- We all wanna get better in life, but what if trying to get better actually makes us feel worse? The topic of today's episode
is an interesting one and it's actually brought
up by you, the listeners. We sourced questions from you all and we picked up a few that
all fell under a similar theme. What do you do when trying
to improve your life makes you feel worse? In the past, I've written
about this concept and I call it the
self-improvement paradox, and it shows up in all sorts
of different situations. Our first reader question is
gonna ask about situations where we feel try-hard or where the harder we
try to do something, the worse at it we seem to get. The next question dives into how people use goal setting as a way to maybe avoid their problems rather than actually solve their problems. And the last question
comes at me a little bit and challenges my take on self-esteem and how I present it in "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", and I hate to say it, Drew, but I think this reader has a point. I think I might've been
wrong about something. I know that's never happened before in the history of my career. (Drew chuckling) But today might be the first time. A reminder to you all, if you wanna submit questions, go to markmanson.net/questions. Send in an audio or short
video of your question and if it's good enough, if Drew deems it worthy of my attention, we might just answer it on a podcast. So let's get into it. - [Announcer] Wait, are you allowed to say fuck in your podcast intro? Oh fuck, I just did. This is "The Subtle Art of
Not Giving a Fuck Podcast" with your host, Mark Manson. (upbeat rocky music) - All right, the first question comes from a listener named James and he is concerned about being try-hard. - Oh hi, Mark. So my question to you and the pod has to do with the topic
of self-improvement. A big thing I see holding people back from improving themselves, for example, in the arena of social skills, is this belief that doing so is try-hard, like by deciding to improve themselves, they're admitting defeat as if they're not good enough as they are. So what do you say to the people who see conscious self-improvement as an admission of personal inadequacy? Like, what's the reframe here? Thanks. - This is a really good question, Drew, because as I've noted before, especially with the
backwards law stuff there, there does seem to be a sub
genre of personal development that the harder you try at it,
seemingly the worse you get. Where I've identified
that this tends to happen is around social or
emotional issues, you know, if you're trying to be
liked by a bunch of people, that's gonna cause you to behave in ways that makes you less likable. If you're trying to be happy all the time, you're gonna think and be
preoccupied in such ways that you are less likely
to be happy all the time. And so, I do think this
is a legitimate concern, although the sense I get
from the way James phrases it is that the core issue here is actually a lot of times ego, right? Like, if we're constantly
worried about coming across as somebody who is desperate
to be good at something or admitting that
they're bad at something, we're essentially gonna
just prevent ourselves from changing in the first place. I mean, this kind of comes back
to personal development 101, which is the number one reason that people don't
ultimately change or grow is because their ego prevents them from admitting that they
need to change and grow. And I think that ego
stems from a preoccupation of how they may appear to others or admitting that they're
fallible or flawed or have a problem in the first place. - Yeah, you see this in
a lot of different areas, and especially like I
think you've noted before, you know, when you were
giving dating advice to men and stuff like that, like, oh God, if you would admit that you
were terrible with women, you couldn't get any man
to admit that, right? - That'd be an interesting
experiment actually. Just have dudes go into a bar and be like, "I'm terrible with
girls, what's your name?" (both chuckling) See how that turns out. - There's worse pickup
lines, I don't know. - Yeah, yeah, there are worse
pickup lines, that's for sure. But yeah, I think a lot of the resistance that people have is around
social stigma, you know, I know that I run into this
a lot with men in therapy. You know, a lot of men don't like to admit that they go to therapy or
that they wanna go to therapy. I know that I went to therapy
throughout much of my 20s and I didn't really tell anybody about it. I think I wrote an article
about it at one point, but everybody in my personal life, there was like not a
peep, it was lips sealed. So I understand there
is this weird resistance to trying to improve
certain areas of your life, your dating life, your
social skills, your sex life. It's taboo, there's a
weird social judgment that can be attached with it. Separate from that, I think there's also
a backwards law issue, which is that if you try
to control the outcome too much of a social or emotional problem, you actually remove yourself from it. Paradoxically, sometimes the best way to improve at something is to stop trying to improve at it, right? It's like if you stop trying to be happy, then that's actually
