# How to Get Lucky in Life and Take Smarter Risks

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 11 Dec 2024, 44 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/uddesamvr5hport861bdj4or.mp3

Today, we dive into the fascinating world of luck, risk, and how they shape our lives. We explore the delicate balance between playing it safe and taking chances, and why understanding this balance is crucial for personal growth. If you've ever wondered whether you're too cautious or not cautious enough, then strap in for this one. We dig into the psychology of luck, examining how our perceptions influence our outcomes, and why taking calculated risks can lead to outsized returns. We also tackle the tough question of how to cope with life's inevitable hardships. Hopefully this gives you a fresh perspective on risk-taking and a new appreciation for the role of chance in your life. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 The Tesla Disaster and the Doghouse • 00:02:22 The Fuck of the Week: How Lucky Are You? • 00:03:17 Luck Is Just Risk Management • 00:05:21 The Four Ways to Create Your Own Luck • 00:10:30 Counterfactual Thinking: It Could Always Be Worse • 00:13:56 The Natural Fail Rate of Life • 00:15:21 Poker and Thinking in Probabilities • 00:17:44 Are We All Chicken Shits? The Risk Aversion Crisis • 00:21:37 The Equilibrium of Risk: Fewer Risk-Takers, Bigger Rewards • 00:24:54 How Mark Analyzes Risk: The Analytical and Qualitative Sides • 00:27:25 The Most Important Question: What Do You Gain If You Fail? • 00:30:04 Asymmetric Risk: When the Upside Crushes the Downside • 00:32:23 Taking At-Bats: Why You Need to Try 100 Times • 00:34:13 How Do You Accept That Life Will Always Hurt? • 00:35:06 The Fail Rate of Being Human • 00:40:10 The Two Arrows of Pain: Event vs. Meaning • 00:41:38 Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People? ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

## Transcript

[0:00] Drew I I've been in the doghouse this week. Oh, yeah sleeping on the couch Not quite that bad, but it got close. Yeah So we shot a we shot a YouTube video it'll probably come out into this year I've got a friend of mine owns a ghost town out in the middle of the desert in California and we went out there to shoot a video with him and and
[0:23] We needed like a truck or an SUV or something. And my wife has an SUV. It's a Tesla Model X, but it's technically an SUV, right? So I asked my wife to borrow the car. She loves the car. She loves it. It's like her baby. And I asked to borrow it. She gets like really nervous. I'm like, I'll take good care of it. Don't worry.
[0:43] drive it out into the countryside, take it onto a dirt road. As soon as we turn off onto the dirt road, within five minutes it gets a flat tire. Oh God. It turns out, I didn't realize this, it turns out that Tesla's weigh like a million pounds and the whole like sport utility vehicle, it's not really a sport utility vehicle.
[1:02] Yeah, cool. You're not really supposed to take it off-road. You're supposed to drive it around LA. And the thing is, Teslas have special tires. You can't replace them anywhere. You have to wait for a Tesla truck to come get you. I was about three hours outside of any major city. And worst of all, the app immediately notifies the owner.
[1:22] Via the phone. So within five minutes, my wife called me and was like, what the hell did you do to my car? So the YouTube team, we spent half a day stranded in the California desert with a flat tire. And they were all freaking out of like, how are we going to get home? And my biggest concern was like, my wife's going to fucking murder me when I get back. But I, so I'm here, I'm alive. But yeah, it's a little, it's a little touch and go in the Manson household. Okay. All right. I, well, yeah.
[1:51] I feel for you. Yeah. Rent a car next time. Dumbass. That's the lesson. I didn't know that about Tesla. So the SUV. Yeah. Public service announcement. Hey, Elon, if you advertise an SUV, make sure it can fucking actually drive like an SUV. I mean, I love the car, but holy shit. It was like literally five minutes. I got to fly. That sucks. Yeah. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
[2:22] Today we're talking about risk, and I guess that is, in a nutshell, my problem. I take too many risks. Yes. I just go for it. You and I are different in this way, and so I think we can get into some of that in this episode and talk about why and how we both approach it. I'm curious to know more about your approach to risk, too, but...
[2:40] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But first, first, the fuck of the week. Okay. You and I were both recently reading Nate Silver's new book, On the Edge. And there's this one part in there where he asked the question, like, if you were to live your life a thousand more times, how likely would it turn out as good or as bad as the one you have right now?
[2:57] And so I think that's a great way to frame a conversation around the role of luck in our lives and how much of a fuck we should give about luck, how much we should attribute things to luck in our lives, how much we should appreciate luck or disregard it as a force in our lives. How do you approach that? How do you think about good and bad luck in our lives?
