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The most important question to ask yourself about your life’s purpose

Man with wavy brown hair wearing a brown jacket over a black shirt, smiling in front of a plain light background.

Mark Manson argues that modern life has confused comfort and stimulation for genuine fulfillment, and that the ancient Greek distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia might be the most important psychological concept nobody talks about anymore.

My name is Mark Manson. I'm the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, as well as some other works. I'm a YouTuber, podcaster, and my work focuses primarily on the importance of values. Becoming an emotionally healthy adult. One of my spicier arguments is that I think happiness is greatly overrated in today's age. I think people focus on it way too much. I think they're focused on it backfires pretty consistently. But worst of all, I think people have started confusing comforts and highs for the same thing as happiness. It's interesting if you look at the ancient world, Aristotle actually argued that there are two versions of happiness. There's Hidonia, which is kind of pleasure, comforts, short-term satisfactions, and then there's Dimonia, which is kind of a deeper purpose-driven. This is a meaningful way to live my life kind of feeling. And I think the modern age has been very optimized to promote as much Hidonia as possible. Everything is designed to make us as comfortable as possible, to give us quick dopamine hits all the time, to make us feel good all the time, and to promise us really simple superficial happiness all the time. But the problem is is that what actually drives life satisfaction is that sense of udimonia, that sense of my life was worth living, I have zero regrets, everything I've suffered or struggled through was worth the trouble. One thing to keep in mind in all this is an idea that comes from Alan Watts that I call the backwards law. And basically the backwards law is that the more you chase a positive experience, that chasing in and of itself is a negative experience. And the more you accept a negative experience, the more that acceptance itself is a positive experience. So you see this show up in all sorts of different areas of life, different ways. The more you try to impress people, the less impressive you're always gonna feel. The more beautiful that you want to be, the uglier you will constantly see yourself. The more money you want to make, the more you will feel too poor and inadequate, like you don't have enough stuff. The more love you feel like you need, the more lonely and isolated you will feel. The more spiritually enlightened you want to become, the more self-centered and narcissistic you'll likely end up being. The more you try to be happy all the time, the more easily you'll be upset. Whereas if you just accept that sometimes life is hard and shit goes wrong, the more happy and easygoing you'll become. So the significance of the backwards law is important because so much of what we're exposed to on a day-to-day basis is kind of selling us these benefits of self-perception. Hey, look at this by this product. You'll become more beautiful. You'll become happier. This will solve your confidence issues. Hey, we can fix your health in 30 days or your money back. You know, all of these things they sound very enticing, but what you discover as you start to go down that road, is that you actually increase the likelihood of your negative experiences because you are constantly chasing that positive. So what I tell people is I say instead of asking yourself, "What's gonna make me happy?" Ask yourself, "What am I willing to struggle for? What are the problems I actually kind of like having in my life?" Sometimes when I give talks, I ask the audience, "What kind of masochist are you? What's like the pain that you secretly enjoy that most other people don't?" Because it's in that pain, that special relationship that you have with that struggle, that's actually probably where most of the meaning and purpose in your life is gonna be found. It's gonna be found in the struggles that you kind of relish having and in the challenges that you are most proud of overcoming. And this comes back to that backwards law and that when you're constantly chasing the positive experiences, you end up on this experience of like a treadmill and that every day and every moment you're looking for the next hit, the next high, to keep you going. Whereas when you find the negative experiences that you're happy to accept, that you're willing to embrace, that embracing of that negative experience is actually what's going to generate a much longer and sustained positive experience. Because this is the sneaky truth that most people don't understand is that happiness is not something that you pursue and achieve in and of itself. It's the natural side effect of finding something more meaningful and purposeful in your life. If you find something that feels important that's worth giving a fuck about, the happiness will happen on its own anyway. I think another common affliction today is this idea that we are each special and unique. And because we're so special and unique, we deserve special treatment, special results, a special place in the world. Ultimately, what this breeds is a sense of entitlement. It's a sense that we deserve certain outcomes without having to put in the effort or the work. And I think this comes from two different places. I think one was very well-intentioned, which was our parents raised us telling us that we were special and amazing and unique and that we had unique gifts to share with the world. And they simply did this because the self-esteem research at the time said this is what you're supposed to tell your kids. Of course, nowadays we realize that that's not the case that when you when you