Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Confidence Classic: Stop Chasing Perfect and Start Living with Purpose with Mark Manson

38 min
Jan 21, 20264 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Mark Manson discusses his journey from troubled youth to bestselling author, exploring how personal tragedy and failure shaped his philosophy on success, identity, and growth. The conversation centers on his book and documentary film adaptation, emphasizing that real growth is uncomfortable, non-linear, and requires confronting one's mortality and patterns rather than chasing external validation.

Insights
  • Success and external achievements don't guarantee happiness; anxiety and self-doubt persist regardless of accomplishment level, just with different surface-level concerns
  • Growth is uncomfortable and non-linear, accompanied by insecurity and self-doubt rather than euphoric breakthroughs; realistic expectations about the process are essential
  • People avoid positive experiences proportionally to how much they threaten their identity and worldview, not just negative ones, due to ego's need for consistency
  • Confronting mortality and personal loss can be transformational, forcing reevaluation of priorities and revealing which daily worries are ultimately meaningless
  • Internal definitions of success are more important than external accolades; misaligned internal metrics can create lifelong feelings of failure despite objective achievements
Trends
Documentary adaptations of self-help books gaining traction as visual medium better serves emotional connection and relatability than textShift in self-help messaging from feel-good platitudes toward honest, irreverent content that challenges conventional wisdom and expectationsGrowing recognition that entitlement and avoidance behaviors stem from cultural messaging about specialness rather than individual character flawsIncreased focus on identity-based psychology in personal development, examining how ego and worldview protection drive behavior patternsAuthenticity and vulnerability in personal branding becoming competitive advantage for thought leaders and content creators
Topics
Personal Identity and Ego Defense MechanismsRedefining Success Beyond External MetricsGrowth Psychology and Non-Linear DevelopmentMortality Awareness as Catalyst for ChangeEntitlement Culture and Generational PatternsRelationship Patterns and Self-AwarenessDocumentary Filmmaking Adaptation StrategySelf-Help Industry Conventions and DisruptionVulnerability in Public Figures and AuthenticityPain as Transformational ToolAvoiding Positive ExperiencesNarrative Reframing and AccountabilityPurpose-Driven Living vs. Achievement Chasing
Companies
Metallica
Used as case study of how external success doesn't guarantee internal satisfaction; band context for Dave Mustaine story
Megadeth
Example of how pain and rejection can fuel achievement, yet internal metrics of success can create lifelong feelings ...
GFC (production company)
Documentary production company that adapted Mark Manson's book into film, chosen for alignment with author's vision a...
Harper Collins
Publisher of 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' book; editor Luke Dempsey championed the project
People
Mark Manson
Bestselling author of 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck'; discusses personal journey, philosophy, and documentary ...
Heather Monahan
Podcast host; conducts interview with Mark Manson about success, identity, and personal growth philosophy
Dave Mustaine
Original Metallica guitarist kicked from band; formed Megadeth; case study of how internal success metrics differ fro...
Josh
Mark Manson's friend who drowned at age 19; death was transformational catalyst for author's personal development and...
Luke Dempsey
Harper Collins editor who published Mark Manson's book; cancer survivor who championed the project based on personal ...
Nathan
Director of 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' documentary film; collaborated with Manson on visual storytelling a...
Matthew
Producer of documentary film; advocated for centering Mark Manson's personal story to create emotional connection wit...
Jimmy
Manson's former party friend; low-level con man used as example of entitlement and avoidance of personal accountability
Quotes
"I actually find it a lot more liberating to remind myself of all the ways that I'm not special. Even if I accomplish something, success, however I choose to define it, 99% of my time each day is spent doing very, very average things, worrying about very, very average problems and messing up in very, very average ways."
Mark Manson
"Your ego's job is to keep things the same at all times. It doesn't matter if things could be better, it doesn't matter if they could be worse. If they're different, that is scary and uncomfortable."
Mark Manson
"Evil people don't think they're evil. They think everyone else is evil."
Mark Manson
"Growth is not a weekend retreat. Growth is usually slower than we want. And it's not as linear as we want. It comes in fits and spurts and plateaus."
Mark Manson
"You can rack up all the external accolades in the world. You can break all sorts of records, put up huge numbers. But if your internal definition of success is off, you can feel like a loser the entire time."