[3:17] Luck is such a funny thing because I think so much of it hinges on how you actually define luck. Right? Like most people, I think, define luck as fortuitous or unfortunate things that happen to them. Right? So I'm driving off-road. I get a flat tire. Wow, that's bad luck. Is it though? Like there's another way to look at it, which is that everything has an associated risk with it. No matter how safe it is.
[3:41] whatever you're doing is, no matter how stable and consistent it is, there's always a small outside risk that something could go wrong. And similarly, everything you do, there's a small outside chance that something could go really, really right. So I think people see luck as just this, I don't know, like winning the lottery or something like that. I think you can actually manipulate luck in your life. You can put yourself in situations where you increase the odds of good things happening.
[4:10] Similarly, you can put yourself in situations where you increase the odds of bad things happening, right? So I think really luck is just, it's actually just risk management. And people who don't ever think about risk management
[4:26] They just kind of sit around and blame things on luck. Right, right. It's interesting you bring that up. I looked up some of the research around luck, and I'm not sure about the actual findings that they find about, oh, this is what luck is or isn't or how people can manipulate luck. What I do like about the research, though, is they have found a way to kind of frame the way people think about it and explain the way people think about it. So whether the actual findings of these studies are correct or not, I really appreciate the way...
[4:54] that psychologists have framed the discussion around luck. So they find that there's, people kind of tend to either think that luck is a stable force in their lives, right? And whatever happens to them, like you were just saying, whatever happens to them is a result of luck. And then there's other people who just see it as more random and chance, which is more probably rational. According to psychologists, I think that's a more rational belief system to have. And those are kind of stable over time.
[5:21] But they do also find, too, that you can't create your own luck. Like you were just talking about, you can't influence this. And they've kind of identified these four different ways that people create luck. And you've talked about this before. You wrote about this a long time ago. And it kind of matches up with what you found, too. But they find that creating and noticing chance opportunities in your life, so just engaging with chance is a way to be lucky. Making decisions by listening to intuition. I thought that was a really interesting one. Okay.
[5:51] Which I think is kind of related to number one. You're just putting yourself in more. The fuck does that mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, I like what? How does that make you lucky? I think what they're saying is that it's it biases you towards acting. OK. A little bit more if you're listening to your intuition. So that I agree. Yes, I do, too. If you're acting. That's how I interpret that might be a generous interpretation. I don't know.
[6:15] I don't know. I hear intuition and I start getting like woo-woo spirit crystal vibes and that triggers me. You think so? That triggers me. There's no – I don't know. No crystal I've ever bought made me more lucky. Okay. Okay. Well, this next one –
[6:33] Maybe this is related to it too, but the third one is creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations. So being an optimist and just that becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right. So that is a thing, 100%. I don't know if that's luck though.
[6:49] It's the perception of luck. Again, these are psychologists talking about this. Yes. Perception of luck. The perception. I imagine that if you perceive yourself as being a lucky person, you will probably notice more opportunities. You will probably take advantage of more opportunities. So that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. I guess when I've thought about this, I've always thought in much more concrete terms. Like I always think of it as just like, how can I create more surface area?
[7:15] for opportunities to happen, right? So a simple example is just meeting more people. Right. Like always say yes to meeting more people. Not because you need more friends, not because you wanna be the coolest kid in school, but simply because the more people you meet, the more people you know, the more you increase your odds of a very outsized positive interaction.
[7:38] And which is quote unquote getting lucky, right? Another example is simply trying new things. Like always trying new things. Whenever you have an opportunity to try something new,
[7:51] Always say yes. Just because, you know, 99 times out of 100, you'll be like, oh, well, that was a thing and I'll probably never do it again. But that one time out of 100, you'll be like, wow, I can't believe I found this. This is incredible. I'm so excited. I'm so glad I said yes to this opportunity. And that can be absolutely life changing. So it's these like, I always think, I mean, I'm probably getting ahead of the docket here. But like.
[8:14] There's so many things in life that have drastic upsides and very low downsides. Right. And like I try to orient my life around just constantly leaning into those things. I think I've mentioned this before, too. Like if you do go out and you meet more people, say yes to more social events. There's always that, you know, you say yes to it and the day comes and you're like, God damn it. Yeah. You go anyway.
[8:35] And almost always it's like, yeah, that was good. Sure. And sometimes like that was fucking great. Yeah. Sometimes it sucks. Yeah. But even the outsized returns that you're talking about, the one time that it is good, like, you know, maybe you meet somebody. I talked about this in the kind of dating context before too. Yeah. I go to social events with my friends all the time or whatever, not because I'm like out to like meet new people to date or anything like that necessarily, but it does just up the odds of that happening.
