DEVELOPING

EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE

A GUIDE TO
UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF
AND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

MARK MANSON
 MARKMANSON.NET 

© 2019

Mark Manson

 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
PART 1: EMOTIONAL AWARENESS 

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I have this kind of twisted dream where one day I’d put on one of those
corporate retreats—you know, where they take you out into the middle
of the woods, make everyone turn in their cell phones, and proceed to
do trust falls or drum circles or personality quizzes or whatever is
being pushed by some overpaid “corporate consultant” that year.

Except, if I put on one of these corporate retreat things, I wouldn’t do

any of that. Instead, my goal would be to make everyone have an
emotional meltdown by the end of the weekend.

(Note: this is one of the many reasons why I’m not a corporate
consultant.)

I’d try to get Dan in accounting to explain to everyone why he’s

actually so fucking miserable on Mondays or why Brenda in R&D
hasn’t produced a good idea in over a year or why Bill in HR is always
trying to undermine Theresa’s ideas behind her back.

Now, I wouldn’t do this to increase productivity and corporate

profits—if that wasn’t obvious enough already. And I definitely
wouldn’t do it just for my own sick, sadistic pleasure (well, not
entirely, at least.)

But maybe getting Dan to feel understood about his depression will
make him have fewer cases of “the Mondays.” Maybe knowing that
Brenda is having a ​hard time getting over a breakup​ will both relieve
her and make the rest of us a little more compassionate about her lack
of ​productivity​. And maybe Bill will finally just fucking quit so Teresa’s
life won’t be so miserable every week.

Then maybe—just maybe—everyone will hate their jobs just a little bit
less, they’ll be a little more productive, and my nefarious corporate

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empire will sell a few extra widgets this year. And I can finally do that
bedroom renovation my wife has been dreaming of.

But I digress…

“Who’s ready for a meltdown?!?!”

The real reason I’d get everyone to bare their souls and face their
demons in front of everyone else is to get them to finally acknowledge
and explore the real emotions driving their lives:

● Is it fear of the unknown that motivates you to stay at your

dead-end job and/or in your dead-end relationship?

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 ● Are you worried about what your parents or neighbors will think
of you if you didn’t work a certain type of job and/or didn’t have
that nice car that’s costing you a fortune...and forcing you to stay
at your dead-end job?
● Is anger and jealousy causing you to be a dick to others because
you got passed up for that promotion and/or rejected for that
date last week?

Yeah, now we’re talking!

This might sound ridiculous, but I’d bet that it would produce a lot
better outcomes for everyone, including the corporation, at least in the
long run. But obviously, corporate America will never do this.

You see, ostensibly, corporations put on these retreats to promote

more emotional awareness in the workplace. But they don’t really hide
the fact that they see this as just another “tactic” to boost productivity
and add to their bottom line.

My point is that if you’re trying to get a better handle on your

emotions in order to achieve some external goal or reach the next level
of self-development nirvana, then you’ve already failed.

And that’s because developing healthy emotional awareness and

emotional intelligence can only be done if your goal is to simply
understand the emotional world around you and within you.

This is not another “tactic.” It’s not another “life hack”—this ​is​ life.

Experiencing emotions fully, reacting to your emotions in healthy

ways, better understanding your emotions—that’s some real shit.

Achieving the maturity to do these things in productive ways should be

the end in and of itself, not some new fad you read about on the

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internet to boost your sales numbers or have a ton of friends or get
into someone’s pants that you’ve been chasing around this month.

Now, those things might happen as a side effect, but again, they’re not
the point.

If this is starting to sound a little weird to you, well buckle up, because
the rest of this guide is only going to get weirder.

I’m here to turn your little emotional world upside down and inside
out, leaving you wondering whether you should be angry, overjoyed,
sad, excited, confused, or outright mind-fucked.

But don’t worry, by the end of this, you’ll have a better handle on all
those feelings.

And that’s a good place to start: your feelings.

FUCK YOUR FEELINGS 

Look, I know you think the fact you feel upset or angry or anxious is
important. That it matters. Hell, you probably think that because you
feel like your face just got shat on makes you important. But ​it doesn’t​.

Feelings are just these… things that happen. The meaning we build
around them–what we decide is ​important or unimportant​–comes
later.

There are only two reasons to do anything in life: a) because it feels

good, or b) because it’s something you believe to be good or right.
Sometimes these two reasons align. Something feels good AND it’s the
right thing to do and that’s just fucking fantastic. Let’s throw a party
and eat cake.

But more often, these two things don’t align. Something feels shitty
but is right/good (getting up at 5AM and going to the gym, hanging
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out with grandma Joanie for an afternoon and making sure she’s still
breathing), or something feels fucking great but is the bad/wrong
thing to do (pretty much anything involving penises).

Acting based on our feelings is easy. You feel it. Then you do it. It’s like
scratching an itch. There’s a sense of relief and cessation that comes
along with it. It’s a quick satisfaction. But then that satisfaction is ​gone
just as quickly as it came​.

Acting based on what’s good/right is difficult. For one, knowing what

is good/right is not always clear.1 You have to sit down and think hard
about it. Often we have to feel ambivalent about our conclusions or
fight through our lower impulses.

But when we do what’s good/right, the positive effects last much

longer. We feel pride remembering it years later. We tell our friends
and family about it and give ourselves cute little awards and put shit
on our office walls and say, “Hey! I did that!” when our co-workers
come in and ask why we have a trophy with a goat catching a frisbee
on our bookshelf (don’t ask).