raise when you raise children telling them that they're special and they deserve to have everything, you're not raising a human with high self-esteem. You're raising a little narcissist who thinks that they deserve all the benefits without any of the costs. Now, what most people don't realize is that there's two flavors of narcissism. Now, when most people think of an entitled narcissist, they think of what's known as a grandiose narcissist, which is the person who believes that they are bigger and better than everyone else, that they are amazing and perfect and the best and they deserve special treatment because they're so superior. But there's a flavor of narcissism that most people haven't heard of and that's the vulnerable narcissist. The vulnerable narcissist defines themselves as a special, unique victim. Everything has gone wrong. Everything is unfair. They've been treated uniquely poorly and because of all those things, they deserve special treatment. And what's interesting is that grandiose narcissists and vulnerable narcissists while having completely opposite attitudes and justifications for their selfish behavior, the result is exactly the same. Everyone should pay attention to me. Everybody should stop everything they're doing for me. Everybody should give everything I want to me. I think the second cause is just the nature of how the internet has evolved itself, is that everything is personalized. It's catered exactly for you. You get online and everything in your newsfeed is perfectly curated for your interests and the things that you care about and the things that you want to know about. All of the ads are directed at how special you are and how much you deserve this outcome and how if you just buy this product, then you are going to live up to all the potential that you always knew that you had. I think this messaging has become the water that we all swim in and it's terrible for our mental and emotional health. Most conventional self-help techniques are really just focused on these sugar highs of making you feel a little bit happier for a moment or making you feel special for a moment. Like the idea that you should stand and look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're beautiful or you're smart or that people are going to like you. Ultimately, the research shows that that's not that effective. In fact, what the research finds is that a lot of these techniques like formalizations and affirmations and and gratitude practices, they work better for the people who don't need them. So if you already feel good about yourself, then yeah, standing in the mirror is going to make you feel a little bit better. But if you feel like crap about yourself, the only thing that standing in the mirror reciting lines to yourself reminds you of is that you feel crap about yourself, that you are the type of person who needs to stand in front of a mirror and say affirmations to yourself. It just makes you feel more pathetic. So when I was in my 20s, I developed a really intense fascination with developmental psychology, you know, like most 20 year olds. And I started reading a lot of really brilliant and famous researchers from Jean Piaget to Lawrence Colberg to Robert Keegan, Eric Erickson, and they all have these amazing frameworks of just how people develop throughout their lives. And the early developmental psychologists like Piaget, they began an early childhood and they kind of looked at how an infant develops basic logical reasoning and rational skills and can identify, you know, the difference between self and other. And then other psychologists came along later and they they continued by looking at how adults develop and how different moral frameworks arise at different parts of our lives and how there are different tensions at different ages that really define how we see the world. So I just kind of became obsessed with this with a bunch of these these theories and frameworks. And I eventually kind of simplified everything into into a framework that I think really ties together a lot of what we're trying to achieve in our lives. So I broke it down in the three really simple categories. There's childhood, there's adolescence and there's adulthood. Each is defined by something very simple, but the progress from one stage to the next is not necessarily guaranteed. So the child sees the world in the simplest of ways, which is I want to think, do I get the thing or not? You know, the child wants ice cream, it reaches for the ice cream. The child wants a cookie, it reaches for the cookie. All it understands is I want this thing and I either get it or I don't get it. If I get it, I'm happy. If I don't get it, I'm unhappy. After being upset enough times, I start developing a theory of the world that explains why I don't always get a cookie when I want it. Well, it turns out mom gets to decide whether I get a cookie or not. And it also turns out that mom has a different experience and perspective than I do. Oh, that's actually really interesting. There are other people who have their own perspectives of how the world works and they have their own desires. They want their own cookies or they don't want their own cookies. And sure enough, when you look at a lot of studies, young children, they don't have a concept of self yet. They don't understand that other people have different perspectives than themselves. They're not able to empathize like older humans are able to empathize. They're not able to understand social status or social signaling or cultural standards or anything like that. And so once the child develops these theories of mind, they enter the adolescent stage. Which I kind of think of as like the transactional stage of life. If you think back to high school, essentially what high school is is everybody is trying to barter with each other for social status. Right? It's like, oh, if I wear this