[Music]
thank you everybody wants what feels good everybody wants to live a Carefree happy and
easy life to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships to look perfect and make money and
to be popular and well respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people
part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room everybody would like that it's easy to like that
if I ask you what do you want out of life and you say something like I want to be happy and
have a great family in a job I like it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything
a more important question a question that perhaps you've never considered before is what pain do you
want in your life what are you willing to struggle for because that seems to be a greater determinant
of how our lives turn out everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial Independence
but not everybody wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks long commutes and obnoxious paperwork
to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies in the blase confines of an infinite cubicle hell
people want to be rich without the risk without the sacrifice without the delayed gratification
necessary to accumulate wealth everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship
but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations the awkward silences the
hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there they view pain as an objectively negative
thing to be avoided at all costs whereas reality is much more nuanced but most people don't realize
this and so they settle they settle and wonder what if for years and years until the question
morphs from what if to was that it and when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is
in the mail they say what was that for if not for their lowered standards and expectations 20 years
prior then what for happiness requires struggle the positive is the side effect of handling the
negative you can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life
at the core of all human behavior our needs are more or less similar positive experience is easy
to handle it's the negative experience that we all by definition struggle with
therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings
we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing and able to sustain
people want an amazing physique but you don't end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the
pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym unless you love calculating and
calibrating the food you eat planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions people want to
start their own business or become financially independent but you don't end up a successful
entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk the uncertainty the repeated failures and
work in the same hours on something that you have no idea whether it's even going to work or not
people want a partner a spouse but you don't end up attracting someone amazing without
appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections building the sexual
tension that never gets released and staring blankly at a phone that never rings it's part of
the game of love and you can't win if you don't play what determines your success isn't what do
you want to enjoy the question is what pain do you want to sustain the quality of your life is
not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative
experiences and to get good at dealing with the negative experiences is to get good at life
there's a lot of crappy advice out there that says you just gotta want it enough everybody wants
something and everybody wants something enough they just aren't aware of what it is they want or
rather what they want enough because if you want the benefits of something you have to also want
the cost if you want the beach body you have to want the sweat the soreness in the early mornings
if you want the yacht you have to also want the late nights the risky business moves and
the possibility of pissing off one person or ten thousand if you find yourself wanting something
month after month year after year yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it
then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy an idealization an image a false promise maybe what
you want isn't what you want you just enjoy the wanting maybe you don't actually want it at all
sometimes I ask people how do you choose to suffer these people tilt their heads and look
at me like I have 12 noses but I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and
Fantasies because you have to choose something you can't have a pain-free life it can't all
be roses and unicorns and ultimately that's the hard question that matters pleasure is an easy
emotion and pretty much all of us have similar answers the more interesting question is the pain
that answer will actually get you somewhere it's the question that can change your life it's what
makes me me and you you it's what defines and separates us and ultimately brings us together
for most of my adolescents in young adulthood I fantasized about being a musician a rock star
in particular any badass guitar song I heard I would always close my eyes and envision myself
up on stage playing it to the screams of the crowd people absolutely losing their minds to
my sweet finger noodling this fantasy could keep me occupied for hours the fantasizing continued
through college even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously but even then
it was never a question of if I'd ever end up playing in front of screaming crowds but when
I was biting my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out
there and making it work first I needed to finish school then I needed to make money then I needed
to find time then nothing despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life the reality
never came and it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why
I didn't actually want it I was in love with the result the image of me on stage people cheering me
rocking out pouring my heart into what I'm playing but I wasn't in love with the process and because
of that I failed repeatedly hell I didn't even try hard enough to fail I hardly tried it all
the daily drudgery of practicing the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing the pain of
finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a [ __ ] the broken strings the blown
tube amp hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car it's a mountain of a dream
and a mile high climb to the top and what took me a long time to discover was that I didn't like
to climb very much I just liked Imagining the top our culture would tell me that I've somehow failed
myself that I'm a quitter or a loser self-help would say that I either wasn't courageous enough
determined enough or I didn't believe in myself the entrepreneurial startup crowd
would tell me that I chickened out on my dream and gave in to Conventional social conditioning
I'd be told to do affirmations or join a mastermind group or manifest or something
but the truth is far less interesting than any of that I thought I wanted something but
it turns out I didn't end of story who you are is determined by the values you are willing to
struggle for people who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape
people who enjoy long work weeks and politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up
people who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of a starving artist are ultimately the ones who live
it and make it this is not a call for willpower or grit this is not a lecture of no pain no gain
this is the most simple and basic component of life our struggles determine our successes
so choose your struggles wisely my friend
hey everybody Mark Manson here what you just heard is an excerpt from my mega bestseller
the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] if you liked it be sure to check out the book and
uh check out my YouTube channel as well it's here on YouTube I'll see you there
[Music]