 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know, have you ever felt like your life or the world around you was falling apart? Boy, that's a good question, huh? And felt hopeless because of it? You know, I think most of us know that feeling. The problem is feeling hopeless can make you sad, anxious, and completely miserable. And that's not exactly the way you want to go through life. Well, the good news is that you can turn things around. In just a moment, I'll speak with Mark Manson. Everybody knows that Mark is the author of the acclaimed bestselling New York Times book that I think we think it's been on the bestseller list for 170-odd weeks. The subtle art of not giving a F-U-C-K, or it's actually F-star C-K. Yes, folks, that's really the title. Recently, he's come out with a new book, which everything is effed. But it's a book about hope. So today, we're going to talk about the importance of being and staying hopeful. What a perfect time to do something completely illogical. We'll also discuss how you can rewrite the narratives inside your head to live a life of purpose and meaning and be happier and healthier as a result. Mark, welcome to the program. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Thanks for having me. So people say that your books are not the typical self-help books. Would you agree? Yeah, I actually jokingly describe them as self-help for people who hate self-help. OK. So take me back to the beginning before you went on this tear of being the greatest author the New York Times has ever had. What prompted you to write everything as effed? Well, I've been blogging online for a number of years now. And I'm a millennial. I'm of the younger. The much maligned generation where we tend to be very cynical and jaded about everything. And I just I was very much in this personal development and self-help when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. But, you know, I became very disillusioned with it. It felt very there was a lot of BS. There was a lot of like just feel good, you know, fluffy rainbows and unicorns type stuff going on. And I just I always felt like, you know, there's some important principles here, but I think we just need to be honest about life. Like life is hard. Life is full of pain and suffering and things go wrong and there are unexpected events. And, you know, no matter how much you accomplish or how much success you achieve, there's always going to be some sort of dissatisfaction that comes with it. And so I wanted to kind of write a little bit more of a kind of a negative approach to things. And the thing that, you know, with this book, it's actually ironic that we're doing this interview now during the coronavirus pandemic because I wrote it about a year and a half ago. And the reason I wrote it is because things were amazing. There was actually like no crisis in the world. Yet when you looked at data about optimism, mental health, depression, anxiety, people's thoughts and expectations about the future. I mean, you're looking at all time lows pretty much across the board. So to me, this was a big question of like, what is it, you know, arguably in 2018, 2019, you know, we were the most comfortable and prosperous humans on the history of the planet. Yet we're we seem miserable, you know, so what's up with that? Now that was kind of the starting point of the book. It was the best of times and it was the worst of the times. Exactly. So getting back to kind of the original thing. So I would take that you are a fan of Albert Camus. Would have you ever read him? Yeah, yeah, yeah, big, big fan of the existentialists in general. So here's here's something nobody knows about me. I was actually at Yale, a philosophy major of all things. And I was majoring in existentialism. In fact, my salutatorian address to my high school was all about the existential lifestyle. And, you know, when I've read your books, I said, man, this guy's an existentialist. I like this guy already. I tell you what, tell listeners, what does that mean? Sure. So existentialism is kind of like a school of thought in 20th century philosophy, where the starting point is basically the acceptance that life is inherently meaningless, that there's no you can't prove with any sort of certainty that anything you do is important or significant at all. And so the kind of the conclusion that they come to is that you the whole purpose of life or living is to create meaning for yourself. That meaning is a subjective thing, not an not an objective thing. And to me, it's just it's a very powerful realization. And to me, it meshes very well. There's a lot of psychological research that's come out the last few decades showing how flawed and biased our perceptions and our faculties are. And to me, existentialism kind of meshes very well with a lot of this new psychological research that just shows that we don't really know how to be happy. We don't really know what's true. We don't remember things correctly. We predict things horribly. We don't know what, you know, how we feel in this moment, much less what we're going to feel tomorrow or next year. And so instead, we need to try to hold on to something. You know, to me, that that that's kind of like a call to bypass all these this kind of obsession with happiness that goes on today and instead ask the deeper questions about meaning and purpose. OK, so in your, you know, in your new book, you say that hopelessness is at the root of our anxiety or mental illness and our depression. So what what is hopelessness? How do you identify it? And how does it affect us? Sure. So the way I define hope in the book is is