The point is: doing what is good/right builds self-esteem and adds
meaning to our lives​.

YOUR TRICKY BRAIN 

So we should just ignore our feelings and just do what is good/right all
the time then, right? It’s simple.

Well, like many things in life, it is simple. But that doesn’t necessarily
mean it’s easy.

1
Philosophers have been trying to nail this good/right thing down for, oh, about 2,500 years. So don’t get
down on yourself if you don’t get it on your first try.

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The problem is that the brain doesn’t like to feel conflicted about its
decision making. It doesn’t like ​uncertainty or ambiguity​ and will do
mental acrobatics to avoid any discomfort. And our brain’s favorite
way to do this is to always try to convince itself that whatever ​feels
good is the same as what ​is​ good/right.

So you know you shouldn’t eat that ice cream. But your brain says,
“Hey, you had a hard day, a little bit won’t kill ya.” And you’re like,
“Hey, you’re right! Thanks, brain!” What feels good suddenly feels
right. And then you shamelessly inhale a pint of Cherry Garcia.

You know you shouldn’t cheat on your exam, but your brain says,
“You’re working two jobs to put yourself through college, unlike these
spoiled brats in your class. You deserve a little boost from
time-to-time,” and so you sneak a peek at your classmate’s answers
and voila, what feels good is also what feels right.

You know you should vote, but you tell yourself that the system is
corrupt, and besides, your vote won’t matter anyway. And so you stay
home and play with your new drone that’s probably illegal to fly in
your neighborhood. But fuck it, who cares? This is America and the
whole point is to get fat doing whatever you want. That’s like, the sixth
amendment, or something.2

If you do this sort of thing long enough–if you convince yourself that
what feels good is the same as what is good–then your brain will
actually start to mix the two up. Your brain will start thinking the
whole point of life is to just feel really awesome, as often as possible.

And once this happens, you’ll start deluding yourself into believing
that your feelings actually matter. And once that happens, well…

2
Sadly, the ​American Dream​ has mutated into this mass delusional form of “what feels good is what is
right” type thing. It’s arguably at the root of a lot of our social and cultural problems at the moment.

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Now, if this is rubbing you the wrong way right now, just think about it
for a second. Everything that’s screwed up in your life, chances are it
got that way because you were too beholden to your feelings. You were
too impulsive. Or too self-righteous and thought yourself the center of
the universe. Feelings have a way of doing that, you know? They make
you think you’re the center of the universe. And I hate to be the one to
tell you, ​but you’re not​.

A lot of young people hate hearing this because they grew up with
parents​ who worshipped their feelings as children, and protected
those feelings, and tried to buy as many candy corns and swimming
lessons as necessary to make sure those feelings were nice and fuzzy
and protected at all times.

Sadly, these parents probably did this because they were also beholden
to their own feelings, because they were unable to tolerate the pain of
watching a child struggle, even if just for a moment.

They didn’t realize that children need some controlled measure of

adversity to ​develop cognitively and emotionally​, that ​experiencing
failure​ is actually what sets us up for success, and that demanding to

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feel good all the time is pretty much a first-class ticket to having no
friends once you hit adulthood.

This is the problem with organizing your life around feelings:

1. Your feelings are self-contained.​ They are wholly and solely

experienced only by you. Your feelings can’t tell you what’s best
for your mother or ​your career​ or your neighbor’s dog. They can’t
tell you what’s best for the environment. Or what’s best for the
next parliament of Lithuania. All they can do is tell you what’s
best for you… and even that ​is debatable​.

A poor philosophy for life.

2. ​Your feelings are temporary.​ They only exist in the

moment they arise. Your feelings cannot tell you what will be
good for you in a week or a year or 20 years. They can’t tell you
what was best for you when you were a kid or what you should

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 have studied in school. All they can do is tell you what is best for
you now… and even that is debatable.

3. ​Your feelings are inaccurate.​ Ever been talking to a friend

and thought you heard them say this horrible, mean thing and
start to get upset and then it turned out your friend didn’t say
that horrible, mean thing at all, you just heard it wrong?

Or ever get really jealous or upset with somebody close to you for
a completely imagined reason? Like their phone dies and you
start thinking they hate you and never liked you and were just
using you for your ​Boy George​ tickets?

Or ever been really excited to pursue something you thought was

going to make you into a big bad ass but then later realized that it
was all just an ego trip, and you pissed off a lot of people you
cared about along the way?

Feelings kind of suck at the whole truth thing. And ​that’s a

problem​.

WHY IT’S HARD TO GET OVER YOUR OWN 

FEELINGS 
Now, none of what I’m saying is really that surprising or new. In fact,
you’ve probably tried to get over some of your own obnoxious feelings
and impulses before and failed to do it.

The problem is when you start trying to control your own emotions,
the emotions multiply. It’s like trying to exterminate rabbits. The
fuckers just keep popping up all over the place.

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 Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m trying to get rid of my fucking feelings.

This is because we don’t just have feelings about our experiences, we

also have feelings about our feelings. I call these “meta-feelings” and
they pretty much ruin everything.

There are four types of meta-feelings: feeling bad about feeling bad
(​self-loathing​), feeling bad about feeling good (guilt), feeling good
about feeling bad (​self-righteousness​), and feeling good about feeling
good (ego/narcissism).

