Read This If You Think the World Is Cheating You…

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

Two things for you to think about

“Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.” – Eric Hoffer

Trust people. Most of them are good and while you might get hurt occasionally, the alternative of distrusting everyone is far worse.

Two things for you to ask yourself

When have you paid the price of distrusting people? What have you missed out on?

One thing for you to try this week

Be a bit more trusting. Protect yourself just a little bit less. See what happens.

New This Week

How to Beat Distraction and Still Enjoy Life (ft. Nir Eyal) – “Why can’t we just do the things we know we should do?” is a simple question with a very complex answer. To help us answer it in this latest podcast episode, I sat down with my old friend Nir Eyal, a behavioral design expert and author of the best-selling book, Indistractable. We talk about what it means to be “indistractable” and how it’s probably the most important skill of the 21st century. We also get Nir’s take on the role of social media in our lives (his views might surprise you). And finally, he answers the timeless question: Why don’t we just do what we know we should do? Check it out.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to embrace the pain you want in your life and let me know what difference it makes.

Our first reader chose to embrace the pain of their work:

This one really spoke to me. I am a middle school teacher and this is actually my dream job. I had always wanted to be a teacher but lately I have been clashing a lot with my leaders because of different values. My leaders tend to cave in to demanding parents and just keep throwing teachers under the bus to please them. It gets very hard sometimes. That said, if there’s something more important to me than my career, it’s my family. And nothing pleases me more than being able to invest in exciting and meaningful experiences for my family.

So, I’m willing to put up with the fickle nature of my leaders to be able to continue doing my part to shape the minds of the young people under my care. I’m also willing to struggle with the demanding parents to continue being able to invest in and enjoy good times with my family. Life feels good and my happiness feels earned.

Lina considered the pain in her life, and decided she didn’t want it:

Three days ago, I dropped out of graduate school. It went against all the advice of my peers, professors, and parents. I was at the program for only five weeks before I realized my ‘dream career’—environmental journalism—wasn’t actually my dream career at all. I thought I wanted to merge my two loves, the environment and writing, and I thought that the turmoil of journalism was the ‘pain’ I was willing to sustain. Like you, I like writing, and find myself writing until 2 AM naturally until my head falls asleep on my laptop. I thought I was willing to tolerate the lack of pay and crazy hours in order to help the public better understand the science of climate change.

I was wrong. Alumni of the program spoke often about the difficulties in paying their rent and inability to see friends over the weekends. I am not willing to give up financial stability or time with the people I love. I am also not willing to merge my writing style to match the needs of some publication—suddenly, everything I loved about writing disappeared in journalism.

Since I got a full scholarship, it was a free 1.5-year program, and I was told by everyone to just power through, that I didn’t have to do journalism after school, that so many would kill to be in my position. But I couldn’t do it. The moment I realized I didn’t want to be a journalist, I had to drop out.

I plan to go back to my environmental job where I work 9 to 5 and have enough money to pay my rent, and enough time to see my friends. I plan to use this stability and comfort to write in my free time, without having to fit the needs of the market.

I am not sure what that ‘pain’ is that I am willing to sustain… perhaps pushing through the monotony of an office job in order to use that financial stability and time to do the things I actually like.

I feel happier and freer and closer to my dream, even though I just gave up my dream job.

To end, a piece of reader wisdom:

I had a plot in a public garden several years ago. These plots cost $30 a year at that time, plus you had to do a minimum of eight hours of community service in the garden (weeding communal flower beds, maintaining the pathways, etc.) and maintain your plot in good order to keep it from year to year.

So one day in the Spring I was at my plot to turn my cover crop under to get ready for Spring planting. At this point I was working a full-time job, plus going to school at night and trying to keep up with homework. As I stood leaning on my hoe and wondering how I was going to do all that plus the work required to keep my garden plot, a thought suddenly popped into my head: ‘The true test of how badly you want something is not what you’ll do to get it, but what you’ll do to keep it.’ I don’t know if this was something I’d read somewhere and forgotten, or if the universe was letting me in on a secret, but it was quite the revelation for me. I managed to do what I had to to keep the plot along with everything else I had going that year.

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
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