Are You Ruining Your Life?

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

Two things for you to think about

All the grit, persistence, and motivation in the world won’t do you any good if you’re working on the wrong thing. In fact, it will do the opposite.

Choosing what to pursue is more important than choosing how to pursue it. Make sure you’re facing the right direction before you start running.

Three things for you to ask yourself

What are you putting most of your energy and focus into? Is that the best place to put it? Is it moving you towards your desired life or away from it?

One thing for you to try this week

Stop doing something that is counterproductive this week. Let me know what it is and how it goes.

New This Week

Keeping the Weight Off, Rewiring Your Brain with Psychedelics, and Finding Strong Male Role Models – It’s hard enough to change, but why is it sometimes impossible to maintain that change? How might psychedelics facilitate this? And how can young men find healthy role models in the modern world? In the latest podcast episode, Drew and I cover my current struggles around keeping a healthy diet and lifestyle, how psychedelics might actually scramble your brain (in a good way), and why so many young men are struggling to find a place in the world today. Enjoy.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to be a bit more trusting and see what happens.

Our first reader learned to trust at work:

Your email speaks to something I have seen pay off in spades in the last year. Two and a half years ago I took over a technical services team at a mine (you read that right). The team was the lowest performing in the company and my initial philosophy was ‘clean house.’ At the top of my list were four employees I thought were extremely low caliber. However, over the two years I learned that these employees just weren’t being motivated correctly. Once I started trusting them and putting them on tasks that better suited them, everything changed.

By the time I moved on to my next role all four had moved from ‘Performance Improvement Plans’ to being promoted. There is no way we would have gotten there without trusting them with new tasks. For instance, I learned one employee attended a performance arts high school yet was in a very technical job. I started trusting him with freedom and more creative tasks (e.g. designing our new OKR and KPI tracking system in whatever way he wanted—which he turned into a gamified candyland tracker that everyone loved). After that he approached his technical work with more enthusiasm too.

In short, never write someone off on a first pass. Have a little trust they can surprise you. Maybe the problem is you.

Linda reflected on how a lack of trust in family used to impact her life:

A family rift about eight years ago had me questioning every interaction with certain family members. I was worried about whether our conversations were authentic or whether something was being concealed. If I sent a message and didn’t get an immediate response, I ruminated about why rather than realizing people were simply busy.

Once I paused and thought about when it was important to speak my truth, and when it was just as smart to let silence do the heavy lifting, things began to change. And now with everything healed because people stepped up to do the right thing and repair relationships, your question has such relevance. Thank you.

Finally, trust breeds more trust, as this reader shared:

I have done this a lot in the past, where I will not share things about myself nor trust how the other person might use that information.

Recently I have been much more forthcoming. If it’s on my mind, I just trust the person to not be hurt or use it against me and accept what happens after.

I have found that the more I trust and share with others, the more they trust and share with me. And they also work harder to get me what I want, instead of me trying to secretly get it. They share my victories as well as me theirs.

Also just helps you learn. People might have something extremely useful to say.

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 – My Podcast