A Special Gift for You

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

Celebrating 100 Newsletters

It feels like yesterday when I sat down to write the first Your Next Breakthrough. But here we are: after nearly two years, 100 newsletters, and over 13,500 shared breakthroughs, here we are.

To celebrate this incredible milestone, I had my team compile all the life advice, reflection questions, and exercises for the week that made up the first 100 newsletters into a collection that you can use as a journaling prompt, tape to your fridge, or rub for good luck every morning.

This is for you. Enjoy.

Two things for you to think about

You can have community without accountability, but you can’t have accountability without community.

Surround yourself with the right people and change becomes inevitable.

This newsletter reaches over a million people in 221 countries. This is one hell of a global community.

Three things for me to ask you

What is your favorite part about this newsletter? What is your least favorite part?

If I sent this newsletter twice a week, would you still read it? Daily?

One request for you this week

Share the biggest lesson or insight you’ve gained from receiving this email each week. I couldn’t be more thrilled and grateful for the community we’ve built here and I want to continue to build it to become even better. Here’s to the next 100!

New This Week

Podcast: How to Cut Through the Bullsh*t in Modern Dating (ft. Sabrina Zohar)

Wouldn’t it be great if we dropped all the bullsh*t in dating? No more games. No more flaky people. No more texting for weeks only to find you have zero chemistry when you meet up… Sabrina Zohar definitely thinks we can skip all of it and get right down to the fun stuff. All it requires is brutal honesty with yourself and the people you’re interested in.

In this latest podcast episode, we ask Sabrina: What does your attachment style really tell you about how you should date? Are dating apps really that terrible, or can we change the way we use them to get better results? Do we have high standards, or are our expectations just too fucking high? And more. It’s a fun one, check it out.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to stop prioritizing romance over friendships, and go do something social. This is exactly what our first reader’s husband did a few years ago:

After struggling for seven years with social anxiety from a stroke, my husband was convinced to try yoga. A local brewery held a casual class on Sundays. He signed up. The day of he almost canceled, was pacing the house trying to talk himself out of it. He hadn’t been anywhere new on his own since the stroke. I convinced him it was one hour long. If you don’t like it, just step off to the side and leave when the class is over. Four hours later he came home so excited. Two women invited him to sit with them to have a beer after class and the time just flew by.

In the past year we both have become great friends with these ladies and see them at least two times a week. We’ve done a 26-mile bike ride, paddleboat ride, charity walks and train trips. We also do weekly trivia. We recently celebrated their wedding anniversary with a trip away for the weekend. If they hadn’t asked my husband to join them we truly would have missed out on the most positive, honest friendship we have ever known in our lives. We four all feel that way and we are in our 60s.

We have done more socially in the last two years than the last 20. Please get out there and do things, you never know how much your life will change.

Our next reader is rekindling old friendships:

I’ll probably not make a new friend, but I’ll go meet one of my oldest friends from law school whose prompts for a meeting I have been ignoring. I realize that I spend a lot of my social time with the same two people and that’s not healthy. It has made me ignore all my other friends and I miss them.

So this week I am meeting my friend. I’ve even sent them a message to confirm our coffee date. That way, I won’t chicken out. My work gets overwhelming sometimes so I prefer to just get home and decompress alone and this has become a terrible habit that I need to break.

So each week, for the remainder of this year, I am going to meet up with someone I haven’t physically met up with for more than six months.

Last but not least, friendships can help with romance in a way you may not expect:

I went through a big breakup six years ago. By the end of the relationship, I felt like I had no close relationships outside of my partner, it scared me, and made it difficult to leave. When I finally did, my top priority those first few years was reinvesting in friendships—those I had neglected as well as connecting with new people.

It wasn’t easy. I had to face my fears of rejection. I had to learn to be vulnerable and have some hard conversations. I had to learn to be flexible and accommodating and how to ask for what I need and stand up for myself. It turned out that friendships were an incredible playground for learning basic relationship skills.

Now that I am dating again, I know what a safe relationship feels like—I should feel as safe and loved as I feel with my friends. And now I don’t feel desperate to lock down a romantic partner because I have so much love in my life. I can really wait for someone special.

What I really love is how each of my friends brings out different parts of me. I feel more whole than I have ever felt. I don’t want to be back in a partnership where many sides of me are neglected because he doesn’t bring them out. If I decide to partner up again, it will be with someone who respects my friendships and values friendship in his own life.

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