Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Mark Manson: The Hard Truth About Success & Happiness | Human Behavior | E342
Mon, 17 Mar 2025
Mark Manson spent his twenties traveling the world, chasing success, and observing human psychology and behavior. Through years of blogging, he built a loyal audience and landed his first book deal. By 32, he had surpassed all his career goals, including becoming a bestselling author. But the massive success of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck came faster than he expected, leaving him lost and questioning his purpose. In this episode, Mark returns with his refreshingly blunt insights on success, happiness, and fulfillment. He shares actionable strategies for personal development and explains why chasing the wrong goals leads to disappointment. In this episode, Hala and Mark will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:29) How Traveling Shaped His Mindset (05:11) From Blogging to Bestselling Author (15:44) Why Happiness is Overrated (18:20) Navigating His Rapid Career Growth (22:21) The Psychology of Passion and Skill (24:29) Reinventing Himself as an Entrepreneur (27:02) The Value of Love and Marriage (31:11) Why Dating Apps Fail You (34:24) Tips on Building Lasting Relationships (39:20) How to Make the Right Commitment (41:42) Turning Writing into a Successful Business (47:58) Scaling a Business Across Multiple Platforms 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 is a leading voice in personal growth and mindset. 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 Resources Mentioned: Mark Manson: Next-Level Adulting | E65: https://youngandprofiting.co/3QTorz0 Mark’s Book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: https://amzn.to/41Rwq5Y Mark’s Book, Everything Is F*cked: https://amzn.to/4izRx27 Mark’s Podcast, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: https://bit.ly/3Dgjw8l 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, Mark Manson
Chapter 1: How did Mark Manson's travels shape his mindset?
Young Improfiters, what is the key to a fulfilling life lies not in chasing happiness, but embracing discomfort. Today, I'm sitting down with Mark Manson. He's the best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and the host of the podcast of the same name. Mark was on the show on episode number 65. This was during the early days of the pandemic.
And in that conversation, we talked about adulting and his book, Everything is Fucked. Today, I'm so excited to have him back on the pod because we're not in lockdown and we get a chance to explore some of his transformative rules for living.
In this episode, Mark is going to share his always refreshingly blunt insights and give us some actionable strategies that challenge conventional wisdom and will help you redefine your past to a more meaningful life. Mark, welcome back to Young and Profiting. Mark, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
So you last came back on the show in 2020, and we were actually in the thick of the pandemic. We talked about your views on adulting, your book, Everything is F'd. And today, I'd love to just get your advice on a whole slew of topics. So let's get right into it. You turned 40 last year.
And something that I love that you do is that every decade, you share your life lessons over what you've learned in the past decade. 10 years. So you did an article about surviving your 20s, excelling in your 30s, and now you just did a blog about 40 lessons that you learned about now that you're 40.
So now that it's the new year, I thought it'd be the perfect time to unpack some of these life lessons. So first of all, why do you do this every 10 years? Why is that so meaningful for you?
There's just something about arbitrary ages that I think it's useful to take stock of your life, how much you've progressed, how much things have changed. And just the decade years, 20, 30, 40 are probably useful years to do it. I don't think there's anything necessarily special about them, but I don't know, it's switching over to a new decade.
So it makes sense to like take a little bit of extra time, take stock of your life and consider what's changed.
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Chapter 2: How did Mark Manson transition from blogging to bestselling author?
observing and commenting on human nature, noticing psychological concepts, cultural trends, being able to appeal and address a wide international audience. I do think that lifestyle ended up kind of inadvertently helping me quite a bit in my career for those reasons. I did technically meet all my career goals at 32.
Part of that is that I think the success of my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, just vastly outstripped any expectation I ever had. And part of that too is that I was probably thinking too small at the time. And I guess we could get into each of those things individually if you want. But that's my 20s in a nutshell, I think.
Why don't you take us to the story of writing your first book? What expectations did you have and how did it surprise you?
It was a very different time back then. So just to give a little background, I started blogging in 2007. By 2009, I'd eked out a very small full-time income. And by 2012 or 13, I'd grown a pretty significant audience online. So by the time my stuff really started to take off, I was five or six years in. I'd been scraping by. I'd been living in a lot of countries that were very cheap to live in.
And suddenly I find myself, I have a bunch of articles going viral on Facebook and Twitter at the time. And I find myself with millions of readers. And back then, what's known today as the creator economy didn't really exist back then.
So back then, the roadmap was just build an audience online and then that can get your foot in the door to go make a TV show or get a book published or make an album, right?
And how old were you at this point?
I was 27.
So young. I didn't realize that.
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Chapter 3: Why does Mark Manson believe happiness is overrated?
Generally speaking, I think it's useful to think of yourself in the broadest and most ambiguous terms. I'll give you an example. I think I suffered quite a bit because I adopted the identity of I am a best-selling author. That became what I was known for that became what I had been most successful at.
And this happens to all of us, is that when we become successful at something or when people start recognizing us for something, we just assume that that's who we are. And I spent many years feeling a lot of pressure and a lot of anxiety. And anytime I went to write a book or write something, it put a lot of pressure on myself. Well, I'm supposed to be this big best-selling author guy.
This is supposed to be what I'm amazing at. And it took something that used to be fun and felt kind of low stakes, and it turned it into something that felt very high stakes and very anxiety-ridden. And then... Something happened a few years ago, which is I took some time off. And then I kind of realized, I'm like, wait a second. Before all this author stuff, I was an entrepreneur.
And I built an online business. And that was a ton of fun. And I actually missed that a lot. And I was like, you know, just because being an author was the thing I was most successful at doesn't mean I have to be an author. I can be an entrepreneur who happens to write books. And they happened to sell really well.
And that simple shift in my head, it just gave me so much internal freedom, unstifled me in so many ways. So yeah, you really want to be careful how you define yourself because no matter what you choose, you're almost choosing a mental prison for yourself. So make sure you choose a very broad and easily navigable prison.
I love that example. And it reminds me of something that Nick Loper, who came on my show, talked to me about. He says that he's in the audience business and he keeps it like super vague. He's like, I'm in the business of building audiences and I sell whatever I want to them. And I just thought that was so cool to think about it that way. Okay, last one.
And then we're going to transition to talk about relationships. So this is the perfect transition. Don't overestimate romantic love.
I think if you think about all of the worst relationship decisions you've made chances are you were either drunk or you were madly in love with somebody. And you probably used that love to justify the horrible decision. I think the truth is that romantic love is great. It feels amazing. It's very powerful. But it doesn't necessarily fix relationship problems.
In fact, if the relationship is unhealthy, then romantic love can actually make that relationship feel even worse. Romantic love actually just amplifies whatever relationship already exists underneath. So if it's a healthy relationship and it's a very loving, respectful relationship, then the romantic love will make it feel even better.
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