jacket, maybe they'll think I'm cool. If I wear the right shoes, then maybe I'll fit in and they'll be friends with me. If I say the funny thing in class, then, you know, maybe the cute girl will pay attention to me. Everything is conditional. It's tit for tat. It's if I do this, it will get that reaction out of that person. And this is very logical, right? Because once you understand it, like, OK, every other person has their own perspective, then what is the behavior that I need to do that is most likely going to make them allow me have my cookie? Now, this carries over into the real world. And in fact, there's a lot of relationships in the real world that function this way that are very conditional. Like, you know, the coffee shop I went to this morning. I have a conditional relationship with the barista. I don't really care who they are or where they went to school or where they grew up. I just want them to give me my coffee and give it to me quick. Right. And that's fine. That's fine in very small, marginal situations. But what you start noticing as you go through life is that this constant conditional interaction with people, it's exhausting. It feels inauthentic. It feels like you're performing all the time. And even when you get people to like you, it's very unsatisfying. And so what you eventually start to realize is that the only way to truly be happy with other people and be happy in the world is to behave unconditionally, is to find something in your life that matters so much to you that you're willing to be disliked for it, that you're willing to suffer disapproval. You're willing to not get the cookie because you found something more important than the cookie. And this is what adulthood is. It's finding the things that really you're willing to plant your flag in and say, this is who I am, take it or leave it. And if I'm not for you, that's totally fine. I get it, live and let live. But I'm going to go look for the people that are right for me and that share in these values. Now, the tricky thing is, is that I think a very large percentage of people get stuck in that adolescent mindset, that they're stuck bartering with the world, performing for approval all the time. And I think a big reason for that is that the modern world is more transactional. It is more you're exposed to so many different people in so many different ways. And there's so many different opportunities that that you feel like you should be performing all the time to get what you want. And so if you never watched that performance fail enough times to start living virtuously, then you'll never cross over into that adult framework of living. And if you don't cross over into that, if you don't find the thing that you're willing to be disliked for, then you're never going to have a stable, happy relationship in the world. If we zoom out, like philosophically speaking, the reason we want to get to adulthood is because living that way makes us anti fragile. Like the adolescent mindset, the childlike mindset, they're very fragile. They're easily disrupted. If things don't go your way, if you don't say the right thing, if you don't do the right thing at the right moment, everything falls apart. Whereas with the adult mindset, if you just have something that you stand for and you're willing to struggle for and you're willing to suffer through being disapproved for, any hardship or setback actually makes you stronger. It actually shows you, it helps you adapt to new circumstances. It helps you find new ways and reasons to work towards the thing that you believe in or stand for the thing that you care about. And the funniest thing about all this too is, is, you know, I went, I went down this like deep, modern psychological rabbit hole. And when I got to the bottom of it, I just found Aristotle. This is basic ancient Greek. Aristotle in philosophy 101. His whole argument was third basic virtues. These are things that you can practice in each and every single moment that you can practice when people love you and when they hate you, that you can practice when you're broke and when you're rich, that you can practice when things are going well and when things are. A total fucking dumpster fire. They're in your control at any given time and they are always socially constructive, regardless of where the political fault lines are that week or that month. And if you prioritize them, if if you make them your highest values, you can pursue them in every moment. You can live unconditionally. You can be anti fragile. You can gain from failure and rejection. You don't have to perform for others. You don't have to chase status or accolades. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. It's this basic virtue ethic that has been sitting in front of us for the entirety of Western history. And I found myself staring at it in the face in between scrolling on TikTok and Instagram, being like, Oh, this was the answer all along. And so I think ultimately it's we are all developing towards an adulthood that is just reflective of what some of the wisest minds in history called out all along that just pursue virtue, just value the timeless things that are good for everybody. And don't get lost in the hedonic treadmill of chasing more likes or chasing a couple more bucks or getting the next car, getting the next date. Because that's that's temporary. That's it's it's just it's a high and it's just going to create more suffering than it alleviates. So I guess we're back at the start. Want to support the channel? Join the big think members community where you get access to videos early, ad free. (upbeat music)

Mark Manson argues that modern life has confused comfort and stimulation for genuine fulfillment, and that the ancient Greek distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia might be the most important psychological concept nobody talks about anymore.