Mark Manson
Full Transcript
You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on what not is exploding right now. I've watched the shows firsthand. I've seen what not climb to the top of the app store, and I've looked at the seller earnings. Small, medium, and multi-million dollar businesses are seeing real growth. If you're selling online or out of a storefront, full-time, or as a side hustle, you already know the challenge. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. What not flips that? On what not, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got. Ask questions and buy, and they keep coming back. What not is a largest dedicated live shopping platform, whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, even cookies. Sellers are building real thriving businesses. What not buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app? They're not just browsing. They're bidding, buying, and coming back. You go live, show off products in real time, and turn what you love into real income. People selling on what not sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products. You're building real connections with your buyers. Across what not, the number of sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. Some make more, some less, but consistency pays off. This isn't a side hustle. It's a real path to building something that lasts. And for a limited time, what not will match your first $150 sold in the first month? Visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What not dot com slash sell. In one marketing and CRM platform built to help you connect with customers, boost engagement, and grow your business smarter. Just head to www.brevo.com slash confidence and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura. Join the millions who are already banking. Be free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com slash confidence. That is chime.com slash confidence. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. N-M-L-S, ID number 1240038. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash confidence for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash confidence. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on what not is exploding right now. Visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. I actually find it a lot more liberating to remind myself of all the ways that I'm not special. Even if I accomplish something, success, however I choose to define it, 99% of my time each day is spent doing very, very average things, worrying about very, very average problems and messing up in very, very average ways. But I think when you focus on that 99% of the stuff that is like everybody else, it liberates you because you realize like, oh, my problems are actually not that unique. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. That's a no-seal, girls. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited to reintroduce you. We've had them on the show once before, but today we are revisiting Mark's based on his global best-selling self-help phenomenon, the subtle art of not giving an F-bomb is a cinematic documentary design to help us become less awful people. Literally, Mark Manson has a movie and we're sitting down here today with him talking about it. Mark, thanks for making time to be with us today. It's good to be back. Okay, so let's get into it. First of all, it's kind of funny thinking about all of the success, massive success. As an author, I bow down to the millions and millions of books that you've sold, so impressive, so incredible. However, in your teachings, when you talk about quote unquote success, I'd love it if you could kind of share with everybody what that achieving millions of books being sold, if that related to happiness for you. That's a great question. I mean, it's funny because in the short run, yeah, for sure, it's exciting to see the sales numbers come in. It's exciting to see the money come in, but in the long run, it's amazing the mind adjusts to the new normal so quickly and those same anxieties and preoccupations and doubts and stuff still exist. It's just they take a new form. So it's like before the book, I used to be anxious and insecure of like, well, nobody's gonna like my book. Nobody's gonna buy it. And then when everybody bought the book, now my anxieties and insecurities is like, well, nobody's gonna like the next book. I'm a one hit wonder. This is never gonna happen again. How do I top this? And so the anxiety is the same. It's just the surface of your life shifts and changes underneath it. Number one, thank you for being honest and sharing that because it makes me feel better about, having those same fears and concerns and not having had that incredible success. So thank you for that. But what's interesting is in hearing that, you're projecting, oh, what if this isn't successful? So many of us have heard or have been taught, you've got to put out there what you're gonna expect. You've got to feel that that success has already happened. How do you think that you have been able to achieve not only one success, but multiple successes in your career without having or leveraging that methodology? I just think in terms of actions, like worthwhile actions, I try not to label things too much of like, okay, well, this makes me a successful person and this makes me a successful author. I feel like the labels will just trip you up as much as they help you. Like maybe they help you early on to get motivated, but as you're going, they can become traps. And so I try not to think so much about like, what makes this movie successful? What makes this next project a success? And I just try to focus on, okay, let's make the best movie possible. Let's make the best book possible. What's the message that people need to hear that nobody's saying right now? Okay, let me go write that book. And then, let other people talk about success. If