Here, let me put those into a pretty little table for you to stare at:

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 MEET YOUR META-FEELINGS 

Feeling Bad About Feeling Feeling Bad About Feeling

Bad (Self-Loathing)
● Excessive self-criticism
● Anxious/Neurotic
behavior
● Suppression of emotions
● Engage in a lot of fake
niceness/politeness
● Feeling as though
something is wrong with
you.
Good (Guilt)
● Chronic guilt and feeling as
though you ​don’t deserve
happiness​.
● Constant comparison of
yourself to others
● Feeling as though something
should be wrong, even if
everything is great.
● Unnecessary criticism and
negativity.

Feeling Good About Feeling Good About Feeling

Feeling Bad
(Self-Righteousness)
● Moral indignation
● Condescension towards
others
● Feeling as though you
deserve something others
don’t.
● Seeking out a constant
sense of powerlessness
and victimization.
Good (Ego/Narcissism)
● Self-congratulatory
● Chronically overestimate
yourself; a
delusionally-positive
self-perception
● Unable to handle failure or
rejection
● Avoids confrontation or
discomfort
● Constant state of
self-absorption

Meta-feelings are part of the stories we tell ourselves about our

feelings. They make us feel justified in our jealousy. They applaud us
for our pride. They shove our faces in ​our own pain​.

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They’re basically the sense of what is justified/not justified. They’re
our own acceptance of how we should respond emotionally and how
we shouldn’t.

But emotions don’t respond to shoulds. Emotions suck, remember?

And so instead, these meta-feelings have the tendency to rip us apart

inside, even further.

If you ​always feel good about feeling good​, you will become
self-absorbed and feel entitled to those around you.

If feeling good makes you feel bad about yourself, then you’ll become
this walking, talking pile of guilt and shame, feeling as though you
deserve nothing, have earned nothing, and have nothing of value to
offer to the people or the world around you.

And then there are those who feel bad about feeling bad. These
“positive thinkers” will live in fear that any amount of suffering
indicates that something must be sorely wrong with them.

But perhaps the worst meta-feeling is increasingly the most common:

feeling good about feeling bad.

People who feel good about feeling bad get to enjoy a certain ​righteous
indignation​. They feel morally superior in their suffering, that they are
somehow martyrs in a cruel world.

These self-aggrandizing victimhood trend-followers are the ones who

want to shit on someone’s life ​on the internet​, who want to march and
throw shit at politicians or businessmen or celebrities who are merely
doing their best in a hard, complex world.

Much of the social strife that we’re experiencing today is the result of
these meta-feelings. Moralizing mobs on both the political right and

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left see themselves as victimized and somehow special in every
miniscule pain or setback they experience. Greed skyrockets while the
rich congratulate themselves on being rich in tandem with the
increasing rates of ​anxiety and depression​ as the lower and middle
classes hate themselves for feeling left behind.

These narratives are spun not only by ourselves but fed by the
narratives invented in the media.

Right-wing talk show hosts stoke the flames of self-righteousness,

creating an addiction to irrational fears that people’s society is
crumbling around them.

Political memes on the left create the same self-righteousness, but

instead of appealing to fear, they appeal to intellect and arrogance.

Consumer culture​ pushes you to make decisions based on feeling great

and then congratulates you for those decisions, while our religions tell
us to feel bad about how bad we feel.

CONTROL MEANING, NOT EMOTIONS 

To unspin these stories we must come back to a simple truth: feelings
don’t necessarily mean anything. They merely mean whatever you
allow them to mean.

Maybe I’m sad today. Maybe there are eight different reasons I can be
sad today. Maybe some of them are important and some of them
aren’t. But I get to decide how important those reasons are–whether
those reasons state something about my character or whether it’s just
one of those sad days.

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This is the skill that’s perilously missing today: the ability to de-couple
meaning from feeling, to decide that just because you feel something,
it doesn’t mean life ​is​ that something.

Fuck your feelings. Sometimes, good things will make you feel bad.
Sometimes, bad things will make you feel good. That doesn’t change
the fact that they are good/bad. Sometimes, you will feel bad about
feeling good about a bad thing and you will feel good about feeling bad
about a good thi–you know what?

Fuck it. Just fuck feelings.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore your feelings. Feelings are
important. But they’re important not for the reasons we think they are.

We think they’re important because they say something about us,

about the world, and about our relationship with it. But they say none

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of these things. There’s no meaning attached to feelings. Sometimes
you hurt for a good reason. Sometimes for a bad reason. And
sometimes no reason at all.

The hurt itself is neutral. ​The reason is separate.

The point is that you get to decide. And many of us have either
forgotten or never realized that fact. But we decide ​what our pain
means​. Just as we decide what our successes expose.

And more often than not, any answer except one will tear you apart
inside. And that answer is: nothing.

The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can escape those vicious
feedback loops in your mind.

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PART 2: THE FEEDBACK LOOP FROM 
HELL 

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There’s an insidious quirk to your brain that, if you let it, can drive you
absolutely batty. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you:

You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety
cripples you and you start wondering why you’re so anxious. Now
you’re becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh no! Doubly anxious!
Now you’re anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety.
Quick, where’s the whiskey?

Or let’s say you have an anger problem. You get pissed off at the
stupidest, most inane stuff, and you have no idea why. And the fact
that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off even more. And
then, in your petty rage, you realize that being angry all the time
makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; you hate it
so much that you get angry at yourself.

Now look at you: you’re angry at yourself getting angry about being
angry. Fuck you, wall. Here, have a fist.

Or you’re so worried about doing the right thing all the time that you
become worried about how much you’re worrying.

Or you feel so guilty for every mistake you make that you begin to feel
guilty about how guilty you’re feeling.

Or you get sad and alone so often that it makes you feel even more sad
and alone just thinking about it.

