- When I was younger, I
used to have this quiet, menacing voice inside me. I would starve for
attention and affection, but every time I started to
receive it from somebody, that voice would quietly
urge me to run away. As a result, I spent most of my 20s being a terribly unreliable
and often selfish person. I was the guy who said he
couldn't wait to see you and then never showed up. I was the guy who went on
three spectacular dates with a woman and then strangely found an endless litany of excuses
to not see her again. It wasn't that I didn't like these people. Actually, it was the opposite. I did like these people, and
that's what terrified me. That's what woke that inner voice saying, Let's get out of here. Don't get hurt. Don't get too attached. (gentle music) We all have demons, parts of
ourselves that we don't like

to acknowledge, but we
see lurking inside of us. We all have that little voice in our ear telling us to do things
that we kind of know are gonna sabotage us. We get high or drunk, or go
gambling much to try to forget or ignore those demons. We distract ourselves from our demons with work or competition. But no matter how hard we
try to ignore our demons, they're always down there. They're always lurking. Here's how it works. Demons start out as self-judgment. You're lazy, you're
stupid, you're unlovable. And then we try our hardest
to avoid that judgment, to prove it wrong, but eventually that avoidance becomes self-destructive, and worse, no matter how
much you try to prove your demon wrong, it doesn't go away. In fact, it just doubles
down and gets stronger. One of the demons that I still
struggle with is laziness.

While we're all lazy slobs, at least some of the time, my struggle is with my own sense of usefulness in this world, and sometimes it spirals to a dark and lonely place if I'm not careful. When I procrastinate, I tend to judge myself pretty harshly, telling myself that I'm no good, I'm a lazy sack of shit. My general assumption is that everyone else must be super productive and kicking ass all the time, except for me, and it's taken me many years to realize how irrational this belief is. But still, that doesn't change the fact that the little voice whispers that no one else is having the problem staying motivated, therefore, something must be wrong with me. The laziness demon never stops making me feel lazy no matter how much work I get done. The demon is never satisfied. So the only alternative is to distract yourself from the demon or, worse, to give in.

For me, I spent many years distracting myself with partying, sex, and alcohol mostly, but also some drugs when I was younger. These days, I have a tendency to fall into a lull of playing video games for three or four days straight, all while hating the fact that I'm playing video games for three or four days straight. In this way, our demons morph into a kind of self-loathing. You feel powerless and trapped. You can't win. No matter how much you succeed, you can't prove the demon wrong, and yet when you give up and fail, you just prove them right. In her book Feeding Your Demons, Tsultrim Allione talks about an old Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice where you literally visualize whatever the demon is haunting you, and then sit down and eat with them, the same way you'd feed a guest or a friend at a dinner party. Allione argues that this has a healing effect.

that it represents accepting
the worst aspects of ourselves, and then developing compassion for it. Inspired by this idea, I
decided to try something that I had never really tried before. I'd become friends with my
demon, my tireless inner critic. I named him Carl. Now, Carl is kind of a dickface. But, you know, that's just Carl's thing: judging, condescension, being a dickface. But you know what? I'm not gonna hold that
against Carl. Not anymore. Like everyone, Carl needs
love and compassion too. So one night, I closed my eyes, and I imagined sitting
down to dinner with Carl. Carl, I said, you really
make my life hell sometimes. You know that? I constantly feel like
I'm not doing enough, even though I'm doing tons, and it's just because you
never leave me alone. To which Carl said, - [Carl] Mark, you've
made a demon out of me.

but I'm really just the other
side of your fiery ambition. The only reason I cast
doubt on everything you do is because you want to do so much. - God damn, Carl, you sound
just like Morgan Freeman. - [Carl] I know, I know. I get that a lot. - So what you're saying
is you're just here because you reflect the sacrifices of the things that I desire. - [Carl] You could say that,
or you could go even further and say that I'm not a reflection of you. I am you. - Whoa. - I've long argued that
the best thing about people is also the worst thing about them. That's because our
extraordinarily positive traits often produce extraordinarily
negative side effects or sacrifices. A gift for empathy might make you overly emotionally attached at times. A competitive streak that
earns you high achievements might make you kind of an asshole. So in my case, my constant
guilt around being lazy

is just the flip side of
having enormous energy and ambition. To give up on one would
mean to give up on both. My old demon about getting
too close to people is also what made me
incredibly independent and allowed me to take risks
that most people wouldn't. In this sense, every demon
has an associated angel, and our demons are just the other side of our best qualities. To give up on one, would
be to give up on both. Put another way, whatever you
choose the value in your life, you are also choosing to
experience the failure of that value. This is also why therapy works, because therapy helps you recognize, spot, and then speak nonjudgmentally to the demons within yourself. And speaking of therapy, this video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Did you know that 40% of Americans do not have access to a therapist? Isn't that kind of fucked up? Well, they don't. But thankfully, you can now
access therapy from anywhere