I just leave that discussion out of my own brain as long as possible, things tend to go better, I find. All right, well, you're talking about not labeling things. And while you might not like to label things, you do like to have your own law, Manson's law of avoidance. So can you break that one down for us? Because I find that to be pretty entertaining. Yeah, my ego just was insatiable. So I had to start naming laws after myself. No, the Manson's law of avoidance says that people will avoid experiences in proportion to how much it threatens their worldview and identity. And I think that's really important because I think most people have had the experience before of, yeah, obviously you get anxious and avoid negative experiences, but a lot of us, we also get anxious and avoid positive experiences as well. Like that huge opportunity comes around and you kind of freak out and you blow it. Or a person you really like, you finally meet somebody you really, really like and you think there's a lot of potential with and you find a way to screw it up or make up an excuse to not see them again. And I think most people have had this experience at some point in our lives and it doesn't make sense. We often like get upset and beat ourselves up, like, wow, I'm such an idiot, why would I do that? But if you look at it from an identity perspective, it actually makes a lot of sense. Your ego's job is to keep things the same at all times. It doesn't matter if things could be better, it doesn't matter if they could be worse. If they're different, that is scary and uncomfortable. And so your mind is always trying to kind of trick you into staying in the same spot and doing the same thing and believing the same things and feeling the same things. And so anytime you try to break out of that default state and change something in your life, it's gonna be accompanied with certain amounts of anxiety, anger, sadness, insecurity. It's just part of the process. And I think this is really important to understand because it's a credit to, I guess, self-help marketing over many decades that I think a lot of people have kind of developed this assumption that growth is this, it's like a weekend retreat. It's euphoric, you're gonna be like singing and screaming and like hugging strangers when, oh my God, my breakthrough finally happened. I'm a new person, like let's throw a party. It doesn't work that way. It's usually any sort of like real growth or breakthrough. It is accompanied with a lot of insecurity and self-doubt. And even when you're on the other side of that, there's anxiety of like, well, what if I fall back? What if I screw up again? What if I relapse? You know, it's not an easy process. And it doesn't always, there are, like it does feel great sometimes, but it also feels not great sometimes. And I think it's just useful to be realistic about that. Well, I mean, it's interesting that we're talking about this at the same time we're talking about you entering into this new era in your career, you creating and narrating this movie, you opening up your life to a whole new level. How were you able to let go during this process? So the book came out in 2016, and we shot the film in 2021. So I had already had, I had about five years of doing interviews about the book. And so I had talked about all the stories and concepts a million times in a way it almost like, it was almost like practice for the film. So when it got time to sit down and actually narrate and talk through the film, that wasn't such a hard part. The hardest part for me was, I don't know, can I curse on this podcast? Sure. Awesome. All right. I don't know a damn thing about filmmaking. And that was apparent very quickly. Like my first meeting with the director, he started asking me all these questions. And I was like, whoa, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, dude. Like, you're the director, you figure it out. And so there was a lot of trust in letting go that I had to go through of like, this is my baby, it's, my name's gonna be on it, my face is gonna be on it. But these other people, the director, the producer, the editor, they're actually making it. And that was very scary at first. And it took a lot of like, okay, just trust them, go with it, assume it's gonna be great. And then as we started going through production and things started shaping up, I was like, okay, good, they know what they're doing. But, you know, early on it was a little bit terrifying. But this wasn't the first time you had been pitched on the concept of turning your book into a movie, right? No, I was pitched multiple times and all sorts of stuff. I mean, my agent and I, we had meetings about sitcoms and reality shows and even a drama made out of like a teenage version of Mark. Like just tons and tons of stuff, which, you know, when you take those meetings, it's very sexy and exciting. You're like, oh my God, this person in Hollywood wants to talk to me about like my idea. Like that's a very seductive thing. But what I realized once I actually got into these meetings, what I realized, I'm like, this makes no sense. I'm like a nerdy author who like sits in gym shorts most days each year alone in an office, typing words onto a Word document. I'm not going to be on a reality TV show. Like this is crazy. We said the younger you, the player could have been on the reality TV show for sure. Maybe, maybe, but that's not like, that's not what I want for myself, I guess, is what I'm saying. And I also felt like that's not the most, it doesn't honor the material the best. Like I really do believe in the ideas and concepts of the book. And so I told my agent, I said, you know, whatever we do with it, whatever whoever we give the rights to or whatever, you know, to me what's most important is that the ideas are transmitted in a good way, in a way that's like going to land with people. And so when GFC approached