[9:04] Correct. Right. Right. And, and the one time it does work out, you know, nine times out of 10, it doesn't, you know, I don't meet anybody that I'm attracted to or whatever, go on a date with whatever. But the one time you do, it's like, oh, this is great. Yeah. And that's an outsized return that you got from all of those other chance opportunities you're engaged with. Totally. And then coming back to the kind of the question of like, if you lived your life a thousand times, like how, how, where on the totem pole would this one be? Yeah. What do you think of that? Well, for you, I'm definitely towards the top of my totem pole. Yeah. Yeah.
[9:33] I won the lottery in this version of the universe. But I think you can apply that thinking to all sorts of things. Okay. Right? Like if you go to 100 parties, 90 of them will be kind of lame and forgettable. Nine of them will be...
[9:53] tons of fun and you'll have a great time with some friends or meet some new friends. And then one out of a hundred, I don't know, you meet your wife or you meet your best friend or you make a huge business deal or you get a new job or whatever. And it's just completely life-changing. So I think it's, you know, a lot of people they'll like –
[10:11] Go to a party and they're like, well, this was lame. I'm never going to do this again. And it's like, hey, boy, I mean, look at the range of outcomes and then like look at the distribution of potential results of each of those experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And this is kind of getting into another part of the research I dove into around this, which is counterfactual thinking.
[10:30] Yes. Okay. And what they find, there's kind of two types of counterfactual thinking that they distinguish. One is upwards counterfactual thinking, which is imagining how a situation could have been better. Yes. And you have downward counterfactual thinking, imagining how a situation could have been worse. Yep. And this made me realize, what they find is you can actually enhance your beliefs and luck or your kind of perception of luck.
[10:59] through downward counterfactual thinking. Yes. It could always be worse. Oh yeah. It could always be worse. It could always be worse. And this made me realize this is like what this, I think this is really what drives, I've talked before about like how I'm a fairly naturally grateful person. Yeah. Gratitude just kind of comes naturally to me. That, I think that's a huge, huge part of why. Yes. Cause I'm always like, oh, this could have been so much worse. Well, and I, this is why I think so much of, of just,
[11:28] Happiness and mental health is having an imagination. It's being able to imagine alternate outcomes and various probabilities. I mean, it's funny. One of my favorite memes of all time is there's one where Bart Simpson is looking down and he's like, man, this is the worst day of my life. And then Homer puts his arm around him and he says, no, son, this is the worst day of your life so far.
[11:58] 100%. And I think about that all the time. Like anytime I'm having a bad day or just like something goes wrong, you know, it's like there's so many ways things can be worse or even something like something as stupid as the Tesla, the flat tire in the desert. You know, it's, yeah, that sucks. Like it was a really shitty 48 hours dealing with that. But I mean, the fact that happened, first of all, I'm driving like an amazing car with
[12:25] shooting YouTube videos in a, in a fucking ghost town. Like this is a pretty good, good situation to get a flat tire in. Like I'm pretty blessed to even like have the opportunity to get a flat tire in that situation. So it's like, again, zooming out and having that perspective. Um, and, and I feel like I, I generally do a good job of that, of like zooming out, recontextualizing stuff, thinking about the counterfactuals, um,
[12:53] And it, I think that plays a huge part in my own like mental stability and mental health. Yeah. I think for me, it's been, I don't know if I'm as good as zooming out as you are, but it's more just like I've had so many brushes with, with bad luck or close brushes with bad luck that it just, it's so vivid. You know, I've talked about, I grew up pretty humble. Yeah. And a lot of my friends, I mean, I've had friends who've died of overdoses. I've had friends who have.
[13:19] you know, drunk driving accidents, whatever. Ended up in jail. Ended up in jail. All sorts of things. That kind of thing. That could have easily been me, you know, in a very slightly different universe. Maybe not even that different of a universe. Such a bad boy, Drew. That's not what I mean at all. Such a dangerous man. No, no, no, no. Not at all.
[13:39] My point is just that I saw it, I was close enough to it that it's easy for me to imagine. I don't have to zoom out for that. I get it. I get it. I get it. One thing I think about too, and if my wife was here, she would tell you this because I bang on this drum all the time at home, which is –
[13:56] there is a fail rate in life. There's just a natural, like anything you do, anything you try to do, whether it is a project at work or like hiring contractors to fix something in your house to, you know, replacing a part in your car, like everything is going to fail a certain percentage of the time. And it's always greater than zero. And it, ideally it's a small percentage of the time, but I, I tell my wife this all the time. I'm like, if you go to 10 doctors,
[14:24] Just the law of averages is that at least two or three of them are going to be terrible. That's just life. Like that's life. It's anything you go to, any service that you deal with, any people you hire, like there's a fail rate to everything. Any product you buy, a certain percentage of them are just going to suck and just fall apart and not work.