pretty simple. It's basically having some sort of vision of a better future, whether for yourself or someone you care about or the world in general. We all need to to have some idea of how things can be better tomorrow. Otherwise, there's not really any reason to get out of bed in the morning. And the problem kind of that that point about happiness, you know, most people assume the opposite of happiness is sadness or anger or something like that. But if you're sad or angry about something, that that actually means that something is still important to you, that something is still giving you hope in some way. You know, sadness is the loss of something you hope for. Anger is feeling wronged in some way or something for something that you hope for. You know, it's hopelessness is when there is just no vision of anything that could possibly be better. And as a result, hopelessness kind of just creates this very bleak, you know, why do anything sort of realization in people? So I would I would think that right now, hopelessness is one of the most prevailing emotions in the world, certainly in this country. Perhaps, yeah. So, you know, how how in the world do you have hope in a time like this, for instance, I actually think there's a little bit of a paradox that goes on in times like this. And I've been really I've been trying to pay close attention to some of the mental health data that's coming out just in the last few months. But one of the arguments I actually make in the book is that it in times of crisis, it's actually easier to hope for something. You know, when there's a pandemic, it's it's actually easy right now to know what to hope for. I hope that we find a vaccine. I hope that we get to go outside. I hope people stop dying. Like that's that is a very clear cut. You know, it's it's actually when times are very good and very comfortable that it becomes difficult to know what to hope for. You know, when when everything, you know, when you can have eight different types of food delivered to your door with a click of a button and there's two hundred movies on TV at any given moment. Like it's actually very difficult to know what to hope for in that situation because it's difficult to know what your problems are. So in a weird way. I I think moments in history like this are actually very clarifying for us as a culture. It helps us understand what is important and what we should be focused on going into the future. No, I think you're absolutely right. You know, was there was there a point in your life that gave rise to the fact that you needed to be hopeful? Oftentimes, many authors have have a defining moment that makes makes them write a book or change their life around. Was there was there a point that you got to where hope was about all you had? Well, ironically, what inspired the book was actually the success of the previous book. You know, so my first my first book, Subtle Art. Was as you were joking earlier, was so widely successful. I mean, it's like a once in a decade type thing in the publishing. I tell people it's like the avengers of nonfiction books. Like it's just it just keeps going and going and going. And I I wrote that book when I was 31 years old. It was my first book. I was a first time author. In my mind, I was going to be climbing the author mountain for the next 10 or 20 years of my life. And it was like within a couple months, suddenly every goal on my checklist, everything that I had been hoping for for years in my career was all accomplished pretty much all at the same time. And it was a very weird place because even though I was experiencing the most worldly success I had ever experienced before, I had no idea what to hope for. I had no idea what to look forward to. Like this was the thing I'd been looking forward to my whole adult life. And now it's now it's here and now it's gone. And so what what the hell do you do? So I actually became a little bit depressed for the year after the book came out for no other reason than I just I had no idea what to do with myself. And so that's kind of what got me thinking about like, wow, my life is from the outside. My life is better than it's ever been before. Yet this is the worst I've felt, you know, since I was a teenager. So what the hell is going on here? Like, why is this happening? And so that kind of led to me down this rabbit hole of what is it about comfort and good things happening that actually makes it difficult for us to be happy? Yeah, because these were the best of times like you start like you started the program. I mean, nobody ever had it so good, at least on the surface. Has this experience with the coronavirus brought you down to earth and now you have something to hope for or you're just still so miserable? No, you know, I I I eventually. You know, writing everything is after kind of. I always tell people I write these books not because I have all the answers. I write these books because I have the same problem. So, you know, writing everything is after was kind of my therapy that got me out of that mindset and helped me find new things to hope for new challenges to pursue and things like that. The coronavirus thing is just a drag. It's just to me, it's just tragic. It hasn't really affected my career. You know, I'm a writer. I sit at home and sweatpants every day, you know. So it's it hasn't it hasn't affect me on that level. It's just to me, it's just it's a very tragic thing. That I I've I tried to do whatever I can to help. Great. All right, getting back to the book, you talk a great deal about the uncomfortable truth. What the heck is the uncomfortable truth? And why do we need to