sold a thing. When you haven't sold a thing, it's funny because when you talk to authors, authors universally complain, like, my publisher doesn't do anything. They barely respond to my emails. And it's like, yeah, because you haven't done anything for them. Well, once you've done something for them and they care a lot, well, that introduces its own series of problems, which is like every word you write, every chapter you send to them is like scrutinized and nitpicked and like, well, we actually don't like this chapter. Why don't you go rewrite it? And it's, so it is the stakes rise proportional to the success. And I think there's this assumption that when you are at the bottom of the mountain and there are very low stakes and failure doesn't cost you very much, There's this assumption, it's like, well, if I get to the top, everything's gonna be great. I can do whatever I want. I don't have to worry about any like repercussions because I'll be rich and famous, whatever. And it's like, actually, in a lot of ways it's reverse. It's like you, once you have tons of stuff to lose, you start questioning everything you do and you start wondering if every decision is gonna be the wrong decision.

You think that being more successful would give you more self-confidence.

Yeah.

But for a lot of people, it actually diminishes their self-confidence after a period of time, they start to second guess the next moves, right? Can I be as successful? What if I lose it? What, you know, I need to be careful about what I say now, whereas before, people were willing to take more risks when they didn't have anything to lose, right? They were like, let me try this thing and this thing. And I know what it hit. Okay, let's try another thing.

Yeah.

How does someone prepare themselves for success to keep their self-confidence and expand it, not dim their light?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the thing that ultimately worked for me is to just kind of maintain that bottom of the mountain mindset in a lot of ways. There's like a famous cliche about, you know, there's, you get to the top of the mountain, you realize there's a taller mountain behind it, you know? And so it's like figuring out what that taller mountain is, right? And like, and a lot of times you just invent it. You just pick something out of there. You're like, you know what? I'll make this my mountain, right? But it's finding that so that you can, because there's a certain amount of freedom and maneuverability that comes with seeing yourself as a beginner, seeing yourself as somebody who doesn't have anything to lose or doesn't have all the answers. And for me, it's been psychologically very, very beneficial to find a way to keep that and not put all of my identity and self-worth into that because if I did that, then I'd be terrified to get out of bed in the morning, right?

So when you were saying that, for those just listening, you're pointing at the book, putting your self-worth and identity into the success of the book.

Yes.

Right?

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Un futuro diferente está a mas cerca de lo que crees. Kunkapella University. Learn more at kunkapella.edu. What should we put our identity and self-worth into if it's not into our accomplishments, our career, or our wealth? Yeah.

It's a great question. I personally believe that you should treat your identity or your self-worth the same way you treat a good investment portfolio, which is you diversify it across a lot of things that are not correlated to one another. So the same way you want to split up your money between stocks and bonds and cash and real estate because those things don't always move in the same direction at the same time. You want to put your self-esteem in things that aren't going to go north or south at the same time.

That's interesting, yeah. For someone listening or watching, what does that look like in a day-to-day life?

So for me, those categories, I do think it's very important Like you should have a lot of your self-esteem tied up in your career and accomplishments. I think that that's healthy. That's good.

Like your skill sets, the things you're learning and developing and the impact you're making.

You spend half your waking hours working on something. So you should care about that something and you should take some amount of pride in it. Like I think that's healthy. But you know, with that I would put relationships, both family and friendships. I would put knowledge, learning something, having some sort of hobby or interest that you do simply for the sake of doing it. And I think I would throw in there as well. I think for a lot of people, you might throw religion or spiritual practice in there. For me personally, I'm not very spiritual or religious. I just kind of see it as like, charity or generosity. You know, it's like do good things for people.

Being generous human being. And that doesn't mean you have to give all of your time, but just being kind to people. Yeah. You know, opening the door, being courteous.

Being sure appreciative or, you know, volunteering, helping somebody out, you know, whatever.

I mean, I'll speak from personal experience here. Whenever I was in challenging intimate relationships, it didn't matter how successful my business or how talented I was as an athlete, I always felt like my self-worth was a lot lower if my intimate relationship wasn't successful, or if it was up and down and emotionally challenging too much. How much do you think our intimate relationship? I, and I don't know if that's just me, that I was just really bad at them, but how much do you think our intimate relationship is tied to our self-worth. Like if we are struggling in intimacy, do you think we can still have covariance and full richness of life in other areas? Or does that hold us back a little bit?