when you become happy. If you stop trying to
make somebody like you, that's actually when
they start liking you. And I think it's just, it's useful to be aware of those contexts and try to be aware of when you're being, quote, unquote, try-hard, but also don't let the stigma
of being try-hard at something stop you from trying. - Yeah, that was actually one thing I was gonna ask you about was, how do you think this applies, you know, your idea of going from bad
to okay and okay to great. Is there a time and a place to be try-hard and to experiment? Like, say you are somebody who's just terrible in social situations and you wanna improve that and so you go out and you
try new conversation topics or styles of humor, or you talk to people you
wouldn't normally talk to, that's gonna come off as try-hard and it's probably gonna suck
and be painful, to some extent, this kind of pain period
you've talked about before. But you're also gonna learn a lot if you take the right attitude towards it. So do you think there are situations in which being try-hard is okay? - I think it is, it's definitely better
than doing nothing at all. And I do think there are situations where you kind of have to go through a try-hard phase to learn
how to stop being try hard. There's this popular two by two grid where it says any skill
that you wanna develop, you start at unconscious incompetence, basically, you're bad at it and you don't even realize
how bad at it you are. Step two is conscious incompetence, which is you start to understand all the ways you're bad at something. Step three is conscious competence, which is you get good at it, but you still have to like really think about it and focus on it. And then step four is
unconscious competence. And I think in particular, when it comes to like social
skills or social graces, people just kind of expect you to be at step four all the time. And if you're not at step four, if you're not a naturally
charismatic and social person, you need to go through that
painful process of like, okay, being bad at it, but being conscious of
what you're working on. And then once you do that for a while, you can kind of figure out
where you're trying too hard or where you're coming on too strong, maybe you're being needy, looking
for reactions from people, you can back off a little bit. Eventually, you find that right balance in your unconscious competence, you have good social skills, but it still takes a
lot of effort and focus, which can still be a little bit try-hard, but then from there you move
into unconscious competence. So I think, in a lot of context, being try-hard is just a necessary step to not being terrible at something. Like, I'd rather be try-hard
than just not try at all. - Ah, okay. Well, what is it between like the social and emotional
things that we try to improve and there's like a stigma
around that versus other things, say you're gonna build a business or get in shape or whatever, people don't judge you so much for that. What is it in particular, do you think, that is the difference between those two and the stigma related to them? - That's a really good question. The only thing that comes to mind is that it is things that are
more emotional in nature, we tend to judge harsher. So, like, let's say I decide
to sell a bunch of T-shirts or something and nobody buys
them, nobody really cares. So nobody's gonna be like,
"Oh man, Mark's so try-hard." It's like, whatever, it doesn't matter. Whereas if I come on here one day and just make a complete ass
outta myself, let's say I just, we have a 45 minute podcast episode that is literally just nothing but me begging to be liked and
sobbing into the microphone and crying about how
nobody appreciates me. - Stay tuned everybody. - Yeah, yeah, right?
(Drew chuckles) Next time on, "The Subtle Art
of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast". The emotional nature of that is jarring, it makes people uncomfortable,
and I think people, anything that makes people
emotionally uncomfortable, they tend to judge much more harshly. And so, if we're interacting with somebody who is extremely insecure and being driven by that insecurity, it makes us feel that
insecurity a little bit and we like, we wanna get away from that. - Okay, yeah, and possibly too, it spotlights our own
insecurities as well, so yeah. - I think this is also a reason why insecure people tend to
attract each other, right? So it's like the only person that a try-hard, insecure
person's gonna appeal to is another try-hard insecure person. And they're gonna be like, "Oh my God, we're like, we're soulmates." And then that's just how
relationships go wrong. - James also gets extra credit for being the first one
to reference "The Room". He started out with the, "Oh, hi, Mark." I don't know if you caught that. - The what? Referenced what?
- "The Room", the movie, "The Room", you
know "The Room", don't you? Do you not know the movie "The Room"? - I don't know, man. - Do you not know? It's considered to be one of
the worst movies ever made. "Oh, hi Mark." Are you serious? You
don't know "The Room"? - (chuckling) You know what? - Wow. - This is like.