come into terms with it? So the uncomfortable truth is that kind of existentialist idea that in the grand scheme of the universe and everything. The vast majority of the things that you do with your life are not going to matter. That that, you know, we're all going to die. The universe is like 14 billion years old. It's everything gets erased and forgotten. You know, so it's it's a very dismal, bleak realization that I think we all think about at some point in our lives. But we all also all instinctively avoid and try not to to deal with. The reason I think it's important to confront that truth is because it's it's only in the face of the uncomfortable truth that we are actually able to be clear about what is worth spending our our time on and what is not. We have a limited amount of time and energy on this planet. So we need to use it well. And if you're not thinking about death and kind of the the futility of of life in general, you're not going to be able to to make those decisions as clearly. Yeah, no, I think you're right. You know, I'm working and finishing up my new book, The Energy Paradox. And a lot of it involves mitochondria and the little energy producing organelles. And there's a lot of us in this space who actually think the only purpose of life is to move one electron from one level of charge to another. And there's probably nothing more existential than realizing the only reason that you and I exist is to move an electron from one level of charge to another and nothing else matters. The meaning of the life, the electron moving, moving an electron. I mean, I had no idea when I got up this morning that I was just going to move a few electrons around. So OK, you say that everyone needs a psychological carrot at the end of a stick. Yeah, absolutely. OK, so we're all going to die and life has no meaning. You know, you better. Electron. Yeah, move electrons. Why do we need a carrot at the end of a stick? Well, it's it's our psychological health is kind of built around it, right? So you can't we need something to look forward to. We need some sort of objective at the front of our mind. And so. I think what we don't tend to realize is that those objectives or those carrots that we create for ourselves, they they're made up, you know, whether it's whether your big goal in your life right now is to to get the corner office or be an amazing mother or, you know, help out with a local charity. Like whatever your mission is at this moment, it is a made up mission. It is something that you kind of arbitrarily created for yourself, envisioned in your mind and then hoped for. And most of us are not aware that we do that with ourselves, that we kind of create these that we are created. We are hanging our own carrots out in front of ourselves. And I think it's important because if we don't realize that, then we feel kind of enslaved to that to whatever our goal or objective is. It's important to understand that we get to decide these things. But at the same time, you have to decide something like you can't just there's no such thing as not hoping for something. There's no such thing as not caring about anything. Like you have to just the way the brain is built and structured. Like you have to pick something to go after. So you need to be very careful what that is. Yeah, that's actually part of the existential philosophy. You have to decide. Yes, at the end of the day, you have to choose and you have to choose something. Right. Absolutely. And it is terrifying to admit that because it's just it's there's a burden that comes with that because as soon as you realize that you're deciding, you also realize that you're responsible for whatever happens in your life. And that that is that's a bummer. Come on. I mean, that's a bummer. It petrifies us. So is that why so many of us just kind of go through life frozen, not willing to make decisions? I think so. I think a lot of us avoid that realization. A lot of us just adopt the the the hopes and goals of the people around us. You know, it's it's, you know, mom always wanted me to go to be a doctor. So I'm going to go be a doctor. She did. Yeah. Yeah. You know, or it's like my brother is an amazing lawyer, so I need to be an amazing lawyer. Like we don't actually stop and think about where we got these these hopes or these narratives from because it's easier not to. Actually, I I I decided to be a doctor at age 10. So my mother didn't make me be a doctor. So OK, so wait a minute. Let's go back. You've got this rousing success with, you know, the subtle art of not giving enough and you're kind of depressed and you got everything. I mean, everything. So what was the what's the new carrot for you? I mean, give us an example. The new carrot for me is. I I kind of I the reorient how I saw my own career. You know, the new carrot for me is is I I've been given this opportunity to affect an industry and a cultural narrative around mental health, happiness, personal growth and development. And my kind of mission in the world, I guess, is I think this this over emphasis and obsession with positivity and feeling good all the time, it backfires in a lot of ways. And so I would like to introduce a healthier narrative that integrates and involves pain and suffering, responsibility, themes of that nature and and try to make this kind of have have that infiltrate both the self help industry, but also the culture at large. So for me, that's that's my new carrot. And it's and it's great because, you know, if I if I get another big, you know, monster mega bestseller, it doesn't it doesn't ruin anything for me. All right, so you bring up an interesting