Mark Manson

21.11.2013

Why I’m Wrong About Everything (And So Are You)

markmanson.net

/wrong-about-everything

Five hundred years ago cartographers believed California was an island. Doctors believed that slicing your arm
open and bleeding everywhere could cure disease. Scientists believed fire was made out of something called
phlogiston. Women believed rubbing dog urine on their face had anti-aging benefits. And astronomers believed the
sun revolved around the earth.

When I was a little boy, I used to think “mediocre” was a kind of vegetable and that I didn’t want to eat it. I thought
my brother had found a secret passageway in my grandma’s house because he could get outside without having to
leave the bathroom (spoiler alert: there was a window). I also thought that when my friend and his family visited
“Washington BC” they had somehow traveled back in time to when the dinosaurs lived, because after all, “BC” was
a long time ago.

As a teenager, I used to try and not care about anything, when the truth was I actually cared way too much. I
thought

happiness

was a destiny and not a choice. I thought love was something that just happened and not

something that was worked for. I thought that being “cool” had to be practiced and learned from others rather than
invented for oneself.

When I was with my first girlfriend, I thought she would never leave me. And then when she left me, I thought I’d
never feel the same way about a woman again. And then when I felt the same way about a woman again, I thought
that love sometimes just wasn’t enough. And then I realized that you get to decide what is “enough,” and love can be
whatever you let it be for you, if you so choose.

Every step of the way I was wrong. About everything. All throughout my life, I was flat-out wrong about myself,
others, society, culture, the world, the universe, everything. And I hope that will continue to be the case for the rest of
my life.

Just as Present Mark can look back on Past Mark’s every flaw and mistake, one day Future Mark will look back on
Present Mark’s assumptions and notice similar flaws. And that will be a good thing. Because that will mean I have
grown.

There’s that famous Michael Jordan quote about failing over and over and over again, and that’s why he succeeds.
Well, I am always wrong about everything, and that’s why my life improves.

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We don’t want to hear that we’re wrong. But we need to in order to grow.

Knowledge is an eternal iterative process. We don’t go from “wrong” to “right” once we discover the capital-T Truth.
Rather, we go from partially wrong to slightly less wrong, to slightly less wrong than that, to even less wrong than
that, and so on. We approach the capital-T truth, but never reach it.

Therefore, from a perspective of happiness/purpose, we should not seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for
ourselves, but rather seek to chip away at the ways which we’re wrong today so that we’re a little less wrong
tomorrow.

When looked at from this perspective, personal development can actually be quite scientific. The hypotheses are our
beliefs. Our actions and behaviors are the experiments. The resulting internal emotions and thought patterns are our
data. We can then take those and compare them to our original beliefs and then integrate them into our overall
understanding of

our needs

and emotional make-up for the future.

This approach to personal development is superior because it relies on experience first and foremost, and
then proper interpretation of experience through various belief systems second.

For example, let’s say you aspire to be a professional writer. You have assumptions you’ve made about yourself —
you’re creative, you love to express yourself, people enjoy your writing, you would be happy writing every day, and
so on. And now you want to pursue an end-goal of turning that into a profession.

I get tons of emails from people in this situation and they all ask the same question, “What should I do?”

The answer is easy. You write. A lot.

You test those beliefs out in the real world and get real-world feedback and emotional data from them. You may find
that you, in fact, don’t enjoy writing every day as much as you thought you would. You may discover that you actually
have a lot of trouble expressing some of your more exquisite thoughts than you first assumed. You realize that
there’s a lot of failure and rejection involved in writing and that kind of takes the fun out of it. You also find that you
spend more time on your site’s design and presentation than you do on the writing itself, that that is what you
actually seem to be enjoying.

And so you integrate that new information and adjust your goals and behaviors accordingly.

This, in a nutshell, is called life. Or at least what life should be. But somewhere along the way we all became so
obsessed with being “right” about our lives that we never end up living it.

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We often say that people don’t take action because they’re
afraid of failure. You’re single and lonely and want a boyfriend
but you never get out of the house and do anything. Or you work
your ass off and believe you deserve a promotion but you never
confront your boss about it. The conventional wisdom about
these situations is that you’re simply afraid of failure, of
rejection, of someone saying “no.”

But it goes beyond that. Sure, rejection hurts. Failure sucks. But
there are certainties we hold onto which we are afraid to
question or let go of, certainties which meet our needs and give
our lives meaning. That woman doesn’t get out there and date
because she would be forced to confront her certainty of her
own desirability and self-esteem. That man doesn’t ask for the
promotion because he would have to confront his certainty
about the value of his work and whether he’s actually productive
or not.

These certainties are designed to give us moderate comfort
now by mortgaging greater happiness later. They’re terrible
long-term strategies. These are the certainties that keep us in
place and out of touch. These are the certainties that drive people into

despair

, prejudice or

radicalism

.

Getting somewhere great in life has less to do with the ability to be right all the time and more to do with the ability to
be wrong all the time. What are you wrong about today that can lead to your improvement?

So try it. Assume that you’re wrong — about everything. See where that takes you. Whatever you’re struggling with
right now, practice some uncertainty. Ask yourself, “What if I was wrong about this?” Because I can tell you that you
are. You are wrong about that and everything else too, just like me and just like everybody else.

And that’s good news.

Because being wrong means change. Being wrong means improvement. It means not cutting your arm open to cure
a cold or splashing dog piss on your face to look young again. It means not thinking “mediocre” is a vegetable or
being afraid to care.

In five hundred years, people will point and laugh at how we let our money and our jobs define our lives. They will
laugh at how we were afraid to show appreciation for those who matter to us most. They will laugh at our rituals and
superstitions, our worries and our wars. They will gawk at our cruelty. They will study our art and argue over our
history. They will understand truths about us of which none of us are even aware of yet.

And we will have been wrong about pretty much everything. Just as they will be wrong about everything too, albeit a
little less wrong.

And maybe, possibly — hopefully! — they will look back on our world and think, “Wow, how did they live like that?”

This article is an excerpt from my book,

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Guide to Living A

Good Life

© 2016 Infinity Squared Media LLC

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