- Okay, all right. - This is like the third or fourth time somebody has tried to bring
up this reference with me, every single time, they
are just as disappointed as you are right now. - Oh man, that is disappointing, oh. - Maybe that's my homework this week is I need to go watch "The Room" and finally understand this reference that people keep trying to foist upon me. - It's so bad, you would love it. - You're being try-hard right now, Drew, I don't get the reference. - Okay, all right, it's reaching, all right, we'll just go with it. - We've got a great
juxtaposition of questions here. James' question is very
representative of people who are like afraid to
try to improve themselves. They probably err too far
on the side of complacency. The next question comes from Abby and she asked the flip side of that where, is there such a thing as trying too hard to improve yourself? So let's listen to that. - If I was to ask you one
question, it would be this, where is the middle ground between accepting that you're fucked up and also not being okay
with fear convincing you to be comfortable? Because, to me, it seems like this weird teeter-totter between the two, where's the middle ground? Where do I continue to grow
but also still challenge myself and then also calm down
and enjoy the present. Like, it's sometimes really
infuriating for someone like me who's very goal-driven and wants
to constantly hit new goals to be okay with all of it. So what is the answer? - All right, Mark, can
I tack my question in? - Go for it. - I have an example. I tend to be pretty hard on
myself and I judge myself, especially for things like not
following through on things, quitting too early, giving up
too early, that sort of thing. I use that to kind of push myself, but it can also be very
damaging obviously too. But, recently, and I kind
of stopped and I thought, wait a second, is that actually true? Do I not follow through all the time? Do I give up too early? Has
that actually been true? Can I find examples where
this hasn't been true? I did find some solid examples in my life where that was actually true and it refuted this whole idea of me not being able to
follow through on things. And so, first of all, you know, I feel like I found that balance, so do you think there is like a balance you have to find between this? But second too, do you think
that all of those years of me feeling inadequate and
using that as motivation to go out and accomplish
all of these things, do you think that was,
I don't know, necessary? Or is there a better way to go about that? Or I don't know, how do you see that? - I definitely think there's
a better way to go about it. You know, I think what Abby is asking and kind of what you're asking as well is, when you're constantly driving
yourself to do something, where is there room for self-acceptance? Where is there room for
like, you know what? I don't need to accomplish
this to feel good about myself. I'm not a loser if I fail at this goal, there's nothing wrong with me if I'm not able to do all
the things that I wanna do. And I think this question of balance between self-acceptance
and self-improvement is really, really important because, on the surface,
they are contradictory. Like, by definition, to
try to improve yourself requires acknowledging something that you're not good enough at, like, something is flawed
or incomplete or suboptimal. And the definition of self-acceptance is recognizing that you don't necessarily have to improve anything
to be okay, to be happy, to be loved, you know, whatever verb you wanna throw in there. You know, my approach to this situation, one of the most profound
things I ever heard, I was on a meditation
retreat when I was in college and the Zen Master said, "You are perfect as you are
and you can always be better." And that blew my fucking mind and has stuck with me ever since. It's one of those classic zen paradoxes, that if you dig into it enough, you find a lot of profound truth. And the way I've come to interpret this is that you need both. If you only have, "You
are perfect as you are," that generally leads to complacency and narcissism, by the way. If you already think
you're fucking amazing at everything you do, you're
probably a narcissist. And if you are always focusing
on, "I can always be better," well, then, you probably drive yourself into a lot of insecure, hyperactive, overachieving, perfectionist type stuff. And neither of those places
are healthy on their own. But when you put 'em together of, like, I'm perfect as I am, but
I can also be better, there's some sort of balance that happens. And I think, generally, people start on one side of
that spectrum or the other. There are people who are probably a little bit too complacent and a little bit too accepting
of their circumstances. Maybe they don't even think they're accepting of their circumstances. Like, they just blame everybody
else for their problems. So, in a sense, they are kind of accepting
their circumstances. And then, there are people who constantly feel like