My name is Mark Manson. I'm the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, as well as some other works. I'm a YouTuber, podcaster, and my work focuses primarily on the importance of values. Becoming an emotionally healthy adult. One of my spicier arguments is that I think happiness is greatly overrated in today's age. I think people focus on it way too much. I think they're focused on it backfires pretty consistently. But worst of all, I think people have started confusing comforts and highs for the same thing as happiness. It's interesting if you look at the ancient world, Aristotle actually argued that there are two versions of happiness. There's Hidonia, which is kind of pleasure, comforts, short-term satisfactions, and then there's Dimonia, which is kind of a deeper purpose-driven. This is a meaningful way to live my life kind of feeling. And I think the modern age has been very optimized to promote as much Hidonia as possible. Everything is designed to make us as comfortable as possible, to give us quick dopamine hits all the time, to make us feel good all the time, and to promise us really simple superficial happiness all the time. But the problem is is that what actually drives life satisfaction is that sense of udimonia, that sense of my life was worth living, I have zero regrets, everything I've suffered or struggled through was worth the trouble. One thing to keep in mind in all this is an idea that comes from Alan Watts that I call the backwards law. And basically the backwards law is that the more you chase a positive experience, that chasing in and of itself is a negative experience. And the more you accept a negative experience, the more that acceptance itself is a positive experience. So you see this show up in all sorts of different areas of life, different ways. The more you try to impress people, the less impressive you're always gonna feel. The more beautiful that you want to be, the uglier you will constantly see yourself. The more money you want to make, the more you will feel too poor and inadequate, like you don't have enough stuff. The more love you feel like you need, the more lonely and isolated you will feel. The more spiritually enlightened you want to become, the more self-centered and narcissistic you'll likely end up being. The more you try to be happy all the time, the more easily you'll be upset. Whereas if you just accept that sometimes life is hard and shit goes wrong, the more happy and easygoing you'll become. So the significance of the backwards law is important because so much of what we're exposed to on a day-to-day basis is kind of selling us these benefits of self-perception. Hey, look at this by this product. You'll become more beautiful. You'll become happier. This will solve your confidence issues. Hey, we can fix your health in 30 days or your money back. You know, all of these things they sound very enticing, but what you discover as you start to go down that road, is that you actually increase the likelihood of your negative experiences because you are constantly chasing that positive. So what I tell people is I say instead of asking yourself, "What's gonna make me happy?" Ask yourself, "What am I willing to struggle for? What are the problems I actually kind of like having in my life?" Sometimes when I give talks, I ask the audience, "What kind of masochist are you? What's like the pain that you secretly enjoy that most other people don't?" Because it's in that pain, that special relationship that you have with that struggle, that's actually probably where most of the meaning and purpose in your life is gonna be found. It's gonna be found in the struggles that you kind of relish having and in the challenges that you are most proud of overcoming. And this comes back to that backwards law and that when you're constantly chasing the positive experiences, you end up on this experience of like a treadmill and that every day and every moment you're looking for the next hit, the next high, to keep you going. Whereas when you find the negative experiences that you're happy to accept, that you're willing to embrace, that embracing of that negative experience is actually what's going to generate a much longer and sustained positive experience. Because this is the sneaky truth that most people don't understand is that happiness is not something that you pursue and achieve in and of itself. It's the natural side effect of finding something more meaningful and purposeful in your life. If you find something that feels important that's worth giving a fuck about, the happiness will happen on its own anyway. I think another common affliction today is this idea that we are each special and unique. And because we're so special and unique, we deserve special treatment, special results, a special place in the world. Ultimately, what this breeds is a sense of entitlement. It's a sense that we deserve certain outcomes without having to put in the effort or the work. And I think this comes from two different places. I think one was very well-intentioned, which was our parents raised us telling us that we were special and amazing and unique and that we had unique gifts to share with the world. And they simply did this because the self-esteem research at the time said this is what you're supposed to tell your kids. Of course, nowadays we realize that that's not the case that when you when you raise when you raise children telling them that they're special and they deserve to have everything, you're not raising a human with high self-esteem. You're raising a little narcissist who thinks that they deserve all the benefits without any of the costs. Now, what