It's funny because I think it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg, where people tend to struggle in their intimate relationships because they don't have a lot of self-worth outside of their intimate relationships.

Right?

And so, It's one way you solve that is finding self-worth outside of it and like building that identity for yourself. And that tends to help you generate better relationships, which then also give you a lot of self-worth. So it's like, it's interesting. I feel like intimate relationships are.

They.

Drive happiness more than any other thing, any, you know, more so than career success, more so than money, more so than hobbies or friendships or whatever. It's generally like when you look at all the data on happiness, it's how good are your relationships? If they're good, you're probably a happy person. And if they're not good, you're probably not happy. And those two things are going to, those two statements are going to tend to be true regardless of whatever else is going on in your life. But I think when it comes to self-esteem, self-worth, I do think there's, A large component of it does seem to be driven by feeling useful in some way, feeling competent, feeling that you're able to do something in the world.

Yes. Speaking of success, I always forget the exact quote, but I love the message that Jim Carrey shared at one of his commencement speeches where he says, I wish everyone could become rich and famous and realize it's not the key to happiness or something like that. Do you feel like success adds to happiness or adds to feeling not enough still? You feel like it supports you more in being happier or makes you realize, oh, I'm actually deficient in other areas?

I don't think success in money buys happiness, I think it, but it can buy away unhappiness. So it can buy away problems that would normally derail other people.

Right.

So the stress of not knowing if you're going to be able to buy books for your kid, right, or if you're going to be able to meet red next month, it buys away those things. It buys away a lot of a lot of stress and angst. But I think if you are psychologically wounded and fundamentally have a low self-esteem or struggle with self-worth issues, it's not going to solve those for you on its own. And in fact, and there's plenty of examples of people who, you know, get super famous and rich and it's not enough.

Yeah. they get into addiction or drugs or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah.

In the last three years, the last 10 years, I've been on a healing journey for a lot of different things in my life. But I was saying the last three years, I've had some of the biggest breakthroughs in terms of healing psychological wounds that were holding me back in certain areas of life. Where do you feel like was the biggest place for you to that you've healed in the last five years in your life internally? Was there any wounds or challenges or things that you were like, they were just kind of holding on to that you were able to start releasing and letting go of?

It's funny because the biggest thing is very related to the physical health. So I came from, I love my parents very much, Love my family, very emotionally dysfunctional. And I grew up emotionally dysfunctional. And so one of the reasons I came to this career is probably sounds like the same reason you came. It's just like, I'm just trying to figure my own out, right? And so I might as well do it in a very public manner so I can get feedback and try to help other people. Yeah, I hear from other people. So it's so much of my early adulthood was very, very honed in on healing my own issues with relationships and intimacy. And kind of getting the, you know, I struggled a lot with depression throughout my life. And so getting like kind of philosophically getting myself straight with the world and, you know, what is happiness and what is a good life and what's worth living and, you know, all those questions, they ate at me for a number of years. So when I look at teens, 20s, and even through early 30s, like that was very much the project. Meanwhile, what's going on externally is I'm at all the parties, I'm drinking all the booze, I'm eating all the food. I'm not saying no to any invitation that comes my way. And again, when you're 28 and you're indestructible, you can get away with that, right? That's not a problem. Yeah. I got into my mid-30s and it became a problem. I became very overweight. So last time I was here, you were talking about my energy, right? So last time I was here, I was on LA was like city number six on a 12-city book tour. I think I had done nine interviews in the past 48 hours when I showed up to talk to you. I was probably completely underslept. I was touring for one book while simultaneously writing another. Wow.

That's crazy.

Just like unbelievable amount of stress and pressure and just exhaustion going on simultaneously and not taking care of myself at all, right? It's like I'm eating Chipotle in the airport or whatever, not even thinking about it. And it was interesting, so during that, That book that I was promoting last time I saw you, it was like two weeks before the deadline. I was under so much stress. I actually started having chest pains.

Really?

I was 36. Started having chest pains. And I'm like, and I have a history of heart disease in my family. So I'm like, in my head, I'm like, I'm having a heart attack. Wow. I'm just gonna like keel over in this coffee shop at any second, right? And then that the chest pains kind of started to turn into a little bit of a panic attack. And I went home, talked to my wife. She's like, you gotta stop. Like, go to a doctor.

Don't mess around with this.