they need to do something, change something, achieve something, accomplish something to, I guess, prove their own value to themselves. And I think for the latter people, the trick is to teach yourself, as it sounds like you have recently, teach yourself to be fine with
not accomplishing everything, not necessarily achieving everything, maybe occasionally not even having a goal. And for the former people, the challenge is to get them
to push themselves and to, you know, it's what we talked about with the first question
is acknowledging like, hey, I'm kind of screwed
up, I need to improve, I need to do this, let's get it done. I also think, ultimately, you know, what matters most is the
motivation behind each one. Are you accepting yourself because you're avoiding
the problems in your life? Well, then, that's probably a kind of a toxic self-acceptance. Are you constantly trying
to improve yourself or achieve things or chase after goals because you're running away
from a bunch of emotional shit that you don't wanna deal with? Well, then, that's probably a toxic form of self-improvement. I think, ideally, not only
do you wanna have both, but they need to be motivated
by the right thing, you know? The self-acceptance really
needs to be motivated by, hey, I'm a flawed human being and that's fine and I'm
still a great person and I've still done a lot of great things and I still like myself. And the pursuit of self-improvement also needs to be motivated
by the right thing, it can't be motivated by, well, if I just do this
then people will respect me. Or if I just accomplish
that, then I can be happy 'cause that never works, that you're kind of just
digging the hole even further. Strangely, this really turns into a discussion of self-esteem. Not only do you need both self-acceptance and self-improvement, but there needs to be
a healthy self-esteem underlying both of them, otherwise, both will fuck
you up in various ways. - Well, I would just say that I think the balance that I found was very much the things that
I could point to as evidence for actually being okay with myself and following through on those things, those things were things
that were important to me, and a lot of things I don't
follow through on were, like you just mentioned, I was, you know, trying to prove myself to other
people or whatever it was. And the balance and the
acceptance that I found was I'm okay not having done those things and impressing other people or proving myself to other people, I'm okay with that. The things I have
accomplished feel good to me and that's where I found it anyway. - Yeah, I mean, I would
say the final boss for you is probably being okay
without accomplishing things that are even important to you. Like, really fucking
something up significant and then learning to be okay with that, like the self-forgiveness. That's the final form of this
beast that you're confronting. - That's a tall mountain to climb for me. - (chuckles) You know, I've always been very driven
and done a lot of goals, but my toxicity was more on
the self-acceptance side. I've definitely wrestled with
a compensatory narcissism throughout my life, kind of convincing myself
my shit doesn't stink. And I think that's why my
work is so focused on failure, being wrong, being rejected
because, when I was young, my brain just kind of
filtered those things out of my reality to protect itself. It is very therapeutic for me to remind myself of those things. Whereas, as you said, you self-flagellate, even when probably nothing is
even wrong in the first place. - Yeah, and do you think, like, is it okay to use those kinds of examples? Where I'm at right now anyway is that like I'm using that as evidence, I'm proud of the things that I've done and that's good to me. I think that's somewhat healthy, right? Like you said, you shouldn't be thinking your shit doesn't stink if you
haven't done anything, right? Like, so there's a balance
there too, you know? - You know, so a big
component of self-esteem is simply accumulating evidence that you have done good and
valuable things in the world. That said, I do think there's
also a component of it, which I think sometimes is
referred to as self-compassion, which is accepting and loving yourself, even in the moments where you
haven't done anything good, where you have actually
failed and screwed up. I think that's a component that also needs to be there as well. But that one is super hard. Looking back and kind of
noting all the good things you've done throughout your life, I think that's a really good
exercise and it's important, but I think the harder exercise is looking at the low
points and the failures and being like, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, I'm okay. - I think that's, yeah, that's what I kind of came to was that, there's a lot more of
those examples actually. (Mark chuckling) Just because, you know,
just statistics, you know? Probabilities, you're
gonna try a lot of things and most of them aren't gonna work out. And that's what I think I became more accepting of, like.
