The Advice Nobody Wants But Everybody Needs

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

Two things for you to think about

Develop the ability to be disliked and free yourself from the prison of other people’s opinions.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, some time in your life.”

– Victor Hugo (often mistakenly attributed to Churchill)

One thing for you to ask yourself

What are three things in your life that you are willing to be disliked for? If you have trouble answering that question, that is a problem.

One thing for you to try this week

Lean into the willingness to be disliked for something. Notice the freedom it gives you. Let me know how it goes.

New This Week

9 Underrated Books That Will Make You a Smarter Person – Nine underrated and slightly unknown books that will give you better, smarter, more realistic perspectives on the world… all summarized in roughly 10 minutes of course. Get your book fix.

The Backwards Law: How to Get More by Doing Less – There are certain areas in life where trying harder only makes things worse. Trying to prove how likable and confident you are only makes you feel more unlikable and less confident. Trying to make someone love you only makes you feel more unlovable.

The solution to this conundrum is what’s known as “The Backwards Law,” which states that desiring a positive experience is itself a negative experience, while accepting a negative experience is a positive experience. In this latest podcast episode, Drew and I get to the bottom of why this is and discuss five areas of life where doing less can bring massive benefits. Check it out.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to reject a belief you hold that may not be yours, and ask where it came from. Troy has been doing this since his mid-twenties:

Six years ago, in my mid-twenties, I had it all—so I thought. Great job, girlfriend, independence… I had done all the things I was ‘supposed’ to do. I was miserable.

Since then I’ve blazed my own trail, having broken up with my girlfriend, learned a language and quit corporate America to travel and later start a business, being diagnosed with OCD at 30 and getting treatment for it. These things—leaving corporate, language learning, mental health, being single—are not things I was raised to appreciate, but I’m actually me now and I’m much happier for it.

My next challenge regarding my beliefs is to accept my ambivalence towards having kids as neither good nor bad. I have been subtly and not so subtly told my whole life that if you don’t have kids you are less than, flawed, even a threat to society… well that’s nonsense. I’m working on unlearning that belief so I can clearly see what I want regarding kids.

After over a decade, Ben finally chose the life he wanted:

I definitely neglected what I wanted to do with my life for many years. Shortly after high school, I got into a trade for no other reason than my father had an in with a company and I needed money. It was fine and I was smart enough to get decent at the job but I was always doing music alongside and nothing made more sense in my life than being a musician.

As we all know, music can be a difficult path so I never fully transitioned. After about a decade doing the blue collar grind I was offered an opportunity to move into the engineering side of things which I promptly took. This was a great transition but after I left that company, I bounced around between design/engineering jobs that never really stuck.

Then, about two years ago, I got involved with a group of musicians that do weddings and corporate events. It’s pretty steady work and actually pays alright. After about a year of doing the wedding gigs alongside the day job, I quit the day job and now I’m a full-time musician/sound tech.

I’m in my second year as a full-timer and I’ve just made more money in four days than I ever made in a week at the day job. It took quitting the day grind to realize I never settled into that job because it simply wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing with my life; I didn’t want those jobs.

Making a living in the music business can be scary but I’ve come to realize that if you’re truly doing something that matters to you and applying yourself to gaining knowledge, the other pieces fall into place.

Aneesa let go of an important belief that came from her community:

I (unfortunately) hold on to a lot of beliefs that aren’t mine, but one I realized recently that did not sit right with me is that to deserve something good, I must first go through a lot of shit. This probably came from some friends and family in my community.

A recent situationship told me he couldn’t commit to me and my first thought process was, ‘Oh this is expected. I should continue to push, beg and show him how good I am to him because this is the typical phase I need to go through to get to the good part of the relationship.’ Friends said the same thing, that I need to get dragged in the mud first, then that would prove I’m ‘worth’ the good stuff.

I decided to reject this belief because I didn’t feel good doing all these things to prove my ‘worth’ to someone. Moving forward, I shouldn’t expect bad things to happen first to deserve good things, and I should choose my own values and beliefs, not dictated by my community.

This shift in belief, I predict, will have massive positive consequences over the coming years. Well done.

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