Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Mark Manson on Embracing Pain for Personal and Professional Growth | Human Behavior | YAPClassic
Fri, 21 Mar 2025
Mark Manson’s journey into the workforce started during a challenging time: the Great Recession of 2008. After struggling with various odd jobs, he shifted his focus to blogging and became a bestselling author. In this episode, Mark explores human behavior, the psychology behind success, and how the critical thinking needed to develop a growth mindset is key to navigating career and personal development in a rapidly changing world. In this episode, Hala and Mark will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:40) Mark Manson's Journey to Becoming a Blogger and Author (05:13) The Evolution and Challenges of Blogging (06:39) Key Takeaways from Mark Manson's New Book (09:43) Understanding Hope and the Uncomfortable Truth (14:09) The Thinking and Feeling Brain (20:18) Pain as a Currency of Our Values (22:14) The Concept of Anti-Fragility (30:37) Defining Adulthood and Real Freedom (39:35) Hope in Science and Technology Mark Manson is a three-time New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur. His books, including The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, have sold over 20 million copies in 75+ languages worldwide. He has also built a thriving online business, offering courses, podcasts, and one of the most popular self-improvement newsletters. Known for his brutal honesty and dry humor, Mark has established himself as a leading voice in the fields of mindset, self-improvement, and human psychology. Sponsored By: Shopify - youngandprofiting.co/shopify Open Phone - openphone.com/profiting Airbnb - airbnb.com/host Indeed - indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - robinhood.com/gold Factor - factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - aka.ms/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Positivity, Critical Thinking, Robert Greene, Chris Voss, Robert Cialdini.
Chapter 1: How did Mark Manson become a blogger and author?
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
For my guests who don't know you, I would like to get some color about your background. I read some of your blogs on career advice and you note that you're living out your dream job currently. And I say that with like air quotes because I know there's no such thing as 100% perfect job. So how did you end up becoming a blogger and an author?
Was that something you always wanted to do or did that sort of like fall into your lap?
It was kind of an accident. See, I graduated from college in the last crisis we had, which was the financial crisis in 2008. And there was like zero job market. And I kind of bounced around a few odd jobs. I lived on a friend's couch for a while. And I started doing freelance web design. And around the same time, I read Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek article.
which talked about building online businesses and automating them and how you could work four hours a week and go live and play in Argentina or whatever. I was like, hell yeah, I'm in. That sounds perfect. And so I spent the next couple of years trying to actually build e-commerce sites and affiliate marketing sites. And it turned out that like, I was kind of bad at it.
I'm not a natural salesman or marketer. But the funny thing was, was at the time, blogs were kind of like all the rage back then.
And so- When did you start?
I started blogging in 2008. And so if you wanted people to come to your website, if you wanted the rank on Google, if you wanted, there wasn't much sharing on social media back then.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Mark face in the blogging industry?
Yeah.
It was, you had to be blogging. You had to be posting articles and coming up with stuff. And so that's actually how I ended up blogging. Originally it was just to like promote these crappy affiliate sites I had. And it turned out I was much better at blogging than I was e-commerce.
Yeah.
And by 2011, 2012, it was blogging was all I was doing.
Yeah, you are such a good writer. So many people like really like your writing style because it's so different. It's like a breath of fresh air. It's like a little witty and cheeky. So props to you. I actually had a website as well. I had an entertainment news website from like 2010 to 2013. And I think that was like the height of blogging. But I couldn't monetize it. And so I shut that down.
And your blog is one of the only blogs, I think, that really has been able to monetize. You've got like a premium subscription. I know you also have a podcast, which is sort of like the audio version of a blog, in my opinion. So would you recommend like going, starting a blog or a podcast? Or do you think those things are saturated now?
I definitely think blogging is in a tough spot. I... What happened with blogging is just that all of the smaller and medium-sized websites, they either couldn't monetize anymore or they got eaten up by larger networks and large websites. So people went to Huffington Post or writing for Huffington Post or Business Insider or whatever.