point. So I shouldn't wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and go, boy, do you know, do I feel good? And, you know, if you act enthusiastic, you will be enthusiastic. And boy, do I feel good. That was one of my father's mantras. Yeah. That's not what you're saying. Well, I I feel like if you actually feel good, you don't need to say that. Right. Like if you have to say that, then clearly you don't feel good. So it's a bit of a contradiction. You know, the more the more you chase happiness, the more it alludes you. Or it's as Albert Camus says, how does it go? The more you seek happiness, the I forget. Yeah, the more it alludes you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Believe it or not, I'm reading. I'm rereading the plague right now. And very very it's a boy that he nailed that book. I'd forgotten how he nailed that book for for our time. And it's actually a book about a city that is suffering from the plague. And they are they are isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. They are self-quarantine and everybody's dying. And this is about a doctor in the town who comes to realize that there actually is incredible hope in a hopeless situation. And yeah. Yeah. So it's available. You know, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, folks. So we're not actually talking about some obscure person. Right. All right. So getting back to hope is that's the subject of today's podcast. So what are what are three things that people need to do to maintain hope? Yeah. So what I argue in the book is that the three things that we need is is the first is we need to feel as though we have some sort of control over our lives. You know, we need to have to maintain hope in some sort of vision of a better future. We need to believe that we can actually we have the power to do something to create that future. If we feel powerless, if we feel constrained, if we feel oppressed in some way, then that removes our ability to to successfully hope for something. The second one is that we actually have to value something. We have to choose something that is more important or we have to choose what that better future is. And we get to define that however, however we like. And then the third one is is that we need some sort of community that shares our vision of hope as well. You know, if we if we hope for something yet, you know, we're the only ones who who know about it or are involved with it in any way. It loses its legitimacy, like ultimately we're social creatures and we we like our emotional health is very much regulated and functions based on the validation and the kind of interchange that happens between us and the people around us. And so we naturally see whenever we start to value something and hope for something, we naturally seek out other people with similar values and hopes and so that we can pursue them together. OK, so that's easy for you to say you're not out of a job. The rent was due last week and you can't pay it. How the heck can you have hope in the situation of 20 million people in the United States right now? Help us. I think there are two ways to look at that question. I mean, obviously, it's hard. It's incredibly hard for a lot of people right now. I think on a macro level, it's just important to remember that humanity has been through this and much worse many, many times throughout its history. Generally, we tend to come out of it stronger than we went into it. But it's it's difficult, it's tragic, but it's this is not anything new or particularly unique. It's only new in our lifetimes. So kind of on a macro level that that sustains hope on a micro level, on an individual level, I think it's it's important to, you know, anytime an individual experiences a great amount of loss, I think it's it's kind of a call to take inventory about where what really matters in their life, like where are they? Where are they really finding meaning? You know, so somebody loses their job, rent comes due. They're having, you know, obviously, 2020 is going to be a rough financial year. At the same time, it's situations like this that, you know, it's bringing families together. It's, you know, reuniting friendships, people who have been estranged from each other. You know, I've heard so many stories from my readers of, you know, people who have dropped everything and gone and taken care of a sick uncle or, you know, a friend or whatever. Economies come back. Jobs come back. Human lives don't at the end of the day. I think what sustains us and gives us hope through periods like this is is each other as hokey as that sounds. No, I know, I think you're absolutely right. You know, I had Lewis Howes on the podcast a few weeks ago. School of Greatness and, you know, Lewis shared that literally for a year, he slept on his sister's couch and, you know, eight Kraft macaroni and cheese every every day, you know, out of a saucepan because he didn't even want a dirty a dish. He didn't feel like cleaning up. He talked about being grateful and, yeah, I go, yeah, you're grateful, you know, your career in professional football was ruined, you know, and you're sleeping on your sister's couch. He says, you know what? I was grateful that my sister had a couch that I could sleep on. And he says, that's kind of where I started. And I think you're right. There's a lot of things when we finally stop and think about it that we can be grateful for, even when everything that we thought was important to us has fallen apart. Absolutely. And there are always, there are silver linings that can easily go unnoticed in these situations. One thing I've been joking with a lot