us, they've done dozens of documentaries, they've done multiple documentaries based on books. You know, when they approached us and they said, look, we just want to take the book and turn it into a visual medium and stay very, very loyal to the ideas and concepts within the book because we think they're powerful. That just made sense to me. So it was more around your visions aligned and trusting them? Yeah, I think it was, you know, we wanted the same thing out of it, I think, with some of the other pitches that we heard, a lot of it revolved. I think a lot of people were just realized it's a great title and it's a great brand. And so you can just kind of milk a lot of attention, straight off of that. I think a lot of people kind of took maybe the wrong lessons from the book. Like, I think they saw the humor and the irreverence and kind of the crazy stories and they're like, oh, we need to make a show out of that. Whereas with the documentary, Matthew, the producer, he came to me and he said, I love these ideas. We need to get these ideas in front of more people. And that is what resonated with me. Meet a different guest each week. Where's all the change? Confidence clear. Chime is changing the way people bank. Fee-free and smarter banking built for you. Not like old school banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees built for you, not the 1%. Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay, giving you access to up to $500 of your paycheck any time and getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Some old banks still don't even do this. Forget overdraft fees, minimum balance fees and monthly fees. Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and progress. Bank fee-free plus overdraft coverage you can count on. Helps you build credit history, stress-free. Get paid when you say up to $500, earn up to 3% APY on savings, seven times higher than a traditional bank. Rated five stars by USA Today for customer service, Real Humans 24-7. It's the new way to build credit history with your own money and get rewarded every single day. The new card that unlocks safer credit building and cash back with everyday spending together at last. No annual fees, no interest and no strings attached. I would have used this if I had known about this when I was younger. The idea of building credit at a younger age, it's impossible, insurmountable and suddenly you have an option. Chime is it. Chime is not just a smarter banking, it's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking. Be free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com slash competence. That is chime.com slash confidence. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card and mypay line of credit provided by the Bankor Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. Mypay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime plus status only. Otherwise 1.00% APY applies. No mean balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Are you ready to take your business's marketing to the next level? Meet Brevo, the all in one marketing and CRM platform built to help you connect with customers, boost engagement and grow your business smarter. With Brevo, you can manage all of your customer interactions in one place, nurture leads with their built in CRM, reach your audience through email and SMS and keep them coming back with powerful automations. But here's where it gets really exciting. Meet Aura, Brevo's AI assistant. Aura helps you craft smarter campaigns by suggesting personalized content, optimizing send times and even analyzing performance data to help you improve your strategy in real time. It's like having a marketing expert on your team 24 seven. And of course, Brevo offers advanced analytics, seamless integrations and AI driven personalization. Everything you need to create multi-channel campaigns that hit the mark every time. Get started for free today or use code confidence50 to say 50% on starter and standard plans for the first three months of an annual subscription. Just head to www.brevo.com slash confidence and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura. Confidence clear. I'm asking you to try to find your passion. She's got it. Well, I'll tell you as a reader and as someone who saw the movie, I agree. If anything, we get to see a whole nother side of you now in the movie, which to me, it made you much more relatable as a person. I'll tell you the beginning of the movie opening, essentially around the story of when you're 13 years old and watching a young 13 year old you, I mean, what you went through getting arrested at school. I mean, the drugs, I'm a mother of a 15 year old and immediately, I mean, I was heartbroken watching that and then hearing it right after that your parents were, I mean, I did not get that from the book. So it was immediately as a viewer pulled me right into that story and it was so powerful. And I think that's gotta be so relatable for everybody watching this. Yeah, and that was very much part of our early discussions. So, I mean, the book is about 220 pages. If you're gonna turn a book into a movie, the first question is, okay, just to read this book out loud, it's probably about six hours to get through the whole thing. And we gotta get that down to like 90 minutes, maybe a hundred minutes at most. So we've immediately have to cut out like 70 to 80% of this and figure out what are we gonna keep? And one of the first things that Matthew said is he said, look, in a book, people sit with you, a book's a very different experience. Like when you're sitting and reading over a long period of time, the author is able to kind of take you down these side trails and explain concepts and say like, researchers discovered this in these experiments in the 1950s and this is how this relates to this concept that we talked about earlier. He said in a movie, that doesn't really work. In a