Mark Manson Quotes

99% of people’s judgments have more to do with them than they do with you.

If Jane has to choose between 2 boxes of cereal, and Mike can choose from 20 boxes, Mike does not have more freedom than Jane. He has more variety. <...> Variety is not freedom.

After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations. You will have a growing appreciation for life’s basic experiences: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? That’s because these things are ordinary. But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.

Dont make assumptions about yourself.

when it comes down to it, if you feel crappy it’s because your brain is telling you that there’s a problem that’s unaddressed or unresolved. In other words, negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something. Positive emotions, on the other hand, are rewards for taking the proper action.

The mind justifies what the heart already decided.

A relationship that requires you to shrink yourself to fit inside it is the same relationship that will suffocate you if you stay in it too long.

Words and appearances are merely a symptom of a greater internal problem.

The quickest way to ruin your life is to try to make everything easy.

If you feel okay only when life is happy and easy-breezy-beautiful Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not free. <...> You are the prisoner of your own indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external comfort or validation that may or may not ever come

The things you think will make you happy are usually just distractions from the things that actually will.

The fastest way to keep your shame alive is to pretend it’s not there.

The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

We are so materially well off, yet so psychologically tormented in so many low-level and shallow ways. People relinquish all responsibility, demanding that society cater to their feelings and sensibilities. People hold on to arbitrary certainties and try to enforce them on others, often violently, in the name of some made-up righteous cause. People, high on a sense of false superiority, fall into inaction and lethargy for fear of trying something worthwhile and failing at it.

By default, we typically don't want to hear the truth.

We just want to hear confirmation of what we already believe is the truth.