of my friends about is how for the last few years we were all like everybody's always complaining about how busy they are and how they wish they had more time to, you know, study a new language or catch up on a bunch of books that they wish they could read or, you know, whatever. And we're all we've all been talking about how like now we have no excuse. It's like, this is the time to do it. This is, you know, you've got that sci-fi novel. You always wanted to write this is the time to do it. And so there are blessings that can come out of this. It's just they're not always apparent. And sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find them. You've got a powerful story from one of your readers about hope. Or I'm sure you must hear them all the time. I was doing last year I was doing a speaking tour and I was down in Australia and I was doing like a little meet and greet in front of the stage afterwards. And this this family comes up to me. There's like a daughter who's probably about 20 years old and then a mother and a father. And the daughter and the mother are like very excited to meet me and shake my hand and sign my books and everything. And and the father is kind of just hanging back, kind of. OK, he's he's like the third wheel. He's just tagging along or whatever. And they're talking to me and they're talking to me. And then they they start they turn around to him and they're like, hey, don't you want to say hi to Mark? And I look at him and it's it's probably a 55 year old man, burly kind of construction worker looking guy. And he's just bawling. And I was completely frozen in my trip. Like I'm not used to seeing this, you know, what's going on. He couldn't even speak. And so his wife started to tell me. She said that he he had cancer and he was going through chemo. And she said he hasn't read a book in 30 years. But he read your book cover to cover. He would finish the last page and then immediately flip back to page one and start reading it again. Probably read it five, six times in a row. And he just came up and started blubbering all over me. And then I started blubbering all over him. And I, you know, it's it's moments like that that I struggle to even find words to to to kind of express how powerful some of these these ideas can be. Like you never imagine that you can have that sort of impact on somebody when you're sitting in gym shorts, you know, having not showered in two days, revising chapter eight for the 25th time. Like as an author, you don't get to confront that very often. And so that was just an incredible story that that I will probably always remember. So what do you tell people who's struggling mentally and emotionally right now? I mean, you've kind of gone through that. Obviously, there is light at the end of the tunnel. This this will end. Yeah. What advice do you give people? I mean, where's the carrot? I think there's always a carrot. It's just it's a matter of finding it. When we're clouded by a lot of negative emotion, it's very difficult to see where that carrot could be. But it's there. And I think sometimes it's just a matter of being patient enough to to let it to let it appear. If you lost your job last week and you don't know where you're going to live next month, you know, it's very hard to imagine things getting better anytime soon. But I think understanding how our minds are very become very clouded by our emotions, how we tend to think way more short term. Whenever I'm in dark moments, I always remind myself that it's it's in the long run, things always pass, things always get better. And it's usually things usually start to get better the moment you think it's impossible for them to get better. You know, you have to hit that bottom first. So there will be opportunities that come out of this period. There will be an economic recovery. There will be a public health recovery. It will end. We will move on. It's just it's just going to be ugly for a while. I think you're really right. Certainly when I when I made a career choice to, you know, stop primarily doing heart surgery and teaching people how to eat, we went through some very tough economic times. My wife and I, we lost our house. We lost our cars and I just kept going. And we always we made a joke that pretty soon we were going to be so successful. We were going to have a villa in the south of France, and it was all going to be worth it. Now, this is people now who are lost their house. We actually had my parents sign for car loans. It was that bad. Yeah, met with bankruptcy attorneys. And yet we're dreaming about having a house in the south of France, where my wife really wants one. We don't have one, by the way, everybody. But, you know, it's funny. It's like, oh, wait a minute, you don't even have a house to live in in the United States. And you're dreaming about your villa in the south of France. And I think you're right. It's like we just, you know, that was our concept. This is why this is why we keep going. And you pick something, right? Yeah. And it doesn't even matter how realistic it is. Right. You just pick something and something that that that's worth getting out of bed for and you go for it. So I think it was Warren Buffett who said that people regularly overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10. Generally in times like this, people overestimate the importance of what will happen in the next year and they underestimate the importance of what will happen in the next 10. Like there's a lot of time on the other side of this for things to change. No, that's that's very true. Very true. And I'm actually a perfect example of that. I still