- Yeah. This ties in pretty well
with the third question here, which is about self-esteem, and it's actually a criticism
of my take on self-esteem in "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck". So this is Amy, let's listen in. - Hi, my name is Amy Jenkins, I just got the book, "The
Subtle Art of Not Giving an F" and have a couple of questions. In chapter three, you give an example of a man you called Jimmy, who you imply had problems because his self-esteem was too high. You further blame high self-esteem on participation certificates
and grade inflation. I think your logic is
flawed in drawing a line from high self-esteem to
producing people like Jimmy. I think your angle is wrong, it sounds like you are
blaming high self-esteem. And I really think you want to or should blame the overreaction from places like schools and
making harmful decisions. I contend that there are many more people with devastating low self-esteem. They deserve to know they
are a worthy human being and that it is a mental health
issue that can be treated. The researchers in the '70s should be praised for their findings, researchers and mental
health professionals 40 years later still stand behind that. So I have two questions. One, would you be willing
to dig into the research to either back up or
revise your assertions that grade inflation and
participation certificates cost too much self-esteem, which then cause people
like Jimmy to exist? And two, would you be willing to consider making it clear in future writings and address past publications that high self-esteem is a
critical element of good health? Thanks. - Amy, coming in hot. - Coming at it. - (chuckling) Just throwing bombs. The first thing I'll say about this is, so one of the things that I think readers love about my books is that I have this kind of
flippant and ridiculous tone, you know, there's a lot of
humor, there's a lot of sarcasm. I'm a little bit over the top and I think readers
really appreciate that. But the problem is, is that
when you come upon a subject like self-esteem that is very
nuanced, the nuance gets lost. And this is actually something, I mean, Drew, you and I have
talked about this for years with all my articles and newsletters and books and everything, like, there's a trade off between
entertaining and informing. Every author is somewhere
on that continuum, and I'm definitely probably
more on the entertainment side than a lot of authors,
especially academic authors. And that's fine, we all
have our own roles to play. All that said, I think Amy has a point. I did play a little bit fast and loose with the self-esteem stuff in
Chapter three of "Subtle Art". So I'd like to use the next few minutes to kind of break down my actual position with a little bit more nuance, explain the research a little bit better, and I guess clarify my
position beyond, you know, some snarky jokes about
participation trophies and a story about my old friend Jimmy. So self-esteem was a term
coined by Nathaniel Branden, I think in the late '50s or early '60s. And I think the original
definition of self-esteem is really solid and
really, really important, which is basically
self-esteem is a very deep and nuanced concept of essentially the quality of a person's
relationship with themself. And the quality of your
relationship with yourself is gonna have a massive
impact on everything you do and every other relationship
you have in life. The problem is, how do you measure that
relationship with yourself? What you often find in psychology is that psychologists will come up with a really good concept or construct, and then they'll proceed to
measure it like fucking shit, like it gets so watered
down in their surveys and in various studies that it kind of becomes
like a caricature of itself. And the problem is, is that, early on, psychologists came up with a
lot of inventories and surveys that were very surface level. There's always a question of, how accurately does the data collected map to the concept as it
was originally conceived? And in my opinion, it did
not not map very well. Psychology eventually figured this out, in fact, I think in the
late '90s or early 2000s, a famous psychologist named Roy Baumeister did some pretty significant studies where he actually went to
maximum security prisons and measured the self-esteem
among the inmates there. And not only did he find that inmates of maximum security prisons had high levels of self-esteem, but the most violent
and horrible criminals tended to have the
highest levels of anybody. So this raised a lot of questions, like are we measuring self-esteem or are we measuring narcissism? And actually, what is the difference between self-esteem and narcissism? That's actually a very nuanced and difficult question to answer. So I do think the self-esteem question and the measurement of it has gotten better over
the past couple decades. I still think it's an important concept and has significant effects on people's mental health and happiness. But the way it has been measured and implemented throughout
history is spotty at best. Now, in "Subtle Art", I
actually make the point that the best way to measure self-esteem is not asking how people feel about the good things about themselves, the most accurate way to measure it is to ask people how they feel about the bad parts about themselves. Somebody with a high self-esteem will look at the worst
aspects of themselves and they will say, "You know what? I'm not so great at this and
I screwed up here and there, that's okay, I'm a good