most people don't realize is that there's two flavors of narcissism. Now, when most people think of an entitled narcissist, they think of what's known as a grandiose narcissist, which is the person who believes that they are bigger and better than everyone else, that they are amazing and perfect and the best and they deserve special treatment because they're so superior. But there's a flavor of narcissism that most people haven't heard of and that's the vulnerable narcissist. The vulnerable narcissist defines themselves as a special, unique victim. Everything has gone wrong. Everything is unfair. They've been treated uniquely poorly and because of all those things, they deserve special treatment. And what's interesting is that grandiose narcissists and vulnerable narcissists while having completely opposite attitudes and justifications for their selfish behavior, the result is exactly the same. Everyone should pay attention to me. Everybody should stop everything they're doing for me. Everybody should give everything I want to me. I think the second cause is just the nature of how the internet has evolved itself, is that everything is personalized. It's catered exactly for you. You get online and everything in your newsfeed is perfectly curated for your interests and the things that you care about and the things that you want to know about. All of the ads are directed at how special you are and how much you deserve this outcome and how if you just buy this product, then you are going to live up to all the potential that you always knew that you had. I think this messaging has become the water that we all swim in and it's terrible for our mental and emotional health. Most conventional self-help techniques are really just focused on these sugar highs of making you feel a little bit happier for a moment or making you feel special for a moment. Like the idea that you should stand and look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're beautiful or you're smart or that people are going to like you. Ultimately, the research shows that that's not that effective. In fact, what the research finds is that a lot of these techniques like formalizations and affirmations and and gratitude practices, they work better for the people who don't need them. So if you already feel good about yourself, then yeah, standing in the mirror is going to make you feel a little bit better. But if you feel like crap about yourself, the only thing that standing in the mirror reciting lines to yourself reminds you of is that you feel crap about yourself, that you are the type of person who needs to stand in front of a mirror and say affirmations to yourself. It just makes you feel more pathetic. So when I was in my 20s, I developed a really intense fascination with developmental psychology, you know, like most 20 year olds. And I started reading a lot of really brilliant and famous researchers from Jean Piaget to Lawrence Colberg to Robert Keegan, Eric Erickson, and they all have these amazing frameworks of just how people develop throughout their lives. And the early developmental psychologists like Piaget, they began an early childhood and they kind of looked at how an infant develops basic logical reasoning and rational skills and can identify, you know, the difference between self and other. And then other psychologists came along later and they they continued by looking at how adults develop and how different moral frameworks arise at different parts of our lives and how there are different tensions at different ages that really define how we see the world. So I just kind of became obsessed with this with a bunch of these these theories and frameworks. And I eventually kind of simplified everything into into a framework that I think really ties together a lot of what we're trying to achieve in our lives. So I broke it down in the three really simple categories. There's childhood, there's adolescence and there's adulthood. Each is defined by something very simple, but the progress from one stage to the next is not necessarily guaranteed. So the child sees the world in the simplest of ways, which is I want to think, do I get the thing or not? You know, the child wants ice cream, it reaches for the ice cream. The child wants a cookie, it reaches for the cookie. All it understands is I want this thing and I either get it or I don't get it. If I get it, I'm happy. If I don't get it, I'm unhappy. After being upset enough times, I start developing a theory of the world that explains why I don't always get a cookie when I want it. Well, it turns out mom gets to decide whether I get a cookie or not. And it also turns out that mom has a different experience and perspective than I do. Oh, that's actually really interesting. There are other people who have their own perspectives of how the world works and they have their own desires. They want their own cookies or they don't want their own cookies. And sure enough, when you look at a lot of studies, young children, they don't have a concept of self yet. They don't understand that other people have different perspectives than themselves. They're not able to empathize like older humans are able to empathize. They're not able to understand social status or social signaling or cultural standards or anything like that. And so once the child develops these theories of mind, they enter the adolescent stage. Which I kind of think of as like the transactional stage of life. If you think back to high school, essentially what high school is is everybody is trying to barter with each other for social status. Right? It's like, oh, if I wear this jacket, maybe they'll think