The 5 Best Traits to Develop for Life

what's up guys this is mark here again and i was hanging out on my website markmanson.net and uh a reader had a really cool question he asked mark what would you say are the five best personal traits that you could have in your life i was like huh that's a pretty damn good question i might have to go stare in the mirror and uh think about that for a few minutes hmm what are my best five traits i do have a pretty strong chin that's a good one what about my cheekbones people never notice my cheekbones but they're pretty underrated i think could be the luscious pandemic hair oh wait [ __ ] i don't think he was asking about my five best traits he was asking about the five best traits for anybody to have in life god damn it i'm gonna have to do another [ __ ] life advice video [Music] so it took me about a half a day to figure out what the guy was actually asking that's on me that's my fault but before we get into the best five traits that you can develop in your life you should know that one of them is to like this video and subscribe to the channel i mean everybody who subscribes to this channel is like [ __ ] killing it haven't you noticed i mean it's like 9 out of ten single mothers say that this channel is why they're a single mother anyway the point is subscribe to the channel and you'll kick ass at life so moving on number one to me the most important trait that anybody can develop within themselves period is self-awareness self-awareness is like the operating system of your psychology without it nothing else runs correctly if you don't have self-awareness you don't realize all the mistakes you make you don't learn from your failures you don't adjust and optimize certain skills or habits moving through life without self-awareness is like it's like driving a car blindfolded and then blaming everybody else when you get in a car accident but perhaps the biggest importance of self-awareness is it's required to develop emotional maturity i know i know nobody wants to [ __ ] talk about their feelings here but you kind of have to if you want to be a well-functioning human being throughout life because no matter how smart you are no matter how badass you are at cooking or coding or whatever it is you do if you can't relate to people well if you can't stop being a narcissistic dick face for 10 seconds then nobody's going to want to work with you nobody's going to want to hang out with you nobody's going to want to date you people tend to hate the self-awareness advice because self-awareness it's such an it's such an ethereal thing it's it's very abstract you can't just like go take self-awareness lessons there's not like a self-awareness coach hanging out on every street corner self-awareness it's a very personal thing it's something that you literally have to sit and do yourself there are all sorts of cool tools that you can use to build self-awareness you can meditate you can journal you can hire a therapist you can talk to a family member and ask them hey in what ways am i a [ __ ] face and then actually listen to them and take it to heart but mostly developing self-awareness is is a constant skill and practice of simply questioning your own thoughts and feelings asking yourself why am i so angry in this moment should i be what could i have done better is that problem my fault is it my responsibility by default we tend not to ask these questions they are mental habits that we have to build within ourselves if you want to learn more about self-awareness i have a number of articles on the website you could check out a link in the description or just go to markmanson.net self-dash awareness [ __ ] all right trait number two and this one might surprise a few of you i think it's risk tolerance see everything in life is a trade-off there's no such thing as a free launch you know we all learn that in economics class so if everything in life is a trade-off that kind of implies that everything has a little bit of a risk to it every career you pursue you have to give up other opportunities every person you get to know or hang out with you have to give up opportunities to know and hang out with other people any skill you invest in any practice you take on any vacation or relaxation you are always giving something up even if you're not doing anything even if you're playing it safe and staying in the same job and living in the same place for 20 30 40 years there's a risk to that of investing too much in one job or one place or one group of people so everything has an associated risk even if we aren't particularly aware of it now with that in mind the way i see life or i guess being successful in life is finding asymmetrical trade-offs where there is a lot of reward for a small or modest amount of risk now the trick is is being willing to take those risks because most people as soon as they're aware that they're taking a risk they [ __ ] chicken out and they run home and play minecraft a simple example of this is talking to somebody you're attracted to to me this is like the best risk reward ratio that you're ever going to find in your life like let's say that you are hanging out in a bookstore and you just see a smoking hottie across the way now the best thing that can happen is you go talk to him or her you totally hit it off you have an awesome relationship very loving very healing very transformative you spend years together have a [ __ ] wonderful time and becomes one of the most important experiences of your life the downside is you might make an ass out of yourself for like 10 or 15 seconds that's pretty good risk reward if you ask me instead of risk tolerance perhaps what i'm really saying is it's a tolerance for failure and a tolerance for embarrassment all right trait number three skepticism we live in the 21st century in case you didn't notice there's a lot of [ __ ] out there a lot of [ __ ] on this website a lot of [ __ ] on other websites most of what you're seeing most of the time is probably [ __ ] some shade of [ __ ] some bullshit's a little browner than others