[14:45] I get so much stability in my life by remembering that, that it's like, oh, this is part of the deal, right? Like if you drive 100,000 miles, statistically, you are at some point, you're gonna be in an accident. At some point, your car is gonna break down. And at some point, you're, you know, something shitty is gonna happen. Like that's just life. That's part of it, right? And it's always helped me to remember like,
[15:13] You're choosing that even when you don't remember it. You're choosing that. Yeah. By the way, can I say where like...
[15:21] This really – I mean, I do think I'm like a little bit naturally predisposed to thinking like this. But the way this got drilled in my head, it was playing poker seriously for years. And it's – because poker, you can play the hand perfectly and still lose. Yeah. And other times, you can make the biggest mistake and just be a total idiot.
[15:46] Yeah.
[16:07] And even if you play perfectly, you only have a 75% chance to win or a 70% chance to win. So you're going to lose 30% of the time. Like once that just gets like fully baked into your brain like that, you can't help but see it everywhere else in your life. Yeah. And just start understanding like, oh yeah, every job I apply for.
[16:31] I can interview perfectly and I'm still not going to get offers on X percent of them. Right. That's just part of life. Yeah. Right. And it's one of the most useful tools I've picked up over the years. I know you mentioned Nate Silver. I know he's a former poker player. There's a great book by a poker pro named Annie Duke called Thinking in Bets. Yeah. Where she kind of explains this thinking in probabilities essentially. But honestly, it's one of the most –
[17:00] I mean, I still love poker and I'm still glad I played. But even if I, even if I hadn't won a bunch of money playing poker, I would still be so grateful because it just like gave me this mental tool set to like approach everything in my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I played a little bit of poker and there was one, one game we played with some friends one night and we went for hours and hours and hours. The final hand, my buddy won on a pair of twos and he took everybody out. It happens. And it happens. It happens. Yeah. Yeah.
[17:28] Well, all right. We'll get a little bit more into the risk stuff in the next segment. Okay. So yeah, we'll be right back. We're back. All right. What's brilliant? What's bullshit? What are we debating today, Drew?
[17:44] Well, on the theme of risk, still, Mark, are we a bunch of chicken shits? Probably. Do you think so? Yeah. Probably. I don't even know. I don't even know what you're about to tell me. The answer is yes. Well, in thinking about luck and mitigating risk in our lives, it just got me to thinking, are we just not, do we not take enough risk in our lives? Is it brilliant or bullshit that we should take more risk in our life, especially financially, socially?
[18:12] with our careers. Well, set some context here. Okay. I know you've dug up some numbers. Yeah, yeah. And tell me, give us some context. Yeah. So there was a study, this was like 2018, 2019. And it was a survey done to evaluate Americans' appetite for risk. And specifically around financial risk, career risk, and social risk. Those were kind of the three things.
[18:39] And probably unshockingly, most people tend to play it pretty safe. Something like 72% prioritize stability over risk in their financial dealings as opposed to going for higher returns with a higher risk. They quantified financial risk tolerance and it was 4.9 out of 10 for the average person. So 5 out of 10, you're right in the middle. Yeah. People are –
[19:04] Right in the middle with that. Most people prefer job stability. Like 65% say they would take job stability over a less stable job that might be a little bit more fulfilling or fun or maybe has the chance of someday paying off more. Sure.
[19:20] Which I find interesting because so many people hate their jobs, but they're like, no, I want a stable job still at the same time. Yeah, it's like 70% of the population hates their jobs. Right, right. At least that. Living situation, 76% of people just don't even want to move, which moving is a stressful event in your life. But still, it's like there could be a huge upside to that that we never think about. 66% say they just want to stick to familiar friends rather than meeting new people. You were just talking about going out and meeting new people. It's just –
[19:48] Basically what they found in this survey anyway, only about a quarter of the people enjoy any sort of risk – actually actively enjoy risk-taking. Not just I'm willing to accept some risk, but they actively enjoy risk-taking.