movie, people need a person to sympathize with and to relate to. And so he was the one who was like, we need to put you front and center and make your story kind of the central focus of the film. Cause in the book, it's like, I use my own stories as a way to, as examples for the concepts I'm talking about. Whereas in the movie, it's kind of the other way around. We start with my story, we get the concepts and lessons and pull them out of that story. So it's kind of inverted in a way, if that makes sense. Yeah, and for everyone listening, the best analogy I can give is I'm not someone who sits around and necessarily reads the Bible every night. However, there is a show out right now called The Chosen, which is incredible and has just reactivated me and captured me in a way that simply reading wasn't able to do. So for anyone who's already read the book, you're gonna love the movie. But if you haven't read the book, this is such a different way to access the content and get, you're gonna get the same messaging, but in such a different way that if you are a visual learner, I really think it's gonna pull people in. They did an incredible job with how differently this movie is cut up. Yeah, visually it's a very eclectic kind of wild ride. And that was mostly Nathan, the director. He and I had a lot of good conversations about why the book worked. And I think one of the reasons why people like the book so much is that it broke convention a lot. Like for decades, people, if you bought a self-help book, you kind of knew exactly what you were gonna get. It was gonna be a lot of feel good, fluffy, nice stories about success and happiness. And here are the three steps to achieve this and that. And the book kind of just spit in the face of all that. Like it very intentionally messed with people's expectations, was very irreverent, was very funny, had some very difficult stories, like challenging stories, but also some very light and funny stories mixed in. It's like fast-paced and it's always kind of changing up what the reader is expecting. And so Nathan and I had conversations about doing that with the film because there's a lot of documentaries, especially documentaries based on books. It's almost like a dry kind of academic interpretation of, well, here this is what chapter three said and now we're gonna show it. And this is what chapter four said and now we're gonna show it. And so he and I had, we very consciously were like, we wanted to be a little bit crazy, a little bit weird, definitely funny. And we wanna mix formats. We wanna have like animations and B-roll and hire some actors to do some crazy stuff and then have me talking for a while and just kind of always keep the audience on their toes of like not knowing what's gonna happen next. Yeah, and incorporating the bombing in Japan. I mean, there's so many things going on. You're getting pulled in so many different directions that it really, it keeps you so focused on the film. And again, like I said, I'm someone who's read the books. So you think is this gonna be, it's very different however, again, to the messaging, it definitely hits home. All right, so some of the key points for people who haven't read the book yet and are thinking why would I wanna watch this film? I want to get into this whole idea that is not the popular belief out there that not everybody's special. In fact, are really any of us special and you diving into that. This is when I'm kind of like the turd in the punch bowl. Very much bang on the drum of this idea that we're not special. I understand why we tell ourselves and tell each other that we're special. And look, like if you're a mom or a dad, obviously your kids are the most special thing in the world to you and to you. They're like these perfectly unique, amazing human beings. But I think in terms of understanding our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with the world, I actually find it a lot more liberating and helpful to remind myself of all the ways that I'm not special, that even if I accomplished something great, the accomplished quote unquote success, however I choose to define it, 99% of my time each day is spent doing very, very average things worrying about very, very average problems and messing up in very, very average ways. And I think so much for our culture, and I don't know if this is, I don't think it's driven by social media or television or whatever, but like so much of our culture revolves around the extremes. It revolves around finding the thing, like the outlier, the thing that you are either incredibly good at or incredibly bad at and focusing on that and ignoring the 99% of the stuff that you are pretty much like everybody else. But I think when you focus on that 99% of the stuff that is like everybody else, it liberates you because you realize like, oh, my problems are actually not that unique. Like everybody struggles with insecurities like this. Every family has problems. Every job has frustrations and parts and periods that you don't like and you don't know if you're gonna get through. Everybody deals with loss at some point. So it's, to me, that's a very powerful concept because I think one of the things, one of the problems that we all have is that when we're very hurt or upset about something, we kind of trick ourselves in the thinking that nobody else can understand that like we're the only ones that feel that way and therefore we're weird. And so you don't say anything because then other people will know you're weird. But when you realize like, no, no, actually everybody has that problem and everybody also has the problem of not saying anything about it because they think that they're gonna be weird if they say something. It just liberates everybody to start talking about it. Meet a different guest each week. Where's your other change? Complex Clearly. These days I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well