Welcome to the Feedback Loop from Hell. Chances are you’ve engaged
in it more than a few times.

Maybe you’re engaging in it right now: “God, I do the Feedback Loop

all the time—I’m such a loser for doing it. I should stop. Oh my God, I

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feel like such a loser for calling myself a loser. I should stop calling
myself a loser. Ah, fuck! I’m doing it again! See? I’m a loser! Argh!”

Calm down, amigo.

Believe it or not, this is part of the beauty of being human. Very few
animals on earth have the ability to think cogent thoughts to begin
with, but we humans have the luxury of being able to have thoughts
about our thoughts.

So I can think about watching Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube, and

then immediately think about what a sicko I am for wanting to watch
Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube. Ah, the miracle of consciousness!

Now here’s the problem: Our society today, through the wonders of
consumer culture​ and ​hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social
media​, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having

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these negative experiences—anxiety, fear, guilt, etc.—is totally not
okay.

I mean, if you look at your Instagram feed, everybody there is having a

fucking grand old time.

Look, eight people got married this week! And some sixteen-year-old
on TV got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another kid just made two
billion dollars inventing an app that automatically delivers you more
toilet paper when you run out.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck at home flossing your cat. And you can’t help
but think your life sucks even more than you thought.

The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epidemic,

making many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic, and overly
self-loathing.

Back in Grandpa’s day, he would feel like shit and think to himself,
“Gee whiz, I sure do feel like a cow turd today. But hey, I guess that’s
just life. Back to shoveling hay.”

But now? Now if you feel like shit for even five minutes, you’re
bombarded with 350 images of people ​totally happy​ and ​having
amazing fucking lives​, and it’s impossible to not feel like there’s
something wrong with you.

It’s this last part that gets us into trouble. We feel bad about feeling
bad. We feel guilty for feeling guilty. We get angry about getting angry.
We get anxious about feeling anxious. What is wrong with me?

This is why ​not giving a fuck​ is so key. This is why it’s going to save the
world. And it’s going to save it by accepting that ​the world is totally

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fucked​ and that’s all right, because it’s always been that way, and
always will be.

By not giving a fuck that you feel bad, you short-circuit the Feedback
Loop from Hell; you say to yourself, “I feel like shit, but who gives a
fuck?” And then, as if sprinkled by magic fuck-giving fairy dust, you
stop hating yourself​ for feeling so bad.

George Orwell said that to see what’s in front of one’s nose requires a
constant struggle. Well, the solution to our stress and anxiety is right
there in front of our noses, and we’re too busy watching porn and
advertisements for ab machines that don’t work to notice, wondering
why we’re not banging a hot blonde with a rocking six-pack.

We joke online about “first-world problems,” but we really have

become victims of our own success.

Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression

have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that
everyone has a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered.

Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual.

We have so much fucking stuff and ​so many opportunities​ that we

don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.

Because there’s an infinite number of things we can now see or know,

there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t
measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as
they could be. And this rips us apart inside.

Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the ​“How to Be
Happy” shit​ that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the
past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap:

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The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative
experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s
negative experience is itself a positive experience.

This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your

brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a
negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive
experience.

It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as ​“the

backwards law”​—the idea that the more you pursue ​feeling better all
the time​, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only
reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

The more you desperately want to be rich, the poorer and more
unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make.

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The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you
come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance.

The more you ​desperately want to be happy and loved​, the lonelier and
more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you.

The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more

self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.

It’s like this one time I ​tripped on acid​ and it felt like the more I
walked toward a house, the farther away the house got from me.

And yes, I just used my LSD hallucinations to make a philosophical

point about happiness. ​No fucks given​.

As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure
he wasn’t on LSD at the time): “You will never be happy if you
continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if
you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Or put more simply:

Don’t try.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Mark, this is making my nipples all
hard, but what about the Camaro I’ve been saving up for? What about
the beach body I’ve been starving myself for? After all, I paid a lot of
money for that ab machine! What about the big house on the lake I’ve
been dreaming of? If I stop giving a fuck about those things—well,
then I’ll never achieve anything. I don’t want that to happen, do I?”

So glad you asked.

Ever notice that sometimes when you care less about something, you
do better at it? Notice how it’s often the person who is the least
invested in the success of something that actually ends up achieving

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it? Notice how sometimes when you stop giving a fuck, everything
seems to fall into place?

What’s with that?

What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called

“backwards” for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If
pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative
generates the positive.

● The pain you pursue in the gym results in better all-around

health and energy.
● The failures in business are what lead to a better understanding
of what’s necessary to be successful.
● Being ​open with your insecurities​ paradoxically makes you more
confident and charismatic around others.
● The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest
trust and respect in your relationships.
● Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to
build courage and perseverance.

Seriously, I could keep going, but you get the point.

Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the

associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to
avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.

The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of

struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is
shameful is itself a form of shame.

Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is

not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels
everything else with it.

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To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain.

By contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you
become unstoppable.

This, of course, requires a certain degree of self-awareness.

   

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PART 3: THE THREE LEVELS OF 
SELF-AWARENESS 

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Disidentifying from your emotions and escaping the feedback loop
from hell are really just two ways of being more self-aware. And
gaining more self-awareness is a big step in the journey to emotional
maturity.

The problem, though, is that self-awareness is like great sex: everyone

thinks they have a ton of it, but in reality no one knows what the fuck
they’re doing.

The fact is that the majority of our thoughts and actions are on
autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our ​habits​,
routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives so we
don’t have to stop and think about it every time we wipe our ass or
start a car.