person, I tried my best, I'm gonna do better next time," yada-yada. Whereas a person with low self-esteem is either going to have
absolutely horrible relationship with the worst aspects of themselves, or if they're narcissistic, they are not even gonna acknowledge that they have any bad
aspects of themselves at all. So to me, that's a much more effective way of measuring and approaching the concept. And there have been some
researchers in the last 10 years, who have taken that approach
towards self-esteem, and in my opinion, it's a much
better way to go about it. So while Amy is correct that I did kind of just
shit all over self-esteem without giving it a nuanced treatment, I do stand by the conclusion
I made in the book. - I don't know, I think
the two from the research since Roy Baumeister did all that stuff in the late 90s, early 2000s, there's been more research, obviously, it's better
research, longitudinal stuff. What they've also found though, too, is that the effect sizes that self-esteem has
on all these outcomes, so the impact it has on whatever
outcome you're measuring, is fairly small, usually,
in the eight to 10% range. And it's about exactly the same as a lot of other measures
that we've looked at too. So things like self-efficacy,
positive emotions, your attachment security, whether or not you have a growth mindset, all of these things are about equal and contributing to a lot
of these life outcomes, you know, whether it's
school, work, income, all of that stuff, they're
all about the same. So I think not only is kind of the participation trophy trope a little bit overblown, I think self-esteem itself might be a little bit overblown too. - Yeah, and that wouldn't
surprise me, because, and I guess this would be
the second criticism I have, and, again, this kind
of got lost in the book because the book really glossed over it, but self-esteem really took a hold of policy makers in the
'70s and '80s in a way that no other psychological
concept had in the past, and I kind of think maybe growth mindset has took a similar hold in education, but, you know, self-esteem
really was everywhere. And it was pitched by a lot of consultants and psychologists at the time as a little bit of a cure all
for a lot of society's ills. And it seemed like an easy
implementable solution, I guess, to a lot of policy
makers and politicians, and so they bought into it wholesale. So it's just a classic case
of something being oversold. It is important, it matters
and it is a good concept and it absolutely should be studied and we should work to
improve our self-esteem as much as possible. But I just think it was
oversold a little bit, and to Amy's point that psychologists still research it today
and stand by it today, that's absolutely true. There are also a lot of psychologists who think it's overblown bullshit and are very critical of it. So like many things in
science, it is debated. There's new data coming in all the time, it's complicated, and obviously, when you're writing a fuck book, you don't necessarily get into
the nuances of that debate. - A fuck book.
(Mark chuckling) Well, I think too though, Mark, part of the overblown
nature of self-esteem is probably an artifact of the fact that, in the United States,
we kind of obsess over feeling good about ourselves too, right? And so, I think it got a lot
of airtime because of that. Like, policymakers
probably grabbed onto that in the '70s and '80s because it's like, yeah, of course, we wanna
feel great about ourselves, so let's just run with it, right? - Yeah, that makes sense. But I do wanna bring this back around to the two previous questions 'cause I do think self-esteem is actually incredibly
relevant for both of those. And it kind of solves the paradox of self-improvement, right? Which is somebody with high self-esteem or somebody who is
forgiving of their own flaws or tolerant of their own mistakes, they are going to be much more
willing to appear try-hard, or, you know, screw up
in front of other people. And somebody with high self-esteem is also not going to
compulsively push themselves to accomplish goal after goal after goal. They're gonna be a little bit
more accommodating of like, you know what? I set this goal, I got halfway there, that's still good, I think it's fine. I do think self-esteem
is a critical component of these questions of, how do we choose to measure ourselves? Do we choose to measure
ourselves by our successes or do we choose to measure ourselves by our mistakes and embarrassments? And the truth of the matter is, I don't know how much we
should measure ourselves by any of those things. I think, at a certain point, there's like a fundamental
value to yourself that you have to find and
acknowledge and live with. That is what makes every other
pursuit a little bit easier. So the self-improvement paradox, you are perfect as you are
and you can always be better. Ultimately, you have to be okay with yourself under both conditions. That's the way, that's the way out of it. Sign up for the newsletter,
markmanson.net/newsletter. I send out a bunch of
life tips, questions, and exercises for people
every Monday morning. Yeah, be sure to leave a review,
subscribe to the podcast, tell me how handsome I am
because, man, my ego needs it, I'm sick of being try-hard, man, just lay it all out there
for me, let me lap it up. Till next time, folks. ♪ So you can throw me to the wolves ♪ ♪ Tomorrow I will come back ♪ ♪ Leader of the whole pack ♪ ♪ Beat me black and blue ♪ ♪ Every wound will shape me ♪ ♪ Every scar will build my throne ♪
