Mark Manson

Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another.

— Mark Manson

The fear of failure never goes away. In many ways, you could argue that success multiplies the opportunities for failure. It's just more of an argument for becoming more comfortable with it.

— Mark Manson

Happiness is not something you achieve. It's not something you do or someplace you get to. Happiness is something you inhabit.

— Mark Manson

Like anything worth doing in life, happiness takes time and patience and consistency.

— Mark Manson

Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us.

— Mark Manson

If everybody just stops caring about politics, we're going to lose the reins on our government.

— Mark Manson

One of the problems of modern society, or the post-Internet age, is that there are so many things bombarding us that we could care about. I think it's more important than ever to really get clear and focus on what's worth caring about and what's just noise or distraction.

— Mark Manson

I think people who become compulsive about fitness or eating right, a lot of the time it's out of fear that they're going to lose control or that they're not good enough, so I think anything done out of fear or motivated by fear is often unhealthy.

— Mark Manson

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

— Mark Manson

When most people set out to change their lives, they often focus on all the external stuff, like a new job or a new location or new friends or a new romantic prospects and on and on. The reality is that changing your life starts with changing the way you see everything in your life.

— Mark Manson

Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.

— Mark Manson

“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the [Disappointment Panda] said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”

— Mark Manson

Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.

— Mark Manson

I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory.Who you are is defined by what you're willing to struggle for. […] Our struggles determine our successes.

— Mark Manson

To become truly great at something, you have to dedicate shit-tons of time and energy to it. […] The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so […] because they're obsessed with improvement.

— Mark Manson

Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems.

— Mark Manson

A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve, and that their life won’t matter.This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.

— Mark Manson

We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?

— Mark Manson

Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect.

— Mark Manson

The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information.It’s far more helpful to assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.

— Mark Manson

Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable.Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate and controllable.

— Mark Manson

This, in a nutshell, is what “self-improvement” is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.

— Mark Manson

A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.

— Mark Manson

You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else.It really is that simple. It’s just isn’t easy.

— Mark Manson

Certainty is the enemy of growth.

— Mark Manson

For individuals to feel justified in doing horrible things to other people, they must feel an unwavering certainty in their own righteousness, in their own beliefs and deservedness. Racists do racist things because they’re certain about their genetic superiority. Religious fanatics blow themselves up and murder dozens of people because they’re certain of their place in heaven as martyrs.

— Mark Manson

Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.

— Mark Manson

Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.

— Mark Manson

Our values are imperfect and incomplete, and to assume that they are perfect and complete is to put us in a dangerously dogmatic mindset that breeds entitlement and avoids responsibility.

— Mark Manson

Next time you’re at a swanky cocktail party and you want to impress somebody, try dropping Manson’s law of avoidance on them:\tThe more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

— Mark Manson

As a general rule, we’re all the world’s worst observers of ourselves.

— Mark Manson

I try to live with few rules, but one that I’ve adopted over the years is this: if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

— Mark Manson

Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.

— Mark Manson

The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.

— Mark Manson

Entitled people who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as victims, eventually someone will come along and save them, and they will receive the love they’ve always wanted.

— Mark Manson

For victims, the hardest thing to do in the world is to hold themselves accountable for their problems. They’ve spent their whole life believing that others are responsible for their fate. That first step of taking responsibility for themselves is often terrifying.

— Mark Manson

Without conflict, there can be no trust. Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man.

— Mark Manson

Without acknowledging the ever-present gaze of death, the superficial will appear important, and the important will appear superficial.

— Mark Manson

Real happiness comes from discovering a sense of importance in one's actions and in one's life.

— Mark Manson

[The author has been writing of people striving for “this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves”]And entitlement strips this away from us. The gravity of entitlement sucks all attention inward, toward ourselves, causing us to feel as though we are at the center of all of the problems in the universe, that we are the one suffering all of the injustices, that we are the one who deserves greatness over all others.

— Mark Manson

As alluring as it is, entitlement isolates us. Our curiosity and excitement for the world turns in upon itself and reflects our own biases and projections onto every person we meet and every event we experience. This feels sexy and enticing and may feel good for a while and sells a lot of tickets, but it’s spiritual poison.

— Mark Manson

People hold on to arbitrary certainties and try to enforce them on others, often violently, in the name of some made-up righteous cause.

— Mark Manson

Our culture today confuses great attention and great success, assuming them to be the same thing. But they are not.

— Mark Manson

You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate enough to have lived.

— Mark Manson

True love - that is, deep, abiding love that is impervious to emotional whims or fancy - is a choice. It's a constant commitment to a person regardless of the present circumstances.

— Mark Manson

Everything has an opportunity cost, and the big things we want in life - like happiness and healthy relationships and wealth - they all have big opportunity costs.

— Mark Manson