don't have that bill in the south of France. But come on, you know, come on. But, you know, I've got to have that carrot out there, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's still dreaming. All right. Well, that, you know, I know, I think you're right. And my actually, my mother grew up with three doors down from Warren Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska. Really? Yeah. And she always used to remind my father that, you know, he she could have married Warren Buffett and, you know, look where she would have been now. And she'd she'd be in the same house because he still lives. We actually always reminded her of that. Yeah, yeah. And I said, besides, you wouldn't have had me. And, you know, that would have been, you know, real real disappointment of me. So OK. Well, I got I got to let you go. This has been great. It really is a pleasure to meet you and talk with you. So, you know, I always ask, but where do people find find you? As if they need to know. But no, seriously. So my website, markmanson.net, I have a weekly newsletter. I'm posting stuff every week there. I invite everybody to check it out. And then, obviously, the books subtle are not giving enough. Everything is F the book about hope. I would say they're available in every bookstore, but I hope nobody's going in the bookstore. So you can get them online everywhere. And when we do open up, please get them at your local bookstore. And we would both appreciate it. And yes, I mean, talk about timing, a book about hope. I mean, come on. You are the marketing genius of all time. I wish I was smart enough to say I knew this was going to happen. It's better to be lucky than smart, right? It's always better to be lucky. All right, well, take care. We'll see you. I hope to meet you in New York one of these days. Sounds good. Thanks, Stephen. Take care. OK, it's time for our audience question. This is a good one. Paula Mackie on YouTube wrote in with this question, please explain herd immunity. Does it make sense during this time? That is a great question. So herd immunity says that if enough people contract a virus and get immunity, then the virus is incapable of spreading to those remaining people who don't have immunity. And believe it or not, back in the dark ages, before vaccines for measles and for chickenpox, there used to be chickenpox parties where parents would bring their kids over to a home where a kid had chickenpox and they would literally rub the chickenpox on their kid to get the kid to have chickenpox, which quite frankly is a very mild illness as a child. So that chickenpox is a really awful illness as an adult. And so they literally would practice herd immunity. Interestingly enough, one of the arguments about measles and measles vaccines and we're not going to go down the vaccine road. Measles is so contagious that measles is one of those viruses where people do suggest that herd immunity works. Now, you'll notice that Sweden right now is depending on herd immunity to work. And as many of you know, Sweden is pretty much reopened. Now, interestingly enough, they do have a higher death rate than their neighboring countries, Finland and Norway, but they are, for lack of a better word, accepting that slightly higher death rate in order to save their economy and have herd immunity. Now, interestingly, there's a new paper that just came out today looking at people in Northern Europe versus people in Southern Europe and the incidence of the severity of the COVID virus with vitamin D levels. And interestingly enough, the incidence of severe infections with the COVID virus are actually very low in Scandinavia and in Northern Europe in general, and they're actually much higher in Southern Europe. And believe it or not, it has to do with vitamin D status. And what happens is in Northern Europe, particularly in the winter, people take cod liver oil. And interestingly enough, cod liver oil has a lot of vitamin D in it and actually a lot of vitamin A, which is another subject. But the researchers now think that was the high vitamin D levels in Northern Europeans that have protected them. And the people in Southern Europe actually have lower vitamin D levels because they're actually quite afraid of the sun. So a long story short, herd immunity is a real thing. The big fear about herd immunity in the United States is quite frankly, we have a very sick ailing population. And we have so many people with preexisting conditions that don't happen that much, particularly in a very healthy country like Sweden, that the idea of trying herd immunity right now is by all health experts in the United States, a really dumb idea. But we're going to find out because as states are opening up, we are going to find out the effect of herd immunity, whether many of us want that or not. So that is a great question. Thank you for letting me talk about that. OK, now it's time for the review of the week. Following my recent episode with the financial expert, Susie Orman, Anna Bailey on YouTube wrote, Thank you for having Susie on during this time rather than only focusing on medical issues. I love your well rounded podcast. Well, thank you very much, Anna. And, you know, this comes down to you'll notice we're talking a lot about mental health right now. We're talking a lot about financial health right now, because quite frankly, that's all a part of our overall health. And if you've been watching, you know that I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. We'll see you next week. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast, because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.