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The problem is when we’re on autopilot for so long that we forget
we’re on autopilot. Because when we’re not even aware of our own
habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, then we no longer control
them; they control us.

Whereas a person with self-awareness is able to exercise a little

meta-cognition​ and say, “Hmm… every time my sister calls me and
asks for money, I end up drinking a lot of vodka. That might not be a
coincidence,” a person without self-awareness just hits the bottle and
doesn’t look back.

Below are three levels of self-awareness along with a (pretty

significant) caveat. Why three levels? Who the fuck knows? Just go
with it.

LEVEL 1 – WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? 

There’s a lot of pain and suckage in life. Over the last 30 days, how
many times have you:

● Struggled with a relationship with someone close to you?

● Felt lonely, isolated or unheard?
● Felt unproductive or lost on what you should do?
● Been underslept, under-fed, low energy, or unhealthy?
● Stressed about work or finances?
● Uncertain about your future?
● Been physically hurt, ill, or debilitated?

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Chances are if you add all of those up, you’re going to be pretty close to
30 out of the last 30 days. That’s a lot of suckage!

We avoid pain through distraction. We transport our minds to some

other time or place or world, where it can be safe and insulated from
the pain of day-to-day life. We ​stare at our phones​, we obsess about
the past or our potential futures, make plans we’ll never keep, or
simply try to forget. We eat, drink, and fuck ourselves into numbness
to dull the reality of our problems. We use books, movies, games, and
music to carry us to another world where no pain exists, and
everything always feels easy and good and right.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with distraction. We all need some sort of
diversion to keep us sane and ​happy​.

The key is that we need to be aware of our distractions.

Put another way, we need to make sure that we’re choosing our
distractions and our distractions aren’t choosing us. We’re the ones
opting into the distraction, rather than simply being unable to opt out
of distraction. We need to know when we’re checking out. Our
distraction needs to be planned and moderated in bite-sized chunks.
We can’t binge on distraction.

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Most people spend much of their day drowned in a sea of distraction
without even realizing it. I do it, too. The other night at dinner, I
pulled out my phone to look at my calendar, and next thing I knew, I
was browsing video game forums on Reddit. Meanwhile, my wife is
staring at me as if I just had a lobotomy or something.

I’m getting better. This only happens about 23 times per day. Or
sometimes I do that thing where I’ll have ​Facebook​ open, and then I’ll

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open another tab and instinctively type in the URL for… ​Facebook​, the
site I was already looking at. I don’t even realize I do it, but it’s my
mind’s automatic move to disconnect (or in this case, disconnect from
its disconnection).

We all think we know ​how we’re using our time​. But we’re usually
wrong. We think we work more than we do (studies show most people
top out somewhere around three hours of actual work per day,3 the
rest is just fucking around). We think we spend more time with our
friends and loved ones than we do. We think we’re more present than
we are, that we’re better listeners than we are, that we’re more
thoughtful and intelligent than we are. But the truth is, we’re all pretty
bad at this.

Now, some people take the hardline approach of trying to remove all
distraction from their lives. This is a bit extreme. If time management
and self-awareness was a religion, this approach would be like
strapping a bomb to your chest and blowing up a mall thinking you’ve
got a one-way ticket to 72 distraction-free virgins, when really, you’re
just going to self-destruct (and probably harm a lot of people around
you in the process).

The goal with distraction isn’t to defeat distraction, it’s merely to

develop an awareness and control of our distractions. Instead of
calling in sick to play video games all day, you’re able to allot video
games into your free time in a way that’s satisfying and healthy. You
let yourself drift away on your phone for a while if that’s what your
brain seems to need, but you’re aware that you’re doing it and able to
rein it back in when necessary.

3
Curtin, M. (2016, July 21). ​In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for This Many Hours​.
Inc.

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The goal here is the elimination of compulsion. But to eliminate
compulsion you must first become aware of compulsion. When are you
engaging in an activity even though you don’t want to be engaging in
it? When are you checking out mentally and why? Is it around family?
Friends? Co-workers?

For years I used to carry around an iPod and put headphones on every
time I went into public. Leaving the house without it felt like I was
naked. For years, I just assumed I was really into music way more than
other people, that there was some special need inside me for badass
tunes that other people simply didn’t understand.

But eventually, it became clear this was a compulsion; I wasn’t in

control of it. My headphones were a way of protecting and
disconnecting myself from others. They were less about a bottomless
passion and more about simple fear. Being around strangers without
my headphones made me feel anxious and exposed.

Don’t judge these observations, simply have them. This is the first
level of self-awareness, a simple understanding of where your mind
goes and when. You must be aware of the paths your mind likes to take
before you can begin to question why it takes those paths and whether
those paths are helping or hurting you.

LEVEL 2 – WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU FEELING? 

Have you ever been raging pissed and when somebody asks you why
you’re mad, you’re like, “I’M NOT MAD! I’M NOT FUCKING MAD!
I’M PERFECTLY FINE! I MEANT TO SMASH MY KEYBOARD
THROUGH MY MONITOR! I’M NOT MAD! WHY ARE YOU MAD?!”

What people often find is that the more they remove themselves from
distraction, the more they are forced to actually ​deal with a lot of the

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emotions​ that they’ve been avoiding for a long time. This is why
meditating​ for a long time freaks a lot of people out; meditation is
basically the practice of ​training your mind to become less distracted
and more focused on your immediate experience. The result is that
some people become ​overwhelmed by all of the feelings​ they’ve been
bottling up forever.

