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Why You Feel So Stuck in Life | Mark Manson | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Why You Feel So Stuck in Life
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Summary
Core Theme
Life progresses through four distinct stages: the Copycat, the Explorer, the Martyr, and the Mortal, each characterized by specific developmental tasks and challenges that define one's goals, dreams, and struggles. Understanding these stages is crucial for personal growth and navigating life's transitions.
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- For most of my 20s,
I thought I was figuring my life out.
I traveled to 50 countries, started multiple businesses,
tried every drug under the sun,
and dated every type of girl you could imagine.
But I was wrong. I wasn't discovering myself.
I was avoiding the fact that I didn't want to know myself,
and even though I was always moving,
mentally and emotionally, I was stuck.
I didn't realize that there were actual stages
to this thing called life,
and I was stuck in the second one.
There are four, by the way, four stages that is,
and you know, you are probably stuck in one right now too,
whether you know it or not.
And this stage that you're stuck in
defines everything from the goals that you adopt,
to the dreams that you have,
to the struggles that you can't seem to get through.
And by the end of this video,
you'll know exactly which of the four stages
you're currently in, why you're stuck in it,
and how you can finally get out.
Starting with stage one,
which is a stage appropriately defined by monkeys and cats.
The copycat.
A friend of mine recently woke up on his 38th birthday
in the middle of a vacation
that he didn't really want to be on,
next to a person that he didn't really love anymore,
working on a job that he no longer believed in,
and it all hit him.
He had no idea how he got there.
He had done everything right,
but it turns out he had never actually chosen
his life for himself.
It turns out that moment is the end of stage one,
the copycat stage,
and a lot of people never quite get out of it.
Now understanding stage one is simple.
Basically, we are born helpless.
We can't walk, we can't talk, we can't feed ourselves,
we can't even do our own taxes.
As children, we're wired to learn
by watching and mimicking others.
First, we learned to do the physical skills.
like walking and talking,
and then we develop social skills
by watching and mimicking our peers around us.
Now, the goal of stage one is to teach ourselves
how to function within society
so that we can be self-sufficient adults.
The idea is that the adults in the community around us
help us to reach this point
through supporting our ability to make decisions
and take action for ourselves.
But some adults and community members kind of suck.
They punish us for our independence.
They don't support our decisions,
and therefore, we never develop that important autonomy.
We get stuck in stage one,
endlessly mimicking those around us,
living out their goals and their dreams
and their ideas of what's best,
endlessly attempting to please all
so that we might be judged by none.
In a normal, healthy individual,
stage one will last until late adolescence
or early adulthood,
but for some people, like my friend,
it will last way further into adulthood.
A select few wake up one day at 45
realizing that they never actually live for themselves
and wonder where the hell the years went.
The only way to move beyond stage one is to hit a point
where you realize that you can't live vicariously
through those around you,
that you have to stand up for yourself,
that you have to develop
some sense of autonomy and individualism,
because, ultimately, copying everyone around us
all the time, desperately craving their validation,
it's tiring and self-defeating.
We can never discover who we are
if we're always basing our opinions and actions on others.
It's then that the stage one person develops the courage
to live on their own terms
that they're able to venture into stage two.
The explorer.
In stage one, we learn to fit in
with the people and culture around us.
Stage two is about learning
what makes us different
from the people and culture around us.
Stage two requires us to begin making decisions
for ourselves, to test ourselves, to understand ourselves
and see where our limits are.
This is straight up
your classic young person's extravaganza,
full of cringe-worthy experimentation
and questionable life choices.
Yes, my friends, the six-foot beer bong is looking at you.
We experiment with living in new places,
hanging out with new types of people,
imbibing new substances,
and playing with new people's orifices.
- Oh, my God, it's in. - In my stage two,
I ran off and tried to live all over the world.
My brother's stage two was diving headfirst
into the political system in Washington, D.C.
Everyone's stage two is gonna be slightly different
because everybody's values are slightly different.
Stage two is a process of self-discovery.
We try things.
Some of them go well,
and some of them are a spectacular failure.
The goal is to stick with the ones that go well for a while
and then move on.
This is because stage two
is all about figuring out who we are.
That means figuring out our values,
and by values I mean trying to know
what is the most important thing in our life,
which pursuits and people and activities
that we're willing to be defined by.