So it's a tough spot to start and I don't want to discourage anybody from blogging but If you're looking to build a content business, blogging is probably one of the worst options right now.
I totally agree.
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Chapter 3: Why does Mark Manson believe everything was 'f***ed'?
Whereas you look out the window and everything's great and job market's best it's been in 50 years and economy's doing great and all the metrics in terms of life expectancy and health and education are all-time highs. Meanwhile, you go on Twitter and you would think that the apocalypse was happening. The book was... very much written to address that.
What is it about not just our culture today, but our generation that we get so worked up about things and trying to put those things in perspective.
And it's ironic because one of the things that I talked about in the book is that there's a little bit of a paradox where when things are great, you kind of have to make up problems to be upset about because it's by being upset about things that you give your life a sense of meaning or a sense of hope.
And when things are actually f***ed up, as they are right now, you don't have to go searching for a crisis. You don't have to go searching for problems. The problem's right there in front of you. So in a weird way, crises are almost psychologically easier for us to bear because we know exactly what to hope for.
Yeah. So it's almost like when things are going so great, we end up making it worse for ourselves because we imagine things to be so bad or we make things that we wouldn't otherwise think are bad just to like kind of satisfy our need to have a crisis and our need to kind of like hope for something. So tell us what the definition of hope is in your opinion. Like how do you define hope?
I define hope as some sort of vision of the future that we believe will be better. There are a couple of things that are interesting about, I guess, that definition of hope. One is just simply that if we don't have some vision of our future that is better, that's when we fall into depression or despair.
It's one of the things I talk about in chapter one is that the opposite of happiness is not sadness or anger. The opposite of happiness is hopelessness, is the sense that Nothing we do matters. Nothing that we do will affect any sorts of change.
But the other thing about that vision of a better future is that paradoxically that it's easier to have hope when times are bad and it's more difficult to find hope when things are good and comfortable. And so for me, that's, I present, there's a lot of statistics like, you know, suicide is the highest and the wealthiest and safest countries in the world.
People who, once they reach middle class or upper middle class, you, you see things like depression, anxiety, mental health issues start to start to increase. And That doesn't really make sense, but when you look at it in terms of the difficulty it comes with hoping for something better in the future, it kind of explains that.
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Chapter 4: What is the concept of the thinking and feeling brain?
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Chapter 5: How does pain relate to our values according to Mark Manson?
Right, so if you feel like you should be working out, but you're not, we've all experienced that before. And most of us, we judge ourselves. We're like, man, I'm such a loser. I can't get out of bed and go to the gym. And we see it as a failure of willpower. We see it as a failure of our rational side of our mind.
But the fact of the matter is, until we are emotionally motivated to go to the gym, until we enjoy going to the gym, to some extent, we're not going to go. We're always going to find a reason not to go. And so in that sense, it's an emotional problem. It's not a problem of knowledge. It's not a problem of willpower or whatever.
So if we understand that, what we can do, instead of trying to will ourselves to the gym constantly, what you can do is you can set up your environment in such a way in that you make it enjoyable to go to the gym. So maybe you find a friend who goes to the gym with you. And that way, if you wake up and you're supposed to meet your friend at the gym at 8 a.m.,
The fear of embarrassment of not being there, like your friend arriving and you not, that is an emotional motivation that will get you out of bed and going to the gym. Another way to do it is to hire a trainer and be like, well, I spent all this damn money And I'm going to feel awful if I don't use it.
So it's using your rational mind to create parameters and circumstances that make something emotionally enjoyable to do.
Yeah. It's like tricking your feeling brain into something that you want to do.
Totally.
So another piece of this thinking and feeling brain in your book that you talk about is how the thinking brain tries to maintain a sense of hope. And we were talking about hope before. Can you help us understand the connection with that?
Well, the thinking brain is always you're always trying to envision some sort of better future for yourself. So whether that's like you as an individual or if it's the world being a better place or impressing your parents or whatever, like it's we all need some sort of carrot dangling in front of us to. to give ourselves direction and purpose in our lives.
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