[20:01] I would be willing to bet that that is decreasing as time goes on as well. I know- I would agree. Yeah. I know like Gen Z is famously very risk averse. I feel like as the population in general gets older, it becomes more risk averse. It does feel like people in general are more risk averse today than they were say 20, 30, 40 years ago. It's hard to answer this because everybody-
[20:31] The optimal amount of risk you should have in your life is very much determined by the facts of your life, right? So somebody who's growing up in poverty in, I don't know, in Africa or something, like their risk equation is going to be much different than somebody who, say, has a boring desk job but –
[20:52] is comfortable in living in the suburbs of Chicago, for instance. So it's like a lot of it depends on your personal talents. A lot of it depends on the job markets, the opportunities. A lot of it depends on just where you're at in your life. So it is really hard to say. I feel like I imagine that this is this measurement of like risk aversion is
[21:15] It is probably reflective of how stable and secure society is. I imagine the more stable and secure society, the less people are going to – the less incentive people have to take significant risks and it probably becomes much more just the freaks and psychopaths like me who –
[21:37] like it. Right, right. Who end up taking it. So, but the interesting thing here is that there's a little bit of like an equilibrium thing going on where the fewer people willing to take risks, the more reward there is for taking them. Oh yeah. So it's the less people are willing to stick their neck out, whoever is willing to stick their neck out is going to get all the benefit from it.
[22:02] Trevor Burrus So you think that the reward curve is shifting too because you were just saying that fewer people are taking risks. Aaron Powell Yeah. Aaron Powell I mean it's – there's – Chris Williamson has this rant that he went on.
[22:16] A while back where you just talked about how it's easier than ever like the bar is lower than it's ever been and I think To a great extent our technology has made us very complacent it's become very easy to just numb yourself and distract yourself and Become complacent with whatever your life situation is and so it's it's like reached a point where it's like if you if you just try like if you just
[22:41] get in relatively okay shape and go out and be somewhat social and take some of your time and educate yourself and read some books and maybe take an online course or something like you're already ahead of like 70% of the population, which is fucking nuts. Like there's just so much complacency in the developed world at the moment. And yeah,
[23:03] So on the one hand, you know, there's a lot of kind of whining and hand wringing about, you know, oh, mental health and things are so hard and everything's so stressful and we're all anxious. But it's like if you actually look at people who are going out and doing things, it feels like there's fewer than ever before. I heard something recently. They were saying that, you know, every generation there's kind of this like.
[23:27] uh, this new influx of entrepreneurs and founders in Silicon Valley every 10 or 15 years. And I heard that it's like Gen Z is just not showing up. There's like, there's like nobody showing up and starting new companies and everybody's just kind of like, okay, well, where'd everybody go? Like, where are the founders? Where are the entrepreneurs? Where are the people who are just like willing to take crazy moonshots and, and see what happens. Right. Um, and, uh,
[23:52] And again, it's like the fewer people that there are willing to do that, the more the people who are willing are going to win for when they do it, just because there's going to be less competition and there's going to be more returns. So this question is...
[24:07] Whereas if you go somewhere in the world where everybody's taking a ton of risks, then it's probably more logical to chill out and seek out stability. So it's a thing that's in flux. It's a – there's like a population equilibrium thing going on, I think. So how do you approach risk now then? Do you – how analytical are you about it? That's one question I have for you. Like how –
[24:30] I know a lot of people who I know who take risks are pretty good at at least coming up with a number in their head. Like, oh, there's probably a 30% chance this is going to work. Yeah. I'll take that risk. Like whether they're right or wrong. Sure. That's just kind of how they think. I feel like you do that some. How analytical do you get with your risk taking and how much of it – how much of it is an intuition, Mark? Yeah.
[24:54] Very little is intuition. I mean, I do listen. I mean, obviously, I do have a bias when I analyze a tough decision and I'll be aware of that bias. It's like, okay, that's probably what most people would call their intuition. It's like my gut is pushing me in this direction.
[25:11] I try to keep that in mind because I actually try to argue against that and see if I can. Okay. Right? So I look at it – I look at it – there's – I look at it in two different ways. There's an analytical side and then there's kind of a qualitative side. So the analytical side is really simple. It's like, you know, if it involves money in any way, let's sit down and start writing numbers down. Okay. Right? Yep.
[25:31] What's the upside? What's the downside? What's the distribution of, what's the percent chance that this is going to work out? What's the percent chance it's going to fail? What's the percent chance that it's somewhere in the middle? And try to get some sort of rough calculation of an expected value out of that.
[25:49] On the other hand, that side, you know, do a pros and cons list, do a risk reward list. Like those things are all useful and I think that's just kind of all that goes without saying. I actually think the qualitative side is way more important because that tends to dictate much more. So what I mean by qualitative is that I look at –
[26:14] I look at what are the intangible costs and benefits of doing something. Yeah, you're very good at that. Or not doing something, right? Like, so some people might look at like, I have a stable job, it's very dependable, I can probably have it for a long time. Let me just stick with this.