Psychologists have found that living in alignment
with one's values brings us a greater sense of meaning
and psychological wellbeing.
It keeps us motivated and excited about the challenges
that we face in our lives.
I actually did a full four-hour deep dive podcast
in the values, what they are, and how to find yours
and how to live up to them once you have found them.
This podcast is essentially the work
of stages two and three from this video's framework.
If you click on the link in the video
or in the description below,
you can head over to that podcast
and get the real deep dive into this topic.
Now, stage two is fun
because we get to feel like we can do anything,
but, eventually, something unpleasant starts to happen.
We begin to run up against our own limitations,
and despite what Oprah and Deepak Chopra may tell you,
discovering your own limitations
is actually a very good and healthy thing.
The fact is, you're just gonna be bad at some things,
no matter how hard you try,
and you need to know what those things are
so you can prioritize your life accordingly.
I am not genetically inclined
to ever excel at anything athletic whatsoever.
It sucked for me to learn that, but I did,
and now I've adapted.
We all must learn what we suck at,
and the earlier in our life that we learn it, the better.
♪ Is this the real life ♪
♪ Or is this just fantasy ♪
So we're just gonna be bad at some things,
but then there are other things that are great for a while,
but begin to have diminishing returns after a few years.
For example, traveling the world.
The first few countries are really exciting,
but after 40 or 50, everything just becomes a big blur.
Or you know, sexing a ton of people, that's another one.
Getting high on a Tuesday night, that's another one.
These things, they're very exciting and novel
the first time you do it,
but after a while, you just start wondering
what the hell you're doing with your life.
Generally, anything that's driven by pleasure and novelty,
the more you do it,
the less interesting and valuable it becomes.
Your limitations are important
because you must have eventually come to the realization
that your time on this planet is brief,
and you should spend it on people and things
that actually really matter to you.
That is, your values.
In healthy individuals,
stage two begins in, say, mid to late adolescence
and lasts into the person's late 20s or mid-30s.
There are some people who never allow themselves
to feel these limitations though,
either because they refuse to admit their own failures,
or they get addicted to the highs
that come with the novelty and pleasure of stage two,
and they delude themselves into believing
that their limitations will just never exist.
These people who get stuck in stage two,
I generally call it Peter Pan syndrome.
They're the eternal adolescents,
always discovering themselves
but doomed to constantly find nothing.
At some point, we all must admit the inevitable:
Life is short, not all of our dreams are gonna come true,
so we should carefully pick and choose
which dreams are worth pursuing
and which ones are worth giving up.
The martyr.
Charles Bukowski once wrote,
"Find what you love and let it kill you."
The truth and beauty in this statement
is that everything you pursue in life in some small way
is leading you towards your death.
Therefore, the logical question to ask is,
"What are you comfortable dying for?"
The way out of stage two is to find people and things
that you care about so much, so deeply,
that they are so dear and important to you
that you're willing to give your life away to them.
Find what you love and then let it kill you.
Stage three is the great consolidation of one's life.
Out go the friends who are draining you
and holding you back,
out go the activities and hobbies
that are a mindless waste of time.
Then you double down on what you're best at
and what is best for you.
You double down on the most important relationships,
and you double down on the single important mission
in your life,
whether that's to work on the world's energy crisis
or become a bitching digital artist, or whatever it is.
Stage three is when you get it done.
Stage three ends when a combination of two things happen:
Number one, you feel as though there's not much else
you're able to accomplish,
and number two, you get old and tired
and find that you would rather sip martinis
and do crossword puzzles all day.
In normal individuals,
stage three generally last from, I don't know,
like, 30 until one reaches retirement age.
People who get lodged in stage three often do so
because they don't know how to let go of their ambition
and their constant desire for more.
This inability to let go of the power
and influence that they crave
counteracts the natural calming effects of time,
and they will often remain driven
and hungry well into their 70s and 80s.
What they are lacking is stage four.
The mortal.
Ernest Becker was a beloved
and wacky college professor in the 1960s.
He was an anthropologist,
but primarily influenced by Freud and Zen Buddhism,
so kind of made him a weirdo academically.
He came to class with props and wacky costumes.
His students loved him
and his administrators absolutely hated him.
Becker worked through his early career
in relative obscurity,
burning through one university's patience after another.
Then in his early 40s,
he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He had only a year left to live.