Don't like, you're not working and you're not writing another word till you go to a doctor. So I go to a doctor, get all the tests, check everything out. Everything comes back.

Blood work, everything's fine.

Everything's fine. Comes back and then, you know, he shows me all the tests. He's like, yeah, you're perfectly healthy. You're doing fine. by the way, you under any stress lately? And I just. That was kind of. Some of that blood work came back, and he was like, you know, this isn't great, but you're still young, so it's not a problem yet. This isn't great, but you're still young. It's not a problem yet. You know, it was a lot of, like, the path I was on was I was gonna be one of those guys by the time I'm 50, I'm. taken half a dozen medications and, you know, high blood pressure and all this stuff. So that was the trajectory I was on. So when my wife started her health journey and I kind of went along with it, I was very shocked and surprised how transformative it was for me because I, my body was something that I just ignored for Pretty much my entire life. I was always focused up here, for people listening, I'm pointing my head.

Very analytical in your head.

Very analytical.

Not in your body.

Very like reading psychological research, studying, reading books, thinking about relationships. Um, it was... You're an analyzer. Totally, totally. And it, when I started getting the physical stuff in shape, First of all, it was surprising to me how much I underestimated. I mean, I feel stupid in hindsight because I'm like, Wow, I feel 20% better 24/7. I feel like I've been running uphill my entire life. I'm like, God, why didn't I do this sooner? But it was interesting because there are a lot of emotional, like a lot to fix a lot of my bad habits around food and alcohol. I did take a hard look at some of, there was like some emotional stuff tied up in it, right?

Really?

So I realized at a certain point.

That.

My drinking, I never craved alcohol, but I found that any social situation I was in, I would drink. And it was just very automatic. I didn't think about it. I didn't question it. It was just like, well, yeah, of course I'm at a birthday party. Of course I'm gonna drink. and it never occurred to me, like, you don't have to drink at a social gathering. Like, that's not a, that's not, that's not necessary. And I started, like, really asking myself a lot of questions around, you know, why, why do you feel like you should be drinking at social gatherings? What happens if you don't? Well, it turns out I don't enjoy half of them. Well, what does that mean? Means you're hanging out with a bunch of people that you actually don't enjoy hanging out with. Well, Why are you doing that? Oh, now we're starting to get somewhere, right? Now we're starting to get into...

The real questions.

People pleasing tendencies, feelings of inadequacy, needing to be seen a certain way. One of the things that I realized is that in college and in my 20s, I developed a reputation as the party guy. I was always the first one to crack open a beer. I was always the last one to leave. I was the first one on the dance floor. Like, I was that guy. And in my early life, that sustained me through a lot of social awkwardness and anxiety and things like that.

And.

I didn't realize, like that same thing that I guess I adopted to kind of protect me when I was younger, you run that ahead 20 years and it's killing me. And so to take that armor off, I had to go back and look at like, why do you feel like you need to be the party guy? Well, probably because you feel like if you're not the party guy, people aren't gonna wanna hang out with you. Well, like, why do you feel that way?

So... What was this realization happening? How long ago?

This was all... so all these questions that I'm kind of running through, I would say it was a gradual process over over the last two years.

Really? Yeah. Wow, man. And how old are you now?

I'm 39.

Interesting. I just turned 40 in March, and it's like the last three years for me, too, man. It's just been like asking all these questions, unwinding certain, I want to say, relationships, but just focusing to spend my energy more with a certain amount of people that, you know, I don't have to show up for in a certain way. They can just be 100 authentic, have the conversations I want. and not feel bad about something or feel pressured.

Yeah.

Similar in a certain way, I guess.

Do you feel part of it is the age? Like, it's... I definitely... There's definitely a sense, my wife and I, we talk about this a lot, that there's definitely a sense she just turned 40, I'm about to turn 40 next year. Like, there's kind of this sense of, like, we don't have time to f*ck around anymore. It's like, when you're 30, it's like, okay, yeah, you could waste a year hanging out with people you don't actually like. But it's like, when you're 40, you're.

Like, no, I don't have time for this. It don't, man. Yeah, it don't. And I 40 didn't hit me where I was like, oh, I need to, like, I don't know, freak out or buy a Ferrari.

Yeah.