made in versatile, it's not worth it to me. That's honestly why I love quints. The fabrics feel elevated, the cuts are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense. Quints makes high quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, 100% silk and organic cotton poplin, lightweight cotton cashmere sweaters, perfect for the changing seasons and can't miss seasonal colors and prints for spring. Versatile, well made pieces that make getting dressed simple. Quints works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. You're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores, just quality clothing. Quints clothing is consistently rated 4.5 to five stars by thousands of customers. Real people wearing these pieces every day and loving them. The Quints Cotton Cashmere Sweater has become my favorite go-to. It's light enough for layering, but it feels luxurious. The material is beautiful and it doesn't cost what I thought quality cashmere would. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need a closet full of options, you need pieces that work. Right now, go to quints.com slash competence for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to qince.com slash competence for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com slash competence. Running a small business is tough and when it's time to get alone, it can feel impossible to find a lender you actually trust. Big banks say now, the internet full of sketchy offers with sky high rates and fine print, you can barely read whether you need help covering payroll, managing cash flow or investing in growth, you deserve better. That's why I recommend the small business marketplace, Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. It's a free, easy to use platform that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. What I like is that you don't need perfect credit to get started, no spam, no bait and switch. Just personalized options that fit your business needs. If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. And here's the best part for a limited time when you visit nerdwallet.com slash competence and fill out the no obligation form. You'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash competence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one, a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1,500 corporate guides. Real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. When you form your business with Northwest, you get a complete business identity, not a stack of vendors to deal with. That includes registered agent service, business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number and built-in privacy. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email and phone number stay private. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Build a professional website, stay in good standing with on-time annual filings. Get simple explanations of corporate bylaws and more. With Northwest privacy comes standard. Your data is never sold and all services are handled in-house under their privacy by default promise. Want more later? Get a free account and Northwest grows with you. Form your business, then get more domains, email addresses, phone numbers and services anytime you're ready. Don't pay hundreds for thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash ConfidenceFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with NorthwestRegisteredAgent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash ConfidenceFree. ConfidenceFree. I can ask you to try to find your passion. All right, so I wanna get into this. I don't know if this guy is a caricature or if this really was your friend. I mean, you're claiming he was your friend, but this guy, Jimmy, is, wow. I mean, this guy is incredible. But you set it up. So basically saying, listen, there was this error of, we were telling everyone they were so special and they're so amazing and you're gonna get an award for doing nothing. And then suddenly we have an entire generation of your friend, Jimmy. Jimmy was a party friend, which is very different than a friend friend. Thank goodness. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think there's just a general sense these days that people feel entitled to not only things, but entitled to feel good all the time. And I think those two things are actually very connected because if you look at, so to catch everybody up, you know, my friend Jimmy that I talk about in the book is a little bit of a con man, like a low level con man, like a cheesy guy at the nightclub con man. He was taking shares in stocks from companies and advising them when he had never advised any companies. He's a total con man. Yeah, you're okay. Yeah, he was a con man. But funny story about Jimmy. So the director of the movie, he was like, hey, can you look like, are you still in touch with this guy? I was like, absolutely not. And he was like, can you like show me a picture? I'm like, I just want to get a sense of, you know, who is this guy? What does he look like? I went started digging around Facebook to find this guy. I hadn't talked to him in 10 years. And sure enough, I find him, I find his Facebook profile and I click on it. And the top thing on his Facebook profile is a video of him standing on a runway in front of a private jet telling everybody that like if they sign up now, they'll be able to join his exclusive platinum club and join him on his jet. And I'm like, watch it. And I'm like, okay, I know him well enough to know that that's not his jet. He just drove to a runway somewhere and is standing in front of that, convinced somebody to let him stand in front of it. And I was like, wow, the dude has not changed a bit. So anyway, back to entitlement. So I think people who do stuff like Jimmy, like Jimmy doesn't think he's a bad guy. He thinks he's a good guy. Like it's, there's a great quote from, that I love