Mark Manson shares 3 rules for life
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I have found it to be the most transformative mindset that I've ever come across and that I've ever implemented into my life.

Hey there, I'm Matt D'Avella, and welcome to my short-form podcast, Three Rules. Each episode, I ask a guest to share three rules that help them find success and happiness. Today, I'm joined by Mark Manson, the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. His books have sold more than 20 million copies, been translated into more than 65 languages, and have reached number one in more than a dozen countries. Thanks so much for coming on the show. It's great to be here. What's rule number one for you? Rule number one, it has to be

i'm responsible for everything in my life whether or not it's my fault i feel like this is the core of my work essentially anybody who's read my books is going to be very familiar with this and it's i have found it to be the most transformative mindset that i've ever come across and that i've ever implemented into my life it it's the underlying basis of everything until you accept that you are responsible for

the things in your life you're not in you don't feel empowered to actually do anything about it does this extend to things that you might not be responsible for um like things that happen to you when can we start blaming other people for things basically so

I have this thing that I call the responsibility-fault fallacy. It's basically like people assume that fault and responsibility are the same thing, but I think they're actually very subtly different, and they're different in very important ways.

let's say i walk into the street here in sydney and like most americans i forget what side of the road the cars are on and i get hit by one now it might not be my fault that i got hit by the car but it's absolutely my responsibility to recover from the injury to take care of my health to decide um am i gonna sue the driver am i gonna forgive the driver am i gonna let this go am i gonna like torture myself asking myself like why did i do this why did this happen

I think it's it's fault is generally external and it's past tense. Responsibility is always present in future tense. So it's like the fault is like, OK, this thing happened. I had no control over it. Maybe that person's to blame. Maybe they're not. You know, I don't think it matters as much as we think it does. The responsibility kicks in of like, how am I going to react to this?

What is my mindset? How am I going to choose to move forward? And that is ever present in every moment, no matter what happens. Is there a specific point in your life where you started to embody this idea or is this something that you've kind of always had? Uh, no, I definitely did not have this. Um, it's actually embarrassing kind of where this came from or, or it's like where, where I first encountered it was kind of embarrassing. Um,

Like a lot of teenagers, I was a stoner as a teenager, very lazy and very like whiny and blamed everybody else for my problems. And the first place I actually came across this was Ayn Rand. And I read Atlas Shrugged, I think when I was 18. And the politics were insane. But the actual, like what I took away from it was this kind of personal empowerment of

You are all in every moment. You are not only capable of doing something better for yourself and others, but you are actually morally responsible to do something better for yourself and others. And that just hit me like getting struck by lightning. And it kind of like woke me up, I think, from from just.

again, being a stoner who blamed the world for his problems. And that was kind of like the first domino, I think, that started knocking the other ones over. What would you say to people who do blame society, systemic injustices for their current circumstances? Right. They might be right. You might be oppressed. You might be a victim of something.

but you're still responsible for how you respond to that. You're still responsible for taking care of yourself, taking care of others.

being the best person you can be, improving yourself and handling those injustices in a way that's healthy and helpful. - If somebody wants to start taking responsibility today, what advice would you give them? - You know, the advice I would give is try to, you know, whatever you're struggling with, whatever you're suffering through, like really try to sit down and maybe journaling is helpful for this, but like really try to sit down

and find the things that you are in control of. Like really map out like, okay, these are the things I don't control and these are the things that I do control and take responsibility for the things that you do control and then like plan on how you can do them better. What's your second rule? My second rule is...

this might be more of a principle i don't know you don't seem like you're gonna nitpick but uh there's no such thing as a good or bad emotion there's only good and bad reactions to emotions so a lot of people one of the most common questions i get is people who come to me and they're like i feel anxious all the time how do i stop or i feel shame i don't want to feel shame or i feel guilty you know what's wrong with me and

We have a tendency to make moral judgments on our emotions. We tend to have these kind of strange standards of like, I should never be anxious. I should always be confident. I should never feel ashamed of myself. I shouldn't feel guilty when something bad happens. And I think it's really important to accept our emotions. I think kind of like the root of most mental health is just

being at peace with whatever we experience in the moment, not judging it. Because when you judge it, you make it worse, right? It's like if you, anxiety sucks in and of itself, but like when you start judging yourself for feeling anxious, you're just multiplying how much it sucks. And it's completely counterproductive. Like you actually, you gain nothing from it. You're just flogging yourself for some reason. So, and the other thing too is that like any emotion that,

Like emotions all exist for a reason. Like we evolved emotions as adaptations to our environment, right? So anxiety actually serves a really important purpose. Like it mobilizes you. It gets you to pay attention to things that are potentially threatening or that are important in your life. Guilt is important because it teaches you not to do stupid shit again, right? So it's...