Therapy​ has a similar effect, but rather than quieting your mind and
staring at a wall for hours on end, you’re sitting on a couch and a really
nice and friendly-looking man/lady is slowly guiding you back to how
you feel, over and over, until your mind finally capitulates and you’re
snotting everywhere and crying like an upset child.

This second level of self-awareness is where you really start finding out
“​who you are​.” I hate using that phrase because it doesn’t really mean
anything, but this is the level that people talk about when they say they
are “finding themselves”—they are discovering how they actually feel
about the shit going on in their life, and often they have been hiding
these feelings from themselves for years.

Most people glide on the surface of life on Level 1 of self-awareness.

They do what they’re told. They follow directions. They distract
themselves with the same shit over and over. At no point have they
allowed themselves to express individual emotions and reactions to
what’s going on around them.

Once they’re removed from these contexts they start to realize things
like, “Oh damn, I’m really sensitive and am sad a lot, and holy shit, I
never allowed myself to feel that because I thought it made me weak or
pathetic, but actually my sadness is part of what makes me different.”

Level 2 is an uncomfortable place to go. People often spend years in

therapy navigating Level 2. It takes time to become comfortable with

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all of your emotions. Going back through those emotions and ​allowing
them to take place​ is something that requires a lot of focus and a lot of
effort.

But a lot of people also get held up on Level 2. They think Level 2 is as
deep as it goes and they get lost wallowing in their feelings for the rest
of forever. I think this happens for a couple reasons.

The first is that emotions are powerful, especially for people who have
been suppressing their emotions for most of their lives. Suddenly
opening up to them will feel life-changing and incredibly profound.

As a result, a lot of people start spinning up a bunch of stories about

how this is the ultimate level of self-awareness, just feeling stuff all the
time. They may even go as far as to consider it a “spiritual awakening.”
They’ll describe it in all sorts of high-falutin’ terms like “ego death” or
“transcendent consciousness” or “higher consciousness.”

But this is a bit of a trap. Emotions, as you eventually discover, are a)

endless, and b) don’t necessarily mean anything. I mean, sometimes
they do, but sometimes they’re also self-induced and completely
arbitrary.

For instance, look at this puppy.

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You probably felt good looking at that.4 Now does that feeling mean
anything? Fuck no, it’s just a puppy. But a lot of people ascribe
profundity to any and every emotion that arises. It’s a simple but often
disastrous error. They assume that because some emotions are
incredibly important and vital, that all emotions must be incredibly
important and vital. And that’s simply not the case. A lot of emotions
are pointless or—and here’s the kicker—merely distractions!

4
If not, then you’re a terrible human being.

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Yes, you heard me. Emotions can also be distractions. From what?
From other emotions.

See, there’s another subtle little trap with emotions. And that’s the fact
that analyzing one emotion will generate another. So you can end up
in this ​endless loop of self-inquiry​, which, after a while, will turn you
into a really self-obsessed person.

But wait, hold on, this one deserves its own section.
CAVEAT – THE ENDLESS NAVEL-GAZEY SPIRAL OF DOOM 

There’s an old apocryphal story from 16th-century ​India​ where a

young man climbs a large mountain to speak to the sage at the top.
Supposedly this sage knew, like, everything and stuff. And this young
man was anxious to understand the secrets of the world.

Upon arriving at the top of the mountain, the sage greeted the young
man and invited him to ask him anything (note: this was way before
Reddit threads). The young man then asked him his question, “Great
sage, we stand upon the world, but what does the world stand upon?”

The sage immediately replied, “The world rests upon the back of a
number of great elephants.”

The young man thought for a moment, and then asked, “Yes, but what
do the elephants stand upon?”

The sage replied again, without hesitation, “The elephants rest upon
the back of a great turtle.”

The young man, still not satisfied, asked, “Yes, but what does the great
turtle rest upon?”

The sage replied, “It rests upon an even greater turtle.”

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The young man, growing frustrated, began to ask, “But what does–”

“No, no,” the sage interrupted, “stop there–it’s turtles all the way
down.”

In ​The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck​, I compared self-awareness to

peeling an onion, that whatever you’re thinking/feeling, there’s always
another layer underneath, and the deeper you go, the more layers you
peel back, the more likely you are to spontaneously burst into tears.

The self-questioning involved in self-awareness can lead to this kind of

endless spiral. Layer upon layer upon layer. And, in many cases, not
only do deeper levels ​not elucidate anything useful​, but the mere act of
peeling them back can generate more anxiety, stress, and
self-judgment.

For example, here’s me spiraling through layers of questioning while

writing this section right now:

Layer 1: I’m aware that I’m writing this sentence right now—I feel
tired, a bit cloudy-headed, but also anxious to make progress on this
piece before I go to bed tonight.

Layer 2: I’m aware of my own anxiety and worried that this is a bad
trend in my recent work habits. Why am I up working at 1:30 AM
anyway? I’d probably write better if I got some sleep.

Layer 3: I’m aware of my self-judgment. Perhaps I am being hard on

myself. What’s wrong with working at 1:30 AM? I have done this
plenty of times.

Layer 4: I’m now aware that I am aware of my montage of feelings and

feelings about feelings and feelings about feelings about feelings.

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Layer 5: I’m also aware that my Layer 4 awareness is hardly
comprehensible.

Layer 6: I’m anxious about the comprehensibility of my levels of

awareness.

Layer 7: I feel that perhaps I am being over-critical, blah, blah, blah…

[…]

Layer 193: This shit is turtles all the way down, isn’t it?

