Mark Manson On Vanity Goals, Self-Sabotage & How To Actually Change Your Life

The Rich Roll Podcast

Rich Roll

Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Education, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mark Manson is the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and host of the Solved podcast. Back for his third appearance (eps. 476, 882), we skip the backstory and pull questions from a fishbowl. We discuss vanity goals versus values-aligned goals, why procrastination is really about emotional avoidance, the trap of people-pleasing, how to distinguish intuition from impulse, and the delusion of passive manifestation. I also share my own shifting perspectives on positive thinking and the dissolution of self. Mark is the anti-guru. And this conversation is your New Year intervention. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: Use code RICHROLL20 for 20% OFF your first order👉🏼https://www.seed.com/RichRoll BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼https://www.betterhelp.com/richroll Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll WHOOP: The all-new WHOOP 5.0 is here! Get your first month FREE👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think most people, when they set goals or aims or have dreams, they orient it purely around the upside, the positive benefits.
0:11.0	They don't think about the costs or the challenges or the struggles that are going to come along with it.
0:15.0	Probably the most powerful reorientation for me and my life has been simply looking at the struggles that I actually enjoy having
0:22.1	and the pain that I secretly enjoy, find something that you are willing or even happy to
0:28.6	suffer for. On the one hand, life is short and take advantage of the time you have left, but on the
0:33.3	other hand, I think we are predisposed and biased against any change, say, past the age of 40 or 50 without realizing, like, they're decades.
0:42.3	This is the Mark Manson 2.0 stance on positive thinking. It is January 26.
1:02.0	Welcome to our global ritual of going about bettering ourselves in some positive way.
1:15.4	If you have struggled with this in the past, you are in the right place, I promise you, because today, the master of no bullshit self-improvement advice, the anti-guru himself,
1:23.1	Mark Manson, is here, and he's going to help us dispel some self-help myths and set matters to rights
1:31.0	when it comes to making real life change and sustaining it over time. And basically, our shared
1:37.6	purpose today is to set all of you guys out there across the Internet to set you up for success in the new year.
1:46.1	We're going to do it together. So if you are new to the show, my name is Rich Roll, and by dint of
1:51.7	hosting this podcast for more than 13 years at this point, and also myself having navigated
1:58.2	a series of personal life transformations from alcoholism to middle-age malaise.
2:04.3	I also happen to know a few things about the subject matter that we're going to get into.
2:08.5	Nothing in comparison to my very esteemed guest, of course.
2:12.2	So I think you guys are in good hands today, and I guess we're going to find out if this is going to work or not.
2:17.7	What do you think, Mark?
2:19.6	Either way, we'll learn something ourselves.
2:21.9	Yeah, so we have a different kind of format today.
2:25.0	Mark's been on the show twice before.
	...

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