[26:32] On paper, that's probably an easy calculation for them to make and justify. But then you have to start adding the intangible stuff in too, which is like, okay, well, you're going to have a lack of novelty in your life. If you have a boss or a coworker you don't really like, you're going to be stuck with them for a long time. If you have a job that you don't find a lot of meaning or purpose in –
[26:51] That's something you're going to have to deal with. You're going to have to go find that somewhere else. So there's all these other little qualitative things. If you have friends who, you know, if your job is going to, you know your job is going to eventually make you move to another city, but you have a great, your friends and family are in the current city.
[27:08] That's another thing to consider. So there's a lot of stuff like that to look at. Like how is this gonna affect some of my emotional needs, some of my needs for meaning and purpose, what's like the long-term qualitative experience. But probably the most important thing I look at
[27:25] is what benefits do I get if this fails? And I think this is the biggest thing that people overlook is there are a lot of things that if you fail at it, you still end up way ahead. For example, starting like when I, I remember when I was starting my online business, my first online business, it was in the middle of the 08, 09 crash. You couldn't get a job anywhere. I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, okay,
[27:52] I can start this online business. If it works, great. I'm gonna have a career, and I'm gonna run my own business, and it'll be amazing. If it doesn't work, what happens?
[28:02] Well, I'll be broke. I'm already broke. I'll be 25 with no job experience, and I was only 23 with no job experience. So that's basically no difference. But I'll learn a bunch of really useful skills. I'll learn web design. I'll learn copywriting. I'll learn sales. I'll understand marketing. I'll understand web development. I'll learn about e-commerce. Like, fuck, I could probably go get a really good job with those skills. Right. Right? Yeah.
[28:29] So the actual – the failure at that moment in time in my life and in the labor market, the failure was actually better than going out and submitting another 100 job applications to a bunch of places I didn't really want to work at, right? So to me, like as soon as I realized that, I'm like this is such a no-brainer. I'm like –
[28:49] I'm an idiot if I don't do this. And I think there are a lot of things in life like that. Like you are even failing at it. You will learn so much. You will develop skills. You will meet certain people that you'll end up way ahead than if you didn't try at all.
[29:08] Yeah, that's kind of how I think of it too. I don't put – I think you are better at the analytical side, the more hard number side of it. But what you said there about – you find the no-brainers that are no-brainers to you especially. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've told this story before too, but coming to work for you too, everybody thought I was crazy and I was like, this is a no-brainer, guys. Yeah. I knew that academia for me, sitting in an office writing grants for the rest of my life, man –
[29:35] it started to seem like to me, you know, it wasn't the actual, there's a reality in that, that space that I was not comfortable with. And I was like, if nothing else, this at least gets me off of that track and gets me pointed in a different direction. So, yeah. The other thing to think about too, is, is there are certain things that have like the upside is so vastly high compared to the downside that you would also be stupid not to do it. Like, yeah, there are so many asymmetries of risk and people don't,
[30:04] stop long enough to think about that. The most simple example that I give all the time is if you're at a party or a dinner or something and you see an attractive stranger, what is the risk of, what's the, what is the risk reward of talking to that attractive stranger? What is the very best thing that can happen? And what is the very worst thing that could happen? The very best thing that can happen in that moment is that you meet your future spouse or partner or whatever, or
[30:30] Or even just a partner for a few years, but they change your life. They influence you. You have this great, like incredible life enriching experience together. That's the upside. That's massive. The downside is maybe you embarrass yourself for a few minutes or look like an asshole in front of a few people. If you got a brain that works like mine, Mark, I'm going to be crying and myself to sleep for the next two weeks. But yeah, I mean, I see what I see. I get your point.
[30:55] Even that, even that, even that, like that is so minuscule compared to the upside, right? And the truth of the matter is that like 99% of the time you're going to end up somewhere in the middle. It's going to be, it's probably going to be a nothing burger if you talk to them.
[31:11] Like it's – there's so – again, there's so many things in life like that. Like it's – starting the business was similar to that. I remember when I was writing Subtle Art, it was a very similar thing. It was a similar choice of – the upside of writing this book is extremely high. The downside of writing this book is –
[31:34] I have a book that sold okay or I can like tell people I'm an author or I became a much better writer. I built relationships in the publishing industry. I built credibility for myself. The downsides of writing a book are just – you give up two years of your time essentially. So again, it was a no-brainer so to speak. Yeah.