When you stop judging the negative emotion, then you are actually able to leverage the benefits of it to actually, you know, channel it in a more productive direction. It's very easy to start to spiral when you're really in a funk. Like if you're feeling that period of depression, uh,

Dr. Claire Weeks, an Australian psychologist, she wrote this book called Hope and Help for the Nerves, which has helped me a lot, where she talks about the second fear, which is where like you have anxiety, you have fear, you have a phobia. And then it is the anxiety after that that compounds it and makes it so much worse and makes it a unique experience to you compared to how other people typically experience anxiety. Right.

her recommendation is to, like you said, accept it, right? Just like sit and feel those emotions. Where does that go? Like how do we eventually overcome these anxieties and fears? And I guess your point, is it something that we try to overcome or do we just accept them for what they are? I don't like the word overcome for negative emotions. I mean, there are

all this other stuff aside right like if you just remove you know your life experiences some people are just very genetically predisposed to be very anxious person some people are genetically predisposed to be an angry person right it's like we all we all have it we all have an emotion somewhere that we struggle with that like keeps creeping up and biting us in the ass and i think it's something that we just kind of have to accept the same way that you know you accept that like

I'm not genetically predisposed to be athletic in any way, shape or form. And like, I accepted that a long time ago. I don't beat myself. I'm like, wow, Mark, you're so slow and weak. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? At some point, I'm just like, no, this is just who I am. Right. And, and I'm, I'm like gifted in some areas of my life and I'm like not gifted in others. And, uh, I think the same is true with a lot of our mental health. Um, some of us,

are, there are certain mental or psychological aspects that like come easily to us. And, and the same way we don't ask like, oh, why am I, why, why do I handle these situations so well? I don't think we should question or judge ourselves for like not being able to handle others so well. Like we all have weak points and, uh, that's, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing abnormal about it. The other thing I would say is that this is where, uh,

Just kind of open public discussion of stuff becomes really important because I think what tends to happen, especially like when you get really deep into that shit spiral that you were just describing, I think one of the key characteristics of those moments is that you just feel so alone. You're like, this is so awful. Nobody understands what I'm going through right now. I've never heard of anybody who's had this issue. I've never talked to anybody who's been in this place. You know, what's wrong with me? Right.

And the truth is, is that there's tons of people who have gone through it. And I think this is where, like, if things get really intense and dark, things like support groups are really important. Finding online communities is really important. I'm curious, you know, you've written one of the most popular self-help books of all time. Yeah.

people must look at you and say, well, he never has a bad day or he never has dark periods of depression or anxiety. Do you still experience this stuff and why?

I think I know the answer, but I think it's important for people to kind of understand what that level of success is really like. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, actually one of the most depressing periods of my life happened right after subtle art hit number one on the New York times list. Like, and it partially happened because I had had all these dreams and goals for my entire adult life. And, and I, once I hit them all,

I had no idea what to do with myself. I was like, oh shit, I'm 31 and I've peaked. And like that took me to a very dark place quickly. I'm like, wow, there's, I don't know what to do. Like I had no plan for anything after this, you know? Uh, so yeah, I sat on the couch and, and, uh, drank a lot of wine and played a lot of video games. And, um,

So yeah, it never goes away. Like there's no amount of money that solves these problems. There's no amount of friends that solves these problems. There's no relationship that solves these problems. It's they're ever present.

they will always crop up in new and novel ways, no matter what's going on in your life. Is money a goal now for you? A lot of people starting out, it's like they, you know, I'll make my first million dollars or I want to make $10,000 per month. Does money come into the factory for you at all when figuring out what your next big project or goal is?

Little bit. I mean, it's not a non factor, but it's not the primary factor money's like oxygen It's when you don't have any it's the most important thing in the world and when you have plenty it's the least important thing in the world and It I think when you're starting out, it's a very great metric to measure yourself and to measure success but there comes a certain point when you've accumulated a good like when you've kind of gotten financial escape velocity and

it's actually a bad thing to measure yourself by because it, it ultimately it's kind of shallow and superficial. So I liked what you said though, too, about the fact that it's not a non-factor because it's like, you wouldn't just show up every day making YouTube videos and lose money and do that for five years straight. Eventually you're like, I mean, just piss money away. Yeah. Maybe, maybe this thing should be viable.