This snapped Becker's work into focus.
On his deathbed,
he wrote a book called "The Denial of Death".
It was published shortly after he died
and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
It has since become one of the most influential
philosophical works of the 20th century.
The core concept of "Denial of Death"
is that we all spend our lives
building immortality projects.
The idea of these immortality projects
is to build something that lives on after our death.
As a result, these projects can infuse our lives
with a sense of meaning and purpose
that goes way beyond ourselves.
The loss of them would plunge us into a deep despair.
People arrive in the stage four
having spent somewhere around half a century
investing themselves
in what they believed was meaningful and important.
They did great things, worked hard,
earned everything they have,
maybe started a family or a charity
or a political revolution or two, and now they're done.
They've reached the age where their energy
and circumstances no longer allow them
to pursue their purpose any further.
Stage four then isn't about doing more;
it's actually about letting go.
You've spent decades building something:
a family, a career, a mission, a movement.
Maybe you succeeded, maybe you didn't,
but, eventually, your body slows down,
your ambition dulls,
and you're left wondering,
"Did any of this actually matter?"
That is stage four,
the shift from building a life
to being prepared to outlive it,
and this is where the fear of death creeps in sideways,
not as a fear of dying,
but more of like a fear of disappearing, of being forgotten,
of becoming irrelevant.
Some people respond by doubling down,
working into their 80s, clinging to power,
fighting change.
Others give up too soon,
resigning themselves to boredom and lots and lots of golf.
But a rare few get it right.
They realized that stage four
isn't about being the hero anymore.
It's about being the mentor, the elder, the teacher.
(groans)
Instead of asking, "What can I still accomplish?",
they say, "What can I support? What can I pass on?"
And the irony, this stage which feels like the end
is actually where your influence can become permanent.
Not because you did more,
but because you let go at the right time
and gave it all away.
Stage four is important psychologically
because it makes the ever-growing reality
of one's own mortality more bearable.
As humans, we have a deep need to feel
as though our lives mean something.
This meaning we constantly search for
is literally our only psychological defense
against the incomprehensibility of this life
and the inevitability of our own death.
To lose that meaning, or to watch it slip away,
or to slowly feel as though the world has left you behind,
is to stare oblivion in the face
and let it consume you willingly.
Growth is often portrayed as a rosy, flowery progression
from dumbass to enlightenment
that involves a lot of joy,
prancing in fields full of daisies,
and high fiving people at a seminar
that you paid way too much to be at.
- And I want to thank you
for sharing that with us, all right.
(audience applauding)
- But the truth is that transitions between the life stages
are usually triggered by an intense pain, a loss,
or an extreme negative event in one's life.
Think about it:
Why go through the trouble of reorienting
all of your values and priorities
unless the current ones
have somehow failed you catastrophically?
Later stages don't replace the previous stages;
they transcend them.
Stage two people still care about social approval.
They just care about something more than social approval.
Stage three people still care about testing their limits
and discovering themselves.
They just care about their commitments
they've made much more.
Each stage represents a reshuffling of one's values.
It's for this reason that when one transitions
from one stage to another,
one will often experience a fallout
in one's friendships and relationships.
If you are at stage two
and all of your friends were at stage two,
and suddenly you settle down,
commit and get to work on stage three,
yet your friends are still fucking around in stage two,
there will be a fundamental disconnect
between your values and theirs,
and that will be difficult to overcome.
Sometimes we get lodged in a stage for years
or even decades, stunting our own maturity and growth.
The solution at each stage is then backwards.
To move beyond stage one,
you must accept that you'll never be enough
for everybody all the time,
and therefore you must make decisions for yourself.
To move beyond stage two,
you must accept that you'll never be capable
of accomplishing everything
that you can dream of and desire,
and therefore you must zero in on what matters most
and then commit to it.
To move beyond stage three,
you must realize that time and energy are limited,
and therefore you must refocus your attention
towards helping others take over the meaningful projects
that you began.
And to move beyond stage four,
you must simply realize that change is inevitable
and that the influence of one person, no matter how great,
no matter how powerful, will eventually dissipate.
Ultimately, these are all projects of assessing your values
and then properly prioritizing new values.
If this is something that you are struggling with,
then you can watch the full podcast episode on this topic,
on the subject right now here on this channel.
See you there.
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