[31:56] You came to me when you were writing the book and that's what you said. You're like, this is either going to set me up for decades to come or we just move on to the next one. Yeah, or we just try the next project. And I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And this business is – it's a hits business, right? I mean as you've seen, it's – you put out 50 pieces of content. 40 don't really do a whole lot.
[32:23] Nine do really well, and then one is just like, basically drives most of your results for the entire year. Right, and it makes all the work for the other 49 that didn't work out worth it. Yeah, and so it's another, there's a distribution of that, right? So it's, and in a sense, you had to do those other 49 to get to that 50th one. You can't just only do the 50th one.
[32:50] I think that's one of the biggest takeaways I've had from working with you too, is that like trying two or three times, that's not, that's not risk taking. Trying a hundred times. Okay. Now we're talking. Yeah. We're getting there. Yeah. So just, just taking the at bats. Yes. That's where it is.
[33:07] Yeah. And it's, again, it comes back to poker, right? Like you can, you can sit down for a single session in poker and, uh, get, get dealt amazing cards and lose money the entire night. Every single time. You know, and, but it's, you have to realize that it's, it's, you have to sit down and play a hundred thousands of hands over many, many, many, many, many nights. Um,
[33:32] For that to even out and you to come out ahead. Like you can still be making good decisions, but you're like, I simply have to play for hundreds of hours for this luck to even out. Right. So. Yeah. Yeah. Kenny Rogers was right. What did he say? Got to know when to hold him.
[33:51] Wow. No one to walk around. That's deep. We better cut this. We better go to an ad. Hurry. Quick. This is devolving fast. We'll be right back. All right. We're back.
[34:13] question time it is question time what do the people want to know um well it's jace or um that's the username i'm guessing it's just jace from youtube wants to know how do you accept the fact that life is going to hurt no matter what you do i understand that there are things you can control to alleviate your suffering but how do you cope with the fact that some terrible things just happen
[34:38] I love, it's such a dark question. It is. It is. It's such a fucking dark question. We're ending on a dark note. This, this, this reader is, is, is a fan after my own heart. It's like, how do you tolerate that everything causes suffering? It's so metal. To me, this comes back to the fail rate thing. And again, I think this is something that people, we don't think about it because it's,
[35:06] uncomfortable like again if you zoom out right like let's not just talk about you know dentists and contractors or car parts zoom out everybody you know is going to die at some point most of the people you know most of people you care about in your life will die at some point during your life
[35:29] And the only people that's not true for are the people who are going to die first. So, you know, it's these sorts of tragedies. I mean, statistically speaking, I think it's like a third of the population contracts cancer at some point. Like 10% of the population will get in a serious physical accident at some point.
[35:51] these things are normal. And we like to pretend they're not. We like to pretend that they're a great misfortune. But over a long enough period of time, over a large enough sample size,
[36:04] Almost all of us are going to have some sort of dramatic calamitous event in our lives. And that's just a fact. And so when I hear a question like that, like how do you deal with it? I think I don't think you do. Like I think you just accept it. That's just you.
[36:23] stare it in the face. You stare it head on. You don't try to avoid it. You don't try to look away. That is part of the deal. You get to live, you get to do all these cool things. You get to, you know, fucking ride the Ferris wheel and eat great food and have sex and joke with your friends and everything. But part of that bargain is you have to have a tragedy every once in a while. That's just how life goes. And
[36:49] you have to take both together. You don't get to have all the joyous moments without the tragedy, and you don't get to have all, you know, you don't have the tragedy without the joyous moments. So to me, this is, you know, the Buddhist in me is like, just stare it in the face, man. Like, don't fucking look away. Like, this is life. This is what you're doing here. Yeah, I've even found too that, like when things are going well, I always try to remind myself of, like, okay, you know, the other shoe's gonna drop at some point. Yeah.
[37:19] And that doesn't help. It doesn't help because you're right. You just have to accept that because when things are going great and you're like, okay, prepare myself, something's around the corner, not like in a pessimistic negative way. Just like, look, enjoy this while it lasts. It's going to end. It's all going to end one day.
[37:39] And yet when those things come, it still just sucks. Yeah, it sucks. And it sucks. It never won't suck. And you shouldn't try to make it not suck. Yeah. Like you should grieve and be sad and be upset when these things happen.
[37:56] Is there anything to that, like that grieving process? Do you think, you know, they talk about the whole grief process. Even that doesn't, I don't know. That doesn't work for me. Well, it's funny because if you talk to grief counselors, they say like the worst thing you can do is just try to avoid the process. Right. Right. Like try to avoid the emotions that you're feeling. Try to avoid the reality of what's happened.
