Shut Up and Be Grateful

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

One thing for you to think about

Your ancestors survived centuries of floods, wars, famine, slavery, and plagues for you to sit on the toilet and compare your life to people on the internet you’ve never met.

Be grateful.

Three things for you to ask yourself

What could you be more grateful for? How much worse could things be? Yes, there are problems, but what other time would you want to be alive, honestly?

One thing for you to try this week

Practice finding one thing to be grateful for each morning this week. Notice how it affects your mood and attitude. Let me know how it goes.

New This Week

How I Lost 60 Pounds and Started Giving a F*ck About My Health – Five years ago, I was overweight, pre-diabetic, and having chest pains in my mid-30s. I thought eating a salad once a week and going for a run every now and then would take care of my health. I was wrong.

Since then, I’ve lost 60 pounds (~27kg). I now enjoy exercising regularly and I eat healthy and nutritious foods. My daily life is much more physically active and I get way better sleep. In this podcast episode, I share the psychological process that I went through in the hopes that you, too, might change how you think about your health and take it more seriously. Because at the end of the day, your health is definitely something you should give a f*ck about.

How to Overcome Your Demons – We all have demons, but it’s our relationship with them that determines how much control they have over us. Demons are a useful metaphor for a lot of our inner struggles and in this video, I utilize an AI-generated Morgan Freeman to help me come to terms with my own demons. Maybe he can help you with yours too…

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to act with self-respect as your highest priority. This is by no means easy, as our first reader is discovering, but the struggle is well worth it:

For three years, I tolerated being disrespected by my ex-wife, because I wanted to save our marriage. It did not end well. I have now been separated for almost a year, and am on my way to a divorce (the least amicable divorce I have heard of—but I’m sure everyone says the same thing about their own divorce).

But despite all of the mental and emotional challenges I am going through right now, I learned how to respect myself again, and I feel a lot better than staying in a toxic relationship.

Bailey learned a hard lesson:

I’m a musician within a community of like-minded individuals and in the search for connections, I have sacrificed my self-respect.

This past fortnight I’ve experienced a real disconnect from people who were all about me, my musical projects and collaborating, until… they weren’t anymore.

After being cast aside as the less shiny thing to play with, I’ve realized that I’ve been so keen on their approval when they were not worth seeking it from.

As I reevaluate my value in the industry and as a person, I see these people becoming scaled back heavily in my priorities. As my partner so eloquently put it, if the treatment I was receiving was from someone I was dating, people would be telling me ‘she’s just not that into you.’

The more you become desperate, the less respect you encourage from others and the less respect you leave for yourself.

Self-respect is integral not only to our relationship with others, but also to how we treat ourselves:

For years I never thought a lack of self-respect was an issue for me. I tend to not tolerate people who aren’t respectful, and have a high opinion of myself. But, very recently I’ve come to realize that self-respect isn’t only about self-talk, it also manifests in how you treat your body.

So, while I probably project confidence and high self-worth in how I talk to myself and let others talk to me, the fact that I drink too much, smoke too much, eat shit, over-caffeinate and don’t sleep enough is, at its core, a self-respect issue.

I’m working on it. My goal is to stop drinking alone and bench 300 lbs by my 40th birthday next June. I still drink alone sometimes, but less than usual, and I’m maxing out at 250. The fact that I see these goals less as health goals and more as a critical component of my psyche and self-respect should help me get there. We’ll see.

As Emerson once said, “Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” Words are cheap and easy. It’s easy to say nice things about yourself. It’s difficult to actually treat yourself well—to treat yourself with, that is, respect.

This is important to remember. You can be sitting there listening to someone disrespect you and silently say, “I don’t deserve this.” Or you can actually get up and walk out of the room. The latter is self-respect materialized into action. And, as with everything, only actions have a lasting impact.

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