I don't have that feeling. I did buy my first home, but I didn't feel like I need this because whatever to feel something. Yeah. It more just felt right because my relationship felt peaceful. Yeah. I was like, okay, I can take this step now. Yeah, but I have a buddy of mine who's just turned 40 over the weekend, and he was It wasn't ever a crisis, but he was like, what am I doing in my life? In some ways and kind of like reevaluating a lot, not in a negative way, but I think it hits you. Where you're like, okay, there's a new decade that I just completed. What is important in my life? What I want my time and energy to be invested in. What I want to make sure that I create or generate or do. before it's too late. And I think that's an important thing to ask ourselves at all times. But so it sounds like in the last two or three years, you started asking these questions. What has been the big realization for you underneath it all?

I guess... It's funny, I guess once I've removed... I've been completely sober for almost a year now.

Congrats on that, man. That's big. Powerful.

I'm, you know, once I've removed a lot of the distractions and stopped doing the things that I don't enjoy doing both professionally and personally, I think kind of the biggest realization is just that actually life is and can be incredibly simple. Like you really just, you find a few people that you really love and love spending time with. You find a few things that you enjoy doing and you're good doing them and you find a way to contribute, give back to the world. Like it's not rocket science. It's, I think that's the other thing is, and this is something that I've, it's so funny being writing about these psychological concepts because it doesn't matter how much you understand them, they still sneak up and get you over and over again. But it's, you know, one thing I've written so many times is that it's when something is emotionally difficult, we tend to assume it must be complicated, right? It's like it's emotionally difficult to break up with somebody. So there's got to be like a 17 step procedure that I can learn and rehearse. You know, it's like, no, you just break up with them. Right, right, right. It just really hurts. Like that's- It's painful.

You got to experience it. Go through it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very simple, extremely Extremely painful. And what I've noticed, I think when I was younger and I had a lot more emotional turmoil and self-esteem issues and questions about my life and the world, I assume that everything must be super complicated.

Really?

And that I've got to get out and go do these 12 things and read 100 books and take notes on everything and study everything. And it's like, you know, now I kind of look at, I'm like, actually, no, it's pretty straightforward. Like you, you, you need a handful of great relationships. You need one or two great Pursuits in your life, and then you need a way to give back or a, a positive way to spend your free time, and, and then you just keep doing that until you die.

Right, right.

That's about it.

Like, stay healthy.

Stay healthy. And, and it's, it's, It's not, there's no secret code or algorithm or anything. It's just you find the few things that work for you and you just rinse and repeat.

Consistency with it, man.

Over and over.

Did you ever have that feeling of like, okay, the subtle art 300 something weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Did you ever think like, okay, will I ever be able to do this type of results physically again in terms of numbers, success, metrics? that ever mess with you or big time? Really?

Big time.

Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson. It's called where everybody knows your name, and we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Malaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to where everybody knows your name with me, Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah, it's, and I'm glad you used the word metrics because, and again, the irony, this is actually in the book. Like I literally talk about this in the book about, there's a whole chapter about be careful how you define success, choose your metrics wisely because depending on the metrics you choose to measure success, you can get yourself into trouble, right? So, My metric for success when I was an aspiring writer, when I was writing this book, when this book came out, like, you know, my metric for success was I want to get to the top of the New York Times, sell a million copies, do all this, right? And what I never considered is that I would exceed those goals by so much that I would almost trap myself, right? Like, and so I quickly, when the book blew up, I quickly found myself in a position of like, Oh my God, nothing I ever do is gonna be this successful.

Really? That quick? Within like a couple months or something?

Yeah, I think it was a year or two.

Wow.

And that... There was an immense amount of psychological stress for me.

Wow.

Of like, I'm 32 and everything is downhill.

Oh my gosh. Right?

And like, that's a terrible place to be, but that is genuinely what I felt for a number of years.

Even with all the checks coming in and all the success and all the opportunities, you felt that way.

Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't, again, it comes back to what are the metric, like how are you measuring success?

Right?

Like to me, like the checks, it's like, cool, whatever.

After you get it for a while, you're kind of like, okay.

Yeah, it's money, money has never been a big driver of mine, ever. It's more been quality of the work, but also, you know, reach, like it's always mattered to me a lot that I'm reaching a lot of people and I'm impacting a lot of people. And I tied a lot of a lot of my definition of success was tied up in that. And this hit so hard and so wide that by that definition it was all downhill.

Right.

