Today’s guest, Mark Manson, is a bestselling author, blogger, and internet entrepreneur who writes about “personal development that doesn’t suck.” He recently published his second book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, and he regularly writes articles on a blog with over two million monthly readers.
“The first book was actually extremely easy … this one was a total bitch.”
When Mark started writing his first book, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, he had already been blogging about relationships for years. It was just a matter of sitting down and getting it all out. When he started writing his second book the pages didn’t pour out of him. He started and threw away two drafts.
“When you talk about failures in past-tense it never really feels like a failure, because everybody knows you turned out alright.”
“I realized that maybe I need some help with this.”
Mark hit a turning point with his book when he published an article, also titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, that received over seven million page views. He signed on with book publisher HarperOne and they helped him pick the title and focus his writing. They told him some of what he wrote was good and some of it sucked.
“It hurt to hear that, but it’s what I needed to hear.”
Mark writes about self-improvement and advice, but he does it in a very contrarian manner. For example, Mark touches on the subject of affirmation in the book, which is a popular autosuggestion technique intended to guide one’s own thoughts, feelings and behavior. He sees benefits to the technique, but he believes the benefits are blown out of proportion. His philosophy doesn’t prescribe specific techniques, because different processes work for different people. His self-help philosophy is to provide principles that can be applied to anyone’s life, in nearly any situation.
“The book is principle-driven, it’s about discovering new ways of looking at things in life. The way to implement that into your life isn’t doing specific things, it’s simply applying these principles to things you’re already doing.”
It was awesome talking to Mark and exploring his unique perspective on the self-improvement and advice industry. He’s hilarious and insightful, and you owe it to yourself to check out some of his writing if you haven’t already. Mark’s new book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is available now – even in the Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue!
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