but everything's got a certain tinge of bullshittiness to it we're all aware of this in the abstract but i think very few of us are aware of it from minute to minute with every video we watch every article we read every person we follow on twitter or instagram or whatever in this day and age skepticism has to be your default it has to be your starting point you have to assume it's [ __ ] until proven true and you have to live and die by evidence evidence and clear rational thinking now a lot of people hear this message and i've been preaching this for years on my website and in my books a lot of people hear this message and they're like yeah skepticism yeah [ __ ] the establishment [ __ ] traditions yeah check out this conspiracy theory i found out and they don't get it it's not about disbelieving what most people believe it's also disbelieving the [ __ ] that most people don't believe too because that's also probably [ __ ] i'm consistently amazed at the amount of people who have a raging sense of skepticism when it comes to say mainstream news or newspaper articles or whatever things politicians say but then as soon as you get like some crank with a tin foil hat in his mom's basement telling you the moon landing was fake and the earth is flat it's like all skepticism goes out the window they're like oh yeah that that sounds about right your skepticism needs to be constant it needs to be a persistent practice every video of mine that you watch you should be asking yourself in what ways could he be wrong is he full of [ __ ] maybe maybe not the tricky thing with skepticism is that it's not being anti-something it's being neither it's like these people might have part of it correct but not all of it and these people also have part of it correct but not all of it and you know what i'm not an expert so i'm not gonna decide who knows what or who's completely correct i'm gonna live with uncertainty and [ __ ] that's probably a better word for this trade being able to live with uncertainty skill number four compassion i know it's touchy-feely and we don't like touchy-feely things you know we like to be hard [ __ ] stay hard [ __ ] but you need compassion in this world because look i'm gonna tell you something we're all [ __ ] up all of us we're all fuck-ups you you're a fuck-up i'm a fuck-up the the [ __ ] the guy who did the lighting in here is the [ __ ] up spoiler i did my own lighting the guy who delivered my pizza as a [ __ ] up like everybody's a [ __ ] up all of us we all [ __ ] up all the time most of those [ __ ] ups we need to be willing to to empathize and to see past the [ __ ] up to understand like okay yeah that guy was trying there's a thing that i believe very strongly called hanlon's razor which says never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance or stupidity and the truth is is that most of us are pretty ignorant and stupid most the time most of the evil in the world it's really just people thinking that they're doing good whenever i see a situation that really upsets me or somebody who does something incredibly incompetent i try to ask myself in what way do they think they're doing good and most of the time it's in a way that i can i can relate to that i can empathize with it's not the pizza guy's fault that he tripped on the curb coming in like i'm [ __ ] clumsy dumbass too [ __ ] happens and we're all turds in this swirling world this is the reason that i preach against the the you know you can be great and amazing and everybody's a special [ __ ] snowflake bra like i i don't believe that because i think it creates false expectations that certain people should be the way we expect them to be which by the way ties into the harsh truth of the day people are [ __ ] we're we're all [ __ ] everybody we suck i mean if you look at history and psychology and sociology politics we [ __ ] suck like we are terrible creatures and that's okay that's why we should love each other that's why we should take care of each other because [ __ ] we need it and finally the last skill skill number five i would say patience there's a lot of research showing that our attention span is dwindling we're becoming worse at delaying gratification we're becoming more impulsive more demanding and i just think as always the tortoise wins the race is the people who are who have the longest time horizon are ultimately going to make the best decisions and that's a difficult skill to cultivate within yourself is that patience to wait through the [ __ ] storm to wait through the drama to understand hey this might suck now but in five years from now it's gonna pay off and be willing to wait that five years that's gold man if you can if you can find that within yourself and harness it you're gonna be ahead of 90 of the crowd because the crowd's impulsive the crowd does dumb [ __ ] because the crowd is [ __ ] people are [ __ ] and i guess this is why my motto and my work is is helping people to be less awful the only thing that makes us less awful is that patience is that compassion is that risk tolerance that ability to accept failure the ability to accept uncertainty and that self-awareness to know when we're doing a good job and not and my chin is pretty [ __ ] chiseled if you didn't notice all right that's it for me guys be sure to like this video subscribe and uh in the comment section if you think i missed a trait that is hugely important in life put in the comments tell me i'm wrong and i'll try to accept it we'll see

Channel: Mark Manson

Views: 289,324

Keywords: the best personal traits, mark manson, markmanson, what to do with my life, life purpose, motivation, career advice, self knowledge, self development, self improvement, self improvement motivation, self improvement tips, self development videos, life choices, life advice, markmanson.net, blog, youtuber, opinions, social media, education, self awareness, personalitytest, personality, bigfive, the best personality type, the best perosnality type, The best peronal traits

Id: kDqQGogavmY

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021