I'm going to be back with the third and final rule in a moment. But first, one of the ways I'm supporting this podcast is through Patreon. By becoming a patron, you get access to the full unedited episodes of the show. And for this episode, that's a full 34 minutes of content, including Mark and I discussing YouTube strategy. You could do the desk video. Yeah. Make just as much money as something that probably like...

It costs you $20,000 to make. It's just so economical. Yes, it is. It's so easy, but it's so boring and I'm so sick of it. And I've done hundreds of them and I just like, I just want to go do something else. As a patron, you'll also get additional unused footage from my YouTube videos and access to a members only area where you can ask me questions for my Patreon exclusive AMA podcast. Simply go to patreon.com slash Matt D'Avella to support the show. That's patreon.com slash Matt D'Avella. There's a link down in the description below. Thanks for considering it.

- What's your third rule for success or happiness? - Third rule also might not be a rule. It's like a principle. I'm sorry, I'm coming with three principles. - Yeah, you fucked up the whole show. - I'm sorry, I ruined your show. No, I guess the third rule is that try not to pursue happiness, try to pursue struggles and challenges. I think a lot of people get off on the wrong foot by just thinking about what is gonna make them feel good

And ultimately, anything that you pursue in life that makes you feel good is going to come with an associated cost or sacrifice. And generally speaking, we're bad at conceptualizing those costs and sacrifices before we do it. It's only after we do it, we're like, oh, shit.

there's a lot of downside to this that I never considered. So I think kind of a mental hack is to instead think of the struggle that you actually enjoy, the challenge that gets you excited and pursue that.

and then just enjoy the upside as a side effect. What was the most recent time that you approached a project that intimidated you and scared you because you felt ill-equipped for it? Yeah. So we were talking about YouTube before we went live. YouTube's kind of been the big hairy thing for me. I had very little, next to zero experience in video production prior to taking YouTube seriously in the last couple of years.

Basically, I had to teach myself a bunch of stuff about cameras and lighting and audio and make all the mistakes, hire a bunch of people and make a bunch of bad videos. But it's funny because when I made the decision to go hard into YouTube, it was probably the first time that I very consciously... A big reason I chose it was because I knew I was going to be bad at it. I found that after writing...

a bunch of successful books and doing all these book tours and stuff. Like I actually, the pressure of kind of being at the top of an industry, like it was like wearing on me quite a bit. And I actually missed the freedom to just be bad at something. I missed the freedom of no expectation. And I started asking myself, like, what's an area of my career that I can go into that people are gonna kind of have no expectation for me to be good at?

And, and I can enjoy that learning curve again, enjoy making the mistakes where there's low stakes and like nobody's, you know, if, if I, if a shot's overexposed, nobody's going to be like, like, wow, how'd Mark fuck that one up? You know, it's like, well, he's an author. Of course, he's going to overexpose his shot. And so I've really been enjoying that. But yeah, there've been moments. I mean, I'm sure you, you've been through this many times too. Like you put

months of effort into a video and it's just bad.

And you're just frantically changing the title and thumbnail, and you're like, oh, god. It's just bombing horribly. And there's just all these things wrong with it. And you're just like, god damn, I put so much time and energy into that. What am I doing? So there are definitely dark moments where you question yourself, and you're like, why did I decide that? Am I crazy? Am I just on this wild goose chase? Am I losing-- am I just pissing money away?

But ultimately, you know, I've tried to like maintain conviction and in the long term vision and just trust myself that like, you know, you, you got really, really good at one thing by failing and fucking up over many years. And like, you can do it again. And, and it's ultimately it's that progression that was way more satisfying than, uh,

you know, than the result at the end. I mean, it's like the cliches are true. It's the journey is what you look back on and smile about. Thank you so much for your rules. This is super helpful. Selfishly, I do this because I need the inspiration now more than ever. And so this is awesome. If you want to get these rules summarized into a weekly newsletter, subscribe at mattdiavalla.com slash three rules.

Thanks to Mark for taking the time to come on the podcast. If you want to get more from him, just Google his name. He's Mark Manson across all accounts.