I'm cool. If I wear the right shoes, then maybe I'll fit in and they'll be friends with me. If I say the funny thing in class, then, you know, maybe the cute girl will pay attention to me. Everything is conditional. It's tit for tat. It's if I do this, it will get that reaction out of that person. And this is very logical, right? Because once you understand it, like, OK, every other person has their own perspective, then what is the behavior that I need to do that is most likely going to make them allow me have my cookie? Now, this carries over into the real world. And in fact, there's a lot of relationships in the real world that function this way that are very conditional. Like, you know, the coffee shop I went to this morning. I have a conditional relationship with the barista. I don't really care who they are or where they went to school or where they grew up. I just want them to give me my coffee and give it to me quick. Right. And that's fine. That's fine in very small, marginal situations. But what you start noticing as you go through life is that this constant conditional interaction with people, it's exhausting. It feels inauthentic. It feels like you're performing all the time. And even when you get people to like you, it's very unsatisfying. And so what you eventually start to realize is that the only way to truly be happy with other people and be happy in the world is to behave unconditionally, is to find something in your life that matters so much to you that you're willing to be disliked for it, that you're willing to suffer disapproval. You're willing to not get the cookie because you found something more important than the cookie. And this is what adulthood is. It's finding the things that really you're willing to plant your flag in and say, this is who I am, take it or leave it. And if I'm not for you, that's totally fine. I get it, live and let live. But I'm going to go look for the people that are right for me and that share in these values. Now, the tricky thing is, is that I think a very large percentage of people get stuck in that adolescent mindset, that they're stuck bartering with the world, performing for approval all the time. And I think a big reason for that is that the modern world is more transactional. It is more you're exposed to so many different people in so many different ways. And there's so many different opportunities that that you feel like you should be performing all the time to get what you want. And so if you never watched that performance fail enough times to start living virtuously, then you'll never cross over into that adult framework of living. And if you don't cross over into that, if you don't find the thing that you're willing to be disliked for, then you're never going to have a stable, happy relationship in the world. If we zoom out, like philosophically speaking, the reason we want to get to adulthood is because living that way makes us anti fragile. Like the adolescent mindset, the childlike mindset, they're very fragile. They're easily disrupted. If things don't go your way, if you don't say the right thing, if you don't do the right thing at the right moment, everything falls apart. Whereas with the adult mindset, if you just have something that you stand for and you're willing to struggle for and you're willing to suffer through being disapproved for, any hardship or setback actually makes you stronger. It actually shows you, it helps you adapt to new circumstances. It helps you find new ways and reasons to work towards the thing that you believe in or stand for the thing that you care about. And the funniest thing about all this too is, is, you know, I went, I went down this like deep, modern psychological rabbit hole. And when I got to the bottom of it, I just found Aristotle. This is basic ancient Greek. Aristotle in philosophy 101. His whole argument was third basic virtues. These are things that you can practice in each and every single moment that you can practice when people love you and when they hate you, that you can practice when you're broke and when you're rich, that you can practice when things are going well and when things are. A total fucking dumpster fire. They're in your control at any given time and they are always socially constructive, regardless of where the political fault lines are that week or that month. And if you prioritize them, if if you make them your highest values, you can pursue them in every moment. You can live unconditionally. You can be anti fragile. You can gain from failure and rejection. You don't have to perform for others. You don't have to chase status or accolades. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. It's this basic virtue ethic that has been sitting in front of us for the entirety of Western history. And I found myself staring at it in the face in between scrolling on TikTok and Instagram, being like, Oh, this was the answer all along. And so I think ultimately it's we are all developing towards an adulthood that is just reflective of what some of the wisest minds in history called out all along that just pursue virtue, just value the timeless things that are good for everybody. And don't get lost in the hedonic treadmill of chasing more likes or chasing a couple more bucks or getting the next car, getting the next date. Because that's that's temporary. That's it's it's just it's a high and it's just going to create more suffering than it alleviates. So I guess we're back at the start. Want to support the channel? Join the big think members community where you get access to videos early, ad free. (upbeat music)

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