19 Raw Lessons To Not Mess Up Your Life - Mark Manson - #961

**Mark Manson** (0:07)
Your business idea, it was just incredible.

**Chris Williamson** (0:08)
Thank you.

**Mark Manson** (0:09)
I'm still thinking about it.

**Chris Williamson** (0:11)
I'm unable to speak about my million, billion dollar idea.

**Mark Manson** (0:15)
Is that because you don't want anybody to steal it, or because you would never be allowed to speak again?

**Chris Williamson** (0:20)
It's a combination of both, but look.

**Mark Manson** (0:24)
The world will wait.

**Chris Williamson** (0:25)
The world is gonna have to wait, but when it happens, it's gonna know about it, and Andrew Huberman is as well.

**Mark Manson** (0:29)
Yes, for sure.

**Chris Williamson** (0:31)
All right. Controversial opinion.

**Mark Manson** (0:34)
Okay.

**Chris Williamson** (0:35)
People would need less therapy if they tolerated fewer assholes.

**Mark Manson** (0:40)
Yeah, I think...
So I hear problems from a lot of people. I get a lot of emails, and I have for almost 20 years now. And it's amazing to me how often people will email me or message me about some issue that's going on in their life. And really, it just comes down to like, somebody in your life is a dick. And yet, instead of just being like, you know what, I'm not going to hang out with a dick anymore, I'm going to try to change their dickishness. I'm going to try to manipulate it or control it or convince them, have them see the light and understand their own dickitude. And it's just like such a losing battle. And of course, they always, the email that comes in is like eight pages long and it has a full biography of every party involved. And I'm just like, well, what, maybe just like don't call them back. Like, is it that hard? So, I just, and when you, this doesn't even get into the therapy culture thing, especially when you get on Instagram and you start seeing all these posts about like, if they don't appreciate you at your worst and they don't deserve you at your best, you know, it's like, life's hard. People don't get along. Like, some people are disagreeable and some people are going through shit and they'll say mean things to you. And like, at a certain point, you just, there's a skillset of deciding what is acceptable and what's not acceptable in your life. And you can either develop that skillset or you can just continue to be subjected to the whims and the asshole nation of the people around you.

**Chris Williamson** (2:22)
What do you think of the contributing skills of that skillset?

**Mark Manson** (2:27)
So I think one reason people get stuck in this is like, one is just the scarcity mindset around relationships, right? So you often hear scarcity mindset around like business and money and all this stuff. And all that stuff is true. But like, a lot of people have a scarcity mindset around relationships. They think like, oh, if I stop hanging out with half my friends, then I'm just never going to have friends again. Where it's like, no, there's an abundance of people in the world. And the way life works is that when somebody exits your life, generally somebody new will show up in due time to kind of fill that role. So I think that's one. I think two is just like the courage to speak up or the courage to stand up for yourself. A lot of people don't feel, I don't know what the word is, like that they have permission to like express what they feel or express that they feel that they've been disrespected.
And I also think that a lot of people develop some sort of like codependent emotional attachment to people around them, right? They have, their self-esteem is lodged in the minds and mentalities of others. And so-

**Chris Williamson** (3:36)
If you're not okay, I'm not okay.

**Mark Manson** (3:38)
Exactly. And so the idea of like excising you from my life is literally like psychological suicide. Exactly. So it's just not even an option that occurs to them.
So yeah, it's like, it's such a simple thing, yet so many people struggle so deeply with it. Which, I mean, I sometimes joke with my team that like, my whole job is just telling people obvious things in a way that like doesn't feel so difficult because like most life problems are actually extremely simple and basic. You know, it's like, how do you break up with somebody? It's like, well, you just say like, I don't want to be with you anymore. But like that is so emotionally hard and painful. And, you know, most of these life issues that I deal with or that I write about, it's just it's extremely simple actions that are laid in with so much emotional attachments and neuroticism around it.