from David Foster Wallace. He says, evil people don't think they're evil. They think everyone else is evil. And so Jimmy, he doesn't think he's a bad guy. He thinks everything he does, all the shady, creepy stuff he does is worth it. It's like a means to an end. But the thing that causes him to feel that way is this sense of entitlement of like, well, of course I should be able to stand in front of a private jet. That's who I am. I'm gonna be a private jet guy. Like that's what I believe. I'm gonna be a super rich private jet guy. And so I'm just gonna like sneak onto a runway and film a video and tell everybody it's my jet, even when it's not. Like they start convincing themselves that they deserve these things without actually going through the sacrifice and the struggle to get there. And so I think, you know, that's kind of an extreme example of just this unwillingness to face pain in one's life. This unwillingness to sit with a struggle and actually work through it rather than finding a way to avoid it and run from it. I appreciate you sharing that behind the scenes that Jimmy is still where we left him because I think it's interesting in that you are not, what that says to me is people have the ability to change if they become self-aware or not to stay on that same path. And again, no judgment. People need to do what works for them. I'm on the wanting to change journey. But one of the things that you highlight in the movie that I really connected with was that story of, you dating women and at first you're thinking, what's wrong with them? And then when you get cheated on, then suddenly your heart broken and you start this journey of looking within and noticing these patterns. Can you share a little bit about what you teach there? Yeah, this is a good example of, I had my heart broken by my first girlfriend in a pretty extravagant way. And I think like a lot of young immature people, rather than looking at myself and asking the difficult questions of, well, why was I so attracted to this person? Why did I ignore so many red flags? Why did I tolerate these sorts of behaviors? What did I do to contribute to this relationship? Like what could I have done better? Instead of asking those difficult mature questions, I did kind of the immature easy thing, which is I'm like, well, clearly women are just evil, just selfish, right? It's clearly it's the women's fault. And yeah, and it's a perfect example of like, evil people don't think they're evil. Evil people think everybody else is evil. And because I started, I protected myself with these irrational beliefs around relationships and women and sex, I became an asshole. Like I became a really bad boyfriend who cheated on people. And it took a number of years of like patterns repeating for it to kind of dawn on me of like, hey, wait a second, there's only one thing that all of these relationships have in common and that's me. Obviously I'm contributing something to these patterns. And it wasn't until that point that I was able to look back at that early relationship, that first relationship, and realize, wow, I wasn't such an angel after all. Like I was kind of a bad boyfriend. And I was selfish in a lot of ways that I didn't realize at the time. And there were a lot of problems in the relationship that I was too immature or naive to address or deal with. And so, of course she left me. Like that's actually not surprising in hindsight that she left me. And so it's, I think that's just, it's one example of how, again, coming back to how growth is not a weekend retreat. Growth is, it's actually, it's usually slower than we want. And it's not as linear as we want. It comes in fits and spurts and plateaus. And then it's also, it doesn't feel good, right? It's like, it doesn't feel good to look back and realize, oh, that really heartbreaking thing that happened to me, you know, I was partially responsible for that. Like I have blamed there as well. And that takes a like, that takes a lot of work to swallow that, especially when you've kind of been feeding yourself these narratives for many years, that you were this perfect angel that was wronged by this horrible, horrible woman. Well, for everybody right now who's having a visceral reaction to this, because you've been cheated on, know that Mark is not like Jimmy. He has changed, he is married, and he's actually repping for his wife right now in a Brazil sweatshirt. So shout out there. Okay, there's two things I need to get to before I let you go. And I know I only have nine minutes left with you. All right, you were a hard metal rocker growing up and you were a big fan of Metallica and you share an amazing story and the power that pain can have to help someone and hurt someone. I'm hoping you can share a little bit about that now. This actually ties in really well with be careful how you define success. So a lot of people don't know, but the original lead guitarist of Metallica was a guy named Dave Mustaine. He was right before Metallica recorded their first album. He was kicked out of the band. No reason was given. They just like handed him a bus ticket and sent him home. And he basically fumed all the way home. He was really, are broken, upset, similar age to how I was, similar reaction, right? It's like, those guys are assholes. I'm going to show them. And he went and formed a new band called Megadeth and Megadeth went on to sell, God, I don't know, 100 million records towards stadiums around the world. I mean, it's, they're huge. They're arguably the second biggest heavy metal band of all time behind Metallica. But it's fascinating because if you jump ahead 20 years, there was amazing documentary about Metallica called some kind of monster. And they actually went and interviewed Dave Mustaine in that documentary. And it was the first time that Dave had sat down with the Metallica guys and like talked very openly about what had happened. And to