A lot of people get caught in the trap of always looking one level
deeper. Doing this feels important but the truth is that beyond a
certain level, it’s just a navel-gazey spiral of doom. It’s turtles all the
way down. And the act of looking deeper itself will sometimes generate
more feelings of anxiety, despair, and self-judgment than it relieves.

The secret of the universe is just a damn turtle.

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When looking at layers of intention and motivation, it’s best to just go
a few layers down until you start repeating yourself. You may be
anxious about your relationship with your mother. Let’s say that
anxiety stems from the fact that your mom is hyper-judgmental and
you fall into this unconscious habit of desperately trying to prove to
her that you’re not a piece of shit. This need to prove to her that you’re
worthy is underpinned by your desire to be loved. This realization then
makes you more anxious – an anxiety driven by the desire to please
your mother, which is underpinned by your desire to be loved – we’re
spiraling now. It’s time to just draw the line and say it’s turtles all the
way down and move on. You want love from mom and that’s that.5

And with that, I’m going to stop thinking about this section and just go
to bed.

LEVEL 3 – WHAT THE HELL ARE YOUR BLIND 

SPOTS? 
The more you become aware of your own emotions and your own
desires, the more you discover something terrifying: you are full of
shit.

We realize that a large percentage of our thoughts, arguments, and

actions are merely reflections of whatever we are feeling in that
moment. If I am watching a movie with my wife and I’m cranky
because I had an argument with my editor that afternoon, I’ll decide
that I hate the movie. And the more my wife tries to convince me the

5
In her book Insight, Tasha Eurich points out that people get caught up when asking “why” questions too
much. “What” questions, on the other hand, get to the root of the problem faster. In this example: Why
are you anxious about your relationship with your mom? Because I need love. Why do you need love?
Because I need to feel secure and safe. Why…turtles turtles turtles… Instead, if you simply ask what you
would need to not feel so anxious about your relationship with your mother, you quickly get to “I need
love from my mother” and you’re both more self-aware in the situation and you have a tangible problem
to solve instead of gazing at your navel in an endless turtle dive.

markmanson.net 40
movie was good, the more I’ll relish the fact that I get to argue with her
about it – because it suddenly becomes a way to justify my anger.

(By the way, if you ever wondered why we tend to fight the most with
the ones we love the most, this is partly why: we can use them as an
emotional punching bag to validate all the crap that we are feeling,
whether they deserve it or not – usually not.)

We all think of ourselves as independent thinkers who reason based

on facts and evidence, but the truth is that our brain spends most of its
time justifying and explaining what the heart has already declared and
decided. And there’s no way to fix that until you’ve learned to
recognize what the heart is saying.

I’ve written quite a bit about ​how flawed our conscious minds are​,
both in ​my book​ and on this site. But to give a quick synopsis:

● Our memories are unreliable and often flat-out wrong, especially

when it comes to remembering how we felt at a certain time or
place. Our ability to predict our thoughts and feelings in the
future is even worse.

● We constantly overestimate ourselves. In fact, as a general rule,

the worse we are at something, the better we think we are, and
the better we are at something, the worse we believe we are.

● Contradictory evidence can often make us surer of our position

rather than inspire us to question it.

● Our attention naturally only focuses on things that already

cohere to our pre-existing beliefs. This is why two people can
watch the exact same event and come away with two completely

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 contradictory memories of it (think of two opposing sports fans
both convinced they saw the ball land in or out of bounds.)

● Most of us, when given the opportunity, will tell small lies to
improve our results. Sometimes (i.e., usually), we’ll even tell
these lies to ourselves.

● We are abysmal at estimating statistics, ​making cost-benefit

decisions​, or reasoning about large populations of people. It’s
actually both depressing and hilarious how bad we are this.

I could keep going, but I’ll stop there. Basically, the point is that you
suck, I suck, everybody sucks. Humans kind of suck. All the time.

And that’s OK. The important thing is just that we’re self-aware about
it. If we ​know our weaknesses​ then they stop being weaknesses.
Otherwise, we become enslaved to our mind’s faulty mechanisms.

Most of this comes down to a few things:

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 1. Hold weaker opinions. Recognize that unless you are an expert in
a field, there is a good chance that your intuitions or assumptions
are flat-out wrong. The simple act of telling yourself (and others)
before you speak, “I could be wrong about this,” immediately
puts your mind in a place of openness​ and curiosity. It implies an
ability to learn and to have a closer connection to reality.

2. Take yourself less seriously. Most of your thoughts and behaviors

are simply reactions to various emotions. And we know that your
emotions are often wrong and/or meaningless. Ergo, you should
take your shit less seriously.

3. Learn your bullshit patterns. When I get angry, I get

argumentative and arrogant. When I get sad, I shut down and
play a lot of video games. When I feel guilty, I word vomit my
conscience all over people. What are your ticks? Where does your
mind go when you feel sad? When you feel angry? Guilty?
Anxious? Learn to spot your coping mechanisms because that
will tip you off next time you’re distracting yourself from your
feelings. I realized years ago that when I’m ​healthy and happy​, I
enjoy playing video games a few hours a week. But when I start
binging on a game, staying up all night and skipping work, it’s
almost always because I’m ​avoiding some problem in my life​.
This has become a huge cue for me to sit down and figure out
what’s going on with myself.

