3197: [Part 1] Why You Should Care About Many Things by Mark Manson on Optimizing Life

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[00:00:38] This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 3197.

[00:00:42] Why you should care about many things, part 1 by Mark Manson of markmanson.net.

[00:00:48] And I'm Justin Malik.

[00:00:50] Happy middle of the week Wednesday and welcome to one of the only podcasts in the world where articles are narrated to you for free.

[00:00:57] A little bit of positivity every day, which adds up after time.

[00:01:01] And sometimes I read longer posts that I split up into two.

[00:01:05] That's the case today.

[00:01:06] I'll read the first half today then finish the rest tomorrow.

[00:01:09] So with that, let's get right to part 1 and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:18] Why you should care about many things, part 1 by Mark Manson of markmanson.net.

[00:01:25] I don't watch much TV, but if there were a channel that played Tony Robbins seminars nonstop, I'd watch it like a teenage girl glued to an America's Next Top Model marathon.

[00:01:36] Say what you want about Robbins.

[00:01:38] Opinions range from him being a complete hack and fraud to him being the second coming of Jesus Christ.

[00:01:45] My opinion is somewhere in the middle.

[00:01:47] But his seminars are never dull.

[00:01:50] The guy knows how to market helping people.

[00:01:53] For the uninitiated, Robbins seminars have some informal portions where people in the massive audience are able to stand up and address their personal issues with Tony one on one in a kind of private counseling session in front of 2000 other people.

[00:02:12] Tony manhandles their emotional worlds, reshaping their realities in front of your eyes.

[00:02:18] All to thunderous applause.

[00:02:20] And whether it's genuine or not, it's never boring and it's usually educational.

[00:02:26] A good friend of mine who is a psychologist and therapist refers to Robbins as the Batman of psychology.

[00:02:33] Sometimes he has to break the rules and do some unethical things, but it's always for the greater good.

[00:02:39] In one seminar, a middle aged man in the audience stood up and confessed that he was suicidal.

[00:02:46] He then shared his story.

[00:02:48] He was a finance guy, a very good finance guy.

[00:02:52] He made a fortune.

[00:02:53] And not only that, but his friends and family members gave him their savings to manage and he made them fortunes as well.

[00:03:01] His entire life, he had been successful and made a lot of people a lot of money.

[00:03:07] And then one day he lost it all.

[00:03:10] When prodded by Robbins, his reasoning for wanting to kill himself was that his life insurance policy would pay enough to support his wife and children after he was gone.

[00:03:21] Whereas if he stayed alive, his family would be saddled by debt and left broke.

[00:03:27] When Robbins threw out the obvious point that while his kids would grow up with financial stability, they wouldn't have a father, the man calmly asserted, yes, exactly.

[00:03:37] That's the idea.

[00:03:39] What immediately strikes you is this man's dumbfounding belief that his kids need financial stability more than a living father.

[00:03:48] It'd be easy to discount him as a loony for that and be on our merry way.

[00:03:53] But if we take a moment and empathize with him and dig a bit deeper into his motivation, we discover something important about his self-perception.

[00:04:03] This man perceives the value of his own life to be nothing more than financial.

[00:04:10] He has no sense of value in himself as a father, husband, friend, companion, not to mention any other skills or hobbies.

[00:04:19] It's not just that he thinks his kids would be better off with money than with him.

[00:04:23] It's that he believes his only value as a person is his ability to make money.

[00:04:29] Superhero Robbins quickly pounced on the nub of the issue.

[00:04:33] This man had never emotionally invested himself or identified with his roles as a father, a husband, a friend, a colleague.

[00:04:44] He had invested all of his identity and time and effort in making money and becoming rich.

[00:04:51] Then once his wealth vanished, so did his entire sense of self.

[00:04:56] A while back I saw a short video of Tim Ferriss and in passing he mentioned a concept called identity diversification.

[00:05:03] He more or less said the following.

[00:05:06] When you have money, it's always smart to diversify your investments.

[00:05:10] That way if one of them goes south, you don't lose everything.

[00:05:14] It's also smart to diversify your identity, to invest your self-esteem and what you care about into a variety of different areas.

[00:05:22] Business, social life, relationships, philanthropy, athletics.

[00:05:27] So that when one goes south, you're not completely screwed over and emotionally wrecked.

[00:05:32] I love this idea.

[00:05:33] It's one of those ideas that's so obvious yet so elusive.

[00:05:38] When you hear it, it makes you feel like you just woke up.

[00:05:41] Identity diversification.

[00:05:44] What is identity?

[00:05:46] Whether consciously or unconsciously, we all choose what's important to us.

[00:05:51] We choose what we value.

[00:05:53] We choose the measuring sticks with which we measure success and our self-worth.

[00:05:59] Common measuring sticks people often choose include being professionally successful, being highly educated, making a lot of money,

[00:06:07] being an excellent father or mother, being pious and faithful in a chosen religion.

[00:06:13] Being socially and or fully popular and desired.

[00:06:17] Being physically attractive or beautiful and on and on.

[00:06:21] Whatever we choose to judge our self-worth by, be it how big of a fan we are for our favorite sports team or making more money than any of our friends or getting more attention from the opposite sex.

[00:06:34] We're choosing in which way we want to receive validation to feel good about ourselves.

[00:06:39] Like a mural, whatever you choose to value and receive validation from conglomerates into your overall identity.

[00:06:48] Most of us naturally gravitate towards certain aspects of our identity merely through growing up and having attention or praise lavished on us for particular reasons.

[00:06:58] Maybe you were the smart kid or the good looking quarterback or the popular musician or whatever.

[00:07:06] The validation we receive growing up largely determines how we choose to value ourselves in our adult life.

[00:07:13] Some of us also experienced emotional traumas early on and therefore many of us got fixated on certain aspects of our identity more than others.

[00:07:23] Social pressures can also force us into over identifying with a certain aspect of our identity which then drowns out other areas of our lives.

[00:07:33] To be continued, you just listen to part one of the post titled, Why You Should Care About Many Things by Mark Manson of markmanson.net and I'll be right back with my commentary.

[00:07:48] Thank you to Mark. I'll finish the rest of this post for you tomorrow.

[00:07:52] Coincidentally, I was talking about our identities in I think it was yesterday's episode and how we could be completely wrong about how we think we are.

[00:08:02] It can take years and years to finally realize that maybe we aren't the way we think we are.

[00:08:10] Now Mark is talking about another side to it, how we measure ourselves and choosing what we value which can be both conscious and unconscious.

[00:08:20] I do agree that most likely the validation we received when growing up probably determines how we choose to value ourselves in our adult life.

[00:08:29] It's a good point. Same with any kind of traumas that might have happened.

[00:08:34] And again, like I mentioned before, hopefully this podcast can shed light on some of these things because it's really easy to not think about it and therefore miss out on a great opportunity to better ourselves.

[00:08:48] That's what this podcast does for me. Besides being a bit of a daily dose of positivity, I think it's also a daily dose of reflection.

[00:08:57] So hopefully it does the same for you.

[00:08:59] And we're just halfway through the article for now. I'll finish the rest for you tomorrow.

[00:09:03] So with that, thank you for being here and listening every day.

[00:09:07] And I'll be back tomorrow to finish up this post where your optimal life awaits.