everybody's surprise, like all the Metallica guys thought like, oh, of course he's in, he started Megadeth. He's fine. Like his life's great. In that, that interview, Dave like broke down in tears. And he said, I've always felt like a failure because no matter what I do, I'm always the guy who got kicked out of Metallica. And to me, it's just such a fascinating story of like, you can rack up all the external accolades in the world. You can break all sorts of records, put up huge numbers. But if your internal definition of success is off, you can feel like a loser the entire time. To me, it's a cautionary tale of beware of how you define success for yourself because you, maybe it helps early on. And I'm sure it did help him early on. It helped help him start Megadeth and make it a better band. But be careful because it can turn into a trap later. And so, you know, hold those definitions lightly. Yeah, I think the word you use in the movie was a prison. And I just, I like that, that word and that visual that it provided. But this guy, maybe he wasn't really in all that much pain. Maybe he's just really good at guilt tripping people. And he got the last laugh on them. I don't think that you're giving him full credit. Okay, so I said earlier that the movie opened with you as a 13 year old boy, and that's not actually true. The movie opens and you're talking about death. And I wanted to get into this story, which was a really transformational story for you. And I just, I love the lesson from it about losing a good friend when you were young and that powerful dream and how it's impacted you, if you could share that. One of the most personal and powerful stories of the book and the film is when I was 19, I was at a party and a friend of mine named Josh suddenly drowned right in the middle of the party. It was very unexpected, very shocking, quite traumatic at the time. You know, it really kind of put me into a tailspin. But it was interesting because, you know, I went through a depression for a number of months in a grieving process. But it was also a little bit of a wake up call. It taught me a very important lesson, which was, you know, as such a young person and with somebody so close to me who had passed away, it was the first time that I really was exposed to my own mortality and the consideration of like, oh my God, like this could be over tomorrow. This could be over that, that could have been me, it could have been anybody. And it forced me to reevaluate a lot of the stories and the things that I was doing with my life. At the time, I was kind of a lazy stoner kid, didn't put much effort in at school, was very insecure, smoked a lot of pot, did a bunch of drugs. And it made me really, really think about like, dude, if you go tomorrow, like, are you gonna be happy with this? Like, what are you doing? Right? Like there's a time limit here and you're not using that time well. So it ended up being an incredibly transformational experience for me in a lot of ways. It was kind of the first experience I ever had in my life that like lit a fire under my ass and said like, dude, you only get one shot, like get up and take it. You know, I quit doing drugs, I started studying in school, I transferred to a better college, got my life together, pretty powerful. And the concept I talk about in the book is how, you know, kind of returning to this conversation about how growth is not always pleasant. I think thinking about your own death is actually one of the most useful ways to kind of get a sense of what's worth pursuing and what's not worth pursuing. I think most people have an experience at some point in their life of either they have a scare in their own life or somebody close to them has a scare or somebody close to them passes away. And it kind of forces them to think about this of like, oh my God, like half of the stuff that I worry about on a day-to-day basis is completely pointless, does not matter, will not care if I go. So what's the 50% of things that does matter and I do care about? And actually a cool story related to that is when I was originally pitching subtle art to a bunch of different publishers back in 2015, you know, my agent and I were driving around New York, we were taking all these meetings at different editors and some of them went well, some of them didn't go so well. And I went to Harper Collins and met with my editor, Luke Dempsey and I think he showed up to the meeting in a couple of minutes late, but my agent and I were sitting in the office or in the conference room and he just walked in, he put the manuscript on the table and he said, I'm a cancer survivor, it's the best thing that ever happened to me and I'm gonna publish your book, I don't care what it takes. And I was like, that's my guy, he gets it. He totally gets it. So true and so powerful. Mark, right, for everybody who's read the book, you've gotta watch the movie and if you haven't read the book, I highly suggest watching the movie, where can people find the movie? So the movie is available on demand on streaming platforms, so Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, et cetera, et cetera. And you can go to, I believe it's subtleartmovie.com to find all that information. Well, I watched it on Apple TV. Definitely go to your digital provider and check it out. Mark, where can everybody find you? markmanson.net and then obviously every, all over social media. All over social media, bring in the heat, bring in the humor. Mark, thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. Thanks, Heather. All right guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. I'm on a journey with you. I'm gonna make a lot of money. I decided to change that dynamic. I'm gonna buy a pair of glasses. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear, start learning and growing. Inevitably some people happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.