And so I had to change that definition. Like I had to redefine what success is for myself. So I actually there were probably a few years I felt imprisoned is probably too strong of a word. you know, imprisoned by the success of Subtle Art. But, like, it... I'm maybe confined or... Trapped or confined a little bit. At some point, it was actually when I took the time off last year that, like, that flipped where it was like, it stopped being... Instead of measuring myself against this book for the rest of my life, which makes no sense whatsoever, I started seeing it as just like a blessing of like, look, like this thing is basically bankrolling anything you want to do for the rest of your life. Any like crazy startup idea, any like stupid indie film, like, you know, if you want to go buy a cabin in the mountains, like this thing is going to bankroll whatever crazy idea you come up with for the rest of your life. This thing's bankrolling it. So like, why don't you just be grateful?

And appreciate this. Don't be stressed about trying to recreate it.

Yeah, exactly. And so, and to come back to the identity thing, because this was actually tied to this, it was an epiphany of like, I don't have to define myself as an author. It's funny because before I wrote the book, being able to call myself an author was something I aspired to do. I took a lot of pride doing it. especially defining myself as a bestselling author, right?

Right.

I hit a point where I realized, I'm like, I don't have to identify as an author. I can do other things. I've done other things. I've been successful at other things. An author can just be one of many things I do. And as soon as that simple little thing switched in my head, it became very liberating.

Oh, man, that's beautiful. I've got a few final questions for you. This has been inspiring.

Yeah.

If, I don't know who of my audience hasn't read the book yet, but make sure you guys get the subtle art of not giving a, if you haven't got it, make sure to get a few copies. It's always a big hit for every family, friend group, Community. Get a few copies, pass them out. You're also your YouTube channel. I love, I love the content you're making on there now. It's interesting because you're talking about, you know, social anxiety of, like, needing to go out in the past to, like, drink and be liked or be seen in a certain way. I think you were talking about, you know, looking a certain way in front of people, and you've got this new series you're creating on YouTube, which is taking readers out.

Yeah.

In your community and helping them overcome different challenges. And the first one is with a woman who's got social anxiety.

Yep.

And you're taking her through all these different challenges and Adventures to overcome them.

Yeah.

And there's a big kind of, you know, prize at the end, if you will, when it's not what people think it might be. So I want people to check out your YouTube channel, which is really cool. And that's, is that I am Mark Manson? Is that on YouTube?

Yeah, Mark Manson. If you just type Mark Manson in.

YouTube, you'll find me. But make sure you guys check that out. Get on your newsletter, markmanson.net, get the book. We'll have it all linked up as well. But your YouTube is a, is a lot of fun and you're putting a lot of energy, time, resources into making these really cool almost like a little reality show series. So make sure you guys check that out. A few final questions I want to ask you. If you could go back seven years, the day this book came out, Subtle Art came out, and you could tell yourself from this perspective, one thing about love, one thing about success, and one thing about subly worth that you know now from everything you've learned in the past seven years to the day this came out that first day, that first week, what would you share?

You know, it's funny, it's one of those things that's like, I don't know if I would have listened to my, you know, it's, this is the thing.

That I would have been like, I gotta figure it out.

Yeah, like, this is the thing about giving your past self advice. At least my past self would have been like, what do you know, old man?

Like, you bit too stubborn.

Yeah, go back to 2023. You said love, success and self-worth. Yes. It's funny with love, like I don't know. It's one of those things where like when you put in the words, it just sounds very banal and lame, you know? But it's the steadiness of it over a long period of time. It's something that you can't really. The feeling of security that you have when you've spent over a decade with the same person and they've been by your side through everything, like it's something you can't really put into words. And obviously you can't find, just go find it down the street, right? Like it's, it is something that you literally put in the time for and, I, As somebody who struggled with commitment early in my life, that's something that I... The value in that is something that I never really thought about for most of my life. And it's been a real joy to get to experience it.

That's cool.

Success, I'd just be like, dude, buckle up. Wow.

It's a ride, man.

