Oh hello, get a thank you for joining us on the body Insul podcast called Healthy Ish. I hope you are having a healthy day. Of course, I am the host of Felicity Hally I'm joined today. Let's call him the godfather of modern self help, Mark Manson. Here's, of course, best selling author of the book The Subtle Art of
Not Giving a F Bomb. Yes, warning, there are a lot of swear words in this EPP, especially if you are listening in the car with kids, as I often do to my podcast Anyway Today, Mark shares his top nobs life advice for choosing the right problem in your life to focus on, and also he shares how to tackle your fears head on now makesure listening to our sister podcast Extra healthy Ish, where he shares more about his no fucks approach to life. You can grab that
wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, thank you for joining us on Healthy Today. How are you.
I'm great. It's good to be here.
Yeah, it's great for you to be here and we're looking forward to seeing you in Australia soon. And on that note, you're bringing your nobullshit life advice to well around Australia. Can you share some of the perhaps your all time favorite pieces of no bullshit advice or things you might talk about in your talk.
My greatest hits greatest hits place. So I guess kind of the number one thing that I go to is a good life is not a life without problems. It's a life with good problems. There's no such thing as getting rid of problems. Improving your life is just simply upgrading from problems you don't want to have the problems you do enjoy having. We've got all sorts of good stuff.
I mean. I wrote an article eleven years ago now that was titled fuck Yes or No, which is basically the simple concept of if something's not a fuck yes in your life, then you should probably experiment with cutting it out of your life. That has completely taken on a life of its own, and it's almost like it's not even mine anymore. It just like lives free in the internet. Yeah, exactly.
Can we just stop me there for a minute. Can I just pick up on the first one, the problem thing? How do you go about processing and dealing with your problems?
It's I mean, obviously every problem is different, but I think kind of an important meta question that needs to be asked, is is this a problem I'm happy to be having? Because I think ultimately the difference between struggling and suffering is simply how much the problem aligns with who we want to be in the world, or what
we value or what we care about. Right Like, if you are struggling with something in it is not who you want to be, it's not moving you closer to your ideal self, or it doesn't feel in line with
your values, then it just feels like pure suffering. But if you are going through a problem, but that problem is something that matters to you deeply, If you're struggling to raise a couple of kids, if you are trying to improve your health, if you are stressing about an important project at work, like, those are all problems that ultimately you're kind of glad to be having them because
it means that there's something important in your life. And so I think part of it is just zooming out a little bit and recognizing that some struggling is indicative of a good life, whereas some struggling is actually indicative of a life that's not where you want it.
Sometimes it's hard when you're in the middle of a problem to discern Okay, is this a problem that I really care about or one that I shouldn't care about? How do you make sense of that in your own mind without perhaps going into the feedback loop of.
You know, the way I'm trying.
To spit out.
Yes, you know. I think in this day and age, it's harder than ever to distinguish what is actually worth caring about and what's not worth caring about. You know. I think the whole thing that resonated about the title of the book and not giving a fuck. I think people in general these days feel overwhelmed or just deluged with information and stimulation, and so it becomes very, very
complicated to distinguish what actually matters. I always say the best way to see is to cut things out of your life for a temporary period of time and then see how you feel. You know, Try a week without a certain app on your phone, Try a month without alcohol, Cut a certain friend out of your life for a couple of weeks, and see what it feels like. Right like you, you actually don't know what is adding value to your life and what's detracting value to your life
until you remove it. And if you remove something and you find that you really miss you feel like things are getting worse because you don't have it. Then that's great, you can go back to it. But generally, what people find a lot of the time is that when you cut something out, it's painful for like a day or two, and then you get like three, four or five days in you're like, ah, actually I feel kind of relieved that.
I don't have to deal with feel a bit lighter.
Yeah.
Yeah. One piece of advice actually spot on your Instagram, which I really like, is your fear can change your life. I mean it's almost a cliche, isn't it, this one? But it's got millions of views on your Instagram. How do we get better at leaning into our fees? I mean, that's the evolutionary response of a human right in our amygdala.
For sure. I mean, obviously a fear is not fun, Like nobody likes fear. But I think one thing that we forget is that generally if we're afraid or intimidated by something, it's often because it's very important. Like if it didn't matter, you wouldn't be anxious about it, you wouldn't be intimidated by it. Right, So the fact that
you're intimidated by it. The fact that you're anxious about it, the fact that you lay awake at night worrying about it, is probably indicates that it's actually really important and it really matters. So I think a lot of people they're just their default is I don't want to be anxious, I don't want to be afraid. Again, it comes back
to it's not about getting rid of fear. It's about feeling fear for good reasons, right, Like if you're about to do something, if you're about to have a huge presentation at work, or you're about to make a huge career shift that you've been thinking about for years, you should be afraid of that moment, right, It's a big deal, and that fear is actually meant to mobilize you and get you to focus and pay attention. Like I'm about
to go on tour in Australia. I guarantee you the hour before I go on stage, I'm going to be scared shitless. But that fear is important because it forces me to get ready mentally, emotionally, to be prepared to rehearse, to like make sure I put on a good show. Right, So fear isn't necessarily always a negative thing. It's simply accompanies. It's proportional to the importance of a thing.
Do you really get nervous? That's that's that's nice to hear and reassuring that you do get nervous when you millions of books, done, millions of speeches, you know.
It's it's especially with the bigger the audience size, it never goes away, you know, like smaller, smaller audiences these days. Doesn't really phase me. But you know, as we talked before we went live, you know, doing the Opera House, that's a big venue.
It's like two thousand people, not any pressure.
Yeah, I mean, I'm my palms are sweating just talking about it right now.
So oh well, we're looking forward to saying you here. But actually, one thing I just wanted to ask you about before you went I saw your five year health and fitness a whole on your Instagram now obviously as a health and fitness podcast. This is very inspiring.
Well done, Thank you, Thank you. It was really fucking hard, but you feel better for it, right, Oh. I mean it's honestly, I feel I feel kind of dumb because it's one of those things that once you do it you're like, why didn't I do this ten years ago? And I sometimes have to be gentle with myself. It's easy to kick myself for going so many years and not taking it more seriously sooner, but I'm glad I did when I did. Well.
Congratulations and we look forward to seeing you down here very soon. Thanks for joining us on healthy Ish.
Thank you.
Friends. Listeners, you can catch Mark he is about to come to Australia. He's tour kicks off in Sydney on November fourth. He travels around to all the major cities and make sure you're there. I'm going along. I hope you did enjoy this chat with Mark, got some nobs wisdom from it? If he did, tell us rate and
review of this episode. You can also DM me at Felicity Harley if you have any ideas for an upcoming episode, anything else, head to body and sooul dot com dot you follow us on socials, grab our print edition, which is our new local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay fucking healthy Ish.