Mark Manson Quotes

Ask yourself this: why would you want to be intimate with someone who doesn't appreciate you? Why would you ever settle for such a person? Because she's hot? Come on, have a little more self-respect. Have some higher standards.

We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time. This is part of life.

What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called ‘backwards’ for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse.....The failures in business are what lead to a better understanding of what’s necessary to be successful...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.

All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. Nonstop. Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average. The deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. So more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction.

Being busy is not being able to add anything else to your calendar. Being fulfilled is not wanting to add anything else to your calendar. Don’t confuse one for the other.

If people cheat, it's because something other than the relationship is more important to them. It may be power over others. It may be validation through sex. It may be giving in to their own impulses.

Remember, nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror and tell himself that he’s happy.

And if you're dreaming of something all the time, you're reinforcing the same unconscious reality over and over: that you're not that.

Procrastination promises relief but delivers regret. Action avoids regret and delivers relief.

You crave honesty from others but fear it from yourself.

You don’t find your purpose. You build it, brick by brick, mistake by mistake.

Every success story is a secret story of pain. But it’s not about how it hurt, it’s about what the hurt led to.

And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice — well, then you’re going to get fucked.

[The author has been writing of people striving for “this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves”]
And entitlement strips this away from us. The gravity of entitlement sucks all attention inward, toward ourselves, causing us to feel as though we are at the center of all of the problems in the universe, that we are the one suffering all of the injustices, that we are the one who deserves greatness over all others.

Commitment gives you freedom because you're no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous.