Mark Manson Quotes

For victims, the hardest thing to do in the world is to hold themselves accountable for their problems. They’ve spent their whole life believing that others are responsible for their fate. That first step of taking responsibility for themselves is often terrifying.

The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life, that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgies an important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on my ability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejecting trashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yet they require rejection at every turn. The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X.

Every healthy relationship starts with two people who have healthy relationships with themselves.

Any toxic relationship is the result of at least one person’s toxic relationship with themselves.

"Don't hope for a life without problems," the panda said. "There's no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems."

A healthy relationship should periodically make you a little uncomfortable. The conversations that matter are uncomfortable. The vulnerability required for intimacy is uncomfortable. Finding compromise and forgiveness is uncomfortable.

A comfortable relationship is likely an empty one.

I try to live with few rules, but one that I’ve adopted over the years is this: if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

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

My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.

We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.

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

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.

The first step to being more attractive is to see rejection as a means to eliminate women who won't make you happy from your life. It's a blessing, not a curse.

Many self-help gurus teach you new forms of denial and pump you up with exercises that feel good in the short term, while ignoring the underlying issue. Remember, nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror and tell himself that he’s happy.

Get out there and expose yourself. Open yourself up and find what makes you happy. Yes, that will mean you’ll probably get hurt. But so what? The best things in life don’t come easily.

You don’t find yourself. You build yourself. And your actions are both the hammer and nails.