If the title of Mark Manson’s first book didn’t catch your eye, then talk about the advice contained in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck would have.
Here was a self-help book full of unconventional and candid advice that turned orthodox guidance and recommendations for “living a happy life” on their ear. Get comfortable, Manson suggested, with challenging traditional ideas about positivity; embrace life’s struggles, accept its limitations and then decide where to invest your time and energy.
The Texan declared: “In life, our fucks must be spent on something. There really is no such thing as not giving a fuck. The question is simply how we each choose to allot our fucks.”
Unsurprisingly, his brand of frank and sweary advice captured the zeitgeist, propelling Manson to authorial stratosphere: he was The New York Times’s number one bestselling author, as well as being number one in 14 different countries with translations into more than 50 languages and one of the largest personal growth websites in the world.
Three years later, in 2019, he was back with equally confronting advice in Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope. Once again, Manson went for the counterintuitive approach suggesting that while hope can be a driving force, it can lead to disappointment so it’s best to have a more realistic understanding that’s grounded in reality.
Now Manson’s bringing his “no bullshit” philosophy to Auckland. He talked with Sarah Catherall about what audiences can expect.
What are some of the key things you want to talk about on your tour?
This tour is all about the importance and necessity of being realistic in the social media age and intentionally choosing the things that we’re willing to struggle for and the challenges that we want in our life, because if we don’t consciously choose that for ourselves, then we will get swept away in doomscrolling.
What are your tips around the use of social media?
Make sure you’re in control of your social media experience and it isn’t in control of you. When I casually consume content on social media, I try to be absolutely merciless in terms of what I allow into my feeds.
I’m conscious of who I’m following, what I’m engaging with, understanding that if I see something that I hate or dislike or that upsets me, sharing it or commenting on it sends the wrong signal to the platform. If you share something that you think is despicable, you’re just signalling to the platform that you want to see more of it.
The one app I’d love people to delete from their phones is TikTok, because the ratio of dopamine to death is worst in that format than any other. The consumption of quick hit short-form dopamine field video is probably like the Snickers bar and Coca-Cola of an information diet.
You write that meaningful change can be uncomfortable. In what ways have you walked the talk?
More than two years ago, I stopped drinking to try to lose some weight and it was initially weird, and a little bit uncomfortable because I was a big party guy, the last one to leave the dance floor, and a lot of my identity was around that. But as the months went on without drinking, I couldn’t deny how much better other areas of my life were getting and it started to really make me question a lot of my prior beliefs and assumptions. I underestimated the all-around positive impact that it would have in other areas of my life, everything from quality of sleep to day-to-day mood and happiness, to my energy and focus. I feel great.
You’ve written a lot about love, relationships and dating – one of your popular online courses is on healthy dating. What’s your view on online dating and how it affects our intimate relationships?
It is backfiring massively. The problem is twofold. One is, we’re bad at knowing what will make us happy. And that applies to partners as well.
Everybody has an idea of the sort of partner they want to be with. But nine times out of 10, the person that you are actually happy with is not who you thought it was going to be, or they’re different to what you thought they were going to be. The apps treat dating like ordering food – do you feel like a tall blonde or are you looking for somebody a little bit more artsy? It doesn’t work that way and it’s sorting for the wrong things.
The other issue is that the apps offer a perception of so much opportunity. You get on an app and they are very much designed to make you feel like there’s always 10 more people waiting to be matched with. So you never invest in the person that you’re talking to or you never invest in the person you’re meeting. As soon as anything uncomfortable comes up, or anything you even slightly don’t like about them, you’re like: “Ah, no, I’m going to go and meet someone else.”
If you talk to people of older generations, it’s crazy how many stories you hear of people who are like, “Yeah, I didn’t really like him on our first date.” Or “Yeah, she was a friend of a friend and, you know, we didn’t really get along at first or I never really thought of her that way.” And then a month or two later, they end up on a date. People need to grow on each other sometimes. I just feel we’ve removed any room for that to happen.
You recently wrote that the trick to self-improvement is to make plenty of mistakes but never make the same one twice. And the most useful trait you can train within yourself is to stop seeing failure as a bad thing. Can you expand on this?
Nobody likes to fail. It’s a very unenjoyable experience to mess up or do something poorly, so that’s understandable. But most of us have been brought up in an education system that teaches us that to do something poorly is unacceptable and it’s shameful and you should be embarrassed about it.
But it’s the ability to fail at something that actually teaches you the most about it and gives you some of the best ideas and helps you adapt quicker than other people. Often an ability and a willingness to take calculated risks is hugely advantageous. And part of being willing to take calculated risks is the willingness to fail.
What are you thinking about at the moment? What’s up next?
I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and how it relates to mental health. I’m currently working on a series of documentary-style YouTube videos about mental health in different countries which will be posted on my channel.
We pulled up global mental health data for a bunch of different things: what’s the most anxious country in the world? What’s the most depressed country in the world? What’s the most alcoholic country in the world? The list goes on and on.
And then I’m travelling to those countries and interviewing psychologists in those countries and trying to understand: what is it about that country’s culture and history and economics and political situation that has made them that way? And it’s been really, really fascinating.
So, what country is the most anxious, and which is the most alcoholic?
The most alcoholic country in the world is Hungary. It took a little bit of digging but it turns out that Hungary spent most of the last 500 years being occupied by other countries and one of the ways that they rebelled involved alcohol. So alcohol very much became part of the national identity.
The most anxious country in the world is Portugal, which surprises most people, including myself. Portugal is the most anxious country in terms of the percentage of population diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Portugal, interestingly, has been number one in the world for decades so it’s not a recent political thing.
New Zealand had a very high anxiety rate for a while in the global rankings and then it dropped.
In 2021, you came to New Zealand and worked with a film crew to shoot a documentary about you and your book. What was that like?
Yes, the film was shot down there with GFC Films in Auckland (they bought the film rights to my book). It was during the crazy pandemic time. My wife and I stayed in Auckland for six months and it was absolutely wonderful. Your country is so beautiful. People are so friendly and laid back. I love New Zealand and I’m excited to do my first event there soon.