I have no idea what's coming. I think the advice I would give that sixth person, because my mentality, and again, I remember having this conversation with my wife. I remember telling her, I'm like, look, this might not last. It's one of these things, like this thing's been a bestseller for 300 weeks or whatever, but it's like when it's been a bestseller for 10 weeks, you never know when it's gonna stop. You keep thinking you're like, okay, maybe another month, and then we're done. The mentality was very much just say yes to everything. Like this is probably not statistically this isn't gonna last for more than a few months so Every invitation every opportunity every media appearance like just say yes just do it. You're young youg don't have any kids like right, you know, you'll sleep later, right? Sure well, after a few years of that like that starts that starts adding up so I would go back and just tell myself, you know, I know there's a little bit of scarcity mindset here, but like, don't forget that you can say no to things and it's gonna be okay. Um, self-worth. You know, it's funny because I don't... It's actually strange, I think, how little self-worth. I ended up tying up in this stuff. I'm actually, it's funny, one of the joys of coming back to my internet business the last year, I strangely, I take a lot more pride and derive a lot more self-worth from that. I think than my books. Interesting for the movie. And I don't know why that is. It's very strange. When my movie came out, it was surprising how much other people expected me to care way more than I did. Other people were like, Wow, this must be like...

It's a big deal.

And this is your capstone moment in your life. And it's... Really? You know, like, and everybody from the. The studio, people at the studio, to friends and family, to, you know, people in my publisher, they're like, man, like, you got your own movie. It's actually. It's gonna be in a theater. Like, this must be, like, a thing.

And I'm like, I should put it out there. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, it's just a. It's more content, right? You know? So it's just. I think I'm just an internet dude, like, and it's. And I think I have more of my identity and self-worth tied up in. the entrepreneurial side. That's cool. Then necessarily like the, being a public figure or what.

Yeah, yeah. This is a question I asked you, I must have been four or five years ago in the last interview, but you're in a much different space energetically now with more life experience. It's called the Three Truths. So imagine, maybe you don't remember because you're in your eighth interview that day, but imagine a hypothetical scenario. and question, we went into your past self, we're gonna get our future self. Imagine you get to live as long as you want, and now that you're on this health kick, you're gonna live with your 100 something. And you get to accomplish and create and be everything you want to be for the rest of your life. But it's the last day, many years away.

Okay.

And in this hypothetical world, you have to take everything with you you've created. So no one has access to any of your books, movies, content, YouTube, or whatever you create in the future. all gonna go somewhere else.

Yeah.

But you have a piece of paper and a pen, and you get to. To write three lessons that you would leave with the world. I like to call them three truths.

Okay.

This is all we have to remember. Your content by for the rest of time. What would be. What would be those three truths you would leave behind?

I I I would say. probably the most important one would be don't be afraid of failure or pain, that that's actually where the joys and successes of life are hidden. I would say be careful how you define yourself and, and be careful how you measure success, because no matter how you choose those things, life's gonna sneak up on you and bite you in the. It's gonna find a way. I guess the third thing. I don't know. Maybe it's because we opened with this, but. But love is not enough that it's. It's. Love is great, but it can't be the foundation. of a healthy relationship. It amplifies a healthy foundation. Yeah.

One more question for you. One final question. But I want to make sure everyone gets the book. If you haven't already read it, make sure you get a few copies. You've got a few other books as well. Grab those movie YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe to that. How else can we be of service to you today?

Oh, man, I don't know. Just like, enjoy your day.

Enjoy your day. That's it, man. I love it.

Take care of yourself. Show appreciation of the people you care about.

For sure, man. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Mark, because again, when I saw you last, I didn't recognize you. You have continued to transform the inside, not just the external success and all the different results you've gotten by creating more great content, but by creating a different world internally and from shifting from more analytical to what it sounds like more emotional, in your body and really taking a deeper dive into those wounds maybe from the past. So I really acknowledge you for going on the journey. I know how scary and painful it has been for me, and I can imagine it hasn't been easy to dive into those things. So I really acknowledge you. It's hard to let go of certain physical things like drinking or socializing in certain ways. When you've done it for so long, it's hard to let go of certain beliefs, conversations, friendships. So I really acknowledge you for going on this healing journey, man. It's really beautiful to watch.

Yeah. Appreciate that.

Of course. Final question. What is your definition of greatness?

Ah, I mean, don't, don't I get, like, this is my third time here. Don't, don't I get a pass on this one? I feel like, I feel like this.

Is, this is, I feel like it's evolved.

Yeah.

You know, I feel like it's evolved.

Yeah, it's the same from five years ago. By the way, if anybody wants to, you know, check if my answers.

I bet they're different.

Yeah, then you could probably go back to my first interview. Definition of greatness. I mean, I would just say living up to the standards for impact and contribution you have for yourself in the world.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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