How to Stop Living for Other People (ft. Ben Nemtin)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Podcast
Mark Manson
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2024
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever felt like there’s more to life than the daily grind, like your dreams are buried under all the obligations and expectations life throws at you?
In this episode, we sit down with The Buried Life co-founder and New York Times bestselling author, Ben Nemtin, to explore why so many of us feel disconnected from our true purpose—and how to reclaim it.
For Ben, it all started as a group of friends chasing wild bucket-list dreams and helping strangers achieve their dreams too. In the process, they discovered what it means to give yourself permission to dream and then make those dreams a reality.
We dive deep into the psychology of fear, the power of accountability, and the surprising benefits of doing what you love—not just for yourself, but for everyone around you. We discuss why most people regret not living authentically, how to overcome the social and emotional barriers holding you back, and practical strategies for rediscovering your dreams, even if they’ve been buried for years.
If you’re looking for inspiration to take that first small step toward a life that feels truly yours, this episode will get you there.
Enjoy.
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Ben’s Stuff:
The Bucket List Journal by Ben Nemtin: https://www.amazon.com/Bucket-List-Journal-Achieve-Fulfilling/dp/B09VX2LMY2
The Buried Life (TV Show): https://www.bennemtin.com/tv-show/
The Buried Life (Poem): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43585/the-buried-life
Ben’s Website: https://www.bennemtin.com Ben’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Y7mfxEaco
Follow Ben:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennemtin
https://www.instagram.com/bennemtin
https://www.facebook.com/Nemtin/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5l2kfhEEEXLm2HlRXRVzbw
Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough
Follow me:
https://instagram.com/markmanson/
https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson
https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/
https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/
https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson
00:00 What is the buried life?
06:57 Finding your gift and giving it away
11:07 The impact of The Buried Life TV show
18:06 Your goals don't have to be big to be meaningful
21:17 Your authentic self changes over time
26:15 Buried lives and the modern world
34:50 How to uncover your buried life
50:22 Leveraging emotions in your favor
59:41 Ben's Bucket List Journal
Theme music: “Icarus Lives” by Periphery, used with permission from Periphery.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Ben Nympton, welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Yeah, thanks for having me. |
| 0:03.7 | It's great for you to come up. |
| 0:06.0 | You know, one of the most common questions I ever get is around questions of purpose, meaning, what should I do with my life? |
| 0:14.8 | Why am I here? |
| 0:15.8 | And I feel like you are the ideal guest to address these topics. Why don't we start, give everybody |
| 0:22.8 | context. What is the buried life? How did you get here? That's a great question. And that's a |
| 0:29.5 | long answer. I'm going to try and do it. Okay. Okay. As quickly as I can. We've got time. |
| 0:33.9 | Okay. And we have an editor. So that's right. Yeah. We have time and we can cut out everything you say. So it's so funny when |
| 0:41.3 | you think about how this whole thing started because it's a, it's an old English poem written by a |
| 0:47.0 | guy named Matthew Arnold, two T's Matthew. And my friend Johnny was assigned this poem in |
| 0:53.7 | English class at McGill. You know, so you had to |
| 0:55.5 | read it for homework. So basically, Johnny and myself and Johnny's brother and our other friend, |
| 1:01.5 | we all had this feeling that we wanted to create something. We wanted to do something, but we didn't |
| 1:08.8 | know what it was. And we, and we had talked about |
| 1:11.1 | this feeling together that we felt buried. Like, we felt like there were things that we wanted to do, |
| 1:16.7 | but we hadn't done them, and we were starting to talk about why we hadn't done them. And we had |
| 1:22.5 | come together for this purpose to create something, although we had no idea what it was. And so |
| 1:27.2 | serendipitously, |
| 1:28.3 | Johnny got assigned this poem, and it struck a chord with him because this poem talked about |
| 1:34.1 | the same feeling that we were feeling that we were having trouble articulating, which was that |
| 1:37.8 | we had all these things that we wanted to do. We had all these dreams, but we hadn't done them |
... |
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