3 Critical Life Skills No One Teaches You

74 people had breakthroughs this week. Will the next one be you?

Two things for you to think about

Three critical life skills that nobody teaches you: how to ask for honest feedback, how to take honest feedback, and how to give honest feedback.

You can’t make someone change if they don’t want to change. All you can do is give feedback that you hope will one day spark change.

Two things for you to ask yourself

Who could you give better feedback to in your life? Who could you receive more feedback from in your life?

Two things for you to try this week

Give someone honest feedback. Ask someone (could be the same person) for feedback. Let me know how it goes.

New This Week

6 Important Truths No One Likes to Hear – The most useful advice is often the advice we don’t want to hear. This week, we sit down and talk about all of the impactful feedback that maybe we need to hear, even if we don’t necessarily want to hear it.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to go do the boring, mundane things everyone knows about but is too undisciplined to do.

Here’s Claire sharing how she does the boring, every single day:

Thank you so much for your comment about how success can really boil down to habitual repetition of unexciting tasks. This could not be more true in the fitness world.

I am 29 and have worked out 5-6 days per week for the past five years. I also consciously consider my food choices and alcohol intake. And I have a visibly muscular, toned body.

However, I am constantly questioned by friends/acquaintances about the ‘magic bullet’ behind my success. I am always taken aback by this comment, because the answer is: my life is a daily ritual, which requires focus and devotion, and can be monotonous and difficult. There is never time to bask in the glow; there is just another day of hard work, and one more waiting right after that.

I believe this applies to so many pursuits, and really shatters the perception that successful people are at the pinnacle of achievement and are therefore no longer climbing, grinding, sweating. As if!

Boring is the new cool for this next reader:

Boring used to be my excuse for using narcotics and it destroyed my life. Now I enjoy boring, because boring is reading a book, listening to a podcast, or watching a YouTube video. Boring is seeking out ways to get back to my community and help others. Boring is constantly finding content to consume that will help me in my new undertaking known as school. Boring is awesome, it took me 46 years to realize how cool boring is.

Finally, if you’re not comfortable being bored, you might want to take a deeper look at your life, like this reader did:

I’ve learned my comfort with boredom is a good litmus test of how fulfilled I am.

For the longest time I recalled the high point of my life as my last semester of law school—I had a routine that included exercising daily, eating well, going to school and working. I was in bed early and up at 5—it was incredibly boring, especially for a 23-year-old, but I was happy. I didn’t care what most of my classmates thought (they thought I was weird/lame for not going out all the time) and I could comfortably sit at home for most of the day unbothered.

Once I moved to NYC, I got caught up in the whirlwind of living in a giant casino. I was overwhelmed with work and everything else going on. I lost any sense of routine, and the habits that made me happy fell off. Being in a confined space and surrounded by fun things to do, along with being bad at setting boundaries/prioritizing, resulted in me always feeling anxious sitting at home. The solution? Meet up with my friends, repeat the cycle of habits that made me even more anxious!

I’ve since moved out of the city and live in a quiet town by the water. I am back in a routine that makes me happy, which is similarly boring to that last semester of law school. I am finally once again comfortable with boredom—it just took me six years to return to it, and sure enough, I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been.

As always, send your breakthroughs by simply replying to this email. Let me know if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Until next week,

Mark Manson

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
My Website — My Books — My YouTube Channel