Mark Manson Quotes

Every dream comes with a price tag. The question is whether you're willing to pay for it or not.

So what do we do? Well, if you’re like I used to be, you avoid using anything at all. You aim to keep your options open as long as possible. You avoid commitment.
But while investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same scale or craft for half your lifetime.
/when you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience space to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. [the same goes for any other life experience]

Uncertainty also relieves us of our judgment of ourselves. Then we don’t know if we’re lovable or not; we don’t know how attractive we are; we don’t know how successful we could potentially become. The only way to achieve these things is to remain uncertain of them and be open to finding them out through experience. Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.

What you focus on expands. Obsess over problems, and your life becomes one.

Feeling like you have no fucking idea what you’re doing is the price of entry to achieving your dreams.

Self-control is an illusion. It’s an illusion that occurs when both brains are aligned and pursuing the same course of action.

fact, things were so bad in the old days that the only way to keep everyone sane was by promising them hope in an afterlife.

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.....It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law” - the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.

when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some.

If you think you can kiss her, you probably could have ten minutes ago.

Self-doubt doesn't go away when you succeed. In fact, the higher the stakes get, the more doubt will continue to show up.

After all, the only way to overcome pain is to first learn how to bear it.

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for.

Hope doesn't care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose. And the more we have to lose, the less we feel we have to hope for.