[38:18] The second worst thing you can do is probably try to hurry through them. Yes. So it's just, it's just the process. Like you said, you just have to face it. Yeah. I, I, I think, um, again, having that context, understanding that, that this is also part of life and this is also part of what makes life rich. And, you know, it is kind of the calamitous moments, the tragic moments that remind us what, what matters it. They remind us to be grateful for what we have to take care of the people who are still with us.
[38:48] Um, I think it's important to kind of see there's like a sad beauty and a lot of these events and experiences. Um, there's a lot of good that can be pulled out of them that can be wrung out of them, uh, through the grieving process. And, and so it's, I, again, I think.
[39:07] And I come back to it's, if you've been fortunate enough to survive a bunch of difficult situations, you learn that. You learn that, yeah, that was awful. I never wanna do that again, but I'm a better person for it. And it's reminded me to be better to the people I care about in my life because of it. Right.
[39:30] But if you've never had any of those experiences, then it just seems horrible and awful and you want to avoid it as much as possible. Right. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about post-traumatic growth and the podcast you've written about it. The point there too isn't that, as you just mentioned, it's not that –
[39:50] these traumatic events or the awful things that happen to us are good. They're not in any way. It's all about the process thereafter. Yeah. And it isn't, it isn't even, I don't think it's like seeing these things in a positive light or changing the way you see trauma or awful things that happen to people. It's more just like, yeah, this is a part of life and accepting that and, and,
[40:10] and finding a way to, like you said, stare it in the face, accept it and be like, this is what it is. And this is what I'm dealing with and taking responsibility for it. Yeah. There's two things, right? There's the event itself. And then there's the narrative in the meaning you create around the event, you know, and the event itself will always be horrible and tragic and, and painful, but the, the, the meaning and the narrative you wrap around it.
[40:34] Can be quite positive. It's the two arrows of Buddhism, the two arrows of pain, the initial pain and the interpretation of the pain. Yes. You can derive a lot of power and meaning from tragic events. And I think developing the ability to do that is –
[40:50] One of the most useful things, and again, I bring it back to the discussion of risk, the risk aversion, I think a lot of it is because people don't feel equipped to do that. So they're like, well, if I fail at this, then my life's over. And it's like, well, no, it's not actually. You'll actually learn a lot from that failure and you'll probably become stronger and more resilient and more resourceful. And so, yeah, what's the downside again? But if you don't feel equipped to do that when things go wrong, then-
[41:20] You'll just avoid things going wrong as much as possible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the age old question, why do good things happen to bad people? Is that the right question even? I've always wondered about that. I'm like that, you know, because what we're talking about is that, yeah, just terrible things will happen. Wait, did you just say, why do good things happen to bad people? I probably did.
[41:39] You meant what I know. Why do bad things happen to good people? No, why do good things happen to bad people too? Why do good things happen to bad people? That's the other side of the question. That's actually – look, I was being profound and you didn't even know it. Oh. That is a stumper right there. Yeah, why do good things happen to bad people? I mean –
[42:00] Both good and bad things happen to both good and bad people. Right. Things just happen. We like to imagine that there's like a divine justice that is just partitioning perfectly. Like, you know, only good experiences for the good people. Right. Only bad experience. No, life is really...
[42:16] complicated. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that helps, but. Yeah. Sorry, Jace. No, again, again, because I go back to it. I'm just like, even if you can, you can do all of this and you can say, and a lot of people, a lot of the questions we get are, how do I just feel better about this? And it's like, wow, I don't know if you do.
[42:33] This is what we do here, right? Like this whole industry is full of people promising to make you feel better about bad things. And sorry, I'm not that guy. Like bad things. There are always going to be things in your life that make you feel bad, dude. Sorry, but you'll get better at it.
[42:53] That's a super cheery note we should end on right there, I think, Mark. It's got dark pretty fast. Why do good things happen to bad people? Why do good things happen to bad people? I have no idea. Yeah. All right. Well, Drew didn't prepare a wisdom of the week. I'm quickly pulling this one out of my ass, but here you go. The Shakespeare line from Hamlet. He says, nothing is good or bad. It is our thinking that makes it so. Yes.
[43:20] Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe. If you want to submit a question, you can email us at podcast at markmanson.net. And if you – what else? What else do they want to do? What else do we want them to do? Sign up for the newsletter. Yeah. I would just sign up for the newsletter. Go sign up for the newsletter. We send out a couple pieces of advice every Monday morning and then we share other readers' breakthroughs from the previous week. The newsletter is called Your Next Breakthrough.
[43:50] I think that's it. I think that's it. All right. We'll be back next week. Thank you, everybody. Bye, guys. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.

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