4. Recognize the problems you create for yourself. My biggest

problem is probably not being able to talk about my anger or
sadness. I either escape through video games or become
passive-aggressive by sniping at people around me. Both of these
tendencies don’t help me. And I’ve learned to recognize myself
when I start doing them. I’m able to say, “Hey Mark, you do this
markmanson.net 43
 shit when you’re sad and you always regret not talking to
someone.” Then I go talk to someone.

5. Be realistic. It’s not about removing your faulty psychological

reactions. It’s about understanding them so that you can adjust
to them. The same way we all have some skills and activities
we’re better at than others​, we all have emotions we’re better at
than others. Some people are ​bad with happiness​ but good at
managing their anger. Others are terrible with their anger but
relish their happiness. Other people never feel depressed but
suffer uncontrollable guilt. Others never feel guilty but struggle
with ​feelings of depression​. Where are your strong emotions and
weak emotions? Which emotions do you respond poorly to?
Where are your biggest biases and judgments coming from? How
can you challenge or re-evaluate them?

Also, if you’re having trouble with this, one of the best ways to wrap
your head around your blind spots is to get feedback from other
people.

Others often have a better perspective on us than we do, especially

friends and family close to us. Asking them in a simple and safe way
(by “safe,” I mean not exploding and threatening to castrate them with
a spoon for insulting your honor) can lead to great gains in
self-awareness.

This, of course, is much easier said than done.

THE END GOAL: SELF-ACCEPTANCE 

There’s a certain type of person who will read all this and think about
it and recognize their shitty emotions and recognize their shitty
thought patterns and recognize all the little selfish tricks and traps

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their mind places and do all the work and practice the self-discovery
and open themselves to their emotions and their big takeaway from all
this will be, “I’m a piece of shit.”

They will see all their internal flaws, and come to ​understand their
biases and irrational mechanisms​, and they will get a handle on their
distractions and their weak emotions.

And they will hate it. All of it. It will cause them to ​hate themselves​.

Obviously, walking around and calling yourself a piece of shit for every
other thought or emotion you have is not exactly what we would call
the zenith of emotional health. In fact, this tendency is, ironically,
downright shitty itself.

Judging yourself for mismanaging your emotions or for having biased

and selfish thoughts is a bit of a trap because when you make that
judgment, it feels like you’re being self-aware.

You’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, I was really kind of a dick at that

meeting because my ego was threatened. I’m such a piece of shit.” And
there’s a little round of applause that goes off in your head because you
feel like such a goddamn saint for recognizing how flawed and shitty
you are around others.

But no, that’s not the point. Self-awareness is wasted if it does not
result in self-acceptance. The research bears this out, too:
self-awareness doesn’t make everyone happier, it makes some people
more miserable. Because if great self-awareness is coupled with
self-judgment, then you’re merely becoming more aware of all the
ways you deserve to be judged.6

6
Silvia, P. J., & O’Brien, M. E. (2004). Self-awareness and constructive functioning: Revisiting “The
human dilemma.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23(4), 475–489.

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These emotional outbursts and cognitive biases, they exist in everyone,
all the time. You’re not a bad person for having them just as other
people aren’t necessarily bad people for having them either. They’re
just human. And you’re just human.

Plato said that all evil is rooted in ignorance. If you think of the evilest,
shittiest people imaginable, they are shitty not because they have
flaws—but because they refuse to admit that they have flaws.

I saw a news story recently about some looney conspiracy theorist who
believes that all mass shootings are staged. This guy actually travels to
communities where these mass shootings occurred and confronts the
victims. He stands in front of parents of dead children and calls them
liars.

I cannot imagine a greater definition of “evil” or “piece of shit human”

than this guy.

Yet, his evilness is not a result of conscious choice so much as an

unconscious choice. He’s unaware of the irrationality and
derangement of his own thoughts. He’s barely on Level 1. Level 2
probably terrifies him because admitting the reality that ​mass
shootings​— these horrible and senselessly violent things—can occur all
around him and without reason threatens him in some unspeakable
way that his mind cannot handle.

And he’s definitely nowhere near Level 3 where he’s able to actually
recognize that his conspiracy theories are elaborate networks of
irrational beliefs and impossible assumptions designed to protect
himself from these feelings on Level 2.

When looked at this way, you almost feel sorry for the guy. You see
how much he must suffer psychologically and how that psychological

markmanson.net 46
suffering drives him to do horrible, horrible things to the people who
are legitimately victims around him.

Welcome to empathy.

Empathy can only occur in proportion to our own self-acceptance. It’s

only by accepting the flaws of our own emotions and our own minds
that we are able to look at the flaws of the emotions and minds of
others, and rather than judge them or hate them, feel compassion for
them.

“Oh, he’s fucked up, too. I used to believe shit like that. I wonder what
he’s running from?”

This isn’t to say that empathy and compassion will solve all the world’s
ills. They won’t. But they certainly won’t make anything worse.

And here’s where that old cliche comes in, about only being able to
love others in proportion to how much we love ourselves.

Self-awareness opens us up to the opportunity to love and accept

ourselves. Yeah, I’m a biased fucknut sometimes. Yeah, I mishandle
my emotions on occasion. Yeah, I’ve got some vices.

But ​that’s okay​.

And because I’ve come to terms with those flaws in myself, I’m able to
come to terms and forgive those flaws in others. And it’s only in this
way that any real love becomes possible.

When we refuse to accept ourselves as we are, then we return to the

constant need for numbing and distraction. And we will similarly be
unable to accept others the way they are, so we will look for ways to
manipulate them, change them, or convince them to be a person they
are not.

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Our relationships—with others and even with ourselves—​will become
transactional​, conditional, and ultimately toxic and fail.

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