using services like BetterHelp. Through an onboarding survey,
BetterHelp matches you with a therapist who can
help you with your demons, and from there, you can
communicate with them any way you wish: through text,
phone calls, or video calls. But most importantly, if
your therapist turns out to be a fucking weirdo,
you can switch at any time. Therapy was hugely impactful
for me when I was younger. It helped me both recognize and
cope with some of my demons, and it can hopefully help
you cope with yours too. So get 10% off your first month of therapy by using the link in the description below or go to betterhelp.com/markmanson. That's 10% off your first month. Betterhelp.com/markmanson. Alright, back to Carl. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I spent much of the book
talking about entitlement, the assumption that we
deserve special treatment.

for better results than everyone else. This drive to disassociate from our demons is a subtle form of entitlement. It's an assumption or belief
that we should be able to live without cost or sacrifice. An offshoot of that
assumption is often the belief that our pain is somehow
special or unique to us, that no one understands
what we're going through or no one can relate to
what it's like to be us or have our problems. But here's the hard truth
that we all need to hear. There's nothing special about your demons. Carl doesn't just visit me. He visits millions of people around the world every single day, and there's a good
chance he visits you too. He's kinda like Santa Claus, except instead of presents,
he brings self-loathing. If everyone faces demons at some point, then it means we don't
have to be ashamed of them. It means that we're human, that there's not actually anything unique

or special about our problems. And I can't tell you how
many emails I get from people saying something like, Hey, Mark, I got this really messed up problem that you've probably
never heard of before. Wait till you get a load of this. And then they go on to describe an issue that 26 other people have
emailed me about that month. Like a shitty partner,
our demons delude us into thinking that they're ours, that our hearts are the only ones that they have infiltrated,
when really they're banging half the people around the block. Now, it's important to
note, befriending the demon isn't necessarily agreeing with the demon, and it's definitely not the same thing as indulging the demon. An alcoholic isn't made better
by drinking more alcohol. That just feeds the addiction. Now, you befriend your demon
by treating them the same way you treat your crazy uncle who believes in conspiracy
theories about crop circles.

You listen to them, you smile at them, you hug them, and tell
them that you love them, and then you go about your life. You say to yourself, Yes,
I'm being lazy today, but that's okay. I'm allowed to have a couple
lazy days here and there. That doesn't mean I'm a horrible person or that I'm fucking anything up. But thank you, Carl, for
mentioning it to me. - [Carl] All good, buddy. - We all have a bundle of voices
offering their perspectives in our heads at all times. A lot of our decisions are made as though they're made by a committee. One part of you feels bad for
your brother who got arrested and you wanna bail him outta jail. Another part of you is
like, Well, fuck him. He's so selfish anyway. Another part of you wants
to impress your parents. Another part of you wants
to say, Fuck your parents.

They never paid enough attention to me. Your demons are just members
of that brain committee shouting at each other. So let them have their seat. Let them have their say, but
when necessary, outvote them. Now, none of this is new, of course. Aside from the Buddhist
encouraging you to be pen pals with the worst parts of your nature, the famous psychoanalyst
Carl Jung wrote prolifically about what he called the shadow self. For Jung, your shadow is
all of the parts of yourself that you despise or loathe
and, therefore, hide and avoid. Much like a shadow, it's this
dark image that follows you around wherever you go, always behind you, always attached to you. It's impossible to run
away or lose your shadow because ultimately your shadow
is a representation of you. It's a beautiful metaphor because no shadow can exist
without a source of light. To rid yourself of your
shadow would require you

to rid yourself of the light in your life and thus live in utter darkness. Jung saw that denying our shadows and everything they contain was a source of a great deal of human suffering. And even argued that violence and full-on wars within and between societies were often the sad result of denying our collective shadow. As a culture, we avoid and deny the worst parts of ourselves, and we wage war on ourselves, threatening and killing our most desperate and vulnerable. We avoid and distract ourselves from our own problems by meddling in the problems of other cultures in society. It's all the same shit. It's just played out on like a much grander scale. Jung argued that we must integrate our shadow into ourselves by turning towards the darkness, not away from it. That means embracing the dark aspects of ourselves, our worst impulses, our worst shame, our worst fears, and owning them, accept them as they are.

but with that acceptance is
also a respectful disagreement. Because you can't have light without dark, and you can't truly value something unless you also value the
lack of that something. You can't strive to achieve great success if you aren't also a little
paranoid about failure. You can't desire wonderful relationships if you aren't also a little
terrified of losing that person. So be nice to your demons.
Invite them for dinner. Maybe a little bit of tea time. Tell Carl I said hello. And in time, they'll be nice to you. (gentle music)

How To Overcome Your Demons

#1 NY Times Bestselling Author. World Champion Non-Fuck-Giver.

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